To be honest, answering a question about what I have learned from this course is a little difficult, since I must admit to having had plenty of experience using social networking tools prior to taking this class ... I first logged on to the World Wide Web the summer prior to my freshman year of college (1995), and have been "hooked" ever since, always eager to try the next "revolutionary" social service or join the latest "flavor of the month" web site (which, to be honest, more often than not simply fizzle and disappear with little fanfare). As such, I've always been interested in how these types of online tools could be applied to an institution - such as a library - as another avenue for reaching out to potential users.
So, I would have to say that a lot of the things that I have learned from this class have come from observing those of my fellow students who might not be as familiar with social networking tools as I was ... Now, I hope this doesn't come across as condescending (because that is certainly not my intent), but it was interesting coming from a place steeped in the "culture" of the online world, and seeing how other people adopt and interpret that world from a fresh perspective.
Seeing their growth over the course of this semester (I remember one person in particular stating that they never thought much about social networking before this class, which was just so different from my own experiences) was truly interesting to behold; I wish them all the best of luck in continuing to learn and grow within the virtual landscape (and convincing their respective libraries to adopt social networking policies of their own!) ...
As for what might come next for me personally, I will continue exploring options for my academic library (I'm a member of our Web Development Committee) in terms of advertising and promoting library services to our students within the virtual realm ... For example, while I maintain an "unofficial" Twitter feed that points out interesting materials found within the collection, there was a time when our library actually had its own account (@HCDinand) which has since been abandoned. At the time, the reason given to me was that (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Twitter is for celebrities, not libraries."
After taking this course, I believe I have some extra "ammunition" to try and persuade them otherwise!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
"A (re)slice of life online, part four" by Howard Rheingold
I guess I'll have to be the one to say it ... As much as I believe that video games have a definite place in the library, I fail to see why librarians continuously turn to "Second Life" as an example to back up this viewpoint.
My brother (who works in the gaming industry) had a former boss leave for California a couple years back to join Linden Lab and work on the "re-design" of "Second Life." He showed me a few screenshots of what the new look of the game would be, and I must admit that it was rather impressive; however, as far as I can tell, it did little to actually maintain the level of popularity that "Second Life" once had ... The truth of the matter is that "Second Life" lost its relevance ages ago, and (unless you're talking about MMORPGs like "World of Warcraft") these types of games just do not have the level of popularity needed to justify their continued presence in the conversation of gaming in libraries.
Google attempted a "Second Life" clone called "Lively" ... it failed.
Sony, with its vast resources within the gaming world, started up its own version of "Second Life" called "Playstation Home" ... its level of user activity is a running joke, if not greatly exaggerated.
The fact remains that "Second Life" has been in decline for a long time now, and attempting to establish a presence within that virtual world is no longer worth the effort ... What I did like about this video was the use of other "participatory media" by Rheingold within his lectures (Flickr, blogs, wikis, video, etc.); it certainly seems as if he is getting his "brand" out there amongst his students (even if "Second Life" might not be the best place to collect all of those applications).
The other thing I liked about this video? The fact that Rheingold called it "the Second Life" ... That gave me a good chuckle :)
My brother (who works in the gaming industry) had a former boss leave for California a couple years back to join Linden Lab and work on the "re-design" of "Second Life." He showed me a few screenshots of what the new look of the game would be, and I must admit that it was rather impressive; however, as far as I can tell, it did little to actually maintain the level of popularity that "Second Life" once had ... The truth of the matter is that "Second Life" lost its relevance ages ago, and (unless you're talking about MMORPGs like "World of Warcraft") these types of games just do not have the level of popularity needed to justify their continued presence in the conversation of gaming in libraries.
Google attempted a "Second Life" clone called "Lively" ... it failed.
Sony, with its vast resources within the gaming world, started up its own version of "Second Life" called "Playstation Home" ... its level of user activity is a running joke, if not greatly exaggerated.
The fact remains that "Second Life" has been in decline for a long time now, and attempting to establish a presence within that virtual world is no longer worth the effort ... What I did like about this video was the use of other "participatory media" by Rheingold within his lectures (Flickr, blogs, wikis, video, etc.); it certainly seems as if he is getting his "brand" out there amongst his students (even if "Second Life" might not be the best place to collect all of those applications).
The other thing I liked about this video? The fact that Rheingold called it "the Second Life" ... That gave me a good chuckle :)
"Video games and the future of learning" by David Williamson Shaffer, Kurt R. Squire, Richard Halverson and James P. Gee
After reading Gee's book, I see many of his points being raised in this article (which would make sense since he is a co-author):
* Video games are a lot more socially-oriented than people give them credit for. Whereas schools "largely sequester students from one another and from the outside world," games "bring players together ... in the virtual world of the game and in the social community of its players"; aside from multiplayer gaming, players are encouraged to "read and write FAQs [and] participate in discussion forums" so that they may gather (as well as dissemeniate) information amongst their peers. This creates a much more social experience when it comes to learning about the games that they play, moreso than simply memorizing facts that are detached from any meaningful situation that might interest potential learners (which comprises the type of learning that is going on in our school systems).
* Game players have an opportunity to "explore new identities" by taking on the personas of the characters found in video games ... While these personas usually take the form of something outside of the realm of reality which the players themselves actually inhabit (wizards, space marines, professional athletes, etc.), such scenarios can also be applied to learning skills that may factor into the players' future job experience; the authors give the example of children playing the game "Madison 2200" and taking on the role of an urban planner, giving them the opportunity to look at problems from the perspective of someone fluent in the practices of urban ecology ("video games [make] it possible to 'learn by doing' ... [and] expose novices to the ways professionals make sense of typical problems").
* "Educational" video games can be used to provide students with "an opportunity to see the world in a variety of ways that are fundamentally grounded in meaningful activity" [emphasis mine] ... Again, by "placing" potential learners within a virtual world where they can experience and navigate their way through particular scenarios, it can provide them with the opportunity to acquire skills in a way that is meaningful for them ("Player learn biology by working as a surgeon, history by writing as a journalist, mathematics by designing buildings as an architect or engineer, geography by fighting as a soldier, or French by opening a restaurant ... More precisely, these players learn by inhabiting virtual worlds based on the way surgeons, journalists, architects, soldiers, and restaurateurs develop their epistemic frames").
* Unfortunately, the authors point out that gathering the type of information necessary to construct these games "requires more work than is currently invested in most 'educational' video games" ... We must remember that the video game industry is a for-profit business first and foremost, and the ultimate goal for the various companies is making money, not revolutionizing the American school system. Sadly, this is why a vast majority of "edutainment" games are horrible, because resources aren't being used to create a truly immersive experience (games like "Diner Dash" and "Cooking Mama" may offer rudimentary instruction in the culinary arts, but for someone to be able to "learn French by opening a restaurant" will involve a more pronouned focus on the ability of the player to "inhabit" the viewpoint and skill range of a true restaurateur).
* This quote sums things up nicely: "When knowledge is first and foremost a form of activity and experience - of doing something in the world within a community of practice - the facts and information eventually come for free ... A large body of facts that resists out-of-context memorization and rote learning comes easily if learners are immersed in activities and experiences that use these facts for plans, goals, and purposes within a coherent domain of knowledge."
The school experience shouldn't just be about memorizing facts and then regurgitating them (without actually understanding the context of what they mean or how they can be applied in real life) in order to get an "A" on one's report card; teachers should make the information "matter" to their students, and video games may provide the opportunity to do just that.
* Video games are a lot more socially-oriented than people give them credit for. Whereas schools "largely sequester students from one another and from the outside world," games "bring players together ... in the virtual world of the game and in the social community of its players"; aside from multiplayer gaming, players are encouraged to "read and write FAQs [and] participate in discussion forums" so that they may gather (as well as dissemeniate) information amongst their peers. This creates a much more social experience when it comes to learning about the games that they play, moreso than simply memorizing facts that are detached from any meaningful situation that might interest potential learners (which comprises the type of learning that is going on in our school systems).
* Game players have an opportunity to "explore new identities" by taking on the personas of the characters found in video games ... While these personas usually take the form of something outside of the realm of reality which the players themselves actually inhabit (wizards, space marines, professional athletes, etc.), such scenarios can also be applied to learning skills that may factor into the players' future job experience; the authors give the example of children playing the game "Madison 2200" and taking on the role of an urban planner, giving them the opportunity to look at problems from the perspective of someone fluent in the practices of urban ecology ("video games [make] it possible to 'learn by doing' ... [and] expose novices to the ways professionals make sense of typical problems").
* "Educational" video games can be used to provide students with "an opportunity to see the world in a variety of ways that are fundamentally grounded in meaningful activity" [emphasis mine] ... Again, by "placing" potential learners within a virtual world where they can experience and navigate their way through particular scenarios, it can provide them with the opportunity to acquire skills in a way that is meaningful for them ("Player learn biology by working as a surgeon, history by writing as a journalist, mathematics by designing buildings as an architect or engineer, geography by fighting as a soldier, or French by opening a restaurant ... More precisely, these players learn by inhabiting virtual worlds based on the way surgeons, journalists, architects, soldiers, and restaurateurs develop their epistemic frames").
* Unfortunately, the authors point out that gathering the type of information necessary to construct these games "requires more work than is currently invested in most 'educational' video games" ... We must remember that the video game industry is a for-profit business first and foremost, and the ultimate goal for the various companies is making money, not revolutionizing the American school system. Sadly, this is why a vast majority of "edutainment" games are horrible, because resources aren't being used to create a truly immersive experience (games like "Diner Dash" and "Cooking Mama" may offer rudimentary instruction in the culinary arts, but for someone to be able to "learn French by opening a restaurant" will involve a more pronouned focus on the ability of the player to "inhabit" the viewpoint and skill range of a true restaurateur).
* This quote sums things up nicely: "When knowledge is first and foremost a form of activity and experience - of doing something in the world within a community of practice - the facts and information eventually come for free ... A large body of facts that resists out-of-context memorization and rote learning comes easily if learners are immersed in activities and experiences that use these facts for plans, goals, and purposes within a coherent domain of knowledge."
The school experience shouldn't just be about memorizing facts and then regurgitating them (without actually understanding the context of what they mean or how they can be applied in real life) in order to get an "A" on one's report card; teachers should make the information "matter" to their students, and video games may provide the opportunity to do just that.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
"Percolating the power of play" by Sarah Faye Cohen, Timothy Minder, and Laurent Nishikawa
The two games mentioned in this article - "Searchlight" and "Dustin King: Locked and Literate" - sounded rather interesting, so I visited the Champlain College Library's website and was able to find more information on the project:
When I first read the description for "Searchlight" in the article, I imagined that the presentation of the game would have a correlation within the "for-profit" gaming business with titles like "Harvest Moon" or "Lost in Blue" (simple item-gathering and resource-management experiences that would be appropriate for younger audiences) ... However, the artwork from the screenshot provided now suggests to me a mixture of child-like innocence with more darker undertones (perhaps not as dark as a game like "Limbo", but somewhere along those lines).
As for "Dustin King", the description in the article immediately made me think of the "Ace Attorney" series; however, looking at the isometric tile-based design suggested in the screenshot, I'm now thinking that the gameplay would more closely resemble something like "Ultima Online" or "Final Fantasy Tactics" ... very intriguing.
Unfortunately, it looks like both games are still "in development", so I guess I'll just have to wait :(
Students play as Clara, a girl who has been charged with repairing the local lighthouse before nightfall. She travels across the various islands of her world and collects balls of light, which represent information that she can use to build her lighthouse in various styles. Every style requires a different kind of information that is found somewhere in the game world, so players must explore and learn to navigate the landscape of information before they can truly succeed. This metaphorical game includes seven mini-games, each with unique game play and stories.I must admit, the screenshots provided were of a much higher quality than I was initially expecting from their descriptions in the article ... In fact, after visiting this website, it kind of makes me want to play them!
Dustin King in Locked and Literate takes place in the laboratory and office building of the mysterious Dr. Spade. The player is tasked with exploring the building and delving into top secret information via computers, books, and office notes scattered throughout the complex. The player must navigate the building, web pages, and books to solve problems. In the world the main character Dustin, a secret agent investigating Spade Co., encounters a quirky worker from the complex along with a cast of unique, funny, and informative supporting characters who contact him through his wrist watch communicator. They help him find his way through the complex, solve problems he encounters along the way, and learn how to be information literate.
When I first read the description for "Searchlight" in the article, I imagined that the presentation of the game would have a correlation within the "for-profit" gaming business with titles like "Harvest Moon" or "Lost in Blue" (simple item-gathering and resource-management experiences that would be appropriate for younger audiences) ... However, the artwork from the screenshot provided now suggests to me a mixture of child-like innocence with more darker undertones (perhaps not as dark as a game like "Limbo", but somewhere along those lines).
As for "Dustin King", the description in the article immediately made me think of the "Ace Attorney" series; however, looking at the isometric tile-based design suggested in the screenshot, I'm now thinking that the gameplay would more closely resemble something like "Ultima Online" or "Final Fantasy Tactics" ... very intriguing.
Unfortunately, it looks like both games are still "in development", so I guess I'll just have to wait :(
"The case for video games in libraries" by Suellen S. Adams
Suellen starts off the introduction to her article by pointing out that some "educators and academics [believe] that perhaps video games are too trivial a pursuit to bring into the library" ... Amusing wordplay aside, these detractors should be reminded that books of fiction were once thought to be "too trivial" to include in library collections as well ("Facts only, libraries are just for research!").
In my opinion, this is simply another case of people dismissing something because they do not truly understand it (which is illustrated nicely by Suellen's quote from Squires that "games have come to typify the essentially subversive side of computing [emphasis mine]") ... A large amount of mistrust has been built up amongst the "older" generations - which includes several academics and librarians - when it comes to video games, because they don't take the time to explore this "world" that younger people find so easy to delve into; there was a point in time when older people didn't like/understand rock and roll music or comic books either, so they attempted to demonize such things for no other reason than the fact that it was something that young people enjoyed (they "got" it) and they didn't.
That's why it's important for those within the profession (such as through classes like LSC597!) to become educated about the benefits of programs like gaming in libraries, and not just base their opinions on the medium solely through some slander piece they saw on FOX News about violent video games ... Video games hold many possiblities and tackle many genres, just like television and motion pictures; some might be appropriate for teaching patrons information literacy skills, some might not be, but that doesn't mean that the entire industry should be ignored and cast aside as a result (imagine a library refusing to stock any movie DVDs because of one title - let's say one of the "Saw" films - that they chose to represent the entire medium!).
