Top four things I've learned cataloguing my own books

For several weeks now, I've been (somewhat amateurly) cataloguing my personal collection of books with LibraryThing.  I love it.  Basically I'm just ensuring the proper and well-formatted title, checking it has the right cover, including the main authors and other responsibility holders, tagging them with my own main "categories", putting  them in collections of who in my family it really belongs to, specifying where and when I got it (if I can remember or figure it out), and putting in a Dewey number.  It's fun, of course, being the librarian nerd that I am, but it's also fascinating and I was thinking about how valuable but impossible it would be to have library school students actually do some personal cataloguing of at least a hundred titles.  Here are some of the interesting things I've found:

1. I've never really thought about the categories of books I've had before.  I've collected books from many sources and over a long period of time so I've never really had a very clear personal "collection policy" so there's plenty of odd stuff in there.  It's mostly graphic novels, reference books, philosophy stuff, science stuff, and of course kid's books but there are ones that stand out:  "Sesshu's Long Scroll", a spiral bound copy of "Understanding Neural Networks", and a nicely bound copy of the Qu'ran.  In the course of cataloguing some of these works, particularly when I'm tagging them with my basic subject areas of interest -- figuring out how broad or specific to make those tags or whether to use them at all if there's only going to be one or two with that tag anyway -- it really makes me think about subject headings and how they can and/or should be used.  I initially just wanted to be able to see the numbers of certain books in a subject that I find interesting and retrieve them easily.  But then I had to add non-subject tags like ".damaged" or ".gift".  And then format tags, such as "REFERENCE" or "GRAPHIC NOVELS".  I came across my copy of "Dark side of the moon : the making of the Pink Floyd masterpiece" and realized that, although I like music, I don't really have a lot of books on the subject.  Should I get more?  Is it worth my time?  I have so many other interests.  Going through my books subject-wise is like walking through a list of my interests, both proven by past actions and potential or maybe just hinted at.
2. Dewey numbers are crap for fiction.  Ok, everybody knows that but trying to put my books into some sort of order led to using Dewey numbers which led to the hard fact that Dewey doesn't do any kind of fiction justice, especially comic strip compilations and graphic novels.  I had to invent a personal organization method to use instead, roughly based on the solutions I've seen in public library.  For example, "FIC A Smi 1997" is a work of fiction, considered an "adult" novel (not sexual, just grown-up, to differentiate it from my YA books and juvenile books, or other formats), by someone with the last name starting with "Smi" published (or originally created) in the year 1997.  It's mostly, as Dewey is supposed to do, to lump alike things together.
3. It's a lot of work.  Again, not a new discovery here but it's really hit home.  And I'm not even truly cataloguing them.  Just cleaning up a few key pieces of metadata.  I was tidying up the publication statement and ensuring it had the right ISBNs but that starting taking too long and I didn't think it was really worth it.  And besides, I think LibraryThing records include ISBNs that I can't easily see since I get records with a search for an ISBN that doesn't end up being the in field.  Odd.  Anyway, not really important, and not worrying about it made things go a little quicker.
4. Finally, although you have to "judge a book by it's cover" it's better if you don't have to.  Describing a book, or really anything, should be done with someone that has a good deal of knowledge about the work (or thing).  Some key access points may not be immediately clear to someone who hasn't read the book.  If you don't know the subject area, then how could you know the place this particular work has in it?  Ideally, cataloguing should be done slowly by a few people who love the particular work, perhaps the particular author.  Philosophy texts should be catalogued by philosphers, collections of poetry, by poets.  How can I truly describe my book on neural networks?  I know very little about cognitive science.  But cataloguers don't and can't know the subject matter to that degree.  The work is done by people who know classification and the rules of AACR2 and RDA.  But when keying in even the tiny specks of metadata about my own collection, I find it much easier and much more rewarding to work with a book I have written a review of, like "Knitting the Semantic Web", or read a million times, like "Waiting for Godot".  Sometimes it makes me think of the part of "Farhenheit 451" when the main character meets the "books", the people who have memorized entire novels and have saved them that way.  Perhaps each book should have it's own cataloguer, who gets to know the work, inside and out, and therefore is the only one qualified to know how to describe it and give access to it.  Not good for the people in those jobs though, I guess, right?

