Infomatters

There’s a lot of chatter about the federal funding of NPR on certain news channels and it’s clear NPR officials are worried. You can get a sense of the sentiment among many by reading or watching Fox News. One sad indictment of our times is the argument made by many  ‘news’ commentators that there is no need for further federal funding since the plethora of radio stations available to contemporary listeners means the original motive of these funds, to create a truly national network of stations, has been achieved. As one analyst on Fox News put it recently, you can hear your point of view expressed on any number of stations, therefore why should the feds fund one viewpoint? Ah….people (and governments)  like NPR because of it’s point of view? I actually cling to the naive idea that news is about the facts of the world with some intelligent commentary, hopefully balanced, to allow us to digest the nuances. Is NPR perfect? No but it offers more than a point of view.  As Daniel Moynihan (among others) is known to have commented, we are all entitled to our own points of view, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

I truly was saddened today to learn of the death of Norman Horrocks. There will be many eulogies, and they will all be fitting because Norman was a breed apart — a gentleman, a scholar, and a man with a genuine sense of professionalism. His passing is all the more noticeable given the generation immediately in his wake, some of whom who will be wheeled out now to seek some form of reflected glory. Norman was the best company I’ve known at ALISE from the day I appeared there as a newly minted dean. Stories will someday be told and when I tell them, he will remain a hero.  What’s more, he was a fellow Manchester United supporter who understood a tie beyond geography. He understood many things did Norman.  The game should be played only one way, the right way. Farewell.

This week’s Chronicle of Higher Ed notes an experiment in open peer review of articles by Shakespeare Quarterly was viewed by the authors as most successful. Here, a selection of submitted article drafts was opened for comment by readers and invited reviewers, all of whom were invited to put their name to their comments (though it appears not all did) and the authors received what they largely believed to be constructive comments and citations which improved their drafts. As the editor put it, it was a controlled editorial process just not the typical controlled editorial process. The merits seem to be that authors received more comments than they might have expected from the blind review process that is typical of journals. This, if anything, points to an understated problem in the production cycle of many contemporary journals which results in reviewers offering little detailed feedback (and we’ve all had those!). One suspects that expert reviewers often exploit the blind aspect of the process to cover up their lack of investment in the activity. Having to put your name to your comments seems likely to encourage greater content and (one hopes) more thoughtful reviews too.

The downsides are real. The editorial work is extended, the decision is more open to scrutiny, and it appears from this example at least, the presence of senior reviewers stating their opinion tended to quiet some junior faculty reviewers who were concerned with presenting alternative views. It seems a sad indictment of the tenure system that one might actually pay a price for openly and intelligently holding alternative views but be rewarded by staying quiet. One hopes that is limited to some schools and faculties only.

Interestingly, the Shakespeare Quarterly results were more positive than the earlier findings by Nature which drew similar conclusions about some faculty unwillingness to participate with little on the plus side to balance this difficulty. Nevertheless, there is increasing interest in opening up the process of review and for me, the most practical one is to improve the quality of reviewing which in this field’s leading journals and conferences often leaves something to be desired.

I spent much of June traveling to conferences. First, I gave a keynote address at the Hypertext 2010 conference in Toronto where I found a community somewhat under threat by other web research conferences but nevertheless alive and kicking. The organizers had asked me to consider where the field might have gone wrong and where it might go in the future. I prepared for this by examining the last few years proceedings and prodding old colleagues in the field (Herre von Oostendorp at Utrecht, Jean-Francois Rouet at Poitiers, Cliff McKnight at L’boro, among others) to give me their impressions of the recent history of hypertext too. My main message was to argue that we not forget the vision of augmenting human thinking that is a common theme in the work of the holy trinity of hypertext thinkers, Bush, Englebart and Nelson. Interesting responses, and an interesting conference, now in its 21st year. I was reminded by this of the first time I attended CHI in 1988 and walked into a hastily organized meeting of folks interested in talking about hypertext. Ben Shneiderman noted how amazing it was that the room was full (we thought we were a secret group of fanatics) and one attendee later described ‘hypertext’ as the ‘word of the conference’ in ’88. The word may be losing currency, as judged by usage rates in Google Analytics, but the questions of human engagement with structure information is as pertinent as ever. What is great about this conference is that it brings together people interested in all aspects of this technology — from education, design, engineering, and user psychology. Toronto was alive too. Here’s to the next 21 years!

