The Search Principle blog

At the 2007 MIT Media in Transition conference, Dr. Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark spoke about participatory cultures (ie. Web 2.0) and how they signal the closing of what he calls “the Gutenberg parenthesis“.

In brief, what is the Gutenberg parenthesis? Consider that we are just emerging out of a period dominated by print in general and the printed monograph (book) in particular. This process, lasting five hundred years, disrupted the idea of what a work is and who owns it. In fact, knowledge creation now recalls cultural norms that prevailed before the advent of mechanically printed texts pre-Gutenberg 1440. In oral and folk culture of the Middle ages, practices such as adaptation, appropriation and recombining – what our modern hip-hop culture calls “sampling” – were not only accepted but encouraged. The printing press introduced a new order in knowledge-creation in which individual printed works were held to be unique, and an author’s ownership sacred.

Pettitt said “…[the Gutenberg parenthesis] is a divide which occurs when cultures change from a primarily oral or hand-copied tradition to one of reliable, consistent mechanical reproduction. Once this happened, a privileged reified place was given to the concept of the complete original text “as the author intended” – rather than seeing it as an interpreted work. Prior to this transition, works evolved and changed over time, and the performative aspect was more important than the accuracy.”

New digital, web technologies are spinning the wheel back to its pre-Gutenberg position (closing the parenthesis). Consequently, cultural production in Web 2.0 circa 2007 is a dynamic, collective process rather than the work of a single lonely genius. Digital media – with it’s ease of copying, modifying and transmission – is moving us away from the primacy of original works.

This disruption introduces copyright problems as video, audio and graphics are getting reappropriated, changed and redistributed. For all librarians, understanding this development is critical to our understanding of the future of our work, our collections and post-textuality.

I have discovered a variety of edu-bloggers during my sabbatical who perceive the Web in critically different ways compared to medical and librarian bloggers.

Read, for example, the thoughtful posts by technologists like Sean Pollack over at the Academic Commons blog. His recent post got me thinking about how teachers are using information technology, sometimes at the expense of sound pedagogy. Have librarians adopted technology too quickly, with disastrous effect on our academic print culture, and a concomitant rise in anxiety over our work?.

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Here, the discussion focusses on how instructional technology can distort pedagogy:

“Technology” is a hollow shell of a concept laden with external baggage, most of it unnecessary.

I have watched and participated in instructional technology since I began using the web and networked computing classrooms in the 1990s. I spent eight years working with teaching and technology initiatives for a non-profit consortium of colleges, and at institutions large and small. I have seen the technology change a good deal, but the discourse surrounding it has hardly changed at all.

Part of the problem is that there is a neo-conservative article of faith that holds that “technology” will solve all the social, environmental and fiscal problems we (that is, unregulated market economies and American unilateralism) have created. “Technology” in education can take on disturbingly similar evangelical, even transcendentalist tones that ring hollow when compared with lived experience. Part of the problem is that some academics perceive that the injection of technology into education means a Gatesian brave new world where teachers will ultimately be replaced by software and hardware vended by Microsoft and its allies. Or perhaps worse, “technology” evokes an information-sphere dominated by an inescapable Googlian web whose algorithms filter the informational life of every citizen based on personal data we voluntarily provide. The price of this Faustian bargain: a delusive godlike apprehension. But if there is one thing gods lack, as every undergraduate reader of Homer can tell you, it is a sense of personal responsibility. It is not that these dark outcomes are impossible; we appear to tumble helplessly or deliberately toward them with every passing year. To both undermine and illustrate this concept: Google “Epic 2014” and watch the video presentation those terms locate. Just as neo-conservative thinking consistently fails to factor in unforeseen consequences, so much of the current discourse about technology in education fails to ask about the unintended consequences of our investment in resources such as course management systems (CMS). To paraphrase Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth: Old teaching habits + Old technology = Predictable results. Old habits + New technology = Unpredictable and even undesirable results. Technology, unfortunately, has become too closely identified with large systems sold by large vendors at exorbitant prices, and a lack of systematic reflection about what habits need revision.

