At Play in the Fields of Ideas

Useful critical evaluation rubric

2009-10-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been working on ways to get more thinking about and doing of critical evaluation into my library research workshops. Rob Weir's discussion of using reviews as a critical evaluation exercise includes a rubric that could also be useful to librarians, even if writing a review is beyond the scope of most one-shot workshops.

Admittedly, I do own a cardigan. One.

2009-10-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

From 100 Scope Notes, Things Librarians Fancy.

(Mind you, I haven't worn that cardigan in several years...)

An instructive perspective on the scholarly publishing process

2009-10-01T09:06:00.001-07:00

Many are familiar by now with the details surrounding the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science's publication of a highly controversial article in July. This article from Inside Higher Ed helps make this entire affair an instructive example to students of how the peer review process is supposed to work, ways that it might fail (or be circumvented), and some of the characteristics to look for when evaluating research.

I find it especially instructive because it's pretty clear that Margulis's contention that PNAS's editors "don't like" the Williamson paper, while probably true, is beside the point. The article fails as research and should have failed to pass peer review.

a brief thought on the 80/20 rule

2009-08-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

This article from Inside Higher Ed doesn't specifically mention information resources, but it got me thinking about a study I read earlier this year about Wikipedia being around 80% right in a given subject area.

If that's true, it's another potential data point explaining why traditional reference sources are getting spanked.

the wave of the present, part deux

2009-08-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

This morning's Inside Higher Ed brings the news that starting in 2011, current University of California Press journals will be available via JSTOR along with the backfile.

The article mentions the Ithaka report from 2007 that libraries have to get more involved with scholarly publishing. I'm inclined to agree, but we also need to recognize that small libraries like mine have limited capacity to do that.

On the other hand, if our acquisitions budget went more toward directly supporting the infrastructure of scholarly communication, and less toward lining publisher pockets, that money would go further for greater good. That makes me really happy that it's JSTOR doing this.

the wave of the present

2009-08-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

Kind of old news at this point, but ACS going online-only is still news.

If not exactly unexpected. At my university, science faculty and students had been asking pretty much since I started here (and probably before) when we'd be getting core publications like Science and Nature online. (We now do, after considerable budget reshuffling.) We'd been getting ACS's journals online for quite awhile, and I can't remember the last time I saw anyone looking at a scientific publication other than American Scientist in print.

If ACS passed the cost savings of this move on to its subscribers? THAT would be news.

and the Librarian Clue by Four of the Day Award goes to:

2009-06-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

Chris Anderson, author of Free and The Long Tail and editor in chief of Wired.

Plagiarism? Lame.
Plagiarizing from Wikipedia, which openly grants re-use of its content as long as you follow straightforward Creative Commons licensing rules? Lamer.
Using this as your defense: "All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources..."

That's beyond lame and into actively stupid. There does not EXIST a recognized citation format that DOESN'T address web sources; if the Modern Language Association has taken to assuming online as the default (which it has) then there really is no excuse.

(Okay, "good" is subjective. But good god, man. The citation formats for web sources are no more egregious than those for print. If you can do one, you can do the other.)

(On the upside, this'll make a great object lesson in library instruction sessions for freshman writing seminars.)

newsbit: Zotero suit dismissed

2009-06-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

As per this post from one of the project's directors. Excellent news!

Badda-bing!: an experiment

2009-06-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine in the dev biz has done some quick-n-dirty comparisons between Google and Bing (Microsoft's LiveSearch, re-branded and apparently substantially redeveloped as well) and been surprised by the results--in Bing's favor.

So much so, that he's switching to Bing for a week to see if the bloom on the rose lasts. I think I might give that a try, too. As he says, no matter how much we might love Google, competition is healthy and ensures a robust ecosystem.

Aesthetically, I'm not sure that I'm crazy about the background image, even with the embedded links. It does save the page from basically looking like Google with a different logo on it, though.

Notes on the invisible library

2009-05-22T13:56:00.001-07:00

One of the things I think about a lot is how the library is changing as the physical facility decouples from the collections it has traditionally housed. In my own personal taxonomy these thoughts group under the heading "Invisible Library", largely because I occasionally encounter students who use the library without knowing it--discovering a journal we subscribe to while using Google, for example. I gave a presentation on campus around this topic last fall and one thing that came very clear to me is that, somehow, we have to stop treating our digital resources in a way equivalent to our physical resources. Publishers do this, but libraries do, too, and it's in danger of killing us.

An article in the latest Journal of Academic Librarianship addresses this issue, adding a third dimension: namely, the people providing library services. It also highlights the phenomenon I mention: patrons can discover library resources through avenues other than the library, and often do. (This is one reason why it would be really nice to somehow handle library patron authentication at the vendor's end, rather than the library's. If there's a nice big banner across the top of the e-journal index page that says "SUBSCRIPTION PROVIDED BY PACIFIC LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY", does it matter whether they got there through the library website or through Google? I submit that it does not.)

A lot of what it talks about here--transformation of library space, digitization of information resource, and a service emphasis on outreach, information literacy, and value-added technology--is already happening; according to long-range plans at some institutions, by fits and starts at others. Some of the technological dimension was addressed in my MLIS program, especially the information architecture side, and some of the Web development and resource management components. But much more, such as data mining, scripting, and technology-dependent aspects of information use (I've been asked how to make charts in Excel so many times in the past month that I've lost count) was not.

The article makes it sound like MLIS programs should become computer science lite degrees, and I'm not entirely convinced that they shouldn't. I love our IT crew, but if certain parts of what we do pass into their domain, it'll be frustrating for them, tragic for us, and a loss to the institution as a whole.

And the MPAA continues its slide into irrelevance

2009-05-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

MPAA says teachers should videotape monitors, not rip DVDs.

I think they're actually serious.

Are you following the Elsevier thing? You should.

2009-05-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

To bring you up to speed:

Ghost Management: How Much of the Medical Literature Is Shaped Behind the Scenes by the Pharmaceutical Industry?

Merck’s Ghostwriters, Haunted Papers and Fake Elsevier Journals

Heuristics and Wikipedia — not directly related, but relevant. Besides, Caveat Lector is awesome.

Dear LITA:

2009-04-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

I just added you to my ALA membership renewal for the first time last month. For, I might add, a pretty penny. (Although ALA's maddeningly useless membership renewal confirmation does not tell me how much I actually paid for the package deal. Dear ALA: some of us itemize our tax returns. What kind of receipt doesn't include an amount paid?)

So, when the very first bit of communication I receive from you is, first of all, close to a month later, and secondly, includes "Former ALA member ID" in the header, and thirdly, is a solicitation for me to RE-JOIN a division I joined FOR THE FIRST TIME less than four weeks ago, it doesn't fill me with confidence.

THIS is the ALA division chiefly concerned with technology in libraries?

I'm still waiting to be impressed.

Back from ACRL...

2009-03-16T17:57:00.000-07:00

...which seems weird to say, since it was held in the city I've called home for almost 13 years. But still. I didn't come to the library for those days, I went to the conference for a different kind of work. I made a new friend, got nostalgic for the days I'd go to Pike Place Market for lunch every day, ran right into the St. Patrick's Day parade, and came away with a short list of ideas for things to do.

This was my first ACRL, and I got about halfway through posting talks and presentations of interest to my Google calendar before I gave up and decided to wing it, aside from a couple of firm commitments (not least of which was hosting the Washington chapter dinner, which was held in a restaurant where the University Bookstore's downtown branch used to be).

Best idea of the conference: the Cyber Zed Shed (but, uh, how to put this delicately: the "cyber" prefix is so very 1990s), despite a couple of participant no-shows. Which is a real pity because I'm starting to get my hands dirty with Voyager's new interface and it would've been nice to pick up some ideas. Lots of stuff about widgets in the other presentations, and not all of it was LibGuides-driven, even. The short presentations forced the presenters to stay on topic, be concise, and avoid digressions, which is something I can't really say for some of the more formal presentations.

Other things that were useful, fun, or both: the preconference on copyright, immediately relevant because of a project I'm currently working on; and the presentation on puzzles as promotional gimmicks at MIT. I like puzzles and think they could be a fun and engaging promotional tool, especially since we don't really do the once-ubiquitous library tour anymore.

The thing that interested me the most, though, is that the puzzles were presented not on the library website (where one might think at first to put them) but in the student newspaper. Because one doesn't come to the library website with the intention of engaging in a leisure activity, which is what the puzzles basically are.

Both of the keynotes I attended were stellar: Sherman Alexie, an author I've been reading since I discovered Reservation Blues sometime in the mid to late 1990s, and Ira Glass, who when speaking sets up as though he's in the broadcast booth, complete with mixing board. Both of them talked about stories. I mean, both of them talked about a lot more than that, but what struck me about both speeches was how they were centered around the concrete reality of story, and the hold it has on people. The thing that story gives you that other forms of information typically don't is context. I often think about what role, if any, storytelling plays in academic library instruction. Most of the time it seems to show up as an attempted-humorous anecdote, but when Glass talked about story structure--something I've learned about in a few writing classes, and I really wonder why it isn't taught me--it occurred to me that that structure might also be a useful way to structure lessons.

So, there. A few wee tips and tricks to play with, and one big idea to chew on. I guess that makes for a pretty good conference.

At ACRL: Cyber Zed Shed

2009-03-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

Corny name, nifty notion. First session is totally jam-packed. Great ideas for a wannabe geek like me.

Not dead, just busy

2009-03-06T09:03:00.000-08:00

Work has been overwhelmingly busy and I've had no time to post anything of substance, or indeed anything at all. That should change...someday.

In the meantime, you can read my latest article for Info Career Trends, To MLIS or not to MLIS? Enjoy.

Jason Griffey's Top 5

2009-01-16T09:56:00.000-08:00

This is actually from December, but check out Jason Griffey's TechSource post on the top 5 most influential technologies of 2008.

As I said there, it interests me that three of the five are devices--hardware.

Thoughts on Source Evaluation: Acknowledge Popularity

2009-01-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot lately on evaluating information, especially Web sources. Much of the literature on evaluating Web sources predates the level of sophistication and richness of content we're seeing now: open-access journals, government reports, newspapers, Google's Life magazine image archive, and so on. But one article I skimmed again recently discusses why popularity and relevance, which seem to be (so far as outsiders can determine) two of the major criteria in Google's ranking algorithm, aren't valid for evaluating an information source.

Tell an undergraduate student this and watch the confusion crawl across his/her face. I also happen to think that it's not necessarily true.

What's really going on here is that there are two parts of evaluation. One is, "Is this good information?" The other is, "Should I use it?"

There are scenarios where one might have a valid use for information that one knows is of poor quality, after all. But that's not really my point.

My point is that while popularity is not a good sole indicator of quality, it's worth considering because first of all, it probably put that search result on the first page for you, and secondly, one would do well to think about why so many people are looking for, clicking on, and linking to this think.

Might even be because the information in it is good.

The real criticism here, I think, is of popularity as an authority indicator. A few months ago I came across an article in the computer science literature, from the late 1990s or early 2000s, that suggested exactly this as a search engine algorithm.

Hmm.

Wouldn't that be an interesting idea to get students to unpack?

It's times like these that I wish I had entire semesters, instead of maybe one hour over the course of four years, to get this stuff across.

The Arresting Image

2009-01-14T09:36:00.000-08:00

Like a lot of librarians and writers (I happen to be both), I have a habit of privileging text over image. Partly it's upbringing, partly it's preference; however vivid and absorbing an image, I'm habitually more drawn to text, both for information and for entertainment.

In the past month, though, I've twice been pointed to the Boston Globe's The Big Picture. As MediaShift puts it, the Big Picture is "a large-format photo-blog" that "has created a way to display powerful images in a user-friendly manner". Simply put, it does this by making the images really, really large, and captioning them. The result is beyond attention-getting; it's far more absorbing than the images that typically accompany online newspaper stories, which often seem to be stuck in as an afterthought, or a way to balance the page layout. (Some of these, to be fair, link to larger pop-up versions of themselves--the Big Picture's images are still larger, though.)

This week I'm thinking a lot about the presentation of information, as my library website is about to go through a minor bit of redesign. We won't be changing the site architecture, but we will be doing some aesthetic rearranging. A few months back I asked, here and elsewhere, for examples of library websites that showed particularly good design. The response was mostly resounding silence. Library websites tend to be ugly, for the same reason that a lot of online newspaper sites are just the print version ported to the Web, often to a visually cluttered result: we're not used to thinking about how to make what we offer appealing to the eye in this medium. Larger monitors help; I read online a lot more since I got my 17-inch Macbook. But you can't count on that, not with mobile technologies taking off the way they are.

Now that I've been in the library field a few years, I'm thinking seriously about what aspects of the field interest me, since there's not enough time to try or do everything even in this little disciplinary slice of the world. We pay a lot of lip service to the necessity of good online service, especially usability, but rarely talk about what that means in terms of aesthetics and presentation. The Big Picture shows why these things are important.

A timely essay on Wikipedia

2009-01-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

I'm in the reading/musing/planning stages of an article that pertains to Wikipedia. Actually, it's about cognitive authority and how Wikipedia pertains to that. I think. As I often tell student researchers, your topic has a way of trying to morph on you when you're doing your lit search.

So there's this article on Alley Insider, appropriately titled Who the Hell Writes Wikipedia, Anyway?, and although it's not a robust study of the subject, it's worth looking at simply for raising the question in a way that suggests that there's an answer. A lot of faculty (with complete justification, I emphasize) disallow Wikipedia because anyone can contribute, but we don't spend a whole lot of time talking about what that means and why it can be problem, especially since for a lot of needs (not necessarily those of the classroom or the assignment), Wikipedia is just good enough.

The ongoing core argument about Wikipedia continues in the comments, which are more interesting than comments on news stories typically are, in my experience. This is in part because a lot of the commenters are Wikipedia contributors--often disaffected former contributors. Which means that they, like most sources, should be read critically, of course.

Sometimes I think the most interesting thing about Wikipedia is that it has created this debate, one that honestly I think is overdue.

News, blogs, and community

2009-01-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

I live in Seattle. My city--hell, my entire region--has been in the news a lot lately. Snow and ice! Buses dangling over the interstate! Torrential downpours! All major roadways closed! (They are, too--right now, the only way to get out of western Washington is to fly.)

Yet for all the news coverage, the kind of local, community news--is that major arterial out of my neighborhood closed? Is there a hardware store anywhere in West Seattle that still has snow shovels? When is Public Utilities going to get around to collecting trash again, anyway?--that people find most useful during even minor crises was frustratingly hard to get ahold of. City news channels got some of it, but they cover the entire city. Two major sources of frustration--city utilities and transportation--were either impossible to reach, even by phone, or were unable to provide useful information.

