The Arcadia Project Blog

ANCIL at LSE

2011-11-15T21:34:00.001Z

Emma Coonan, Jane Secker and Helen Webster gave a great seminar presentation at LSE on the new curriculum for Information Literacy that emerged from Emma's and Jane's Fellowships. (Helen is now working on implementation issues.)

LOCKSS

2011-10-25T16:06:00.001+01:00

LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), based at Stanford University Libraries, is an international community initiative that provides libraries with digital preservation tools and support so that they can easily and inexpensively collect and preserve their own copies of authorized e-content. LOCKSS, in its twelfth year, provides libraries with the open-source software and support to preserve today’s web-published materials for tomorrow’s readers while building their own collections and acquiring a copy of the assets they pay for, instead of simply leasing them. LOCKSS provides fully managed preservation and 100% post cancellation access.

LOCKSS site

Ten questions for wannabee "digital scholars"

2011-10-02T10:43:00.001+01:00

From Martin Weller's Blog:

Do you have an open access publishing policy for the outputs of the project?
Will you make the data openly available, or is some of it not appropriate to do so? If so, where will you put it?
Will there be one main individual in charge of social media communication or is it just distributed across the group?
Will you have specific twitter/blog/youtube accounts for the project or do individuals in the project have a high online reputation it would be better to utilise?
How will you incorporate analytics into the project? Do you expect to get a certain number of views, dwell time, global distribution, etc on a main site?
What media will you use? For example, will you create a 'trailer' video for the project and an overview of the findings?
How will you archive discussion around the research, eg twitter hashtag conversations?
Will you provide a curation service, eg a Scoop-It page of relevant resources as you go along?
Are there new methodologies you will employ, eg crowdsourcing?
Is there a planned release for findings throughout the project? Will any aspects be not open for dissemination eg via twitter or blogs?

John Palfrey's closing SSP Keynote

2011-06-14T23:26:00.003+01:00

John Palfrey -- of Harvard Law School and the Berkman Center -- is taking a close interest in library issues and delivered the closing plenary session at this year’s SSP Annual Meeting. Kent Anderson has provided a useful summary of what he said.

Hacking the Academy: contents list now available

2011-06-04T18:39:00.003+01:00

The full list of contents for the edited volume is now available. Over 200 scholars took part in the project. All the contributions are online here.

Fascinating project.

Larry Lessig on access to scholarly knowledge

2011-05-31T13:03:00.001+01:00

The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge from lessig on Vimeo.

This is long, but worth it IMHO.

Court rejects Google Books settlement

2011-03-22T20:42:00.000Z

Significant setback in Google's path to world domination. CNET News reports that

Adding another chapter to a long, drawn-out legal saga, a New York federal district court has rejected the controversial settlement in a class-action suit brought against Google Books by the Authors Guild, a publishing industry trade group.

"While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA would simply go too far," a court document explains. "It would permit this class action--which was brought against defendant Google Inc. to challenge its scanning of books and display of 'snippets' for on-line searching--to implement a forward-looking business arrangement that would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners. Indeed, the ASA (Amended Settle Agreement) would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case."

The settlement would grant Google the right to display excerpts of out-of-print books, even if they are not in the public domain or authorized by publishers to appear in Google Books. When the settlement was initially announced in mid-2009, opposition flooded in from lawyers on behalf of Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a coalition called the Open Book Alliance who decried it as anticompetitive.

"Google and the plaintiff publishers secretly negotiated for 29 months to produce a horizontal price fixing combination, effected and reinforced by a digital book distribution monopoly," a lawyer for the Open Book Alliance said at the time. "Their guile has cleared much of the field in digital book distribution, shielding Google from meaningful competition."

Well-known economics journal goes open access

2011-03-22T17:51:00.001Z

Interesting post by Justin Wolfers:

Here’s a test of basic economic literacy: What is the socially optimal price of online access to economics journal articles?

If my students learn only one thing, it’s this: Price equals marginal cost. And the marginal cost of accessing a journal article is pretty much zero. The research has been written, the type has been set, and the salaries have already been paid — usually thanks to a university, think tank, or government grant. So the socially optimal price is: free. Every time we charge a price higher than this, we risk pricing out someone who might benefit from the insights of an academic scribbler.

The Brookings Papers on Economic Activity – the journal that David Romer and I edit — has decided to take this piece of economic wisdom seriously. The Brookings Papers are now entirely open access. Yep, we’re charging zero; nada; nothing; zip.

The Internet-Informed Patient: March 28

2011-03-20T11:58:00.004Z

We're holding a one-day symposium on March 28 on the implications of the Internet-informed patient for health care. The previous day (March 27) we will be hosting a Hack Day for developers and other professionals interested in harnessing IT to improve our use of health data -- both in terms of patient-centred Apps and making creative use of open health data to inform patients and improve decision-making.

Both events will be held in the Moller Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge.

The symposium will not take the usual form of a panel of expert speakers with a (largely passive) audience, but is designed as a day-long series of structured conversations in small groups primed by a few pithy, thought-provoking statements on a number of burning issues. The conversations will be live-blogged and some contributions will be video-recorded, so that a record of the conversations can be made available afterwards.

We still have some places available for both the Symposium and the Hack Day. If you're interested -- or know someone who might be -- please get in touch.

For the Symposium the contact is Isla Kuhn -- ilk21 (at) cam.ac.uk
For the Hack Day the contact is John Naughton -- jjn1 (at) cam.ac.uk

You can also get in touch via the website -- http://www.iip-symposium.info/

'Lending' Kindle books

2011-01-07T09:42:00.003Z

The Kindle was apparently Amazon's best-selling product at Christmas, but many of its new users feel uncomfortable with the DRM-lockdown that comes with it. According to this report, though, there's been a slight relaxation -- in that you can 'lend' a Kindle book to a friend for 14 days.

Amazon is allowing Kindle users to lend a book to a mate, but the UK Publishers Association reckons e-book borrowers should get down the library.

The new feature allows e-books bought for the Kindle platform to be lent out for 14 days, delivered by email and springing back to their owners automatically as detailed by Amazon, but the Publishers Association (PA) is unlikely to approve, given its stance that anyone wanting to borrow an e-book from the local library should get their bones down to the building for a bit of physical interaction with their local community.

End of Delicious?

2010-12-17T16:47:00.007Z

Many reports are circulating on the Interweb regarding Yahoo's planned closure of several sites, not least of which is Delicious, the social bookmarking site. From being one of the first web 2.0 successes, the site has had many problems over the past few years and some have noted its failure to adapt and evolve to meet changing expectations.

We used Delicious to list useful web resources on the first ever Arcadia project, science@cambridge. Many libraries in Cambridge and beyond have also done the same, its a great tool. Since then, the potential risk of loosing third party infrastructure like this has often popped up in discussion. Now it may be a reality. (Large portions of our site are also using Pipes. Lets also keep our fingers crossed for that superb service).

Thinking on a wider scale, Delicious, like Wikipedia, StackOverflow and many other online resources full fill some of the functions of a library in the networked world, namely the classification of units of online information. Many people rely on it daily, and much noise has made of its community basis as a real alternative to traditional means of classification.

Now thanks, to a corporate reshuffle, it may just disappear as a result of market conditions. I'm left with on a Friday afternoon with three things to think about:

Why was the site judged a failure? Is tagging a fad that will fade, whilst traditional classification will somehow endure (this I doubt) ? Is it because its function was better provided by other successor sites, or some other reason?
If the market cannot sustain these networked library-like services, should libraries (or the non-profit educational sector) start developing services like Delicious? Would we be better placed to provide this vital web infrastructure over a commercial entity? Would it be a better investment than an Institutional Repository?
Does anyone care now we have Facebook?

Myths about students -- and implications for Web design

2010-12-15T23:09:00.003Z

Interesting post by Jakob Nielsen which claims that usability research undermines some prevailing myths about students.

Myth 1: Students Are Technology Wizards
Students are indeed comfortable with technology: it doesn't intimidate them the way it does some older users. But, except for computer science and other engineering students, it's dangerous to assume that students are technology experts.

College students avoid Web elements that they perceive as "unknown" for fear of wasting time. Students are busy and grant themselves little time on individual websites. They pass over areas that appear too difficult or cumbersome to use. If they don't perceive an immediate payoff for their efforts, they won't click on a link, fix an error, or read detailed instructions.

In particular, students don't like to learn new user interface styles. They prefer websites that employ well-known interaction patterns. If a site doesn't work in the expected manner, most students lose patience and leave rather than try to decode a difficult design.

Myth 2: Students Crave Multimedia and Fancy Design
Students often appreciate multimedia, and certainly visit sites like YouTube. But they don't want to be blasted with motion and audio at all times.

One website started to play music automatically, but our student user immediately turned it off. She said, "The website is very bad. It skips. It plays over itself. I don't want to hear that anymore."

Students often judge sites on how they look. But they usually prefer sites that look clean and simple rather than flashy and busy. One user said that websites should "stick to simplicity in design, but not be old-fashioned. Clear menus, not too many flashy or moving things because it can be quite confusing."

Students don't go for fancy visuals and they definitely gravitate toward one very plain user interface: the search engine. Students are strongly search dominant and turn to search at the smallest provocation in terms of difficult navigation.

Myth 3: Students Are Enraptured by Social Networking
Yes, virtually all students keep one or more tabs permanently opened to social networking services like Facebook.

But that doesn't mean they want everything to be social. Students associate Facebook and similar sites with private discussions, not with corporate marketing. When students want to learn about a company, university, government agency, or non-profit organization they turn to search engines to find that organization's official website. They don't look for the organization's Facebook page.

Show me the numbers

2010-12-03T14:06:00.010Z

One of the offshoots of the Arcadia Project was the joint UL/CARET CULWidgets product, which wangled some JISC funding to "provide users with services appropriate to a networked world" in a widgetty/web services way.

Our two main production interfaces are the Cambridge Library Widget and the CamLib mobile web app, both soft-launched at the start of this term. This, the last day of term, seems a good time to look back and see how they've done.

Overall unique visitor numbers for the Widget are:

And, slightly more erratically, for CamLib:

A combined 4,489 unique visitors across the two. The services are mainly targeted at Undergraduates, of which Cambridge has c.12,000. Even assuming some crossover between the interfaces, and the likelihood that not all of them are undergrads, we're still looking at a significant proportion of our UG population (25-33%?)

Of course, these are just our unique visitors (i.e. distinct people who have visited the site) - total visits for the period are 12,284 and 2,559 respectively. Which shows that students are coming back to the interfaces again and again, not just taking a crafty peek. Monthly figures across both interfaces average around 3,000 unique users.

Our initial target was for 2,000 unique users in the first term, so we're running at well over double. Well done Widgets! And there are more to come.

Disruptive technologies in digitisation

2010-12-01T15:55:00.008Z

Much of my fellowship has been taken up with examining three tech initiatives, all of which could be used in an on-demand process and could also be classed as disruptive. One is software, two are hardware.

Here is a bit more information ...

1) The Copyright calculator

Public Domain Calculators from Open Knowledge Foundation on Vimeo.

What is it?
A software development that assesses the copyright status of a creative work by looking at associated metadata. I've made an initial attempt to tie the Open Knowledge Foundation calculator into LibrarySearch, or new catalogue interface.

Why is it disruptive?
It can give the reader a useful indication of the copyright status of a book, allowing them to decide how they can re-use it. Its potentially useful as the first stage in a digitisation selection workflow, but also useful on its own. Its also an example of the commoditisation of a basic legal service.

What problems are there?
The be effective, the calculator needs author death-date information. Libraries only record this information when they wish to differentiate a name. Linked data tying a record into other sources of information could help overcome this

2) Kirtas book-scanner

What is it?
An automatic book-scanner. Turns pages using a vacuum equipped robot-arm and images pages with dual high-spec cameras

Why is it disruptive?
Books can be scanned and turned into PDF or other documents in a matter of hours, with minimal human interaction required.

What problems are there?
Its not cheap and still not 100% accurate. Its also a robot, so should not entirely be trusted.

3) Espresso book machine

What is it?
A photocopy sized book creation machine that does not require a printing-works to run it. Can print and bind a book in minutes.

Why is it disruptive?
Provides a library or a bookstore with a massive research collection/ back catalogue with none of the storage problems or overheads . Could have implications on acquisition, collection development and every part of library activity.

What problems are there?
As with the Kirtas, its not cheap, and limited in formats and outputs. And its a robot.

I'll have more to say on my project as I slog through write-up ...