Oh, and one more thing.  I've discovered that I'm really weird.  I take great pleasure in considering the proper capitalization of my books.  For example, in AACR2, the only title words that get capitalized are the first one and any proper nouns.  I have the graphic novel "Star trek : countdown".  Although it looks weird, "trek" doesn't get capitalized because, in the context of the title, it's not a proper noun.  It's just a "trek" through the "stars".  But I also have "Star Trek : The Next Generation : technical manual".  In this case, "Trek" is capitalized because this is a technical manual for the ship in the TV show "Star Trek : The Next Generation".  TV show names are proper nouns.  (I mean, technically, the book should have been called something like "Technical manual for the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701D" or something like that, and not had a cool cover, but publishers like to think they're tricking us into buying their crap...  which they are.)  In the first case, the work is using the term as a name for the work and isn't referring to itself.  It's just using the words as they are, as the entire "Star trek" universe does.  The second case is using the term in reference to the series, to the previous works, to the fictional universe that the TV shows, movies, comics, etc. make up.

Of course, I'm only half way through my books so far so perhaps I'll learn more (or learn better?) as I go.  And then there's my movies and video games...  I need a "LibraryThing" for those.

E-Resource licensing and negotiations

Summary of and reactions to "Licensing Electronic Resources and Contract Negotiation" by Ryan O. Weir, chapter four of "Managing Electronic Resources: A LITA Guide" edited by Ryan O. Weir.

Things to remember when acquiring electronic resources

Summary of and reactions to "Acquiring Electronic Resources" by Denise Pan, chapter three of "Managing Electronic Resources: A LITA Guide" edited by Ryan O. Weir.

How to survive the clash between e-resources and budgets

Summary of and reactions to "Coping with Economic Issues and a Paradign Shift in Collections" by Regina Koury, chapter two of "Managing Electronic Resources: a LITA Guide" edited by Ryan O. Weir.

ERM basics

Read chapter one of Managing Electronic Resources: A LITA Guide edited by Ryan O. Weir, "Learning the Basics of Electronic Resource Management" also by Ryan O. Weir.

Upon reading this chapter, I've tried to describe the actual life cycle (since, in my opinion, the life cycle(s) described in the chapter are a little out of date or at least impractical) and the key requirements in ERM in this way:

1. Consideration:  This will involve details such as overlap, license terms, possible access points/issues, pricing, potential audience, trials, quote requests, feedback (from librarians, staff and/or patrons), negotiation, and how the final decision will be made.  Regardless of the decision, ideally, all factors that went into the decision as well as the final result should be recorded.
2. Acquisition:  This will involve ordering, receiving, paying, documentation of resource and transaction details (e.g. quantity, rights, license terms, payment, etc.)
3. Processing & Maintenance (initial or renewal):  This will involve providing and ensuring access to the resource (e.g. activation, cataloguing, etc.) as well as checking on and updating all records kept about the resource and the deal(s) (including usage statistics).  This will also involve as-needed troubleshooting and updating of access and functionality of the resource.
4. Evaluation:  This will involve the compilation of details (most importantly usage and cost) about the resource and deal(s) on a regular basis, either at renewal time or simply after a set amount of time, to reconsider keeping the product in the collection.
5. Removal:  Although rarely mentioned in the literature (this chapter included), it is always suggested that, given the need for renewal evaluation, there is the possibility that the resource will NOT be renewed.  There are also resources that cease to exist, or change to such a degree that it is no longer the same resource.  For these cases, actions must be taken to remove the resource from the collection involving the catalog, records kept, website references, etc.

Some of these may be standardized or may be unique to the specific resource or subject.

There is also the issue of promotion of electronic resources.  I have not included it (although I was very close to doing so) since, although vital, it is not truly necessary and is often left undone or at least done by librarians or staff other than those involved in ERM.

Also mentioned in the chapter:

• Electronic resource management challenges and changes:  Mentioned only in very general terms with references to two other chapters.
• Personal organizational skills:  Certainly very important but I'm torn as to the real meaning of this information being included here.  In a way, all librarians need good time management skills and project management methods, etc.  One of the things that I enjoy about librarianship is also a disadvantage:  flexibility.  Librarians, regardless of actual role, can do a wide variety of things, and have a lot of leeway in judging what really counts as their responsibility.  This means that we can and do take responsibility for plenty of different functions, which makes it difficult to manage our workload.  On the other hand, if electronic resources librarians have more than their fair share of work, then this suggests an imbalance in our institutions and the need for restructuring.
• Education and professional development:  Good quick introduction to some of the key issues.  I like the list of conferences:  I tend to go to regional conferences but I really should attend ER&L and maybe even Charleston.  And I've been thinking about how to help build a network of other professionals as it suggests.

