Doc Searls points us to documentation on the emerging Dataweb.
Category: Information Commons (Page 15 of 26)
Information Commons, Copyright, Censorship and/or withdrawal of public information, Libraries: Digital and other
Mike Conway posts a comment in response to the musing about the Future of Collections in Academic Libraries below asking about Wikipedians (as a term and as a people) and a bit about library futures. I decided to reply as a brief article and as a comment so’s it doesn’t get lost.
First Wikipedian is not that new a term. Wikipedians have been self-identifying by that name for a while now. See also “You now you are a Wikipedian if …”
We have a professional information caste; we call them “librarians” and less often “encyclopedians” The last were/are the heroes of the Foundation Trilogy as compilers of the Encyclopedia Galactica. Or you might prefer the parody turned real HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
For the moment, I’m thinking and talking about academic libraries and their future collections. A little bit of boundary helps me out. I do think that data preservation and access (see post above) problems and solutions contain the big issues for the next 20 years.
Public libraries are in an interesting state. They are busier than ever before. People are demanding growth and more access. Being able to access information on the Internet seems to have increased public library use. Book clubs, internet access, reference, and collections of multimedia (books on tape, children’s, etc) are large growth areas at the moment.
An aside, today I have two board meetings — one of the Academic Board of the Library for the UNC Academic Libraries; one for the Chapel Hill Public Library Board of Trustees.
UPDATE: Nassib has been thinking about Federated Databases in Science over at his blog.
Brian Russell announces that Podcastercon has raised the money needed to meet his ideal budget (over on the podcastercon blog).
Where: 116 Murphey Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC
When: Saturday, January 7, 2006 11am – 4pm
On March 13, I’m speaking at the Librarians’ Association at UNC-Chapel Hill conference here. The conference theme is “Beyond the 5 year plan: The academic library in 2025” I’ve drawn the library collections of the future straw (see preliminary description below). 2025 is definitely in the future! I’m open for suggestions as to what will be collected and how they’ll be held.
My initial take is that relationships between objects in a collection will be as important as the objects, whatever format, themselves. Algorithms and code for accessing datasets and related objects, which have never really been considered as part of a library collection, will be an important and necessary part of the future library. Without them, the datasets and objects that libraries will be holding for medicine and science soon and for other disciplines in time cannot be understood or used.
Library Collections of the Future
A look at both the kinds of materials that libraries will collect and the formats in which they’ll be held. We can safely assume that books and journals will still be around, but what will they contain? Will they include text alone, or regularly feature audio and visual elements? Will libraries continue to own most of the materials they collect, or will they increasingly have to rely on subscriptions and other continuing costs? How will libraries provide access to traditional books and archival materials?Speakers: Paul Jones, founder and director of ibiblio.org, and Clinical Associate Professor, School of Information and Library Science, UNC-Chapel Hill; Greg Raschke, Interim Associate Director for Collection Management Organization & Preservation, North Carolina State University.
Just took a phone call from a Daily Tar Heel reporter, Kyle Chorpening, who is doing a story on Wikipedia and the Seigenthaler issue. He had already spoken to Seigenthaler and to Jimmy Wales before calling me. What the heck could I add after that?
Well, maybe a pointer to the video of Jimbo’s talk here at UNC in October and some talk about owning your own words harking back to the WELL and over to Brin’s Transparent Society as a tension point with the American history of anonymous pamphleteering going back beyond the Federalist Papers. A brief mention of the Hitchhiker’s Guide site at BBC as a peer-reviewed encyclopedia too.
My take is that wikipedia is in process. It will change to meet challenges and it has already begun some changes to address problems such as this one. A year ago, Wikipedia was less good than it is today. In five years, it –or it’s online successor– will be much better.
Kyle also asked if I would accept wikipedia as a source in a paper. The answer is that academic papers should use primary sources, not encyclopedias, not Britanica, not World Book, not wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great starting point and often points to primary sources. In that way, it’s great. I would even accept wikipedia as a source for one of several definitions, but not as a major source. Not because of reliability but because good research should go to the source whenever possible.
UPDATE: Kyle’s article is here. I get the last words, but not (appropriately) the most words ;->
Paul Jones, a journalism professor at UNC, said people should be held accountable for content but can’t reasonably be restricted from publishing it.
“What are you going to do? Make people get an Internet driver’s license?†he said.
