SJRLC Connections

OCLC Report: Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World

The next in OCLC's great series of Membership Reports is now available for download from: http://www.oclc.org/reports/sharing/.  If it's half as good as their previous reports, it will give us all a lot to think about and discuss!

From OCLC's site:

Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World Now available! This OCLC membership report summarizes the findings of an international study on online social spaces, including social networking attitudes and habits of both end users and librarians. This international study on social networking, privacy and trust opinions surveyed the general public in six countries—Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States—and library directors from the U.S. Social networking was also discussed at the OCLC Symposium “Who’s Watching YOUR Space?” at ALA Midwinter 2007, while property law and privacy rights were discussed at the OCLC Symposium: “Is the Library Open?” at ALA Annual 2007.

Interesting Debate on Web 2.0: Weinberger vs. Keen

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a piece, "The Good, the Bad and the Web 2.0" that featured a debate between Andrew Keen, author of, "The Cult of the Amateur" and David Weinberger, author of "Everything is Miscellaneous".

I highly recommend the article, but for you fans of Cliffs notes, here's my quick 'n' dirty summary, followed a by a few questions to ponder.

Notes on Keen's position

IS WEB 2.0 A DREAM OR A NIGHTMARE?  It is: "The radical democratization of media which is enabling anyone to publish anything on the Internet.    

• Web 2.0 tranforms all of us into digital writers, music artists, movie makers, journalists (and critics)
  
• YouTube, blogs, Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Tagging
  
• A flattened media is a personalized, chaotic media without that essential epistemological anchor of truth.  The impartiality of the authoritative, accountable expert is replaced by the murkiness of the anonymous amateur.  When everyone claims to be an author, there can be no art. no reliable information, no audience
  
• Web 2.0's Democratization of information is creating a generation of media illiterates.  That's the Nightmare.
  
• Web 2.0 (combined with broadband) will transform the media into "ubiquitous chatter".  Digital abundance will lead to intellectual poverty.  "The more we know, the less we will know."
  
• Traditional media has done a good job in discovering, polishing, and distributing talent.
  
• To use this chaotic media efficaciously, we need to invent our own taxonomies -- which isn't realistic to the majority of the people.

Notes on Weinberger's position

THE WEB IS ABUNDANCE, WHILE THE OLD MEDIA IS PREMISED ON SCARCITY

• The web is problematic because there are no centralized gatekeepers BUT the Web is ALSO the continuing struggle to deal with that problem:  sites that enable users to tag online resources; the Web invents ways to pull together ideas and information, finding the connections and relationships that keep the "misc" from staying that way.
  
• People rely on a wide range of trust mechanisms appropriate to the domain to guide us (i.e. ebay reputations; persistence of posts on blogs; recommendations of other bloggers; Wikipedia's sophisticated governance and complete transparency…)
  
• Amateurs aren't driving out pros.  But the criteria governing our choice of whom to listen to are expanding from "those are the only channels I get".
  
• Keen's picture of talent is formed by the binary view the traditional media has forced on us.  It's been expensive to produce, market, distribute products (book, records, films).  The traditional distribution system made it look like talent is a you-got-it-or-you-don't proposition.  That doesn't reflect the scarcity of talent so much as the scarcity of distribution, a result of the high cost of delivering the first copy.
  
• We couldn't find so much on the web if finding required creating our own taxonomies as Keen says.   We rely on taxonomies created by experts (catalogs, indexes), computer assistance (search engines) and recommendations from people we trust.  We're getting better at all of these.
  
• Consider how much more we know about the world because of bloggers.  They may not be "journalists" but they are sources.

Thoughts/Questions

1. What can libraries be doing to help people find information?
   • Creating (good) expert taxonomies
   • Building recommendations systems into our catalogs and websites
   • Leveraging our reputation as a trusted source
   • Become actively involved with social tagging.   
     
2. What can/should libraries be doing to help customers create and share?  Can/should we be aggregating or creating local community or subject oriented:
   • Blogs
   • Wikis
   • YouTube "channels"
   • Podcasts
     
3. As information professionals, what are our information competencies in the web 2.0 world?
   • Can should we be helping to teach our customers how to use new information technologies to enhance their lives?
   • What do you think of David Lee King's suggested competencies. 
   • How do Livonia Central School's tech competencies for 3rd graders compare/contrast with the current competencies of library staff?   
     
4. Web 2.0 fosters communities of interest.  Are there opportunities for libraries to strengthen their role in their community and/or connect people (or connect with people) in their communities?

Joan Bernstein has an article in CIL

Joan Bernstein, Director of the Mount Laurel Library, has a feature article in this month's Computers in Libraries entitled, Train Employees and Officials to Be Ready for Privacy Challenges.

If you don't subscribe to the wonderful magazine, don't fret:  You can access the full text online at: http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jun07/Bernstein.shtml.