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.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
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
-- Richard Leiter
Thursday, May 14, 2009
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
But of course, I'm not sure what is a title anymore....
-- Posted From My iPhone
Friday, April 03, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, March 23, 2009
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?
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
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....)
"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....)
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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....
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....
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
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!
Law books aren't dead: at least for now, their supplementation is!
Friday, January 16, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
"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....)
Friday, September 19, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
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.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
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.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
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.
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.
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