Subject: [CODE4LIB] Another nail in the coffin

From: Alexander Johannesen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 11:13:46 +1000

Another nail in the library coffin, especially the academic ones ;

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TIOH80Qg7Q

Organisations and people are slowly turning into data producers, not
book producers.

Alex
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From: Andreas Orphanides <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 08:44:39 -0400

You say that as though libraries are all about books.

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From: Joe Hourcle <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 09:25:53 -0400

> Organisations and people are slowly turning into data producers, not

You're forgetting the 5th Law:

 	The library is a growing organism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science

-----
Joe Hourcle

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From: Alexander Johannesen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 23:42:14 +1000

> You say that as though libraries are all about books.

Libraries still have the word "biblio" as their primer, and it
certainly is the written word on paper that occupies most of our time,
no? Sure libraries around the world are trying to play catch-up in the
digital and modern world with all sorts of things, but the primary
directive is still "books" for most librarians. Not sure what you mean
they're *really* into?

Alex
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From: Alexander Johannesen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 23:43:51 +1000

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_laws_of_library_science

Not forgotten, I just don't believe it anymore. And, taken to its
natural consequence, organisms through evolution comes and goes. :)

Alex
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From: Mike McDermott <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:40:31 -0400

Alexander - Maybe you had forgotten that you are posting this to
CODE4LIB... :-)

> no?

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From: jimm wetherbee <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 10:47:01 -0400

> certainly is the written word on paper that occupies most of our time,
And one still "dials" phone numbers on a cell phone.  To be honest, most
of our efforts are with databases or getting apps, such as spreadsheets,
to perform as students expect.  To the extent that we work with print
resources, it is when the students have tried everything else.

--jimm

-- 
Jimm Wetherbee                 | [email-masked]
Information Systems Librarian  | Voice: 704-233-8092
E.K. Smith Library             | Fax:   704-233-8254
Wingate University             | http://library.wingate.edu/staff/jmw/
Wingate, NC 28174              | lux et fides

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From: Ranti Junus <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 15:25:56 -0400

I always intrigued with everything that has knowledge management or
information management aspect of it. I'm more intrigued with the
possibility that this tool might be able to work on presenting the
information based on the context.

Scouring the Twine site gave me this:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/see_wolfram_alpha_in_action_-_video_and_screenshots.php

I personally think this is a darn cool stuff, from the computing point
of view.  I'll wait until it's out sometime this month to see what
kind of results I would get.

ranti.

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From: "Frumkin, Jeremy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 12:40:15 -0700

Seems more like a conversation for web4lib than code4lib, however, I always find it intriguing that somehow there is this notion that technology and libraries are at odds. While Alexander talks about this being "another nail in the coffin", I look at this (and other emerging technologies) are new support and information tools that can be used by libraries. Hmmm.

-- jaf

==================================
Jeremy Frumkin
Assistant Dean / Chief Technology Strategist
University of Arizona Libraries

[email-masked]
+1 520.307.4548
==================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Ranti Junus
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 12:26 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Another nail in the coffin

ranti.

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From: Chris Fitzpatrick <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 16:28:43 -0700

My favorite part is when he ask the software to return a bibliographic  
record  matching 245 10$aFaust.$nPart one
and the computer literally catches fire.

Artificial intelligence is no match for the MARC format.

On May 4, 2009, at 12:40 PM, Frumkin, Jeremy wrote:

> Seems more like a conversation for web4lib than code4lib, however, I  
> always find it intriguing that somehow there is this notion that  
> technology and libraries are at odds. While Alexander talks about  
> this being "another nail in the coffin", I look at this (and other  
> emerging technologies) are new support and information tools that  
> can be used by libraries. Hmmm.
>
> -- jaf
>

---

From: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 11:55:06 -0700

thanks so much for your post Alex, i hadn't had a chance to
consider Wolfram|Alpha (WA) seriously until you posted the link
to the talk (and i had the time to actually watch it).

On 5/3/09 6:13 PM, Alexander Johannesen wrote:
 > Organisations and people are slowly turning into data
 > producers, not book producers.

when i think of data producers, i think CRC press and the like,
companies that compile and publish scientific data. certainly
much of this data is now born-digital or being converted to
digital formats (or put on the web), rather than only being
published in books. but these organizations and people are
still producing data, and those that produce books are in a
rapidly changing space (aren't we all).

imo, the advent of WA will likely result in the production of
_more_ books, not less, and will almost certainly benefit
libraries and learners.

after watching Mr. Wolfram's talk, i realize that most of the
responses to Wolfram Alpha on the net appear to be missing the
point. more specifically,

* WA consists of curated (computable) data + algorithms (5M+
   lines of Mathematica) + (inverted) linguistic analysis[1] +
   automated presentation.

* afaict WA does not attempt to compete with Google or Wikipedia
   or open source/public science, they are all complimentary and
   compatible!

* WA is admirably unique in its effort to make quality data
   useful, rather than merely organizing/regurgitating heaps of
   folk data and net garbage.

