Early September Links, volume 2

Well, here is the second part, and my list of unread posts in Google Reader is finally back to zero! Now to tackle the work email in-box, where I keep getting automatically generated "mailbox full" notes!

Iris Jastram always writes thoughtful pieces. (Often they are based in her real-life experiences.) She recently posted about her philosophy of librarianship. It is well worth reading, it notes the important role of librarian (especially reference librarian) as generalist. In fact, it makes me think that once upon a time when I was part of a team doing book selection, we made it a point to include one of the support staff who worked the circulation desk (and handled ILL). She brought some of that real-world grounding to our work.

One of the library humor blogs on my list is obnoxious librarian from hades. Its subtitle is : a satirical look at life in a large bureaucracy. One of the more recent posts, while posted as a satire, really pegs the state of e-books and libraries today.

I mentioned here that Abigail Goden is doing a series of "Data Friday" posts which continue this week. The most recent post talks about a book published in the UK (and soon to be published here) about access to web data.

Letters to a Young Librarian has a recent post by a law firm librarian talking about professional development. (This is also falls into my category of "continuous education.") Here is a key "take-away" quote:

It is true that you get out of professional development what you put into it. Anything that you can use to further your career, enhance your skills, or support learning and progress in librarianship counts as professional development.

There were a couple of posts about mobile apps and libraries. First from Bill Drew who casts his headline as either/or between mobile apps and mobile web sites. It turns out that he refers to two separate articles in Computers in Libraries each of which tackles one of the two topics. Based on his comments, the web sites will be easier to produce in the short run. I wonder how long the "apps" portion will be relevant.

Aaron Tay has a fairly long post about mobile friendly databases being offered by libraries. He notes both of the trends talked about by Bill, but focuses on database access as provided by our vendors (i.e. not library created). Because he is a librarian in Singapore, he takes a (literally) more global view than do many other bloggers I read.

Librarians are on strike at the University of Western Ontario. The author (Mita) blogs library issues at New Jack Librarian. She has an interesting philosophical take on information, copyright, the library's role, and how the university should be treating its librarians. (I will confess, while I have heard about the strike, I am not very well informed on the issues...)

Rory Litwin is continuing Library Juice and Library Juice press, but he has returned to school for a PhD, and has started a new blog, Non-Robots and Their World. One of his recent posts is about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has the great title
Feeling and not feeling.

Finally, there are a series of four posts from Eric Hellman (I have mentioned him before). I am going to list them and comment in the order of chronological appearance:

1. The first is on the value of a book. The post includes graphs and some sophisticated economic analysis. I'll probably have to read it a couple more times to really understand it.
2. The second is about his new venture which is the process of raising money to make creative-commons licensed ebook editions of the books ... so that everyone, everywhere can read them.
3. The third reflects on the sense of smell. I have often heard that it is the most powerful of the senses in memory recall. I have certainly experienced that in my life, times when just an odor brings back a very strong, vivid memory. One of my favorite quotes is: "When we smell a book all of these feelings resonate across time and they comfort us."
4. Finally, Eric posted about orphan works and finding the true copyright holder. He noted that the Hathi Trust had proposed posting some orphan works. The Authors Guild then sued them. As part of their prep, the Authors Guild used its membership (and blog readership) to identify many of the authors not found by Hathi Trust. Eric's post is full of links.
   

Links (or not) and the Harper Collins Fiasco

I have not posted much lately. Life has been busy.

My feed aggregator is full of saved links, mostly to the HarperCollins fiasco. For a while I was going to post them all as links, but then the number of links and comments which I saw got completely out of hand.

Part of my reason for posting links here is to have a place for me to be able to find links which I may want to use/see again. Does it work? Well, for the most part. I know I get traffic, even if the commenting is pretty sparse.

So....I'm going to clean out most of the links in my feed aggregator, and post only the most important ones here.

Eric Hellman does some nifty analysis of book use (which he calls "physics of book use"). I have to admit that my calculus and advanced math is rusty enough to not quite get all the implications...And then there is the response from a statistician which he also posted. (Eric is good at clever naming, not the least of which is the name of his blog!)

E-books in libraries

I have posted on some of my concerns about libraries, e-books, digital rights management (and its associated software), and the fact that libraries are now purchasing "access" or licenses, and not items protected by the copyright law and doctrine of "first sale rights." Some of those concerns were framed by the way some libraries are using Netflix.

