Social Intelligence

I wish to thank Tim Spalding’s What is Social Tagging? video for a little side trip to New Zealand. Watching this video reminded me of the power of other speakers I have heard at professional conferences and made me curious about using LibraryThing to locate some titles and information about New Zealand. I found reference to other titles by Keri Hulme who wrote The Bone People that I had read years ago. I now have other titles to read from an author I had always thought to be a one hit wonder. Now the trick will be finding copies of the suggest works in a library in Canada.

I loved the idea of using this site to catalogue the works in small libraries which can not afford library software or a full time, fully train librarian or library technician. It would be great for these little libraries to be able to share their collections and have a record of what they have for interest and insurance purposes. There is a large number of small collections that may never be known to anyone outside the institution that has the holdings.

Sam H. Korne seems to be giving folksonomies credibility by studying them for hierarchical structure which is one of the complaints about them from traditionalists. By giving folksonomies and by extension social cataloguing legitimacy these guys are allowing people who might not have used them otherwise to find reasons to join the social tagging community.

Folksonomies and tagging are relatively new concepts for me, but concepts with potential to make my work and research extremely interesting in the coming years. I do a good bit of exploring on the internet whether I am doing my own research for school, looking for information for someone else or just browsing the internet. I think that  bookmarking websites and sharing them with others could become a hobby that continues through out my life. Often  when I hear a new term or meet someone from elsewhere one of the first things I do is to Google the term or location to learn more about it to add to my knowledge base and make sure I understand it in the context of my own experience.

Tagging is the way that people are now making sense of the world around them and making sure that they remember the websites, blogs, books, music, etc.  they might want to go back to at a later date. Social bookmarking sites and tagging in library catalogs enlarge the amount of information that is being digested by these individuals. If people add their own terms to those currently existing they will be able to find these items of interest in the future and in some cases find other items of interest that someone else has tagged with the same term. They will adding to their personal library and knowledge base as well as potentially sharing new resources with others who also enjoy the topic.

Interest groups develop as result of social tagging when people realize that they share an interest in multiple websites or articles. They can then share ideas and information that the other people might not have as well as solve problems and come up with new web content or programs. People with particular interests  are motivated to keep up with the latest news and changes in these areas and so are able to provide information to others with similar interests. Interest groups can act as a panel of experts validating new knowledge, recognizing fakes and forgeries as well as providing constructive criticism and input for ongoing research.

Folksonomies and the other changes being made to library catalogs are exciting in that they have the potential for making the vast knowledge base of the internet sortable on some scale and creating greater access to traditional resources. The idea is that the terminology developed by users is added to that chosen by cataloguers resulting in a library catalog that is a portal instead of a wall to a larger majority of library users. I am sure many others have read a great book or watched a movie and then wanted to read or see something else only to discover that further works by this person are unavailable.  Having a wider selection of search terminology available would aid in making a secondary selection and as a cataloguer I have no difficulty recognizing the frailties of the traditional catalog.

 LibraryThing for Libraries and Bibliocommons provide extra information from the knowledge bases of the users and other librarians. Information on topics like series and other editions as well as the wealth of material from other countries. Social cataloguers are creating amazing resources that we as librarians can not dismiss whether we add the content directly to our catalogs and websites or whether we just let people know what is out there in the virtual realm.

I decided to use my reading week to catch-up on my extra readings toward my group project and potentially for my final project as well. I made this decision for one very good reason and that was the fact that both books on social software that I had borrowed from the Okanagan Regional Library (ORL) were due back prompt at the end of this month. Meredith Farkas’ book, Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online was due back first and could not be renewed as someone else had a hold placed on it. This book has been great for links and tips on everything from blogging to choosing the right software for online reference. I would recommend it to anyone starting out on the virtual journey of adding social software to their library.  However, like many articles and books on technology it will be out of date very soon and it is showing its’ age (c2007) with comments about websites that have had upgrades since the book was published. Facebook for example is no longer completely defined by access through universities and colleges. The comment on MySpace as being a site predominately utilized by teenagers is still accurate. The discussion of how My Space is utilized by bands and musicians is accurate and entertaining as accessing and listening to new music is exactly what I use this site for lately. I enjoy the opportunity to try out the music of groups or artists I have not heard of before commiting to attending a concert or to purchasing a compact disc.

I also decided it was beyond time for me to post some humour in one of my posts. I will start with the link for a multilingual slide show by Library Mistress from Flickr. This is a combination of comics, posters, and alternative formats such as pins to present humour. This is a fast slide show so you may decide to replay it or backtrack to enjoy it fully.

For a totally different pace here is a link to an issue of Warrior Librarian Weekly on librarians who refuse to fit the stereotype of the gray haired sshhing librarian. The issue includes a series of links to blogs, articles, and websites of outstanding librarians out to be heard and to make a difference in our field.

