Publishers. Publishers! C'mere. Let's chat. Sit right here in my office and let's look at this entirely reasonable request from a faculty member, who wants to know if two art history titles published in this decade by two different entities are available as ebooks.
They are not.
In the ongoing drama of what is where and what is accessible, not licensing academic titles as ebooks is detrimental to both of us. Libraries can't afford to buy multiple copies of books, yet some course sections run to 50 or 70 students on my campus. If you don't offer an e-book that we can license and make accessible to students enrolled on the campus, guess what?
Guess what indeed. I continue to be shocked and amazed at the expectation of what people think "is on the Internet." Much of the world's useful content is paywalled, but a great deal more is simply only available in one format.
I feel as if publishers are slow to embrace the e format for books much in the way radio stations responded to music videos in the 1980s. But ultimately, what did those delicious little videos do? Why they made us consumers even crazier for music! Music we could download onto little devices and carry around with us so we could have music all the time!
Yes, I love print books. You love print books. Some of us love books too much. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of getting the content that authors have labored over, editors have overseen, and you, dear publisher, have chosen to offer, it doesn't make a lot of sense to squeeze access into one channel.
Dear lord, what might happen if readers had access to a greater array of intellectual content? Pretty sure they will read more. Just going to make that speculation.
I feel silly telling a faculty member "no" when I'm asked if an e-book version is available so her students have easier access to the content she has chosen. Especially when the book was produced in this decade so I'm pretty sure it was produced, gasp, on a word processor and computer software was used to layout the book.
What can we do? The Art History Publishing Initiative is a very good start but we are going to need more than four presses to fully support this field.
I'm sure I'll have more to say about this over the course of the semester. It is an "interesting" time in the sense that new technologies are emerging but old technologies remain necessary, yet there is an expectation, at least here in Silicon Valley, that the new technologies are much more robust than performance demonstrates.
Showing posts with label access. Show all posts
Showing posts with label access. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
The Whole Story, metadata and linking, and New Stories
Or, what I've learned from #28daysarenotenough.
In February and through March, I've continued my Internet gallop in search of one new thing each day about African American History. It has been exciting and sobering. Exciting with the pleasure of learning about a person new to me each day, sobering in realizing what a blank slate my mind was before the discovery. After this experiment, which I must conclude at the end of March for this year because my Too Read list is staggeringly long and I want to try to do some deep reading and thinking about what I have found so far, I also have a new perspective on the need for metadata and deep linking across sites.
Let's talk about language for a moment. In searching web sites, I would get different results if I searched "african american woman" vs. "black female." Why is this important? Well, think about how sources are tagged and described. If there isn't a line of code or a linked descriptor/controlled vocabulary to bring like information together, the researcher has to _know_ and search in all possible ways. If didn't know how to be flexible in my searching, I might not have found out about Jane Bolin, http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/jane-bolin-americas-first-black-woman-judge or activist Mary Church Terrell http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/terrell/
The above is a fairly obvious example. But what about more subtle or politically charged language? A tremendous resource for researching history is the Documenting The American South project from UNC-Chapel Hill. This repository of texts provides the opportunity for unprecedented access to primary source material. And not just access, organized access through browsing and searching. This repository provides a representative example of the tensions that come to bear on organizing information. And though I have often found subject headings to be a very useful way of navigating a lot of content, I am finally able to fully grasp Sanford Berman's arguments about the Prejudices and Antipathies of applying LCSH's to people. If you aren't well schooled in Berman's arguments, get yourself over to http://www.sanfordberman.org/prejant.htm immediately. Here's the example from DocSouth that has raised my awareness:
If you do a keyword search on "escape" in this repository, 18,000 results are generated. If you search "fugitive" 5,560 results are retrieved. However, there isn't a subject heading for Escaped Slaves. The LCSH is Fugitive Slaves. Think about the implications of the word "fugitive". For an example of how the word was employed in the 19th Century, choose one of the entries under the subject heading to read. You could begin with:
Life and Adventures of James Williams, a Fugitive Slave,
with a Full Description of the Underground Railroad printed in San Francisco in 1873. The html copy is online at: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/williams/williams.html
A scanned copy is available at:
https://archive.org/details/lifeandadventure00willrich
After you read it, or even read just the table of contents and the summary, would you really think that "fugitive" is the best subject heading? This is an incredible narrative on many levels: Williams' story and how he tells it, the information he provides about other former slaves and their successful escapes, including his own work on the Underground Railroad. His move to California, his jobs and his relationships.
