Is the message clear? Sending a message in the Digital World

In a time when we are so reliant on digital data for information, it's important to know what information there is to be found.

If you Google yourself, what comes up? Does it paint an accurate depiction of who you are and what the world-at-large should know about you? Have you even left a real footprint?

Blog or not to Blog...

These are questions of importance not only to individuals, but also to organizations- including libraries.

In searching Wikipedia for some key topics of interest to the library and information field, I was overwhelmingly pleased to find relevant, seemingly accurate information, presented with recent updates and a number of valuable links and resources expressing from which locations the information came. Also, thankfully, there were not many Wikipedia notes at the tops of the pages indicating that the articles needed more work, appeared to be biased, or may not reflect a "worldwide view". [Segue: I am continually impressed by the information that can be found using Wikipedia. In the past five weeks, I have truly been converted to a believer in that community.] Overall, the image of information science appears to be well reflected in the accessible information found online.

It is our responsibility to represent our profession, our organizations, and ourselves as clearly and accurately as possible in this digital age of technology and information. If there is no information to be found, or if all of the information is negative, it does not bode well for anyone on our branch of the professional tree.

So you Google yourself. What comes up? Is it what you'd expect (or hope) to see?  If a potential employer were seeing my name on Google, a cluster of appropriate keywords or tags might include something like this:

(Note: this is NOT my name/ word cloud)

Were I to tag myself I would include: Kent State University, MLIS, Library, Information Science, Ohio, Librarian, Art, Artist, Print-making, The Arts, Scholar, Research, Student, Academic Libraries, Professional, Organized. As I become more experienced or more knowledgeable  I would add more and more keywords to my tag-cloud to reflect my professional identity and interests in this field. As of now, I'm not sure exactly which direction my studies will take me, so, as expected my tag-cloud is still a work in progress. Thankfully, proper utilization of social websites like LinkedIn and Blogger can help you cultivate an online presence. My plan is to continue this blog and allow it to lead off my future in information science and provide a space for me to explore the relevant topics in this field. More topics, more information, and more tags can all add richness and contextual information to my web presence.

Just like Shedroff's Model of Understanding, I will recognize and utilize my role as a producer and consumer of data and allow my worldview and contextual experience to add to the larger pool of data found on the web. I will add my voice to the many already speaking and exploring these developing topics and emerging directions for information access. I will continue developing my own base of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of this profession and contribute it to metaknowledge. As Weinberger noted, "... now more than ever, knowledge's value will come from the understanding it enables" (p 215). The more we all contribute to our social understanding (metaknowledge) the more knowledge we can inspire over time- the innovation in the intersections (Weinberger).

International Library Access

In all the recent conversations regarding technology, the direction of our libraries, and information access for the future, it is extremely easy for us to overlook the fact that our advances and expectations surpass the available services for many international locations.

Global Internet Access Graph

Growing up in the United States it is easy to take advantage of the local public library system, and I have never known a region without at least one local area library. These conveniences, even some of our worst ones, can surpass the provisions in some of the "Third World" regions of the world. While not every area is given the same extravagances we have in the United States, it is not to say that those areas of the world do not have the creative minds and capacities to develop meaningful technology and benefit from better access to information.

The TEDTalk with Anil Gupta perfectly captured the spirit of ingenuity and adaptation in order to better advance society. Gupta said, "minds in the margin are not marginal minds," and it would be beneficial for us to take note of that fact and recognize the value of that truth. Every individual every where has the capacity to develop creative solutions to their technological deficiencies. Just as "life will find a way," people too will problem solve and develop alternative methods. We are ALWAYS striving to be more efficient, more effective, and better served by the tools we use.

I had never considered Maslow's hierarchy of needs from the viewpoint Gupta captures in his lecture, but I am inclined to agree with him. I studied psychology for many years and we were always taught Maslow's hierarchy and told that no human could hope to achieve self-actualization or seek to meet higher level needs without meeting their basic needs first. Clearly, as Gupta points out, this idea is flawed. There are impoverished peoples living throughout the world and managing to live day by day barely meeting any of the "basic needs" and certainly not living as a majority of American citizens are living, but they struggle, strive, and survive by the sweat of their brows and the creativity of their minds. They make it work. They adapt and they problem solve in ways that many of us in "First World" countries would not be able to simply because our life situations challenge us differently.