Futurebook 2010

2010-12-01T15:07:00.008Z

Whilst beginning to wrap up my fellowship (more in another post), I took time out to attend the FutureBook conference yesterday. Organised by the Bookseller, this conference brought together a number of industry leaders to highlight their successes and to raise awareness of issues they have faced in digital publishing. It was a fascinating day. For publishers and booksellers alike, it seems the digital revolution has finally arrived. Some highlights:

The Bookseller has conducted a wide survey of the sector to gauge opinion and attitude, with over 2,600 responses. This will be published soon.
One statistic was worth noting, when asked who will gain most from a rise in digital sales, respondents suggested readers, authors, publishers as the most, with booksellers and libraries rated last.
Publishers and booksellers had differing ideas regarding how quickly the change would occur. By the end of 2015, 2/3rds of publishers believed digital sales would account for anywhere between 8-50% of the market. Only just over half of the booksellers polled believed the same thing
Google will enter the online book retail market soon with Google Editions. Rather than tie themselves to a device, they are aiming for a platform agnostic browser and app based model, with all content remaining in the cloud rather than on-devices (although HTML 5 based local storage will be used) It will allow various online retailers and booksellers to build platforms around Google editions.
Tech-startups were suddenly seen as competition by publishers, at least in the app business. In response, much value was placed on publishers' knowledge of markets, talent and trends, as well as the curatorial process of commissioning and editing
Richard Mollet of the Publishers Association talked up the Digital Economy Bill. Formerly in the music industry, he noted that 'rights and copyright make the digital world go round', and argued that the bill was vital in explaining the damage illegal copying had on the creative sectors
Nick Harkaway, an industry commentator agreed in principle, but noted that enforcement so far had failed to deter illegal filesharing and DRM was no serious barrier to rights infringement. He urged publishers to keep people paying by offering serious innovation rather than simple digital recyling of print content
The academic book sector was well represented, with Wiley, CUP, OUP , Ingenta Connect and Blackwells Academic presenting. OUP gave an excellent talk on the changes required across an institution
We also had displays from Scholastic regarding the cross-media Horrible Histories series and looks at the editorial and creative processes behind booksellers' first steps into the world of mobile app development. Max Whitby from Touchpress showed off the Elements app, the next stage in the evolution of the coffee-table book
YouGov have a tablet track scheme looking at customer experiences of iPads and Kindle readers, which produced some interesting facts.

One over-arching trend that libraries can learn from relates to changes in the production and publishing processes. The phrase 'reflow-able text' was heard throughout the day, with publishers being urged to ditch PDF and print centric work flows in favour of granular xml-based marked up text that could be easily re-purposed for the next device of platform.

It seems to me that mainstream publishing is jumping over academic publishing on this one. Given the amount of on-line journal vendors that still insist on forcing PDF files down our throats, XML based delivery of more academic content could be of real use now to the consumer as well as the publisher.

One application of this approach was demonstrated, the Blackwells Academics custom textbooks service. This allows course-leaders to assemble all the material relating to a course into one bound volume which could then be sold on. Taking care of rights clearance, it also quite handily passed on the cost of printing course-packs to students!

Its still a great concept. Such a leap is only possibly by storing content in a normalised XML form, allowing it to be quickly pulled together to create new outputs.

Of course, we've been doing this in libraries with TEI and other transcription initiatives for some time now, but publishing at least is really taking the concept to heart, especially when faced with multiple devices and platforms to support. Post iPad, library digitisation projects will need to bear this delivery model in mind rather than relying upon image based delivery.

Analog tools

2010-11-23T15:04:00.001Z

Sometimes, you just can’t beat an olde-worlde paper notebook. Highly portable, great screen resolution, excellent, intuitive user interface and infinite battery life.

Only problem: it’s hard to back up. On the other hand, it’ll still be readable in 200 years. Which is more than can be said for any of my digital data.

Digital Humanities

2010-11-20T21:23:00.001Z

The New York Times has an interesting piece about the renewal of interest in the Digital Humanities.

The next big idea in language, history and the arts? Data.

Members of a new generation of digitally savvy humanists argue it is time to stop looking for inspiration in the next political or philosophical “ism” and start exploring how technology is changing our understanding of the liberal arts. This latest frontier is about method, they say, using powerful technologies and vast stores of digitized materials that previous humanities scholars did not have.

The article goes on to describe a few interesting projects. For example:

In Europe 10 nations have embarked on a large-scale project, beginning in March, that plans to digitize arts and humanities data. Last summer Google awarded $1 million to professors doing digital humanities research, and last year the National Endowment for the Humanities spent $2 million on digital projects.

One of the endowment’s grantees is Dan Edelstein, an associate professor of French and Italian at Stanford University who is charting the flow of ideas during the Enlightenment. The era’s great thinkers — Locke, Newton, Voltaire — exchanged tens of thousands of letters; Voltaire alone wrote more than 18,000.

“You could form an impressionistic sense of the shape and content of a correspondence, but no one could really know the whole picture,” said Mr. Edelstein, who, along with collaborators at Stanford and Oxford University in England, is using a geographic information system to trace the letters’ journeys.

He continued: “Where were these networks going? Did they actually have the breadth that people would often boast about, or were they functioning in a different way? We’re able to ask new questions.”

One surprising revelation of the Mapping the Republic of Letters project was the paucity of exchanges between Paris and London, Mr. Edelstein said. The common narrative is that the Enlightenment started in England and spread to the rest of Europe. “You would think if England was this fountainhead of freedom and religious tolerance,” he said, “there would have been greater continuing interest there than what our correspondence map shows us.”

Hacking the Library -- ShelfLife@Harvard

2010-11-13T19:03:00.004Z

What is Shelflife?
Shelflife is web application that uses what libraries know (about books, usage and comments) to allow researchers and scholars to access the riches of Harvard’s collections through a simple search.

Researchers will be able to access, read about, and comment on works using common social net- work features. ShelfLife will bring Harvard results to the forefront of the research process, allowing users to easily access and explore our vast collections.
What makes it unique?

Shelflife is designed to help you find the next book. Each search will retrieve a unique web page providing key information about the thing searched, including basic information, fluid links to related neighborhoods, and analytic data about use, all presented in a clean graphical format with intuitive navigation with discoverability in mind.

From the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. The site provides no information about ShelfLife beyond the above, but Ethan Zuckerman, who's a Berkman Fellow at the moment, has a useful blog post reporting a presentation by David Weinberger and Kim Dulin, who co-direct the project.

Libraries tend to be very knowledgeable about what they hold in their collections. But they’re much less good about helping people discover that information. There are few systems like Amazon or Netflix recommendations that help scholars and researchers discover the good stuff within libraries. Dulin argues that librarians have been pretty passive in the face of new technology – they’ve purchased fairly primitive systems and had to buy back their content from the companies who build those systems.

Researchers tend to start with Google, Dulin tells us. They might move to Google Books or Amazon to find out more about a specific book. And perhaps a library will come into play if the book can’t be downloaded or purchased inexpensively. Libraries would like to move to the front of that process, rather than sitting passively at the end. And lots of libraries are trying to take on this challenge – new librarians often come out of school with skills in web design and application development.

The Lab hopes to bring fellows into the process, much as Berkman does. It works to build software, often proof of concept software. And innovation happens on open systems and standards, so libraries and other partners can adopt the technology they’re developing.

Two major projects have occupied much of the Lab’s time – Library Cloud and ShelfLife, both of which Weinberger will demo today. There are smaller applications under development as well. Stackview allows the visualization of library stacks. Check Out the Checkouts lets us see what groups of users are borrowing – what are graduate divinity students reading, for instance. And a number of projects are exploring Twitter to share acquisitions, checkouts and returns.

Weinberger explains that ShelfLife is built atop Library Cloud, a server that handles the metadata of multiple libraries and other educational institutions and makes that metadata available via API requests and “data dumps”. Making this data available, Weinberger hopes, will inspire new applications, including ones we can’t even imagine. ShelfLife is one possible application that could live atop Library Cloud. Other applications could include recommendation systems, perhaps customized for different populations (experts, versus average users, for instance.)

Turns out the ShelfLife is in a pre-Alpha state of development. The metaphor behind it is the "neighbourhood" -- i.e. clusters that a given book might sit within.

We see a search for “a pattern language”, referring to Christopher Alexander’s influential book on architecture and urban design. We see a results page that includes a new factor – a score that indicates how appropriate a title is for the search. We can choose any result and we’ll be brought into “stack view”, where we can see virtual books on a shelf as they are actually sequenced on the physical shelf. Paul explains that it’s actually much more powerful than that – many books at Harvard are in a depository and never see the light of a shelf. And many colelctions have their own special indices – the virtual shelf allows a mix of the Library of Congress categories with other catalogs.

The system uses a metric called “shelfrank” to determine how the community has interacted with a specific book. The score is an aggregate of circulation information for undergraduates, graduates and faculty, information on whether the book has been assigned for a class, placed on reserve, put on recall, etc. That information exists in Library Cloud as a dump from Harvard’s HOLLIS catalog system – in the future, the system might operate using a weekly refresh of circulation data. The algorithm is pretty arbitrary at this point – it’s more a provocation for discussion than a settled algorithm.

Ethan reports some of the Q&A and generally does a great job of writing up the event. His post is worth reading in full.

A systems view of digital preservation

2010-11-13T12:34:00.005Z

The longer I've been around, the more concerned I become about long-term data loss -- in the archival sense. What are the chances that the digital record of our current period will still be accessible in 300 years' time? The honest answer is that we don't know. And my guess is that it definitely won't be available unless we take pretty rigorous steps to ensure it. Otherwise it's posterity be damned.

It's a big mistake to think about this as a technical problem -- to regard it as a matter of bit-rot, digital media and formats. If anything, the technical aspects are the trivial aspects of the problem. The really hard questions are institutional: how can we ensure that there are organisations in place in 300 years that will be capable of taking responsibility for keeping the archive intact, safe and accessible?

Aaron Schwartz has written a really thoughtful blog post about this in which he addresses both the technical and institutional aspects. About the latter, he has this to say:

Recall that we have at least three sites in three political jurisdictions. Each site should be operated by an independent organization in that political jurisdiction. Each board should be governed by respected community members with an interest in preservation. Each board should have at least five seats and move quickly to fill any vacancies. An engineer would supervise the systems, an executive director would supervise the engineer, the board would supervise the executive director, and the public would supervise the board.

There are some basic fixed costs for operating such a system. One should calculate the high-end estimate for such costs along with high-end estimates of their growth rate and low-end estimates of the riskless interest rate and set up an endowment in that amount. The endowment would be distributed evenly to each board who would invest it in riskless securities (probably in banks whose deposits are ensured by their political systems).

Whenever someone wants to add something to the collection, you use the same procedure to figure out what to charge them, calculating the high-end cost of maintaining that much more data, and add that fee to the endowments (split evenly as before).

What would the rough cost of such a system be? Perhaps the board and other basic administrative functions would cost $100,000 a year, and the same for an executive director and an engineer. That would be $300,000 a year. Assuming a riskless real interest rate of 1%, a perpetuity for that amount would cost $30 million. Thus the cost for three such institutions would be around $100 million. Expensive, but not unmanageable. (For comparison, the Internet Archive has an annual budget of $10-15M, so this whole project could be funded until the end of time for about what 6-10 years of the Archive costs.)

Storage costs are trickier because the cost of storage and so on falls so rapidly, but a very conservative estimate would be around $2000 a gigabyte. Again, expensive but not unmanageable. For the price of a laptop, you could have a gigabyte of data preserved for perpetuity.

These are both very high-end estimates. I imagine that were someone to try operating such a system it would quickly become apparent that it could be done for much less. Indeed, I suspect a Mad Archivist could set up such a system using only hobbyist levels of money. You can recruit board members in your free time, setting up the paperwork would be a little annoying but not too expensive, and to get started you’d just need three servers. (I’ll volunteer to write the Python code.) You could then build up the endowment through the interest money left over after your lower-than-expected annual costs. (If annual interest payments ever got truly excessive, the money could go to reducing the accession costs for new material.)

Any Mad Archivists around?

Worth reading in full.

LATER: Dan Gillmor has been attending a symposium at the Library of Congress about preserving user-generated content, and has written a thoughtful piece on Salon.com about it.

The reason for libraries and archives like the Library of Congress is simple: We need a record of who we are and what we've said in the public sphere. We build on what we've learned; without understanding the past we can't help but screw up our future.

It was easier for these archiving institutions when media consisted of a relatively small number of publications and, more recently, broadcasts. They've always had to make choices, but the volume of digital material is now so enormous, and expanding at a staggering rate, that it won't be feasible, if it ever really was, for institutions like this to find, much less, collect all the relevant data.

Meanwhile, those of us creating our own media are wondering what will happen to it. We already know we can't fully rely on technology companies to preserve our data when we create it on their sites. Just keeping backups of what we create can be difficult enough. Ensuring that it'll remain in the public sphere -- assuming we want it to remain there -- is practically impossible.

Dan links to another thoughtful piece, this time by Dave Winer. Like Aaron Schwartz, Dave is concerned not just with the technological aspects of the problem, but also with the institutional side. Here are his bullet-points:

1. I want my content to be just like most of the rest of the content on the net. That way any tools create to preserve other people's stuff will apply to mine.

2. We need long-lived organizations to take part in a system we create to allow people to future-safe their content. Examples include major universities, the US government, insurance companies. The last place we should turn is the tech industry, where entities are decidedly not long-lived. This is probably not a domain for entrepreneurship.

3. If you can afford to pay to future-safe your content, you should. An endowment is the result, which generates annuities, that keeps the archive running.

4. Rather than converting content, it would be better if it was initially created in future-safe form. That way the professor's archive would already be preserved, from the moment he or she presses Save.

5. The format must be factored for simplicity. Our descendents are going to have to understand it. Let's not embarass ourselves, or cause them to give up.

6. The format should probably be static HTML.

7. ??

Put not your faith in cloud services: they may go away

2010-11-07T01:15:00.002Z

From John Dvorak:

I have complained about the fly-by-night nature of these companies for years, but my concern now seems misplaced. I was concerned about operations that you depend on for deep cloud services. This means complex programs running on the cloud with no real alternative. Over time, I've tended to see these companies as more stable than the "Use our free service. You won't regret it!" model.

