So given the similarities it is likewise reasonable to question if academic libraries will survive. What do we need to do to make sure that happens? Newspapers are getting lots of advice for what they need to do to survive in the 21st century. How well might that advice work for academic libraries? I wanted to put that question to the test, and had a good opportunity to do so when Vadim Lavrusik, a new media student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, posted an essay on the “12 Things Newspapers Should Do to Survive” at Mashable.com. So let’s take them one at a time and consider how well academic libraries could implement these recommendations, or whether we are already successfully evolving in the Internet Age.

1. Put the Web First: Translated to libraries this point suggests we should emphasize connecting with our user community via the Web, and de-emphasize more traditional means. Reporters are still hired to emphasize reporting in print. Academic librarians appear well adapted to working with both electronic and print media. We seem to have already caught on to the importance of operating effectively across multiple platforms and media – we’re not hanging on to print as the holy grail. Then again, we don’t depend on print advertising as our main revenue stream.

2. Go Niche: Newspapers can’t be all things to all people, and neither can your academic library. Our advantage is that we know the specialists in our communities. It allows us to target the niche groups within our institutions, and deliver personalized services to them. This strategy may work better at smaller institutions, just as a community paper can go niche more so than a large metro daily.

3. Offer Unique Content in Print: Has the time come to stop collecting the most common content in print? Why are we still putting so much effort into collecting that which is easily accessible online? Newspapers are realizing that offering the same information available everywhere else is a losing proposition. It may be time to emphasize and promote those print collections not easily accessible elsewhere – and leverage them globally through resource sharing networks. Granted, newspapers are businesses and libraries are not. Should we stop subscribing to the local paper because it’s online and print copies are available for purchase everywhere? People expect their library to have a copy of the local paper. It’s a tough call, but tradeoffs may be necessary.

4. Librarians as Curators and Contextualizers: It was interesting to see the recommendation that newspapers should “verify what is real and what is not from all the information out there”. Isn’t that what we claim to help library users do? If that’s a survival strategy we need to get better at promoting what we offer. Newspapers are finding it tough to compete with the convenience and timeliness of online news sources – and the free factor. But newspapers still continue to excel in analysis and helping to understand a situation. Librarians can’t compete with the ease, speed, convenience and cost of the web as an information source. Like newspapers we have to capitalize on our ability to get people beneath the surface of any issue.

5. Real-Time Reporting Integration: Newspapers need to move more aggressively into real-time reporting because everyone can now report and produce news as it happens. Academic libraries need to integrate into real-time information exchanges and real-time networks to establish a presence and lay the groundwork for connecting with members of the user community – and many academic libraries are already moving into the Real-Time Web.

6. Start-up vs. Corporate: Is organizational bureaucracy overwhelming your ability to innovate? If so, you have something in common with newspapers. In the corporate model bureaucratic requirements make it difficult to be agile and able to shift rapidly to meet changing expectations. Like newspapers, if we expect to have a future, we need a cultural shift so we operate more like start-ups do.

7. Encourage Innovation: That goes hand-in-hand with adopting a start-up culture. Academic libraries need to create the workplace environment that encourages innovative thinking and action. Newspapers were slow to innovate and look where it got them.

8. Charging for quotes: This really doesn’t apply to academic libraries but I thought I’d throw it in the mix because this is a strategy that might bring in some additional revenue for newspapers, but ultimately could backfire and cause a real backlash in the global web community. It’s important to innovate and try new things, but we need to be mindful of how it impacts on the user community. The last thing we want to do is alienate them.

9. Invest in Mobile Technology: Newspapers are looking at how they can increase readership by getting their content on all mobile devices. Newspaper subscriptions via e-readers is one example of that strategy. No surprises here for academic libraries. We simply can’t ignore the importance of having a mobile presence.

10. Communicate with Readers: Newspapers that want to survive are doing all they can to allow readers to get involved and interact with journalists. The online New York Times prominently features selected reader comments. This is an ongoing challenge for all libraries. We have yet to find something truly compelling for our communities that engages them and encourages their online participation. Fortunately we do have other channels of communication to reach our user communities, and perhaps those will offer some opportunities for new forms of engagement.

