"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!).

"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?!

"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!

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:

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

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.

"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.

"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!

"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.

"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.

"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.

"Tips for writing Facebook and Twitter updates" by Kivi Leroux Miller

The author mentions the "three G's of positive social media marketing" (Be Genuine, Generous, and Grateful), and this ties in with the idea of librarians earning "social capital" with their patrons ... When interacting with their respective communities via social media, they need to proceed in a manner which will build up goodwill and make a positive impression; that way, patrons will be more likely to return the next time they have a question or need help with their information needs.

For example, the author describes "being genuine" with social media as whether or not one's post "helps your core fans/friends to really understand you better and to see your personality"; I see a lot of people in the library profession encouraging their colleagues to show more personality and build a relationship with their patrons (librarians can't gain a foothold in the community if they're perceived to be anonymous face-less "drones").

Of course, the article goes on to say that it can be a "fuzzy line between giving someone 'flavor' versus giving someone 'fluff'" ... In other words, there's nothing wrong with librarians having a little fun with their Facebook/Twitter updates (it is supposed to be "social" after all), but the truth is that patrons go elsewhere for their frivolity; when they're interacting with the library, they're looking for information first and foremost!

The description for "being generous" seems simple enough ... "It's about being helpful to your supporters, participants, etc." should be easily recognizable to any self-respecting librarian (it's basically the job description for the entire profession!).

As for "being grateful", this is another area that librarians need to focus on; while it usually works the other way around (patrons are thanking us whenever we solve a problem or answer a question for them), librarians can also "pass on information from others" in the form of going above and beyond simply pointing out a reference book or journal article; that's certainly important, but we can also provide them with further suggestions and recommendations that they didn't even realize they needed, as a way of "saying thanks" for coming to the library in the first place.

Twitter: who do you follow?

Aside from Professor Adams and my fellow students, here are the organizations/persons of interest that I am currently following via my Twitter feed:

• Library of the American Library Association (@ALALibrary) - The ALA's Twitter feed, where they "respond to inquiries about all aspects of librarianship and ALA ... just ask!"
• Library Journal (@LibraryJournal) - "Library views, news, and book reviews" from the staff members of the magazine/website.
• Library of Congress (@librarycongress) - News and updates on the "largest library in the world."
• Holy Cross Catalog (@HCCataloging) - Maybe this is "cheating," but I'm also following the Twitter account I created for my library (in an unofficial capacity) which I use to highlight interesting and/or unusual items that can be found in our collection ... such as a book on the Indonesian version of "American Idol", or the "Dog Whisperer" video game.
• Awful Library Books (@awfullibbooks) - Speaking of "unusual" items found in library collections, I threw in this Twitter feed for a little fun ... I know other people have already mentioned it, but Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner have a hilarious blog featuring some of the worst library books ever (I just wish their appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" was still available online).

Woman creates fake Facebook account ... & it ends up saving her life!

I'm just saying ... :)

I understand that when married couples decide they don't like each other any more, they sometimes opt for extreme feelings and gestures.

No wife, though, has perhaps expressed herself in quite as socially networked way as Angela Voelkert.

Voelkert, according to court records obtained by the Smoking Gun, decided to use Facebook to see if she could find out what was really in her husband's mind.

She created a Facebook profile for a superficially attention-grabbing teenage girl called Jessica Studebaker. Her first step was for her creation to friend her estranged husband. Her next step was to persuade a trusted friend to be Studebaker's typing fingers and to entice her husband, David, into communication.

This allegedly worked better than many might imagine. Soon, the court papers declare, David Voelkert was e-mailing his newfound Ms. Studebaker and revealing details of plans to disappear with his children.

It seems that Voelkert might be technically inclined, given that he owns a South Bend, Ind., business called Secured Alarms, some of whose customers are allegedly police departments.

So a Facebook message he allegedly wrote to Studebaker might just have tipped the balance in the eyes of the FBI. It is said to have read: "O.K. Here is the deal. I had a GPS tracker on my van and I took it off earlier, it was just installed on my ex-wife's van so I can track her and know where she goes."

He then allegedly made suggestions that he would find someone to "take care of" his ex-wife.

Source: CNET

EDIT: And now I find that the charges have been dropped, because the husband claimed that he knew it was his wife all along ... convenient.

