The New Mode of Conference

[Below is a draft of a column that will be coming out shortly in Legal Information Alert. The published version will be well-edited and cleaner. I encourage you all to check that publication out....]

Two weeks ago I attended the 19th annual CALI conference in (beautiful/splendid/amazing) Boulder, Colorado. As conferences go, this one was remarkable for several reasons.
First of all, the venue was fantastic. If you haven’t been to Boulder, add it to your bucket list and move it into the top ten. And if you go to Boulder, even if you have no interest in visiting just for the fun of it academic law libraries, be sure to visit the law school at the University of Colorado.
But more pertinent to this column, there were many surprises. I have been attending CALI conferences for years. When I began attending CALI in about 1992 or 1993, I initially found it to be a disturbing experience. The general topic of the conferences was fairly routine for the early 90’s: books were dead and the world was going paperless. IT attendees tended to look upon librarians with pity, and librarian attendees fell into two camps, either they were revolutionaries who agreed with the prevailing prevailing point of view that libraries were dead, or they were left in the uncomfortable position of having to defend themselves, knowing all the while that their mere attendance at the conference was a tacit admission that things were, at least, changing in mysterious or threatening ways.
As an Associate Dean of library and Information Technology, I attended regularly every year for a few years. But after a while, I grew tired of the rhetoric and attended every other year, and, lately every three years. There were other ways to keep current with technological developments in computer hardware and administrative systems, and none of the rhetoric convinced me that simply by “putting everything on computer” would necessarily make researching or running a law school any better. It always seemed to me that technology should be adapted to appropriate purposes, thereby creating new tools for administration and research, that sometimes, but not necessarily always presumptively replaced old tools. Some tools were destined for complete metamorphosis, or death: print versions of Shepard’s, various indexes, directories, paper filing, bluebook test-taking and admissions tracking to name a few. I remember one member lamenting the near-unanimous of rejection of e-textbooks by 1L’s in a poll after they were part of an experimental class which was given no print casebooks for the entire first year, “Until someone can invent an e-book that has the look and feel of print, students will never accept them!” The fact that the person thought that simply mimicking the look and feel of paper would somehow make the experience better somehow, simply rang hollow. Computerization for it’s own benefit just simply made an existing thing faster. And there were some things that just didn’t need to be done at light-speed.
In those early days, I was also one of the few Mac users. (People accuse me all the time of being a Mac fanboy. Well, I suppose there’s some truth to that. I sure do like Macs.) When I would warn of the impending rise of the Mac, I would usually be dismissed with a sniff.
This year, however, I was very surprised at what I found. First off, the content of the program had generally shifted from the general rhetoric of “death of books,” to “here are some cool things that we can do on a computer.” It was inspiring. The focus was on new products, new capacities and capabilities, completely new tools that do things in ways that we never dreamed of. It was cool. In all fairness, new products and services were always being revealed and talked about at previous conferences, but, in general, the rhetoric and the quality of products tended to focus on their ability to displace old things with new, better ones, simply because they were “automated,” “digital,” or “online.” I only heard a soft-beat of the death of the book drum at the keynote, and, even that one was somewhat apologetic. This changed tenor of the conference for me by allowing me to focus on the neat, new things we can do with technology.
The concept of e-books is no longer how to simply digitize casebooks, but how to use technology to enhance teaching and the learning experience. We learned about fantastic new cloud based products and services like DropBox and Buzzword, we learned about using technology in teaching, about new tools to help build better websites, like Aquila Drupal and about how to build electronic course supplement packages. We also learned about new online products coming from CCH, Westlaw, BNA and Hein that, potentially will make a difference in how we research.
Not only was the tenor of the meeting splendid as a result, there was an amazing new dimensioned that none of us could have dreamed of even a year ago: Twitter. During the whole meeting, there were at least a couple dozen people that were tweeting about every program and activity and nearly every conversation! When you were in a program, you could simultaneously monitor what was happening in every other program. All you needed to do was follow tweets with the hashtag #calicon09, and you found a play by play of the entire program. One time, a speaker got way off the mark with some bizarre ideas about changing law school pedagogy and, during the talk, a debate raged about them. I had left early because my blood had begun to boil and went to a program on cloud computing that was very informative and enjoyable. The tweets confirmed my opinion of the other program.
And then there were the Macs. Roughly thirty percent of the attendees had Mac. Astonishing. The people that didn’t were the ones with new netbooks or ancient albatrosses that nearly looked antique. In an amazing irony, one of the pioneers of use of technology in legal education proudly showed me his new Dell Mini (I think it was), on which he had installed OSX! There were lots of iPhones, too, and lots of talking about and sharing of apps. (MouthOff and Bump, to name two.) The fanboy in me rejoiced!
I felt for the first time that the technological issues that we must face in the future are not a question of “us versus them,” or “brace yourself, you are about to become unemployed,” to, here are some tools and techniques that can really make us better educators, administrators and librarians.
Much information about this year’s program and various CALI resources as well as information about next year’s twentieth CALI annual meeting are available at http://cali.org. I encourage you to check it out.

The Durham Statement

The "Durham Statement" has become a meme. And I can't imagine why. I understand the desire of law faculties to want their scholarship widely disseminated - even freely disseminated - but I can't understand why some have determined that this means that law reviews and law journals should cease being printed altogether.

Law journals and law reviews have long histories in legal academe. The quality of scholarship isn't what it once was, nor is the scholarship as important, but it's still the primary place for law professors and scholars to share their ideas and hash out new understandings of the law and our legal system. I think that the quality and importance has suffered partly because of the proliferation of law journals. Many schools have multiple journals with special interests and this has diluted the importance of scholarship. It's rare today for an article to be rejected altogether for publication. This has lead to a situation in which finding legal scholarship has become somewhat like finding cases: there are just too damn many of them to be of much use.

In the end, ceasing to publish in print the-already-too-many-journals is only going to dilute their importance further for two reasons: First, an online-only journal, no matter how you dress it up, will remain an online-only journal with all the cachet of a blog; and, Second, a trend toward online-only journals will most certainly facilitate the creation of new journals, diluting scholarship further.

The bottom line is this: Part of the value of articles published in these journals is that they are a record of a scholar's ideas and thoughts about a legal issue. The ideas may be inspirational, challenging, enlightening, wrong, controversial, revolutionary, evolutionary, or all of the above and more. But, part of the process of scholarship is committing them to "paper", or some medium in which the author can be held accountable and called to defend them. It doesn't necessarily have to be paper. But it must be in a format that is permanent. To date, nothing in any computer format can even begin to approach anything resembling the permanence of a printed book. Until then, an article published in electronic format only will only ever have the status of a blog or a wiki, neither of which, with all due respect, do not yet command the same respect of the printed word.

What's More I'm Need of Preservation, Primary or Secodary Legal Materials?

I'm inclined to think that secondary materials are in greater danger of disappearing from the Public's access than are primary materials - if only because they are being distributed in ways that keep them out of reach: restrictive licensing agreements; great cost in obtaining access; and, pragmatic obstacles, such as lack of bandwidth or lack of adequate equipment. Since secondary materials are the true keys to unlocking the meaning of primary law, might not the consequences be dire?


-- Richard Leiter

The 200-Title Law Library?

As I was signing invoices the other day, it ocurred to me that if all titles from the Big Three (or four) law publishers end up costing $3000 per year, we won't be able to afford much more than a 200-title law library!

But of course, I'm not sure what is a title anymore....


-- Posted From My iPhone

Getting to the REAL Issues Regarding U Presses Going Digital

On March 25, Inside Higher Education ran an editorial by Scott McLemee titled, "A Change is Gonna Come." McLemee is obviously a bright guy and correctly parses the issues surrounding digital scholarship. He also presents a very balanced discussion of the pros and cons. I encourage everyone in the academy and in libraries to read the piece carefully.

I think that there IS a danger of University Presses becoming blogs. And my fears aren't related to my "luddite" orientation as a library and book-hugger. I am worried about scholars and researchers' ability to conduct research effectively and consistently with reliable authority.

The million dollar question is, Will future (near and far) readers of scholarly works be able to find the materials cited in them?

But the "nearer" term question is will monographs and articles published digitally be vetted as thoroughly as those published in traditional formats? McLemee points out that there is no logical reason that this can't be so. Obviously, modern scholarly journals and books can be subjected to at least as much editorial scrutiny as print versions of the same, and I think that the skeptics, instead of being "luddites" are simply looking for assurances that they will be subject to the same level of scrutiny. So far, those assurances haven't been forthcoming.

There is another issue that McLemee doesn't raise that gives me, as a librarian, the most pause about diving into this revolution with both feet: that is preservation. What guarantees are in place, or that can be put in place that will assure users that the material will remain the same as it was when published? One feature of print materials is that once it is printed and distributed, it is very difficult to change without issuing new editions of the work. (It's annoying enough when publishers make corrections from printing to printing....) When a work is published digitally today, how will a reader in ten years know that it is the same work? (I'm not even raising the question of whether the future reader will even be able to find and read the work born digital today.) I've heard all the arguments that print's no better. It can burn up, get soaked, be mislaid, etc. But so what? We do our best with whatever format we're working with. Digital formats can't give us any better assurances that it will remain more accessible or consistent than print. It's just in a "cooler", "hipper" format. And we have much less experience with digital than we have with print. We know how to care for print, and we know that it we take care of it properly it will last for hundred and hundred of years.

Skeptics aren't luddites, or obstacles to progress at all. We're cautious. We're careful. And I think that there's a chance that early adopters and technophiles will some day thank us.

U of Michigan Biting the Dust (?), Poised to Turn into Blog....?

The Great Lakes IT Report reports that the U of Michigan Press is following the trends and will revamp their publishing operation and expand into "3D animation and video", as well as publish it's scholarship in digital format so it can provide hot links and graphics. The announcement says that it "will be "restructured" to focus primarily on digital monographs, not the printed version."

