Session 7

My previous post was about the SOPAC of Oakville Public Library developed by Bibliocommons. I had a very hard time finding any abuses or misuses of Bibliocommons, it is still very new and the ability for users to interact is limited, particularly interaction visible to the general public. So for this session I will be looking at management and conflict at LibraryThing.

From their About page- “LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.”
Many libraries have added LibraryThing features directly into their OPACS. These features include reviews and book recommendations. Patrons can link to the main website of LibraryThing and see the vast community that exists there.

The privacy policy and terms of use of LibraryThing is located here

There is a talk and group feature at LibraryThing and that is where most of the community building takes place. In the terms of use LibraryThing specifically outlines what is not allowed in talk/groups:

• Do not make personal attacks. As Wikipedia's policy states, "Comment on content, not on the contributor."
  
• Do not use LibraryThing as an advertising medium. Egregious commercial solicitation is forbidden. No matter how great your novel, this does apply to authors.
  
• Do not spam user comments or group invitations. Inviting people in your town to a new group is okay; inviting hundreds of members is not.
  
• Do not repost flagged content in Talk. If you believed you were flagged unfairly, go ahead and discuss the issue (without getting personal). You can discuss it, with short selections. But you may NOT repost it. If people want to read it, they can; Talk allows you to click something to see the flagged content.
  
• Do not create "pointless," "meaningless" or "random" groups. We give all groups the benefit of the doubt, but the creation of multiple, duplicative and contentless groups is against these terms.
  

SPAM
Spam is in virtually every online community and LibraryThing is no exception. Users can create a spam profile or spam comments. When users find spam comments there is a “flag abuse” link to report it. I didn’t find a "flag abuse" link on profiles or groups. However, I did find a forum where users report instances of spam they have come across.



From what I’ve seen these are taken down fairly quickly. I did manage to take a screenshot before this spam group was taken down by an administrator.

Here is what you see when a profile has been taken down.


The removal of spam comments can be done without the assistance of administrators. This is also the case for abusive comments. Any comment can be flagged for abuse by any user. Once a comment has been flagged four times it is deleted. This allows community members some control on the oversight of the site, which according to the study by Cosley et al is just as good as expert oversight. Of course one can see how this can be abused. Users can create “sock puppets” to remove a comment that they disagree or take issue with. (Gazan)
Users are encouraged to be polite and work out differences civilly. LibraryThing states in their terms of use that “in extreme cases - if you feel that you're being harassed, or if a flame war begins, please email email [sic]Tim at tim@librarything.com or Abby at abby@librarything.com.”


PERSONAL ATTACKS
It was difficult to find a vicious personal attack. I imagine those are removed quickly but I did find some squabbling and commenting on contributors instead of content which is specifically mentioned as a no-no in the terms of service.
Here’s a link to the entire thread…it’s pretty long so here is a screenshot where a reference is made to name-calling.

Foul language is rampant throughout LibraryThing. LibraryThing prohibits children under 13. Children 13 and over may participate with the permission and guidance of their parents. I did find use of a certain highly pejorative term. Here's the screenshot.

The slur is directed at an anime character and not a contributor, so does that make it okay?


POINTLESS GROUPS
LibraryThing specifically state the creation of pointless, meaningless or random groups is against its terms. However I did find one seemingly pointless group.

Creating a pointless group is not as grievous an infraction as what some Goons have done in Second Life but it still can be a hassle. It is annoying to wade through meaningless groups to find something worthwhile. Contentless groups lessen the value of all groups.

While LibraryThing forbids pointless groups they do allow groups and discussion on topics other than books. Here’s a link to the complete list of groups and as you can see the range of topics is vast. There is even an Off topic group created by LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding. Here users can discuss whatever.


LibraryThing like Answerbag has, for the most part, embraced the change from factual content to social content. LibraryThing is a self-aware community. There is even a group for recommendations and suggestions for the site.


Overall I found it difficult to find examples of violations of the terms and even more difficult to find inter-personal conflict. The community seems to be well behaved and respectful.



