May 2014 – Looking Forward

May 28, 2014

Too Many Metrics?

The New York Times Sunday Style Section – of all places – recently contained a report, titled “The United States of Metrics”, about how every area of life now is dominated by numbers and statistics. As its author, Bruce Feiler, put it:

In the last few years, there has been a revolution so profound that it’s sometimes hard to miss its significance. We are awash in numbers. Data is everywhere. Old-fashioned things like words are in retreat; numbers are on the rise. Unquantifiable arenas like history, literature, religion and the arts are receding from public life, replaced by technology, statistics, science and math. Even the most elemental form of communication, the story, is being pushed aside by the list.

After reviewing the use of analytics in fields as diverse as sports, health, lifestyle, etc., Feiler ends the story with Einstein’s time-worn warning, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”

A couple of months ago, Zachary Karabell’s book, titled “The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World”, was published. Karabell goes into this subject in much more depth and with a lot more historical context.

(By the way, Karabell is a lively writer and brings all this to life in a more engaging way than the average reader would expect of a book about economic statistics.)

Despite their prominent role in politics and business planning, he notes that the statistics we all hear reported about – GDP, trade deficits, unemployment rates, etc. – are misleading, inaccurate to varying degrees and mostly fairly new. Nevertheless many are already outdated by changes in the economy and the ways that people make a living.

He discusses various ways that these economic statistics can be updated. However, he also points out that no single measure alone will be able to provide a good picture of something as large and complex as a national and changing economy. So maybe we need more metrics to round out the picture.

Karabell thinks the metrics are good and useful, but that we need to be more sophisticated in our handling of them.

That’s something that makes sense. In a world that increasingly needs and demands the kind of data-driven knowledge that all these measurements can provide, our understanding and literacy in using quantitative methods also needs to improve.

In a way, this is not all that different from the argument that is made by those in the visual arts, who also call for more visual literacy in a world that is also increasingly visual, rather than textual. See my post “Visual Images And Text” from about a year ago at http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/60268577982/visual-images-and-text .

(Come to think of it, these last two paragraphs do pose an ironic challenge to a blogger who writes using words – as traditional text gets diminished in a world of numbers and images 🙂

©2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/87101098190/too-many-metrics]

May 21, 2014

What Is The Role Of Libraries In Open Government?

Earlier this month, I was invited to participate in a workgroup that focused on and merged two of my strongest interests – libraries and open government. This workgroup, made up of approximately two dozen leaders of the worlds of libraries, open government and the Internet, was pulled together by the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) of Albany University, as part of a project funded by the Federal Government’s Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS).

CTG describes the rationale for the project this way:

“State and local governments are exploring new ways to open their governments using technology to engage citizens, increase transparency and accountability. Such efforts provide new opportunities and challenges for public libraries as citizens turn to them for both access to and assistance in their interactions with government … An open government initiative will impact and can be facilitated or impeded by a community’s information ecosystem. Libraries can have a critical influence on an ecosystem and the success of such an initiative.”

The CTG staff will summarize the day and a half of intensive work at a later point. But I thought I’d share some of my observations from participating in it.

First, while open government, particularly the open data initiatives that have occurred all over the US and elsewhere, is clearly a step forward for transparency, it is not always very useful to the average citizen. That’s why too often, the data has been used mostly for “gotcha” articles by local news media.

Typically, the data is put out on the web. This is akin to setting up a library by buying 10,000 books and dropping them all in a big pile in the middle of the floor. Librarians have long developed skills in organizing knowledge and, as reference guides, in helping people find what they need. So the most obvious first role of librarians is to help open data initiatives succeed by applying their professional skills to the data.

Second, libraries can be the place where open government occurs. This role not only involves making available to citizens the printed and online forms they need to interact with government – or even extending that to enable citizens to have video conversations with government staff who are located many miles away from home.

Libraries can also encourage the discussion of public issues. Traditionally, libraries have used their meeting spaces for open forums. More recently and much more interesting is the role the Los Angeles Public Library has played in a community in south Los Angeles. The local library branch there is hosting Betaville, open source software to enable people to collaborate together to propose urban design solutions for their community. Betaville is being used for people to do exactly that with respect to a large proposed redevelopment of the Rancho Cienega facility. The library was the only place where people could come together to do this work, which had the proper technology and also the trust of residents that it is an objective, open facility.

Third, Jamie LaRue, former director of the Douglas County library system, which has been a pioneer in libraries as creators of content, built on that experience to propose an additional role for libraries. In the face of the demise of many local news outlets, he suggested that this creative role of libraries be extended to becoming the platform for local news.

Finally, while a number of state and local governments have encouraged their local software developers to create apps using open government data, this is clearly not enough. There are many apps that are needed, but make no sense for private companies that ultimately require profits. Government cannot abdicate its own technology role. Recognizing that it can’t do everything, however, government can call on librarians to understand what gaps exist based on what they are asked for by library patrons.

For more information, see CTG’s website at http://www.ctg.albany.edu/projects/imls . They have also posted a concept paper at http://imls.ctg.albany.edu/book/enabling-open-government-all-planning-framework-public-libraries . If you’d like to participate in the discussion about libraries and open government, you can do that at http://imls.ctg.albany.edu/forums/online-discussion-concept-paper .

