Emerald is the world’s leading scholarly publisher in business and management, publishing more than 190 journals as well as serials and books, and had more than 20 million articles downloaded in 2008 alone. Emerald invites each of its journal’s editorial teams to nominate what they believe to be the most outstanding paper and three highly commended papers each year.

The editorial team of the Journal of Documentation, which published Lankes’ paper, selected his article for the award, dubbing it “one of the most impressive pieces of work the team has seen throughout 2008,” according to the announcement.

Emerald bases its decision on a list of criteria, including the contribution of new knowledge, structure and quality of the writing, rigor of analysis or argument, relevance, and timeliness or connected to the latest developments in the field.

His paper addresses how Internet users determine the credibility of information on web sites from a conceptual level and how that affects new online tools and services. He describes how and why people are dependent on the Internet for information, and also describes the progression of users shifting from analyzing the credibility of an online source to determining the reliability of sources.

Lankes will be recognized at the 2009 Literati Network Awards for Excellence ceremony.

Lankes is director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and a fellow of the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy. Lankes’ research focuses on education information and digital reference services. He has authored, co-authored or edited eight books, and written numerous book chapters and journal articles on the Internet and digital reference. He holds a bachelor of fine arts in multimedia design, a M.S. in telecommunications and network management, and a Ph.D. in information transfer from Syracuse University.

Reference Extract: Concept from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

The second is a fast overview of the project’s proposed architecture:

Reference Extract in 4 Minutes from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

Please remember, we still need your letters of support.

And you wondered why it had been so long since I posted…just wait until next week.

Technorati Tags: help, project news

Reference Extract: Call for Support from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

[February 22, 2009]

R. David Lankes
Information Institute of Syracuse
Syracuse University
213 Hinds Hall
Syracuse, NY 13244

Dear David:

[Organization or Individual] is pleased to support your proposal for Reference Extract that will enable the library community to build a credibility engine and enhance how people search for information on the web. Finding credible information on the Internet is essential in this digital age, and project like Reference Extract demonstrate the considerable positive effect libraries and librarians can make.

[Information on you or your organization and efforts in credibility and/or librarianship]

[We/I] support the effort and look forward to helping to shape the project. Some ways my organization might support the project include [sharing reference archives, serving on a board of advisors for the project, providing an environment to test Reference Extract,].

Sincerely,

[your name]
[your title]

by the way,someone asked me if I came up with the term (hence my comment in the opening of the presentation), and the answer is definitely no. See Wikipedia.

“Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most powerful,” said Dr. Mike Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Information School of the University of Washington and a lead on the project. “The best search engines are great for basic search, but sometimes the Web site results lack credibility in terms of trust, accuracy and reliability. So, who can help? Librarians. If a librarian recommends a Web site, you can be pretty sure that it’s credible. RefEx will take hundreds of thousands of librarian recommendations and use them in a full-scale search engine.”

Reference Extract is envisioned as a Web search experience similar to those provided by the world’s most popular search engines. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extract will be built for maximum credibility of search results by relying on the expertise of librarians. Users will enter a search term and receive results weighted toward sites most often used by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State Library of Maryland, and over 2,000 other libraries worldwide.

As part of the planning process, participants are reaching out to partners in libraries, technology organizations and research institutions. “The only way this will work is by making a project of an entire community,” said Dr. R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and Associate Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. “Web searchers get to tap into the incredible skill and knowledge of the library community, while librarians will be able to serve users on a whole new scale. This work follows on previous credibility work supported by the MacArthur Foundation, most notably the Credibility Commons (http://credibilitycommons.org/).”

“We look forward to working with Syracuse University and the University of Washington in developing this credibility focused search capability, which holds the promise of providing powerful new access to information based on professionally delivered library reference services,” said Jay Jordan, OCLC President and CEO. “We are grateful for support from the MacArthur Foundation in this planning phase, and we are hopeful that this effort will lay the necessary groundwork for implementing a large-scale, general user service.”

The Reference Extract project will hold a series of meetings and consultations over the coming months. The team is eager to build a business plan and technology architecture to benefit users and the library community alike. Those interested in providing input on the project and learning more can visit the project Web site at http://digref.org.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. More information is available at www.macfound.org.