I was taken to task by numerous vendors who kept telling me that I was full of crap, because cloud services are professionally managed, and nobody could do the job—whatever the job was—better than a room of pros. With the cloud, the pros would also keep the data safe.

Yeah, until they were all laid off, and the service shut down!

Now here's the problem I am experiencing second-hand. The audio podcast I do with Adam Curry, the No Agenda Show (Google it), has been using Drop.io to store podcast album cover images for convenience. They will all be destroyed, as well as the accumulation of links, tips, curiosities, and other valuable information, in the next few weeks.

Looking back on the idea of using this service, I didn't fully consider the ramifications of its discontinuance despite my skepticism about cloud services in general. You know, this was just a lot of weird stuff thrown into a bin. But once it was discontinued, it was apparent what you are left with: dead links.

Tales of the Unexpected: an alternative history of the computing industry

2010-10-27T15:12:00.001+01:00

Bill Thompson and I will be doing a joint gig tomorrow at the Science Museum in London. All welcome.

The big bad package

2010-10-27T10:27:00.014+01:00

Another opinion piece on how technology has changed libraries, this time focusing on the shift to licensed content and its perceived effect on services:

"Libraries are early and enthusiastic adopters of digital innovations. But these innovations bring the values of the marketplace with them. Through innocuous incremental stages, academic libraries have reached a point where they are now guided largely by the mores of commerce, not academe.

Commercialization has impinged on two core facets of university libraries—their collections and their user services. The ownership and provision of research materials, especially academic journals, has been increasingly outsourced to for-profit companies. Library patrons, moreover, are increasingly regarded simply as consumers, transforming user services into customer service. Both developments have distanced libraries from their academic missions."

This fairly damning article comes from Daniel Goldstein, a subject Librarian at UCD writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education. He writes at length about how big package ejournal licensing has eroded the value of traditional library services, removing the specialist librarian as a vital part of academic life and simplifying the services libraries offer:

"By outsourcing ownership to mega-vendors, libraries have introduced the commercial interests of the journal providers into what had been an internal academic transaction between a library and its patrons. Purveyors of e-journals provide access to their titles on sites that are designed to bolster brand recognition and encourage repeat visits. This practice is good for business but not for scholarship. It is common to hear library patrons say that they found information on "Informaworld" (the platform of publisher Taylor and Francis) or "ScienceDirect" (Elsevier's platform) and not to know the name of the journal in which the article was published. Students especially have become purveyor-dependent, when they should be familiarizing themselves with the best literature, in the best journals, regardless of who sells it."

My first thought on this is, does it matter, as long as they get the content they need? But it does. The journal in which an article is published should indicate the authority of the piece based upon the journals' editorial credibility. To some extent, journal vendors are possibly unwittingly eroding the value of peer review. He also warns against the same problem occurring with ebooks:

"It is time, now, to articulate a plan for e-books that better serves the needs of the academic community. University libraries should opt out of the e-book market until it conforms itself to the values, needs, and wallets of academe."

Pretty radical stuff. Its worth taking the time to digest and read. I've often felt that ejournal vendors have forced us to arrange the digital library by publisher, rather than by subject or author. Goldstein also warns against the 'good enough' data that Librarians increasingly fall back on when dealing with digital material. This is also a strong argument, although one I don't always buy. After all, access to full text will surpass even the most well constructed metadata. That said, getting accurate metadata to run a library link resolver remains a real challenge.

There is an interesting response in Library Journal, focusing on open access as an alternative and the problems faced in both getting material available and readers aware of its existence.

Its strikes me that open access for pre-prints, at least in its current institution-centric form does not have all the answers. As Goldstein notes, scholarly publishing is still a legitimate commercial concern, and peer review is a costly process, I can't personally see how open access publishing on an institutional basis could solve the big package problem. Institutional repositories themselves certainly have other vital roles to play, notably that of digital preservation.

A new business model for licensed content may help, moving away from the big deal packages. A colleague who deals far more with this kind of thing recently suggested an interesting alternative to me, which I have since given some thought to:

Social academic platforms such as Menderley are transforming the way academics share citations, and also full text articles, (be it possibly illegally in some cases). Why not simply plug article purchasing from vendors directly into there, but marry that up with shared institutional funds? Academics could purchase articles directly from Menderley, Pubget, Scopus, Web of Knowledge or a library discovery service such as Summon using pools of institutional funds, some or all of which was previously spend on packages.

Once an article has been purchased using shared funds, the full text is then made available to everyone from their institution, either via the vendors' website and/or stored locally on an institutional licensed content server, similar to the LOCKSS and Portico initiatives.

Placing article level selection in the hands of the user is a great idea, allowing collections to grow and diversify according to the academic needs of an institution. The negative issues around big deal purchasing and vendor-exclusive deals could be partly sidestepped. Certain core titles for all disciplines could still be automatically purchased for all by the institution (Nature), and any titles already purchased in perpetuity (such as an archives package) could be added.

We could see two or three purchasing models in operation, rather than just one.

In this 'shared itunes for papers' model, what role is there for the librarian, now selection has been devolved? The above scenario would still need administering financially, with access management and article availability issues to be taken care of, as well as any local storage of content. Its not really so different to the current work of our library's' ejournals team, all that's changed is the selection model.

Libraries without librarians?

2010-10-25T16:48:00.007+01:00

The Wall Street Journal has produced a somewhat bleak article focusing on the news that to cut operational costs, U.S. public library services are turning to automated mechanisms, sometimes over staff.

Faced with layoffs and budget cuts, or simply looking for ways to expand their reach, libraries around the country are replacing traditional, full-service institutions with devices and approaches that may be redefining what it means to have a library.

Later this year Mesa, Ariz., plans to open a new "express" library in a strip-mall, open three days a week, with outdoor kiosks to dispense books and DVDs at all hours of the day. Palm Harbor, Fla., meanwhile, has offset the impact of reduced hours by installing glass-front vending machines that dispense DVDs and popular books.

The wave of innovation is aided by companies that have created new machines designed to help libraries save on labor. For instance, Evanced Solutions, an Indianapolis company that makes library software, this month is starting test trials of a new vending machine it plans to start selling early next year.

"It's real, and the book lockers are great," said Audra Caplan, president of the Public Library Association. "Many of us are having to reduce hours as government budgets get cut, and this enables people to get to us after hours."

Whilst it will be a while before a walking robot can successfully guide a reader around the labyrinthine complexities of South Front 3 within the UL, it is interesting to note that this is seen by some as a negative or retrograde step.

"The basis of the vending machine is to reduce the library to a public-book locker," Mr. Lund said in an interview. "Our real mission is public education and public education can't be done from a vending machine. It takes educators, it takes people, it takes interaction."

I don't personally read it that way. Many libraries in Cambridge and the world over already use self-circulation machines to cut costs and make life easier for the reader.

The article seems to be placing a negative cutback-centric spin on a larger growing trend for automating basic library services.

Academic libraries have been doing this kind of thing for years. A self-issue terminal that works with RFI tags in books is arguably a much nicer experience than a 10 minute queue ending in a grumpy Librarian. Ditto with being able to get requested books from an external locker any time you like.

Freeing up staff time for more productive action or interaction (of the reader-educational type perhaps?) other than scanning a barcode and stamping a book is never a bad thing.

From my perspective as an evening Duty Officer within the UL, it would be really nice to be able to have some way to cater for those readers who insist on turning up five minutes before closing with a really complex query. These lockers would not work, so where is the robot that could possibly help here?

Data mash-ups and the future of mapping

2010-10-24T19:31:00.002+01:00

Interesting JISC report published last month. The Summary says (in part):

"This TechWatch report describes the context for the changes that are taking place and explains why the education community needs to understand the issues around how to open up data, how to create mash-ups that do not compromise accuracy and quality and how to deal with issues such as privacy and working with commercial and non-profit third parties. It also shows how data mash-ups in education and research are part of an emerging, richer information environment with greater integration of mobile applications, sensor platforms,e-science, mixed reality, and semantic, machine-computable data and speculates on how this is likely to develop in the future."

Full report (in optimised pdf format) from here.

Arcadia Lecturer honoured by Electronic Freedom Foundation

2010-10-23T01:29:00.002+01:00

James Boyle, who was the first Arcadia Lecturer, has been given a Pioneer Award by the EFF. The awards were established in 1992 to "recognize leaders on the electronic frontier who are extending freedom and innovation in the realm of information technology". The award will be presented at a ceremony in San Francisco on November 8 hosted by Cory Doctorow, who you may remember, gave an Arcadia Seminar in 2009.

Introduction ...

2010-10-19T15:40:00.010+01:00

I'm Ed Chamberlain, the first fellow for Michaelmas 2010. Whilst I've posted on this blog quite frequently, this is my time doing so as an actual fellow! I've spent the first two weeks of my fellowship investigating digitisation-on-demand services at the University Library, with a view to scoping a potential future service.

The aim would be to offer readers digital delivery of print only material, on demand through the library catalogue.

The project may sound a bit woolly at first, after all libraries have been doing digitisation en-mass for mainstream material and rare stuff for some time, but a reader-driven approach covers a number of areas that have an impact on the future of libraries.

By no means the smallest is that of copyright. In looking for automated solutions to copyright assessment I'm currently taking a look at the wonderful copyright calculator API developed by the Open Knowledge foundation. I'll also be looking to highlight some of the problems that copyright legislation raises for libraries wanting to innovate with new digital services.

Later on I'll be looking and quick wins in non-destructive digitisation of bound material and print-on-demand, hoping to learn from the experiences of those already deploying these services.

Whats interesting for myself, as a Systems Librarian, is that there are no major technical challenges here, its arguably as much about changes in work flow and culture as anything. At the heart of it all is the concept of placing choice over the material digitised firmly in the hands of the reader, rather than a Librarian.

More info about my project can be found on the Arcadia project site, as well as a bit of bio blurb.

Project Highlights for the coming academic year

2010-10-18T11:38:00.005+01:00

An outline of what's in the pipeline.

FELLOWSHIPS AND PROJECTS

We will have eight Fellows over the course of the year. The first, Ed Chamberlain, is already beavering away on "Digitisation-on-Demand in academic research libraries". We will have two Fellows working on a radical re-engineering of the info-skills curriculum to make it fit for purpose in a networked scholarly environment, and two working on using technology to support the work of a busy teaching library. And Isla Kuhn will be working on designing a one-day symposium on health-related information (see below for more information).

SEMINARS

We have three interesting speakers booked for the Michaelmas Term.

On November 2 Professor Richard Susskind will talk about "The End of Lawyers?" He is one of the world's leading experts on the impact of information technology on the legal profession and has been an adviser to the Lord Chancellor's Department on IT systems for supporting the administration of justice. Given that librarianship is also an established profession that is being profoundly affected by information technology we thought it would be interesting to hear about his experience with his own profession.

More details at http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/27313

On November 16 Dr Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing at the Public Library of Science (PLoS) will talk about "Re-engineering the Scholarly Journal". Open Access publishing will be one of the key areas of interest to the academic community in the coming decades and PLoS is a fascinating and successful enterprise in this area. Given that it's on our doorstep, it seemed like a good idea to hear about PLoS's experience so far and their thoughts about the future.

More details at: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/27157

On Devember 7 Simon Andrewes will give a talk on the subject of "Changing BBC News: the cultural, managerial and editorial challenges of adapting to a digital environment". Given that adjusting to the needs of a digital environment poses major problems for any established and successful organisation, we were looking for a speaker who could speak from experience. Simon Andrewes was formerly Head of Newsroom development at BBC News and is currently leading a project to deliver and implement a set of online tools to help BBC Journalism collaborate and share more effectively.

More details at: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/27548

OTHER EVENTS

The Arcadia Lecture: April 2011

The Arcadia Lecture will be given in April 2011 by Tim O'Reilly, the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, and the only publisher who can command the attention of Linux-kernel geeks. Tim has built O'Reilly Media into a leading publisher of computing-related books and a major conference-organising organisation on leading-edge technology issues. He is credited with coining the phrase 'Web 2.0' and is widely recognised as one of the world's most influential commentators on technology issues.

International symposium: health information in a digital world

In 2011 we plan to host a major one-day symposium on how online information and search is impacting on health care. As part of her Arcadia Fellowship, Isla Kuhn, will be working on this. The symposium will focus on most (though perhaps not all: a day may be a long time in politics, but it's just a blink in an academic timescale) of the following areas:

Patients

Practitioners

Researchers

Policy-makers

Mass media

Technology

More details will be available as we have them.

OTHER PROJECTS

Specification and development of an iPhone/Android App

We plan to devote some resources to the development of an original, library-related smartphone App. If you're interested in helping imagine and specify an App, please email me (jjn1 at cam).

The Arcadia Project Book

We will be crowdsourcing a book based largely -- but not exclusively -- on reports by Arcadia Fellows, using an approach pioneered by the Dan Cohen, last year's Arcadia Lecturer.

Future scenarios for academic librarians

2010-10-14T13:39:00.001+01:00

From Phil Davis, writing on the Scholarly Kitchen blog.

The report, Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025,” sponsored by ACRL, provides nine likely, high-impact scenarios for the future of higher education and the supporting role of librarians. Understanding that universities and their academic libraries take time to adapt to change, the purpose of this study was to start preparing for the likely — or inevitable — future. These scenarios involve:

1. A breaking of the textbook monopoly — creating flexible content that allow pieces to be assembled and allow feedback from users.

2. “I see what you see” — large touch screens that allow for collaborations.

3. “Write here with me” — automated mobile devices that allow students to collect and reference work.

