"SemTech 2009: CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS | |||||||||
Interested practitioners, developers and researchers are hereby invited to present a paper at the fifth annual conference focused on the application of Semantic Technologies to Information Systems and the Web. The event will be held on June 14-18, 2009 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California. The conference will comprise multiple educational sessions, including tutorials, technical topics, business topics, and case studies. We are particularly seeking presentations on currently implemented applications of semantic technology in both the enterprise and internet environments. A number of appropriate topic areas are identified below. Speakers are invited to offer additional topic areas related to the subject of Semantic Technology if they see fit. The conference is designed to maximize cross-fertilization between those who are building semantically-based products and those who are implementing them. Therefore, we will consider research and/or academic treatments, vendor and/or analyst reports on the state of the commercial marketplace, and case study presentations from developers and corporate users. For some topics we will include introductory tutorials. The conference is produced by Semantic Universe, a joint venture of Wilshire Conferences, Inc. and Semantic Arts, Inc. AudienceThe 2008 conference drew over 1000 attendees. We expect to increase that attendance in 2009. The attendees, most of whom were senior and mid-level managers, came from a wide range of industries and disciplines. About half were new to Semantics and we expect that ratio to be the same this year. When you respond, indicate whether your presentation is appropriate for those new to the field, only to experienced practitioners, and whether it is more technical or business-focused (we're looking for a mix). Tracks (Topic Areas)The conference program will include 60-minute, six-hour, and three-hour presentations on the following topics: Business and Marketplace Collaboration and Social Networks Data Integration and Mashups Developing Semantic Applications Foundational Topics Knowledge Engineering and Management Ontologies and Ontology Concepts Semantic Case Studies and Web 3.0 Semantic Integration Semantic Query
Semantic Rules Semantic Search Semantic SOA (Service Oriented Architectures) Semantic Web Semantics for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) Business Ontologies Taxonomies Unstructured Information Other
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Monday, October 20, 2008
Calling all Librarians and Info Pro's
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Hakia and the Semantic Search
The new user interface shows tabs for all results, images and news, as well as one for the company's existing Meet Others social network. This feature puts visitors in touch with others searching for the same or similar information. Users can e-mail each other through this feature.
So Hakia differentiates itself through having credible sites vetted by information professionals. What's the difference between Google? Hakia believes Google search results are undifferentiated, meaning they have less value because, unlike with Hakia credible sites, the reader doesn't immediately know which sites to trust or ignore. In other words, Hakia adds a human element to its game, while continuing to refine its semantic ingredients. If there is one suggestion I'd make, it would be to include a multilingual element, too. So far, there hasn't been one engine that has done an adequate job.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Talis' Integration
Talis is an innovator of information technologies for libraries. Richard Wallis, of Panlibus and a contributor to Nodalities' podcasts, explains how Talis can easily integrate its APIs into applications.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Financial Crisis 2.0
By studying the dot-com bubble, researchers have found that the optical network built during the hype period had become the foundation of the following economic boom at the Web industry, namely the Web 2.0 hype. Without the investment of these optical networks and without the bankrupt of the original optical network investors, we were not able to obtain the cheap price of network usage which is an essential reason behind the Web 2.0 hype. By this mean, it was the IT crisis that constructed the foundation of the new Web-based industry. . .
. . . In comparison we may watch China. The future is, however, not optimistic at all because of this financial crisis. The deep drop of the stock market will greatly hurt the industrial innovation. Moreover, western investors are going to invade China on its debt market and real estate market to cause severe economic inflation in China. As we have discussed, the high price of real estate in China will hurt the formation of Chinese Web-based small businesses. As the result, the technological distance between USA and China will not decrease but increase. As a Chinese myself, I am quite sad on this prediction of the future. However, be honest I would say that it is the future most likely to happen.
