Amazon Needs Some Catalogers

Posted on by
6

Usually I like Amazon. They do a lot of things well. Delivery is fast. Customer service is usually good. I save a lot of money in shipping with the Prime account, and the Prime video  is a good supplement to Netflix. Plus, I don’t have a neighborhood bookstore for them to drive out of business, so I don’t have to feel guilty about that, either. However, considering that they started out in the book-selling business, and have been pretty good at it by all accounts, you’d think they would make it easier to find the exact book you want when you’re looking for it. Amazon sometimes has the devil of a time distinguishing between both different expressions and manifestations of the same work, especially of translations.

Here’s an example. After reading A Guide to the Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (definitely recommended) I wanted to read Epictetus’ Discourses, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Epictetus recommends the Robin Hard translation from Everyman’s Library, i.e., this translation. So far, so good. I considered a library copy, but my library doesn’t own that translation (since ordered). But I wanted my own copy and it’s inexpensive. However, Amazon says it’s temporarily out of stock. Okay, fine, I could wait, except I don’t need to because supposedly it’s available in “other formats,” including hardcover. That’s great. I love Everyman’s Library hardbacks because they’re well made.

So I click on over to the used hardcovers, relishing the first sale doctrine and the money it’s about to save me. Had I not been paying attention, weirdbooks would have been a few dollars richer because they advertise the lowest-priced “used–very good” copy and that’s what I usually buy. Fortunately, I glanced at the picture of the book at the top of the page, and knew that whatever that green book was, it wasn’t an Everyman’s Library edition. The title says “Heritage Press” edition. If collecting old translations of classics hardbound in slipcovers is your thing, then the Heritage Press is the publisher for you. Truth be told, that green volume would probably go well with the sofa in my den, so it was tempting. Regardless, I knew at a glance that it couldn’t be the translation from 1995.

From that page, you can click on “return to product information.” I clicked on it, but returned nowhere. Instead I was taken to the product information for for the Heritage Press edition, which lists the translator as P.E. Matheson. Unless Robin Hard was using a pseudonym, or unless P.E. Matheson also translates under his porn-star name, those are probably not the same people, and thus not the same translations. And it gets worse! One of the reviews on the page of the Heritage Edition reads: “I read A. A. Long’s, “Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life” (2002, also rated five stars). Long wrote that the best translation was by Robin Hard (this edition).” But obviously we’re not on the page for that edition. There are a couple of reviewers skewering the translation and copy editing, but that’s true on the Everyman’s Library edition as well, because the reviews are identical. The same reviews are also on this edition, which is obviously a public domain reprint with no translator even listed. But they’re missing from this edition, this edition, this edition, this edition, and this edition, despite them all bearing the same generic title The Discourses of Epictetus. What gives?

I’ve found the same thing throughout the Kindle store as well, especially because for just about any classic work there are several “publishers” hoping to make a few bucks by copying text from Project Gutenberg, converting it to a .mobi file, and uploading it to Amazon, and the results are all lumped together. All of which leads me to conclude that Amazon either needs to improve their algorithms or hire some catalogers. I’d go with the latter, because technology can only take us so far without some human intervention.

People I Neither Hate Nor Fear

Posted on by
6

I’ve been trying to ignore the post-election insanity, but it’s pretty hard to do if you follow the news at all. There’s a lot of craziness out there, whether it’s some loonies in all 50 states petitioning the White House for their state to secede from the United States, or the obvious hate of some of the white people mourning Romney, or people defriending Obama voters on Facebook, or a Florida man possibly committing suicide because Obama won, or a pregnant Arizona woman definitely running her husband over with their automobile because Obama won. According to the injured husband, the Arizona woman “believed her family was going to face hardship if Obama were re-elected.” Since he was hospitalized in critical condition and the wife was in jail, it turns out she was right. None of my Republican friends went batty after the election, but there are obviously some psychologically damaged people out there.

Apart from all the gibbering bile, the thing I read that most resonated with me was this blog post: Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people. The Republican apologists had one thing wrong for a lot of independent voters. They seemed to think that people voted for Obama. Technically, they did, but a lot of voters, including me, don’t necessarily vote for candidates they support so much as against candidates or parties they don’t like. I’m not sure I’ve ever voted for a candidate that I’ve completely supported. I’m not a joiner, I’ve never registered with a political party, and I find people who prefer party to country at best misguided and at worst dangerous. I’ve voted for Democrats and Republicans and even one Libertarian. This year I was tempted to vote for the Green Party just for variety, since NJ isn’t exactly a swing state.

I pretty much agree with his assessment. I have no idea what most Republican voters voted for or against, but the Republican leaders’ stances on science or war or marriage aren’t very defensible. Multiple divorcees whining about the sanctity of marriage repulse me. Also, I’m in more or less the same situation as him. I’m a straight, white male, married for almost 19 years, never divorced, raising a daughter, and while I’ll never be in the 1%, I’m solidly in the top quintile. Except for a few semesters in college, I’ve held a job steadily since I was 14. I work hard, pay my taxes, and have never received any sort of direct governmental support (other than student loans, which I’ve yet to default on). Although I do work in the non-profit sector, I don’t work for any government body. I’m exactly the sort of person that a lot of people would consider a “real” American.

