parma ponti01
DESCRIPTION
The purpose of this presentation is to suggest commons-based peer-production as a form of work that can help bridge the gap between research and practice in LIS.TRANSCRIPT
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
EXPLORING PEER-PRODUCTION FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH IN LIS
Marisa Ponti, Ph. D.
IT-University of Gothenburg
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Lecture Outline
• Theory-practice gap in LIS
• Collaborative research as a strategy
• The concept of peer-production
• Case study: the Semantic OPACs project
• Conclusion
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
A Gap Exists
For most librarians research is divorced from practice
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
What is Collaborative Research?
• Provides academics and nonacademics with a research approach in which they both work together throughout the entire research process (Nyden, Figert, Shibley and Burrows, 1997).
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Why Care About Collaborative Research? (1)
Develop new services Better understand usersNeed to keep updated and reflect on
practiceQuestion and investigate daily practices
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Why Care About Collaborative Research? (2)
• Jointly develop new expressions of knowledge in the form of digital scholarship products and digital library systems.
Source:http://www.metascholar.org/events/2007/dsdl/
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Competencies Leveraged
• Faculty– Domain expertise– Data collection– Taxonomies– Data reuse
• Librarians– Archives– Metadata
management– Culture of service– Culture of trust– Project management
Source: http://www.metascholar.org/events/2007/dsdl/
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Strengths and weaknesses
• What are the problems and issues?– Technical– Social– Financial
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Peer-Production: An Opportunity to Bridge the Gap?
Sociotechnical form of production, in which individuals cooperate in group collectives to contribute to a common goal, in a more-or-less informal way, and produce a shared outcome (Benkler, 2006)
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Semantic OPACs Project
• Semantic OPACs (SemOP2), 2007-2008 – Italy: 17 participants: one academic and seventeen practitioners. URL: http://www-dimat.unipv.it/biblio/sem/
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
SemOP2 as Sociotechnical Network
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Research Questions
– Explore the nature of LIS practice-research collaboration
• How and why is it initiated and sustained?
– Study which sociotechnical aspects influence LIS practice-research collaborations
• How does their influence play out?
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Sociotechnical Aspects (Olson et al., 2008)
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Characteristics of SemOP2
• Small-scale
• Distributed
• Decentralized
• No-grant funded
• Volunteer- based
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Key Findings (1)
Lack of institutionalization - Bottom-up, unaffiliated project - Lack of external seed funding, no budget - Voluntary participation
Opportunity for External Expertise - Self-selection of individuals who like the project and want to contribute
Lack of intellectual property - ”Professor's privilege” system allowing flexibility to reward individual effort
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
No formal management rules - No ”hierarchy of authority” (Chompalov, Genuth & Shrum, 2002) - No formal management mechanisms
Role of Previous Ties - Importance of history of joint-work
Nature of work and and remote collaboration - Copresence better for grounding and understanding - Listserve useful to maintain ongoing awareness and create a memory of the project
Key Findings (2)
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Key Findings (3)
Predominance of intrinsic rewards
- Presence of a ”gift culture”
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Summary:Peer-Production Features in SemOP2
• - Lack of institutionalization
• - Voluntary participation
• - Self-selection of participants
• - Predominance of intrinsic motivations
• - Decentralisation of control
• - Granularity of tasks
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
References• Benkler, Y. (2006), The Wealth of Nations. How Social
Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yale University Press New Haven, Connecticut.
• Chompalov, I., Genuth, J. and Shrum, W. (2002), ‘The organization of scientific collaborations’, Research Policy, Vol. 31 No. 5, pp. 749-767.
• Nyden, P., Figert, A., Shibley, M. and Burrows, D. (1007), Building Community: Social Science in Action, Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA.
• Olson, J. S., Hofer, E., Bos, N., Zimmerman, A., Olson, G.M., Cooney, D., & Faniel, I. (2008). A theory of remote scientific collaboration. In G. M. Olson, A. Zimmerman, & N. Bos (Eds.), Scientific Collaboration on the internet (pp. 73-97). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
October 15, 2010 ParmaMarisa Ponti
Acknowledgments
My thanks to all my study participants.
This research was funded by the Center for Collaborative Innovation, the
Högskolan i Borås and the Bengt Helmqvist Fund