"Blogs, mashups, and wikis, oh my!" by Bruce Dearstyne

It's like Professor Adams said, four years is pretty much an eternity in "web time," so many of the examples cited by Dearstyne could definitely use some updating ... For instance, his description of videogame industries on the web (that create an "imaginary world where users interact and can spend real money") mentions Second Life, which has definitely lost steam over the years while being usurped in the "overhyped and heavily-touted" category by social-networking games such as Farmville.

It kind of reminds me of the book "Stealing MySpace: the battle to control the most popular website in America," whose subtitle became obsolete almost immediately after hitting store shelves ... Attempting to speculate on internet-based subject areas via the print medium (even if one uses something with a relatively "quick" turnover rate like newspapers or scholarly journals) is almost guaranteed to be a losing battle. The online world is just too "fluid" (for lack of a better term), so the "next best thing" or "latest innovation" is always right around the corner, ready to take the place of the current "flavor of the month" (or "week", or "day", or "second", etc.).

However, I did recognize the name Robert Scoble from Dearstyne's list of knowledgeable people who maintain blogs on Web 2.0 topics; he's been a guest on several podcasts I listen to, and always seems to have something interesting to add to the conversation.

Checking his blog, Scobleizer, I found the following posts of particular interest:

Klout's +K influence vouching

There was a video portion to this post (not quite a "vlog" but close enough) where Scoble interviewed the co-founder and CEO of the website Klout, Joe Fernandez, which serves its users by tracking and verifying the "influence" that a person exerts over his or her social media networks (i.e. whether or not a person's suggestions/recommendations made via social-networking tools directly influence their followers to take action and follow their lead).

This sounded like a very interesting (although inherently flawed) way to see if people - such as, say, librarians - are getting the most out of social networking sites, in terms of whether or not they are using them to their full potential; Fernandez explained that Klout creates a "social credit score" for people to measure their "social standing", based on "algorithmic [calculations] on top of Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, and looking at what you do on the social web."

He also took the opportunity to discuss the site's new "+K" influence-vouching system, whereby real-world influences (not just the online component) are taken into account ... He gave the example of Person A logging onto FourSquare and seeing that Person B has just eaten at a local restaurant, so Person A tries out that restaurant himself and ends up liking it; with "+K", Person A can acknowledge that Person B influenced his decision via their unofficial recommendation, and can reward Person B by adding Klout "currency" to their "social credit score" through a tweet or blog post.

Fernandez mentioned that his advice for building influence online is "consistently creating content that your network responds to and engages with," which is a lesson that librarians should definitely take to heart (if you don't keep your blogs and other social media outlets updated, patrons will lose interest and stop paying attention).

Scoble seconded that notion, stating that value plays a big part in how much influence one exerts within their social media realm ("I looked at the value that people were providing me, [and] were they stupid cat videos or were they about the tech industry, and were they good quality or were they bad quality?") ... If users aren't getting value (perceived or otherwise) out of your social-networking content, then you become a "liability" to their information-gathering needs and they will simply ignore/unfollow you.

Also, Scoble and Fernandez both pointed out that this service has been utilized mostly by big corporations or people looking to impress potential employers (having a high Klout score demonstrates "your ability to have an audience [and] drive your content to them"), but I don't see why people like librarians couldn't use it - or some similar service - to try and calculate their level of "popularity" with patrons. For example, if a librarian helps a patron find a book that they're looking for or answers their question at the reference desk, that patron could blog or tweet about their positive interaction and increase the librarian's Klout score (which could thus influence other potential patrons to seek out that librarian via Facebook or Twitter the next time they themselves need help).

In this regard, an ability to measure the amount of influence that libraries have through social media could go a long way towards justifying the use of these tools as an essential part of the library's overall strategy for interacting with their respective user communities ... After all, Fernandez says that "every user that creates content has influence"; that includes librarians!

Google 2015: what will it look like?

This post had some unflattering things to say about the current state of Google's business practices, as well as throwing out some speculation/predictions on what the company (as well as the technology world as a whole) will look like in four year's time ... The time span chosen struck me as sort of a funny coincidence, since we just saw in Dearstyne's article that a lot can change in four years, so that trying to predict how things are going to play out over that span of time is a bit of a fool's errand.

