Pennvibes - DLF Fall Forum - Nov 6, 2007

PennVibes

Currently the production & maintenance of library web pages is labor intesive, involving:
* content specialists
* web production staff
* IT staff
* hand-coded HTML
* adding any kind of tools to a page requires special code

This results in a very limiting economy of production:
* we can't modify our pages too often
* we can't have to many pages

Enter Web 2.0

* Netvibes, PageFlakes, iGoogle

* pages are custom-tailored to the user's needs

Can this Web 2.0 model be of use in a research library context?

* yes if
- we develop library-oriented widgets
- if we build a framework that is community oriented (e.g. for a librarian to build pages for
patron use)

Enable a new level of service
- e.g. microsubject pages

[PennVibes Demo]

main focus is on rapid web page development - even to a web page developed to respond to a
specific patron request

Next Steps:

* Release Into Production
* Goal: Progressively replace core library web pages with Pennvibes pages

Longer term:
* more customizable pages
* group maintenance of pages
(but these customizable & maintenance features requires significantly more infrastructure)

* widget interoperability
e.g. Librarian adds a PageFlakes widget to a Pennvibes page and vice-versa

* need for industry standards

* a pool of library widgets from many organisations?