This  same  point regarding the life styles and making ends meet also applies to individuals with differing abilities. Individuals with hearing, vision, mental or other impairments, have a host of other challenges that are not faced by many of those who develop new technologies and are responsible for providing open access to the public in libraries. Those with different abilities have many creative and adaptions to daily living and there are many more that could still be developed and need to be developed in order to provide open access to our modern technologies and services. With the fast-pace of society and our desires for ever more intuitive and flexible technologies, we need to be vigilant regarding our adaptions and adaptations for those with different abilities.

I greatly enjoyed learning about initiatives like Room to Read- providing libraries and new schools in areas like Nepal, but I must admit that I have questions and reservations about such initiatives. I always wonder how the individuals creating these programs go  about interacting with the students and their families. How do these programs actually change the lifestyles of these young girls? Does education offer them the chance to "go further"-- the way we would view it in the United States. Watching the videos of the Room to Read program I recalled the documentary film "Born into Brothels" and the challenges that those individual young people faced. I specifically recall the mother of one of the young girls in "Born into Brothels" being unsupported of her daughter's involvement in the program because she needed her daughter to be working and making money  for the family.

I have to wonder if the families of the girls in the Room to Read program are supportive of the girls' involvement or if they would prefer to have the girls helping in the home with their mothers and their siblings? I have to wonder how far some of those girls have to walk to reach their schools? I would like to see where some of those girls are in five or ten years from the time they begin the program. Do educated girls feel disconnected from their families- do they "abandon" their families? Even more importantly, how do the girls use their education? Is an educated woman of a certain poverty level less appealing to a potential spouse? If the culture is so regimented and hierarchically structured, I could imagine an educated wife being dismissed for a less educated wife who would be more obedient and better "prepared" to be a house wife. It's possible that none of these questions are problematic in reality, but there are many facets of living, culture, and lifestyle that are impacted by access to information and education. While "we" value education and equal opportunities for men and women, those values cannot be superimposed on other cultures.

But, I want it NOW...

I think that one of the most interesting things about library 2.0 (or our more modern library systems) is just how much more integrated they are into the community. Like most people, I grew up in a time and place where the library was a stand alone building that I only visited when I needed something and never really thought about as a place to go and "hang out" because we would inevitably be shushed or asked to leave and socialize elsewhere. These days, that is far from the norm! Libraries are places of activity, of exchange of information, and and community centers in many ways. I think that libraries are finally becoming what they were always meant to be.

I love the idea of a "library that lets," a library that allows and is more interested in providing information, space, and opportunity for the people it serves than being museum-like, dusty, and vacant. Libraries and librarians are adapting to the constant changes in societies and really rolling with the punches- granted they have to if they want to keep their doors open- but it's also a great accomplishment for a field that was so traditionally structured and organized. It seems that despite the difficulties in keeping up with new technology and new ways to access information, that librarians are willing to do whatever they can in order to provide the nest service and best access to information that they can for their patrons.

One of the ways that I have seen advances of technology encouraging the evolution of the library has been in the ways that we are visualizing information. I remember working at the circulation desk for my undergraduate library and one of the librarians showing me the AquaBrowser (example below) tool being used by another library.

At the time, we were all fascinated by this method of browsing and very impressed with the technology that made it possible. Fortunately or unfortunately (I'm not sure which) I have not seen that technology appearing on more library websites. It's unclear to me whether it just never "caught on" with the public, or if it was simply too complex, too problematic, or too expensive to put in place. I think that unless it was a technology that could "learn" from the users it could be more frustrating than helpful in the long run.

Being an individual with a background in art, I am a very visual person and I found myself quite drawn to the design and spread of the AquaBrowser. MindMap is a tool that I have used myself when trying to visualize ideas or plans of my own that were non-linear and it was very similar in its core structure to the AquaBrowser. If there was a way for libraries to bring this mapping technology into the library system I would most definitely explore it. Being able to bridge connections between things often allows for an unexpected and valuable layer of knowledge. I, for instance, would have never really known which of my FaceBook friends knew each other if I had not played with the friend-wheel app. You might think, "well, they're your friends how did you not know they knew each other!?!," but it's not as if we regularly question whom our friends are acquainted with- at least I don't. I do wonder how the software color codes the friends though- based on networks perhaps(?).

