Jim, I don't know how many times I have to explain this: our holdings
data is low-hanging fruit and therefore a good place to START if we want
to make libraries visible in the Web NOW - because it probably can be
implemented using today's data and today's Web technology. Nowhere,
NOWHERE, do I say that it's the only thing we have. In fact, in that
talk I mention many things that we could or should be doing, from
creating links between library materials and web materials, adding and
exploiting the concept of time, and including the experience of our
users. I also talk about the fact that our classification work is not
getting much return on investment (and go into more of that here [1] in
a talk I gave a few years ago). All of these can be part of our future,
but most of them are going to take much more work than the low-hanging
fruit of holdings.
Would you please stop turning what are rather big ideas into a
reductionist black and white? Sheesh!
kc
[1] http://kcoyle.net/presentations/kcClassn.pdf
On 11/16/12 1:35 AM, James Weinheimer wrote:
> One last point of Karen's talk that I would like to raise is a very
> important one, and perhaps the major question facing the cataloging
> community today.
>
> Karen mentions that the world doesn't need yet another copy of
> bibliographic metadata, when the world is awash with it already, from
> Amazon to ONIX to all kinds of other types of bibliographic metadata and
> therefore all that libraries can contribute is their holdings data. This
> really hits the nail on the head, in my opinion, and the question is: is
> this correct or not? If it is correct, it would appear to mean that the
> current information discovery mechanisms are considered to be adequate.
> These mechanisms are based on various types of algorithms, almost always
> of enormous complexity and often, proprietary and unavailable for review.
>
> Someone who has brought these issues to the fore and made some
> fascinating arguments is Ted Striphas and his ideas of "algorithmic
> culture". He lays out very clearly several problems that have concerned
> me but I have not been able to describe them as well as he has. In
> short, he describes "algorithmic culture" in this way (from
> http://www.thelateageofprint.org/2011/09/26/who-speaks-for-culture/):
> "When I began writing about "algorithmic culture," I used the term
> mainly to describe how the sorting, classifying, hierarchizing, and
> curating of people, places, objects, and ideas was beginning to be given
> over to machine-based information processing systems. The work of
> culture, I argued, was becoming increasingly algorithmic, at least in
> some domains of life."
>
> Of course, these algorithms are dominated by engineers. This is from the
> same post:
> "As Siva Vaidhyanathan has pointed out in The Googlization of
> Everything, engineers --- mostly computer scientists --- today hold
> extraordinary sway over what does or doesn't end up on our cultural
> radar. To put it differently, amid the din of our pubic conversations
> about culture, their voices are the ones that increasingly get heard or
> are perceived as authoritative."
>
> Here is an interview he did with the CBC radio show "Spark"
> http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/10/full-interview-ted-striphas-on-algorithmic-culture/
> (16 minutes)
>
> It seems to me as if he is talking in many ways about libraries and
> their traditional tools. Attached to this is the crowdsourcing example
> of the Smithsonian Institution that I provided in the previous thread on
> this list "Authority in an Age of Open Access (an analysis)" where it
> was very easy to point out serious problems with access that would
> otherwise remain hidden.
>
> So, after all of this, my question is, is Karen correct about the world
> not needing our metadata except for our holdings data? It seems to me
> that either answer: yes or no, raises a raft of additional questions.
>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Fri Nov 16 2012 - 10:37:05 EST