Morgan Wilson: info overload

ahh - trying a different aggregator has helped alleviate my information overload

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 03:41:19 GMT

Switching to TypePad will also involve getting a stand alone news aggregator. For the past week I've been experimenting with NetNewsWire, a fine Mac only product. I've been very impressed. Before I used to think that needing a new aggregator was a drawback to switching from Radio, but now I think it's a positive reason to try something else. I love its Post to Weblog feature - which replicates the one thing about the Radio aggregator which I really liked. More interesting, I find that the three-pane design makes it easier to get through all of my subscriptions. If I'm in the mood to see what's been on at one particular blog first, I can do this. If none of a blog's titles appeal to me, I can mark them as "all read" with one click and effectively ignore them. All this is much easier than needing to wade through all the entries of all my subscriptions. And I can arrange my subscriptions alphabetically or in theme-based clusters, rather than just by time (although I understand why some bloggers would prefer this). There are some blogs which I would like to check everyday, while others can wait a week or so - it depends on the quality and quantity of the words, as well as my mood. Anyway, here's something from the blog by NetNewsWire's makers:

Wired News: [base "]Maniacally wired netizens who read a hundred blogs a day and just as many news sources are turning to a new breed of software, called newsreaders or aggregators, to help them manage information overload. Many now say that their news aggregator is as indispensable as their e-mail client.[per thou]

Interesting article. I think I was slightly misquoted about sales of NetNewsWire. The [base "]five figures[per thou] part refers to the number of users of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite: the number of users is at least a five figure number. Just wanted to clear that up: not a big deal, really. [Ranchero]

4 motivations for blogging, with 2 digressions

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 04:46:20 GMT

I’ve been ruminating about this topic for several weeks and now I feel inspired to write about it.

So why do people blog? For some people, it fits in very well with their day job. This is partly the reason why I blog. As I’ve explained in some of the essays I’ve written about blogging, maintaining a blog is a good way of keeping up with the latest news and technology concerning my profession - being a law librarian. For some people, this goes further. Blogging is becoming a parallel way of publication, which is so important in the academic world. Of course, self-publication will never be as prestigious as peer-reviewed or paid publication. But does this distinction really matter when blogs are offering the most innovative and accessible (read cheap) content and form? I’m sorry, but if I only have x hours per week for professional reading, that time is better spent reading blogs than journals or trade magazines.

<Digression1>

Of course, I’m a Very Naughty Librarian for saying this. We always push getting the best of both print and online worlds. So why have I turned heretic in this way? I know that blogging is far from perfect. It can be a breeding ground for rumours, half-truths and bad scholarship (I’m guilty of this at times, so I’m allowed to say this). It can be very circular or self-referential. On other hand, established publications aren’t perfect either. They can be expensive, full of ads, and print only publications don’t have hyperlinks (and rarely do their online versions) – footnotes aren’t quite the same. I think that reading online materials with hyperlinks is a more active and engaging process than reading articles in print.

Most importantly, more often than not, I am simply not interested in the content which has been selected by publishers. Reading blogs, I am in charge of what I’m reading. I choose which blogs I put in my aggegator, which posts to skim over and which ones to read in detail. This is one of the benefits of information overload. I know that there will always be more things to read than I have time for. I can use this situation to my advantage by letting myself focus in what I’m really interested in. I’m not saying that publishers don’t add any value. They do by paying professionals to write and sometimes selecting interesting articles which I wouldn’t have read otherwise - Salon being a case in point for me, for which I’m very willing to pay. But other bloggers can do this too - and they point me to interesting articles in other publications which I would never read otherwise.

All that said, I still do read print journals and trade magazines - because I'm also a bookworm and feel that I should.

</Digression1>

Some blogs greatly compliment the blogger’s paid career. I know of instances of people being offered real jobs because of the quality of their web logs.

Another reason to blog is that it’s good for the ego. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way. For people who think that “ego” or “egotistical” are invariably bad things, think self-esteem instead. I think that most honest & self-aware people who aren't saints would be hard-pressed to deny that the ego boosts can help. It’s nice to read your blog being praised. It’s interesting to see the number of hits & referrers to your blog increase. Of course, I must mention the BlogShares (truly, life is too short to be fixated by such things). Of course, depending on their sensitivity, a blogger’s ego can be hurt by criticism, being delinked or receiving reduced readership. Some people have a thicker skin and are not bothered by this. Other people reduce the likelihood of negative reactions by not going out on a limb or expressing opinions which would be inflammatory to members of their particular blogging community.

<Digression2>

It’s very hard to define what a blogging community is. I don’t mean anything monolithic such as - “Trent Lott’s racist remarks caused such furor in the Blogging Community that the mainstream media could no longer overlook them.” There are many different blogging communities. They include the formal attempts to establish a blogging community - e.g. Salon blogs, the blawg web ring, various LiveJournal communities etc. But these formal constructions only help facilitate a blog community, they are not essential for a community. I would tentatively say that a blog community consists of those formal or informal relationships between bloggers who frequently read each other’s postings and occasionally point to or comment on them. I would guess that relationships are based on shared viewpoints and personalities.