Some things I disagree with in this chapter:

• On page 7, it states, "Once the decision is made that the library wishes to acquire an electronic resource, the task of negotiating the licensing and pricing of the resource begins."  Although it does say that the library merely "wishes" to acquire the product before negotiation, too often we find ourselves in the situation of deciding to obtain the product and then negotiating terms.  Details such as pricing, access rights, support agreements, etc. are crucial to determining the value of the resource and therefore should go into the decision to acquire it or not.  This is why I've put negotiation into the consideration process.  Initial negotation MUST take place before the decision is made to acquire.  The acquisition process can only take place once the decision has been made.
• The lack of consideration for "removal" of resources, as I've included above.
• There is no mention or consideration of purchased, or perpetual access resources.  In the "Review and Renewal of Resource", the assumption is that the only motivation for evaluation is for renewal or cancellation.  But eResources are increasingly purchased and although they do not take up "shelf space" they do fill up staff and librarian time, and can often come with slowly rising access fees.  Evaluation MUST take place to ensure that keeping it in the collection is still worth the time and money.

Good intro to the book.

Ethics of Vendors Having Direct Communications with Patrons

I was sitting in a meeting with a sales rep from a library information resource vendor when he mentioned that his sales visits were quite different in the past.  He would spend all day on campus, talking with faculty, handing out brochures, giving demos of his products, etc.  He went on to say how he could help us with promoting his products within our institution, with premade emails with links, graphics, brochures, etc.

This made me think:  academic libraries, and particularly mine, I think, have a hard time "getting the word" out about the products that we add to our collection.  It always difficult to know which resources to promote and how exactly to do so.  We want them to know and appreciate the value of the collection but we don't want to overstep our bounds and become pushy sales staff in the minds of our faculty and students.  Even if we knew which and how, it's a question of time and staffing:  there are so many things that we all have to do, promotion tends to get put to the bottom.

But it's always in the best interest of the company that we acquired the products from that our patrons use them more.  We collection statistics and how and how often these resources are used and these numbers tend to inform our decisions on whether to renew, cancel or change our subscriptions, and even if we should get more products from the same vendor.  Why don't we allow vendors to provide training to our patrons?  Why don't we want vendors to communicate with faculty, pushing new and old products?  Why don't we let them take some of the work of letting our patrons know what we have and what we could have?

Some of the answers are obvious:  vendors are biased.  Librarians like to think that we're a little more objective when it comes to the various products that are available.  Allowing vendors to promote directly to the users would be the difference between deciding on a car by reading Consumer Reports or by watching car commercials.  Yes, the producers may know more about their products but they don't always say it all.  They will always fib a little.  But is this such a bad thing?  We all know salespeople lie, so maybe the value of the increased information would outweigh the hopefully slight misrepresentations.

Also, vendors want to sell new products.  This is fine and good when they are talking with the people who have control of the money that will be spent on them and are experienced in managing similar products.  But librarians find that when faculty know about new products, however they find out about them, they tend to pester us with requests for products that we can't afford, can't use, or are not going to be valuable to anyone else.  This wastes our time and harms our relationship with our patrons.  But again, maybe this shouldn't be the end of the discussion.  Perhaps by having to deal with these issues, faculty and other users on campus can learn more about the nature of acquisition of these resources, that immediately perceived use isn't the end of the analysis, and that things are much more complicated in the library than they may think.  And maybe "waste of time" is the price we pay to have a more involved faculty.

Finally, I think one of the reasons we don't let vendors train users directly is a bit of fear for our own jobs.  If a ProQuest-paid instructor can teach how to use ABI/INFORM Complete, what's left for the info lit librarian to do?  Well, actually I think we SHOULDN'T be teaching how to use interfaces, but rather general search strategies regardless of interface, judging quality of sources, etc.  Just as staff are short when it comes to promotion efforts, many libraries don't have enough instructors to teach all the students frequently enough. Why not let the vendors lighten the load where they can?  There is plenty of instruction to go around.

Perhaps there are other reasons why we should or should not allow vendors direct communicative access to our users.  What do you think?

Testing out Bitstrips.

Yeah, I'm looking at you, Single Search Box.

I'm torn about developments in search functionality these days.

