Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections

Citation

Gray, N. (2012), "Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections", Records Management Journal, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 81-83. https://doi.org/10.1108/09565691211222207

The term “Web 2.0” has disorientingly many meanings. To some, it refers to the cluster of mid‐level technologies which let services such as Google Maps or Facebook act as an “application inside a webpage”; to others it has meanings which can be grouped under the slogan “the read/write web”; another camp sees it as a marketing expression and is divided about whether this is an obviously good or an obviously bad thing; and for yet others it is a proxy for a broad change in society towards a more decentred, or engaged, or empowered or open‐licensed future. These terms are not remotely equivalent: in some cases they may not even intersect, so something as obviously next‐generation as Wikipedia is Web 2.0 under some definitions but not others.

The term is really only useful as an adjective, to denote something – anything – that is more than a collection of static web pages. However, even saying that much begs the question: what is it that's so _wrong_ with static web pages (which we're now obliged to call Web 1.0)? Unfortunately, this is a question that Kate Theimer neither asks nor really answers. Indeed, depending on your conception of what “Web 2.0” means, podcasts are firmly Web 1.0, and if you turn off visitor editing on your wiki pages, or commenting on your blog, then those become Web 1.0, too.

Such rational objections notwithstanding, the tools Theimer discusses _are_ conventionally, stubbornly, described as “Web 2.0 tools”, because the thing that unites the various senses is a “Web 2.0 _attitude_”, which in its most elemental form is that knowledge should not be confined in silos, nor publication restricted to those rich enough to buy soapboxes; further, that technology can open the silos and offer publication for all (for good or ill); and further still, that this change can happen from a host of relatively small actions. Viewed in this light, the question of whether web pages are static or not is an irrelevance: the point is that “Web 2.0” technology can make it easy for small operations to pry open the silo doors. If this is the real goal, then old‐fashioned “Web 1.0” tools might be the best fits to some problems, but the main point is probably in fact the attitude rather than the technology.

So this is where Theimer's book is located. It is not addressing grand questions of policy, or national archives, but instead small‐scale initiatives and local history collections. It is for this reason that, although the book is topped and tailed with brief discussions of the larger context, the bulk of the book is composed of relentlessly practical advice on blogs, podcasts, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, wikis and Facebook. Each chapter describes the technology, how to start experimenting, how it has been successfully used by others in this area, and roughly how hard it is to manage. If this rigid structure occasionally becomes tedious, it is because, at this level and for these purposes, each of these technologies has roughly the same set of things to be said about it. The book is written to be read with a manager or a trustee over the reader's shoulder: Theimer effectively assumes that the reader already wants to open the silo and knows that “Web 2.0 tools” can help (or at least are more likely than “web pages” to attract funding, which amounts to much the same thing), but the reader doesn't really know where, technically, to start, nor how to cost the project and sell it to an institutional board. Theimer is not addressing initiates into the webby arts, but she is perhaps addressing postulants at least.

Theimer's (presumed) assumption here is both a strength and a weakness. Her technical advice usually boils down to “here's how and where to get started: now watch others and imitate”. This is good advice – the tools in question generally are reasonably accessible, and where expert knowledge is required, Theimer says so clearly – and it gives her plenty of space to focus on highly relevant use‐cases and institutional benefits. However the assumption and structure also mean that Theimer is not always clear about the unique benefits of each separate tool. Of the technologies mentioned, the only one I've never “got” is Facebook, and though I follow everyone's explanations of what Facebook is for, I don't have any useful intuitions about why it works or why anyone should care about it. In this respect I'm not much the wiser after reading Theimer's chapter on Facebook, which makes me wonder whether her other chapters, on technologies I do understand and am already persuaded by, would be any more convincing to a novice or sceptic.

Another thing I expected to find in the book, but didn't, is a discussion of the specifically _social_ aspects of these tools. One of the various subtitles of Web 2.0 is “the social web”, highlighting that what makes such tools successful – in some cases phenomenally successful – is a complex of social needs and desires. This means that some of the challenges of successfully running “Web 2.0” services are not about the IT, but about creating, servicing and growing an online community. There are hints of this problem throughout the book, in advice to “create an identity for your wiki”, “identify what you want to do”, or “monitor the comments you receive on your images”, but nowhere any extended engagement with the notion that activity on the social web includes intangible human puzzles that are nothing to do with technology, but which are challenging, and which could derail a project if they are not handled well. In fairness, I have little idea how one would go about giving such advice in a book, but it would be useful for Theimer to at least note that some people are social naturals in some media, and others are not (and I have the scars to prove it).

Theimer's book, then, is a useful manual, which satisfies its clear (though specialised) goals. It will date, but not too quickly, since the approaches it describes are not too tightly coupled to specific technology versions, and the problems it approaches are not likely to be solved tomorrow. It can be read profitably by anyone in charge of an archival silo, big or small, who wants to share its contents on any version of the web.