Friedman's thesis is a stark contrast to Ding and Chinese economist Junluo Liu's contention. According to the Flat World premise, developing countries such as India and China are quickly catching up to the US due to their increasingly educated and dedicated workforce. Entrepreneurs, particularly in wireless telecommunications industries, no longer require real estate. Everything can be done remotely in era Globalization 3.0. Indian entrepreneurs are very happy to stay in Bombay as America supplies them with outsourced work. True, nothing can replace land; but then again, nothing can replace a talent and creativity.
China had fallen behind due to ten years of a disastrous Cultural Revolution, and trampled by a century of civil war and foreign invasion. But the past is behind us. With a workforce that continues to grow not only in talent, but also in fierce nationalism, can they overcome this upcoming crisis?
Monday, October 06, 2008
Over the next decade the semantic wave will spawn multi-billion dollar technology markets that drive trillion dollar global economic expansions to transform industries as well as our experience of the internet. Drivers and market forces for adoption of semantic technologies in web 3.0 are building. Project 10X has come out with a Semantic Wave 2008: Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0 Executive Summary. It's worth a read.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo. Who says Web 2.0 can't be beautiful? Enjoy, everyone.
Friday, October 03, 2008
The Hakia Question
But at the same time, I see it as an opportunity for librarians to make a case for their expertise in information retrieval. We can keep quiet and let others do the work for us; but that only leads to further marginalization. And we'll be left out again, which we did with Web 2.0.
What we librarians should do is not only learn about the SemWeb and come up with solutions, but to offer our knowledge and recommendations, as librarians do in their every day work. If search engine companies are intelligent enough to realize the importance that librarians offer in the search and information retrieval, they'll realize librarians are partners in this race to the SemWeb. Librarians must step up to the plate, it's an opportunity -- and not one to take lightly either. Here is what Hakia has issued:
Yesterday we issued an open call to librarians and information professionals for credible Website submissions at the WebSearch University in Washington D.C. We are glad to report that the immediate feedback is overwhelmingly positive.
Currently, hakia is generating credibility-stamped results for health and medical searches to guide users towards credible Web content. These results come from credible Websites vetted by the Medical Library Association. For an example of a credibility-stamped result, search for What causes heart disease? and mouse over the top search results. We are now aiming to expand our coverage to all topics.
Librarians and information professionals can now suggest URLs of credible Websites on a given topic by joining the hClub. Our credibility site definition is transparent and fulfills most of the following criteria:
• Peer review. The publisher of the site must have a peer review process or strict editorial controls to ensure the accuracy, dependability and merit of the published information. Most government institutions, academic journals, and news channels have such review mechanisms in place.
• No commercial bias. The publisher of the site shall have no commercial intent or bias. For example, for travel related recommendations consider U.S. Department of State travel portal and not Travelocity.
• Currency. The information on the site should be current and links should be working.
• Source authenticity. The publisher (preferably) should be the owner/producer of the content.Upon submission, hakia will process the suggested sites with QDEX (Query Detection and Extraction) technology and make them available to Web searchers in credibility-stamped search results. Each month we will give away thank-you prizes, ranging from a book donation to two conference grants, to participants. To learn more or suggest credible Web sites, please visit http://club.hakia.com/lib/
We are looking forward to hear your feedback! This is just the beginning of a long journey.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The Future of the Semantic Web . . . Is Here?
Market Watch has released an interesting article with Cognition Creates World's Largest Semantic Map of the English Language With More Than 10 Million Semantic Connections discussing Cognition Technologies' releasing of the largest commercially available Semantic Map of the English language. The scope of Cognition's Semantic Map is more than double the size of any other computational linguistic dictionary for English, and includes over 10 million semantic connections that are comprised of semantic contexts, meaning representations, taxonomy and word meaning distinctions. Technologies incorporating Cognition's Semantic Map will be able to provide users with more accurate and complete Search capabilities, the ability to personalize and filter content, and improve the user experience by significantly reducing the amount of irrelevant information presented. Cognition Technologies' lexical resources encode a wealth of semantic, morphological and syntactic information about the words contained within documents and their relationships to each other. These resources were created, codified and reviewed by lexicographers and linguists over a span of 24 years.