11. Building Community: Newspapers are realizing it takes more than quality content. By creating real communities of engaged readers they build loyal relationships. That approach should pay off for academic libraries too. We need to continue to develop and maintain our physical communities and find ways to leverage technology to extend those communities into virtual spaces.

12. Pay Wall or No Pay Wall: This is the biggest issue confronting newspapers. Should they freely give away their content or put it behind subscriber-only walls. This is less of an issue for academic libraries. We’ve already put all of our valuable content behind walls that are for affiliates only. There are issues. Is the walled garden approach sustainable? What happens as more of our subscription content becomes freely available? Will we be pressured to accept advertising as a tradeoff for keeping subscription costs manageable? Like newspapers, we may have some real dilemmas to confront in the not-too-distant future.

While the comparison between the newspaper industry and the academic library is occasionally a less than perfect match, there are definitely some areas where we face similar challenges and opportunities. That means we can find good lessons to learn and work from as we try to re-think our services and resources to meet new expectations and user behaviors. Are there other industries we should be observing and seeking new ideas from which we can improve our own practices? I believe there are, and as I come across them I’ll continue to share what I learn here at ACRLog – but I hope you will help by bringing what you learn about them to our attention.

First Mondays (an excellent and long-established open access journal) has an article by Brian Whitworth and Rob Friedman on “Reinventing Academic Publishing Online.” In a nutshell, it examines the fact that the “top” academic journals remain vested in a traditional system in which maintaining barriers and exclusivity because their exclusivity is perceived as rigor and therefore value. The higher your rejection rate, the prouder you are. But there are two mistakes academic publishing can make: publishing stuff that isn’t any good and not publishing stuff that turns out to be good. It’s the cost of the latter – failing to publish something innovative and challenging for fear it might be wrong – that these authors feel is left out of the equation.

These error types trade off, so reducing one increases the other, e.g., a journal can reduce Type I errors to 0 percent by rejecting all submissions, but this also raises Type II errors to 100 percent as nothing useful is published. The commonsense principle is that to win a lottery (get value) you must buy a ticket (take risk). In academic publishing the rigor problem occurs when reducing Type I error increases Type II error more . . . Pursuing rigor alone produces rigor mortis in the theory leg of scientific progress.

The authors point to the fact that the publishing industry essentially determines who is hired and fired in universities, which flies in the face of the mission we are supposedly on and the intellectual freedom that should enable our work.

When a system becomes the mechanism for power, profit and control, idealized goals like the search for truth can easily take a back seat. Authors may not personally want their work locked away in expensive journals that only endowed western universities can afford, but business exclusivity requires it. Authors may personally see others as colleagues in a cooperative research journey, but the system frames them as competition for jobs and grants. As academia becomes a business, new ideas become threats to power rather than opportunities for knowledge growth. Journals become the gatekeepers of academic power rather than cultivators of knowledge, and theories battle weapons in promotion arenas, rather than plows in knowledge fields.

The authors suggest that under the color of “rigor” this model sustains a system in which cross-disciplinary and innovative research is unwelcome. “As more rigorous and exclusive ’specialties’ emerge, the expected trend is an academic publishing system that produces more and more about less and less.” (And hey, it’ll make the Big Bundle even bigger and more expensive, therefore more profitable.) They think instead technology could offer ways to facilitate information exchange rather than creation of further citadels of isolated specialization. Paying more attention to the mistake of failing to publish something that turns out to be worthwhile will require the creation of a democratic open knowledge exchange which can better balance the equation.

The funny thing is that this tension has existed for a long time. Well before the Internet enabled the opportunity for fundamental change in the way we share research, both Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn described the delicate tension between maintaining an agreed-upon understanding by fending off crackpot theories and the need to allow something new to challenge the dominant paradigm. Both self interest and a more idealized notion of rigor conspire against innovation. What I find interesting about this First Monday article is the idea that our current dominant publishing model has let self-interest reign supreme, and that a new open model could let the more idealized urge to preserve that which is solid and true duke it out with ideas that challenge it. It could balance the risk/reward tradeoff involved in choosing what to publish and which questions to pursue.

