WEB4LIB: The Pulse Of Librarians Online

Roy Tennant

Within the last decade, librarians went from ignorance of the World Wide Web to complete adoption of this technology in almost every area of professional endeavor – from selecting and ordering books to providing online service to patrons. This massive and wholesale professional retooling happened for most librarians on the job, often with little or no formal training. One major resource for helping librarians make this transition has been Web4Lib – the electronic discussion of library-based Web systems found at: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/

It is ironic that the same technology that created one of our greatest recent professional challenges – the Internet – provided one of the essential tools for meeting this challenge. Electronic discussions in all their various technical implementations (from Usenet newsgroups to LISTSERV-based systems) are an excellent way for practitioners to learn new skills from their peers.

For almost nine years Web4Lib has been a free online forum for library-based Web managers to ask questions, pose problems, and discuss issues with their peers. It is an unmoderated e-mail-based electronic discussion that began in May 1994 and has stabilized at a worldwide readership of around 3,200 individuals. For more on how and why the list got started, as well as the early history of the list, see the Ariadne article listed in the bibliography.

Subscribers to the list have used it to ask questions of their peers, listen in on the answers to the questions of others, to find out what other libraries are doing, to discover the real world experiences of librarians with specific products or services, and to find solutions to problems – often very quickly. Web4Lib is blessed with a solid core group of subscribers who are quite loyal and often are helpful to the "newbie" or long-time subscriber alike. Eric Hellman of Openly Informatics has even gone so far as to say that"everything I know about real electronic libraries, I learned from Web4Lib". Cherie Dutton of NetConnect has described Web4Lib as "the pulse of librarians online". GraceAnne DeCandido, a library consultant, says Web4Lib"allows me to hear the hum of webwizards at work. What's working? What isn't? What do you need to know? What bugs you unmercifully?"

Services

The archiveNearly eight years of messages are browseable and searchable, for those needing to refer back to something they had seen previously, or discover what was said on a particular topic. Each month's worth of messages can be browsed separately, and the search options allow for limits to very specific date ranges or message fields (Figure 1).

 Figure 1

The library Web manager's reference center

Over the years it became clear that library Web managers faced situations that were fairly unique among Web managers, and that rather than answering the same questions over and over it would make some sense to start building a collection of stock answers and helpful links. Thus the Library Web Manager's Reference Center was born, and has been ably managed by Jerry Kuntz from the Ramapo Catskill Library System in New York (Figure 2). For those needing to know how to lock down public access PCs, or how to set up a proxy, it is an invaluable service.

 Figure 2

Keeping it on track and civil

Perhaps the greatest challenge of any unmoderated list such as Web4Lib is to keep the discussion focused on the subject of the list and to not allow the discussion to degenerate to the point of character assassination. As a new list manager, I found myself learning as I went along what I needed to do to keep Web4Lib a civil and effective online community. Those strategies are discussed below, but the single most important factor in forming a civil, informative, and interesting discussion is the participants themselves. For some reason that I have not yet been able to pinpoint, Web4Lib is graced with an amazingly well-behaved and astute membership.

There will always be a few people who test the limits, however, so my first lesson was that there should be policies that are iron-clad and consistently enforced. These limits are codified in the Web4Lib Posting Policy (http://sunsite.Berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/#Policy). Every Web4Lib policy was enacted in direct response to a problem – none were created without a specific and compelling reason. So far we have only perceived the need for six policies.

What might be considered the Web4Lib "prime directive" is our first policy: "All messages must relate, however slightly, to the general topic of World Wide Web systems and libraries or library staff. The list owner interprets this rather broadly, but messages that are clearly off-topic will not be tolerated." This is the policy that most frequently requires enforcement.

Enforcement entails a warning to the individual that they have abrogated a posting policy, with direct reference to the policy violated and the message in question. If the individual breaks the same policy again they risk being removed from the list. Although we cannot prevent someone from subscribing to the discussion, we can prevent them from posting, so such an action effectively removes them from the community. In our almost nine year history I have removed two individuals for policy violations.

Our policies, as strict as they may be, still allow a good deal of behavior that can be distracting, annoying, and wasteful of the reader's valuable attention. So we have also developed a set of "Guidelines for Appropriate List Behavior" (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/#Behavior)that try to discourage behaviors that may drive subscribers off the list.

After a few years of making policy decisions alone, I decided it would be a good idea to create an Advisory Board to help make decisions about policy issues. Thomas Dowling, Bernie Sloan, and Karen Schneider comprise the Board,and their advice and assistance has been invaluable at keeping the discussion on track.