It seems to me that ceasing publication is quitting publishing, and selling scholarship as pdf's and web pages won't enhance it's prestige, but will dilute it. It also seems odd to brush off concerns about customers who want to "hold something" can simply print them off on their own. Most scholars that I know would rather publish with a publisher who can actually capture the scholarship and sell it as an item. Blogs and hot links still don't have the cache of a printed book.

That's not to say that blogs don't have their place, or that bloggers aren't thinkers. It's just that their material is inherently different. It's a new format that's gaining respect and notoriety all it's own. Witness, Obama has even called on Politico correspondents in his first two press conferences. If that act alone hasn't given bloggers credibility, then nothing has. But does this mean that blogs are equivalent to University Presses?

UM's announcement, I think, is short-sighted. If anything, they should go slow, and start a blog, perhaps, and use it to promote it's catalog.

Fortunately, the announcement doesn't say that it is going to completely cease it's print publishing, but, spokes-people quoted in the article seem to indicate that it is going in that direction. I predict that ten years from now, it will largely be the same as it is now. But with the addition of a digital division; it will have higher overhead and will probably be selling more books.

Finally, I'd like to know how many libraries, or customers, for that matter, actually buy digital books. When I see adverts for e-books, I usually pass them up. What's a library to do with e-books, any way? To me, it seems that delivery of e-books is too personal for libraries to be involved with. I can provide links to the material, or direct patrons to useful titles, but I can't be responsible for how they actually obtain use, or fuss with setting up their equipment or software to guarantee their ability to use it.

If a patron has a Kindle (or the new e-book reader/web-book from Apple that's coming in the summer) how can a library lend it out? There's a missing link in this business model.

I wish the U of Michigan Press well, and hope that they are able to complete their misguided experiment before too many others go down the same road.

OK, a final thought: If a publisher publishes a title in a format that no one can read, have they still published a title? The thing that's neat and tidy about publishing a book is that the end user needs only two things to read it: light and the ability to read. (OK, knit-pickers, they do need access, but that's theoretical....) But look what's required to read an e-book: power, equipment of a particular variety, connection to the internet, software and the ability to make it all work together - plus the ability to read.

What's the Future of Legal Publishing? (To Anonymous)

Ok. Anonymous, here's an attempt to clear up my earlier post on Westlaw and Lexis. I grant you that stock price isn't necessarily an indicator of profitability. But for a company with a virtual monopoly on a very important (critical?) product, with an ever-expanding market, it seems to me that they should be doing better than they are. (Ie., Not raising prices at double the rate of inflation, not complaining about declining sales, etc.)

Let me try to explain my cynicism about their business models:

Here's a couple of facts that I observe about the state of legal bibliography:

1) the director's email listserv is buzzing with talk of canceling print subscriptions to reporters, looseleafs and costly, large treatises;
2) prices of legal materials are rising at about 10% per year, and more;
3) cost for access to the very titles being cancelled in favor of academic subscriptions to online services is substantially less;
4) each company has become publicly held in the past fifteen years;
5) stock has remained virtually unchanged in value since Yahoo! Finance charts report - shouldn't it have been going up?;
6) the quality and quantity of free government and court information are both increasing; and,
7) publishers complain/comment ceaselessly on declining sales of print materials. (They seem to be blind to the fact that their pricing policies on these materials is making them unaffordable. This is probably the biggest reason sales are declining. But that’s another topic....)

Taken altogether, it seems clear that both companies’ present business models are threatened. Their positions with respect to LMA’s and public access contracts are ruthless and even seem desperate.

What is most puzzling to me is that the Big Two/Three legal publishers just can’t seem to adapt to the current climate. Instead of enhancing their valuable assets - secondary materials - they appear to be focusing on primary material (at extravagant prices) as their primary business. Primary material is free information that is in the public domain. All that the publishers can really do to make a product that is more valuable that mere access to primary material is add their intellectual property: digests, case-verification tools, treatises, handbooks, encyclopedias, etc. These tools provide the intellectual structure that overlays the whole field of primary sources and helps practitioners and citizens make sense of it all. But as they see their subscription base decline, they appear to be simply raising the prices to make up for falling revenue.

The BT/Th should be innovating. Offering users something that’s new and useful and that exploits the fantastic catalog of secondary materials that they’ve built over the years. They should be building mobile device/iPhone apps and 2.0-sites that serve up indexes to all their material: Digests, KeyCite and the whole catalog of secondary materials.

In the end, they could easily cease publication of many books and provide cleaner and more useful access to these valuable tools of research. For instance, why do they publish the Digests at all? A mobile/web app can provide better access to digest information than can a print volume. Likewise, a mobile device can provide better indexing to all their materials than can their print indexes.

As their profits temporarily rise, primarily because they are selling less and less at higher and higher prices, they have to adapt or end up in a curious conundrum: they own the most valuable and important assets to legal scholarship and research, but won’t be able to sell them to anyone anymore because their won't be able to afford them.

Then what?

OK, I Give Up, Newspapers ARE Toast - But Important, They Are

It appears that the industry just isn't adapting to the times. First, they failed to compete with Craig's List and lost classified revenue; Second, in response, they laid off staff and let the quality of their product slide; and, Third, many have failed to develop an online format that will connect with their users. The future of the news looks like it will be a combination of Twitter feeds, email notifications, RSS, 2.0-style websites, and mobile-optimized websites. The biggies, have made most of the switches, of course, but clearly the time has come for local rags to develop local online content.

This all can't be that difficult to do, either. And, as Prof Glasser, rightly puts it, the importance of these enterprises are critical to an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy, so I am optimistic that news papers will keep pace and adapt. Just check out news organization iPhone Apps from USA Today and the BBC if you want to see part of the future. The Google News reader for iPhone is another app that is well-executed to feed users news, national, international AND local.

From USA Today: Newspapers as important as libraries!

Here's a delightful quote from Professor Theodore Glasser. The article is about the demise of newspapers:

"We need to view journalism in the same way that we view libraries and public schools, as absolutely essential to any prospering community," says Theodore Glasser, professor of communications at Stanford University.

Prof. Glasser has just become one of my personal heroes. (I've never met the man, but I hope he's up to the task....)

Lexis and West are Losing Money? Oh My!

Weird. I just looked up Reed Elsevier’s and Thomson Reuters’ stock quotes for the recent past. In the case of Thomson, Yahoo! Finance’s charts only go back a couple of years, and in the case of Reed Elsivier they go back much further. If stock is any indication of anything at all, it’s the company’s profitability. And over the long haul, both companies are not doing well at all. The charts show a general decline. In the case of Reed Elsevier, it's about at the same place it was ten or fifteen years ago. Surprising? I think so. How in the world can companies with such great, vital products be loosing money?

Lack of foresight. They failed to create the next generation of information product when they had the means. They’ve stayed loyal to what they know: sell what you’ve got, and keep it that way! Instead of innovating and using the tools at their disposal and distributing their product with the greatest of ease, they have priced themselves and their products out of existence.

As Carl Malmud and others advocate for thorough and free distribution of all public information, and as technology and technologists rise to meet the challenge with elegance and facility, the Big Two (three, if you count Volters Kluwer) are marketing themselves out of existence despite a veritable intellectual gold mine in hand, the main things that make their products special: secondary titles, digests and indexes and compilations of all sorts.

The free public information movement will surely supplant the Big Two/Three’s ability to publish primary materials. But they can’t supplant their ability to publish the secondary materials that help us make sense of it all.

If the Big Two/Three go out of business because of poor business practices, bad judgement and lack of vision, God help us. I’m serious. If scholarship fails, (which is what secondary materials are, after all) then culture fails. When culture fails, so do civilizations.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think that our legal system is mighty important for maintaining order, and even if I think that it can stand with a tweak or two here of there; it’s worth saving and maintaining.

Somehow, the news that Lexis and West (and CCH) were loosing money sent a chill up my spine....

Is Twitter Killing Newspapers?

John C Dvorak keeps marveling at the reactions of newspapers to declining readership: they lay off writers and reporters! It does seem like a weird response to a marketing problem. If people are not reading newspapers as much as they were, making the product better would seem to be the best response.

Here's a thought: I think that people are relying on more immediate services like RSS feeds, Twitter and radio and television for news. Newspapers are useless for this purpose. If newspapers want more readers, they need to provide more than news, and more than Twitter can give them: local perspectives and meaningful content. Publishing more fiction, perhaps, or more practical news about local issues. Newspapers should have opinions and should entertain, inform and be forums for local discussion. Heck, they should even have their own Twitter and Momentile feeds.

The Beginning of the Middle

It occurs to me that reality has finally come to Emerald City. (The here and now.) I think that Lexis and Westlaw have actually finally become the extensions of treatises. Think about it: The Great Treatises, Wright & Miller, Wigmore, Thompson on Property, etc., are no longer affordable case-finding tools. Which actually was their original purpose, by the way. The treatises themselves represent the intellectual output of the author while the supplements are dated and outrageously expensive. The user is well-served by relying on Wexis for updating, not pocket parts!

Law books aren't dead: at least for now, their supplementation is!

Welcome Back to the Real World

It occurs to me that the future is finally here. At last week's AALS meeting, there was nary a word about "the future of libraries"! All library programs, meetings and discussions were actually about managing libraries, studying legal information and striving to improve services and collections. It was inspiring. I just hope that we librarians have gotten over our infatuation with speculating about how technology will impact us (which is nonsense, because no amount of speculation will change it's impact - it's a train going forward and we simply need to adopt it, adapt it and use it, as we've always done).

It's time to get back to business and work on developing theories and practices that help us cope with shrinking resources. The expectation is that we will continue to improve collection growth and development with less money. This means we have to be clever and knowledgeable about what it is we are collecting. I think that in many ways, we've wasted a lot of time in the last twenty years trying to predict a future, instead of studying the present.