In fact, as Suellen points out, an unwillingness to accept video games into libraries is misguided because they have already been implementing "games" within their outreach programs/collection development for years now (the only difference being a move into the "digital" realm) ... She mentions storytelling as an example of "emphatic identification with the protagonist of the story," something that the interactive nature of gaming also offers to its users; this reminds me of Scott Nicholson's 2008 article "Reframing gaming", where he argues that gaming in the library could serve as a type of "storytime for the rest of us," not just for the very young ("Having a variety of gaming activities can draw interest from not only the teens who are drawn to video games but also the adults and seniors who may be interested in other forms of gaming").
Also, Suellen makes the observation that "libraries have hosted a variety of game-related programs in the past [such as] chess clubs, board games and pencil and paper role-playing groups"; again, it is only because video games carry a (largely unfair) negative stigma with certain individuals that they are treated as somehow separate and "different" from these types of activities ... Once again, this is a subject that Scott Nicholson also addresses, and - if anyone is interested in further educating themselves about this subject - I highly recommend that you check out his series of videos about gaming in libraries via YouTube.
In my opinion, this is simply another case of people dismissing something because they do not truly understand it (which is illustrated nicely by Suellen's quote from Squires that "games have come to typify the essentially subversive side of computing [emphasis mine]") ... A large amount of mistrust has been built up amongst the "older" generations - which includes several academics and librarians - when it comes to video games, because they don't take the time to explore this "world" that younger people find so easy to delve into; there was a point in time when older people didn't like/understand rock and roll music or comic books either, so they attempted to demonize such things for no other reason than the fact that it was something that young people enjoyed (they "got" it) and they didn't.
That's why it's important for those within the profession (such as through classes like LSC597!) to become educated about the benefits of programs like gaming in libraries, and not just base their opinions on the medium solely through some slander piece they saw on FOX News about violent video games ... Video games hold many possiblities and tackle many genres, just like television and motion pictures; some might be appropriate for teaching patrons information literacy skills, some might not be, but that doesn't mean that the entire industry should be ignored and cast aside as a result (imagine a library refusing to stock any movie DVDs because of one title - let's say one of the "Saw" films - that they chose to represent the entire medium!).
In fact, as Suellen points out, an unwillingness to accept video games into libraries is misguided because they have already been implementing "games" within their outreach programs/collection development for years now (the only difference being a move into the "digital" realm) ... She mentions storytelling as an example of "emphatic identification with the protagonist of the story," something that the interactive nature of gaming also offers to its users; this reminds me of Scott Nicholson's 2008 article "Reframing gaming", where he argues that gaming in the library could serve as a type of "storytime for the rest of us," not just for the very young ("Having a variety of gaming activities can draw interest from not only the teens who are drawn to video games but also the adults and seniors who may be interested in other forms of gaming").
Also, Suellen makes the observation that "libraries have hosted a variety of game-related programs in the past [such as] chess clubs, board games and pencil and paper role-playing groups"; again, it is only because video games carry a (largely unfair) negative stigma with certain individuals that they are treated as somehow separate and "different" from these types of activities ... Once again, this is a subject that Scott Nicholson also addresses, and - if anyone is interested in further educating themselves about this subject - I highly recommend that you check out his series of videos about gaming in libraries via YouTube.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
"Library Law blog" by Mary Minow and Peter Hirtle
I couldn't help noticing that the first two pages of posts for this blog (spanning April 3rd through June 29th) have managed to generate a grand total of one comment between them ... Not a particularly good sign that this section of Minow and Hirtle's website is stirring up conversation within the library community about "issues concerning libraries and the law."
Nevertheless, I still see this site as a great resource for librarians to maintain awareness about the various legal issues/battles going on that directly affect the profession ... I could see right away that several timely and pertinent topics were being discussed by the authors, including copyright restrictions on e-books, the legality of the Library of Congress' collection of pre-1972 sound recordings, and Google's possible mishandling of user privacy.
The posts I read were not bogged down with needlessly technical jargon, or "legalese" that would make sense only to other lawyers ... Rather, all of the ideas were discussed and summarized in a clean and easy-to-understand fashion, giving readers a chance to truly digest the facts and contemplate the ramifications these cases will have (or might have in the future).
Nevertheless, I still see this site as a great resource for librarians to maintain awareness about the various legal issues/battles going on that directly affect the profession ... I could see right away that several timely and pertinent topics were being discussed by the authors, including copyright restrictions on e-books, the legality of the Library of Congress' collection of pre-1972 sound recordings, and Google's possible mishandling of user privacy.
The posts I read were not bogged down with needlessly technical jargon, or "legalese" that would make sense only to other lawyers ... Rather, all of the ideas were discussed and summarized in a clean and easy-to-understand fashion, giving readers a chance to truly digest the facts and contemplate the ramifications these cases will have (or might have in the future).
Monday, July 11, 2011
"Free culture: the future of creativity, collaboration, and knowledge" by Elizabeth Stark
Some random thoughts while watching Stark's fascinating talk from Quinnipiac University on March 25th, 2010:
* I remember back in 1998 when the "Steamboat Willie" copyright case was in the news, and everyone was wondering how Disney was going to react ... Here's a good summary from the LA Times.
* People shouldn't be surprised that the internet has changed the rules; copyright law as it stands now "doesn't necessarily make sense in an age where the ability to copy a file verbatim... has virtually no cost" (these laws were created in an age of physical goods, not digital).
* It's good to hear Stark remind people that peer to peer file sharing is not inherently illegal; many indie bands and other small-time businesses upload their material to these sites with the hopes of drawing in new fans and getting their message out to a world-wide audience.
* I like the term "digital restrictions management" ... http://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm
* As Cory Doctorow says, DRM does not work!
* "Free culture" does not just mean that you don't have to pay for anything ... "Free" in this case means "free expression" and "free speech"; it is "the idea that the ability to access, share and re-rip culture is a good thing for society, and that such a culture requires an environment of technological freedom and free expression to go along with it" (an "open source culture").
* The meaning of "net neutrality" has sadly been muddled along party lines by our political leaders, but it basically means that "everybody should be able to access all parts of the internet equally" (in my opinion, the upholding of net neutrality via government regulation is not a perfect solution, more like the "lesser of two evils") ...
* "In a free culture, people would have the right to share and re-rip culture, and cultural production would not be dependent upon exclusive rights, but this doesn't necessarily mean that people creating culture would not be able to make a living; people often assume that if one makes culture available, there would be no models for survival, but in fact [in] many cases making one's work available to share and access and rework can actually benefit the creator rather than detracting" ... For example, the aforementioned Cory Doctorow has all of his novels available for free on his website without DRM, and yet his books still consistently reach the number one spot on bestseller lists for science ficition (he builds up such positive goodwill with his fanbase - through book signings and other social interactions - that they're willing to still support him financially and buy his books even though they are available for free).
* "Transformative works" like Pogo's "Alice in Wonderland" remix are not hurting big companies like Disney and their ability to make money ... No one is going to watch that 3-minute video and think "Well, I don't have to buy that Alice In Wonderland Blu Ray now, I just watched the movie for free!" (it has become a dramatically different work).
* If we didn't have "fair use" laws, then we wouldn't have VCRs, DVDs, Blu Ray players, DVRs, etc. etc.
* "Fair use is an incredibly important doctrine in the digital age, and something along the lines of DRM as discussed can inhibit making it fair use" ... I personally believe that a fan of a TV show, who is using a 10-second clip from a copyrighted DVD in a YouTube video to help express their love for said show, is totally different from someone ripping an entire season of the same show from a Blu Ray disc and uploading the whole she-bang to BitTorrent (one can actually gain new viewers for the property and thus help the copyright holder, while the other can obviously stunt sales of legal copies and end up hurting the copyright holder).
* Ideals like the democratization of culture ("where anyone can participate") and "citizen media" have many benefits ... as well as some drawbacks (for example, Wikipedia is a good starting resource, but I wouldn't necessarily consider it the definitive source for factual information)
* There is no knowledge that is not power (a rallying cry for librarians!) ...
* The bottom line is that societal norms are changing and copyright law needs to change with them ... Some might call this "legitimizing piracy", but the fact remains that we are playing by a different set of rules now ("In many cases, these exceptions and these laws are out of step with reality").
* Quinnipiac provided a helpful list of some of the site discussed during Stark's talk via their website.
* I remember back in 1998 when the "Steamboat Willie" copyright case was in the news, and everyone was wondering how Disney was going to react ... Here's a good summary from the LA Times.
* People shouldn't be surprised that the internet has changed the rules; copyright law as it stands now "doesn't necessarily make sense in an age where the ability to copy a file verbatim... has virtually no cost" (these laws were created in an age of physical goods, not digital).
* It's good to hear Stark remind people that peer to peer file sharing is not inherently illegal; many indie bands and other small-time businesses upload their material to these sites with the hopes of drawing in new fans and getting their message out to a world-wide audience.
* I like the term "digital restrictions management" ... http://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm
* As Cory Doctorow says, DRM does not work!
* "Free culture" does not just mean that you don't have to pay for anything ... "Free" in this case means "free expression" and "free speech"; it is "the idea that the ability to access, share and re-rip culture is a good thing for society, and that such a culture requires an environment of technological freedom and free expression to go along with it" (an "open source culture").
* The meaning of "net neutrality" has sadly been muddled along party lines by our political leaders, but it basically means that "everybody should be able to access all parts of the internet equally" (in my opinion, the upholding of net neutrality via government regulation is not a perfect solution, more like the "lesser of two evils") ...
* "In a free culture, people would have the right to share and re-rip culture, and cultural production would not be dependent upon exclusive rights, but this doesn't necessarily mean that people creating culture would not be able to make a living; people often assume that if one makes culture available, there would be no models for survival, but in fact [in] many cases making one's work available to share and access and rework can actually benefit the creator rather than detracting" ... For example, the aforementioned Cory Doctorow has all of his novels available for free on his website without DRM, and yet his books still consistently reach the number one spot on bestseller lists for science ficition (he builds up such positive goodwill with his fanbase - through book signings and other social interactions - that they're willing to still support him financially and buy his books even though they are available for free).
* "Transformative works" like Pogo's "Alice in Wonderland" remix are not hurting big companies like Disney and their ability to make money ... No one is going to watch that 3-minute video and think "Well, I don't have to buy that Alice In Wonderland Blu Ray now, I just watched the movie for free!" (it has become a dramatically different work).
* If we didn't have "fair use" laws, then we wouldn't have VCRs, DVDs, Blu Ray players, DVRs, etc. etc.
* "Fair use is an incredibly important doctrine in the digital age, and something along the lines of DRM as discussed can inhibit making it fair use" ... I personally believe that a fan of a TV show, who is using a 10-second clip from a copyrighted DVD in a YouTube video to help express their love for said show, is totally different from someone ripping an entire season of the same show from a Blu Ray disc and uploading the whole she-bang to BitTorrent (one can actually gain new viewers for the property and thus help the copyright holder, while the other can obviously stunt sales of legal copies and end up hurting the copyright holder).
* Ideals like the democratization of culture ("where anyone can participate") and "citizen media" have many benefits ... as well as some drawbacks (for example, Wikipedia is a good starting resource, but I wouldn't necessarily consider it the definitive source for factual information)
* There is no knowledge that is not power (a rallying cry for librarians!) ...
* The bottom line is that societal norms are changing and copyright law needs to change with them ... Some might call this "legitimizing piracy", but the fact remains that we are playing by a different set of rules now ("In many cases, these exceptions and these laws are out of step with reality").
* Quinnipiac provided a helpful list of some of the site discussed during Stark's talk via their website.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
"Online social networking sites and privacy: revisiting ethical considerations for a new generation of technology" by Peter Fernandez
In this article, the author very clearly and succinctly breaks down how social networking sites work:
This description serves as a healthy reminder for overly enthusiastic librarians that these sites are "controlled by third parties [and] they represent a space whose owners create the parameters for what is possible" [emphasis mine]. As such, librarians "cannot exert direct control over the social networking sites they interact with" ... As a profession, we cannot place ourselves within an SNS environment like Facebook or Twitter and expect to exert influence/maintain control over our patrons' information; in effect, librarians are entering someone else's "yard" and have to play by "their" rules (whether they like it or not).
Of course, this doesn't stop librarians from "working to integrate social networking sites into their outreach efforts by creating profiles that allow them to interact with their patrons in this new space"; in fact, some libraries take it a step further and try to adapt some of their "rules" into the social experience by "integrating services such as catalog searching directly into their social networking sites" ... A lot of articles I've read point out features such as this (and I must admit that building one's individual OPAC into a Facebook page does sound cool on the surface), but I am curious if librarians who've attempted this have made public any actual usage statistics; being able to search the catalog directly through a social networking site seems rather impressive, but do patrons actually use this feature? If not, and they're ignoring this feature, then it suddenly seems a lot less impressive, as it's serving no real purpose for the library's outreach efforts (other than trying to make the library look "cool").
In the end, the author warns that "future updates to [social networking sites] could potentially track how people use library profiles; collect information about how their users access the library catalogue; or perhaps most worryingly, do something else entirely that librarians cannot anticipate" ... Librarians need to be aware of these types of scenarios when putting their "trust" into a third-party for-profit business like Facebook or Twitter. After all, once a library encourages their patrons to join a social networking site, they are basically "handing over" that information for unknown purposes ("Once a user's information has been placed into the system, there is no way to retain full control over how it is used").
I think this statement by the author highlights the concerns we as librarians must have when using social-networking sites, rather than simply rushing in blindly and adopting the latest trends:
These sites allow users to create profiles that maintain a record of personal information submitted by the user. This profile can contain things like the user's favorite music, birthday, contact information, and favorite hangouts. This information is shared with other users to facilitate networking and to generate traffic for the site. Traffic represents people using the site, which is the key to making them attractive to their ultimate customer, advertisers. Whatever the values of the individuals running the site, this creates pressure to encourage users to share private information as freely as possible. This allows them to attract additional users, as well as to provide data for targeted advertisements.
This description serves as a healthy reminder for overly enthusiastic librarians that these sites are "controlled by third parties [and] they represent a space whose owners create the parameters for what is possible" [emphasis mine]. As such, librarians "cannot exert direct control over the social networking sites they interact with" ... As a profession, we cannot place ourselves within an SNS environment like Facebook or Twitter and expect to exert influence/maintain control over our patrons' information; in effect, librarians are entering someone else's "yard" and have to play by "their" rules (whether they like it or not).