Technology can produce an anxiety over technical obsolescence, often expressed as frustration about the pace of change in operating systems, commonly-used software packages, and particularly course management systems. Institutions, in search of alternatives to the major platform Blackboard/WebCT, experiment with or adopt open source technologies. Faculty often feel as though they have made a major investment in “learning” and using a particular platform, and resent the switch. This concern over obsolescence often manifests itself keenly in faculty outside the sciences who have observed the rise of electronic texts and networked information; they sometimes decry what they see as the demise of print culture, and its human networks of gatekeepers, editors, and the practices of print-based research. The anxiety over the continual entropic obsolescence of technology is in part an anxious misapprehension of their own looming, spectral obsolescence.[1] Scientists, however, seem either to roll with it, or roll their own. They tend to understand that while technology changes, the disciplines abide, but not unaltered.”

The boys (and they are boys) at Facebook announced recently that public content @ Facebook will be crawled by search engines, and made searchable, within weeks.

At first glance, I didn’t consider this an intrusion into my privacy but upon closer examination I’m flummoxed.

Here are the issues:

1. First, there is no privacy anymore, let alone on Facebook. But posting messages, however humorous, on Facebook is a very public act. Repeat: no privacy, no anonymity. Think (think, very hard) before you post. What you post is a matter of public record, and will be searchable forever.

2. Facebook content will be crawled by search engines. This will essentially continue to blur the boundaries between our public and private selves, and digital identities.

3. Facebook is essentially becoming public e-mail, made for all to see. Negotiating your self-presentation is a skill for Web users in the age of social software, but you can always say nothing. Write nothing. Reveal nothing. Err on the side of privacy.

4. Facebook collects (and uses) information from you in the way that Google collects and uses information from you. Your search topics. Your e-mail. Your conversations. Think about it. No privacy, no confidentiality, no anonymity. This is the new transparency we must live with in Web 2.0-Web 3.0.

5. Perhaps anonymizers will eventually be needed for our communication spaces like Facebook, e-mail, wikis and instant messaging. Either that, or Google will insert a special chip at birth and crawl your thoughts – even before you have them – making them searchable.

How’s that for the future of search??? Dean

The following is an exchange between Josh Illig, Sales and Marketing Manager – Institutions, jillig@conferencearchives.com and me about his work in using technologies to record the knowledge exchange at scientific meetings. Josh works for an organization in the United States called Conference Archives, Inc. (CAI) ; here, he discusses his role at CAI as well as the importance of event-based science – a term that I think is self-explanatory, but it essentially amounts to making digitally-accessible the evidence, information and knowledge presented at annual biomedical conferences and meetings.

(For some idea of how Ekatius™ works, see the 2007 American Association for Thoracic Surgery Meeting presentations.)

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Interview with Josh Illig, Conference Archives Inc.

1. Tell my readers a little bit about your background and the work you do with Ekatius. Talk about what Ekatius is, and how it would be of interest to educators, academics and physicians.

“My name is Josh Illig and I have a B.A. in English and a Master’s degree in Education, however I want to say that I’m a big supporter of libraries, and of self-directed learning. I work for Conference Archives, Inc (CAI) which has been digitally capturing, producing, and archiving meeting presentations (audio, slides, etc.) since 2001.

CAI produces Ekatius, which is a platform solution to aid in the accessibility, discoverability, and exposure issues for scientific conferences – what we are calling event-based science (EBS). It has been estimated that abstracts accepted for presentation at biomedical meetings have only a 45% publication rate within six years of presentation. With Ekatius, associations can make their events available on the Web in one place and disseminate it to educators, academics, and physicians globally.

While I have an affinity for print materials, as having a book in your hands is a convenience that cannot be replicated, I also believe in the power of rich media.”

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2. We’ve collaborated on an article for the JMLA, but I wonder if you could briefly discuss this paper and the concept of rich-media and “event-based science”.

“The paper deals with the value of recording event-based science (EBS) and the rise of rich media in the post-textual web. Since learning about the meetings industry, I am surprised that EBS is not captured systematically, or disseminated beyond a meeting’s physical boundaries. After all, are meetings and conferences not comprised of the ‘best and brightest’ researchers in a given field?

In conversations I had with medical librarians at the MLA 2007, I heard that EBS is sought after by information professionals but hard to locate. After reviewing the literature, we learned that the publication rate for papers at conferences was incredibly low, estimated to be around 45%.

