Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> A couple of problems with this analysis is: it has no room for
> selection (a topic I raised a while back). If we have blanket
> selection then yes, I agree there is simply far too much, but
> much of it is simply not worthwhile.
Jim, give up *now*. There is no way you even have the slightest time
to even look at a squirt of what's available. You simply cannot go
through it all; not only is it too much (the 2003 estimates are no
good; "According to an IBM study, by 2010, the amount of digital
information in the world will double every 11 hours.";
http://news.cnet.com/2100-7345_3-6159025.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news),
but it is *ever* changing! The Internet doesn't stand still. Even
WikiPedia pages change, not only in content, but in links and in
meaning (as content change). Resources and content die and gets born
in a continuous line that will never end. There's no way for you to go
through it all, no way to monitor it, no way to catalog it ... you
cannot put it on a shelf. Of course, you can make a copy and catalog
the copy, and as such make it obsolete like old books, that's fine,
I'm sure you can do that for a selection of sorts. But the sher amount
of stuff you have to wade through to even make that selection is
simply unsurmountable.
But I think there's a hint in there somewhere at what can be done.
There's research to back it up, and there *is* a way to make this pipe
dream somewhat tangible ;
Make your own goddamn search engine! Compete with Google, make
something that analyze text, find meta data, find text quality
(language parsing / NLP, document rating/cumulative pattern
recognition, umpteen filters [Bayesean, etc.] and channels, etc.) and
archive it. Google has already done a darn good job, but their focus
is elsewhere. Where is the search engine that values knowledge rather
than ads? Where is the search engine that archives the good stuff, who
rates content, references and finds subjects, and makes good
categorizing of it?
> But once the task of selection is included (and how we can select
> from this mass I do not know. I have a few ideas, but it is a huge
> problem that must be solved, I think, before anything else), the
> numbers will fall drastically.
I don't think you can do it, not in the traditional sense. You really
need to rethink this one.
> Then comes the problem of coordination of work. I have written several
> times that workflows in libraries are still based in the 19th century, as
> if each library were completely alone. Libraries have cooperated and
> coordinated to an extent through cooperative cataloging, but still with
> tremendous duplication every step of the way.
Yes, libraries needs to reshape their inner sanctum. What worked in
the distant past is *not* going to work now and for the future. Guys,
you're in the information / knowledge management business, and it's
time you paid attention to what's going on in that field at *all*
levels of the library business, not just the ILS / OPAC level.
I'e written about in the past how the library world can shape
themselves a super important part of the future of modern digital
thinking, especially through identity management, cataloging and
structuring conceptual knowledge that every single computer system in
the future would need. But I suspect you're going to waste this
opportunity because you don't see it, you don't think it's part of
your job, and by it not being part of your job, you're not grabbing
that job. And hence, someone else will do it instead, and you will
die.
> I fully realize that this is idealistic. But it has happened before,
> and somebody, somewhere has to envision the impossible before
> it can finally come to pass.
You know, the library once was such a place where idealistic thinking
bloomed. I don't see it anymore, and it saddens me *greatly* that the
library I love and respect seems unable to move at a pace that will
save it from going under.
Kind regards,
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Mon Jul 05 2010 - 17:55:15 EDT