Of course, this doesn't stop librarians from "working to integrate social networking sites into their outreach efforts by creating profiles that allow them to interact with their patrons in this new space"; in fact, some libraries take it a step further and try to adapt some of their "rules" into the social experience by "integrating services such as catalog searching directly into their social networking sites" ... A lot of articles I've read point out features such as this (and I must admit that building one's individual OPAC into a Facebook page does sound cool on the surface), but I am curious if librarians who've attempted this have made public any actual usage statistics; being able to search the catalog directly through a social networking site seems rather impressive, but do patrons actually use this feature? If not, and they're ignoring this feature, then it suddenly seems a lot less impressive, as it's serving no real purpose for the library's outreach efforts (other than trying to make the library look "cool").
In the end, the author warns that "future updates to [social networking sites] could potentially track how people use library profiles; collect information about how their users access the library catalogue; or perhaps most worryingly, do something else entirely that librarians cannot anticipate" ... Librarians need to be aware of these types of scenarios when putting their "trust" into a third-party for-profit business like Facebook or Twitter. After all, once a library encourages their patrons to join a social networking site, they are basically "handing over" that information for unknown purposes ("Once a user's information has been placed into the system, there is no way to retain full control over how it is used").
I think this statement by the author highlights the concerns we as librarians must have when using social-networking sites, rather than simply rushing in blindly and adopting the latest trends:
By creating a profile on these sites, libraries also risk further legitimizing them, and encouraging users to be passive regarding their own privacy. If libraries take a comprehensive view of privacy as a core value, encouraging their users to use products that do not have the same regard for privacy should give librarians pause. Furthermore, it raises the issue of the role that libraries should play in actively promoting awareness about the priacy issues inherent to these sytems.
"Privacy and Generation Y: applying library values to social networking sites" by Peter Fernandez
Let me just start off by saying that I like the author's definition of Generation Y ("persons born between 1977 and 1994"), because it just barely squeaks me into that demographic ... and here I've always thought I was one of those disillusioned Gen X slackers ;)
Other observations:
* Fernandez encourages libraries to "look into the future and anticipate the needs of a wide variety of patrons", and I believe this is a rational way to look at the adoption of social networking sites into the library's online presence ... It's important for librarians to investigate and see what their individual communities want (and not just rush into the latest "flavor of the month" just because it's what everyone else is doing). If the patrons communicate a desire for the library to have a Facebook page, then go for it; if they don't, then don't force the issue just to appear "hip"!
* With our recent discussions on socially targeted advertising, I found this paragraph interesting: "A study conducted in 2009 revealed that the majority of 18 to 24 year olds surveyed did not want tailored advertisements. When the participants were informed that their online activities would need to be tracked in order to include tailored advertising, the number who opposed tailored advertisements increased."
So, it appears that the younger generation isn't so eager to have their information used for targeted ads after all ...
* The author points out the Beacon and terms-of-service controversies surrounding Facebook, as a way to remind his readers that social networking sites are businesses that are out to make money ("The bottom line is that the profitability of SNSs - even their very existence - depends upon their users transmitting information about themselves freely"), so they may often play fast and loose with that information (while hoping that no one will notice!).
Again, librarians have to take these types of behavior into account when deciding whether or not it is appropriate to encourage their patrons to join these sites. Fernandez says as much when he points out that there is "ample historical evidence" for social networking sites to "continue to push at the boundaries of what their users find acceptable", and that for this reason "librarians have an obligation to consider their values and the practical implications of acting within these spaces."
In fact, the author states that librarians cannot use ignorance by patrons of how social-networking sites work as an excuse for ambivalence towards their stances on user privacy ("The fact that many users are legally complicit in the invasion of their own privacy as SNSs conflate public and private realms does not relieve librarians from considering how the value of privacy should influence their actions").
* Fernandez claims that if "librarians do not find ways to articulate their roles in relation to SNSs they risk being left behind" ... Again, if users do not want to accept "authority figures" (like librarians) into their respective social-networking realms, then they are going to be "left behind" and left out regardless!
* He does touch upon this issue when he quotes Danah Boyd's statement concerning authority figures and students ("You should enter the students' social networking space only as a mentor and only as invited"); he compares this to corporate marketers who have found that users of social networking sites "react poorly if they feel as though their space is being invaded" ... Again, if users are willing to accept "outsiders" into their social circles, then individual librarians may proceed; however, don't expect patrons to automatically respond just because you set up a Facebook page. They could just as easily reject your participation and ignore your presence as an undesirable nuisance ("It would be a mistake to override students' boundaries and break the trust libraries have developed").
* Finally, Fernandez is talking about privacy with this particular statement, but he could just as easily be referring to the "parents at the party syndrome": "Libraries must ensure that the patrons do not feel violated. Simply being legally covered does not ensure that the user will not feel offended at an unwanted intrusion into a space that operates between public and private realms."
If the patrons don't want librarians around, then we shouldn't try to make them accept us (i.e. perpetrate an "unwanted intrusion" into their social-networking space)!
Other observations:
* Fernandez encourages libraries to "look into the future and anticipate the needs of a wide variety of patrons", and I believe this is a rational way to look at the adoption of social networking sites into the library's online presence ... It's important for librarians to investigate and see what their individual communities want (and not just rush into the latest "flavor of the month" just because it's what everyone else is doing). If the patrons communicate a desire for the library to have a Facebook page, then go for it; if they don't, then don't force the issue just to appear "hip"!
* With our recent discussions on socially targeted advertising, I found this paragraph interesting: "A study conducted in 2009 revealed that the majority of 18 to 24 year olds surveyed did not want tailored advertisements. When the participants were informed that their online activities would need to be tracked in order to include tailored advertising, the number who opposed tailored advertisements increased."
So, it appears that the younger generation isn't so eager to have their information used for targeted ads after all ...
* The author points out the Beacon and terms-of-service controversies surrounding Facebook, as a way to remind his readers that social networking sites are businesses that are out to make money ("The bottom line is that the profitability of SNSs - even their very existence - depends upon their users transmitting information about themselves freely"), so they may often play fast and loose with that information (while hoping that no one will notice!).
Again, librarians have to take these types of behavior into account when deciding whether or not it is appropriate to encourage their patrons to join these sites. Fernandez says as much when he points out that there is "ample historical evidence" for social networking sites to "continue to push at the boundaries of what their users find acceptable", and that for this reason "librarians have an obligation to consider their values and the practical implications of acting within these spaces."
In fact, the author states that librarians cannot use ignorance by patrons of how social-networking sites work as an excuse for ambivalence towards their stances on user privacy ("The fact that many users are legally complicit in the invasion of their own privacy as SNSs conflate public and private realms does not relieve librarians from considering how the value of privacy should influence their actions").
* Fernandez claims that if "librarians do not find ways to articulate their roles in relation to SNSs they risk being left behind" ... Again, if users do not want to accept "authority figures" (like librarians) into their respective social-networking realms, then they are going to be "left behind" and left out regardless!
* He does touch upon this issue when he quotes Danah Boyd's statement concerning authority figures and students ("You should enter the students' social networking space only as a mentor and only as invited"); he compares this to corporate marketers who have found that users of social networking sites "react poorly if they feel as though their space is being invaded" ... Again, if users are willing to accept "outsiders" into their social circles, then individual librarians may proceed; however, don't expect patrons to automatically respond just because you set up a Facebook page. They could just as easily reject your participation and ignore your presence as an undesirable nuisance ("It would be a mistake to override students' boundaries and break the trust libraries have developed").
* Finally, Fernandez is talking about privacy with this particular statement, but he could just as easily be referring to the "parents at the party syndrome": "Libraries must ensure that the patrons do not feel violated. Simply being legally covered does not ensure that the user will not feel offended at an unwanted intrusion into a space that operates between public and private realms."
If the patrons don't want librarians around, then we shouldn't try to make them accept us (i.e. perpetrate an "unwanted intrusion" into their social-networking space)!
"Balancing outreach and privacy in Facebook: five guiding decisions points" by Peter Fernandez
Three things that I'd like to point out in this article:
* Right from the start, the author repeats the argument that "Facebook and other social networking sites are new spaces where library patrons are, and therefore provides opportunities for libraries to reach out to them" ... However, the question is whether or not patrons actually want to "meet" librarians in these types of spaces; social networking sites are for (believe it or not) socializing and having fun, not necessarily research and studying.
I wish I could remember which of our previous readings had this quote, but someone compared libraries on social networking sites to the "parents at the party syndrome," whereby authority figures (like librarians) are trying to "hang out" with all of the "cool kids" but they just wind up embarrassing themselves ... If patrons do not show any interest in interacting with librarians in these social spaces, then librarians are fighting a losing battle if they try to "force" themselves into the equation.
* The author does echo some of my concerns from the data-mining article discussed on Sakai, as he states that "the library has an ethical obligation to be aware of potential abuses" when patrons contribute to any part of the library's Facebook page, and "determine how [the library] wants to regulate the interactions that occur on its site." Again, librarian have to determine whether or not it is their responsibility to educate their patrons on the privacy concerns/issues that come with adopting social-networking tools into their online presence.
* One statement by the author that I find troubling is when he states that "libraries do not always have the technical expertise to ensure that any information conveyed through Facebook remains secure"; this is something that the profession as a whole should work on. Since the world of information retrieval is becoming much more technologically-driven than it has been in the past, librarians should familiarize themselves with these aspects and become more "technologically aware" (as I've said before, there need to be more geeks in the library profession!).
EDIT: I found the "parents at the party syndrome" quote ... It was from Dempsey's "Always On" article. Thanks Google!
* Right from the start, the author repeats the argument that "Facebook and other social networking sites are new spaces where library patrons are, and therefore provides opportunities for libraries to reach out to them" ... However, the question is whether or not patrons actually want to "meet" librarians in these types of spaces; social networking sites are for (believe it or not) socializing and having fun, not necessarily research and studying.
I wish I could remember which of our previous readings had this quote, but someone compared libraries on social networking sites to the "parents at the party syndrome," whereby authority figures (like librarians) are trying to "hang out" with all of the "cool kids" but they just wind up embarrassing themselves ... If patrons do not show any interest in interacting with librarians in these social spaces, then librarians are fighting a losing battle if they try to "force" themselves into the equation.
* The author does echo some of my concerns from the data-mining article discussed on Sakai, as he states that "the library has an ethical obligation to be aware of potential abuses" when patrons contribute to any part of the library's Facebook page, and "determine how [the library] wants to regulate the interactions that occur on its site." Again, librarian have to determine whether or not it is their responsibility to educate their patrons on the privacy concerns/issues that come with adopting social-networking tools into their online presence.
* One statement by the author that I find troubling is when he states that "libraries do not always have the technical expertise to ensure that any information conveyed through Facebook remains secure"; this is something that the profession as a whole should work on. Since the world of information retrieval is becoming much more technologically-driven than it has been in the past, librarians should familiarize themselves with these aspects and become more "technologically aware" (as I've said before, there need to be more geeks in the library profession!).
EDIT: I found the "parents at the party syndrome" quote ... It was from Dempsey's "Always On" article. Thanks Google!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Media sites (YouTube, Flickr, DeviantArt)
YouTube (youtube.com)
I must admit that I'm a bit of a YouTube addict; I've had an account since March of 2007, and started uploading videos only a few months after that ... So far none of my creations have made me "internet famous" yet, although footage I took of Wes Welker dancing at a Boston Celtics game did go "viral" for a couple weeks (over 40,000 views as of this writing, and it was linked on the websites of the Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated).
While many people still consider YouTube to be nothing more than a place to waste time watching stupid cat videos and bizarre internet memes (or a combination of both!) when you really should be working, a lot of libraries have been using it as a potential resource to reach their patrons ... Many of the resulting videos created by these libraries/librarians have been informative, emotional, humorous, silly and visually striking.
Flickr (flickr.com)
As a photo-sharing site, Flickr definitely promotes itself as a social-networking tool as well ... The language used on the frontpage ("Keep up with your friends and share your stories with comments & notes"; "Upload your photos once to Flickr, then easily and safely share them"; "Join one of over 10 million active groups to take part in the conversation, learn from our other 60 million photographers and share your own story through photos"; "See the world through someone else’s eyes, right here on Flickr") certainly sends the message to potential users that this is a thriving community for people to become a part of.
Taking the tour only strengthens this message, as Flickr bills itself as "the best online management and sharing application in the world" (bold statement!); you can add notes to your photographs (like annotations on YouTube videos) and add people's names to the photos you've taken (like tagging other users in Facebook photos). There's even a "guest pass" to invite people without a Flickr account to view your private photos (no doubt in an attempt to entice them to sign up themselves).
In addition, there is a tool called the Organizr which allows Flickr users to "label, tag and organize [their] photos on the web" ... This helps make it easier for users to find the kinds of photographs that they're looking for, since they can be organized by things like category ("Galleries") or location ("Places").
Flickr even allows users to get really creative via the App Garden, a place where "anyone can write their own program to present public Flickr data ... in new and different ways; the App Garden is a place where developers can showcase the applications they've created and where you can find new ways to explore Flickr." This is a great way for social-networking sites to really let their users feel like they have a hand in the direction of the growth/evolution of these communities.
DeviantArt (deviantart.com)
Don't let the name of this site scare you off; while the term "deviant" has certain negative connotations which you might not necessarily want associated with your library (and believe me, there is some freaky stuff to be found here if you dig deep enough), this site actually houses some very talented artists.
Unlike Flickr, which focuses more on photography, DeviantArt places an emphasis on illustrations, calling itself "the largest online community of artists and art-lovers" ... Taking the tour reveals that there are "over 100 million original works of art" created by its over 12 million members, with artists "from over 190 countries"; that certainly is a very diverse and thriving community!
The site encourages users to group their favorite images into "art collections" (it's interesting to note that they never use terms like "images" or "graphics files" but instead emphasize the uniqueness and creativity of their users by referring to everything as "artwork" or the more eye-catching "deviations"), while also offering tutorials on how to better create one's own artwork.
In fact, DeviantArt members (the "deviants") are not limited to simply creating images, as the site accepts "images, literature, film or Flash [animations]" and displays them all for free ("build an instant audience by displaying your work in front of over 11 million members!").
Much like a typical social networking site, DeviantArt emphasizes the interactive elements of their community ("engage with other artists by commenting on their artwork and profile pages") and allows users to post journal entries that others may follow and comment on.
