Masters of the
Bibliographic
Universe?
The Promises and
Pitfalls of Digital
Scholarship in the Age
of Googlepedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe
Where we’re headed…
• Digital scholarship
• Bibliographic
universe
• Googlepedia
• Demo of Zotero etc.
• The promises and
pitfalls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe
For example…
• Claim: Bibliographic practices are being
transformed through the convergence of
specific socio-technical factors, e.g.
‘Googlepedia’
• Reason: Scholarship now takes place in print
and digital media, but is increasingly
disseminated through the Web. Therefore
scholarly citation and hyperlinking are coevolving practices/technologies…
• Evidence: Watch this space…
RDIF
Radio Frequency
Identification
The Evidence
“It is immediately clear that Wikipedia is very
popular with usage ranging between 70 and 84
percent across all age groups. This is mainly
individuals reading content rather than contributing,
although the ratio of contribution to lurking across all
collaborative authoring tools is 1 to 4. Around 50
percent of Wikipedia use is for study, which
represents a huge amount of students and
researchers who probably use Wikipedia as there first
(and possibly only) source of reference.”
David White, ‘Results and analysis of the Web 2.0 services
survey undertaken by the SPIRE project’, JISC 2007.
http://spire.conted.ox.ac.uk/trac_images/spire/SPIRESurvey.pdf
Figure: Wikipedia referrals to UW Libraries Digital Collections, October 2005 - September 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Willis_Sayre
Ann M. Lally and Carolyn E. Dunford. ‘Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections’, D-Lib
Magazine, Volume 13, Number 5/6, May/June 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Modelling_Wikipedia%27s_growth
Demo: Bibliography 1.0
Microsoft Word and Endnote
Bib 1.0: the scholars perspective…
Desktop
publishing
OPAC
WEB
z39.50
Database
Text file
Wordprocessor
Bibliographic
Software
e.g. Endnote
Demo: Bibliography 2.0
Firefox and Zotero
Bib 2.0: the scholars perspective…
Worldcat
Libraries
Australia
GoogleDocs
Google
Wikipedia
Open
Office
SRW/U
RSS
OpenURL
OpenSearch
Zotero
Carmun
Endnote
Blogs
/wiki
Cohen, Daniel. 2007. History and Technology - Zotero: Social and
Semantic Computing for Historical Scholarship. Perspectives:
Newsletter of the American Historical Association. 45, no. 5: 13.
Rosenzweig, Roy. 2006. Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia
and the Future of the Past. The Journal of American History 93,
no. 1: 117.
Compatible standards and
software for Zotero
Standards
• ContextObjects in
Spans (COinS)
http://ocoins.info/
• Embedded RDF
• Dublin Core XML
• MARC
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Software
Voyager (WebVoyage)
InnoPAC
SIRSI
Aleph
Dynix
VTLS
DRA
…
Conclusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_the_Universe
Promises of Googlepedia
• Scholarly information any time and any
where: ambient library made good…
• Complex knowledge organization:
Semantic Web made good…
• Complex searches: FRBR made good…
• Permanent: digital repositories made
good…
Pitfalls of Googlepedia
• Accuracy and reliability of Wikipedia an
ongoing issue
• Googlepedia hyperlinks lack durability and
persistence
• Information overload: trusted information
filtering and recommendation services are
needed
• Skills and knowledge gaps of students and
academic staff
Bibliography 2.0, maybe…
• Scholarly communications is becoming
dependent upon ‘free’ Bib 2.0 services
offered by the big info utilities i.e.
Google, Amazon.com, OCLC
• Growing gap between local campusbased Bib 1.0 and global Bib 2.0
practices