By the way, what is your library planning to do for Open Access Week?

(Photo courtesy of rptnorris.)

One option is the “Michigan Model” in which a press becomes a part of the library’s operations, sharing a common vision, but having to adapt to library culture or risk marginalization. For some presses, this probably sounds like “resistance is futile. You will be absorbed.” But Michigan is not the only press to be aligned with the library’s operations. As reported by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed, Penn State University Press is also part of the library division, and according to Patrick H. Alexander, that means adjusting to very different experiences.

Presses, he said, “look outward” and are “very much concerned about professors at other institutions, relationships with external vendors — we work largely with people outside the institution. That is not the perspective of the university library,” he said. University presses must be constantly thinking about revenue, while libraries, he said, are focused on service. At a university press, he said, the motto must many times be “just say no,” as editors turn down book proposals they can’t publish and must do so all the time. The library, he said, is much more of a “yes we can” place, trying to satisfy the faculty and students of the campus.

Maybe through this cultural collision we’ll both learn something valuable.

Doug Armato of the University of Minnesota Press criticized the “polarizing and self-serving rhetoric” of the open access movement. This year’s president of the AAUP, Alex Holzman of Temple UP, predicted that the electronic revolution for book publishing is about to take off and change everything, though he doesn’t see open access as the future of university presses.

But Michael Jensen of the American Academies Press (whose books have been browsable for free online for years) had a different prediction.

In the conference’s final plenary session, “Directions for Open Access Publishing,” Michael J. Jensen, director of strategic Web communications for the National Academies Press, made an extreme version of the adapt-or-die argument for incorporating open access into scholarly publishing. Mr. Jensen entertained the audience with a description of his longtime obsession with crises that threaten life as we know it. Then he went for the Darwinian kill and linked print-based culture with global warming.

“C02 must be radically curtailed,” he said. “Print is CO2-heavy.” How about a business model that would rely on 50 percent digital sales, 25 percent print-on-demand books, and 25 percent institutionally funded open-access publishing? “Open access in exchange for institutional support is a business model for survival,” Mr. Jensen advised, all joking aside.

“If we fail to make these changes, we will be knowing participants in the death spiral,” he warned. “The print book must become the exception, not the rule, as soon as possible.”

Inside Higher Ed has further coverage of the debate over open access and different possible models for long-term sustainability.

More immediate threats to presses facing closure were also on the agenda. Take, for example, LSU Press. They have a terrific list, books that have won Pulitzers and become bestsellers as well as scholarly books that might not find a home elsewhere. Check it out – maybe you’ll find some books that fit your curriculum that should be on your shelves. And maybe it will help sustain a valuable press while together we figure out the best way to disseminate scholarship in the 21st century.

Now it turns out this wasn’t an embarrassing one-off. Elsevier published at least six fake journals – er, sorry, got my terminology wrong: “sponsored article publications.” (The Scientist article is free, but requires registration.)

Mistakes were made. Elsevier officials regret the error. The nasty people who did that left the company long ago. Besides, it was in Australia. The CEO of Elsevier’s Heath Sciences division says it’s going to be looked into, but he’s sure it’s not ever going to happen again. “I can assure all that the integrity of Elsevier’s publications and business practices remains intact.”

Um, isn’t that up to us to say? Seems to me Elsevier’s integrity was in question even before this disgraceful and embarrassing revelation.

Anne-Marie posted some thoughtful comments about this issue at Info-fetishist – particularly the implications for information literacy.

Maybe we can’t talk about peer review at all anymore without talking about the future of a system of knowledge reporting that is almost entirely dependent upon on the volunteer efforts of scholars and researchers, almost entirely dependent upon their professionalism and commitment to the quality of their disciplines, in a world where ultimate control is passing away from those scholars’ and researchers’ professional societies and into the hands of corporate entities whose decisions are driven not by commitment to quality, knowledge creation or disciplinary integrity.

