Slides for talk on "Enthusiastic Amateurs and Overcoming Institutional Inertia" given by Brian Kelly, UKOLN at the Mashed Libraries 2009 ('Mash Oop North') event. See http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/mashed-library-2009/

1. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/mashed-library-2009/
Mashed Library “Oop North” 2009:
Enthusiastic Amateurs and
Overcoming Institutional Inertia
Brian Kelly Acceptable Use Policy
UKOLN Recording of this talk, taking photos,
University of Bath discussing the content using email,
Bath, UK instant messaging, blogs, SMS, etc.
is permitted providing distractions to
Email:
others is minimised.
b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk
Twitter: Blog:
http://twitter.com/briankelly/ http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
Resources bookmarked using ‘mashlib09' tag
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2. Introduction
About Me
Brian Kelly:
• National Web adviser to UK Universities
and cultural heritage organisations
• Based at UKOLN, a national centre of
expertise in digital information
management and located at the University
of Bath
• Involved in Web since January 1993
• Current area of interest include Web 2.0,
Web standards and Web accessibility
• Not a developer (though used to write
Algol, Fortran, Basic and Cobol!)
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3. Mashups Are Exciting!
Innovation
Competition at
IWMW 2008
attracted
several good
examples of
mashups,
including
several from
Mike Ellis
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4. Mashups Are Exciting!
Thumbnails of
UK HEI Web
pages,
generated
automatically
using
Thumbalizr
(Note I did this
manually in
early days of
Web)
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5. Mashups Are Exciting!
Google Custom
Search Engine
(GCSE) of UK
University sites
“Why? I dunno
either?”
Joke at my
Scottish HEI
GCSE page 
Note JISC
proposal for this
in late 1990s
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6. Mashups Are Exciting!
Google Earth
view of of UK
Universities
Why?
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7. Mashups Are Exciting!
Tony Hirst’s
submission to
IWMW 2008
innovation
competition
Note:
• Mashup (using
RSS, Yahoo
Pipes, &
Dipity)
• Documentation
on blog
Display of effectiveness of media
releases (how they are picked up by
news & centre of expertise in digital information management
A
in blogosphere)
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8. Documenting The Mashups
Tony Hirst’s blog post
about his IWMW 2008
submission includes
documentation of what he
did and screen shots of
tools used
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9. Bring Down The Government!
Tony Hirst has written
(& documented)
multiple mashup
examples making use
of public sector data
(e.g. Guardian APIs):
• Formula 1 data
• MPs expenses
• …
Note interview in
journalism.co.uk
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10. D
What About You?
Some questions:
• Will your mashup expertise thrive after
today?
• What should be different after today?
• What barriers do you envisage?
• Will you be able to demonstrate value for
attending ‘Mash Oop North’? (cf evidence
for MP’s expenses!)
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11. Advocacy
Your convinced (to some extent) of:
• The value of data reuse
• The benefits of light-weigh development
• …
You can:
• Promote this to senior managers
• Encourage these approaches by your
developers
• …
What else?
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12. Encouraging Greater Openness
Your convinced (to some extent) of allowing
others to access your data & reuse of other’s
data
You can:
• Minimise legal barriers to reuse of your
data (CC licences, please)
• Encourage a risk management attitude for
your developers e.g. Oppenheim formula:
R=AxBxCxD
What else?
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13. Providing Documentation
You’ve a great mashup
service – but developer
leaves (dies):
• “Did he say anything
about the source
code?
• “Anyone know if
there’s any
documentation”
How about encouraging
open documentation
e.g. using a blog (open
to peer review)
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14. Sharing Experiences
Some additional thoughts:
• Sharing experiences
• Allowing and permitting
• Engaging with others (peers, users, policy
makers, …)
• Driving down costs (e.g. negotiations with
vendors)
What else?
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15. Critical Friends
Remember, though, that developers may get it
wrong!
Acting as a Critical Friend may be helpful
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16. Questions?
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