I’ve had an epiphany that e-book readers like the Kindle and the Sony Reader are trying too much to be like books. They are trying to improve on the technology of reading, but that may be a failed enterprise. The beauty of the digital may be, rather, the ability to go beyond text, to integrate multimedia into the reading experience. This is not to say that extended reading will (or should) disappear, but only that printed books are a very effective reading technology. Electronic devices, on the other hand, can include audio, video, and other media. E-book uptake may be low for this very reason. E-book devices are not a significant improvement on print and don’t yet offer integration of other media. I am not sold on it as a reading or media device, but the iPhone may serve as the model for the kind of integrated device I am thinking about. I look forward to a device that has all of iPhone’s media capabilities (phone, video, audio, text, and multi-touch screen), but in a slightly larger format: something between an iPhone and a Samsung Q1. THAT would be a useful media device!

photo by Robin Hamman

It occurs to me that since publishers are assuming physical control over much that librarians call collections, then publishers should be adopting many of the professional and ethical standards of librarianship. Think about it: the materials we offer through our e-collectons are, for the most part, physically controlled by the publisher. Librarians are only licensing access to the materials. Our role in the care and feeding of those materials is diminished.

Therefore, I think it is appropriate that we ask publishers and vendors to embrace some of the ideas that we hold dear:

• Preservation: this has started to happen with some archiving projects like Lockss, Clockss, and Portico, but even those really sprang from the minds of librarians. Many a publisher still exhibits little concern beyond the front list (books OR journals). If publishers are going to maintain perpetual control over electronic products, then “out of print” should be a phrase that passes into oblivion. Our collections need to be available forever or something like it. Needless to say, the tasks of refreshing and migrating digital collections fall on the publisher too.
• Intellectual Freedom: this too hovers around the margins of publishing ethics, while never entering the center. Users of electronic collections need to be safe from prying eyes. If I am otherwise a licensed user of the product, it’s nobody’s damned business what I read or view. Don’t be sellin’ my behavior off to some other commercial entity! At least not without my permission. And don’t cough it up to the first government fishing expedition the comes down the road. One word: warrant. Think Yahoo resistance not telecom rolling over and dying on this issue. Publishers obviously have commercial interests that libraries don’t share, but intellectual freedom trumps everything for the librarian. It ought to be pretty important for publishers too.
• Metadata: the organization and description of physical collections fell completely on the librarian (except a little CIP here and there). Publishers, however, have almost complete control over the organization of digital collections. They need to offer metadata options and, therefore, flexibility to their licensees. Librarians can still do some cataloging of digital collections, adding the appropriate metadata to the OPAC, but the OPAC isn’t always the primary mode of access to these materials. Effective discovery of information will rely on rich and thorough metadata. Publishers need to be helpers in this process, not barriers.
• Customer Service Mentality: hey, the publisher’s responsibility doesn’t end anymore once we pay the invoice. Publisher service representatives are the reference librarians to our questions. That reference help needs to be offered willingly, happily, eagerly. It also needs to be thorough, confidential (see intellectual freedom above), and available more than just 9 to 5 Eastern Standard Time. It would be great if they could end each service call with, “Did that answer your question? Please come back if that information doesn’t serve your needs.”

 
I think those are small things to ask of publishers, with huge import to the users of our digital collections. Maybe we should begin asking publishers about these things when they make that sales visit. Hell, maybe there is a place for some of this in the license agreement itself. There may be some cost involved, but I’m hoping publishers and vendors might embrace these standards as their own without tacking on a “service charge” to the price. Just a thought.

Free Range Librarian is talking about buying a small power strip for traveling. Indeed. I just got back from a conference (Utah Library Association/Mountain Plains Library Association). A co-worker and I did a presentation about Second Life, which was pretty media-intensive: still images, video, audio. We were never sure if our room setup would be adequate for the task. Of course, we brought backups and redundancies:

• power strip
• extension cord
• mini computer speakers
• extra computers
• presentation backed up 5 ways (well 2 anyway)

 
We used the power strip. Conference rooms always have plenty of power, but it’s not always close, or with enough outlets. Orange cables constrained with copious duct tape! We also used the speakers. There was no PA system in the room and the VGA cable for the projector did not have a mini-stereo cable combined with it. It was for these reasons that we said, “no,” our Second Life presentation would not include a live Second Life demo. Hotel internet connectivity. Ha Ha!

