Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?

Dalla lista Web4Lib ancora una segnalazione a proposito del dibattito sull’utilità e l’attendibilità di Wikipedia. Ad intervenire questa volta è l’autorevole e colto New Yorker, che, per mano della sua editorialista Stacy Schiff, nell’articolo intitolato Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? (numero del 31 luglio 2006) ci informa che “Wales’s [il fondatore di Wikipedia, N.d.R.] most radical contribution may be not to have made information free but—in his own alma-matricidal way—to have invented a system that does not favor the Ph.D. over the well-read fifteen-year-old.”

L’articolo coglie molte sfaccettature di Wikipedia: dai suoi esordi accidentati agli sviluppi più recenti – inclusa una certa tendenza alla burocratizzazione delle policy che pure non è servita ad impedire il diffondersi dello spamming sulle voci: “Wikipedia has become a regulatory thicket, complete with an elaborate hierarchy of users and policies about policies. (…) For all its protocol, Wikipedia’s bureaucracy doesn’t necessarily favor truth.”

Schiff nota acutamente come “Part of the problem is provenance. The bulk of Wikipedia’s content originates not in the stacks but on the Web“, per concludere però negativamente che “Wikipedia remains a lumpy work in progress. The entries can read as though they had been written by a seventh grader: clarity and concision are lacking; the facts may be sturdy, but the connective tissue is either anemic or absent; and citation is hit or miss.”

C’è da consolarsi con l’aneddoto riportato (quasi) in chiusura che chiama in causa il proverbiale ottimismo dei filosofi del linguaggio…”When I showed the Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam his entry, he was surprised to find it as good as the one in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He was flabbergasted when he learned how Wikipedia worked.”

OCLC lancia il search box

From Information Today, by Paula J. Hane, July 17, 2006:

“OCLC is planning to launch a new destination site and downloadable search box for searching the content of libraries participating in WorldCat. Scheduled for a beta release sometime in August 2006, the new WorldCat.org site will continue OCLC’s efforts begun with its Open WorldCat program—to make library resources more visible to Web users and to increase awareness of libraries as a primary source of reliable information.

The WorldCat.org search box will make visible all 70-plus million records in the WorldCat database—not just the smaller data subsets of 3.4 to 4.4 million currently made available by the Open WorldCat partner sites, such as Google, Yahoo!, and others.”

From OCLC:

“To be released August 2006 in beta form, WorldCat.org continues OCLC’s efforts—begun with the Open WorldCat program—to make library resources more visible to Web users, and to increase awareness of libraries as a primary source of reliable information and helpful personal assistance. Where Open WorldCat inserts “Find in a Library” results within regular search engine results, WorldCat.org provides a permanent destination page and search box that lets a broader range of people discover the riches of library-held materials cataloged in the WorldCat database.”

Read Paul Miller Looking forward to WorldCat.org on Talis website.

Library success practices

Vorrei suggerire un wiki di buone pratiche per la biblioteconomia: LibSuccess, creato nel luglio 2005 da Meredith Farkas per essere “a collaborative space for librarians to share success stories and inspire each other to do great things in our own libraries.”

LibSuccess è diviso in numerose categorie, tra le quali segnalo la Implementing tech in the library con le sue sotto-sezioni:

• Grants for Technology Projects
• Free/Open Source Software
• PLA TechNotes
• Providing Technology to Patrons (computers, wifi, iPods, etc.)
• Self Checkout
• Technology Planning
• web4lib Manager’s Reference Center
• Website Design
• Web Tips and Tricks

Queste invece sono le pagine per le quali Farkas ha registrato uno sviluppo più marcato lungo quest’ultimo anno:

• “Online Reference – with the famous list of libraries that are providing IM Reference
• Gaming – which seems to have been made the official gaming knowledge repository of Jenny Levine and her merry band of gamers
• Web Browser Extensions – the work of Gianluca Drago and Richard Akerman, this may just be the best collection of links to toolbars, bookmarklets, user scripts, search plugins, coding info and reference works (on browser extensions) out there
• Website Design – This page is good, but with so many tech savvy librarians out there, I know it could be a lot better. The wiki will soon be home to the web4lib Manager’s Reference Center an excellent collection of links for library Web managers
• Online Communities – this was originally created to collect success stories for WebJunction’s Focus on Online Community for Public Libraries, but people have continued to add some terrific stories about libraries building community online
• The Podcasting page offers links to great library and library-related podcasts. Know of others? Go ahead and add them!”

Community 2.0 secondo InfoTangle

Il meme 2.0 ha prodotto articolazioni concettuali le più svariate – la library 2.0 è ormai di pubblico dominio tra gli information professional, ma per esempio recentemente mi sono imbattuta negli statement dell’e-learning 2.0, del business 2.0, della economia della conoscenza 2.0 e così via.