The fact that the subject of the site is books may have something to due with the overall civility of the community. The stereotype of bookworms and those passionate about books is that they are intelligent and well-educated as well as quiet and meek, not people you would imagine starting a flame war or hacking a book profile. Of course this is a stereotype and generalization, I’m sure there are plenty of rogue users causing problems at LibraryThing. It is likely the administrators of LibraryThing can relate to the letters from users of Answerbag demanding special privileges or complaining about other users shown in the reading “Understanding the Rogue User.” (Gazan) And the case of one checker hacking movie titles by replacing information entered by other subjects in the study by Cosley shows that if takes just one rogue user to create a lot of work and frustration for many others. (Cosley, pg.7) 

Session 6

For my final project I am exploring social tagging of library resources and SOPACs (social online public access catalogs). While I am exploring many different library websites and catalogs I will focus this discussion on one in particular, Bibliocommons. In the summer of 2008, Oakville Public Library (Ontario, Canada) unveiled their new SOPAC created by Bibliocommons. According to their website, Bibliocommons is “a complete social discovery tool for libraries …transforming online library catalogues from searchable inventory systems into engaging social discovery environments.” (http://bibliocommons.com/)

Online identity in Bibliocommons is not as broad as social networking sites such as Myspace or Facebook but it is not nonexistent. There are two main ways a user can create an online identity in Bibliocommons, through their username and through their collection. In the reading “Signals in Social Supernets” Donath states that on social networking sites identity can be established by how many friends one has, how much activity is on their page, how often do they comment on their friends pages and vice versa. And the reading “Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances” analyzed the lists of interests on Myspace profiles exploring the language, coherence and substance of profile interest lists.

While identity on Bibliocommons may not be as obvious as on the SNSs Donath and Liu studied there are signals given by what a person’s username is and what they have added to their collection. Users are not required to use real names so users can signal part of their identity by creating a funny, clever, anonymous or straightforward name. Another way users can express their identity is by adding library materials to their collection. They can also rate, review, and tag items. However, this activity is not documented on a user’s “page”; it is included only on the page for the particular item. 

Here's a screenshot of the page for the book 1984. 

Particularly interesting is the "connect with others" area. Bibliocommons encourages library users to socially connect with others.

When you click on a user, you are taken to that user’s collection. No demographic or personal information is listed about the user only what they have added to their collection.
Here’s a screenshot of the user Library75's collection.

I can formulate in my mind an identity for this person based on the materials they have included and their username. This person has a lot of kid’s books, which leads me to believe they have a young child or children. It’s also possible that the person was born in the year 1975 because the username includes the digits 75. Of course I can’t be sure of this. The 75 could be random or for another reason.

Informal use scenario #1:
Nancy is looking for a good book to read. Nancy is busy and doesn’t have as much time as she’d like to read. Therefore, she would like a book recommended by someone she trusts. She uses the library’s online catalog to see what her friends have added to their collection.

With Bibliocommons users can “trust” a particular user. (check the screenshot of Library75 to see that you can trust or ignore a user). Trusting is anonymous so users don’t know if they’ve been trusted or ignored. Here’s a screenshot explaining a little more about “trusting” someone.

Informal use scenario #2:
Carl is looking for a book he heard about on the radio. He doesn’t remember the author or the title just that it was about the Spanish Civil War. He uses the library’s online catalog and searches the tags to find the book, he thinks he’ll remember the title if he sees it.

In this case, if he uses Bibliocommons he is out of luck because there are no results for a search of tags for Spanish civil war. Bibliocommons is new and does not allow the general public to tag (you must have a library card) therefore it is understandable that the number of tags is low. For the tags to be useful more participation by the users is needed. Hopefully Carl can find and tag the book so others after him may find it more easily. 

In terms of online identity Bibliocommons does not enable much of an identity to be created. Users can only evaluate other users based on their username and collection. Still if a user has added many items to their collection other users can likely make safe assumptions about their particular tastes.