After Toronto I spent 10 days in London, reacquainting myself with a city I’d not visited for over 15 years. It’s changed, and for the better in my view, with the ethnic mixes and modernized licensing laws giving rise to street cafe culture previously missing. London is also a wonderful reminder of the cultural and lifestyle value of decent public transport! The real reason for the trip was a series of LIS related talks at CoLIS 2010, held in UCL, and a keynote address at the newly organized UK LIS Research Coalition Conference at the British Library. It’s an interesting reminder that even in Europe, community divisions are rife. Few people attended both events, despite the shared relevance of these meetings. CoLIS remains, in my view, one of the only LIS conferences where it is possible to seriously think about presentations. Attendance is limited, everyone stays in the same room, and evening events mean that community engagement is assured. The content is thoughtful and sometimes provocative, and one leaves with a sense of refreshment that I find too often is lacking in other conferences. The next one is on 2013 (yes, we don’t want to spoil ourselves by having these too often) in Copenhagen.

The UK LIS Research Coalition put together a one day event emphasizing the issues of demonstrating value and impact in the LIS world. Much like librarians over here, there is increased pressure in the UK to demonstrate return on investment and the financial value of libraries and librarianship. Lots of issues here related to how one demonstrates value, especially for practices and research models that are highly context-dependent. I love the emphasis on data and the concern to answer the perennial ‘so what’ question that plagues LIS research, though I am less convinced than others that the need for evidence-based evaluations in LIS is as great as it apparently appears to be in medicine, but let’s not argue the niggles. If we cannot quickly and clearly articulate examples of how the field adds value, then we have no business claiming intellectual legitimacy.

Good trips, good people, good discussions. If only it was always like this.

It’s been a while since I checked back with the Taiga forum and I find the site now largely locked down to members, but there are some updates for others to see. The most recently available in their series of “provocative statements” (TM) can be downloaded (see the pdf link in the bottom left corner) and it contains a few gems such as:

In 5 years, library buildings will no longer house collections and will become campus community centers that function as part of the student services sector. Campus business offices will manage license and acquisition of digital content. These changes will lead campus administrators to align libraries with the administrative rather than the academic side of the organization.

and

collection development as we now know it will cease to exist as selection of library materials will be entirely patron-initiated. Ownership of materials will be limited to what is actively used. The only collection development activities involving librarians will be competition over special collections and archives.

There’s a couple of duds in there too, in my view (and theirs too, since they lined out the one predicting Google meeting everyone’s search needs), such as the predictions that 20% of ARL directors will have retired by 2015 or, the truly outrageous idea that the library community will insist on better ROI from organizations such CRL, ALA etc…..as if!

That said, it’s good to see some direct and clear statements on some of these issues, though one wonders if the motivation to provoke discussion is somewhat negated by the controlled membership structure involved. I was reminded to check the forum again by Sarah Glassmeyer’s defense of libraries in May’s issue of the AALL Spectrum where she accuses too many people of throwing in the towel too quickly. She reports the Dean of Libraries from a well known university as stating up front in a recent conference that the ‘library, as a place, is dead’. (Suzanne, was that you?) And she offers a good retort to Seth Godin’s implications that libraries have become irrelevant, drawing solace, like many before her, in Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science. Ah, we have laws to prevent this kind of thing…..good to know!

