As a hopeful librarian, I couldn't help but admire Bonilla's commentary on the hashtag as an indexing system. While painfully obvious (I often use it myself when researching what a new city has to offer in terms of food, entertainment, events before I travel there), I never thought of it in that sense. Future information professionals need to stay current on the trends of how information is processed and disseminated, both formally and informally. Showing that #Ferguson was used to discuss both mundane and incredibly serious aspects of the town's life proves that it is more pertinent than ever that we know how to dive into such rich and copious amount of information.
On an unrelated note, it is important to remember that during the time of strife in Ferguson, its public library refused to close their doors to the public!
http://www.newsweek.com/ferguson-library-open-286946
I agree with your point on the use of hashtags for information professions to stay current on trends. I feel like it is such a powerful tool to do so. Back in Otlet's days, or even as recent as a decade ago, it would have taken much longer for the cataloging, organization, grouping of trends to be both identified and understood. With the ability to search by hashtags, our access to knowing what the world is talking about by the second is virtually instantaneous.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right about future information professionals needing to stay up to date on current trends, like hashtags, slang, and emojis (an emoji was Oxford's word of the year, for goodness sake). Hashtags in particular are useful when connecting folks across large regions, or even across the world. In that way, it could be argued that technology and tools like hashtags opens dialogue and increase the accessibility of information. Often time, folks who may not be aware of current events will be exposed to them through avenues like social media. It will also be interesting to watch these trends change, likely at a rapid pace, over time.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! One issue this week's readings revealed for me was what I might call "hashtag integrity." I'm sure someone has already written about this, but I'm talking about the issue of unrelated or competing posts riding the popularity of the "hashtag of the moment" to get their message out there until the point where the original message is degraded or lost. I suppose this is one of the drawbacks of Twitter, etc. being such democratic spaces. -- Brandon Kidd
ReplyDeleteGood post. I agree with the fact that we informational professionals definitely need to stay up to date on the way information is communicated. I agree that hashtags serve similar functions as call numbers. Both the library and the internet have a great deal of information so hashtags and call numbers help filter and narrow things down so that people can find the information they need. I will also add that I think because hashtags can bring a wide range of results on Ferguson be it sympathy for Mike Brown, sympathy for the police or even mundane tweets about Ferguson, it could also be like the "Subject" filter as well.
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