Yes, the one-search-box interface is here to stay and if libraries and information resource developers don't get on the band-wagon, we will all miss the boat.  Users want simplicity and nothing's simpler than one box you can type whatever you want into and results and thrown back at you.  But, given current technology, the single search box can NOT provide better results than a more functional interface with more options.  Searching is about communication:  the user is trying to tell the system what he/she wants and the system responds with what it thinks is appropriate.  Too little information and the system either doesn't know what to do or simply guesses.  And, too often, too little information means the user is assuming a whole bunch of information.  The system doesn't (or more accurately, the system designers don't) necessarily have those same assumptions.

One objection to this might be, "But what are 'good' or 'bad' results? Can you make that kind of judgment?  Aren't all results either useful or not?  And isn't it just the user that must decide this in the end?"  This is all valid.  Usefulness IS the value in results.  It's what makes them good or bad.  This is not a case of moral value but utility of the results.  And yes of course it's the user that must decide in the end but, by definition, the user cannot perfectly judge results.  They're searching because they don't have the answer.  Hopefully, while putting pieces together, they can make a more knowledgeable assessment of the results but in some cases the user may just be judging them on whether they LOOK like their good.  So there are limits to how much the user is able to be the final judge.  But there must be a judge otherwise what are we doing by providing search results (or any kind of library resources for that matter)?  There must be some kind of assumption that results can be objectively determined as useful or not based on user input otherwise there's no point in developing a computer system to take such input and spit out results.

The other objection is that the library is not here to make things purposely difficult.  If there is an easier way of doing something, why shouldn't we provide it?  Those against the single search box may describe providing one as 'pandering' but aren't all efforts to make things easier a kind of pandering?  Where's the line beyond which such developments become a negative thing?  And again, this is basically true.  We should be making things easier.  Particularly in this age where putting up barriers may serve only to scare users off.  But there are plenty of cases where simply giving the users what they want, even giving your paying customers what they want is inappropriate.  In education, students consciously want a perfect grade.  We may suppose that what they want in the end is an effective education but if you gave every student the choice between a free A+ and an well-earned B-, the vast majority would choose the former.  I have no doubt about this.  Wouldn't you?  Especially in this increasingly competitive education and job market.  But educators do not simply hand over perfect grades despite this desire because that would defeat the purpose of teaching.  On a similar note, we cannot simply hand over free search results when it's clear that this is not the best way of searching.  This results in more garbage and less quality and, in my opinion, leads either to a misuse and misunderstanding of the information found, or more work on the part of the patron.

What single searching should do when used properly is simply backload the work farther down the line, which may work better in the long run (i.e. the novice user gets an idea of the info available early on which can then inform the search strategy) but unfortunately gives the impression that what pops up first at the top is what they were looking for all along.  A savvy user should recognize that more work is necessary but wouldn't the savvy user be fine with a more advanced search interface to begin with? If they know enough to recognize good and bad results, they should know enough to aim toward good results in the beginning.

I guess my point is that single search box interfaces are necessary but imperfect as we now use them.  Perhaps this is not really an argument with anyone serious about the topic at all.

"Directory of Open Access Books" (DOAB) review

From the press release for the launch of DOAB, the "Directory of Open Access Books" or "DOAB" is:

a discovery service for peer reviewed books published under an Open Access license. DOAB provides a searchable index to the information about these books, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher’s website or repository. 

CONTENT

The site claims to contain "854 academic peer-reviewed books" as of April 26, 2012 but my check found only 841 (by counting the number of titles under each letter in the alphabetical browse by title list).  Perhaps I missed a number or two when adding?  Perhaps there are titles not listed in that browse by list?  Not sure.  Regardless, although this is a relatively small number for a useful collection of ebooks, the Open Access (OA) book 'industry' (if you can call it that) is still new and the resource was only launched two weeks ago so the low number is understandable.

Looking through the browse by publisher list, there are some recognizable publishers (e.g. Taylor & Francis) plus several university presses (e.g. University of Michigan Press).  And there's already a pretty wide subject coverage (pure and applied sciences, arts and humanities, social sciences, etc.).

NAVIGATION

As is common with new resources now, DOAB has a very simple navigation and interface.  The pages are very clean, being mostly white with really no clutter.  There's a Google-like single keyword-search box on the front page (which seems to search all fields except "pages").  This search does not auto-wildcard meaning that it will not find the text string entered as a part of the meta-data.  For example, it did not find a book with "Donation" in the title when searching "donati".  It also includes an advanced search which allow the combination of search boxes with a Boolean connector searching specific fields, plus date range specification.

