This week in LSC 555, it’s all about the Internet (and let me tell you, as someone who just moved into a new apartment and has barely been connected this past week, these articles elicited both a new appreciation for the wonders of the web, and some serious consternation over the lack of Internet connection).
Here is a completely fun and frivolous discussion question for you (more-academic question(s) to follow later): Do you remember the first time you experienced the Internet? Personally, I’m a little fuzzy on the date (I think I was in 3rd grade), but I remember it happening. One day my parents came home with a Windows 1995, HP Pavilion PC, which was just a whole new world from the DOS-based IBM Tandy we had owned previously. They set it up and then a few hours later my dad was in a chat-room with some guys from Malaysia. That’s right, Malaysia. I don’t think I’d even heard of Malaysia before that. Anyway, he let me say hi, and type a smiley face to them, and it was just...amazing stuff for an 8-year-old, really. I remember going to bed thinking , “Wow! My dad has friends in Malaysia now!” (not really, but hey, I was a kid). And just like that, I was introduced to the wonders of the World Wide Web (all of this, of course, was over an old-fashioned dial-up connection. You should have been there when I discovered DSL).
It’s been well over a decade since I sent a handful of characters to a group of Malaysian strangers, and the Internet has become a completely different entity since then -- as the rise of Web 2.0 should make clear. But the basic principles are the same (and still just as fascinating and impressive, I might add), which is why I was glad to find that the first of this week’s articles was a basic introduction to Internet connectivity: “How Internet Infrastructure Works,” written by Jeff Tyson for the HowStuffWorks website. I would have preferred to see a date on this article (I couldn’t find one anywhere, not even in the metadata), just because anything related to web connections and speeds is necessarily very date-sensitive. Still, it made for an informative read.
Tyson steps through all of the basics an Internet user could need or want to know: How is the Internet structured? What exactly are we connecting to, and how, when we get online? What is this IP address thing we are always hearing about, and what does it do? How do URLs work? How do servers work with the Internet?
Personally, I found the section on IP addresses and DNS look-ups particularly striking, in part, I’ll admit, because I vividly recall the online game I played in middle school, using a program called TelNet, that put me through the hassle of manually entering an IP address every time -- and now I finally understand what that was all about. But I also found it striking because I had never really considered the “magic” (I suppose technology would be a more appropriate word, although less descriptive of my level of ignorance) behind URLs before. In all my time online, never have I questioned the fact that typing in “http://www.google.com” would lead me to Google. Nor, for that matter, did I really understand what the “http://” part was all about, or why some URLs lack the “www” but none of them lack the “http://” (because “www” simply refers to the World Wide Web host machine within a domain name, whereas “http://” refers to the protocol, or communication language, to which every website conforms). Cool stuff, and, I would venture, stuff that’s good to know. Most of us will never need to understand the inner workings of the Internet, because its interface is designed so that we can use it anyway; still, I think there is something to be said for having some grasp of the power behind the Internet, if only because we might be able to use it more effectively. Besides, it certainly doesn’t hurt to maintain a healthy level of respect for the power of any tool, like the Internet, that is integral to our daily lives.
One article in, and this blog entry is already becoming a novel; go figure. I’ll try to be a little more succinct talking about our other two readings....
...Which is actually a little simpler because both of these articles take the Internet subject in a new direction, highlighting the wonders of Web/Library 2.0. What is Web 2.0? The simplest, common definition of Web 2.0 is that it comes out to the “next generation” of my chat with Malaysian strangers: the ultimate in communication and social networking. Or, perhaps this is a better example: in the late nineties, my dad built a website, http://dailydash.com (believe it or not, this page is still in existence, albeit not very functional), as a dissemination point for a daily e-newsletter that he was writing at the time. He typically sent this around through e-mail, but he wanted to have a central, stable place to share the information. At that time, it was kind of a big deal, especially since this newsletter was really an amateur endeavor; today, my Dad can -- and does--post a note or link on Facebook, send out Tweets, or even post to a blog like this one. And that, my friends, is the beauty of Web 2.0. Or one of them, anyway.
...Which is actually a little simpler because both of these articles take the Internet subject in a new direction, highlighting the wonders of Web/Library 2.0. What is Web 2.0? The simplest, common definition of Web 2.0 is that it comes out to the “next generation” of my chat with Malaysian strangers: the ultimate in communication and social networking. Or, perhaps this is a better example: in the late nineties, my dad built a website, http://dailydash.com (believe it or not, this page is still in existence, albeit not very functional), as a dissemination point for a daily e-newsletter that he was writing at the time. He typically sent this around through e-mail, but he wanted to have a central, stable place to share the information. At that time, it was kind of a big deal, especially since this newsletter was really an amateur endeavor; today, my Dad can -- and does--post a note or link on Facebook, send out Tweets, or even post to a blog like this one. And that, my friends, is the beauty of Web 2.0. Or one of them, anyway.
For a more detailed, information science-oriented perspective to Web 2.0, a good place to start is our second reading for this week, Paul Anderson’s 2007 article, “All That Glisters Is Not Gold.” Anderson’s title is meant to be a reminder that not every “gold” functionality of Web 2.0 is transferable to Library 2.0; rather it is our task, as librarians, to devote critical thought to which features will work in a library context (Anderson, 2007, p. 195). One of the great points of this article is Anderson’s description of “Six Big Ideas” posited by Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, which Anderson presents as the core of the Web 2.0 framework--alongside “mature social applications” and currently-developing W3C technologies/standards, such as XML (Anderson, 2007, p.196). What are these Six Big Ideas? :
1. Individual production and user-generated content - For a real-life example, see this blog.
2. Harness the power of the crowd - Despite what you’ve heard about the “mob mentality,” O’Reilly (as cited in Anderson, 2007, p. 197) posits that there is actually some value in “collective intelligence.”