And therein lies the problem for me. In addition to unpalatable stances on science or marriage, what I vote against are people who seem to hate me because I don’t hate or fear the right people or for reasons that should have nothing to do with governing the state. What I would like to see are political parties whose leaders don’t try to sway voters by placing large swaths of the population into the Other category. People who talk about “real” Americans or “traditional” Americans are counting on other people fearing or hating a lot of their fellow citizens. I can’t support that, because there are several groups of people I can’t bring myself to fear or hate that a lot of people seem to.

Non-white people

It’s been difficult to ignore American racism this year, from racially motivated protests at the University of Mississippi to the Twitter meme, “It’s called the White House for a reason,” sometimes preceded by “I’m not racist, but.…” Unsurprisingly, the map of the most racist tweeters corresponds pretty closely with the red states. Growing up white in the south, I was exposed to plenty of racist sentiments from my fellow white people, who no doubt felt comfortable expressing their true selves around a pasty person like me. Since I’ve never been particularly impressed by most of the white people I’ve met in my life, that whole white supremacy thing doesn’t work for me. And since I’ve spend most of my adult life in higher education exposed to all sorts of people who aren’t like me, I’ve learned to take people as they come. If people are nice to me, I try to be nice to them, and I don’t care what color their skin is. And if they’re not nice to me, then screw ‘em, I’ve got enough friends.

Homosexuals

While Rick Santorum, for example, seems obsessed with gay sex, I’ve never heard any of my numerous gay and lesbian friends and acquaintances over the years ever mention sex. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to believe, homosexuals aren’t out to convert anyone to homosexuality, which is about as possible as praying away the gay. As for gay marriage, I really don’t see why it bothers anyone what other people do in private. In fact, I see it as downright unAmerican to try to restrict people’s liberty. Anti-gay types are usually just provincial and limited in their experiences. Since the don’t know any homosexuals, they don’t realize that the defining characteristic of homosexuals isn’t all the gay sex they’re having with each other and trying to have with straight people. It’s the same stuff that defines us all: work, hobbies, friends, family, etc. If the Republicans weren’t so obsessed with gay sex, there would be a lot more Log Cabin Republicans.

Women

Now, I don’t really think that Republican leaders hate or fear women, well, most of them anyway. Calling women sluts is a pretty good sign of misogyny and double-standards. However, even the non-haters often think women are less than full citizens, and their rights to control their own bodies cease when they become pregnant. To some, women are merely baby receptacles and their rights end where a fertilized egg begins. I know they have their reasons, even some good ones, but I just can’t get behind that. “Life begins at conception” isn’t a fact; it’s a catchphrase. And while I’ve never met anyone who was actually pro-abortion, I’ve met plenty who are definitely anti-choice. For the record, I like women, and I think they should have the same rights over their bodies as I have over mine, and that includes all the ones who turned me down for dates in high school, which in my experience is a leading cause of misogyny. One can be morally opposed to abortion without being opposed to its legality. If a belief in equal human rights gets me hated, that’s fine. As for male superiority, I feel about that like I do about white supremacism. I’ve met a lot of men in the course of my life and haven’t been all that impressed by most of them as some sort of superior beings.

Poor people

Otherwise known as “the takers.” I can’t bring myself to hate poor people, either. I’ve been poor myself at times, and grew up, if not exactly poor, then at least in tight circumstances. But I had advantages that a lot of poor people lack: two parents who set examples by working, attending safe if not spectacular schools, living in a safe neighborhood, etc. I’ve even known a lot of truly poor people, especially in the rural south. What they seemed to have in common wasn’t a desire for government handouts or an unwillingness to work hard so much as a lack of knowledge about what is possible and an environment that didn’t allow them to succeed without overcoming extreme obstacles and deprivations. A lot of people grow up in circumstances that make it highly unlikely they’ll succeed without being geniuses of some sort, while others grow up in circumstances where even their stupidest actions don’t allow them to fail. People born rich who think they’re self-made are deluded.

Immigrants

I have a confession to make. Unlike, apparently, all the immigrant-haters in the country, I’m descended from immigrants to America. Sure, they came over a few hundred years ago, but my ancestors were all immigrants, except possibly that Choctaw woman my dad claimed was his great, great grandmother. (Actually, he claimed she was Cherokee, but given that the family is from central Mississippi, if it’s true she was most likely Choctaw.) The thing I’ve noticed about immigrants to America is that they like to work. If hard-working people want to come to America and work hard, I say let ‘em. As for the attempt to distinguish between “legal” and “illegal,” well, we all know laws change. If we passed a law saying all immigrants are now American citizens, then suddenly they wouldn’t be illegal. Good or bad laws don’t change the fact that people come here for work and freedom. And if immigrants want to deprive Americans of grueling jobs picking fruit or cleaning rich people’s toilets that no Americans actually want, I can live with that.

