Neal-Schuman Publishers

NEW BOOK DEMONSTRATES HOW WEB 2.0 CAN EXPAND ACCESS TO ARCHIVES AND BETTER SERVE USERS

Expert author offers tips and techniques for expanding reach through key social media strategies!

In order to remain relevant and serve the growing generation of native Web 2.0 users, archives and local history organizations must take advantage of the ever-growing range of low-cost Web 2.0 tools that allow their users to discover and interact with collections through their preferred modes. Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections, to be published by Neal-Schuman on January 3, 2010, is a highly practical, jargon-free guide to help organizations with archival and historic manuscript collections successfully use social media to share their activities and collections on the Web. Anyone working in archives, special collections departments, historical societies, local history collections in public libraries, or museums will find clear guidance to successfully integrate Web 2.0 into their unique professional environments.

Author Kate Theimer divides the book into twelve chapters, beginning with an introduction to Web 2.0’s key concepts. She also provides advice for making a smooth transition from a Web 1.0 to a Web 2.0 organization, and includes a thorough review of important technical and administrative planning issues. The next six chapters cover all the major Web 2.0 services—blogs, podcasts, image-sharing sites like Flickr, video-sharing sites like YouTube, micro-blogging and Twitter, wikis, and social networking sites like Facebook. For each tool, there is an overview of its crucial functionalities, a detailed analysis of its implementation requirements, and a thoughtful discussion of its current uses across a range of archives, historical societies, and special collections. Theimer also addresses four additional Web 2.0 tools, including mashups, widgets, online chat, and Second Life.

She then shifts the focus to cover methods for measuring and evaluating outputs and outcomes, along with helpful suggestions and best practices for documenting results. Theimer then reviews important management and policy concerns, with advice for getting institutional buy-in, dealing with copyright issues, defining tasks and assigning workloads, creating policies, planning for preservation, learning what your users want, and publicizing your efforts. She concludes with guidance for finding the right balance between traditional archival principles and the opportunities of the new Web.

There are sample screenshots, illustrations, and checklists throughout the book, as well as sidebar Q&A’s with organizations that have successfully utilized Web 2.0 tools, including the Library of Congress, Florida State Archives, Seattle Municipal Archives and many more. The appendix provides a number of useful resources available on Web 2.0 in general, as well as recommendations for further reading on each tool.
Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections provides archives and collections professionals with an essential resource to help them demystify Web 2.0, implement both existing and new Web tools, and spark new ideas about how to be part of the new interactive web.

Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections
ISBN: 978-1-55570-679-1. 2010. 6 x 9. 300pp. $79.95.

About the Author
Kate Theimer is the author of the popular ArchivesNext blog (www.archivesnext.com), as well as a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops on issues related to the use of Web 2.0 technologies by archives and historical organizations. Kate holds a Master of Information degree with a specialization in archives and records management from the University of Michigan and a Master of Arts from the University of Maryland, and has held positions at the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

About Neal-Schuman Publishers
Neal-Schuman Publishers is a leading publisher of professional books for librarians, archivists and knowledge managers. Founded in 1976, Neal-Schuman Publishers is based in New York City, with offices in London, UK.

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