Cognition's comprehensive Semantic Map is a critical component for the next phase of the Web's evolution, a.k.a. the Semantic Web, or Web 3.0 because it gives the computer a depth of knowledge and understanding of language far beyond the current keyword and pattern-matching technologies in place. As Nova Spivak has said, the future of information gathering will involve a combination of the Web and desktop, or 'Webtop' content. Our Semantic Map will enable these technologies to be more efficient and effective intermediaries in the process through such applications as Semantic Search, sentiment extraction and business analytics. I'm excited. Are you? I just wish somebody tried to discern Web 3.0 and Semantic Web though. . .
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Web 2.0 and 'Live' Videos
We've heard of real-time video, but this is really taking it to another level. Yahoo Live! might just be onto something here. In many ways, it combines all the elements of Web 2.0 PLUS being live. Think about it - you get to social network with friends (or at least users you permit to see you), you customize your own content, and it's dynamic with its imbedding and mashup capabilities with API coding. Watch New York City from sunrise to sunset -- 24/7.
Y! Live is a community of broadcasters. It’s a place to socialize around live video content through broadcasting, viewing, and embedding. These guidelines are a structure for maintaining the creative environment and positive community vibe of Y! Live.
Let's put aside the privacy issues for a moment. And think of all the marketing possibilities this offers. It's like . . . Facebook with real faces :)
Monday, September 22, 2008
Minding the Planet
One of my favourite thinkers of the Web - Nova Spivaks, is a moderator of this panel of visionaries and experts and their ideas of the evolution of the Web.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Cultural Diversity in a world of Web 2.0
(1) Personality orientation - Idiocentric or allocentric?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A Portal Consultant, Anyone?
Information professionals have grown out of just the confines of OPACS and databases. Librarians and information professionals manage content management systems, develop web portals, and are the information architects of web projects. Many are leaders of Web 2.0 innovation and some are even dabbling in the next version of the Web. A great many more are adept with computer programming languages, XML, AJAX, Perl, PHP, etc. But there appears to be a disjunct. Why aren't information professionals and librarians moving into these positions? There is a market to be met; it's a matter of time. We should take advantage. Sooner or later, someone's going to notice. And they won't be disappointed at all.
--
Description
If you join Accenture you can make great ideas happen for some of the world's most dynamic companies. With broad global resources and deep technical know-how, we collaborate with clients to cultivate ideas and deliver results. Choose a career at Accenture and enjoy an innovative environment where challenging and interesting work is part of daily life.
Accenture's Consulting workforce is involved in business consulting, process design work and the application of technologies to business. A career in Consulting is varied and stimulating because each project presents a new challenge and will give you exposure to new clients, business issues, technologies and people. We need people who are able to challenge conventional thought, offer unique perspectives and conceive more innovative solutions for our clients.
Working as a consultant with Accenture, you will build core business, technology and industry expertise helping to deliver world-class business and technology solutions that enable clients to become high performance businesses. Consultants must be professionals who have an interest in how business processes work and interact. In addition, consultants need to apply their skills in project and program management while exhibiting leadership in process re-engineering and implementation of process, technology, and organizational change. Finally, consultants also need to have a working knowledge of the industry and/or the functional areas they serve.
The Consulting workforce is made up of three groups: Management Consulting, Systems Integration Consulting and Technology Consulting. This consulting group structure provides outstanding opportunities to develop highly specialized skills that will help you advance your career.
Job Description
Systems Integration Consulting professionals are responsible for delivering large-scale, complex programs that marry processes with technology to help our clients achieve high performance.
Information Management professionals define, develop and deliver solutions that enable the collection, management and processing of information from one or more sources and delivery of information to audiences who have a stake in or right to that information.
Portals professionals design, develop and deliver solutions, typically Web based, that enable a company's employees, customers and/or business partners to search for and retrieve relevant corporate information from across various systems and databases.
