Open Source Information

Watch this Video: Imagine 2020 (8 minutes, stop it before nano technology) Listen to the comments regarding fairness in the use of technology and open source software, open architecture networks and Wikipedia. Notice the differences at the university in Japan.

Listen to this Podcast:Open Source Information


Open Source. You may have heard the term before. It has been a buzz word in IT circles for several years. Open source software is usually a collaborative effort between communities of programmers that join together to create alternatives to software published by closed-source-for-profit companies. For example, the open source Open Office competes directly against Microsoft’s Office. Both programs have essentially the same functionality; both packages include a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation program and a database. They can even share files! The major difference is that Open Office is free and Microsoft Office will cost you about between $125 - $250 depending on if you own a previous version or not. (To be fair, when you download Open Office you are asked to either contribute to the Open Office community by telling your friends and reporting bugs as you find them or contribute a monetary donation of an amount of your choosing.) Another difference is that Open Office encourages you to share, change or modify the program to best meet your needs. With closed-source software, changing the code would violate your user agreement and may violate laws. Sharing your copy with someone else would definitely send you to jail. What do you think is the better solution? The free software that you can share with anyone and change to best meet your needs, or the pay per view version that you can only use the way the vendor dictates?

We can draw very similar lines of comparison to information. Access to information is very much becoming open source. There is a shift away from conglomerate owned media companies providing only the stories that will draw the biggest audiences and the largest advertising dollars. The shift is towards individuals using blogs, video cameras, or cell phone cameras to capture events as they happen and sharing them with the world. Don’t get me wrong, the possibility of a bias is still pretty much a given, but we are now in the age of citizen journalism. Take a look at this Youtube video about the use of video by politicians on Youtube. Video

Liveleak is another video website like Youtube, but it is much more focused on reporting events as they happen. What you see (and hear) is most often un-edited, as it happened, how it happened, video. Some of the videos come from formal news agencies like the BBC and AP ; most of the video comes from people like you. Be prepared, what you see may not be pretty! Liveleak

In our opening video and in the last course, we talked about collaboration; working together to solve a problem or to get a job done. Collaboration is a LARGE part of Web 2.0. Question and answer websites are one of the biggest trends on the web right now. These websites allow users to submit any kind of question and the community answers it. Yahoo, Google and Amazon all have their own answer websites or branded websites. One of the pioneers is Answerbag. Here is a good description of what these websites do: Answerbag defined Answerbag has done some interesting things to build it’s community and market it’s services. In July, they released an application for Facebook that allows FB users to ask questions. So why are they doing this? What is the big deal? By attaching itself to Facebook, Answerbag picks up 60 million users in the US alone! (Facebook Stats) Oh, and for those that don’t have a Facebook account, Answerbag will give you a widget to hang on your webpage so your visitors can use Answerbag too. (AB Widget read this only if you are interested in widgets )

If you don’t trust the masses with your information needs, there is always the old fashioned way….you know....Google Scholar! Google Scholar

Here is another source of info that I think you will like: Library Spot Click the About link at the bottom left hand side to read about the organization.


Exlporer: Take a few moments to explore each of the answer sites below. Create an account and post or answer a question. It might be interesting to post the same question on each site to see what kind of answers you receive – just a thought.

Yahoo Answers
Answerbag
Askbille

Since you joined OCLS, how has technology changed the way you access, use or provide information? As technology makes information more open source, how do you see our role, as a library, in the future? Describe it for us in your blog.


Adventurer: Have you Googled yourself lately? You might want to, especially after reading this: Google, Florida and Personal Information What did you find out – tell us in your blog.