As a result we've fallen behind the curve and are not well-equipped to deal with the future that none of us predicted: Publishers who no longer consider us partners in providing legal information to lawyers, students and the public, but who see us as consumers. Legal publishers are not trying to please users of legal information by providing quality access to material, they are trying to please share-holders. That means that the only thing worth producing is what will generate the greatest profit. This has fundamentally shifted the paradigm. Books, databases, reporters, online services, etc., are now all widgets.

The encouraging thing is that no matter what legal publishers do, legal information will still exist. What we law librarians now need to focus on is to find ways to continue to provide it to our patrons - without the help of publishers, if they choose to price those materials out of our libraries.

"Hook 'm Horns" About to Take on New Meaning: Ars Tech reports on UT's Attempt to hook students on eTextbooks

Publishers are a determined lot, I'll give them that. The whole concept of eTextbooks is stupid, that's why no one wants them. I mean, who in their right mind would pay $40 for a text book on, say, chemistry, that you can't resell or keep for later reference? Or that you can't print from - or that you can only print ten pages from? Or only open fifty times....? From the consumers POV it's stupid and costly (think of it as a highly restrictive lease with onerous DRM built in), but from the publishers POV it's a gold mine because it kills the market in used books. Look for kick-backs and incentives to encourage schools to require adoption of eTextbooks.... There will be lots of ridiculous arguments in support of eTextbooks, including the fact that they're "green." (Useless, but environmentally friendly....)

AALL "Blawg" Gets It Right - Mostly

While anyone can look back through writings of various technology naysayers and cautionary pundits of the past (including yours truly) and find warnings about how the rapid (and thoughtless, apparently) wholesale adoption of technology for publication of legal information, it's turning out to be much more complicated than that.

Simply taking snapshots of Agency websites won't capture the important information that we're loosing. In fact, it captures more useless stuff than valuable. After all, who needs to know how, say, the Immigration Office coded their homepage? The important stuff is what's at the other end of the links, the data. Knowing that a link to a report was present in an agency page isn't as important as the report itself. If that only exists as an html or other form of e-document and it's wiped out, who cares about the link?

As I've said a zillion times before, all important government information should be in e-format only as a secondary, back-up format. The primary format of everything that's important should be in print.

All e-formats, by their natures are ephemeral. Until that conundrum is solved, "preservation of electronic material" is an oxymoron.

Amazon to Become "Content Provider"

If you listen to no other podcast and are interested in what's happening in the world of hi-tech, it should be John C Dvorak's "Tech 5". Subtitled, "The most important five minutes of your day," Dvorak covers all the latest tech trends with economy and wit. Occasionally, he even makes brilliant observations:

The September episode carries mention of a story circulating that day in which it is announced that Amazon was soon to become a "content provider." Dvorak makes the observation that that's precisely what Amazon is! People go to the website, look for music, books, whatever, and then Amazon packs the stuff up and sends it to the customers. Isn't that providing content?

Sheesh. Good point.

NY Times Article on Otlet's Web: What the WWW would be without computers....

This is a fascinating article about the WWW and it's role as an information retrieval tool, IF the entire infrastructure were analog. No computers would mean mountains of paper storage facilities and archives. Amazing.

OLPC XO-2 - At Last, A All-round Functional PC?

This is a way cool new PC concept. The size of a large hardback book, but a quarter of the width; two touch-sensitive, haptic-enhanced screens that can function as a key board and a monitor, when opened like a book, like two screens, when laid out flat like two touch screen tablets. What more can you ask for? And for a target price of $75?! Sheesh.

Brewster Kahle: The Best Part of the e-Library is....

Brewster Kahle, self-described internet librarian and all-around technological gadfly, talked excitedly on TWiT this week about one of the Internet Archives great projects: a book mobile that is connected to the net and is fitted out with a high speed printer-binder so the book mobile can roll around the country side printing out books on demand.

Hmmm. Digital library meets the real world.

This Week In Tech

Love him or hate him, Brewster Kahle, found of the Internet Archive, is the guest on the fabulous podcast, TWIT, This Week In Tech. Leo Laporte, Denise Howell (This Week in Law), and John C Dvorak interview Brewster about his projects. It's a fascinating interview.

If you haven't heard of it before, the podcast is an amazing source of information about what's happening in the technology world, and it's very entertaining. The best thing about the podcast is that Laport and Dvorak are techno-celebrities in their own rights with access to all of the industries leaders. They've had Larry Lessig, Steve Wozniak, Dave Winer and many others on the show from time to time.

The show is recorded live on Sunday afternoons, you can actually watch via a live feed at http://twitlive.tv/, and the podcast, available direct from the twit site, iTunes, or any podcast aggregator, is usually up by midday on Mondays. Its a very worthwhile hour for any one interested in current events and developments in the world of tech.

Breaking Through to the Other Side

For years now, much of library conversations have been about books vs. online sources. I've always rejected the notion that we need to make choices between the two formats. There's no war going on, and I think that the "death of the book" pundits always understate the value of print, at the expense of some fundamental values that libraries possess, vis a vis collecting, sorting and storing information for researchers and scholars.

Well, it occurred to me this morning that the whole debate is nonsense. Fights over format are purely economic and commercial. What our job is, as librarians, is to understand and organize the bibliography of law - regardless of format. Whoopty-doo, some firm or developer is developing a really cool website or search engine. Does that mean that books are dead or dying? Who cares?! It merely means that we have yet another neat tool for research, and the law has found yet another neat place to dwell.

And so it goes.

PARC Developing "Erasable" Printer Paper!

In a bizarre twist of I-don't-know-what, PC Magazine reports that PARC is working on developing reusable printer/copier paper. The idea is that most print jobs are for temporary purposes, such as printing emails, after which they are discarded. This paper, which is light-activated, fades after about a day and then can be re-used up to 100 times. Robert Scobel even has a Qik video of it: http://qik.com/video/66798

The implication for libraries? Heck, simply print out newspapers or articles on demand and have patrons return the paper to the desk.... Who knows?

4DigitalBooks Makes Book Scanning Look Fun and Easy!

Gizmodo reported about a cool hands-free book scanner from Swiss company, 4DigitalBooks. The new machine, the DL 3000 will scan 3000 pages an hour with no human innovation to mess things up. Sweet. And it only costs $250,000, according to Giz.... So don't look for it in your local library any time soon. Read all about it on the company's website:

http://www.4digitalbooks.com/

"EDUCATING LAWYERS" (PARTIAL REVIEW)

I'm just starting to read a fascinating book, "Educating Lawyers," by Sullivan, Colby, Wenger, Bond and Shulman. It's a book about legal education (obviously) published in conjunction with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. I'm going to be commenting on it from time time as I read through it looking for information on how legal research factors into the authors' view of legal education as a skill.

Two immediate reactions jump out: First, there is no entry in the index for legal research. But there are several for legal writing. Why is this? Are writing instructors more vocal than librarians, who clearly have the ultimate responsibility, not to mention the expertise, for training law students in the techniques and theories of legal research? If this is so, this clearly indicates that librarians have dropped an important ball. Or is it that research is much more intangible than writing skills which produces something tangible, such as a document, and is therefore overlooked? In this case, librarians have dropped the ball in approaching the topic of legal research as a substantive course of study. I think that it's the latter.

Research is a skill that depends on intimate knowledge of how legal information works (where it comes from and where it goes and how), much more than a study of how to use different tools of legal bibliography.

Second, there is a very curious and surprising sentence in the Introduction, on page 6, in the third line of that page, "Students taught from Langdell's case books were being introduced by their professors to legal research, much as a laboratory or seminar professor in the arts and sciences of those days would have led students to grasp the principles organizing the particular domain..... Through this new procedure, Langdell updated a central tradition of classical jurisprudence: American law was now to be analyzed by academic specialists and criticized in the light of general ideas and principles." This is a very insightful observation. But it presumes the existence and respect of secondary sources and a complex system of organizing case law. As students are introduced to legal principles through the study of cases, treatises and cross-referencing systems aid the student and lawyer to get to the materials needed to answer specific research questions.

But here is where the book gets interesting. The first full paragraph contains this gem: "In the first place, up-to-date legal scholarship was to turn the jumble of court decisions into synthetic overviews or treatises that could organize and explain various areas of the law. Then the school would train future lawyers the way scientists are trained, teaching them to do legal research amid actual cases in the library...." This is a very key observation. Just as Kent, Bacon and even the writers of the classic encyclopedias and the restatements saw their role as attempts to simplify and synthesize the rules of law that were buried amid a morass of ambiguous and sometimes contradictory case law, all treatises and secondary materials' primary importance is in their ability synthesis and clearly state what are the rules of law. (Royalties and ego stroking notwithstanding.)

This is a key element of what legal research instructors must get across to our students: we must educate them to understand that treatises aren't merely old-fashioned legacies of the past; they are valuable tools that help skilled researchers get to the heart of the matter.

In light of the rise of online services and their ability to bring researchers into direct access to primary materials, this is a very interesting observation indeed. If you cut out the middle man, ie, the treatise writer/scholar who produces secondary material, efficiency in researching will not only decline (to the online services great benefit, because researchers will spend more time online trying to make heads or tails out of case law), but it may lead to the sort of crisis in our legal system such as Kent warned about in his commentaries, volume one, page 441-442 (1826): "The evils resulting from an indigestible heap of laws, and legal authorities, are great and manifest. They destroy the certainty of the law, and promote litigation, delay and subtilty [sic]."

Online services' great virtue is that they bring researchers face to face with primary sources. Online services greatest curse is that it brings researchers face to face with primary sources, without mediation. This is a very dangerous thing, indeed.

Where Were the Lawyers When....?

People are up in arms about the big air tanker contract going to Airbus (a foreign company). Where were the protesters when foreign nationals took over the publication of US laws? Good grief, West, Lexis, CCH, Aspen, Matthew-Bender, RIA, Lawyer's Co-Op are all now owned by Canadian, British or Dutch companies. That's got to amount to nearly 90% of all commercial legal materials. And now they're squeezing us for every penny we own, and most of that revenue is flowing outside the US. Isn't that something to be protested?