The School of Information Studies at Syracuse University
The School of Information Studies is The Original Information School in the nation. It is a leading center for innovative programs in information policy, information behavior, information management, information systems, information technology and information services. The nationally ranked school (U.S. News and World Report) has professional degree programs at the undergraduate and master’s levels and a research degree at the doctoral level. The school offers its master’s programs in campus and distance learning formats. For more information, visit www.ischool.syr.edu/about/.

The University of Washington Information School
Each year, the world creates more than 161 exabytes of new information—enough to fill 2 billion 80GB iPods. So much information can be overwhelming. Rigorous study of the users and uses of information conducted at the UW Information School helps answer important questions. By tackling key social and technical problems in the information field, the UW iSchool has become an important link between users of information and designers of information systems, connecting society with the information it needs. For more information, visit www.ischool.washington.edu/.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC is a nonprofit library service and research organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing, eContent, preservation, library management and Web services to 60,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories. OCLC and its member libraries worldwide have created and maintain WorldCat, the world’s richest online resource for finding library materials. For more information, visit www.oclc.org

What does this have to do with participatory librarianship? Well, read the description:

Cyber-Infrastructure – broadly defined to include the web, wireless grids, parallel processors, lap-tops, cell phones, mainframes, telecommunication networks, etc – has become the informational substrate of most dynamic enterprises. Databases, statistical datasets, data ware-houses, sample libraries, and image collections are just a few of the myriad examples of massive scale information collections that e-researchers dependent on information must create, maintain, and share In addition, some of the most innovative information use is now in the form of collaboration technology that facilitates the development of geographically distributed sites and networked communities within and across traditional divides.

Yet in e-research scholars have three serious problems facing them. First, researchers spend their careers mastering the skills, knowledge, and tools that comprise the core of their respective disciplines. Few among them have the capacity to simultaneously become experts in information management, networking, virtual or distributed collaboration, search and retrieval, archiving, user interface development, and all of the other skills of the information professions. Second, advances and convergences in Cyber-Infrastructure that have occurred over recent decades have themselves fueled a vast proliferation of information – more findings, more datasets, more papers, more conferences, more journals, more books and so on. Even the brightest and most motivated struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of knowledge creation in their field. Finally, information infrastructure itself is in the process of an accelerating evolution. Gains in computing power, storage, transmission bandwidth and other fundamental building blocks of Cyber-Infrastructure create frequent discontinuities in the economics of information technologies, while open source software tools sprawl daily into innovative new application territories. The rapid pace of development of information infrastructure implies that only individuals who dedicate their professional lives to it can truly keep up.

One solution to these issues is the preparation of “cyber-infrastructure facilitators.” These are information professionals able to partner with e-research teams to identify extant data and tools, as well as build new tools in the pursuit of research topics.

Sounds like a good participatory librarian working in the digital world to me.

However, a central tenant of participatory is the focus on conversation and how artifacts only make sense in the context of someone’ use. Perhaps it is the nature of the beast, but this approach to bibliographic control is in making descriptions of artifacts more standard and more efficient. So it is participatory in process, but not result. What would help is a recognition (perhaps as part of the cohesive philosophy of bibliographic control discussed) that any artifact, and thus it’s description, gains meaning and utility in the context of communities and conversations. Further that these conversations and context often exist BETWEEN records and items.

My question for the committee would be how could bibliographic control incorporate contexts between items or be applied to conversations and non-document like objects? What are your thoughts?

“Virtual Reference to Participatory Librarianship: Expanding the Conversation” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). ASIS&T Bulletin

“Collecting Conversations in a Massive Scale World” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). Library Resources & Technical Services

“The Ethics of Participatory Librarianship” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). Journal of Library Administration

“Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation” Lankes, R. David, Silverstein, J. L., Nicholson, S., Marshall, T. (forthcoming). Information Research

“Credibility on the Internet: Shifting From Authority to Reliability” Lankes, R. David (forthcoming). Journal of Documentation.

“Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation.” Lankes, R. David, Silverstein, J. L., Nicholson, S. (forthcoming). Information Technology and Libraries.

Also, the last VRD book should hit the presses very soon.

Not bad for two months into a sabbatical.

We’ve now put up a new participatory version of the technology draft “Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation.” As you may recall we had a home grown version up before based on the if:book project. Now they have released their software open source, so we are using that for the participatory version. Please play around with it.