So our article explores the importance of capturing, aggregating, and disseminating EBS in rich media formats. Although capturing research is important, the rich media format is what changes its dissemination. Rich media takes the user beyond text by synchronizing multiple modes of information presentation – from audio to slides to video and beyond. The technology aligns with learning theories and reinforces the idea that information retention occurs when multiple senses or ‘intelligences’ are actively engaged in learning.”

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3. PubMed is starting to index audiovisual content (Search for the phrase “Videos in clinical medicine” at pubmed.gov) and the TRIP database will soon include pod- and vodcasts in its search results. This is the rise of non-text; do you think that this material should be indexed in MEDLINE and made more easily findable in Google and Google scholar?

“Absolutely. However, the challenge we face is how to index non-text, an issue that continues to arise for indexers. Google Scholar crawls text only, so for 30-minute presentations of synchronized audio and slides, will GS index that knowledge? Without a detailed abstract (or metadata), it will not be findable.

I feel very strongly that the audiovisual side of the web will be important for the training of future physicians. Millennials make up 18% of the current physician workforce in the U.S and this number will only increase as the Baby Boomers retire. Millennials are a ‘tech-savvy’ generation and prefer multiple modes of information presentation.

If you link the learning styles and preferences of new Web users, the indexing of A/V and rich media content is a no-brainer, and essential – but we have to capture it and archive it first.”

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4. If medical organizations are considering videotaping their conferences for later broadcasting on the Web, what do you recommend they do in terms of planning for that? How much money is required to made an entire day’s worth of content available through Ekatius?

“First, I suggest that the association identify its purpose: is it for a CE course, a members-only resource library, etc.? To whom will the meeting be directed, institutions, consumers or members? Answers to these questions provide direction for recording a presentation, and raise important issues such as the recording quality and format required.

Associations can identify reputable audiovisual or archiving vendors that have knowledge of the meeting industry. Vendors should take associations through the process of recording live recordings, and help them achieve the best possible recordings for their desired aims.

Our mission at Ekatius is to increase the accessibility, discoverability, and exposure of EBS regardless of an organization’s size. We are willing to work with any association and have developed revenue-sharing models to ease or eliminate the financial commitment of large and small organizations.

When it comes to money and education, I’m reminded of an exchange I had with my dad when deciding whether to go to college. My argument was that I didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars for a ‘piece of paper,’ and his reply was that “education is no burden to carry around.” Six years and two ‘pieces of paper’ later, I’ve come to see the wisdom of those words.”

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5. Where do you think the Web is going? What will it look like in five years?

“I see the Web being a more complete and dynamic ‘marketplace of ideas’ with the free flow of information and collaboration. Social networking, bookmarking, and user-created content will make it possible for new Web users to ultimately take total control of media.

More importantly, I see the Web as the vehicle for breaking down information and networking silos and bringing people of unlikely backgrounds and expertise together. For instance, I see the future of the web as a place where an engineer can go to a website, read/view content both within and outside of his specialty, and contact and collaborate with an expert in a completely unrelated field. If you think about it, this should be a completely natural occurrence due to the informational overlap that occurs not only within medicine but across all disciplines.

Let’s remove barriers to knowledge exchange, and, as Pink Floyd says: “Tear down the Wall!”

The Web is truly becoming an unruly mess, and predictions of ambient findability seem a bit overstated, I think. Searchability is becoming problematic, right across the web. All librarians (but especially those in health) should watch for increased vortalization of our search spaces. We should also stick to our guns about what information we believe is trustworthy, useful and reliable.

That said, academic librarians are increasingly asked to assist scholars in assessing new information technologies – and we need to be patient with search start-ups. Today’s announcement of PogoFrog.com – a medical search engine for physicians is a case in point. (See also: about PogoFrog). Does the search engine look familiar to you? Look like Google Co-op – Health (or Rollyo) to anyone?

This is quite the look, a kind of Dr. Kermit Search, don’t you think? What the tool itself does is monetize <a href=”http://migrator.rab.olt.ubc.ca/googlescholar/2007/06/Barsky-Cho-&-Rothman—On-Social-Search/”>social search. What next? PogoFrog searches across American .gov and .edu sites in medicine but notice that there are Sponsored links to the right of every search page. Looks like Canadian content is minimal also.

PogoFrog also appears to want physician input, essentially another kind of social search. Oh dear. What a mess.