There were protestations, to be sure. But compared to the uproar about the air tankers, narry a peep!

Time for New Classification System?

The character of legal information is changing in the fact that the breadth of what qualifies as legal information is changing. Just as librarians have struggled in the past with incorporating new formats into existing collections and classification schemes, we need now to be creative in figuring out how to capture, preserve and classify new mercurial formats such as podcasts, blogs and twitters.... The adjective "mercurial" only describes a fraction of the challenge....

Truth is Sometimes Stranger than Fiction

I heard about this on TWiT a couple of weeks ago and I've been telling people about it since then. No one believes that it can be real. Well, it is: Google is investigating a service that serves up broadband wireless by attaching access points to balloons (yes, balloons) and then floating them into the atmosphere where the rise until they pop and then parachute back to earth where lucky finders can redeem them for 50-100 dollars a pop. Sound bizarre? Check out this video reported by Gizmodo....

http://gizmodo.com/358940/google-may-buy-a-balloon-company-to-build-huge-wireless-networks

What's an "Inforcrat"?

I just returned from a trip to Washington, DC. I was equipped with my iPod Touch and my MacBook Pro - hey I'm fully connected - and ready for anything. But you know what? I couldn't use either device for email of web-browsing anywhere in two airports (Omaha and National), the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Starbucks and Georgetown University School of Law! Why? I don't have subscriptions to the "pay as you go wi-fi" at the airports, hotel or Starbucks and I'm locked out of the Georgetown network because I'm a visitor. In the course of a stimulating visit in DC in which we discussed the future of law libraries, it occurred to me that if the future is becoming digital, then who will have access to digital information?

Well, the answer is becoming more and more, "The people who pay and the people who are somehow or other on the inside track." What are the ramifications for our democracy? More and more, it may turn out that the "haves" are becoming the "infocrats", if that's a word. How will libraries be able to maintain their roles as custodians of the culture if they can only provide access to information to those who have Kindles, iPhones, Blackberrys or the like? Isn't our challenge to maintain free unbridled access to public information in the face of the digital age?

Hmmmm.

Do Publishers Read Newspapers?

It seems to me that law publishers - of all people - should be aware of the funding crisis in (public) academe. I'm not sure that any law libraries or law schools are getting funding increases, so how do they get off raising costs at all? We, here at the University of Nebraska haven't received a budget increase in eight years. But our vendors are all increasing prices five to ten percent! How do they expect us to afford the increases, much less purchase new products like MOML, MOML Trials, etc....

Ken Svengalis to Appear on first Episode of the "The Law Librarian"

I am going to experiment with a call-in internet radio show on Blog Talk Radio. Brian Striman will co-host with me on May 2 during which we will interview Ken and discuss the challenge of managing libraries in the face of shrinking public funding and out of hand inflation from information providers. The show will be one hour on Friday afternoon and will accept call-ins from listeners as well as chat and Twitter comments.

More information as it develops.

Internet and Legislative History

Legislative history is, essentially, whatever sources you can find that help reveal the intent of the legislative body in it's conduct, usually passing legislation. But the principle also applies to actions of the executive branch, and, therefore, includes hearings, speeches, correspondence, reports (commissioned or otherwise), and whatever else a resourceful researcher can uncover or discover.

Today, blogs, webpages and email will qualify as sources of legislative history. And there's a lot of it. I think that this turns the whole idea of understanding teaching of legal research on it's head: it's not about the sources or knowing what they are, it's understanding how information gets from one place to another. Where do legislative ideas come from? Where do they go? How do they get there?

Think Using Books is Easy?

Click this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pyjRj3UMRM

and pity the poor early adopters.....

'Kneed' Extra Power to Keep You Mobile Device Up and Running?

Gizmodo reports on a device created by researchers at the University of Michigan that harvests the energy of the knee to power cell phones or other handheld devices. Great news for people who have chronically dead phones: They just need to be convinced to get up and walk around....

"Digital Collections" – An Oxymoron?

It occurred to me recently that the term, "digital collection" may well be an oxymoron. When libraries 'purchase' a digital collection, it is usually a license, not a purchase at all. How can libraries collect licenses? When a publisher decides to drop a file or database from an online service, what is a library to do about it? We can insist on paying less for the service, but that's about it. Libraries are the repositories of civilization, but if the record of our civilization is all digital and we libraries try to collect it, we are left with nothing - ultimately. What do we own? A file folder filled with contracts.

An example of this recently rocked the law library world when suddenly, without warning, it appeared that Lexis dropped Tax Notes from their service. This has happened with other services. Contract issues between information providers and Lexis or Westlaw have affected the services available to Lexis and Westlaw subscribers. For example, if you don't subscribe to various BNA titles, either in print or electronically, you can't get access to them through Lexis or Westlaw. So, in this modern age, a library charged with collecting, preserving and making available to researchers valuable information (including historical information) can no longer guarantee that what it has 'collected' is still in its collection.

So what are we collecting? Information or information about information?

Oy Yoi Yoi! Bezos Declares Himself the New Gutenberg!

OK. Who doesn't want to be the Leonardo, Gutenberg or Edison of his day? But do you get there by declaring it to be so? Or do you wait around for posterity to declare that you're special? It seems to me that humility is an important aspect of greatness. At least in the present. Edison may have been a keen self-promoter, but history proved him correct in whatever he may have thought about his accomplishments. Heck. Did he need to brag about the lightbulb? His invention was destined to place him the history books, because it worked.

The Amazon Kindle hasn't even been released yet, and he's already got Newsweek quoting him as saying that he's going to improve the book, the way he "improved" the bookstore. Good grief.

First of all, is Amazon.com an improvement over Borders, Tattered Covers or Barnes and Noble? It may be an easy way to shop while you're at work, but I'm not sure that it's an improvement on wandering the stacks of Tattered Covers or Strand bookstores.

Second, how do you improve on a book? By making it digital? How does that improve a technology that's been around before Gutenberg? Think about it. The old-fashioned book works every time, requires no power source and is simple to use. (I've never had a patron ask for help using a book! The most ignorant patron in the world can figure out how to lift a cover....) They can be dropped and work with light. Anything digital is going to rely on a myriad number of associated technologies for them to operate. And if they're not all working in harmony. Who knows what kind of kind technological "adventures" are in store? What's more, will a Kindle be guaranteed to work in 200 years? My copy Bushrod Washington's biography of George Washington still works as well today as it did when published nearly 200 years ago.

Call me a cynic, but I just don't yet buy Jeff Bezos as the new Gutenberg. I'm sure it will sell some books. But it's not going to make me toss any of my prized books any time soon. It's a gimmick, Jeff. Not a revolution.

Of course, I'd sure love to have one....

Whole New Meaning to "Ripping Books"?

Gizmodo reports that Atiz Innovation Co., Ltd., a leading manufacturer of book digitization hardware and software, has announced the development of "BookSnap", a personal book scanner that allows the user to digitize, "rip," her own books. The Atiz website, http://www.atiz.com/, declares, on it's home page, that "It's not a scanner. It's a book ripper." It also declares that it allows the user to transform books into PDF's at 500 pages per hour. Assuming that you can turn the pages that fast, that means that you can convert your copy of "No Country for Old Men" into a digital book in about a half-hour.

The website is silent on the platform on which their software runs, or what kinds o ebook readers that the resulting books can be displayed. Since BookSnap converts books into PDF's, we know that books ripped in this way can be read on your computer or any device that will handle PDF's.

Of "On Demand Publishing" and "Over Publishing"

TradingMarkets.com posted this interesting article which highlights Espresso, the on-demand book publishing machine that was announced recently. The ironies are frightening. Kinko's can become a bookstore, bookstores can become publishers and libraries faux bookstores. Publishers can make more money by licensing all these activities and selling direct to consumers. Ironic, isn't it? Amazon is the one major player that would be taken out of the market by this scenario....

The Ideal Book

This past weekend, I attended a meeting of the Mid America Association of Law Libraries, where Rivkah Sass was the keynote speaker. Wow! If you ever get a chance to hear her speak about change, don't miss it.

But she got me thinking about an old idea I've had about the perfect blending of old and new technology. You see, many people tend to see the coming "revolution" as some sort of an all or nothing thing: you are digital and like everything to be on computer, or you're a book person, who disdains computers and wants everything in print. That's dumb in my opinion. Who declared war? There's no battle going on, there's simply life, lived in reality.

We need to regularly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various technologies and formats and adopt or collect those that work, and drop those that don't. But sometimes, hybrids make most sense. Consider this: ALR, CJS or things like annotated codes are fine research tools, but their indexes suck. What if instead of an index, there was a volume that was really a solid state computer with it's flash memory stuffed with indexing information? Such a device could be cheaply made and easily updated either wirelessly or with little flash upgrades. It could have a BW touch screen that allowed you to search the text of the treatise or encyclopedia in full text and provide lists of citations. You could even build a little thermal printer in the top that would print lists of cites of a roll of paper like a cash register receipt. End of indexes, without killing the book. Such a device would cost about fifty to one hundred bucks to manufacture and next to nothing to maintain. At today's costs, such a device could added into the cost of maintaining the subscription and hardly be noticed.

The Real "Free" Library?

Brewster Kahle, creator of the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine is one of the is apparently one of the masterminds behind the UNESCO digital library initiative reported below. Way to go, Brewster! The only question remains: will anyone be content reading books online?

I once read "Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan" on a Palm Pilot (in full color, I should add), just to say I did it. Once was enough for me....

Competition b/t "Free" Digital Online Libraries Heats Up

This interesting article over at ZDNet points out a little known issue facing the "one world, one library – for free" idealists. Google and Microsoft's initiative for the online libraries, are a pretty good deal for the libraries whose materials they scan: it's free! However, the agreement limits the availability to their own services. OCA's digital initiative, on the other hand, costs libraries about $30 per book to scan, but without limitations.... Hmm, free, or not to free....