Anyway, Scoble did make some dire observations about where Google could be headed as a company when 2015 eventually rolls around, as they are currently lacking in innovatie design when it comes to areas such as nuanced social networking (Google Buzz has pretty much been a colossal failure, and Orkut has little traction outside of India and Brazil) and socially-influenced news displays (sites like Zite and Flipboard have real-time interactive news feeds available via tablets, while Google "isn't even a player here yet").

Again, it's impossible to accurately predict where current trends will lead in the future (Scoble admits as much with the statement: "Quick, what was Facebook when it first came out? 'A way to meet girls at Harvard.' You really were gonna fund that?"), but he does make the compelling argument that Google - one of the most ubiquitous presences on the internet right now - is really lagging when it comes to innovation (especially in fields like social media), and is in danger of falling behind its competitors and perhaps even becoming irrelevant as a company by 2015.

It's hard to imagine a world without Google, but it could happen!

A perfect example of the need for information literacy in social media

I'm a big fan of The Onion, but I'm also in on the joke that all of their stories are made up ... However, that doesn't stop certain individuals from sharing those stories via Facebook and treating them as legitimate news items:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386088,00.asp

The Onion is a satire publication and website. It makes fun of real news in a creative and often extreme fashion, which makes it all the more laughable when someone posts a link to an Onion story alongside some scathing comment about the state of society/politics/puppies.


We wish we could make that last part up, but we're not. In fact, The Onion seems to confuse so many online users that a blog has been set up to record instances where fake news meets real-life shock. It's called "Literally Unbelievable," and it's—literally—just that. Users submit the horrific responses their friends have made to fake news articles for publication on the site. There are no comments and no "likes" on Literally Unbelievable: Just responses the news (or the not-news).

Boy, these people are in serious need of some information literacy instruction :)

"Embracing a Culture of Connectivity"

A couple of observations from this discussion/video:

• John Palfrey (who was a keynote speaker at the NETSL conference I attended this year) mentioned that there is a digital divide, not only in terms of patrons' ability to access technology, but the skills necessary to use that technology ... This is a perfect place for librarians (especially those who work at public libraries) to step in and provide the education - for free! - on how to use social networking tools and the like
• Danah Boyd talked about how "being a participant is absolutely essential to being part of the social world", while providing a - very old? - quote from a teenager to accentuate the point ("You have to be on MySpace because everyone is on it!") ... This reminded me of a quote from Tibor Koltay's article: "People like to be where other people are." In other words, users want to be where the action is, so that they can share and exchange ideas with as many people (both friends and strangers) as possible; it's why the previously-mentioned MySpace is pretty much dead at this point, because everyone moved to Facebook! Why hang around in that social space anymore, when it's no longer actually "social"?
• Her discussion of imagined and invisible audiences was also intriguing ... Just think of the students in this class, for example; as long as our blog posts and Twitter feeds aren't labelled as "private", then anyone in the world could be reading these things. Not only that, but what about future users, ten or twenty or however many years into the future? What will they think of the ideas and discussions being brought up here?
• "I don't think Facebook is violating privacy, I think it's letting people choose how they wanna define privacy" ... No, Facebook has been pretty much called out on having horrible privacy settings that have exposed information that users mistakenly thought was being shared only with their friends; sadly, I don't think it simply boils down to educating people on how privacy works with Facebook ... All I'm saying is that the more Zuckerberg (and his advertisers) know about Facebook users, the more money they can make off of them.

"Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)"

Just for a change, I thought I'd do a "running commentary" on this YouTube video via Twitter:

"Library 2.0: revolution or evolution?" by Tom Kwanya ... [et al.]

Now that I look over the syllabus again, I hadn't even realize that this reading echoed the sentiments expressed by John C. Dvorak that I mentioned in a previous posting ... Namely, that the current changes in our information-gathering environment should not be seen as something utterly brand new and distinct from what has come before (i.e. "revolutionary"), but instead a natural progression and "evolutionary" step which builds upon - rather than completely tears down and replaces - the successful and time honored strategies of the past:

On the other hand are those who feel that these changes are not unique and should be dealt with in the same way libraries have handled myriad environmental and technological changes over the centuries ... Libraries need to offer traditional services more efficiently and new services which appeal to those comfortable with new ways of accessing information (Casey and Savastinuk 2007).


