Category: Worth Reading

For postings that mention a good article, book, study, etc.

Google, copyright and Gorman

In case you missed this recent Wall Street Journal article on Google print, several librarians are quoted including ALA President Michael Gorman.

Gorman continues to channel librarians of 80-100 years ago who believed not only that people ought to read, but that people ought to read the right things in the right way, and librarians were to show them how. Gorman says, “They are reducing scholarly texts to paragraphs. The point of a scholarly text is they are written to be read sequentially from beginning to end, making an argument and engaging you in dialogue.” Huh? Besides lumping scholarly texts from many disciplines into one category, who knows what the point of a scholarly text is? Maybe the point of a scholarly text is to get the author tenure. Maybe the author’s point is to get the ideas out there and build reputation. Furthermore, if I read the whole thing from beginning to end, how am I in dialogue? It’s more like a monologue. Ok suppose you are supposed to read the whole text from beginning to end. What if giving someone a little taste makes them want to go for the whole meal? And what if I’ve already read the whole work a while ago and forgot most of it and want to go back and search for a particular part that’s relevant to my work now? There’s no end to the different ways people use texts, and librarians shouldn’t be telling them that they must use them or read them in a certain way. At least the article noted Gorman wasn’t speaking on behalf of ALA.

Andrew Herkovic, director of communications at Stanford University Libraries “declined to comment” on whether Stanford provided copyrighted material to Google. Google is not always forthcoming, but at least Google admits they’re scanning copyrighted texts. If Stanford did provide copyrighted material, could they be named in the lawsuit? Would this be against ALA’s code of ethics, which says librarians should respect copyright? I guess there’s always a chance Herkovic/Stanford doesn’t know if they’ve given copyrighted material or not, but shouldn’t they make it their business to know?

My In-box Overfloweth

Amazing all the interesting stuff that can wash up in one’s in-box in a single day. The Chronicle reports that some of the first books scanned in the Google Library project are now online. Google’s blog shows some of the texts. I notice that some are missing the “find in a library” link to WorldCat that the library project is supposed to include (a link that is absent on the digital books supplied by publishers; the idea was to include it on the library-scanned books). Still no memo describing how Google plans to take over the world. We’ll just have to either take their word for it that they’re good guys – or use our imaginations. And wait to see what the courts decide.

If you want paranoia with that, here’s a scary item from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: your printer may be watching you. Remember how detectives used to match documents to the typewriter they were written on by noticing the top of the letter T was a little chipped? Well – that’s sort of the idea. Embed a secret code that can match a page to a specific printer. And how handy when industry does the advance work for you! It strikes me as a tad bizarre that we live in a country in which the idea of making a record of the unique grooves and lands in any handgun as it goes from the manufacturer to the marketplace is totally untenable. Nope. No way. Threatens our civil liberties. Fuggetaboutit. But ideas? Speech? Expression? Hey, those things are dangerous, dude! We need to be able to track back and see where they came from. The Feebs, of course, say it’s just to apprehend counterfeiters, but that’s about as comforting as being told I shouldn’t worry about the PATRIOT Act unless I’m a terrorist.

The EFF tidbit (not the rant) came from the wonderful folks at LII – which has a spiffy new look. Between their weekly update and the one from the Scout Report I usually find plenty of interesting academic sites to share with faculty or to add to our subject guides. Or just to make me think.

Now if Steven would just find a way to add a button to his Kept-Up Librarian that would automatically download all the news fit to feed directly to my brain, I would truly feel kept up. But I would definitely need a memory upgrade.

Let’s Get On The Right Train Right Now

After an EDUCAUSE session last week a colleague asked if I’d read the column in the latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review (n-d ’05) that “slammed” libraries. Fortunately I was at the one place where finding a copy of ER is not a problem. Paul Gandel’s piece, “Libraries: Standing at the wrong platform waiting for the wrong train” doesn’t quite slam academic libraries, but he does take them to task on two counts: hastening their own marginalization and failure to innovate. It’s a good read, and it’s important for authors to send a call to arms when change is imperative. But when it comes to spotting trends it seems Gandel is late arriving at the train station. Pointing out that academic libraries are suffering from a case of diminishing relevance and innovation is nothing new. Bell and Shank have written in depth about marginalization issues and authors as diverse as Coffman, Tennant, Pace, and others criticized librarians and our system vendors for lacking innovative.(note – registrations required to view some links)

Gandel wouldn’t be the first author to make points made previously by others, and sometimes there is no harm in reminding us we need to do better. He is also writing for a different audience – our IT colleagues. Where I do find fault with his article is that it identifies problems but offers no solutions. Granted, this is just a two-page article, but surely there can be a better balance between what’s wrong and how we fix it. Lack of innovation? Has Gandel walked through the poster sessions at an ACRL conference? Has he joined or visited an online learning community where academic librarians are exploring cutting edge ideas? If he had I think that instead of implying that Amazon and Google offer models we should adopt, he’d be identifying solutions that promote better user education programs and the integration of library resources and services into those places where learning occurs. Yes, we absolutely must rethink our policies and procedures for digital environments. There’s no question we must offer systems that balance ease of use and sophisticated algorithms that yield high quality results.

To truly avoid, as Gandel puts it, “being rendered obsolete in an increasingly digital world” we all need to work hard at putting ourselves and resources where the learning is happening. If we do that it should help our faculty and students to make better use of our collections and reference services – two areas that Gandel finds particularly problematic. I agree with Gandel that our old “just put it out there and hope they find it” model of librarianship needs improvement. But there are many librarians that are advocating change as well as libraries that are innovating so they can avoid being marginalized. I encourage Gandel to discover them. When he does I hope he uses his space in ER to share this information with his IT audience. He should encourage them to work with the campus library to make sure it is technologically well equipped to support the library’s effort to achieve relevance and sustainability in the digital landscape.

Evolving Discourse Communities

An article that has been discussed recently on the ILI-L discussion list (sponsored by the Instruction Section of ACRL) is well worth reading. “Librarians as Disciplinary Discourse Mediators: Using Genre Theory to Move Toward Critical Information Literacy” by Michelle Holschuh Simmons (published in portal: Libraries and the Academy, 5.3: 297-311) shifts the focus in information literacy efforts from finding and using information to the interpretive work of understanding both the context of the texts students use and the disciplinary conventions that shape it. Simmons argues that librarians are uniquely situated as mediators among disciplinary discourses and that by helping students understand the rhetorical underpinnings of texts we will help them “see that information is constructed and contested not monolithic and apolitical.” It’s well worth a look, since we frequently stumble when it comes to the aspects of information literacy that involve evaluation and understanding the ethical, economic, and social issues surrounding information called for in the IL Standards. This article is not available free online but can be found in some libraries through Project Muse.

I admit I thought of this article when reading a story in today’s Inside Higher Education. In “Too Much Information?” Scott Jaschik raises the issue of faculty members blogging before they have tenure. In part, this is really a genre question: will scholars take blogging seriously as a form of expression? how do blogs blend otherwise distinct genres – opinion, scholarship, personal narrative? is blogging is invading the space previously owned by journalists and public intellectuals, where speech is limited to those who hold the proper credentials? The more our genres morph and reinvent themselves, and as new kinds of discourse communities arise, the more agile we all need to focus information literacy on the critical work involved.