Internet Librarian: Keynote—Social Computing & the Info Pro

Keynote—Social Computing & the Info Pro
Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Rochester Institute of Technology Lab for Social Computing and Microsoft Corp.

Lawley spoke a bit about the long tail theory (as did Lee Rainie yesterday), stating as he did that the bulk of content is in the tail, not the popular blogs that a zillion people are already reading.  She noted that librarians have traditionally been good at being aware of the long tail resources…things that very few people know about, but are valuable. 

She also stressed that we’re using computers to augment our social networks, not to replace them.  Human-to-human interaction is not going away, despite many people’s fears.  Most of the computing tools today that we use (including a lot that are made by Microsoft) are frustrating to use and frankly “suck.”  She noted that after first meeting the people at Microsoft, she couldn’t understand how such smart nice people created such crappy software.  She’s found that it’s due to large organization mechanics (which happen in any organization, including libraries).  Great innovative ideas get mutilated on their way to the end product by committee work, risk management, and cost-benefit analysis. 

She says that what we need is software that makes really hard tasks really easy, and therefore empowers the user.  What makes searching tools more usable are social networking components.  She compared a search for “clay” on Google (Clay Aiken, polymer clay, Jars of Clay) to one on Yahoo (Clay Shirky for all hits on the first page).  Why?  Because she’s customized her Yahoo search page (My Web 2.0) so it knows what kind of information she typically wants to find.  Smart web searching is good.

She also spoke about social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and their role in social networking—communicating items of personal interest to others in an easy and efficient way.  It also connects you to people who are interested in the things you are also interested in…to experts in your fields of interest. 

She stressed that not all social networking is about friends…it’s about people with similar interests who you will most likely never meet.  It’s an informational network, not necessarily a buddy network.  She showed something that Jenny Levine showed yesterday: the La Grange Park Library has a del.icio.us account with all their reference bookmarks.  This is not only shared with the reference staff, but with the public as well.

She also stressed the importance of human filters (such as filtering your search results through the bookmark sites of trusted people or organizations).   

Beyond that, she spoke about tagging and that even if we as librarians don’t think it’s a good idea, it’s here and not going to go away.  She also spoke counter to current thinking by saying that tagging does not show you the long tail, but it rather focuses on a rather narrow vocabulary.  Finally, she said that for students doing website design and trying to decide what to call categories, she recommends that they go to del.icio.us to see what people are calling things.

She showed us the ESP game.  The game flashes an image and you have to type in what you think the best keyword will be to describe the image (with some general taboo words listed that others have chosen).  If you and your anonymous partner on the other end choose the same word, you move on to the next image.  She mentioned that many cultural biases are revealed in this game—girl vs. woman, racial slurs, etc.  Do we want these biases coming through in our tagging? 

She cautions us against assuming that because we don’t like a particular technology or find it useful that it isn’t useful or good for anyone.  Attention is a form of capital.  Speakers and resources and organizations can’t demand attention from you without giving you something in return.  The lecture “pass-the-time” activities of passing notes and reading the newspaper has morphed into computer activities.  Students are listening when there’s something they need to hear and not listening when it’s something they don’t need to hear.  Grades and participation don’t go down…students are just giving us their “continuous partial attention.”

She also recommends that we read the “Meet the Lifehackers” article in the New York Times Magazine (October 16th). 

[for-pay access only--that is teh suck]

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