This paper considers Library 2.0 as the embodiment of the changes currently witnessed in libraries and librarianship and discusses the big question on whether it represents an evolutionary or revolutionary transformation of the library profession and/or institution.

The article further goes on to point out that the term "Library 2.0" can be seen as a derogatory term that is "deriding today's libraries and librarians as rigid and unchanging," and that its use can "[create] division where none is necessary" ... Again, there are people within the library profession who are using such terminology to advocate an "out with the old, in with the new" philosophy that - for lack of a better term - bashes the traditional library methods as useless and obsolete. As the author points out, this is unnecessarily confrontational, and fosters ill-will towards those who simply want to improve the current library environment with modern information-gathering tools.

Furthermore, I agree that the adoption of new social-networking tools within the library field "do not constitute novel approaches"; the authors use the example of email as "passing information from source to information" which is still fundamentally identically to sending a letter via snail mail or even having a face-to-face dialogue at the reference desk with a librarian. Perhaps someday we'll get to the point where a would-be patron can simply "download" his brainwaves to a central processing unit and have his question answered without moving a single muscle - as crazy (and appealing?) as that might sound, it's still the same basic premise of "passing information" back and forth. No revolutionary change there, just one more evolutionary step on the scale.

I like the words used by the authors when describing this argument for "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary" ... It is a "refinement of what libraries have been making available to their patrons for generations," and that it "complements rather than replaces the existing approaches" [emphasis mine]. This helps get across the idea that libraries are simply continuing to do what they do best (i.e. helping their patrons find the information that they are looking for), only that the methods are changing and evolving to better suit the current information seekers' needs.

As I've stated before, I don't feel that a full-blown "revolution" is taking place here (either within the library field or on the web); people certainly need to evolve and "change with the times," as it were, but that is a natural progression that should be recognized and embraced by all ... Introducing terms like "Web 2.0" and "Library 2.0" simply confuses the matter, in my opinion.

"Experts weigh pros and cons of social media" by Sandra Ordonez

There were two quotes from this article that really stood out for me: Trevor Butterworth's assessment of Twitter's ability to "create chaos ... instantly and without verification", and Matt Hinckley's belief that "too much information bouncing around at the speed of thought ... has only accelerated the pressure to be 'first' often at the expense of being 'right.'"

Prior to the internet (and to a lesser extent television), journalists and members of the "traditional" media had at least a day to check their facts before submitting their stories for public consumption; after all, "yesterday's news" is an acceptable timeframe when you're talking about an information-gathering environment comprised of newspapers and magazines (current events just couldn't get to the mass audience any faster back in the day).

However, now that social-networking tools make it possible to report on breaking news almost instantaneously (no need to wait for a beat reporter or a TV news crew to arrive when a lone bystander can simply open up her smartphone and record/tweet away), there's a lot of pressure to be the first one to report on and make comments about a story. This leaves almost no time for fact-checking or verification ... Rumors and hearsay that would have been heavily scrutinized (or even ignored) by newspaper reporters a mere decade ago are now being slapped onto their websites and Twitter feeds as fast as possible, just on the slight chance they can avoid being "late to the party" if it actually turns out to be factual.

The fear of being scooped by bloggers and the like is a real threat for those "traditional" members of the media nowadays, to the point where they are actually putting their readers in jeopardy of mistaking fiction for fact ... Journalistic integrity is being sacrificed in the name of instant gratification, and the (genuine) information-seeking audience is suffering as a result.

However, this is where another quote from the article gives me hope ... Terri Thornton asks how people in the future will "know what is a journalistic story and what is a paid, biased or fictitious post" and how to "tell a scam email from the real thing"; this is a role in which librarians can fit quite nicely, by educating their patrons via information literacy and teaching them how to better recognize the well-researched and factual information from the more spurious sources found online.

"New media, old media"

Maybe it's just me, but I'm a little dubious about some of the findings presented by the PEJ in this article.

For starters, they admit that there are "some problems" when it comes to studying the "literally millions of blogs and tweets produced each day" ... This herculean task in and of itself would be problematic enough, but they go on to say that their findings are based on information culled from the Web tracking sites Technorati and Icerocket, one of which (Technorati) "stopped working in early July and [was] down ever since." In other words, half of their year's worth of research came from a single source, which (even though we're still talking about millions of individual bloggers to work with) really doesn't give me much confidence in their ability to provide an accurate assessment of the social-media climate as a whole.

