Web 2.0 - What It's all About - an Aslib Engineering workshop held at at Brunel University

On a warm and promising day last week, Phil Bradley did an excellent job of guiding a room full of 'first-timers' through the essentials of Web 2.0. Essentially Web 2.0 brings things together favourite links, "to do" lists, key searches, contacts, and so on, and provides the ability to share what you've found and stored with friends, colleagues, or just the world in general!

The big advantage is that you clearly do not need any real technical knowledge in order to do this. You can create your own web page complete with blog and even a customised search engine in a matter of minutes. Phil introduced us to some of the best tools available - Pageflakes, Rollyo and Zimbio - as well as offering comparable alternatives from the thousands available. The real benefit of the day (aside from Phil's immense knowledge and experience!) was Time - time to play and experiment without interruption.

So what is Web 2.0 all about? Constant change - forget your ideas of the Internet as it is, we're moving on. Not sure if it's for you or afraid to get started? We left with Phil's advice ringing in our ears: "Just Do It!!!"

For more information on Web 2.0 please see Phil's website.

Phil's presentation on Web 2.o is available to download from Slideshare (another great Web 2.0 tool!)

If anyone reading this was at the workshop, please do share your thoughts with us! Have you started using any of the skills or tools you learned about last week?

Free access to Royal Society Digital Journal Archive

Following a recent announcement from the Royal Society, the Digital Journal Archive, dating back to 1665 and containing in excess of 60,000 articles, will be free online from 1st September to 30th November 2007. During this three month period, librarians and academics will be able to access and download any article from arguably the most comprehensive publishing resource in science.

More details may be found at:

www.publishing.royalsoc.ac.uk/archive