revised: 2004-05-26 terry kuny / xist inc. ottawa, canada the cop & the librarian: a love story
TRANSCRIPT
Revised: 2004-05-26
Terry Kuny / XIST Inc.
Ottawa, Canada
The CoP & The Librarian: A Love Story
The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but to those who control filtering, searching, and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the Expanses of Cyberspace.Paul Saffo,
Institute for the Future.
“Its the Context, Stupid.”
Biases, Omissions, Caveats
Skeptical idealist librarian - and idealize librarianship! Wield Occam’s Razor ruthlessly: try & keep things
simple. Do not believe knowledge is power. Knowledge economy: No. Attention economy: yes. Bias towards documents & databases: everything is a
database. If I cannot capture it, it is ephemeral. Bias towards usability & open access. Prefer pragmatic approaches & pulling things down
from 10000 foot views. Do simple things well.
An Excuse for Error
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
- Igor Stravinsky
DCoP has a long history…
IMHO, there is nothing new here:
Tribal hunter/ gatherers. Scholastic tradition: monks & manuscripts. Scientific societies. Invisible colleges. Epistemic communities. Virtual communities. …all variations on an old theme of working
together.
DCoP: Observations
Lots of CoPs exist: competition for scarce resource - our attention. All communities are by definition “distributed”. “Distributed” in this context: short-hand for “online” or “virtual”. Individuals associate with different CoPs: clubs to communities. Reasons for association are varied. There is more “association”
than “participation”. Goal or task directedness is not essential: other values may
invoke participation. Knowledge is instantiated in documents. Objective is to move knowledge from oral to documents. Knowledge management is about document management. For many online services, if training is required, it has already
failed.
Role of Librarianship
“Infomediaries”: moderators, researchers, distillers, analysts, promoters.
Identify & refine information needs. Provide “neutral” infrastructures for broad access
(open access, transparency). Information management (e.g. institutional
repositories). Knowledge organization (e.g. metadata, classification). Enable access (consortia licensing, streamlining access
to diverse resources). Training, support, promotion. Stewardship of CoP information ecologies.
SITUATING CoPs: Observations & Lessons
Sustainability Interoperability Technology Usability Accessibility Titillate Ecology
Sustainability
Challenge: to ensure that CoPs can be supported & provide value (probably with minimal or no resources).
Preparing a ground for the cultivation of new CoPs. You CAN create a CoP BUT work is necessary. Key: trustworthiness, stability, persistence, ease of use. Active stewardship & champion is essential. Audience constrains choice: appropriate technology,
motivators, value, governance. Openness & transparency in governance but within
limits: sometimes we want autocracy not democracy. Size matters: scale creates different expectations &
results. Principle: do the small things well. Repeat as necessary.
Interoperability
Challenge: How to enable CoPs to work together?
Not just technical: social engineering consensus.
Identifying & building on commonalities. Need standards for data description. Shared infrastructures & common platforms. Harmonization of policies & procedures. Enablers: Open Archives Initiative, Dublin Core
metadata, “Development Markup Language”.
Technology
A broad range of technologies are used. Key: appropriate technologies for a given
context & user need. Applying technology to a dysfunctional
community or organization will not make a more functional community or organization.
Social engineering must accompany technical engineering.
Technology
Email is key application: it is present, timely, broadly accessible.
Messaging (immediacy & informality). New technologies are important: Weblogs & WIKIS
(for individual/collaborative sharing) & RSS syndication (for current awareness & promotion).
Communications archives are important. Websites as repositories for document collection &
access (databases, portals, institutional repositories).
…Everything becomes a document, everything becomes a database.
Usability
Challenge: ensure that information services respond to real demands or problems & have usable interfaces.
Managing information overload is critical: Thou shalt not abuse the time of others!
Key: facilitation & moderation: not disintermediation but remediating appropriately.
Tools need improvement. Learning & sharing experiences in designing more usable systems is key.
Integrate usability testing into application development process.
Evaluation & assessment of electronic informs next generation service development.
Accessibility
Challenge: to promote a culture of sharing. Flexibility in mandate or scope for evolution. Most people associate rather than participate: free-
riders in taking information. Enablers: Open Access, Open Source. Open access encourages sharing & the use of
common infrastructures. Open source provides technologies that can be used
inexpensively & provide opportunities for working on systems tailored to your community needs.
Internationalization: design at the lowest common denominator; supporting linguistic diversity.
Titillate
“Build it & they will come” does not work. CoPs need care & feeding. CoPs may need advocacy (but some don’t). Scale matters redux: increased opportunities,
value potential improves, revenue generation e.g. sponsorship revenue.
Marketing tells others that a CoP exists & encourages others to check you out.
Discourage balkanization of professional communities where possible.
Ecology
Transparency & openness provides fertile ground for participation.
Active stewardship & championing are essential. Most people associate rather than participate: free-riders. Sharing serves many different values & needs & motivations. Preserve & archive knowledge gained. Use appropriate motivators for the scale or type of
community. Decision-making online is difficult (democratic or otherwise.) A lot of CoP activity is directed towards enabling FTF
meetings! Commerce & CoPs: what is the balance?
Ideas for the Future…
1. Institutional repositories for managing development resources across organizations; accessibility; preservation.
2. Interoperability: promote & develop IM standards, eg. metadata, classification, OAI.
3. Common infrastructure (email, blogs).4. Promotion: RSS newsfeeds.5. Open Source: encouraging use & development.6. Evaluation & metrics: sharing common approaches to
service & program evaluation.7. Consortia: working together to enable access to
resources.8. Involvement: bring library professionals, policymakers,
“unfriendlies” into your projects to anticipate needs.
[email protected] 3510
Closing Thought
I have not lost my mind - it’s backed up on disk
somewhere.
Unknown signature file.