4. Bridging the scholar/practitioner divide — open access publishing and open peer review

5. Stultifying of scholarship — the antithesis of #4 where the current status quo is maintained and strengthened.

6. Everyone is a non-traditional student — moving beyond the 4-year resident college experience.

7. Meet the new freshman class — preparing for the digital divide between in-coming tech-savy students and students with need of remedial technological training.

8. Increasing threat of cybercrime — as campuses lock down their technology, online privacy and intellectual freedom are compromised.

9. “This class brought to you by . . . ” — disaggregated education provided by corporate sponsors.

Enola Gay and digital preservation

2010-10-14T13:29:00.002+01:00

Interesting blog post by Danny Bradbury, who made a documentary a few years ago about the cultural history of the nuclear weapons programme. One of the most interesting interviews he had was with Martin Harwit who had been director of the National Air and Space museum in Washington, DC, but was rudely ousted in 1995.

Harwit had attempted to mount an exhibition showcasing the Enola Gay, which was the B52 airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. As part of that exhibition, he tried to ask whether the bombing was justified. His approach called down a rain of fire. He was blasted for historical revisionism by the politically powerful veteran community, and the board had little opportunity but to let him go.

The spectre of the Enola Gay's public display caused a tussle before Harwit's moral inquiry even began. The exhibition was mounted because 1995 was the 50-year anniversary of the bombing, and veterans were anxious to see the plane exhibited that year.

Archivists had other ideas. They wanted the job done properly. They knew that in 500 years, when historians examined the aircraft, they might ask an array of arcane, academic questions. For example, what materials were the alloys in specific engine parts comprised of? Investigating minute details such as these and acquiring or rebuilding complex parts for complete veracity takes a great deal of time and effort. They may not have been interesting for veterans who wanted to see their bird fly one last time, but skimping on such tasks for short-term satisfaction puts the whole archival endeavour at risk.

The more I think about the quandary facing archivists preparing the Enola Gay exhibit, the more I worry about our digital existence. Increasingly, our lives are articulated digitally. We share our experiences with others online, and carry out more of our transactions in binary form. The amount of information that we create is accelerating exponentially. "Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information created," said Google CEO Eric Schimdt recently. "We [now] create five exabytes every two days."

Archiving this stuff is going to be really difficult, in a way that the Enola Gay's archivists couldn't begin to imagine. For one thing, there's the physical media involved. Information may become increasingly stored in the cloud, but it must still be held on physical media, in some data centre somewhere.

Estimates for the longevity of this physical media vary, but all of them point to instability; eventually, data storage decays. It turns out that tape, which is increasingly becoming an archival medium rather than a backup one, is particularly prone to damage because of the way that robotic tape libraries work. In order to access the information that we store today centuries hence, we'll need media that stands the test of time.

New Masters course in Knowledge and Networks

2010-10-14T13:18:00.004+01:00

Cathy Davidson at Duke University is designing an intriguing Masters course and has put the outline proposal on the Web for commenting.

Current topic headings are:

Attention: What are the new ways that we pay attention in a digital era? How do we need to change our concepts and practices of attention for a new era? How do we learn and practice new forms of attention in a digital age?
Participation: How do we encourage meaningful interaction and participation? What is its purpose on a cultural, social, or civic level?
Collaboration: Collaboration can simply reconfirm consensus, acting more as peer pressure than a lever to truly original thinking. HASTAC has cultivated the methodology of “collaboration by difference” to inspire meaningful ways of working together.
Network awareness: How we both thrive as creative individuals and understand our contribution within a network of others? How do you gain a sense of what that extended network is and what it can do?
Global Consciousness: How does the World Wide Web change our responsibilities in and to the world we live in?
Civic Responsibility: How we can be good citizens of the Internet when we are off line, working towards real goals in our communities and using the community practices of sharing, customizing, and contributing online towards responsible civic action off line?
Design: How is information conveyed differently, effectively, and beautifully in diverse digital forms? How do we understand and practice the elements of good design as part of our communication and interactive practices?
Narrative, Storytelling: How do narrative elements shape the information we wish to convey, helping it to have force in a world of competing information?
Procedural Literacy: What are the new tactics and strategies of interactive games, where the multimedia narrative forms changes because of our success or failure?
Critical consumption of information: Without a filter (editors, experts, and professionals), much information on the Internet can be inaccurate, deceptive, or inadequate. How do we learn to be critical? What are the standards of credibility?
Digital Divides, Digital Participation: What divisions still remain in digital culture? Who is included and who excluded? How do basic aspects of economics and culture dictate not only who participates in the digital age but how we participate?
Ethics: What are the new moral imperatives of our interconnected age?
Advocacy: How do we turn collaborative, procedural thinking on line into activism in the real world?
Preservation: What are the requirements for preserving the digital world we are creating? Paper lasts. Platforms change.
Sustainability: What are the metrics for sustainability in a world where we live on more kilowatts than ever before? How do we protect the environment in a plugged-in era?
Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning: Alvin Toffler has said that, in the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century, the most important skill anyone can have is the ability to stop in one’s tracks, see what isn’t working, and then find ways to unlearn old patterns and relearn how to learn.

Thanks to John Connell for the link.

This is an interesting venture, and it has some useful echoes for us -- especially given that we will have two Arcadia Fellows in the Easter Term working on designing a new curriculum for information skills.

Concept books ...

2010-09-22T09:26:00.008+01:00

Why should cars get all the fancy concept models? Here are a few for the book:

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Via the wonderful Gizmodo. As noted in the comments there, most of the hardware to do this already exists, and many iPad apps are not too far away. What is impressive here is that elements of the work have been rethought to work in the digital medium. The none-sequential novel with parallel chapters accessable through motions is a fascinating idea. Interesting to think that a change in delivery format could affect the way literature is written.

Back to earth, here is a great example of taking something dry like a Library annual report and making it interesting and accessible with digital media.

How many unique papers in Mendeley?

2010-09-01T11:59:00.002+01:00

Interesting blog post by Duncan Hull (who works on the Genome Campus in Hinxton):

Mendeley is a handy piece of desktop and web software for managing and sharing research papers [1]. This popular tool has been getting a lot of attention lately, and with some impressive statistics it’s not difficult why. At the time of writing Mendeley claims to have over 36 million papers, added by just under half a million users working at more than 10,000 research institutions around the world. That’s impressive considering the startup company behind it have only been going for a few years. The major established commercial players in the field of bibliographic databases (WoK and Scopus) currently have around 40 million documents, so if Mendeley continues to grow at this rate, they’ll be more popular than Jesus (and Elsevier and Thomson) before you can say “bibliography”. But to get a real handle on how big Mendeley is we need to know how many of those 36 million documents are unique because if there are lots of duplicated documents then it will affect the overall head count.

He then does an experiment, with intriguing results.

Thanks to Lorcan for the link.

The psychological disorder of the filing system

2010-08-21T16:08:00.015+01:00

From the title poem of George Szirtes excellent 2009 collection The Burning of the Books:

Librarian of the universal library, have you explored

The shelves in the stockroom where the snipers are sitting,

The repository of landmines in the parking bay,

The suspicious white powder at the check-out desk,

The mysterious rays bombarding you by the photocopier,

The pyschological disorder of the filing system

That governs the paranoid republic of print

In the wastes of the world?

Hoping that the "universal library" is not a veiled reference to the UL (we hold a collection of Szirtes' letters so I imagine he feels kindly towards us), library "filing systems" are often considered confusing, if not "psychologically disordered", by library users.

The Wikipedia entry tells us that "Classification systems in libraries generally play two roles. Firstly they facilitate subject access by allowing the user to find out what works or documents the library has on a certain subject. Secondly, they provide a known location for the information source to be located (e.g. where it is shelved)".

Perhaps these dual roles are at the heart of the confusion. Unsurprisingly they often prove to be incompatible - subject groupings being countermanded by physical factors like size and space. And for many works, subject classification decisions can seem arbitrary to a library (or indeed bookshop) user. In any case, the majority of bibliographic records contain headings which are able to record subject information with far greater complexity than a single call number.

I have argued elsewhere that users approach our catalogues knowing exactly what they want. If discovery isn't something which normally happens when browsing, then all a classification scheme needs to do is assign a fairly unique identifier to each item and provide a map showing the physical organisation of these identifiers. This is already the case for closed-access collections where browsing is not a factor.

What about classification for online resources, which don't have a physical location? Many libraries either assign a generic call number for electronic material, or don't assign one at all. Discovery is handled mainly through search, and any subject-driven browse facility is generated by the subject headings within the record itself.

Which is all very well in the catalogue, but what if we need to group online resources for other reasons? One of the things we're looking into is pushing subject-relevant content to students. In order to do this we need to "classify" these resources by subject. Some options are:

Use existing subject headings in record - BUT these can vary enormously in terms of "width" and "depth" (i.e. how many and how specific they are). They are often assigned by libraries with the nature of their collections in mind - if you only have 10 physics books, "physics" is fine, if you have 10,000 you'll need to be more specific. Can we be sure that subject headings have been applied in a consistent manner across our online resources?
Tap into existing forms of recommendation such as reading lists/citations and reflect them in the catalogue - seems the ideal solution BUT difficult to get your hands on the data and link it through to bibliographic records - an "expensive" option.
Use circulation data to make recommendations (i.e. "other people on your course borrowed this, other people who borrowed this borrowed that") BUT difficult to track for online material which is not "borrowed" as such - can we easily track access in the same way?

There are wider questions - does this kind of recommendation produce a concentration on core texts at the expense of wider exploration of the collection? Or, handled correctly, might it lead people into areas they would not have otherwise considered?

There are plenty of questions, and I for one don't have any real answers. Perhaps if I hang around by the photocopiers the "mysterious rays" might spark some inspiration ...

Blogging as "autosave for our entire culture"

2010-07-31T04:13:00.002+01:00

Interesting talk by Scott Rosenberg (one of the Salon pioneers), who has written a useful history of blogging.

One way street to the iPad, paywalls and linked data

2010-07-29T16:51:00.013+01:00

Writing in 1925, Walter Benjamin senses a radical change, not just in the physical forms which contain writing, but also in the nature of writing itself:

"Just as this time is the antithesis of the Renaissance in general, it contrasts in particular to the situation in which the art of printing was discovered. For whether by coincidence or not, its appearance in Germany came at a time when the book in the most eminent sense of the word, the book of books, had through Luther's translation become the people's property. Now everything indicates that the book in this traditional form is nearing its end."

This from a section entitled "Attested Auditor of Books" in Benjamin's brilliant collection One-Way Street, written in his usual aphoristic (blogging?) style (from which I will, with apologies, quote extensively). The internet has also been credited with allowing cultural output to become "the people's property", and leading to important changes in the forms which that output takes.

Benjamin isn't talking about the internet, but he is talking about a change in the form of "print", driven and shaped by economic and technological forces:

"Printing, having found in the book a refuge in which to lead an autonomous existence, is pitilessly dragged out onto the streets by advertisements and subjected to the brutal heteronomies of economic chaos."

So there are further parallels. The production of text, once controlled by publishers (in the broadest sense), is now subject to different forces - the kind of economic chaos Rupert Murdoch is trying to tame with his paywall? Perhaps.

There follows a lovely passage about the perpendicularity of text:

"If centuries ago it began to gradually lie down, passing from the upright inscription to the manuscript resting on sloping desk before finally taking to bed in the printed book, it now begins just as slowly to rise from the ground. The newspaper is read more in the vertical than the horizontal plane, while film and advertisement force the printed word entirely into the dictatorial perpendicular."

There's no argument that electronic content has, in the past, been mainly consumed on upright monitors in the "dictatorial perpendicular". There has been a lot of toing-and-froing over how effectively e-readers and the like can mimic "real" books (screen brightness, electronic ink) - I wonder how much thought has been given to the angle of reading and how it affects our consumption of print. Do the Kindle and the iPad herald an era when texts will once again cosily recline on their beds?

(Lacking either an iPad or a Kindle, I attempted to mimic "horizontal reading" by laying my monitor flat on the desk - don't try this at home. And yes, it does seem to make an immediate difference to one's attitude to the text, at least for this reader.)

If all this seems a bit prophetic - how about this for child/internet anxiety, 1925-style?

"... before a child of our time finds his way clear to opening a book, his eyes have been exposed to such a blizzard of changing, colourful, conflicting letters that the chances of his penetrating the archaic stillness of the book are slight"

It might sound like Benjamin is fondly harking back to this "archaic stillness" - but read on:

"... the book is already, as the present mode of scholarly production demonstrates, an outdated mediation between two different filing systems. For everything that matters is to be found in the card box of the researcher who wrote it, and the scholar studying it assimilates it into his own card index."

Not content with scholarly research databases, Benjamin goes straight onto linked data:

"It is quite beyond doubt that the development of writing will not infinitely be bound by the claims to power of a chaotic academic and commercial activity; rather, quantity is approaching the moment of a qualitative leap when writing ... will take sudden possession of an adequate factual content."

So words will not just carry the "ordinary" meaning that they have in text, but will be imbued with further meaning by the nature of their representation. Anyone who has worked with XML, let alone RDF (a "method for the conceptual description and modelling of information") will find this kind of thing familiar.

Signing off, Benjamin says that "poets" will be the new masters of language, implying that an understanding of the deep and various meaning of words will once again become of prime importance in a new system of communication. Perhaps we all need to be poets in the modern world. Again, his words seem prophetic:

"With the foundation of an international moving script they [poets] will renew their authority in the life of peoples, and find a role awaiting them in comparison to which all the innovative aspirations of rhetoric will reveal themselves as antiquated daydreams."

