Social Networking vs. Live networking

And I'm back once again to zdnet.com. What can I say? It's a decent information hub. This time I found rather a sad commentary on networking. I find it particularly distressing that the authors felt it a necessity to state that "The base lesson is that what may be OK online (for example, jumping into the middle of a Twitter or Facebook thread) does not always translate to the real-world."

...  Really?   This isn't OBVIOUS?  ...

It hurts my brain that there must be a subset of the population to whom this is not readily apparent.  (Or why would anyone have felt the need to write such an article?)  Isn't this just playing to the sterotype that all technophiles must be socially awkward and therefore require such advice?

But as social networking takes a larger role in how businesses operate  and as libraries as information service providers become more closely entwined with the development of information technologies the issue will become more pressing. Actually, I think Dion Hinchcliffe put it rather well in the article when he said: 

"Also, the leading benefit [of social collaboration] is clearly information sharing. In work environments where information is the most potent currency, such as knowledge workers (which are the backbone of the modern economy), therefore social business is most likely to provide the highest value."

Rather interesting possibilities for libraries there, I think.

* On a personal note: Why is it that the less sleep I get the more philosophically minded I become?

Wikis as the ultimate democracy?

This weeks lecture topic: Blogs, Wikis, and Social Computing

I was doing a bit of casual digging (yes, I am aware of the irony) and came across this statement - "Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web..."

Not to be pigeonholed into a single opinion I also wound up reading:

Governance, Organization, and Democracy on the Internet: The Iron Law and the

Evolution of Wikipedia ( Piotr Konieczny, Sociological Forum, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2009  DOI :10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.01090.x)

In addition to learning about  Robert Michels, I think my favorite actual term discussed for a wiki is actually  "adhocracy".

I'm not sure that I totally buy democracy though... I need to do more digging.

I think I have never enjoyed Jeopardy quite so much...

Dear IBM:  I am thoroughly impressed! Watson has dominated the human competition in the final round. I am in sympathy with competitor Ken Jennings - and will welcome our new computer overlords...

(Eventually. Grudgingly. Maybe.)

In all seriousness - a fantastic exhibition match. I am EXCITED to have seen this in my lifetime! The only thing better would have been to be in the audience.

The language recognition, the ability to recognize idom and wordplay is fascinating - Watson is certainly a well designed, well coded machine.  And I was pleasantly surprised at how its voice gave it tangible personification, in spite of a lack of facial features. Even Alex Trebek refered to it as "he" once or twice. As far as its ability for data retrieval and analysis, there were a few notable instances where the humans still took the advantage (at least temporarily).

An interesting case study in rapid information retrieval between humans and computers.  Might shed some interesting light on the argument that Google can replace reference librarians on the basis of cost savings alone. Watson may have answered the majority of questions correctly, but the instances where it failed were odd...not what I expected. Not to mention - it's hardly cheap!

 I really hope this gets re-aired for more analysis!

Warning: Rant ahead.

The one serious issue I am having with my current academic persuit is the sheer number of accounts and login information I now need to maintain.  In addition to my Pitt student login I also have:

Omeka
Jing
Screencast
RefWorks
Scopus
Blogger
ePrints

Not to mention Facebook, which I joined my first term (under some duress) because it was the preferred method of group communication, in addition to my own email accounts and personal blog, (which has suffered some on hiatus) which I  have been maintaining since 2001.

They really need to consider converting our student ID's into something like a CAC card to maintain and retrieve all the protected information we need to remember and access as a part of our student activities!

the benefits of tagging, social bookmarking and other user centered contributions

I found yet another interesting article via zdnet.com about assessing the business benefits of social business .

If you read this article replacing Enterprise 2.0 with Library 2.0 it could in many ways stand as proxy for any of a dozen articles I've perused in the course of my library studies thus far including similar concerns for cost benefits analysis, integration, security measures... even the statement that   " there’s still enough uncertainty to make more conservative organizations take a wait and see approach, even as many of them that I speak with now realize that broad deployment of social tools is now primarily a timing issue."

It's that sense of inevitability that makes me wonder why, if multiple disciplines are holding essentially the same dialogue, there isn't more conversation going on across disciplines than I've encountered thus far. Of course it may be that I am  simply not looking exhaustively as I might, but as much of a hot topic as this has become, it shouldn't be too difficult to uncover such collaboration attempts. To harken back to an earlier post on branding, how much do we treat a library like any other corporate venture in order increase customer satisfaction?

tagging is not just for graffiti artists anymore

An interesting discussion this week on why tagging will not replace cataloging as a method of describing and locating items in a library collection. (Which boils down, in its essentials, to  the difference between a taxonomy and a folksonomy). There were some interesting comments regarding how a folksonomy might be used to augment a taxonomy, i.e how the inclusion of tagging might improve a users satisfaction with an Online Public Access Catalog experience.

One comment by the instructor - that if the idea of a folksonomy gained some acceptance in the profession that Law and Medical libraries would likely be among the last adapters - got me thinking.

I can completely understand that lawyers and doctors by the nature of thier professions are required to be precise in their communications, and would likely be least satisfied with such a mutable arrangement system as a tag cloud - but they are also, I imagine, likely to be the best potential producers of a folksonomy with some underlying structure - a hybrid between a rigid taxonomy and a completely free form stream of consciousness association. Something which might stand a chance of combining greater flexibility of tagging with a commonly known, well accepted, not to mention precise, professional vocabulary that resembles a taxonomy in that it provides a known (or knowable) structure. Maybe not a supertype-subtype arrangement, but an arrangement none the less...

Maybe that's just the insomnia and cold medicine talking, but I can't get the concept out of my head.

A video tutorial!

In the process of making which I learn what zotero is and how to capture video....



Also that I hate the sound of my recorded voice and I absoloutely MUST get a better microphone if I am going to keep doing this!!