So how big is the internet?

The internet is big. Really big. You have no idea how amazingly, mind-boggingly big it is. You may think War and Peace is a big read, but that’s just peanuts to the internet (cue Douglas Adams engaging in grave-rolling type activities)…..

Consider this…. Or this…..

So much on-line content is now created, because anyone can create on-line content. Information was once scarce. Information was hand-written onto scrolls, codices, and later printed into books. The rate at which books have been published has gone up markedly over the last decade as printing techniques have become more automated, so even in the traditional printed realm we are drowning in information.

Libraries, like all gatekeepers depend on a relative scarcity of information to thrive. Libraries were important in the ancient world as a means of disseminating and as a means of preserving information. In order to make sure that everyone could access that information we (libraries) controlled who could access it, and for how long, which depended on who provided the funding (the local city council, a university, a law office, a school). We were on the whole good at it, and rightly proud of what we could provide.

Thanks to tutescin: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tutescin/3797594257/

But what happens to gatekeepers when the gates can be bypassed?

Thanks to Kordite: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kordite/2975689845/

So a person with a computer can access information on most kinds of things. Not everything: everything is not yet on-line. But enough to be getting on with. So if the body funding the library decides to ditch the books, what happens to us, the library staff?

It won’t happen, I hear you cry? It does, and has. For example, this, and this. Now, is that wise? Well, maybe not necessarily, but if things move that way then thery need to be dealt with, rather than simply decried. I wonder whether decisions to take books out of school libraries might be resisted more strongly in Australia, but if educationn trends move away from the printed page then fewer books in favour of more digital (and importantly, more interactive) stuff is going to happen sooner or later.

What then is the library’s future long-term? I think that libraries will still be an important part of the community in my lifetime, but in historical terms we are I think on the cusp of a new era. I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment which touches on a lot of this stuff, which I’ll share over the next few posts.

23 Things – Topic 14: Youtube/Teachertube

Having used these frequently it’s hard to think of what to write that’s new. So I’ll begin by reiterating that anything posted by Mike Wesch is woth looking at:

There are all sorts of applications for YT in library services. ‘How-to’ videos posted to and embedded in the library website (or catalgoue) come to mind. In a TAFE environment one could try to add particular videos relevant to programs to the catalogue, but simply keeping with the volume of stuff would be a full-time job for several people.

Simply ensuring access is I think the most important thing here. An inability to get through corporate firewalls/filters will simply encourage people to try downloading video material using sites such as Zamzar and Youconvertit (violating YT’s terms of service) so that they can be stored on personal drives. Thus piracy is encouraged.

How much stuff gets added to the internet?

This came to me via @michellelamb on Twitter:  Gary Hayes Social Media Count. It was so good I had to use it:

http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/

Which bears on another interesting post by David Lee King on Content Curators.  One comment from Brad Czerniak said that humans are much slower at processing and indexing information than computers. If search engines won’t be able to keep up, there’s no chance that a human will. Some of this stuff happens now collectively. Good information will make the rounds in twitter, the best stuff re-tweeted, so that twitter (or delicious, or….) is often a better place to begin research.

If we get ‘content curators’ in the future, will they simply re-package content created by others. In the ancient and medieval world, commentators published excerpts and commentary on authors, and in many cases we only know of the existence of a writer through the commentator. The modern curator might not have a preservation role, but help keep good information out of the ‘noise’. As David wondered, is this something that libraries do? We have made directories of websites, added sites to catalogues. Is that sort of activity still worthwhile? Is there a better way to do it?

Web 2.0 – it ain’t the tools!

My writing has dropped off when I promised myself that I would do so regularly. So here we are then. Quite a few weeks ago I went to an ALIA event called Web 2.0: from the cradle to the future. It had 40-50 or so people, and I was also fortunate enough to run into Rhys Moult, who I’d previously met on the E-Dayz working committee. It was good sitting next to Rhys, partly because I knew him, but also because it was good to hear comments about a library profession-organised web 2.0 event from a non-librarian’s point of view.