Scientists and the scientifically minded

Not only do I not hate scientists, I state approvingly that my Congressman is a rocket scientist, which is what it says on his bumper stickers. Since I don’t stand to make a ton of money peddling fossil fuels, it doesn’t bother me that scientists are concerned about the long-term sustainability and environmental damage of our reliance upon dirty energy. Since I don’t care that I’m descended from monkeys or whatever it is anti-evolutionists believe I believe, it doesn’t bother me that the scientific evidence is pretty much all in the evolution camp. Good science is good for everyone. I don’t have a problem with following the scientific consensus because I don’t have a religious or political ideology hostile to empirical evidence or reasoned analysis.

Atheists and agnostics

According to something I read recently, atheists are among the most reviled people in the country. Personally, I think atheism is a philosophically untenable position, which is why I’m an agnostic myself, but despite our philosophical differences I don’t hate the atheists, and for the haters we’re all the same anyway. The objection seems to be that it’s supposedly impossible to be a morally upright person if you don’t believe in whatever god the person judging you happens to believe in. I think this one is another example of provincialism, a limited upbringing, and a lack of experience. I’m too busy working hard, paying taxes, obeying laws, not being cruel to people, being married, and raising an almost perfect child to worry about what the haters think, though.

Liberals

I saved the most vague for last, because when I read right-wing descriptions of those darned liberals in the comments to a news article or a blog post, I can’t figure out who they’re talking about since none of the descriptions seem to have anything to do with me, and I’m pretty much a liberal. I believe in the individual right to life, liberty, and property; freedom of speech, religion, and association; equal rights; constitutional government; representative democracy; the separation of church and state; the Bill of Rights; basically, liberalism. If you don’t like those things, fine. Hate me. But you know what, liberals are concerned about government spending and the economy, too. If people quit attacking me for something they obviously don’t understand, they might get my vote occasionally.

There are probably some other groups of people I don’t hate or fear, but these are the groups I see being “othered” or demonized the most. When politicians, talk-show hosts, and whatever Sarah Palin is these days demonize people I know aren’t demons, it just makes them look crazy to me, like they’re not part of the reality-based community. If the recent election shows anything, it’s that demonizing or demeaning women, minorities, immigrants, the scientifically minded, and the poor isn’t necessarily a winning strategy, not that I expect it to stop.

Bad Google Scholar Results

Posted on by
9

I’ve seen lots of criticism of Google Books, but I find Google Scholar to be more frustrating. Google Scholar tends to be something of a last resort for me. It’s where I go when I’ve tried everything else and hope that the keyword searching will pull up something with at least some relevance that might have been missed in standard indexes. Usually I’m disappointed. For example, I was looking for scholarly information around a controversy within the International Churches of Christ, specifically regarding a controversial letter criticizing the organization and the aftermath. Here’s the Google Scholar search.

There are eight results, only half of which might count as scholarly. The book about God and karate could be considered scholarly. Another is a 4-page article from Leaven: the Journal of Campus Ministry, which I wouldn’t consider scholarly in the way that, say, the Journal of Religion is scholarly, and it has no references, but it’s sort of scholarly. Another is a link to a PDF of “Discipling Sisters” at the University of Georgia’s institutional repository, which wasn’t working at the time. By searching their OPAC and following links, I discovered it was a 2007 dissertation. Finally, success! Except that the only mention of the guy I was looking for uses a Wikipedia article as the source of information. Failure! The only other link that is at all scholarly is to a master’s thesis in the digital commons at McMaster University. That’s scholarly, but a master’s thesis is pretty low down the food chain for scholarly secondary resources. On the other hand, no Wikipedia articles are cited. One actual book, one questionable article, and two theses. Half the search results were sort of relevant.

The other links are not. Two are links to the same article from two different websites, spirtualpornograpy.com and reveal.org, both of which are anti-ICOC websites, so there’s some obvious bias and article is definitely not scholarly. There’s another link to a lecture housed at douglasjacoby.com, which is a Christian ministry site. How did they end up there? The only thing I can think of is that they’re all in PDF format. Does Google assume that anyone who can save a document to the web in PDF format is a scholar? Finally, there is a link to a Christianity Today article, only it’s to a Russian website instead of to the Christianity Today. Not scholarly, and possibly bootleg. Three non-scholarly websites and a bootleg news article. Half the results weren’t remotely relevant.