In the jargon of the poetry workshop, or equally of the linked data practitioner "don't tell - show!"

Anyone in search of a real treat could do worse than track this book down - if only for the next section, subtitled "Principles of the Weighty Tome, or How to write Fat Books" - point II as an example:

"Terms are to be included for conceptions that, except in this definition, appear nowhere in the book"

Or the wonderful, and thankfully, online Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses

"Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight"

So much for Benjamin the blogger!

Context and meaning in search

2010-07-07T15:35:00.006+01:00

My 18 month old son has just discovered sentences - or, more specifically one sentence - "Where's it gone?" (pronounced as one word - "Wezzigonn?" ). He throws his ball into the bushes. He looks at me dolefully and says "Wezzigonn?". I retrieve the ball. He throws it into the bushes. He looks at me dolefully and says ... well, you get the picture. Essentially, he thinks "Where's it gone?" is a single word which means "Fetch the ball, Dad". And the interesting thing is that in the context of the "game" I understand exactly what he means.

In Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations he posits a "language game" involving a builder and his assistant. Every time the builder needs another slab he shouts "Slab!" and his assistant duly brings him a slab. So the single word "Slab!" functions as the sentence "Bring me a slab!" in this context.

(He also discusses a variation where every time the builder needs a slab he calls out "Bring me a slab!". An observer who doesn't speak the same language assumes that "Bring me a slab!" is the word for "slab" and when building a wall himself calls to his assistant "Pass me a 'bring-me-a-slab'!" These kind of misunderstandings are commonly found in placenames - such as Bredon Hill, meaning "Hill Hill Hill".)

I suppose the point of all this is that context gives language meaning. Which is all very well if you're building a house, buying some cabbages, throwing a party etc. But what about when you "speak" into a search box. Where do you get your context from then? Do you have to play around with clever search modifiers so the interface understands that when you search Google Images for "bondage" you're looking for pictures of serfs?

Not entirely - at least not in Google and not in Amazon, which both use contextual information to give you relevant results. [In]famously, these interfaces give very different results depending on whether you are logged in. People get pretty uncomfortable with the whole idea of this 'contextual information' - how it's gathered, where it's stored. But the use of contextual information to give language meaning is an essential part of communication.

Libraries have thousands of users and millions of resources crying out to be introduced to each other. But our search mechanisms tend to be context-less. Lorcan Dempsey has said Discovery happens Elsewhere. For users of university libraries, discovery happens in context-heavy environments such as reading lists, citations, seminars, lectures. By the time they get to our interfaces they know exactly what they want. Then they find it (or don't).

Can we start to build some context into our own systems? And what kind of context would be useful? We can say straight off that for students the most useful context is what course they're doing (something we will soon have access to, and which I've blogged about elsewhere). If we also have access to course materials (i.e. reading lists) we can really start to provide useful context for searches. How about if we have access to the content of books and articles - in particular the citations they contain? Could we start to put our searches in the context of a scholarly network based on citation?

Or do we run the risk of second-guessing what users are searching for, and getting it wrong? There are endless anecdotes about people changing their relationship status on Facebook and immediately being bombarded with ads for wedding planners/speed dating. If people change course do we start serving up different results? And if discovery happens in context, how far should the library go in providing context, and how much should it leave to others?

PS Emma has pointed out that little Henry is playing the Fort-Da game http://www.cas.buffalo.edu/classes/eng/willbern/BestSellers/Catcher/FortDa.htm and that along with Lorcan and Wittgenstein, Freud could also be added to the list of tags!

Library Futures - A Surfeit of Future Scenarios

2010-06-29T22:21:00.006+01:00

Earlier today, I came across an ACRLog post entitled Add Cyberwar Contingencies To Your Disaster Plan that includes a couple of links to reports on possible futures/scenarios that can help in planning future library needs and services:

- Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians, an announcement post for an ACRL report on “Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025”
- 2010 top ten trends in academic libraries, a "review of the current literature" by the ACRL Research, Planning and Review Committee.

These in turn reminded me of a couple of scenarios I'd heard that had been developed for JISC et al's Libraries of the Future project, and a quick dig around turned them up here: Libraries of the Future - Outline Scenarios and Backcasting

The Libraries of the Future project has identified three scenarios:

- Wild West, introduced as follows:

2050 is an era of instability. Governments and international organisations devote much of their time to environmental issues, aging populations and security of food and energy, although technology alleviates some of the problems by allowing ad hoc arrangements to handle resource shortages and trade. In this environment, some international alliances prosper but many are short term and tactical. The state no longer has the resources to tackle inequality, and is, in many cases, subservient to the power of international corporations and private enterprise.

The challenges of the 21st century have created major disruptions to academic institutions and institutional life. Much that we see as the role of the state in HE today has been taken over by the market and by new organisations and social enterprises, many of them regional.

- Beehive, introduced as follows:

The need for the old European Union countries to maintain their position in the world and their standard of living in the face of extensive competition from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) has led to the creation of the European Federation (EF) under the treaty of Madrid in 2035. The strength of the EF has meant that values in the EF have remained open in the long tradition of western democracy and culture.

In the years leading up to 2050 the world became increasingly competitive; the continuing economic progress of the BRIC countries and their commitment to developing high quality HE systems means that even high-tech jobs are now moving from the West. On a worldwide scale, and in the US, UK and Europe especially, employer expectations now dictate that virtually all skilled or professional employment requires at least some post-18 education. In the UK these drivers have resulted in a state-sponsored system that retains elements of the traditional university experience for a select few institutions while the majority of young people enter a system where courses are so tightly focused on employability they are near-vocational.

- Walled Garden, introduced as follows:

Following the global recession of the early 21st century cuts in investment levels to help reduce the national deficit meant that internationally, the UK’s influence waned and it became ever more isolated. Indeed the UK drifted from the EU, particularly after the Euro collapsed in the century’s second global recession, and the UK itself fragmented as continued devolution turned to separation and independence. Fortunately, the home nations have achieved reasonable self-sufficiency.

Technological advances, whilst allowing some of the challenges faced earlier in the century to be overcome, has also brought its
problems. The ability for people to connect with like-minded individuals around the world has led to an entrenchment of firmly held beliefs, closed values and the loss of the sense of universal knowledge. This has resulted in a highly fragmented HE system, with a variety of funders, regulators, business models and organisations that are driven by their specific values and market specialisation. However, ‘grand challenges’ of national importance goes some way to galvanising the sector.

The ACRL 20205 report identifies 26 possible scenarios (?! - I thought the idea of scenario planning was to identify a few that covered the bases between them?!), with a range of probabilities of them occurring, their likely impact, and their "speed of unfolding" (immediate change, short term (1-3 years), medium term (3-10 years), long term (10-20 years)).

High impact, high probability scenarios include:

- Increasing threat of cyberwar, cybercrime, and cyberterrorism, introduced as:

College/university and library IT systems are the targets of hackers, criminals, and rogue states, disrupting operations for days and weeks at a time. Campus IT professionals seek to protect student records/financial data while at the same time divulging personal viewing habits in compliance with new government regulations. Librarians struggle to maintain patron privacy and face increasing scrutiny and criticism as they seek to preserve online intellectual freedom in this climate.

- Meet the new freshman class, introduced as:

With laptops in their hands since the age of 18-months old, students who are privileged socially and economically are completely fluent in digital media. For many others, the digital divide, parental unemployment, and the disruption of moving about during the foreclosure crisis of their formative years, means they never became tech savvy. “Remedial” computer and information literacy classes are now de rigueur.

- Scholarship stultifies, introduced as:

The systems that reward faculty members continue to favor conventionally published research. At the same time, standard dissemination channels – especially the university press – implode. While many academic libraries actively host and support online journals, monographs, and other digital scholarly products, their stature is not great; collegial culture continues to value tradition over anything perceived as risky.

- This class brought to you by…, introduced as:

At for profit institutions, education is disaggregated and very competitive. Students no longer graduate
from one school, but pick and choose like at a progressive dinner party. Schools increasingly specialize by offering online courses that cater to particular professional groups. Certificate courses explode and are sponsored by vendors of products to particular professions.

The 2010 top trends from the literature review are given in no priotised order as:

- Academic library collection growth is driven by patron demand and will include new resource types.
- Budget challenges will continue and libraries will evolve as a result.
- Changes in higher education will require that librarians possess diverse skill sets.
- Demands for accountability and assessment will increase.
- Digitization of unique library collections will increase and require a larger share of resources.
- Explosive growth of mobile devices and applications will drive new services.
- Increased collaboration will expand the role of the library within the institution and beyond.
- Libraries will continue to lead efforts to develop scholarly communication and intellectual property services.
- Technology will continue to change services and required skills.
- The definition of the library will change as physical space is repurposed and virtual space expands.

What strikes me about all these possible scenarios is that there don't seem to be any helpful tools that let you easily identify and track indicators relating to the emergence of particular aspects of the scenarios, which I think is the last step in the process of scenario development espoused in Peter Schwartz's "The Art of the Long View"?

So for example, OCLC recently released a report called A Slice of Research Life: Information Support for Research in the United States, which reports on a series of interviews with research and research related staff on "how they use information in the course of their research, what tools and services are most critical and beneficial to them, where they continue to experience unmet needs, and how they prioritize use of their limited time." And towards the end of last year, the RIN published a report on Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences (a report on information use by researchers in the humanities is due out later this year(?), and one for the physical sciences next year(?)...) A report on researchers' use of "web 2.0" tools is also due out any time now...

So, are any of the trends/indicators that play a role in the 2025 scenarios (which are way too fine grained to be useful?) signaled by typical responses in the OCLC interviews or the Research Information Network report(s)?

PS As if all that's not enough, it seems there's a book out too - Imagine Your Library's Future: Scenario Planning for Information Organizations by Steve O'Connor and Peter Sidorko. (If the publishers would like to send me a copy...?! Heh heh ;-)

I've Got Google, Why Do I Need You?

2010-06-25T15:36:00.006+01:00

An excellent presentation on how a modern student percieves the way a library works. Its a great reminder on the gap between the web native student experience and the traditional library service. It also has my favourite quote of the week: "The librarian's logic is just as alien to me as the programmers' logic" ...

By way of Angela Fitzpatricks' shiny new blog!

I've Got Google, Why Do I Need You?

View more presentations from Ida Aalen.

a wealth of reference management

2010-06-19T10:39:00.000+01:00

There's a lot going on in the field of reference management tools - especially here in Cambridge.

Reference management tools include all kinds of systems which help you organise references you have found, store the papers they refer to and perhaps annotate them, share the citations with others, cite papers in your own works, and so on. There are some big players in this area - the first two which spring to mind for me are Zotero and Mendeley. Zotero is a Firefox plugin, so it sits within your browsing experience; Mendeley is a website and a downloadable tool, and makes a big effort to connect you to others and recommend other works - the "Last.fm of scholarly work". Both are popular with researchers at the University of Cambridge.

I realised this week that I now know of at least four reference management tools just originating here in Cambridge:

Papers. This is Mac software from Mekentosj, and has recently won an award
iCite. Like Zotero, this is another Firefox plugin
PaperPile, an open source system (GPL) from the EBI, which was first written for Linux
qiqqa, a somewhat unpronouncable name for a Windows application.

It's great to see the local entrepreneurial spirit coming into play in the academic sphere!

These are a tiny fraction of the world of reference management. It's interesting to note that the market can support so many tools. Each has special features which will appeal more to some users than others; some are particularly well suited to one discipline, with better support for their paper types and bibliographic databases. Of course, it's possible to combine two or more tools as part of your scholarly workflows, to get the best bits of each...

The hidden costs of peer review

2010-06-11T13:08:00.001+01:00

My OU colleague Martin Weller has done some calculations of the cost of the academic peer-review process.

Peer-review is one of the great unseen tasks performed by academics. Most of us do some, for no particular reward, but out of a sense of duty towards the overall quality of research. It is probably a community norm also, as you become enculturated in the community of your discipline, there are a number of tasks you perform to achieve, and to demonstrate, this, a number of which are allied to publishing: Writing conference papers, writing journal articles, reviewing.

So it's something we all do, isn't really recognised and is often performed on the edges of time. It's not entirely altruistic though - it is a good way of staying in touch with your subject (like a sort of reading club), it helps with networking (though we have better ways of doing this now don't we?) and we also hope people will review our own work when the time comes. But generally it is performed for the good of the community (the Peer Review Survey 2009 states that the reason 90% reviewers gave for conducting peer review was "because they believe they are playing an active role in the community")

It's a labour that is unaccounted for. The Peer Review Survey doesn't give a cost estimate (as far as I can see), but we can do some back of the envelope calculations. It says there are 1.3 million peer-reviewed journals published every year, and the average (modal) time for review is 4 hours. Most articles are at least double-reviewed, so that gives us:

Time spent on peer review = 1,300,000 x 2 x 4 = 10.4 million hours

This doesn't take into account editor's time in compiling reviews or chasing them up, we'll just stick with the 'donated' time of academics for now. In terms of cost, we'd need an average salary, which is difficult globally. I'll take the average academic salary in the UK, which is probably a touch on the high side. The Times Higher gives this as £42,000 per annum, before tax, which equates to £20.19 per hour. So the cost with these figures is:

20.19 x 10,400,000 = £209,976,000

(Some people think the sum involved is much greater than this, btw.)

