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Agency: library clients in online social spacesAgency: library clients in online social spaces

Bridging Worlds Conference, Singapore, October 2008Bridging Worlds Conference, Singapore, October 2008

Bonna JonesBonna JonesSenior Lecturer, RMIT UniversitySenior Lecturer, RMIT University

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Online social spacesOnline social spaces

• ‘rich user experiences’

• ‘architecture of participation’

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new online social spacesnew online social spaces

our understanding of these could grow out of earlier research on social spaces and how they operate:

• Making Narratives• Making Social Spaces• Making identities

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My interestMy interest

• as a practising librarian in a university I developed an interest in some ideas that were being researched by our clients

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Philosophy of complexityPhilosophy of complexity

• Emergence of a science of complexity

• Transdisciplinary, but also accounts for the achievements of the humanities

• ‘being’ and ‘becoming’

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Arran GareArran Gare

• Gare “Nature regarded as mere product is for us an object; but as productivity, it is for us subject” (2000, p. 336)

• Gare “a conception of the world in which humans, understood as conscious and self-conscious, free, creative and essentially social agents able to struggle to understand the world and themselves, could be seen to have evolved from nature” (2004, p. 2)

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actionsactions

• strings of actions• networks of action• processes• hierarchies of action• systems of action

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Making NarrativesMaking Narratives

“the boat came in with the morning catch of fish”

“the cats sat on the sea wall”

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Narrative as an actionNarrative as an action

Prestory (Prefiguration)

Story (Configuration)

Restory (Refiguration)

This is a spiral that loops back on itself and meaning is an achievement of its process. Transfiguration?

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ProductProduct

• Narrative

• Qualities of narrative (from ephemera right through to grand narratives; always in time)

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EventsEvents

• Carr (1986)• Events are already in a form that can be

described as ‘narrative’ • Action takes place in time and has both temporal

and practical order

Order understood as:• Closure (beginnning, middle and end)• Departure and arrival, or departure and return• Means and end• Suspension and resolution• Problem and solution

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CreativityCreativity

• Defined as a process:

• Narrative operates as an action of synthesis or a ‘grasping together’ of the heterogeneous within language.

• With narrative, the semantic innovation lies in the inventing of another work of synthesis - a plot. By means of the plot, goals, causes, and chance are brought together within the temporal unity of a whole and complete action. (Ricoeur 1984 , p. ix)

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Hierarchy of actionHierarchy of action

• Symbol → Word• Activity is interpretation• Sentence → Narrative• Activity is emplotment• Narrative → Library• Activity is collecting

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Cats and FishermenCats and Fishermen

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Making social spaceMaking social space

• social space – an invisible reality that cannot be shown, but nevertheless organises our actions

• the economy of symbolic transactions

• acquiring capital (social, cultural, economic, and symbolic)

• time (ongoing in time - sustained by a central argument; tradition)

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Levels of actionLevels of action

• word/sentence/narrative/genre/library

meaning is created in a story “I am….”

• person/collective/field

social space is created “I belong….”

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ProductProduct

• Narrative (from ephemera right through to grand narratives)

• Social space (‘my life’, ‘our group’, ‘our organisation’)

• always occurs within time

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Online social spaceOnline social space

• Social space

• Narrative-making space

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Evolution of social spacesEvolution of social spaces

evening campfire - a vital social space in prehistory

the town square or marketplace

the public library

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PowerPower

• Freedom, creativity• Non-nested hierarchies• Level of observation

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• Levels in the hierarchy of action constrain lower levels, more or less

• Lower levels may be able to ‘act back’

• Nested hierarchies that wholly constrain vs those with some freedom for action

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• ‘rich user experiences’

• ‘architecture of participation’

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• When we talk about ‘rich user experiences’ and an ‘architecture of participation’, these ideas about narrative, social space, identity and constraint are helpful I think. They give us a basis for thinking about the kinds of new social spaces we are now creating and how these will be an extension of what we already do in libraries. Indeed, I also think that librarians are beautifully placed to understand these dynamics, where other professions are not.

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“With each new integrative level, societies have become more differentiated and hierarchically organized, generating mutually amplifying co-evolutionary systems within these societies. Co-evolution has generated further specialist structures mostly associated with the regulation of society and the means for this regulation” (Gare, 2002 p 9)

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Onine social spacesOnine social spaces

• As products are more interactive• Verbal and graphic• Still and moving• Games

• Platforms such as VastPark http://www.vastpark.com/