Some search related odds and ends:

• Not all entries have subject headings which is odd.  The database does include cover images for the books, which is nice (and probably almost mandatory for today's users).
• Search results display include faceted search functionality on the right.
• Subjects (at least in the browse by subject list) are quite limited and rather high level.  This ok with only 800-900 titles but it will be increasingly painful as the directory grows.
• No author browse function.
• Not a target in the SFX Link Resolver yet.  (This is understandable.)

CONCLUSION

This is a good showing for such a new resource.  And it's certainly good for the OA book movement which needs more promotion and supporting resources.  This is made by the makers of the "Directory of Open Access Journals" (or DOAJ) which has done well so far.  Many libraries appreciate the DOAJ data and add the "collection" to their list of accessible ejournals.  Books are a different kettle of fish than journals but it's probably safe to assume a possible similar trajectory for DOAB.  IMHO, I would add this to a small-medium sized library's "collection" of eresources.

What goes around comes around.

/ Listening to today's episode of Spark about proto-versions of today's online and often "2.0" technology:

1. Pirate radio (e.g. "Pump up the Volume") as proto-blogging/file-sharing;
2. Removal of toll booths (e.g. "Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State") as proto-net-neutrality;
3. Prince's song titles (e.g. "U Got The Look") as proto-texting slang;
4. Ham and CB radio (e.g. "Ham Radio's Technical Culture (Inside Technology)" or "Smokey and the Bandit - Special Edition") as proto-social networking tools; and
5. Eighteenth century coffee house communication (e.g. "Flesh and Stone: The Sociology of Richard Sennett") as proto-status-updates and the explosion in Renaissance Europe of letter writing (e.g. "") as proto-information-overload.

This is an interesting concept and one that speaks to me personally.  When faced with many criticisms of modern tools (facebook, Wikipedia, ereaders, etc.) my response often includes something about how what we have now is not completely unique and has connections to things we've done in the past (why and how).

The criticism of facebook and Twitter in the style of "I don't want to know about what you had for lunch and when you go to the bathroom," earns the response "So why do you talk about similar things over coffee with your friends?"  Social communication in person is often (and has often been) trivial and inane.

The criticism of Wikipedia that "Anyone and their uncle can fiddle with an entry at will," is met with "Yes, that's the strength of the tool."  That's why there's a rather extensive entry about my home town when there will probably never be one in a more traditional encyclopedia.  We have often valued socially generated and grounded information over more objective sources.  In studies about information seeking behaviour, we tend to start with our friends and family before going to the library or other potentially authoritative sources.

And I just read a thought-provoking article about how reading digitally may result in lower retention than print reading (I'm not convinced that it's an important point given such early days).  My immediate response is, as the author agrees, the benefits outweigh these possible negatives.  The reasons why print might allow greater retention than digital apply even more to say pre-printing-press material compared to the "sanitized" and "stream-lined" movable type versions.  And, to make a huge generalization, you have to pay for progress with some loss.

[ Listen to the complete broadcast and the full interviews at CBC Spark. ]

We can but we don't want to

Just read an old article about the publishing industry's problem with posting copyrighted text online from 2006 in which quotes Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers as saying that "[Publishers] can't compete with free."  Oh really?

This is the exact opposite of the very argument publishers are currently using to argue that Open Access (OA) can never truly replace the traditional scholarly publishing process since it fails to sustainably provide all the competitive benefits that publishers have been providing for centuries, not to mention all the digital services available now.  If the publishing model that we are using now, i.e. anything in the industry except for OA, provides so much unique value (such as their contributions in editing, managing peer review, filtering, etc.) then how can you argue, at the same time, that a few professors posting longer-than-typical excepts online for free on functionless web pages are substantial competition?

I'm not arguing that we should all have the right to post whatever we want, however much we want.  It's just that the publishers' argument in this case is a little silly.  They don't need to make an argument for why it shouldn't be allowed.  The law already doesn't allow it.  And we all know why the law is there.  (Of course the issue involves the quantity allowed through US fair use which is a little vague but still, the point is that there IS a line that should not be crossed though it may be difficult to find the line.)

What's the big deal with the "Big Deal"?

Right now, in the Canadian academic library world (and beyond to some degree as well), there's an ongoing discussion regarding the value of the Big Deal.  What's the Big Deal?  It's basically bulk purchasing of electronic journals from a specific vendor which saves time, money (per title at least), and workload processing these resources.  The concern is whether this deal is actually such a deal in the end and when does it stop being so.