As Wikipedia has grown in popularity and reliability, students often are using it as a source for research, especially for term papers.
“I use it for general ideas, but not for specifics,†said freshman Russell Johnson. “It gives me a comfortable understanding of the topic.â€
Jones said Wikipedia is useful for directing students to good information but should complement other sources.
“Last semester, I returned a paper that was comprised almost solely of Wikipedia entries,†he said. “I think by the time you’re in college, you should be using primary sources.â€
One nice thing about the upcoming Podcastercon as an unconference is that you can propose a session on a topic that you know something about but want to know more about — sort of like Birds of a Feather sessions. TJ and I have proposed a session on iTunes and podcasting.
We were early in getting Roger McGuinn’s Folk Den registered and working with iTunes so we learned a lot about the iTunes extensions to RSS, but there are a couple of things that still drive us nuts. Like, how do you get the image to show in the “Drag Album — Art Here” area under Selected Song? LeShow from KCRW gets their picture there most, but not all, of time. We have the same RSS extensions that we see coming from KCRW but we can’t get our image in place. Not that Roger has a “Drag Album” ;->
Where: 116 Murphey Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
When: Saturday, January 7, 2006 11am – 4pm
Whither wikipedia? Two voices on the wikipedia side of the Seigenthaler issue that haven’t been heard fully are those of Dannah Boyd and Jimmy Wales. Linked to these two postings from the Association of Internet Researchers listserv archives (a list to which I subscribe and recommend).
Brian Russell has been working away on Podcastercon. The conference site now has Room and Ride Share threads on the blog. Registration, sessions, hotel and airport info and more are on the conference wiki.
Where: 116 Murphey Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
When: Saturday, January 7, 2006 11am – 4pm
Good news for Libertarians, Civil and otherwise, “A near-agreement to extend the controversial Patriot Act was blocked Friday by an odd-bedfellows coalition of liberals and conservatives who protested that it did too little to protect Americans’ civil liberties.” Reports Jill Zuckerman of the Chicago Trib as carried by the San Jose Mercury News.
Reminding us all that tomorrow, Tuesday November 15, is the Triangle Bloggers Blast at Durham’s American Tobacco Historic District.
The O’Reilly Net top story (at this instant) is Andy Oram’s report from the UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process, titled: Autumn Symposium Rakes Over Copyright and Patent Law
The teaser goes:
Andy Oram looks at the states of copyright, fair use, patent law, and more, as seen through the eyes of attendees at the recent Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity, and the Innovation Process. The conference attracted the likes of Marybeth Peters–register of copyrights, IP law critic James Boyle, open source advocate Chris DiBona, and EFF rep Cory Doctorow, to name a few of the people there who’ve planted stakes in the ground of this seeming turf war.
Mister Sugar writes on blogtogether to remind us of the Triangle Bloggers Blast:
Who: Bloggers, podcasters and anyone who wants to socialize with us.
What: A reception at the new WUNC studios and a happy hour with free drinks.
Where: American Tobacco Historic District, Durham (across from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park)
1. Start at new WUNC studios for tour, talk about podcasting and reception with catered food. Short welcome messages from Joan Siefert Rose and Keith Weston of WUNC, Michael Goodmon of ATHD, Stephen Fraser of Lulu.
2. Then move next door to Tyler’s Speakeasy for drinks and socializing. Short welcome messages from John Conway of WRAL.com and Henry Copeland of blogads.
When: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7-9 p.m.
Why: Why not? Let’s meet and greet each other, talk about blogging, or not, and share a few drinks.
How: Sponsors and supporters include: Blogads, WRAL.com, Lulu.com, ibiblio.org, mistersugar.com, WUNC, ATHD and podcastercon.
Why I didn’t type anything much today: I left on the 7 o’clock plane to DC and am just home at 10:30. I did catch this most interesting (and probably most blogged about) set of links from Dave Winer who was selected to leak a Bill Gates memo on Microsoft’s new direction (hint web services and things like Google maps that other may use to innovate and build) lead by the newly more powerful Ray Ozzie. Ray Ozzie’s followup email, The Internet Services Disruption, is also on Dave’s site — this is a more important read than even Gates’ memo. There is a lot of harping on how wonderful and successful .Net is which sorta makes you wonder what planet they are living on, but beyond that…
Ric Swiner and Brian his camera came by and we did a little chat outside Manning Hall about filesharing systems. I explained how bittorrent has many legal uses just like your car or Brian’s camera — even though folks can use any of those things for evil. I explained briefly how Grokster was found in violation of the law but that BitTorrent should not be. Grokster was even marketed as an inducement to illegal behaviors while BitTorrent is a content neutral protocol (I was simplier than that).
