The Search Principle blog

How many of you have really thought about the long-term implications of open access in your work as librarians? Look at how open search tools like Google and Google scholar are disrupting how users find information and use (or not) the skills we teach. Look also at how search tools enforce ‘an aesthetic and an easy functionality’ across all that we do in our libraries – for lack of a better word: Googlization.

Extend the disruptive ideas of openness, access and ubiquitous findability to a new brand of ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) education and learning; take some self-motivated and directed learning to a new place combined with an abject, anti-corporate (MNCs) angsty-attitude? Think of it as Brian Lamb without the angst (Ok, some).

That’s DIY education or Edupunk, the latest reaction against cookie-cutter commercialization of higher learning, informed by punk ideologies. Some cool ideas have fermented at UBC where a Spanish 312 course called “Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation” is emblematic of edupunk.

The video clip below illustrates just how fast edupunk as a concept (and beyond it as a reaction against CMSs) has been adopted since it was coined in May 2008. Will edupunk’s ideas be adopted later to the monolith that is medicine?

Probably not, but it made for a good ‘eye-catching’ headline, don’t you think?

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…..changing educational expectations in a web 2.0 world….

Thanks to Allan at AllansLibrary for pointing to this article. I appreciate the fact that many medical librarians around the world are finding the excitement in web 2.0, and sharing it with their peers. Congratulations Vahideh & Vishwa!
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Vahideh Zarea Gavgani, V. Vishwa Mohan(2008). “Application of web 2.0 tools in medical librarianship to support medicine 2.0.” Webology, 5(1)53.

Today, the UBC Health Library wiki went over three-quarters of a million page views. That’s 750,000 pages viewed by health librarians and other professionals around the world. A special thanks to the wiki team and our group of SLAIS volunteers. I am always looking for others interested in building the wiki, so join the team. ~ Dean

I stumbled across these two examples of automated computation of the h-index:

It was simply a matter of time before Google introduced its own virtual world, and today it arrived: Lively. Like the popular Second Life, Lively has many of the same trappings as SL including avatars, locales, but a few things are different. No client is needed for Lively as you do for Second Life, and there are no virtual dollars in Lively. Only a plugin is required to get going. (And Windows Vista or XP.)

Imagine how an immersive technology will integrate all of Google’s projects: Google Earth, Sky, Documents, Powerpoints, Spreadsheets, Picasa, Talk, Mail, Youtube, etc. Be any avatar you want to be, any gender or identity, any clothes-horse, pump-wearing, political-manifesto spouting character you want, thank you very much. And, of course, be social.

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Some basic information about how Lively works:

Download

1. Go to http://lively.com/ (Or visit any room, or room embedded on a blog).
2. Click download Lively button.
3. Click save file to open the livelysetup.exe file.

Install

1. Click Open to continue installing; click livelysetup.exe file that appears on your desktop.
2. A message will appear that Lively is installing with a status bar showing progress.
3. When install is complete, click Close.

Select a room you want to enter and a sign-in screen will appear. Set up your own avatar, and select your desired gender, hair colour, clothes, etc. By the way, keep me posted on what you think of Lively, particularly in the early days…

This is a good overview to Web 2.0 use in higher education for a workshop at UOC (www.uoc.edu). Authored by Peter Bihr who blogs at www.thewavingcat.com

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The Montreal-based start-up – Control Yourself, Inc. – has launched a new open microblogging service called Identi.ca. How different is Identi.ca from other microblogging tools?

Similar to Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce, Identi.ca is the first site, however, to support OpenMicroBlogging, a standard for exchanging messages between microblog sites.

The OpenMicroBlogging standard ‘decentralizes’ micro-posts, and takes the strain off centralized servers (as in Twitter) so in a distributed model there will be no more ”down time”. Identi.ca also makes public user data available under a Creative Commons license. Open, open, open….

Even Dave Winer seems happy….by Identi.ca‘s launch.

I’ll sign up for an Identi.ca account but admit it would be tough to leave Twitter. We need some kind of aggregating service for microblogs, me thinks. New features coming to Identi.ca include cell text messaging (SMS) and multilingual support in a subsequent software release.

I hear that early users of Identi.ca think it’s good, and like its openness. Jon Phillips from Creative Commons says “…it makes me feel alive to see the resurgence of free/open on the web”.

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References

1. Identi.ca: May A Million Twitters Bloom. Read, Write Web

Five brief ontological views – see wiki entry

1. Socialize: “Be social”, chit-chat, extended chat, converse & discourse – Twitter, microblogging, social networking, instant messaging, blogs, etc.

2. Collaborate-think: brainstorm, write, build – wikis, Googledocs/presentations, Noodletools, etc.

3. Share, describe, disambiguate: teach-demo, organize, plan, broadcast – bookmarks, calendars, surveys, photos, LibraryThing, RSS, microblogging, pod/vodcasting, etc.

4. Virtual play/act : “be”, “immerse” – gaming/Second Life/haptics/virtual services

5. Mash, merge: – mashups, semantic & social search, Yahoo pipes, web 3.0, etc.

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Recurring themes in web 2.0

1. Authoritative information? scholarly, opinion-sharing
2. Matching social software to need; does tool ‘fit’ purpose?
3. Open access & closed access; free/fee;
4. Online identity, presentation, reputation management
5. Privacy, copyright, liability
6. Publicity, analysis & even agitprop
7. Research, evidence-based web 2.0, web 2.0 strategies

In building my online social network(s), I have come to rely on ever-increasing access to knowledgeable twitterati outside my direct circle of friends and acquaintances for the buzz – but I also rely on these people for help about topics in the long tail.

None of this is possible when Twitter is down (which is often). For help, try Summize.

That said, I’m documenting what Twitter signifies in my work here on the wiki entry. Am I the only UBC librarian on Twitter, btw?

What seems to be emerging for me in the design of the new LIS course on social software is that I would like to cover or focus on three major aspects (or pillars) of the discourse: 1) the range of tools, and how they are used; 2) the underlying social processes of web 2.0 and 3) some nascent ideas around web 2.0 that lead us into the future. I’ve started to interrogate the affordances of social software as well. Take a good look, and let me know your thoughts. ~ Dean

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I. Tools

The term social software refers to a broad range of web-based tools and applications that people use to socialize and network in the 21st century. Social software – also social media and social technologies – are central to the rise of web 2.0 — a set of trends that positions the web as a highly-social place, one that facilitates communication, interaction and collaboration. Web 2.0 is often described as a social, participatory, grassroots, global community, attributes that are critical to work and learning in the information age.

II. Social processes

This course explores the use of social software technologies as channels of conversation (and information) as well as how web 2.0’s underlying principles change the way people communicate and interact on- and offline. Of particular interest is how librarians and archivists use social software in the digital age to connect with constituencies, engage in discussion (and debate) and how they use them to deliver innovative services and programmes. (Examples include: blogs, wikis, RSS, social networking, tagging, Second Life and Library 2.0, etc).

III. Ideas for the future

Near the end of the course, time is allocated to discuss some of the instructor’s nascent ideas about the future of social software, in areas such as online performance and reputation management, over-technicization of our work and conducting research (i.e. evidence-based web 2.0) to support the application of social media. Developing web 2.0 strategies and policies for librarians and archivists within their organizations will also be introduced as an emerging or future planning and management tool for information professionals.