My opinion about this is that the problem rests not with the vendor or the deal but with both budget stagnation in academic libraries and with our failure to truly evaluate value on resources like ejournal packages.  The former issue seems primarily a problem with the thought on the part of university administration, government agencies and the public that, because "everything is online now", why should we be paying more for information?  We should be paying less, right?  That's not true obviously.  The latter issue comes from the complexity of assigning value to these resources individually by journal title say, or even moreso, as a huge package of thousands or tens of thousands of titles.  There are too many variables (list price, usage, differing usage style by subject discipline, non-transparency of past and future pricing, variable industry pricing, institution size, etc.) to be able to put it all together into one figure that can then be compared to the value figure for other resources/packages or even to be used to signal when (and why) to cancel, acquire, renew or resubscribe later on.

An idea concerning moving library collections from 'ownership' to pure 'access'

Just read through the slides from a 2011 presentation by Colin Koproske entitled "Redefining the academic library: managing the migration to digital information services, part I: planning for transformation and the future of ebooks" and I have to say something:  I am convinced.  I don't know whether it was the slide or just the ideas rolling around in my head finally falling into place, but I think I am sold on patron driven access (PDA) (which was basically what the slides were about).

I had a lot of the usual concerns about PDA:  controlling cost, ensuring a good collection, preventing gaming of the system.  But the one slide about moving from an ownership model to an access model is probably what brought me over to the dark side.  Having read a Rick Anderson article on Scholarly Kitchen a while ago, which was effectively about PDA, the idea of moving from "just in case" to "just in time" has been brewing in my head.  Although I don't agree that librarians are particularly bad at judging future quality (in fact I think we are uniquely qualified, more so than any other professional), the fact of the matter is that there is too much change and uncertainty nowadays to be able to do effectively and sustainably.

You may notice that I actually wrote patron driven "access" instead of acquisition.  Well, I'm not sure I'm sold on the acquisition part.  I mean, if the point of PDA is to provide a resource when demand is there and to not be building a "legacy" collection, why purchase the item?  Perhaps a pattern of patron use does predict future value better than a devoted selector (arguable) but there will be an end to that value.  Even great present patron use can't predict future use far into the future and with the information universe exploding as it is and will be, this will be increasingly true.  If use is required now, then provide access now.

What I'm suggesting is the 'pay per use' model basically.  I have not read much about the effectiveness of this model (more additions to my reading list) but I do see one big straight off:  control of budget.  If you give access to resources to your patrons and are billed per use by them without vetting that use in some way, who knows how much you will be spending per year?  This could be controlled by having an account with the vendor from which fees are withdrawn.  Access is provided (and displayed) when there is sufficient funds in the account and removed when insufficient.  Perhaps, once a certain level of usage of the contents of a package were reached, access would be guaranteed for the rest of the year?  Who knows.

Financials could easily get out of control in this model or at least stay quite unpredictable and difficult to react to (e.g. what to do if your patrons surprise you and use up all the money in the account early in the year?) so some experimenting would have to be done.  The vendors' resources could also be called upon since, because their revenue would be based on usage, they would be motivated to increase usage by your patrons as much as possible.  I am never happy with the idea of injecting advertising into the scholarly environment (ethical considerations here) but the fact is that advertising is already strewn through the information universe and trying to keep companies out of campus seems increasingly futile.  Why not harness their motivation and resources and allow them to sponsor programs, services, staff, etc. on campus and allow them to drum up usage?  Librarians are always bemoaning how hard it is to get the faculty and students to listen to us when we say how useful these expensive resources are...  perhaps we could use some help.

This is just a blast of an idea that I had while eating lunch today, so perhaps I've missed something obviously flawed with my thinking.  Feel free to blast back.

It's simply misconceivable!

I had a bit of a chuckle reading through the List of common misconceptions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions) on Wikipedia the other day.

I recently read something about someone trying to correct something in a Wikipedia entry based on his current research who then had his correction removed and a good finger-wagging explanation of the Wikipedia rules given to him.  Their point is that Wikipedia is not the place for cutting edge fact and that only commonly held and therefore well documented information.  The direct quote was something like "Wikipedia is not about what's true.  Wikipedia is about what's verifiable."  Now I can understand their point (although I'm not sure this is the best strategy especially if they do not let users know this in even a subtle way) but it seems to conflict a little with their having a page listing common misconceptions, doesn't it?  If these are truly common, then they represent the popular opinion and until they become the UNpopular opinion, wouldn't the truth be considered a bit too cutting edge?  I'm afraid that Wikipedia rules cannot reasonably contain both the cake and the eating of this particular cake.