A broader search for ICOC alone brings more results, and with more results, there is a larger number of actual scholarly sources. However, buried in those results are numerous questionable sources, like PDFs from icocinvestigation.org, whose subtitle is “exposing the International Churches of Christ.” At least their bias is obvious. There’s also gospelpreaching.com, willofthelord.com (both linking to the same non-scholarly article), starringjesus.com (which doesn’t exist anymore), and regainnetwork.org, whose “mission is to outreach, unite and support those touched or adversely affected by the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi Movement.” These might all be great websites, but there’s nothing remotely scholarly about them.

It’s like Google Scholar is deliberately putting in non– or quasischolarly material just to make us have to evaluate the information more. Instead of filtering out the nonscholarly stuff littering the Internet, which is what I thought Google Scholar was supposed to do, it clutters up the results with dubious sources based on a questionable search algorithm. The best I can figure is that if a source on the Internet is in Google Books, is in PDF format, or has any citations, Scholar seems to consider it scholarly.

On the other hand, it’s a good exercise to discuss Scholar with students who want a quick fix when searching for scholarly sources. Do a search and start evaluating the source with even the most cursory criteria for scholarship and it’s pretty easy to show what is and what is not scholarly and why. That’s typically necessary when searching the open web, but it’s the sort of thing I wish one didn’t have to do with something like Google Scholar. There are no royal roads to research.

Vendor Provided Instruction Materials?

Posted on by
4

Last week I spoke at the NFAIS Humanities Roundtable about “Library Research Instruction in the Humanities.” The audience was a mix of vendors, publishers, and librarians, which was a different audience than I’m used to. I was trying to tell the non-librarians in the room, or rather the people who don’t currently work in libraries, what kinds of research instruction librarians do for students in the humanities. On the same panel was someone from ProQuest who then spoke to the librarians about what materials vendors could provide to help with that instruction. Her talk mirrored my points, and I thought it went pretty well.

One thing that surprised her in our discussions (both on the phone and at the Roundtable) was that I don’t attend vendor training on products and almost never use any instruction materials vendors might provide (with the exception being that years ago I did pass out some pretty good material on Refworks when we were first promoting it). I didn’t claim to be the norm, although I might be on my campus. It’s not that there isn’t plenty to learn about various products. It’s just that I’d rather learn it on my own, because that’s how I learn best. When asked what vendors could provide, I said I wanted lots of detailed information available online for me to read, and then I’d go from there. I learn more by tinkering than training.

Also, with some exceptions, in the humanities a database is a database is a database. If you’re mainly concerned with the major subject indexes in the humanities, once you’ve mastered one database you’ve pretty much mastered them all, especially if, as we do, we get most of them from the same vendor. There are some exceptions, such as L’Annee Philologique, but these days the only time I personally use that is when I’m showing it to library school students in my humanities librarianship class, while simultaneously thinking to myself “I wish this were as intuitive as the Ebsco interface.” There are full-text primary source databases that can be tricky as well, such as the Thesaurus Linquae Graecae. Try going to that database and doing an advanced lemma search if you’re not really sure how to go about it and you’ll understand what I mean. But it’s rare that in the humanities I would encounter something of the complexity of a Bloomberg Terminal, where I’d have to know not only a good deal about finance but also about how to manipulate that very specialized interface.

There are apparently a lot of librarians who like to be trained on databases by vendors or other librarians or some combination. That’s a matter of learning style. But what about using the supporting material? The ProQuest trainer talked about all the stuff they provide, which was all new to me. And they do provide a lot of support material, including Libguides boxes that can be imported. I took a look at some of the material, including the Libguides for the Patralogia Latina and the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals. It seemed like good content to me, but would I use it?

Probably not, at least not as it stands. The question is, with solid content explaining how to use particular resources, why wouldn’t I use it, especially if it was as easy as importing into Libguides? The biggest reason is branding. I don’t object to branding as such, and have no problem recommending the ProQuest Research Library or Ebsco Academic Search Premier. They’re good products. It also makes perfect sense for ProQuest or Ebsco or whomever to want to brand everything in sight. I doubt it matters much to students, but interfaces matter to librarians, and many times I’ve chosen to get the same index through one vendor rather than another because the interface was better. I think I’m on my third vendor with the Philosopher’s Index, for example. If Ebsco provides me with a better search experience than some previous interface did, I want to know that, and I keep it in mind for future decisions.

However, when I’m doing some sort of research instruction, either with a class or individually or through online tutorials, I don’t want to brand the product. I don’t want students thinking about brands, but about tools. I don’t want students to think ProQuest or Ebsco or FirstSearch. I want them to think Digital Dissertations or the ALTA Religion database or WorldCat. I don’t want the “ProQuest Start Here” logo on any of my training materials, because I don’t want students thinking that way. I’m reminded of an ebook rep several years ago who said they were designing the product as one-stop, or at least first-stop shopping for books. We basically said our library had 7 million books and this product had 10,000, so we would never promote the product that way, even it’s a good product.