This is for lots of reasons, not least of which is there is now an active community doing brilliant research in the area so I can focus on new implications and practices in librarianship. When I started writing about digital reference, it was a pretty lonely field. Now with folks like Marie Radford, Jeff Pomerantz, Lynn Connaway, and Lynn Westbrook (among many others) it is an active field. I feel like I can learn from them while I seek new implications of how expertise and human interactions fit into information systems. Couple this with real deployment and development from folks like Caleb Tucker-Raymond, Dynex/Sirsi, Tutor.com and there exists a real marketplace of ideas.

The reality is also that my current work in participatory librarianship is just the current place my overarching research has taken me. Starting with AskERIC on how you build a digital library that begot the Gateway to Educational Materials to deepen the investigation into how you organize digital library resources (and metadata and the like). It also begot (love that word) the Virtual Reference Desk into how people provide expertise online. All of this work lead up to the power of conversations… that is the primacy of context in sharing information and the necessity of discourse. This of course lead to my current work in participatory librarianship. In many ways, this is taking what I learned in virtual reference (including on digital reference knowledge bases) and projects it out to the library as a whole.

For those who remember the last VRD conference in San Francisco we rolled out Story Starters and OpenQA that used blogging as a social means of providing reference service. This work itself came from Reference Extract, a search engine based on reference citations. These projects came out of my work in credibility, that was an examination of how users can believe the information they get from reference or in general. Even my more theoretical focus in the participatory world comes from an attempt to better conceptually integrate reference and other functions of the library.

So have I abandoned reference? No. I want to take what we all learned in virtual reference and play it throughout the rest of the library world. Remember, at heart I’m a systems guy, meaning I always want to see how all of these pieces (reference, metadata, archives, etc.) fit together, and what can we get out of novel combinations.

So keep up the good work in virtual reference. Call me when you need me, I still consider myself one of you. I also invite you to be active in the new participatory library world.

In the meantime if you are looking to host a wandering academic for a while (anyone read this in Scotland) let me know.

Some great quotes:

“”Libraries, if they are true to their original and intrinsic being, seek primarily to collect people and ideas rather than books and to facilitate conversation among people rather than merely to organize, store and deliver information. TO be sure, libraries have traditionally collected the documents of human imagination and action. In doing so they have preserved the ideas and events of history and have become centers for ongoing conversations in which people speak their opinions, criticize others’, and enlarge or restrict the scope of discussion.”

“Conversation, essential to the quality of life of Homo sapiens, provides the occasion and m ode for intimate, significant, and ongoing engagement of human beings with each other in society.”

“Focusing on the enlargement of conversation in the educational environment demands that librarians ask questions about the needs of faculty and students…THe answer to such questions concerning collection development and services will necessarily come out of continuing conversations with faculty and students, both individually and in the governance structure of the college. Surely the whole range of possibilities – reference service, database searching, term paper consultations, bibliographic instruction, and, one hopes, new possibilities for services not yet envisioned – will be explored in order to bring about the widest participation in the intellectual inquiry.”

Did I mention this was written in 1986!!!!

Here is the citation:

Bechtel, Joan M. 1986. Conversation, A New Paradigm for Librarianship? College & Research Libraries 47: 219-224.

The site includes an executive summary, a PDF version of the final paper, and an experimental participatory interface to the document. Comments always welcome. From the document:

Knowledge is created through conversation. Conversations can take place between friends and colleagues in the “here and now.�? But, they can also take place over centuries, with the participants changing but the theme remaining the same, and the conversation being recorded in thousands of artifacts, like books, pictures, and digital files. In many conversations users need sophisticated processes to facilitate the conversation. Facilitation not only enriches conversations with diverse and deep information, it also serves as a memory keeper, documenting agreements and outcomes to facilitate future conversations. The library serves this vital role for many communities.

The implication of this rather abstract concept is that libraries are in the conversation business. This theoretical argument can be seen in traditional brick-and-mortar libraries as library speaker series, book groups, and even the collection development processes. Yet online, the library has fallen far short of this ideal of conversation facilitator. Key library systems, such as the catalog for example, are at best one-way conversations. Libraries have a great opportunity to provide invaluable conversational, participatory infrastructure to their communities online. By adopting concepts and technologies from Web 2.0 and tightly integrating them into their services, libraries can advance not just their communities but also their positions within them.

