[Update: Keith pointed out that my small disclaimer at the end isn't clear enough. This post is copied, stolen, cut and pasted in its entirety from Keith's blog, ISTP Dad. I was glad to learn of the story, and this was meant to be ironic and funny.]

An editorial in the Washington Post is explicit about a topic close to my heart: students think plagiarism is fine, and teachers (high school? college?) realize that there’s not much point in assigning papers if they expect 100% original work.

…the educational system needs to acknowledge what the paper is today: more of a work product that tests very particular skills — the ability to synthesize and properly cite the work of others — and not students’ knowledge, originality and overall ability.

The comments on this editorial are worth a read as well. Not everybody agrees with the sentiment.

(Cut and pasted verbatim from ISTP Dad.)

school, research, plagiarism, original thought, education, cut and paste, washington post

Somebody at Gizmodo found this Agence France-Presse story about the intersection of American surfing and bathroom habits in The Hindustan Times. It’s based on a report by the USC Annenberg School’s Center for the Digital Future. For five years running now, the center has tracked internet use (and non-use) in a 2,000 household representative sample of America (choosing a new sample each year).

This year, researchers found: “Over half of those who used Wi-fi had used it in the bathroom.”

Gizmodo is going a little farther than I’d initially care to by asking readers to comment on their behavior, but I found this gem that reminds us that this may just reflect the evolution of our media: “The laptop in the john is the new newspaper for the millennium.”

I apparently have too many neatnik issues to go down that path, but rather than devolve the discussion, I’d like to point out that this Center for the Digital Future report appears to be a good complement to OCLC’s latest report and the regular stream of reports from the Pew Internet Project.

Now back to the funny: RSStroom Reader.

restroom, bathroom, rss, media, newspaper, report, Center for the Digital Future, wifi, in the bathroom, technology, computer use, behavior, research, on the throne, in the can

Way back in April 1997, Jakob Nielsen tried to educate us on Zipf Distributions and the power law, and their relationship to the web. This is where discussions of the Chris Anderson’s Long Tail start, but the emphasis is on the whole picture, not just the many economic opportunities at the end of the tail.

Here’s how it works with hits to websites:

• a few sites become popular and form the “big head” at the left
• a few more sites form the slope
• a huge number of websites score very low and form the “long tail”

Nielsen adds these examples:

• a language has a few words (“the”, “and”, etc.) that are used extremely often, and a library has a few books that everybody wants to borrow (current bestsellers)
• a language has quite a lot of words (“dog”, “house”, etc.) that are used relatively much, and a library has a good number of books that many people want to borrow (crime novels and such)
• a language has an abundance of words (“Zipf”, “double-logarithmic”, etc.) that are almost never used, and a library has piles and piles of books that are only checked out every few years (reference manuals for Apple II word processors, etc.)

But the point here is about Google (or Yahoo, etc.) search results ranking, which puts enormous value in the number of incoming links to a page. It turns out that these links also follow a power-law distribution and it not uncommon to find complaints that Google’s Page Rank recognizes popularity over other factors.

So it’s worth wondering: is popularity bad? Are popularity and quality mutually exclusive? Do search rankings represent some sort of global group-think?

Now put this in an academic library context and consider a student Googling for background for a research paper (think University freshmen the night before it’s due). Is it possible that linking patterns work like Wikipedia and tend to favor quality, or do they simply represent lowest common denominator popularity. Do search results reflect the sum of our altruistic linking intentions or our base crudity?

More about search ranking and libraries:

• Findability, The Google Economy, and Libraries
• The Google Economy Vs. Libraries
• Changing Modes Of Communication
• The Google Economy Will Beat You With A Stick

tags: academia, academic library, google, google economy, googling, group think, jakob nielsen, libraries, library, lowest common denominator, networked information, popularity, quality, research, search engines, search rankings, search result rankings, search results, wikipedia

James Torio has been working on his masters in marketing and took a strong look at blogs for his thesis.

I looked at how Blogs have impacted business and communication, how some Blogs create revenue, how some companies are using Blogs, how Blogs greatly boost the spread of information, how Blogs add richness to the media landscape, how Blogs work in the Long Tail, how some companies are tracking the Blogosphere and what the future of Blogging may be.

Via Blogging Pro

tags: blog study, blogging, blogging thesis, blogosphere, blogs, communication, james torio, media, media landscape, research, thesis

Via Jay Bhatt at LISNews: UCLA Libraries‘ discussion of Google Scholar, Search Engines, Databases, and the Research Process.

tags: google scholar, googlescholar, libraries, library, research, research database, research databases, search, search engines, sevia, ucla libraries