John - Such as, say, PostGenomic? (http://postgenomic.com/)

Repositories have done an OK job on the functions of preserving and searching for papers. They have been largely useless as a way of keeping tabs on interesting developments in your domain and inspiring new research ideas. This is where the SN approach shines - augmenting our existing social networking we do via conferences, research seminars, and (aargh) mailing lists with some new techniques.

S

On 13 May 2008, at 18:10, John Smith wrote:

 
David,
 
I can see social networking techniques replacing (or supplementing) coffee break meetings and even the old invisible college idea. However, unless you have specially designed social networking services focussed on the needs of researchers (and subject specific) the possibilities seem limited.
 
Although now quite an old idea I still see a role for virtual journals. The idea of paying a group of subject experts to filter and rank the most relevant items available on the net seems to make sense if it saves me more time (ie, money) than it costs. We still need to have humans who actually ‘understand’ rather than compare keywords in the loop. Only with understanding can you see analogies and recognise the possible usefulness of discoveries in other fields.
 
I agree entirely about watching what people do with these social networking (and other information related) tools. I think what we can predict with certainty is that they will do things the designers never intended :-) .
 
Regards,
 
John.
The Templeman Library
University of Kent, UK.
 
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Kane
Sent: 13 May 2008 11:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Semantic Web (was RE: Google, OAI and the IRs)
 
Hi Peter, Everyone,

On the Semantic Web: I think a key problem of the 21st century for scholarly communications is, or will be, information overload.  Search technologies retrieve information that best matches any given search terms, but this does not determine quality.  Even in the world of scholarly information, where there are ways to determine quality, the problem exists in a relative sense - which is the most relevant quality information? Furthermore, the notion of quality or relevance will be different, depending on who you are and what you want do do.

As far as I can see, two technologies hold promise for dealing with this.  These are;
1) The Semantic Web
2) Social Media

The semantic web is based on a fundamental assumption that language is the basis of intelligence.  It is also based on the assumption that individual humans are logical creatures.  Neither of these assumptions are true.  First, there is ample evidence of problem solving in the animal kingdom from slime moulds to apes.  Second, human decision making (including information evaluation) is driven by many competing impulses, of which reason is only one.  I also sense a hubristic undercurrent to the semantic web movement - the unwritten sense that one day the whole thing will coalesce into a singularitarian intelligence that will solve all our problems and sweep us into rapture.  The fact is that language is only a tool for transferring information between intelligences and its inherent ambiguity makes it a poor building block for creating internet-sized edifices of syllogistic logic.  This may be why the semantic web only seems to work in the petri dish at this point in time.  

Social media I like better.  It 'keeps it real' - staying close to what humans are and do best, which is to be community.  Communities have more knowledge than individuals, and this is *the* reason we pay attention to cues from our wider community, rather than depending purely on our own logical deduction.  Therefore, information technologies that bind communities together, I think, provide for enhanced decision making in terms of information evaluation, with respect to that particular community's aims.  

We should be watching what communities of people are doing with these technologies today.  The real changes in information evaluation and dissemination are going to come from the grass roots and this will apply as much to scholarly communities as to any other grouping.

David
2008/5/13 Peter Crowther <[log in to unmask]>:
> From: Les Carr
> Linked Data is another name for the Semantic Web, and we were
> celebrating its 10-year anniversary at the WWW conference in 2006. So
> that has been getting off the ground since [1996], three years before
> OAI-PMH!

Speaking as someone who's been pretty close to that effort, and ended up very disillusioned at the behaviour of the acolytes of the Great Prophet Tim, isn't the Semantic Web still *on* the ground as far as broad practical applicability is concerned?

               - Peter



-- 
David Kane
Systems Librarian
Waterford Institute of Technology
http://library.wit.ie/
T: ++353.51302838
M: ++353.876693212