The Work of Knowledge - a More Marketable Me

"2. On page 212, Weinberger gives an example of a third-order description of an imaginary person. Imagine that you are preparing a resume for a job application – a first order information package - how would you better tag yourself in terms of the third order to make yourself more marketable?"

Here's some bits of my resume, transformed into the third order:

Additions are in blue.  Tags are in green.

Summary (what I am best at)

I am great at intercultural communication.  I am passionate about teaching children, but they wear me out at my age, and so I chose knowledge organization and management as my fourth career, because books don't move around. 

Education

Master of Library and Information Science September 2012- present

Kent State University, Kent, OH

GPA 3.67 on a 4.0 scale  (brain cells work well, even if the rest of the body has succumbed to gravity and age)

Bachelor’s of Arts, Biology; minor in Chemistry and English 1986 - 1990

Wilmington College, Wilmington, OH

GPA 3.75 on a 4.0 scale  (love science and am eternally curious)

Diverse Experiences - 

Head of Landscaping Committee April 2012 - September 2012

Humane Society of Central Illinois

Normal, IL (threw this in because my sister said I had to show what I had been doing with my time the last 20 years.  Like landscaping, but the heat was too much for me, and we had the worst drought in 20 years.  Mediocre results at best.)

Expatriate March 2007 - December 2011

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Hired and managed eleven full time household staff members, most of whom did not speak English. Planned logistics and executed 17 international trips for a family of four, to Europe, Asia, or the U.S. Enforced household security, responsible for food shipments, planned and managed special events for up to 75 guests. Managed a household budget of $50,000 per year.

Managing staff was a big learning curve for me.  I didn't like it very much, although I loved having the help around the house.

I became very flexible and learned to work around infrastructure problems.  I learned that tap water can become electrified, and that wearing rubber-soled shoes in the house will save you from all but the really strong shocks.  I learned to identify poisonous snakes, that geckos cannot harm you but chirp very loudly, and that mosquitos are the most dangerous thing in India.  I learned that is is very hard to make cheese in the tropics.  I learned that domesticated dog breeds are fine, but the street dogs in India are genetically closer to wolves, and the packs fight loudly all night.  I learned that lepers and their families are still shunned in India, even though leprosy is curable.  I learned that polio still maims and kills.   I learned to bargain hard.  I learned that rabies always kills, and the vaccine only gives humans a few extra days to find medical aid.  I learned that if the TV starts smoking and flames come out of it, you're probably OK; but if the generator starts smoking and flames come out of it, you're in real trouble.  I learned that I can handle flooding up to my knees in the house, but that water pouring out of the electrical outlets is not good.  I learned that the combination of the generator catching fire AND flooding up to my knees is my breaking point. 

I overcame my fear of head lice, researched many different parasites, and am proud to say that I have effective and efficient de-lousing and de-worming skills.  I hate heat and do not do well in it.    I am highly adaptable, good at problem solving, and very practical.

Tutor July 1991 - December 1992

Japan Tokyo North Mission, Tokyo, Japan

Taught ESL one evening a week; studied and became fluent in spoken Japanese
When I returned from Japan 20 years ago, I dreamt in Japanese, and translated from Japanese to English in my head.  I had lived with only Japanese roommates for nearly 18 months, studied hard, and it soaked in to the point where reverse culture shock was worse than the original form.  Sadly, now, I only understand about 30% of what I hear in Japanese, but I do feel that if I were to return to Japan, I could regain my comprehension of the language faster than someone who had never learned it.

Toxicology Intern June 1990 - June 1991

British Petroleum, America

Tested computerized toxicology program; analyzed results; prepared summary and reports for publishing.

Discovered that data about poisoned rats does not make good dinner conversation.  Also, gray cubicles depress me.  As a side note, you should never, ever, ever, wash your hair with gasoline, no matter how greasy it got in the engine room.

Library Page (part-time)

Coventry Village Library, Cleveland Heights, Ohio August 1990 - May 1991

Shelved books and read shelves for accuracy in book organization.

I'm very detail-oriented.

Scholar and Presenter February 1989 - December 1989

Palmerston North, New Zealand

Traveled and presented American culture to Rotary groups as part of the Rotary Foundation International Study Abroad program.

Full-time student at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

My first trip abroad.  I could not believe how much I learned about myself.  Public speaking does not bother me.  

Editor-in-Chief July 1988 - December 1988

Wilmington College Hourglass, Wilmington, OH

Hired, trained and evaluated six reporters and staff; edited all articles; managed $10,000 budget.

100% good at meeting deadlines; 100% stressed out at having weekly ones.

Awards and Honors (I'm gifted academically, with a high reading comprehension and very fast reading speed.)

National Merit Scholarship Finalist 1986

Wilmington College Presidents Scholarship 1986-1990

Science Achievement Award, Wilmington College 1987

Outstanding Freshman Agricultural Student, Wilmington College 1986

Wilmington College Leader Scholar Recipient 1986-1990

Ruth Durham Biology Scholarship 1986

Wilmington College Dean’s List 1986-1990

Pickerington High School PTO Scholarship 1986

Weinberger and Shedroff

I've posted the diagram of Shedroff's model before, so I won't post it again.  In Shedroff's model, knowledge includes conversation, storytelling, and the integration of data in a localized context.  Knowledge occurs after information is organized and presented, and because of a stimulus.  It is part of experience, and leads to understanding.  Understanding occurs on a personal level, because of contemplation, evaluation, interpretation, and retrospection.

This ties in with Weinberger's statement that "understanding is metaknowledge".  The ability to understand on a semantic web level relies on the ability to take metadata, or the description of data (data about data, so to speak), put it all together, and look at the global picture.  Metaknowledge is like Shedroff's "wisdom" circle, in that the person learning has taken their knowledge (metadata) and evaluated it, based on a relationship model, to decide how it fits in with the entire collection of metadata.

I would conclude that Weinberger is re-stating Shedroff's model in light of technological advances (the semantic web, RDF, etc.).

The Work of Knowledge - Question 1

"1. In Wikipedia, look for some of the concepts or topics we have discussed in class and share your impressions and comments about the information presented. Is there anything you would add or edit?"

I first searched Wikipedia for "berry picking knowledge", but nothing related to the search strategy model came up. I then tightened up the search by inputting "berry picking information retrieval strategy", which produced two truly bizarre results: "spawn (biology)" and "desert". Wikipedia informed me that I could ask for a page about the berry picking information retrieval strategy to be created, but I chose to change the search entry to "berrypicking model" instead. This yielded the results that I was looking for: three hits - 1. cognitive models of information retrieval (section Berrypicking);  2. Marcia J. Bates (the creator of the berrypicking model); and 3. Browsing.

I clicked on "browsing" and was informed that it was an important subject in Library and Information Science, and that for the topic of herbivore "browsing", I should check out another page. I was also informed by Wikipedia that the article lacked inline citations, and would I please add some to make it more precise.  Unfortunately I had no citations to add.

Scrolling down the page led me to this entry:

"Controversies [edit source | editbeta]

As with any kind of human psychology is browsing understood in biological, behavioral or cognitive terms on the one hand or in social, historical and cultural terms on the other hand. Marcia Bates (2007) researched browsing from "behavioural" approaches, while Hjørland (2011a+b) defended a social view. Bates found that browsing is rooted in our history as exploratory, motile animals hunting for food and nesting opportunities. According to Hjørland (2011a), on the other hand, Marcia Bates' browsing for information about browsing is governed by her behavioral assumptions, while Hjørland's browsing for information about browsing is governed by his socio-cultural understanding of human psychology. In short: Human browsing is based on our conceptions and interests."
I would definitely edit the first sentence, since it barely makes sense without commas. The entire paragraph seems very disjointed; the last sentence has nothing to do with the controversy between Bates and Hjorland, and I don't think that the description of Bates' theory is adequate.  Poorly written, is my diagnosis.

