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ICS Students & Libraries. Bill Tomlinson Associate Professor Department of Informatics Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences UC Irvine wmt@uci.edu. ALA June 25, 2012 Anaheim, CA. Disclaimer. I am not a librarian, nor do I do research involving libraries.
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ICS Students & Libraries Bill Tomlinson Associate Professor Department of Informatics Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences UC Irvine wmt@uci.edu ALA June 25, 2012 Anaheim, CA
Disclaimer • I am not a librarian, nor do I do research involving libraries. • Some/all of the topics of this talk may already be completely obvious to you. If so, I apologize, and you have my permission to doze off.
Outline • Value of Libraries • Changing Times • What Students Want • Potential Projects • Collapse Informatics
Value of Libraries:To Students • Locus of information access • Course reserves • Place to study • Etc.
Value of Libraries:To Society • David Rosenthal, Stanford University Libraries • Distributed knowledge preservation system • No single point of failure • The danger of Google Books
Changing Times:21st Century Skills • Digital literacy • From scarcity to abundance: search is of growing importance
Changing Times:Evaluating Information • Judge Carter example
Changing Times:Research Requirements • NSF data management plans • Libraries hosting datasets
Changing Times:Sources of Information • Undergraduates: Wikipedia • Graduate students: Wikipedia, Google Scholar • Faculty: Wikipedia, Google Scholar, ACM Digital Library, etc.
Changing Times:Quality of Wikipedia • As good as Britannica (Nature, 2005), and far more comprehensive (3.9M vs. 65K)
What Students Want • 62 students in undergraduate “Social Analysis of Computerization” course. • 50 minutes of discussion/questionnaires. • Note: I have questionnaires with me if you’d like to look at them.
What Students Want:A Sampling • More knowledge about real world – how to get internships • Remote (and ongoing) access • Knowledge of how to communicate across disciplines • Make everything searchable • Things get outdated fast – stay current • Centralize class information • Concierge Librarian – help organize one’s own resources • Support Wikipedia • More collaborative data – crowdsourcing • More reasons to go to the physical building – like a coffee shop without coffee (only 3-4/62 work in library on regular basis) • Combine career center and library • Be as awesome as Stackoverflow • Integration with mobile tech • Reference management (Zotero/Mendeley)
Potential Projects • Extend Wikipedia and Google Scholar for students • Draw attention to recent changes to Wikipedia • Natalie Jeremijenko’s How Stuff Is Made assignment – ever bolder font • Augment Google Scholar – if it’s the place they’re going to look, make sure it’s as good as it can be.
Large-Scale Projects • Work broadly with other universities and/or encourage open source projects to do the work.
Project Aaugh! • Six Silberman • Fix the problem of someone you know having a library book you want.
Potential Assignment • Each student finds a piece of information (journal paper, dataset, etc.) that is not accessible via Google Scholar. • Students write descriptions of easiest way to find their pieces of information. • Students exchange descriptions, and track each others’ findings.
(Part of) My Research: Collapse Informatics • Build sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity. • Maintain quality of life in declining standard of living.
Peak Information • Peak oil -> Peak computing -> Peak information • What will libraries and universities be like in a condition of diminishing information access? • Google is neat, but it’s only been around since 1998. Libraries have been around since 2600BC. I know which ones I trust to keep information available. :)
Short Story • Future Librarians • Keepers of PDFs • Transcribers of e-books • Selectors of most relevant information of our time • Like many science fiction authors, I have a setting, but no plot yet. :)
Conclusion • Embrace and improve the new technologies current generations use, but don’t lose the books!
Thank You! wmt@uci.edu