In no way did I advovate illegal behavior or illegal sharing, but I did point out examples of legal behaviors using BitTorrent.
Probably I’ll be on a few seconds. But I’ll likely not be watching tonight; it’s election night in Chapel Hill and I leave for DC early tomorrow morning.
I got a frantic series of calls during a meeting (a day of meetings but that’s a sadder story) on my cell. Finally I went out in the hall to at least listen to the voice mail. A producer from WLFL WB 22 (got all that) wanted an expert on p2p, copyright, and file trading. I am listed on the UNC experts pages as knowing about technology and copyright. Since I did put together the panel (and part of the audience/attendees) for the UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process last week and I paid attention to what the folks were saying, I guess I am.
The story they want to do is about Grokster being shutdown. Okay. But “Have you heard of this other thing out there that’s even worse? BitTorrent?” Err. It’s not worse, only worse if you wanted to be anonymous. It uses a tracker that remembers who had been trading. And we use it for legal downloads at torrent.ibiblio.org. “I guess you are an expert. Ric Swiner will come by at 11:30 tomorrow and we’ll talk with you.”
I do a lot of this but if you have suggestions and advice, do sent it my way.
MisterSugar writes to invite is all to:
Triangle Bloggers Bash
A social event for Triangle-area bloggers to meet and greet each other at Durham’s American Tobacco Historic District.
Who
Bloggers, podcasters and anyone who wants to socialize with us.What
A reception at the new WUNC studios and a happy hour with free drinks.Where
American Tobacco Historic District, Durham (across from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park)* Start at new WUNC studios for tour, talk about podcasting and reception with catered food. Short welcome messages from Joan Siefert Rose and Keith Westin of WUNC, Michael Goodmon of ATHD, Stephen Fraser of Lulu. Then move next door to Tyler’s Speakeasy for drinks and socializing. Short welcome messages from John Conway of WRAL.com and Henry Copeland of blogads.
When
Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7-9 p.m.[more at link above]
Note: ibiblio is one of the sponsors of this event.
Jamie Boyle writes in his Financial Times (London) column on the “Web’s never-to-be-repeated revolution” which begins:
The web is having a birthday. This month, we will have the 15th anniversary of the creation of the first web page. It is the birthday of Tim Berners-Lee’s amazing idea that there could be a world wide web, linked not by spider silk but by hypertext links and transfer protocols and uniform resource locators.
How should we celebrate? We are too close to the web to understand it. And those who lost money in the dotcom boom greet any celebration of the web the way a person with a hangover greets a mention of the drink of which they overindulged. The knowledge of shameful excess produces a renunciant puritanism. No more tequila or web romanticism for me!
That is a shame, because there are three things that we need to understand about the web. First, it is more amazing than we think. Second, the conjunction of technologies that made the web successful was extremely unlikely. Third, we probably would not create it, or any technology like it, today. In fact, we would be more likely to cripple it, or declare it illegal.
Cory begins with talking about John Phillips Sousa and his opposition to to recording devices. “If the infernal talking machines were not curtailed, we will surely loose our voice boxes just as we lost out tails when we came down from the trees.”
Instead of requiring clearance of rights, we got compulsary licenses.
Next radio as pirates, they played recordings on the air for many many listeners.
Next p2p. We are taping this and will have it digitized in about a week or so.
John Buckman of Magnatune, Gene Hoffman founder of eMusic, Edward Klaris of New Yorker, Adam Toll of Big Champagne, Sam Yagan of MetaMachine (eDonkey), Tor Hansen of Yep Roc, Roger McGuinn and hosted by Koleman Strumpf, economist.
Quite a variety of voices here as you might guess from the affiliations.
In the audience, Cory Doctorow, Robert Kaye, Chris DiBona, Scott Adams, David Bollier, Marybeth Peters, Roy Kaufman, Chris Evans, Laurie Racine, Jocelyn Neal, Stephanie McGarrah (see this page for ids).
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