Good Books Independently Cataloged

This morning The Chronicle featured this news story, "Librarians Duel Over the Future of Producing Bibliographic Records", essentially a story about the protests librarians are making against the IT-ification of the profession--the move to take the "know" out of knowledge in favor of "Knol" and the like.

I've also become aware of the UI libraries' move to consolidate and make other changes in a move towards "Planning for New Service Models" (ugh, more money-sucking administrative committees).

I started searching for a recent Journal of the American Academy of Information Science article on algorithms and academic search, instead finding this article titled, "A user-centered functional metadata evaluation of moving image collections." Thinking it, like about half of the articles in JAAIS, was close to what I was looking for, I clicked on the link at the bottom of the page: Related Articles, * Find other articles like this in Wiley InterScience. The first two returns weren't bad. The third, "Corporate public affairs research: chronological reference list," fourth, " Confocal laser scanning microscopy of calcium dynamics in living cells," and fifth, "Biliary drainage in obstructive jaundice: Experimental and clinical aspects" just illustrate the reason for the librarians' ire and words of caution. As long as "AI" and "algorithms" are nearly interchangeable for search and other associative tasks, humans cannot be replaced by machines. (Helped, yes.)

These are also reasons why traditional libraries have collections of related items. While the algorithm can look across Wiley's "collection" and make connections that a human would not necessarily see, it also makes connections that are largely nonsensical and a waste of time to mere mortals who, while we won't be replaced by humans twice as fast in 18 months, do not have 18 months of our lives to waste wading through bungled corporate computer code.

So, just as I alluded to in "Good Books Independently Edited" librarians are important to the efficient transfer of information just as editors are. And perhaps small and/or academic presses, and libraries, occupy niches that big corporations cannot fill.

Hulu, the guilty pleasure

A couple of weeks ago NYTimes.com announced that Hulu.com was through testing, and open for business. Coincidentally, the same week the cable bill jumped 20% and I canceled it. So, I had plenty of time to test the new computer, old DSL connection, and new TV on the Internet.

It's a lot of fun. It turns out its mostly old TV, just like cable. Like iTunes, the quality would not hold up to a screening of Good Night, and Good Luck or Lawrence of Arabia. Unlike iTunes and YouTube, it's not open for anyone and everyone to post content or links to content, as it functions as a distribution channel for some big networks and production companies. Hulu's other shortcomings include little news or non-fiction (like the Discovery Channel and NGEO) programming, which I do miss. However, there are plenty of sitcoms, movies, and dramas that I had forgotten I liked.

The show that convinced me Hulu is worthwhile is the turkey episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. Because of music permissions the show hasn't been released on DVD until recently, and then, as now on Hulu, the music isn't as memorable as it was when I was a child. Even so, unless you're a card-carrying member of PETA, I recommend it highly if you want a good laugh.

P.S. One more major shortcoming: Apparently content will be changed almost randomly, so don't miss the turkey drop, in case it's pulled before the DRM is hacked!

Must remember . . .

It's impossible to read everything I feel that I need to, let alone everything I want to. Add blogging, or writing, or otherwise keeping track of the reading and my thoughts about what I've read and . . . I really admire people who can do it regularly.

More things I haven't kept up with, but think are important:

--Charles W. Bailey has updated his Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, as posted to COLLDV-L (a collection development listserv) . A well-developed list of more things that I should read! Actually, I've probably read about a third of it. Okay, maybe a quarter.

--With possibly the worst "well, duh," headline ever, the New York Times declared, Tech's Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True." Since the article appeared in the same week that I finally broke down and replaced my perfectly good seven-year-old Compaq with a new computer, it managed to make me feel less guilty about holding on to the old machine for so long (because it still works!), and about finally abandoning it due to the uncomfortable work-arounds necessary to actually use it. It's one thing to keep a TRS-80 as a perfectly good word processor--as a customer actually did in the mid-90s when I was working at Radio Shack. It's another to try to use an orphan program on a networked computer. Good-bye, Netscape (which I deleted a few weeks ago) .

--And this Inside Higher Ed piece is likely to be revisited at a later date: Abandoning Print, Not Peer Review. This is an article about Indiana Library's new online-only journal, Museum Anthropology Review. With a super-organized editor at the helm, it sounds like it's doing well. What the article doesn't mention is the structure and the organization, not just copyeditors and graphic designers, that a University Press or other publisher brings to the table. There is an entire department at UIP that has several people who spend a good portion of every day tracking articles, making sure that changes are made, drafts are turned in, and that everything is organized by arbitrary deadlines that ensure that Indiana University and other libraries, organizations, and individuals receive their online or print scholarship in a timely and coherent manner. Like most people in publishing I love academia, and have great respect for academics, but I have no illusions about the quality or timeliness of the writing that will frequently be the result when publishers are taken out of the equation. More power to Jason Baird Jackson, the intrepid editor.

"Engagement," or, who reads this stuff, anyway? (part 1)

Today I received a rate care I had requested from Soy Daily (Our World of Soy I could imagine reading, but I don't think I could handle it daily). I won't post the rate card, because they don't, but the top of the card listed their "bargain" rates pay-per-view rates that started around $20 per thousand; no guarantee (that I saw) of unique visitors. Below that were their display rates, with a button ad starting around $600/month on the main part of their site. they also offer an ad in their weekly newsletter for nominal flat monthly fee. They also prefer Paypal, but will accept checks with prior arrangement.

I hope this sort of pricing structure and flexibility becomes a trend. I think it might, based on the hopeful comments the folks at MediaPost 1, 2 have been making recently about the rise of online display (re: Yahoo) as a viable alternative to search (re: Google). More importantly, in the latter reference Jeff Hircsh celebrates the seeming decline of Click Through Rate (CTR) as the be-all-and-end-all of online advertising, as a measure of the ever-elusive concept, "engagement."