Our video and audio worked pretty seamlessly because we had embedded the files in the PowerPoint. Hey! It was PowerPoint! Get over it! Not like it was a bunch of bullet points. It was media! Anyway, the presentation was a great success. Many compliments. The next day people said, “I went home and set up a Second Life account,” or, “I never understood Second Life until your presentation.”

I saw several other presentations at the conference that also made use of media. It did not always go well. People had to flip back and forth between PowerPoint and Quicktime…fumble fumble. Or had no amplification for the audio on their computer. Bending the podium microphone down to the computer speakers! Or using the clock radio from the hotel room. Ingenious. Ineffective.

You’ve got to be prepared people! Especially if you are going to make use of media. Things go wrong. The arrangements are never like in your office. Bring power. Bring playback options. Bring backups. I also wonder when hotels and conference facilities will catch up with the media needs of presenters. We got a thing going here called the 21st century! We should all join it!

As an experiment in ubiquitous computing, the other day I went shopping with the Samsung Q1 in hand and broadband card installed. I like the notion of a broadband card, freeing your computer from a dependence on a geographically limited wi-fi hub (still geographically limited, but less so).

So I slapped the Verizon broadband card in the Sammie and hit the grocery store. I wanted to test having a media-rich experience, so I logged onto Pandora to listen to some avant garde jazz on my Henry Threadgill station. The music stream from Pandora came down fine. I did lose the broadband signal at one point, but generally the card seemed to work pretty well as I walked the grocery store aisles. People, however, seemed to look at me like I was some kind of terrorist or something, wandering the store with my bizarre device and and its weird flashing antenna.

The achilles heel for ubiquitous computing: battery life. With the power-intensive media stream and broadband card running, my Samsung could only operate for a little over an hour before going belly up. Wow. That has got to be a lot better. I’m having the same experience at a conference right now. I can’t be away from a power outlet with the Samsung for more than about an hour.

Some would say that devices more like a phone would be the future of ubiquitous computing. While I agree that phones or phone-like devices will become more and more common, I just can’t see that they are useful for all kinds of computing activity. For example, I have read a number of books on a PDA or a cellphone, but it’s not an activity I generally recommend. If I’m only carrying the phone or PDA and don’t want to be burdened with something larger, OK, sure. But as a general practice, reading on a phone-sized screen doesn’t seem especially effective or pleasant.

I think devices like the Samsung, an intermediate step between the laptop and the phone, will become more common. These devices need to be freed from both the localized wi-fi and from the electric outlet. That will be true ubiquitous computing.

A friend asked me a question about Twitter the other day. I had never used it before, so I got signed up. Turns out over 15 people in my gmail address book have Twitter profiles. Some of them were following me within minutes of signing up. Pretty amazing technology. Great to be able to make posts with a simple text message from the phone.

All that said, I have to admit that Twitter isn’t really doing much for me. In general, I’m not interested in inflicting my every thought on others (nor do I want to read theirs). Because of the simplicity and connectivity, I can envision some useful applications. It’s a great way to preserve thoughts and ideas. Some writers might be witty or insightful enough to inspire a devoted following. Webs of friends can communicate in new ways.

But what is here for libraries? I’m not sure. I’ve seen some Twittering libraries that post mini-news items. That’s cool. I’ve also seen libraries that post new books. Also fun. But kind of random. Unless you’re paying attention at the right moment, you probably miss anything you’re really interested in. As a kind of “short attention span” form of entertainment, I guess it’s pretty effective.

But I wouldn’t advise people away from Twitter. I suppose in order for the breakthrough application to develop, a lot of mundane has to happen first. So, Twitter on my friends!

Speaking of Widgets, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is now offering them too. Poor folks. It may be a day late and a dollar short for them. But who knows, maybe this is their path to survival. I applaud their open data approach, although I’m not sure the entire encyclopedia is available this way. Their interface for finding articles seems a bit clunky. I believe if you sign up for the service, however, (free to bloggers and online publishers) you get better access.

Sigh. Their widget uses iframe markup, which is also not supported by hosted WordPress blogs. Might be time to migrate to my own site for this blog.