The other odd thing is that many of these "common misconceptions", to my mind, aren't really misconceptions but rather misunderstandings of the words being used.  Take for example, the page's second point under Astronomy:

Black holes, contrary to their common image, do not necessarily suck up all the matter in the vicinity.

It's explained that black holes do have a specific mass and therefore can have less that other stars making them less "sucky" in terms of gravitational pull.  Perhaps they think that most people have this image of black holes just continually sucking in all matter from everywhere regardless of how far away it is.  Perhaps that IS what most people think but the crucial "truthiness" in this hinges around the word "vicinity".  I think the point about black holes (and I am no physicist) is that there IS a vicinity (i.e. the space inside the event horizon) in which black holes suck up all matter.

There's also the fact that "The United States Supreme Court did not actually rule that tomatoes are a vegetable, instead of fruit, in the botanical sense" despite some thinking that it did.  Or that "The word theory in the theory of evolution does not imply mainstream scientific doubt regarding its validity" while certainly many people like to pull that one in anti-evolution arguments.  These are, at base, problems with the public misunderstanding the meanings of words, not the concepts.

This would all be fine if this was it.  I could mentally translate "list of common misconceptions" to "list of common faulty word usage" but for a line that stands out in this list:

"Irregardless" is a word.

And for proof, someone has basically given the fact that it's in the dictionary.  It's used commonly enough to qualify as a word.  I'm not sure I like that idea, that there's a number of times said or people saying it beyond which any given configuration of sounds becomes a word.  In that case "um" has been a word for a long time.  Ok, even granting that, I guess what most people SHOULD say instead of "it's not a word" is that "it shouldn't be a word".  That's what I'm thinking when I hear it used.  "Why are you saying that?  If you stopped for just a second and listened to what you're saying, you'd realize that there's no point in saying 'irregardless'!  So just stop!"  Ok, fine it's a word.  That doesn't mean that it means what you think it means. Please stop saying things like that before some reasonably intelligent lifeform passes over Earth because words like that disqualified us from being labelled 'advanced'.  That and 'orientate'.  /shudder

xkcd's "First Post"

From xkcd's "First Post".

Incoming! As usual.

When challenged to move their institutions forward in this information-intensive age, administrators are generally quick to employ new technologies in pursuit of enhanced service offerings.

The troubling reality though is that the implementation of such technologies is almost always seen as providing desirable opportu­ni­ties to reduce budgets.

True. We seem to be in a fight with technology in the eyes of administartion when we should be seen as more invaluable because of the increases in technology. Fewer academic librarians means less skilled research being done in the university both by faculty and by students. Instructors bemoan the research skills of students and yet deny librarians class time with their students to help them with the problem.

[ Academic Librarians Are under Attack ]

Algorithmic culture is just culture

Interesting Spark interview from Ted Striphas, associate professor in the department of Communication & Culture at Indiana University. (It's only about 16 minutes so go ahead and listen to it.) He's talking about our algorithmic culture and the danger and issues surrounding the use of our technologies that are so often at the foundation of our current cultural activities: recommendation algorithms, search engines, etc. Unfortunately, I think a lot of what he says fall into some typical traps in the fields of technology versus society.

There's the usual fallacy of treating human culture and ability as somehow magical and valuable and resulting in quality always if not always obviously. I get the feeling that Ted and Nora (the interviewer) both think that injecting "the machine" into the cultural process flattens the results, makes it die a little inside (to be a little overly dramatic in my description). There's the assumption that technology is somehow going to control everything, that using these algorithmic tools will keep us from something we don't like. We've always avoided what we don't like and we've always had to face what we don't like because those efforts fail. Technology has ALWAYS limited our use of culture and experience with others. Because of how the printing press spat out the words, how the horse-and-carriage distribution network could reach people, how roads were laid out (due ultimately to limitations of technology and workload) and so on, news could only travel in so many ways to so many people in so many formats.

Practices like SEO (search engine optimization) is seen as somehow changing the authenticity of the results, making things popular which are not REALLY popular. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean. What's the difference between what the numbers say are popular due to usage and what is REALLY popular. Perhaps, if things were different, other patterns of popularity would arise. But that's always been true. What rises to the top has always been biased. We just understand that bias a little better because we are intentionally controlling the tools that these biases are flowing through.

