An integrative review of Web 3.0 in academic libraries
| Published date | 04 June 2018 |
| Pages | 13-17 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-12-2017-0092 |
| Date | 04 June 2018 |
| Author | B. Preedip Balaji,Vinay M.S.,Shalini B.G.,Mohan Raju J.S. |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Library & information services |
An integrative review of Web 3.0 in academic
libraries
B. Preedip Balaji, Vinay M.S., Shalini B.G. and Mohan Raju J.S.
Introduction
Since the 1990s, Web technologies
have been widely used and have
influenced online library services
(McKenna, 1994). There has been an
evolving learning process, innovative
pedagogies and technology-based
educational applications in the digital
age where the learning and instruction
emphasis is on just-in-time learning,
constructivism, student-centered
learning and collaborative approaches
(Isaias et al., 2011). Academic libraries
have been at the forefront to develop
and deploy integrated library service
platforms and Web technologies to
enable interactive, semantic and
responsive user experience through
search technologies, electronic
resources, audio-visual tools, blogs and
social networking sites. Web
applications and social media for user
services are widely deployed to
empower users and for online
information bring service delivery to a
new level (Shoniwa and Hall, 2007).
Information marketing, user
engagement and outreach strategies
became indispensable so that Web
content of libraries and social media
tools are organized into a cohesive
process of workflows to manage library
websites as hubs of information. As new
applications emerge, the notions of
scholarly communication are changing
and academic libraries should
reposition themselves strategically and
competitively to be the places to go to
get started for research and to enhance
the user experience of accessing
resources seamlessly.
Web 3.0 technologies for libraries
Having connected information (Web
1.0) and people (Web 2.0), Web 3.0 is
about representing meaning, connecting
knowledge and bringing these closer
together to work in ways to employ
intelligent agents, layered applications
and interactive systems to provide a
productive and intuitive user experience
(Bolinder, 2008). Web 3.0 is
conceptualized as a third generation
technology upgrade through 2010-
2020s, mainly characterized by
semantics of – meaning and
intelligence. As an evolving interactive
platform for collective intelligence,
Web 3.0 comprises a set of tools
involving markup data, crowd-sourced
content, data mining and machine
learning to enhance intelligence,
underlying frameworks and architecture
of the Web toward establishing
semantic connections, so that machines
understand and interpret what humans
exactly want – contextual, relevant
results.
Envisioned to provide a common
framework, the semantic Web is an
extension of Web 3.0 connecting
distributed data that can be shared and
reused across applications, enterprises
and community boundaries, toward
building a Web of data (W3C.org,
2015). Furthering the data Web a step
further, the semantic Web concepts,
applications and rules drive formal
languages (Resource Description and
Framework [RDF] and OWL),
formalize defining the semantics of data
structures, mapping concepts, entities
and their relationship, publishing data
records and querying them using
SPARQL (Spivack, 2007). Web 3.0
defines next generation of Web
standards to promote common data
formats and exchange protocols on the
Web, most fundamentally through
XML, RDF and OWL to not only read
and write but also execute and connect
data with linkages as Web of data
(Berners-Lee and O’Hara, 2013).
As a result, emerging third
generation of Web-based services such
as collective intelligence, semantic Web
services and recommender systems will
uptake and intensify machine-to-
machine discernable systems and
services. Web 3.0 applications are
implicit to yield the desirable results of
semantic connections based on
modeling of people, digital objects,
entities through ontologies, controlled
vocabularies and other knowledge
organization systems. This is essential
to organize the Web, especially the
libraries as a Web of data, which
generates and holds enormous data in
the form of bibliographic records, data
repositories, digital collections and
research data. In this Web 3.0 phase
libraries are expected to explore the
unwieldy Web content, tap social media
networks and disparate library
resources and connect them together in
a widely searchable, accessible, usable
platform for unified searches, visible
resources and contextual results. Linked
and open data, semantic metadata and
ontologies frameworks encapsulated by
RDF and Resource Description and
Access (RDA) and metadata schema
(Dublin Core) models, library services
are upscaling to Web scale discovery
systems and integrated library services
platforms where currency, accuracy and
relevancy are at its core.
Social media
Social media has become an important
force to use for maximizing the usage of
library resources and for information
marketing, facilitating user participation
and user-generated content and is central
to engage, promote and disseminate
research to a larger user groups in an
academic setting (Flynn, 2012). Without
geographical restrictions, social
networking sites allow libraries to market
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 4 2018, pp. 13-17, V
CEmerald Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/LHTN-12-2017-0092 13
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