Which brings up another distinction besides my learning style and my desire to have students think about tools, not brands–the size of the collection and library staff and the librarian-student ratio. We create most of our instructional materials in-house and could probably meet individually with every student on campus if they wanted research help. We don’t have 30,000 students and I don’t have to liaise with 12 academic departments or do 40 instruction sessions a semester. (And I’m grateful for all those things!) That was pretty much true at my first job as well at a liberal arts college, except I did a lot more instruction sessions. Thus, we’re not so overwhelmed that we can’t make our own Libguide content.

In addition, we have a lot of stuff. There are smaller libraries that pretty much rely on one vendor to provide most of their database content, so in some ways it makes sense to rely on the brand as a shortcut. If everything you have is from ProQuest, that ProQuest “Start Here” is accurate. That’s also the approach Summon is taking, and I just got an email offering videos on how librarians have used Summon in instruction sessions. However, while Summon might be “web-scale discovery,” it doesn’t have everything, and except for freshmen I wouldn’t recommend it as the first or only tool to use. We have too many specialized databases and indexes for that. Plus the most important means of scholarly communication in the humanities is still the monograph, so I’d recommend starting with WorldCat anyway.

So those are my reasons for not using vendor-supplied training materials. I prefer to learn on my own, I don’t want to brand the research, I have the time to create my own material, and my library has too many specialized resources to focus on a given vendor. Am I the minority here? Are some of you using that material?

NFAIS Humanities Roundtable

Posted on by
Reply

I’m going to be one of the speakers at the NFAIS Humanities Roundtable on Monday, October 1. I’m going to be talking about library instruction in the humanities along with someone from ProQuest. There’s a virtual and onsite registration if you’re interested. If you’re there, feel free to say hello.

I haven’t completely planned the talk yet, which is supposed to be 20 minutes covering the whole area. Right now, I think I’m going to talk about four modes of library instruction (or information literacy if you must): online learning objects, the one-shot, the flipped class, and research consultations, and how they vary depending on several factors, including the librarian-student ratio. Also, I think I’m going to talk about instruction in research concepts, types of information, and active learning more than on specific tools. For you humanities instruction folks, if that seems way off base from what you do, I’d love to hear from you in the comments or by email.

The Memex and the Academic Mind

Posted on by
Reply

In a July 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Vannevar Bush, then Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development for the United States government, published As We May Think, in which he laid out the plans for a machine he dubbed the Memex. The Memex was what we would now think of as a computer-like apparatus, a large desk with both a viewing screen and a screen for writing with a stylus. The insides would hold thousands of reels of microfilm, and researchers using the Memex could read the microfilm on the viewing screen and both annotate and make connections between microfilm pages (similar to hyperlinking). The Memex has been hailed as thought precursor to the personal computer, and in Libraries and the Enlightenment (a perfect holiday gift for the librarian in your life!) I discuss it as an example of a universal library scheme, that is, a way to make all the world’s information accessible to humans. However (and I also mention this in the book), one interesting thing about Bush’s conception of the Memex for librarians is the insight it gives into the academic mind and its relationship to information.

In “As We May Think,” Bush worries about the “growing mountain of research” and the danger that researchers were “being bogged down today as specialization extends.“The investigator,” he writes, “is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.” Bush noted that “our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose” and that “that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.” The Memex was intended to help solve that problem.

In a later 1959 essay, “Memex II,”[1] he goes on about the ease of actually acquiring material for research: “Professional societies will no longer print papers. Instead they will send him lists of titles with brief abstracts. And he can then order individual papers of sets to come on tape, complete, of course, with photographs and diagrams” (172).  Still later, in “Memex Revisited” (1965), he exhibited the practical thinking of the scientist in terms of materials, but not other costs.  He noted that the “material for a microfilm private library might cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a few cents.… The entire material of a private library in reduced film form would go on ten eight-and-one-half-by-eleven-inch sheets. Once that was available, with the reproduction methods now available, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a few cents apiece beyond the cost of materials” (208). As with the current debate about ebook pricing, Bush implies that the cost of information lay primarily in its medium, ignoring the costs of the information production itself. Microfilm is cheaper than print, so information will be cheaper, as people resist paying as much for ebooks today as they do for print books. If the cost of information were correlated with the cost of the medium of distribution, then digital books and articles would be nearly free, which of course they are not. [2]

Many professional societies indeed no longer print papers, but the bulk of publishing, at least in the sciences, is done by commercial publishers who certainly wouldn’t just send researchers scholarly articles for a few cents each. However, the expectation that Bush has is typically academic, even today. Information just appears, either as soon as we want it or a few days later. Barriers to information are either nonexistent or irrelevant. The question is whether this is a naive expectation or not.