Random House is offering a new widget that enables searching and browsing through some of their books (much like you see on Amazon). Alas, it’s JavaScript based. My hosted blog can’t include JavaScript until WordPress gets over their paranoia on that point.

Sample widgetude

I didn’t make it Computers in Libraries. I’ve NEVER made it to CiL, but there always seems to be good stuff coming out of that conference. JPRU has a post about her slides at CiL for an Academic Library 2.0 session. There were several great speakers on the panel. All the slide presentations are interesting. JPRU’s presentation, “Going Beyond the Great Idea: Getting buy-in and doing effective training for 2.0 projects” has one especially good point: collaboration still takes leaders.

To me that says we can offer all kinds of 2.0 tools to people, but we still need to suggest what it means. We need to establish a context in which 2.0 projects become significant for both the library and the library user. If we just say, “do whatever you want with it,” maybe there is no payoff for us, the librarians. If there is no payoff for us, then the service doesn’t grow and improve. That means something less for the library user. It’s a negative feedback loop. With the right leadership and context, it can become a positive feedback loop.

Saw this announcement recently:

http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/shimenawa.php/2008/04/04/ils_basic_discovery

about developing standards for interoperability between the ILS and “discovery applications.” If this wasn’t being led by the DLF, I might think there was some kind of weird collusion going on. I think there is a pretty specific agenda here, that seems to focus only on the communication role between the interface and the ILS. But it may have implications that look out way beyond the current fetish for finding a better public interface for the catalog.

Since the project is only looking at that communication role, there is little said about what features the interface should have, from the public perspective. What do you think a public “discovery application” should have? (I do so enjoy putting quotation marks around that phrase!)

How about:

• ability for the patron to save any metadata they find
• ability to export or mashup the data elsewhere
• ability to apply their own tags (shared or private)
• ability to write comments or reviews (shared or private)
• customizable notifications (email, RSS, or whatever they want)
• customizable screen layout
• federated searching
• customizable search functions (”I am interested in this database but not that.”)
• built-in citation management (or seamless communication with such a utility)
• interoperability with any number of outside applications
• links to related materials (reviews, contents, images, excerpts)
• links to full-text
• ability to search on any of the above metadata elements (”I only want things tagged with…”)
• access to use data
• variety of search skill levels
• ability to search beyond the walls of the home library (other libraries, databases, the web)
• seamless ILL request for items not in the home library

So, the thing about cooperative collection development of electronic resources is this: libraries must be able to share some of those electronic resources in the same manner as they share print resources. Interlibrary loan must somehow encompass all manner of electronic collections. Publishers will scream bloody murder about this. They have a notion that this will mean libraries will be throwing the gates open to the world to use their publications without paying.

Many licenses for electronic journal packages explicitly forbid interlibrary loan. Some just fail to acknowledge it. Others allow it under the most ridiculous conditions: print out the PDF file, scan it, and send the scan or fax it. What a waste of time and money! Ebooks and ILL? Fagetaboutit! After some bad experiences with consortia in the past, publishers are now completely restrictive about their ebook licenses.

All this goes toward making true cooperative collection development of electronic resources nearly impossible. Publishers and vendors are happy to offer a discount for consortia, as long as everybody is buying the same thing and no sharing happens. We need to begin pushing them about this. They need to hear about it when we sign contracts, see them at conferences, and when they make sales visits.

Mini fantasy: libraries in a consortium are allowed to select materials in a specific subject area. The widest possible subject coverage is achieved across the consortium. Everyone has access to the indexing and abstracting of the total collection. If someone at my library wants something at another library, they can request it through ILL and get it delivered as a digital file. This holds true for ebooks too. It may be even more significant for ebooks. I would even be willing to allow the restriction that the borrowing library must already have a license for the platform in question.

Extra mini fantasy: actually, that previous mini fantasy makes me think that a patron driven collection is eventually the way to go. We have access to indexing and abstracting of EVERYTHING in the world. We only pay for what people actually USE. Some variation of this is possible for ebooks now. I think it should be the case for journals as well. Pay-per-use. Scary to some folks. Hard to budget for. Requires all kinds of new user education activities. Requires all kinds of different collection procedures. Maybe collection development as we know it disappears. Shiver!