The opportunities inherent in participatory networks have not emerged because of current Internet developments such as Web 2.0, but, rather, these technologies make it easier to meet an identified and long-standing role of libraries. Wikis, blogs, and recommender systems replace dial-up bulletin boards and local databases as a means to empower our communities. What’s more, these technologies can bring the ideal of the participatory model to our most fundamental library systems. Libraries should adopt participatory network concepts and software not because they are new or sexy, but because they match our most fundamental mission: knowledge creation and dissemination.

This document describes the participatory model of libraries and provides an overview of current Web 2.0 technologies and a brief discussion of how current Library 2.0 efforts point the way to an even greater change in library as a facilitator of conversations. Specific challenges and opportunities of participatory networking are reviewed. Finally, the authors recommend the creation of a shared participatory test bed for libraries. This network would not only experiment with new collaborative Web technologies, but also work with library organizations and vendors to speed innovation in traditional library systems. Finally, the network test bed would create a shared infrastructure to provide participatory technologies – such as Wikis, blogs, and RSS feeds – to libraries for inclusion in their day-to-day services.

There was an active period of comments on the public draft of the Participatory Networks paper from mid-October to the first part of December. The comments came in three forms: e-mail to the authors, postings to a web based bulletin board systems, and comments and edits to the paper posted as a collaboratively edited WIKI. Commenters ranged from noted members of the library community, such as Karen Schneider, Walt Crawford and John Buschman to library science students. The most active mode of comments was the bulletin board and e-mail. Few actual edits were made to the WIKI site, with most participants choosing, instead, to leave comments via the WIKI.

The table below summaries the nature of the comments, and the anticipated effect in the final document:

There will be two presentations on the brief at ALA Midwinter. The first Friday January 19, 2007 to the advisory board of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy and the second, an open meeting, on Saturday January 20, 2007. The Saturday briefing will be part of the “Washington Office Update Session” 8:00 A.M.–10:00 A.M., Washington Convention Center, Rooms 611-614.

Here’s a snip from the press release:

New York, NY, October 19, 2006 – The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today announced plans to build the emerging field of digital media and learning, committing $50 million over five years to the effort. The Foundation will fund research and innovative projects focused on understanding the impact of the widespread use of digital media on our youth and how they learn.

“This is the first generation to grow up digital – coming of age in a world where computers, the internet, videogames, and cell phones are common, and where expressing themselves through these tools is the norm,�? said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton, who announced the new initiative today. “Given how present these technologies are in their lives, do young people act, think and learn differently today? And what are the implications for education and for society? MacArthur will encourage this discussion, fund research, support innovation, and engage those who can make judgments about these difficult but critical questions.�?

More information is available here.

http://iis.syr.edu/projects/PNOpen/

You will also find more information at the site on the project as a whole. To give you an idea of what’s in the draft here is the table of contents:

NOTE TO READER
Executive Overview
1. The Goal
2. Library as a Facilitator of Conversation
3. Participatory Networking, Social Network and Web 2.0
3.1. Web 2.0
3.1.1. Web 2.0 Characteristic: Social Networks
3.1.2. Web 2.0 Characteristic: Wisdom of Crowds
3.1.3. Web 2.0 Characteristic: Loosely Coupled API’s
3.1.4. Web 2.0 Characteristic: Mash Ups
3.1.5. Web 2.0 Characteristic: Permanent Betas
3.1.6. Web 2.0 Characteristic: Software Gets Better the More People Use It
3.1.7. Web 2.0 Characteristic: Folksonomies
3.2. Core New Technologies: AJAX and Web Services
3.2.1. AJAX
3.2.2. Web Services
3.3. Library 2.0
3.4. Participatory Networks
4. Libraries as Participatory Conversations
4.1. Challenges and Opportunities
4.1.1. Technical
4.1.2. Operational
4.1.3. Policy
4.1.4. Ethical
5. Recommendations

* build digital collections (YouTube, FLIKR);
* join and create social networks (or digital collections of people such as MySPACE, Facebook); and
* self publish (Blogger, LiveJournal).

The advance of these tools have had impacts in multiple areas. One clear example is on software developers (and consumers). Software developers now release early betas of software to a community for testing and refinement…sometimes creating permanent betas that never get officially “finished.” Software developers also often look to a loosely coupled cadre of programmers to create and/or maintain software and standards through open source. These shifts in the Internet software community have already begun to impact libraries. User expectations for the online catalog and the services of a library they can access online have changed, and libraries must keep up.