So I clicked on Marcia Bates to see what Wikipedia has to say about her. I ran into the following interesting warning: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (September 2012)"

Well, that's interesting. I'm glad to know that Wikipedia doesn't condone libel, although I wouldn't want to be the person deciding the definition of "contentious material".

Reading about Marcia Bates' career and her contributions to search strategy theory was pretty interesting. This article did note that she and Hjorland "discussed", "responded" and "rejoinded" their respective theories. Despite the fact that "rejoinded" is not a word - it should be "rejoinder", which is a noun that the Wikipedia author apparently tried to turn into a verb - it was obvious from this sentence that Bates and Hjorland had an argument about who was right. Quite clever the way that the Wikipedia author avoided any libelous statements, by attempting to create a new English verb.

I just had to complete my research about berrypicking on Wikipedia by clicking on the first hit, "cognitive models of information retrieval (section Berrypicking)", which Wikipedia informed me had no links to other articles, making it a sad and lonely orphan. I felt sorry for it, especially since one would think that such a diverse topic would have many links. Anyway, I would link it to Bates and Hjorlands' pages, since they are obviously extremely interested in this topic.

I was proud to note that "Berrypicking" was the first category listed; Marcia Bates was prominently noted as its originator; and Hjorland was nowhere to be seen. Bates' theory was simply and easily explained, but a random sentence about a man named Salton was thrown in the middle of the explanation, which rather threw one off. Sadly there was no link attached to Salton's name, although the citation led one to a computer science article published in 1968. Clicking on the citation yielded the information that Gerard Salton was quite well-known in the field of computer science, so perhaps having his name connected with her theory somehow helps matters. Marcia Bates was not mentioned in his Wikipedia entry.

In conclusion, these three Wikipedia articles need a little bit of editing for grammatical purposes (especially the non-existant "rejoinded"), but overall, were pretty informative.  The biggest problem that I had was in the original search term - berry picking vs. berrypicking.  A simple space changed the entire set of search results.  It would be more efficient if Wikipedia used a more relational approach, and suggested changing my search to "berrypicking", but one can't have everything.

Messiness as a Virtue, Question 4

"4. What are the library prototypes? Experiment with identifying three levels of abstraction for libraries. Be sure to think about how different cultures may think about/abstract libraries."

The first, and most obvious, library prototype that I can think of is a book, or monograph. The prototype book would be bound (hard or softcover) and contain paper pages which have print on them. This prototype would be in a middle layer of abstraction - that is, the book contains words (the first level); many books make up a library (third level); the book itself is the middle level of abstraction.

I read Cleopatra: A Life last summer, and one of the things that I learned was that during Cleopatra's reign in Egypt, the county ran on a bureaucratic system which relied on extensive and detailed written records. These were not written on paper and bound into a book; instead, they were written on papyrus (made from reeds) and rolled into scrolls (because papyrus is thicker than our paper and less pliable, so it cracks). So, a library prototype for an ancient Egyptian would be rolled scrolls of papyrus, probably with tax records and other governmental data on them.

Ancient Tamil people (Indians) did not use paper either. Instead, they carved intricate scenes on palm tree leaves. I have some mounted and hanging on my wall. The leaves are quite large and dried, but one cannot roll them up, or they will split. Nor can one bind them into a group. So, palm tree "books" consist of only one large leaf with writing on it. These are two good example of how other cultures would view a prototype monograph.

Another, more abstract, library prototype would be the concept of free public libraries. This is an American prototype. Many countries either charge for library usage, do not loan out materials, or do not have libraries at all. Many libraries are connected to institutions, and one must be a member or student of said institution to use the materials therein. When we lived in southern India, I was only aware of one library that was not attached to a university (and therefore closed to the public); it was a private library, run like a business - you had to pay a fee to rent a book.

So the very concept of a group of books in one room, open to the public, which can be taken home and read, is only a valid prototype in some countries; not in all.

Messiness as a Virtue - Question 3

"3. Relate what Weinberger is saying about the definitional view and the prototype view to the information behavior models presented in this course."

Well, Weinberger's explanation of the definitional view - Aristotle's neat and tidy system of classifying everything in a hierarchichal fashion - is traditionally used in libraries to organize the books, serials, etc. The Dewey Decimal system is a great example of a definitional view of the world - everything is defined and organized into a category, and assigned a number. The ASK model (Information Search and Retrieval), which follows a flowchart of steps to find information, is a definitional model of information behavior.

The prototype view, which Weinberger explains as "concepts can be clear without having clear definitions if they're organized around undisputed examples, or prototypes," (Weinberger, p 185) is based more along the lines of relationships between objects or data, not the definition of the item itself. Weinberger gives several examples of this theory, based on Eleanor Rosch's work with different cultures identifying similar concepts, such as colors. It was very interesting to me to find out how few groups of colors people across the globe actually identify. This model is more like Devin's Sense-Making Model, which uses a more fluid structure to relate data to the user's need.  

Weinberger discusses the prototype model and the Semantic web extensively in Chapter 10, and I found his interpretation of RDF easier to understand than other explanations that I have read.  Using the triplicate relationship model, RDF allows people to connect data points by relationship, in a richer way than using a point-to-point, or linking, system.  Currently, libraries are attempting to move towards this relationship-orientated data searching model.

Messiness as a Virtue - Question 1

Some of the messes in my life?  Concrete messes or relationship messes?  Let's stick with concrete, since people can't be neatly slotted into little cubbies.

I must admit this question is a little vague, and a lot personal to me.  I guess I should treat it like an interview question.  But an interview for what?  For being a maid or a librarian?

Well.  The degree of messiness is judged differently by different individuals.  Right now, my craft workshop in the basement is a mess to me, because it needs swept and picked up.  My kids have been home for the summer due to the bizarre and outdated U.S. school calendar, so they've been down there with the big screen TV.  It's not a mess to them, but then, not much is a mess to them.  Generally, I make them bring up any food or utensils they've taken down there, and don't allow my daughter any access to glitter (long story).  About once a week someone sweeps it.  Since both kids are currently traveling out of state, that someone will probably be me.

My craft supplies themselves are organized, but in a fashion that makes sense to me, and is more semantic than hierarchical.  I like to have all of the supplies for one craft project in one area, rather than having all of the supplies grouped by type.  So, right now, there's a lot of Christmas stuff out on my craft table, because I'm working on a Christmas craft.

I just cleaned out my family financial files; that was good, because it made me feel more in control.  A lot of times, I think that people organize so that they feel more in control, even though in the long run, it may not make any difference.  So, the files are organized.

My daughter insisted that we do our school supply shopping early, so that's done; she's registered, ordered gym clothes, ordered the yearbook, and only have to attend one orientation.  My son attends boarding school, so he's set.  I'm looking forward to having them back in school, because I like routine.

That's about it.