As a Canadian academic librarian, I hold in high regard the work being done in American universities, especially in cities with well-established programs (and libraries) in New York, Washington and Boston. In Boston – a mecca for academics, a kind of Athenian centre for educational excellence – we find institutions such as Harvard, MIT and Boston University (and hundreds of others); but, on the medical side, countless teaching hospitals in the Longwood Medical Area such as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary .

A few months ago, Lauren Maggio, a medical librarian at the Boston University Medical Center, and I began communicating about library education programs, and projects we’d like to implement in our respective universities. Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

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1. Tell me about some of your work, Lauren, at Boston University Medical Center.

Lauren: “At Boston University Medical Center (BUMC) I’m the Coordinator of Library Education and Information Management, which means that I’m in charge of an education program that annually trains over 2,500 students, faculty and staff. For this program, I create and teach a wide variety hands-on skills sessions, organize a dedicated team of education librarians and create related online materials. (See http://www.medlib.bu.edu) I also represent the library on key curriculum committees and this fall, I’m teaching a for-credit course Introduction to Biomedical Information. I most enjoy working with faculty from across the medical campus to help them integrate information literacy into their courses.”

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2. You and I share an interest in medical education. I am particularly interested in applying learning theories to the teaching of information literacy. Where do your interests lie?

Lauren: “I’m especially interested in evaluating information literacy training over time to determine its effectiveness in creating lifelong learners. Additionally I believe that faculty members play a large role in teaching information literacy and think that a thorough investigation of this role would be fascinating and valuable.”

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3. Lauren, how did you get to where you are? What’s the job market like for medical librarians in the U.S.?

Lauren: “I came to BUMC through a variety of education-related experiences. For example before becoming a librarian, I tutored elementary students, taught Japanese high school students English and coordinated curriculum-based service learning experiences for college students. I think that these diverse experiences helped make me an attractive candidate for my position.

Currently the US medical librarian job market seems to favor those looking for director and associate director positions. Although I have noticed a flurry of entry level positions all of which have a definite emphasis on instruction skills and experience. ”

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4. What’s the most important tools and websites to stay current for you?

Lauren: “I’m a big reader of the Chronicle of Higher Education and Academic Medicine. Also I keep current through various medical education, information literacy and medical librarianship list servs. However, the most crucial way that I stay up to date is by frequently speaking with librarians, faculty members and students. One way I communicate with librarians is through the Librarians in Medical Education (LiME) Special Interest Group of the Northeast Group on Educational Affairs, a regional group of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). This group has members from over 30 AAMC institutions who are dedicated to increasing the role of library instruction in medical school curriculum. Recently, as the current chair, I created a LiME blog, which is open to all librarians at: http://www.librariansinmedicaleducation.blogspot.com/

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5. Do you serve physicians, residents and medical students – or one group more than others? What kinds of help do they need most?

Lauren: “At BUMC, I serve anyone with information needs, which may include nurses, students, physicians and the occasional patient. However, our education program focuses on mainly training students and faculty from the Boston University Schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Public Health.

I find that most patrons generally need help understanding which resources are best to use for answering certain types of questions. For example, we stress that although Medline is great, it’s not necessarily the best resource for every question. We make sure to address the appropriateness of certain resources in all of our training sessions and in our online materials. “

In alphabetical order:

1. Ask.com

Give your Yahoo.ca and Google.ca searches a break, and try the flexible search space that is Ask.com. Ask.com has a librarian on board, Gary Price, who understands how students search. (So do we….)

2. Bloglines

Like iGoogle (or Google reader), bloglines lets you set up an account for free, and track activity on your favourite blogs, websites and news services. Ask your favourite librarian to show you how to set up RSS feeds for online indexes like ERIC, PubMed and Agricola.

3. Del.icio.us

Are you trying to find a way to keep track (and share) your favourite websites? and file them under subject terms (or tags) that you understand? Del.icio.us, Digg and Connotea.org are some of the most-used in academic circles.

4. Facebook

Social networking is a skill you’ll need to stay in touch with colleagues, faculty and fellow students. MySpace, Sermo and LinkedIn are some other popular tools.

5. Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Writing a paper with two other students? Don’t want to send large files on your e-mail account? You can try the Google Docs tool. Keep in mind, Google watches what you are doing, and can let the authorities know. Caveat Goooglers.