This is the work that digital humanities can accomplish: bringing forward and making accessible texts that complete the story, that will provide seekers with the broader narrative of American history beyond what gets into watered down textbooks and a few hours per week in "social studies." I found the Williams narrative because I was looking for it, it has been digitized, and I was willing to look at formal subject headings that I now question.
I'm going to keep pursuing my #28daysarenotenough quest until the end of March. I have been happily surrounding to the "search and click and mull" process to choose a person each morning in a ritual of reading and coffee drinking. But I am willing to hand it off to you dear reader: who are the people we should know? Where can we read their works, see their art, hear their music? I challenge you to expand your to read list and share it with me. I also ask: How as librarians and archivists, publishers and teachers, are we building links to repositories that will result in researchers finding the information that they seek?
So, what's on my to read list as a result of this experiment? Well, right now my neurons are being restructured and my heart broken and stitched together by T. Geronimo Johnson's Welcome to Braggsville. It is making me want to go re-read Caucasia by Danzy Senna. I have just finished March Book 2 by John Lewis, which activated that "what's the WHOLE story" question I have held in my mind ever since #Ferguson blew into my West Coast consciousness back in August.
Also on my list: Professor Annette Gordon-Reed's Hemingses of Monticello, and James McGrath Morris' new book on journalist Ethel Lois Payne, Eye on the Struggle.
And what I'm most anxious to turn my complete attention to and I hope a savvy publisher will pick up on as well, the ongoing blog of 93 year old and National Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin, go look: http://cbreaux.blogspot.com/
I have learned from my #28daysarenotenough experience that I do have huge gaps in my knowledge about so many decades and regions and citizens of my country, but if I look and listen and ask and seek, those stories are available and more are coming forth each day.
I am most excited about the increase of new stories and the opportunity to participate in supporting their broader distribution. If you want new stories, support them with your money and if you don't have money to spare support them with your time through signal boosting. Here are two stories I can't wait to see on the big screen:
Ella Jenkins, First Lady of Children's Music: http://www.singasongtogether.com/
Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/travel-notes-of-a-geechee-girl--2
#28daysarenotenough
In February and through March, I've continued my Internet gallop in search of one new thing each day about African American History. It has been exciting and sobering. Exciting with the pleasure of learning about a person new to me each day, sobering in realizing what a blank slate my mind was before the discovery. After this experiment, which I must conclude at the end of March for this year because my Too Read list is staggeringly long and I want to try to do some deep reading and thinking about what I have found so far, I also have a new perspective on the need for metadata and deep linking across sites.
Let's talk about language for a moment. In searching web sites, I would get different results if I searched "african american woman" vs. "black female." Why is this important? Well, think about how sources are tagged and described. If there isn't a line of code or a linked descriptor/controlled vocabulary to bring like information together, the researcher has to _know_ and search in all possible ways. If didn't know how to be flexible in my searching, I might not have found out about Jane Bolin, http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/jane-bolin-americas-first-black-woman-judge or activist Mary Church Terrell http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/terrell/
The above is a fairly obvious example. But what about more subtle or politically charged language? A tremendous resource for researching history is the Documenting The American South project from UNC-Chapel Hill. This repository of texts provides the opportunity for unprecedented access to primary source material. And not just access, organized access through browsing and searching. This repository provides a representative example of the tensions that come to bear on organizing information. And though I have often found subject headings to be a very useful way of navigating a lot of content, I am finally able to fully grasp Sanford Berman's arguments about the Prejudices and Antipathies of applying LCSH's to people. If you aren't well schooled in Berman's arguments, get yourself over to http://www.sanfordberman.org/prejant.htm immediately. Here's the example from DocSouth that has raised my awareness:
If you do a keyword search on "escape" in this repository, 18,000 results are generated. If you search "fugitive" 5,560 results are retrieved. However, there isn't a subject heading for Escaped Slaves. The LCSH is Fugitive Slaves. Think about the implications of the word "fugitive". For an example of how the word was employed in the 19th Century, choose one of the entries under the subject heading to read. You could begin with:
Life and Adventures of James Williams, a Fugitive Slave,
with a Full Description of the Underground Railroad printed in San Francisco in 1873. The html copy is online at: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/williams/williams.html
A scanned copy is available at:
https://archive.org/details/lifeandadventure00willrich
After you read it, or even read just the table of contents and the summary, would you really think that "fugitive" is the best subject heading? This is an incredible narrative on many levels: Williams' story and how he tells it, the information he provides about other former slaves and their successful escapes, including his own work on the Underground Railroad. His move to California, his jobs and his relationships.