We’ve been focusing on “why pay attention to scholarly work and conversations going on on the participatory web” mostly in terms of how these things help us give our students access to scholarly material, how they help our students contextualize and understand scholarly debates, how they lay bare the processes of knowledge creation that lie under the surface of the perfect, final-product article you see in scholarly journals. And all of those things are important. But I think we’re going to have to add that “whistleblower” aspect — we need to pay attention to scholars on the participatory web so they can point out where the traditional processes are corrupt, and where the gatekeepers are making decisions that aren’t in the interests of the rest of us.

Excellent food for thought.

Another approach to the news popped up at the LSW room at FriendFeed where Steve Lawson proposed “the LSW needs to get Elsevier to publish the Australasian Journal of Library Science.” And in the over 80 responses you can find helpful suggestions like “your article will be reviewed by a panel of representatives from library vendors,” “there should be one issue deliberately missing. Supplements should be completely unavailable electronically,” and “it’s only available on one computer on campus. There is a login & password if you want off-campus access, but you can’t share it with ANYONE. … and we’ll publish 4 issues per year. But if we can’t come up with enough content for 4 issues a year, we can just combine them, like 1/2 or 1-2-3 or 2-4 or whatever.” See how productive pent-up rage can be? Thanks to all the brilliance behind this thread for the best serials humor ever.

Amongst all the giddiness some commenters pointed out a previous little scandal involving a high-impact journal that got its high impact by having one allegedly “crackpot” author publish multiple papers., as many as five in a single issue, all of them citing himself. The publisher? You guessed it – Elsevier.

photo courtesy of London Permaculture

Anytime you hear someone talk about intellectual property you are going to wind up hearing the phrase “non-rival.” The idea is that information or knowledge is a non-rival good. What this means is that when one person consumes information, it does not prevent another person from consuming it. So information or knowledge is not like land or pudding, which are “used up” when other people consume them. Ok, fine.

But from this idea many people quickly get to conclusions like: information just wants to be free; intellectual property is evil; DRM is the devil; and the Kindle is a giant threat to intellectual freedom. Maybe all those things are true, but I don’t think you can get there from the claim that information is non-rival.

First, I’m not even sure that information is non-rival. What about a juicy piece of gossip? The more people hear about it, the less juicy it becomes, the more it is “used up.” Or what about the secret to a magic trick? Or an insider stock tip? Or a trade secret? Or any information that gives someone a competitive advantage?

But even assuming that information is non-rival, nothing follows from this about intellectual property rights. Information and knowledge should be widely distributed because everyone in society will be better off (not because they are non-rival). But that doesn’t mean information has no value, or that the creators of information can’t charge for it, or put restrictions on who uses it and what they can do with it (within reason).

And even assuming that information is non-rival, that does not mean that books as containers of information are non-rival. In fact books are not non-rival in all respects, as anyone who goes to a library and finds the book they want “checked out” knows. If someone is using a book, someone else cannot simultaneously use it, hence it is not non-rival. Oh unless it’s an electronic book, with the right kind of DRM set up.

In her post, Jones jumps from the idea that information is non-rival to the idea that the Amazon Kindle will do “monumental and egregious harm…to intellectual freedom and the maintenance of an informed populace” because a person cannot take their Kindle book content to a used bookstore or donate it to a library like one could with a physical book. Jones claims that books are like bottomless cups of pudding because others can consume their contents hundreds or thousands more times.

This is going too far. It’s an open question whether Kindle will lead to a more or less informed populace. Kindle books are less expensive (after you shell out for the device) than physical books. Kindle makes it easier to carry more books at one time on a train or a plane. Perhaps for these reasons, Kindle will lead to a more informed populace, not less. As for not being able to sell or give away Kindle books, that is a disadvantage, but if people could give away digital books there’s a good argument that that activity would undermine the whole market because sharing networks would be set up. We may like that, but I don’t think there’s an inherent right to it simply because information is non-rival or because information is a public good. Physical books are not, as Jones claims, bottomless cups of pudding. Eventually they wear out, especially if the first owner treats them roughly or writes in them. The more they are used, the more they are used up. As far as I know there is nothing stopping someone from loading up a Kindle and selling it or giving it away, or even lending it out, as some libraries have done.