The added bonus is that it's just PRETTY to look at!

The most impressive references in this discussion of open access and access to information were the two TEDTalk videos with Lawrence Lessig (one at that link, the other here). Larry made so many fascinating points regarding the modern applications of creativity and several fantastic arguments for less stringent policies and laws surrounding copyrights. Larry's point that artist choice is the key to open availability is one-hundred percent right. We have to rely on the creators of the original content we reference in new creative works to be open and supportive of the creative endeavors of their fans and the public and I think we are getting much closer to realizing that dream.

In recent years, many (not all), recording artists have welcomed and accepted services like Spotify. Artists are coming to realize that their profits will no longer be tied to the sale of physical albums- everything is digital. When a new album is released we want instant access to it. We want to have those copies on our computers and on our phones so that we can take it with us on anywhere- at home, in the car, in between classes, on our breaks. Music is a huge part of our culture and historically has always had a place at the heart of not only our solitary activities but of our social endeavors. With Spotify- every time a track is played by a user, the artist is making a profit (a very small one- but it accumulates I'm sure). Consumers don't have to buy full albums, and they don't have to listen to any album in its entirety. We build playlists- mixes, and we share them with our friends- we subscribe to one another and we share all of the music. It's truly brilliant, and it's free for PC- a small monthly subscription for the flexibility of mobile use.

My own Spotify account as I listen to Lindsey Stirling (she actually came to fame ON YouTube)

The best thing about services like Spotify is that independent artists- singer/songwriters and some of the artists on the periphery of the pop culture spectrum are also made available (talk about opening the long-tail!) I personally have not bought a CD or digital album in well over a year. I don't need to anymore- and I LOVE IT. I actually don't even pay the monthly subscription, but I imagine it won't be much longer before I do. Spotify has completely changed my music listening habits. I have playlists of "New to Me" artists that I have either stumbled upon by the related artists information or from family and friends who have suggested them. I follow my friends playlist "cheer up... if you want to" and hear an assortment of music I know and don't know. The trick is- only artists can opt to make their music available on this service. The service provides a VAST amount of digital music and the collection is growing all the time, but it will take participation in order to allow it to become kind of the Wikipedia of digital music. Recently there was a user-related campaign that led up to releasing the Pink Floyd collection. It seems as though there is a lot of pressure on artists to adopt this approach to making their music widely available and still retaining a profit. It's great for the users, and it seems to be working for the artists (otherwise it would have flopped a long time ago.)

We can all only hope that YouTube will eventually release its firm grasp of copyright laws and once again allow the users the space to create the content that they want to create. Larry Lessig made a great point when he discussed the fact that mash-ups, remixes, pastiches, and parodies are individual and unique creative endeavors. Even though users reference more official media or resources- as always the greatest form of flattery is IMITATION. In order to reach new levels of innovation we have to build upon what we already know and that is what a vast number of YouTubers are set out to do. Lessig really drove this argument home for me when he stated (I paraphrase) Our lives are built on sharing activities- socializing- and we need spaces of "fair use" in order to relate to the world in the most natural way.

We can all hope that the future of our digital media progresses closer and closer to Lessig's vision of an ecology of commitment to the values: freedom, community, limited regulation, and respect for the creator.

The Objective of Neutrality

In Weinberger's chapter "Social Knowing," the discussion of Wikipedia and its practices regarding neutrality and anonymous authoring becomes a topic of relevance for not only research and information access, but also of best practices in all social sectors.