Apple, Intel and Google Aiding in the World Digital Library Initiative

According to AppleInsider.com, Apple is a major supporter of the World Digital Library, reported below. What's more, it apparently has a name after all....

Looks Like Google's Got Competition....

UNESCO, the Library of Congress, Bibliotheque Nationale, National Library of Brazil, Egypt's Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Russia and Russian State Library have teamed up to an create online global library. James Billington, Librarian of Congress, has been instrumental in the creation of the digital library that appears to be, as yet unnamed.

Gizmodo: New Sony Reader

Gizmodo reports that pictures of the new Sony E-Book reader have been leaked. Apparently the device is much improved, but asks the critical question: will a new and improved dumb device actually make it better?

It has always seemed to me that the promise of e-books is that the books will be more easily distributed and widely available. But so far, e-book vendors' strategies have gone contrary to this promise: First, e-books are expensive; and, second the devices themselves don't work with all computers (most don't work with Macs, for example). Each device also has insisted on using it's own proprietary software, in an apparent attempt to steer customers to stick with their platform, thus limiting the choices of consumers of e-books.

Now, with Google and Amazon getting into the market, consumers are stuck in a position of having to make arbitrary decisions between several different hardware and software platforms. And given the cost of hardware and software, the decision is essentially a lifelong one.

It's almost analogous to Border's or Barnes and Noble refusing to sell all their books in English, but arbitrarily selling them in various languages and codes.... I'm not sure the e-book is going to be ready for prime time, any time soon....

Google eBooks?

C|Net News.com reports that Google is about to enter the eBook market.  The Google Book Search of a few years ago, apparently taught them a thing or two about business possibilities and now they are exploring ways to spruce up their book offerings and sell them to viewers.  There's also a rumor that they are looking to develop a new device on which customers will be able to read the books they buy online.  There are two things that I can guarantee:  There will be some sort of digital restriction on usage (say you can read the book three times then it locks up, or you have three months to read it before it locks up), and they will probably develop their own proprietary software - because Sony's or Amazon's won't be good enough and, of course, they're just looking out for the consumer.....  Oy vey, here we go again.

Blogged with Flock

Amazon to the Rescue!

Ever wonder about why eBooks aren't taking off? Well, it's because Amazon hasn't been involved in the marketing of this fabulous, tree-saving, shelf-space-saving tool of the future! And everyone knows that the future is all about digital, right?

And if that exciting announcement in itself isn't enough, get ready for the BIG news: The rumors are that the Amazon eBook will have proprietary software! Nothing that's been done before is good enough for their new machine, so it's great news that users who are already "hooked" on eBooks will have to download new software. (This awesome twist is logical from a company who has been hauling in the sales with their incredible "Unbox" video service.) What genius.

But this article's punch line is the hint that Google is also looking to get into the market.

Incredible. In case you don't pick up on the sarcasm, I'm appalled that Amazon is so thick as to attempt more proprietary software. Their "Unbox" service is so illogical that it will probably win a Darwin award before too long. Think about it: They sell iPods. iPods have sold about 100 million so far. Huge market. So they decide to get into the video market and create a service that doesn't run on iPods. Makes sense to me.

Whatever Amazon calls their eBook, it will not succeed for the simple reason that they are working at odds with their customers. Rule number one of good marketing is to not confuse your customers. But Amazon's smarter than we are, right?

Books On Demand? The Espresso Book Machine

One may ask if this is an example of computers replacing books, or of books dominating technology as the format of choice for literature....

The Columbia (SC) Free Times reports that a company called On Demand Books has developed something called the "Espresso Book Machine," a device that is capable of printing "15-20 paperbacks in an hour – in any language and with a four-color cover." The machine is expected to sell for $100,000 each. According to the article, NY Public Library has already installed one in their Science, Industry and Business Library.

"Paper is a Drag"

Please read Bob Berring's article in the recent issue of The Green Bag. In it he raises some critical issues that are facing the world of legal information. As governments of all stripes, municipal, state, county, federal, make the "inevitable" switch from print to online publication of their laws, we're finding that the law is getting lost; the old law, that is. Obviously, the governments are concerned with publishing their current laws and regulations, but they are not doing a good job of preserving old versions, and history is disappearing into the vapor.

The interesting issue in all this is that there is a very simple solution to this disappearing law: print it as the version of record, and allow the web version to serve as prima facia evidence of what the current version of the laws are.

Let's face it. The web is ephemera. Did anyone really envision it as a substitute for hard, cold reality? The web is the web, and it will never be anchored in a way that is as permanent and reliable of a record of the past as a printed version of the laws. The simple statement that "paper is a drag" (whatever that means) is not enough of a reason to ditch print forever. Particularly when the stakes are too high.

OK, It's Been A Long Time, Hasn't It?

What can I say? It's difficult to maintain a blog, and I got bored. But I'm back and hope to maintain this discussion regularly from here on out.

Delicious Monster? In a Library?

It's true, a company called "Delicious Monster," http://www.delicious-monster.com/, has developed a very cool, tool. This is a personal library management software application. With the software you can catalog your collection of books, CD's, DVD's, etc., to your heart's content. Been there, done that, right? Not exactly. Everything that I'm aware of for the consumer market requires you to actually catalog your materials. Some may even allow you to search ISBN numbers for information on Amazon, or some other database. Yuk!

The beauty of this product, though, is that you can use your iSight camera to read bar codes! And it works. You simply hold up your CD's or book's barcode in front of the iSight camera and, in about 2 seconds, it's searched Amazon and added the title to your collection - complete with cover art.

You can set up borrowers for your library, search it with Spotlight - you've essentially got a personal library automation tool with a barcode scanner - for $30!

Way cool. Go Monster!

Virtual Reality Coming to Libraries - For Real?

I refer you to an interesting article in the June 2006 (23:6) issue of Information Today, "Gaming: The Next Hot Technology for Libraries?" The article made me think of a news item I once wrote of in "Law Library Hi-Tech," in AALL Newsletter (23:3, p 597, 1991). I've reproduced the article, to the left. (Obviously.)

Lord Thomson, of the West Group/Gale Group Empire, Dies at 82

A fascinating article about the chief architect of the transformation of legal publishing in our time. Read it and weep. Do you think that all the West folks at AALL this year will be wearing black; black arm bands, or something?

What's Old is New....?

Andrew Sullivan makes an intersting point about new technology and newspapers: what was once ephemeral is becoming more discoverable and "permanent." While I don't share his confidence that the new technology will provide a permanent place for old materials, a point that he almost raises is that columnists have always had a certain luxury of anonymity of time. After all, unless someone decides to compile the columns, or the columnist decides to write a book, or become notorius through some means, no one ever goes back and reads opinions of columnists!

The new technology provides more and more access to "newsy" stuff. Writers must now pay more attention to what they write - the future may actually hold them accountable....

An interesting column, and well worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

"Here’s one simple example of what I mean. A decade or so ago I remember calling up the sub-editors of this paper in the dead of night worrying about an error I thought I might have made in a column. The breezy cockney voice on the other end of the phone reassured me: “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s fish and chips now, mate.”"

(Little) Big Brother IS Watching Us?

The following will be published in an upcoming "Database Report" column in Legal Information Alert:

Welcome to 2006. The NSA is collecting our phone records to protect us from terrorists and now it seems that Lexis (for one) is monitoring our research habits in order to protect them from inappropriate usage.
A few days ago I received a phone message from a person in Lexis's "Contract Compliance" office. Apparently, one of our faculty's passwords was flagged for "unusual" activity. I asked the faculty member about his usage of Lexis and he blinked at me a few times and said that he'd been doing nothing out of the ordinary and hadn't given his password to anyone. He said that he regularly reads the New York Times on Lexis (don't ask me why) and that he regularly scans certainly portions of the US Code online, too.
When I returned the called to the "compliance office," I was told that somehow this professor's account had been flagged as having "unusual activity." I told him what the faculty member had said, to which the Lexis officer replied, "OK, that seems to be consistent with why that password flagged." Apparently, simply reading the NYT on Lexis everyday is enough to flag the password as having "unusual" or suspicious activity. He noted that my report was consistent with the report he had received about the activity on the account. He said, though, that his report only went back about three months.
When we finally agreed that the unusual activity was not really unusual in this case, he said that he'd note it somehow so that it wouldn't get flagged again. What I can deduce from this and one subsequent conversation with the Lexis employee is that the office is new and that they are using an algorithm that searches through account activity looking for usage that doesn't fit "normal" patterns.
So far, Lexis hasn't been willing to talk to me about the office. The person who originally contacted me didn't feel comfortable telling me too much about who they are or what they do. However, I did discover that the office he was calling from was Accurint, a subsidiary of Lexis that sells personal information to collection agencies and lawyers and business information to businesses.
What does this mean? Probably nothing. And I suppose that I shouldn't really be surprised, either. After all, this is their business and they have a right to monitor customers usage looking to prevent abuse or misuse.
I just thought you'd like to know.....

The End of the World as We Know it

The following will soon be published in an upcoming "Database Report" column in Legal Information Alert:

I recently was asked if I had any concerns to bring to the attention of a certain large midwestern publisher. I responded, with characteristic reserve and diplomacy:

"Yeah: Everything is getting too expensive. We're considering canceling Westlaw to save money. Over the last six years, their prices for standard print materials has inflated something like 30%. That's absurd. Especially for publicly funded schools in this present economy. Most of us haven't had budget increases of more than 5% in years. They should be excoriated to not read shifting purchasing patterns of academic libraries as an indication of our preferences: ie, canceling digests, state codes, etc. It is purely a matter of economics brought on BY WEST ITSELF! If they see our cancellation patterns as indicating that libraries are moving away from print for any reason other than cost, they are deceiving themselves and will come to regret it. Someone will come along and market cheaper versions of all this stuff. West has virtually no good will left in law libraries any more. They need to hear this stuff.

