We attended a panel this morning with Margaret Heller, Patrick Danowski and Tom Roos on the subject of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 (the latter, in case you were wondering, was envisioned by Roos as the ultimate arrival of the semantic web allowing for much greater sophistication in the retrieval of information).
Topics discussed included privacy issues (and librarians' role in educating users about these, especially in relation to social networking - not easy if like Margaret you work in Illinois where libraries have been forced by state legislation to block the use of such sites!); the inherent subversiveness of blogging (and how they challenge authority by giving the tools of communication to the masses - making them an obvious 'fit' for the mission of libraries); the usefulness of tagging and librarians' tendency to be 'prescriptivist rather than descriptivist' (>Margaret) in their use of language.
The discussion was lively and interesting ideas were shared, however what we couldn't arrive at an answer for was the time-old question of how exactly we're going to arrive at the semantic web, or what librarians' role in this will be. Will user-generated metadata help get us there? (and how many people are adding it anyway - Tom Roos says he rarely tags anything since it costs him time but the benefit is to someone else) Or is the breakthrough likely to be not in the content or metadata but in the search technology itself? We hope to revisit some of these areas of discussion in our workshop, tomorrow afternoon.
Please use the comments to add your own thoughts on any of these issues.
More later!
Showing posts with label role. Show all posts
Showing posts with label role. Show all posts
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Monday, 28 January 2008
Live from Zadar!
Greetings from BOBCATSSS2008! (and apologies for any typing errors - this is a very strange keyboard!)
This morning we heard two keynote speakers:
Ana Marusic addressed the role of the medical publisher, a field in which issues of trust are paramount since lives depend upon the publication of accurate evidence.
It was interesting to hear her describe the role of the modern publisher as moving away from being a gatekeeper and toward that of an educator - similar to the shift Matt and I would suggest is taking place in the role of the librarian.
The second keynote was from Claudia Lux, president of the IFLA, who was also interested in the librarian role, but specifically how we need to ensure that those who provide our funding (be they local or central government authorities, or even vice chancellors!) perceive the value of our service. She argues that we need to be advocates for our services and for our profession, to "stop complaining" (where have I heard that before ;-) and to start talking about our successes.
This morning we heard two keynote speakers:
Ana Marusic addressed the role of the medical publisher, a field in which issues of trust are paramount since lives depend upon the publication of accurate evidence.
It was interesting to hear her describe the role of the modern publisher as moving away from being a gatekeeper and toward that of an educator - similar to the shift Matt and I would suggest is taking place in the role of the librarian.
The second keynote was from Claudia Lux, president of the IFLA, who was also interested in the librarian role, but specifically how we need to ensure that those who provide our funding (be they local or central government authorities, or even vice chancellors!) perceive the value of our service. She argues that we need to be advocates for our services and for our profession, to "stop complaining" (where have I heard that before ;-) and to start talking about our successes.
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