Encyclopedic Knowledge in the Mobile AgeEncyclopedic Knowledge in the Mobile Age

Agnes Kukulska-Hulme

Institute of Educational Technology, 14 November 2007

The mobile mantra: “anytime,

anywhere”

Anything? Anyhow?

How knowledge is conceived, created,

represented, used…

… and its connections with mobility, travel and

cross-cultural communication

Themes

• Shared knowledge• Cross-cultural communication• Travel• Location, narrative and

personal meanings

An abiding fascination with encyclopedic knowledge

• Encyclopedia Britannica

“Since 1768.. the world's most famous and authoritative source of information”

Not A Walking Not A Walking EncyclopediaEncyclopedia

Random musings on books, Random musings on books, film, cats, quilting and film, cats, quilting and

anything relevant. Now with anything relevant. Now with recipes and original art.recipes and original art.

Blog by Candy Schultz http://www.not-a-walking-encyclopedia.blogspot.com/

Knowledge sharing• Wiki wiki… Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, Wiktionary,

Wikiversity etc…

• An alternative: Citizendium - “… we will avoid calling [it] an "encyclopedia" until the project's editors feel comfortable putting their reputations behind that description.”

• WikiAnswers - forum for ‘community-grown’ Q&A http://wiki.answers.com/

• Wikispecies… and alternatives:– Encyclopedia of Life project: a web page for every species http://www.eol.org/

– Biodiversity Observatory project: data on wildlife from the public, surveys, learning communities http://www.open.ac.uk/science/outreach/outreach-projects/biodiversity-observatory.php

Building knowledge collaboratively

InnoCentive: ‘seekers’ and ‘solvers’ – financial rewards for best solution to open challenges in engineering, sciences etc. http://www.innocentive.com/

Google Language Tools: translate, mouse over text to view original language, “suggest a better translation”

Chinese Wikipedia

• Baidu Baike – Chinese online encyclopedia modelled on Wikipedia, launched in 2006

“Welcome to Baidu Wikipedia! This is a written jointly by all users of the encyclopedia… Now join the bar, personally experience the successes and written encyclopedia joy!”

[Google automatic translation]

China to Digitize World's Earliest Encyclopedia

• The National Library of China is digitizing the Great Encyclopedia of Yongle

• Compiled 1403-1407, it contained 11,095 books. Only around 400 books remain

• Will be published on the Internet

L’Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert 1751-1777• Published on the Internet - anyone can

volunteer to translate it from French into English - http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0000.169

• the aim of this encyclopedia was to "change the common way of thinking" through the expansion of knowledge and the development of critical thought

L’Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert

• The 32 volumes contain 21 volumes of text….

• The remaining 11 volumes contain beautiful illustrations

L’Encyclopédie – ‘Travel’

•“…famous travelers [would go to Egypt] in order to profit from the conversation of the priests of the region, who alone possessed the reflective sciences”

•… “Travelers develop and raise the level of the mind, enrich it through knowledge, and cure it of national prejudices”

•“Such study cannot be replaced by books or by the tales told by others. Men, places, and things one has to judge by oneself”

http://www.discoverhongkong.com/pda

“The mobile phone is fast becoming a ‘security blanket’…. Especially if it can work overseas .. and if it can provide multilingual support overseas” (Jaokar & Fish, Mobile Web 2.0, 2006)

What multilingual support is needed here?

A different kind of challenge

‘Vires acquirit eundo’ – a local motto, MelbourneSearch pages written in English – translate into Chinese

A World in Three Aisles- Letter from San Francisco, by G. Lewis-Kraus, 2007

Prelinger Library – a small private collection – “an out of the way corner of perhaps the world’s most wired city”

•A landscape-related project: books often filed according to a local place they relate to, local understandings•the library is in ‘a constant state of associative refinement’

-browsability within a narrative structure-ambition to “help you find what you are not looking for”

Finally…

Prelinger Library

A place where “ideas are shared because books are held”…

“The best way for libraries to move forward is to take several thoughtful steps back.”

Institute of Educational TechnologyThe Open University

www.open.ac.uk

Thank you!