It’s just one weekend, dirt cheap, and going to be loads of fun. It’s in Edmonton at the School of Library and Information Studies (University of Alberta).
Taught by Lisa Yeo, formerly of The Alberta Library, now a Ph.D. student, and author of “Personal Firewalls for Administrators and Remote Users” (and very cool person). The bonus is that yours-truely, Cloned Milkmen, will be giving demonstrations. RFID hacking, barcode hacking, wifi man-in-the-middle, and more.
Here’s an excerpt:
To introduce students to the theory and practice of information security – the protection of information and information systems. The course will focus on foundational concepts, assessment and evaluation of information security practices in the library and information studies context.
Media Sharing sites are extremely popular. Common examples are Flickr for sharing photos, or Youtube for sharing videos. You can also share audio, powerpoint presentations, and screencasts. These sites allow you to upload your content and other people can search for it, access it, and easily share your content with others in a variety of ways.
A Mashup combines one or more different *things* to make something distinctly new: something more than the sum of its parts. A mashup could combine two different songs to make something more interesting than either of the originals. A mashup could combine audio and video in an interesting way (e.g. Animoto makes movie-trailer like mashups from your videos and a soundtrack). A mashup could combine two the features of two different websites (e.g. Panoramio combines Google maps with photo sharing) to provide something that neither provided on their own.
Media sharing and mashups share a common feature: they create value through sharing content. This is obvious in media sharing, but it is also fairly simple: content is shared through viewing, linking, and copying. Mashups depend upon others sharing content, but in a way that allows the creation of something new (not simple copying).
In this post, I am going to describe how, socially, media sharing works. I am also going to explain how mashups work and are enabled by media sharing. As interesting as each of these things are, I’m going to demonstrate something remarkable: that mashups are becoming shareable media in their own right. I will conclude by arguing that this is a significant opportunities for libraries and suggests ways that it can be used.
What does it mean to “share” media?
Originally, media sharing sites were pretty simple. They were essentially social media sites: You would upload your photos or videos, and other users could view and search for your videos if they visited that site. People could also discuss each other’s content. However, it was basic: You shared your content.
Things got interesting when media sharing sites allowed anyone to embed shared content on other sites. Embedding means that you find something you like and you put a copy on your blog, or your Facebook account, or somewhere else. The content links back to the media sharing site (and all those social media features), but visitors to your blog (or whatever) can see the content without having to visit the media sharing site at all. In this context, someone else is sharing your content.
A Simple Example of Media Sharing
If you already know how media sharing works (e.g. embedding youtube videos), just skip to the end of this section.
This development is significant because it changes how content is found by others. You content becomes more findable when others can share it. Other people, people you don’t know, will find an audience for your content. Here is an example:
Imagine that Bob has a very dramatic chipmunk. He makes a video and shares it on Youtube. He’s got a small audience, and they all see the video because they regularily visit his Youtube page. A few other people might find Bob’s video by searching on the Youtube website (if he tags it well). Bob’s video is cool, but not enough people know it.
One day, Jane sees Bob’s video on youtube. She’s blown away by the coolness of Bob’s chipmunk video. In fact, Jane has a blog about chipmunks. So she copies the “Embed” code for the video into her blog (just like I did below). Now the video appears in her blog post. Her audience sees the video when they visit her site, they don’t have to visit Youtube at all. A lot more people have seen Bob’s cool video now.
The video still links back to Youtube of course. This is important, because Jane doesn’t know it but Alice has a website for humourus pet videos. Alice subscribes to Jane’s blog and see the video. Alice follows the link back to Youtube and, like Jane, shares the video on her blog, and a LOT more people see it. Now Bob’s video is getting copied all over the place. It’s so popular it’s catching on like a virus (and hence it’s called a viral video).
The video in this example is actually real, as is its popularity, but it wasn’t originally shared by a guy named Bob (as far as I know).
Media Sharing is Important because it makes Content Findable
In The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More Chris Anderson argues that abundance is the marketplace is revealing new truths about what customers want and how they expect to get it (Anderson, 2006). Specifically, he observes that the Internet has made more goods available, easier to find, and cheaper to obtain and argues that these three forces are transforming the marketplace focus away from blockbuster hits and toward satisfying myriad niche interests.