Searching for artwork is pretty easy (there is a "mature content filter" if you don't want to stumble upon anything controversial), and can be divided either by category or groups ... In fact, using the latter search led me to this group of creative librarians sharing their artwork ("Ranganathan Has a Posse!"). There's also a gallery for the Worcester Public Library Manga Club; maybe Stacy can tell us more about that one ;)
I must admit that I'm a bit of a YouTube addict; I've had an account since March of 2007, and started uploading videos only a few months after that ... So far none of my creations have made me "internet famous" yet, although footage I took of Wes Welker dancing at a Boston Celtics game did go "viral" for a couple weeks (over 40,000 views as of this writing, and it was linked on the websites of the Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated).
While many people still consider YouTube to be nothing more than a place to waste time watching stupid cat videos and bizarre internet memes (or a combination of both!) when you really should be working, a lot of libraries have been using it as a potential resource to reach their patrons ... Many of the resulting videos created by these libraries/librarians have been informative, emotional, humorous, silly and visually striking.
Flickr (flickr.com)
As a photo-sharing site, Flickr definitely promotes itself as a social-networking tool as well ... The language used on the frontpage ("Keep up with your friends and share your stories with comments & notes"; "Upload your photos once to Flickr, then easily and safely share them"; "Join one of over 10 million active groups to take part in the conversation, learn from our other 60 million photographers and share your own story through photos"; "See the world through someone else’s eyes, right here on Flickr") certainly sends the message to potential users that this is a thriving community for people to become a part of.
Taking the tour only strengthens this message, as Flickr bills itself as "the best online management and sharing application in the world" (bold statement!); you can add notes to your photographs (like annotations on YouTube videos) and add people's names to the photos you've taken (like tagging other users in Facebook photos). There's even a "guest pass" to invite people without a Flickr account to view your private photos (no doubt in an attempt to entice them to sign up themselves).
In addition, there is a tool called the Organizr which allows Flickr users to "label, tag and organize [their] photos on the web" ... This helps make it easier for users to find the kinds of photographs that they're looking for, since they can be organized by things like category ("Galleries") or location ("Places").
Flickr even allows users to get really creative via the App Garden, a place where "anyone can write their own program to present public Flickr data ... in new and different ways; the App Garden is a place where developers can showcase the applications they've created and where you can find new ways to explore Flickr." This is a great way for social-networking sites to really let their users feel like they have a hand in the direction of the growth/evolution of these communities.
DeviantArt (deviantart.com)
Don't let the name of this site scare you off; while the term "deviant" has certain negative connotations which you might not necessarily want associated with your library (and believe me, there is some freaky stuff to be found here if you dig deep enough), this site actually houses some very talented artists.
Unlike Flickr, which focuses more on photography, DeviantArt places an emphasis on illustrations, calling itself "the largest online community of artists and art-lovers" ... Taking the tour reveals that there are "over 100 million original works of art" created by its over 12 million members, with artists "from over 190 countries"; that certainly is a very diverse and thriving community!
The site encourages users to group their favorite images into "art collections" (it's interesting to note that they never use terms like "images" or "graphics files" but instead emphasize the uniqueness and creativity of their users by referring to everything as "artwork" or the more eye-catching "deviations"), while also offering tutorials on how to better create one's own artwork.
In fact, DeviantArt members (the "deviants") are not limited to simply creating images, as the site accepts "images, literature, film or Flash [animations]" and displays them all for free ("build an instant audience by displaying your work in front of over 11 million members!").
Much like a typical social networking site, DeviantArt emphasizes the interactive elements of their community ("engage with other artists by commenting on their artwork and profile pages") and allows users to post journal entries that others may follow and comment on.
Searching for artwork is pretty easy (there is a "mature content filter" if you don't want to stumble upon anything controversial), and can be divided either by category or groups ... In fact, using the latter search led me to this group of creative librarians sharing their artwork ("Ranganathan Has a Posse!"). There's also a gallery for the Worcester Public Library Manga Club; maybe Stacy can tell us more about that one ;)
"This Week in Law" podcast talks about Twitter and Facebook privacy
Since this week's discussions are about Facebook and internet privacy, I thought I'd share this podcast featuring the thoughts of Denise Howell (a California lawyer who specializes in technology-related legal matters) and her guests on those subjects ... Here are links to the relevant parts of their discussion:
0:29:30 - Two creators of the Twitter account "omgfacts" are suing each other over which one actually "owns" the account and its two million-plus followers. This case brings up the issue of online ownership and what it actually means to "own" an account and the stuff that's created for that account; whose intellectual property is it (and is there such a thing as "copyright of tweets")? Collaborative efforts like this within the social-media realm may give rise to other ownership/legal issues in the future (which is something that librarians might need to be aware of).
0:47:38 - This talk was more about for-profit businesses, but it may still be applicable here ... If a librarian creates a Twitter account for their library, does their employer actually "own" the intellectual property created therein? Even if the librarian maintains it on their own time, they're using "company" equipment/resources.
0:57:04 - Privacy and the workplace (when people apply for jobs, some potential employers are now asking for their Facebook passwords in order to nose around and see what they're up to!)
1:00:48 - Story about a school teacher who posted private photos of herself drinking alcohol on Facebook, but the pictures still managed to find their way to members of her school district and led to her termination ...
1:15:20 - Do we need new laws on the books to govern social media in regards to privacy issues? It is voluntary, after all (no one's forcing people to have a Facebook account), but it's getting so ubiquitous that it may cause problems down the road ...
1:29:17 - Could you be liable for embedding an infringing YouTube clip on your blog (not uploading copyrighted material yourself, but just linking to it)?
0:29:30 - Two creators of the Twitter account "omgfacts" are suing each other over which one actually "owns" the account and its two million-plus followers. This case brings up the issue of online ownership and what it actually means to "own" an account and the stuff that's created for that account; whose intellectual property is it (and is there such a thing as "copyright of tweets")? Collaborative efforts like this within the social-media realm may give rise to other ownership/legal issues in the future (which is something that librarians might need to be aware of).
0:47:38 - This talk was more about for-profit businesses, but it may still be applicable here ... If a librarian creates a Twitter account for their library, does their employer actually "own" the intellectual property created therein? Even if the librarian maintains it on their own time, they're using "company" equipment/resources.
0:57:04 - Privacy and the workplace (when people apply for jobs, some potential employers are now asking for their Facebook passwords in order to nose around and see what they're up to!)
1:00:48 - Story about a school teacher who posted private photos of herself drinking alcohol on Facebook, but the pictures still managed to find their way to members of her school district and led to her termination ...
1:15:20 - Do we need new laws on the books to govern social media in regards to privacy issues? It is voluntary, after all (no one's forcing people to have a Facebook account), but it's getting so ubiquitous that it may cause problems down the road ...
1:29:17 - Could you be liable for embedding an infringing YouTube clip on your blog (not uploading copyrighted material yourself, but just linking to it)?
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
"Academic libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and student outreach: a survey of student opinion" by Ruth Sara Connell
Connell's article is another example (in my opinion) of librarians trying to skew the numbers to create a desire for social networking tools where none actually exists ... Unlike the previous article, this one at least attempts to gather patron input on the subject, but - as you'll see - that still provides data that can be easily manipulated to "prove" the authors' point.
Connell starts off with a literature review of other attempts to drum up support for social-networking tools within the library profession, and she comes up with some interesting observations: one librarian at the Georgia Institute of Technology sent out more than 1,500 Facebook messages to students (in an apparent attempt to spread the word about the library's collection), but received a paltry 48 responses. The librarian actually had the temerity to claim that his venture was a "success," but the more logical conclusion would be that students were not interesting in hearing from a "stranger" (especially one in a position of authority like a librarian).
Another librarian mentioned in Connell's literature review had her staff sift through MySpace profiles in order to find "4,000 Brooklyn College students, faculty, and graduates.". Aside from the fact that these actions could be construed by some as "stalking" (and thus having the potential to negatively affect these students' view of the library and drive them away), the librarian sent "friend requests" to her designated targets and "seven months later had approximately 2,350 friends." On the surface, this story appears to be a success, but what about the other 2,000-odd students who ignored the request? Were they "turned off" by the obtrusive nature of this "friending" campaign? Additionally, there is no indication that any of these friends had actually come from the original 4,000 targeted; for all we know, those "friends" were nothing but MySpace spam accounts!
Connell also highlights the Mississippi State University libraries as using a different (far less "creepy") approach to attracting students via Facebook, as they advertised their site through posters and ads - but not through unsolicited "friending" - and were able to accumulate 180 members; she applauded this approach as allowing "those interested to participate but … not [forcing] the library on those not interested." It certainly seems like a more successful method, although once those students became friends, how "engaged" did they remain? The literature failed to establish whether they checked out the library's Facebook page once, and then ignored it; we do not learn what effect (if any) the method had on "repeat business" for the library.
Connell starts off with a literature review of other attempts to drum up support for social-networking tools within the library profession, and she comes up with some interesting observations: one librarian at the Georgia Institute of Technology sent out more than 1,500 Facebook messages to students (in an apparent attempt to spread the word about the library's collection), but received a paltry 48 responses. The librarian actually had the temerity to claim that his venture was a "success," but the more logical conclusion would be that students were not interesting in hearing from a "stranger" (especially one in a position of authority like a librarian).
Another librarian mentioned in Connell's literature review had her staff sift through MySpace profiles in order to find "4,000 Brooklyn College students, faculty, and graduates.". Aside from the fact that these actions could be construed by some as "stalking" (and thus having the potential to negatively affect these students' view of the library and drive them away), the librarian sent "friend requests" to her designated targets and "seven months later had approximately 2,350 friends." On the surface, this story appears to be a success, but what about the other 2,000-odd students who ignored the request? Were they "turned off" by the obtrusive nature of this "friending" campaign? Additionally, there is no indication that any of these friends had actually come from the original 4,000 targeted; for all we know, those "friends" were nothing but MySpace spam accounts!
Connell also highlights the Mississippi State University libraries as using a different (far less "creepy") approach to attracting students via Facebook, as they advertised their site through posters and ads - but not through unsolicited "friending" - and were able to accumulate 180 members; she applauded this approach as allowing "those interested to participate but … not [forcing] the library on those not interested." It certainly seems like a more successful method, although once those students became friends, how "engaged" did they remain? The literature failed to establish whether they checked out the library's Facebook page once, and then ignored it; we do not learn what effect (if any) the method had on "repeat business" for the library.
"Use of Facebook in academic health sciences libraries" by Dean Hendrix ... [et al.]
In many of the article I've read for my literature review, I see librarians give glowing recommendations for social-networking sites like Facebook as tools to "create and market library services" ... That may very well be true, but the problem with those articles (and I see it in this article as well) is that the authors offer very little in the way of hard data to actually back up their claims; the "evidence" provided is either skewed to better reflect their already-established opinions, or they fail to take the actual patrons' input into account.
This article, for example, examines the results of a 2008 survey on the use of Facebook by academic health sciences libraries as a marketing/promotional tool ... While the authors eventually decided that the "small number of actual libraries using Facebook" at the time made the resulting data inconclusive, there were still some details that (in my opinion) were "glossed over" when they were establishing their argument.
Let me give an example: Of the 72 librarians who responded to the survey, only nine reported that their libraries maintained a Facebook page, and (of that number) thirty-four percent of their total "fans" were "employees of the same library" ... In other words, over one-third of the library's "fans" were other librarians; now, that doesn't really speak very highly for Facebook as a "marketing" tool, when you're pretty much only talking to other members of the same staff!
That's not all, however ... Reading the results a little more closely, we see that the authors use the phrase "of the same library" when describing these employees; now, there's no indication that the other 66 percent of the "fans" couldn't have been librarians from other institutions who were looking to network! As such, the percentage of "fans" of these libraries who were actual patrons (the people that marketing tools are supposed to be targeting) might be even lower than this report would have us believe; there's just no way of knowing with the way that the data is presented here.
The results of this survey, as reported by the authors, go on to say that many of the librarians that maintain Facebook pages "felt more positive about the future success of their library's Facebook page", while 28 percent of the librarians who do not maintain Facebook pages believe that "Facebook demonstrated little to no utility in an academic setting" ... This all sounds well and good, but statements like these are replacing hard evidence with opinions and conjecture. Not only that, but it's leaving out the most crucial element: patron input.
If the librarians surveyed bothered to actually find out what their users thought of Facebook as a part of the online presence provided by academic health sciences libraries, it's not evident in the article; we're merely left to speculate on guesswork. After all, when the authors use a phrase like "positive feelings", are the librarians they're questioning basing that on user feedback, or do they just have a "hunch"? On the flip side, when the other librarians dismiss Facebook as having "little to no utility" in an academic setting, do their patrons feel the same way, or are they simply making a kneejerk reaction without taking their opinions into account?
This article, for example, examines the results of a 2008 survey on the use of Facebook by academic health sciences libraries as a marketing/promotional tool ... While the authors eventually decided that the "small number of actual libraries using Facebook" at the time made the resulting data inconclusive, there were still some details that (in my opinion) were "glossed over" when they were establishing their argument.
Let me give an example: Of the 72 librarians who responded to the survey, only nine reported that their libraries maintained a Facebook page, and (of that number) thirty-four percent of their total "fans" were "employees of the same library" ... In other words, over one-third of the library's "fans" were other librarians; now, that doesn't really speak very highly for Facebook as a "marketing" tool, when you're pretty much only talking to other members of the same staff!
That's not all, however ... Reading the results a little more closely, we see that the authors use the phrase "of the same library" when describing these employees; now, there's no indication that the other 66 percent of the "fans" couldn't have been librarians from other institutions who were looking to network! As such, the percentage of "fans" of these libraries who were actual patrons (the people that marketing tools are supposed to be targeting) might be even lower than this report would have us believe; there's just no way of knowing with the way that the data is presented here.
The results of this survey, as reported by the authors, go on to say that many of the librarians that maintain Facebook pages "felt more positive about the future success of their library's Facebook page", while 28 percent of the librarians who do not maintain Facebook pages believe that "Facebook demonstrated little to no utility in an academic setting" ... This all sounds well and good, but statements like these are replacing hard evidence with opinions and conjecture. Not only that, but it's leaving out the most crucial element: patron input.
If the librarians surveyed bothered to actually find out what their users thought of Facebook as a part of the online presence provided by academic health sciences libraries, it's not evident in the article; we're merely left to speculate on guesswork. After all, when the authors use a phrase like "positive feelings", are the librarians they're questioning basing that on user feedback, or do they just have a "hunch"? On the flip side, when the other librarians dismiss Facebook as having "little to no utility" in an academic setting, do their patrons feel the same way, or are they simply making a kneejerk reaction without taking their opinions into account?
"Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" by Danah Boyd
It was interesting to read Boyd's theories on how adoption of social networking sites by American teens was initially divided along social/class lines: the "hegemonic" (or "good") teens gravitated towards the more professional look and feel of Facebook, while the "subaltern" (or "bad") teens were still drawn towards the "outsider" status of MySpace.