The working definition of neutrality in the Wikipedia community, for posting content, relies on the belief that neutrality is achieved when people stop changing the content (Weinberger, 2007). For Wikipedia, this is what works. The authorship and the content of the site is entirely open to the public and as such every individual feeding information into the articles has their own information, their own perspective, and their own language to describe the person, places, and events contained within the articles. It takes everyone's participation in authoring these articles to achieve the most neutral voice on the subject as possible. -- I really appreciated Weinberger's contrast of this process to that of newspapers and media outlets where only one voice or one message is really heard. Everyone likes to believe that the news they hear/read contains "the facts," but the truth of the matter is that it is not in most cases the whole truth.--

An example of how social interaction can reduce bias

At Wikipedia, the approach to article writing is entirely collaborative and prevents any one voice from necessarily being the dominant one. At Wikipedia, they realize the importance of representing facts in a neutral playing field for the sake of the readers right to decide what they think about the topic. They encourage well rounded information to bring the greatest degree of knowledge on the subjects to their users. In the case of Wikipedia, it is not just the few, powerful, educated, and influential figures of the world who are writing our history and sharing the information we "need to know," it is the people from many spheres of the world who are documenting the information and relying on one another to build a complete picture of events.

When it comes to "deciding what to believe," it is the expectation of the Wikipedia community that the readers will challenge the facts/data and explore the truths themselves before adding this knowledge into their worldview. This process directly relates to Shedroff's Model of Understanding :

It would behoove the public to value the kind of information  and methods of collaborative communication demonstrated by Wikipedia- neutral, unbiased, and interactive information presented in compromise- rather than allowing themselves to learn from one source or one authority. Shedroff's model addresses particularly how we on an individual basis take in data and integrate information into our knowledge and sense of personal wisdom. What may not be clearly understood from this model alone is that the data, provided by the "producers" is already imbued with context when it gets to us. Producers are consumers and consumers producers. We are living in a time when we collectively teach and learn in our social interactions everyday. Such is the wonder of our digital age- where rarely should anyone be expected to be an expert on anything. We all dabble, we all explore, and we all have a relevant context for information. We do not live in the a world of Orwell's imagination. We live in a time where we are more powerful in our collective search for knowledge than the few who would choose to censor it.

1984 - George Orwell

I have personally pushed myself to explore more topics that have been the subject of public outcry in the past two years. I have struggled with communicating differing opinions and values in social media on more than a few occasions (and have all but given up on trying). But, I have found that it is because my voice is the one saying, "Where did you get that information? Did you actually read the official document yourself? Are you aware that the resource you're sharing here is completely biased and provides a very harsh criticism from a very narrow view point on this subject?" I am finding that it does become more and more difficult to reign in conversations and allow clear communication to occur- especially when it is something which people are particularly impassioned by.

The simple fact is that once people hear something, they tend not to look any further in to it- or they only listen to the voices saying all the same things and it spirals into a world of anger and argument because, "THESE are the FACTS! I don't care that you found someone else saying something different- THIS is the TRUTH because THIS is what I READ." The topics become impossible to discuss in most places because people are very passionate about their beliefs and in most cases are unwilling to hear opposing beliefs. In the places where people have an opportunity to "discuss" topics, they end up arguing instead and working themselves into a fury- name-calling others, cursing at them, judging the morals, intelligence, and sense of decency in the people who offer different beliefs or perspectives. There tends to be a great deal of capitalization and exclamation points.

Most people, it seems, are unwilling to discuss the difficult topics because it is very personal- their ideas become a part of their identity, their sense of self- and to have a disagreement on something is to face a personal attack (even when the subject itself has nothing to do with them personally). The context rather than the data ends up translating the information. The individuals in disagreement most often are fighting not about the facts, but about how they have individually interpreted them. The interpretations form the "brands" and the "labels" that individuals cling to and identify with instead of discussing the raw data and coming to a neutral understanding. The individuals hoist their banners and create divisions between themselves and "others" and turn what should be an open forum of information sharing into a battlefield to fight for the title of "truth" and authority over the "others".

To a large extent, I think that better educating everyone to be more wise in their information gathering in this digital world cannot be emphasized enough. While many voices together may hope to weave a neutral and accurate tapestry of information (like in Wikipedia), most people are not gathering their information from those forums and are instead turning to the individual voices who seem to shout the loudest- or use the right "brand". Seeing the success of Wikipedia- and knowing that from time to time articles need to be locked when tempers flair- does give me hope for the future and the information sharing between people. But, until people once again become more skeptical of the information they find online and re-learn to question bias and access information from many diverse voices, I fear it will take a long time before the majority of the voices stop shouting and start listening.

