Open, social and linked - A ménage à trois of content exploitation
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Transcript of Open, social and linked - A ménage à trois of content exploitation
UKSG, HarrogateApril 2011
Image: Jenser (Clasix-Design) @ Flickr
Open, social and linked
A ménage à trois of content exploitation
Andy Powell, Eduservwww.eduserv.org.uk/research
twitter.com/andypowe11
Overview/ will argue that we have tended to underplay the importance of social
networks in our provision of library and academic publishing services
/ and, in fact, in the development of digital library services more generally
/ and that emphasis on providing open and linked content provides platform for social
activity
Image: Niecieden @ Flickr
Attitude
/ our behaviour is being changed/ the web is now a social construct/ research and learning are social activities/ ditto cultural heritage
Image: still from The Machine is Us/ing Us by Michael Wesch
residents vs. visitors
/ a visitor is “an individual who uses the web as a tool in an organised manner whenever the need
arises”/ a resident is “an individual who lives a percentage
of their life online”David White, University of Oxford – TALL Blog
/ note: attitude rather than capability/ in digital libraries, we have tended to focus on
visitors
Image: bartmaguire @ Flickr
channels vs. platforms
/ content should be ‘of’ the web rather than ‘on’ the web/ huh? what does that mean?/ again, it’s about attitude/ an expectation of re-use/ think platform rather than channel
Image: akhr1961 @ Flickr
In digital libraries…
/ in digital librarieswe have a long (and pre-digital) heritage
/ we tend to focus on contentand descriptions of content
/ and moving collections of those descriptions
from providers to consumers/ such that they can be searched and
browsedor otherwise displayed to individuals
Image: spike55151 @ Flickr
Standards
/ we’re quite good at standards…/ particularly those that focus on metadata (MARC, MODS, DC, ORE, etc.)/ and identifiers for the content/ and protocols (OAI-PMH, Z39.50, SRW, etc.)/ and OpenURL, …
Image: BEUTELTIERE @ Flickr
Access control/ because some (most?) content has not been freely availablewe also focus on access control/ standards like SAML/ software like Shibboleth or OpenAthens
Image: spodzone @ Flickr
People and identityImage: Jenser (Clasix-Design) @ Flickr
/ commonly still a focus on one-way flow of information
/ increasing interest in relationshipsbetween stuff and people
/ but usually with a content-centric view/ still little real interest in relationships between
people/ which means that ‘identity’ issues normally focus
on“that is you, that is what you are allowed to do”
/ whereas on the social web, the emphasis is different
“this is me, this is what I’ve done”
Openness aside (1)
/ being open is all about enabling re-use/ cultural conditions for openness don’t emerge
overnight/ as we are finding with learning objects,
research papersand probably data
Image: dullhunk @ Flickr
Openness aside (1)/ UKRDS survey of staff
representing 700 researchers (2009)...
/ 43% expressed need to see other’s research data/ most share data in some
form (informally with peers)/ but only 12% share via
existing formal data centres
Image: tk-link @ Flickr
Openness aside (2)/ need to distinguish ‘open’ from ‘free’/ aspects of Amazon service are ‘open’ but content paid-for/ contrast with current difficulty determining which e-books are made available by which publishers
http://ebookfinder.labs.eduserv.org.uk
The social web
/ typical characteristics of social websites/ concentration and diffusion
Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Lorcan Dempsey’s Blog
/ exposure at the item level/ focus on social interaction - both within the network and across other networks
Contrast with repositories/ contrast with repository activity
/ mis-match between repository architecture and real-world social networks
/ emphasis on ‘shelving’ content rather than social behaviour
/ uncompelling value offer to end-users/ result… the need for mandates to fill what would
otherwise remain empty
Image: timtom.ch @ Flickr
Linked Data/ Linked Data…1. use URIs as names for things.2. use HTTP URIs, so that people can look
up those names3. when someone looks up a URI, provide
useful information, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL)
4. include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more things
/ point 2 brings greatest value/ modelling issues make realisation of the promise some way off
Image: Zach Klein @ Flickr
Facebook ‘like’ button
/ Facebook ‘like’ button provides interesting case in point
/ underpinned by snippet of Linked Data (using the Open Graph Protocol)
/ but emphasis is on building social capital rather than the technology
/ arguably, value comes more from use of ‘http’ URI than from use of RDF
ConclusionsConclusions/ if the web teaches us one thing, it is the power of the http URI and links based on it/ openness and linkedness provide a platform for social interaction/ but are not sufficient on their own/ increasingly need to understand the social activity of our users, particularly resident behaviours, and think platform rather than channel