Hi Sarah,

Apologies if my last reply to you was offhand - I pressed 'send' too soon.

This reply is the better for my having spent the long weekend out of doors...

Social networks are key to dissemination of information.  No
technology (not even the semantic web, imho) is going to replace this
the role that community plays, but it will enhance the way we commune.

So far, technology has allowed us to do a things like;
# Store our knowledge outside our brains (the written word),
# Create metadata which enable us to manage that information
efficiently and facilitate retrieval.

Now it is the turn of the social networks themselves to be enhanced by
technology. The participants in this thread, for example represent an
ad-hoc special interest community.  This would not have been possible
before the Internet because we are geographically dispersed.  We can
come together and tackle issues such as this for a time before
dissolving again.  Longer-lasting communities, with an online
presence, can accrue to themselves a rich legacy of data, which can be
'mined' and used to strengthen the identity of the group and help with
communal evaluation of information resources.

So, now we can have highly specialist academic interest groups,
connected virtually in real-time, sharing information about the
information that is most relevant to them.  As a community they work
together to sift out the most relevant resources/ideas - very useful
in an age of overwhelmingly abundant information.

And yes, the management and retrieval of information through proper
meta data as essential and foundational to this ( I do find
information management interesting, really. ;).  However, the reality
is that a generation of researchers are now embracing the new ways of
associating made possible by the web.  If part of the reason for
hosting academic output on a repository is dissemination, then we have
to be alert to any issues that might arise.  For example, Jewel raised
the point that different communities may have different formats for
sharing their 'social metadata' or their content.  Another serious
question is how might it be possible to measure the 'subjective impact
and importance' of a particular resource, highlighted in the most
recent posts to this thread by Talat and John.

I have no idea of where the problems could lie, but we should be
looking at these things now so that we can at least anticipate any
problems that will arise in the future.  The academic publishers
certainly are.  For example Nature Publishing Group is deadly serious
about Web2.0/Social Web and has quite a number of projects running in
the area (including Connotea.org, Second Nature, Nature Preceedings,
the Nature Network and a Nature.com Blogs, to name a few).

Kind regards,

David.

2008/5/2 Sarah Currier <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>  OK, I'm going to do a classic "Friday afternoon" posting here:
>
>
>
>  But if not for information on repositories and similar services, what would
> people on social networks talk about ?
>
>  Thanks for saying what I always think at this point in the conversation
> Les.
>
>  And something additional occurs to me.  For many, many students and
> researchers, online "social networks" may not be a time-efficient way of
> finding what they need.  I think the concept of "social networks" online may
> become a new version of "old boys' network", or perhaps a new version of the
> "social capital" (bleachh, sorry for that painful term) enjoyed by the
> middle classes, enabling them to navigate the waters of education with ease.
> Or maybe it already is.
>
>  For those accessing higher education whose existing social networks consist
> of (a) non-academics, (b) families with no interest in the internet, (c)
> their own children and the support network around child-rearing, and for
> those who have to spend a good bit of their time simply earning money to
> live while they research or learn, or paying off the debts they've accrued
> so far, or supporting families, there may not be much time for tutuing about
> online.  I'm thinking of one person I know who is doing a PhD as a
> 40-something poor working class non-digital-native.  She wants to get onto a
> research system, search in as few clicks as possible, delving into whatever
> resource she has access to via the open web or the university library's
> services, and get what she needs for the work she's doing.  She doesn't have
> broadband at home and maybe never will.  She wants to get an accurate
> return, representing the best possible match to what she's searching for.
>
>  I'm sure she will eventually become part of more and more social networks
> related to her subject area and its related professional area.  Some of
> these may be online.  But it seems to me that the social networking stuff is
> still a huge luxury to most of the world, with regard to the accessibility
> (in its broadest sense) of knowledge and learning.  Systems which at their
> basic level allow accurate retrieval of appropriate resources (e.g.
> repository and metadata management) grow out of a library tradition of
> making knowledge available.  There is still work to be done on this.  (Don't
> worry, I'm very aware of how social mediation also takes place within
> information management- how systems such as cataloguing and classification
> can embed human biases).
>
>  I always have this suspicion that when esteemed, accomplished and highly
> intelligent colleagues such as Andy say things like "[...] we are focusing
> our attention in the wrong place", they are bored with dealing with metadata
> and information management, and they perceive that issues of "social
> networking" are either more interesting to them professionally now, or that
> it is a more lucrative and high-status area of research and development to
> move into.  (Andy, I'm not implying this mercenary last option is what
> you're thinking at all!).
>
>  And that's fine: it may well be that folk like my friend may reap hitherto
> un-dreamt of benefits from all this online social networking stuff in a few
> years' time- but don't conflate it with needing to take attention and
> funding away from the basic information infrastructure, without which, as
> Les says, we wouldn't have much to talk about in our networks.
>
>  Having just read Jewel's response as well, which I am in agreement with:
> where is the funding going?  Why isn't it going into making sure there are
> robust systems for open access to research data and learning resources,
> well-catalogued with good-quality metadata?  It's just such a basic need in
> education.
>
>  Please insert disclaimer about none of this being remotely related to
> Intrallect's position on these matters: purely some personal thoughts...
>  S.
>
>
> --
>
>
> Sarah Currier
>  Product Manager, Intrallect Ltd.
>  http://www.intrallect.com
>
>  2nd Floor, Regent House
>  Blackness Road
>  Linlithgow
>  EH49 7HU
>  United Kingdom
>
>  Tel: +44 870 234 3933
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>  -- P Please consider the environment before printing this email.



-- 
David Kane
Systems Librarian
Waterford Institute of Technology
http://library.wit.ie/
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M: ++353.876693212