When is too much enough? Data as far as the eye can see.

I was just perusing one of my favorite blogs, Resource Shelf . I enjoy this blog because it's easy-to-navigate and straightforward about what's going on in info science and related disciplines. One particular post from this week got more of my attention because I find it to be a key issue from now until far into the future. What's that issue? Information Management. The post title is "Managing Information: A Special Report (10 Articles+ from the Economist)". Here's a quote from it that surprised me:
"Only 5% of the information that is created is “structured”, meaning it comes in a standard format of words or numbers that can be read by computers. The rest are things like photos and phone calls which are less easily retrievable and usable."
(here's the link to the Economist article I took the quote from, "Data, data, everywhere".) Note that in the article the terms "data" and "information" are interchangeable.

Wow. I had no idea that 95% of data was so "unstructured". If it isn't structured, then how will it be organized and maintained? Does most data need to be organized and maintained? My gut reaction to these questions is maybe. It truly depends on the context. A car company will need to organize and maintain information far more stridently than a 5-person book club.

Who is a stakeholder in this whole business of structuring information? If you take prescription medicine, drive a car, have a bank account, own pets, buy things, etc... Everyone who owns, uses, makes, sells, contributes to, analyzes and does things because of data is a stakeholder. I could have stopped at "everyone".

Bridges

I've been reading Dan Simmons' newest novel, Black Hills. I'm a fan of his work, especially The Terror. Black Hills is historical fiction told by a Lakota Sioux man named Paha Sapa. Some of the backdrops in this story are Custer's Last Stand(1876), the building of the Brooklyn Bridge(finished in 1883), and the Chicago World's Fair (1893), and the blasting of the Black Hills to make Mount Rushmore (first opened in 1916). Without giving too much away, I'll just say that the descriptions are wonderful. This story is rich, amazing, and thought-provoking. I'm sad every time I have to stop reading to do things like work, study, or sleep.

Before reading this, I had never really considered how the Brooklyn Bridge came to be. It's an incredible history filled with machines, hard labor, death, and nearly impossible dreams. And all of it sits on wooden caissons. From what I understand, they sank the caissons and the men worked inside of them. Curious about this? Here's some great places to go to know more:
Ken Burns' Brooklyn Bridge
Great Buildings: The Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge Website
Building Big-PBS databank

Hoaxes!

Today I came across an issue of Archaeology Magazine. I'd never looked at this publication before. This magazine drew me in due to my fascination with potsherds, ruins, dirt, and art history. The pictures are also, well, pretty. I immediately went online to see the electronic form. It's quite nice.

Right away I saw a link that I could not refuse-Archaeology's Hoaxes, Fakes, and Strange Sites. This stuff fascinates me. If you've ever pondered the existence of Atlantis or the Loch Ness Monster, then this might be worth looking at. Keep scrolling down and you'll get to "Seductions of Pseudoarcheology". Did the Mayans come from Atlantis? Is the world's largest pyramid in Bosnia? I'm not going to give any secrets away. You'll just have to read and find out.

This leads me to think about all the informational hoaxes we encounter every day. These could be in the form of weight-loss ads, phishing scams, and virus-loading pop-ups. Such hoaxes are fairly easy to spot. Many info hoaxes are far more subtle. I'm talking about un-cited, un-researched, untested, un-vetted, and just plain dangerously wrong information being passed off as fact. (Please note: I'm not talking about most opinion-disseminating sites, okay?)

Here's a small list of Hoax Sites. This list includes the hilarious (brain transplantation) to a site that is devoted to misquoting and hating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.(yeah, they're not all funny). Even if you're not doing research, it's still important to know where info comes from. Here are a few places with guidelines for evaluating web pages:
University of Washington Libraries-Criteria for Evaluating Online Information
UC Berkley-Evaluating Web Pages
Cornell University-5 Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages

Be careful where you get your info....it could be leading somewhere fantastic or it could lead you directly to the Great Egress.

Medicine, how curious

The world of medical information is a strange, vast, amazing place. You don't have to be a doctor, or even an armchair biologist to appreciate the bizarro evolution of medicine. One great place to see some curious medical history is in the Library of Congress Pictorial Americana: Medicine collection. Here you'll see ads, products and illustrations that deal with the history of American Medicine.
One of my favorites is the image of Gilbert and Parson's Hygienic Whiskey(for medical use).

Another great place to find historical medicine-related images is the Images from theHistory of Medicine collection of the National Library of Medicine. Here you'll find an array of images from caricatures to photographs. You'll also see results in languages other than english. I searched the term "bitters" and found this ad for Burdock Blood Bitters.

Hi! Welcome to the Cabinet

This blog is intended to be like a Cabinet of Curiosities; a place for the obscurities of information. Cabinets of Curiosities were strange collections of natural objects that were meant to be oggled, pondered about, and marveled over. In this blog, I will present resources that, hopefully, cause further explorations in the world of information.

Looking for a good mystery/horror novel about Cabinets of Curiosity? I recommend Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.