Give 'em hell!"

My concerns were diplomatically conveyed to the publisher and I received a reply to the effect that while they acknowledge that the market is changing, they want to attempt to milk all the revenue they can out of the print market before it dries up! This response is surprisingly frank and honest. And it should scare the living daylights out of us all.
I truly believe that the "big two" publishers believe that the print market is "drying up." What I'm not sure of is whether they are aware that they are the cause of it drying up. They have multiple reasons for thinking this. For one, they think that online research being the future is a fait accompli. This is reflective, of course, of the naive belief that the future will look like Star Trek or the world of the Jetson's. This is patently false. If I am correct, then the market will prove me so and the publishers will continue to grow their catalogs and profits in the print market whether they like it or not. At best, they will be relieved and embarrassed.
But there is a sinister aspect to this scenario. The costs associated with maintaining their online databases is every bit as expensive as maintaining a print publishing house, so as they enter the future they are running two gigantic businesses side by side. Clearly, they would like to only run one, but maintain the same profits. New contract schemes like LMA's, WestPack's and who knows what else will be coming down the pipe in the next few years, will be directed at causing us to cut back on print resources - for economic reasons, not practical ones - in hopes that they can justify canceling their print catalogs.
My prediction is that soon, we may be in a situation where the publishers will unilaterally close their print publishing divisions and announce that they are going entirely online. Watch for the cost's of CALR to go through the roof.
My proof for these predictions? I have heard of no library that has cancelled a title simply because the print version was not useful anymore (exceptions might be Shepard's, indexes to legal periodicals and, someday, perhaps, digests); The reasons for every cancellation is lack of money and lack of space. I know of no one who would argue that books are bad or not useful. They are simply expensive and take up space.
And there aren't any libraries on the Enterprise or the Skypad Apartments.....

I'm Ba-a-a-ck!

I'm not sure how many of you missed me, but I've figured out a way around some spamming problems associated with managing this blog, and am now ready to keep it up again.

Watch here; I'll be in touch soon.

What's the trouble with eBooks?

I'm sorry to readers for being such a slacker in getting new posts on this blog. But, hey! I've been busy.....

Any way, the NewYorkTimes.com's technology section contains a remarkable article, "E-books, has your time come?" by Elinor Mills, who was writing for News.com. The article is a pretty good analysis of what's happening in the industry, but contains the following few paragraphs (below) in the middle of the article.

What's especially interesting about the article and the quotes is that the clear presupposition is that the technology will inevitably "evolve" from books to online, despite the comments from Project Gutenberg Director, Gregory Newby. It seems that everyone assumes (wants?) that books will eventually go away! As though somehow this new technology is going to change reality!

Can't anyone see that if e-books "take off" it may only be in a very small niche market and for a very small band of afficianados. Books may well remain the predominant format for books. (!)

I've excerpted a few paragraphs from the NY Times article for those who are subscribers to NYT.com. If you want the full text of the article click the link contained in this post's title, above, or click here.

"We don't see a lot of resistance to electronic books per se," said Gregory Newby, director of Project Gutenberg, the first electronic library, which offers 20,000 titles for free. "What we see are limiting factors in specialized readers and difficulty in finding good stuff to read." Plus, "publishers are charging the same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book."

There are other challenges too. With e-book readers, people may be able to store numerous texts in one small device and do things to make reading easier, such as changing type size, something that's impossible with print. But people also like to share books with others, resell them and hand them down to their children, he said.

"When you buy a book, you have it forever," Newby said. "With these electronic books, you often are prevented from doing those things that you can do with regular books. What happens when my device breaks?...Books aren't just words on a page. They are things you can trade, share and store for later."

To be compelling enough to trigger any kind of mass migration away from paper books, e-books will need to have compelling characteristics regular books don't, such as interactivity and mixed-media capabilities, Newby and others said.

Where'd Google Print Go?

With little fanfare, Google has changed the name of its digital library initiative from Google Print to Google Book Search. The old URL, print.google.com now refers surfers to books.google.com.

While the change doesn't look like much, on close examination it clearly represents a fundamental shift in Google's digital library philosophy. The title alone implies that the service is more of a book search/finding engine rather than a final destination for researchers – which, of course, it was all along!

Where'd Google Print Go?

With little fanfare, Google has changed the name of its digital library initiative from Google Print to Google Book Search. The old URL, print.google.com now refers surfers to books.google.com.

While the change doesn't look like much, on close examination it clearly represents a fundamental shift in Google's digital library philosophy. The title alone implies that the service is more of a book search/finding engine rather than a final destination for researchers – which, of course, it was all along!

Ever Wonder Where's Google Going to Backup All Those Virtual Books?

Faced with the near impossible task of securely and permanently preserving and protecting thier substantial investment in the production of the millions of pages of books that it intends to scan and make available worldwide on the internet, Google has entered into an agreement with Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA under which Google will take possession of the storied former US Army airship base and mammoth dirigible hangars and indoor training center in Mountain View, California's Moffet Field.
Think about it, according to Google's stated plan, millions of books will be scanned into an enormous database that will ultimately be at the mercy of hackers, systems upgrades and a national power source. The only way to guarantee the collection's permanence is to store all the original data in hard copy! The 200-foot high Hangar One is a ready-made building of the appropriate capacity to store millions and millions of books and is a ready-acknowledgement of the safety and permanence of hard copy materials vis a vis a digital library!
From a press release of 28 September 2005:

“Google and NASA share a common desire-to bring a universe of information to people around the world,” said Eric Schmidt, Google chief executive officer.

USA Today Editorial Gets it Right!

In terrific editorial, Needless fight threatens Google's online library, USA Today defends Google's "online library" initiative in convincing and in insightful ways. Excerpts:

"The publishers are not without reasonable arguments, but Google's are better. Copyright law specifically allows limited copying of protected material for purposes that serve the public — such as commentary, news reporting, teaching and scholarship — and Google's plan has broad public benefits. It will greatly expand the universe of knowledge online and could renew interest in out-of-print books.(Emphasis mine.)

"What's more, a ruling that Google needs the specific permission from publishers to index a minimum of information could call into question the very notion of search engines...."

"Amazon Pages:" the iTunes of the Publishing World?

According to a recent article in idm.net.au Amazon is set to launch new services called Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade. To quote the article:

"Building on its successful Search Inside the Book technology, Amazon is developing two new programs that will allow customers to search the complete interior text of hundreds of thousands of books and purchase online access to any page, section or chapter of a book, as well as the book in its entirety.
....
""Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade leverage Amazon's existing Search Inside the Book technology to give customers unusual flexibility in how they buy and read books," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, Amazon.com. "In collaboration with our publishing partners, we're working hard to make the world's books instantly accessible anytime and anywhere.""

A clever twist on the "online library" movement....

Apologies to Readers

I have lately been experiencing technical difficulties with the Widget that I've been using to create entries to my blog. It reports a successful post and appears on the page when I check it. However the next day it simply disappears.

As a result, lots of brilliant (!) entries have been lost. Over the next week or so I will endeavor to recreate the ones I can remember.

I have also changed the way that I am editing the posts so they will actually get posted! Truly I have been entering new material approximately once a week, sometimes more often. I intend to continue to do so.

My apologies (for appearing like I was) slacking....

Thinking Outside the Wrapper When Thinking about Print Newspapers

Wrting for TheStreet.com about the value (or lack thereof?) of print newspapers and the newspaper business, Jon Markman makes a brilliant observation about the intrinsic value of home delivery of printed newspapers:

"It's a random Saturday morning, and after an evening of watching a baseball game on television, reading about it online and talking about it with friends over instant messenger, I pad out to the to the rain-soaked steps in front of my house in my socks and eagerly grab the newspaper. I tear the wet plastic sheeting off the rolled up paper, snap off the rubber band, and plop down in front of a fire with a cup of coffee to read it.

"Even though it's only The Seattle Times, not quite one of the world's top 10 newspapers, this uncomfortable sock-soaking adventure is counted as a great pleasure. I've spent a decade writing and editing online, but scanning the newspaper -- skipping my eyes over headlines without having to do any clicking, imagine that -- is still something I value and enjoy. In fact, if news were only available online, the home delivery of a full-blown, hard-copy version of the product might be seen as a fantastic innovation."(Emphasis mine.)

It is true: If we had been raised on newspapers and books being available solely online, the development and distribution of these materials in hardcopy would probably be hailed as the death of computers!

Well said, Mr. Markman!

Leave it to Librarians!

According to a press release from RLG, dated 29 October 2005, RLG is partnering with an impressive group of business partners to create a unique online database of books. The partners include the California Digital Library, Adobe (uh-oh!) Yahoo!, HP, Microsoft (oh well....). An ecnouraging thing about this program is that materials to be digitized will be selected and bibliographically described by RLG members and scanned from member libraries. The unique thing will be apparent association with third parties who will, for a fee, bind and deliver hard copy of any materials discovered at the site.

Excerpts from the press release follow:

RLG, a not-for-profit organization of over 150 research libraries, archives, and museums announced today that it will be a contributor to and partner with the Open Content Alliance (OCA) (www.opencontentalliance.org), a consortium that is building a permanent archive of digitized text and multimedia content. Generally, textual material from the OCA will be free to read, and in most cases, available for saving or printing using formats such as PDF.

The OCA calls this initiative the Open Library Project (www.openlibrary.org). This project will create free Web access to important book collections from around the world. Books are scanned and then offered in an interface for free reading online. The books can be downloaded, shared, and printed for free. They can also be printed for a nominal fee by a third party, who will bind and mail the book to customers. The books are always free to read at the Open Library Web site.

Newcastle (England) City Libraries Launches 24-hour Reference Service

Apparently this service, developed by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council in the UK links up a variety of libraries' reference staffs to be on call via email and online chat to handle any question from patrons. The article on 24dash.com does not explain how the on-call system works, but one does wonder how those late night reference questions are handled....

