Libraries vs authors - not again

This article "Authors Take Libraries to Court in Face Off on Copyright Issues" came up in my news feed today. The Authors Guild, some other organizations and 8 authors filed a suit against HathiTrust and several universities (including my own Indiana University and its libraries), blaming them for the "systematic, concerted, widespread and unauthorized reproduction and distribution of millions of copyrighted books and other works." (text of their complaint).

Really? Do these organizations and individuals have legitimate concerns regarding the dissemination of their work or are they there for publicity and settlement money? It seems that if they had legitimate concerns, they would've done it differently. Why attack libraries, which don't really profit from all their work but rather try to provide better and more adequate services to their populations? Isn't it an attempt to go for smaller fish in order to get bigger fish? Libraries have an agreement with google, so this suit looks more like a move against google. If Google steps in, it can settle a better deal for everybody.

Getting one's name out isn't a bad idea either. For example, the article about the suit mentions Frances Grimble, who quoted as saying "It is time for libraries to go. Clearly, their only goal these days is to maintain their existence—with the aid of public funding, which most writers and publishers do not get—in a world where libraries have become obsolete." Hm... The argument doesn't seem to have much evidence to support itself. I talk about library obsolescence with my students all the time and we always come back to "but what do you mean by 'library'?".

It seems that Ms. Grimble's understanding of libraries needs to be updated. Libraries provide access to the internet, databases, digital books, ipods, ipads, e-textbooks, etc., etc. And they rely on public funding, because their goals are not to earn money (which is the goal of authors and publishers), but to preserve knowledge and disseminate it among those who can't afford to pay $35 for a book (the average price of most Ms. Grimble's books on amazon). Public funding allows citizens to combine financial resources (through taxation, etc.) and create a pool of shared resources so that the larger group can benefit from it. Modern resources are digital resources. It's obvious that libraries should provide access to digital resources. Why anybody would want to fight it unless they have an ulterior motive? I certainly wouldn't want to buy every book or DVD I use. I don't have that much money and honestly, most of it is not even worth it.

HathiTrust Statement on Authors Guild, Inc. et al. v. HathiTrust et al.

Newspaper 2.0

10 suggestions for newspapers to adapt to the digital world from Doc Searls' post "A newspaper progress report, sort of" can essentially be summarized as "link, link, link". The suggestions may be good, but they don't seem to be justified:

1. Open up archives, don't charge for access to archived news. This one makes sense, unless the newspapers come up with a lot of added value in archive browsing (e.g., tools for mapping, tracing, or otherwise researching events and issues).
2. Link to archived news on the paper's website. The suggestion should be "link to archived news only if you understand the purpose of such linking". Multiple links to archived news add to information overload, clutter the text, and make the reading more difficult.
3. Link to relevant content on the web. Why and what for? The newspapers want their readers to read their content, not the web. If they link outside, readers will go away from their pages and advertisers.
4. Link to local bloggers and competing papers. Again to encourage readers to go away? While I can see this being of benefit to the reader, I can't understand why newspapers would want to do it.
5. Hire good bloggers. Hiring based on one's work rather than degrees, etc makes sense.
6. Engage citizen journalists. OK, using others without paying them also makes sense.
7. Treat your writing with respect and don't use the word "content". This is a personal preference. There is no argument why the word "content" is more offensive than "news", "text", or anything else except its coming from a non-journalistic environment and blurring the boundaries between journalists and other producers of digital information.
8. Simplify your website. Good one, but needs to be more specific. And it contradicts #2,3,4.
9. Make your web dynamic, in other words twitter and facebook. This is a hype, everybody now calls for using twitter and facebook. Does it mean to reach certain populations or disseminate news in various (shorter, etc.) formats? This suggestion needs "unpacking" as some humanities professors like to say.
10. Make news friendly to mobile devices. See #8.

The self-imposed limits of LIS by Ron Day

The paper The self-imposed limits of library and information science: Remarks on the discipline, on the profession, on the university, and on the state of "information" in the U.S. at large today by Ron Day is published in InterActions, a UCLA publication. It begins by raising three related issues: the marginalization of critical thought, the lack of interest in studying public information (mass media and education), and the construction of individuals as 'information seeking' and 'information using'. However, by the end it does not directly address these questions (except maybe the first one). Rather it argues for a change in attitudes and approaches towards information, knowledge, research, and scholarship. Here are a few notes from this paper.