Tom Peters did a great historical survey on ALA Techsource in a post called E-Book Lending Clubs. (It is very much an irony that it hit the web just a day or two before the HarperCollins thing blew up!)

Infodocket was first on my radar screen to pick up the latest. [It is a new blog from folks with good blogging/library pedigrees.] Their post (It's Always Something) makes some good points.

Eric Hellman gives a good overview of the e-book industry and some of the issues from the publishing perspective. He ends his post with an interesting observation:

Even if the lending models of today turn out to be transitional, they help everyone involved become comfortable with library ebooks. Once the library ebook experience becomes embedded in our everyday lives, readers, publishers, authors and librarians will be able to recognize the novel digital distribution models that benefit everyone.

Maybe the transition is already beginning. But let's hope that the publishers listen to the backlash and do something for libraries rather than to which is what it seems that they are starting to do.

It seems that this issue has now become a huge concern. Here is the story as reported in Library Journal: HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations. You should read the comments.

Joe Atzberger has a succinct post and summary.

Stephen Abram posted about an article on "The Subscription Economy" where he notes some of the positive aspects and draws the analogy to what libraries are doing with serials (which also worries me, even as I weed the collections here at work). What he does not mention are the negative aspects/problems with the subscription model. What do you do when the organization which sold you the subscription goes bankrupt, or in Internet tradition, just disappears leaving only a "404 Page not found" message?

Some of my concerns are also related to what Lorcan Dempsey talks about as the university's curatorial role. In some ways you can substitute "library" for "university." What is our curatorial role, and how can we fill that role when all we have paid for is a license, and not the property rights? I don't know the answer, but I do know that it is an important question to resolve.

David Lee King is asking for input/ideas on the topic. He summarizes things nicely in Let’s Play Rent-A-Book!

Finally, one of my Louisiana colleagues has posted her thoughts about the HarperCollins plan. (Nice post, Emilie!)

Well, it was finally, except that Sarah Houghton-Jan posted more extensively her thoughts. She is quoted in the LJ article cited above. She issues a call to action. For me the most quotable paragraph is this one:

I cannot over-emphasize that we are in trouble my friends. The lack of legislative leadership and advocacy in the last decade has created a situation where libraries have lost the rights to lending and preserving content that we have had for centuries. We have lost the right to buy a piece of content, lend it to as many people as we want consecutively, and then donate or sell that item when it has outlived its usefulness (if, indeed, that ever happens at all).

E-Books and librararies (several takes)

I decided to put this separately from my usual link articles. There are a number of articles/posts which recently hit my desk about e-books, Kindles, and libraries.

First one I saw was Stephen Abram's on Kindles and libraries. He cites a post from the Kindle Review, a blog about Kindles. Here is what that blog says is the answer: "The quick answer would be – No, not really. Not unless Amazon loses its head. Not unless another company starts beating it on the basis of library book support. Not unless there’s a gun put to its head." He notes that it is simply not in Amazon's business plan. Stephen then goes on to suggest that libraries need to not purchase Kindles and encourage patrons to purchase one of the other devices out there. [As a side note, today I had a phone call from a library user who wanted to know how to download library books on her Kindle. I was gentle, told her this story, and sent her on to her local parish library's web site for info on the kinds of e-books she could easily borrow.]

AL Online picked up on Meredith Farkas' and her post about e-books and libraries and her concerns. Meredith notes that she was surprised at how much she liked the Kindle (after using NetBooks and ebrary). It is the lack of a back-lit screen. [I am reading that as more of an endorsement for the technology than for the DRM which comes with the device.] Below are two important points she makes:

And the options that libraries now have for ebooks (in terms of content, interface, interoperability, etc.) are, by and large, piss-poor. ... But the negatives, the uncertainties of where the ebook market is headed, and the current restrictions most ebook vendors have placed on their products often outweigh the benefits.

Here are the bullet points for the other issues she raises in this fairly long piece:

• There are differences between eBooks for individuals and eBooks for libraries to lend
• What about ILL?
• Too many platforms, too little interoperability
• And how do you browse a shelf of eBooks?
• DRM and crazy rules for “lending”
• What do we own and what does that mean?
• Patron driven acquisitions is not a magic bullet

Read the whole thing. It is worth it.