Enter the West Seattle Blog. It came to prominence during a previous bout of wild weather--a massive windstorm two years ago that knocked out power to some parts of the city grid for over a week--but I'd been following it for awhile because I happen to live in West Seattle and, to be honest, had found the community newspaper rather lacking.

The blog has a number of cool features and interesting characteristics, but the most intriguing thing about it, which is key to its success, is that it's run by a couple of traditional-media veterans who encourage and capitalize on active community participation. Would the site be quite so popular if the 2006 windstorm hadn't happened? Probably not. But it's an excellent example of a virtual community serving a geographic or physical one, and as such, it has a number of characteristics that libraries would do well to emulate.

It's also an object lesson for traditional media: namely, to dismiss it because it's hosted on a blogging platform (which some sources that traditionally communicate with newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations have done) is to miss the point and miss the boat. It's a handy demonstration of how a blog CAN be a perfect community news and communication venue. Other community resources, libraries included, would do well to take heed.

Design on my mind

2009-01-07T11:09:00.000-08:00

Last fall, a group of students in a market research class did a research project for our reference department. It was the sort of thing that we'd wanted to do for awhile, but lacked the wherewithal: surveying literature and students to gauge perceptions and get ideas and recommendations regarding our service. One advantage to being at a university is that you have all this brainpower at your disposal--not just the (considerable) faculty brainpower, but the students too, to whom you can provide opportunities for class projects and learning.

Anyway, among the recommendations--several of which we are implementing--was a redesign of the library website. I was a little tempted to skip this one at first, since we just did a redesign a couple of years ago: it was my first major project after starting here.

But I have to admit that while our library website is pretty good from an organizational and IA perspective, the design is, well, less visually interesting than it could be. And as I started looking at other library websites to get some ideas, I saw that for all we talk about the importance of making our Web presence engaging, easy to use, maybe even (dare I say it?) a little bit fun, most library websites--not to put too fine a point on it--suck.

I've never been a Web designer and have only a smattering of development experience, but I've been on the Web since 1995 and to be honest, most websites suck. Why is this so hard to get right?

Well, for one thing, there are a lot of different elements that go into making a good website. As librarians, we're really good at organizing information--that is, after all, a cornerstone of our profession--but most of us are not designers and we have an ongoing problem with presentation, which also manifests in our instructional settings and the physical layout of our buildings. A library doesn't have to look like a nightclub, and our websites need to resemble neither Google nor Facebook. But in addition to being well organized and functional, they should also be well designed.

This isn't only or even principally about aesthetics. I've seen some beautiful websites whose designs are entirely unsuitable for libraries--but I've also seen some exemplifying principles that library websites would do well to emulate. CSS Zen Garden provides plenty of examples of both, and is especially useful because it shows how many different ways you can display the same content. Some of those displays would work very well with the kind of content libraries provide.

So for the next while I'm going to be thinking about design. In a way, it's easier this time around because I know that the underlying organization of my library's website is solid, which wasn't necessarily the case before. It's also worth thinking about design as distinct from (though obviously necessarily related to) content, information architecture, technological feasibility, and implementation.

If you're contemplating a similar project, the best suggestion I can make at this point is to look beyond other library websites. Most of them suck, and most of them suck in the same ways, for a reason.

Happy new year?

2009-01-05T10:45:00.001-08:00

I came back to work today to the news that EBSCO is launching an integrated search service sometime this year.

...anybody NOT see that one coming?

Conference themes

2008-12-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

What sort of theme would you like a small-ish, regional, academic library conference to have?

No reason. :)

The Broader Question

2008-12-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

I'm late to this particular party, which might be the closest thing to an unforgivable sin in the blogosphere (god, what a horrible word). But sometimes being late to the party has certain advantages.

Perspective, for one. Reflection, for another. Context, for a third.

So by now everybody who could possibly care one way or the other knows that the Journal of Access Services ran an issue that consisted entirely of articles by the Annoyed Librarian. Hilarity ensued, and you wouldn't have needed a Magic 8-Ball to predict exactly how: it's the death of peer review! OMG, how can anyone take the Journal of Access Services seriously now?! Or library science scholarship for that matter?? How will I explain this to my students? What were the editors thinking?? (It turns out the editors didn't even know--how's that for setting the dog among the pigeons?)

Let me advance this thought: if the state of scholarly publishing in our field is so perilous that a joke issue of a journal (something not unheard of in other disciplines, including ones with a much longer and more substantive history of scholarship than ours, which is most of them--the British Medical Journal's Christmas issues come to mind, or the Annals of Improbable Research) is capable of destroying it, then we have much, much bigger problems than the Annoyed Librarian.

Assuming that you think the Annoyed Librarian is a problem.

I'm not here to accuse those who think so of having no sense of humor. I personally find the AL's schtick pretty one-note; this profession has plenty of sacred cows, but once you've shot them, is it necessary to come back around and beat up on the carcass? Maybe the AL agreed, and decided to do this as a way of following his or her own act. I don't know, and it doesn't really matter. Because if this stunt and the response to it generates an examination of library science scholarship, and particularly its flaws, then it will have served a useful purpose.

Reading the Research: Journal of Academic Librarianship

2008-12-01T14:29:00.000-08:00

Tidbits from volume 34, issue 6.

Toolkit Approach To Integrating Library Resources Into The Learning Management System:
Regardless of what librarians choose to label the various ways of doing this, articles like this one are among my favorite examples of why "How we done it good"-style reports are worthwhile. Course management systems are just one way that online library services, like online services of other kinds, are becoming distributed--in both senses of the term.

The Value of LIS Schools’ Research Topics to Library Authors’ Professional Work
This title almost seems to be begging the question, but perhaps I'm jaded--after recent conversations with professionals in various social sciences, which is where library science has borrowed its research methodology, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that LIS courses in research methods would be valuable if students gained firmer grounding in how to actually do research. In fact, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I'd like to see library schools farm this one out to the nearest social science program.

There's also the assumption that all research in the library science field ought to follow a particular methodology. Personally, my favorite scholar in the field from whom I've gained the most professional benefit is Patrick Wilson...

Do clickers improve library instruction? Lock in your answers now
This one interests me because I've actually used clickers in a classroom setting recently. Leaving aside the much bigger and thornier question of how one actually teaches people to use the library and conduct literature searching (the two are not equivalent, if in fact they ever were), the question of retention is a good one and I'm not surprised to learn that the answer seems to be no. It's not that the things don't work, but a quick quiz at the end of a session (which is how I've used them) doesn't tell you anything about how students will actually use what you teach them. In my library we try to time library instruction for as immediate applicability as possible because really, the only way you're going to remember how to do this stuff is if you use it.

Clicking in the classroom

2008-11-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

Today's Inside Higher Ed has a brief article on the use of click-response technology in the classroom.

I've used them once, during a recent guest presentation to a general chemistry class of 140 students, most of whom did show up in class that day. I'm still ambivalent about them--the clickers, not the students--because I'm not sure they're as useful as their proponents claim. I do have to say, though, that they provided a pretty good snapshot of whether students got what I was talking about. What they didn't tell me, since I hadn't tested student understanding prior to the presentation, was how many students came in already knowing what I was talking about. That, unfortunately, would have taken more time than was available.

We're also working on a project on my campus that uses clickers in a plagiarism prevention workshop, adapted from such a workshop developed and presented elsewhere. We haven't piloted it yet, though.

My tentative conclusion is that they're useful but not revolutionary, and by themselves simply present another option. I prefer more hands-on and less lecture in my workshops, and class discussion when I can get it. I can see clickers' applicability for some types of library instruction, though.

Another shift in the sea: CS Monitor going online

2008-10-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

In a way, I'm surprised it took this long for a major newspaper to shift to primarily online. Even when I was getting a printed paper, I typically took the weekly one because I haven't had time to read a paper every day for years (whereas it's easy to dip into a news site for a few minutes in a break from work or during lunch). And I've been seeing this shift with research journals, too; it's been going on for years, of course, but for more and more publications, scholarly and non, online is becoming the principal rather than the alternative publishing venue. (In the case of scholarship, often with prices to match. Unfortunately.)

I'm sure that all the national dailies are trending this way. I'm also sure that none of them wanted to be the first to jump. I find it interesting that even the Monitor is saying that it basically has to do this:

"Changes in the industry - changes in the concept of news and the economics underlying the industry - hit the Monitor first," given its relatively small size and the complex logistics required for national distribution, Mr. Wells said. "We are sometimes forced to be an early change agent."

And so it goes...

On the road again

2008-10-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Today, I am off to the ACRL-Oregon fall conference. I've gone to the Washington one the last few years, but this will be my first time going to Oregon. (For the conference, anyway; I've been to the state several times.) I'm going down early because ACRL-WA has a board meeting this afternoon. And before I go, the car needs servicing, so I get to spend my morning in the shop. Thank goodness for mobile technologies, or I'd have to tell you all about that afterward.

Er. Maybe that's not a good example.

Anyway, I'm developing a fondness for local and regional conferences. I'd started to draw back my emphasis from national events even before the latest economic downturn started to make that an eminently sensible move; although I still have a commitment that will likely take me to ALA this year, I wouldn't be going to ACRL if it weren't in Seattle already.

What I'm finding, though, is that a lot of really interesting stuff happens at these smaller-scale conferences. For me, "really interesting" means stuff I can take back to my job and almost immediately apply. I don't get the occasional derogatory comment about "how we done it good" kinds of presentations; personally, those are the ones I find most useful. Maybe I'll feel differently after a few more years in this profession.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to going for a run at Menucha. It looks beautiful.

I've been a little "eh" about the conference theme--the once and future catalog? Really?--but I think I get what they're getting at. The way we almost inevitably end up designing library websites constitutes, to me, an inherent failure of the OPAC. Maybe it's because I used to work for Amazon.com and have seen how this can be done well--there, the website and the catalog are so thoroughly integrated that nobody thinks of them as separate entities. And yet libraries almost have to do this, because catalogs handle so much so poorly.

I'm going to a users-group meeting on Voyager next month, and hoping afterward to brush up my somewhat rusty XML skills and really do some cool things with my library's website.

It's also been awhile since my last road trip. I've laid in a good supply of music, and downloaded the free portion of this audiobook. If I like the story (I expect I will, I like Jay Lake's work), I'll be buying the rest.

On another note

2008-10-14T13:05:00.001-07:00

It's Open Access Day! Which I didn't know until this morning, or there'd be something more here, since there's a blogging competition going on.

Oh, well, maybe next year. Meanwhile, follow the link to learn about OA and read what other people (librarians, scholars, and more) are writing.

Sometimes, it's still about the books

2008-10-14T08:54:00.000-07:00

I came to librarianship from previous professions in e-commerce, PR, and freelance writing. Those things, particularly the e-commerce part (put it this way, I worked for Amazon.com when books were all they sold) have impacted how I work: in front of the computer, for the most part. The subject areas I work with in my job, mainly business and the natural sciences, also impact how I work. The scholarly record in those areas is increasingly born digital, and that's how people access it. (Insert yet another reference to that Ithaka study from a couple of years ago here.)

Yesterday, though, I was doing some research on a matter of personal interest after my workday was done. Most of the material my library has on the subject is in print: in books, not to put too fine a point on it. (Although Google Scholar had done well by me, too, including turning up a translation of an Old Irish poem that I was curious about. Since I don't read Old Irish, finding an article that contained a translation and extensive commentary was gold, especially since, in my cursory search, it was the only extant modern English translation available either online or in print.)

So I spent about half an hour wandering the stacks, looking up call numbers, skimming back-of-the-book indexes. These aren't things that I or the students I work with do much anymore. Online searching is so much faster and more efficient, even though a lot of the bibliographic research tools available to us...well, suck, to be blunt.

The librarian who loves to read is a stereotype, one that a lot of my friends in my profession eschew. The reading I do on the job certainly isn't the kind of reading I'd prefer to spend my time on, professional or scholarly research notwithstanding.

And yet, if it holds true in my case, what's so bad about that? One major difference that I find between going to the stacks and going online is that the latter often has an illusory sense of urgency. There's always more to discover and it can feel overwhelming.

There's always more to discover in the stacks, too. But there's something patient about a physical library, and that's a characteristic that the Internet lacks.

Fair Copyright in Research Works Act neither fair nor encouraging of research, film at 11

2008-10-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's been awhile. The semester started, and that means I've been embroiled in the sorts of things one does in the library when the semester starts: library research instruction, juggling serial subscription renewals, and trying to keep the mail from overtaking both my inbox and my desk. (My mailbox is rather small, so I can only ignore it for so long.)

But while the public's attention is fixed (not without reason) on bailouts and elections, a post at Au Courant brings the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act to my attention. Really, once the open access movement started to gain a bit of traction, this sort of thing was only a matter of time. And one thing you can bet on: any piece of legislation that uses both the words "fair" and "copyright" in its title isn't going to be fair at all.

The proposed act is an amendment to Title 17 which, as most anyone reading this probably already knows, is the part of the U.S. Code that pertains to copyright. Specifically, it proposes to amend Section 201, which pertains to ownership of copyright.

What it does is add new limitations on the federal government. Now most people I know, regardless of their political affiliations, have no objection to this, especially considering the bloat of the current administration. But let's take a look at the language.

The amendment specifically pertains to "extrinsic works". What's an extrinsic work? Glad you asked. It's defined in paragraph 3 of the proposed amendment, as follows:

(A) EXTRINSIC WORK- The term 'extrinsic work' means any work, other than a work of the United States Government, that is based upon, derived from, or related to, a funding agreement and--

So this refers to a work that is funded, but not created, by a Federal agency; "funding agreement" is defined later in the act. What's under discussion here is, in essence, federally funded research: meaning, for instance, biomedical research funded through NIH grants.

'(i) is also funded in substantial part by one or more other entities, other than a Federal agency, that are not a party to the funding agreement or acting on behalf of such a party; or'

The work, therefore, is being funded by other entities in addition to the Federal agency. This is hardly unusual, especially in STM (science, technology, and medicine) research; few grants are big enough to fund what constitutes a major research project these days.

'(ii) represents, reflects, or results from a meaningful added value or process contributed by one or more other entities, other than a Federal agency, that are not a party to the funding agreement or acting on behalf of such a party.

This is where, in my opinion, the language starts to hedge. So it's not necessary to actually be receiving funding from another entity, as long as that other entity is adding meaningful value or process to the work.

Such as, for instance, publishing it. Remember that we're in Title 17, here.

