LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Further to notes about NetGen, Fintan O'Toole's wonderful remarks on public libraries, and networking and the Obama campaign, here is Fintan O'Toole on generations, networks, and the election. Thirdly, and closely related to this change, is the cultural impact of the internet. The fears expressed about the internet even a decade ago were that it would create a culturally atomised society, in which everyone could choose to connect only to people like themselves with the same narrow range of obsessions. Obama's campaign showed, more profoundly than ever before, the capacity of the technology for creating a sense of common purpose.This is not just about the obvious ways in which the campaign used the internet for brilliant propaganda (winning the You Tube wars hands down) and to create a crucial advantage in fundraising.It is much more profoundly that the very habit of using the technology seems to have created a new kind of engagement with public space. It is striking, for example, that the internet generation in the US, which was supposedly going to be atomised and individualistic, is far more inclined to want larger government doing more things than those who are older.Even among white evangelicals, this split is obvious... dempsey

Some interesting quotes from a Rupert Murdoch lecture on the current media landscape on CNET. He talks about "compacency and condescension" in newsrooms. "The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly--and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception." [Murdoch to media: You dug yourself a huge hole | Coop's Corner - CNET News] He talks about the changing balance of power in determining what is and what is not news. He cites the role of bloggers in the resignation of Dan Rather. "Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. '60 Minutes,' he said, was a professional organization with 'multiple layers of checks and balances.' By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as 'a guy sitting in his living room in... dempsey

I spent a couple of hours in Heffer's in Cambridge a while ago. Turning a corner I was pleasantly surprised by a set of handsome books in fine covers especially set out for inspection. It turned out they were a special issue to mark the 30 year anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics. 2008 is the 30th anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics. To celebrate this occasion, we’ve produced a stunning set of eight hardbacks, featuring cover artwork by twentieth-century women textile designers, including Lucienne Day, Cath Kidston, Orla Kiely, Celia Birtwell, and founder of Biba, Barbara Hulanicki. This stylish collection, celebrating literature and art by women in the twentieth century even featured in the Sunday Times style barometer (going up, of course). [Virago Modern Classics - Little, Brown Book group] I do not know the background here, or the history of Virago in recent years. And certainly, that last sentence seems out of synch with its founding ethos. The iconic green covers loom large in my book memory. I consulted my colleagues, my fixation reaching such a degree that poor Harriet tells of me pinning our designer to the wall, demanding five colour covers, exquisite paper, washed tops, strings,... dempsey

From the Economist review of Don Tapscott's latest book, Grown up digital. Young people are fine, he argues, it is baby boomers who are befuddled. Contrary to the claims that video games, Facebook and constant text-messaging have robbed today’s young of the ability to think, Mr Tapscott believes that “Net Geners” are the “smartest generation ever”. The experience of parents who grew up watching television is misleading when it comes to judging the 20,000 hours on the internet and 10,000 hours playing video games already spent by a typical 20-year-old American today. “The Net Generation is in many ways the antithesis of the TV generation,” he argues. One-way broadcasting via television created passive couch potatoes, whereas the net is interactive, and, he says, stimulates and improves the brain ...... Mr Tapscott identifies eight norms that define Net Geners, which he believes everyone should take on board to avoid being swept away by the sort of generational tsunami that helped Barack Obama beat John McCain. Net Geners value freedom and choice in everything they do. They love to customise and personalise. They scrutinise everything. They demand integrity and openness, including when deciding what to buy and where to work. They want... dempsey

I mentioned Raymond Yee's book on mashups a while ago and signaled that a fuller review would follow from my colleague Ralph LeVan. This has now appeared: Ralph reviews the book positively in the current issue of Ariadne. I can’t imagine a more comprehensive book on mashups. This book would make a great textbook for a class on the topic. If you are a developer of mashups, this book must be in your reference library. However, if you’re looking for a gentle introduction to the topic, it may be more than you want. [News and Reviews: 'Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services', Ariadne Issue 57] Raymond is the originator of the useful and widely used phrase "gather, create, share" to characterise personal information use.... dempsey

