Monday, April 16, 2007

CIL - Lee Rainie's keynote

I am in rainy (is it raining all over the continent?) Crystal City--well, actually, I am in the conference hotel and it's not likely I'll go outside until it's time to go the airport.

CIL feels big this year...over 2,000 attendees, and according to a show of hands, many first-timers. The CIL blog is here. Other bloggers attending are listed here.

Lee Rainie, the affable Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, was the keynote speaker this morning. His talk was titled Web 2.0 and What it Means for Libraries. I'll add a link to his slides later but here's the major points, without any editorializing.

Lee confessed that librarians were left out when a list was created naming the major stakeholders of the Pew I&AL data back in 2000, but he says now he "adores librarians." He said he "youtubes" now just as he "googles" and showed this video, "askaninja." This is on podcasting and Jason the whale and apple pie...there are others

Several slides on the background of web 2.0 - September 2005 Tim O'Reilly and John Batelle - basic idea - web as platform.
- Meme map from O'Reilly

Lee's six hallmarks of web 2.0 that matter to libraries

1 -the internet has become the computer. - the # of computer users is almost the same as the of internet users in the US -as it gets easier to be online people spend more timeonline -broadband means more video is used and made -younger people love amateur videos -People are more social

2. -tens of millions of Americans espcially young adults are creating content - more than half of online teens have created profiles - SNS profiles - "switchboards for life" - Visual images are as much a currency of communication for the young as text - 40% of US young women have blogs - Librarians should think about offering support, training and mentoring for bloggers - One fifth of US young adults and 9% of adults have created avatars

3. -even more internet users are accessing content created by others
- 44% of young adults seek info at wikipedia
- people will ping their networks for help verifying info

4 - more sharing what we know and feel online and that becomes part of a big conversations
-33% of young people have rated a person product or service
- 33% of young people have tagged something

5 -Tens of thousandsof people are contributing their expertise and their computers to group activities

6- customization of stuff online such as news pages
- RSS is embedded and ubiquitous

Lee mentions Pam Berger's blog post on 5 Web 2.0 issues for librarians (can't find the post right now...)

1 navigation - From linear to nonlinear
2 context. Stuff is disaggregated people are too
3 Focus - continuous partial attention
4. Skepticism - need more
5. Ethical behaviour - understanding the rules of cyberspace

Lee ended by showing Michael Wesch's brilliant (ok, that's editorializing) video "Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us.

1 comment:

Eric said...

Very useful, readable summary. Good info.!

N.B. Lee Rainie was instrumental in the initiation of Elon University's project Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast which takes a retrospective look at how accurate -- or not -- past predictions about the shape of the future have been. A book, Imagining the internet : personalities, predictions, perspectives, related to the project has been published.