Messiness as a Virtue - Question 2

I think that Krebs has underlined the value of an individual person in an organization; by that, I mean that his system of finding out and mapping the unofficial communication channels in an organization recognizes the value of each individual.  The example given about "Mary", who had many more spokes coming out of her wheel and hence was much more valuable to the company, and the "jerk" who outranked Mary but had very few spokes coming out of his wheel, tells it all.  In any organization, the individual - their personality, honesty, reliability, ability to communicate - outweighs their position, no matter what powers that position may hold.

This all reminds me of when I worked as a secretary for IBM, twenty years ago.  I got the job through nepotism; my father and uncle both worked there, although they were not my supervisor.  But I kept it - working every summer and every college break - because I could learn quickly, communicate effectively, and was reliable.  I learned a lot about the corporate world at that job.  I learned that high-powered executives might wear nice clothes and have lots of power, but they also might not be able to manage the latest phone technology.  I learned that fast and accurate typing, clear diction and prompt delivery of messages, and a smile, go a long way towards success.  I learned that finding out what kind of drink and doughnut each manager likes for breakfast will increase early morning meeting attendance, without costing the company anything more, since they were already paying for a catering service.  And, my manager pulled me aside one day, and told me that I would look much more professional if I stopped chewing my nails.  I was very grateful for that advice; I was able to quit because of it.

What I learned overall was just what Krebs delineates: some people will always be "out of the loop" because of their management style, personalities, etc.; but others, no matter what their position, will know everything.  I'm not saying that I knew everything, but I was surprised to find out that in my desk there was a key to the lock box where all the keys to the manager's offices were kept.  Every night, each manager carefully locked up his or her office; while my desk was never locked.  Anyone on the night shift could have come in and gotten into any manager's office.  When I pointed that out, they took the key away from me. :)

Yes, I'd certainly be interested in pursuing Kreb's system in information science.  It makes the entire process more efficient if the actual communication lines (Kreb's data) and the organization chart (Macallum's system) line up.  Of course, they'll never line up perfectly, but the better they align, the faster things get done.

Library ILS - Module 10, Question 1

Very interesting lecture.  I got to thinking about how great it would be to have every library tied into and using WorldCat, instead of having their own particular catalogues, which sounded like a great idea - at first.  That thought led to the realization that one person or entity would then have control over the world's library catalogue.  (I know I'm generalizing a bit - after all, it would take more than one person to do this - but still, the concept is the same.)  Is this a good idea?  Communism does wonders with that model, and look how that affects not only the people in Communist countries, but the entire world.

I've already blogged about my recent experience with China's blockage of accurate information about the Avian flu; that's a great example of how to control people, as a group, by feeding them enough information to make them feel like they know what is going on, without giving them all of the information (or the truth).  This takes away their free agency.

Yesterday, my husband came home and told me how badly the slowdown in China's building industry has affected his company.  His company sells a lot of building equipment to China, but their sales are down so much that they are talking about having to take drastic measures (enforced layoffs, 25% cut in personnel, etc.).  It's an American company, employing mainly Americans, but because China has discontinued its building boom (completely without any basis that he knows about), it's going to affect him and global economics in general.  China certainly has not come forth with a reason for their decision, or with any transparency about their economic situation.

So there you go.  One country can have a huge ripple effect for the world; one entity in charge of the only library catalogue could also have a huge effect - positive or negative.  I love the idea of a unified, searchable, one-and-only library catalogue, but because we are dealing with information and not light bulbs (see earlier post about wishing all light bulbs had the same size base), it's far more serious if that entity decides to withhold or change what is available.

What does everyone else think?

Anil Gupta

Wow!  Get a load of that rapid-fire English - did it set your teeth on edge, or just sound like gibberish?  Could you understand it?  It gets easier with time.  It makes me homesick to hear it.

Anyway, this Honeybee Network sounds wonderful; a very grass-roots information exchange system.  There are many micro economic non-profit projects in India; usually helped out or started by expatriates.  Some of them are very successful.  Mr. Gupta is right; India is a hotbed of invention, led by necessity.  What he doesn't discuss so much is that because necessity leads this invention, a lot of things that are used in India are outdated or useless in more developed countries.  Case in point:

One Woman's Antiques are Another's Treasure

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 2:03:36 PM

A lesson in cultural paradigms

People often ask, or comment upon, what it's like to live in such a poverty-stricken country and experience the economic disparities. It's hard. It's hard from all sides - to be the suddenly elite rich, having not been groomed for that role; and on the other hand, to see such poverty and not be able to fix it. As a friend remarked, India really shows you your character.

My latest experience with this paradigm has been with an old sewing machine that the movers took out of its cabinet (which I use as a nightstand) and packed up in a box, along with all its assorted bits and bobs. I got the machine from my sister, who had refinished the cabinet, and it sat in my house, hidden by the cabinet, for a good ten years. I never gave it a thought unless I had to pry little hands out of its drawers. As far as I knew, the machine didn't work and was too old to be useful anyway.

When we got here I put the box in the garage and forgot about it again. Recently, though, my driver's wife began to take sewing lessons, and he asked if he could have the machine. Since I never intended to use it, I willingly gave it to him.

Today his wife, her sewing instructor, the director of the sewing program, and my driver stopped by on a trip to Mahaballipuram. They raved about the machine. Apparently it is an electric machine, and it works. She is so happy to have this machine - something that was entirely an afterthought to me.

This isn't the first time that something that I've considered antique, so old it's useless, or decorative, has been put to use on a daily basis by the Indian people. In Austria, it was a cast-iron iron designed to be filled with charcoal and used - I saw it being sold as an antique in the flea market. I have a picture of a man using one exactly like it here in India for his streetside ironing business. In my kitchen, there is a decorative coal-oil lamp which my maids keep asking me to buy oil for, to use when there are power outages. Not to mention the treadle sewing machines which are all over the city, complete with wooden cabinets - just like the two antique cabinets that I own.

It's a very humbling experience to see these items and realize that this is all people have; this is the end game for them. There is no thought of getting a more modern appliance, because electricity is too iffy and the item is too expensive. Truly, what I consider to be useless in the modern world is still a highly prized possession in India.

And that's what it's like to move from the first-world to the third-world economic system.

Brewster Kahle - Module 10, Question 2

I wanted to jump up and shout "AMEN!" at the end of this Ted Talk.  What an awesome idea!!  If only  people were perfect, Creative Commons would work, and Brewster would have his free library.

If only.

But backing up, let me show you what people need first:

The Boy from Assam

Monday, September 22, 2008 5:38:06 PM

Always something to surprise you here in India.

Meet our new guard:


His name is Anil. He is 18, born in 1988. (You do the math. Funny how that works, eh?) He replaces Sadeek, the man with two wives, who went back to Orissa to tend to one of his father-in-laws, who is ill.

So the guard company sends this young soul out to us. Anil speaks no Tamil, no English, and his boots are too big for him, making him walk slightly knock-kneed. Everyone likes him because he will do anything they ask without arguing - once he understands what they want. Fetch the pot, get the tea, be the replacement for one of our guards who is chronically late.....you get the picture. He's the low man boy on the totem pole.

After a week I can't stand it anymore. Even though I didn't hire him, it's killing me to be a party to child labor. If I fire him, he's out a job and on the street; and the guard company will probably just send me another boy. Besides, he claims to be 18. I need to be more creative. I had Mr. Fixit, who speaks passable Hindi, ask him about his schooling. He's been up to the fifth grade. He doesn't know the English alphabet, but he can count in English - up to 18. The teacher (and mother) in me rose up and demanded action - I sent out some workbooks that Levi has outgrown and told the head guard to tutor him. After all, they do virtually nothing all day. Within two days, Anil had the English alphabet mastered. On to phonics.