Okay, so that's an extrinsic work. What are the limitations so imposed? Here's the first part of paragraph 1 of the proposed amendment:

(1) LIMITATIONS REGARDING FUNDING AGREEMENTS- No Federal agency may, in connection with a funding agreement--

`(A) impose or cause the imposition of any term or condition that--

`(i) requires the transfer or license to or for a Federal agency of--

`(I) any right provided under paragraph (3), (4) or (5) of section 106 in an extrinsic work; or

This is pretty clear. It says that the funding agreement can't stipulate the transfer of rights provided under paragraphs 3, 4, or 5 of section 106. These are, briefly put, the right to distribute copies, to perform works publicly, and to display works publicly. In other words, the rights by which copyright holders enable the sale of books and magazines, the staging of theatrical productions, the showing of movies, and so forth.

In other words, this goes directly to the open access mandate which went into effect in April 2008, which stipulates that all NIH-funded research must be made available to the public via PubMedCentral within 12 months of its publication.

Don't think so? Take a gander at this next bit:

`(II) any right provided under paragraph (1) or (2) of section 106 in an extrinsic work, to the extent that, solely for purposes of this subsection, such right involves the availability to the public of that work; or

Availability to the public. Paragraphs 1 and 2 pertain to making copies and producing derivative works. This act wouldn't touch any of that--except insofar as it involves making the work available to the public.

`(ii) requires the absence or abandonment of any right described in subclause (I) or (II) of clause (i) in an extrinsic work;

This just means that in addition to transferring these rights, the agreement also can't require these rights to be nonexistent or abandoned.

`(B) impose or cause the imposition of, as a condition of a funding agreement, the waiver of, or assent to, any prohibition under subparagraph (A); or

In addition, the prohibitions previously described can't be a condition of receiving funding in the first place.

`(C) assert any rights under this title in material developed under any funding agreement that restrain or limit the acquisition or exercise of rights under this title in an extrinsic work.

This wording is a bit confusing, but essentially what it boils down to is that the Federal agency can't assert Title 17 rights over existing material where the funding agreement has already restricted those rights--thereby, it seems to me, covering work released between April 2008 and whenever this act, should it pass, goes into effect.

Any term, condition, or assertion prohibited under subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) shall be given no effect under this title or otherwise.

Now I find this bit pretty alarming. It seems to be saying that if there's anything anywhere in Title 17, now or in the future, that contradicts A, B, or C, it is now void. I can see that having an ill effect for libraries.

On to paragraph 2:
`(2) CONSTRUCTION-

`(A) CERTAIN OTHER RIGHTS NOT LIMITED- Nothing in paragraph (1)(A)(i)(II) shall be construed to limit the rights provided to the copyright owner under paragraphs (1) and (2) of section 106.

So the copyright owner can still do what he/she likes with regard to copying and derivative work. No surprises there.

`(B) NO NEW COPYRIGHT PROTECTION CREATED- Nothing in this subsection provides copyright protection to any subject matter that is not protected under section 102.

Section 102, for any of you who aren't aware, defines what can be copyrighted. Again, no surprises there.

The next bits come from paragraph 3, where extrinsic works are also defined:

`(B) FEDERAL AGENCY- The term `Federal agency' means any department, agency, or instrumentality of the United States Government.

`(C) FUNDING AGREEMENT- The term `funding agreement' means any contract, grant, or other agreement entered into between a Federal agency and any person under which funds are provided by a Federal agency, in whole or in part, for the performance of experimental, developmental, or research activities.'.

Prescient of them. Yes, right now the only Federal open access mandate applies to NIH-funded works. This proposed act applies to any works funded by any Federal agency. Such as, for example, the NEA. Or the NSF. Or any other Federal agency you can think of that funds research. The Federal government is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, source of research and grant funding in this country. Think about what this means for public access to Federally-funded material.

(b) Applicability- The amendment made by subsection (a) applies to any funding agreement that is entered into on or after the date of the enactment of this Act.

Of course. You can't make it retroactive--although it seems to me that paragraph 1, subsection C sort of does.

(c) Report to Congressional Committees- Not later than the date that is 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Register of Copyrights shall, after consulting with the Comptroller General and with Federal agencies that provide funding under funding agreements and with publishers in the private sector, review and submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report on the Register's views on section 201(f) of title 17, United States Code, as added by subsection (a) of this section, taking into account the development of and access to extrinsic works and materials developed under funding agreements, including the role played by publishers in the private sector and others.

I have to admit, I'm having difficulty reining in my snark at this point. It isn't at all surprising that publishers want to control access to material that they publish; this entire proposal is just another salvo in a long-running battle.

I also have to admit, however, that it positively blows my mind that publishers honestly seem to think that they have this much authority to control access to research that they had no part in funding. Well, you could argue, but they control access to research funded from other sources, right?

Yes, they do. And isn't it interesting that their role has shifted from publishing--which is, fundamentally, about making information available--to controlling access to that information.

The difference is, that's not taxpayer-funded research. If something is made possible through a grant from NIH, NSF, NEA, or another Federal agency, then you paid for it. You ought to have access to it.

You can read more about this at Peter Suber's blog (which I recommend reading generally), and follow the links there to further commentary. In particular, also look here, where much more detailed analysis than my novice's take is available, including considerable discussion of why this is just bad law.

Congress reconvenes in January. At some point after that, the bill may come out of committee--or sail through attached to another bill, as so often happens.

If open access matters to you--and if you pay taxes, it should--contact your Congresscritters. Many of them have no idea why this is important, for reasons that Suber describes. Enlighten them.

How Green was My Library?

2008-09-17T10:48:00.001-07:00

Moving from print to online resources makes a huge amount of sense for a whole host of reasons, from usage to accessibility, but one reason I've always quibbled with is that going online makes better environmental sense.

Does it really? I think the jury's still way out on that. Because while paper manufacture and recycling is at least pretty well understood, the disposal of obsolete electronics--from the computers made available for patrons to access resources, to the servers that enable that access--is a great big ball of ugly (that's a technical term, of course).

Today's Washington Post has an article that is just the latest in a series of recent scathing indictments of how electronic waste is dealt with. The news of note here is that the Government Accountability Office is reporting on all the ways that the EPA is failing to deal with the problem. Much electronic waste--computers, cell phones, and all the other devices increasingly indispensable to daily life--is shipped overseas, where it's disassembled and recycled under appalling conditions.

My personal favorite bit is the note that 43 U.S. recyclers have flat-out lied about how they dispose of electronic waste.

Read the report here.

In other depressing news, the North Pole is ever closer to having no ice.

News I'm Reading

2008-09-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

Any librarian, particularly a public librarian, could have told U.S. airlines that as soon as they started offering in-air wi-fi, they'd have to deal with porn. I wouldn't expect American Airlines flight attendants to be any happier about it than librarians are.

Here's a great example business librarians can use on vetting information: an old story on the Sun-Sentinel website got picked up by Google News as fresh, triggering a massive sell-off of United stock. It occurs to me that a particular piece of metadata--the story's date of publication--would have prevented this, if news articles had such metadata attached and news aggregators such as Google News looked for such metadata as a matter of course. More coverage here and here. (One wonders if any canny investors realized what was happening and scooped up some of the stock on the cheap...)

Speaking of Google...microfilm is a valuable medium for storage and preservation, but using it is a total pain. Now, you might not have to: Google is digitizing newspaper archives, including those stored on microfilm. Some of the same concerns and questions are being raised here as by the Google Books project, but at first blush, this is way cool, and a boon for research involving newspapers.

Something I'd like to read: American Widow, a new graphic-novel memoir by a woman who lost her husband in 9/11. (I'd definitely prefer to read that over some of today's news coverage.)

Speaking of books, The Jewel of Medina has found a new publisher. To be honest, it took longer than I thought it would.

Reference publishers should take note of this analysis of Wikipedia entries showing up on Google search results pages, while they dither about following JSTOR's lead and at least exposing their citations to search engines. I find myself increasingly frustrated by reference publishers. They've got the good information, but it's harder to find and use than it needs to be.

Esquire will publish its 75th anniversary issue with an e-paper cover enabling moving images. Life imitates Harry Potter.

The Way to Preserve Knowledge is to Use It.

2008-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

I know, not exactly a new observation. But I was thinking it again this morning, while reading a historical survey on the topic of homosexuality and civilization (see booklist to the right).

The book's a survey, of course, and a secondary source by definition, but it draws on a lot of primary sources: letters, legislation, Church documents, and especially trial records. One point that comes up over and over again is how many gaps there are in the record, because the primary documents upon which the author must draw to make his case are lost or destroyed. (In the latter case, sometimes deliberately so--and even being able to find out that much is telling.)

At my library, our emphasis is on use. Our budget and our physical facilities are simply too small for us to have the kind of large research collection of, say, the big state university up the road. When I'm weeding the collection, of course I'll keep the classics, as well as the heavily-used materials (not always the same thing, you'll note). And of course the main thing is that the information is available somewhere.

But using recorded knowledge is about more than keeping favorite materials in the library collection. It's also about keeping knowledge as part of the current understanding about the world, its circumstances, and the people in it.

Historians probably think this way all the time, but it's a rather new perspective on the preservation issue for me.

Working the Information Ground

2008-09-04T09:09:00.001-07:00

For the past six years, I've seen in autumn by working at Bumbershoot, Seattle's music and arts festival. I manage an information booth, which resembles working a library reference desk more than a little. My standard observation is that it's just like a reference desk, only noisier and with more drunk people (some of my public library colleagues may, at this point, be saying, "Oh? How so?").

It's also busier than most reference desks, these days. An estimated 50,000 people come to Bumbershoot each day; of those, a certain number can be guaranteed to a) not have read any of the website or printed literature beforehand, b) be from outside the area and unfamiliar with the layout of Seattle Center (or be from Seattle and still not know how to find a particular building or stage; Seattle Center's grounds can be confusing to the uninitiated), c) require something that only an information booth can provide (i.e., a Mainstage pass or, this year, a Comedy pass), d) have a complaint that they wish to pass on to the festival's most visible representatives, or e) desirous to know if Elephant Ears are available from any of the food vendors this year.

I'm sure someone from the information science end of my profession has already done a study on this, but Bumbershoot always makes me think of information dissemination, customer service, and how to get a bit of that festival vibe into libraries. To wit:

It's a perfect example of teach someone something, then get them to teach it. Every year I wrangle a team of volunteers, anywhere from two to seven at any given time. They get, on average, 5-10 minutes of training, then learn the rest of what they need to know by example (both from yours truly and from each other). It's amazing how well it works, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the pressure cooker that is information booth work.
We only wish our reference desks were as busy as Bumbershoot information booths. Part of the reason the booths are so busy is that they're perfectly placed to provide point of need assistance. As we redesign our libraries into information commons, the placement of service points, including reference desks, ought to be done with this in mind.
You know what customer service means when you have two people asking you questions simultaneously, plus a radio blaring in your ear, and you must address all three in the next thirty seconds. In that context, the combination of receptivity and assertiveness that superior service requires gets a real workout.
The reference interview model exports very well. There are many studies in libraryland of patrons who come to the desk with so little notion of what they're after that they don't even know how to phrase the question; the well-known "information gap". The same thing happens at Bumbershoot. For example, there was the guy who came up to me on Monday afternoon and announced, "I'm confused." Using reference interview techniques, I determined the source of his confusion, helped him resolve it, and sent him on his merry way. My point here is that the reference interview really works, in contexts beyond the library reference desk.

The thing I always come away thinking about, though, is how the booth is no barrier to inquiry. We have tables with our programs, schedule grids, and other paraphenalia. They're just those long folding tables you find in classrooms, meeting rooms, and cafeterias everywhere. People don't hesitate to approach them, because their need outweighs any ambivalence they might have.

Recently there's been a lot of discussion in the library world about making reference desks less intimidating and more receptive. While there's some merit to this discussion (I have an ongoing issue with my own reference desk in this respect) and I'm a big fan of conscientious design of the built environment, it's not the only factor worth considering. I run across a lot of references to bringing customer service principles into the reference environment, as though this were some sort of revolutionary idea. It ought to be par for the course.

WaPo's TMI Editorial, Part 2

2008-08-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's post only got us halfway through this recent editorial in the Washington Post (a news source I'm having increasing trouble taking seriously, even though it's my hometown paper), so let's continue with this little gem:

The opportunity to educate millions of citizens, so essential to significant movements of the past, has dwindled. In the early New Deal era, the Roman Catholic "radio priest" Father Charles Coughlin promoted ideas for economic reform to a weekly audience estimated at 40 million, which helped pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt to enact Social Security, the Works Progress Administration and other programs. Today's top talk-radio host, Rush Limbaugh, reaches only about 14 million people per week.

This comes after some more extensive comment on media fragmentation. I mention the context because one might well be moved to wonder how, in an age of information ubiquity, the opportunity for education has dwindled at all. But what Horwitt is really talking about is claiming and holding people's attention. Librarians are familiar with this problem, to be sure. On the other hand, here as elsewhere Horwitt's real complaint seems to be that journalists no longer have a monopoly on sharing, interpreting, and explicating current events.

Speaking as an information professional, I have two things to say on that: 1) it's not clear that journalists ever did have such a monopoly, and 2) get over it.

And Father Charles Coughlin? Really? Horwitt's idea of a good supporting example is a notorious anti-Semite who's better known for being against the New Deal than for it? Horwitt isn't a journalist, but if this is his idea of journalism, maybe that's a good thing.

It is true that Coughlin was one of the first to harness the power of radio for political ends. He certainly wasn't the last, though. And if Limbaugh only reaches 14 million people per week, I have trouble seeing that as a bad thing. That's a qualitative judgment on my part, but in a way, that's my point, and the biggest problem I have with Horwitt's argument: he's making a case for a situation that disallows and silences heterogeneous points of view. It's hard to see how such a situation can possibly further the cause of a democratic society.

Moving on:

Without broad media coverage, the civil rights movement might never have succeeded. In 1965, front-page newspaper coverage of the bloody march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., helped push Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, write journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in their 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Race Beat." Even the Fairbanks Alaska News-Miner carried the story on the front page for 10 straight days.

Fair enough. In fact, journalism today could draw a lesson or two here, and arguably has, if the State of the News Media report's content analysis of newspaper coverage in 2007 is anything to go by. Newspapers seem to have figured out that their reports aren't first on the scene anymore; where they continue to excel is in in-depth analysis.

But if Horwitt is arguing that such coverage no longer exists, that doesn't follow from his previous points. He goes on to say that in the wake of declining newspaper coverage, "other news outlets aren't picking up the slack", and for evidence cites the declining audiences of major television news--as though no other news outlets exist. Considering his earlier statements about radio, one wonders why he doesn't mention this news outlet that he clearly values. Could it be because listenership is largely holding steady, which appears to counter his argument?

