Session five reading response

Es tut mir leid - Kurzer Schreiben!

This weeks readings focus on three issues:

Do community contributions to social networks self-regulate to follow standards of quality?
How much regulation is needed to ensure quality and how do social networks encourage it?
How do libraries fit into this picture?

The idea of a social networking community (SNC) coming together to create something has been philosophically linked to the opensource software movement. Duguid rightly points out the flaws of this linkage, and highlights the need for some kind of quality and control to be imposed over the product of the SNC. Hayworththwaite (?) analyses how this quality regulation can be achieved through either a lightweight or heavyweight scheme. Geisler and Burns found that in a lightweight scheme (Youtube’s tagging system) a huge diversity of tags were created by the SNC. Lerman’s study showed that poor regulation of a SNC can lead to the tyranny of the minority, suggesting that in the case of at least some SNC a greater degree of regulation may be needed in order to assure some kind of democracy. Leibenluft again returns us to the issue of quality by highlighting the success and failure of Yahoo! Answers. This SNC succeeds in that the questions asked here would be difficult to efficiently research in a web browser or at a library. However, their failure is that many of the answers are incorrect or misleading, and this poor standard of quality is a serious issue for this site. By comparison, SNC’s such as Wikipedia, which have a stronger regulatory system, have higher quality information, but cover less material. At the core of this issue is the concern about accurate information on the one hand, and the need of SNC members to interact with information. SNC members are not content to passively learn, they want to actively engage with information to create knowledge. This desire is easily harnessed and can generate significant content, but some authority needs to regulate the enterprise. Traditionally, libraries have stepped into the role of an information authority. What is the place of libraries within this model, and how can they engage SNC members?

Gazan and Dempsey both get at the place of the library within this scheme. Gazan argues that digital libraries need to regard their users as both “information consumers” and “information generators.” Dempsey recognizes that libraries can play a critical role within the digital information age, but is at a loss as to where to position these institutions so that they can have maximum impact.

Resurgence of the Albanian Plague Demon

Hey guys, I'm letting the team down this week. Whatever plague I've had off and on since December has chosen this weekend to return and I've been running a fever since Friday. Be leery of Albanian Witches - they hex hard!