Side note:  Anil left after about two weeks.  I had given him an English picture dictionary and asked if he was willing to let me tutor him, but he was too embarrassed.  Anil was from a little orphan state in northeastern India, Assam.  I call it an "orphan" because if you look at the map, it lies between Bhutan and Bangladesh, nearly completely cut off from the rest of India, and right in the middle of an area that is known for its extreme poverty - even by Indian standards.  Plus, there is that pesky 50+ year-old border dispute with Pakistan, to keep people busy fighting and dying.  First, water; then, food; then, shelter; then, safety; then, maybe, education.

My driver, whom I call Mr. Fixit in this blog, told me that Anil was homesick.  Maybe he was.

Pictures that Are Worth a Thousand Words - Module 9, Lesson 1

This lecture covered my passion - poverty, illiteracy, and the availability of information worldwide.

So, instead of going on and on about my feelings on these topics, I thought that I would show you a real-life experience of ours, when we lived in India.

This is our high-speed internet connection, put in especially for us, after a year of bribing, begging, pleading, and pressure from my husband's multi-national company.  It cost approximately $30,000 USD per year.  Internet is not normally that expensive in India, but in our case, my husband needed high-speed access to do international conference calls late into the night, after his office building closed (think global time differences).  So we lucked out and had high-speed internet.  I don't know of anyone else, expatriate or native, who had that there.  None of our staff had internet; none had any books other than the ledger that the guards kept (a logbook); all of them had cell phones.

This was our newly-installed high-speed internet connection in India, at the point where it came out of the wall around the house.

It randomly jumped out of the dirt lane we lived on, about halfway down the 1/2 mile to the paved road.  No idea why.

OhioLink

I already had an OhioLink account, but I subscribed to the OCLC abstract service through the Electronic Journal Database.  I enjoy keeping up with OCLC's latest developments, and am especially interested in the Virtual International Authority File.  I also browsed through the different international aspects of OCLC, and will keep up with those resources better. 

It's interesting to me that Ohio has so many consortiums and groups of librarians that cooperate to disseminate information.  It gives me hope that eventually, perhaps the world will accept Creative Commons.

Social Knowing

Shedroff's Model of Understanding

"Use Schedroff's model of Understanding to describe how your knowledge of a particular topic was affected by the new understanding of authority that Weinberger articulates in the last paragraph of the section on Authority and Truth, p. 143." 

"In a miscellaneous world, an Oz-like authority that speaks in a single voice with unshakeable confidence is a blowhard.  Authority now comes from enabling us inescapably fallible creatures to explore the differences among us, together." (Weinberger, p 143)

OK, let's look at Facebook:

I had no desire to be on Facebook until my foster daughter went to college.  It quickly became apparent that if I ever wanted to know how she was doing, I was going to have to do it via Facebook.  It was the only way she communicated long-distance.

So I got a Facebook account.

For a while it was fun to post, to browse, to find old friends.  I enjoy the fact that I can search and re-connect with people that I have lost touch with; I like maintaining relationships.

But, as Weinberger points out, the knowledge is between us; not inherent.  It is in what we don't say, not what we do say.  

So here is me being transparent.  You will notice that my Facebook photo is a daffodil.  Daffodils are symbolic of many things for me, not the least of which is that they grow in almost any soil.  They are hardy, and they are beautiful, to me.  Daffodils are also poisonous.

My Facebook banner is a photo of two of my cats.  I have discussed my cats on this blog before, so I will not go on about them again.  But, you can infer that I like my cats, because they are the largest photo on my Facebook page.

Now, if you check out the rest of my Facebook photos, you will see that there are exactly twelve attached to my account, through tags.  I did not post any of them.  Two of them are of people whom I have never met, and places I have never been to.  Further research reveals that a friend tagged them and somehow attached them to me, but again, I know nothing about them.  They are completely unrelated to me.

One of them has a Christmas tree in it.  That is not my house, but I did sell the tree to a friend in India when we left.  Pine trees being pretty rare in the tropics, she was excited enough to tag the photo of the tree with my name.  If you showed me this photo on paper, without the clickable link, I would never know what connection it had to me.

Six of them have children in them.  Only some of these children are mine.  I will leave you to guess which ones.  

One of them has two women in them, standing at the Red Fort in Agra, overlooking a very misty and distant Taj Mahal.  That was one of the best trips of my life, with one of my oldest and dearest friends.  That photo alone is one that I would have posted.  However, I am not Muslim; other than architectural beauty, the Taj itself has no meaning to me.  The beauty was experiencing the trip with my friend.

I am actually only present in five of the photos.  You will note that there is a beautiful young woman in four of them.  She is not related to me, but she is a great person, and a good friend.  As a born-digital youngster, you can learn a lot about her from her Facebook page.  Go ahead, click on it.  Her name is Crystallyn, and she has 542 photos attached to her Facebook page.  Most of them are of her.  She is a model, very photogenic, and you'll enjoy her amazing pictures.

Using Shedroff's model, what do we learn from the two Facebook photo spreads?  Well, first of all, I've gathered and researched data on my Facebook photos, by clicking on them to find out who posted them.  I discovered that 17% were unrelated to me.  Next, I have organized and presented the data about my photos; and I have given a brief summary of Crystallyn's pictures.  Integrating what I know about myself and about Crystallyn, I can tell you that while I hate having my photo taken, Crystallyn has a natural affinity (and I'm not saying she is vain; she just loves to ham it up) for the camera.  Crystallyn likes to create and document herself through photography.  I notice, however, that she has not posted many pictures in the last several months.  Because I personally know Crystallyn, taken in context, this leads me to wonder if she is ill, or extremely busy.  It is not like her to not post on Facebook.  Contemplation and retrospection about this leads me to act upon it, which is wisdom, and send Crystallyn an e-mail, asking if she is all right.  

"Comment on the last paragraph of the chapter and incorporate what you have learned about how you learn through the course. Again, relate to Schedroff's model and remember that context is everything."

"For 2,500 years, we've been told that knowing is our specie's 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." (Weinberger, p 147)

Despite our glaringly obvious differences about posting photos of ourselves on Facebook, Crystallyn and I actually have some very deep, very special connections.  Some of them I don't wish to share, but some I do.  We both have a passion for children and orphanages.  We have both volunteered at orphanages in third-world countries, and we would both like to continue to do so.  We both love to travel.  We are both brave, and take risks that other people might not.  We both live in chronic, constant pain.  We both married men who were in the military and graduated from a little-known federal academy named Kings Point.  We are both women, and happy to be so.  We have spent quite some time exploring the differences and the similarities between us, and I for one, feel extremely grateful to know someone was extraordinary as Crystallyn.

In a broad context, based on our Facebook photos, Crystallyn and I have little in common.  But, if you take into account the space between the photos, in a personal context, we do have a lot in common.  I certainly hope that the richness of our relationship continues throughout our lives.

P.S.  Crystallyn is not my foster daughter.

If It's In Print, It Must Be True

"On p. 143 Weinberger writes "Deciding what to believe is now our burden" as opposed to being "passive knowers" who trust what we read in authoritative resources such as the Encyclopedia Britannica."