He's right that TV news audiences have been on the decline for years, though. On the other hand, one wishes that he'd looked at which online news sites overall (instead of just blogs) get the most traffic. CNN and MSNBC may not have figured out how to make money with their online channels, but that doesn't mean they aren't attracting large audiences.

Anyway, while the editorial thus far is vague as to its point, weakly argued, and cites poor examples (it'd make a great example of what not to do in an information literacy workshop), the foregoing is as nothing compared to what Horwitt recommends to ameliorate this state of affairs. To wit:

Rather than call for government regulation of technology itself, perhaps the best way to limit the avalanche is to make the technologies that overproduce information more expensive and less widespread. It could be done via a progressive energy tax designed to keep energy prices at a consistently high level (while providing assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans).

At this point, what capacity for commentary I possess fails me. Horwitt is actually arguing that the best way to preserve democracy is to reduce access to information.

Seriously.

I found myself wanting to look behind the curtain, to see if perhaps Horwitt was making a play for Jonathan Swift-style satire. He writes social commentary disguised as country music and impersonates Bill Clinton; this suggests he has some sort of sense of humor, however unrefined.

Others elsewhere have pointed out why Horwitt's comparison to the cost of shipping (which is still, despite the skyrocketing cost of fuel, a relatively small portion of the overall cost of manufacture, delivery, and retail) isn't really germane, and his quote about computers being "the most energy-intensive of home devices" comes from a paper on the energy intensity of computer manufacturing, leads one to conclude that he's advocating reducing the information glut by taxing computer makers.

At this point, I'd like to know whether Horwitt drives a car manufactured in the past decade, uses a bank or credit union, or shops in a grocery store. For someone who claims to specialize in studying energy consumption, he doesn't appear to understand the implications of what he's advocating.

Or maybe he does. After all, he argues that "an energy tax, by making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels too costly to maintain, could reduce the supply of information" (emphasis added). How on Earth could this be achieved, without also driving up the costs of banking, store supply management, and automotive onboard electronics, unless you're taxing energy use based on the use being made of that energy?

Horwitt is starting to sound like those people who advocate closing all the libraries and replacing them with a personal computer for every family, people who have clearly never observed neophytes in public libraries attempting to use the Internet. And as the new media landscape evolves, it's also starting to look like he's complaining about a nonexistent problem. Consider the introduction to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media 2008 report, particularly this quote:

Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience, than in the legacy media. The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists.

By Horwitt's definition, it appears that democracy is safe. By my own, I'm reminded of a song by The Who. The one that goes, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Yeah. That one.

I was going to end there, but I can't resist poking a little more, at this:

A reduced supply of information technology might at least gradually cause us to gravitate toward community-centered media such as local newspapers instead of the hyper-individualistic outlets we have now.

If Horwitt cared to look, he might see that this is already happening. In my own community, a diverse area encompassing multiple neighborhoods, languages, cultures of origin, and socio-economic conditions, we have a news resource that concentrates on news within the community. It's already been credited with helping to solve several burglaries, to bring traffic to new businesses, and has been cited by citywide media on issues of interest.

It also just happens to be a blog.

Oh, WaPo, We Knew You When

2008-08-28T12:02:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about information quality, and information evaluation, and other such good and crunchy things that concern librarians. (Well, all right. I took some time off from thinking about these things to get married, hence the recent radio silence here.)

The Washington Post ran a...I guess it's an editorial, judging by the tone, on information overload. Except that what it really is is a thinly-veiled screed decrying the decline of information quality in the age of information profusion, complete with a eulogy for the selfless newspapers that still provide good, hearty information to the soup of public opinion. (Or should that be stew, or something even less savory?)

My first thought is that Dusty Horwitt should read some history. Specifically, of newspapers and journalism. Particularly of the 19th century.

My second is that Horwitt's piece is pretty profuse, itself. You can throw as many statistics on the printed page, or the computer screen for that matter, as you want, but by themselves they don't add up to an argument.

In fact, let's unpack this piece a little, titled: "If Everyone's Talking, Who Will Listen?"

Let's start with this little tidbit:

In August 2007, there were about 100 million blogs. Of those that reached 100,000 people or more in a month, only about 20 focused on news or politics, according to ComScore Media Metrix, a company that measures Internet traffic.

Why is this bad? If the point is that the profusion of information channels fragments audiences--and we see throughout the piece that this is Horwitt's point--then shouldn't we be pleased at that relatively low number? And notice, Horwitt doesn't tell us how many of those 100 million blogs actually do reach 100,000 people or more in a month. We can't find out from ComScore, either, since their data is proprietary, and Horwitt's article doesn't link to any citations. (In itself, very common in newspapers, even online ones, even those reporting on scientific research studies which are themselves available online in open access publications. Tell me how the Internet doesn't help spread information, again?)

Then there's this:

According to Nielsen Online, the average visitor to newspaper Web sites stops by for just 1.5 minutes per day on average. By contrast, the average print newspaper reader spends 40 minutes with each day's edition, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

That does suggest fragmented attention spans, if not necessarily fragmented audiences. On the other hand, it really doesn't tell the whole story. Among its unanswered questions are the following: how much overlap exists between online and print newspaper readers? (Not a lot, as it turns out, but Horwitt doesn't even address the question.) Also--and this is a glaring omission--newspaper website are not the only source of news online. Even newspapers and blogs (Horwitt's targeted bugaboo) together are not the only sources of news online. Horwitt completely fails to mention television and radio channels which operate websites, not to mention news sites which aren't tied to printed newspapers at all.

Also not addressed is how many different newspaper websites that average visitor may visit in a day. I don't have data on this, but on an average day I'll visit at least two national newspaper websites, two city newspaper websites, anywhere from one to six regional newspaper websites, and a local blog operated by a couple of local media veterans who understand that beat reporting techniques do just fine in the blog format. Add it all up and I'd guess I spend more than 40 minutes a day reading the news, and that doesn't even account for the news radio I listen to on my commute.

Maybe I'm exceptional. Could be. But the State of the News Media 2008 report (which is, by the way, a product of the Project for Excellence in Journalism) suggests that if you take print and online newspaper readership numbers together, newspaper readership is growing, not shrinking. So what's the problem here?

Maybe it's this:

The overload siphons audiences and revenue from newspapers such as The Post and other outlets that can spread important information, forcing these media to shrink and to rely increasingly on advertising to stay afloat.

It's true enough that lower readership of print newspapers in particular means that print advertising is less effective. On the other hand, to suggest that newspapers have not historically had to rely on advertising to stay afloat is disingenuous at best. The real problem is that the print advertising format does not translate well to the way that people read news online: what's more, as the State of the Media report points out, newspapers have been losing classified advertising revenue for years. It's not a new problem, and it's only indirectly related to the proliferation of online information sources. Sure, Monster and Craigslist do provide information, but nobody would call their content news.

And we're only halfway through this editorial. More unpacking to come, hopefully tomorrow.

Three Questions to Ask Your Search Engine

2008-08-12T17:14:00.000-07:00

I'm in a rush to wrap up the end of my day, but wanted to pass along this article from Slate, on how to test and compare search engines. More later, perhaps.

Jamie LaRue asks an excellent question.

2008-08-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

We already think that Jamie LaRue is awesome for the letter he wrote in response to a patron complaint about the book Uncle Bobby's Wedding. But I have to say that I like the excellent question he poses in his column for the Douglas County News-Press even more. To wit: if we really should run a public service (i.e., a library) like a business, then shouldn't successful libraries attract more investment?

As anyone who pays attention to public funding knows, it typically doesn't work that way. When times are lean, it's hard to get funding because there isn't any. When times are flush, it's hard to get funding because, hey, things are clearly going great at current levels, so why does the library need more? (I've never met an overfunded library. Just sayin'.)

But, if you're an investor (and I am), you know that one common approach to long-term investing is: when an investment demonstrates value (which may or may not be correlated by price), you add money to it.

The thing is, though, "run your public service like a business" is really a euphemism for "do what you're doing with less money", under the tacit assumption that public service providers, even the good ones, must be bloated examples of waste. Such do exist, of course, but in my personal experience the problem most public service providers have is trying to do an increasing amount with less and less. They can't do it all and wind up looking ineffectual.

How about giving Douglas County Libraries, boasting numbers any business would be thrilled to have, more money, and see what happens. Particularly now, when a lean economy has sent library usage soaring nationwide?

Well, that's one project out the door.

2008-08-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

I pushed my Evidence-Based Nursing resources page live today. Yay!

Just in Time Requires Just in Case

2008-08-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

I forget where I read the foregoing--some other library blog, perhaps--but I've been thinking about it a lot this morning, because I think it's true.

In my pre-library life, I worked for Amazon.com. This was in the company's very early days: a single warehouse in Seattle's SoDo district, a customer service department that sometimes went to help pack book orders (and only book orders, in those days) when things were slow, Jeff Bezos's famous laugh echoing down the stairs from his crow's nest of an office. At the time, people didn't know what to make of a company that didn't even have a storefront, let alone any stock.

And here's how they did it: they relied extensively on distributors, especially Ingram, which has an enormous warehouse along I-5 in central Oregon, to deliver books every morning based on orders that had been placed over the previous few days. In other words, anything that was in Amazon.com's warehouse was there because there was already an order for it. This was quite a change from traditional bookselling, and not just because orders were only placed online (people were surprised that there was no print catalog, either); brick-and-mortar retailers place orders based on what they think will sell, not what has actually sold.

So that's cool. But in order for it to work, there needed to be a distribution network that could deliver books to Amazon.com's warehouse quickly, so that from the customer's perspective, Amazon.com's service was in turn rapid and efficient.

What does this mean for libraries?

There's been a lot of discussion in recent years about resource sharing, moving beyond the basic ILL scheme to consortial agreements, alliance arrangements to speed up interlibrary lending, and so on. As library resources (particularly journals) get more and more expensive, it makes more and more sense to not buy something if the library down the road, with which you have an arrangement, has bought it.

But, that does require that other library to own, or have access to, that resource. Without that, you can't do your just-in-time delivery.

My library's ILL service is the fastest I've ever encountered. I've placed an article request in the morning and received it by the afternoon. Book delivery is necessarily slower but I still typically get my requests inside of a week. Our own collection is relatively small and curriculum-oriented, which means that, like most other faculty, when I'm doing my own research I make extensive use of ILL.

But in order for it to be as fast as it is, we need the access that we have: to an extensive regional network of academic and public libraries which includes a major Research I university with an award-winning library system, as well as one of the most highly regarded public library systems in the country.

It seems to me, then, that what just-in-time really does is push the just-in-case further back along the supply chain. There are advantages to this from the supplier perspective; publishers have just as much trouble figuring out how many books to print as booksellers have figuring out how many books to buy. And as long as there are libraries with a mandate to preserve as well as to provide access, as that Research I up the road has, then libraries like mine, where access is the main guiding principle, can continue to provide quality service even as the resources get more and more expensive.

LCSH of the day

2008-08-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

"Sun-tzu, 6th cent. B.C.--Views on management"

It's a perfectly valid subject heading, of course, and describes the subject of the book under which I found it about as well as one could expect.

Still, there are times when I think that folksonomy isn't such a bad alternative.

Midsummer Project Update

2008-07-29T11:47:00.001-07:00

This blog's been quiet for awhile, for quite a few reasons.

You see, one of the downsides of having a largely self-directed workday, at least if you're me, is that you tend to take on too many projects. In my case, whether I take on a project has to do with whether a) I'm interested in it, b) I can see how it furthers the library's mission, c) I can see how it furthers the division's mission, d) I can see how it furthers the university's mission, and d) whether it's really within the scope of my position. That last one can be tricky, since I have tenure and promotion requirements to meet as well as professional ones. These do overlap most of the time, but it still means two sets of requirements to consider.

Anyway, here's what I'm working on now:

News portal project, complete with a meeting this morning with one of the digital media team to get this project moving to the next stage.
A possible article on, broadly speaking, the subject of cognitive authority. I don't think the article will be written this summer, but I've done a fair bit of reading and am starting to develop one or two possible lines of argument.
Crash course in copyright law as it applies to the library, which is mostly telling me what I already knew: copyright law is incredibly complicated and I should probably call my brother (who is an attorney specializing in intellectual property) more often. Take a look at this article by Peter Hirtle if you don't believe me.
A presentation for the faculty fall conference, on the changing library research landscape.

...plus the usual reference, collection development, instruction, and other duties as assigned.

How's your summer going?

A media-literacy tool for the digital age

2008-07-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

In the past week, two of my friends have called my attention to the PhotoShop Disasters blog.

We've all seen them: pictures that are funny, or just plain peculiar, and obviously--or sometimes not so obviously--improbable. Is it real life, or is it PhotoShop? Sometimes the illusion is so well done that it's difficult to tell.

Sometimes the results are funny. Sometimes, well, not so much.

Doctoring photos is nothing new; we can point to plenty of examples similar to the above in media from around the world, the U.S. included. PhotoShop, though, makes photo doctoring easier to do--though if the person doing the work isn't particularly accomplished at it, it can also be easier to spot.

When does such modification improve or clarify, and when does it deceive?

What's a gate count worth?

2008-07-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

Today's Inside Higher Ed reports on an NCES report on academic libraries, specifically the news that library gate counts are holding steady.

The immediate question that springs to mind is one that a couple of commenters on this item have already asked: with so much information online, including library holdings, are gate counts still relevant?

I'd argue that they are--as part of a composite picture that should also include usage statistics for online resources, tallies of online reference transactions as well as those at the desk, and library instruction wherever it takes place. If the use of library space is changing, which it undoubtedly is, it's also worth knowing whether that change is successful.

The library on my campus is morphing into a multi-use learning space. It's the primary computer center on campus, a preferred study and group work space for many students, and a home for related services, such as tutoring and digital media. If we were offering all of that and people weren't coming in, that would be important, if disappointing, to know. So gate counts do still matter--because while the library is online, it's also (still) a building, and a building that people use.

Especially during finals, according to our gate counts.

The most important part of proper citation: read the article

2008-07-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

If you're an academic librarian, chances are you teach--IL courses, research workshops, whatever. And chances are, somewhere in your lesson plan, there's some content on proper citation: not just how (with increasing options in citation export and management, many of which are free or come bundled with a particular database package, this is arguably becoming less important), but when. I've worked with students who understand the context of proper citation perfectly well, and students who just didn't get it, and every level of awareness and good practice in between.