Personalities

Within any human community certain persons will come to be recognized for their easily identifiable traits (dare I say quirks?) that make them stand out from their peers. Web4Lib is no different in that regard, and although we may find those with traits we abhor to be more memorable, I will try to stick with those who have admirable traits.

The benevolent dictator

Did I say benevolent? Hmm … probably a mistake, that. In any case, what I say goes. A posting is not off-topic until I say it is (in consultation with the Advisory Board, of course!). My long experience with Web4Lib has proven to me the benefit of benign dictatorships in online discussions. If you do not like it, start your own.

The collective conscience

Whenever a Web4Lib reader begins to stray from the standards into the realm of strange HTML hacks, or attempts to design their site for a specific Web browser or user environment, Thomas Dowling is always there to remind us of the straight and narrow. Every list of a technical nature should be so blessed. Countless times over the last eight-plus years Thomas has jumped in with an authoritative reference to the appropriate W3C standards document, quoting chapter and verse as to why the poster is unfortunately misguided. That he invariably does this with good humor and tact has endeared him to the community. His consistency in responding to such questions means that many of us just sit back and wait for Thomas to weigh in on a question that seems right down his alley, knowing that he will handle it much better than we could.

Controversies

Any online discussion is likely to have its controversies, and in our history we have had several. The problem with controversies that are hotly debated is that they have a tendency to persist to the point that you may think they will never end. Despite this, however, I have never called an end to a debate on Web4Lib. I may have encouraged individuals to agree to disagree, or to take an exchange that is mostly between two readers off the list into a private conversation, but I do not think it should be up to me to arbitrarily state when we should stop discussing a topic. So far (knock on wood) that stance appears to have worked, although some readers have at times requested me to stop a discussion. Herewith are a couple of our common controversies.

Filtering

The issue of filtering access to content on the Internet, particularly in public libraries, has been one of our most hotly debated controversies. I think the firestorm around this issue was the most trying time this community has experienced. There were in particular two individuals on the opposite extremes of the controversy (both of whom were eventually removed from the list due to repeated policy violations) who seemed to debate the topic endlessly. Recently there has been relatively little discussion of filtering, although I am not so naïve as to think it is a dead issue.

<>Religious platform wars

Since most Web4Lib subscribers are either techies or wannabe techies, we tend to be an opinionated bunch when it comes to our preferred hardware and software platform. The Linux/Apache camp sometimes fights it out with the MS Windows/IIS users, or the open source zealots duke it out with those in favor of shrink-wrapped packages. Not that these discussions are all that heated –as Charlie Irwin from Wheelock College Library said recently, "I find that the tone of people on this list seems to be 'kinder and gentler' than on some lists. Lots of courtesy and respect for newbies, tyros and those who don't quite get it (but are trying) – not always common on Web lists."

And before I forget, it is time to settle the most inconsequential controversy once and for all. It is pronounced "web-for-libe", which rhymes with "jibe". Get over it.

Management

The mailing list management software used by Web4Lib is ListProc, from the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking. Although some of the tasks required to manage a large list are handled by the software (some subscribers are automatically removed after a number of bounced e-mail messages), there are some tasks that I must do manually. Primary among these are removing e-mail addresses that are bouncing mail and manually removing subscribers who are unable to remove themselves. To assist subscribers in knowing more about why they may be experiencing a problem, I created the Web4Lib Subscriber's Troubleshooting Guide (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/troubleshooting.html)(Figure 3).

Web4Lib is hosted by the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE (http://sunsite.Berkeley.edu) at the University of California, Berkeley Library, and would not exist without the long-term, unwavering, and helpful support of the Library Systems Office staff– in particular, Janet Garey and Garey Mills.

 Figure 3

Why we will soon celebrate our tenth anniversary

Although I began Web4Lib, I am not why it is still around. It is still around because it has served a useful purpose for the community it aims to serve. Not only is Web4Lib a cooperative and helpful online community, it is maintained through a collective effort. Besides the specific responsibilities fulfilled by the Advisory Board, Jerry Kuntz, and Thomas Dowling (who set up an automatic twice-monthly mailing of basic information about the list), there are the wonderfully helpful crew of library Web managers who are only too happy to help out their colleagues, and to receive help in turn.

ReferencesTennant, R. (1996),"Web4Lib: the library Web manager's electronic discussion list", Ariadne,Issue 5, September, available at: www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue5/web4lib/Web4Lib, available at: http://sunsite.Berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/

Roy Tennant (roy.tennant@ucop.edu) is the Manager of Web and Service Design at the California Digital Library (CDL), Oakland, California, USA.