Google Print's Objective Revealed!

According to a USA Today article, "Google said its objective was to build the world's largest online card catalog."

What's more, "Google Print product manager Adam Smith says the biggest misconception is that Google's master plan is to display entire books online. "We don't have permission to do that," he says. "We're a finding tool, like a digital card catalog."

This is very insightful acknowledgement of what the Google Print initiative is all about. And a welcome one. Many people are tired of hearing how the compute is going to do away with reality as we know it. On the contrary, if it's a useful tool, it will actually enhance reality! That's what progress is all about. Right?

I still maintain that librarians need to be prepared for a rennaisance: free online services like this will mean better access to libraries and greater demand for books. Not only will libraries' collections grow, but our numbers of patrons will too.

European Commission Announces Plans for Google Digitization Rival

According to a News.com (c|net) article from 3 October 2005:

The European Commission isn't about to sit back and let Google have control over digitizing the world's information--it's planning to turn Europe's "historical and cultural heritage into digital content."

According to an EC announcement on Friday, the aim of the project is to digitize and preserve records of Europe's heritage--including books, film fragments, photographs, manuscripts, speeches and music--and make it available online to all European citizens. To make this happen, the European Union is proposing high-level cooperation between the member states and has set a deadline of Jan. 20, 2006, for first comments on the plans.

The Commission acknowledged that the process of making the resources in Europe's libraries and archives available on the Internet "is not straightforward." It identified three key areas for action: digitization, online accessibility and digital preservation. The Commission also noted that several such initiatives are already under way within Europe, including the Collect Britain project in the United Kingdom, which is backed by the British Library and partly funded by the U.K.'s National Lottery.

-Let the games begin!

University of California, Berkeley, Partners with Yahoo! to Create Digital Library

The Daily Californian, today, reports:

"With the digital support of Yahoo Inc., which will provide its search technology to the project, the materials are scheduled to be made available beginning in the spring of 2006 on the Open Content Alliance Web site, the global consortium building the archive.

"This program will allow UC Berkeley students and researchers to access material at the click of a mouse without having to search the stacks of Doe and Moffitt," said UC spokesperson Jennifer Ward. "It will also be a great convenience to the public, including high school students, who will have access to literature at the universities without having to find transportation to campus."

The literature will be available for download free of charge, opening the door to convenient public access to the historical documents."

Fort Wayne News Sentinenal Asks the Question of the Day:

In an article about the growing interest and availability of digital audio books, the writer's subtitle says it all: But so far the files can be used only on Windows, not on Apple’s iPod. NetLibrary and OverDrive, Inc., still won't (they say can'tprovide audio books in an iPod compatible format.

Don't these people read the news? iPod has dominated the digital audio market! Not good enough for MicroSoft devotees, I guess.... I think that this is just fascinating. I wonder if librarians refused to buy audio books that aren't compatible with iPod, if these companies would change?

The Financial Times Article Examines the Pros and Cons of Google Digitization Project

From the article: Tony Sanfilippo is of two minds when it comes to Google Inc’s ambitious programme to scan millions of books and make their text fully searchable on the internet. Mr Sanfilippo credits the programme for boosting sales of obscure titles at Penn Sdate University Press, where he works. But, he’s worried that Google’s plans to create digital copies of books obtained directly from libraries could hurt his industry’s long-term revenues.

Hmmm.... I wonder whether anyone has examined the impact Google's project will have on paper manufacturer's? I have a hunch they may sell a lot of paper!

Authors Guild Sues Google, Citing “Massive Copyright Infringement”

From the Author's Guild website press release dated 20 September 2005:

"The Authors Guild and a Lincoln biographer, a children's book author, and a former Poet Laureate of the United States filed a class action suit today in federal court in Manhattan against Google over its unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Library program. The suit alleges that the $90 billion search engine and advertising juggernaut is engaging in massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers."

Bucking the Revolution! At Least Two Libraries Dragging Patrons into the Future Their Way - Whether Patrons Like it or Not!

Two library systems have announced that they are providing digital e-books to their patrons. Maricopa Library District and Hawaii State Library Systems have each announced that they are teaming with Overdrive.com to provide exciting new services to patrons.

An interesting aspect of each program is that in an age in which over fifteen million iPods have been sold, Overdrive.com doesn't support that technology! Preferring clumsy Microsoft Windows Media Player, the company - and libraries who partner with them - apparently believe that iPod owners aren't worth the effort. In trying to come accross as cutting edge by providing new services using new technology, they demand allegiance to the stuffy monopoly of Microsoft instead of appealing to the true innvators in the MP3 world.

An interesting demonstration of counter-revolution: Why adopt cutting edge technology when blunt-edge will do? After all, blunt edge is Windows compatible!

Go figure!?

A New Definition of Reality!

Dr. Sam Vakin, writing in The Global Politician strains to give us a definition of the book, vis a vis e-books, that demonstrates print's inherent foibles. In his desperate attempt to describe print in terms that show it is inferior to books in digital format, he declares:

"Ostensibly, consumers should gravitate to the feature-rich and much cheaper e-book. But they won't - because the medium is as important as the text message. It is not enough to own the same content, or to gain access to the same message. Ownership of the right medium does count. Print books offer connectivity within an historical context (tradition). E-books are cold and impersonal, alienated and detached. The printed word offers permanence. Digital text is ephemeral (as anyone whose writings perished in the recent dot.com bloodbath or Deja takeover by Google can attest). Printed volumes are a whole sensorium, a sensual experience - olfactory and tactile and visual. E-books are one dimensional in comparison. These are differences that cannot be overcome, not even with the advent of digital "ink" on digital "paper". They will keep the print book alive and publishers' revenues flowing."

Perhaps he has forgotten that computers, too, exist in three dimensions, and possess smell and other sensory attributes? It appears to me that his "criticisms" of print are also print's greatest virtues: they exist in the gestalt, the here and now. And, we humans are to be criticized as preferring books because we can hold them, use them without restriction and enjoy them right here, right now?

I'm confused....

Yahoo! and Google's Library Initiatives: The New OPAC's?

BusinessWeekOnline's Stephen Wildtrom recently wrote an interesting article about Yahoo!'s and Google's digital library initiatives. In the article, he makes observations that support a point I've been making continuously on this blog: that Google's "project ocean" will essentially create an online index to the great books of the world. Who knows? Perhaps we're on the verge of a rennaisance in libraries! Mr. Wildstrom concludes with the following observations:

"Even if I end up having to go to a university library to see the whole book, this still strikes me as a powerful tool that I would have died for back in my student days. As useful as the Web is, Google Print shows how much is missing. It's good to see it gradually coming within clicking distance."

Forbes' interesting comment on the "Invisible Web"

Steve Manes has written an interesting essay in the Digital Tools section of Forbes, titled "Google Isn't Everything." With cute, lay-persons' wonder he describes his discovery of the invisible web and the revelation that there beauty is only skin deep!

Most interesting, however, are his comments about arrangement of the resources in the library websites. Sounds vaguely similar to complaints librarians have heard for centuries regarding arrangement of collections. Remember Ranganathan's Fourth Law: Save the time of the reader.

Perhaps Yogi Berra was right again: The more things change, the more they remain the same....

Library Journal article about "LibraryCity" raises more questions than answers

In the article about an apparently interesting and innovative project called LibraryCity [Note: no spaces, a la modern tech patois], the adivosory librarian, Tom Peters is described as:

"an e-book usability expert as well as former director of the Center for Library Initiatives at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), the academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago."

Keep in mind an earlier posting below in which the University of Chicago is in the process of building what is being touted as being the largest print library in North America!

The highlight of the article comes when Peters is quoted:

“Our goal is to construct a worldwide digital library of both public-domain and copyright-protected e-books... LibraryCity wants to stretch the traditional notion of a library… For example, we will make it possible for readers to post study guides, comments, and other documents that support the continued use of public-domain information as well as copyright-protected e-books.” It’s not yet clear how that would work.

But it will be fun to see them try....

Wow! The Future IS Already Here!!

Thanks to Prof. Brian Baker (UDC) for this tibbit from Drexel University's "information" page on their proposed new law school. Apparently they won't even have computers at this law library: Blackberries only!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:
The author of the linked article got LOTS of flack for his language about the future of law libraries. In the meantime he has "seen the light" and has apparently re-written the lbrary section of the proposed law school information web-pages. Good for him! In the meantime, the language on the page is a classic example of what can happen when one lets infatuation with all things "future" run away with you. I've decided to preserve the original language with the following excerpt:

"Thirty years ago, when the last first-tier university in the United States opened a law school, the Selectric typewriter (http://www.selectric.org/selectric) was state of the art, the telefacsimile (only later known as the fax) and the word processors were still on the drawing boards, and the Internet was still just an idea in some professors’ heads. Lexis® and Westlaw® arrived on the scene in the early 1970s, offering the first commercial, full-text legal information services, but the legal profession had depended on libraries as the source of the law, and was slow to accept these innovations.

"Today, only retired partners, law firm messengers, and people needing a quiet place to think or write can be found in law libraries, as virtually all legal resources have been digitized and made accessible through electronic data library services. Today, lawyers can access the law wirelessly from their offices, or over their BlackBerries®.

"Drexel was one of the first universities in the country to go “wireless” and to require its students to have computers. It has a very successful distance learning company Drexel e-Learning, Inc., that is providing quality educational programs to Drexel’s graduate and undergraduate students, ensuring that they can take classes when they want to, from wherever they might be. And its libraries (http://www.library.drexel.edu) are both wireless and rich with resources.

"Drexel’s law library will be similarly state-of-the-art. In fact, it will be three-dimensional. First, it will have a “physical core library”. This will include the resources that the American Bar Association requires all law schools to have. It will also include special depth in those areas that will be the focal points of the law school programs - health law, intellectual property, entrepreneurial business, environmental law, elder law, and the like."

