This pleasant and highly readable book is composed of layers somewhat like a set of nested wooden Russian dolls. The outer layer organizes the chapters with project management strategies for developing a high impact and highly interactive library website. The second layer clusters web-based techniques to implement stages of the project strategy. The inner layer describes specific resources and tools. As the back cover states, the book provides “practical instructions and advice on everything from planning and development to marketing and metrics”. In other words, there's a lot squeezed into just over 100 pages. Unless the reader follows the somewhat complex conceptual organization, the book may come across as unfocused and uneven.
For a library web site developer with little background, the broad overview in this book could be very useful. When a developer already has experience with some of the approaches described here, the strength of the book is in providing links for a range of interesting websites and approaches. The book could also be useful for project managers who want an overview of specific techniques. Finally, the book could provide a quick overview for students and professional who are generally interested in finding out about service-based web technologies beyond simple searching.
The title suggests that the book offers insights into “Semantic Web technologies and social search”. It is true that most of the web development tools reviewed are related in some way to these topics but the presentation might best be described as “breezy” rather than systematic or comprehensive. For instance, the book only briefly mentions RDF (the glue of the Semantic web) only once and it doesn't mention OWL (an advanced but important standard) at all. Nor does it address relevant microformats such as the Schema.org Book schema although the lengthy discussion of Google Rich Snippets covers some of that territory. Perhaps more surprisingly, there didn't seem to be any explicit discussion of “digital libraries”.
That said the many useful topics the book covers may give the library community a sense of the new directions offered by the Semantic Web community. However, the book does not succeed as well in describing the extensive contributions of the library community to the growth the Semantic Web. Indeed, many approaches to information organization which are standard in librarianship have yet to be adopted into the Semantic Web. Still, we can hope that this book will help bridge the gap between the two communities.
The book ends with a discussion of emerging web-based tools and services such as the Open Library (www.openlibray.org) and Open Calais (www.opencalais.com) that help to support large online collections. Consistent with goals of the book this is a pragmatic overview for the developer. Yet, we can hope that the reflective reader will pause to consider a vision for where all this activity is leading and what skills we should foster among future information professionals. Finally, we should be mindful that a new generation of websites will make the book outdated within a few years. Until then, it will remain an engaging and a potentially useful resource for many developers.