The popularity and media sharing is an example of Anderson (2006) theory. Content creation is easy, and the Internet makes distribution cheap. We must ask, however, how in a growing glut of user-generated content is anything findable? To understand this, we must realize that, unlike older communications media, like television, not everything is a blockbuster hit and therefore known by everyone.
Anderson (2006) is heavily influenced by the example of Amazon.com researched by Brynjolfsson, Hu, & Smith (2003) which reported that Amazon.com offered a selection of books that was 23 times larger than the number of books available in a typical “big box” bookstore and concluded that “increased product variety of online bookstores enhanced consumer welfare more than lower prices or increased competition in the marketplace (p. 1580). This measure of consumer welfare means that consumer needs in bookstores are being revealed only when book selection is greatly increased (p. 1591). In short, there is a trend for variety, not blockbuster hits, to drive demand. Anderson (2006) expands on this by examining CD music sales at Amazon.com and finds the same trend (pp. 90-91).
In media sharing sites, very few videos every “go viral” as we saw in the dramatic chipmunk example. Instead, most content find a small audience that are interested specifically interested in that content. “Sharing” is the mechanism by which we make personal media findable. If you find a video on Youtube that you like, you might share it with people you feel will like it. They might do it the same. Thus, content finds it way to its audience: the audience doesn’t have to necessarily find the content.
How (socially) does sharing work?
We might ask, why does media sharing work at all? Will people really share? Why do they share? Will they share enough that non-blockbuster-popular items will find a new audience? Recent research indicates that individuals posses a variety of motiviations for sharing, and that some individuals share a great deal.
Phelps, Lewis, Mobilio, Perry, and Raman (2004) studied the responses and motivations of people in sharing content and links by email. 66 participants agreed to have their email analysed for content and forwarding patterns and 23 were later interviewed at length. The study identified a variety of motivations that influence the chances that a person will forward an email to an acquaintance. Specifically, they found that individuals were likely to pass on information in areas that they were experts in to those that they felt could benefit from the information. They also found that some individuals passed on information more generally to large numbers of individuals.
This matches the popular Tipping Point theory. Gladwell (2000) suggests that the spread of information is heavily influenced by three specific social network roles: connectors, mavens, and persuaders. Connectors are people who have many social ties, mavens are subject experts, and persuaders advocate specific ideas. The role(s) that an individual plays in their own social network and the presence or absence of others playing various roles may influence the individual’s effectiveness in finding and using information in day-to-day tasks.
Huotari and Chatman (2001) studied the influence of social networks on information seeking among staff of a University. Fourteen participants were selected from five different levels in the corporate structure of the University of Tampere in Finland and were interviewed at length. Their interviews were analysed and contacts between individuals from different levels in the corporate structure were categorized as “outsiders” and contact between individuals from the same level were termed “insiders.” The study found a variety of relationships between people: some of which revolved around reciprocal information sharing arrangements, and others which involved one-way flow of information. The study identified individuals seeking out others that fill maven-like roles especially as relates to power-relationships in corporate hierarchy (that is, the powerful actively seek out mavens). In the context of media sharing, we might imagine that this influences how and when people share professional presentations (e.g. found on slideshare). By putting your presentations on slideshare, you become a maven in the hopes of gaining the favour of those more powerful. This would appear to be a strong motivator toward sharing.
Uses of Media Sharing by Libraries
There are many examples of media sharing being used by libraries. I have previously blogged about The Flickr Commons, an extremely popular photo sharing project that grew out of the Library of Congress sharing their photo collections on Flickr. Now there are over a dozen institutions making their photos available through Flickr. These collections had limited audiences before, when they were only available on the LoC website, but are now finding niche audiences thanks to media sharing.
Calgary Public Library choose to share its videos on Youtube. So now others can embed those videos in their blogs and the advertisements might reach new audiences that they did not before. These videos are not likely to “go viral” but there isn’t a need for everyone in the world to see these. Instead, it is enough that they will reach a niche audience that is receptive of the ads.