As it turns out, misinterpreting, misrepresenting, or even failing to read cited research isn't a phenomenon restricted to students. Leaving aside for the moment whether the authors chiefly concerned here are being misinterpreted, or just don't like the way their work is being used, I have to say that anecdotally speaking, incorrect or misprinted citations are one of the things that keeps me in business. I recall a particularly egregious example when I was still in library school: an engineering paper someone brought to me for help tracking down the citations in its reference list. Several of the citations on the list were incorrect in their details; date of publication, page numbering, volume numbering, and so forth. I draw no conclusions as to whether the paper's author was being misleading, or just sloppy, but considering the importance of citation chaining to researchers--I'd argue that it's at least as important as searching a bibliographic database, especially when working across disciplinary lines--it's inexcusable either way.

More recently, a paper I wrote passed peer review with recommendations for revision. One of the recommendations was that I incorporate more work by other researchers into my own paper, both to provide context for the subject under discussion and to show my awareness of recent scholarship. I did, reading, digesting, and incorporating at least half a dozen articles and book chapters as appropriate. I can't claim that my understanding of these scholars' work was 100% correct--who could? Though of course I did my best. I can claim, however, that I read everything cited in my paper from beginning to end, and more than once at that.

If professors are going to demand proper citation practice from their students--and they should--it behooves them to practice the same themselves. It's just good scholarship--and if that weren't enough, the increased transparency bestowed by the Internet makes doing otherwise less and less feasible as time goes on.

Conference Venue as Place

2008-07-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

I'd complain about ALA being held in Anaheim this year, but the Annoyed Librarian already did it--and quite well, I have to say. I wonder if we found the same local Mexican restaurant; it was in a sort of strip mall halfway between the budget hotels and the conference center, and was by far the cheapest and the best food I had the entire weekend. I think I wound up eating there three times, all three of which taken together were STILL cheaper than one dinner in Downtown Disney.

I have to agree with AL on the general pedestrian-unfriendliness of Anaheim, especially since I had recently returned from Greece, where the drivers are far more aggressive but there are entire neighborhoods off-limits to them and the city blocks are reasonably short, dating as they do from an era long before the car. This was the first ALA where I made extensive use of the shuttle-bus system; previously, I've always walked or relied on public transit.

I don't think AL went to Disneyland itself, where not only are there no decent bars, but as far as I can tell, there are no bars at all. (On the other hand, the Indiana Jones ride is fun. That by itself, however, is not sufficient reason to go to Disneyland.)

On the other hand, the conference center itself is one of the better ones I've been to; everything was much easier to find than at conferences past (though I've only been going to ALA for a few years at this point). I wish now that I had checked out public transportation options more thoroughly before I went, so that I could have explored some of the areas farther away from Disney.

Some notes on actual conference content will come later.

Signs of the Times

2008-07-02T09:10:00.001-07:00

Back from ALA and blogging again...

This is getting to be a common story around these parts, and probably where you live too: demand outstripping supply at food banks. A few weeks ago I saw a similar story on the West Seattle Blog, which is my main source for neighborhood news. There are two food banks near me, one for West Seattle and one for White Center, the unincorporated area to the south of my neighborhood. Both are feeling the pinch. Rising food prices and rising fuel prices together are making life difficult at the margins, and as those prices continue to go up, those margins will include more and more people.

Meanwhile, the auto industry's attempt to gut California's emissions standards is dead. I can't say that I'm surprised or sorry. Like many of you, I was just in Anaheim, and even with the toughest emissions standards in the country the air quality was poor. (Not as bad as Athens, where I was a few weeks ago, but definitely eye-watering.)

In reading about the 8 different proposals for replacing the viaduct that runs above the downtown Seattle waterfront, I can't help but think of Dan Ariely's talk at the ACRL's president's program. Ariely is the author of Predictably Irrational, a book I added to the to-read pile after hearing part of his presentation. I had to leave before he was done, but garnered implications for everything from how I teach information literacy to alterations to my library's website.

Anyway, one of Ariely's points is that too many options tend to stymie people and decrease the possibility that they'll make the best choice. None of the P-I's readers appear to like any of the options, but I'm moved to wonder whether that's because none of them are viable, or because there are too many from which to choose.

Not dead, just on vacation

2008-06-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

I tell you, I had reams of brilliance lined up to put on paper (well, on screen), and then I went on vacation for two weeks. Honestly, if you had to choose between Greece and blogging, what would you pick? Yeah, I thought so.

Anyway! I returned to the Northwest to the news that Iowa was underwater, you shouldn't eat tomatoes, and gas had well over topped $4 a gallon. That latter bit is the focus of a number of articles in this week's Sightline Dailies, a newsletter from a think tank in these parts.

Anyone might have predicted some of these outcomes from rising fuel prices: people want to live closer to where they work (including yours truly, though since I drive a Prius the Seattle to Tacoma commute is still more expensive in terms of time than of money), and they're taking out their grief about gas prices on convenient targets (for those of you outside the Northwest: in Oregon, by law a gas station attendant must pump your gas--you'd think this would make things more expensive, but on my last trip through Oregon gas was still cheaper there than in Washington or California). At long last, Americans are driving less.

Having just returned from a city with a well-functioning transit system (Athens, despite its many and storied inefficiencies, has a lovely subway that will take you to the nearest major port AND to the airport, and our troubles with its bus system were purely our own), I have to wonder if Seattle will ever be able to say the same.

In the meantime, I'm just glad that when the time came to buy a new car, I got a hybrid. I'll be even happier when I'm living walking distance from work again, as I was during the first several years of my professional life.

That's what really interests me about this: that the cold hard reality of money, not the harder to define but arguably more important quality of life issues inherent in spending a good chunk of the day in our cars, is what is making people rethink where we work, how we get around, and how we live.

Just don't abuse the pump jockeys. It's not their fault. (I'm not convinced it's the Bush administration's, either, but that's another post.)

Why Be a Scholar?

2008-05-20T15:46:00.001-07:00

Lately I've taken to calling myself an accidental scholar. Scholarship wasn't ever something I really planned on, but the more of it I read in library school, the more I started to have my own ideas. Library science is often characterized as not particularly intellectually rigorous, and there's quite a bit of truth to that statement. I go back and forth on whether we really need to be, to be honest. A body of scholarly work is a nice thing, but do we need it to be good librarians?

In academia, at any rate, there's at least one reason to do it beyond mere interest, or membership in a scholarly community, or the requirements of faculty status.

That reason is simply this: we get a much better picture of our constituents' research experiences with our library.

Case in point. I'm currently revising an article for a scholarly publication. As part of the process, I've been hunting down some additional sources to address a few key points, and making extensive use of my own library's interlibrary loan service, since we don't own most of the materials that I'm finding. Our collection primarily supports the curriculum and student research, which means that we don't offer a whole lot in the particular area I'm working in (a thin intersection of information science and science fiction), and I'm having to supplement my searches in library databases with free online indexes and a lot of citation crawling.

One good way to maintain and improve services is to get as good an idea as you can of what your patron base does, and what they need to do it. There are plenty of ways to find this out, including asking them, but another really good way is to try using your library the way your patrons are using it. If you have scholars among the users of your library, try being a scholar yourself. (You can try being a student, too; take a class, and see how well the library serves the need of that class.) You might be surprised at what you learn.

Going Local

2008-05-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

I had my first meeting with the ACRL-NW board this morning--I'm a new Member-at-Large--and I have to say, I'm pretty excited. Not only do I know a lot of the board members already (including a friend from my graduate program and one of my mentors from the UW Engineering Library, where I worked in grad school), but even though we were videoing in from four locations (it was my first videoconference!), it felt like we were all in the same room. This group has a really pleasant synergy and I'm looking forward to working with them.

Running for the regional chapter board was a deliberate attempt to get more local with my professional service, as is my volunteering with InfoCamp 2008 this fall. I'm wrapping up a stint on a national ACRL committee, and while it's been interesting work and I've learned a lot about how the organization does its business, when the call for nominations to ACRL-NW went out I realized that I wanted to concentrate my efforts more locally. Here's why:

I like working with people in person. This might seem odd to say, since my first board meeting was a videoconference, but the difficulty with national committees is that you see each other twice a year--and maybe not that often, if people don't show up. Then, depending on how active your committee is, you might not do anything between conferences, not even via e-mail.

I like contributing where I live and work. This informs my community volunteer work as well; I look for opportunities in my own neighborhood, where I can get to know the people and how the community functions. I don't think I'll go for national service again until I'm established enough in the profession to feel like the national organization is my community.

Environmental conscientiousness. It's another argument for allowing virtual committee participation: air travel is one of the most polluting forms of transportation out there. ALA conferences regularly attract 10,000 to 20,000 attendees. I'm not going to drop out of participating in ALA, nor of going to ALA conferences entirely, but required attendance at two conferences a year because of a committee appointment was starting to bother me.

Getting to know local professional colleagues--and future colleagues. This is a really active area for librarianship. We have a library school, dozens of universities, several public library systems, and an active information architecture/knowledge management community. With such a wealth of professional knowledge and expertise nearby, it's less necessary for me to go farther afield.

Between this, South Sound Librarians, and InfoCamp, I've got plenty to keep me busy on the local scene for awhile. And it feels like what I do will have a bigger impact. One might well accuse me of big fish, small pond syndrome, but small ponds are where you find some of the richest ecosystems. What's in your professional backyard?

Five Reasons to Keep the Reference Desk

2008-05-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

Reference sure is getting a lot of airtime these days. It was a topic of major discussion at Midwinter in Seattle, close to a year and a half ago; a profluence of reference service models continues to expand, so quickly that our patrons may at last be forgiven for not knowing where or how to find the reference librarian. And this summer, in Denver, we have the Reference Renaissance conference.

At my library, I sit shifts at the reference desk, take phone calls, do virtual reference via chat and follow-up e-mail, and e-mail back and forth with students. Occasionally a student even finds his or her way into my office to ask me a question in person. I've also taken a laptop to other locations on campus and done in-person reference there, a model that I think requires a ton more promotion than I've been able to give it thus far to really be successful.

The traditional reference desk is getting rather lost in all of this--either buried beneath a flurry of new service models, or disappearing entirely as libraries go to on-call, roaming, by appointment, or other options. In the midst of all of this, I'm reminded of this story about an experience in an Apple store. I'll quote the salient point here:

I'm sure that when the differently-thinking store designers at Apple started blowing each others' minds with their crazy new "store with no cashiers" idea it seemed like a very good idea. If you make every employee a cashier and every location a register, anyone can buy anything anywhere at any time. There's no lines at the cashier and more room to display products - big win all around. Unfortunately the scheduling problem was failing on the two most important counts: to ensure fairness and minimize resource starvation. Customers with a quick purchase aren't just stuck into the same queue as customers with a half hour of questions - they're competing with those customers to locate disguised queues (black-shirted geek: customer or employee?) and pick the right one.

What kind of crazy, outside-the-box solution would work even better here? Let me walk you through my reasoning. Since sales interactions are faster than support you'd probably want to leave one employee dedicated to sales all the time. And since as Apple's own user interface guidelines say, spatial user interfaces work best when they're predictable you'd probably want that employee to stand in a predictable location. Some specific place in the store. Maybe near a table that customers can place their purchases on while the transaction takes place. And since this special employee was performing a special purpose you'd probably want them to be visually distinctive. Maybe place something iconic on the table. Something that denotes "purchase transaction" in our cultural zeitgeist. Something like, oh I don't know, A CASH REGISTER.

The point here about a clearly designated service point is something that librarians ought to take into account as we decide how to provide reference service now and in the future. And, as old-fashioned and traditional as a DESK where one can find LIBRARIANS (to borrow tongodeon's style of emphasis) might be, here are five reasons to keep it:

Visibility: a frequent complaint in this profession is that our patrons don't know who we are or what we do. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this isn't a new problem, and there's probably data somewhere to back it up. A downside of almost every reference service model I've heard tell of (roaming the library being a notable exception) is that librarians disappear: we're on the other end of a chat connection or sequestered in our offices. Making people go to additional effort to find us and find out about us does not strike me as a particularly good idea.
Awareness of what's going on in the library: if you've never read John Seely Brown and Paul Deguid's The Social Life of Information, get your hands on it right now and at least skim the introduction. For all our wikis (which replaced intranets which replaced internal listservs which replaced bulletin boards), the primary way that everything from office gossip to important developments such as massive printer failures and workarounds when your link resolver fails to function as advertised is through people talking with each other. I get the most important information for my reference shift by talking to whoever I'm taking over from and the tech support staff who share our desk. Would that stuff still get passed in isolation? Maybe. If your communication systems are really good and you have a successful culture of using them. Or, you could use the system and culture you've already got.
Step into my office: in my other life, I have occasion to buy boxing equipment. One of the suppliers I buy from sells a t-shirt with an image of a boxing ring and the caption, "Step into my office." The point being, the boxing coach's office isn't where he or she works. The ring is. Librarians don't just work in our offices, or online. We work in libraries, and libraries are still places, even though their collections and services are increasingly uncoupled from those places. One advantage a reference desk has over other models is that, if you put it in the right place, the entire library becomes your office. Which is as it should be.
The best service is still in person. My first job out of college was answering customer service e-mails for Amazon.com. At that time, people were still sort of boggled at the idea of a store that had no physical storefront. "Are you sure there isn't somewhere we can come pick up orders?" they'd ask. Yes, we were. And most of the time, that was okay. Especially since Amazon's principal customers at the time were Web-savvy sorts who didn't need much help navigating the site. Most of the questions were about stock levels and credit card security. Then, one day, I got this question: "Hi. We just got our first computer and went online for the first time, and the only website address we knew was yours. How does this work?" It was a great conversation, actually, and when we hung up half an hour later those customers had successfully placed their first order and, if I had anything to do with it, came back to make many more purchases over the years. But oh, what I would've given to be able to show them how to do it in person. You can talk co-browse and webcam and videoconference all you want, and they often work well and sometimes they're your only option (when you're working primarily with distance learners, for example), but sometimes you, and your patron, just have to get together.
Identifiable service point. Once again, this gets back to the excerpt posted above. This is related to, but distinct from, the point about visibility. Visibility increases people's awareness of you. An identifiable service point tells them where to go. Reference interviews are more analogous to support than sales, but the rest of the parable holds: if you want people to be able to find your reference service, it should be in a predictable location. Some specific place in the library, perhaps. Someplace visually distinctive. With something that denotes "reference" in our cultural zeitgeist.

But what denotes reference, particularly since a distressing number of people don't seem to know what reference is, while anyone old enough to have an allowance can identify a cash register?

Aha.

Maybe that's the problem.

Open Access in the Humanities

2008-05-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

We're used to thinking of open access as primarily an STM phenomenon: science, technology, and medicine. It makes sense, since researchers in this area seem to be more likely to embrace new channels of information dissemination, and new research in these fields can be so expensive to access; one of the principles behind the open access movement is to make published scholarship accessible to researchers who lack the financial resources to gain access to expensive scholarly publications.

