Tom the Librarian

Mobility up, PC use down

tomthelibrarian — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:30:31 +0000

Online is everywhere. The mobile era has begun in earnest. Morgan Stanley research indicates home PC use may have crested at 33 hours per week in 2008. Weekly PC use is down to 26 hours now as we all spend more time on our smartphones at the kitchen table, on the sofa, sitting on the porch, out at the park, and even in bed. And the influence of tablets on behavior has yet to be really felt.

What or who drives Google search?

tomthelibrarian — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:25:07 +0000

The venerable New York Times seems to have uncovered a very successful campaign that bolstered JC Penney’s Google results for searches on “cocktail dresses,” “bedding,” and the like by using unsanctioned “black hat” optimization. Corrective “manual” action by Google’s spam cop quickly dampened these results. The author, David Segal, goes on to explain the traffic value of being top search result, ferrets out a web publisher paid to host links for that purpose and interviews a search optimizer who manages surreptitious campaigns to skew results in favor of his clients. It’s all done by attempting to build link structures that Google measures – the who cites whom phenomenon upon which even scholarly rankings are built. The search optimizer differentiates between influencing commercial searches on Google for say, a suit, and more important and less skewed information searches on, say, a cancer condition. Nonetheless, the sum effect seems to roil and muddy the clarity of Google’s vaunted methods to assure the integrity of search impartiality. Enough so that the Times wondered aloud about links between Penney’s advertising expenditures with Google and search placement, even as it conveyed Google’s strong denials of any possibility that this might be the case.

Social Media on Campus – Boston University

tomthelibrarian — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:44:24 +0000

Interesting online Washington Post Campus Overload piece about social media at Boston University (BU). Note especially this comment by BU’s Jenny Mackintosh: “What is the most important lesson you have learned on Twitter? Listen, listen, listen. …talking about yourself less …Our followers …want to hear about what’s going on both on campus and in Boston, and they want to know that we’re listening as well.”

BU’s Admissions Facebook worth a look for the changing flavor of doing business – http://www.facebook.com/buadmissions. Forget email.

Cannot know enough

tomthelibrarian — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:20:06 +0000

Successful algorithms crave data and in creating them “they” cannot learn enough about us-

“As CEO Eric Schmidt explained last May [2007] “We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.” He said that Google wants to be able to answer when users ask, for example, “the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’” from Google: Search and Data Seizure written by Jeffrey Chester in The Nation, October 15, 2007, (http://www.thenation.com/article/google-search-and-data-seizure). Info about the author is at http://www.alternet.org/authors/468/ and a link to the article text retitled Will Google’s Greed Ruin the Internet? is at http://www.alternet.org/story/6421/will_google%27s_greed_ruin_the_internet/ . Jeffrey Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy
(http://www.democraticmedia.org/).

The State of Online Scholarship

tomthelibrarian — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:52:03 +0000

Ejournals, reviews, preprints and working papers, encyclopedias and dictionaries, bibliographies, data, blogs, discussion forums, and professional and scholarly hubs – that’s what Ithaka found when the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) asked them to look into the state of digital scholarship. Read the 49 page report, Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/current-models-report.pdf, review the scholarly resources here and read a summary news release here. (This is a repost of a 2009 blog entry I originally wrote elsewhere.)

Scholarly Access and Publisher Compliance (NIH mandate)

tomthelibrarian — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:02:02 +0000

“PubMed Central Deposit and Author Rights,” an ARL publication available online (http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/grillot-pubmed.pdf), reviews a dozen varying publisher attempts to comply with the mandate that authors submit published NIH funded research to PubMed Central within one year. (This is a repost from a Jan. 28, 2009 blog entry I originally wrote elsewhere.)

Fair Use Still Very Alive after Harry Potter

tomthelibrarian — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:53:53 +0000

Jonathan Band’s How Fair Use Prevailed in the Harry Potter Case, an ARL/ALA sponsored publication (http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/harrypotterrev2.pdf), argues that the court supported fair use and the creation of reference works pointing to the work of others. The case, Band points out, failed only on the author’s excessive use of material already written by J. K. Rowling and not on any other fair use point, which the court explicitly supported, as summarized in this 13 October 2008 news release. (This is a repost from a Jan. 28, 2009 blog entry I originally wrote elsewhere.)

Google Settles – As if Copyright and Fair Use Weren’t Already Confusing Enough

tomthelibrarian — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:48:24 +0000

“Extremely complex:” that’s Google’s settlement with publishers about scanning copyrighted books. It’s worth studying to learn what opportunities libraries have according to the Association of Research Libraries’ Jonathan Band in A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement, available online at http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/google/. Lots of other links there, too, to further muddy the mind. (This is a repost from a Jan. 28, 2009 blog entry I wrote elsewhere.)

Hindering Progress – Is Intellectual Property Limiting the Public Good?

tomthelibrarian — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:41:49 +0000

The current intellectual property environment is hindering the ability of universities to access material in and teach at the leading edges of disciplines. Copyright and other protections were developed to help society prosper, not just commercialize intellectual property. The academic community needs to address the current imbalance says Peter McPherson, President of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) in an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Bimonthly Report article, On Ensuring that Intellectual Property Public Policy Promotes Progress. (This is a repost from a Jan. 28, 2009 blog entry I wrote elsewhere.)

The Third Place

tomthelibrarian — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:28:36 +0000

Starbucks spectacular success owes as much to its offering neutral, comfortable, anonymous public space as to its coffee. Starbucks subtly promotes a sense of community – a place to meet and chat with friends or work clients as well as catch up on your laptop while not all alone at home. I’ve long been intrigued by the important role libraries offer with valued neutral, anonymous, yet public space. On college campuses today the library information commons has supplanted the two storied hallowed reading room as emblematic of this essential library function.

A long December 11, 2009 Boston Phoenix article by Mike Miliard reviews Bryant Simon’s book Everything But the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks. In it Simon explores this “third place” concept suggesting Starbucks manages this role with predictability (e.g., soft music, mixed seating), price filtering, and careful location (much the way the Boston Public Library was built proximate to genteel Bostonians and not working class neighborhoods?). “What it [Starbucks] did is reinforce an economy and geography of haves and have-nots,” Miliard quotes Simon. America’s middle class will not flock to buy coffee and schmooze among the poorly dressed and less washed, a challenge facing many public libraries.

Starbucks’ success selling space four bucks at a shot should not be and has not been ignored by libraries. The invasion of ubiquitous coffee into libraries – far from complete – exemplifies something about today’s consumer culture far beyond Starbucks alone. Libraries must avoid the schizophrenic growth-at-all-costs mindset now challenging Starbucks to keep what it built. Miliard describes the chain’s loyal patrons complicity in becoming “overworked and overcaffeinated office drones, tapping their laptops with existential melancholy.” It astounds me how thoroughly corporate today’s America has become. Let’s not cede civic values to a consumer cafe culture.

The challenge is for libraries to offer comfortable, welcoming space while preserving something “other” – a real third place – beyond the pressures and limitations of the world just outside its doors. For this, the book serves as sufficient icon for the free range of ideas that must continue to be nurtured even as it digitally morphs.