I have a contribution in Mohamed Ally and Gill Needham. M-Libraries: Libraries on the Move to Provide Virtual Access. London: Facet, 2008. [Worldcat][Table of contents PDF on Facet] That said, I notice that I am not listed among the contributors on the publisher's page ;-) This collects the proceedings of the first M-Libraries conference. I have agreed to speak at the successor conference, The 2nd International M-Libraries Conference, in Vancouver in June 2009. A call for papers is posted on the conference page. This conference aims to explore and share work carried out in libraries around the world to deliver services and resources to users 'on the move,' via a growing plethora of mobile and hand-held devices. The conference will bring together researchers, technical developers, managers and library practitioners to exchange experience and expertise and generate ideas for future developments. [mLibraries 2009 conference - Homepage]... dempsey

JISC has just made available a report by Nicky Ferguson and colleagues about consistency of metadata and policies between repositories. In the UK, a large number of Institutional Repositories have been set up very recently. Often, it seems, they lack sufficient clarity of policy and purpose. In interviews with depositors and after conducting a case study of an Institutional Repository, we find different perceptions of the role of the repository, some seeing it mainly as an administrative tool for collecting and collating research at the institution and others believing it is a tool for sharing research and creating open access to the results of that research. If such perceptions are combined with weakly defined policies and/or unclear implementation procedures, then it would be unsurprising to find inconsistencies both within and between repositories. In fact, our respondents tell us that such inconsistency is widespread and are pessimistic that this will change, except where sufficient resources, shared objectives and strong relationships are in place. [Feasibility study into approaches to improve the consistency with which repositories share material] The report makes detailed recommendations to JISC and to repository managers. (Note: I was among those interviewed by the authors.) I don't propose to summarise... dempsey

Eric Lease Morgan has a nice note reporting on the Worldcat Hackathon held at the end of last week. A group came together to explore building applications against OCLC Grid Services. Taking place in the Science, Industry and Business Library (New York Public Library), the event began with an overview of each of the Web Services and the briefest outline of how they might be used. We then quickly broke into smaller groups to “hack” away. The groups fell into a number of categories: Drupal, VUFind, Find More Like This One/Miscellaneous, and language-specific hacks. We reconvened after lunch on the second day sharing what we had done as well as what we had learned. [Worldcat Hackathon] ... and he goes on to list some of the things that people did during the two days.... dempsey

I am en route back to Columbus, Ohio. I am now in Atlanta - nearly there! I have been reading Roads: driving America's great highways by Larry McMurtry on the plane. I was interested to read the following on page 80: Accordingly I pulled across the Ohio River at Wheeling just as the rising sun glinted in my rearview mirror – thirteen hours later I watched it sink into the plains, beyond the Kansas River at Lawrence. I spent the day in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, answering, at least to my own satisfaction, the question about where the Midwest begins. Its eastern edge would appear to be Columbus, Ohio, after which the great cornfields appear, and continue all the way to St Louis. Eastern Ohio still has the look of Appalachia, with narrow framehouses on steep hillsides, but after Columbus there are no hillsides, just the flat Midwestern plain. Columbus itself has grown a good crop of cornstalklike postmodern skyscrapers since I was last through it; it even produced a respectable traffic jam, though later in the day, at Kansas City, I was to see a really mature traffic jam, one that stretched for eleven miles; …... dempsey

Posting will be light this week as I am attending the 2008 RLG European Partners meeting later in the week. I go to Paris via a meeting in Ottawa tomorrow ..... Too much flying :-( I was traveling through National in Washington DC a while ago. I was tired. It was early in the morning and I was coming off a bumpy and cramped commuter flight from Columbus, Ohio (purportedly within an hour and a half's flying time of 56% of the US population, I seem to remember reading somewhere). I passed by a display of retro Pan Am flight bags, proud with that iconic logo. They were on sale. Since then, it seems that I have been seeing retro flight bags everywhere. As a young child, the logo was very familiar to me, and not a little magical. I had an uncle who worked with Pan Am, and for a while there were always bags or other items around. It was a time when flying was exciting and even exotic. And Pan Am seemed more exciting than the rest. I notice that Wikipedia describes Pan Am as a "cultural icon of the 20th Century". Indeed, the flight bag, and... dempsey