It's a nice little theory, but I'm not convinced that the divide (if there even was/is one) can be defined so easily ... For example, she argues that the "showy, sparkly, brash visual displays" found on many MySpace pages were acceptable to those teens who valued the flash and "bling" of hip-hop culture; this contrasted with the more "clean" and "mature" look of Facebook, with its homogeneous style and color scheme. However, I really don't think this can be explained as a mere cultural aesthetic - I remember many a MySpace page which featured clashing graphics for background images and tons of animated GIFs dancing all over the place; that's not "bling", that's just people with no sense of style!
In fact, I would argue that this was one of the reasons why MySpace began losing ground to Facebook (cultural differences notwithstanding): the makers of MySpace allowed users to alter the look of their pages pretty much anyway they liked, to the point of people creating MySpace pages which were nothing more than a jumbled mess of incoherent nonsense (if one's site is so visually disruptive that you can no longer even read the text on the screen, then people will simply move onto other sites that don't give them such a headache). People could even run arbitrary code on their sites, leading to a lot of the security holes/issues which eventually drove even more users away from MySpace.
I believe the reason for MySpace's disintegration is a lot simpler than laying blame on class divisions or such things ... The bottom line is that social-networking sites live and die by how social they are; it seems obvious enough, but people go where their friends are, and if their friends are using Facebook instead of MySpace, then they're going to use Facebook too!
Boyd says at one point that many of the "good" kids ("goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes") are still using MySpace because of "their connections to participants who joined in the early days"; once again, these kids' friends are still on MySpace, so that's where they're going to be too. However, even if these good kids are separated from the "bad" kids in high school, there are eventually going to be some "goths" or "gangstas" that run in the same circles (at college, at work, in the same neighborhoods, at a bar, on another website, anywhere!) and they're going to suddenly want to "keep up" with their new friends where they're socially congregating ... and right now, the most active place online for that type of interaction is Facebook.
The "exodus" from MySpace (whether users were switching to Facebook or just giving up on the site entirely) may have started off in some small way as a "cultural" clash, but soon more and more people began leaving the site, meaning there were less and less people for teens - good or bad - to socialize with ... No matter what group or clique one was associated with, if there's no one else to talk to or share information with, then the site becomes useless, so why bother sticking around?
It's a nice little theory, but I'm not convinced that the divide (if there even was/is one) can be defined so easily ... For example, she argues that the "showy, sparkly, brash visual displays" found on many MySpace pages were acceptable to those teens who valued the flash and "bling" of hip-hop culture; this contrasted with the more "clean" and "mature" look of Facebook, with its homogeneous style and color scheme. However, I really don't think this can be explained as a mere cultural aesthetic - I remember many a MySpace page which featured clashing graphics for background images and tons of animated GIFs dancing all over the place; that's not "bling", that's just people with no sense of style!
In fact, I would argue that this was one of the reasons why MySpace began losing ground to Facebook (cultural differences notwithstanding): the makers of MySpace allowed users to alter the look of their pages pretty much anyway they liked, to the point of people creating MySpace pages which were nothing more than a jumbled mess of incoherent nonsense (if one's site is so visually disruptive that you can no longer even read the text on the screen, then people will simply move onto other sites that don't give them such a headache). People could even run arbitrary code on their sites, leading to a lot of the security holes/issues which eventually drove even more users away from MySpace.
I believe the reason for MySpace's disintegration is a lot simpler than laying blame on class divisions or such things ... The bottom line is that social-networking sites live and die by how social they are; it seems obvious enough, but people go where their friends are, and if their friends are using Facebook instead of MySpace, then they're going to use Facebook too!
Boyd says at one point that many of the "good" kids ("goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes") are still using MySpace because of "their connections to participants who joined in the early days"; once again, these kids' friends are still on MySpace, so that's where they're going to be too. However, even if these good kids are separated from the "bad" kids in high school, there are eventually going to be some "goths" or "gangstas" that run in the same circles (at college, at work, in the same neighborhoods, at a bar, on another website, anywhere!) and they're going to suddenly want to "keep up" with their new friends where they're socially congregating ... and right now, the most active place online for that type of interaction is Facebook.
The "exodus" from MySpace (whether users were switching to Facebook or just giving up on the site entirely) may have started off in some small way as a "cultural" clash, but soon more and more people began leaving the site, meaning there were less and less people for teens - good or bad - to socialize with ... No matter what group or clique one was associated with, if there's no one else to talk to or share information with, then the site becomes useless, so why bother sticking around?
Monday, June 27, 2011
"WorldCat local task force report to LAMP" by Michael Boock, Faye Chadwell, and Terry Reese
A couple of thoughts after reading this report:
* The authors mention that one of the search tools in use at Oregon State University (as of March 2009) is called "LibraryFind", which they describe as a "locally developed open source research tool."
Curious, I decided to look into this further, and - sure enough - their website still incorporates this "software developed by the Oregon State University Libraries, in part funded from a grant from the State Library." Furthermore, there is a dedicated project website which boasts that "LibraryFind is an open source metasearch application developed by librarians for libraries."
Now, even though the point of this report is to see whether or not LibraryFind can be "effectively replaced" by WorldCat Local, I wish more libraries would look into developing their own tools and online applications; the authors seem to share this view, as they note that "giving up search and retrieval to OCLC" (in effect, giving up control of their online presence to an outside third party) may ultimately "[take them] out of the search and retrieval equation" while relegating the role of library staff to "teaching users how to use the system and cataloging materials for that system" (i.e. serving as "drones" who must follow how OCLC's system works, with no real input into how the system serves their local user community).
Kendall Wiggin gave a talk at this year's NETSL conference, where (amongst other topics) he spoke about how - and I'm paraphrasing here - "there are already enough nerds in the library profession, but now we need more geeks!" His point was that more librarians should be learning how to code and program and troubleshoot computer programs for themselves, so that they don't need to rely on the IT department or outside sources (like OCLC) to do the work for them ... It seems as if OSU's library staff has the "geek" thing well in hand (they have a web development group nicknamed "Team 200" working in-house on projects like LibraryFind), so perhaps they shouldn't be so eager to give up control of search and retrieval in their community, when they've developed a pretty robust system all on their own.
* When describing how WorldCat Local works, the authors state that "maintenance of a local catalog would remain necessary, although less attention would need to be devoted to customization of the catalog." [emphasis mine]
Now, I understand that there is a movement within the profession towards less "localized" cataloging, while having large databases (like OCLC) do the work in order to save time and resources ... After all, the Boston Public Library's copy of "Blink" is pretty much the same as UCLA's copy (i.e. each institution's copy of the book has the same identifying information, and their individual user communities do not require much in the way of heavily-scrutinized editing by local catalogers in order to find them).
However, I do think that individual library collections will lose some of that "local flavor" if they rely too much on outside sources to do that kind of cataloging work for them. Besides, by employing this strategy, libraries are putting a lot of faith in tools like WCL to get every cataloging detail correct ... While many preach the mantra of "good enough" when it comes to catalog records (Who cares if a book has 235 pages but the record says "236", patrons won't even notice!), I can't tell you how many records we've downloaded from OCLC at my library where important information (titles, authors, etc.) is just plain wrong! In fact, their errors can wind up being misleading to the point where it would actually hamper a patron's ability to find that particular item (if there wasn't a "local catalog" system in place to correct those errors, of course!).
* The authors mention that one of the search tools in use at Oregon State University (as of March 2009) is called "LibraryFind", which they describe as a "locally developed open source research tool."
Curious, I decided to look into this further, and - sure enough - their website still incorporates this "software developed by the Oregon State University Libraries, in part funded from a grant from the State Library." Furthermore, there is a dedicated project website which boasts that "LibraryFind is an open source metasearch application developed by librarians for libraries."
Now, even though the point of this report is to see whether or not LibraryFind can be "effectively replaced" by WorldCat Local, I wish more libraries would look into developing their own tools and online applications; the authors seem to share this view, as they note that "giving up search and retrieval to OCLC" (in effect, giving up control of their online presence to an outside third party) may ultimately "[take them] out of the search and retrieval equation" while relegating the role of library staff to "teaching users how to use the system and cataloging materials for that system" (i.e. serving as "drones" who must follow how OCLC's system works, with no real input into how the system serves their local user community).
Kendall Wiggin gave a talk at this year's NETSL conference, where (amongst other topics) he spoke about how - and I'm paraphrasing here - "there are already enough nerds in the library profession, but now we need more geeks!" His point was that more librarians should be learning how to code and program and troubleshoot computer programs for themselves, so that they don't need to rely on the IT department or outside sources (like OCLC) to do the work for them ... It seems as if OSU's library staff has the "geek" thing well in hand (they have a web development group nicknamed "Team 200" working in-house on projects like LibraryFind), so perhaps they shouldn't be so eager to give up control of search and retrieval in their community, when they've developed a pretty robust system all on their own.
* When describing how WorldCat Local works, the authors state that "maintenance of a local catalog would remain necessary, although less attention would need to be devoted to customization of the catalog." [emphasis mine]
Now, I understand that there is a movement within the profession towards less "localized" cataloging, while having large databases (like OCLC) do the work in order to save time and resources ... After all, the Boston Public Library's copy of "Blink" is pretty much the same as UCLA's copy (i.e. each institution's copy of the book has the same identifying information, and their individual user communities do not require much in the way of heavily-scrutinized editing by local catalogers in order to find them).
However, I do think that individual library collections will lose some of that "local flavor" if they rely too much on outside sources to do that kind of cataloging work for them. Besides, by employing this strategy, libraries are putting a lot of faith in tools like WCL to get every cataloging detail correct ... While many preach the mantra of "good enough" when it comes to catalog records (Who cares if a book has 235 pages but the record says "236", patrons won't even notice!), I can't tell you how many records we've downloaded from OCLC at my library where important information (titles, authors, etc.) is just plain wrong! In fact, their errors can wind up being misleading to the point where it would actually hamper a patron's ability to find that particular item (if there wasn't a "local catalog" system in place to correct those errors, of course!).
"New generation of catalogues for the new generation of users: a comparison of six library catalogues" by Tanja Mercun and Maja Zumer
Mercun and Zumer's article touches on some subjects that I plan on bringing up in my paper, i.e. the belief by many within the library profession that "by not following technological innovations and the trends on the web, libraries will not be able to compete with services such as Amazon or Google and may lose their position as primary information providers". In other words, the theory goes that libraries must "copy" other Web 2.0 applications in order to remain relevant, and one of the ways to do this is to redesign and restructure the online catalog so that it can "bring convenience, trends and quality closer together" for the patrons.
One method of accomplishing this is to take advantage of the collaborative nature of the web by enticing patrons to contribute things like reviews, comments, and tags (the article calls this "[making] use of collective intelligence"); the authors argue that while traditional OPACs have "relied on the expertise of a small group of specialists" (i.e. catalogers), the next-generation catalogs should "take advantage of [patrons'] contributions" so that they can "become better and [have their] value enhanced."
Now, while the implemenation of social tagging and user-generated reviews into the library OPAC can certainly be helpful, the contributions of these "specialists" shouldn't be so easily dismissed (and I'm not just saying that for job security!); as I've previously mentioned, things like social tagging (which are generated by the patrons) and controlled vocabularies (which are generated by the "specialists") can work in tandem to produce the optimum search results for those seeking information.
Another problem with this strategy - and I again explore the subject in my paper - is that people are assuming that patrons are even willing to participate in their libraries in this way ... The article points out that "the problem with collective intelligence is that it is achieved only when a critical mass of participation is reached"; in other words, a lot of people have to contribute in order for the system to be useful. And yet, the authors admit that (at least at the time the article was published) "social features have added only little value to the library catalogue." In fact, they rightfully point out that libraries are "late-comers" in the area of user-generated content (patrons are already contributing content to sites like Amazon and Flickr and LibraryThing, why would they bother adding the library catalog to the list?), and that patrons have no real motivation to actively participate in such endeavors.
The bottom line is that if patrons aren't willing to contribute tags or reviews to the library catalog, then the very idea of a "social cataloging community" becomes meangingless ... If no one is providing content (other than the "specialists"), then patrons will not be motivated to participate, and the "next-generation catalog" will be ignored regardless.
Also, not to rehash old gripes, but I found that the authors used the same rhetoric in this article about "Web 2.0" that I just personally find to be very irksome ... In particular, they describe Web 2.0 as "a place of collaboration and participation where users no longer only receive but also create and share content"; the use of the phrase "no longer" implies that "Web 1.0" users could not create and share content, which is simply not true, they just did it on a smaller scale (back in the day people could "create" personal homepages and "share" information via message boards and newsgroups, it's certainly easier nowadays but the principles of participation and user-created content were still very much in place back then).
It doesn't stop there, though, as they go on to describe the "Web 2.0 trend" as "the collaboration of users in the creation of content on the web" ... which, once again, can just as easily be used to describe what "Web 1.0 did as well! In fact, that's been the whole concept behind the explosion of the "World Wide Web" since the '90s: the ability for everyday people to create content and share it with people around the world.
Seriously, were the people spouting this stuff just not paying attention back then?!
One method of accomplishing this is to take advantage of the collaborative nature of the web by enticing patrons to contribute things like reviews, comments, and tags (the article calls this "[making] use of collective intelligence"); the authors argue that while traditional OPACs have "relied on the expertise of a small group of specialists" (i.e. catalogers), the next-generation catalogs should "take advantage of [patrons'] contributions" so that they can "become better and [have their] value enhanced."
Now, while the implemenation of social tagging and user-generated reviews into the library OPAC can certainly be helpful, the contributions of these "specialists" shouldn't be so easily dismissed (and I'm not just saying that for job security!); as I've previously mentioned, things like social tagging (which are generated by the patrons) and controlled vocabularies (which are generated by the "specialists") can work in tandem to produce the optimum search results for those seeking information.
Another problem with this strategy - and I again explore the subject in my paper - is that people are assuming that patrons are even willing to participate in their libraries in this way ... The article points out that "the problem with collective intelligence is that it is achieved only when a critical mass of participation is reached"; in other words, a lot of people have to contribute in order for the system to be useful. And yet, the authors admit that (at least at the time the article was published) "social features have added only little value to the library catalogue." In fact, they rightfully point out that libraries are "late-comers" in the area of user-generated content (patrons are already contributing content to sites like Amazon and Flickr and LibraryThing, why would they bother adding the library catalog to the list?), and that patrons have no real motivation to actively participate in such endeavors.