Isn't Weinberger simply repeating the old adage "If it's in print, it must be true?" (a sarcastic way of saying, just because it's in print doesn't mean it's true.) I just finished editing a book that was, I'm sorry to say, pure crap. Absolutely made no sense at all, and this is a non-fiction work by a woman with a doctorate, who is a native English speaker. Frankly, I nearly quit the course after the first 47-page chapter, because a. she made no sense linguistically; b. she made so many basic mistakes (missing citations, using words incorrectly, etc.); and c. the middle chapters were all about foul words - and she herself even used swear words to describe some things, which I find extremely unprofessional. I could not figure out how she managed to get a publisher to take this book on, until I found out that it was actually a vanity publishing job. Then it all made sense. For money, you can have anything you want to say put into print. Even if you have nothing to say, and say it quite badly.

So you see, the human filters - the experts - that Weinberger talks about, were always an illusion. Just because the Encyclopedia Britannica says it is so, doesn't necessarily mean it is so. Pluto is a good example. (The former planet, not the Disney character.)  Knowledge changes as we, as a global society, find out more.  I think the key is to keep an open mind and be flexible; I think that we were always responsible for what we chose to believe.

What to Say, and What not to Say - views on transparency and information sharing

"After reading the section “What Isn’t Said” with the four points about how the Web might overcome the volume of information to make useful connections, think about Kevin Kelly’s point about having to be transparent in order to benefit from The One. How has your position on transparency and information sharing changed over the past few weeks of this course?"

I really......don't think that my personal position has changed about transparency and information sharing over the internet. I have learned a lot about how the internet works, and about different ways to share information over it; but my underlying feelings about what and how I share my personal information hasn't changed. I think this is probably because even though some of the technology and websites were new to me (ie, I'd never used Twitter before), life had already forced me to make decisions about what I would share, and how much time I would devote to sharing it on the internet.

The blog that I kept while living in India is a good example. I decided to create a blog - my first one - and I had a specific purpose in mind: to post information useful to other expatriates, or anyone, who might want to live in that specific region. I did that because I couldn't find any information about Chennai, except for one phrase in a guide book which I will never forget: "the blue-collar city of southern India". I did a lot of research before I decided to take the risk of moving my young children there, and I even demanded and got a look-see trip before we made the decision, mostly because the company changed the job location at the last minute, so I had some leverage.

So, my blog is quite simply about living in Chennai, India. It tells what I learned while I was there - very practical things, like how to de-louse children. (Don't ask.) It was interesting to me, and I hope it helped other non-natives who were living or thinking of living there. It contains some posts that reveal my personal feelings about some issues, but they are feelings that I would be comfortable telling to anyone.

My blog was not to keep in touch with my family. I know my family members, and most of them didn't read it, for various reasons. We used other technology to keep in touch with them; mainly regularly scheduled Skype sessions, which we still hold weekly. Skype is our technology of choice for communication; almost none of us use Facebook or other internet avenues.

I specifically avoided mentioning anyone by their real name, and I also chose a blog site that allowed me to choose between three levels of privacy for each post: public, friends only, and private (my eyes only). Almost all of my posts that mentioned or had photos of my children were for friends only. I did not and do not think it wise or safe to put their photos all over the web. They were already getting enough unwanted attention, just by living in India. I never mentioned the company, or company politics, either, especially after the Managing Director's wife got a call from corporate security about her blog entries, which were quite blatantly anti-corporate and mentioned a lot of specifics about corporate policy, travel plans, etc. Not good. She had to take it down.

I try and remember when I e-mail, or put anything on the web, that it's the same as putting it into the newspaper. No matter what you may think about who is going to see it or not see it, it's in the public domain. It is not private, like a letter. It feels private because it feels anonymous; but it's not, because once it's out there, it's very easy to copy, and forward, and publish.....and then someone's feelings are hurt. Or worse.

In a nutshell, when necessity or personal preference demand it, I have no problem learning and using new technology; but I'm not born-digital. I value my privacy. I don't have technology just to have technology; I have it and use it for a purpose. Otherwise, I have other things I'd rather do with my time.

Targeting My Dream Job

In the section “Mapping the Implicit”, Weinberger quotes the GIS director at Rand-McNally that “we’re targeting maps for specific audiences” (p. 158). Adapt the sentence to read for librarians as “we’re targeting information products for specific audiences”. Think about your past experience and education and how to combine it with an MLIS degree to create information products for specific audiences. What products would you create, what audiences would you target, what would be your niche?

Based on my past experiences, mainly with genealogy, I'd like to enter the preservation and archival field. I would like to preserve and create metadata - map out, in other words - a local history collection. Ideally, it would be somewhere abroad, because I love new cultures and I know a lot of areas of the world don't have adequate libraries; but if it isn't, preserving and archiving local history is still of great interest to me.

Obviously I would be targeting the local population; those who were interested in learning more of their ancestors or of the area's history. I think it would be fascinating to create an interactive exhibit, combined with local historical information, kind of like the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois - if you haven't been there, it's well worth the visit. It's attached to the official Lincoln Presidential Library, which makes it all the more interesting. The Abraham Lincoln museum is small, but it is hands-down the best museum I've ever been to (and museums are usually on my itinerary when we travel). It has one room for traveling exhibitions - we went once when they had a traveling exhibit that covered every first lady ever, complete with a biography and one of her original dresses - plus several permanent features. Some are the usual museum type - a children's play area with period toys; a walk-through life-size diorama of Lincoln's life - but the films, and the original documents, are fantastic. The films use state-of-the-art special effects and amazing photos of Lincoln to re-create the timeline of the Civil War. You can see him age so visibly over the years.

Then, if you want to do research, you just walk across the street to the archives. That's the kind of product that I would like to work with - something that documents and preserves local (or national) history, draws young people in with its state-of-the-art presentations and with interactive displays, and also has a serious and well-catalogued archive attached.

Laws that Choke Creativity

I loved the idea of Creative Commons when I first heard about it, and hearing Lawrence Lessig cover three examples of outdated laws that led to him coming up with the idea was fascinating.  I had never heard of John Philip Sousa's negative feelings about phonographs, and certainly had no idea that trespassing laws used to cover airspace as well as land.  In fact, I've often wondered how you can "own" a part of a stream or river, since it's moving; I understand that you can have fishing rights on the banks, but to "own" it seems like a misnomer to me.

It's a shame, but money drives most things, so I don't see the music companies or the media in general giving up their grip on copyright law without a fight.  Even though it seems inevitable that they will lose in the end, they will make life as miserable as possible.

Living in India - "the credit card fraud capital of the world", as our bank repeatedly reminded us - following copyright laws was very hard.  Every form of media was pirated, no matter where you purchased it or how much you paid.  DVDs often suddenly switched to another language, or went to black and white, or just left entire scenes out.  We could get new releases (movies released in the U.S.), before they hit the big screen in the U.S.  Most expatriates used a Slingbox, which personally I think is against copyright, but I don't know if the courts have ever ruled on it.  A Slingbox hooks up to a friend's cable in the U.S., and then you can watch and record whatever you want abroad, off of their cable.  We used Apple TV, which, incidentally, is the only media outlet which will allow you to purchase and view anything when you have an Indian ISP.  Amazon and the major networks block you as soon as they recognize that you are in India.

So, I wish the entire world would go to Creative Commons and just end the debate.  The media needs to get with the program, and recognize that they will lose, in the end.

Discussion forum - Visualizing Information

I don't see a discussion forum on the wiki, so I'll just discuss it here. :)

Random thoughts as I listen to the lecture -

For those of us with our own personal, legally registered stalkers, all of these tracking functions are not a good thing. I have as many of mine turned off as I can. It's all in your perspective, based on your experience.

