A note of clarification. The terms Web 2.0 and social networks span a
multitude of services, so just considering those services referred to
already in this discussion:
Google, Internet Archive
No new content, harvested services
Slideshare, Flickr, YouTube, blogs
New digital content for which there was previously no coordinated
means of dissemination (taking the generic cases, i.e. photos,
slides, rather than YouTube vs Google Video, etc.)
IRs, subject repositories
New content, purpose OA; established alternative means of
dissemination for the primary target content, but those means not
open access (mostly)
The differences may be a little clearer now. To make these
comparisons meaningful we have to look at their role in new content
generation and author motivations. It's not enough to decide models
are successful for one type of content, especially when we haven't
measured the relative successes, and to try and replicate that for
other content on the basis of labels. The analysis has to be deeper than that.
There are lessons to learn for repositories, particularly in terms of
improved services, perhaps interfaces too, but first we have to
understand the type of target content and look at the available
evidence. Is there is a UI solution to IRs that can beat mandated IRs
for OA content (the few we have of these so far)? The clues above and
the evidence seem to be saying not.
Steve
At 13:16 10/03/2008, you wrote:
>Hmmm... the fact that you "have never, ever, ever heard anyone refuse
>to use our institution's timetabling software because the user interface
>isn't good enough" rather misses the point - or my point at least.
>
>This is not a discussion about whether the user-interface of each IR is
>good enough or not.
>
>It's a discussion about what makes one or more repositories grow into a
>viable scholarly social network. The UI is a small facet of that...
>what I'm suggesting is that the 'social networking' aspect is more
>important and that we need to understand that aspect rather better than
>we do now in order to understand why repositories remain unfilled.
>
>Take something like Slideshare (www.slideshare.net) as a case study -
>albeit one with significant differences to the scholarly repositories
>space in terms of content, responsibilities and the surrounding
>political landscape of scholarly publishing. But bear with me
>nonetheless...
>
>Ask yourself what makes Slideshare such a successful repository of
>presentation-like material - i.e. such a compelling place to surface
>that sort of content on the Web? Yes, part of the answer lies in UI
>type issues. But more fundamentally the answer lies in the network
>effects of a globally concentrated service. Could the functional
>equivalent of Slideshare have emerged by getting people to put their
>presentations on the Web in a distributed manner and then harvesting
>them into a central service? I don't think so. Ditto Flickr, ditto
>YouTube, ditto ...
>
>Having said that, I accept that the blogsphere is a good counter case
>study... because the blogsphere does give us an example of a healthy
>social network built on a distributed based of content, using globally
>concentrated services (Technorati, et al.) that harvest that content
>into multiple single places. The interesting question is what makes
>these approaches work (or not) and what we can learn from them to help
>fill our repositories (centralised or distributed) without relying
>solely an a "thou must deposit" type approach.
>
>But as I said on eFoundations... imagine a world in which every
>institution mandated to their academics that they must only blog using
>an institutional blogging service - would that support or hinder the
>development of a vibrant academic blogging environment?
>
>And before you ask, I wouldn't mandate that people deposit in a globally
>concentrated service either - for me, the only mandate that matters for
>OA is one that says that scholarly output must be surfaced openly on the
>Web.
>
>Andy
>--
>Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation
>http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
>http://efoundations.typepad.com/
>[log in to unmask]
>+44 (0)1225 474319
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Repositories discussion list
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leslie Carr
> > Sent: 10 March 2008 10:30
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
> >
> > On 10 Mar 2008, at 09:55, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> >
> > > Brewster Kahle may have the disk space, but if his is to become the
> > > global database, then why should individuals have local websites at
> > > all? They could all set up shop in the Global Wayback
> > Machine -- or,
> > > for that matter, store directly in Google, saving it the trouble of
> > > having to harvest!
> >
> > Brewster or Google can do all they like - if the content
> > ain't there it can't be harvested. People often think that
> > somehow "repositories"
> > are failing, but they're no different from "web sites" in
> > that respect. An examination of research and university web
> > sites show that researchers have out-of-date, incomplete
> > pages and sometimes no pages at all. My own Head of School's
> > home page is just in the form of an FTP listing of some files
> > he occasionally puts there. Others of my senior colleagues
> > have home pages that are over three years old and miss out on
> > describing an entire generation of projects and their outputs.
> >
> > The fundamental problem is not repository software, it is
> > researcher's disinclination to disseminate. And I am
> > convinced that the repository software isn't fundamentally at
> > fault because I have never, ever, ever heard anyone refuse to
> > use our institution's timetabling software because the user
> > interface isn't good enough (though it is appalling), or
> > because it doesn't integrate into their personal calendar (which it
> > doesn't) - they just get on and use it because it does a job
> > they need to do.
> >
> > But that isn't to say that we at won't be working our hearts
> > out trying to make EPrints better and more functional!
> > --
> > Les Carr
> >
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