The first speaker was Rod Martin from Era Publications. He spoke well, and his presentation (promoting a web-based children’s book application) was reasonably interesting. It’s only problem was that it had nothing to do with the topic. His main point was that having an on-line product means that digital children’s picture books are more dynamic and adaptable. Which is true. but it isn’t web 2.0. The emphasis with w2 is network creation, content creation and interactivity. This has some interactivity: a child can take the pre-generated characters to create their own stories, which they cannot share, except by printing it. There’s little in the way of sharing and collaboration that marks this as a web 2.0 tool for me.

Kate Sinclair’s Get a (2nd) Life: Virtual Worlds for Teaching and Learning was also an interesting presentation, but also got the collaborative essence.  One interesting point was that 2L can model worst practice. For example, students doing a health assessment of a fitness club might see the odd point to criticise, but because it will have had warning it will also have made sure that things are ship-shape. On the other hand, in 2L, students can look at a a problem environment (and can do so without any OHS&W concerns). It also means that there’s an engagement with the process (for example, ‘there’s been an outbreak of legionella: why?’).

Karen Ayles’s presentation on the UniSA Law Wiki was interesting because of how the wiki was used. Essentially, UniSA got a new Law School, and the wiki was to have important Q&A for queries from law students, and to track dtat for those types of inquiries. A good idea. What I found interesting was that the wiki was managed and updated bty a small team, while those people who actually handled the queries couldn’t update it themselves.

As this was being explained, Rhys was shaking his head, and he whispered to me what would become the title of this post. Using web 2.0 tools isn’t web 2.0. Web 2.0 is collaboration, networking, creating, directly. The age of the gatekeepers is fading.

23 Things project – Youtube

Have used Youtube for a while so wasn’t sure of what to post. First, I’ll start with embedding a video:

Mike Wesch produces a lot of excellent material on learning, technology and culture, which he uploads to YT. Which leads into the first tack that I’ll take: copyright. One should only use material from YT that the copyright holder has agreed to add to the site. Sometimes it’s not obvious (for example, though Mike is featured in the clip, does he hold copyright, or is it the institution at which he was speaking – I’m assuming the former).

It’s also important to note that YT (like any other website) has terms of service that one agrees to by the process of joining. Of particular interest is this one:

C. You agree not to access User Submissions (defined below) or YouTube Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Website itself, the YouTube Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.

People often like to download them using converters such as Zamzar. The reasons peole feel the need to do so I suspect have to do with network (un)reliability, blocking, etc. If you really need to have access to a clip off-line, the thing to do is simply contact the copyright holder. They may be happy for you to do so!

23 Things Project: iGoogle

I used iGoogle when it came out, and stopped using it because I found it rather clunky for my tastes. aving to re-explore it for work’s 23 Things project, I find that I’m now rather taken with it. It’s great to have gmail, reader etc all on the same page. Here is a screendump of my page:

The theme is also one that I created myself – if you’re searching for a new theme it’s called ‘Akropolis’.

23 Things: Flickr Tools

Having used Flickr for a few months, I’ve dropped off the frequency with which I upload my photos. Perhaps because I’d not learned to do anything new with them beyond uploading and tagging. Ennui can be hard to fight without challenges.

So the next 23 things was flickr mashups. I must confess that the only thing that I’d like to do would be to see my photos on Google Maps or somethiong similar. So when I saw Fotoland I was quite excited. It basically lets you view photos on a google map. I tried adding a few (give Fotoland your flickr username and you can automatically add photos by tag) and it worked OK. It’s not necessarily a great way to find your photos (there are lots of photos of the Acropolis in Athens, folks), but your photos become part of the mix.

Mind you, Flickr also allows you to map your photos and show rough location on Yahoo maps, which is cool! So now I have a reason to add more photos!

Work Photo – Port Adelaide

Work Photo – Port Adelaide, originally uploaded by LibrarianCat.

This photo of me was taken via webcam for TAFESA Library Services 23 Things project. While I haven’t uploaded a photo for a while, I really like Flickr. My photography skills are nothing to write home about (though if you look for my photos under LibrarianCat, I really like my photo of Khatachurian).

I’ve never used the blogging tools that come with Flickr, so I’m grateful to the 23 Things project for getting me to use that!

Also a good method of photo storage (I say let the cloud work for you!).

