Ab’s Blog

Two interesting pieces recently came across my aggregator on the topic of the web’s impact on traditional publishing.

The first is an article in the Chronicle, “Book 2.0,” about an experimental book format that allows readers to comment on the original text and the author to respond. The book under discussion, GAM3R 7H30RY by McKenzie Wark, is hosted by the Institute for the Future of the Book. The project description indicates that the book will eventually be published “in print by a conventional press” and that “Our hunch is that a good conversation generated here will result in a better book.” Wark has gotten many comments on his text, ranging from simple copy editing to close examinations of the book’s arguments.

The second piece is a blog post by Malcolm Gladwell called “The Derivative Myth.” The key questions of the post are whether or not blogging is inherently derivative and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Gladwell’s comments follow his participation in a Slate panel on print journalism and resulting conversation (partially via blogs) with Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine and author of the recently-published The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, who took issue with some of Gladwell’s comments at the panel discussion. The whole thing is worth reading partly for its very meta feel.

A short piece on All Things Considered reveals that mother and daughter have very different perspectives on the site, online privacy, and the nature of the web.

Since I am moving on from electronic resource management, I thought it would be a good time to share what I’ve learned over the past six years.

1. The more usage a particular e-journal gets, the greater the chance that the holdings statement will be incorrect.

Corollary: Journals used by faculty/board members on the library’s advisory committee are more likely to have inaccurate holdings than journals used by other library patrons.

Corollary: If the holdings are accurate, the faculty/board member will be looking for a pre-Tasini article by a freelance journalist.

2. As soon as you compliment an industry executive on the high quality of the company’s technical support service, the quality of that service will decline precipitously.

3. The chances that a journal will be cancelled increase in proportion to the time and effort you have spent ensuring that it is configured correctly in your link resolver and/or e-journal management system.

4. Usage reports are available only for those resources whose renewal was never really in question.

5. The product with the most problematic licensing terms is the one must-have database in its subject area.

6. Thorny technical problems occur at 4:45 the Friday before your vacation is supposed to start.

Corollary: Thorny technical problems happen to patrons at the extreme ends of the networking knowledge bell curve.

7. The more time and energy you spend documenting purchasing decisions to demonstrate institutional savings and fiscal responsibility, the more likely that your documentation will be returned to you for additional information and justification.

8. If a journal provider confirms your e-journal holdings prior to March 1, the holdings on March 1 will be exactly the opposite of what you were told.

9. Databases go down 10 minutes prior to an instruction session and 10 minutes after a class assignment is given out.

10. Once an electronic resources librarian, always an electronic resources librarian.

On June 15, I heard Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan give the keynote address at the 2006 SUNYLA conference. (Vaidhyanathan is a professor of communications at NYU; you can read more about him, and hear the correct pronunciation of his name, at his blog, sivacracy.net.) He discussed Google’s Book Search initiative and its implications for libraries, copyright law, and even the future of web searching. He noted that while debate about what Google is doing is often portrayed as two-sided, the situation is more complicated.

While Vaidhyanathan could be described as often on the “copyleft” (my description, not his), he is not supportive of Google’s initiative as far as it involves copyrighted works. For one thing, he is not optimistic that they will win. Google’s case will be heard by a court that is usually favorable to copyright owners–the 2nd Circuit, if I remember correctly. If the case does go Google’s way, Vaidhyanathan believes it is likely that Congress will step in. Will the case eventually have repercussions for web searching in general? Will the effect be the overturning of precedent that allows search engines to display thumbnails and snippets of web pages in their search results?

By way of conclusion, Vaidhyanathan noted that Google’s project is the human genome project of intellectual property, and he believes that there should be a comparable public initiative. The tragedy is that some people think there’s no need for an initiative because Google is already doing it. His hope is that Google will back off the digitization of copyrighted works and instead make a statement about the current state of copyright law.

Links:

• A Risky Gamble with Google by Siva Vaidhyanathan, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, volume 52, issue 15 (subscription required, or look for access via ProQuest, EbscoHost databases, or LexisNexis Academic Universe)
• Is Google Book Search “Fair Use”? by Lawrence Lessig, at YouTube

Bonus: For an interesting take on copyright in the print world, look for the 6/19 New Yorker article, “The Injustice Collector,” about the grandson of James Joyce.