Some librarians would certainly consider it naive. We know better than anyone the cost of knowledge. Information doesn’t just appear. We make it appear, if we can. So the expectation that barriers to information are nonexistent is a bit naive. But what about whether barriers to information are irrelevant? I think this is less naive, and in fact I think this expectation drives the entire academic research enterprise, including that of academic libraries. Librarians have spent decades building research collections and resource-sharing networks to make it seem like information just appears for researchers. Recent polls suggest that this is the primary function of the library for researchers: we buy stuff. And with information technology far more advanced than what Bush could conceive of with his Memex, the technological barriers to information have almost completely been eliminated. For Bush, getting the information organized and hyperlinked was the real problem, but that problem has been solved.

The only thing beginning to change, and possibly for the better, is that some researchers are becoming more aware of the economic and legal barriers to information. The Elsevier boycott has spread the word some. Elsevier trying to block U.S. efforts to make publicly funded research available to the public were a public relations disaster. Lawsuits against universities to stop professors sharing articles with their students as they see fit have gained some negative publicity. And the rise of gold-open access journals is starting to clue some researchers in to the cost of publication. Even modest out-of-pocket expenses for OA journals can cause controversy, as evidenced by the long discussion here when the OA journal Philosopher’s Imprint decided to implement a $20 charge to submit articles (since revised to a request for a donation). Ignoring the question of whether charging a submission fee is morally permissible, you can get a sense from the discussion that a lot of people who benefit from OA journals (i.e., everyone not affiliated with a university) were the ones most opposed to even a small submission charge. Nevertheless, there’s still the expectation that information should just be provided, even for the non-academically affiliated. It’s an expectation many of us have because it underlies the entire ethos of scholarship. All scholars should have access to relevant scholarship, even if they don’t work for a rich university.

I’m not one to make predictions (well, except that Twitter and Facebook have already called the 2012 Presidential elections), but if I had to make one I would predict that eventually even the economic and legal barriers to scholarly information will be reduced enough to make access broader and more sustainable. For information seekers outside academia, I’m less sanguine, although I would love to see an extremely robust Digital Public Library of America succeed, more OA scholarly journals, and current copyright laws restricted to at least pre-1992 levels. But even some of this might be achievable for scholarly information. In other words, I believe the academic information expectation will somehow overcome the commercial information exploitation. Something has to give, and I don’t see it being the centuries-old expectations of publishing researchers who expect access to all other published research. Or perhaps I’m wrong, and we’ll enter even more of a black market culture where scholars at better funded institutions send copies of articles to less well off scholars.

That’s not the same thing as saying information, even scholarly information, will be free, which is impossible. Only that the costs of that information will not be significantly more than is necessary to sustain it and the profits won’t be squeezed from researchers providing the information and editing for free while restricting access for researchers whose libraries can’t afford exorbitant costs. Commercial publishers expect to make a profit; researchers expect universal access to scholarship. Somewhere there’s a middle ground. At least I hope there is.

 

[1] I couldn’t find either “Memex 2″ or “Memex Revisited” online or even in microfilm to feed into my Memex. However, both are collected in the following volume: Bush, Vannevar, and James M. Nyce. From Memex to Hypertext : Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine. Boston: Academic Press, 1991. The page numbers refer to this volume.

[2] Portions of the last two paragraphs are taken from: Bivens-Tatum, Wayne. Libraries and the Enlightenment. Los Angeles, CA: Library Juice Press, 2012.

2012 Presidential Election Guide

Posted on by
6

Election time is rolling around and in the spirit of the season I’ve produced a completely objective and non-partisan guide to the two major Presidential candidates for those 14 truly undecided voters in the country. Feel free to pass it out to your library users.

Height and Great Hair Index

Two important factors in a political campaign. Supposedly the taller candidate always wins, and when was the last time we had a bald President?

Obama: 6’1″, hair too short to be great, turning whiter every moment he’s President
Romney: 6’2″, great hair, got the shellacked pompadour and distinguished gray at the temples going for him

Point: Romney

Celebrity Endorsement Index

Since celebrities are celebrated because of their political wisdom and because they’re so much smarter than us ordinary people, it’s important to know who’s voting for whom.

Obama: Scarlett Johansson–talented, articulate, very hot as Black Widow
Romney: Ted Nugent–old, kinda scary, famous rock musician 35 years ago

Point: Obama

Does that not seem fair? Okay, let’s try it again.

Obama: George Clooney–handsome, articulate, women want him and men want to be him
Romney: Gene Simmons–old, kinda scary, famous rock musician 35 years ago

Point: still Obama

Racist Index

For voters who really don’t like brown people, despite, you know, some of their best friends being brown people.

Obama: definitely black despite that white mother of his
Romney: very, very white

Point: Romney

Lone Individual Well Being Meter

For voters who think their personal well being is determined by who is President, and that it alone should determine your vote. Am I better off than I was four years ago? Yes, I am. Thank you, Mr. President.

Point: Obama

Rich White Male Index

For voters who believe that rich white males are, by definition, superior to everyone else and deserving of tax breaks, like capital gains tax rates being significantly lower than income and social security tax rates.