The humanities, in contrast, are seen as still relying primarily on print, which in general I've found to be the case (JSTOR being a notable exception for many faculty).

Today, though, Inside Higher Ed reports on Open Humanities Press, a large new hat in the open access ring and notable precisely because it is dedicated to humanities scholarship, not STM. Even I've heard of some of the names on the advisory board, and with the exception of music, I don't spend much time with humanities literature.

There's been much discussion in librarianship as to if and when the humanities would jump on the e-scholarship and open access bandwagons (not the same things, not by a long shot, but they're in the same parade). This looks like it could be a significant step in that direction.

Neat Stuff from the Librarians' Internet Index

2008-05-06T10:41:00.000-07:00

As I often tell my students, nobody can index the entire Internet--at least, not in the way that, say, a disciplinary index or database is organized. It's too big, too diverse, and too weird. Aboutness is much easier to determine from within a subject or disciplinary context, and even there it's problematic, as Patrick Wilson told us in Two Kinds of Power (which I recently re-read).

But that doesn't mean that there aren't useful portals out there for purposes of browse and discovery, and the Librarians' Internet Index is one such. You can even get their New This Week sent to your e-mail or RSS feed. That's how I discovered the following:

I live in Washington State and hike frequently, though I haven't done real backcountry in years. Nonetheless, the Park Service's guide to safety in bear country might well come in handy someday. (A friend of mine once clued a bear to his presence--you want to avoid startling them--by playing his harmonica.)
Iron Man is out, which (if you're me) leads to consideration of comparable real-world technological developments. Someone at IEEE had the same idea, and provides a rundown of exoskeletons in commercial development. Neat.
Frontline's Merchants of Cool. I first encountered coolhunting in William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition. I wonder if real-world coolhunters develop brand allergies, too.
Government materials and websites can be confusing to navigate, and Congress is no exception. Get help from UC Berkeley's Congressional Research Tutorials.
Worried about the price of rice lately? So is the International Rice Research Institute.
Real Petroleum Prices, from the Energy Information Administration.

Wikipedia is the Kill Your Television of the 00s?

2008-05-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

Clay Shirky's post on the death of the sitcom reminds me of a piece of advice I encountered in Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. To wit:

I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit. This might not be important. On the other hand, if you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far.

Just an idea.

King is basically saying "kill your television," but just because something's been said before doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't need to be said again. Lately I've been in favor of killing the Internet as well, but Shirky points out an important difference between that and the TV: on the Internet, people can make their own contributions.

Okay, yeah, sure, the vast majority of those contributions are going to be nothing much; Sturgeon's Law had not, last I heard, been revoked, and an awful lot of Wikipedia's content is about TV, suggesting that if we all did as King suggested Wikipedia itself would be a lot poorer content-wise. On the other hand, a lot of them are going to be worthwhile, and some of them are going to be downright brilliant.

A friend of mine recently started a blog for photographers. Amateur photographers, specifically. Like herself. The point being, that one needn't be paid for something to be good at it (though it is one of the great satisfactions in life to be paid for something that you're not only good at, but that you would do whether someone was paying you for it or not. One of her entries reminded me of something that, as a lifelong French speaker, I ought to have remembered: the origin of "amateur" is "lover of".

Hear that, Andrew Keen? It's not enough that Cult of the Amateur gets a couple of pretty important facts wrong; it might well be that it's also mistaken in its conclusions.

Friday Food for Thought

2008-05-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

From Inside Higher Ed:

The Next Market Bubble: Student Loans?

is it caturday yet?

2008-05-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

I read ScienceBlogs to get the thoughts of people who do and/or think about science. Most popular science reporting is absolutely terrible, so ScienceBlogs are a breath of fresh air.

However, there are other benefits as well, including the occasional cute animals pic. And who doesn't like a cute animals pic, especially at 9:30 on a Friday morning?

So, here! Kittens!

Merging Subject Guides into Subject Pages

2008-04-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

If yours is like a lot of academic libraries, somewhere in it there's a shelf, or a twirly rack, or a set of letterboxes, in which you keep your subject-based research guides.

Those guides might have lists of databases or citation indexes, or reference books (complete with call numbers and/or URLS), or Boolean search tips. Chances are you haven't updated them in awhile. There are always so many other things to do. And if you're me, when you make a research guide these days, you tailor it to a particular class, even a particular assignment.

Research guides make a lot of sense. They probably made more when most library research tools were paper-based. But these days, that's no longer the case for most of us.

At Online Northwest this year, I was impressed by the Course Assignment Guides developed by the OSU Libraries. These are the next step beyond class- or assignment-specific guides such as we use at my library: research tools fully integrated with help in using them, dynamically generated according to the librarian's specifications.

So why not organize subject resources this way? So many subject pages (including ours, I admit) are just lists of resources with hyperlinks. There's not much there to guide students. Sure, if students comes to the reference desk or to a class, we can teach them to use these things (and they should do that anyway), but for those who don't, a few tips, pointers, and ways to get help can go a long way.

Some people will still want a printed handout or research guide, but if you're using a content management system to generate your website, or even just know a bit of CSS, you can create an integrated guide/subject page that has a print-friendly exemplar for whoever wants one.

We're looking at revamping subject guides at my library; most of ours are out of date and refer to resources we no longer have or have access to. Instead of just generating a new handout, I'm advocating taking this integrated approach.

Friday Food for Thought

2008-04-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

Plant hardiness zones shifting northward in the United States.

Handy (and Short) Explanation of NIH Open Access Mandate

2008-04-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

In the latest issue of Open Medicine, Peter Suber gives a rundown of the NIH's new open access mandate. I could not get the table included in the article to appear, but Coturnix's post on ScienceBlogs provides an image: a handy list of misconceptions about the mandate, countered by the actual facts. Take a look.

More on the Georgia State lawsuit

2008-04-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

...from today's Inside Higher Ed.

Latest Battle in the Copyright Wars: Digital Course Packs

2008-04-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

From today's New York Times, "Publishers Sue Georgia State on Digital Reading Matter":

In a complaint filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Atlanta, the publishers — Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications — sued four university officials, asserting “systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works” by Georgia State, which the university distributes through its Web site.

Varying models exist for securing copyright clearance for coursepacks, electronic reserves, and other materials that inhabit the vaguely defined territory between the course textbook and the library collection. Some institutions leave it up to individual faculty, some have a copyright clearance center, some do it through the library. What does seem fairly clear, though, is that as the situation surrounding digital materials and DRM evolves, we'll see more cases like this one.

Professor Crawford's point about disaggregation is interesting, since at least one e-book provider out there--Safari--allows you to do exactly that. Of course, Safari includes more than one publisher, providing (depending on your subscription) comprehensive coverage of its particular subject area. Disaggregation within a single publisher's list might be of limited utility.

As anyone who deals with issues of fair use knows, it's a murky subject, and a common understanding of what it means in an educational context--that it's okay as long as the material is being used for an educational purpose--isn't exactly how it always works out in practice. Charging rights fees for materials used in course packs could well have the effect of determining course pack content; if something is out of copyright, or cheap, or easy to secure the rights to, it'll be more likely to be used, even if it's not necessarily what the professor would prefer.

A copy of the suit (in PDF) is available from the Association of American Publishers. The Association of American University Presses has also posted a copy on their website, along with a press release supporting the complaint. Plaintiffs are Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications.

The relevance to libraries here should be obvious, regardless of whether a particular university's library plays any role in securing copyright clearance for course packs or reserves. The suit claims that Georgia State exceeded fair use in its provision of copyrighted material (with a side comment that at one point, materials meant for use within individual courses were accessible to the general public, not just to students in those courses), and mentions specifically that making the material available digitally, rather than through printed course packs available through a copy shop (which has presumably paid the requisite licensing fees), has deprived these publishers of revenue.

It also sounds like the suit is specifically regarding materials that have been digitized, as opposed to materials that were owned in digital format in the first place and then made available through a hyperlink to a research database or e-book. These are, presumably, materials that previously would have been made available in printed course packs by either the university bookstore, or by a copy shop, which would have paid the requisite licensing fees. So the claim here is that publishers are losing revenue because the e-reserves setup at Georgia State does not ensure that they receive licensing fees.

As of this writing, Georgia State has not responded.

This is one to watch.

Resource Update

2008-04-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Here at PLU, biochemistry students make use of the RCSB Protein Data Bank for their research projects. It is "the single worldwide depository of information about the three-dimensional structures of large biological molecules, including proteins and nucleic acids." Students select molecules from the data bank to research, reporting on their structure and function.

Today, ScienceDaily reports that the PDB has added its 50,000th structure. (It began in 1971, with seven structures. What a difference 36 years makes!) And the nice thing, from a library resource as well as research perspective, is that all of this data is available to whoever wants to use it, free of charge.

Of course, someone has to pay for its upkeep, and actively maintain it, for it to remain a useful resource (currently, that's the job of the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics). The Web is full of such resources, from large, government-funded databases to pet projects put together and supported by just a few people.

As I told a class of freshman writing students last week, you've got to look in more than one place to get your information: library research databases, but the open Web as well. The PDB is an example of how high-quality, up to date, useful information can be free--to its users, at any rate.

Recent Reading: Field Notes from a Catastrophe

2008-04-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

As pleased as I was when the cherry trees began to blossom on Capitol Hill this year (I love spring), it was a little alarming to see that happening in January. The Pacific Northwest is known for a temperate climate that, in the low-lying areas along the coast, rarely drops below freezing (although when I went hiking near North Bend last weekend, we did get sleeted on). But still, cherry blossoms in January seemed a bit much.

It's more of that kind of thing that we can expect, though, according to Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe: shifting seasons, wilder weather, and the extension, contraction, and alteration of wildlife ranges. Recommended by a friend currently working on her doctorate in oceanography, Field Notes is a sober take on an alarming subject for a lay audience. It may or may not persuade the unconvinced, but the survey of climate scientists, not to mention the people whose lives are already being affected by climate change--human-induced or not, there is little doubt that it is happening--at the very least shows the choice that the human race has before us: adapt, or don't. That might very well include attempting to mitigate our impact on the Earth, though by some lights it's already too late for that.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe is a good starting point for understanding a complex, contentious, and if you'll pardon the expression, heated subject.

Resource Roundup: Science News

2008-04-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

Science Daily: Portal site featuring press releases from research institutions and link to popular science news reporting. Advertiser supported. Offers RSS feeds.

ScienceBlogs: Blog network of working scientists and others with an interest in science, science news, and related topics. Sponsored by Seed Media Group. Offers RSS feeds.

Science News from the New York Times: Decent coverage for the lay reader, not as busy as some other resources. And, hey. It's the New York Times.

American Scientist: Publication of Sigma Xi. Most content is subscription-only but there is some free content as well.

EurekAlert: From the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publishers of the journal Science. Press releases from research institutions. Offers RSS feeds.

Where do you get your science news?

The E-book Tipping Point: Here at Last?

2008-03-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

Is print dead? I remember Egon Spengler saying so in Ghostbusters, which dates me quite a lot, and the saying is older than that. But it might well finally be that print is, if not on its last legs, finally set to become just one of a range of options, and not the most popular one at that.

March 16th's New York Times notes that encyclopedia publishers are, finally, taking up Wikipedia's gauntlet and going online in a big way. Actually, it's not that encyclopedias weren't online before; I had a personal subscription to Britannica Online when I was a freelance writer and found using the paper version at the public library too inconvenient (parking downtown was a royal pain and all of the library's copiers were broken), and at roughly $6 a month it was a worthwhile investment. But online reference materials have been slow to arrive, and when they do, their interfaces are often poor and their search engines poorer.

However, the Internet and the way people use it to find information is practically tailor-made for online reference resources. The whole point of ready reference is the quick lookup of information, that mainstay of Google searches. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Wikipedia is not the problem. Publishers' unwillingness to embrace a medium that can enhance, not detract from, what they do is the problem. There is no inherent reason that information found online must be low quality.

The other interesting thing about this development is how much of this reference content is, or will be, open access. $6 a month for Britannica Online wasn't much, but Wikipedia is free--if you've got access to the Internet, at any rate.

Then, ebrary released its report on faculty use of ebooks. The title of the study is a bit of a misnomer, since the survey also covers electronic journals, which thus far have led the charge in moving scholarly content online, and faculty overall prefer electronic journals to print. No surprises there. For books, faculty still prefer print, but many of the responses show that the reason is that ebooks are still, after all this time, difficult and cumbersome to use. DRM restrictions on downloading, printing, and copying are a big part of the problem, as is general difficulty of use. Even e-journals, in my experience, still hew far too closely to the print paradigm, with publishing and navigational features that mirror print. But it doesn't make sense for them to continue to do that, when putting scholarly content online makes other possibilities available. You can look at the survey results yourself if you register with ebrary.

And of course, while the initial furor over the Kindle has died down, it looks like Amazon is closer to getting it right than previous e-book attempts. Whether it's actually gotten it right--probably not, not entirely--remains to be seen, but growing usage and preference for electronic resources, along with reference publishers finally getting their online acts together, suggests that the age of the e-book might, finally, be here at last.

Now, is print dead? That's another question.

Wikipedia in the News...Again

2008-03-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

It seems significant that The Economist isn't just talking about the popularity of Wikipedia, but about how Wikipedia works and how the ongoing debate might impact its future.

The other week I actually heard a novelist, who ought to have known better, proclaim that "everything is on Wikipedia". I'm a fan of it myself, generally speaking, and have been inclined to think that traditional reference publishers blaming Wikipedia for their own misfortunes is less a reason than an excuse.

On a lighter note, has anyone noticed the tendency among Wikipedia's non-fans to refer to it as "the Wikipedia"? Correct usage, to be sure, but whatever the outcome of the rest of the Wiki Wars, I'm afraid that that particular battle is lost.

Wither Reference...or Reference Renaissance?

2008-03-07T10:31:00.000-08:00

For at least the past couple of years, discussion and debate about whether reference is dead have garnered high profiles at conferences, in the literature, and in the blogosphere. So conferences like Reference Renaissance (built on the remains of Virtual Reference Desk) are perhaps inevitable.

This is timely, because the question of what it means to provide reference service, and how best to do it, has been a topic of ongoing discussion in my library. We're not sure whether any of us are going to this conference, yet, but we're interested to see what comes out of it.

And it seems to me that the question all along, not just at my library but at libraries in general, hasn't been whether reference is dead, but whether and how it must change in the changing library landscape. Personally I think that if your library is still a place, then there's still a place in it for reference, and that in fact that place should be central.

