My Learning log
I feel I have learnt a lot on the course, already. Certainly I never thought I would have a blog on the internet, nor would I have appreciated the conceptual value of using web 2.0. for some of the things I have seen as a result of the reading lists. I am beginning to see how useful some of these tools could be for specific tasks, particularly for personal goals, and Susan’s Kirk project shows an amazingly useful way of using wikis.
However, I thought I might as well use the blog to its full extent and post a more contentious comment on my blog, because – I still have my doubts about some things we are buying into professionally with the surge towards web 2.0 technologies as a way of professionally ‘keeping up’ with the rest of the world.There has already been a lot of debate about it, and I do take Chris’ point about, that although we don’t want to get rid of cataloguers ,it is important to free things up a bit and get people thinking.
Also I think it is great to be relevant, and not be left behind, but there are still bits I cannot get my head around .. I am going to a workshop in Sheffield about Web 2.00 for libraries..but it is being implied we should now be taking on board web 3.00 (don’t know what that is though!) . I haven’t got on top of web 2.00 yet! It is great to explore all these things, which is why I am on this course, but I also joined because there are some issues that I want to get feedback and clarification on - I know this is boring and passe, but I still don’t think I get it all! Could we be sending our libraries down a track of lowering indexing standards, just for the sake of not losing relevance? I see there are pros, but there are also cons. I think …so OK, I am going to put my head above the parapet and confess -I am not yet convinced of the professional value of folksonomies, and I think web 2.0 technologies still have some drawbacks that raise problems , as well as solutions for information retrieval for users.
I am not a luddite..I really think the tools are valuable for certain things, (keeping posted on critical sites, enabling discussion forums for training, harnessing wider knowledge bases, discussion forums like this etc.). I have learnt I could certainly make more use of new tools.However, whilst thinking about folksonomies I have revisited some of the things that I would still like to discuss in terms of the the drawbacks ….
1. Usability
I am not sure about the ease of using the technologies. RSS links into your RSS reader, but what you are presented with is still a lot of information that may or may not be relevant. So you then need to set aside time to regularly trawl all the feeds, blogs and wikis..they may get to you very easily, but you still have to evaluate all that information. Do we have time for this really?
I set up RSS feeds for web sites I like to visit, but often I get material that I find of limited value. It is not a ’silver bullet’.
Similarly, I found doing this course interesting because I am subscribed to blogs that I find interesting. However, I have subscribed to blogs in the past because they seem interesting at first , and then I get loads of updates that are really of limited value.
So, unless you keep tight control on managing the feeds, blog updates etc., you can quickly become over-loaded with information to deal with. It is very easy to subscribe and unsubscribe, but do we really have the time to manage the information that comes pouring in at the click of an RSS button. I wonder whether we are creating information overload for ourselves?
Also, every site has different features, tools, navigation issues that have to be conquered. It is already a problem for many users to use our database tools. Pointing them with RSS to lots more navigational hazards and tools with which they are unfamiliar is going to increase the cognitive load of getting useful information, and perhaps encourage them to by-pass our own library catalogue and recommended tools.
I also wonder about the real usability of folksonomies. I love the democracyof them, but visiting each site and establishing the index ‘language ‘ before you can look for what you want seems cumbersome and time consuming. Also, unless everyone using the site keeps good and consistent intellectual control over the tagging structures that they are using, (which they don’t) the return on tags has to have a percentage of potential hits missing.
2.Standards
I found Susan Smith’s comment about the evaluation of contributions to wikisurgery lies at the heart of what I find least useful. There is a lot of information out there, but without some consistent way of evaluating who is contributing , what value does it have? This is the problem to me about web 2.0 technologies generally..the old fashioned problem of inconsistency, and dubious quality, which is why librarians have always fought so hard for standards.
As librarians we can spend hours trying to be sure that the index terms we ascribe will bring back results reliably. We pay for resources because of the quality of their indexing and retrieval power. So folksonomies STILL go against the grain for me.
As I said, I take the point Chris made about it being good to just get people thinking of indexing in some form or another. Having worked as a secondary school librarian I really take that point in fact! The bit I don’t get though is how relevant social indexing is to our own sites, and what is the relevance of folksonomies to our professional practice. Surely we have been fighting hard for internet standards? Also, I am sure we would not want everyone to have a say in how we index the library catalogue, so why is it relevant to do so for our other professional sites?
All the discussions about Dublin Core, RDF, and the need for consistent metadata on the internet still seem really valid to me!
3. Privacy and legality
The discussion of privacy Susan pointed to from the Shifted Librarian raised a few issues for me as well.
In terms of legality,can anyone tell me who owns copyright on a blog or a wiki? That would helpo me enormously to get the hang of the legal issues… probably Phil Bradley or Freepint has something ..can anyone tell me?
In terms of privacy, I know that when I lived abroad in my 20’s I had to change my conception of what my physical and psychological space or privacy, was..I can understand that privacy can be a cultural issue. I think it is possibly a generational thing as well though. I was quite happy to do things in my 20’s that I am quite shocked at now..like hitchhiking around Africa! In my 20’s it was great ..I think it sounds stressful now, and I am not at all sure I would like all that sharing space with other people- I need my privacy more than I used to! Our thoughts and attitudes change, and I suspect we get more concerned about our privacy as we get older. What fits at one age doesn’t necessarily fit at another. I do wonder whether the generation that has now casually exposed itself on the web may in future years regret what they published so lightly in their youth. I do not think this has been tested as yet, as we have not had a generation that has grown old on web 2.0 to know.
Well, as a web 2.0 blog publisher I may regret this without growing old! Everyone will probably see me as a reactionary..I am not..I want to use these tools, but I am struggling to put them in a professional context. But I would be really pleased to know what people think ..and that is the value of a blog..so I must be getting the hang of it really!
Action planning for the next 3 months: