Radical Reference NYC Grassroots Media Conference Presentation 2007

Introduction

"…librarians are more freedom fighters than shushers."

--Carla Hayden, Ms. Magazine online

Mission Statement: Radical Reference is a collective of volunteer library workers who believe in social justice and equality. We support activist communities, progressive organizations, and independent journalists by providing professional research support, education and access to information. We work in a collaborative virtual setting and are dedicated to information activism to foster a more egalitarian society.

1. What this talk covers
   
   • What is Web 2.0?
     
   • Limitations of technology in "Media and Movements Beyond Borders"
     
   • What is out there? Feeds, searches, and alerts
     
   • How do I keep up with this stuff? Feed readers, alerts, and tagging
     
   • Some examples that pull it all together
     
   • Q&A
   
   
2. Definitions and context
   
   • What is Web 2.0
     Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004,refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Web-based services... that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. wikipedia
     "What Is Web 2.0?" by Tim O'Reilly
     Semantic Web(WC3)
     
   • Technology limitations, don’t necessarily need to own computer to access resources and use free aggregators
     Newsmap – visualization of Google News
     witness
   
   
3. What is out there? Feeds, searches, and alerts
   
   • RSS Feeds
     Global Voices Online
     
   • Finding Feeds
     Syndic8.com – for finding RSS feeds (not info)
     [Feedster – search engine that indexes RSS feeds]
     appears defunct as of 9/2009, a friend suggests:
     List of Blog Search Engines from USA People Search as a replacement
     
   • News feeds
     Counterpunch
     Democracy Now!
     Alt weeklies feeds
     Indymedia syndication
     Amnesty International feeds
     
   • Government feeds
     GovTrack.us
     U.S. Government RSS Library
     Government blogs
     GPO Access feed page
     United Nations RSS feeds (featuring feeds by region)
     Free Government Information
     Get the FGI browser Toolbar too for customized searching of government info!
     
     
   • How do I organize this stuff?
     
     • Feed Readers
       A Directory of RSS Aggregators
       Bloglines
       
     • Tagging
       *Bookmarks that you used to keep in your browser, you can keep and share online
       *Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks - collections of those tags have been called "folksonomies"
       Del.icio.us
       Furl
       Connotea
       flickr
       article on social bookmarking tools
     
     
   • Page Monitors
     See the attachment below --page monitor message.doc
     
   • Search
     
     • Search Engine Watch
       
     • Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
     
     
     • Scroogle scraper and firefox plugin --a search engine that queries google, brings back Google results but scraped clean of ads with no cookies, no search-term
       records, access log deleted within 48 hours! (thanks James)
       
     • Google Alerts
       
     • news: Google News
       
     • blogs: Technorati
       
     • local info: outside.in
       
     • health: Health on the Net Foundation (HON)
       
     • customized searching: Rollyo
       
     • tag metasearching: Keotag
     
     
   • Examples that pull it together
     
     • Tracking developments in immigration legislation
       immigrants rights
       interest in finding out about HR 4437, the legislation that sparked protests
       monitor feeds in a reader
       
     • Atlantic Yards activist
       
     • Organizations: Radical Reference / Free Government Information
       How can an organization share and display bookmarks?
       put a linkroll on your site
       or a tagroll
       

Example Blogroll!

Some Sidebars
Cool software to know about
TrackMeNot
Psyphon, sponsored by Citizen Lab

Cool uses of web 2.0
Iraq study group report with annotations
http://www.futureofthebook.org/iraqreport/
Newsmap – visualization of Google News

Managing organizational information
Open Plans
Pando