Well, I have come to the end of my blog.  I created this blog for a class, and that class is over, and so I will no longer be able to log in.  So this is goodbye.  Really.

This was my first experience with blogging.  My reactions:

• It was remarkably easy to do.  I love templates!
• I found that I always had something I wanted to share on my blog.  I was never at a loss for words!
• I enjoyed reading my classmates blogs, even preferring blog posts over the Vista discussions.

Will I continue to blog?  Probably not in my personal life, as I haven’t really got that much to say to the world.  In my professional life?  I hope so.

Keep an eye out for the latest radical cataloger blog….it will probably be me!

Farewell to my blog.

My thoughts this week are in response to the following question from Dean:

“Is aggregation a new role for librarians?  Haven’t we always gathered, organized and used classification systems, integrated information?  How can we use aggregating tools to deliver innovative library services? (If our existing “legacy” systems allow for it.)”

I’ve been thinking about this question from the perspective of a cataloger.  What, first of all, does it mean to “aggregate?”  According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it means to “to gather into a mass, sum, or whole.”   Is this something that librarians do?  Absolutely.   In fact, you could even define a library as a place of aggregated information – a place that gathers together disparate resources into a single place.   And for over a century, catalogers have, by creating searchable metadata,  made those resources aggregate-able. 

But now, aggregation occurs not just at a physical level, but in the virtual world.  In a library, resources have traditionally resided in a physical place – the library — and have been accessible from a single access point – the library catalog.  And although  our catalogs now reside online, this traditional paradigm has changed remarkably little.  We still put our resources in a ‘silo’ and expect users to come to us (to our website) to find it.   But in a world where aggregation tools are making it possible for multiple sources of information to be custom-filtered and fed directly to our desktops, this just simply won’t work anymore.  Library catalogs need to become digitally aggregate-able if they are to survive.

What would happen if we allowed our resources to be aggregate-able beyond the library catalog?  What if we made our catalogs findable by search engines, and thus aggregate-able by RSS feeds and other tools?  What if individual items in your nearest library were retrieved in a Google search?  What if a single Google search could tell you the nearest library that owns what you are looking for, and could tell you if it is checked out, and if you are a cardholder at that library?  What if Google could show you the nearest copy of that item at the nearest library of which you are a cardholder?

This hasn’t happened yet, but I think it will.  The technology is there, it is the mindset that is missing.  So what role do catalogers have in this future?   I think it is the same role they have always had: they will not be aggregating information – that will happen, more and more, through personalized, unmediated, aggregation tools – but they will be making information findable for those aggregators.  Our challenge is to recognize our new responsibility: it is no longer enough to create metadata that is findable in our institution’s catalog; it must be findable by the world.

This book is not explicitly about social media.  It is about much more than that:  it is about how digital information – in combination with the power of online social networks – is changing our society in fundamental ways.  This book goes beyond the usual observations, such as that we have access to more information than ever before, or that the Web enables us to communicate more, and gets at the heart of how these changes are changing us. 

The digital world is a decidedly messy, cluttered, disorganized, and limitless place.  Sometimes this place seems overwhelming, but David Weinberger argues that this messiness, or “miscellaneous-ness” is in fact a very good thing.  He explains that digital information, if kept free and miscellaneous, random and disordered, social and collaborative, will bring about positive change in society.  That, in fact, digital information is already causing society to be re-invented in crucial ways: it is changing the way we categorize and organize the world, changing the ways in which we interact as a society, and even changing the way we think. 

Weinberger’s basic argument is that because digital information does not operate according to the same laws as the physical world, it does not need to be thought of, or used, in the same ways.   Because digital information resides in unlimited virtual space, we no longer need authoritative experts to choose and sort what gets published – we “filter on the way out, not on the way in.”  This means that information is becoming more democratized: traditional authority figures are losing control as ordinary people gain the power to choose and share what they want to know. Digital information is also enabling “social knowing” in ways never before conceivable, as people come together to create knowledge and meaning collaboratively. 

Weinberger lays out the fundamental principles of the new digital world in the book’s first chapter.  He defines three “orders of order:” The first order is how we organize physical objects – the way physical items are sorted on shelves, for example.  The second order separates information about first-order objects from those objects – in other words, a card catalog.  The third order – the digital order — is very different from the first two, as none of the limitations of the physical world apply.  In the third order, information is freed from the rules that bind what Weinberger refers to as ‘atoms,’ or physical things: it can exist in multiple locations, it can be sorted and retrieved in multiple ways, and it can be shared and created collaboratively.  And, perhaps most importantly, because of the unlimited space in the virtual world, third-order information no longer needs to be ‘filtered’ by experts. 