Many librarians are expanding their professional development activities by on slideshare.com. If you give a presentation at a conference, you reach a certain audience. However, if you share it on slideshare, others can share it on their own sites with an audience that is likely to be receptive and interested. Here is a presentation on Library 2.0 for example.
The open attitude that lead media sharing sites to allow embedding of content in other sites, has also lead to the development of “mashups” sites. A mashup site combines the features of two or more other sites to do something completely new. These are possible, when one website allows their content to shared through mechanisms that computer programmers can use to automatically search, retrieve, and display content. These mechanisms are called APIs: but think of them as automated sharing.
For example, Twitgoo combines twitter and photosharing. Panoramio combines Google maps with photo sharing). The Edmonton City Policy Neighborhood Crime Map combines google maps and crime stats (but shh… don’t talk about it… its against the usage agreement).
LibraryThing is probably the most important source of library mashups. They provide APIs so that programmers can “mashup” LibraryThing with other systems. For example, zorked.net/bm mashes up data from BookMooch, LibraryThing, and Amazon.com. CodexMap combines LibraryThing data with Google Maps.
Sharing Mashups
Mashups are as exciting as media sharing sites are. As the examples, I have given demonstrate, they should both be of intense interest to libraries. Media sharing allows libraries to reach niche audiences that they might not know exist. Mashups allow libraries to create entirely new services from existing sources.
However, a key traditional limitation of mashups, is that they are websites. Like those media sharing sites of old, before embedding, where people had to search the site itself to find content, mashups are destinations. To “share” a mashup, you would have to give them the link. Another limitation is that to make typical mashups, one has to be a programmer.
This is rapidly changing however. For example, for over a year, it has been possible to share a google map. Here is a map to the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies.
That is a trivial mashup though: a little bit of data, and a map. What would be ideal, is to be able to create custom mashups, without having to be programmer, and to be able to share them as easily as we share embeddable content.
Making Embeddable Mashups with Yahoo! Pipes
Yahoo! Pipes is a system that allows you to generate simple or sophisticated mashups without being a programmer and to be able to share them as several different types of embedded content. In this section, I will describe the process of creating two mashups (one actually didn’t work but it’s not Pipes fault).
You have to have a Yahoo! ID to login to Yahoo! Pipes. After you login and you choose to create a new “Pipes” you are presented with a screen that looks like graphing paper. This is a canvas on which you will “draw” your mashup.
To create the mashup, you drag-and-drop modules onto the canvas. Your mashup has to have one input module and one output module, and (optionally) other modules that modify your input.
The input sources can be many things. For example, it could be a Flickr photo search, an RSS feed, an XML data source, a search of Yahoo! Local, a search of Google Base, or several other things. You can also type in your own input which is surprising useful
The output depends, in part, on the input. Typically the output is an RSS feed of the items generated from the input. If your input is a Flickr search, than you will have the option of presenting the output as a slideshow, as a list of image, or an RSS feed of the images. If the photos have been geotagged (i.e. contain the location of where they were taken) then you will also be able to present the results as a map.
Example 1: Flickr photos of Cameron Library
To start off with, lets create a Flickr mashup. I drag the Flickr input module onto the canvas and I specify a search of “cameron library” and then connect the input module to the output module and click “Save”. I give it a name and click “Run Pipe…”. It shows me three different views of the mashup and a link to an RSS feed. Here are two of the views.
Example 2: Creating an RSS Feed
Many libraries offer RSS feeds, however, some libraries don’t have the technology to do it. They might want to provide a list of new items that have arrives, or even something as simple as an RSS feed for events and changes in holiday hours.
Yahoo! Pipes, will let you create an RSS feed from scratch. Just drag the “RSS Item Builder” input onto the canvas and then fill out all the forms fields (e.g. Title, author, etc.). You can even include the URLs of multimedia files here (podcast anyone?!). To add multiple items to your RSS feed, just drag another RSS Item Builder and fill out, then drag a “union” module. Draw a line between each of them and the “union” and now you have an RSS feed with both items. After you save the feed, you can choose to embed it or give someone the link. Here is an embedded version.