Key responsibilities may include:
• Supervising process and functional design activities
• Creating functional requirements as an input to application design
• Developing and testing detailed functional designs for business solution components and prototypes
• Supervising application build, test, and deploy activities
• Planning and executing data conversion activities (e.g., test data)
• Driving test planning and execution
Qualifications
• Experience in Enterprise Portal - General, Portlets, Portal Installation and Configuration, Portal Development, Portal Scaling and Loading, Enterprise Intranet, Information Architecture / Site Taxonomy, BEA-WebLogic Portal, AquaLogic-User Interaction, Computer Associates-Cleverpath Portal, IBM-WebSphere-Process Server, Microsoft-SharePoint-Portal Server, Oracle-Portal, SAP-NetWeaver-Enterprise Portal, Sun Microsystems Java System Portal Server, Vignette-Application Portal, Adobe-Intelligent Document Platform, Day Software-Communique, EMC-Documentum-Web Publisher Portlet Builder, EMC-Documentum-Web Publisher Portlets, Open Text-Livelink Portal Integration Toolkit, Percussion-Rhytmyx Express Portal, IBM-FileNet-Portal Integration & Connectors, Oracle-WebCenter, Microsoft-Office SharePoint Server
• Ability to travel 100% of the time
• University level education is required
Professional Skill Requirements
• Proven success in contributing to a team-oriented environment
• Proven ability to work creatively and analytically in a problem-solving environment
• Desire to work in an information systems environment
• Excellent leadership, communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills
Job
Systems IntegrationPrimary Location
Canada-British Columbia - VancouverOther Locations
Canada-Quebec - Montreal, Canada-Ontario - TorontoOrganization
ConsultingSchedule
Full-timeSunday, September 14, 2008
Four Ways to Handle the Third World Digital Disorder
(1) Filter on the Way out, Not the Way In - There's a lot of stuff on the Web which would never have made it in the physical realm (think New York Times). But that's okay. In the Web 2.0 universe, everything and everyone has a niche.
(2) Puch Each Leaf On as Many Branches As Possible - Think tagging. Unlike the HTML-world, it's an advantage to hang information from as many branches as possible in the Web 2.0 world. Think Craigslist.
(3) Everything is Metadata and Everything Has a Label - It's true. On Google, "To be or not to be" (in quotations, of course), is in fact a great piece of metadata. Type that and press enter, and you'll get Hamlet.
(4) Give Up Control - There's no point of trying to control it, just go with the flow. Information may not be easily findable, but at least it's easily searching. The finding part comes next.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Web 2.0 + Semantic Web = Web 3.0
Friday, September 05, 2008
Quantum Computer Reviewed
Currently, there are physicists, computer sciencists, and engineers in more than 100 groups in universities, institutes, and companies around the world are exploring the frontiers of quantum information, encompassing quantum computing, as well as recently commercialized quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation communication techniques.
Ross and Oskin's Quantum Computing is definitely worth a read. Exponentially scalable computing power that could solve problems beyond the capabilities of conventional computers. The key is exploiting the superposition of quantum-entangled information units, or qubits. But the research challenges are daunting: How to create and reliably compute with the qubits, which require the seemingly mutually exclusive conditions of exquisite classical control while being isolated from any external influences that could destroy the entanglement.
What does this mean for information professionals? A lot. With Web 3.0 around the corner, information processing at high levels will be necessary. It's still cloudy as to how it will all look like. But with quantum computing, we're on the right track.
Monday, September 01, 2008
The Third Digital (Dis)order
Just finished reading David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. A terrific ideas-driven text, which proposes the idea that we have to relinquish the notion that there is one of way organization information hierarchies. From the Dewey Decimal System to the way we organize our CD collections, Weinberger critiques and takes a shot at everything along the way. But he does make an exellent argument: in the digital world the laws of physics no longer apply. Just take a look at your computer files, and you realize you can organize your music by any number of criteria -- artist, genre, song name, length, or price -- you name it, you've got it. Because the Web is a hyperlinked web of information that grows organically, it's really a mess out there. And Web 2.0 doesn't help at all with the glut that has emerged.