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/86405556739/what-is-the-role-of-libraries-in-open-government]

May 14, 2014

How Can Libraries Respond To Technology Trends?

On May 3, the Library Trustee Association of New York State held its annual trustee institute. I ran a session on the intersection of technology trends and changes in libraries. I made a presentation, titled “Creating The Library’s Future”, to get people to start thinking about this intersection.

While there is always change in information technology, I chose to highlight these clusters of trends as being most relevant to the mission of libraries. Here’s a quick summary:

Digitization Of Written, Oral and Visual Materials: the worldwide effort to digitize paper documents as well as the increase in media that are born digital; the budding Digital Public Library of America; the end of the self-contained book which makes possible an infinite variety of mashups; the various ways that “big data” in libraries can be used
Artificial Intelligence & Robotics: such applications as speech recognition, the Army’s artificially intelligent guide and its implications for Ask A Librarian; robotics, especially in warehouses that have implications for larger libraries
High Quality Visual Communications: noting the importance of non-verbal communications and how we are not yet at a stage where this is a ubiquitous aspect of the Internet, but it will be; the extension with videoconferencing of the groups, literacy training, public services that libraries have always provided
Ubiquitous Internet: the various ways that access to the Internet is escaping the limitations of the traditional PC display/keyboard/mouse where any surface can be a display or a keyboard or a mouse or you don’t even need a surface at all with arm movements or eye tracking; augmented reality
Billions Of People Who Produce And Consume Content: the concepts of the “Pro-Sumer” and the long tail; the ways that this is opening up opportunities for authors and content creators that are not limited to the traditional publishers; the role of readers and library patrons in enhancing the traditional hierarchical catalog; the various forms of user involvement and creation at libraries in the US and abroad, including 3D printing and entrepreneurial spaces

Then I shifted to thinking about libraries in this future world. I noted the warnings have been around for a long time, with a quote about the Internet’s impact almost twenty years ago. I asked about a series of websites that seem to offer services which librarians have defined as their role.

All of this requires librarians to enhance that role to keep ahead of what are now commodity services and to think about library services as pervasive throughout the community – not confined to what goes on in the library building or even what is local.

Then taking a World Café approach, we broke up into groups focused on three questions:

How will technology change the expectations of patrons?
How could/should future technology trends affect the way individual libraries budget and spend their money?
What are the organizational implications of changing technology? (including the role of the individual libraries vs. the systems vs. the RRRs vs. the State vs. the national networks)

Here are some of the possibly contradictory highlights from the discussion that followed:

Expectations of patrons are rising because of what they exposed to, outside the library – at work and at home.
Libraries as often lead patrons to new technologies and uses of tech, rather than the other way around
Budgets need to shift, setting a minimum percentage for digital collections and providing staff training.
As library activities become more varied, there may need to be more private spaces for music, videoconferencing, etc.
The availability of resources directly from the Internet is upsetting the traditional hierarchy of the library world. So individual libraries may see alternatives to the cooperative systems or the State librarians that used to be the primary suppliers of technology.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/85721053189/how-can-libraries-respond-to-technology-trends]

May 7, 2014

Is The Voice A Model For Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing — using the wisdom of the crowd on the Internet — has been especially intriguing to public officials. It gives them access to new ideas as well as an assessment of the popularity of those ideas.

Of course, not all of these crowdsourcing projects have worked so well.

In many cases, these efforts have failed to meet the criteria that James Surowiecki identified in his book, “The Wisdom of the Crowds”. Among other factors, he pointed out that the crowd’s assessment is most useful when they have a great variety of viewpoints based on diverse experience and their judgments are independent of each other. It has been too often the case in public sector crowdsourcing that these criteria are not satisfied.

There has often been a sense by the public that their suggestions get lost and are no one pays attention to them, which leads to low participation. For their side, the professional staff ask “where do we come in?” Is there no role for expertise anymore?

The very popular and Emmy-award winning reality TV series, “The Voice”, may provide a model. The show is intended to identify new singing talent.

The Voice starts with open auditions in many cities, much like crowdsourcing sites are open to anyone to propose an idea. Then in the winnowing process, the professionals enter the picture.

At the beginning of the televised season, professional and well-known singers select candidates for their team. So they act as a filter. This, in a sense, parallels the selection of the public’s ideas that professional staff in government decide they will actually consider.

Then the professional singers do something else – they provide mentoring, advice and training to the candidates on their team. So far as I know, I haven’t seen anything like this in the government or corporate use of crowdsourcing, but it is something they should be doing in order to refine and improve on ideas that arise from the public.

After a few additional trials of their talent, the professional singers select a final set candidates. At that point, the public re-enters the picture. (And the Voice does seem to follow the characteristics of successful crowdsourcing that Surowiecki found.)

Over the rest of the series, it is the votes of the public which determine ultimately who walks away with the number one position and the prized recording contract. In a twist on the usual way people vote, The Voice allows multiple voting – a measure of intensity of support, which also parallels many political situations where intensity is as important as the raw numbers.