With this being the case, I would suggest that any hard "facts" submitted by the PEJ on the subject of social networking are inherently flawed and should be taken with a huge grain of salt!

Another problem I have with the article is how they attempt to label and categorize the news stories that they are attempting to analyze ... For example, one of their findings suggests that only three percent of blog stories discuss pop culture (a pretty "significant" topic of discussion within the online realm), and another three percent comprise what are described as "oddball" stories; just from personal experience, those numbers seems way too low to me. It starts to make sense, however, when we see what the PEJ highlights as some of their "legitimate" news stories.

Let me provide an example: the article states that "the second-biggest subject on blogs in the year was foreign events," and yet one of the "foreign-event" stories that they choose to highlight is "a vote on the number one song on the Christmas British pop charts" ... Now, that is clearly a pop-culture story, and yet they choose to categorize it under "foreign events" (along with more "appropriate" stories like the protests in Iran).

Another example: "science was the third-largest topic on blogs and social media pages", but they go on to say that "much of the interest here was in off-beat scientific findings" like cats manipulating their owners by purring and the therapeutic qualities of blue M&Ms ... Are these types of stories also counted under the "Oddball" category in addition to "Science"? The article does not say.

Finally, when discussing the subject of "news videos" on YouTube, one of their examples is "an unidentified city council meeting that was interrupted by the sounds of flatulence" ... Like the PEJ, you can call this a "political" video if you'd like, but let's be honest - there's no political discourse or exchange of factual information here. No one is becoming more politically active or gaining awareness of the issues by watching this video. It's a fart joke in video form, and would be a much more accurately categorized as "Oddball" or "Humor" than as "Government" or "Politics and Campaigns."

"Library 2.0, information and digital literacies in the light of the contradictory nature of Web 2.0" by Tibor Koltay

It's interesting how the title of this article describes "Web 2.0" (putting my own feelings for that term aside) as being "contradictory [in] nature" ... On the one hand, the internet gives users the unprecedented ability to create and distribute information as they see fit; on the other hand, this opens up the possibility for misinformation and outright deception to proliferate at an alarming rate, as "the speed and easiness of creating texts allows half-blown ideas to appear as if they were the more well-formulated concepts, just like the ones we would encounter in print documents."

It is true that printed materials give the information found therein a certain level of "prestige" and authority; hey, if it's printed in a book, it's gotta be true, right? And yet, as more of our information is being delivered to us via the online format, there is a growing segment of the population that is giving that information the same level of prestige, whether it's been critically examined or not ("Hey, if it's printed in Wikipedia, it's gotta be true, right?") ...

Of course, it's not simply a case of "banning" social media tools and the information they provide from the library, in order to "protect" our patrons; that would be depriving them of a lot of useful information (Koltay cautions that librarians should "discover [social media's] use for purposes that properly serve different library constituencies"). Instead, libraries should be aware of both the "opportunities and threats" inherent within this technology, and educate their individual communities on the best ways to filter through that information in order to find the most relevant information possible.

"Amateurism" does not automatically equal "uneducated" or "misleading" (even the so-called "experts" get things wrong now and then), but at the same time people must turn a more critical eye towards such information ... It is in this way that librarians can serve a valuable function in the new information age, by acting as "managers, coaches, or trainers" for their patrons, by enhancing "their evaluation skills [through] information literacy and digital literacy."

"The Terrible Twos" by Greg R. Notess

I'm going to use this article as an opportunity to "vent" on a subject that has always kind of bothered me ... As much as I love the web in general and social networking in particular, I have never been a fan of the term "Web 2.0"; to me, this has alway been nothing more than a meaningless buzzword latched onto by greedy investors looking to recover from the bursting dot-com bubble of the late 90s.

Seriously, when the bottom fell out of the "internet boom" and companies were no longer throwing piles of money at anyone who could register a domain name (it was more about having an internet "presence" than having an actual functioning business model back in those days), Silicon Valley was desperate for a way to fill their coffers once again ... So, if the "first" version of the Internet could no longer make these people money, it only made sense to try and convince people that a "new" version of the Internet had suddenly sprang up in its place ("No no no, that was Web 1.0 that lost all your money! Now we're using Web 2.0!")