Weinberger proposes that in this new digital world, there are three planes to disorder:
(1) Physical Disorder - The natural state of disorder, when things are left as they are, disorder inevitably arises.
(2) Metadata Disorder - Because of this disorder -- lists, classification systems, hierarchies, taxonomies, ontologies, catalogues, ledgers, anything -- that brings order to the physical realm
(3) Digital Disorder - In the digital world, it makes bringing order that much more difficult, yet also that much more interesting and convenient. There are more ways than one to bring order to the chaos. Just look at Wikipedia.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Open Access: The Beginning of the End?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
A LEAP of Faith
(2) Treats users as co-developers of the site – The more people using the service, the better it becomes. LEAP treats this fundamental treatise to the core, encouraging student’s reviews, comments, and rants. Collective intelligence in its purest form.
(3) Customizable content and interface – LEAP allows students (and faculty) to merge their blog content to the
(4) Core application of the website runs through the browser and web serve – Rather than on a desk platform. We don’t need Dreamweaver. All we need is a freely downloadable open source software. LEAP uses Wordpress, a beautiful piece of work.
(5) Social software – the LEAP homepage is maximizes on this. Blogs, tagging, video and image sharing. You name it, they’ve got it. The whole Web 2.0 suite.
(6) Integration of emerging web technologies – LEAP uses this, building on AJAX, RSS, and using API’s for mashups.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
7 Ways to Better Teaching
(1) Accessibility and Approachability
(2) Fairness
(3) Open-Mindedness
(4) Mastery and Delivery
(5) Enthusiasm
(6) Humour
(7) Knowledge and Inspiration Imparted
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Information Anarchy
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Five Weeks to a Semantic Web Class
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Making Academic Web Sites Better
(1) User Focus - Focus on library users by presenting library resources in a targeted an customized manner
(2) Personalization - Recognize library users as individuals by giving them opportunities to configure their own library interfaces and to select tools and content based on personal needs
(3) User engagement - Provide sufficient tools to allow and encourage library users in content creation and exchange
(4) Online communities - Nurture the development of online communities by connecting individuals through online publishing, and sharing Web 2.0 tools
(5) Remixability - Employ a mashup approach to aggregate current and emerging information technologies to provide library users with opportunities to explore new possibilities of information resources.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
WHATWG?
The WHATWG was founded by individuals of Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software in 2004, after a W3C workshop. Apple, Mozilla and Opera were becoming increasingly concerned about the W3C’s direction with XHTML, lack of interest in HTML and apparent disregard for the needs of real-world authors. So, in response, these organisations set out with a mission to address these concerns and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group was born.
Fascinating. There're two roads that lead to the same path. But the question remains. Are we any closer to the SemWeb?There was a time when RDF’s adoption would have been a given, when the W3C was seen as nearly infallible. Its standards had imperfections, but their openness, elegance, and ubiquity made it seem as though the Semantic Web was just around the corner. Unfortunately, that future has yet to arrive: we’re still waiting on the next iteration of basic specs like CSS; W3C bureaucracy persuaded the developers of Atom to publish their gorgeous syndication spec with IETF instead of W3C; and, perhaps most alarmingly, the perception that W3C’s HTML Working Group was dysfunctional encouraged Apple, Mozilla, and Opera to team with independent developers in establishing WHATWG to create HTML’s successor spec independently from the W3C. As more non-W3C protocols took on greater prominence, W3C itself seemed to be suffering a Microsoft-like death of a thousand cuts.