The blogiverse is like the night sky. Stars all over the place, in every direction. Some are bright while others are very faint, some have different colours, and they arranged in constellations. Now, imagine a series of Venn diagrams overlaying these stars.

And so the image changes to light rain falling onto a pond. The water's surface is covered with interlinked and concentric circles. Some circles are larger than others, some circles intersect with others, some circles are wholly contained by others.

So each blog falls into a number of different communities, some of which may be large, other which might be small or narrow.

For example, if it is very important for me to be included in the mainstream law blog community or the library blog community, it is not wise to rant my particular blend of left-wing politics. Because I may alienate myself from the members of these broad communities who have opposing or neutral point of view, and I move to the fringes of the community. On the other hand, my rants may bring me closer to the centre of the smaller communities of lefty lawyer/librarian bloggers.

</Digression2>

So if you aspire towards the centre of a large mainstream blog community, you can’t be too controversial, particularly about issues which are outside the main focus of that community.

Before I finish about blogging and the ego, I must point out this discussion by Jonathon Delacour.

Another reason to blog is simply for self-expression. Blogging for self-expression is similar but different from blogging for the ego boost. It’s not hard to imagine situations where self-expression will get you into trouble and cause you to be criticized, delinked or removed from aggregators. The people who blog purely for self-expression are not interested in their readership or number of links, so long as they are saying what they want to say, in the way that they want to say it. Of course, ego can be important to even the most idealistic / artistic bloggers, because what is the purpose of self-expression if nobody is going to read it? But now I’m approaching into questions which have challenged philosophers and artists for centuries, and I don’t want to add another digression.

Finally, there are some people who blog for money. I suspect that this will become a trend, as blogging becomes more mainstream. Depending on the financial relationship, this could seriously undermine the ability for self-expression. On the other hand, being paid may confer extra legitimacy and visibility, which could help the ego. Finally, blogging for money could conceivably become a job – which returns to the first motivation I that mentioned.

I’m writing all this to understand my own motivations for blogging. I think that I’m motivated in part by my career, my ego and my need for self-expression – but not for money :) I wouldn’t be opposed in principle to blogging for money, so long as it didn’t interfere with my other needs, particularly self-expression. I’m not going to rank how important these three different motivations are for me, because it changes on any given day. I can say that the self-expression motivation is getting more important, but I doubt that the other two motivations are going to disappear.

article in Searcher about the digitial divide in legal research

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 06:00:26 GMT

Slashdot has reported (& discussed in typical Slashdot style) an article in Searcher magazine by Melissa Bar called "Democracy in the Dark: Public Access Restrictions from Westlaw and LexisNexis." It is a very interesting and well-written article that highlights the important issue of public access to the law.

In my biased opinion, this article has one major flaw, which is that it seems to totally ignore the role of law libraries - particularly academic law libraries and court libraries. I can only speak for the academic law library where I work. Although we mainly exist to serve our students, faculty and alumni, we never turn anyone from the public away who needs help with legal research. We are trained to help people find what they want or need without crossing over into the area of unauthorized practice of law. At the risk of blowing the profession's own horn too much, I say that the the assistance of a good law librarian - who is armed with a standard collection of printed materials and the resources available on the "free web", including the Legal Information Institute, West's FindLaw and LexisOne - will usually do a much better job for the pro se patron than free access to LexisNexis or Westlaw. The printed sources aren't all bad. They are very strong with the older materials, which Ms. Barr uses as an example, and they make it more difficult to fall into the full-text infoglut trap - where the few pearls are hidden in a tonne of garbage.

Law libraries should do a better job of communicating all this to public libraries. I know that some of the professional associations, including the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries are already doing some work in this area.

None of this is to say that I don't have my issues with LexisNexis or Westlaw - or think that they're perfect, altruistic companies. But now there are more free electronic alternatives (or cheap ones, like VersusLaw) available for legal research. They don't have the all the fancy bells & whistles of Westlaw or Lexis, but they still offer the public access to primary legal materials that would have seemed unthinkable 15 years ago.

even more information about information overload!

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 01:11:52 GMT

Newsreaders & Information Overload.

Newsreaders Help Combat Information Overload. (23 Jan) J.D. Lasica suggests that using a newsreader (like Newzcrawler or AmphetaDesk) to scan information from "weblogs and niche news sites" helps to cut through the mounds of information. [TVC Alert]

Sounds like Mr. Lasica agrees with my Jan. 17 post on this topic and Genie Tyburski's recent Law Practice Managment article Surviving Information Overload.

