Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
New topic -- "Electronic Information Publishing in the Information Curriculum"
Many thanks to Barbara Winters for taking on guest editor duties at short notice and moderating our topic on "Outsourcing." Despite spending only a week on this topic, we have had a fruitful discussion on this topic and should consider revisiting it in the future. Thanks again, Barbara, for doing a terrific job on the guest editing process.
Let's move onto our next topic entitled "Electronic Information Publishing" which is hosted by Bob Watson.
To introduce Bob to you, I will quote him directly:
"After getting my MLS in 1975 (George Peabody), I found myself working in several types of libraries before settling back into public libraries where I originally wanted to be. But the experience was very useful since it gave me perspective, plus an expertise in "business" that brought me back into a public library that had a slot for a "Business Services Librarian." If there is anything I believe about librarianship, it is that it is a reflection of the professional-level jobs that need to be done in a library and not something "minted" at a graduation ceremony. I've written a bit and some CRISTAL-ED listserv members might have read my writings; I'm now into what might be called a "power poster" on Howard Rheingold's Electric Minds (www.minds.com), where I'm free to publish to the online non-library world (but who knows when, pfft, the power goes off?)...Hence my interest in electronic publishing."
Let's now join Bob Watson in a discussion of electronic information publishing.
Bob Watson
Executive Director
Franklin Park Public Library District
10311 Grand Avenue
Franklin Park, IL 60131
Voice: (847) 455-6016
bwatson@linc.lib.il.us
Hi, everybody. The project of the moment is "electronic information publishing" and your task, should you decide to accept it, is to post your opinions.
Electronic publishing covers a broad spectrum of what librarians encounter today. Electronic "documents" range from something akin to traditional publishing (such as CD-ROMs one can add to a local collection) to off-site data-bases which have content very much in the vein of traditional publications (such as magazine indexes and full-text resources) to formal "magazines" which now exist only in electronic format (such as several scientific "e-journals" or Slate or First Monday to well-financed and stable web sites to personal web pages. A long run-on sentence, to be sure, but you see the continuity.
What do students need to know? And how do these fit in with librarianship as taught and practiced?
One of the resulting issues has very much to do with what cataloging is all about. Right now, we librarians do cataloging along certain prescribed methodologies and have developed our libraries so that our technical services departments work under a certain "load" through the year. New developments in OPACs, which make them very like web browsers, complicate this. No one, that I'm aware of, has the time to manually enter the hundreds and thousands of URLs that might be useful to a library, arranging them in fashions which use our existing subject terminology. We need outside vendors to select sites and load the URLs, updating their selections on a frequent basis so "link rot" is minimized. I think.
(Which seems to be a convenient segue from the "Outside Vendors" topic which preceded this one.)
Martin J. Cohen
Media Services and Library Systems
Saint Mary's College of California
Moraga, CA 94575
Voice: (510) 631-4229
Fax: (510) 376-6097
mcohen@stmarys-ca.edu
Bob Watson has posed the question in a fruitful way, which I would paraphrase as: what are the responsibilities of libraries toward the variety of electronic publishing and what do librarians need to know and do in order to fulfill these responsibilities?
His characterization of the varieties of electronic publishing is apt. Laying aside those that in some sense parallel print (i.e. in transitory form redistribute the "content" of an existing print publication), there are a relative few publications which somewhat resemble monographs, many more which resemble the ephemera and pamphlets which have always been problematic for libraries, and a large number of quasi-periodicals, the best of which resemble in their quality and informality the early circular letters which evolved into scientific journals some 300 years ago.
Most of these appear and disappear, change their provenance, source, and quality with protean irregularity. "Fixing" them is not the question. How can we know them well enough even to point our clients toward them from day to day?
As Bob Watson puts it:
"No one, that I'm aware of, has the time to manually enter the hundreds and thousands of URLs that might be useful to a library, arranging them in fashions which use our existing subject terminology. We need outside vendors to select sites and load the URLs, updating their selections on a frequent basis so 'link rot' is minimized."
Perhaps we would be more content to "outsource" this responsibility if there existed reliable agents with whom we could contract. As it is, we must distinguish between outsourcing to an agent in whose quality we have some confidence and simply abandoning responsibility to entrepreneurs.
I suggest that more of this work ought to be done within the library community, through formalized cooperative agreements between the major libraries and associated smaller ones, such as those that govern RLIN. The W3 organization has been making a good effort along these lines.
Paul M. Gherman
University Librarian
611B General Library
419 21st Avenue South
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37240
Voice: (615) 322-7120
Fax: (615) 343-8279
gherman@library.vanderbilt.edu
I thought that OCLC's NetFirst was doing just this for URLs.
I may be turning this discussion in another way than intended, but it seems to me librarians need to be increasingly involved in the publishing process itself. If academia is to regain control of the scholary output of our faculty, we need to find new ways of sharing the results of research and scholarship. Librarians need to have the skills to work with those faculty who would like to publish electronically.