The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) has an incredible collection of library humour which highlights the power of collaboration in creating databases of interesting content from jokes to prayers to obscure rules for campus libraries. Librarians have included the titles and authors of original works when they create parodies such as the library version of Murphy’s Laws:

REVEYRAND’S LIBRARY LAWS
(with apologies to Murphy)

6 books on a topic + 5 classes = odds are 2-to-1 on teachers assigning the same topic at the same time.

 Budget statements from the District Office are always inversely proportional to your budget.

 If you made the system foolproof you discover that everybody has suddenly become geniuses.

 When 60% of your book order is back-ordered, you can safely bet that 90% of the back-orders are out of print.

 A “missing” encyclopedia will remain missing until the replacement you ordered is placed on the shelf.

 Books will remain upright on the shelf until you go to place another book beside them.

 You finally revise you card catalogue after putting it off for a year only to discover a week later that a complete revision is coming out in a month.

 You can be sure the student who has the most overdue books reads the least.

 When a teacher recommends a library book to a student, you can be certain that the teacher has checked out the only copy and has lent it to a friend in Peru.

 Students always require a 400 word article for a 500 word essay.

 Change libraries frequently. It allows you to place the blame on your predecessor for anything that is wrong.

 Make 17 subject headings for a book and you will find that you should have made 18.

 If a teacher discusses a unit with you well in advance, it is a certainty that she will be absent on the days scheduled, the substitute cannot administer the unit, and when the teacher returns she cannot do the unit because she has to make up for lost time.

 The one time of the month that you take 5 minutes to read MAD magazine is when your superintendent walks in.

 Prepare your year-end report in September before you have screwed everything up.

 If it’s a good book, it’s out of stock. If it’s an excellent book, it’s out of print.

 No matter how many books you have on a subject the student always thinks they’re all “too big”.

 The “super” syndrome: Libraries are always empty when the principal or superintendent comes to visit.

 The volunteer aide who files the worst is the one who volunteers the most.

 If you have a system that works you must be doing everything wrong.

 When you spend half your library budget on a teacher’s request for a course the odds are that the teacher will quit or be transferred and the course will be dropped or changed.

 No matter how long you keep an article or piece of information you will never need it till you throw it away.

 If you have lost one issue of a magazine there will be 35 students who will require that issue.

 No books are lost except those that are most needed and hardest to replace.

 The books you need the most always come from your worst supplier or jobber.

 Every librarian should have a full-time aide. It allows you to put the blame on someone.

 If everything’s fine you’re probably in the wrong library.

 When you re-catalogue a book to correct an error, you automatically create seven new problems.

 If you close the library only 3 days before year end for inventory and administration it is a fact that 2 teachers will ask you to do a library lesson on those days. These are teachers you couldn’t get into the library before but now need marking time.

 The thinnest books have the longest catalogue numbers.

 From The Bookmark, September 1989, p.48-49
M.L. REVEYRAND, teacher-librarian, KLO Secondary School

Last, but not least I wish to apologize for being late. We were temporarily dropped as customers by our internet provider over a miscommunication that had us paying the bill late due to not getting it in the first place. I also got a note for the Associate Dean that needed immediate attention.

I think I am throughly addicted to social bookmarking and tagging of new websites. I initially signed in to Delicious to complete my assignment, but then got side tracked searching for various related topics. I was amazed at how easily time slipped away while exploring  this site. I found material on babyboomers, seniors, and social networking for my final project. Then I looked to see what variety there was in social networking sites and from there I checked out a variety of sites for volunteering and home stay holidays.
Eventually I looked at all the sites tagged with LIS9763 and realized that I might have got off track with my tags as I concentrated on social software, but I had not always linked to sites that described library applications for social software. After exploring the sites tagged with LIS9763 I  went back and changed some of my tagging and went looking for more library related sites that also applied to our class.

Today for the first time I communicated with one of my colleagues outside library school on a wiki. I am trying to broaden my horizons, but it is easy to get off track and wander into unrelated topics.  I believe this sort of exploring  needs to be quickly added to the “favourite file” then I must redirect for the sake of timing.

I feel that social bookmarking has a lot of value for researchers and reference librarians as part of the search has been completed already. Being able to keep bookmarks on the web means that no matter what computer I log into I will be able to access them as long as I have an internet connection.

I like the idea of importing links directly into a blog from a social bookmarking site, but have not tried it yet. I have been reading Meredith G. Farkas’ book, Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication and Community Online this week.   It sounds like some of the other social bookmarking sites have interesting applications that allow you to track a site’s viability so that your links do not die when you go back to them at a later date or at least you are notified if they require updating. It was also mentioned that one could set up rss feeds for particular tags so that when new sites were tagged you would be notified.