The bottom line is that if patrons aren't willing to contribute tags or reviews to the library catalog, then the very idea of a "social cataloging community" becomes meangingless ... If no one is providing content (other than the "specialists"), then patrons will not be motivated to participate, and the "next-generation catalog" will be ignored regardless.
Also, not to rehash old gripes, but I found that the authors used the same rhetoric in this article about "Web 2.0" that I just personally find to be very irksome ... In particular, they describe Web 2.0 as "a place of collaboration and participation where users no longer only receive but also create and share content"; the use of the phrase "no longer" implies that "Web 1.0" users could not create and share content, which is simply not true, they just did it on a smaller scale (back in the day people could "create" personal homepages and "share" information via message boards and newsgroups, it's certainly easier nowadays but the principles of participation and user-created content were still very much in place back then).
It doesn't stop there, though, as they go on to describe the "Web 2.0 trend" as "the collaboration of users in the creation of content on the web" ... which, once again, can just as easily be used to describe what "Web 1.0 did as well! In fact, that's been the whole concept behind the explosion of the "World Wide Web" since the '90s: the ability for everyday people to create content and share it with people around the world.
Seriously, were the people spouting this stuff just not paying attention back then?!
"Toward a twenty-first century library catalog" by Kristin Antelman, Emily Lynema, and Andrew K. Pace
Since I came into the library profession as a cataloger (and plan to keep on that path once I earn my degree), any discussion on the future of library catalogs holds great interest for me ... However, I found the language used in this article when describing the "traditional" catalog to be a little too negative for my tastes.
The article starts off with a very nice history of the development of the OPAC, but the authors seem to go out of their way to use terms and phrases that - for lack of a better term - "bad mouth" online catalogs as they are presently (at least in 2006) constituted: "stagnant technology"; "rich metadata trapped in the MARC record"; "closed, rigid and intricate online catalogs"; "the severity of the catalog problem"; "libraries are no better off."
Obviously, it should be the priority for the designers of these OPACs to update and adopt the technology in order to better reflect current trends in the world of searching, but there's no need to verbally tear down what came before just for the sake of making a point; after all, no system can achieve 100 percent search relevancy (they all have their own little "quirks" that keep them from reaching perfection).
Anyway, the article goes on to describe the implementation of Endeca's Information Access Platform at North Carolina State University; curious, I decided to see what kind of changes have occurred with NCSU's online catalog in the five years since this article was published.
Visiting the college's library homepage, I found that they are in fact still using the Endeca platform to power their online catalog (as helpfully pointed out by the "Guided Navigation by Endeca" byline at the bottom of the search results page) ... All of the bells and whistles touted in the article seem to be intact; for example, spell correction is present, as a search for "librerian" brings up "Also searched for: librarian". Also, subject headings and call number location are available in the left-hand column (180 results for "library science" appear under "subject", and 1046 results for "Z - Bibliography, Library Science" appears under "call number location").
The "Browse" tab mentioned in the article has been separated into two separate tabs: "Browse New Titles" (one can search for material newly added to their collection within the last week, the last month, or the last three months) and "Browse by Call Number" (which still includes a handy list of what all the groupings of Library of Congress call numbers stand for). Also, as the article suggests, users can still "submit a blank search and browse the entire collection by any of the dimensions" (taking this action produces a list of 2122255 results).
In addition, the article mentioned that there were "plans to pull out other dimensions, such as format, language, or library, for browsing" ... It looks like Endeca was able to live up to that promise, as clicking on the "Advanced Search" tab now provides these options (for example, selecting "Chinese" under "Language" in the "Optional limits" section produces a list of 2793 results, while selecting "Fiction" under "Genre" in the left-hand column cuts that number down to 127 results, just as the article predicted).
It appears that the old Web2 search system has been eliminated entirely (or else it has been "buried" to the point where I cannot easily find it), so I couldn't try the search results test that the authors used with the broad term "marsupial" ... However, I can report that the library's holdings in this area has jumped from 78 to 171 items, but the top five hits no longer have "marsupial" in the title and "marsupials" or "marsupialia" as a subject heading; of course, this is a minor gripe, as the top three results are e-books which do not include the traditional LC subject headings (anyway, there are no bogus "Tributes to Malcolm C. McKenna"-type results in the first several pages, so I think this search can still be considered extremely relevant).
One more thing: I wanted to take a look at the "More titles like this" feature that the authors spoke about in the article ... So, I clicked on one of the results ("A fragile balance : the extraordinary story of Australian marsupials") and noticed a "Browse Shelf" link under "More Like This"; I clicked that link, which displayed a "virtual book shelf" of titles found around that particular book by call number:
I found this to be a great way to capture the serendipity of browsing the physical bookshelves (in order to discover works that one might have otherwise missed), and I hope that more libraries take the opportunity to adopt this feature into their online catalogs!
The article starts off with a very nice history of the development of the OPAC, but the authors seem to go out of their way to use terms and phrases that - for lack of a better term - "bad mouth" online catalogs as they are presently (at least in 2006) constituted: "stagnant technology"; "rich metadata trapped in the MARC record"; "closed, rigid and intricate online catalogs"; "the severity of the catalog problem"; "libraries are no better off."
Obviously, it should be the priority for the designers of these OPACs to update and adopt the technology in order to better reflect current trends in the world of searching, but there's no need to verbally tear down what came before just for the sake of making a point; after all, no system can achieve 100 percent search relevancy (they all have their own little "quirks" that keep them from reaching perfection).
Anyway, the article goes on to describe the implementation of Endeca's Information Access Platform at North Carolina State University; curious, I decided to see what kind of changes have occurred with NCSU's online catalog in the five years since this article was published.
Visiting the college's library homepage, I found that they are in fact still using the Endeca platform to power their online catalog (as helpfully pointed out by the "Guided Navigation by Endeca" byline at the bottom of the search results page) ... All of the bells and whistles touted in the article seem to be intact; for example, spell correction is present, as a search for "librerian" brings up "Also searched for: librarian". Also, subject headings and call number location are available in the left-hand column (180 results for "library science" appear under "subject", and 1046 results for "Z - Bibliography, Library Science" appears under "call number location").
The "Browse" tab mentioned in the article has been separated into two separate tabs: "Browse New Titles" (one can search for material newly added to their collection within the last week, the last month, or the last three months) and "Browse by Call Number" (which still includes a handy list of what all the groupings of Library of Congress call numbers stand for). Also, as the article suggests, users can still "submit a blank search and browse the entire collection by any of the dimensions" (taking this action produces a list of 2122255 results).
In addition, the article mentioned that there were "plans to pull out other dimensions, such as format, language, or library, for browsing" ... It looks like Endeca was able to live up to that promise, as clicking on the "Advanced Search" tab now provides these options (for example, selecting "Chinese" under "Language" in the "Optional limits" section produces a list of 2793 results, while selecting "Fiction" under "Genre" in the left-hand column cuts that number down to 127 results, just as the article predicted).
It appears that the old Web2 search system has been eliminated entirely (or else it has been "buried" to the point where I cannot easily find it), so I couldn't try the search results test that the authors used with the broad term "marsupial" ... However, I can report that the library's holdings in this area has jumped from 78 to 171 items, but the top five hits no longer have "marsupial" in the title and "marsupials" or "marsupialia" as a subject heading; of course, this is a minor gripe, as the top three results are e-books which do not include the traditional LC subject headings (anyway, there are no bogus "Tributes to Malcolm C. McKenna"-type results in the first several pages, so I think this search can still be considered extremely relevant).
One more thing: I wanted to take a look at the "More titles like this" feature that the authors spoke about in the article ... So, I clicked on one of the results ("A fragile balance : the extraordinary story of Australian marsupials") and noticed a "Browse Shelf" link under "More Like This"; I clicked that link, which displayed a "virtual book shelf" of titles found around that particular book by call number:
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Book review
Here is my book review for James Paul Gee's "What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy" (the video is embedded below, or you can click the direct link here):
Here also is a transcript of the video:
Here also is a transcript of the video:
BOOK REVIEW OF
JAMES PAUL GEE'S
"WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO TEACH US
ABOUT LEARNING & LITERACY"
By Alessandro (LSC 597)
Important knowledge ... is content in the sense of information
rooted in, or at least, related to, intellectual domains or academic
disciplines like physics, history, art, or literature. Work that does
not involve such learning is "meaningless." Activities that are
entertaining but that themselves do not involve such learning
are just "meaningless play."
--- James Paul Gee (p. 21)
Gee's argument is whether or not there is
value in how video games (a so-called
"frivolous" activity) can "teach" its users
how to play ...
Can a similar argument be made for how
social-networking tools like Facebook &
Twitter (also considered by many to be
time-wasting activities) can help users
"learn" new skills?
The theory of learning in good
video games fits better with the
modern, high-tech, global world
today's children and teenagers
live in than do the theories
(and practices) of learning that
they see in school.
-- James Paul Gee (p. 7)
Both video games & social media require
users to learn and think in new ways, ways
that they are not necessarily exposed to in
our school systems.
In fact, Gee argues that learning should be
a social experience, where students are not
"isolated" but are instead able to take
advantage of the "social world" in which
we live.
Learning ... is social, distributed,
and part and parcel of a network
composed of people, tools,
technologies, and companies all
interconnected together.
-- James Paul Gee (p. 177)
When we look at learning as a social
experience, an individual's knowledge and
skills are distributed across:
1) the self ("exists in his own head & body")
2) other people ("the social community")
3) various tools & technologies (computers,
the internet, etc.)
This creates a "social mind" that benefits all!
Social networking works the very same
way, in that other users of the
social-media tools (as well as the tools
themselves) "extend" an individual's
intelligence beyond what's simply in
his or her head ...
It's the "social mind" at work, and Gee
argues that it "plays a central role in
helping people to think about learning
in our modern, high-tech world" ...
Video-game players can be part of a
powerful network, if they so desire and
know how. Their own ineptness need
not stop them.
-- James Paul Gee (p. 187)
The power of the network is the ultimate
learning tool ... In video games, players are
asked to publicly display & share their
knowledge for the benefit of the group (and
the system as a whole), just like in social
networks.
The learner as "social isolate" (isolated
from other people & from knowledge
tools) is no longer the answer in our
modern "social" world!
Young people who play video games often experience
a more intense affinity group, leverage more knowledge
from other people and from various tools & technologies,
and are more powerfully networked with each other
than they ever are in school.
--- James Paul Gee (p. 194)
Much like in social media, there are no
"outsiders" when it comes to the world of
video games ...
Players are encouraged to produce & design
content themselves, rather than being mere
passive observers ... Gee points out that
"game designers & game players are both
insiders & producers," making the experience
more "vibrant" and real for the user!
In the modern world, language is not the only
important communicational system.
Today images, symbols, graphs, diagrams,
artifacts, and many other visual symbols
are particularly significant.
---James Paul Gee (p. 13)
Gee also stresses "visual literacy" (learning
to "read" images & symbols) ... Like video
games, social media has grown its own
visual language
[@SuellenPHD #LSC597] [Like Button] [Digg Button]
that you have to recognize or else you
won't understand what's being said.
As Gee points out with video games, social
media is its own unique "semiotic domain";
if you can't read/understand the meaning of
terms like "tweet" or "poke" in the context of
social networking, then you can't converse in
that world (you are "social-media illiterate")
Furthermore, one can better understand
the world of social media if one is an active
"producer" in that world (i.e. gain a better
understanding if one participates)!
The bottom line for Gee is that, in a specific
context (like video games or social media),
particular words, actions, objects, & images
take on distinctive meanings ... If you don't
know how to "read" these signs, then you
cannot be "literate" in that domain.
The lesson for us all: Understanding the ways
that things like video games & social media
"teach" us how they work can be applied to
our classrooms to great effect!
Gee, J.P. (2003). What video games have to
teach us about learning and literacy.
New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
VIDEO CREATED USING
Windows Movie Maker ver. 5.1
MUSIC:
"Saving The Shy Librarian"
from "Famicom Sessions Special Edition"
By MisfitChris
Used under Creative Commons license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-nc-nd/3.0/
Images inspired by the sprite artwork of
Kouichi Ooyama
("Earthbound", c1995 Nintendo of America)
Created using
Paint Shop Pro ver. 5.01
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tagging sites (LibraryThing, CiteULike, PennTags)
LibraryThing (librarything.com)
I've been meaning to create an account with LibraryThing for awhile now ... as a member of our library's Technical Services staff, I'm immediately drawn to any service that promotes itself with the ability to "catalog your books online"!
As of this writing, the site boasts 1,360,184 members with 63,542,867 books cataloged (6,173,071 of those are described as "unique works"); also, there have been 76,978,503 tags added to the site - wow, that's a lot of social participation! - and 1,433,245 reviews ... Very impressive stats all around!
I clicked on the "tour" link in order to get a better idea of how the site worked ... First off, it's apparent that the creators of the site want people to know that LibraryThing emphasizes a community experience (the sentence "LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for book lovers" is repeated twice on the first page); users are encouraged to "contribute tags" and share "common knowledge" (i.e. facts about a book or author), as well as "participate in member forums or join the Early Reviewers program."
It is also a great resource for gathering information about the books that one has in their personal collection; LibraryThing draws its cataloging information from Amazon (which non-library users will easily recognize), but also "over 700 libraries around the world, including the Library of Congress."
Of course, the main drawing point is the ability to create one's own descriptive terms via social tagging (here called "LibraryThing concepts"); on this page, the author - I assume it's Tim Spalding but it doesn't actually say - talks about the necessity for a system to organize collections of books, but that "for most personal libraries ... subject classifications [such as Library of Congress subject headings] aren't much use" (sad but true). The author goes on to compare the admittedly cumbersome subject heading "Bible. N.T. Romans I, 18-32 -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600" (which a lot of patrons won't make heads or tails out of) against the more straightforward concepts of "early church" and "homosexuality". In this case, I would agree that simplicity is sometimes for the better!
All in all, this site is a great resource for book lovers, not only in keeping track of their own collections, but - as the site puts it - "providing some of the best recommendations on the web" through "social information" such as "which members have the book and what they think about it - tags, reviews and even links to conversations about the book."
CiteULike (citeulike.org)
I've come across a few scholarly journals linked through CiteULike via Google, but never actually took the opportunity to explore the site more fully ... Clicking the "Frequently Asked Questions" link found at the top of the very sparse frontpage, I found that the site promises to "store, organise and share the scholarly papers you are reading." It emphasizes simplicity ("When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library ... CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself") as well as the social aspects of the service ("You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about. The more people who use CiteULike, and the more they use it, the better it becomes as a resource").