Ellyssa Kroski, nel sempre sorprendente InfoTangle, dedica una riflessione al concetto di community 2.0, ovvero a quelle forme di coesistenza virtual-tecnologica rese possibili grazie agli strumenti di condivisione della conoscenza propri del web 2.0.

“Community 2.0 is about user-generated content and collaboration. It is a contribution culture. It is all the more prevalent because our community now comes with us through our handhelds, our phones, our laptops. It is mobile, it is ubiquitous, and it is continuous computing. Community is the new king”.

E, passando all’elencazione sociologica delle tipologie di comunità, vediamo che “There are several different types of web-based communities that have emerged online:

• Communities of Interest: These communities evolve and revolve around shared interests such as music, videos, or other subject matter. These are the Myspace, YouTube, and TagWorld sites-types. Users exchange, produce, and consume information as well as share a public space with like-minded members.
• Communities of Practice: This community type shares and produces knowledge and information within a professional network. The social site LinkedIn as well as the community of librarian blogs known as the biblioblogosphere would both be considered communities of practice.
• Goal-Oriented Communities of Interest: When users share a tangible goal as well as an area of interest, they gather in a goal-oriented community of interest. The best example of this would be the Wikipedia.
• Learner’s Communities: These communities encompass those who share a similar educational goal. They are the often-times private networks of students enrolled in particular classes. These could include course management sites, message boards or new Web 2.0 elearning sites such as Nuuvo or Instructables.

Mentre, sempre secondo la Kroski, le attività che i partecipanti delle varie comunità condividono sono raggruppabili in ben 17 categorie:

1. Blogging
2. Wikis
3. User Ratings
4. P2P File Sharing
5. Content Sharing
6. User Comments
7. Trackbacks
8. Blogrolls
9. User Profiles
10. Most Popular Lists
11. Tagging
12. Open Source Software
13. Podcasting
14. Vlogging
15. IM/Chat
16. Internet Forums
17. Mobile Communities

In conclusione è possibile affermare che “Community 2.0 fosters sharing, collaboration, and consumer-created content. It promotes group conversation and input. Community 2.0 is an organic, bottom-up phenomenon enabling users to author their own environments.”

Socializer: tanti tagging in un solo click

I siti di social tagging sono cresciuti in maniera esponenziale e spesso ci si trova di fronte alla necessità di archiviare un certo link presso più contenitori di folksonomy e di dover moltiplicare le operazioni di categorizzazione tante volte quanti sono i siti che offrono il tagging.

Socializer interviene a colmare questa lacuna: si tratta di una utility che si frappone tra il sito che si desidera salvare e i vari motori di social tagging, attraverso l’uso di una schermata con l’elenco di questi ultimi nella quale l’utente può selezionare di volta in volta il provider che fa al caso suo.

Disponibili plug-in per le più diffuse piattaforme blog (Word Press, Movable Type, Blogger etc.) e il javascript per realizzare la feature.

LibX – a Firefox extension for libraries

LibX is a Firefox extension that provides direct access to your library’s resources. LibX is an open source framework from which editions for specific libraries can be built. Currently, 19 academic and public libraries are offering LibX editions to their users, an additional 44 libraries are testing editions. Take a look at the screenshots & screencasts.

LibX Features

• Toolbar & right-click context menu: Direct access to the catalog via a toolbar and context (right-click) menu – automatic construction of simple or advanced searches. Search by entering terms, select and right-click, or select and drag-and-drop without having to navigate to the library catalog page.
• Adaptive context menus: The context menu changes automatically depending on what is selected. For instance, if an ISBN is selected, the context menu will offer the option to search directly using that specific identifier. Currently recognized are CrossRef DOIs, ISBNs, and ISSNs, and PubMed IDs.
• OpenURL support: LibX gives direct access to your institution’s OpenURL resolver, which can directly point you at the full text of an article you are looking for.
• Google Scholar Support (The ‘Magic Button’): Select text and search for the selected text on Google Scholar. In addition, LibX will read Scholar’s results for you, determine whether the paper was found and if so, ask the OpenURL resolver for a paid-for copy, should you not have access to the copy to which Scholar links.
• Web Localization via Embedded Cues: LibX places localized cues in web pages you visit if the library has resources related to that page. Whenever you see the cue, click on the link to look at what the library has to offer.
• Autolinking: Based on Jesse Ruderman’s autolinking script, LibX automatically links ISBNs, ISSNs, DOIs, and other identifiers to the catalog or OpenURL resolver.
• Support for xISBN: Support for OCLC’s xISBN: find a book, given an ISBN, even if the library holds this book under a different ISBN.

LibX was created by Annette Bailey and Godmar Back.