21. Aquabrowsing.

Is it my imagination or was there much more material to read this time? I keep clicking on links which lead me to other articles where there are countless more links and I become lost in an underwater labyrinth. I 'dived' in yesterday afternoon (Sunday) and it is already Monday afternoon, I've been frequently coming up for air! I'm really, really impressed with the Aquabrowser facility though even if I haven't quite got to grips with it yet.I'm also impressed with the online catalogue of OBA, Amsterdam Public Library.I've made my own 'My Discoveries' account(pleased to see instructions in English, when are we going to include that in our catalogue?)and added one children's book to my list(a bit confused as I thought this would not be made public but received the message that it would be) with tags, rating but no review as yet.I tried to access the '23 Dingen' account on Worldcat but was told that the password was invalid?? Perhaps I'll make my own account there too.
I found the article taken from bibliotheekblad- 2008/24 very interesting:'Als mensen willen vinden wat ze zoeken moeten ze ook weten wat ze willen zoeken. Mensen zijn daarvoor sterk afhankelijk van aanbevelingen. Aanbevelingen die op heel veel verschillende manieren georganiseerd kunnen worden. Dat kan de bibliothecaris verzorgen in de bibliotheek of op de website van de bibliotheek maar dat kan ook volautomatisch worden gegenereerd op basis van je aankoop- of leengedrag zoals bijvoorbeeld bij Amazon.com en bij onze eigen Muziekweb gebeurt. Maar je kunt je ook laten inspireren door wat gewone mensen van een boek, cd of dvd vinden.'
This raised for me the question as to how responsible libraries are for influencing the choice of reading matter for their public? I'm thinking aloud here and can answer my own question. A public library should provide readers for the most part with the sort of books/information/entertainment they want but 'popularity' should not be the only criterium for adding an item to the collection.If we are only influenced by those computer literate readers who are confident to contribute tags, ratings and reviews, will we ignore the needs of and therefore alienate others?
I'm certainly not finished with Thing 23 yet but for the moment will leave you with a glimpse of the future, also discovered in my 'aquatic exploration.'
Web 3.0!!!
“The Semantic Web is a set of technologies which are designed to enable a particular vision for the future of the Web – a future in which all knowledge exists on the Web in a format that software applications can understand and reason about. By making knowledge more accessible to software, software will essentially become able to understand knowledge, think about knowledge, and create new knowledge. In other words, software will be able to be more intelligent – not as intelligent as humans perhaps, but more intelligent than say, your word processor is today.” Nova Spivack
Spivack also says, in language I understand, that the Semantic web ,“helps individuals and communities mine and share information from Internet sites, blogs, and social media services, such as YouTube.” So, we're going to be replaced by robots after all!!