Last weekend, I read The Information Diet by Clay Johnson. These days before I buy almost anything from a book to a vacuum cleaner I check online reviews. Reviews for this book were mixed, but positive enough for me to buy it. I needed something new on media bias and a reminder to not be sucked into so much mindless surfing. 

While there were a few interesting points about transparency and broadcast media, on the whole I found the book somewhat depressing and scattered. One chapter covers digital literacy, or as we know it, information literacy. The book fails to acknowledge the role information professionals have played in this, research on information behaviour, or even how we can help you find quality research.

I questioned, after finishing the book, whose fault is that? Debates around information literacy have for years focused on the inability of librarians to brand it as something anyone outside our profession understands. We have also not joined forces with those working on media literacy as much as we could have which could raise IL’s profile.

And yet, as I wonder with any book that clearly is researched and consults academic materials: how can a book be written about one of our primary services and not even be noticed during the process of obtaining that research?

I also reflected on the reviews I had read before making the decision to buy the book. Is it more a factor of the brokenness of reviews, the deprofessionalisation of reviewing that is frustrating to me? My last project working in libraries was to implement a discovery layer. Ranking, the role of reviews, and ‘aboutness’ were interesting by-products of the decisions we made. I can’t help but think that as we continue to absorb more and more information everyday, it’s not important merely whether or not you can get to the data source (as Johnson advises) but that you can easily and effectively find those sources between all the noise. Which, even if you are digitally literate, might be a challenge without access to information, good search, and advocates for quality information – including librarians.

Not including cancelled talks, 100%ofall #swib11 speakers are male with ~1/3 female participants Congrats to #gender #fail via @nichtich
@nopiedra on a conference in Germany on semantic web in libraries.

I don’t want to overly criticize this conference, as I don’t have more information about it than this tweet. I am not the kind of woman to go around counting the number of women presenting at conferences. However, strategies to be inclusive of gender, new professionals and newbies (to new concepts) are a good thing in my book. Diversity is important, especially when it comes to emerging concepts and practices in the profession. I see this in my day job, working with library communities around the world to communicate better and to be more inclusive.

This blog has really fallen off the semantic web/linked data track, mostly because my interests have changed but also because keeping up was becoming a challenge. My strongest interest lies in working to communicate ideas, technology and practices in a way that is engaging to non-techies, and new professionals. I enjoyed the pieces I wrote for FUMSI, Library Journal, and Internet Librarian International on these topics a couple of years ago, and of course this blog.

Reader, perhaps this is just the kind of motivation I needed to get back into the topics that started this blog in the first place.

Any librarian that thinks that libraries move at a slow pace should try standing outside them sometime. In the past two years alone we’ve seen the the eBook market grow from virtually nothing in non-US markets to dominate conversation, a huge increase in the amount of legal streaming content (and simultaneous geolocking), copyright term extensions, new organisations like Library Renewal spring up, attack and defence of libraries whether by word, or by physical will.

It’s been two and a half years now since I last worked in libraries (I now work ‘for’ libraries and rejoined IFLA in 2009), and roughly that span of time since posts have been more sporadic on this blog. Not for want of issues to discuss, but rather for space and time to consider what to say, since Twitter tends to take most rapid thoughts, and in-person meetings the rest. Perhaps some blog fatigue – I had to smile when a post elsewhere said I had started blogging recently. It’s now been 12 years since I started my first blog (and had the dubious distinction of being the first Australian library blogger). Now everyone has an (abandoned) blog. In my current role, I’m fortunate to travel, visit a number of libraries and to discuss issues in the profession with a broad group of experts and professionals. While I remain interested in the Semantic Web, and Linked Library Data, it’s become just one of many things that I’m monitoring these days in both the library and development communities. Yet Semantic Web as an idea remains important – if not only because it harkens back to fundamental principles of standards, openness, transparency, and the role of ICT in development. Much that I have learned from the development community – crisis mapping, aid transparency, and developing flexible services for multiple platforms including mobile is deeply relevant to libraries too. There is growing awareness of this in many developing countries, but perhaps not so much in libraries elsewhere, in a twist on old information flows. Open Access, and the way countries can collaborate cross border to advocate for increasing access to information, remains on my mind.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to watch and discuss these topics in person in a lot of countries from Australia to Ukraine over the past two years, and I’m looking forward to bringing it back to the blog. Thanks for sticking around.

The Poet movie Two articles out this week describe semantic projects which aim to improve findability and personalisation:

An EU-funded project is described in Next-generation hi-fi: deepening the musical experience. One of the aims of the projects, called Semantic Hi-Fi, is to increase the number of ways in which you can search for music -

As a result of this work, users of future hi-fi can expect to be able to navigate easily through their collections using search criteria, such as tempo, genre, instrumentation, in addition to the traditional search criteria of artist and title. If you have a particular tune running through your head, but no information on it, you can simply hum the tune into the system’s microphone and it will find it for you!

When I worked in a music library, we used to include all of this information in the catalogue, but it was done manually, and only if the information was included on the CD. This project goes much further by analysing the audio file itself to extra the data.

Libraries which circulate music may have an interest in this type of semantic technology – it could assist with research and reference questions about music, especially classical and jazz in academic environments, and in recommending new titles for clients. Further information is available on the project’s website.

The second article is about ubiquitous computing, but has some interesting possibilities for the semantic web and libraries. Democratic Parties: An Interview With UCLA Computer Scientist Kevin Eustice discusses applications which establish social and location and make recommendations. Eustice gives the example of providing local information at museums -

A pretty straightforward application we’ve considered is extending this to support context-aware museum experiences. You can provide media content directly to a device; you can customize it to social groups; you can customize based on the age or language of a person visiting the exhibit.

There are some libraries in Asia that have started to use barcode technology to activate downloads of audio and data to mobile and other handheld devices. Technology like Eustice describes is another way of providing tailored experiences to individuals.

The UBC Health Library has added a page on the Semantic Web to their wiki. Check it out for a links to resources on the concept and a great section on why health librarians should care -

The semantic web could potentially be a place where much of the knowledge of librarians and computer scientists could be built into the web itself. What’s remarkable about semantic technologies is that they will not affect the look or feel of our ‘web experiences’, and may perform tasks without our end-users’ knowledge.

An exciting prediction!