The American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy has contracted the Information Institute of Syracuse to research and write a detailed technology brief on the topic of participatory networks. The brief will put an emphasis on interactive and social web applications such as blogs, social networks, and include a survey of the general “Web 2.0″ and “Library 2.0″ development world. The idea is to present a comprehensive document library decision makers can use to understand the new wave of social Internet applications, and devise strategies to respond to potential opportunities and threats. The draft of the document will be shared with ALA as well as experts in the field for initial comments in September and October. A public forum will be incorporated into a final drat document at the 2006 LITA Forum in Nashville.

The lead authors of the brief are R. David Lankes and Joanne Silverstein.

The public draft and web tools for commenting will be available soon.

The scope of the current National Research Council study is to “…provide strategic advice to the federal government and the states regarding a sustainable administrative structure and funding mechanism for meeting the information services needs of the transportation sector. The committee will define the core services that need to be provided, identify how they should be provided, and suggest options for funding.�?

It is clear that a concerted effort will be needed to begin implementing this study. A NCHRP project will serve as an appropriate first step in what will be a long-term effort to capitalize on the benefits to be gained—in terms of increased efficiencies, cost savings and quality—through better management of transportation information.

The objective of the research is to begin immediate implementation of recommendations from the policy study. Likely required tasks might include: (1) Develop a detailed business plan for implementing the administrative structure recommended by the Committee. (2) Establish perform- ance measures for evaluating delivery of the core services recommended by the Committee. (3) Engage key U.S. DOT, state DOT, and University Transportation Center personnel in supporting and facilitating implementation of the Committee’s recommendations. (4) Develop a prototype website to demonstrate integrated information access and retrieval for a key transportation business need.

http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/03/2006032901t.htm

Ars Technica also write it up:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060330-6492.html

No, not that MacArthur grant…this one funds the creation and the “Credibility Commons” which includes Reference Extract.

the Credibility Commons is an experimental environment enabling individuals the opportunity to try out different approaches to improving access to credible information on the World Wide Web. Tools will be provided to researchers as well as the public, allowing them to try out search strategies, collections and other approaches to improving access to credible information. The Commons can be viewed as a collaborative space in which to share ideas, data sets, results and innovations. This project is sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation who is deeply invested in improving access to credible information on the World Wide Web.

I’ve discovered a great little development application distributes as part of it’s developer package called Quartz Composer. It uses a visual programming language to directly tap into Apple’s graphics architecture. It’s inputs aren’t too rich, but I managed to get MySQL data dumped into it using RSS. While it seems a bit of a kludge, it works pretty well.

Here’s an animated GIF showing the digital transactions clustering in 3D:

Here is a quick MPEG movie showing how you can fly around the cluster at any point. What you’ll see is a screen capture of me moving around using the keyboard and mouse:

3D Cluster Move

Here’s just a pretty rotating movie of a small subset of the data:

3dplay.mov

In this figure 200 question/answer pairs from the AskVRD service are shown clustering. This is a very deterministic test run with 1 simple rule applied to all items…get closer to items that share your subject. This deterministic test is used to make sure all the software is working as expected. The next step is to include multiple rules, then dynamic rules (like how popular is this subject), and then finally diverse agent types. Still, I though the picture was pretty enough to share.

In case you want to know what the actual rule involved looks like (in PHP):

foreach ($prime as $p){
foreach ($target as $t){
if ($p[0]==$t[0]){
if (($p[1]==$t[1])AND($p[0]==”category”)){
$Move++;
}
if ($p[1]!=$t[1]){
//$Move–;
}
}
}
}

Facts:
I’ve put up a website to allow the VRD community to add events, articles, people and other to an interactive timeline (surrounding the VRD conferences…more on that later). It is anonymous and pretty informal. People go to the timeline at http://askeric.syr.edu/VRDTimeline and they can add (or edit) items they feel should be part of the history of virtual reference (at least over the past 7-10 years). You can browse the timeline, and I even put up an RSS feed and a cloud view of the entries.

Plea:
I need folks to add things they feel should be part of this timeline. I also need folks to vote for items they feel are particularly significant. While the timeline is centered on the VRD conferences, I’m really hoping to build a more comprehensive view. If you wrote an article in virtual reference…add it! Started a service – add it! I’m very interested in the people you feel shaped the past 7-10 years in virtual reference (people seem reluctant to add those). I’d really like this to be a resource of and for the community.

