Cultural Heritage

Last month I gave a series of presentations on “Using the Social Web to Maximise Access to your Resources“. These were delivered in a series of workshops organised by the Strategic Content Alliance and held in Belfast, Edinburgh, London and Cardiff. In addition a slightly tweaked version of the session was held at the IWMW 2009, following the unavailability of one of the planned sessions.

The structure of the sessions was (a) an illustration how the Social Web can complement Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques to maximise access to resources, services and ideas; (b) examples of approach to use of metrics to understand the success (or not) or the approaches taken and (c) discussions of the challenges to be faced in making use of the Social Web for these purposes.

The slides used at the IWMW 2009 session are included below (and are also available on Slideshare).

In the final workshop held at Cardiff on 31 July 2009 I invited participants to raise any specific concerns they had regarding use of the Social Web. These issues were recorded and are included below. I did (foolishly!) agree to provide ‘solutions’ to any issues which participants raised. I’ll try to do this in a forthcoming post. In the meantime can anyone help by providing solutions to these issues?

Table 1

• How do you find relevant resources?
• What are the quick wins?
• How does one develop an organisational strategy?
• How does one rein in the enthusiasts?
• How do you get motivation higher up the food chain?

Table 2

• Who owns the content and how does one go about monitoring  it?
• How do you learn how to use social media?
• How do you automate workflow processes to keep, for example,  course materials up-to-date on third party Web sites?

Table 3

• How appropriate is it to move in to student’s social media (it might make them move out)?
• What about the investment in existing systems (e.g. VLEs, CMSs, etc.)?

Table 4

• Is their a problem just trying to be cool and trendy, or can we fulfill particular purposes?
• Can you assume that all students are able to communicate i.e. social inclusion?
• Should you seek permission in the first place… or just do it?

Table 5

• How do you monitor what’s up there and make sure it is answered in reasonable time
• How do you convince decision makers for staff to do this work and get resources?

Table 6

• What tone should be used for embracing Social Web?
• How do you control and monitor use of the Social Web?
• How do you identify authentic Web sites, compared to those that appear similar?