I tried searching for "librarianship" and came up with over 800 results ... Aside from a list of the articles tagged with the term "libraranship", the search also included a list of groups interested in that term (like "librarian" and "Semantic-Social-Networks"), and it produced a tag cloud of other users interested in the term "librarianship" (with users like Joachim Schopfel and David Bibb in bold text for emphasis). This is a great example of the social power of CiteULike, as I can now see what other articles are being used/cited by people within the library profession, thereby discovering sources of information that I might have otherwise missed out on.
PennTags (tags.library.upenn.edu)
The University of Pennsylvania's social-tagging project seems to be one of the first (and most successful) endeavors by the profession to integrate the controlled vocabularies of "traditional" catalogs with the simplicity of user-generated tags ... Of course, since I'm not a student at the university, I can't create my own tags, but the system still allows "outsiders" to browse and see what others have come up with.
The frontpage immediately greets visitors with a tag cloud of the most popular terms ("tags used at least 110 times"). Many of these highlighted tags look familiar to someone like me who is outside their campus community ("copyright", "animation", "medieval_studies"), but some are clearly for personal use ("scholarship_is_changing", "to_read"); it's like how Hesham Allam described some tags as altruistic ("easy retrieval by anyone using that system") and others as selfish ("users tag their own contents for their own easy retrieval").
In their "About" section, PennTags is described as a "social bookmarking tool for locating, organizing, and sharing your favorite online resources." From this description, it's apparant that the service is being "sold" to the Penn community in much the same way as a commercial service like Delicious ("Have you ever bookmarked a web page and then cant find it again in your mass of bookmarks? The beauty of PennTags is that it allows you to organize your bookmarks/resources exactly the way you want and it lets you share them with others. It's both personal and portable"); by portraying the service as something that the students would be familiar with, it makes it that much easier for those patrons to accept the service and adopt it into their usual online routine.
To highlight the popularity of PennTags within the community, the site provides a very robust list of tags already employed by the students, as well as a list of "owners" who are contributing to the social-tagging aspect of the site ... It certainly seems as though the PennTags concept has really caught on with the community, and that the patrons are making good use of its services.
Services like PennTags are a great way to "socialize" the library's online catalog, without completely discarding that system as "obsolete" ... As I've mentioned before, it's a way for social-tagging and controlled vocabularies to work in tandem, in order to better help patrons locate and retrieve the information that they are looking for.
I've been meaning to create an account with LibraryThing for awhile now ... as a member of our library's Technical Services staff, I'm immediately drawn to any service that promotes itself with the ability to "catalog your books online"!
As of this writing, the site boasts 1,360,184 members with 63,542,867 books cataloged (6,173,071 of those are described as "unique works"); also, there have been 76,978,503 tags added to the site - wow, that's a lot of social participation! - and 1,433,245 reviews ... Very impressive stats all around!
I clicked on the "tour" link in order to get a better idea of how the site worked ... First off, it's apparent that the creators of the site want people to know that LibraryThing emphasizes a community experience (the sentence "LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for book lovers" is repeated twice on the first page); users are encouraged to "contribute tags" and share "common knowledge" (i.e. facts about a book or author), as well as "participate in member forums or join the Early Reviewers program."
It is also a great resource for gathering information about the books that one has in their personal collection; LibraryThing draws its cataloging information from Amazon (which non-library users will easily recognize), but also "over 700 libraries around the world, including the Library of Congress."
Of course, the main drawing point is the ability to create one's own descriptive terms via social tagging (here called "LibraryThing concepts"); on this page, the author - I assume it's Tim Spalding but it doesn't actually say - talks about the necessity for a system to organize collections of books, but that "for most personal libraries ... subject classifications [such as Library of Congress subject headings] aren't much use" (sad but true). The author goes on to compare the admittedly cumbersome subject heading "Bible. N.T. Romans I, 18-32 -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600" (which a lot of patrons won't make heads or tails out of) against the more straightforward concepts of "early church" and "homosexuality". In this case, I would agree that simplicity is sometimes for the better!
All in all, this site is a great resource for book lovers, not only in keeping track of their own collections, but - as the site puts it - "providing some of the best recommendations on the web" through "social information" such as "which members have the book and what they think about it - tags, reviews and even links to conversations about the book."
CiteULike (citeulike.org)
I've come across a few scholarly journals linked through CiteULike via Google, but never actually took the opportunity to explore the site more fully ... Clicking the "Frequently Asked Questions" link found at the top of the very sparse frontpage, I found that the site promises to "store, organise and share the scholarly papers you are reading." It emphasizes simplicity ("When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library ... CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself") as well as the social aspects of the service ("You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about. The more people who use CiteULike, and the more they use it, the better it becomes as a resource").
I tried searching for "librarianship" and came up with over 800 results ... Aside from a list of the articles tagged with the term "libraranship", the search also included a list of groups interested in that term (like "librarian" and "Semantic-Social-Networks"), and it produced a tag cloud of other users interested in the term "librarianship" (with users like Joachim Schopfel and David Bibb in bold text for emphasis). This is a great example of the social power of CiteULike, as I can now see what other articles are being used/cited by people within the library profession, thereby discovering sources of information that I might have otherwise missed out on.
PennTags (tags.library.upenn.edu)
The University of Pennsylvania's social-tagging project seems to be one of the first (and most successful) endeavors by the profession to integrate the controlled vocabularies of "traditional" catalogs with the simplicity of user-generated tags ... Of course, since I'm not a student at the university, I can't create my own tags, but the system still allows "outsiders" to browse and see what others have come up with.
The frontpage immediately greets visitors with a tag cloud of the most popular terms ("tags used at least 110 times"). Many of these highlighted tags look familiar to someone like me who is outside their campus community ("copyright", "animation", "medieval_studies"), but some are clearly for personal use ("scholarship_is_changing", "to_read"); it's like how Hesham Allam described some tags as altruistic ("easy retrieval by anyone using that system") and others as selfish ("users tag their own contents for their own easy retrieval").
In their "About" section, PennTags is described as a "social bookmarking tool for locating, organizing, and sharing your favorite online resources." From this description, it's apparant that the service is being "sold" to the Penn community in much the same way as a commercial service like Delicious ("Have you ever bookmarked a web page and then cant find it again in your mass of bookmarks? The beauty of PennTags is that it allows you to organize your bookmarks/resources exactly the way you want and it lets you share them with others. It's both personal and portable"); by portraying the service as something that the students would be familiar with, it makes it that much easier for those patrons to accept the service and adopt it into their usual online routine.
To highlight the popularity of PennTags within the community, the site provides a very robust list of tags already employed by the students, as well as a list of "owners" who are contributing to the social-tagging aspect of the site ... It certainly seems as though the PennTags concept has really caught on with the community, and that the patrons are making good use of its services.
Services like PennTags are a great way to "socialize" the library's online catalog, without completely discarding that system as "obsolete" ... As I've mentioned before, it's a way for social-tagging and controlled vocabularies to work in tandem, in order to better help patrons locate and retrieve the information that they are looking for.
Monday, June 20, 2011
"Social tagging as a knowledge organization and resource discovery tool" by Hesham Allam
In his article, Allam defines social tagging as a process which "can be performed by anyone by freely attaching keywords or tags to describe the content of a Webpage [emphasis mine]." He further goes on to state that this is unlike traditional indexing, where "experts are needed to catalogue and create metadata to describe search terms for efficient retrieval."
Now, I don't want to continuously harp on this subject (and come off as "elitist"), but there is a reason why the "experts" are "needed" in certain cases, and that is to get the job done right.
Of course, it is impossible to "catalog" the entire Internet, but relying on amateur content organizers (as Wichowski described them) will always introduce its own set of problems (misidentification, spelling errors, spam etc.) ... That is why, in terms of the library profession, social tagging should be seen - at least in its current form - as a supplementary extension of the process of acquiring information for patrons.
There's been a lot of successful cases of the implementation of social tagging within the library field (this site has some good information on the subject), but the point should not be to totally supplant the "traditional" methods ... Again, to tackle the entire internet via those traditional methods is not an option, but there is room for both systems - folksonomies and controlled vocabularies - to exist within the burgeoning information environment that we now find ourselves in.
Now, I don't want to continuously harp on this subject (and come off as "elitist"), but there is a reason why the "experts" are "needed" in certain cases, and that is to get the job done right.
Of course, it is impossible to "catalog" the entire Internet, but relying on amateur content organizers (as Wichowski described them) will always introduce its own set of problems (misidentification, spelling errors, spam etc.) ... That is why, in terms of the library profession, social tagging should be seen - at least in its current form - as a supplementary extension of the process of acquiring information for patrons.
There's been a lot of successful cases of the implementation of social tagging within the library field (this site has some good information on the subject), but the point should not be to totally supplant the "traditional" methods ... Again, to tackle the entire internet via those traditional methods is not an option, but there is room for both systems - folksonomies and controlled vocabularies - to exist within the burgeoning information environment that we now find ourselves in.
"Tag gardening for folksonomy enrichment and maintenance" by Isabella Peters and Katrin Weller
In the other article for this week's readings, Wichowski mentioned ways to "standardize" social tagging, for the betterment of all users; she brought up terms like "tag training" and "educating users about tag literacy", as well as "linking folksonomies with ontologies," which all sounds well and good ... unless you're like me and think that "regular" users (i.e. amateur content organizers) will never expend the time or effort to partake in such things, at least not in the numbers necessary to make such an endeavor worthwhile.
Not to be cynical, but I've always felt that regular users are going to tag their pictures/bookmarks/videos with whatever keywords suit their needs - even if those tags are factually incorrect or too specific to be useful to the general population - regardless of how other people may use them. Really, in my mind, I see no scenario in which the everday internet user is going to exert the energy required to "train" themselves in the "correct" forms and standards; if they wanted to go to all that trouble, they would've already been enrolled in library school :)
Therefore, I could have never bought into the idea of the typical internet user taking part in the type of "standardization" described by Wichowski, and thus simply wrote off such initiatives as a pipe dream ... However, after reading Peters and Weller's thoughts on the subject of "tag gardening", I may be coming around to their way of thinking.
If there was a dedicated group of people who would take the time to "optimize tags in a folksonomy data set" after the fact (i.e. evalute the tags created by others for accuracy and correct/re-write them accordingly), then this opens up the possibility for a whole new industry devoted to "tag gardening," which could take up residence in the new information environment and "clean up" those errors that would usually permeate a community's particular folksonomy.
In fact, this could be the new role that future librarians play in helping to organize the online information landscape; instead of simply creating subject headings for books, they could be re-organizing and re-cataloging tags found on sites like Flickr and Delicious!
After all, librarians have the knowledge and training necessary to identify tags beyond the level of simple keywords; while the authors aren't referring to librarians specifically, they seem to be describing our profession when they talk of users who can "manipulate, revise and edit folksonomy tags" to better reflect that information so that it can be useful to the community at large.
For example, they cite a study which found that "users can be influenced by the tags which are already assigned to a resource," and recommended that "a new tagging system might be seeded by its designers with a large set of tags of the preferred type" [emphasis mine] to better guide users on the best tags to adopt ... Maybe it's just me, but librarians sound like the perfect people to step in and use their training to produce these "tags of the preferred type" (in essence, a controlled vocabulary for tagging).
However, it's not enough for librarians to act as "outside observers" of these social-tagging communities, remaining distant and separate from their users ... The authors talk about the process of removing "bad tags" (i.e. the "weeding" aspect of tag gardening) to help improve folksonomies for the purposes of consistency, and that this process of elimination/evaluation should be "handed over to the users themselves."
With this seemingly innocent statement, the authors (unwittingly) touch upon the idea of social capital as it pertains to the librarian-patron relationship, which we have been discussing in class thus far ... In other words, it's not enough for librarians to simply help the users, but they must become the users!
Librarians must familiarize themselves with tools like Flickr and Delicious; they must experiment and manipulate and participate, until they are just as much a part of the community that they are serving as the patrons themselves. In this way, handing the responsibility of optimizing tags in a folksonomy data set over to a librarian ("Their processing should be handed over to the users themselves") will be no different than handing them over to an amateur content organizer; the two become one and the same!
Not to be cynical, but I've always felt that regular users are going to tag their pictures/bookmarks/videos with whatever keywords suit their needs - even if those tags are factually incorrect or too specific to be useful to the general population - regardless of how other people may use them. Really, in my mind, I see no scenario in which the everday internet user is going to exert the energy required to "train" themselves in the "correct" forms and standards; if they wanted to go to all that trouble, they would've already been enrolled in library school :)
Therefore, I could have never bought into the idea of the typical internet user taking part in the type of "standardization" described by Wichowski, and thus simply wrote off such initiatives as a pipe dream ... However, after reading Peters and Weller's thoughts on the subject of "tag gardening", I may be coming around to their way of thinking.
If there was a dedicated group of people who would take the time to "optimize tags in a folksonomy data set" after the fact (i.e. evalute the tags created by others for accuracy and correct/re-write them accordingly), then this opens up the possibility for a whole new industry devoted to "tag gardening," which could take up residence in the new information environment and "clean up" those errors that would usually permeate a community's particular folksonomy.
In fact, this could be the new role that future librarians play in helping to organize the online information landscape; instead of simply creating subject headings for books, they could be re-organizing and re-cataloging tags found on sites like Flickr and Delicious!
After all, librarians have the knowledge and training necessary to identify tags beyond the level of simple keywords; while the authors aren't referring to librarians specifically, they seem to be describing our profession when they talk of users who can "manipulate, revise and edit folksonomy tags" to better reflect that information so that it can be useful to the community at large.
For example, they cite a study which found that "users can be influenced by the tags which are already assigned to a resource," and recommended that "a new tagging system might be seeded by its designers with a large set of tags of the preferred type" [emphasis mine] to better guide users on the best tags to adopt ... Maybe it's just me, but librarians sound like the perfect people to step in and use their training to produce these "tags of the preferred type" (in essence, a controlled vocabulary for tagging).
However, it's not enough for librarians to act as "outside observers" of these social-tagging communities, remaining distant and separate from their users ... The authors talk about the process of removing "bad tags" (i.e. the "weeding" aspect of tag gardening) to help improve folksonomies for the purposes of consistency, and that this process of elimination/evaluation should be "handed over to the users themselves."
With this seemingly innocent statement, the authors (unwittingly) touch upon the idea of social capital as it pertains to the librarian-patron relationship, which we have been discussing in class thus far ... In other words, it's not enough for librarians to simply help the users, but they must become the users!
