Archives for information

Organization of information

Posted by  on Sunday, July 18th 2010     

I’m cleaning up my loft, and came across a book from my undergrad days: “The Organization of Information” by Arlene G. Taylor. This was probably one of my first glimpses into KM, from a bibliographic perspective. Since I was in a program in the School of Library Sciences (now the School of Communications and Information), the book focuses on the need to organize info so that it can be retrieved at a later date for posterity’s sake.

With that background in mind, here are Ronald Hagler’s six functions of bibliographic control:

  1. Identifying the existence of all types of information-bearing entities as they are made available
  2. Identifying the works contained within those information-bearing entities
  3. Systematically pulling together these information-bearing entities into collections in libraries, archives, museums, Internet communication files, and other such depositories
  4. Producing lists of these information-bearing entities prepared according to standard rules for citation
  5. Providing name, title, subject, and other useful access to these information-bearing entities
  6. Providing the means of locating each information-bearing entity or a copy of it

I started this post thinking maybe those rules need to be updated – but now I’m not so sure they do. I find it frustrating that my own blog is lifted and reproduced (with massive linkspam) by all sorts of characters. When I look for information, I find the same thing – its hard to find relevant valid information.

What do you think? How can we improve upon these bibliographic rules?

category: information
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How information needs and small world signatures are related to affinity and relevance

Posted by  on Monday, July 12th 2010     

Last week I wrote a post asking if anyone knew a technical term for truthiness.

No takers on that so that request. So now this is my reflective post to work my way through the idea that unscrupulous information imposters will be able to figure out how to use social media to control information networks. How can that happen? Think about information.

Information Needs

We talk alot about the digital explosion of data at EMC, but how is data different than information? Information has more depth than data because information responds to a need. There may be a need for the information, but if that need is never expressed the information seeking process never begins.

The way that people process information is dependent on the small worlds (or communities, or tribes…) to which they belong. The roles we play in our small worlds also impact if we are able to express a need for information.

Small world signatures

Once you belong to small world, you have to conform to that group’s signature (or style) to remain a member of the world. The signature defines how a group will handle events, topics that can be discussed (or must be excluded), the form of interaction, and the level of meaning of events.

The style also instructs group members how to deal with outsiders. Usually, if a stranger enters a small world they present enough raw information about their world to allow members of the group to see a worldview beyond their own. If the stranger understands the rules the group has for information exchange, the stranger can continue to share his alternative world view. But if the stranger forgets to stay within the group’s signature, the members of the small group won’t communicate freely anymore.

Think about Windows admins vs UNIX admins. Think about very technical people and marketers. Think about women in technology. Think about teenagers and parents. Think about yankees and southerners.

How this relates to social media

Relevance and affinity are two goal posts companies are driving toward with their social media programs. Its the place companies want to get after all of their investments in listening and building reach. The idea is to build real relationships with customers, not to just market at them.

Here’s my idea:

Relevance is being able to meet an information need. If a company has done their homework, they know how to be relevant and end up in one of their customer’s searches for information.

Affinity is being able to know a small world’s rules for exchanging information, and being able to copy the pattern so that information exchange is possible. Its understanding your target community, connecting on their terms, talking their language.

Here’s what scares me

Information imposters can have play this game too. They can study small worlds, make themselves relevant to information searches of their target population, and build affinity. If they are able to do all of these things they should be able to infiltrate a small world. Will they be able to change the group’s signature? Will they be able to change the rules so that people no longer have a need to search for information?

And now this post is getting too long — so I have more reflecting to do. What do you think? Am I on to something here?

All of this came from a paper I wrote in my undergrad days, the material was from class notes in my Information Needs and Preferences course which was taught by Elfreda Chatman.

category: information
tags: , , , , , ,

Is there a technical Sociological term for “truthiness”

Posted by  on Friday, July 9th 2010     

I’m going to Bitnorth in August. Its going to be geeky and awesome, and I can’t wait. I have to present. Everyone going has to present. I wanted to present on the idea that there since there is still a digital divide, is it possible that the new social rules that are emerging will impact a population that can’t participate in creating these new rules. And is that a problem?

But given the situation in the Gulf of Mexico (I’m from the Florida Panhandle), I’ve changed my idea just a little bit. I’m actually writing this blog post in the hopes that someone can help me with some terminology.

The background story

Since all of my family and lots of my friends still live on the Gulf Coast, I get pretty frequent updates on what is actually going on. What I hear from them is different than what I hear on the news up here in New England (where this week I heard more about Linsday and LeBron than the oil spill), or even in the newspapers back home.

Friends from a bit further west of my family (New Orleans to be exact) say the same thing – the news that is being reported is not matching the reality that people are seeing and living.

What is going on in the Gulf is very strange.