Larger Picture:
I’ve mentioned a couple of times that this has a VRD perspective (particularly the conferences). This is because I’m hoping to use this data as part of the next VRD book from Neal-Schuman. The next book will be more of a continuous narrative, and less proceedings (it will include articles from this year’s conference). The idea is to capture the evolution of digital/virtual reference over the past decade. In the text will be people profiles, important articles, and a good dose of “movement building” activities and descriptions. I’d hope to really reflect the community, and hence the desire to have the VRD community add information and vote.

So please add and vote.

Developing an Open Infrastructure for the Greater Good

A Brief Prospectus
R. David Lankes, Syracuse University
rdlankes@iis.syr.edu

Vincent and Didi Frochette lost their son Lukie to a rare form of cancer. In memory of their son they formed a charitable foundation to raise money for the Syracuse Children’s Hospital. Each year they hold a golfing event and want to put up a website to both advertise the event and recognize sponsors. Both Vincent and Didi had full time jobs, and no technology experience. Imagine if they could go to a place on the web and with three clicks of a mouse and 5 minutes time build a web site. Not a simple 1 page brochure on the web, but a website that allows Vincent to blog about the upcoming event; allowed the couple to upload pictures of the current and past events, allowed them to set up e-mail accounts and listservs for volunteers, and ensured their site conformed to standards for disabilities, usability.

Funding agencies are taking scarce funds from program activities and devoting it to building project websites. While there may be projects where the construction of highly unique web resources is key to the success of a program activity, in many cases funds for web sites lease web server space, hire designers, and train staff in how to build web pages. If the primary purpose of funding organizations is to promote Internet literacy, this makes sense. Otherwise these dollars represent money that could be spent on program objectives.

This constant re-investment also puts a significant burden on the funded organizations. Many of these organizations are unprepared for the complexity of managing web sites, dealing with increasing cyber-security issues, and are unaware of best practices in web design and information dissemination. They are small operations, with knowledge about improving communities, not building websites. Maintaining an effective website is more than simply HTML. It involves technical knowledge, knowledge of usability, design knowledge, information organization, information architecture and more. While those new to web design might master attractive static websites, they will never be able to put up interactive websites with database infrastructures needed to maintain program information and user interest by the end of the grant period. In much the same way funding agencies do not ask recipients to become book publishers, they should not expect all grantees to become effect web publishers.

So what is the alternative? There is a low-cost, high impact way for a funding agency, or preferably a consortium of funding agencies, to pool a fraction of their current web investments into a scalable, open platform for the not-for-profit sector. Using open source technologies, a funded project could build a highly responsive, customizable and secure technical environment for small not-for-profit organizations.

I propose the construction of an Open Infrastructure for the Social Good. This centralized facility would offer hosted services built specifically for the not-for-profit sector. This infrastructure would be much more than a web accessible hard drive, but rather a suite of integrated services such as content managements system, full text search engines, blogging, mailing lists, podcasting, streaming media servers, RSS feeds, technical support and more all managed from an integrated web “control panel,�? that hides the details (and complexities) of managing these services.

By centralizing the hosting of these tools, the technology (and associated learning) can benefit from economies of scale. Also, by standardizing on a suite of highly adaptable services, backups, upgrades, security patching, and the like can be done by a single team in one place. This central support should not be underestimated. Just ask the East Side Moms club who had their site hacked…twice. Not keeping up with security patches can be devastating for the public face of small not for profits.

So how would the open infrastructure work? The infrastructure would need four components:
• a governance structure,
• a technical set up,
• an education program, and
• a community of not-for-profits

Governance

The governance structure, a steering board, would consist of technical experts, representatives of funding and hosted organizations. This board would set polices for the service as well as decide what features need to be included in the infrastructure as it evolves. The idea would be to build a common platform of policy and technology that represents the community it seeks to serve.

Technical Infrastructure

The technical infrastructure would be a cluster of servers and storage with redundant backup. The system itself would be highly scalable. It would also have high-bandwidth access to the Internet. Since this is a hosted service, visitors to the sites of hosted organizations could enjoy broadband applications (such as video streaming) even if the funded organization has a dial-up connection to the net.

