Google Reader and the Academic Community

When Google Reader was first introduced, the product manager, Nicholas Baum, said it was like your “inbox for the web.” (Read his full introduction here) As many of you know I am a big Google fan and will try out any of their products so I jumped right in. After several weeks of use I am not totally hooked and realize that Google Reader (or some sort of RSS reader) is a must have for anyone in the academic community.

How it Works:

On almost any page that you visit now a days there is what’s called a RSS feed reader. It often has an orange icon accompanying it or even just says ‘RSS feed’. If you look at the right of this page you will see that my blog has a RSS feed as well. If you see any of these things, or often even if you don’t, you can ‘subscribe’ to that webpage.

To subscribe you right click on the icon or link and click “Copy Link Location” (Firefox) or “Copy Shortcut” (IE7). After that go to Google Reader and click “Add Subscription.” Walaha! It is added to your reads and updated every couple of minutes if there is something new. There are lots of other little tricks I love about Google Reader, like the shortcuts (list of shortcuts and other FAQ’s about Google Reader ) and the ability to read it INSIDE of your G-mail , but this article is more to introduce the product and discuss it’s academic potential. Feel free to add any comments you have about what you like about it or other RSS-feed readers that you like. For more information about RSS Feeds in general and other options out there see Wikipedia or About.com.

General Uses of a RSS Feed Feader in an Academic Community:

– World News – No college education would be complete without keeping up with the news of the world. (CNN Feed , BBC Feed )
– Campus Happenings – Keep up to date with what is happening on campus
– Campus Sports – I am an avid Tar Heel Fan and have subscribed to several of my favorite teams RSS feeds to keep up with what is going on (UNC Sports RSS Feeds Page ).
– Keeping up with your favorite hobby or passion. For me it happens to be Google so I am subscribed to dozens of Google RSS feeds.
Possible Discipline Specific Uses:

The possible uses of a tool that lets you aggregate the most current information on the web is one that is useful across all disciplines of education. Of course sciences like medicine have a constant need to be updated on the latest and greatest developments in their field… but that need extends beyond them. If anyone is to survive in an academic community one must be up to date with what the rest of the community is doing. I would be interested to see what you think about this, but I believe that someday RSS feeds or something like that will start to appear that alert users of the newest publications in print articles as well. It would certainly be a useful tool for academic writers. There is nothing worse than working on an article for weeks only to find that your topic was already written about, and you didn’t know about it.

So take a moment and look through the hundreds of pages in your bookmarks and see which ones would be helpful to subscribe to. It only takes a moment to set up and the knowledge you gain from your daily reading is invaluable. Read what you can, skip the things you don’t find important. Remember, knowledge is power.

I realize that my perspective may be limited, but as always I am writing to induce discussion. We all learn from each other, so what is your favorite RSS feed? How do you use RSS feeds in your specific discipline? What do you think about the future of RSS feeds? Do you think they will eventually start to publish information about printed articles? Perhaps it is already out there…

Organizing the World’s Information – Google Lecture w/Craig Silverstein

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to hear Craig Silverstein speak on the campus of UNC-CH.  For those who don’t know, here is currently the Technology Director at Google and was the first employee hired by Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.  The lecture was sponsored by UNC’s Health Sciences Library and was framed around Google’s mission statement to organize the world’s information, make it universally accessible and useful to everyone.  Craig basically talked about products that fulfilled this function throughout the lecture.  The purpose of this article is not to regurgitate the lecture, but to review some thoughts provoked by the lecture.  The presentation was video taped, so I’m sure it won’t be too long before it shows up on YouTube or GoogleVideo somewhere anyway.

For the ease of the reader I will format thoughts in bullet format.

• Before the lecture even began it became apparent to me that despite many people’s superficial aversion to Google on campus there is a large following for Google which most definitely includes librarians and academics.  The 650 person auditorium was packed and there was another 150 person overflow room that was full as well.  That is a lot of people for a lecture that extends beyond business hours.
• Before Craig actually began his lecture there was a discussion about librarians and the role they will play in the future.  I thought it was interesting to highlight the changes in the way librarians help people with the advent of the internet.  Where people previously went to the library for help and information they now often submit requests online and librarians themselves are increasingly turning to the internet for answers to the questions they are receiving.
• The definite highlight of the presentation occurred when Craig started his presentation and couldn’t get it to advance to the next screen.  He said “Technology, it’s tricky.”  How ironic.
• Craig gave an interesting statistic about half way though the lecture.  He said that the topics most commonly searched for are health related.  Perhaps I am a bit more cynical, but I have thought for some time that the most common topics were probably more sexual than anything else.  It is good to hear that the internet is actually being used for good too. 🙂
• At the end of the talk there was a panel that asked questions.  I found two of those questions very thought provoking.  The first was a question about the privacy of individuals and protecting that privacy.  I thought that Craig did a very good job of addressing this question.  First off he assured the audience that Google took the privacy of individuals VERY seriously.  He alluded to the lapse in judgment by some of their competitors (AOL) and pointed out that Google asks for as little information as possible when users are signing up.  There is no need to give out addresses or phone numbers or any of that other stuff.  On a personal note, and I know some people may disagree with this, but I almost feel like because Google has more money and people to devote to security they are a more secure than even perhaps large educational institutions that are constantly trying to keep up with the newest advances in security and never have enough money to do so.  Granted, Google is a larger target, and that has to be taken into account, but an institution of 100,000 people is a pretty big target too.
• The second point was brought up by Fred Stutzman.  He pointed out the generational gap that is widening between incoming students and those teaching the classes.  Students are growing up in a society where the internet is part of every day life and has been their entire lives, whereas professors are often not part of that, and even more importantly, don’t understand how that affects their students in every aspect of their lives.  His question to Craig was basically how do we bridge this gap?  If I recall correctly, Craig didn’t really have an answer to this, but it got me thinking.  I realize this thought is probably not original by any means, but it brought it home for me in this context.  We really need classrooms where the internet becomes part of the classroom.  There is so much information out there, yet it is often passed over for more traditional textbooks and lectures.  I dare wager that 90-95% of the information we teach in classrooms is presented on the internet in one form or another… the problem is just finding it.  Imagine that College Algebra class you took as an undergrad where the teacher, try as they might, could not explain a certain concept or theory to you in a way that you could understand.  Now imagine you had your laptop there in the classroom and looked up the theory online.  You could see someone else’s explanation of it… perhaps a diagram or two, and dozens, maybe even hundreds of examples.  That is the power of the internet.  That is a power that almost every freshman coming onto a college campus understands.  The question is, how do we get professors to understand the potential of this great resource?  What do y’all think?