[Publib] 2.0: It cheapens us, it cheapens everyone

[K.G. Schneider]

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:46:57 -0500, "Kathleen Stipek" <kstipek at aclib.us>
said:
> While I think that there can be some use for wikis and similar
> technological resources both for librarians and the general public, I
> have some of Joe's reservations about accuracy and authority in
> information resources.  Right now, we can't tell who is contributing to
> Wikipedia or any other wiki.  There may be a way to chase down the
> information on somebody's screen name to find out if this person knows
> what he's talking about, but the ordinary patron hasn't got time for it.

This is a valid problem but is not adequate for supporting the broader
argument that 2.0 "cheapens" us.

A number of people (including me) have written at length about
Wikipedia's problems. As Kathleen says, we need to participate. We have
not been loud enough in this conversation. For a really good discussion
about the role of expertise, see Liz Lawley's talk to Google: 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ctyi98ruvzY 

Karen G. Schneider

> evaluation specialists.  Our stock in trade has always been hunting down
> reliable, authoritative information.  Here I part company with Joe.  I
> think that librarians need to participate in the internet, perhaps not
> in Wikipedia except in areas where we have either personal or
> professional expertise.  We need to be the ones demanding transparency
> in information provision.  No more edits or contributions with screen
> names.  If your information is good, you should be prepared to put your
> name on it and state your sources.  We could add wiki reviews to LJ,
> RBB, etc., and make a point of which ones have source details and which
> are anonymous.  As it is anybody, with wonderful information or lousy,
> can create a wiki to enlighten or endim the world.  We as librarians,
> information evaluators, need to be involved, to separate and identify
> the trash and the treasure.  Reference book publishers cringe when RBB
> reviewers observe 'not a necessary purchase.'  Internet content
> providers should cringe when a librarian review of their wiki or other
> resource observes 'not a necessary link.'  The time for passivity is
> over.  Someone needs to evaluate the quality of information out there,
> and we have the tools and the talent.
> 
> Kathleen Stipek
> Alachua County Library District
> 401 East University Avenue
> Gainesville, Florida 32601
> 352-334-3931  (fax) 352-334-3948
>  
>      --Non, merci.
>        Cyrano de Bergerac
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
> [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Joe Schallan
> Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 1:51 PM
> To: Publib
> Subject: [Publib] 2.0: It cheapens us, it cheapens everyone
> 
> This book from last summer got under my radar and I have just discovered
> it. Since it directly relates to my recent remarks on crowdsourcing, I
> thought I'd share an excerpt with the list:
> 
> Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur -- How Today's Internet is Killing
> Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy, New York: Doubleday/Currency,
> 2007.
> 
> Blurb: In a hard-hitting and provocative polemic, Silicon Valley insider
> Keen exposes the grave consequences of today's new participatory Web
> 2.0. He reveals how amateur, user-generated free content threatens the
> very innovation and creativity that forms the fabric of American
> achievement. 
> 
> 
> >From Chapter 1:
> 
> . . . democratization, despite its lofty idealization, is undermining
> truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience,
> and talent. As I noted earlier, it is threatening the very future of our
> cultural institutions.
> 
> I call it the great seduction. The Web 2.0 revolution has peddled the
> promise of bringing more truth to more people-more depth of information,
> more global perspective, more unbiased opinion from dispassionate
> observers. But this is all a smokescreen. What the Web 2.0 revolution is
> really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us
> rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered
> judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet
> into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously
> talking about themselves.
> 
> Moreover, the free, user-generated content spawned and extolled by the
> Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers,
> as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers,
> and other purveyors of expert information are being replaced
> ("disintermediated," to use a FOO Camp term) by amateur bloggers, hack
> reviewers, homespun moviemakers, and attic recording artists. Meanwhile,
> the radically new business models based on user-generated material suck
> the economic value out of traditional media and cultural content.
> 
> - - - - - - - -
> 
> 
> Keen could have added "reference librarians" to his list of purveyors of
> expert information whose ranks are being decimated, of course.
> 
> Excellent coverage of the book and the issues it raises may be found on
> the BBC website:
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/2ju5sz
> 
> 
> Librarians, ever eager, in their inexhaustible insecurity, to emulate
> the latest fad to prove their hipness and coolness, have come up with
> "Library 2.0,"
> a term which, as near as I can tell, means we will embrace all the
> various social-networking sites and tools to reach our patrons, in a
> sort of vast, blissful emailochattic, facebooky, myspaceish,
> ningytwittery, blogospheric, flickristic, picasametric, mahalodic,
> youtubian, wikidly del.icio.us informational orgasm.
> 
> If any of you heard Joe Janes at Internet Librarian in Monterey, you
> know he excoriated librarians who gripe about Wikipedia's authority and
> accuracy but who do not join the Wikipedians to make the source better.
> 
> Given Keen's analysis, perhaps the correct response to Wikipedia is
> precisely NOT to participate in it.
> 
> I'd further ask, Why we should give away our expertise for nothing?
> Kindle Ask NowNow thinks our expertise is worth exactly two cents an
> answer, and at that rate, the Mechanical Turks aren't making even
> third-world sweatshop wages. Not even remotely close, if you do the time
> and the math. Sure incentivizes delivery of high-quality information,
> eh?
> 
> The crowning glory of our profession was once its insistence on accuracy
> and authority.
> 
> Should we not, finally, continue to insist? Isn't such insistence what
> makes us, finally, what we are?
> 
> Joe Schallan
> Phoenix
> 
> 
> 
>  
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