Some libraries are beginning to be involved via association with the university press. Johns Hopkins via Project Muse, Standford via HighWire Press. Others are experimenting on their own, such as Virginia Tech's "Scholarly Communications Project", while others are just beginning to explore publishing dissertations and thesis in electronic fomat. We need librarians with a knowledge of publishing to become involved in this process. Our faculty do not have the skills, often our presses do not have the technological expertise, but library staff do or can. We need to find new ways to make our organizations relevant in an electronic world.
Bob Watson
Executive Director
Franklin Park Public Library District
10311 Grand Avenue
Franklin Park, IL 60131
Voice: (847) 455-6016
bwatson@linc.lib.il.us
I first want to thank Martin J. Cohen and Paul M. Gherman for their responses.
There is, indeed, a wide range of issues.
Regarding OCLC's Net First, I must say that I've known of its existence for some time, but am still unsure as to whether or not they'll be offering a loadable product for adding subject specific URLs to a local catalog. I had had a chance to talk to DRA's Mike Mellinger about such a product and he knew of no prospective vendor as of this past April. Perhaps a reader can provide greater detail.
The "publishing issue" is interesting. From the point-of-view of a degree offering institution, why should they publish a specialized text unless there is some assurance that it will be accessible at a later date? Is non-accessible scholarship actually "scholarship" (in a sense similar to the question of whether or not a tree falling with no one to hear it actually makes a sound)? This may not be "off topic" in library practice if libraries are the only ones who can deal with the issue.
Also, what can libraries do, together as consortia, to deal with the massive explosion of URLs (particularly "junk" and ephemera)? There may be many answers -- and how do we teach students to appreciate the problem?
Another issue, which I hereby throw into the fray, is technology succession. DVD will be replacing CD-ROM for many applications, and simple "net computers" may allow access to many products that now require a full-fledged PC. Do students need to know product details, or do they need to know theory so as to be familiar with the issues of technology succession? If both, how are the issues framed and how is this done given the other degree requirements?
Suggestions, anyone?
David Drummond
Director
Safety Department
University of Wisconsin - Madison
30 N. Murray St.
Madison WI 53715-2609
Voice: (608) 262-9707
Fax: (608) 262-6767
David.Drummond@mail.admin.wisc.edu
Paul Gherman highlighted the usefulness of electronic publishing to create access to scholarship among small audiences.
Electronic publishing can also preserve access for large audiences. Libraries are plagued by the disappearance of valuable and/or irreplaceable books. In addition to notorious cases of theft, state libraries, law libraries and even the Library of Congress fall victim to accidental and intentional losses.
Electronic publishing can preserve, even enhance everyone's right of access to irreplaceable books and archives. Most of these resources are not copyright-protected. After the one-time cost for scanning, the CD of a formerly irreplaceable volume can be replaced for a dollar or two. Result is better security and greater availability for the collection -- also potential space savings. Industries, such as insurance, already store archival information as electronic images.
Are there barriers that are not obvious to this outsider?
Bob Watson
Executive Director
Franklin Park Public Library District
10311 Grand Avenue
Franklin Park, IL 60131
Voice: (847) 455-6016
bwatson@linc.lib.il.us
Steve Wooldridge, who is the wizard working "behind the computer" on this LISTSERV, gave me a well-deserved wake-up call. There's been very little traffic on this topic.
So I'll throw out some points which may help kick-start discussion.
First, however, a report from OCLC. Readers will recall that I was very unsure as to what NetFirst would be offering; it appears that OCLC is in something of a quandary, too, as I had a call from a lady there (and I apologize for not getting her name) who compared what they are doing to the labors of Sisyphus. The problems of web disorganization and fluidity are making it hard to develop a product.
I suspect some of this might be due to software (when is a URL ending with a slash equivalent to one which doesn't have one), but I also suspect that the effort required to create a good product (by librarian definition) may be delaying a useful product. I do not know, of course, but it seems to me that the first product in the field will have an enormous advantage.
Are there any thoughts on the matter?
Here are some issues:
Now -- how's that for a few issues facing electronic publishing and what fledgling librarians need to know? :-)
James H. Sweetland
School of Library and Information Science
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201
Voice: (414) 229-6840
Fax: (414) 229-4848
sweetlnd@csd.uwm.edu
Well, dealing with just one of the issues raised:
Until fairly recently (say somewhere between 1950 and 1990) the primary problem in most information retrieval requests was how to get anything at all which answered your question. For most of the period, say, 1300 - 1950, books were relatively scarce, experts were hard to find, except in limited subjects (the village blacksmith was really good at what he did, but knew very little about, say tinsmithing), and other resources also scarce.
The result: We developed a set of skills which allowed us to make the very best we could of limited resources. Or, in modern terms, the most common approach was a high recall search, except in the very largest libraries. Cf. the number of people who still ask questions like "Where are your nonfiction books?" or "Do you have any cookbooks?"