6. iGoogle

Like Bloglines, there are a number of social tools that will help you track RSS feeds and updates on websites, and online databases. iGoogle requires a gmail account.

7. SlideShare

An excellent tool to share knowledge with students and faculty. Now includes soundcasts, if you can use odeo.com or audacity.com.

8. Technorati.com

Like Google Blogsearch, technorati.com allows searchers to track discussions on the blogosphere. Keep in mind that there are other blog search space tools.

9. YouTube.com

Google is the quintessential Web 2.0 company. It now owns youtube.com, and is monetizing it – watch for adverts. That aside, it’s still one of the most useful sources of video information.

10. Wikipedia.org

Nearing 2 million articles, the English version of Wikipedia is the ninth-most popular site on the Web. Is it a bona-fide academic, scholarly website? Should you use it for your scholarly papers?

Before using Wikipedia, ask your professors (or a librarian). Or, use it just to start your research and for the links it provides to trustworthy information.

As a librarian, I find a lot of what Sir Tim says to be extremely compelling. You? Dean

Suweeeet. Look at the syllabus of a course entitled INST Introduction to Open Education:

Week 1 August 27: Why Open Education?

Removing obstacles in the way of the right to education (Tomasevski, 51 pages)

Free and compulsory education for all children: the gap between promise and performance (Tomasevski, 81 pages)

Testimony to the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education (Wiley, 7 pages)

QUESTIONS: In your opinion, is the "right to education" a basic human right? Why or why not? In your opinion, is open *access* to free, high-quality educational opportunity sufficient, or is it necessary to *mandate* education through a certain age or level?

[edit] Week 2: Background Readings in Open Education

Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (OECD, 147 pages)

[edit] Week 3: Background Readings in Open Education

Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012 (OLCOS, 149 pages)

[edit] Week 4: Background Readings in Open Education

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities (Atkins, Brown, and Hammond, 80 pages)

Interviews with:

• Susan D’Antoni
• Mike Smith

QUESTIONS: What do these overviews of the field have in common? What do they emphasize differently? What are the aims of the authors of each report? Do you see a bias toward or against any ideas, organizations, or approaches in any of the reports? Which report spoke the most clearly to you, and why do you think it did? Based on where the field is now, and these initial ideas about where it might go, what part of the open education movement is most interesting to you? Why?

[edit] Week 5: Example Open Education Projects

Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative

Rice Connexions

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative

UNESCO Open Training Platform

MIT OCW

National Repository of Online Courses

QUESTIONS: What do these representative open education projects have in common? What differentiates them? In the context of open education projects, what does "quality" mean?

Slideshare.net is a very useful social software site where powerpoint presentations are stored, shared (and searched) and viewed by others. If you think about it, SlideShare is a kind of youtube.com for presentations.

Recently, a nice mashup of powerpoints and audio was announced at SlideShare called "Slidecasts". Think of how you – as physicians and medical librarians – use powerpoint, and store presentations. Think of how you may be using tools like Camtasia (Techsmith.com) or even how slackers remix audio with other audiophiles.

What is Camtasia? Camtasia is a proprietary tool to create a recording that is both audio and synchronized video captured from your computer’s microphone and screen. Used to capture combined powerpoints and audio presentations for making training videos and lectures, Camtasia can be edited and saved in a variety of formats. (Tegrity.com offers a similar application, with files stored on a Tegrity server.) The Apple computer program, Garage Band, allows you to attach photos and images to segments of an existing audio, or podcast, file.

Slidecasts requires two things: (1) a Powerpoint presentation that has been uploaded to Slideshare.net [ppt, pps, opd, and pdf formats all work], and (2) an MP3 audio file stored on the Internet — on a webpage or blog. (Some free audio/podcast sites that might work for this are Gcast.com.) Slidecast is an online application that allows you to mash two files by moving slide transitions to any point on the audio file. The result is cool and can be viewed on the Slideshare website, or the code can be copied on a blog or other website. Examples? Try: Slidecast of the Day.

Most librarians can’t use Camtasia due to cost (we like the free software culture, don’t we?) or because decision-makers keep this software on a few computers only. When I record my lectures and presentations, I use odeo.com. Slidecasting will enhance online learning for me and my users, and students.

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