Wikipedia: if not the last, the latest

Reblogged from Weblogg-ed:

Research on Wikipedia/Trusting the Source of the Source

(Via Smart Mobs) So here is a research study (and I mean research, full of all sorts of funny looking formulas and symbols and stuff) about Wikipedia that comes to the conclusion that the more edits there are to a particular article the more accurate it is. Not surprising, to me at least, but since smart people are publishing quantitative results, it might add to the discussion.

Since its inception six years ago, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has accumulated 6.40 million articles and 250 million edits, contributed in a predominantly undirected and haphazard fashion by 5.77 million unvetted volunteers. Despite the apparent lack of order, the 50 million edits by 4.8 million contributors to the 1.5 million articles in the English-language Wikipedia follow strong certain overall regularities. We show that the accretion of edits to an article is described by a simple stochastic mechanism, resulting in a heavy tail of highly visible articles with a large number of edits. We also demonstrate a crucial correlation between article quality and number of edits, which validates Wikipedia as a successful collaborative effort.

The conversations I had this week about Wikipedia with the schools I was working with in Atlanta were pretty heated at times. But it’s interesting how it quickly turns into a larger discussion about students as editors in general, and that Wikipedia ain’t the only problem we have in terms of what to trust and what not to trust. And that quickly turns into another discussion about how the network (if you have one) filters out much of the good stuff, just as it did in this instance. You may not trust the source, but if you trust the person or people who sent you the source, the source inherently becomes more trustworthy.

Or something like that…

The comments section is worth skimming as well.

*** BTW, WordPress has reconfigured its splash page, making loging in a little less intuitive. Just look to the far right-hand column, under the header Meta ».

Ross

flickr! in libraries

Some interesting chatter in one of the flickr! groups, Libraries and Librarians, about permissions to take photographs in libraries, including library events. The responses are somewhat boilerplate, but it’s an interesting ’snapshot’ of the intersection of these two concepts … and germane to our experimentation.

The group is also compiling a list of libraries with flickr! accounts. We are (ahem, that is the Watson Library is) listed twice (aren’t we enterprising?).

Ross

Look out, Outlook!

Reblogged from the New York Times:

A Google Package Challenges Microsoft
By MIGUEL HELFT

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 21 — Google is taking aim at one of Microsoft’s most lucrative franchises.

On Thursday, Google, the Internet search giant, will unveil a package of communications and productivity software aimed at businesses, which overwhelmingly rely on Microsoft products for those functions.

The package, called Google Apps, combines two sets of previously available software bundles. One included programs for e-mail, instant messaging, calendars and Web page creation; the other, called Docs and Spreadsheets, included programs to read and edit documents created with Microsoft Word and Excel, the mainstays of Microsoft Office, an $11 billion annual franchise.

Unlike Microsoft’s products, which reside on PCs and corporate networks, Google’s will be delivered as services accessible over the Internet, with Google storing the data. That will allow businesses to offload some of the cost of managing computers and productivity software.

For corporate technology staffs, “we think that will be a very refreshing change,” said Dave Girouard, Google’s vice president and general manager for enterprise.

The e-mail and messaging package, which is based on products like Gmail, Google’s e-mail service, has been available in a free trial since August and is supported by advertising. It has been used by thousands of businesses, educational institutions and other organizations, Google said.

Google will continue to provide the extended bundle of software free to businesses and educational institutions. But it will also offer businesses additional e-mail storage and customer support for an annual fee of $50 a user.

By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange, the Microsoft server software typically used for corporate e-mail systems, in addition to the costs of in-house management, customer support and hardware, according to the market research firm Gartner …

Sounds a little like what’s happening de facto here.
Read the rest of the article here.

Ross

“Who will organize all of this data?”

I wouldn’t want this to degenerate (?) into a My Favorite YouTube blog, but taking my cue from Robyn’s ‘ridiculous’ Web 2.0-related video, here’s my nominee for the ’sublime’: Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, a brilliant gloss on everything 2.0 and the implications for how we see the world. It’s the brainchild of Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University, headed by Prof. Mike Wesch, “a working group of Kansas State University students and faculty dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography.” And, yes, they have a blog.

It’s proven to be quite a ‘viral’ phenomenon. It was making the rounds of the biblioblogosphere last week; my apologies to any who might have seen this before — except to say it gets better with repeated viewing. For those who want a transcript of the text (and it does go by in quite a hurry), it’s been published here.

And you will want your headphones for the techno background music.

Ross

How do I open this thing?

Okay, I can’t help myself.  This is TOO funny and very appropriate for Web 2.0.  You don’t need the sound.  Enjoy! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRjVeRbhtRU

Robyn

Met Matters announcement begun

I’ve created started a Met Matters announcement document on Google Docs. It’s called Met Matters announcement and is in extremely rough form. This is a skeletal document for collaborative editing, not a final copy. The goal here is to create an acceptable announcement for Met Matters. I wanted to get the ball rolling.

As Robyn says below, it looks like our target deadline is Thursday, Feb. 27 for the March 9 issue. –or– Mar. 13 for the Mar. 23 issue, depending upon when we get the program straight.

I will be inviting collaborators through Google Docs, so let me or someone else know if we’ve forgotten you & we’ll be sure to pass it along.

Thanks, Dan

If you’ve searched one …

Ken Liss of tracking changes/changing tracks makes an interesting observation about the confluence of Google and Google Scholar when searching Google:

Here’s something I hadn’t noticed before: certain searches in Google bring up citations from Google Scholar at the top of the results list. For example: do a search on television and doctors and stereotypes and appearing at the top of the results is the following:

You can click on one of the three articles next to the diploma icon or click on “Scholarly articles for….” to run the same search in Google Scholar.

He goes on to point out some idiosyncracies in the nature of the search results and speculate on what might be up Google’s sleeve on this one. Worth adapting to one’s presentation on Google products, I think.

Ross

Library feedback through a weblog

Reblogged from RSS4Lib:

Library Feedback through a Weblog

Ever thought about opening up your patron feedback system to users through a weblog? The University of Chicago library has done just that with their Maroon Suggestions blog.

Patron suggestions are accepted through a library feedback form. The suggestions, and the library’s response, are posted on the blog. This is a great adaptation of the suggestion boards that I’ve seen in libraries all over — and makes the questions (and answers) available to patrons even when they’re not at the library. There is even a detailed FAQ to provide information about the service.

[Via the Web4lib listserv.]

 

Ross

 

Met Matters deadlines

The deadlines for the next issues of Met Matters are: 

Feb 14 for February 23rd issue

2/27 for March 9

3/13 for March 23

3/26 for April 6

A blog dedicated to circulation

For those who felt the biblioblogosphere was missing a crucial element, the début of a blog dedicated to “access service”, Circ and serve. In her ‘about’ she writes:

Circ and Serve is the new blogging project by Mary Carmen Chimato. Mary is the head of access and delivery services at a large university library. [...] She has over 7 years of access services experience and believes it is truly one of the hardest, yet most rewarding places to work in a library.

Some of you (you know who you are!) might want to add it to your Bloglines. I did.

Ross