[Internet Tools for Lawyers]

The other day I stumbled over this fascinating collection of links on information overload at Look.com. I wish that I had access to this collection while preparing for a Speechcraft presentation on the topic a couple of years ago. This also makes me curious to explore more of Look.com

the losing battle to debunk the full-text myth

Wed, 29 Jan 2003 13:43:08 GMT

Is more information always better?.

"We're throwing masses of full-text information at the students, and it's overwhelming them," says Steven J. Bell, library director at Philadelphia University, in an interview published by The Chronicle of Higher Education today. (The interview was a follow-up to an article by Mr. Bell in this month's issue of American Libraries.) His point rings true in many of my own experiences, both interviewing students and coping with my own research quests. I want to get a full copy of his article, as well as the article he mentions from College & Research Libraries News.

His words imply a larger challenge: Are we able to balance research that is helped along by human beings with research that is accelerated by automated search technology? Is automation winning the game? He mentions a "full-text fixation" among students who will only use databases (the Web included) that give them the full page or full article or full book. With full-text resources out there, why bother with citation databases? Why make the effort to walk to the stacks? Why take the time to ask a reference librarian to help find a subset of journals that cover a topic, when it's easier to get what looks like a pile of texts on that topic by plugging in a few keywords?

[Lisa Guernsey's Weblog]

For the next 2 weeks, I and the other reference librarians at my library, will busy be teaching the basics of using Westlaw to our first year students (we did the Lexis training in November). We'll be giving a demonstration of the full-text JLR database of law journals. We take pains to mention that the JLR database does not contain every law review article ever written - not even all the recent ones. We also try to empathize that full-text searching is the most difficult type of searching and that human-indexed databases such as the Index to Legal Periodicals and LegalTrac may give them more relevant results (hence, less information overload) from a broader pool of sources. But it's hard to interest them in this two-step process, especially when Westlaw offers free printing and spends millions on marketing themselves to law students.

using google or vivisimo for legal reference questions

Wed, 29 Jan 2003 13:05:16 GMT

Free Net Search Engines vs. Westlaw & Lexis.

Are free Internet search engines like Google ever better places for legal research than paid services like Westlaw and Lexis? More.

[Internet Tools for Lawyers]

It's curious to see how the generational differences can work here. One of my older colleagues, whom I greatly respect as a reference librarian, will usually turn to the library catalogue first. Alternatively, he will know of a great reference book off the top of his head. Thirdly he will use Lexis or Westlaw.

If I come across a more challenging question, I will often turn to Google first. It's a very quick way of giving me ideas for better search terms in the catalogue or Westlaw or Lexis. I find it particularly helpful for finding books when I'm missing a piece of crucial information about the title. There have been several instances when a law student has spent an hour searching in vain for something in Lexis or Westlaw (which would be horrifyingly expensive in "real world" Wexis billing), and then I find the document in a minute or two with Google or Vivisimo - my other favourite search engine.

I guess my point is that web search are a very helpful supplement to the more established research methods, but you would be most unwise to rely on them exclusively.

why information overload is like obesity

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 05:57:17 GMT

... The online version of an article I wrote for Law Practice Management is now available. It discusses products, services, and strategies for obtaining and dealing with mounds of current information. ... [TVC Alert]

I always perk* up my ears when I come across anything to do with information overload. Often I've been disappointed and it's just a company trying to flog their KM system or something. This article by Genie Tyburski definitely did not disappoint. It's well-written and is at an appropriate level of detail for someone like me. To summarize: she recommends (1) avoiding spam by using filters and a spam-bait email addresses; (2) use web tracking services, news aggregators, and helpful browser add-ons to keep you informed without wasting your time and attention. I can't wait to try out TrackEngine, which she mentions - considering that it works on a Mac. All of these methods will surely help - some of which cost money - although I think none are definitive cures . Because sucess is often rewarded by taking in even more information. Some people will always have more exposure to information overload than others, by virtue of their profession, lifestyle, nationality etc. Like obesity, information overload is disease of the western world. The world doesn't do a good job at distributing food from the rich to the poor - can we do a better job with information? Anyway, Genie Tyburski gives some very helpful coping strategies.

Some numbers about the perception of information overload

Sun, 10 Nov 2002 21:52:30 GMT

This interesting quote appears in an article about knowledge management. "Gartner ... estimates that 90% of businesses surveyed suffer from 'information overload.' Of the companies surveyed, Gartner found that the perception of information overload was 20% higher overall among companies that had knowledge management systems in place, compared to those which didn't." [TVC Alert]

Very interesting - especially the bit about companies with KM systems being more likely to perceive information overload. I can think of 2 reasons for this: 1, The employees of companies with KM systems in place are more likely to be aware of the information overload problem; 2, the funder of this research is SupportSoft, who is trying to show that "traditional knowledge management systems" are "ineffective" - unlike their system, of course.