Tag Archives: wikipedia

The opportunity of the SOPA blackout

I don’t know how this will come across, but I have serious reservations about the suggestion I’ve seen in a few places that libraries can take advantage of Wikipedia being down to promote the library.

I mean, yes, we can do that, but if libraries are only useful when Wikipedia’s down then libraries are pretty crappy. And yes, I know that’s not what people are meaning when they’re suggesting/doing this, but it’s what it comes across like to me at least. I envisage hordes of students desperately trying to finish their assignments grudgingly admitting, “Okay, for that one 24-hour period in a lifetime when Wikipedia’s down, the library’s kinda useful. Apart from being slow and clunky and not giving me enough or up-to-date enough information. Thank $Deity Wikipedia’s back up tomorrow!”

Because to be honest, when it comes to ready reference, everything sucks compared to Wikipedia. I’m a librarian, I know my library’s resources, and I’m also a geek and know how to search the web at large, but if I want a quick introduction to almost anything I go to Wikipedia. If I want to figure out what model my cellphone is, if I want a description of a database that isn’t a salespitch, if I want a listing of all the episodes of White Collar, if I want a summary of King Lear, if I want to decode a biochemical reference query I’ve just received by email so I can start answering it…

If I want to know something and I want to know it now, not in two minutes time, I go to Wikipedia. Because none of the library’s references resources is anywhere near as convenient, easy to use, up-to-date, or thorough.

(If I need to know for certain I’ll double-check elsewhere. But that doesn’t happen nearly as regularly as needing to know it now.)

So to me, the blackout as an opportunity to promote the library as a replacement for Wikipedia is just an opportunity to show people one of our greatest weaknesses. The strengths of a library are so much more than that, but we can’t promote them by setting up this comparison.

The real opportunity of the SOPA blackout is to educate people about intellectual property and freedom of information. You know — that thing which the blackout was supposed to be about.

Beyond the simple ethics of not hijacking an important cause (and btw, I have even graver misgivings about using the blackout to promote the databases sold to us by the publishers supporting SOPA!), teaching people about this stuff is a much more important part of our mission than pointing them to the encyclopaedias. And fulfilling this mission will do far more to promote our real strengths.

Implementing Web 2.0

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Paul Hayton

Metrics are important – available on flickr, wordpress, facebok, youtube, witter. Wikipedia doesn’t.

Launch dates all refer to Dunedin Public Library’s accounts.

Flickr:
consider using a secret email address; it negates most IT/Council security uploading hassles. Subject heading becomes title and body is description.
Flash-based tools may break so use the basic uploader
Pro account gives features that are worth it.
Link Flickr to blog, facebook, etc – facilitates crossposting.

Blog:
Started having news and reviews blogs. In Feb 08 merged to a single blog at wordpress.
Use Google Analytics. Hosting on own servers makes it easy to put code in.
Suggests posting every 1-3 days. Every day is too much, every week not enough.
Include youtube clips, flickr banner and links to other services down the side.

If doing more than one thing then reuse your content! Eg description on images / blog description of event. Push people through to different services by linking blogpost, photo, through to youtube video etc.

Post a little content often rather than a lot infrequently.
Link to other online spaces proactively
Review content using metrics to discover what really is popular content (eg topical links to Swayze-related collection)
Use categories, not tags to standardise search when running a blog with multiple contributors – forces authority control.

Wikipedia article – launched April 08. Anecdotally well-received but hard to read statistics. Have had one instance of vandalism – corrected by wiki community within 24 hours. When Paul started adding stuff he had people telling him he couldn’t put up library-copyrighted stuff.
Tips:
Establish an account
Declare who you are
Start small, build content as time permits
Add images and links to other online spaces
Reference where you can
Seek other pages with related content and edit to include a link back to your own page

YouTube
Launched May 08; now 111 videos, average of 40-60 viewers per day.
Tips:
Invest in a tripod
Recording at 320×240 at 8 frames per second is fine and reduces both file size and upload time
YouTube has a 10min limit
Don’t pan and zoom.
Be consistent in categories and tags

Facebook
Launched December 2008 – wanted to establish a profile and generate viral promotion; engage in dialogue with fans and deliver targeted promotional info to fans
Address is horrible – get a badge. (Me: if you have 100+ fans you can get a custom address)
Metrics interesting – fans are 64% female which reflects library membership. Highest fans are at 25-34%
Good conversation going.
Tips:
Have a response plan for if customers engage.
Establish a page, not a group.
Post links to other online spaces
Use the events feature and selectively send invites to fans
If you have a Twitter account, consider linking your status updates to it.
Import blog, flickr content etc to your page.