The reality is that like any technology, social bookmarking sites are not completely foolproof and just as cataloguers  can come up with different tags for the same item so can anyone else.  When “see also records” work well they can redirect a searcher using a redundant term to an alternative, but the reality is that you often end up either getting no results or limited results if you enter the wrong term into a library catalogue or database. I am not convinced this is a problem only common to social taggers.

After reading Edward M. Corrado and Kathryn A. Frederick’s article about subject guides and library software for subject guides, I thought about potential uses for this software for public libraries. This software could be used for a library of digital links  for a public library as well as the uses described in this article in the academic realm. I was surprised that no one seemed to mention the fact that some proprietary software has a built-in alert system for upgrading links. I wondered whether the alert system is a specialized application of cataloguing/metadata software and is not included in the subject guide software. The problem is that alerts are still a relatively new addition to cataloguing software (I was part of a discussion on this technology approximately 8 years ago).  Cataloguers are leary of adding web sources to their catalogues because the websites and their content can be transient in nature. The extra work involved in maintaining links and making sure that previously discovered sites have not been shutdown or highjacked by others is a worry. A similiar worry likely exists for subject librarians maintaining subject guides. I have been to static subject guides where a third or more of the links were dead so maintainance is important. While link libraries and subject guides are a time consuming project being able to delegate the checking of links to reliable staff or volunteers who may be manning a quiet reference or circulation desk might be a worthwhile option. Another option is to have a digital suggestion/problem box at the base of your link library so that suggestions for useful links and  a note about dead links can be sent directly to the staff member or members maintaining the site.

If social software is about collaboration and connection then a site maintained by both patrons and library personnel could be an interesting way of connecting with your library community and promoting communication. We keep hearing in books, like John Palfrey and Urs Gasser’s Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, how much more connected the digital natives ie. teenagers and twentysomethings, are to the internet they grew up with or are growing up on than the digital immigrants ie. the older set and I include myself in this group. Why not utilize all this digital knowhow to create the most user friendly and utilized web community for our libraries? This is an idea that some of the university blogs and wikis have been capitalizing on that we have check out in the last few weeks.

After reading the various articles for this week and watching Amanda’s slide show I went investigating the variety of wikis in the virtual realm and they are vast in number and diverse in content. I would definitely add Medpedia to a list of resources for a professional library at a hospital whether it served only doctors or whether it was a library that served both patients and medical personnel. I sent the link to a friend as she has been doing some personal research and I felt it was a wiki that she would find useful.

When I got the wiki for the book club, I shared with Mum and she asked me to send her the link so I did. I like the idea of using wikis to connect with patrons and with my colleagues as well as maybe for the occasional personal project such as planning a trip. I have been into anime in the last few years so went to find a wiki on this topic and can suggest Anime-Wiki.org http://en.anime-wiki.org/ This wiki would be of use to those starting an anime collection at their libraries as well as those with an interest in area like me or questions about what anime is.

 I think that the age of the expert is certainly not over by any means it just must now share the spotlight with collaborative knowledge sources as well and one should no longer be taken as significantly more authoritative than the other. Expertise is now just coming from a variety of sources that may not initially have been considered legitimate. If say you use Wikipedia for a source as part of your research then you should make sure that you have a number of other more academic or traditional sources to back it up. It is important to be able to verify information found or enlarge your argument into one that can be taken seriously regardless of who is reading and evaluating it.

Some of the wiki sources that I located about gardening took this idea to heart by connecting with experts from the universities and botanical gardens as well as references and tips from everyday gardeners who were sharing their successes and failures with the wider world of green and black thumbs out there. I chose three wikis for Canadian gardeners particularly people wanting to plant in British Columbian ground.

http://www.garden-wiki.org/ Garden Wiki is organized by what you are growing such as garlic. Under Favourites it has a nice selection of links to other useful sites.

http://www.gardenology.org/wiki/Main_Page This plant and garden encyclopedia includes plenty of pretty pictures and both the latin names and the common ones as well as information about different species.

http://www.greengardenista.com/blog/?p=1368 A gardening  wiki with a central blog which has a large amount of useful information and is entertaining to boot.

I also went in search of some woodworking wikis for my dad, who is in the middle of setting up his workshop and is hoping to create some useful and wonderful masterpieces for their new home. These wikis were interesting in their layouts as one was organized by the tool you would use for a project and another was organized by the projects that you might create.

http://woodwork.wikia.com/wiki/Woodworking_Wiki This woodworking wiki can be searched by pages on handtools, powertools, types of wood, and projects. A great general wiki that is easy to navigate.

http://woodworkerszone.com/wiki/index.php?title=WoodworkersZone_WoodWiki:Community_Portal This site allows woodworkers to read articles of interest, take part in a forum, and go to a mentors section for one on one help.

The wikis I have chosen to highlight this week are appropriate for public libraries and not areas in which litigation would be an issue. I will continue to look for information people and send appropriate note re:reliability and other possible sources.