Discovery Report #4: Jess

Peter Brantley, a regular contributor to O’Reilly’s blog, Radar, recently posted his notes from a workshop he attended in his role as the Executive Director for the Digital Library Federation, whose aim was to discuss and create a model for dealing with online footage coming out of the Iraq War and other places. This footage is obviously often violent and shocking, and many online archives and websites have been asked to remove such material. The question is complicated not only by the mission of archives to collect and make documents (especially those of historic importance) available to the public at large, but also by questions of rights, privacy, censorship, social and personal responsibility. In the end, the group decided that the archival mission of maintaining an accurate historical record and access to information should be of primary concern, though user feedback would determine whether certain videos and images should be preceded by a warning or removed altogether. The comments at the end of the post continue the conversation, wondering if the term “terrorist” isn’t a relative one in times of war, to which Brantley responded with a graphic description of one video (preceded by a warning), and a firm declaration that such actions, no matter who performs them, are terror, that war is terror, and that it is the duty of archivists to preserve documentation and access to that documentation in the hopes that they will be informative, potentially even enlightening.
In a case like this, where the mission of archives of any type is called into question by an urge to protect, self-censor, or respond to public criticism, it is heartening to see a thoughtful discussion take place among professionals. Archives and other repositories of digital information have an especial vulnerability to public scrutiny since their contents are more widely and easily accessible. I am glad to hear that the participants in this workshop came down on the side of transparency, conservation and preservation rather than following in the footsteps of a media that has yet to show the American public what is happening on the ground in Iraq, either because of outside political pressure, or a sense of self-censorship and misplaced propriety. It is important that the terrors and horrors of war are preserved, studied, and openly available to the public, especially in the case of a public that is funding a war. The question is, as it always must be in any kind of information center, who decides what is information? Who decides what is valid, and what can be accessible to all? In the end, if libraries, archives, and other repositories of information are to maintain the democratic ideal and serve the public good, the urge must be towards full disclosure of information. For the sake of future generations, if not our own, it is of vital importance that a record of this war is preserved, and with this war, more than any other, there is an opportunity to maintain nearly immediate access to the record of the war, and from many more vantage points than ever before. Archivists and other information professionals have a duty to posterity above all else. They should be sensitive to information that is potentially dangerous, even lethal, and provide disclosure about potentially upsetting, traumatizing information, but above all else, they must preserve the public record for study, and whenever possible, to check the record for authenticity.

Open Library

Open Library is a digitization project, much like Google Books, only with librarians. In other words, my dreams come true.

Here is their page regarding librarianship. They're working on a new schema, calling it futurelib. This all seems a little bit pie-in-the-sky, but I tend to run on the optimistic side myself. I signed up for their listserv on my Pratt email. I'll let you know if anything good comes up.

information as art

Click the title above for one thing. Click here for another.

a blog about blogs about libraries

Shoot the Moon

"Books, films, and other informational materials are the weapons of this propaganda effort; THE LIBRARY IS THE ARSENAL. "

-Eric Moon, 1965

Libraries and the Long Tail with a Technical Divide

In this article, Dempsey analyzes how the “long tail” effects libraries that operate within the online environment. He briefly explains what a long tail means, how this impacts libraries, and suggests ways to improve the current system. Chris Anderson coined the long tail argument in his October 2004 article for Wired magazine. There he explained that huge online distribution businesses (such as amazon.com) can sell more items from hard to find niche markets than it will from frequently requested items in popular markets. The number of niche items far outnumbers the orders placed for popular items. Dempsey applies this argument to the library, which contains “the full range of what has been made available as well as what is now available.” For the library to sustain a long tail and subsequently a viable future, it must employ a number of tools similarly employed by online search engines and large media distribution businesses. These include the unification of search systems, analyze catalog use and circulation, “provide transaction support” and utilize an increasingly semantic web. The key as Dempsey puts it “is about make it much easier to allow a reader to find it and get it, whatever ‘it’ is.”
I actually enjoyed this article and agreed with many of Dempsey’s opinions and suggestions; however I take issue with his assumption that everyone is has internet access or at the very least a computer. His long tail library would serve only the technological elite, leaving the digitally divided behind. He cites Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science, (1- Books are for use. 2- Every reader has his or her book. 3- Every book has its reader. 4- Save the time of the reader. 5- The library is a growing organism.) and suggests the use of semantic systems as way to advance them. It is amazing and incredibly useful technology, but we cannot forget how these continuous changes will affect those not plugged into the network. How libraries will respond to their needs?

information architecture needs semantic structures

An interesting slideshow about the relationship between semantics/ontologies and IA.