On 07/29/13, john g marr wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Jul 2013, Stephen Paling wrote:
> First, Wikipedia is the only open egalitarian, online information source available, in that real people participate in it (as they should also in government and public institutions like libraries)),
There are a LOT of egalitarian communities on the Web, e.g., StackOverflow, although many of them are far less general than Wikipedia.
> Libraries could participate in the editing of Wikipedia pages and in helping Wikipedia find ways to prevent that editing from being corrupted (which is not the fault of Wikipedia).
So can virtually anyone. What exactly could we offer that no one else can? Take this article as an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phasor. What do we know as librarians that would allow us to contribute to the maintenance of that page any more effectively than any number of people with greater technical training?
> OTOH, Libraries could develop (collaboratively) more efficient non-profit search engines that would put Google's lack of ethics to shame.
I'm sorry, but do you have any what idea kind of funding and resource availability libraries would need to compete with Google? And given that so many librarians refuse to learn programming in any depth, they would need to hire outside programmers. Who cost money. A LOT of money. Whose salaries would have to come from a steady revenue stream... like ads...
Further, in what sense would we make search engines more efficient? Efficiency is, roughly, about lowering the ratio of input to output. Who in librarianship is going to beat Google at that game?
> Maybe the trains did run on time, but no one cared about or had the courage to look at where the trains were going or what they carried... or why... or to what possible consequences such efficiencies might lead.
Is this a comparison to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy? I hope not. But if it is, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
Steve Paling
Received on Mon Jul 29 2013 - 16:20:07 EDT