This is the work that digital humanities can accomplish: bringing forward and making accessible texts that complete the story, that will provide seekers with the broader narrative of American history beyond what gets into watered down textbooks and a few hours per week in "social studies." I found the Williams narrative because I was looking for it, it has been digitized, and I was willing to look at formal subject headings that I now question.
I'm going to keep pursuing my #28daysarenotenough quest until the end of March. I have been happily surrounding to the "search and click and mull" process to choose a person each morning in a ritual of reading and coffee drinking. But I am willing to hand it off to you dear reader: who are the people we should know? Where can we read their works, see their art, hear their music? I challenge you to expand your to read list and share it with me. I also ask: How as librarians and archivists, publishers and teachers, are we building links to repositories that will result in researchers finding the information that they seek?
So, what's on my to read list as a result of this experiment? Well, right now my neurons are being restructured and my heart broken and stitched together by T. Geronimo Johnson's Welcome to Braggsville. It is making me want to go re-read Caucasia by Danzy Senna. I have just finished March Book 2 by John Lewis, which activated that "what's the WHOLE story" question I have held in my mind ever since #Ferguson blew into my West Coast consciousness back in August.
Also on my list: Professor Annette Gordon-Reed's Hemingses of Monticello, and James McGrath Morris' new book on journalist Ethel Lois Payne, Eye on the Struggle.
And what I'm most anxious to turn my complete attention to and I hope a savvy publisher will pick up on as well, the ongoing blog of 93 year old and National Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin, go look: http://cbreaux.blogspot.com/
I have learned from my #28daysarenotenough experience that I do have huge gaps in my knowledge about so many decades and regions and citizens of my country, but if I look and listen and ask and seek, those stories are available and more are coming forth each day.
I am most excited about the increase of new stories and the opportunity to participate in supporting their broader distribution. If you want new stories, support them with your money and if you don't have money to spare support them with your time through signal boosting. Here are two stories I can't wait to see on the big screen:
Ella Jenkins, First Lady of Children's Music: http://www.singasongtogether.com/
Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/travel-notes-of-a-geechee-girl--2
#28daysarenotenough
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Materiality of Periodicals
Greetings, Reader!
I write to you from the mid-way point of Spring Break, where the to-do list is not half way completed but Spring Break is half over. Clearly, an opportune moment to blow the dust of this blog, having not even posted about our rousing defeat by USC Gleeson Library in the library shelfie contest a few months ago. They were gracious winners and even sent a nice consolation prize in return.
No time for such light hearted librarianship today. A convergence of data provider announcements and an actual reference inquiry converged in a mighty specific way early this morning, and an early burst of social media activity leads me to believe I might just get to 15 seconds of Internet Fame.
What am I talking about? Scrolling this morning's twitter feed, I noticed this announcement from Dow Jones and quickly replied:
I am a seasoned enough (i.e. old) librarian to remember a functional iteration for Dow Jones, before it was even called Factiva. When a dear colleague and as yet unindicted co-conspirator trained me how to use the new version, she began by saying, "Take everything you know about Dow Jones and forget it. It is not ever going to work the same way."
