From the Codification of Text to the Manipulation of Reality: A New Paradigm for Information Professionals

Johannes Britz’s presentation gave a concise and engaging overview of how human mean’s of organization and interpretation reality has changed with technology and what that means for the information profession.

In the past, writing, drawing, painting, or sculpting reality resulted in a subjective representation of reality. Then, with the invention of cameras, suddenly there was the ability to capture an objective image of reality. However, along with this invention and additional technologies, we now also have the ability to manipulate and create our reality.

Despite our knowledge that such manipulation is possible, we still tend to think that all photographs are “real” representations.

Today’s world is an unpackaged, dematerialized reality instead of an economics of things.

Unpackaged: Think about the difference between getting a paper airline ticket from a travel agent compared to going online, comparing flights, and then picking your seat based on the kind of plane you will be on.

The Scary Parts of the New Era:

• There are huge implications with the mass distribution of incorrect information, and how hard it can be to correct. The system is good at distributing information whether good or bad.
• This new paradigm is unlimited if you have an American address (both physical and IP) and credit card.
• Internet access for acquiring goods does not work without the infrastructure. If there are no roads for the FedEx truck, your Amazon.com order cannot be delivered.

What does this mean for information professionals?

• The information industry is the best able to adjust to the new reality, and can thrive because of online access.
• We are ready, prepared with background/skills, but not “fully dressed” in that we are not fully embracing the possibilities.
• Access to information is no longer through a thesaurus. Instead, it is about the unbundled presenting information.

Logic and InfoLit

Notes written on the fly during the session on the Logic and Information Literacy Project at Marquette:

"Using web directories to demonstrate hierarchical relationships among concepts."

Students have a difficult time "generalizing" -- abstracting from one context to another. Goal of the project is to enhance the teaching of logic -- not about information literacy -- helping students learn how to construct and evaluate arguments. Arguments are patterns of statements: premises that lead to conclusions.

So you need to know about concepts and their hierarchies. A concept is like a file folder: it classifies a set of things.

Examples of genus and species hierarchy:

Genus: Reference books
Species: Encyclopedias
Referent: Encyclopedia of Psychology

Genus: Animals
Genus or species: Vertebrates
Species: Dogs
Referent: Sophie the dog

Genus: Furniture
Genus or species: Furniture used for sitting
Species: Chairs
Referent: This chair

Why teach this? Helps students distinguish one concept from another and the referent from the concept. Strategy for making definitions and making distinctions among them.

But the genus/species approach has mixed results...

So, they developed something that looks like this:

Step One: Perform a keyword search in Google and Yahoo to find info about the Spanish-American War.

Step Two: Try ro find websites pertaining to the Spanish-American War using three Web directories: e.g., Zeal, Google Directory, KidInfo...

Where do you start in a browsable directory?
Using the Google directory:
Society --> History --> By time period --> Nineteenth century --> Wars and conflicts --> Spanish-American War --> individual websites (referents)

Identify the Genus --> Species relationships.

Directory results tend to be grouped more logically but you have to know whose logic.

Zeal directory:
Library --> Humanities --> History --> U.S. History --> Wars and conflicts --> Spanish-American War --> websites

KidInfo directory:
Homework Help --> American History --> U.S. Historical Wars --> Spanish-American War --> websites

KidInfo has less hierarchy, flatter approach, more lists -- easier for that audience?

Discussion question for students after doing these searches:
Give examples of genus, species and referent in each directory.
Which directory organizes info more effectively?
How does choice and arrangement of categories reflect the purposes of the creators of the hierarchy?
Which are better: keyword searches or directory searches?
Will there be a time when directories are unnecessary?

Parallels to the psychology of supermarkets: how are things arranged and why are they arranged that way -- classified to maximize purchases. The directory categories are created by Google for Google's own purposes.

Parallels with how disciplines fit into divisions: where does Philosophy fit in to a Humanities/Social Science/Science schema? This is hard for new students or those not familiar with traditional academic subdivisions and is a crucial concept when setting up things like MetaLib/E-Resource Gateway: what are the categories that will make the most sense to our users?

Understanding and Managing Change

Randy Kratz, from SYMMETRY, gave a very useful presentation on "Understanding and Managing Change." Randy's spoken at WAAL conferences before and has some good things to say about dealing with change in a healthy way.

Randy started by asking us to write our names as many times as we could in one minute. We could do 15-20. Then he asked us to do the same thing with the opposite hand. We could do 3-9. The lesson: change causes an inevitable drop in productivity and one of our jobs is to manage that.

He also showed (briefly) a list of terms having to do with sleep and asked us to reconstruct the list. The word "sleep" wasn't on the list but many of us thought it was -- or we "remembered" terms that were related but not on the list. The lesson: rapid change, too much info leads to "making stuff up" -- rumors and gossip.

Some points:

Change won't stop; it only goes faster

People deal with change in many different ways: at different rates and with varying degrees of success

Communication is key

Take care of yourself