And finally, there seems to be a narrow definition of "culture" being used; as something governed by or enjoyed by a minority. Culture is created and experienced by everyone. It's the average of all our tastes and activities, it's the successful memes that have survived society. Often "high culture" are those aspects of culture that are enjoyed by the minority and/or had been enjoyed by the majority in times past, but culture as a whole is a description of entire social groups. What we're doing is affecting culture. What gets remembered as culture has typically been those parts of culture that have been lucky enough to have been recorded somehow: in print, on records, as oral tradition, etc. But sitting in the middle of present day society, looking around, anyone can see how much more complex culture is while being experienced.

Sure, algorithms are affecting culture more and more, but it's always been the case that non-cultural tools and processes have affect culture. Don't worry about it. Don't run from it. Understand it.

"Day Zero" is bland to do list tool

I heard about "Day Zero" through Lifehacker. It says that "If you've got a list of a few things in your head that you really want to get done 'someday', consider actually writing them down at Day Zero." It claims that this will somehow motivate you.

Now, I'm all for productivity tools, tools to record my goals and my efforts, tools that will help me get done what I want and need to get done. But I'm not sure how this "Day Zero" is supposed to help. Writing your goals down is pretty much all it does. I can do that anywhere. It does allow you to write them all down and gives you a handy list, with tagging and a nice countdown feature but I'm afraid that that won't cut it for me. I already have a tool that will do that and more (RTM). Hell, I could do that with Excel.

But maybe you'll have a different take. Go check it out. Tell me if you see anything more to it than I can.

Just Google It

Just like all librarians, I'm on the fence about Google and other search engines. Very useful - irreplaceable in some situations - but not always used appropriately and certainly not understood well enough to properly judge appropriate use.

I just came across another specific disadvantage of the "just google it" phenomenon. People in institutions with large websites seems to think that it's ok not to organize their site well since you can just site-Google what you want anyway. Even those who are invested in a specific area of an institution think it's just fine to have the primary (pronounced "easiest") access to their pages be through the Google search engine limited to the site's pages.

By itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It DOES provide quick and easy access to what users want without having to find their way through a long and complicated site structure, particularly for complex issues that aren't important enough to warrant front page real estate.

The problem is that it relieves us of the job of having to think about our desired information goal on a broader level. But is this a problem? Thinking is hard. It takes effort. And when we want information yesterday, we don't want to waste time thinking about something only tangentially related to our want/need. Having to think about, say, what KIND of thing is the thing we want to find, or WHY would the institution be providing this information and therefore where would they have made it available, is complicated and requires effort. But I think it's important in almost all situations.

Actually, I think there are only two situations: either it's easy to do this since the answer is obvious, or it's not so obvious and therefore is going to take some time and energy to figure out. The first case is not a problem. Finding information about "Dogs" should be in a book about "Animals" or in the "D" section or in the area related to "Pets". No problem. Find that section/chapter/link/section and go there. Problem solved. However, what about something like "Student Initiatives"? What is that exactly? The searcher themselves may not understand what exactly they are looking for. In fact, that may be WHY they're looking for information in the first place, because they don't know what that phrase really means. And without that information how will they be able to find what they are looking for if (a) the site is not using that phrase exactly, or (b) the phrase is being used in two or more different ways? Spending some time before searching to think about what the topic being searched for actually means, or even just COULD mean, would ensure that the searcher will be able to find the information faster and, when finding it, more quickly identify it as the information being searched for. Mere "phrase recognition" can lead to dead ends or mistakes.

Of course, all this relies on the pile o' information being searched is well organized in the first place, which, I guess, is the intitial stumbling block. This too is hard work and requires a lot of time and effort. This is certainly why it doesn't always get done in anything but those "piles" for which information searching is the primary purpose of the pile (e.g. journal article indexes). Web sites are not usually primarily about find each piece of information they contain. They are usually marketing tools to some degree. Communication of pieces of information chosen by the owners is the focus. But if the owners of this information want it all to be found, not just the pieces they want, then IMHO then need to ensure more finding tools that Google Site Search.

My 2.0 cents.

Science 2.0

In my usual search for all things 2.0, I came across the article "Magic Goggles And Enchanted Maps - Kind Of A Science 2.0 For Museums".  I'm usually looking for interesting uses of "2.0" in writing but this hit was from (and referring to) a site called Science 2.0. From the About Science 2.0® And Scientific Blogging® page, I learned that it's "a place where researchers could dive into direct science outreach and 'be journalists' and make science writing as accurate as they would like and the audience can get information directly from the source, without any editorial or corporate bias." So, in this context, the 2.0 here refers to both interactivity (on the part of content creators and vettors (sp?) as well as readers) and improvement in the way science information is communicated and received.

[ Check out Science 2.0 ]