Where’s the trust?

My library, after much pleading, launched a blog.  This is the email I received…

Each of you will shortly receive an invite to join but first here are the ground rules (subject to revision):1) There are no restrictions on how often you post. However, each of the librarians is required to post at least once a quarter, just like you had to write once a quarter for Informatics. If need be, we will remind you. Your area of responsibility will be the same as it was for Informatics. Talk to Mary if you need a reminder of what this is.

2) You will be designated as a contributor. This allows you to write, but not publish, a post.

3) Mary and I will have editorial control. We will check for new postings on a daily basis, review them and then publish.

4) Please limit your postings to 500 words or less.  (Red mine)

My question is where is the trust? 

Web 2.0 Review — Wiki’s

For my web 2.0 review, I chose to write about the use of wiki’s.  I chose this topic because of their applicability to libraries and librarians.  I am going to define what a wiki is, how it may be used in libraries, and some drawbacks to the use of wiki’s.  I am certain that the last component may cause uproar, but I feel that I must give both sides of the argument.
A wiki is a “website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a site.”[1] 

The Association of College and Research Libraries defines wikis as a “collaborative” and “multi-authored” web resource.[2]  Moreover, Doug Achterman states that the “potential of wikis as an educational tool remains largely untapped.  The power of a wiki lies in its ability to provide a format for collaborative construction of knowledge.”[3] 

So what does this have to do with library services?  Well, the ACRL goes on to say that wikis can be used in library instruction.  “Library instruction wikis have two chief uses: the sharing of knowledge and the ability to cooperate in creating resources, such as informational handouts and guides.”[4]  This may include instruction web pages, subject guides, pathfinders, resource lists, etc.  A second application of wiki software is Wikipedia.com, and how students can use this resource for quick reference sources.  Moreover, students, librarians, and faculty should be taught how to add content to this web service; thus adding to the collective knowledge of the human race.  Another possible application of wiki software is its role in literacy development.

As for some of the drawbacks to wiki’s, I will only address a few.  For the purpose of this project, I will not attempt to deal with the philosophically or ideology of the wisdom of crowds.

The first major drawback for wiki’s is authority and credibility.  I do not mean the author as an expert, but in the teaching of authority and credibility as a librarian.  Librarians used to be able to say to users to not use .com web sites as credible, however many of the wiki software platforms are .coms.  http://bullrunlibrary.pbwiki.com/

The second drawback is Wikipedia.  While Middlebury College got a lot a flack from 2.0 enthusiasts because they told students that they cannot use Wikipedia as a source, the question is not whether Wikipedia is a trustworthy site.  While this is debatable, the greater point is that college students are to NEVER use an encyclopedia of any origin in a research paper. 

My final words are from Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia.  He states:           

 Clearly, something really important has been left out of the Web 2.0 equation. What? What needs to be added so that our communities produce content that is not merely abundant, useful, and interesting, but also reliable and relevant? I have three principles, which I will state briefly first but then elaborate, because it is very easy to misunderstand in all three cases. They are: 1.        Find a meaningful role for experts within the project. 2.        Require contributors to use their real-world identities. 3.        Establish the rule of law by committing contributors to a social contract that makes them full partners in the project. Adopting these three principles will help transform Web 2.0 into Web 3.0. Leveraged intelligently, these principles will allow an online community to produce high quality and relevance, without necessarily compromising high productivity. They will, in short, help the Internet to grow up.[5]  

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

[2] “Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program” ACRLhttp://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2007/april07/usingawiki.htm   Accessed: April 27, 2007.

[3] Doug Achterman, “Beyond Wikipedia”, Teacher Librarian, Dec. 2006.

[4] http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2007/april07/usingawiki.cfm

[5] http://www.citizendium.org/cznewvision.html#Three_principles

Post #3 Scholarly Communication

For this post I want to explore scholarly communication.  A recent NY Times article discusses Harvard’s push for open access.  I am fascinated by this new push for getting rid of the publishers, and having the material published by the library.  While Harvard is considered a frontrunner in this matter, in truth, the first actual push came from our government. 

The NIH (National Institutes of Health) requires all federally funded research findings be submitted to the NLM (National Library of Medicine).  Harvard, on the other hand, is debating whether or not to publish their scholarly work via an open access repository.  The library would spearhead this process!  “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”

With this all going on, there has also been a lot of blogging on putting scholarly work in blog format and circumvent the publishing process.  (See Why Professional Librarian Journals Should Evolve into Blogs) This push suggests that peer review should be a process that occurs post publication.  I tend to agree with T. Scott who suggests:

I’m not at all sure that it would be a service to the library community if all of those articles that I read through in their first iterations had simply been posted to a blog and opened up for comment.  The few experiments that have been done in the last couple of years with post-publication review have not been overwhelmingly successful, the ArXiv experience notwithstanding (extrapolating from the experience of a small, tightly knit, fairly homogeneous scientific community that writes largely in formulas to a much more diverse, narrative literature is a stretch, I think). 

So I think that it’s great that we take back scholarly communication from the business of publishers.  But I do not think it prudent or wise to circumvent the scientific methods of peer-review prepublication.  The interesting question will be what role libraries and librarians will have in the new era of scholarly communication.