Another survey, this time the fourth of the three-yearly Ithaka studies of faculty perceptions of their libraries, suggests all is not well. Without putting too fine a point on it, the authors state up front:

Since the first Faculty Survey in 2000, we have seen faculty members steadily shifting towards reliance on network-level electronic resources, and a corresponding decline in interest in using locally provided tools for discovery.

What follows is a colorful presentation of data that is wrapped up in suitable contemporary jargon (network-centricity, digitized resources etc.) that paints a picture which is not as bleak as some are interpreting it. Surprise surprise, faculty don’t like to leave their desks, know how to find stuff with Google, prefer domain specific to generic databases, follow links from articles, like full-text ejournals. In short, all the design features that we have been advocating for years such as ease of access, direct readability, linked documents, full coverage etc. are proving to be important to people.

Where the survey might be posing some more challenging thoughts is the shifting view of academic libraries as less the gateway and more the purchaser, though this has always been a role that academic libraries played. The shift seems sharpest among scientists, who unlike their colleagues in the humanities, report less value in the library for teaching, research, or even archival purposes, and appear to just want libraries to buy the materials. I have some doubts about this. The data are not provided which might explain how scientists imagine teaching materials of the future to be provided or how they foresee the scientific record being curated, though this surely is an issue of very real concern to many that I know, as confirmed by the results in section three, so I suspect the wording and terminology in some questions might be crucial here.

We do see faculty becoming more and more comfortable with electronic only versions of holdings. Much is made of the media shift from paper to digital but this also points to the continuing value placed on provision and curation through time. More and more faculty seem willing to trade off paper (even seeing it ‘discarded’ in terms used here) for reliable e-versions as we move forward, but this should not surprise us. Yes, 40% of respondents agree with this, but the key issue for faculty is availability, and that is a role the library has long fulfilled. Long term preservation of the record is what matters, and faculty are wide-awake to the importance of ensuring electronic resources are maintained. But for those still seeking the e-book tipping point, for all the desire to preserve these, still relatively few faculty seem to use them for teaching or research purposes. Maybe there’s a publication market here?

Media shifts get the news but the constants of quality triumph. In a series of questions about publication venue, faculty care about readership by peers and reputation more than medium. While much noise occurs about the need to revamp scholarly publication systems, there’s little data here to suggest faculty are so concerned. The published paper, tenure-dossier approved, is the gold standard. Self-interest motivated publishing behavior and the survey authors seem a little concerned at the end that faculty are unwilling to lead a revolution in the publication paradigm. It’s interesting stuff but I am not sure any of it is surprising. What is surprising is the suggestion of commentators that this points to the irrelevance of libraries to faculty. Hardly so, would be my interpretation.

It’s been out a few weeks now but it’s sheer size makes it less than simple to digest, which might account for the rather limited attention it’s thus far received in the information community. This aside, the report can be downloaded here: (PDF; 120 p.) and it’s worth reading. The major arguments are not particularly new but it’s interesting to hear others make this case loud and clear. Our cultural records in the digital era will rest on three key commitments according to the panel:

1) Articulate a compelling value proposition
2) Provide clear incentives to preserve
2) Define roles and responsibilities among stakeholders to ensure an ongoing and efficient flow of resources to preservation throughout the digital lifecycle.

The report is strong on economic analyses of the drivers of preservation, complementing what is seen as the dominant policy or technical concerns that have garnered most attention. However, early on the report acknowledges that key to success in this domain is promoting education and training for 21st century digital preservation, with core competencies in relevant science, technology and engineering knowledge. Interesting stuff…..more to come surely.

iSchool Advisory Board member, and entrepreneur-in-residence at UT this year, Gary Hoover provided a degree’s worth of insight in last month’s lecture on innovation which is available here. Start at part 1 and work through it at your speed to get the most from his words. Gary is a human dynamo and a self-confessed information junkie with a passion for learning that is truly inspiring. This lecture is exactly how he speaks – without notes, without affectation, and barely pausing for breath. Worth watching more than once.