As Weinberger put it:
"For 2,500 years, we've been told that knowing is our species' destiny and its calling. Now we can see for ourselves that knowledge isn't in our heads: It is between us. It emerges from public and social thought and it stays there, because social knowing, like the global conversations that give rise to it, is never finished" (2007, p.147).

We are all allowed our opinions, but we have to begin to acknowledge that opinions are not facts- they are interpretations. All interpretations are valid because they are unique to the individual context. We cannot force our opinions upon each other. We cannot turn opinions into laws by which everyone must abide. We cannot keep cultivating arbitrary figures of authority based on what is "right," because there are no absolutes. We have to create a spirit of open access to information and allow one another the opportunity to "know" whatever it is we may know and believe [without judgement] whatever we choose to believe. But, then again, that's just my opinion.

The Radical Encyclopedia

As a student, I have heard for years, "Don't use Wikipedia as a resource for your work," and spent much of my academic career completely believing that it was not a real resource and something that was not reputable. I'm sure others have heard all the same pleas and arguments against the website as anything more than "an unreliable overview" of a variety of topics.

But, in taking a closer look at Wikipedia, it's amazing to me to hear that a majority of people's arguments against the site are actually the exact opposite of what it's founder instills in the community that develops the site. The TEDTalks interview with founder, Jimmy Wales, was fascinating to me as an individual striving for unbiased material in this very opinionated digital world. Despite being encouraged to seek my information elsewhere, Wikipedia has always been a resource that I have used without question when I wanted to find information about broad topics or very popular ones.

As a resource, the website has been invaluable to me simply because of how easy it is to access the information. We don't have the dusty shelves of encyclopedias in our homes anymore because we have the internet (and everyone know you can find anything on the internet). But, finding anything also means either paying for a "reputable" service or trudging through useless websites until you find one that has valuable information on it- and even then, students are not able to reference most websites in academic writing.

I now, fully support the mission of the Wikipedia community. I greatly appreciate their collaborative approach to sharing knowledge and fully agree with their approach to neutrality in their content. I have seen first hand how they manage neutrality on pages containing controversial topics and I have learned a lot from such pages. While they shy away from labeling such work as "objective," for the reader it is objective. They tend to outline the different opinions regarding controversial topics and explain what the sides believe, why they believe it, and who "they" are without slanting the information in a biased way. As Wales points out in the interview, there is no "Truth" to behold on any topic, there are merely commonly held beliefs.

It does no one any good to only hear one side of a controversy from an individual impassioned by the topic. The only way to make independent choices is to be educated about topics and draw independent conclusions. Wales himself described in the interview how when inputting information on their topics they report information from reputable sources- effectively doing research for you in the same way that a traditional encyclopedia editor may have done in the past. The only difference is, the editors of Wikipedia work in a collaborative and dynamic way that allows the information to be regularly updated with new information that is relevant to our fast-paced culture.

In debating the relative importance of having a "radical encyclopedia" versus a "safe and stodgy" encyclopedia, the wording alone leads my to prefer the radical. The words "safe" and "stodgy" for me call up concepts of conservatism, censorship, and outdated information. When I seek information I personally don't want to be spoon-fed, sugar-coated morsels hand selected for me by people who purportedly know what is important about the topic. I want to see it all! Give me the gruesome details, the offensive alongside the reserved. Give me all the sides of the story and let me choose which side I am on.

There is a lot to be said for the quality of learning that can happen in an environment dedicated to collaborative learning and  the kind of "social cooperation" Wales described.

I have no idea what a radical library might be like, but I do suspect it is on our horizon. With the rapid adoption of digitizing software and the desire for many libraries to retain preserved copies of historical and limited books, I imagine that the radical library, like the radical encyclopedia will be digital. The development of software and distribution services for eReaders and digital books has been quite well received and I imagine with the benefits of digital text books and classroom materials that tools such as iTunes U will only continue to spread throughout society. In a world so focused on speed, functionality, and on-demand access, I would expect nothing less.