Obama: not rich, not white, male
Romney: rich, white, male, liked by other rich white males, loves tax loopholes and offshore accounts

Point: Romney

Foreign Policy Index

Obama: 3.5 years of actually being President and having to make decisions, killed Osama bin Laden
Romney: No foreign policy experience. Not even liked by the British, despite their “shared Anglo-Saxon heritage.” Best in Republican lineup because he shared the primary with the most foreign-policy-challenged Republicans since the 1930s. Didn’t the Republicans used to have this category wrapped up?

Point: Obama

Crazies who are more anti-Obama than pro-governing Index

Mitch McConnell: “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Point: Romney

Stock Market Index

Like astrological signs, stock market indicators tell us who to vote for, or something.

Dow Jones on 1/23/09, four days after Obama took office: 8077.56
Dow Jones on 9/14/12 at lunchtime: 13,592.63

Point: Obama

Hopelessly Deluded Index

Four years ago, this would have undeniably gone to Obama. Otherwise sane and intelligent people devolved into breathless disciples who were then disappointed that Obama’s election was not in fact equivalent to the second coming of Christ. Last week on the radio I heard a woman from Virginia say she was voting for Romney “because we’ve got women living in cars with little kids and we need someone to take care of them instead of all those foreign countries.” Good luck with that.

Point: Romney

Joe Six-pack Index

Obama: Used to smoke, drinks beer, obsessively follows sports
Romney: doesn’t smoke or drink, friends with many NASCAR team owners

Point: Obama

Ignorant Yahoo Index

One word: birthers. Plus all the people who think Obama is a Muslim. That would include a woman from rural Mississippi who told my grandmother during the 2008 election that if Obama was elected she would need a prayer rug because he would convert the country to Islam. The conversion process has apparently been very subtle, but I’ve put a couple of prayer rugs in my Amazon Wishlist just in case.

Point: Romney

Political Consistency Index

Obama: has held more or less consistent political positions throughout his career
Romney: earned porn star Jenna Jameson’s ironic endorsement because he’s the only candidate who has assumed more positions than she has

Point: Obama

Family Values Index

Obama: successful marriage, stable children, no divorce
Romney: successful marriage, stable children, no divorce

Point: tie

Educational Credential Index

Obama: BA, Columbia, JD, Harvard
Romney: BA, Brigham Young, JD/MBA Harvard

Point: tie. Columbia is more highly ranked than BYU, plus Romney was an English major. But Romney has two degrees from Harvard. Ivy league snobs might vote Obama because of the Ivy undergraduate degree.

Unemployment Rate Index

For voters who think the President is responsible for them having a job or not.

Unemployment Rate in 1/09: 7.8%
Unemployment Rate in 8.12: 8.3% (down from high of 10% in 10/09)

Point: tie–not Obama, no evidence on Romney other than unproven faith that cutting taxes always creates more jobs. Hopeless voters might vote for Romney if Obama hasn’t gotten them a job by November.

Persistent Folly Index

Obama: kept thinking Republicans would work with him for the good of the country
Romney: once tried to convert the wine-drinking French to Mormonism

Point: tie, although Romney was young at the time and had to try to convert someone, whereas Obama really should have known better

Youthful Indiscretion Index

For voters who think the child is father of the man.

Obama: some marijuana and cocaine when younger
Romney: allegedly held down younger boy in high school and cut off his hair

Point: tie, depends on whether you’re more offended by youthful experimentation with drugs or youthful experimentation with bullying. I’m not a big fan of either. However, I am conjuring an image of President Obama smoking a joint while Governor Romney gets him in a headlock and tries to give him a noogie. That would be the best Presidential debate performance ever.

So far, they’re tied, with each candidate scoring well on major indices. The deciding factor should probably be social media indices, because if Twitter can start a revolution, then Twitter and Facebook can certainly determine a Presidential Election. How do the candidates stack up?

Facebook Likes

Obama: 28,594,746 likes
Romney: 6,846,537 likes

Point: Obama

Twitter Followers

Obama: 19,741,449 Followers
Romney: 1,114,418 Followers

Point: Obama

Twitter and Facebook don’t lie. I’m calling this one for Obama.

The Stupidity of White Supremacists

Posted on by
5

Before any of you white supremacists out there start to object, I want to preface this by saying that I have nothing against white people. I’m white. Some of my best friends are white. And while I don’t subscribe to the doctrine of white supremacy, I know for a fact that there are a lot of white people out there who are quite articulate. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think you have to be pretty stupid to be a white supremacist.

I heard an interview on NPR with Pete Simi, author of American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate, about Wade Page, the Sikh temple gunman. Simi had interviewed Page before, and noted that one of Page’s formative influences was his time in the American military. Page told Simi that if you entered the military not a racist, you would still leave as one, and by “you” I assume he meant a white person who was probably pretty racist to begin with. Why? Because the American military treated black soldiers and white soldiers differently. Black soldiers, for example, were promoted over more deserving white soldiers and they weren’t disciplined for offenses like white soldiers were.

