‘The Frictionless Library’Following Ranganathan Towards "Five Principles for Networked Libraries”

Tony HirstDepartment of Communication & Systems,

The Open University

“Back to the Future and into the Cloud”

Ranganathan `31: The Five Laws

Adaptive Efficient Relevant Democratic Access (to knowledge)

Modalities of Constitutional ArgumentThese methods of reasoning and ways of making arguments determine the ways in which constitutional propositions are characterized as valid from a legal point of view. These methods might be divided or recategorized in different ways, but the following six forms or

modalities of constitutional argument are widely accepted: (1) historical—relying on the intentions of the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution (see Original Intent;

History, Court Uses of); (2) textual—looking to the meaning of the words of the Constitution alone, as they would be interpreted by an average contemporary American

today; (3) structural— inferring structural rules from the relationships that

the Constitution mandates; (4) doctrinal—applying rules generated by

precedent; (5) ethical—deriving rules from those moral commitments of the

American ethos that are reflected in the Constitution; and (6) prudential—seeking to balance the costs and benefits of a particular rule. A modality is the way in which a proposition is characterized as true.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/constitutional-interpretation#ixzz1mjX2jgoc

Historical Textual Structural Doctrinal Ethical Prudential

1st Law

2nd Law

3rd Law

4th Law

5th Law

http://www.answers.com/topic/constitutional-interpretation

“Furthur”, Joe Mabel

5The Fifth LawThe library is a growing organism

Ranganathan `31

historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, ethical, prudential

…and the Library lives in a networked world…

Structure in data - h

ierarchies

Hierarchical data and treemaps - medals

Pivot tables

Couple of network graphs to make the point…

Network activity is sensitive to network structure

YOU can influence the network structure

Page Rank

Persistent side-effects

Page Rank

Or maybe not-so-persistent side-effects…?

Edge Rank

1The First LawBooks are for use

Ranganathan `31

historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, ethical, prudential

<A>CCESS

“friction”

http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2011/11/openly-connect/

I’ve started to think about factors affecting reuse as being causes of friction .... This may not be an exhaustive list, but the things I can see that create friction in the reuse of

data are:

Explicit restrictions on reuse

Uncertainty about possible restrictions on reuse

Unusual or unfamiliar interfaces and formats

Lack of information on data and where the data is available

Sometimes you might deliberately introduce friction – perhaps you don’t want your data to be reused by just anyone, for any purpose. I don’t see friction as bad per se – we

just need to be aware of it, and especially avoid introducing friction when we don’t mean to.

“static friction”Credentials

AuthenticationTraining Requirements

Registration fee

“dynamic friction”Transaction Fees

QuotasLicense conditions

Format/representation conversions

DIS

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Resolve resource identifiers to

accessible locations

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Find relevant resource identifiers

Resolve resource identifiers to

accessible locations

RECO

VERY

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click-thru

sear

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2The Second LawEvery reader his or her book

Ranganathan `31

historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, ethical, prudential

Democratic Access

Find relevant resource identifiers

Resolve resource identifiers to

accessible locations

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RYse

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click-thru

Find relevant resource identifiers

Accessible locations

Inaccessible locations

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Known Individuals

Known Communities

The “wider public”

Networks can emerge from loosely co-ordinated action

Networks may codify “common knowledge”

3The Third LawEvery book its reader

Ranganathan `31

historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, ethical, prudential

Relevant Democratic Access

THEN…

Index + Search Terms -> Candidate Results

Candidate Results + Ranking -> Results Page(s)

Page Rank

Find relevant resource identifiers

Accessible locations

Inaccessible locations

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NOW…

There is no Google Ground Truth any more…

the invisible librarian

“frictionless sharing”

Brian’s “Trusted Social Librarian”

4The Fourth LawSave the time of the reader

Ranganathan `31

historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, ethical, prudential

Efficient Relevant Democratic Access

Find relevant resource identifiers

Accessible locations

Inaccessible locations

DIS

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RE

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Find relevant resource identifiers

Accessible locations

Inaccessible locations

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“Furthur”, Joe Mabel

Brian’s “Trusted Social Librarian”

“user interface friction”

Pfeiffer Consultinghttp://www.pfeifferreport.com/trends/UIF_Report.pdf

User interface friction is the resistance that the implementation and execution of a user interface feature imposes on the user of a program, device, or operating system.

User Interface Friction is not related to the functionality of an application program, and does not depend on the processing power of a computer, although these can be mitigating factors.

The same application program, functioning on two different operating systems can yield different overall UIF because of differences in the way the user interface responds.

User interface friction can result in significant productivity loss when it occurs on frequently repeated operations.

open development and “issue reports”

5The Fifth LawThe library is a growing organism

Ranganathan `31

historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, ethical, prudential

Adaptive Efficient Relevant Democratic Access

Network activity is sensitive to network structure and

dynamics

YOU can influence the network structure and its dynamics

@psychemedia

blog.ouseful.info