Martin points out one important implication of this -- that academics are donating over £200 million a year of their time to the peer review process.

"This isn't a large sum when set against things like the budget deficit", he continues,

but it's not inconsiderable. And it's fine if one views it as generating public good - this is what researchers need to do in order to conduct proper research. But an alternative view is that academics (and ultimately taxpayers) are subsidising the academic publishing to the tune of £200 million a year. That's a lot of unpaid labour.

Now that efficiency and return on investment are the new drivers for research, the question should be asked whether this is the best way to 'spend' this money? I'd suggest that if we are continuing with peer review (and its efficacy is a separate argument), then the least we should expect is that the outputs of this tax-payer funded activity should be freely available to all.

And so, my small step in this was to reply to the requests for reviews stating that I have a policy of only reviewing for open access journals. I'm sure a lot of people do this as a matter of course, but it's worth logging every blow in the revolution. If we all did it....

Yep.

Death and the Web

2010-06-02T10:03:00.001+01:00

Daithí Mac Síthigh of the Law School at UEA came to Lilian Edwards's seminar last night and has posted a really useful account on his blog.

Libraries and Games

2010-06-01T11:02:00.011+01:00

At the start of the year, the NB column in the Times Literary Supplement ran a "Literary Anniversaries" series "for the benefit of aspiring scribes in search of a subject to tempt a literary editor". Noting the trend for biographies covering connections between apparently unconnected subjects, two notable anniversaries were picked out each week and explored for their combo-blockbuster-biog potential.

There is a real value to the chance juxtaposition of subjects. Collegiate systems such as Cambridge's have long been lauded for encouraging cross-fertilisation. Browsing in a library can be similarly productive - books are pulled from shelves, connections are made, inspiration strikes and great ideas are born (new books sections are particularly fruitful for the browser - the only thing the items have in common being their "newness").

Online library catalogues (or OPACs) are often accused of ironing serendipity out of the system. You approach an OPAC search with a specific need (I want a copy of this book which appears on my reading list/is cited in an article). That need is either fulfilled or not fulfilled. Few OPAC searches are made in expectation that the item will not be held, so the best outcome is that your expectation is met. And the worst is that you are disappointed. But you are seldom surprised or delighted.

One of the topics of conversation at Mashed Libraries Liverpool (as well as the subject of a lightning talk I have since lost my notes to!) was libraries and games. Or, loosely, how to apply techniques from the computer gaming industry in library interfaces. Musing on the subject with Tony Hirst, I was reminded of an interesting and entertaining debate - "Is Google making us Stupid?" - held at Wolfson College last September. At one point conversation slipped from search engines to video games (are they making us evil? are they making our children evil? and stupid?).

Ian Goodyer, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychology and a member of the panel, pointed out that the really dangerous aspect of computer games is not violent or sexual content but a phenomenon called partial reinforcement, which means doing the same thing again and again and sometimes being rewarded for it - a bit like reverse Russian Roulette. If the action/reward pattern is (or seems) random - as in a fruit machine - the strength of the reinforcement is increased.

What can libraries learn from all this? We certainly don't want our users to become addicted to OPACs (do we?). But a little slice of serendipity and surprise might change the way people use both library catalogues and library collections.

Amazon already provides a kind of semi-serendipity with its "Other people who bought X bought Y" section. So you get what you searched for, and then a little extra which is relevant but might be unexpected. This section intrigues us because sometimes it contains something of real interest, and sometimes it doesn't. Rather than the main search result which is only, rather boringly, what we were looking for. A couple of months ago Dave Patten of Huddersfield gave an Arcadia Seminar on doing this kind of thing with library catalogues, and it's something we're looking to pursue when we get access to CAMSiS course data.

Another angle is to incorporate some kind of complete "randomness" into library searches - along the lines of "hit the search button and sometimes you'll get something really interesting". I'm currently working on the JISC funded CULwidgets project in collaboration with CARET. As well as working on the provision of core services, we said we wanted to do some fun things which illustrated important points about libraries. A while ago I wrote a little web service which provides random results from the UL database. You can try it here:

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/api/voyager/newtonRandom.cgi?databases=cambrdgedb

(it's in completely raw XML form at the moment so you'll just see the data - but it could form the basis of something more polished with finding instructions, book covers etc.)

Hit refresh to get a new, random result. Then hit it again. And again.

A little serendipity in searching works particularly well with a collection as huge and diverse as the UL's. Try refreshing the service until you come across something unexpected, intriguing or downright odd - it might not take as long as you think. And it's surprisingly addictive.

I'm not suggesting that a completely random search is likely to be used in anger by students and academics (though if you were writing a column in the TLS you could run an interesting line in "take three random results from the UL and write an essay on them").

But it does illustrate that the way library catalogues are searched could influence the way collections are used, and how a touch of the unexpected could help to spark ideas and open up the wealth and depth of Cambridge's library collections.

Space balloons, mash and bubble blowers

2010-05-20T17:06:00.015+01:00

It's pretty cool making interfaces and web-gizmos - but there's no denying that it's much cooler to build actual physical stuff that works. Last week a few of us from the UL went up to Liver and Mash, a Mashed Libraries event at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool. The first thing that caught my eye was a little machine in the corner which intermittently blew clouds of bubbles into the room. It transpired that the bubble blowing was triggered by people tweeting about the event, and the contraption was powered by something called Arduino.

Back in Cambridge, I read this O'Reilly Radar post by Dale Dougherty about people who send balloons into space, build strange robots, make machines which let you examine your own dna (and so on) using lollipop sticks and rubber bands. Well not quite, but the main thread of the post is that innovation is driven by imagination as well as money (indeed lack of money can be a driver of innovation), and that there are emerging technologies which allow you to achieve a great deal at minimal cost.

Mashed Libraries events are all about innovation. Part of a packed and inspiring programme (including a great talk by Arcadia Fellow Tony Hirst) was a presentation by Adrian McEwen on Arduino (part of the technology behind the space balloon project). Arduino is "an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software ... intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments". Essentially an easy, open and cheap way of communicating between software and hardware.

Academic libraries have a big investment in the virtual and the physical. Users discover physical resources on the web, discover virtual resources by asking librarians and colleagues, order up books online and read them in the bath, and sit in the library reading ebooks and ejournals.

For all our (valuable) work on the connections between web interfaces and databases, it's easy to forget that libraries are full of hardware - catalogue machines, self-issue terminals, photocopiers, entrance and exit gates, informations screens, lifts, lights, coffee machines. And increasingly our users carry a powerful arsenal of personal hardware around with them -smartphones being just one example. Could technologies like Arduino and standards such as HTML5 join up the physical and the virtual for our users in new and exciting ways?

Mobile University

2010-05-19T15:24:00.008+01:00

Last Thursday I attended the Eduserv 2010 Symposium on the Mobile University, an excellent event, well organised, with a good mix of interesting speakers, delicious lunch and sensational cheeseboard. There was an impressive array of cameras, leads, mics in evidence (the event was streamed live) and I see that slides and videos are now available. If you watch nothing else, please try to see Paul Golding's opening keynote for some staggering stats (59 countries have more active mobile accounts than people) and scary/exciting predictions on augmented reality.

Just before I left to catch a train to Mashed Libraries Liverpool (completely different, equally excellent - no cheeseboard, lovely bacon butties) there were a series of short talks from universities who had already made some progress on the mobile front. Among them Edinburgh, who presented a short survey covering what gadgets and gizmos their students own, and also what they expect to be able to do with them (thanks to Laura James for the reminder!)

Looking at the list of expectations, one thing which struck me (again) is that users don't see boundaries between different parts of their academic life - they just want to go to one place (in this case their phone) and do everything. This kind of developing across institutional boundaries is something we're working towards, particularly with projects such as the JISC funded UL/CARET project CULwidgets.

Last spring, Arcadia's own Keren Mills produced a Cambridge-based study of mobile use and student expectations, in which she says "people are currently more positive about accessing information via SMS than via the mobile internet, although iPhones and iPhone like smart phones may change that". And looking at Edinburgh's survey, it seems that a year is a long time in mobile phone-land. It would be interesting to repeat Keren's survey now and compare figures.

Paul Golding points to a number of drivers which are pushing the smartphone, touch-based, mobile internet world (chief among them being more data-friendly tariffs), and to a dramatic shift in the use of mobile technologies - essentially, a smartphone isn't just a new kind of mobile phone - it's a completely different beast. We are not talking about replacing like with nearly-like.

The consensus seems to be that in c. 3 years the majority of students will have smartphones and expect to be able to come to university and use them. And, for universities, the trick seems to be to get started now. Even if you get it wrong, you'll be engaging and learning in an area where you might soon have to be an expert.

Which is what we're doing at the UL with CamLib the Cambridge Libraries Mobile Interface. It's been out in Beta for a few weeks now and use is starting to pick up. Meanwhile, we're analysing Google Analytics stats and user feedback to see where we're going right and where we're going wrong. But in a sense just being involved is getting it right - staking a claim in what's likely to be a very important new territory.

Sage on the Stage questions the pedagogy of 'Sage on the Stage'

2010-05-09T13:05:00.001+01:00

Interesting lecture by Jeff Jarvis.

Library of Congress to drink from Twitter firehose

2010-05-08T08:58:00.001+01:00

When he was in Cambridge to give the second Arcadia Lecture recently, Dan Cohen mentioned that Twitter had agreed to give the Library of Congress its archive of tweets. Here's the NYT report of that decision.

“Twitter is tens of millions of active users. There is no archive with tens of millions of diaries,” said Daniel J. Cohen, an associate professor of history at George Mason University and co-author of a 2006 book, “Digital History.” What’s more, he said, “Twitter is of the moment; it’s where people are the most honest.”

Last month, Twitter announced that it would donate its archive of public messages to the Library of Congress, and supply it with continuous updates.

Several historians said the bequest had tremendous potential. “My initial reaction was, ‘When you look at it Tweet by Tweet, it looks like junk,’ said Amy Murrell Taylor, an associate professor of history at the State University of New York, Albany. “But it could be really valuable if looked through collectively.”

Ms. Taylor is working on a book about slave runaways during the Civil War; the project involves mountains of paper documents. “I don’t have a search engine to sift through it,” she said.

The Twitter archive, which was “born digital,” as archivists say, will be easily searchable by machine — unlike family letters and diaries gathering dust in attics.

As a written record, Tweets are very close to the originating thoughts. “Most of our sources are written after the fact, mediated by memory — sometimes false memory,” Ms. Taylor said. “And newspapers are mediated by editors. Tweets take you right into the moment in a way that no other sources do. That’s what is so exciting.”

Twitter messages preserve witness accounts of an extraordinary variety of events all over the planet. “In the past, some people were able on site to write about, or sketch, as a witness to an event like the hanging of John Brown,” said William G. Thomas III, a professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “But that’s a very rare, exceptional historical record.”

Ten billion Twitter messages take up little storage space: about five terabytes of data. (A two-terabyte hard drive can be found for less than $150.)

Mobile interface for Cambridge Libraries

2010-05-03T16:40:00.005+01:00

Today sees the Beta launch of Camlib, a mobile interface for Cambridge libraries. It has been tested with iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices (revision: apparently it's also working on Opera Mini browser on Blackberry).

Link to interface: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/mob/camlib.cgi
Link to info: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/toolbox/camlib.html

Much of the new functionality is linked to log-in - those without a Cambridge Library account can log in with our test user (using library barcode login):

Barcode:VABCD
Surname: BLOGGS

[NB please use Mr Bloggs to explore CamLib, but refrain, if possible, from making any requests under his name ...]

CamLib is developed from the Cambridge Libraries Widget, with extra functionality and lots of bells and whistles thrown in. It's written in jQTouch, a JQuery library which gives the look and feel of a native app in a web interface.

We thought long and hard about what people were likely to want out of a mobile library interface, and came up with Bookbag, a new piece of functionality which allows you to build a list of items from your searches then email it to yourself (or anyone else for that matter). Viewing content on a smartphone can be difficult, and nobody wants to be copying classmarks from phone to paper - BookBag allows you to discover now, and consume at your leisure.

CamLib also links out to full text and Google Books (where available), though we can do nothing about the mobile-friendliness (or otherwise) of external sites. It will link out to Google Maps (or a floorplan in the case of the University Library) to help you locate items. On iPhone/iPod Touch there is a neat tie-in with the inbuilt mapping functionality which allows you to use the Directions button to find out how long it will take to walk to your book! (untested on Android)

Otherwise, it does everything the widget does - view and renew loans - place, view and cancel requests - view library profile etc.

CamLib builds on the ideas, work and concepts that have emerged from the Arcadia Project - indeed, a mobile interface was one of Arcadia Fellow Tony Hirst's direct recommendations. In this sense it still counts as an "Arcadia Product", even though the project is now being funded by JISC!

Supporting early career researchers

2010-04-30T14:47:00.002+01:00

At the JISC2010 conference earlier this month, I chaired a session on "researchers of tomorrow" - looking at how universities can best support this group.

Four projects were presented, all of which used different methodologies, and examined slightly different demographics. "Researchers of tomorrow" might be postgraduate research students who are young; or those who are just starting their research career, regardless of age; or a group who are not yet researching but still undergraduates, perhaps. Nonetheless, all researchers are undertaking similar tasks in their work, regardless of their field of study (finding and analysing data, organising information, and writing and sharing their findings), and those at the start of their research careers are likely to face similar challenges too.