Over the course of the rest of the book, Weinberger regales the reader with dozens of examples of how this third, or “miscellaneous,” order works.  He contrasts “first order” entities – for example, the Encyclopedia Britannica, editors in a newsroom, or the Getty Thesaurus – with their third-order counterparts: Wikipedia, digg.com, social tagging.  He shows how social media – including blogs, wikis, social networking, and social bookmarking — are helping to create the new third order, playing an important part in this reshaping of our world.

 One of the most important changes brought about by third-order information is that it needs no expert “filterer” – no authoritative editor is needed to determine what we read, or to judge information’s accuracy or neutrality.  To illustrate this point, Weinberger compares the Encyclopedia Britannica with Wikipedia. He describes how Wikipedia, by using social interaction and collaboration, effectively provides both accurate and neutral information.   He cites the journal Nature’s discovery that “science articles in Wikipedia and Britannica are roughly equivalent in their accuracy,” and shows how Wikipedia achieves neutrality through group consensus.  Neutrality in Wikipedia is a product of group editing, or, as Wikipedia’s founder claims, “an article is neutral when people have stopped changing it.”    This, Weinberger points out, “is a brilliant operational definition of neutrality, one that makes it a function of social interaction,” rather than something that needs to be determined by experts or authority figures.

Social tagging is changing the way we search for and retrieve information.  It is a messy, uncontrolled process, but somehow it seems to work.  Weinberger investigates just how this happens by comparing the Getty’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus – a traditional controlled vocabulary – with  the social tagging used on Delicious and Flickr.  He concludes that despite the chaos of tagging – for example, all the problems with inconsistencies and spelling differences – the power of crowd sourcing  is enough to make it effective.  He notes how surprisingly effective a tag search is on Flickr, concluding that “the bigger the mess – more tags, and more tags per photo,”  the more accurate searches become.

He does have some reservations about tagging, however, admitting that “tagging is too young to be predictable.”  But he sees a bright future, pointing out that by increasingly combining user-created tags with social data mining, computers will be able to create more semantic meaning out of our currently messy tags.  He points to Flickr as a good example of how this is already being done.  Flickr determines what photos are “interesting” based not just on tags, but also on sophisticated algorithms that discover how photos are being used socially – including the number of views, the number of tags, and who is commenting on them.   In this way, social data may in fact be the key to the emergence of  a more Semantic Web.

In his chapter on “Social Knowing,” Weinberger delves into how social media will change education.  This may be one of the most significant changes brought about by third-order information: the way it is changing how we learn.  So far, third-order learning is mostly happening outside of the traditional classroom – students are learning socially on their own, while teachers continue to teach in traditional ways.  He gives the example of how students often instant-message each other as they do their homework. “Our children are doing their homework socially,” he points out.  They are asking questions of each other, and comparing answers.  Traditional education might call this ‘cheating’ – but what will happen when today’s students become teachers?  Will learning collaboratively become the new normal? And how will that effect how and what we know?  

Weinberger believes that social knowing will result in our being able to go beyond creating knowledge – it will enable us to begin to create meaning.  “In the world after the Enlightenment,” he says, “the cultural task was to build knowledge.  In the miscellaneous world, the task is to build meaning.” We will do this by finding connections with one another, by sharing our ideas with one another, by learning about, and with, one another.  Knowledge is no longer something isolated that is gained by individuals, rather it is something shared — and that sharing adds context and meaning, making us all smarter.   At the conclusion of the book, Weinberger gives us all philosophical food for thought, stating that “the public construction of meaning is the most important project of the next hundred years.”  This book helps us begin to understand how that project will proceed.

 Everything is Miscellaneous should be read by anyone interested in social media, information organization, or social change.  Weinberger astutely illustrates how the digital world is changing us and our society, making points that are thought-provoking and insightful.  His arguments are, in general, well-supported, clear, and persuasive.  He reassures us that although the burgeoning world of digital information can be overwhelming – who can really keep up with all their social media applications and RSS feeds? – this very chaos is slowly but surely creating a better future.

Dean’s questions about the role of social media in government intrigued me.  I couldn’t think of any examples, so I took a look around the Internet to see what I could find.  I discovered that the U.S. government at all levels is making a considerable effort to become more engaged in social media.  My city government, for example, is tweeting and Face-booking and on Utube – this page conveniently shows what departments are on what social media sites.