Why? Because marginalizing reference encourages the notion that librarians are not useful in the age of instant information, when we all know that this isn't true: that the "Google generation" is a myth, that the most easily accessible information isn't always the best, and that however we might wish it were otherwise, the OPAC still sucks, third-party database interfaces still can't be customized to individual library environments, and those students working on a history project still aren't going to walk ten feet to the stacks if it seems as though the answer might swim to the surface of just one more Web search.

What this really involves is identifying reference's core values, and fulfilling those. It involves, yes, PR, marketing, and outreach. It involves not intruding on patron spheres, but inviting them into ours. It also involves embracing information technology, but not at the expense of these other, I submit more important, aspects of the issue. The trouble with anything shiny and new is that it tends to present itself as the solution to something that isn't necessarily a problem--or, if it is a problem (as declining reference desk counts arguably are), not necessarily the right solution (is building a virtual reference desk in Second Life going to fix that? Really?).

So maybe "Renaissance" is the right term. After all, one of the core elements of the Renaissance was the rediscovery of Classical ideas. What are the classical ideas of reference, and how can we best continue to make them a reality? That's the question we should be asking.

Friday is Resource Day

2008-02-29T12:10:00.000-08:00

An interesting experiment came to my attention last year, and this week we finally get a glimpse of the Encyclopedia of Life. Even if you're not interested in, or working in, biological or life sciences, this new online encyclopedia is worth a look, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, for those who get hives at the mere mention of Wiki-anything, EoL is an example of an online, digitally native, free to use encyclopedia with authoritative content creators, the lack of which seems to be a lot of people's chief issue with Wikipedia and its ilk. (One could quibble about that, but that would require an in-depth exploration of what we mean by "authoritative", which is too long for a blog post.)

Secondly, it shows, rather subtly, how an online encyclopedia must be different from a print one. Ease of access is only one of its advantages over too much of its digital competition; the design here was very clearly born in the digital realm, instead of being transferred there from the print. Jared Spool or Peter Morville could probably expound at length on the design principles involved here, but I'll just put it this way: it looks good, it feels good, it's easy to use without succumbing to the temptation to resemble Google (has anyone else taken a look at EBSCO's to-launch-this-summer interface yet?).

Thirdly, it's fun to explore, a characteristic it shares with Wikipedia. Although it's only populated a few branches on the tree of life (a pity, as I really wanted to read about African stink ants), it leverages that existing taxonomic structure really well--and its searching is flexible, enabling use by novices and experts alike.

This is one to watch.

Slate Discovers the Ultimate Library Question

2008-02-28T15:29:00.000-08:00

Ross Dawson says that libraries will be extinct by 2019, but Slate isn't so sure that it agrees. I'm not so sure that I do, either, and not just because I'd like to have a job in 2019 (though, to be fair, I don't expect it to look much like my job today). Slate's slideshow of newer libraries includes the Seattle Public Library's downtown branch, a place that I sometimes love and sometimes hate. At the very least, though, it's an interesting experiment. And the question of what is a library in the digital age is an interesting one, though so far most commentators seem to be finding new ways of asking the question, rather than proposing answers.

One possible answer came from the students at my university recently. Several of them have campaigned for longer building hours, which surprised a few people--if you can work from anywhere, why come to the library?

Answer: in the library, you can tell people to be quiet--and they will. Our library isn't silent, particularly on the first floor where the group study happens, but there are nooks upstairs where you can work for hours undisturbed by so much as a footstep or a human whisper. And ours is not a large library.

We live in an increasingly noisy world, and a lot of the time we bring it with us: I'll never forget the day back in 1996 when I was hiking on Hurricane Ridge and passed someone plugged into a portable CD player (today, of course, it would be an iPod). That's his prerogative, of course; since it wasn't a boom box I can't disapprove too much.

But there are very few places you can go nowadays where people can be together, yet be quiet. Churches (and other religious houses), libraries, and not much else. It's still acceptable to insist on quiet in the library in our culture, and I worry about eroding that acceptability in the name of being all things to everyone. We shouldn't be all things to everyone. We should be what we are, and what we will be.

So what is a library to be? One possible answer: a quiet, yet communal, place to work.

What else is a library to be?

Another open access experiment

2008-02-28T13:56:00.000-08:00

Harvard's new open access initiative has made a lot of waves, but InsideHigherEd reports today on another, smaller scale, but in some ways more interesting initiative, this one out of Indiana University.

What makes this one of particular interest to libraries is that the Indiana library is providing the publishing platform.

This makes eminent sense, for two reasons: libraries increasingly have the technological infrastructure to support a venture like this (look at the volume and variety of online services we provide already: what's one more?), and it cuts out the expensive and unsustainable middleman from the provision of serial content. Why pay a university press when you can serve it yourself, and partner fruitfully with faculty into the bargain?

It does remain to be seen how cost-effective this will be: a big unanswered question is whether open access scholarship really saves money or just shifts the burden of cost around. That's difficult to predict without trying it out, though.

One question that has often lurked in my mind when thinking about the role of libraries in scholarship, now and in the future, is whether or how libraries could play a role in the publication process. Indiana hasn't just been thinking along those lines, they've done something about it. More power to 'em and let's see what happens.

Oh, Amazon.

2008-02-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

So can libraries loan a Kindle, or not?

The Magic 8-Ball seems to still be saying, "Answer unclear, try again later."

It's a little surprising to me that Amazon didn't see this one coming, to be honest. But, since apparently they didn't, it also doesn't surprise me that they aren't sure what to do about it. (I worked for Amazon from mid-1996 until early 2000.) My guess is that they don't want to say no to what could, after all, be a huge market (imagine how many public libraries might jump on board once the green light is given for real!), but Sparta PL is, after all, violating the terms of use of the device.

This gets at the heart of the ongoing debate also taking place in other areas of the entertainment industry, most notably music and movies. The format content is in shouldn't change what you can do with it--or should it? Do libraries have to stick with printed books, or with comparatively unwieldy digital library services (I love NetLibrary, but forget trying to use it to read a novel)? Or wait for a reading device as cool as the Kindle apparently is, with equally cool use rights?

The Magic 8-Ball says: Stay tuned.

Speculations on the Inside of Google Book Search

2008-02-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

...via Campus Technology.

The main implication seems to be, let's get the bulk volume first, and worry about details of quality later. I can't entirely quarrel with that; a lot of what's already available through Google Book Search is already good enough for a lot of purposes, and increasingly, "good enough" is, well, good enough.

What remains to be seen is what will happen once the project with UC reaches its numbers goal. Will quality control then come into play? Or will the project just sort of exist, as seems increasingly to be the case with Google Scholar?

Inspiration Solicitation: Web-Based Tutorials

2008-02-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

What's your favorite interactive, Web-based tutorial? Need not be library-related. Comment with a link.

Don't Touch That App!

2008-01-30T09:12:00.000-08:00

Academic librarians are starting to figure out that maybe students don't want to be bothered on Facebook. Though a few students at my university have added me, I haven't sought out the Facebook profiles of students I know and work with.

Why? Because part of the point of college is finding and defining your own social space, and personally the last thing I would've wanted were professors or librarians sending me e-mail for no reason, or tracking me down on Usenet. What would any of that have had to do with my classes or my research?

That said, I'm all in favor of libraries finding new ways to promote themselves, or promoting themselves at all for that matter, and certainly online tools have a role to play here. And in recent weeks several librarians have pointed out that a Facebook app could be one great way to go. Open Worldcat jumped on board with this; considering what a great search tool Open Worldcat is turning into (with the potential to be an excellent example of what Read/Write Web calls vertical search), any way it can find to embed itself in already popular, highly-trafficked sites is probably to the good.

It's also useful, and that's a good thing too, since (also according to Read/Write Web) Facebook users are starting to develop app fatigue.

Personally, my app fatigue came pre-loaded. I love my friends, but I've ignored every one of your app promotions on Facebook because by and large, the apps have been neither useful nor fun. If it's neither useful nor fun, then it's just annoying.

There's something in this worth learning for libraries. Yes, of course the library is useful. Yes, of course a library Facebook app would be useful, too, as long as it's well designed and works as intended. But apps have the potential to be as intrusive as other ill-conceived entries into online social networks, so it's important to be judicious in their, well, application.

Personally, I wonder when someone's going to come up with the Facebook equivalent of the cellphone novel; that is, if they haven't already. That's the kind of viral content I could go for, personally.

Friday is Resource Day: GovTrack.us

2008-01-25T09:34:00.001-08:00

(Subject line inspiration is thanks to the Esoteric Science Resource Center.)

Today's nifty resource is GovTrack.us, an example of the kind of interesting and useful mash-up that you can generate on the Web. Sure, all this information is available elsewhere, mainly from governmental websites, but governmental websites are notoriously bad at presenting information in a useful format. Ask any public librarian; public librarians have become the go-to people for help in navigating governmental websites and finding information. Which, yes, is part of their role, but wouldn't it be nice if the tools were well designed? (That said, GovTrack's main data source, THOMAS, is well-designed and easy to use. This could have something to do with it being a Library of Congress project.)

But that's another rant.

Anyway, here's the skinny on GovTrack. It's not exactly citizen journalism, but it is an example of the positive side of the "cult of the amateur" (when, by the way, did being an amateur become a pejorative? It can't all be Andrew Keen's fault, can it?). The creator and maintainer of the site is a graduate student at Penn; in other words, this isn't his job, just his passion. (Passion, by the way, is one of the amateur's great strengths, though it can also be a drawback.)

The cool thing about GovTrack is that it makes it easy to track legislative votes. Want to know what current presidential candidates' voting records look like? You can get that out of THOMAS, but you have to compile the information yourself. GovTrack grabs that data and presents it to you. Want to know how your representatives are voting? You can find out, even if you're not sure who they are. You can find out what bills are on the table, what's being voted on, and send all of this stuff to your RSS aggregator; you don't even need to visit the site (though if you don't, you'll miss some features).

Could THOMAS provide all of this? Sure it could. Chances are, it would like to (the Library of Congress did recently reveal its capacity for hipness with its Flickr photo project, which leverages the Web's ability to aggregate knowledge collectively. Are the people tagging the LoC photos historians, or photography experts? Some of them probably are. Most of them probably are not. But what if you recognize something in an unlabeled photo, something that nobody at the LoC has been able to identify? How else would that information ever have come to be associated with that photo?

The point being, sites and services like GovTrack are examples of people building their own tools for others to use, rather than waiting for them to be built. If there's an upside to Internet culture, then that's it.

Wither Reference? Part 2: From Just-in-Case to Just-in-Time

2008-01-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Almost twelve years ago, I moved to Seattle and got a job with a strange little business located south of downtown. They did mail order, but their warehouse stock was tiny even though their catalog was huge. The catalog was only on the Web, even though the local library still offered telnet access to its catalog. There was no storefront, no printed catalog, and the business didn't take phone orders.

That business, of course, was Amazon.com.

These days, Amazon sells everything from books to bustiers, and has warehouses located all over the country, not to mention subsidiaries located all over the world. I haven't worked there in eight years, so I have no idea what their warehouse-stocking philosophy is. But in 1996, Jeff Bezos and company were leveraging the incredibly powerful idea of just-in-time delivery. They've made some missteps along the way, but have gotten things right enough that quite a few people have made quite a bit of money off of it.

What does this have to do with reference?

At my university, I do remote-desk hours: set up a laptop in a location outside the library on campus and provide reference service. A lot of libraries have been trying this, with varying degrees of success. So far, the one time I've gotten a lot of traffic was when a professor put my contact information in his syllabus, including my office hours, then gave his students an assignment that was beyond most of their library research skills. The following year, when the course came up again, I did a guest lecture instead covering the same material points. It would be interesting to compare the results on student assignments.

Now, obviously one factor at work here is promotion. But another is this notion of just in time: what you need, when you need it, where you need it. And in an increasingly connected world, "where" doesn't need to be physical.

This is important because the library as place is coming uncoupled from the library as a resource base. This turns the physical library into a place that serves multiple needs: the information commons at work. Which varies from campus to campus, but at my university, the library is the preferred study space for many students. It's comparatively quiet, even with the inevitable noise from the computer area on the first floor; it's open late (though not late enough, they tell us); and they can access online library resources as easily there as anywhere. More easily, perhaps; the library has wireless, though it's increasingly clear that it doesn't have enough power outlets to serve the demand from student laptops.

The reference desk is a quintessential just-in-case service, and the profession knows this. From Steven Bell's writings on the subject to the open discussion at Midwinter 2007, librarians are considering the idea that the reference desk is outmoded in our brave new just-in-time, wirelessly wired, increasingly connected world.

Is it?

I'm not convinced that anyone really knows the answer to that question, though we're all trying out alternatives to see what works. Chat reference, IM, giving out your cellphone number, remote-location reference, reference by appointment, and the rest: a lot of them are attempts to bring just-in-time into a traditionally just-in-case scenario. On the other hand, the librarian at the reference desk is there at the right time and in the right place for students who are working in the library and need reference assistance. And there are still quite a few of them.

What does just-in-time reference service look like? Is it a change in service, or a change in attitude?

Neither are fish the best authority on water.

2008-01-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

(Subject line a paraphrase from Jane Yolen's Sister Light, Sister Dark, a book I highly recommend.)

While we were away at Midwinter, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) revealed what librarians already know: the "Google generation", that is, people who grew up using the Web, is a myth. That's the conclusion of a new report, "Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future" (available as a PDF download from the JISC website; at 35 pages, it's not a super-quick read but is downright brief compared to many reports I've seen) that highlights one of the downsides of convenient information retrieval: a kind of blindness to less convenient but more worthwhile information, coupled with a lack of application of critical evaluation.

It makes sense, if you think about it. The television is one of the most ubiquitous information-based media out there, but channel-surfing doesn't make you an expert on current events. Neither does only watching one channel, or only getting your news from the TV. Plenty of people have cell phones now, but having a phone doesn't make you an expert on the art of conversation. Far from it, if some of the phone conversations I've overheard recently are any indication. (You may not care that you're chatting in an airport bathroom, but does whoever you're talking to really want to listen to the inevitable ambient sounds?)

But I digress.

Like I said in this article last year, when retrieval gets easier, other things become harder. Google (increasingly a convenient shorthand for Internet search engines) is the great decontextualizer, and that's a problem: it conveys and reinforces the notion that if it can't find it, it doesn't exist—even though it's impossible to know for sure how much of the Web Google indexes. The size of a search engine's index isn't the best measure of its quality (perhaps not a measure of its quality at all), but it can lead a person to wonder what they might be missing.