3. Data on an epic scale - Whatever we do online, whether we intend to or not, we are creating HUGE amounts of data. Smart companies know how to collect that data and use it (take Facebook, for example, or even Gmail --using profile data/message contents to create targeted ads. We may not like it, but we have to concede it’s financially-savvy).
4. Architecture of participation - Anderson cites Google Search as an example: not only do well-designed websites and tools encourage participation, but participation can actually help these architectures to become better-designed.
5. Network effects This means taking seriously questions and discussions about the logistics of the World Wide Web and the impact each user has.
6. Openness Open source code, open standards, open information access -- you name it.
(Anderson, 2007, p.197). Of course, it is not sufficient for us, as aspiring librarians, to grasp the concepts of Web 2.0; we also have to be able to envision the role they will play in Library 2.0. We have to be constantly aware of the swift evolution of technology. We have to have always in mind the ethical implications of Library 2.0 with regards to copyright and intellectual freedom.
But we also have to discuss Library 2.0 among ourselves. Part of the problem Anderson sees is that there hasn’t been enough professional discussion about Library 2.0, or even a formal definition (Anderson, 2007, p. 196). So here’s some (pre-professional) discussion: what can we, as aspiring librarians, do to get this discussion rolling? And, what thoughts do we have about the possibilities and implications of Library 2.0? Anderson says, that the ethical implications of Web 2.0 “actually [put] librarians in a strong position in terms of potentially being able to influence how new types of technology develop and are used within libraries, and maybe even more widely"(Anderson, 2007, p.197). Do you believe that this is true?
Finally this week, we have a report from some of our colleagues in Greece (Athens and Corfu to be exact), Dimitris Gavrilis, Constantia Kakali1, and Christos Papatheodorou. They describe a prototype improvement on the OPAC system called OPACIAL, developed by Panteion University to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies. The report makes mention of a few other OPAC notables we may want to keep an eye on , including the Ann Arbor District Library and Hennepin County Library systems, open source programs such as Scriblio, and proprietary programs such as Aquabrowser (for an example of Aquabrowser, check out CUA’s own Discovery Catalog. Not my favorite, but definitely an interesting approach to catalog-searching) (Gavrilis, Kakalil and Papatheodorou, 2008, section 2).
But the real focus of the report, of course, is OPACIAL. The authors step through the system development process -- a little lengthy and complex to summarize here, but definitely a fantastic example of the system development life cycle in action -- including a discussion of the components of their system. OPACIAL has some really fantastic Web 2.0 features -- a user-created tag cloud (made searchable after user testing), faceted searching, and a list of potentially-related items. My favorite part of OPACIAL, though, has to be the breadth of information in the catalog records: they contain not only bibliographic data, but also a space for users to tag and annotate, reviews, and (my personal favorite) an image of the library’s floorplan showing exactly where the book can be found (Gavrilis et al., 2008, section 3). Pretty amazing stuff, albeit maybe not as well-suited to a massive, complexly-organized library like CUA’s Mullen Library (I have no sense of the size of Panteion, I freely admit). The authors conclude the article by describing the process of user-evaluation, including statistics, user suggestions, and some final comments on where OPACIAL stands now -- definitely in a good place, but definitely requiring revision (Gavrilis et al., 2008, sections 4-5).
Some discussion points: OPACIAL looks fantastic, at least in my (still-beginner) opinion. As with any user interface, it is obviously going to be a point of personal preference. But beyond the limitations of personal preference, I tend to be idealistic. I’ll admit, I have grand visions of OPACIAL swimming around in my head right now, but going back to Anderson, is that realistic? Yes, OPACIAL implements some of the truly innovative possibilities that have come with Web 2.0, and yes it embraces the social, user-created mindset that Web 2.0 embodies. But as Anderson pointed out in the second article, it’s our job to think critically about what is actually feasible for Library 2.0. Do you think OPACIAL is feasible? What might be the challenges for implementing Web 2.0 features in the catalog -- tag clouds, for example, or reviews--, and can we overcome those challenges? Should we even be trying to? Articles Cited:
Anderson, P. (2007). “All That Glisters Is Not Gold' — Web 2.0 And The Librarian”. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science,, 39(4), 195-198. Retrieved October 10, 2011, from the Sage Premier 2009 database.
Gavrilis, D., Kakali, C., and Papatheodorou, C. (2008). Enhancing Library Services with Web 2.0 Functionalities. In Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology For Digital Libraries (Aarhus, Denmark, September 14 - 19, 2008). B. Christensen-Dalsgaard, D. Castelli, B. Ammitzbøll Jurik, and J. Lippincott, Eds. Lecture Notes In Computer Science, vol. 5173. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 148-159. Retrieved October 10, 2011 from http://www.wcl.ece.upatras.gr
Tyson, Jeff (n.d.). HowStuffWorks: How Internet Infrastructure Works. In HowStuffWorks: Tech. Retrieved October 10, 2011 from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm
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