Librarians must familiarize themselves with tools like Flickr and Delicious; they must experiment and manipulate and participate, until they are just as much a part of the community that they are serving as the patrons themselves. In this way, handing the responsibility of optimizing tags in a folksonomy data set over to a librarian ("Their processing should be handed over to the users themselves") will be no different than handing them over to an amateur content organizer; the two become one and the same!
"Survival of the fittest tag" by Alexis Wichowski
As a cataloger myself (or should I say "future cataloger" until I get my degree), I always find it interesting when the subject of social tagging comes up as it relates to the use of controlled vocabularies in libraries, such as Library of Congress subject headings.
Wichowski starts off her article by stating that "unidentified and unorganized content, however useful it may be, is at risk [of] being rendered unfindable, and thus obsolete" in the new information environment brought about by the internet ... Of course, this type of scenario still existed when our information resources were limited to books and journals: if a patron can't find a piece of information that they're looking for, then - to that patron - that information simply does not exist. That's where cataloging would come in, to make that information easily identifiable via the assignment of subject headings (the idea is rather comically represented in this 1947 short film, a personal favorite of mine).
However, now that the "modern information environment holds far more information than specialists to identify it", and the advent of folksonomies has transformed everyday people into "content organizers" (boy, sounds like us catalogers are out of a job!) the argument usually goes - at least in many studies that I've read - that there is simply no need for the adoption of a controlled vocabulary within the online world when we have the patrons doing the tagging for us.
I would argue that social tagging doesn't have to replace things like subject headings; in my opinion, this is not an either-or scenario. Instead, social tagging can be seen as a supplementary resource to help make the process of finding information easier ... In essence, social tagging is just another access point created for our patrons, to help them attempt to locate exactly what they are looking for.
That's why I was happy to see Wichowski point out a study which stated that "when folksonomies were combined with the directories with controlled vocabularies, precision and recall results were higher than in searches using the controlled vocabularies alone" ... As I said, this doesn't have to be an either-or scenario (discard the old in order to embrace the new); both systems - folksonomies and controlled vocabularies - can be used in tandem to enhance the information finding experience for the user.
Of course, one thing to remember in all of this is that no information-organization system is perfect; Wichowski admits as much when she states that most (relatively new) folksonomies are "immature, uncoordinated, and have much to learn from their predecessors."
On the one hand, "amateur" content organizers can tag information with easily recognizable terms, written in everyday language that patrons can understand (many subject heading terms can admittedly be a little bit on the technical side) ... And yet, since there is no specific training or rules associated with folksonomies (hence the "amateur" status), these newly-minted content organizers don't always get things right.
For example, tagging by everyday users can lead to incorrect/misleading results (many YouTube video are labelled "librarian" when they are really referring to "bookstore owner" or even just "pretty girl wearing glasses"), or results that just aren't very helpful (a Flickr image of the Egyptian Sphinx could be labelled "summer vacation" or "1997" or "digital camera" or any other combination of words except for "Egyptian" and "Sphinx") ... That is why it can be advantageous to supplement folksonomies with controlled vocabularies, rather than just abandon the idea entirely, and this is something that those within the library profession should keep at the forefront of the argument.
Wichowski starts off her article by stating that "unidentified and unorganized content, however useful it may be, is at risk [of] being rendered unfindable, and thus obsolete" in the new information environment brought about by the internet ... Of course, this type of scenario still existed when our information resources were limited to books and journals: if a patron can't find a piece of information that they're looking for, then - to that patron - that information simply does not exist. That's where cataloging would come in, to make that information easily identifiable via the assignment of subject headings (the idea is rather comically represented in this 1947 short film, a personal favorite of mine).
However, now that the "modern information environment holds far more information than specialists to identify it", and the advent of folksonomies has transformed everyday people into "content organizers" (boy, sounds like us catalogers are out of a job!) the argument usually goes - at least in many studies that I've read - that there is simply no need for the adoption of a controlled vocabulary within the online world when we have the patrons doing the tagging for us.
I would argue that social tagging doesn't have to replace things like subject headings; in my opinion, this is not an either-or scenario. Instead, social tagging can be seen as a supplementary resource to help make the process of finding information easier ... In essence, social tagging is just another access point created for our patrons, to help them attempt to locate exactly what they are looking for.
That's why I was happy to see Wichowski point out a study which stated that "when folksonomies were combined with the directories with controlled vocabularies, precision and recall results were higher than in searches using the controlled vocabularies alone" ... As I said, this doesn't have to be an either-or scenario (discard the old in order to embrace the new); both systems - folksonomies and controlled vocabularies - can be used in tandem to enhance the information finding experience for the user.
Of course, one thing to remember in all of this is that no information-organization system is perfect; Wichowski admits as much when she states that most (relatively new) folksonomies are "immature, uncoordinated, and have much to learn from their predecessors."
On the one hand, "amateur" content organizers can tag information with easily recognizable terms, written in everyday language that patrons can understand (many subject heading terms can admittedly be a little bit on the technical side) ... And yet, since there is no specific training or rules associated with folksonomies (hence the "amateur" status), these newly-minted content organizers don't always get things right.
For example, tagging by everyday users can lead to incorrect/misleading results (many YouTube video are labelled "librarian" when they are really referring to "bookstore owner" or even just "pretty girl wearing glasses"), or results that just aren't very helpful (a Flickr image of the Egyptian Sphinx could be labelled "summer vacation" or "1997" or "digital camera" or any other combination of words except for "Egyptian" and "Sphinx") ... That is why it can be advantageous to supplement folksonomies with controlled vocabularies, rather than just abandon the idea entirely, and this is something that those within the library profession should keep at the forefront of the argument.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
"Always on: libraries in a world of permanent connectivity" by Lorcan Dempsey
One subject that Dempsey brings up in his article is collection management as it pertains to libraries; now that we live in a "permanently-connected" world, the idea of collecting and storing print material is becoming less and less of a priority. After all, physical space has always been an issue with libraries (I know that my library has trouble finding room in the stacks for all those books!), and now that mass digitization initiatives are becoming more and more feasible - getting to a point where patrons can simply access anything in the library's collection via their computer or mobile device - we are looking at a major shift in what the term "library collection" even means.
This brings up the point of partnering with "outside" sources within the digital realm to collect and store these new online "personal and instituational collections"; for example, Dempsey brings up scenarios like using Flickr to manage digital images, or uploading a collection of university podcasts on iTunes. Now, unlike the usual methods of housing a physical collection (i.e. it's in the library building so therefore the library owns it!), these new methods are taking materials out of the librarians' hands - so to speak - and placing them in the "care" of third parties. Of course, the individual institutions still retain the rights to their intellectual property, but (as we've seen in the case of licensing issues brought up against database and online-journal vendors) a "virtual" collection is not as easily claimed as a physical one.
For example, if Flickr suddenly closes up shop (unlikely but not impossible) and your library did not think to save backups, then that virtual collection is gone forever ... Or, if iTunes is down for maintenance (or some other technical issue), and your patrons want to gain access to the university's collection of podcasts, then the librarians' hands are tied; unlike an in-house technical issue (the library website is down, etc.), libraries can do nothing in this situation because they have - in effect - "outsourced" their collection to a separate third party.
We can even look at social-media site in the same way ... Let us say that a public library has really put a lot of effort into its Facebook page, uploading pictures and maintaining a robust calendar of events taking place at the library and so forth; while not a "collection" in the traditional sense, status updates and the like are still information sources that libraries are sharing with their patrons.
Now, let us say that Facebook decides to take down that library's page for some unknown reason (it's been known to happen); since the library handed over the reigns of their social-media presence to an outside company (rather than keeping such information on the library website or an in-house social networking system), then they are really at the mercy of every whim or technical snafu of said company, with no true recourse. In this case, "your" page is actually Facebook's page, and - truthfully - then can do anything they want with it (including deleting it) without explanation.
This is the danger of libraries ceding control of their collections to third parties, and is something that they must consider before proceeding on that course.
This brings up the point of partnering with "outside" sources within the digital realm to collect and store these new online "personal and instituational collections"; for example, Dempsey brings up scenarios like using Flickr to manage digital images, or uploading a collection of university podcasts on iTunes. Now, unlike the usual methods of housing a physical collection (i.e. it's in the library building so therefore the library owns it!), these new methods are taking materials out of the librarians' hands - so to speak - and placing them in the "care" of third parties. Of course, the individual institutions still retain the rights to their intellectual property, but (as we've seen in the case of licensing issues brought up against database and online-journal vendors) a "virtual" collection is not as easily claimed as a physical one.
For example, if Flickr suddenly closes up shop (unlikely but not impossible) and your library did not think to save backups, then that virtual collection is gone forever ... Or, if iTunes is down for maintenance (or some other technical issue), and your patrons want to gain access to the university's collection of podcasts, then the librarians' hands are tied; unlike an in-house technical issue (the library website is down, etc.), libraries can do nothing in this situation because they have - in effect - "outsourced" their collection to a separate third party.
We can even look at social-media site in the same way ... Let us say that a public library has really put a lot of effort into its Facebook page, uploading pictures and maintaining a robust calendar of events taking place at the library and so forth; while not a "collection" in the traditional sense, status updates and the like are still information sources that libraries are sharing with their patrons.
Now, let us say that Facebook decides to take down that library's page for some unknown reason (it's been known to happen); since the library handed over the reigns of their social-media presence to an outside company (rather than keeping such information on the library website or an in-house social networking system), then they are really at the mercy of every whim or technical snafu of said company, with no true recourse. In this case, "your" page is actually Facebook's page, and - truthfully - then can do anything they want with it (including deleting it) without explanation.
This is the danger of libraries ceding control of their collections to third parties, and is something that they must consider before proceeding on that course.
"Library/mobile: tips on designing and developing mobile web sites" by Kim Griggs ... [et al.]
One of the things that I took away from this article is that compatibility is a serious issue when it comes to designing a mobile website, even moreso than designing a "standard" website for desktop browsers ... I used to fancy myself a web designer in college, and back then I always found it a real hassle trying to make sure every single web browser/operating system could display my creations the way I wanted (Will these tables format correctly in earlier versions of Netscape Navigator? Will these fonts display in Mac OS 8? etc. etc.)
Anyway, it seems like things are an even bigger headache nowadays having to deal with the explosion of newly possible entry points to the web (the article mentions "thousands of devices and hundreds of browsers"), and this can have a serious effect on librarians that are attempting to draw in patrons by designing a mobile version of their library's website ... After all, if the library's mobile website isn't compatible with a patron's particular mobile device, they will simply give up and look elsewhere for their information needs.
The article mentions that a push for conformance within the mobile world has not met with much success, as there has been "little movement from cell phone providers and browsers to agree to and adopt" a set of standards ... Oh, there are standardized tools available (like MobileOK and MobiReady) which librarians can use to test their mobile sites, but the fact is that not everyone can agree on a form of "code compliance," and this leaves the door open for mobile users (and by extension library patrons) to suffer with incompatibility issues as a result.
The authors admit that "mobile application testing is often an issue in mobile application development", but do give a few suggestion on testing methods to use - such as browser simulators and device emulators - before having one's new mobile site go "live" ... However, we must remember that smartphones and internet-enabled cellphones aren't the only mobile devices on the market. There are PDAs, tablets, even handheld gaming consoles (Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, GP2X Caanoo, etc.) come equipped with web browsers now! All of these devices could be a potential gateway for patrons seeking information, and (if librarians truly want to serve all members of their community) then they must take such things into account.
Obviously, the authors do not recommend taking on the herculean task of researching every single device for compatibility issues ("testing on all devices is out of the question"), and using the most popular devices for mobile application testing should be enough to cover the largest percentage of a library's particular user base. The authors say as much when they state that by "identifying device families between which the user experience is the same or similar, you can greatly reduce the numbers of devices on which to test" (i.e. it's "good enough") ... Unfortunately, just like the well-known "digital divide", some patrons are going to be left out in the cold when it comes to accessing their library's mobile website in this scenario.
However, the article does provide a useful suggestion that might get around this problem: the authors talk about "focus groups and online surveys [as a way] to have users evaluate a mobile site and provide feedback even after the mobile site is released." By targeting actual patrons (either by posting a survey on the traditional website or even walking up to someone in the library who is typing away on their mobile device), it gives librarians a chance to gauge what their users are looking for in terms of a mobile website experience and - if the mobile site is already "live" - if they are experiencing any compatibility issues.
Anyway, it seems like things are an even bigger headache nowadays having to deal with the explosion of newly possible entry points to the web (the article mentions "thousands of devices and hundreds of browsers"), and this can have a serious effect on librarians that are attempting to draw in patrons by designing a mobile version of their library's website ... After all, if the library's mobile website isn't compatible with a patron's particular mobile device, they will simply give up and look elsewhere for their information needs.
The article mentions that a push for conformance within the mobile world has not met with much success, as there has been "little movement from cell phone providers and browsers to agree to and adopt" a set of standards ... Oh, there are standardized tools available (like MobileOK and MobiReady) which librarians can use to test their mobile sites, but the fact is that not everyone can agree on a form of "code compliance," and this leaves the door open for mobile users (and by extension library patrons) to suffer with incompatibility issues as a result.
The authors admit that "mobile application testing is often an issue in mobile application development", but do give a few suggestion on testing methods to use - such as browser simulators and device emulators - before having one's new mobile site go "live" ... However, we must remember that smartphones and internet-enabled cellphones aren't the only mobile devices on the market. There are PDAs, tablets, even handheld gaming consoles (Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, GP2X Caanoo, etc.) come equipped with web browsers now! All of these devices could be a potential gateway for patrons seeking information, and (if librarians truly want to serve all members of their community) then they must take such things into account.
Obviously, the authors do not recommend taking on the herculean task of researching every single device for compatibility issues ("testing on all devices is out of the question"), and using the most popular devices for mobile application testing should be enough to cover the largest percentage of a library's particular user base. The authors say as much when they state that by "identifying device families between which the user experience is the same or similar, you can greatly reduce the numbers of devices on which to test" (i.e. it's "good enough") ... Unfortunately, just like the well-known "digital divide", some patrons are going to be left out in the cold when it comes to accessing their library's mobile website in this scenario.
However, the article does provide a useful suggestion that might get around this problem: the authors talk about "focus groups and online surveys [as a way] to have users evaluate a mobile site and provide feedback even after the mobile site is released." By targeting actual patrons (either by posting a survey on the traditional website or even walking up to someone in the library who is typing away on their mobile device), it gives librarians a chance to gauge what their users are looking for in terms of a mobile website experience and - if the mobile site is already "live" - if they are experiencing any compatibility issues.
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