There were two "Christmas present" posts. Sarah Houghton-Jan talks about her love for her Kindle (with reservations) as does Chad Haefele and his new-found love for his Kindle, since he got one for Christmas.

Sarah clearly states that she loves the Kindle as a consumer, but detests it as a librarian. You can also watch her unpack her Kindle. Chad talks more about why he likes it, and defers to Sarah on some points.

Finally, Eric Hellman reviews some of the issues related to book and e-book identification. He attended a recent book industry presentation which shared a study of the use, issues and practice surrounding assignment of ISBNs in the US book industry. He noted that while there is a theoretical policy for assigning numbers to e-books,

Implementation of that policy is all over the map, with little coherence between one company and another in ISBN assignment practice. What's more, he found that the industry is almost unable to communicate with itself due the wide variations in the practical definitions of terms such as "format," "product," "version[,]" and "work."

Eric gives an excellent example of this in the way Barnes & Noble assigned numbers including to some "enhanced" e-books which originally only they were selling. There is much more, and Eric lays out some of the issues for libraries in very clear language. It is an aspect of e-books which I had not previously considered.

First of the Year links

I have been back at work for more than a week, and finally feel like I am getting caught up. Here are some of the things I found of interest since I returned:

First, from one of my new favorite, thoughtful bloggers (along with Walt Crawford, Meredith Farkas, Stephen Abram, and a number of others...) Eric Hellman. To close out the year, he talked about "catastrophic future of libraries" and concluded with the forceful statement:

In 2011, let's build things that change the system dynamics.

He also posted about Bridging the eBook-Library System Divide. His post talks about some of the issues facing libraries with providing ebooks, and still keeping their "brand" alive.

I guess that Meredith and I must have been thinking along the same lines, since the day after I posted about the LITA flap, she added thoughtful comments including reflections on her experience with the ACRL Virtual Conference committee.

Iris Jastram has been posting somewhat less frequently than she once did, however, when she "talks," I always sit up and pay attention. One of her more recent posts was about searching, databases, and how we (or for her, undergraduates) look for information. One of the key quotes: "Search is all about term matching, and terms are often the hardest thing for undergraduates to harness." Two other key quotes/thoughts:

1. Google Scholar is very forgiving of bad searching. It will nearly always give you something, even if you enter “impact of cell phones on globalization” into the search box.
2. Disciplinary databases are not nearly as forgiving of bad searching, so they may be pretty intimidating places to start. Where they excel, however, is in foregrounding those elusive, mysterious, and powerful terms that students need so badly if they’re going to revise their searches and gather more disciplinarily relevant material.

This was driven home to me today when a patron came to the desk to ask for "books for women over 50." How do you find that? They are most often classified with the other books on a more specific topic. What did I do? Well, it is not perfect, but I started by doing a "Power" search with the keyword "women" and the phrase in keyword as "over 50." Now, Library of Congress Subject Headings have some issues, and Sandy Berman was often a vocal critic, but I was able to identify that there is an LC subject heading "Middle aged women -- United States -- Life skills guides." Now, I am not a fan of the heading, but it certainly helped me to identify some items to meet that patron's needs. And, it is all about searching, and finding the right terms.

And then there was the whole Bloglines/Delicious debacle towards the end of last year. Stephen Abram, like me, now reads his RSS feeds in Google Reader. Almost three years ago (in 2007), I tried it, and didn't like it. I even went back, after some conversation, and tried it again. Well, I admit that I did not try to move to the new Bloglines platform, and based on Stephen's experience, I am glad that I didn't. Delicious was dead, then it wasn't. I appreciate Stephen's comments on it and the alternatives.

And a final post from Stephen on change within an organization which refers to a FastCompany post and new book: Ten Questions Every Game Changer Must Answer.

David Lee King is doing a series of posts about how to use current technology to do presentations. It is called: "10 Tips to Do Presentations Like Me." He does not use PowerPoint, but certainly everything he says can be done in PowerPoint. Tip #2 is one that I use for my web presentations, presenter notes. I recommend the whole series (which is not finished yet!).

ALA has a library. It serves as the resource for ALA staff and volunteer leaders, but it often gets questions from outside that sphere. American Libraries has a feed which often includes questions that the Library receives, a recent one was about recommended web sites for libraries.