Now, it's not that the Web hasn't changed over the years (that certainly is not the case), but - to me - there hasn't been that fundamental paradigm shift big enough to justify claiming that we are in a whole new era ... In my opion, referring to things like blogs and wikis as "Web 2.0" is (at best) redundant, because these tools - even if the technology running "under the hood" wasn't around during the 1990s - are still governed by the same principles that have been a part of the World Wide Web for the past twenty-odd years: namely, interactivity.

Proponents of the term "Web 2.0" would have us believe that this "new" entity is more interactive and user-oriented than "Web 1.0" ever was, but that's not really the case ... I could list off things like chatrooms and message boards and newsgroups which were used back in the day, that allowed users to have a voice in their online communities. Again, those tools might not have been as sophisticated or efficient as the blogs and wikis of today, but that's to be expected - technology moves forward and improves year after year; that's not revolution, but simply evolution.

That line comes from a briliant article written by tech journalist John C. Dvorak in 2006 (not long after the term "Web 2.0" first began making the rounds), entitled - appropriately enough - "Web 2.0 Baloney":

Web 2.0 is the latest moniker in an endless effort to reignite the dot-com mania of the late 1990s. This one seems to be succeeding. The problem is that little has changed. Bad ideas of the past have been renamed and spiffed up. We're watching a classic example of "old wine in new bottles": Changing the label doesn't make the wine any better, but it does get us to buy more wine.


Here's what's really happening. Some trends that were knocked for a loop by the dot-com bust, such as online retailing, rebounded without anyone resorting to smoke and mirrors. Their growth is steady, and their future seems rosy. But the fallout from the dot-com bust sidetracked many other trends. The assertions of Web 2.0's promoters, a welter of catchy, impressive-sounding phrases, seem nothing more than a rehash of those failed digital panaceas.


Perhaps the inventors of Web 2.0 don't realize what the real trends are, because lost amid the buzzwords and highfalutin conferences is the reality that what people are actually doing online is built around the concept of using the Web to do things yourself. That has been the main thrust of the Internet since its inception. Since simplicity (the core idea underlying self-service) is not a moneymaker, this idea is lost in a fog of terms such as "participation architecture," "play-enabling," "rich experience," "user-contributed folksonomy," "hackability," and "user remixability." But it's all evolution, not the revolution the cheerleaders promote.


This lingo makes no sense to anyone not caught up in the dream. The real dream, by the way, is to get rich quick without doing any real work—except maybe writing some code once. For programmers, this dream dates back to 1981, the start of an era in which coders could be prima donnas, get away with it, and walk away wealthy.


During the late 1990s, the golden ring slipped just past the grip of a lot of wannabes, who are convinced that they can do it right this time around—if only there is another dot-com surge. Web 2.0 is a rallying point. Maybe cheerleading will make it happen! But what they are cheerleading for, a slew of vague and meaningless concepts, shows that they have no clue about what they are doing.

Anyway, when I first saw the title to Notess' article, I thought it would feature more of the same rhetoric ... So I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was not buying into the "hype" like so many authors I have read in the library field.

He defines the "nebulous Web 2.0 concept" as a "second wave of Web techniques to create more interactive and easy-to-use Web sites", but acknowledges that these tools are also "using older technologies in a new way" (not necessarily re-inventing the wheel) and that "the 1990s Web included many social aspects and even used some Web 2.0 technologies" ... This is already a lot more than many authors on the subject are willing to admit; I've read countless articles which try to paint "Web 2.0" as groundbreaking and unique, all the while sweeping supposed "Web 1.0" technologies under the rug as "static" and no longer relevant. It was refreshing to see an author not trying to pretend that the goals and ambitions of these new tools are somehow distinct from that which came before them.

All that I'm saying is that we should be wary about declaring something as totally brand new when - more realistically - it is simply an extension and evolution of past accomplishments. Adopting a term like "Web 2.0" (and by extension, the term "Library 2.0") is - for me - akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater; in order to appear "hip" and relevant, we risk downplaying (and possibly outright negating) all that which came before.