As far as tracking other, non-sapient beings, I'm all for it. I have RFD tags on my kid's phones, my husband's keys, etc., just because I got tired of the endless searches and hysteria over them being lost. The books at my sister's library have RFD tags. My cats are microchipped. (Microchipping doesn't track them, although you can get that feature for animals, but it does give them a unique identifier number.) I microchipped my cats because a. I had to to transport one of them across country borders; and 2. I volunteered at the local humane society for several years, and let me tell you, one black cat looks like all the other black cats!

My favorite tracking website is the U.S. postal service. Did you know that if you use Priority Mail (which is a flat-rate service with a weight limit of 70 pounds), not only does the USPS provide free tracking information, but, they will come and pick it up from your house? I run a home-based internet basis, so this is AWESOME! I can put in the tracking number from any package I send and tell the buyer exactly where it is.

Another site I love is OCLC's Virtual International Authority Foundation's site. This is an attempt by OCLC to gain authority control over every form of a work or author, in every language. For example if you type in "Mark Twain" and selecte the field "Personal Names", ten search headings come up, with the results in at least three different language scripts. Included in the headings are his birth name (Samuel Clemens Langhorne), his pseudonyms (including the disputed Quintus Curtius Snodgrass), and a book written in 1982 by his purported spirit, or ghost, via an Ouija board and with the corporeal help of Robert Leichtman. Further investigation into the search results showed at least 20 different variations of Twain's last name in different ethnic scripts, along with a visual matrix connecting these different representations. (I am happy to report, however, that said matrix did not list the spirit realm.) I like this site because it shows a very comprehensive list, or visual matrix, of the author and all of his pseudonyms; and, it shows the relationship between them. Fascinating.

Explicit and Implicit Information in Libraries

Well, the first example I can think of is the most obvious: most Americans implicitly think of a library as a building or room containing books.

With the digital age here to stay, that is not always true.  Nowadays a library could just as easily contain only e-books, or music, or whatever format the data comes in.  Even on iTunes, media is arranged in the "library", once you have purchased it.  So, I suppose that at some point in the near future the word "library" will not implicitly mean "a building with books".

Another example is the explicit signs that most public libraries have: "Reference Desk", "Nonfiction", "Fiction", etc.  Lots of explicit signs that state which type of material goes where.  

Then there is the reference desk.  I think we would all recognize it, even without a sign; it's usually in the center of the main lobby area, there's someone behind it, and they look busy.  Implicitly, we know that's the reference desk, and not a student study carroll.

Speaking of explicit and implicit information at libraries, my sister recently told me that at the large academic library she works at, the most asked question is "Where is the restroom?"  This seemed logical to me, and I asked if they had some sort of map they handed out so that they (the reference staff) didn't have to earn their $25 an hour salary explaining where the restroom was located.  She said no, that she had been trying to get them to put in a mall-like kiosk map - you know, the kind that has a big red X labeled "You are here", and then the little symbols for drinking fountain, restroom, etc. - but sadly, the committee was still stuck on how to appropriately label the restroom.  In other words, they have no signs pointing to where it is.  I was pretty surprised, because knowing where the restroom is is not an implicit piece of knowledge.

Signs, or explicit knowledge, can be funny things.  Symbols do not always transfer between cultures; nor does implicit knowledge. Take roundabouts - most Americans cannot handle them with grace.  I myself hate them.  Four-way stops are the American way; roundabouts are outside our box of implicit knowledge.  

My favorite sign is the one in India which is painted in large letters on all of the big trucks that carry diesel or gasoline.  It reads "Inflammable liquids".  To me, that meant "liquids that won't catch fire", since in the U.S., we would label such a truck "Flammable".  Because of the "in_" prefix, my brain automatically categorized the world inflammable as an antonym of flammable, which it is not.  They both mean the same thing.  So much for my knowledge of English. :)

Library 2.0: The "Let" Library

The preservation, organization, and communication of information has certainly changed from the days when monographs were the primary means of doing such tasks.  Now, with Library 2.0, librarians are faced with the broadening of information resources, as well as technological advances that allow users to access those resources from nearly any location.

You mentioned several interactive, helpful web resources in your lecture: eBay, yelp, etc.  I would like to add etsy.com (craft and vintage sales site); thredUp (clothing resale); and the ubiquitous pinterest.  Check pinterest out, if you haven't already - there's more there than you might think.   And of course, we can't forget WebKinz.  Even though my kids have outgrown them, we still have quite a few of them around the house.

I think that the "emerging technologies" librarian position is going to become crucial in the coming years; technology changes so swiftly that one person could easily find 40 hours of work a week in keeping up with and managing existing technological functions.  It's an interesting concept to have a job dedicated to just that - and a good idea.

Switzerland vs. Wikipedia

The more I read and learn about Wikipedia and how it functions, the more I like it.  Based on the little I've read about its founder, Jimmy Wales, I don't think I'd like him; but I like what he created.  I like his practicality and his vision.

"Neutrality" is defined in most standard English dictionaries as refusing to participate in a conflict.  Switzerland, of course, is the most famous political example of neutrality, due to its somehow being able to refuse to participate in both World Wars, even though it is a tiny country in the middle of the geographical conflict.  Quite often when I feel caught up in workplace politics, or in useless bickering, I state "I'm Switzerland", and walk away.  It saves time.

Wales defines neutrality differently.  Instead of refusing to participate in the conflict, he says that neutrality begins when the conflict ends.  In his words, "An article (in Wikipedia) is neutral when people have stopped changing it."  In other words, the "people" - in this case, anyone and everyone with internet access - have decided to stop arguing about the issue.

This makes Wikipedia a good overview of what people care about - and what they don't care about.  When they stop editing an article, or don't even have one about something, it's not important to the world in general.

Or at least to the world that uses the internet.

Now, as far as librarians go, I hear a lot about librarians being the standard-bearers for free speech, and the upholders of liberty and information for all.  Yet, I don't feel this quasi-patriotic call.  I would no more dictate what a patron reads than I would tell them what to eat; but I don't feel obligated to actively argue about it, either.  In that sense, I am neutral.  Ban what books you want; in the end, it won't stop the information from getting through.  It will just take longer and interest more people in reading them.

What I believe in is a person developing moral fiber.  I believe that they have the right to choose, and that choosing develops their character.  Taking the choice away is like trying to keep a baby from walking.  In the long run, it's not going to work, and it's harmful.  Let the baby choose to progress, to learn to walk.  Let the reader choose whether or not "Shades of Grey" is pornographic, and whether or not they want to read pornography.  I've lived in too many places where other people - mainly the government - took away such choices, to believe that it does anything but slow down the growth process of society as a whole.

So, I guess I'm still like Switzerland.  I'd rather not waste time arguing whether or not a certain military man earned three medals or two.  If I want to know, I'll research the entire situation and decide for myself.  In the meantime, I'll continue to uphold allowing others to argue, if they want.  Go for it, fellas!

Gadgets and their shelf life

It was pretty interesting to see which technological inventions were listed on both lists - "21 Things That Became Obsolete in This Decade" and "Gadgets that Changed Everything".  The Palm Pilot, or PDA, was the only one on both lists.  Granted, the "Obsolete" list included many things that are not considered "gadgets" - such as envelopes and phone books - but still, the PDA was a short-lived but important phenomena.

