The United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) returned to Torquay, Devon, UK for its 32nd annual conference, March 30-Apr. 1. I'd intended to blog live from the sessions but TypePad wasn't cooperating.
Beyond Open Access
Jan Velterop (Knewco, Inc.)
opening plenary
What's wrong – we have far too many returns in terms of actionable knowledge because there is so much data and it is deeply hidden. He discussed how knowledge transfer works now and compared it to a "needle transfer" - he showed a humongous stack of hay (i.e., needles) hanging off the sides of a truck).
We know we have information overload (and that will only increase) but suggests that we also have organizational underload: a lack of conceptual structure to effectively organize information.
Blogs, wikis – much scientific info going into these – suggests publishers should be doing more with blogs; there is much good informal information coming at us.
Analogy: water and information
-- what is the use of water? Overload of water. Water is for drinking (take in); boats created to navigate the water; empires were built
-- what is the use of information? Overload of information. We read it (take in); have to find a boat to navigate through it: publish articles and triples; prepare content for the future and maximize its usefulness; determine best ways to present it
Publishers and librarians must think differently about the skills and workflows needed:
-- what we do now is focus on the detail
-- need to get the big picture to see how the information is connected/related; must make some concessions (i.e., it won't be perfect or necessarily pretty)
-- connect the silos of information (research literature, databases, websites, etc) – feed through filters to bring out the concepts in order to find information you didn't even know you're looking for – harmonize data so it's readable – feedback loops can be introduced, annotated, and fed back into the community
-- use triples – 2 concepts connected by a relationship – can be uni-directional – attributes can be added -- use mashups – use information to enrich traditional information – publishers can do this to highlight info – searching can include synonyms and related authors who may have published about similar concepts – this could open up more papers and people and connect concepts that might be related to the base concept - this provides opportunities for those "a ha" moment.
For more background on this see the Concept Web Alliance.
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