Despite the differences in the approaches taken by the projects, it was very encouraging to see that common themes were emerging across all the projects.

One was the tension between competition and collaboration; whilst many early career researchers are happy to share with others in many ways, and to work together, it remains the case that competition for funding, jobs and publications is fierce.

In addition, early career researchers always seem to find out about new technologies and tools from people - whether that means colleagues, friends, family or others, online or offline. There is often time pressure, limiting willingness to take risks and try new technology that might not prove useful, Time constraints also mean that training and support systems need to fit in to research life; for instance, being offered at times and places which work for the early career researcher, and supporting learning whilst undertaking a real task with real information, so as not to waste time.

I look forward to the future results of the British Library study [4], and seeing how Esther Dingley's study fits into it all!

[1] Cambridge-lead study: commentpress site and downloadable report

[2] OCLC review of JISC VRE work

[3] OCLC other study - covered in slides

[4] British Library study (interim results only, the project runs for another 2 years)

JISC Cambridge Library Widgets Project

2010-04-26T11:52:00.003+01:00

For those of you who thought widgets were bits of plastic that made beer fizzy, a new project to open your eyes. The JISC Cambridge Library Widgets Project is a collaboration between the University Library and CARET, aiming to deliver a joined-up, relevant and accessible suite of library services through small, portable web interfaces (or widgets).

The UL, CARET and Arcadia already have a history in widgets. They are a perfect tool for fast, lightweight development, for trying out ideas, and for knitting together the stuff of academic life. The UL and CARET collaborated on the Cambridge Library Widget - info (and screencast) here: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/toolbox/camlibwidget.html and recent Arcadia Fellow Harriet Truscott did an enormous amount of work on an exam papers widget, which is one of the ideas we'll be taking forward.

We'll also be looking at interfaces for mobile devices, at integration with DSpace (our institutional repository) and with CamSIS (our student registry), and at some fun, innovative tools for the future.

We'll be blogging here: http://culwidgets.blogspot.com/ and I'll also be adding any major updates to the Arcadia blog.

OUP takes on Wikipedia

2010-04-21T15:30:00.000+01:00

From ArsTechnica:

The OBO tool is essentially a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines. Users can drill down to a specific bibliographic entry, which contains some descriptive text and a list of references that link to either Google Books or to a subscribing library's own catalog entries, by either browsing or searching. Each entry is written by a scholar working in the relevant field and vetted by a peer review process. The idea is to alleviate the twin problems of Google-induced data overload, on the one hand, and Wikipedia-driven GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), on the other.

"We did about 18 months of pretty intensive research with scholars and students and librarians to explore how their research practices were changing with the proliferation of online sources," Damon Zucca, OUP’s Executive Editor, Reference, told Ars. "The one thing we heard over and over again is that people were drowning in scholarly information, and drowning in information in general. So it takes twice as much time for people to begin their research."

OBO grew out of that research, with the goal of helping scholars and students deal with information overload, possibly by skipping Google entirely. The resulting bibliography is fairly simple and lean, which is exactly the point. The messy and often politicized work of sorting and sifting the information has already been done for users, so that they can drill down directly to a list of the main publications in their target area.

"You can't come up with a search filter that solves the problem of information overload," Zucca told Ars. OUP is betting that the solution to the problem lies in content, which is its area of expertise, and not in technology, which is Google's and Microsoft's.

To trust OBO's content, you have to trust its selection and vetting process. To that end, OUP is making the list of contributing scholars and editors freely available. Each subject area has an Editor in Chief who's a top scholar in the field, and an editorial board of around 15 to 20 scholars. The EIC and editorial board either write the bibliographic entries themselves, or they select other scholars to do the work.

The launch version of OBO covers only four subject areas: Classics, Islamic Studies, Social Work and Criminology. But OUP has plans to add 10-12 new subject areas (known as modules) within the next year. Each subject area contains between 50 and 100 individual entries, and that number should grow at the rate of about 50 to 75 entries per year.

And the cost of all this peer-reviewed quality? Why $29.95 a month or $295.00 a year

He never told a lie, maybe. But did he pay his library fines?

2010-04-21T15:21:00.002+01:00

Lovely story in today's Guardian.

Founder of a nation, trouncer of the English, God-fearing family man: all in all, George Washington has enjoyed a pretty decent reputation. Until now, that is.

The hero who crossed the Delaware river may not have been quite so squeaky clean when it came to borrowing library books.

The New York Society Library, the city's only lender of books at the time of Washington's presidency, has revealed that the first American president took out two volumes and pointedly failed to return them.

At today's prices, adjusted for inflation, he would face a late fine of $300,000.

The library's ledgers show that Washington took out the books on 5 October 1789, some five months into his presidency at a time when New York was still the capital. They were an essay on international affairs called Law of Nations and the twelfth volume of a 14-volume collection of debates from the English House of Commons.

The ledger simply referred to the borrower as "President" in quill pen, and had no return date.

Sure enough, when the librarians checked their holdings they found all 14 volumes of the Commons debates bar volume 12.

Under the rules of the library, the books should have been handed back by 2 November that same year, and their borrower and presumably his descendants have been liable to fines of a few cents a day ever since.

C'mon Obama: pay up. It's your Office's responsibility.

Library of Congress decides to archive Twitter firehose

2010-04-15T10:18:00.002+01:00

From today's New York Times:

The Twitter archive will join the ambitious “Web capture” project at the library, begun a decade ago. That effort has assembled Web pages, online news articles and documents, typically concerning significant events like presidential elections and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Raymond said.

The Web capture project already has stored 167 terabytes of digital material, far more than the equivalent of the text of the 21 million books in the library’s collection.

Some online commentators raised the question of whether the library’s Twitter archive could threaten the privacy of users. Mr. Raymond said that the archive would be available only for scholarly and research purposes. Besides, he added, the vast majority of Twitter messages that would be archived are publicly published on the Web.

“It’s not as if we’re after anything that’s not out there already,” Mr. Raymond said. “People who sign up for Twitter agree to the terms of service.”

Knowing that the Library of Congress will be preserving Twitter messages for posterity could subtly alter the habits of some users, said Paul Saffo, a visiting scholar at Stanford who specializes in technology’s effect on society.

“After all,” Mr. Saffo said, “your indiscretions will be able to be seen by generations and generations of graduate students.”

People thinking before they post on Twitter: now that would be historic indeed.

Collaborative composition moves up a gear

2010-04-12T20:41:00.000+01:00

Copyright 2010: back to first principles

2010-04-12T20:31:00.002+01:00

On Friday last, Counterpoint, the British Council's Thinktank held a conference in London to mark the tercentenary of the Statute of Anne, the first piece of legislation on copyright. I was one of the two opening speakers. Here's my script on "Getting back to first principles".

...............................

When I think about this stuff, two images come to mind.

The first was conjured up by a fellow-countryman of mine in 1726. This is how he tells it:

“I was extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just daylight. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt several slender ligatures across my body, from my armpits to my thighs. I could only look upwards; the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me; but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. In the mean time, I felt at least forty more of the same kind (as I conjectured) following the first. I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground.”

This is Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver, on the first of his celebrated travels.

The second image comes from Joseph Tainter’s intriguing book The Collapse of Complex Societies, in which he examined a number of sophisticated civilisations that flourished for aeons and then suddenly collapsed: these civilisations included those of the Romans, the Lowlands Maya and the Chacoans. Each of these societies had impressively complex social structures and very advanced technology, and yet, despite this, they collapsed, impoverishing and scattering their citizens and leaving little behind. How, Tainter asked, did this happen?

His answer was that they hadn’t collapsed despite their cultural sophistication, but because of it. Tainter’s account describes societies which, through a combination of social organization and environmental luck, find themselves with a surplus of resources. Managing this surplus makes each society more complex, and for a time the marginal value of this complexity is positive: each additional bit of complexity more than pays for itself in improved output. But over time, the law of diminishing returns reduces the marginal value, until it disappears completely. At this point, any additional complexity is pure cost. “Tainter’s thesis”, as Clay Shirky’s useful summary puts it, “is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract --and then some”.

***

What have these two images to do with intellectual property?

Well, first of all, the Internet is our Gulliver, and the pygmies crawling about him are IP lawyers and their corporate clients.

My generation was lucky enough – or maybe smart enough, it doesn’t matter -- to invent something magical: a gigantic, global machine for springing surprises. Or, to put it more prosaically, a network for enabling disruptive innovation. The architecture of the TCP/IP-based Internet with its lack of central control and its neutrality towards applications has stimulated an astonishing wave of creativity in the decades since it was switched on in January 1983. Among the surprises sprung by the network to date have been: email, the World Wide Web, streaming media, peer-to-peer networking, cloud computing, VoIP, blogging, Flickr, social networking and powerful search engines. These innovations have transformed our information environment, to the point where life without them has become inconceivable.

The arrival of this unruly giant on our Lilliputian shores, however, caused panic in many quarters, particularly in those which had hitherto made a good living out of the status quo. And their response to it – as evidenced most recently, for example, in the undignified scramble to pass the Digital Economy Act in the dying hours of a Parliament – has been to attempt to immobilise the giant by binding it with billions of silken threads, woven by IP lawyers, in the hope that it can be rendered impotent and life can go back to the status quo ante.

But if we allow that to happen then we’re done for. Capitalism needs explosive innovation: that’s the source of its dynamism. It can’t get by on the cosy incrementalism of old business models. We desperately need Joseph Schumpeter’s waves of creative destruction if we’re to feed our exploding global population, provide citizens with health care and develop technologies which might arrest and eventually reverse global warming. But we’re stuck with an Intellectual Property regime that was shaped by old communications technology and the special interests that grew up around it, and is increasingly a barrier to innovation rather than an incentiviser of it.

Which brings me to Tainter, and his gloomy thesis about collapse. As many of today’s contributors have pointed out, our existing IP regime is increasingly hindering creativity rather than facilitating it. The content industries would dearly love to extend this regime to cover everything that goes on in the networked world. If they succeed it will be, in my view, the step too far that Tainter observed in the societies that he studied. And those who recommend it will find that, far from extracting even more value from the system for their shareholders, they may just choke it to death.

My fear is that this is what will, in fact happen. Our situation is now one best described by the theory of incompetent systems – that is to say systems that can’t fix themselves because the components which need to change are driven by short-term considerations and are unable to think longer-term. Global warming belongs in the same category.

***

But perhaps this is too gloomy a thought to stomach on such a bright Spring morning. So let’s make an effort to be optimistic. If, by some miracle, we actually were able to muster the collective resolve to do something about our plight before it is too late, what should we do? To what First Principles should we return?

Historically, our approach to IP is that it has been too much couched in terms of particular communications technologies – print, records, movies, broadcast, and so on. If we were to have the opportunity to redesign the system then we should escape from these shackles; we should formulate the design in terms of general principles rather than particular instantiations of transient technologies. Among other things, this would involve:

Explicit recognition that an IPR is not a presumptively absolute right but a temporary, conditional monopoly granted by society.

A default assumption that any creative product is in the public domain unless the creator explicitly asserts ownership of his or her rights.

A globally-agreed definition of ‘fair use’ that emphasises its status as a condition of the grant of a temporary grant of monopoly and not a privilege grudgingly granted by rights holders.

A return to a legislative philosophy which decides copyright duration by balancing the need to incentivise innovators with society’s need for unrestricted access to creative outputs. This implies: (i) an obligation on legislators to seek objective assessments of the public interest in the context of any requests to extend IPRs; (ii) that appropriate durations may be different for different forms of expression: (iii) that durations should be regularly reviewed and adjusted to match changing circumstances; and that lawmaking on intellectual property should be strictly evidence-based in the way that legislating on e.g. pharmaceutical products is. Rights holders petitioning for extensions of their temporary monopolies would be required to provide evidence that the proposed extensions would lead to increased innovation or some other tangible public benefit.

The copyright system should be redesigned to be efficient in the sense that it is easy to identify rights holders.

Strict liability should be abolished. Penalties for inadvertent infringement should be proportional to the actual losses suffered by rights-holders, and in the event of disputes compensation should be determined by independent arbitration.

None of this is rocket science. These principles seem to me to be patently obvious, if you’ll excuse the pun. Some of them were obvious in 1710, and many were understood – and extensively discussed -- by the framers of the US Constitution in the 1780s. Yet over the intervening 300 years we appear to have forgotten many of them. It’d be nice to think that we can begin learning from our mistakes. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

Evil Empires and many Davids ... latest on publisher practices

2010-04-12T12:08:00.009+01:00

Meridith Farkas has recently blogged about EBSCO's continued policy of providing market 'exclusives' on popular academic journal titles in their packages, to the extent of removing journal backfiles from JSTOR. This also ties users into EBSCO's set of discovery tools which many find unwieldy and restrictive.

Furthermore, the society that publishes the journal seems to be complicit in this practice. Comments on the blog reveal a lot of anger from Librarians. Barbara Fister summed the situation up neatly at libraryjournal.com:

Farkas offers a synonym for “exclusive”: extortion. She also, in an incisive analysis worthy of von Clausewitz, surmises that the society has found a nifty way to increase their membership by removing its journal from most libraries that had it through the nearly-ubiquitous Academic Search Premier. You want the journal? Join the club.

Out of this situation, librarians tend to arrive at three conclusions:

Articles published in this journal have deliberately been made into an artificially scarce resource.
The society involved and/or EBSCO stand to make more money because of this new scarcity.
Fewer people will have access to the information—and parties to the exclusive agreement think that’s great!

