JISCMail - FISH Archives

Taking a step back from the specifics of our particular discussion, I'm reading a book by American academic Clay Shirky 'Cognitive Surplus - Creativity and Generousity in a Connected Age' (that's a link to Amazon, or just search for it online if it doesn't work). This might be of assistance and relevance. Shirky's focus is on the ways in which new online tools for collaboration are changing the way in which groups, professions etc can work together.

He cites work by a French economist Dominique Foray. In 'The Economics of Knowledge', Foray makes the point that knowledge is the most readily combinable commoditywe have. I can give you some of my knowledge, and you can combine it with yours - but I still have it. That combination works most effectively in special conditions. These are

On size, the point is that the larger the community of those sharing knowledge, the more likely it is that there will be two or more people who can effectively share a piece of knowledge [this is akin to 'Metcalfe's Law' - the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number in the network].

Reducing the cost of sharing knowledge is what the Internet does best, and very much accords with our 'Access' strand of discussion.

Clarity is where I think a standard comes in. Shirky uses the analogy of a recipe for a dish. By listing ingredients, then describing the method step by step a recipe is clearer than a straight narrative of how a dish is made. He continues -

"A rambling description might have the same informational content as a recipe, but the form of a recipe is clearer. As a result, once any field of endeavour aquires something like a recipe - a set of instructions for an activity, separate from the activity itself - it can circulate much more effectively among people who can understand it.

The spread of recipe like clarity can accelerate the sharing of knowledge among groups working on the same problem, but it can also make it easier for others to benefit from the knowledge so produced, because clear expression of an idea can travel from person to person and group to group more easily than the same idea expressed in a way that only the members of a specific group can understand" (Shirky, C. 2010 op cit 142-143).

The fourth condition is the culture: a community's shared assumptions about how it should go about its business. Shirky makes the point that a 'community of practice' (a phrase coined by Etienne Wenger) enhances the exchange of knowlwdge. Our discussion has touched upon the existence of two sub-communities within our sector - the researcher and the local authority curator. There are others (the archaeologist and the built heritage expert for example). The point I'll take from that is that any standard that we might devise needs to address this aspect as well as the technical work to develop the standard in the first place.