Preaching to the converted?

3. This house believes that A&I is RIPOpposing the motionNick Woolley, Information Specialist, King’s College LondonNovember 2009

4. Preaching to the converted? Do our old axioms still hold true? Our are cherished constants still relevant given the Web and Web 2.0 / 3.0 / number of your choice? In theory there shouldn’t be much to debate: - recall, precision - exhaustivity, specificity - information needs - information seeking behaviour - ontology, taxonomy 4

5. A&I perspectives and issues Technology Findability Information overload User requirements Value for money (VFM) 5

6. A&I technology Human and automatic, manual and algorithm Expert and amateur Controlled vocabulary and folksonomy Full text (web) and selective index Be a lumper and think metadata* * Of course, not all metadata is equal (or really ‘meta’!)

7. Google A&I • Google is A&I, Google Scholar is A&I, so is Google Books • Just not very good A&I* • Bad metadata, ghost authors for citation data See - Peter Jascow “Google Scholar’s Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems” Library Journal, 9/24/2009 http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698580.html?&rid=1105906703&source=title * From what we can figure out! 7

8. Findability Peter Moville's ‘Ambient Findability’ (2005): “Ambient findability describes a fast emerging world where we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime.” (p.6) ”..[ambient findability] is less about the computer than the complex interactions between humans and information.”(p.13) The better the metadata the greater the findability 8

9. User requirements Still display Anomalous States of Knowledge (ASK) Digital natives and similar myths Exhibit the cultural norm of instant gratification Want and expect full text now Paying more for the service Disintermediation is still a relevant concept, especially when ignorance is bliss (not Bliss) 9

10. Ignorance is bliss (theory) Mooer’s law (1959) - original context was contradictory principle of behaviour not usability “.. many people may not want information, and that they will avoid using a system precisely because it gives them information” “Where an information retrieval system tends not to be used, a more capable information retrieval system may tend to be used even less” See Austin, B. 2001 http://spot.colorado.edu/~norcirc/Mooers.html 10

11. Ignorance is bliss (real world example) The Rationally Ignorant Consumer Hypothesis Media and markets, imperfect and biased information provision People choose to be RICs McCluskey, J.J. & Swinnen, J.F.M. 2004, "Political economy of the media and consumer perceptions of biotechnology", American Journal Agricultural Economics, 86 (5) 1230-1237. 11

12. Information Overload The haystack is getting bigger Negates labour-saving technology Less signal more noise, deflates precision and recall More RIC’s and ASK’s get more anomalous? Futility Point Criterion decreases as % of total relevant records Information overload opposes findability. A&I becomes more important. 12

13. Wisdom of crowds? End user generated metadata for free!* Do folksonomies enhance findability? Are tags and related activity a valid form of A&I? Can mob indexing solve information overload (or just add to it)? Personal versus shared worlds * Nothing is free! 13

14. Losing the Long Tail? The Long Tail thrives online Web 2.0 crowd A&I is still crude Little exhaustive or specific indexing so low recall Reinforcing homogeneity, dampening serendipity Even with good A&I not all documents are equally findable, but a degree of parity helps Can you conflate popularity with value? How do Tag clouds work? 14

15. LibraryThing 0 tags v ? (a lot) Can you guess the book on the right? 15

16. One stop shops? Single interface and aggregation Zipf and Mann - principle of least effort Familiarity Joins up institution resources Added value – not replacements 16

17. VFM How do you value findability? Good A&I increases chance of uniting researcher with information they need This can translate into revenue far exceeding the cost of the service A&I contributes to the success of your institution 17

18. VFM • Discovery or Access* • Database expenditure < ejournals expenditure • When budgets bite why go after the smaller slice? • Controversial, e.g. • RIN ejournals report April 2009 • Perceived and / or real immediate need for information *Which would you choose – Pubget or EndNote X3? 18

19. VFM Back of an envelope calculation: Cost of database subscription pa = a Cost of staff time searching and supporting databases pa = b Cost of staff time searching Google pa = c a + b < c False economy and decline in standards? 19

20. VFM Look at the evidence: - Do your users use your subscription databases? - Which groups benefit most? - Do researchers rely on your databases? - Are you asked to provide details for grant applications? - Do you support systematic reviews? Imagine you have no paid A&I. What happens next? 20

21. Challenges Education, education, education Information literacy, information skills Advocacy and marketing Identifying and demonstrating value Collaboration between publishers and information services 21

22. Summary A&I carries on evolving – 90’s new automated methods, 00’s mob indexing, new interfaces and aggregation Whatever your bottom line (findability, VFM) A&I is essential Abandoning A&I can only be a false economy We need to face up to the challenges Integrating and joining up with new A&I is vital, nothing is mutually exclusive. 22

23. A&I is alive and kicking! 23