Critique is not a negative term that refers to opposition to the norm. In Kantian terms it's understanding of the formal conditions for understanding, practical action, and judgments of taste. It is the questioning of assumptions from which a research starts, whether they be theological or scientific-empirical assumptions. Empirical research approaches knowledge as facts discoverable through application of theory and method and ignores the possibilities of these facts being constructed by theories and methods. The studies of information that are construed as studies of empirical entities erase the conditions of knowledge production, of understanding that information is not the essence of some substance (as wax is the essence of candle).

It is important to question dogmatically derived assertions and critique the powers of expression. These powers are manifested in the formal arrangement of materials as well as in statements (form and content of expressions). Preventing dogmatism is the orientation of critical analysis.

The modern epistemology of systems emerged as the development of classifications. In various classifications individuals are seen as representatives of classes arranged by a system. Systems often ignore the historical development of individuals. Such synchronic identities may be called 'individuals', while historically determined measures may be called 'singularities'. The political struggle is often confined to the struggle for the rights of certain individuals as seen in terms of classes sanctioned by the reigning state (race or gender). To overcome dogmatism and ideologies, we should view identities as singularities and allow such singularities challenge the world and question conditions and re-define the terms of their existence.

"The ideal of critique, however, is not toward simply being granted identity within the norm's grammar and logic of recognition and representation, but rather, toward justice, that is toward all beings being considered as equal, each according to the terms of its specific singularity, as well as its in-common being."

Published in Journal of Documentation

My article "Information about the synthesis of life forms: a document-oriented approach" is finally published in the Journal of Documentation (url). It takes almost a year for an accepted article to be published. How come in the age of practically instant communication scholars are still ok with that?

Difficulties of cross-country comparisons

A paper in the last issue of The Information Society analyzes popular searches in Google and Yahoo across multiple countries ("Popular Searches in Google and Yahoo!: A “Digital Divide” in Information Uses?", by Elad Segev and Niv Ahituv, N26(1)). The authors show that users from Russia make more queries regarding economics and politics and offer some explanations of why users from the US and some other Western countries focus more on entertainment, while users from other countries are more interested in the issues of economic and political value.

With cross-country comparisons it is very difficult to develop a common ground. Google and yahoo as international search engines seem to be good candidates to provide such a ground. But how many people in non-English countries use google and yahoo? As far as I know one of the most popular search engines in Russia is yandex.ru (a service that has many services similar to google). So it could be that those who use google in Russia are on the much more advanced side in terms of education, information skills, etc. Then the conclusions about digital divide based on the analysis of google and yahoo become less valid.

According to yandex statistics "Runet content" (http://clck.yandex.ru/redir/dtype=stred/pid=39/cid=2948/*download.yandex.ru/company/yandex_on_content_autumn_2009.pdf) the most popular searches fall into the categories of "download something", "games", "weather", and "dating". Far from the issues of economical and political values. To be convinced by the results of the research published in The Information Society one would have to look at the statistics of search engine preferences in each country.

Information access

From a qualifying paper defense yesterday:

Information access is part of information ethics. It has been conceptualized in the literature in different ways. Info access can be viewed as knowledge, technology, communication, control, goods, participation. Another conceptualization looks at information access as a triad of physical, intellectual, and social access. It's important to address the three as in interacting combination.

I think bringing intellectual (cognitive?) and social into the concept of access diffuses the concept and makes it difficult to study it. It will be especially difficult to study it within the boundaries of information science.

What makes a document accessible? First of all, it's availability. If I cannot get the document, I can't use it at all. So it's a matter of collecting and storing information. Second, it's "findability". I need to be able to find it in order to get it. It's a matter of organizing information. Third, it's readability. Can I read and understand it? This is where it potentially starts going beyond information science in its traditional sense.

And this is where it begins to be interesting to me. What role does the language play in accessing and using information? Can we as information professionals make inaccessible (e.g., scientific) documents accessible by providing extended abstracts, reviews, and evaluations? Or is it all obsolete and useless because of the large amounts of information and promises of automation?