Semantic Web Technologies and Social Searching for Librarians is one of ten new titles in the Tech Set series which provide practical instructions and advice on emerging technologies. This volume is intended to provide a guide to the future of web-based technology, especially search through semantic web technology. It covers topics such as tracking trends using social media; finding hidden content online; searching for reusable content; and creating searchable metadata.
The strength of this book is that it is not simply focussed on technical issues, but also discusses the social and organisations aspects of working with new technologies, such as project planning, staffing and marketing. While the inclusion of this type of guidance is welcome, I found the advice given to be quite general and not really targeted towards the specific requirements of semantic web technologies and social searching.
However, it is difficult to decide who this book is aimed at. While some sections, such as “Using Google's Rich Snippets” require a degree of technical skill, other sections are written for readers which extremely levels of low technical abilities (or even information skills) for example, detailed instructions for searching using Google Scholar. Given the short length of this book, I feel it would have been better to target a more defined audience, rather than trying to include something for everyone.
Another problem is that books about technology are often, inevitably, out-of-date by the time they reach publication and this volume is particularly unfortunate in this respect, as several of the tools which feature quite heavily, including Google News Timeline, are no longer available.
In summary, I do not feel this book adds a great deal to resources already available on this area; by trying to appeal to a wide audience it fails to really serve the needs of any.