This is interesting indeed. As Bonfield reveals, on April 9, WHATWG’s founders proposed to W3C that it build its HTML successor on WHATWG’s draft specification. On May 9, W3C agreed. W3C may never again be the standard bearer it once was, but this is compelling evidence that it is again listening to developers and that developers are responding. The payoff in immediate gratification—the increased likelihood of a new and better HTML spec—is important, but just as important is the possibility of renewed faith in W3C and its flagship project, the Semantic Web. Things are moving along just fine, I think.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Web 3.0 in 600 words
It's conceptual; therefore, it's murky. And as a result, we overlook the main elements which are already in place. One of the main points I make is, whereas Web 2.0 is about information overload, Web 3.0 will be about regaining control. So, without further adieu, please take a look at this article, and let me know your thoughts. The article should not leave out the excellent help of the legendary librarian, the Google Scholar, Dean. He helped me out a great deal in fleshing out these ideas. Thanks DG.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Web 3.0 and Web Parsing
Website Parse Template consists of three main entities:
1) Ontologies - The content creator defines concepts and relations which are used in on the website.
2) Templates - The creator provides templates for groups of web pages which are similar by their content category and structure. Publisher provides the HTML elements’ XPath or TagIDs and links with website Ontology concepts
3) URLs - The creator provides URL Patterns which collect the group of web pages linking them to "Parse Template". In the URLs section publisher can separate form URLs the part as a concept and link to website Ontology.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Kevin Kelly on Web 3.0
At the Northern California Grantmakers & The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Present: Web & Where 2.0+ on Feb. 14th, 2008, Kevin Kelly talks about Web 3.0. Have a good weekend everyone. Enjoy.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
EBSCO in a 2.0 World
1) Take a look at EBSCOhost 2.0 Flash demonstration here.
2) It's also got a spiffy marketing web site also features new EBSCOhost 2.0 web pages, where you can learn more about its key features, here. (http://www.ebscohost.com/2.0)
EBSCO has really moved into the 2.0 world: simple, clean, and Googleized. But perhaps that's the way that information services need to go. We simply must keep up. I had gone to a presentation at Seattle SLA '08, and EBSCO gave an excellent presentation (not to mention a lunch) in which it showed the 2.0-features of the new EBSCO interface. In essence, it's customizable for users: you can have it as simple as a search box or as complex as it is currenly. The retrieval aspects have not changed that much. Yet, perception is everything don't you think?
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Why Be a Librarian?
As technology allows the storage and uploading of information at ever greater speeds and quantities, people are becoming oerwhelmed by the “information overload”. The information professional is a much needed guide to aid people in their search for knowledge.
The librarian learns to seek, organize and locate information from a wide variety of sources, from print materials such as books and magazines to electronic databases. This knowledge is needed by all industries and fields, allowing librarians flexibility in choosing their working environments and in developing their areas of expertise.
The librarian keeps apace with the latest technological advances in the course of their work. They are web authors, bloggers, active in Second Life. They release podcasts, produce online videos and instant message their users. The librarian rides at the forefront of the technology wave, always looking out for new and better ways to organize and retrieve information
for their users.
At the same time, librarians remember their roots, in traditional print and physical libraries, and continue to acquire and preserve books, journals and other physical media for their current users and for future generations.
Well said. I like it!
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Expert Searching in a SemWeb World
As an analysts or knowledge worker you are busy everyday searching for information, often in onerous and time consuming ways. The goal of course is to locate the strategic knuggets of information and insight that answer questions, contribute to reports and inform all levels of management. Yet current search technology proves to be a blunt tool for this task. What you are looking for is trapped in the overwhelming amount of information available to you in an endless parade of formats and forced user interfaces. Immediate access to strategic information is the key to support monitoring, search, analysis and automatic correlation of information.
Join this presentation and roundtable discussion with Expert System on semantic technology that solves this every day, every business problem.
This is a free webinar brought to you by Expert System.
To register send an e-mail to webinar@expertsystem.net
- You are looking for a semantic indexing, search and analysis innovative tool to manage your strategic internal and external information.
- You want to overcome the limits of traditional search systems to manage the contents of large quantities of text.