However, especially with electronic resources, we now have reversed the situation. And the currently developing Web makes it even worse. Not only do we have access to a very large amount of information, but the level of access is increased -- the ultimate being the full-text search.
The problem is that we still tend to have skills and assumptions that we must wring every drop out of the resources. Or, what we really need to do is get a high precision search. But, few people are used to this, and fewer are very good at it.
Many of the questions posed, and OCLC's problems with selection are related to this new problem: We are reluctant to want to "filter" the information stream. In part, I suggest it's because we are still in an older information retrieval mode.
I have no really useful suggestions at the moment, but I think the information professions need to address the need for better concern with precision (including selection of "material"/sites/etc.), and we need to work at educating users. The worst example of bad searching I've seen in a while was on a home shopping channel, where a computer + modem unit was demonstrated by using Excite to search "college scholarships": This gave ca 1,500,000 hits, which the sales person claimed (a) really listed that many college scholarships and (b) was a "good thing." Ignoring the problems of terminology, and the difference between phrase searching, implicit "or" and the like, does anyone really think a list of 1.5 million scholarships is particularly useful?
Or, in brief -- yes, we need to select; we have over the centuries developed criteria for "good" vs. "bad" materials; we have some skills in applying these criteria. We can develop both skills and criteria for "good stuff", even with the moving target of the Web. And, fairly soon, society as whole will start realizing how badly we need such selectivity. And, bottom line: "librarians" are fairly good both at selecting, and at being aware of intellectual freedom and similar issues when doing it. There is a role for us in this.
Dan Lester
dan@84.com
Thanks, Jim, for pointing out the precision vs. recall issues here. I've not forgotten the terms since I first learned them in mid-sixties in a class from Don Swanson at U of Chicago, but rarely use them anymore. I DO regularly emphasize these issues to colleagues I train about the Web, but don't use those terms much.
Specifically, the advertisement above is misleading, as there are NOT 1.5 million references to 1.5 million scholarships on the web. I'll bet there aren't 1.5 million different scholarships in the country. As you know, many search engines use various weighted searching strategies, and the 1.5 million is the number that hit on one or the other terms. The number that match on an "and search" is many less than above, and of course those include many where the words are on the same page, but not in any relevant relationship to one another. The examples are abundant, so I won't repeat any here.
Personally, when I hear ANY numbers quoted regarding the net or the Web, I'm instantly on "BS alert" to question the numbers. You can always use numbers to prove whatever you want, but since the Web is basically non-measurable, no matter how you define your terms, I'm particularly suspicious of any numbers about it.
Paul Doty
Jim Dan Hill Library
University of Wisconsin - Superior
pdoty@staff.uwsuper.edu
I would like to pick up a thread from Bob Watson's third post on access versus ownership. My guess would be that most academic libraries have moved, or are under considerable pressure to move, to an access model, probably to the beat of "just in time not just in case." What I think needs to be examined, however, as much as what this does to a collection or medium such as a magazine is what it does to researching, reading. Since much full text electronic publication is tied to indexes, many people encounter electronic publishing in the form of dissimilar articles strung on a search, rather than in an editorially drawn grouping such as in a magazine. Subject and keyword searching of electronically published material prioritizes the article not the journal, in the same way hypertext prioritizes the word not the argument. The question I have is what changes will these formats force upon reading, and whether, in turn, changed reading will alter such traditional research distinctions as "scholarly" and "popular" more than subscription decisions.
Paul M. Gherman
University Librarian
611B General Library
419 21st Avenue South
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37240
Voice: (615) 322-7120
Fax: (615) 343-8279
gherman@library.vanderbilt.edu
Per James Sweetland's comments about finding the "good stuff" on the Web. I suspect that very shortly we will see commercial services develop which will distill the information on the Web and offer the "good stuff." I find on our campus, very few faculty or students know how to use our catalog well enough to get the right-sized search result sets. One VP some years ago, boasted to me that he could get hundreds of results from any search on the Web. This level of ignorance does not help the situation. I am not optimistic that we will be able to train our users to use Boolean search terms. Instead, we will need to develop filters, as James suggests, which may be transparent to the user, or can we make the choice of filters easy for the user to select. I doubt that many users will even do that.
Shirley Richardson
Catalog Librarian
Angelo State University
San Angelo, Texas 76909
Voice: (915) 942-2221
Fax: (915) 942-2198
Shirley.Richardson@mailserv.angelo.edu
I can't help wondering, in the midst of all this scurrying to online publications, what effect all of this extra time spent staring at CRTs will do to people's eyesight, and potentially, to people's health. If students, faculty, etc., have all of their resources moved online, it will mean a lengthy period of time spent at the computer terminals. We really don't know yet what effect all of that extra computer time will have on eyes and/or other body parts. Personally, I prefer the paper format for my nearsighted eyes, although I recognize the inevitability of electronic formats.
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