* the value added by WA is that it makes (so-called) public data
   "computable", in the NKS[2] sense, as executable Mathematica
   code.

as mentioned in the talk, Wolfram engineers take data from
proprietary, widely accepted, peer-reviewed sources (probably
familiar to any research librarian) and transforms it into
datasets computable in the WA environment[3].

there is considerable confusion as to how WA compares to Google,
Wikipedia, and the Open Source world. i think Google is solving
a different problem with very different data, and Wikipedia (as
mentioned in the talk) is one of many input sources to WA. more
specifically,

* Google's input data set is un-curated, albeit cleverly ranked,
   links to web pages, and _some_ data from the web. it (rightly)
   does not have "computable" data or the Mathematica
   computational engine, but does have many of the natural
   language and automatic presentation features, as well as a
   search engine query box type interface (which i think is the
   cause of much incorrect comparison).

* Wikipedia is merely folk input to WA, complimentary but
   missing _quality_ data (think CRC press), computational
   algorithms, natural language processing, and automated
   presentation. the only basis for comparison i can see here is
   that both Wikipedia and WA contain a lot of useful information
   - however, what is done with and how you interact with that
   data is clearly very different.

* WA is not in danger of being "open-sourced" because curating
   and converting quality scientific data into computable
   datasets is non-trivial, and so is the Mathematica
   computational engine. the comparisons here, i think stem from
   the fact that it has a web interface, and much of the data is
   available from public sources. for many problem-solvers, i
   think it's natural to respond with, "hmmm, how would i have
   done this..."

ultimately, i think Wolfram Alpha will be an extremely valuable
tool for libraries, and could (hopefully) change the way
learners think about how to get information and solve problems.

i think it's exciting to think that it could steer learners and
researchers away from looking to the web (unfortunately, almost
always Google by default) for quick answers, and back to
thinking about how they can answer questions for themselves,
given quality information, and powerful tools for problem
solving.

/[email-masked]

Notes:

[1] as mentioned near 0:39:00 in the video, Wolfram explains
that the natural language problem that WA attempts to solve
(like search engines) is different than the traditional one.
the traditional NLP problem is taking a mass of data produced
by humans and trying to make sense of it, while the query box
problem is taking short human utterances, and trying to
formulate a problem which is computable from a mass of data.

[2] A New Kind of Science
http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html
i must confess, i haven't completely digested this material.

[3] as a long-time MATLAB user in a former life, this makes a
lot of sense. in MATLAB, everything is a computable matrix, and
solving problems in that environment is about taking (highly
non-linear) real-world problems, and linearizing them to be
computable in the MATLAB environment. this approach has deep
mathematical roots, and is consistent in solving problems across
many scientific disciplines, so the kind of problems which can
be solved with the help of MATLAB is broad and deep.

the Mathematica computational engine has a similar genetic
heritage, if you will; but also includes curated "computable
datasets", including Astronomical, Chemical, Geospatial,
Financial, Mathematical, Language, Biomedical, and Weather
data. formerly, this data was available within the Mathematica
environment. Wolfram Alpha makes this data available through an
alternative interface, much like a search engine query
interface.

---

From: Sharon Foster <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 10:34:07 -0400

I wanted to find out how much my house would be worth today in a
"normal" situation (if there is such a thing in the housing market).
WolframAlpha helped me to formulate the query

$96900 (1985 dollars)

and then gave me the answer, adjusted for an average inflation of
about 2.8% per year.

Google gave me a bunch of irrelevant links, which is odd, since Google
understand all kinds of conversions and other factual queries. Maybe
it just wasn't phrased correctly, but Google didn't help me to find
the correct phrasing.

Sharon M. Foster, 99% Librarian (waiting for the official okey-dokey
to change it to 100%)
Speaker-to-Computers
http://www.vsa-software.com/mlsportfolio/

---

From: Mike Taylor <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 09:12:11 +0100

> it just wasn't phrased correctly, but Google didn't help me to find

Funny.  I test-drove Wolfram Alpha with a dozen queries off the top of
my head, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them gave "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure
what to do with your input".

So I was less impressed than you.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[email-masked]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Have you killed anyone?" / "Yes, but they were all bad" --
	 Arnold Schwartzenegger, "True Lies".

---

From: marijane white <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 08:43:38 -0700

It seems W|A is something like a computational almanac, and because of that,
there's a lot of stuff it doesn't know.  It doesn't feel like a search
engine to me, and it's not encyclopedic.

It had no idea what to do when I asked it about nuclear pebble bed reactors
(my favorite test query) but I was kind of impressed when I asked it what
the circumference of the head of a 6-month-old female is (which is something
i've had to look up when knitting baby hats for friends):
http://bit.ly/6tp73

Marijane White, MSLIS
[email-masked]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 1:12 AM, Mike Taylor <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  _/|_
>  ___________________________________________________________________

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From: "Federowicz, Yvonne Marie" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:05:37 -0400

I've recently come across a resource that has some overlap with
Code4lib.  Some members here might find it interesting and/or wish to
participate. I saw no mention of Techsoup in our archives, so I'm
passing it along.

Techsoup for Libraries is a project of Techsoup, a more general
nonprofit technology organization.

http://www.maintainitproject.org/   (libraries)

http://techsoup.org/   (general)

There appear to be members with widely varying levels of technological
background, with the goal of assisting their nonprofit missions.