The debate of ownership vs. access for libraries is not a simple one, and it’s quite a stretch to blame the current economic meltdown on access over ownership. Intellectual goods may be non-rival, but physical books are not. Something follows from the fact that information is non-rival, but I’m not sure what and I’m not sure it’s interesting. Whatever it is I don’t think it has anything to do with intellectual property rights, the debate between ownership versus access in libraries, or if the Kindle is a boon or threat to intellectual culture.

And Boston Public, in a partnership with the Open Library that seems to have gotten far too little press, will digitize a public domain book of your choice within a matter of days, letting demand drive mass digitization. All you have to do is press a button in their catalog. How cool is that?

It’s interesting how these efforts are described. “An ATM for books.” “Library as Bookstore.” “Library as publisher.” “Amazon partnership.” We’re not quite sure what to call this effort – which is making public domain books available in multiple formats to as many people as possible while recovering costs. Basically, it’s interlibrary loan of non-returnables that happen to be book-sized and often go direct to the patron. It’s a terrific development. But . . . you knew there’d be a but, didn’t you?

By now some of you will have twigged to the fact that partnering with Amazon – particularly for POD fulfillment – is going on my “hey, wait a minute” list. Amazon is a hugely successful company that is able to set terms because it is so big. Their strategy is vertical integration and ownership of every piece of the industry that can be integrated. The only POD company they support is the one they own. The only e-book format they will sell is the one they bought – MobiPocket (which also fuels Kindle). They are the Microsoft of books. Don’t like the way we do things? Tough, ’cause we’re the biggest. You go through us, you get the audience, but you play by our rules.

The more we partner with Amazon, the bigger it gets and the harder it is for local independent bookstores to survive. It’s the same Faustian bargain libraries stuck with Google to digitize books, but it’s harder to argue it’s totally win-win. Independent booksellers lose. That’s a choice we make.

I suggested an even more radical partnership partnership in Library Journal last year, but so far no takers. I’m not really surprised, since it would require regional library consortia having a new-generation machine and expanding delivery of print-on-demand books to local booksellers. But a partnership of publishers, regional library systems, and the local book trade could lead to a greener, more reader-driven supply of books to borrow or buy – and a healthier local community.

I recently caught a blog posting from a bookseller who said of hard times “it’s Mardi Gras over there at the library!” We’ve all seen the news stories about the surge in library use. We have the mojo to refresh a broken book culture using new technologies and new ideas, but before we fashion ourselves as publishers, we should think about what that means to our communities near by.

I know a lot of indie booksellers, and they are dedicated to connecting people to books because they believe that connection matters. They aren’t getting rich. They aren’t trying to boost their profit margin. They’re just trying to pay the rent and stay open. My own campus bookstore is one of the few that isn’t outsourced. It’s an independent bookstore, and I’m proud of that.

If we’re going to become part of the book business, let’s think about how to do it in a way that doesn’t screw over our local partners in connecting books and readers.

Joseph Storch has an idea (behind the Chronicle’s pay wall) to deal with textbook piracy – have all publishers put their books on a common electronic platform and let the colleges negotiate a subscription on behalf of students and dole out royalties to publishers based on use. Students will be fine with it because online is where students are at, and if a few students insist on printing content, well, even so “the system could save considerable paper.” And publishers might even start creating some digital content to supplement textbooks. What a concept!

Evidently Mr. Storch, an assistant counsel in the State University of New York’s Office of University Counsel, knows something about intellectual property law, but hasn’t paid much attention to the textbook industry and the masses of expensive online content they bundle with books, or to how students prefer to read. I don’t know about your students, but at our college most students print any online content that they want to read with care. Like most of us, they hate reading long texts on screen and even those suffering from ecological guilt prefer reading, marking up, and (if they’re on the ball) bringing their materials to class so they can refer to it. Professors want students to refer to texts under discussion, but are not universally delighted to face a classroom full of students with their noses buried in laptops. Not all students have laptops. Not all classrooms have wireless access to handle all those laptops at once. (I won’t even touch on the silliness of an ecological argument that landfills full of printed textbooks are a bigger problem than landfills overflowing with electronic junk, heavy metals and all.)

