All information resources are products of their time, environment, creators, intended uses and clientele, and their context in general. The Oxford English Dictionary was constructed in the way it was using then-current technology, building on previous dictionaries, and in no small part because of the 19th century English mindset. You could say the same for Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature, WorldCat, or the Wikipedia.
Bill Drew, a community college librarian in upstate New York, wrote a blog post not long ago about the “CSMI nexus,” the convergence of current societal and technological trends: cloud computing, social networking, mobile technology and of course information. These forces each independently are producing tremendous change in the information environment; in combination, no doubt they will have even more profound effects on our society, the way we work and interact, and, no doubt, information sources and resources as well. Indeed, you might argue that YouTube is a good representative of a socially-constructed information source, Twitter an example of a mobile-enabled tool, SoundCloud or Rhapsody from the cloud, and so on. What sources might emerge as these forces draw ever closer and begin to interact?
For your second task, you are to envision an information source that might emerge from a cloud/social/mobile/information nexus. How you express that vision is up to you—you might mock up a sample of what it might look like, write a press release or make a video announcing its launch, compose a blog post reviewing its features, etc., but you must convey what it is, how it works, and how it comes from the combination of those four forces. You may work individually or in groups as large as 3 on this task, and your submission may take up no more than 2 standard pages, though in any format(s) you like. Your work will be evaluated on creativity, authenticity to each of the 4 specified forces, viability, and the overall quality of your submission.
Your submission is due at 5:30pm on February 7. Please use this Catalyst dropbox for your submissions.