Infomatters

I can hardly bear to write that Roy Mersky, perhaps the best known legal librarian in the country, is at this moment close to the end of his life. Roy, the Tarlton Law Librarian here at UT has been an incredible force in the education and career advancement of many influential legal scholars and a staunch supporter of our school’s development over the last five years. Roy, the Law West of Townes Hall, was a pioneer in the area of legal information access, a human rights activist, a bon-vivant, a storyteller, an outspoken critic of mediocrity, a demanding leader but a passionate defender of his staff and just about the best fun at a party you could ever hope to meet. There are hundreds of stories one could tell of his sharp wit (and sharper tongue) but I will never forget his telling me that if we wanted to create a leading national program in legal information, all we had to do was start one! To help me do this, he invited to UT dozens of the leading law librarians and legal informatics researchers (at their own expense) for a workshop where they provided me with input, curricular ideas and advice. That everyone he asked responded positively to his invitation spoke volumes of the man’s impact on others’ lives. I have no direct way of communicating to Roy, in his final hours tonight, the sadness felt by many at our school but Roy Mersky was cut from very special cloth and we’ll not see the likes of him again. Farewell Roy, and thank you — what a life!

The quote above is from an interesting story in the LA Times of a potential faculty member for Cal State who was fired for not signing a loyalty oath initially developed to weed out commies from the university system in those enlightened 1950s. Before making your own mind up, here’s the text:

From the California Constitution:

“I, ______, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.”

The faculty member wanted to add an addendum to the effect that as a Quaker, she was a pacifist, and the interpretation of defending needed clarification. Unlike some other universities in CA, employees are not given this option. Wendy Gonaver, the faculty member concerned, was due to teach a course on protecting the constitution ( you could not make this stuff up, right?)

The reader reaction is quite intense on the paper’s site, but I just can’t quite figure out how the Al Qaeda member gets through, unless one assumes such a person would not care. Indeed, the most telling line in the report is a quote from Gonaver that the only people that fail to get hired as a result of this oath are those who ‘take it seriously’.

We hosted a lively talk this week from William (Bill) Anderson, formerly a researcher at Xerox, now chief of Praxis 101, on the potential of the ‘Net to advance scientific discourse and data sharing through peer production and commentary. He raised fascinating questions about the potential for ‘citizen scientists’ to engage in the process of research, the roadblocks to participation, and the general reaction of scientific communities to open access and engagement. His talk sparked one of the liveliest discussions among the audience that we’ve seen this year at our iForum series and it’s clear that many of us have very strong views on the problems and prospects. The local Daily Texan covered the talk in advance and this attracted a diverse group of attendees, many of them surely first-timers at a School of Information talk. We encourage this, as the issues we deal with are impacting everyone.

A couple of issues that dominated discussion revolved around the apparent elitism of science which is seen as discouraging participation from ‘amateurs’. I am less convinced of this. I believe most scientists and scholars encourage discussion and are quick to engage, but lack the time to deal with people who themselves lack sufficient knowledge to talk appropriately about certain topics. Discussion forums that treat opinion as equivalent to data push intelligent discourse aside quickly, resulting in the setting up of more controlled groups where membership is limited to those who can discriminate. This is necessary, not elitist, in most cases for reasons of effort and sanity.

A further issue related to the ability, given big science’s reliance of massive technological investment, of citizens to engage in any process. That is true enough if we anticipate a return to Victorian-era innovators working out the secrets of medicine in their studies, but there are examples of shared computing resources being put to targeted use or the ability of large numbers of people to play with huge data sets generated by some of these technologically-driven experiments. I would add that the process of discovery should not be limited to the individual level so literally, and that distributed discourse on research might enable a culture or society to play with ideas in a manner that yields insights which would not emerge were a scientific team working in relative isolation in their labs.

All told, a lively session and lots of food for thought. Bill blogs through his company site.

If you ever watched the Killing Fields, you know about Dith Pran, even if you forgot his name. He died this weekend and his story is being retold by most major western newspapers. The Independent in England ran a great article that outlines his role as an infomediary, a fixer who enabled journalists from the west to function in the hostile world of 1970s Cambodia. There are many others playing that role now around the world and they are perhaps even more overlooked now by a news media intent on presenting stories through photogenic, white-toothed, personalities impersonating journalists. What Dith Pran provided was literally a life or death service and we would all do well to remember the power of information and the reliance of this power on a series of human links who rarely, if ever, get the attention their role deserves.

A motion from the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto proposes to drop ‘studies’ from their name so as to create the more elegant Faculty of Information. If approved, as seems likely, this will create another information school, joining Texas, Washington, Berkeley, Michigan, and FSU as having names representing the broad field. As noted in the motion, there will come a time when one wonders why we were ever called anything else (info studies, info science etc.). That day is getting nearer. Curiously, the old argument was about dropping the L word, but the Toronto naming indicates that the naming issue has evolved from those heated debates and now more accurately reflects the increased meaningfulness of information as a term for a field.

the sunday New York Times carried an interesting article on the end of paper encyclopedia, noting that Brockhaus in Germany announced it would electronically publish all 300,000 of its articles, which have been reviewed and refined through two centuries of print editions. A spokesperson noted that they may never again release a paper version (though you know as soon as someone says this, there’s a boutique edition just waiting to be snapped up). Strikingly, the NYT piece stated that as extensive as the Brockhaus content is, it is dwarfed by the nearly 2 million entries in English on Wikipedia. Even Encyclopedia Brittannica, with its 32 volumes, cannot compare in sheer size to this.

Naturally people complain that the content is not as reliable or that it’s easy to spoof Wikipedia but people forget that the collective effort of the majority of Wikipedia contributors is amazingly adept at monitoring and correcting problems. That two million articles can be created and maintained so rapidly, and satisfy millions of users who are not all gullible, term-paper copying high-schoolers, is the real miracle here. If we can get here in a decade, imagine how good it might be in two more? And Wikipedia is just one example, there are others such as Citizendium, whose tag line is “we are creating the world’s most trusted encyclopedia and knowledge base” and involves greater editorial control than Wikipedia, or The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where entries are updated by a team of experts. The information world is being shaped as we live, get involved (or alternatively, sit on the sidelines and complain, someone might mistake you for an ‘expert’).

Yes, the word is that the trauma has ended – CS is the sexy once more. Well maybe it’s not quite as unappealing as it was…….but is it really a case of ‘geek chic‘? Oh well, the numbers of grads, if you look at them, are still half of where they stood a decade ago. Part of the attraction seems to be the embracing of new areas under the CS heading (forensics, security etc.) so one can hope for change, especially if TV shows can start presenting computer scientists as action heroes. Is it churlish of me to note that applications to our program are through the roof? But we are not graduating more, we are just graduating better. Now that’s sexy!