My former colleague and network resident, Andy Powell, advocates strongly that public events should publish a conference tag, a virtual venue to which event amplifying network activity like blog posts, tweets, images and so on can cluster. It's easy to forget, but I'd go as far as saying that the tag is almost as important as the venue. In fact, in a sense, the tag becomes the virtual venue for the event's digital legacy. [eFoundations: Tags as virtual venues] For a network resident this may make complete sense; to others, it may seem overstated. I raise this in the context of the Libraries Australia 2008 Forum. They have gone the extra step of pulling that network amplification into a single page. This is what people have posted about the 2008 Libraries Australia Forum. If you are posting about the forum, please tag your blog posts, presentations or flickr photos laf2008. If you are using twitter, use the tag #laf2008 in your tweets. [2008 Libraries Australia Forum - from the web] Now, at the time of writing, the network amplification seems largely to be the work of one person. I don't think this is a particular issue: whatever the level of... dempsey

I was pretty interested to see this panel on the home page of the Kelvin Smith Library at Case. In recent presentations I have been noting that while we are increasingly used to seeing 'signed' network resources, library websites are often very anonymous. Think of reviews, ratings, social networking profiles, shared bookmarks. People have become entry points on the network, and signature is important. [1] However, think of library websites. They tend to be anonymous. Often, it is not straightforward finding appropriate contact points: there may not be photographs, or communication options are limited (office hours, IM, texting, email, phone). Library services are not always associated with people. How often do subject pages, for example, carry a name and contact information who can be consulted? Libraries promote their expertise, but do not always make experts visible. My colleague Lynn Connaway has noted how students are sometimes reluctant to use virtual reference because they do not want to interact with somebody who remains anonymous or who they do not know, even if it is a library service. [2] Putting faces to names, as Case is doing, is important, I think .... [1] I heard the phrase ‘people are entry points’ used... dempsey

Regular readers will know that I follow the Hitwise blog. I was interested to see their note on Google Book Search the other day, prompted by the settlement which discussed which sites benefited from downstream traffic from that site. In other words, where do people go when they leave Google Book Search by following links. Among other things, the settlement allows universities and libraries to buy a subscription to the entire collection of scanned books in Google's archives. Last week, 22% of visits from Google Book Search went to an Education website, with Worldcat (a website that allows users to search library catalogs) the #3 downstream website overall and the #1 Education website. [Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - US: Google Books Drives Visits to Book Retailers] If I am reading the entry correctly, the order of downstream destinations is [1] Google.com, [2] Amazon.com, and [3] Worldcat.org.... dempsey

There is an interesting and reflective commentary about the historical record and 'unpublishing' in the Guardian. I particularly like the comment about tattoos. The consequences of putting information about yourself into the public domain are more far-reaching in a world where things you say are linked to, easily passed around and can pop up if your name is put into a search engine by, for example, a prospective employer. The web makes a lie of the old cliche that today's newspaper pages are tomorrow's fish and chip wrapping. Nowadays, as I've said before, the things you say about yourself in a newspaper are more like tattoos - they can be extremely difficult to get rid of. ...... The established view is that a newspaper's online archive is a historical record and that there is therefore a strong public interest in maintaining its wholeness, unless deletions or amendments are strictly necessary. In line with these principles, changes to the Guardian's online archives are usually made only for the purpose of correcting errors or for legal reasons. However, in exceptional cases, amendments are made on compassionate grounds, particularly when children are involved. [Open door: The readers' editor on unpublishing | Comment is... dempsey