One of the non-library blogs I follow is called Principled Innovation. Jeff De Cagna posts on ideas to help organizations/associations to deal with change. This is a recent post which is the first of a series and a response to a white paper for the Wisconsin Society for Association Executives.

Now, in my various travels recently I have neither had the full body scan nor pat down. But I have to admit liking these items:

• In November, George Stroumboulopoulos blogged about 4th Ammendment Underwear;
• Here is a link to the official sale site; and
• Finally a t-shirt that says "I got to Second Base with a TSA Screener."

ALA Executive Board member Courtney Young wrote a great post on running for ALA Council. You most likely have until the end of the month to get your petition with 25 signatures in to appear on the ballot this spring.

And in a final moment of randomness, the State of Connecticut has cut all funding for tourism promotion. As a result, they dropped the state's membership in Discover New England. So the new map simply omits Connecticut from the map.....read it here.

Books and E-Books

Whither e-books? (And will there ever be agreement on the spelling?)

This started as a collection of links, which has suddenly grown.

I was reading Publisher's Weekly, when I came across a column by Cory Doctorow which talked about the recent discussion between Macmillan's CEO and Amazon's CEO over the pricing of ebook. One person commented: "This was the best break down of the Amazon vs. MacMillan slap fight that I have come across."

Tom Peters posted earlier today in ALA TechSource about how some Kindle owners (Kindlistas) are using the Amazon ranking system to show displeasure with some of the pricing schemes (which the publishers want...) It is an interesting read.

The same print issue had an article on booksellers finding the balance between print and electronic. It is also worth a read.

EBSCO announced that they are buying NetLibrary from OCLC. There is a good piece and reaction from Eric Hellman. In it he notes: "NetLibrary was a bubble-era dot-com that was the first company to try to make a business of creating, aggregating and selling ebooks." [I swear that somewhere I still have the NetLibrary bag from an ALA conference, Chicago 2000, maybe?] It is a long post, and like most of Eric's, very thoughtfully presented.

Stephen Abram posts the key concepts from a Michael Mace article "Why E-Books Failed in 2000 and What It Means for 2010."

And before I slide over to print, Eric Hellman posted just a couple days ago about the new Overdrive offer in a post called: "Overdrive to Offer Honor System eBook Lending for Libraries." He starts off talking about Newark (NJ) light rail, and segues into the DRM-free books being offered. [Of course, the announcement is timed with the PLA Conference. Oh, how I wish I could be in Portland (OR) for that!]

Finally, on the print side of life, The New York Times has an interesting article called "Text without Context."

#450 - March Links

Here is post #450! Wow, who would have believed that I could be that prolific. This blog started in July 2005, inspired by then-Council colleagues Rochelle Hartman (Tinfoil and Raccoon -- now somewhat dormant) and Jessamyn West (librarian.net).

Here are the links I have stumbled on recently:

• Eric Hellman (one of my new favorites) had a chance to chat with John Sargent of Macmillian about e-book publishing and libraries. He does a great write up, and the comments are also interesting.
• Eric Hellman (again) forced by lack of electricity due to the weekend storm in the Northeast, went to Starbucks, and had some interesting, further thoughts on e-books and their distribution.
• Jason Giffey writes about copyright and the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" in an interesting discussion of copyright and the DCMA on his blog Pattern Recognition.
• A college classmate, Dan Woog, wrote about the Westport [CT] Public Library and the additional services they provided during the recent power outages in the area caused by storms. My friend Maxine Bleiweis (the library director) is featured.
  

Links, again (late posting)

There is an interesting post by Barbara Fister (whose writing I have come to admire) which challenges the current academic model. It is in Library Journal, and certainly deserves a great deal of thought.

The recent storms in the East Coast have certainly challenged people's travel. There is an interesting article on how some folks managed to stay in touch. Parts of it remind me of the stories I hear about post-Katrina, and more recently, post-Gustav, and how library workers stayed in touch with each other.

In the ebook saga (I decided to go away from any pugilistic or other violent metaphor), it seems that the cost of ebooks, and how much the author gets, may soon shift. The Financial Times (a reliable source) has an article on how one publisher is wielding its influence and control of the rights (DRM) to increase the publisher and author share.

Who owns Koha?

