Beth Jefferson at Netspeed 2006
Notes and Quotes from Beth of Bibliocommons presentation on Social Software: [my comments in brackets]
“It isn’t FINDING it is FILTERING”
“People want connections [between genres, subjects, items, books, etc.] that makes sense to them.”
“Pick BPM Range” for music selection at jogtunes. The Library lists meaningless subject headings. e.g. Music->16th century etc. [Library catalogue lists artists and title for music, but not relevant meta-data.] “There are no experts that go and build meaningful connections [in libraries]. [In the web, they do with] “lists, labels, and ratings”
Most people contribute ratings to the Internet, not content. By far, ratings is the largest self-reported category of Internet contribution. e.g. hot-or-not
Written comments on websites, don’t help you find things, because computers cannot read the text and make meaning of it. But rating help rank items automatically. Computers can use ratings automatically. e.g. If there are 973 customer reviews of “sisterhood of the traveling pants’ what can you do with that? nothing. But 973 ratings can be used to help you find the item (e.g. because it is highly rated for young adults). Further, people who rate the item as “low” might have different types of reviews than those who rate it highly. [The ratings help you find reviews]
The “return cart” is reported by users as a popular method for finding new items. This is because items in the return cart are presumed to represent items worth taking out. e.g. someone else thought this was worth taking out, so it cannot be that bad.
A comparison of reader tagging of Harry Potter novels versus the catalogue classification shows that the catalogue is not as rich or meaningful as the reader’s tagging. The tag clouds immediately show a better picture of the classification than the catalogue subjects. [though, honestly, they are similar).
Quoted someone else as saying "lists and ratings are the currency of youth." Lists help youth find what they are interested in. [I think someone should do a model and simulation to show if top 10 lists cause some kind of serious swarming around limited topics. I think youth like top 10 lists because they help them avoid criticism and find their way to conforming. Do they help adults as much? What about people with/without existing identity?]
Catalogue search fails to reveal lists of resources compiled by experts on specific subjects and most often yield, “sorry, nothing matches your search.” e.g. search for head injury yeilds a few items in the library catalogue but only have a long tortuous search. A web search yields expert-selected resources almost immediately.
“crowd sourcing” using people to supplement what computers cannot do well [computers are not the problem here but formal systems, of which computers are just a medium]
“how do we connect the people who want to talk with the people who want to listen” “the people with questions with those who have answers”
The next generation OPAC provides a premise for converstation (where we have shared context with others).
‘put the opportunity in the flow’ [this means nothing.. "flow"?? I might as well say, "puts the action in the river"]
Libraries do not allow people to keep lists of what they have read or interested in. But it is a big part of online identity.
Calls the answerers in “google answers” “amateur librarians” [as opposed to expert researchers... what does that say about librarians? There is the implication that librarians would do a better job. Where is the evidence for that?]
“The catalogue is the ideal meeting place” [I find this worth challenging. What is the catalogue? Why would I meet there as opposed to some other place on the web? This is like meeting in a barn or storage room when there is a cafe available.]
“The ark was built by amateurs” “THe titanic was built by prefessionals”
Beth used to be the head of IS for Air Miles.
