This is your last chance to sign up for the free one-day workshop entitled ‘An Introduction to Web 2.0 and the Social Web’ sponsored by the MLA. The workshop be looking at what can Web 2.0 and the Social Web offer to museums, libraries and archives, especially small organisations with limited budgets and technical expertise.

The new dates are:

• Bath (Kingston Room) – Monday 8th March 2010
• Cambridge (Central Library) – Monday 22nd March 2010

These dates are likely to fill up fast.

We can now tell you about four more Web 2.0 Workshop dates for 2010.

The one-day workshop sponsored by the MLA and entitled ‘An Introduction to Web 2.0 and the Social Web’ will be looking at what, if anything, can Web 2.0 and the Social Web offer to museums, libraries and archives, especially small organisations with limited budgets and technical expertise.

The new dates are:

• Newcastle (Discovery Museum) – Monday 8th February 2010
• Birmingham (Central Library) – Monday 22nd February 2010
• Sheffield (Millennium Gallery) – Monday 1st March 2010
• Nottingham (E-Learning Centre) – Wednesday 17th March 2010

These dates are likely to fill up fast.

UKOLN is currently running a one-day Introduction to Web 2.0 and the Social Web Workshop in various locations around the country. I attended the one in Devizes recently where the issue of public libraries Web site design came up and the constraints that can be imposed by IT services and council policy. Discussion focused on what the actual barriers were and how they could be overcome.

One solution is to create a presence outside the council Web space that allows more creativity in presentation and content and is out where the potential audience is. That means looking at using blogs, microblogging services like Twitter, social networking sites and picture and video sharing services such as Flickr and YouTube.

So it was good the other day to see the launch message for a new blog for Newcastle Libraries which will host podcasts, news, events information and staff blogs. There’s a local studies picture gallery on Flickr and some videos on YouTube about memories of life in Newcastle collected as part of a recent project. Definitely worth a look for inspiration if you’re considering doing this sort of thing.

You can also follow @ToonLibraries on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NewcastleLibraries.

If you want more information on how they did this, then contact Jennifer Clark, the eLibraries Support Officer at Newcastle Libraries at: jen.clark@newcastle.gov.uk

Two more south east dates have been announced for the touring UKOLN Web2 and the social Web workshop.

The one-day workshop sponsored by the MLA and entitled ‘An Introduction to Web 2.0 and the Social Web’ will be looking at what, if anything, can Web 2.0 and the Social Web offer to museums, libraries and archives, especially small organisations with limited budgets and technical expertise.

The new dates are:

• Dulwich (Dulwich Picture Gallery) – Friday 29th January 2010
• Chelmsford, Essex (Goldlay Gardens) – Wednesday 17th February 2010

Places for the London workshops went very quickly and we expect these workshops to be fully booked by the end of the week – so register now!

A few places are still available on the Devizes workshop taking place next Monday (16th November).

More workshops in other locations will be announced in the New Year.

Web 2.0 and the Social Web are terms which are now being used widely. But what do these terms mean? And what, if anything, can Web 2.0 and the Social Web offer to museums, libraries and archives, especially small organisations with limited budgets and technical expertise?

A one-day workshop sponsored by the MLA and entitled ‘An Introduction to Web 2.0 and the Social Web’ will be touring the country in the next few months. The workshop will attempt to answer the above questions. It is free to attend but places are limited. Bookings are now open so why not sign up!

• Preston (the Gujarat Centre) – 13th November
• Devizes, Wiltshire (Wiltshire Heritage Museum) – 16th November
• London (Clore Learning Centre, Museum of London) – 3rd December
• Leeds (Leeds Discovery Centre) – 9th December
• Leicester (School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester) – 18th December

More workshops in other areas will take place after New Year.

The Wiltshire Heritage Museum library has just gone online with a full digital library created in just 5 months using the Google Books service.

The Library has been collecting books about the history, environment and archaeology of Wiltshire for over 150 years, and has many rare and important books in its collection of over 8000 volumes. Until now, the idea of getting the library online has been only a dream for librarian Dr Lorna Haycock. Without Google, it would have cost tens of thousands of pounds, buying a computer system, exhaustive data entry and only a few of the books could have been scanned electronically.

Museum Director, David Dawson explained that the controversial Google Books service has a ‘My Library’ facility, where you can simply click on a book that you have found on Google Books, and then add it to your own digital library. Work began in May this year to catalogue the entire library, using Google Books, and over 5,000 books have now been recorded. Many of them have already been digitised, and the full text of many can be searched online. He commented “as far as we know, we are the first library in the world to have created a digital library using the Google Books service. As an independent charity, we simply couldn’t afford to get our library online until Google Books gave us this fantastic opportunity to enable people to carry out their research online.”

The digital library has now been launched through the museum Web site. Everyone can now browse and search the library online – finding books that contain detailed information about where they live, or about the history of their family. Director David Dawson explains “people can then visit our library to read the real books, discovering the wealth of material that we have in our fantastic library”. As Google digitise more books, increasingly you can search every word in a book. Users can sit in their office, search the digital library and find the information they need within seconds. Sometimes they can read the book on the screen, if it has already been digitised by Google, or they can get the book from the shelf in the library. For the museum, this is the key,  researchers are already using the Google Book catalogue to find the books they need, and then coming to the library to read the book.

David Dawson will be talking in more detail about the project at a forthcoming one-day workshop facilitated by UKOLN and funded by Musuems, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and the South Western Federation of Museums and Art Galleries. The workshop, entitled The Social Web – An introduction to Web 2.0, will be held at Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes, Wiltshire on 16^th November 2009.