Jessamyn points to what users want and a synopsis of the longer article.

Links - Mid February

Here is the scariest news story I have seen lately: FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

Almost as scary is this one about copyright of photographs in Britain. It is a long article, and I admit to not having either completely read it, or to understanding all the implications.

A friend of mine in Boston sent this link to an article praising librarians as "pioneers" in the digital age. (It even mentions Henriette Harriet Avram!) [Thanks to Sue Kamm for the first name correction! 2/26]

I found this brief article on assessment in academic libraries interesting.

This post from a doctoral student in language and literacy at the University of Georgia talks about the current rage for testing in schools and for tying the results of testing to teacher performance judgments. His/her name does not appear on the blog (even though there is a list of publications).

And now a series of "clipped" notes from my blog reader....

Michael Stephens noted in ALA TechSource that he has found a new "tribe" at Educause. I think it is important to have several different circles of friends. Talking only to the same people all the time creates the opportunity for groupthink, which will not lead to real progress.

The indomintable Dorothea Salvo has written a long-ish post about "pre-prints" and open access. (When I need to learn more about open access, it is to Dorothy to whom I turn.)

Current ALA Executive Board (EB) member Courtney Young posted some EB documents about the potential new ways of communicating within ALA.

Chad Haefele (Hidden Peanuts) has an interesting post about e-books, digital rights managment, and electronic publishing.

Sarah Houghton-Jan has a great post on using technology in your library to save money on technology.

A few years ago, I picked up on a blog dealing with technology and innovation for associations Principled Innovation. There is a great post on their blog with five important thoughts/trends for 2010.

There is a new blog in the library world, Quid est veritas? [I know who the author is, but have temporarily forgotten. However, it is in my blog reader now.] There is a great post on "Inputs and Outputs." The concepts of inputs and outputs, which is what we have traditionally measured, is very important as many organizations (like the Institute of Museum of Library Services [IMLS]) start to request outcomes as the measurement for grant services.

Amanda McNeil is a library school student in Boston. She writes a blog called Opinions of a Wolf which is a mix of thoughts on library school and the profession and book reviews. She wrote an interesting post "What public libraries should be."

Kim Leeder, of In the Library with a Lead Pipe, posted a year starting discussion of Learning Commons activities and rumination about the role of the library (in general). It is long but worth reading.

My final set of links is from Stephen Abram. With his recent change in employment, his blog Stephen's Lighthouse has moved. However there are seven posts to which I wish to point:

1. Social Media for Employees -- Rules? which indirectly follows up on some posts of mine. It consolidates some additional suggestions.
2. How many ways are there to visualize data? Visualization of data is something that Stephen pays attention to. I often get some great ideas thanks to his consolidation and re-posting.
3. Web searching skills recommendation is a longer article with comments from Stephen.
4. Florida Libraries Rock talks about the update to the Florida State Library's update of its ROI (Return on Investment) study. The new study shows that investment in libraries (i.e. tax support) returns $8.32 for every dollar invested.
5. 10 Fool-Proof Predictions for the Internet in 2020 reminds us some of the obvious trends.
6. Social Technology and Libraries includes a great chart showing the technologies, Sescription, stage of development, and impact.
7. 8 Things You Need to Know about Collaboration recaps a post on collaboration.
   

January links

I need to read and understand this better, but Char Booth has written an article in Library Journal about data visualization which I just can's seem to get my head around ... yet.

I found a new, interesting blog: Go To Hellman. It was brought to my attention in the discussion about ebooks. Here is the second post. And here is a third one.

The wonderful Jenny Levine wrote a great post about Twitter and policies (oh, and ALA). I am thinking I should find the time to consolidate all that I have learned into a new post.

In a really "library geek" vein, there is a post on ALA Techsource about RDA and FRBR -- which are supposed to replace AACR2. This post has some diagrams which help explain. (The bottom line for the non library geeks is that it should make our catalogs/access systems much more user friendly, and theoretically even better than Amazon or Google!)

And finally in this list, and to bring it back full circle, Ryan Deschamps has written about the future of the library and Seth Godin's comments. Read it here. [I have an issue with the title, it should not be "Neither Libraries Nor Information is Free" but "Neither Libraries Nor Information Are Free." Grammatically, both "libraries" and "information" are plural nouns, and the conjunction compounds the pluralness.]