MSNBC's "Practical Futurist" Comes to Some Impractical (Albeit Interesting) Conclusions

This article, "Turning Books into Bits" is worth reading. The Practical Futurist reports some interesting facts, and makes some interesting observations; unfortunately, he reveals the subtle oxymoron of putting the words "practical" and "future" in the same sentence....

British Library Web Page Features Cool "Online Book" Display

These are more than "online books" these are full featured, fully navigable online versions of important books. They include scrolls that you can scroll through, illiminated manuscripts with maginfiers and optional commentary.... Pretty cool, eh?

Creating an "Intelligent" Web

In this interesting, if impossibly (for the web anyway) LONG article, Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., describes an interesting initiative to create creator-defined meta-data as an integral part of HTML, thus making searching "more relevant." Good idea, too. Its just that teaching cataloging and indexing principles to millions of content creators sounds like a daunting task.

But, I guess after reading Mr Vaknin's article, they'll all be convinced that boning up on and following indexing standards is the "right thing to do!" And, of course, they'll just do it.....

Google Goes Live With Print.Google.com

Google's "library digitization" project went live in Beta on May 26, 2005. Don't fret, yet. It's not all its cracked up to be. A search of "natural law," for example, turned up thousands of hits; but no full text! A search reveals the pages where you search terms appear, but then offers information of how to buy the book, or where to find copies. It appears to not provide full text of books - yet.

This only reinforces what many pundits have been saying: Google's project provides us with a virtual search engine, not a virtual library!

University of Iowa Exhibit on Bookbinding Is A Reminder Of The Durability Of Books

Quotes from the i-newswire (U of Iowa news service):

"Today digital storage and retrieval methods are very popular, yet most digital storage is outdated and unreadable within 25 years," says Gary Frost, University Conservator. "On the other hand, a storage technology using carbon ink and papyrus of late antiquity has proven readable for 16 centuries."

The exhibition is presented by the Friends of the UI Libraries in conjunction with the conference "The Changing Book: Transitions in Design, Production and Preservation" that will be held at the UI Libraries July 22-25, and the University of Iowa Museum of Art exhibition "Bill Anthony: Fine Book Binder," on exhibit through July 31.

Georgetown Professor Laments U of Texas Library Book Removal Plans

Professor Michael Czinkota, in a special column to the Japan Times gives pretty good, if not original, defense of books in libraries.

Dutch Universities Create Free Internet Scientific Research Site

According to an article in The Register: "Scientists from all major Dutch universities officially launched a website on Tuesday where all their research material can be accessed for free. Interested parties can get hold of a total of 47,000 digital documents from 16 institutions the Digital Academic Repositories. No other nation in the world offers such easy access to its complete academic research output in digital form, the researchers claim. Obviously, commercial publishers are not amused." [Reed-Elsevier is Holland's own enormously big and profitable international science journal publisher....]

In the World of Libraries You Don't Need to be a Nation to Create International Controversies!

According to a recent article in Cherwell Online, "France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain have asked the EU to launch its own library initiative, proposed by French President, Jacques Chirac.

"The plans come as several European countries have spoken out against Google’s digitisation plans, for fear of cultural dominance. Jean-Noel Jeanneney, President of the French National Library, published a book this weekend entitled, When Google Challenges Europe, presenting a vision of Google carrying out a hostile takeover of “the thought of the world”."

U Texas to Move 90K Books from Undergrad Lib for Info Commons

According to an article in The Ledger Online:

By mid-July, the university says, almost all of the library's 90,000 volumes will be dispersed to other university collections to clear space for a 24-hour electronic information commons, a fast-spreading phenomenon that is transforming research and study on campuses around the country.

"In this information-seeking America, I can't think of anyone who would elect to build a books-only library," said Fred Heath, vice provost of the University of Texas Libraries in Austin.
....

The trend is being driven, academicians and librarians say, by the dwindling need for undergraduate libraries, many of which were built when leading research libraries were reserved for graduate students and faculty. But those distinctions have largely crumbled, with research libraries throwing open their stacks, leaving undergraduate libraries as increasingly puny adjuncts with duplicate collections and shelves of light reading.

Mr. Heath said removal of the books had raised some eyebrows among the faculty and anxiety among the library staff. But he said the concerns were needless. "Books are the fundamental icon of intellectual efforts," he said, "the scholarly communication of our time."

So, Mr. Heath said, speaking of the library, "if you move it, there's a pang, a sense of loss." He added that the books were merely being moved within the university's library system, one of the nation's largest, home to some 8 million volumes and growing by 100,000 a year. Basic reference books like dictionaries and encyclopedias will remain.

The move, Mr. Heath said, would free about 6,000 square feet in the four-story Flawn Academic Center, which opened in 1963.

Students at Texas, interviewed as they studied or lounged at the library tables, said that they would welcome extra computer space and that they got most of their books anyway at the far larger Perry-Castañeda Library. But some said they liked the popular selection at the undergraduate library and feared the loss of a familiar and congenial space.

"Well, this is a library - it's supposed to have books in it," said Jessica Zaharias, a senior in business management. "You can't really replace books. There's plenty of libraries where they have study rooms. This is a nice place for students to come to. It's central in campus."

"What me worry? My data's all been backed up!"

This headline, "Time Warner: Backup tapes with data on 600,000 employees lost" in national papers on May 2, 2005, says it all. First of all, computer data isn't all that permanent, is it? Second, it doesn't take much to affect a lot of data. One little misplaced trunk and "poof!" an entire library, gone....

EU to launch Digital Library

EU President, Jean-Claude Juncker, announced that the EU will form a digital library program to "counter" Google's digital library plans. "We have to act," he said, "That's why I say yes to the initiative of the French presidet to launch a European digital library." What's every body so afraid of?

eWeek Reports that Changes are Afoot for Windows Tablet PCs

According to an eWeek story, the millionth tablet PC was finally sold this past February after five years on the market! (Not quit a tidal wave of enthusiasm.) In any case, Microsoft (read: Bill Gates) sincerely wants this platform to succeed and he is convinced that smaller a form factor (about 6 X 8 inch) will make the platform more attractive. Bill reveals his hopes for the new platform in the excerpt from an interveiw with Peter Jennings, quoted in the article: "I am meeting with our tablet people about the idea of carrying text books around. They'll have just a tablet device that they can call up the material on. That's been a dream for a long time, we're making progress there." Just think, someday we can all have four devices: an iPod, a PocketPC/Palm device, a laptop and a tablet! Won't that be grand?!

Will the internet kill the printed book?

Ibrahim Ramjaun, has some interesting comments on this question, in a three part series published in March and April 2005 in LeExpress.mu, a newspaper or online news service from Mauritius (a small island nation off the coast of Madagascar). Read the articles here:

Will the Internet kill the printed book? (Part I)

Will the Internet kill the printed book? (Part II)

Will the Internet kill the printed book? (Part III)

Library Journal Reports that an Oregon Library Worker has been Accused of Stealing Books

One wonders what the defense may be: If the man sincerely believed that books and libraries were dead anyway, perhaps he was trying to do the local branch a favor by culling the hard copy collection. Or, I wonder if the books are also available in the library in online format, was he really stealing at all? He may claim that he was merely appropriating an out of date format of a title otherwise readily available to the library's patrons!

From the "What'll they think of next" File: Google announces "video-blogging"

From the article:
"[Google Co-Founder, Larry] Page admitted there were a number of issues to be sorted out with the service, including concerns about the nature of content that people may want to upload." Duh?

Library Journal Features an Insightful Analysis of Ranganathan's Five Laws

In an article titled, "Ranganathan Online," the authors examine Ranganathan's Five Laws as it applies to digital libraries. Well worth the read. (Even if they don't refer to another late treatment of Ranganathan Five Laws, "Reflections on Ranganathan's Five Laws," 95:3 Law Library Journal 411 (2003)).

French Call Europe to Arms Against "Americanization" of the Global Agenda

Interesting issue: Has American technological supremacy in the ether created a danger of international homoginization of human culture? Has Google become the McDonalds and Wal-Mart of the Internet? Some are beginning to think so....

The International Herald Tribune reports that the librarian of the Bibliotheque Nationale has called "Europe" (by which he seems to mean France) to arms in the digitization war. Jean-Noel Jeanneney says:

"I am not anti-American - far from it," the 62-year-old historian said in an interview in his office in the library's new headquarters overlooking the Seine. "But what I don't want is everything reflected in an American mirror. When it comes to presenting digitized books on the Web, we want to make our choice with our own criteria."

When Google's initial announcement went unnoticed here, then, Jeanneney raised his voice. In a Jan. 23 article in Le Monde titled "When Google Challenges Europe," he warned of "the risk of a crushing domination by America in the definition of the idea that future generations will have of the world." And he urged Europe to "counterattack" to preserve its culture and political influence.

The French Feud with Google heats up

FinFacts, an Irish Business and Financial Journal, carries a wonderful story Mar 26, 2005, "AFP shoots itself in the foot, not Google" by Michael Hennigan. The article implies that Agence France Press (AFP) has sued Google for providing references to its material as part of France's "vendeta" against Google for failing to include Biblioteque Nationale in the list of libraries that it would use as a source to build its online "library" project. In the end the lawsuit will leave AFP references out search results in Google. Everyone loses. Leave to the French to cut off their noses to spite their faces....

The French Feud with Google heats up

FinFacts, an Irish Business and Financial Journal, carries a wonderful story Mar 26, 2005, "AFP shoots itself in the foot, not Google" by Michael Hennigan. The article implies that Agence France Press (AFP) has sued Google for providing references to its material as part of France's "vendeta" against Google for failing to include Biblioteque Nationale in the list of libraries that it would use as a source to build its online "library" project. In the end the lawsuit will leave AFP references out search results in Google. Everyone loses. Leave to the French to cut off their noses to spite their faces....