At the federal level, I found even more significant engagement. The White House has strongly embraced the idea of direct citizen participation.  On their web site devoted to open government, a quote from President Obama proclaims “we will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.”  And the site seems to live up to this pledge: there are many opportunities for citizen participation, as anyone can submit ideas, add data, and participate in forums and wikis. On the Open National Science and Technology Page, for example, anyone can submit new ideas for technology initiatives, and the community then discusses and votes on those ideas.

The federal government is also embracing collaboration internally – wikis, it turns out, are everywhere in Washington, D.C.  The Department of Defense has an internal wiki dubbed Techipedia for collaboration and information sharing in the area of technology and research, the State Department’s  internal wiki is called Diplopedia, the Intelligence community uses Intellipedia, and even the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), has an internal wiki called Bureaupedia.

After my investigations, I began to ponder how all this collaborative social media might change our experience of government.  It seems to me that this kind of openess and participation can only result in a government that  is more truly “of the people and by the people,” not just for the people.  The possibilities of direct democracy seem to be endless.  I can’t help wondering if, someday, we will live in a world where everyone participates directly in their own government, causing representative government to become extinct.  Or is that a really bad idea?  Are we capable of governing ourselves? 

Lastly, I wondered about the role of  libraries in this new environment of open, participatory government.  Becasue public libraries are government buildings that have always provided public spaces where communities can come together, I decided that  public libraries should also provide virtual spaces for that purpose.   It is not enough, any more, to just have a physical meeting room.  Libraries should encourage their community members to engage online: to debate, submit ideas, and collaboratively plan ways to improve their community.  Libraries have always been more than a place to get free resources: we are a vital part of a modern democracy, and as such, must give democracy room in our virtual spaces.

(http://www.trendenterprises.com/ProdOneDetail.cfm?ItemId=TA-63133&Description=How+do+you+live+your+life…+ARGUS%C2%AE+Poster)

 “Exhibitionism is liberating, because it represents a refusal to be humble.”  I absolutely loved this sentence.  It’s so good, it should be made into a bumper sticker.

 In this article, Albrectslund coins the phrase “participatory surveillence” – the idea that surveillence isn’t always a negative thing, that it can in fact be “social and playful.”  Surveillence, he says, is “fundamentally social.”  And of course that is true.  It is not always a bad thing to be observed: sometimes, being observed is what brings out the best in us.

 Social media gives us more opportunities to be observed, making exhibitionists of us all.  Sometimes, of course, people share more information than anyone really wants to know, but as an information professional, I believe that you can never have too much information.  We can filter out what we don’t want to see, but having the option to see everything about each other is, I think, a very powerful thing. 

Being observed can change behaviors. I recently cataloged one of those inspirational posters that elementary teachers hang in their classrooms (yes, we have a curriculum collection at my academic library).  The poster read: “How do you live your life when nobody’s watching?”  I think the poster was trying to teach kids to take responsibility for their actions all the time, not just when an adult is watching and they might get in trouble.  It will be interesting to see whether social media is a benign Big Brother that may, in fact, teach our kids to become more responsible, better behaved citizens.  Or am I dreaming?

Reading Pearson made me ponder why I don’t participate much in online social networks.  Maybe I’m uncomfortable with the kind of performance that occurs there, or with the kind of fluid digital identity I would need to assume.  I agree that individuals – whether online or face-to-face – “continually perform their identities.”  I’m certainly no exception: I act differently with my Mom, for example, than with a stranger.   So why am I so uncomfortable transferring my “act,” so to speak, to the digital world?  Why, in short, don’t I use Facebook? 

Pearson’s discussion of the “glass bedroom” provided some clues: on a SNS, you are performing to different audiences simultaneously.  You are both performing to your intimate friends (Mom), and at the same time to a random stranger who might be passing through.  This need to create an identity that can be both public and private at the same time may explain my discomfort.

I am decidedly not a “millennial”, and this new participatory culture often mystifies me.  I learn, play, and socialize in traditional, non-digital forums.  And, I’ll admit, I tend to be one of those people who worry about “youth today,” wondering if all those hours kids are spending on Facebook is good for them. 

But reading this paper made me start to understand this new culture better – and to realize that perhaps young people are learning important life skills from their digital excesses – skills such as creative expression, collaboration, and networking. The most important idea I drew from this reading is that if digital technologies are teaching kids all this outside of school, what will happen when schools finally get around to harnessing these technologies for teaching? 

I believe there is a huge potential for interactive, social, collaborative, multi-media learning interfaces: imagine a classroom where students can learn together with students from across the globe?  The possibilities go way beyond Blackboard.  This article made me begin to hope that maybe all that youthful Face-booking is in fact building a brave new digital world of learning.  And as an information professional, albeit an old timer, I want to start to get involved in, and try to facilitate, this new culture of participatory learning.