This house believes that A&I is RIP

Opposing the motion

Nick Woolley, Information Specialist, King’s College London

November 2009

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• 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

Preaching to the converted?

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• Technology• Findability• Information overload• User requirements• Value for money (VFM)

A&I perspectives and issues

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• 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’!)

A&I technology

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• 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, 9/24/2009http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698580.html?&rid=1105906703&source=title

* From what we can figure out!

Google A&I

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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

Findability

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• 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)

User requirements

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• 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

Ignorance is bliss (theory)

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• 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.

Ignorance is bliss (real world example)

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• 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.

Information Overload

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• 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!

Wisdom of crowds?

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• 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?

Losing the Long Tail?

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LibraryThing

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0 tags v ? (a lot)

Can you guess the book on the right?

• Single interface and aggregation• Zipf and Mann - principle of least effort• Familiarity• Joins up institution resources• Added value – not replacements

One stop shops?

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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

VFM

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• 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?

VFM

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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?

VFM

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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?

VFM

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Education, education, educationInformation literacy, information skillsAdvocacy and marketingIdentifying and demonstrating valueCollaboration between publishers and information services

Challenges

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• 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.

Summary

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A&I is alive and kicking!

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