Wikipedia as an Internet Metropolis

In seven years, Wikipedia – the collaborative, online, free encyclopedia – has become one of the top 10 global websites. While it still has many fewer visitors than Google, Wikipedia’s 60 million visitors a month put it within striking distance of such Internet heavies as Amazon and eBay. Hundreds of thousands of people have thus far come together to collaborate.

With its 2.8 million English-language articles is Wikipedia close to being “complete?”

No, argues Noam Cohen in The New York Times. Cohen writes:

“Wikipedia can no more be completed than can New York City, which O. Henry predicted would be “a great place if they ever finish it.” In fact, with its millions of visitors and hundreds of thousands of volunteers, its ever-expanding total of articles and languages spoken, Wikipedia may be the closest thing to a metropolis yet seen online.”

Read “Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City.”

Museum of Modern Art Recreates Itself Online; Add Large Social Network Component

The New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has redesigned its website after seven years.

The site, moma.org, which debuted today, is, according to Randy Kennedy writing in The New York Times, "an almost complete reconstruction of how the museum presents itself online. It features livelier images from its collection and exhibitions, increased use of video and the new interactive calendars and maps... the museum wants the site to transform how the public interacts with an institution that can sometimes seem forbidding and monolithic."

The site will now include a high degree of social networking: There is a “social bar” at the bottom of the page, which when clicked will expand to show images and other information that users can “collect” and share after registering for a free account at the Web site.

Again according to the Times:

“A user could build a portfolio of Walker Evans photographs or Elizabeth Murray paintings and send them to friends... The site will also eventually make it easy for users both casual and scholarly to trace lines of interest, digging up more information about works from publications and curators…

The new site includes an area called MoMA Voices that [museum officials]… see as a place where blogs will begin to form and where new ideas about how to have conversations will grow organically...

Museum visitors with cellphones will be able to text the number associated with an artwork to an area on the museum’s Web site. In this way they can later review and organize what they have seen.”

Times to Launch Blog Network

One thing about which we have been talking here at the Library, is the accelerating move from print to electronics in the news industry. Just yesterday -- touched off by this item about the Rocky Mountain News -- we were wondering why the traditional print media has so badly adapted to the web. It is not like they didn't receive fair warning. Like the automobile industry, the print news industry sometimes seems unaware of a new reality.

Perhaps The New York Times has finally learned a lesson: the Internet is here. Use it before you die.

This from TechCrunch.com: The New York Times Expected To Launch Local Blog Network.

Opera Lovers: Metropolitan Opera Now Streaming Audio and Video

According the the New York Times:

"In the Metropolitan Opera’s relentless quest to exploit all media, the company next Wednesday will start making many video and audio broadcasts available for Internet streaming on demand.

Met Player, as the service is called, will be available through the Met’s Web site, metopera.org.... [U]sers will be able to choose from 13 high-definition video performances, 37 standard video recordings and 120 audio broadcasts dating to 1937. The company said it planned to add performances regularly, drawing on its vast historical archives and its continuing high-definition broadcasts....

For $3.99 or $4.99 per streamed opera, users will have a six-hour window in which to listen to or watch a production, once it has started. A monthly subscription for $14.99 brings unlimited streaming, while a yearly subscription costs $149.99."