- You have ever wondered how you can improve the effectiveness of the decision making process in your company.
DATE/TIME: July 10th 2008, 9:00 am PT, 12:00 pm ET USA; 5:00 pm UK.
Duration: 60 Minutes
Focus On: semantics as a leading technology to understand, search, retrieve, and analyze strategic contents.
The webinar will teach how to:
- Conceptualize search and analysis on multilingual knowledge bases;
- Investigate the documents in an interactive way through an intuitive web interface;
- Highlight all the relations, often unexpected, that link the elements across the documents.
- Monitor specific phenomena constantly and then easily generate and distribute ways for others to understand them.
It's worth a look-see, I think.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
End of Science? End of Theory?
And according to Anderson, biology is heading in the same direction. What does this say about science and humanity? In February, the National Science Foundation announced the Cluster Exploratory, a program that funds research designed to run on a large-scale distributed computing platform developed by Google and IBM in conjunction with six pilot universities. The cluster will consist of 1,600 processors, several terabytes of memory, and hundreds of terabytes of storage, along with the software, including IBM's Tivoli and open source versions of Google File System and MapReduce.Consider physics: Newtonian models were crude approximations of the truth (wrong at the atomic level, but still useful). A hundred years ago, statistically based quantum mechanics offered a better picture — but quantum mechanics is yet another model, and as such it, too, is flawed, no doubt a caricature of a more complex underlying reality. The reason physics has drifted into theoretical speculation about n dimensional grand unified models over the past few decades (the "beautiful story" phase of a discipline starved of data) is that we don't know how to run the experiments that would falsify the hypotheses — the energies are too high, the accelerators too expensive, and so on.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Catalogue 2.0
(1) Wikipedia – What better way to get the most updated information for a resource than the collective intelligence of the Web? Can we integrate this into the OPAC records? We should try.
(2) Blog – “Blog-noting” as I call it. To a certain extent, some catalogues already allow users to scribble comments on records. But blog-noting allows users to actually write down reflections of what they think of the resource. The catalogue should be a “conversation” among users.
(3) Amazon.ca - Wouldn’t it be nice to have an idea what a book costs out on the open market? And wouldn’t it make sense to throw in an idea of how much the used cost would be?
(4) Worldcat - Now that you know the price, wouldn’t it be useful to have an idea of what other libraries carry the book?
(5) Google-ability – OPAC resources are often online, but “hidden” in the deep web. If opened up to search engines, it makes it that much accessible.
(6) Social bookmarking – If the record is opened to the Web, then it naturally makes sense to be linked to Delicious, Refshare & Citulike (or similar bibliographic management service).
(7) Cataloguer’s paradise – Technical servicemen and women are often hidden in the pipelines of the library system, their work often unrecognized. These brave men and women should have their profiles right on the catalogue, for everyone to see, to enjoy. Makes for good outreach, too. (Photo is optional).
(8) Application Programming Interface - API's are sets of declarations of the functions (or procedures) that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs. It's like the interoperable sauce which adds taste to web service. It's the crux of Web 2.0, and will be important for the Semantic Web when the Open Web will finally arrive. As a result, API's need to be explored in detail by OPACs, for ways to integrate different programs and provide open data for reuse for others.
Are these ideas out of the realms of possibility? Your thoughts?
Monday, June 23, 2008
Seth Godin at SLA in Seattle
Best known as being an author of books such as Unleashing the Ideavirus, the Purple Cow, and Permission Marketing, Godin’s blog is not only one of the most popular blogs in the world, Godin also helped create a a popular website Squidoo, which is a network of user-generated lenses --single pages that highlight one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise . According to Godin, the way marketing works now is not by interrupting large numbers of people; rather, it is through soliciting a small segment of rabid fans who can eagerly spread the word about one's idea. The challenge is how to engage each person to go and bring five friends. What tools do we give them so that they can reach out to colleagues? A website like Zappos is so successful not because it sells shoes, but because it connects consumers to products, and then encourages consumers to spread the word to their friends and colleagues -- and hence, more consumers.
