WebHord and Web Curation

Human curation over automation.

Just recently Alex Chan ended a four-post series about archiving bookmarks. Kind of feels in line of what Jeremy and Dave is talking about on creating resource directory although Alex’s more of a personal one just like with Jake and Simon. These pockets of Ark of Knowledge tend to spring up whenever I do link and blog hopping across different disciplines of software development.

Alex’s series… I view it as a blueprint of what’s to come. Maybe an idea of a webring of online library for resources is in order. A resourceRing to rule them all, to bind them…

Games do well when it comes to cohesively interconnect overworlds. So a gamified experience traversing these archives woudl be a fine touch maybe?

I remember that one Minecraft server where a magnificent Alexandria-like library was built: the Uncensored Library. It houses hundreds of books, knowledge, and content usually blocked and censored for certain countries. People who have access to Minecraft can turn this library to circumvent censorship tactics.

How to categorize let’s say the front-end knowledge sphere, we can turn to the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) as explained:

“…an interdisciplinary field of study that centers on the documentation that records our stories, memory, history, and knowledge. LIS professionals serve as custodians of printed materials, records, photographs, audiovisual materials, and ephemera, in both analog and digital form. Librarians and other information professionals collect, organize, preserve, and provide access to these materials and are the stewards of the knowledge that they contain. We connect people to the resources that they need to understand their histories, communities, and the world around them. We advocate for free and open access to these resources and train folks to use these materials to better themselves and society as life-long learners.” - School of Library and Information Science

As I frequently remember Katherine Goble say in the film Hidden Figures, “it could be old math.” We need an expert in human curation. It could be a known expert we’ve already established. And it gives me chills to think that from the digitization path we are in, we turn to our roots and ask a Librarian for help.

Curating a list of bookmarks (haha) in reference to this endeveor:

• Alex’s 4 part series
  • Creating a static site for all my bookmarks
  • Building a personal archive of the web, the slow way
  • What I learnt about making websites by reading 2,000 sites
  • My favourite websites from my bookmark collection
• Jeremy’s call and Dave’s I second
• Jake, Simon, and Adam’s webhords.
• Ooh.Directory
• folksonomy concept
• Four Principles for Reflective Web Archiving
  A bit about this reference. Searched if Jeremy talked about Alex which I vaguely rememeber he did.. here. Then on that post, went to his train coding post, which led to Flickr Foundation’s quest to make a Data Lifeboat. And here’s the blog site for that. And all that led to the main link above about the Four Principles.
• The term WebHord is inspired by Dr Hana Videen’s Old English WordHord site:

  “The Old English word wordhord (word-hoard) describes the collection of words and phrases that a poet may draw upon while crafting tales. Unlike a dictionary or other physical book, this stockpile of verses and vocabulary exists only in the poet’s mind.”

  So in that context, we can think of it as drawing upon our WebHord while crafting software.