Legal Research

Semantic Web - Web 3.0

Some of you will need to control your visceral reaction to the 3.0 concept. Again it's just the title of a conversation. In library land there seem to be two types of conversations - those that discuss the concept and try to figure out what it means, and those that try to decide what label it should have on its spine.

Anyway, the web 3.0 thing is starting to form a beach head in the discussions outside of library land. One useful post to start with is this one:

11 Things to Know About the Sematic Web (ReadWriteWeb)

It's a nice simple post. I like point number one: "You don?t need to apologize for calling it Web 3.0. Of course the Web does not upgrade in one go like a company switching to Vista. But there is a definite phase transition from current technologies. My personal Web 3.0 definition is ?the combination of Web 2.0 mass collaboration with structured databases?."

I also like the hint that this trend is more powerful in the enterprise world than the consumer space. With an emphasis on vertical search, leveraging local communities and tagging, it's made for librarians' skills. My SLA colleagues will be watching this one closely.

If you don't like the Web 3.0 title, just call it the semantic web, no one really knows what that means either.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on February 16, 2008 (boomark / email).