I applaud any attempt to improve the situation for students who have to spend so much on textbooks, but solutions should be proffered with some rudimentary research done beforehand. Libraries have subscribed to bundled electronic content on behalf of students for a long time, and while it means more content is accessible, it doesn’t make it cheaper – nor does it mean students will use more content. And so far, having all content through one platform may be the dream of some of our ambitious vendors, but it’s not likely to happen – or save anybody money.

I also had to laugh that he mentions Harvard Business Review – the outfit smart enough (or should I say greedy enough?) to have licenses with their content bundled into library databases spell out that it cannot be used for courses. For that, you pay more.

[Whoops - as Steven points out in the comments, I read that wrong. It's Harvard Law Review. I did notice something else, though, that I hadn't before - the copyright statements on full-text articles in Academic Search Premier vary from publication to publication, and a lot of them specify articles can be downloaded "for personal use." It makes me wonder if that's to wriggle out of use of these articles in courses, with links in syllabi or e-reserves systems. But that's a paranoia for another day . . .]

A cheaper solution? Nice thought, but I doubt it.

The survey focused entirely on sources of information that can be optimized for advertising dollars – and how to drive the public toward news media for purchasing decisions – so they may have just decided libraries don’t belong on the list. But when they ask about “where you go for information” and libraries aren’t there, it suggests value is only attached to information sources that exist to generate advertising dollars and stock dividends.

The study reports that people are increasingly skeptical about mass media and that “word of mouth” is more important than being told what to read through PR and marketing. In other words, you PR flaks have shot yourselves in the foot and are now trying to learn how to talk like a human.

Maybe our users need to get a little more outspoken. Libraries have net assets worth billions! You can claim your dividend every time you use them! You can use them online with no pay wall! And no harvesting of personal information or annoying banner ads!

I think we have an edge, here, if only we were able to get the word out.

Today’s New York Times has an opinion piece about the use of UK’s plaintiff-friendly libel laws to suppress publication of books in the United States. The authors, professors of law and of Jewish Studies at Emory, call attention to the way Cambridge caved when a billionaire Saudi banker objected to passages in Alms for Jihad and call for legislation that will prevent US courts from enforcing libel judgments issued by foreign courts – what they call “libel tourism.” We raised this issue a couple of times here.

I was reminded of how much easier it is to preach than practice once again when reading, in LJ’s Academic Newswire, that UK publishers are hammering out OA issues, followed by a summary of an article on the value of venting published in the ALA-APA’s newsletter – only open to subscribers. Well, I’m venting again – how are we supposed to lecture publishers about open access when our own organizations aren’t practicing it? There, I feel so much better.

But while I’m at it, let me applaud ACRL for making their publications accessible. As Steven pointed out in an earlier post, the much-awaited ethnographic study of the University of Rochester library is browseable online. It’s fascinating! I’m going to go order a copy so I can take my time reading it.

It seems to me, ACRL is not only doing the right thing, they’re doing the smart thing. As the RIAA continues to threaten our college students, the marketplace is embracing DRM-free solutions; trade publishers such as HarperCollins and Random House have created digital depositories so their books can be searched on their own sites, not just at Amazon and Google Books. (Random even has cool book widgets so you can run them on your own website.) Open for business – what a concept.

I got into a spot of bother when I asked ProQuest whether they had any response to the Times wooing my students and faculty with free select accounts shortly after my library plunked down lots of cash for the same content. (It bugged me that the Times would act like my students’ best friend when, after all, I’m their best friend and had just purchased them a really shiny, expensive bauble and was trying hard to get them to notice.) Apparently ProQuest asked the Times and the Times said “oops, never mind” – and librarians (me in particular) were blamed for pulling the plug. But this development is exactly what I’d hoped for and I’m delighted with it.

Those of us who subscribe to the Historical New York Times will have to make clear why it’s different and worth using – there’s content and search capability that won’t be at the Times’s site. But that’s okay. And when our students graduate they won’t lose both our version and a temporary freebie from the Times.

The real news: here’s yet another example of bean counters figuring out that open is better for business than closed.

I’m still not sure what to think of their Knowledge Network, though, as reported in Inside Higher Ed a while back.