It seems to me that these technological inventions, these "gadgets", change quickly, but the underlying purpose stays the same.  For instance, maps.  I have no sense of direction, and, as my mother says, "Couldn't find her way to her own bathroom."  (This has literally happened, depending on the hotel.)  Anyway, my mother informed me early on that since I got turned around finding the bathroom, I'd better learn to cope by learning to read a map.  Then she proceeded to teach me to read one.  (I have a really great mom. :)

For the first few years of my driving experience, I had maps of all kinds of places, neatly tucked away in the driver's door or the glove box, so that I could refer to them as needed.  It was not unusual for me to refer to a map three or four times just to get to the local grocery store.  It was that bad.  

After I got married, my husband became my human GPS, and since he likes to drive anyway, a lot of the pressure was taken off of me.  Yay husband! :)  Once he got on the iPhone bandwagon, there was no stopping us; I learned to navigate off of the tiny little screen, and he learned to listen to my directions. :)

Fast forward to India.  There are no reliable road maps, and no GPS service.  Even google earth isn't that reliable.  Your driver is your map.  Get a good driver, one who is experienced, has two eyes that both see correctly, fast reflexes, and most importantly will ask for directions, and you made it to where you wanted to go about 85% of the time.  The drivers had their own network of texting and phoning each other for directions to the weird, out-of-the-way places that expatriates wanted to go (like the man with the freezer of meat), and so you needed a driver that was tied into that network.

Get a bad driver - one substitute driver in particular comes to mind - and you got a four-hour ride, literally going in circles around the 1/2 mile area, two car sick kids, one cranky baby, and a mama close to heat stroke and homicide.  That was the only time that I have EVER called anyone to come and get me, and thank goodness, my regular driver was only minutes away.  HE found the place in 10 minutes.

So.  Relying on the human network and luck.  But, once again, the responsibility was not on me.  Whew.

When we moved back to the U.S., my husband introduced me to the GPS.  This is now as important to me as the tires on the car.  No tires = no go; no GPS = no go.  The GPS is my friend.  It is my helper.  It is the only way I can find my way to the grocery store.  If it's not in the GPS, I panic. 

It's just a map, albeit one that talks.  It's faster than using a paper map - because I don't have to stop and look at the paper all the time - but it is just a map.  

So, I think that it's a bit inaccurate to say that these gadgets "changed everything".  They changed the way we view data, but the underlying goal is still the same, and there are still plenty of places where you can't get a signal or the GPS doesn't have any coordinates to work off of.

The Sixth Sense

I thought that was a movie title.  I googled it and it IS a movie title - a movie about a little boy who can talk to the dead.  Well, my reaction to talking to the dead is about the same as my reaction to this gadget:

Thank you, but no.

I don't need any more information flowing into my brain than I've got right now.  I like talking to people and letting them decide what I will know about them.  I do not like gadgets or dead people who flood me with more information and force me to decide what is accurate and what is not.  I ESPECIALLY do not like being labeled before I've even opened my mouth.  

I'm pretty sure that if this idea does come onto the market - and I note that the TED talk was dated 2009, so maybe it already has - my kids and my husband will have them.  They will be flashing that thing over everyone and everything they meet, and finding out all kinds of stuff, feeling very powerful and superior.  But is that wise?

What if the information is wrong?

I'm all for simplicity.  How about, if you want people to know your interests, you get a T-shirt made that lists them.  You could color-code them for the days of the week.  Or, how about, if you have been convicted of a felony, they just brand you on the forehead with a code, like they did in the dark ages.  Then no one would need any fancy units to read your "tag".  If you're married, instead of a wedding ring, the name of your beloved could be tattooed on your ring finger, and if you get divorced, well, off goes the finger.  That way, everyone knows what your relationship status really is - it's so much harder to cover up a missing finger than it is to slide a wedding ring off at the bar.

See what I mean?  As a society, we've already tried and rejected many forms of labeling people.  Labels by skin color, labels by clothing we wear, sexual preferences declared (for men) by whether we have one earring, two earrings, or no earrings.  (I heard this last one is now out of date, however.)  How does using a really amazing, inventive piece of technology change the underlying idea?  It doesn't.  

So count me out.  I want to be free to change my labels whenever I can; even better, I don't want to have any at all.

Berner-Lee

Ah, more new words.  "Data" is not a discrete unit of information in Tim Berners-Lee's TED talk; it is a link of such information.  What an interesting concept.  I like it overall, but I think that he needs a new term coined for this concept, because for some of us, "data" is only a fact or a figure; not the link it has to anything else.

The example about scientific data is very interesting because my sister used to be a USDA botanist, and is now a second-career librarian.  (For reasons not yet explored, all but one of my five siblings chose science as their undergraduate majors; two went on to get advanced degrees in the sciences.  It makes for interesting, if sometimes incomprehensible, table conversation.)  Anyway, part of her job is to create an institution repository database where all of the scientific research done at her university can be "published", and accessed publicly.   This is what Berner-Lee wants everyone to do; to put their information out on the web.

The problem is, scientific data is legally owned by the scientist (unless legal disclaimers come into the picture).  A scientist's discoveries are his or her daily bread.  They don't want to share.  Sharing means their marketability goes down.  Sharing means they might lose the edge in whatever particular field they are in.  Sharing means a potential loss of income.

So, due to the way the system is set up, scientific information - especially cutting-edge discoveries - is very valuable, and not to be shared.  Ergo, the problem with Berner-Lee's example.  Great that some scientists shared some information, out of the goodness of their hearts, I guess.  But the majority are not going to do so.

Recently, the US government has made it mandatory to share study results - with the public - if the study is funded by the government.  As many, many studies are, that's a big shift in the landscape.  It will be interesting to see how quickly the inevitable happens - more scientific data available to the public, faster.

So, I do hope they get it all linked together and easily searchable, although I myself still think that for social networks and personal information, there should be clear opt-out options.  Fascinating view of the next step for the internet.

Intertwingle. Intermingle. Intertwine. Intertwingularity. Singularity.

I love it when people create new words that actually make sense.  I hate it when they try and fail.  (Sorry, just finished indexing a manuscript full of them.)

So.  Weinberger discusses the subject of intertwingularity within the parameters of each piece of data, no matter how small or irrelevant, having its own unique identifier; they can then be pulled together, or intertwingled, to create an ever-growing, infinite variety of information about a certain topic.  

Shirkey, in his TedTalk presentation, describes how the communication of knowledge has progressed from a one-to-one model, then to a one-to-many model, and now to a many-to-many model.  At our current level of technology, information can and is transferred nearly instantly from person to person, back and forth, intertwingling on its way.  

I believe that the concept that both are expressing is that data is no longer able to be contained within a discrete, hierarchical concept, but instead is a multi-faceted, ever-rearranging cluster.  "Intertwine" describes the process of becoming so entangled by the growth process, that from a distance, the objects look to be one.  "Intermingle" is used when separate, discrete objects mix together so densely that also, from a distance, they cannot be individually distinguished.  

Shirkey and Weinberger are both saying that using today's information transference techniques, what we have to communicate is continuously being arranged and re-arranged, data touching each other at so many points that it looks as if it is one unit from a distance, but upon closer inspection, can be broken down into discrete units.  

