Introducing Web 2.0: RSS trends for health librarians

Abstract

In Jenny Levine’s excellent blog The Shifted Librarian (http:// www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/), I recently noticed an interesting debate about Web 2.0 that I had completely missed. Knowing very little about Web 2.0 or its implications for my work as a health sciences information professional, I chose to read Tim O’Reilly’s article “What Is Web 2.0: design patterns and business models for the next generation of software” (http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6228). O’Reilly comes up with this somewhat technical definition: Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences. In other words, Web 2.0 has enormous potential to bring user-generated content to the Internet. The idea is to free data from corporative control and allow anyone to assemble and locate content to meet their own needs or the needs of clients. Rather than having to conform to the paths laid out for us by content owners or their intermediaries, we create the content. Is Web 2.0 something that we need to start thinking about? What does it mean for how we provide medical information services? Perhaps this is another bubble that will disappear if we just ignore it for a while. However, in thinking about this, I would like to share with you some ideas and tools that will set up the way for Web 2.0. I have written a series of short reviews of the major trends and surmised their application in health and medical information services.