Truer words have really been spoken in libraryland. Factiva has long been an inducer of eye-rolling. Sure, it has specific uses, which is why we pay for the darned thing in first place, but it has not been keeping up with the user driven environment in which we live now.
Steady yourself, I'm about to praise Ebsco and Proquest. Are you ready?
One of the most frequent things we look for in library land are specific holdings of periodicals. I believe I have ranted previously about how we are paying for the same content in multiple places. However, when it comes to some periodicals, we are forced to go to exactly one place. This is the case of the periodical Bon Appetit and Factiva.
Why is this a big deal? Look what happens when I go from our catalog holding indicating we have access to Factiva and what I get when I arrive at that site:
This what you get when you arrive:
Here's how to do that title search, don't go looking for a source search option in the search form:
I had reason to discover this dis-functionality because I had a reference question asking for assistance in locating this exact title. On the very morning Dow Jones had announced "We are pleased to announce a series of enhancements to Factiva, designed to improve the overall user experience." No wonder my patron couldn't find it! I'm going to leave off with my Factiva disgruntlement here, except to say that vendors such as EbsQuest or ProCo and MuseStor and etc. are able to provide a stable URL to specific periodicals which we can use as links in our catalog to take patrons to the exact journal they wish to search you can too, DJ.
I write to you from the mid-way point of Spring Break, where the to-do list is not half way completed but Spring Break is half over. Clearly, an opportune moment to blow the dust of this blog, having not even posted about our rousing defeat by USC Gleeson Library in the library shelfie contest a few months ago. They were gracious winners and even sent a nice consolation prize in return.
No time for such light hearted librarianship today. A convergence of data provider announcements and an actual reference inquiry converged in a mighty specific way early this morning, and an early burst of social media activity leads me to believe I might just get to 15 seconds of Internet Fame.
What am I talking about? Scrolling this morning's twitter feed, I noticed this announcement from Dow Jones and quickly replied:
 |
| The Bookcharmer's reponse to DJ |
I am a seasoned enough (i.e. old) librarian to remember a functional iteration for Dow Jones, before it was even called Factiva. When a dear colleague and as yet unindicted co-conspirator trained me how to use the new version, she began by saying, "Take everything you know about Dow Jones and forget it. It is not ever going to work the same way."
Truer words have really been spoken in libraryland. Factiva has long been an inducer of eye-rolling. Sure, it has specific uses, which is why we pay for the darned thing in first place, but it has not been keeping up with the user driven environment in which we live now.
Steady yourself, I'm about to praise Ebsco and Proquest. Are you ready?
One of the most frequent things we look for in library land are specific holdings of periodicals. I believe I have ranted previously about how we are paying for the same content in multiple places. However, when it comes to some periodicals, we are forced to go to exactly one place. This is the case of the periodical Bon Appetit and Factiva.
Why is this a big deal? Look what happens when I go from our catalog holding indicating we have access to Factiva and what I get when I arrive at that site:
 |
| Catalog sez goes to Factiva |
 |
| Surprise! This is where you go to do a search for a specific title. |
Here's how to do that title search, don't go looking for a source search option in the search form:
I had reason to discover this dis-functionality because I had a reference question asking for assistance in locating this exact title. On the very morning Dow Jones had announced "We are pleased to announce a series of enhancements to Factiva, designed to improve the overall user experience." No wonder my patron couldn't find it! I'm going to leave off with my Factiva disgruntlement here, except to say that vendors such as EbsQuest or ProCo and MuseStor and etc. are able to provide a stable URL to specific periodicals which we can use as links in our catalog to take patrons to the exact journal they wish to search you can too, DJ.
I'm going to set that particular grudge aside for the moment because a much bigger issue was raised for my hunt to find what my patron requested, which was a photo layout by a well known photographer she is researching. In the end, the Factiva holdings of Bon Appetit would not have helped us at all, because it is a text only site.
The print periodical collection saved the day again. Should I ask, Bon Appetit, how long it will be until you offer your backfiles, complete backfiles, for libraries to access electronically?
 |
| Yes, these are unbound issues. I'm not happy about that either. |
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