Example 3: Searching the Library Catalog
What I’d like to do is mashup my library catalogue with RSS. I want to be able to create an RSS feed that will contain all the new books that come up when I search the catalogue for “mashups”. There is a technical trick to this. Yahoo! Pipes will allow you to use any XML data source as input. There is a standard system called SRU (Search Retrieve by URL) that will search a library catalogue and return the results as XML.
To create this, you drag the “Fetch Data” input on to the canvas, and then put in an URL. The URL is special, it is an SRU query. Once you know the trick, it is easy to change the query. Here is an example of a query of the University of Alberta Libraries for “mashup” books.
I have to specify the XML tag (just like an HTML tag) that will contain my search results. In this case that is “records.record”. And then attach the input to the output.
To improve this, I could transform many of the input items, into known RSS fields. Unfortunately, Yahoo! Pipes, had a problem parsing the XML data from the SRU service and this pipe did not work. However, the general idea that you can transform any XML source into a mashup is interesting.
Other Possibilities for Pipes
A number of the modules in Pipes hold out interesting opporutunities. For example, there is a “location extractor” module. Any input source that contains geographical information (e.g. place names, addresses, latitude and longitude) can be used to mashup with a map. This happens automatically: the user doesn’t have to do anything to create the map output. As long as some data from the input is identified (by dragging-and-dropping or drawing lines to it) as a location identifier, the output will contain an mapping option.
Similarly, any input that contains images will provide for slideshow or other display options.
Imagine a mashup of library catalogue search and cover art. The mashup in Pipes would automatically provide an RSS feed and an embeddable list to put on a website.
The Value of Shareable Mashups for Libraries
Libraries have a lot more to share than photos, videos, presentations, etc. Libraries are sources of organized information. As with Anderson (2006) “long tail” theory, libraries have large amounts of information, where most items are likely to be of interest to only a few individuals. So how can we put together niche interest items with the unknown individuals who might be interested in them? In an Academic Library, the traditional approach is to have liaison librarians who get to know a special collection and the faculty that collection serves.
Sharable mashups present a new way to do this. By combining library data sources, with other information libraries can create new applications, that may be highly specific to a niche interest. By making these sharable through a simple cut-and-paste, users who find these items interesting can then share them with other likeminded individuals.
Reference
Anderson, C. (2006). The long tail: Why the future of business is selling more of less. New York: Hyperion.
Brynjolfsson, E., Hu, Y., & Smith, M. (2003). Consumer surplus in the digital economy: Estimating the value of increased product variety at online booksellers. Management Science, 49(11), 1580-1596.
Gladwell, Malcolm. 2000. The Tipping Point. New York: Hatchet Book Group.
Huotari, M-L, and E. Chatman. 2001. Using everyday life information seeking to explain organizational behavior. Library and Information Science Research 23 (4): 351-366.
Phelps, Joseph E., R. Lewis, L. Mobilio, D. Perry, and N. Raman. 2004. Viral Marketing or Electronic Word-of-Mouth Advertising: Examining Consumer Responses and Motivations to Pass Along Email. Journal of Advertising Research 44 (4): 333-348.
This is part one of a podcast version of my Hackers in the Library presentation from Netspeed 2008 (incorrectly identified as Netspeed 2007 in the podcast). The slides are available for download so that you can follow along with the podcast.
Hackers in the Library is a presentation that tells the stories of real information security incidents that have occurred in libraries. Part three tells explains how trends in cybercrime will affect libraries
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This is part one of a podcast version of my Hackers in the Library presentation from Netspeed 2008 (incorrectly identified as Netspeed 2007 in the podcast). The slides are available for download so that you can follow along with the podcast.
Hackers in the Library is a presentation that tells the stories of real information security incidents that have occurred in libraries. Part two tells the stories of incidents that are not unique to libraries but where libraries are more vulnerable or have special outcomes.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This is part one of a podcast version of my Hackers in the Library presentation from Netspeed 2008 (incorrectly identified as Netspeed 2007 in the podcast). The slides are available for download so that you can follow along with the podcast.
Hackers in the Library is a presentation that tells the stories of real information security incidents that have occurred in libraries. Part one contains an introduction and includes stories of incidents where libraries represent unique targets for cyberattacks: attacks that would not occur in non-libraries.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
