OLPC and Library Management

[Xavier Alvarez]

Just a thought that crossed my synapses...

As an initial 'filter' (or 'highlight' as SJ prefers to thinks about
it ;) I was wondering if the logs of sites like Wikipedia and such
could provide with some sort of useful 'initial content'.

Most IPs are geographically (or country) mapped. Together with request
logs, search logs, and edit logs of a wiki (if that info is available)
you could build an initial list of articles and subjects that are
'important' to that country.

It would be even better if you could isolate schools or academic
sources - but in many places internet is primarily accessed through
cybercafes...

Of course, there are some privacy concerns with this approach... and
also, that the sample will be biased towards the 'rich' local people
and/or higher education institutes... (did I mention my idea was not
perfect? ;) nevertheless, it could provide with some insights about
content that is significant to each country (maybe even provinces and
cities).


Comments?

Cheers,
Xavier

PS: Felíz Año 2007!


On 1/1/07, SJ Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:
>
> Since you mention "library management" -- one aim is answering the
> question "what material is available in libraries of content near me?" and
> coordinating with the holdings of traditional and digital libraries.
>
> While most laptop users will be far from a physical library, some will be
> near enough to use one; libraries are developing growing digital
> collections; and the school servers can function as local digital
> libraries.   OCLC (oclc.org) is interested in helping with parts of this
> problem; they already provide a search interface that looks for digital
> materials available freely online, or in paper from a library within a
> local geographic region.
>
> On 12/28/06, MBurns <maburns at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/27/06, Adam Robinson <arobin30 at une.edu.au> wrote:
> > > The web is full of useful information in an evolving model, including
> > sites like Wikipedia. The challenge is what to filter.
> >
> > Some might say the challenge is to remove the impression that a filter
> > is needed at all. But that gets into an off-topic discussion.
>
> I'm not sure filtering (in the most commonly-used sense) is a primary
> challenge; highlighting great material might be a better description.
> What material do you want to be sure is available at a local level when
> access to the web at large is slow or unavailable?
>
> > Is there any work/interest in having a unified content management
> > system of some sort, or are each government assumed to roll their own?
> > If many groups are doing the same, basic thing, we might as well see
> > if we can help them collaborate by using a common infrastructure to
> > organize and manage their content.
>
> Content managment for digitizing and publishing existing materials will be
> different for each digitizer (a country or publisher, for instance).  This
> may not be a very collaborative process, so having many independent
> efforts is fine.
>
> Organizating and classifiying information, or collecting and distributing
> new information, will be collaborative and will benefit from coordination.
> Much of the content laptop users care about will come from [groups of]
> other laptop users; there will be common infrastructure for publishing and
> sharing that work.  Many groups developing learning materials already have
> quite open CMS'es; for instance most open textbook projects are being
> developed through world-editable wikis.
>
> >> Based on this, is the goal to provide material that governments can
> use?
> >> Or a starter set of cached material, or links to that material on a web
> >> server? I don't think there can be a goal to control all content on the
> >> internet (though tell me if you disagree).
>
> There will be cached material installed on the distributed laptops
> (different for each region), and larger caches of material at each school,
> on a school server.  School servers will want a way to update their
> caches, and individual laptops will want a way to update their own smaller
> collections [for instance, for when they are home and separated from the
> school].  Providing tools for this is independent from controlling what
> internet content is available; which is not the goal.
>
>
> Wishing all a happy new year,
>     SJ
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