We know millions of gallons of oil are being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, and they are using an extremely toxic substance to break up the oil, and that they may have drilled into a methane bubble. What we don’t know is what impact that will have on the health of the residents of the Gulf Coast, because no one is sharing the information that could help Gulf Coast residents and visitors come to their own conclusions about the dangers of living near this oil spill.

Back to my Bitnorth presentation

Here’s my idea – what happens when in this day and age information imposters use social media to control the message about an event that will impact everyone? What happens if information imposters are very social media savvy, and are able to use “truthiness” to futher their own agenda? What happens when information imposters are able to game the system to seem as if they are more relevant than people or organizations trying to get the real information out there to people? What happens if these imposters know how to work people to gain their trust, so that they are the ones with high affinity?

What happens to our idealistic view of how social media can be used to improve and connect the world?

My main question for all of you is this: is there a technical term for this concept of “truthiness”?

category: information
tags: ,

Information Stewardship: the only answer to Information Imposters

Posted by  on Monday, September 7th 2009     

I’m writing this as I’m watching the first FSU game of the season. FSU vs. Miami, you can’t get better college football than that.

I’m currently in grad school at FSU – a total distance student since I live in Massachusetts right now. I received my bachelor’s degree from FSU. I grew up in the Florida panhandle. I am a traditional southern girl, I love my college football.

So, what does this have to do with Information stewards and imposters?

Let me set this up for those who don’t know my background. When I was at FSU, some friends and I reinstated the Native American Student Association (NASA). We were a hodge-podged group of descendants from several different nations. Our main goal was to have a place on campus to talk about native things that had nothing to do with the mascot. Before I left I worked hard to turn the group into a union so it couldn’t be eliminated easily.

Those of us who worked on NASA had different personal views on the mascot. I don’t care for the mascot, because the drama the University creates around it sets my alma mater up to be an information imposter.

The definition of an information imposter (from my notes from Elfreda Chatman):

Information impostors are persons within a small group that give the illusion of having knowledge. They jam the information social system with their own psuedo-information, shutting down the information seeking process. In effect, they claim to have given all the information that is necessary, telling members of the small world that they do not need to seek for any more information.

I’m writing this post because of the ESPN hype around this game. This game is epic, and deserves the hype. But the hype around the mascot needs some balance. For instance, if you are going to show the pre-game “Chief Osceola” scene, why not explain what the guy with the flaming spear on the horse supposedly represents.

Osceola, or more correctly Asi-Yahola, was a Muscokgee from Alabama who was forced to emigrate to Spanish-owned Florida as the result of Andrew Jackson’s Creek War settlement. Osceola was never a chief, but a charismatic leader during the Seminole wars. He vehemently fought against removal to Oklahoma.

The pre-game ritual is supposed to pay tribute to Osceola’s actions at the Treaty of Payne’s Landing (1832). This treaty would basically have had the Seminoles cede all their land in Florida to the US, as well as move the entire tribe to Oklahoma – inside of lands already occupied by the Creek nation. No one wanted to go to OK, especially not if they had to live with the enemy Creeks. And the Black Seminoles were certainly not happy to live where they could be taken into slavery just based on their skin color.

During the negotiations at Fort King, Osceola stepped forward, pulled out a knife, plunged it into the treaty that was on the negotiating table and said:

“The only treaty I will ever execute will be this! There remains nothing worth words. If the hail rattles, let the flowers be crushed – the stately oak of the forest will lift its head to the sky and the storm, towering and unscathed.”

So all of this history, from Andrew Jackson’s hatred of Indian people to the mass exodus of indigenous folks from the Southeast to Florida, slave raids, and resistance to removal is now all distilled into pregame highlights.

I love FSU. My undergraduate degree was Information Studies, and I would never have imagined the places that degree would take me, or the worlds it would open up for me. My Master’s will be in Instructional Systems, a program that is a consistently a nationaly top-rated Instructional Design major.

FSU has many top-ranked educational programs such as the two with which I have been involved. We should have a top-ranked Native studies program, just because of where the University sits geographically. But we never will, because for some reason, it is much more important to protect the football legend than it is to educate the people of Florida about the legends that happened on the very ground on which they walk.

I grew up in the Florida panhandle. But I never knew about Osceola outside of FSU. I never knew that Billy Bowlegs was a Seminole. I never knew about the Negro Fort.

But I knew about the FSU Seminoles. How sad.

This is the danger of Information Imposters. Their psuedo-information lulls people into believing there is no other information to be found, so no one launches their own search for information. This is where Information Stewardship comes in. This could help provide checks and balances for the Information Imposters. If the University took up the mantle of Information Steward, even if they always kept the mascot at FSU, the true history of Florida would be just as widely known.

This leads me to think even wider. As educators, or as the people who write, develop, and implement the technical means to distribute and manage information, do we have a broader responsibility to act as Information Stewards? Do we have any moral obligation to make sure that Information Imposters don’t clog the networks with so much irrelevant information that our real shared histories is so obfuscated that is lost?

category: information
tags: , , , , ,