23 Things – Wikis

Having has a very long hiaitus from the 23 Things program, I decided that today would be an opportune time to return to it (and maybe knock off 3-4 topics today).

One of the things that occurs to me is that a wiki might be a good tool to replace policy/procedure documents that currently sit on network drives , and that often have multiple versions that don’t, for one reason or another don’t get deleted. For it to work, the person who oversees the day-to-day running of the site needs to be able to let staff update and modify it.

As an example, I’m on the working group for this year’s E-Dayz conference,  and it uses a wiki to organise its work. The updating of information is not centralised through any single person. Everyone can update the wiki. It’s one of the great things about social networking: no-one has to control it.

Web 2.0 and U

Yesterday I attended a Secondary Teacher Librarians Forum hosted by the Libraries for Learning Partnerships – North Adelaide. The focus was Web 2.0 and U, and so I rocked up to an interesting but also frustrating afternoon.

Good, because the keynote speaker was Michael Coghlan, whose enthusiasm is always good to listen to. He went through his How Web2 is Revolutionising Education presentation which, though I’ve heard before has posed some new questions for me. One was a twitter question (posed to demonstrate the ability of twitter to provide quick answers) on the role of libraries in a web 2.0 environment. Apart from the traditional print resources (which will still have a place for a while) we can provide access to useful data that you can’t get from search engines from databases, which is effectively free for the the person accessing it because the library or institution is paying for it.

Is that really valued though? While it’s not true that everything is on the web, the web is also the default starting point for research today. As a librarian, I can hardly bemoan this fact because this is also my practice. What is the web though? It isn’t html or xml pages, or tweets, or java (well, not just that). It’s people connected and engaged, creating as well as absorbing. It’s a giant network from which we can learn, and that we can also teach.

Michael made the point that increasing numbers of educators argue that learning is becoming student-centered, but that in fact it still tends to be instructor-centric. There is the inevitable inertia of institutions that have been geared for sage-centric, board-and-talk learning models that have been in place for many decades (or indeed centuries) at play. But perhaps also the fact that, when asked who has a personal learning network, only a small number of hands shot up is just as important. Karl Fisch notes that these are really not new things, but they now have a global reach. But they can also now be much more personal in nature. One of my interests is warfare in ancient history. I have traditionally had to read books by experts to gain information (and I still do this). An example would be this title by Professor Phil Sabin. But I can also interact with him directly through his yahoo group. The PLN can also be much more personal.

It often isn’t though. This video by Mike Wesch illustrates the point better than me:

Daniel Tobin lists 4 stages of learning: data, information, knowledge and wisdom. We can get all (or most) of stage 1 ourselves, but people help get to the other stages. That person can still be the sage, but it can, and should also be colleagues, peers, friends.

I think that this is where the library comes into the question posed earlier. How does the library get into a person’s PLN? By helping to personalise the experience, by being available for questions, requests for advice, and by networking. In an education institution, this means networking with with teaching staff. We need to be able to do it face-to-face, but we also need to be able to do it in a Web 2 environment. My PLN includes books, my work colleagues and also people on twitter, people who bookmark in del.icio.us, people who share photos in flickr.

One of the things that Michael helped me think about was the question of how exactly does one do this? I think one of the keys is using content that people have created, rather than creating your own. It saves you time, and the use (and attribution) helps the creator. Doing that I think also helps begin the path of content creation. Web 2.0 is all about network and content creation. Seeing what exists also helps to see what doesn’t exist, and what ought to, and therefore what ought to be created. And it’s this interaction that gets you into someone’s PLN.

This also tells me that the tension between collective wisdom versus authority is not insurmountable.  That there is a lot of rubbish on the web is true. But collective wisdom can promote the good, the innovative and the insightful. It’s not an either/or equation anymore.

The frustration in the afternoon was simply the amount crammed into an afternoon agenda. Sue Spence also gave a SACE update, after which we broke for various tempting treats. Pru Mitchell from Edna gave us an experiential look at web 2.0 technologies  and Mark Richardson showed us some of the stuff Salisbury Public library have done with 23 Things. It was an interesting afternoon, and I was glad to have been able to attend.