While the producers of the show likely do this to enhance their ratings and the public’s involvement with the show, there is a lesson here as well for public officials. While these officials may sometimes dismiss the public’s ideas as misguided, that easy dismissal or failure to follow up on public suggestions only serves to increase the cynicism of voters about the government.

Instead, perhaps like The Voice, after initial rounds of public suggestions, the experts in government could work with the most best ideas to hone them and then present those back to the public to identify which they like the most. This provides the experts a meaningful role in the process and it also brings in the public in what is the ultimate step in a democratic decision process – the priorities of the citizens.

This final step would certainly lessen the cynicism that has accompanied government crowdsourcing efforts in the past and increase participation in those efforts, which would only help to make them even better.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/]

May 1, 2014

Moving To A National Digital Library?

In a post last year, http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/66967472797/a-national-future-for-libraries , I discussed the increasing volume of digital text, video and audio, produced by millions more writers and artists than have been supported by the big publishing and media corporations in the past. These trends have important implications for libraries, especially the need to offer library patrons a national collection and reference to materials located anywhere. That’s why I titled the post “A National Future For Libraries”.

So it was great that the US Government’s Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS) conducted their “Strategic Priorities 2014” conference with a focus on a National Digital Platform.

The meeting, held at the main building of the New York Public Library on Tuesday this week, featured most of the key leaders in the world of libraries and other non-profit cultural and information organizations as you can see below.

Jason Kucsma, ‎Executive Director of the Metropolitan New York Library Council, was one of the speakers – a nice recognition for the innovative work that METRO is doing under his leadership and METRO’s role as the New York State hub for the Digital Public Library of America. (Note: I’m President of the board, but Jason and the staff of METRO actually do the work.)

It was very encouraging to see these leaders working together with a generally positive frame of mind, trying to figure out how to create and, more important, sustain a national digital library. There’s clearly lots of work ahead of us – including much more than the usual community of librarians – but this was a good start.

You can see the conference video at http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/imls/140429/. Since it was a whole day event, I’ve put the agenda below so you can watch particular sections.

Welcome and Framing the Day

Anthony Marx, President and CEO, New York Public Library – @NYPL

Maura Marx, Deputy Director for Libraries, IMLS – @mauramarx / @US_IMLS

Play Flash Video

INFRASTRUCTURE: Examining the Hubs Model

Moderated by:
Jim Neal, VP for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University, @columbialib

Panel:
Dan Cohen, Executive Director, Digital Public Library of America – @dancohen / @dpla

Brett Bobley, Chief Information Officer, National Endowment for the Humanities – @brettbobley / @NEH_ODH

Elliott Shore, Executive Director, Association of Research Libraries – @ARLnews

Play Flash Video

CONTENT: Beyond the low hanging fruit: Strategies on Providing Access to Complicated Content

Moderated by
Rachel Frick, Director, Digital Library Federation – @RLFrick / @CLIRDLF

Panel:
Sari Feldman, Executive Director, Cuyahoga County Public Libraries – @Sari_Feldman / @CuyahogaLib

Katherine Skinner, Executive Director, Educopia Institute – @Educopia

Clifford Lynch, Director, Coalition for Networked Information – @CNI_org

Play Flash Video

USE: Challenges and Opportunities to Broad Use of Digital Content

Moderated by:
Susan Hildreth, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services – @IMLSDirector / @US_IMLS

Panel:
Susan Gibbons, University Librarian, Yale University – @YaleLibrary

Bernie Margolis, New York State Librarian and Assistant Commissioner for Libraries

Play Flash Video

TOOLS: Encouraging Innovation

Moderated by:
Mary Lee Kennedy, Chief Library Officer, New York Public Library – @NYPL

Panel:
Ben Vershbow, Manager, NYPL Labs – @subsublibrary / @NYPL_Labs

Martin Kalfatovic, Associate Director Smithsonian Libraries, Program Director BHL – @UDCMRK / @SILibraries

Tom Scheinfeldt , Associate Professor of Digital Media / Director of Digital Humanities at University of Connecticut – @foundhistory / @UConn

Play Flash Video

ACCESS AT SCALE

Moderated by:
Josh Greenberg, Program Director for Digital Information Technology, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation – @epistemographer / @SloanFoundation

Panel:
MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian, University of California at Davis

Jason Kucsma, ?Executive Director at Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) – @J450NK / @mnylc

Dan Chudnov, Director, Scholarly Technology, George Washington University Libraries – @dchud / @gelmanlibrary

Play Flash Video

SKILLS

Moderated by:
Bob Horton, Associate Deputy Director for Library Services, IMLS – @US_IMLS

Panel:
Nancy McGovern , Head, Curation and Preservation Services, MIT Libraries – @mitlibraries

Jack Martin, Executive Director, Providence Public Library – @provlib

Play Flash Video

CONCLUSION AND CLOSING DISCUSSION

Maura Marx, Susan Hildreth and Bob Horton – @mauramarx, @IMLSDirector / @US_IMLS

Play Flash Video

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/84466500047/moving-to-a-national-digital-library]