The thing is, students don't wonder what they're missing, because the Internet gives them so much. And, increasingly, so much of it is good quality—or at least good enough. Part of our job as librarians, and also part of faculty's jobs as teachers, is to demonstrate why "good enough" isn't good enough: to show students the benefit of researching comprehensively, using more than one resource, and developing their evaluative skills so they can see the gaps in what Google finds.

For some people, at least, the bloom is off: usage of Google Scholar is down 32% for 2007! The question is, how much are people (including, of course, students) using plain ol' Google for their research needs?

Wither Reference? Part 1: In a Wiki World, What's a Reference Book Worth?

2008-01-03T15:13:00.000-08:00

We're not exactly taking machetes to the reference collection in my library, but we definitely are thinning the herd, as it were.

What we're finding, simply put, is that while students use and love online journal articles and, increasingly, electronic books (shortly after we highlighted our NetLibrary collection, I got two reference queries about how to get e-books specifically), the reference collection is mostly gathering dust.

This problem isn't unique to us, by any stretch. But when you're out of shelf space and have a ten-year-old encyclopedia in front of you that's only been used once since you bought it, you have to ask yourself: do we have to keep this?

There's a disciplinary angle here. Currently I'm weeding the business reference collection, and business is a discipline where currency is important--not money, though that's important too, but the timeliness of the material. I also work in the sciences, which has the same emphasis on currency, and in nursing, where accreditation requirements have led to tossing a great deal of old material. In music, in contrast, keeping those old materials might be the only way of researching something ancient and/or obscure. We once received a call from a faculty member at another university because we were the only library in the country with a copy of a particular score. Stuff like that is why I get up in the morning.

Reference books, though, don't go through Interlibrary Loan; not only because they're, well, reference, but because the information needed tends to brook few delays like that required to get an ILL book to a patron. Which in turn explains the growing reliance on Google and Wikipedia, to cite the two best-known examples. I'm not sure why the convenience of these tools is so often decried in the library community; yes, people should make sure that the information they're getting is good, but shouldn't the resources that contain that good information make themselves more accessible? I used to maintain a personal subscription to Britannica Online, because--get this--it was more convenient than going downtown to use the print encyclopedia in the library. I think I gave up when they neglected to send me a renewal notice, and I had to inquire (and wait a few days for a response) to find out why it wasn't working. Perhaps they've improved.

The need for the kind of information that usually gets classed as "reference" isn't going away; the massive volume of ready-reference-style searches on free Web search engines is evidence enough of that.

The need for reference books, though? That's an open question.

The Curious Nature of Education for Librarianship

2007-12-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

There doesn't seem to be a lot out there on the background and development of education for librarianship (a word that Blogger's spellchecker doesn't recognize, by the way), though admittedly I've only just started looking.

This was inspired by two things: I recently finished and submitted a review of a book on the history of information professions in Britain, and I have a question that has been a source of longstanding puzzlement: why do we get Master's degrees, anyway?

As it turns out, that's a fairly complex question, even though the Master's degree in Library Science is a relatively recent development. Its facets include the nature of education for the professions in general, the professional status of librarianship itself, the longstanding and occasionally acrimonious split between librarianship and information science, the gendering of the profession, and, of course, politics. You can't get human endeavor without also getting politics.

Accordingly, this might be a bit much for a blog post, or a series of blog posts. For the nonce, however, this is where my thoughts on the subject will appear. More to come.

Writing the reference vision statement

2007-12-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to see the value of vision and mission statements. I'm not sure what that says about me, but it's where we've ended up in discussing the future of library reference. If you've been paying attention over the last few years, you're aware of the conversation going on in the profession in general (I'm not sure whether it's a debate yet, but it might be getting there).

The gist of it is that reference isn't dead, but the reference desk might be. There are a lot of suggestions about what should takes its place, but they tend to be long on generalities and short on specifics.

Try this as a thought experiment: if the reference desk had never existed, what might reference today look like instead?

And once you've done that, contemplate this: what might it look like in the future?

Then, take that and turn it into a vision statement.

That's what we're doing.

Elsewhere that I write: read my article

2007-11-30T09:04:00.000-08:00

I don't just blog, you know. In the latest issue of the ACRL Washington newsletter, you can read this article:

INVISIBLE LIBRARY: Riding the Wave of Library Transparency.

Enjoy!

Post-Thanksgiving Roundup

2007-11-27T15:39:00.000-08:00

Retailers putting up Christmas decorations right after (or sometimes in conjunction with) Halloween notwithstanding, the day after Thanksgiving is still taken as the first day of the holiday shopping season. Which in itself, seems to have taken on characteristics similar to the openings of other hunting seasons, or perhaps the Running of the Bulls. In any case, MSNBC ran a ton of coverage, most of which I missed due to being in a mountain cabin with no Internet or electricity at the time. We played Scrabble. It was refreshing.

When I got back to Seattle, the mister and I discussed how to respond to our relatives' well-meaning inquiries as to what we wanted for Christmas. Neither of us could really think of anything, largely because we both already own more material goods than either of us wants. (Books in my case, for the most part; DVDs and computer games in his.) The getting and giving of gifts isn't supposed to be the point anyway, though it's been the point for a lot longer than a lot of people realize.

Old information getting a new lease on life: This is the kind of thing that digital preservation is all about. If, like me, you have a fondness for old books and old maps of all kinds, the free distribution of digital scans of documents online is one of the best developments ever.

The apparently disappointing numbers on reading have popped up in a number of places, but this isn't the only coverage that seems to assume that reading = books. So is it that men don't read, or that their reading is largely materials that aren't books? I don't know, and I wonder whether the NEA doesn't either. Anecdotally, I read fiction and nonfiction in about equal measure, at least where books are concerned. But I also read a lot of other things. Got to fulfill that librarian stereotype somehow, I guess.

The Devil You Know

2007-11-18T11:09:00.000-08:00

If you go by the media take on it, the chief danger to young people of sites like MySpace is the possibility of their encountering online predators of various kinds. Sort of the online equivalent of not getting into a stranger's car, sort of fing.

But an interesting, and I think significant, aspect of the Megan Meier case is that everyone involved knew each other. They were acquaintances, neighbors, and at one point even friends.

There are certain kinds of crimes where the perpetrator is likely to be known to the victim. I know that right now, the county prosecutor isn't sure whether criminal charges can be filed in this case, but the ways in which it resembles what could be called, for lack of a better term, "real world" crimes (as though the Internet weren't in the real world) should not be dismissed.

We're going to see more stories like this. I hope they won't be this tragic.

As fish in a barrel, so go my potshots at ALA's website.

2007-11-13T11:50:00.001-08:00

It's my own fault, I suppose. I know there's been some progress on ALA's long-awaited site redesign. I saw the wireframes (admittedly, by accident) during Annual 2007. Every so often, some blog or newsletter that I read mentions it. But I rarely visit ALA's website unless I absolutely have to, and after an admittedly blistering response sent during the organization's usability solicitation last year, it's largely fallen off my radar.

So when I got an e-mail solicitation from an ALA section that included a call for volunteers, I decided to have a look. My current appointment is up this summer, and it's time to do something else. I clicked the link. Hunted up my membership number and password so that I could actually log in to the committee volunteer form, and...

Whoops. I see an error message indicating that I don't have the "appropriate membership access"--whatever that means. Although I'm an ALA member, I think that I must not be a member of this section, even though the e-mail I received addressed me as such. Well, such mistakes happen. I cut back on my division and section memberships last year because, honestly, I can't justify the cost of belonging to any of them unless I'm actively working in them. The cost for each is fairly low, true, but it adds up.

So I started clicking around to try and figure out whether this was the case. First, I logged into MyALA.

I still can't figure out what the point of MyALA is supposed to be. It doesn't tell you anything about your own membership, such as when it expires, or (more to the point of my current endeavor) what the details of your membership are, such as which sections you belong to. Fortunately, I keep almost all of my e-mail, and was able to dig up my membership confirmation letter from last winter. It seems that I did indeed let my LITA membership lapse. Oh, well.

So what constitutes "appropriate membership access" to volunteer for a LITA committee? I spend some more time working my way back to the LITA website and look up the requirements for committee service. One must indeed be a LITA member.

Makes sense. But spending close to 10 minutes clicking around the ALA website, clicking search results links that lead to dead pages, and digging around in my e-mail to figure out which parts of ALA's alphabet soup I've elected to be officially part of this year, all reminds me of why I visit the ALA website so rarely.

I really, really hope that along with the ALA website redesign, there's substantial time, thought, and effort being given to improving the site functionality. This isn't the first time I've had this kind of experience with the ALA website, and it engenders a low-level but enduring frustration that renews itself with every encounter.

I can, of course, join LITA right now and then (once someone processes my application, presumably) attempt to volunteer again. However, I'm going to wait for that low-level frustration to subside a bit before I tackle the current incarnation of ALA's website again.

The Annoyed Librarian is Spartacus!

2007-11-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

I'm not a well-known librarian blogger (in point of fact, I'm barely a blogger, since this is only my second post), so there's no point in my claiming to be The Annoyed Librarian. The most enthusiastic reception such a revelation could muster would be: "Eh." No shock or awe involved.

That's the most interesting thing about this week's great revelation that Meredith Farkas—no, Karen Schneider—is the Annoyed Librarian. People are wondering who AL is, and wouldn't it be just perfect if she/he turned out to be someone well known in the blogosphere? Someone net-savvy librarians regularly read and admire? Someone who might well wear AL's label of "twopointopian" with pride?

The irony, it burns. Or would burn, presumably, if the identity of ~~Spartacus~~ AL were revealed.

It's interesting because readers want AL to be someone well known. (Wouldn't it be funny if it were Steven Bell?) There are tons of anonymous blogs on the Internet, of course, but AL attracts attention in our little professional corner for saying provocative things, or for saying things provocatively—things that a lot of AL's readers secretly or not-so-secretly agree with. Attaching an identity to those statements, particularly a well-known identity, lends them a certain degree of...well, authority.

Authority is getting to be an interesting concept in and of itself: not just because of the Internet, a haven for anonymous content of all kinds, but because of the collaborative creation of content that has the potential to be authoritative, despite not having gone through the recognized process by which information acquires that qualification. Wikipedia is the most obvious example, but there are plenty of others; and once you pass out of the realm of reviewed scholarship, the qualification itself gets a lot more hazy.

The point being, would AL's statements be any more or less valid if we knew who was making them? Is it AL's very anonymity that gives the blog its bite, or would it be provocative even if we knew who was writing it? If the blogosphere is a forum for professional discourse—and I think it is—what part does AL play in that discourse?

AL asks some of these questions, on the blog:

One of the things I found amusing about the speculations that Meredith Farkas writes the AL (which I like to think of as the Farkas Fracas) is the assumption that when/if the AL is unmasked, it will turn out to be someone you've heard of. Maybe, maybe not. I don't want to spoil it for you. But what if the AL turned out to be just some bored librarian or group of librarians sitting around having a lark? Would that lessen the impact? Or what if the AL turned out to be someone ensconced in ALA headquarters? Does it matter at all who writes the AL? Does the identity of the author(s) somehow change what's written?

You might well ask whether there's much point in considering the authority (or lack thereof) of a blog in the first place. After all, it's a blog. But a blog is just a format. Nothing about that format specifies content. The content could be anything: your lolcats collection, your research article, your enumerated points about how the profession is incompletely clothed. The author could be anyone. The decision about whether to take what's in it seriously resides entirely with its reader.

And that drives some people crazy.

One Square Inch of Quiet

2007-10-30T10:50:00.000-07:00

My office is tucked into a quiet corner of the library. I'm as likely to hear cars rolling down the street outside, or the soft roar of the fans from the climate-control system, as I am to hear chairs rolling along the polished tile floor, or the ringing phone at the reference desk. Sometimes I catch snippets of conversation. Sometimes my own phone rings. Most of the time, there's a low-level but quiet hum, occasionally punctuated by someone's phone violating library policy.

Gordon Hempton's been in the news before, but his visit to the quietest spot in the continental U.S. with reporter Tom Banse came up today in Tidepool, a Pacific Northwest news service with an environmental bent. That quiet spot is easier to get to than you might imagine: hike in three miles from a visitor's center, and you're there.

Libraries these days aren't particularly quiet places, and in some ways that's a good thing. The proliferation of group research projects in the academic setting reflects how work is increasingly done in the real world, and in order to work together, groups must talk. My own library features several options for groups working together: study rooms with large tables, computer workstations where several people can share a machine, cozy arrangements of chairs facilitating discussion of topics academic and non. At certain times of day, walk through the first floor and the air is abuzz with students in the throes of discovery, or at least of looming deadlines.

But there's noise, and there's noise. A couple of years ago, the library instituted a no cell phone policy. Not unusual, but the interesting thing about it is that it was by student demand. It's not adhered to 100 percent, though most students are good about taking their conversations outside or at least to a remote corner where they won't disturb anyone. The conversations themselves are usually quiet.

But the ringtones. Deary me, the ringtones.

We have all been in a place—not necessarily a library, but someplace reasonably quiet—where someone's cell phone, buried at the bottom of a voluminous backpack or purse, has gone off at full volume, playing "Funkytown" with impunity until its owner manages to find it and answer it or switch it off. The effect is usually startling; and, in my library, often earns the owner a number of glares from nearby students whose thought processes have been interrupted.

The point here isn't so much the cell phones, or even the ringtones. The point is certainly not to return to the days when libraries were quiet as tombs; if nothing else, the constant click of keyboards would prevent that for some time to come. However libraries reinvent themselves, and much of the field agrees that they must, though exactly how is the subject of much debate, the result is already noisier and less solitary than in the past.

But the absence of quiet (not the same thing as silence, as Hempton points out) isn't just a concern of libraries. There are times when I get my best thinking done by turning up White Zombie as loud as it will go, but quiet suggests a certain harmony of surroundings that seems to be increasingly hard to come by in the increasingly urbanized environments in which we live. It's not the absence of noise, so much as the absence of noise that disrupts and distracts. A student who quietly converses on a phone about the paper she's currently typing at her computer is less disruptive than one who jumps up and runs out of the building to strains of Handel, however melodious. Absent disruptions and distractions, the mind is free to wander, to engage with ideas, to develop perspective and delve deeply.

Academic libraries have been positioning ourselves not just as places to do literature searches—especially since these can, increasingly, be done online from the privacy of a dorm room or office—but as a place to work. That has to include the student studying for his midterm, or the one wrestling with Proust, or the one working on her reflective essay. However we design our spaces and allocate our limited resources for the future, we shouldn't forget these quieter activities, and to make room for them. The environment isn't just a place out in the woods, removed from everyday life; in some ways, that's the antithesis of what the concept should be. The environment is where we live.

(Postscript: I am rather pleased to see that I'm not the only one thinking about this.)