In this new era of permission marketing, spamming no longer works. Services such as PayPal which connect users to products or Sonos, which engage users as customers through recreating data into knowledge, and producing a conversation using the web as its platform are the new models of success. "Be remarkable," Godin argues, and "tell a story to your sneezers" so that they could spread the word and "get permission" from consumers for their attention to the product. Godin concludes with a controversial assertion. "Books are souvenirs," he said, to a hushed audience. Most people find everyday facts and information from digital documents. "When was the last time you got your information from a book?" Although Godin might have made a gross generationalization, his assertion of the divergence between the digital and the physical is a reality. In the Web 2.0 world, our enemy is obscurity, not piracy.
Together, Abram and Godin's sessions at SLA 2008 in Seattle were both rewarding experiences. They ultimately propose that information professionals need to shift their mentality from one of passivity to one of actively promoting themselves, of engaging information services in new ways, and of accepting change with an open mind.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Stephen Abrams at SLA in Seattle
For those who don't already know, Stephen Abram is President 2008 of SLA and was past-President of the Canadian Library Association. He is Vice President Innovation for SirsiDynix and Chief Strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute.
Here's a flavour of what I thought were key points that really gave me food for thought:
(1) What's wrong with Google and Wikipedia? - It's okay for librarians to refer to Google or Wikipedia. Britannica has 4% error; Wikipedia has 4% error, plus tens of thousands of more entries. It's not wrong to start with Wikipedia & Google, but it is wrong when we stop there.
(2) Don't dread change - This is perhaps the whiniest generation this century. The generation that dealt with two world wars and a depression did fine learning new tools like refrigerators, televisions, radios, and typewriters. And they survived. Why can't we? Is it so hard to learn to use a wiki?
(3) Focus! - We need to focus on the social rather than the technology. Wikis, blogs, and podcasts will come and go. But connecting with users won't. We must not use technology just for the sake of catching up. There has to be a reason to use them.
(4) Don't Be Anonymous - Do we give our taxes to a nameless accountant? Our teeth to a nameless dentist? Heart surgeon who has no title? If these professions don't, then why are information professionals hiding behind their screens. Go online! Use social networking as your tools to reach out to users!
(5) Millennials - This is perhaps the 1st generation in human history that its younger generation teaches its previous generation. However, though there is much to learn from youths about technology, there is also much need to mentor and train for this profession to prosper and flourish.
(6) Change is to come! - Expect the world to be even more connected than it already has. With HDTV, that means more cables are freed up for telecommunications. Google's endgame is to provide wireless accesss through electricity. There're already laser keyboards where you can type on any surface. The world is changing. So must information professionals.
(7) Build paths, not barriers - When there are pathlines created by pedestrians, libraries commonly erect fences to prevent walking. Why not create a path where one exists already so that the library becomes more accessible? Librarians must go to the user, not the other way around. If patrons are using Facebook, then librarians need to use that as a channel for communication.
Stephen's power presentation is here for your viewing pleasure as well.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
SLA Day #1
What is controversial about the proposal is the suspension of the Resource and Description Access (RDA). Not only does the working group believe that the RDA is too confusing and difficult to implement, it also requires much more testing. The report also proposes for a more continue education in bibliographic control for professionals and students alike. By designing an LIS curriculum and building an evidence base for LIS research can the profession be strengthened for the future.
Although the session had a fairly spare audience, I found this session to be highly engaging and perhaps even ominous for the future of librarianship. Because the Library of Congress accepted the report with support (although unofficially), this could mean a schism in progress of RDA, which is viewed as the successor of the AACR2. Also, the fact that this working group included the non-library world (i.e. Google and Microsoft), the future of bibliographic control won't be limited to librarians. Rather, it will involve input from the private sector, including publishers, search firms, and the corporate world. Is this a good thing? Time will tell. For better or for worse.