It is interesting to me that neither mentioned the buzz term "going viral", meaning a message or video that spins out of control to so many different users that it becomes ubiquitous.  "Going viral" implies that this intertwingling process has become uncontrollable; the creator of the data is not able to limit who accesses it.  Both present the concept of intertwingularity as a positive one, but if the data is a misconception, and it goes viral, it could be negative.  As with all new ideas, it is a double-edged sword.

The Social Construction of Knowledge

If essentialism is defined as "the idea that everything is defined by clear and knowledgable traits that make it what it into what it is." (Weinberger, p 116), then an essentialist librarian would be one who thinks in black and white; "a place for everything, and everything in its place" type of person.  They would catalogue based on measurable facts - object size, print font, number of pages, author, title, etc.  No "personality" category for them.  This would be, to me, a librarian who followed the traditional hierarchical classification system, such as the DDC or LCSH.

Accidentalism, on the other hand, is defined by Weinberger as a person who "doesn't even have confidence that there is an inarguable way to divide the world into types of things." (p 117)  An accidentalist librarian would think more in terms of the data's relationships to other data; more like the RDA model that is being implemented.  This kind of librarian would see information, and its categorization, more in shades of gray.

I believe that as Weinberger points out, as knowledge becomes more and more accessible and communicable, it becomes more difficult to definitely classify it.  There is no "perfect" classification scheme for anything, because people see things differently.  The same fact - ie a day of the week - can be interpreted many ways by different individuals.  Stephen Covey talks about this when he discusses the "lens" through which we see life in his books; as Weinberger points out, Thomas Jefferson said "creation is of individuals" (p 117), meaning that individuals create their own classes of data based on their own experiences.  So, as sites that allow users to classify information in their own way (for example, by tagging), the dividing line between categories becomes blurrier and blurrier, because we are experiencing everyone's "lens", and not just our own.

Using the Model of uBio

"The chief librarian at the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole created uBio as a way to make sense of and allow for the different opinions and classifications that scientists give to the same species.

Are there other information resources that use this model? Does Wikipedia?

What ideas do you have for using this model to create similar information resources that might help us see the many different connections between bits of information in the digital age?"

Hmmm....I think I already shared my idea of using uBio's model in my post about the fish poster. Primitive, yes, definitely not digital; but very effective. Digitalizing it would not have made it any more useful to the local population because the internet and electric are so unreliable.

So, from roaming through the uBio site, it's obvious that the sources it uses are authenticated, even though they don't always agree on the taxonomic structure of a particular organism. My little experiment had no such controls, but it was practical.

Wikipedia does use this model, but the sources don't have to be professionals in any particular field, and the data is not peer-reviewed, so the information that Wikipedia gathers is open to fraud and inaccuracies. Nevertheless, it is still very useful, as long as one keeps in mind that it might be entirely inaccurate. It's always wise to check out the reference links included in wikipedia articles, since they often lead you to the root source.

A similar data-gathering effort is the Foxfire project. It would be fascinating to digitalize and create metadata about the information garnered in the Foxfire project, because indexing, cataloguing, and mapping each individual subject would lead to a huge body of practical (yet little-known in the U.S. these days) information and folklore. That would be my dream job.

uBio and Me, part II

Well, I tried three of the most common fish names that I ran into in Chennai, and only one came up in the uBio search.  However, I was using transliterated versions of the name (from Tamil characters to English), so that may have been the problem.  The fish I found was one of my family's favorites, Pomfret, or vavval, as it is called in Tamil.

I still wish I had known about this database when I lived in India!  Oh, as a matter of fact....short pause here while I look something else up....

DANG IT!  Another question that plagued me for four years answered in a second!  A zebu IS classified as a bovine!  I'd go into more detail, but you're probably tired of reading about India.

AND, those herds of giant water buffalo that roamed outside our house, through the streets, and which occasionally ran into our car.....there ARE two kinds!  Ha!  I was right on that one.

Yes, this was a most interesting chapter.  I had better get off of uBio or I won't have time to finish the text.

uBio and Me

All I can think (about the uBio project) is "Oh, my gosh, WHY DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT THIS BEFORE I LEFT FOR INDIA??!"  This chapter has just explained a major source of intercultural frustration for me.

You see, in my daily quest to find edible food for my family (yes, it took more time and energy than any other task), I was always looking for sources of protein.  After I ruled out the open-air chicken butchers, the rotten pork, and the mystery meat from the man with the freezer, I was left with: drum roll:  fish!

Yes, we lived right on the beach, on the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean, so fish seemed a very viable and logical choice.  In fact, there were several fisher villages right outside our doorway.  You would think that we would be able to pay some exorbitant sum for their bounty.

Except they liked those little tiny fish, dried in the sand, so that the birds could poop on them, and my family did not appreciate this delicacy.  The especially objected to eating the heads and bones, a squeamishness that I had been forced to overcome when I lived in Japan.  My family are food wimps.

So, I cast about (pun intended) and, through the local desperate expatriate mother's network, discovered that there were two sources for purchasing fish:

1. The large, local fish market that was about an hour away.
2. A small, hole-in-the-wall fish store that was indoors, much closer to my house, and had a fan.

I tried the local market; my in-laws, who went with me, threw up at the smell.  Not so successful.  Plus, it was over an hour away, on a good traffic day.  So I found the indoor store.

Now, this store was the most westernized food store I had experienced in India.  It had a display case, with labels for the products, a cash register that took credit cards, a shopman, and, as mentioned, a fan.  Also, there were no dogs or other livestock inside of it.  The fish butcher stood behind the counter, with this incredibly large butcher's knife that he sharpened every other second, and he did things to those fish that defy imagination.  You could get your fish custom-cut in any way you wanted, including having the meat on the heads filleted.  When you purchased the fish, you paid by the pound before it was eviscerated and cut up, so it availed one to know beforehand exactly how you wanted it sliced.  Seriously, this man - this fish butcher - was an artist.  He was so fast I kept waiting to find one of his fingernails in the bag when I got home.

But best of all, there was a large poster on the wall that had pictures of the fish of India, with labels in Tamil, Hindi, and sometimes, British English.  So, I would look over the daily selection, carefully copy down my version of the Tamil label, and then run over to the poster to see if I could match the symbols up and figure out what I was buying.  Sometimes I would have to drag the shopkeeper from behind the counter and do my mime act of "Is this fish in the picture what is in the case?".  He was not much help.  Or, if I was in a hurry, I would just close my eyes and point to something in the case.

What I discovered was that the labels in English were of fish that I had never heard of, or, in many cases, there was no English label.  Even when I went home and researched on the internet, a lot of those English fish names didn't come up.  I spent months trying to figure out which fish was what, because many fish look alike to me, and I wanted to be able to identify which ones my kids would eat.

In despair, and out of patience, and way too hot, one day I took a Sharpie and wrote the American names of the few fish I had managed to identify on the poster, under the respective fish.  The shopkeeper just stared at me.  The fish butcher stopped his slicing and flipping act, and gaped.  I felt guilty for defacing their property and not being able to explain why to them.  But, I was so happy to have at least a partial knowledge of what I was purchasing!

After that, names began appearing in many languages: French, Spanish, Arabic....it seems that the expatriate community had been collectively wondering about the fish, and now that a databank had begun, was very happy to contribute to it.  When I left India, the poster looked like a word cloud of fish names in many languages.

My own baby uBio project.

If only I had known about this uBio project, maybe I could have identified more of the fish!  Maybe even all of the fish!  Dang it, the opportunity is gone.  I am going right now to those websites and finding out if any of those obscure fish names are in the database.

Teresa