First, I doubt that’s true at all. None of my friends in the military have ever mentioned it, and given racial politics in this country I find it very hard to believe that black soldiers are coddled in the military, except by possibly treating them more equally than society in general (which itself would be a crime from the racist’s perspective). I suspect this belief is the result of selective evidence and confirmation bias. If you are a white supremacist, you believe that black soldiers don’t deserve promotion. Thus, if they get promoted, then it must be because the military is biased towards the black soldiers. Given the shaky psychology of many white supremacists and, as Simi noted, their drinking problems and inability to hold jobs, I would think it’s much more likely that black soldiers would be promoted above them, which would just make them angrier at the unjustness of a system that prefers competence over skin color.

But even it was true that the American military was biased toward black soldiers and against white soldiers, wouldn’t the obvious target of hatred be not the black soldiers, but the military leadership? The black soldiers benefiting from their preferential treatment are no more individually to blame for their success than white Americans who have benefited from their preferential treatment in American society. And unlike the subtle racism that benefits white people in America, this racial injustice would be caused by an identifiable group of people.  So even if it were true, it would seem a logical place to vent your hatred through assault would be a military base or the Pentagon rather than a temple. On the other hand, people attending worship services are less likely to carry M-16s than soldiers on a military base.

In my experience growing up in the deep south, the sort of people who espouse white supremacy or aggressive racism are always unachieving white people. Though a subtle racism is pervasive though all classes (or at least was when I was growing up) the most outspoken white racists I have met were always unsuccessful by any measure. Successful white people may owe some of their success to being white, just because being white in America makes many things easier for you, but they’re unlikely to attribute any of their success to being white. Quite the contrary, most white people are content to believe that their skin color gives them no advantages whatsoever. However, just being white isn’t enough to get by, even in America, a lesson lost on the white supremacists. If you’re white and still one of life’s losers, I guess it makes some twisted sense to demonize a group of people and stew in your illogical fantasies, but it’s still pretty stupid.

The stupidity is present even in the reviews of Simi’s book on Amazon . All the reviews are 4 or 5 stars except for this absurd review giving one star:

I’ll be anxiously awaiting your next books on the Black Power movement aka Black Panthers, the Muslim Brotherhood movement and the Hispanic Reconquista movement that claims the Unites States stole the southwest from Mexico. These groups have their own “spaces of hate” so let’s see some reporting on them as well. In fact, these movements are a bigger threat to white Americans than the any “white power” movements are for people of color. Case in point — when was the last KKK lynching? Ah yes.. the 60’s… But almost DAILY we see Black on white hate crimes that get BURIED by the mainstream press. Tsk Tsk — your bias is showing..

Well, someone’s bias is certainly showing. I’ve noticed on Amazon that oftentimes the worst “reviews” have absolutely nothing to do with the product. Products get one star because the shipping was slow or it wasn’t what the buyer wanted in the first place. This review doesn’t even have anything to do with the book and seems to be by some sort of racist who wants to avoid the painful fact that sometimes white people do stupid and awful stuff. The rhetorical move is what I call the “But what about.…” Simi has written an extensively researched book on the white power movement. The racist ignores it and says, “but what about other races doing bad things,” as if there were no other books in the entire world about whatever other topics he was interested in. The “anxiously awaiting” comment is particularly pathetic, because it’s pretty clear the reviewer doesn’t read books.

Seriously, if you take a look at the person’s other reviews on Amazon, only two are about books, the review of Simi’s unread book and another review about a book on multiculturalism and education that just rants about how bad it is that people from other cultures are ruining our “cultural fabric,” and I’m betting that fabric is white. Again, another stupid review about a book most likely unread. I guess that’s part of the stupidity of racism or any sort of ingrained hate. It blinds a person to everything but their obsession.

Well, not everything. The reviewer thinks a $350 bidet toilet seat is the “best invention ever,” and not just because it’s white (which it is).

I love this toilet seat — it installed very easily (make sure you have an outlet near your toilet however). I love the warm toilet seat — never knew what I was missing! The wash and bidet features are perfect and I am sure I will use 1/10th the toilet paper now. I just use the OVER-PRICED toilet paper now to dab dry versus trying to use it to do the entire job. I predict I will be saving money on buying TOO MUCH TOILET PAPER from this one purchase and it will pay for itself within the year.

It’s not just people from other cultures and races that ruin our cultural fabric. Apparently there’s some sort of conspiracy by toilet paper manufacturers, who sell that “OVER-PRICED” toilet paper (those toilet paper factories are probably run by foreigners or brown people). What does expensive toilet paper cost, like a buck a roll or something? If using 1/10 the toilet paper will pay for itself in a year, then the racist reviewer must use something like a roll of toilet paper a day. Then again, I guess if you’re that full of shit you need a lot of toilet paper.