Twitter
Launched Feb 09
Can get statistics from various analytic sites eg tweetstats.com
Predominantly events stuff.
Tips:
Use web stats services to analyse account
Use the power of the + in http://bit.ly/1894XD+ to get stats on how often it’s been viewed.
Firefox – install Power Twitter add-on.
“The more you give the more you get” – the more you tweet the more followers you get – but it’s more about quality vs quantity.

Implementing:
– Strategy – be clear about why and where you’re playing, but you don’t need a full strategy before you dive in. No analysis paralysis!
– Staff/time – better to do one thing well than several things poorly. Look for something you like and do that.
– Learn by doing. Forgiveness vs permission, action vs policy.
– Proactively network with like minds.
– Spend time each week being a ‘naive enquirer’ to learn more.

Q: Release permission for filming booktalks, audiences?
A: Get permission for authors, performers. Camera is generally not on audience – only incidental and not very identifiable. Anecdotally – email from someone in a video who wanted a copy to send it around

Q: Problems with Wikipedia’s rule against editing your own page?
A: No issues.

Q: YouTube filming at low resolution – shouldn’t we film at high resolution for posterity and just upload a low-res version?
A: Yes, valid point – could be something we could do better at. But currently dealing with practical issues

Non-English blog roundup #12

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[Sitting around since last year…]

Bambou (French) writes about Wikimini, a Wikipedia-like project written by kids for kids: 8-13 years old. It was conceived by a teacher as a pedagogical tool.

Penser le futur (French) writes about the ease of amending incorrect data on Amazon – [not quite as immediate as Wikipedia perhaps, but] it only took clicking a button, adding details, and waiting while Amazon verified it – a few days later Amazon even sent an email explaining why some of the changes had been accepted and others left alone.

Frank den Hollander (Dutch) points to the experimental PurpleSearch (English) at the University of Groningen. PurpleSearch is a federated search engine that doesn’t require users to select which databases to search – instead it parses the search keywords to guesstimate at which will give the best results.

And if you’re interested in non-English blog posts you may be interested in LibWorld – library blogs worldwide, a book version of the essays on InfoBib.

[More recently…]

Vagabondages (French) lists French and francophone library twitter accounts and Biblioroots lists accounts for librarians, bibliobloggers, authors, editors, booksellers and more librarians as well as general information and technology accounts.

Erik Høy on Biblog (Danish), inspired by Google promoting short videos of its employees introducing themselves, suggests that librarians could do the same.

Links of interest 19/5/09

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NZ On Screen gives free online access to selected NZ On Air television. (They also won the Best Entertainment Site award at the 2009 Qantas Media Awards on Saturday.) The World Cinema Foundation has digitised a selection of international films.

Professor Peter Murray-Rust says “The bit of Wikipedia that I wrote is correct.“

Wolfram Alpha has gone live. This is a “computational knowledge engine” – meaning it’s intended to read and parse your question then search its index of facts and put them together to give you an answer (rather than Google which just gives you a bunch of pages which may or may not contain an answer). It’s early days so of course a lot of questions will confuse it, but it does well on things like “How old is Helen Clark?“, “Who directed Dangerous Liaisons?“, “What languages are spoken in India?“, and “What is the meaning of life?“

Christchurch City Libraries has their annual booksale this Friday/Saturday.

Deborah

Non-English blog roundup #10

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Bibliobsession has posted a set of slides on Towards Library Ecosystems (French). It begins with an introduction to web 2.0 then points out, “A collection doesn’t exist without its users and its uses.” (slide 61) It goes on to discuss the library as an ecosystem: “creating links with other ecosystems in order to benefit from network effects which guarantee it a social utility”.

Bobobiblioblog (French)

asks medical students if they’ve used Wikipedia – pretty much all have. Have they edited it? None – “Ah, no, once, a timid young woman whispered that she’d corrected a spelling mistake in one article.”) Bobobiblioblog wonders whether “the general rule is perhaps to have a consumerist attitude towards Wikipedia – using it without participating in it”. [I don’t think it’s necessarily as bad as that – remember the general 90-9-1 theory: 90% use it, 9% contribute occasionally, 1% contribute regularly.]
writes about adding an institutional filter to PubMed so that users of MyNCBI can filter their results to those that their institution holds. [Alas, when I try to register for MyNCBI I get 404 file not found, so I can’t play with this myself.]

Vagabondages (French) points to “liquid bookmarks” (Japanese).

Kotkot writes about sustainable libraries (French), asking what sustainable development might mean in a library. The post includes a list of ideas like turning off screens overnight, using rechargeable batteries, reduce tape consumption on books, double-sided printing, create a comfortable bike shelter, etc.

Bib-log (Danish) announces the Roskilde public library mobile site.

Benobis lists French genealogy resources (French).

Via Klog come the steps of digital preservation in 1 slide (French).

De tout sur rien (French) suggests getting our users to scan book covers to go into a cross-library pool particularly if vendors put restrictions on us using theirs.