All of these services are available today in the open source domain. However, two problems are faced by someone seeking to set these services up: implementation and integration. Implementation refers simply to having a web space available that provides key software such as a databases, scripting environment, and a stable Internet address. Implementation is also complicated by the need to learn the intricacies of each of these open source applications. Each one has separate procedures and issues. Integration refers to the fact that each of these applications was developed separately. Each has a different look and feel. The goal of this infrastructure would be to integrate these applications so that funded organizations wouldn’t need to know the details of installation, and the user wouldn’t need to learn different interfaces.

The use of open source software to build this infrastructure is purely practical. It is assumed that some not-for-profit organizations would not want to be part of a hosted service. Whether it be policies of a parent organization, a unique need, or the fact that they simply grow large enough to host their own web services, an organization might need to run their own servers. The open infrastrucutre could then provide a “web portal�? in a box – a CD of the integrated applications that can be installed on any compatible open source platform.

Education Program

The Open Infrastructure would be an education program for those organizations that want to either increase their technical abilities or learn best practices in using web services to meet their strategic plans. Using streaming technology a user could walk through what it takes to set up a web server, how to better be found in search engines like Google, how to design web information for best impact in special populations like schools, and more. The point is to have the open infrastructure remove barriers to getting up and running, but provide support for organizations that want to be more Internet literatre.

Community

A goal for the infrastructure should be to retain a hosted organization’s identity. A visitor to the Lukie’s Soul Foundation should see the site as unique. Through the use of logos, themes and unique domain names, the foundation should be able to brand their work and their space on the web. However, once hundreds of sites are hosted together, new community benefits among these unique sites are possible, much like a concerted warehouse of artists lofts allow for new creative collaborations. The infrastructure could provide for “matchmaking�? services where projects with common goals could join up in activities. Materials produced for one organization, such as photos or teaching materials, might be reused by organizations in different locations or topical domains.

In addition to a home for not-for-profit organization, the open infrastructure can become a home for other common not for profit activities. Increasingly, foundations, government agencies and other funders are paying for the development of standards and software. Many organizations are not prepared for the ongoing maintenance of such technical tools, and yet many organizations are becoming dependant upon them. The infrastructure can become a repository of such projects, ensuring long-term maintenance and development.
The ultimate goal of the community function would be to reduce duplication of effort and promote collaboration of like-minded organizations.

What it Would Take

The details of the technical implementation are best left for another forum. The basics are a number of light-weight scalable servers that can be added to as the number of hosted sites increase. These servers would be networked together with high volume storage expandable as needed. This type of hosted configuration is rather standard and the means of managing this set up well established.

The core of the open infrastructure would be technical and program expertise. A multidisciplinary team would be needed to first construct the infrastructure, and later maintain and expand it. Programming expertise would be needed to first evaluate, and then integrate the various open source packages hosted (and develop any new applications that might be required by the governance board). A separate set of expertise would be needed to maintain the basic infrastructure of servers and databases. The last set of expertise would be in education and program development. This expertise would be used in developing the education program, but also in working with not-for-profits to determine their needs, match up technical capabilities with not-for-profit needs, and ensure the open infrastructure continually met the needs of the hosted services.

Conclusion

The overall goal of the project is to save funding organizations money, to provide small not-for-profits access to cutting edge technologies, and increase the impact of programs. There are a huge number of worthy small not-for-profits seeking to improve our society. How to build a web site shouldn’t get in their way.

The interesting idea? Tamal Guha, a visiting Fullbright at the Institute has started work on a multilingual version of StoryStarters. He is currently translating StoryStarters into Hindi! We’ve been kicking around the idea of creating a multi-national project to support the development of a multilingual open source digital reference system. The idea would be to emulate the quality study we did with Chuck McClure and Melissa Gross where we identify the project (developing OpenQA) and then seek sponsors for the project. International organizations could join at various levels (right now we are thinking as a function of size and what how much say in the direction of the project). Join at one level and you get a hold of the software and source. Next level you pay for a language adaptation. Next level you drive the software features (we want chat, etc).

This is still fuzzy, but it seems to resonate with folks here. The end result would be an open source, low cost or free digital reference packaged built for multinationals. It would also focus on building software, not consortia or content, hopefully by-passing legal issues.

The plan is once the database schema is in place we finish the StoryStarters beta.

Then we take this code base and re-task it for OpenQA Builder (shh, but we’re working on a release for distribution at this year’s VRD).

Stay tuned.