Writing about scholarly method, Paul Courant discusses 'information literacy' and 'scholarly literacy'. Partly in response to these concerns, there has been much talk about the importance of developing "information literacy". I will argue here that our most important audience is already information literate and then some. [3] Our interest should be in ensuring the production of something that we might call "scholarly literacy", by which I mean the understanding of sources, methods, and their use that is at the heart of knowing what one knows and does not know. The problem is that the remarkable growth of information literacy has both enhanced our technical ability to produce scholarly literacy, by greatly increasing access to resources, while at the same time reducing the imperative to engage in sound scholarly practice by doing work that is "good enough." The challenge that we face will not and should not be that of turning back the clock; our task is to take ubiquitous information literacy and exploit it as an asset for the development of scholarly literacy. (There would be a high payoff, by the way, to generating a phrase that is jazzier and more marketable than "scholarly literacy.") [3] As Stanley Wilder has... dempsey

After a recent makeover, search engine Ask has a nice clean interface and some nice features. One that is foregrounded is the 'related searches' feature. I could not immediately see how they were generating this list, but it was often helpful. I was interested in what a search for Lorcan Dempsey returned ...... dempsey

I have observed that 'concentration' - of data, of connections, of computing capacity - is major feature of Web 2.0. Nick Carr talked about the centripetal web the other day, and this was picked up in an interesting way by Mark Dahl: With the web as the medium, it becomes that much easier to take the IT department (or the library for that matter) out of the loop when provisioning software or academic content. The HR department, the development office, or an academic department can select content or services over the Internet that meets their needs. User communities for cloud software and services can easily transcend institutional boundaries and make what used to be isolated choices seem less so. Nick Carr recently discusses how cloud computing is exerting a centripetal force throughout the web as a whole, with a trend toward centralization. In the context of an organization, it's exerting a centrifugal force: it is now much easier for a department or professor to deploy a multi-user application (eg VoiceThread, a NITLE favorite) without the participation of the IT department. [synthesize-specialize-mobilize: thoughts ahead of NITLE Cloud Computing Event] This is an example of a major trend. Universities have internalized particular... dempsey

On the politics and business of standards making ..... Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and standards, tells me that Big Blue has decided to cast a cold eye over the performance of the standards bodies it belongs to - which number “several hundred” - and may drop its links to some. The process of creating standards is “much more broken than people realised”, he said: in particular, there is a lack of transparency in some bodies about how decisions are arrived at or even how membership of the standards groups is set, which opens the system to abuse. [FT.com | Tech Blog | IBM takes a blunt axe to its dealings with standards-setters] I was interested that IBM was a member of 'several hundred' standards bodies.... dempsey

My colleague Lynn Connaway has been working on several collaborative projects looking at user behaviors over the last few years. Together, she and colleagues have produced a nice body of work looking at user attitudes and behaviors to library services, and to information work more generally. I thought it would be useful to pull together some publications which report on this work and list them here ..... Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, Marie L. Radford, and Timothy J. Dickey. 2008. "On the Trail of the Elusive Non-user: What Research in Virtual Reference Environments Reveals." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 34,2 (December/January): 25-28. Available online in HTML or PDF (222K/4 pp.) from: http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Dec-07/ Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, Marie L. Radford, Timothy J. Dickey, Jocelyn De Angelis Williams, and Patrick Confer. 2008. "Sense-making and Synchronicity: Information-seeking Behaviors of Millennials and Baby Boomers." Libri 58, 123-135. Connaway, Lynn Silipigni. 2007. "Mountains, Valleys, and Pathways: Serials Users' Needs and Steps to Meet Them. Part I: Identifying serials users' needs: Preliminary analysis of focus group and semi-structured interviews at colleges and universities." Serials Librarian, 52,1/2: 223-236. E-print available online at: http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/archive/2007/connaway-serialslibrarian.pdf (.pdf: 49K/14 pp.). Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, with Marie L. Radford [first author].... dempsey