What’s interesting in all this is that the major providers of access to this journal—libraries—were not consulted at all. In fact, Farkas only found out about it because links through Serials Solution that used to point her patrons to access points in JSTOR and Academic Search Premier had simply vanished.
Who’s got the ransom note?
Here’s where I think the word “extortion” doesn’t quite work. Usually, extortionists communicate with their victims: “pay us, or else.” In this case, libraries have had to stumble across the “or else” before they could do some frantic research to find out where to send the ransom and what it will cost while patrons stand at the reference desk or wait on the phone, rolling their eyes at stupid librarians.

Are we so insignificant that nobody even bothered to copy us on the ransom note?

I personally feel that issues raised in these two articles tie directly in the mission of the Arcadia fellowship; exploring the role of the library in the networked environment, specifically how we can meaningfully interact with the providers of online scholarly content.

As well as curators of print and digitised material, libraries currently play a major role in purchasing and negotiating large packages of online material. However, when faced with this kind of practice we can arguably appear obsolete as unnecessary middle-men.

Lorcan Dempsey visited Cambridge late last year and remarked in a discussion that 'a medium sized academic library that uses EBSCO for the majority of its online material might as well replace its library with EBSCO', (or words to that effect). Another recent survey in the States has warned of the increasing irrelevance of academic libraries.

Potential solutions in dealing with this kind of practice include negotiating collectively, as we in the UK are continuing to do so in a greater fashion through JISC collections.
In a follow up post, Meredith queries if consortia in the States are doing this. Certainly, the response from the library community to EBSCO's practices shows that we are at least willing to co-ordinate on sharing experiences and feelings regarding publisher and vendor practice.

Or on a more radical note, maybe its time to give the whole peer review model that underpins academic publishing a serious rethink? Digital repositories continue to be only marginally successful as alternative and open publishing methods, and will continue to be so as long as the processes of peer review remain with journal publishers. Peer review is in itself a sound and trusted method of ensuring academic credibility, but why do the methods and processes of review and the distribution of peer reviewed output need to remain in the hands of profit making bodies?

With Librarians and publishers getting together at UKSG this week, its all food for thought.

Farewell to Arcadia - an end or a beginning?

2010-04-06T12:37:00.001+01:00

My final post on the Arcadia Project blog, as the Exam Paper Browser project has now come to an end. It was a challenging project - creating a test case for the potential to provide staff and students with personalised resources and services, and linking together 3 different University IT services with Google's gadget technology. But after just 10 weeks, we now have a working prototype of the system up and running. Of course, this prototype Exam Paper Browser can be developed by the University to provide a central bank of online exam papers, but it also offers a starting point to develop a whole range of tools displaying information from DSpace in easy to use formats directly to any web page. It should be comparatively easy, for example, to develop a tool that will automatically display PhDs submitted by Department members on a Department web page.

So, lets hope that this is a beginning, rather than an end, and that this will be the start of a whole range of gadgets pulling material out of DSpace to be displayed in helpful ways across the University.

I'm now back in CARET, and will be sharing my new-found knowledge about gadget design with my colleagues here, before taking up a new post at the Botanic Gardens.

Finally, a big thank you to all those at the University Library and beyond who were so consistently helpful and welcoming - special thanks go to Huw, Lizz, Ed, Ray, Elin, Barbara, Simon, Sebastiaan and the wonderful people on my support team!

DIY book scanning

2010-04-06T11:56:00.004+01:00

Above is the elevator pitch. The video below tells the whole story.

Of course this isn't the way Serious Libraries would approach the task. Perish the thought!

Thanks to the Berkman Center for the videos.

The future of education

2010-03-19T10:33:00.000Z

Future of Education

View more presentations from Martin Weller.

Lovely Slideshare presentation by Martin Weller.

It was a response to this invitation.

Which also elicited this:

The cultural responsibilities of libraries as curators of the digital record

2010-03-13T16:39:00.001Z

Jonathan Zittrain from the Berkman Center at Harvard gave this riveting lecture at Duke University on March 3. It's quite long -- an hour and a quarter -- so you need to allocate some serious time to it, but IMHO it's worth it. It starts slowly as he lays out an analytical framework that, at first sight, seems to have little to do with libraries, but about 27 minutes in to the presentation he really hits his stride. For anyone interested in the role of libraries in a digital era, this is eye-opening stuff becasue it gives some concrete examples of cases where libraries will need to assume really serious responsibilities as curators of the digital record, not just in terms of preservation, but also in defence of historical accuracy.

Towards a New Alexandria

2010-03-12T23:40:00.000Z

Long, thoughtful and wide-ranging article by Lisbet Rausing in The New Republic about the future of academic libraries in a digital environment.

It is clear that if a new Alexandria is to be built, it needs to be built for the long term, with an unwavering commitment to archival preservation and the public good. A true public good itself, it probably needs to be largely governmentally funded. And, while a global and cooperative venture, it needs to be hosted by one organisation that is reputable, long-standing, nonprofit, and exists in a stable jurisdiction. The Library of Congress, the flagship institution of the world’s only surviving Enlightenment republic, comes to mind. There might be other possibilities, such as the New York Public Library, or the British Library, or a consortium of the world’s leading university libraries—UCLA, Harvard, Cambridge University, and so on.

In other words, the question for scholars and gatekeepers is not whether change is coming. It is whether they will be among the change-makers. And if not them, then who? Who else will ensure long-term conservation and search abilities that are compatible across the bibliome and over time? Who else will ensure equality of access? Ultimately, this is not a challenge of technology, finances, or ultimately even laws, difficult though they are. It is a challenge of will and imagination.

Answering that challenge will require some soul-searching: Do we have the generosity to collaborate? Can we build legal, organizational, and financial structures that will preserve and order—but also share and disseminate the learning of the world? Scholars have traditionally gated and protected knowledge, yet also shared and distributed it in libraries, schools, and universities. We have stood for a republic of learning that is wider than the ivory tower, and now is the time to do so again. We must stand up, as the Swedes say, for folkbildningsidealet, that profoundly democratic vision of universal learning and education...

Worth reading in full.

Reviewing my first week

2010-03-08T09:43:00.003Z

I'm reviewing my first week as Arcadia Fellow and the experiences I have been fortunate to have had. I have been made very welcomed by all the staff at the University Library and also the college (Wolfson) I am associate with.

I spent the first few days, settling in, meeting people, sorting out my IT set up and just taking the time to familiarise myself with the University Library. Despite, being luck enough to have my own office, which I share with the other current Arcadia Fellow Harriet Truscott, I have been fascinated by the unique architecture of the Library and the history and tradition it represents. I feel honoured to have the opportunity to research here and have been finding lots of interesting and inspiring places to work around the library making me feel very scholarly. I strongly think the place where you work or study can really have a very remarked impact on you and your ideas.

This week I have planned a research timeline and fleshed out the finer details of my methodology. It is a relatively short research project so progress has had to be swift. I have also started my first research objective and started compiling a database of online opportunities for researchers, particularly referencing tools. I have found the thread on managing literatue on Graduate Junction most interesting. Thanks to all those that have contributed.

This week I also had the opportunity to meet with a former Arcadia Fellow Liz Edward-Waller whose IRIS(Induction, Research and Information Skills) Project report I have found a very interesting read. Listening to her experiences has also been really helpful, especially when planning finer details and practicalities. Sharing little tips learned from your peers' research experience is always so incredibly valuable, especially when the timeline of this particular project leaves little room for the unexpected. For example, little things like remembering to look for and un-tick a particular box when constructing a survey to ensure users of university computers aren't restricted by one survey for one IP address.

This week I also enjoyed attending my first Arcadia Seminar by Professor Martin Weller from the Open University about “the pedagogy of abundance – new teaching models in a digital age” as well as attending a researcher-led Thesis Writing Group. Briefly , I was interested that Martin drew parallels from the lessons learnt through the transformation of the music industry in the digital era. The role and place of higher education institutes is definitely changing, particularly as a result of the increased open educational resources (OERs) available, but exactly how HEIs will adapt is still an area of much debate. I will write more on both these events another time as they really deserves their own dedicated post and discussions.

My aim now I have settled in is to keep a more regular account of the daily experiences of my project on the esther @ arcadia blog I have set up on Graduate Junction. I see the esther @ arcadia space as my 'research diary/log' and people are welcome to follow and comment on either blog. You can also follow me on twitter @arcadiaesther.

So I start this second week with much excitment.........

The gospel according to Google: The desktop PC is dead and only the paranoid survive

2010-03-04T22:28:00.001Z

Interesting insight from a recent speech given in Dublin by Google's European sales chief.

Google believes that in three years or so desktops will give way to mobile as the primary screen from which most people will consume information and entertainment. That’s according to Google Europe boss John Herlihy who said that smart phones enhance Google’s mission to make information universal.

Speaking at the Digital Landscapes conference at UCD, Herlihy said that the cloud-computing opportunity will make sure that every mobile device will be capable of doing rapid-scale applications.

“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” Herlihy told a baffled audience, echoing comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the recent GSM Association Mobile World Congress 2010 that everything the company will do going forward will be via a mobile lens, centring on the cloud, computing and connectivity.

“Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible. Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later.”

In fact, the disruptive effect that Sergey Brin and Larry Page had on the internet when they were maxing out credit cards in 1998 to buy servers to build their search engine haunts Google to this day, Herlihy said.

“The fear is the next Sergey and Larry will come up with a disruptive technology or service that will eliminate the need for Google. That spurs us on to deliver the best quality return on investment to advertisers in an open and transparent partnership that works for them.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs to end the need for Google. It’s our challenge not to let that happen by continuing to drive innovation and value.”

Identifying Off- and On-line referencing tools used by researchers

2010-03-04T14:35:00.004Z

Having spent the first few days, settling into the University Library and planning the timeline of my research, today I have started my research by identifying and compiling a database of current off- and on-line opportunities that assist early-career researchers in managing literature (information resources and particularly referencing tools). One of my aims is to assess the current usage rates of these different opportunities and identity particular advantages and disadvantages expressed by researchers who have used these different software options.

I decided to begin my search on Graduate Junction as I thought it would be a useful place to start. Part of my research will also be to look at the role of social/academic networks as not only a place to connect with others based on research interests, but as a place were researchers can share knowledge and experiences of more practical or generic skills, such as information searching and handling. Therefore this morning I was really excited to find an example of this on Graduate Junction in the form of a thread in the advice forums discussing managing literature . It’s provided a great starting point for my research as well as providing a great example about the role of networks in sharing experiences.

I personally used EndNote for my dissertation as this was already installed on my computer when I got it. I therefore didn’t really shop around at the time or evaluate the advantages or disadvantages of other opportunities. As it was also installed I didn’t think about the cost. I found it very intuitive to use but did find it a problem when I went to the university computing room or library and used other computers as I could obviously not access my library. I know that many universities provide researchers with a free EndNote, or sometimes Refworks, account attached to their university IT account. This has the advantage that you can log into any university computer and access your account, overcoming the problem I experienced. However, I am also under the impression that when you graduate and you lose your university IT account you also lose your subscription to this tool. Does anyone know whether you can then transfer your library to your own account or do you lose this?

I have also heard a lot about Zotero (open source) and I know that Dan Cohen of George Mason University, is coming to give the second Arcadia Lecture in Cambridge in April, which I am very much looking forward to.

It would be great if people could continue this discussion thread and share their personal experiences or thoughts.

Introducing Esther

2010-03-02T12:58:00.003Z

Yesterday I started as the new Arcadia Fellow. My aim for the next ten-weeks is to use this blog to keep the group updated with my progress and findings. I see it as a useful space to obtain comments and feedback to my ideas as they develop over the next weeks. But I thought I would begin with a brief introduction.

As introduced by John I graduated from my Economics and Management degree at the University of Oxford in 2007 before completing my Masters in Research Methods (Education) at the University of Durham in 2008. During this time I also worked as a Research Assistant within the Department of Education working on a project funded by the Teaching Development Agency.

During my Masters and through my experiences as a new research assistant, myself and a fellow PhD researcher identified flaws in the information flows for early-career researchers. Researchers have three sources of information about work done in their chosen field: published literature, conferences and their supervisor. Literature reviews, whilst essential, can only ever reveal completed work, relevant conferences do not happen every week and supervisors mostly rely on these same sources. We felt it was very easy to become overly focused on the specifics of your own work and to lose a sense of what other related work is currently being done, especially by other early-career researchers. We also noticed that very distinct and separate literatures and conferences exist for different subject areas despite the large overlap between some disciplines. Networking is an essential part of the research process: promoting collaboration, generating new ideas and preventing duplication of effort. Consequently, we thought it would be great if there was a common point that brought together Masters, PhD and Postdoctoral researchers from all disciplines. By making ‘Research Keywords’ rather than ‘discipline’ central to the networking process, we hoped to break down existing disciplinary boundaries so that it would be possible to find others with similar research interests regardless of which department, institutions or country they were in.

From this idea Graduate Junction was founded in May 2008. Graduate Junction is now the largest online academic network dedicated to the needs of early-career researchers, providing an opportunity to network based on research interests as well as gain peer-support on issues related to undertaking doctoral research. It is a researcher-led, self-funded initiative which we have managed alongside our own research commitments. Whilst the other co-founder, Daniel Colegate, developed the website, I was almost entirely responsible for the original growth of researcher network, the website receiving over 150,000 unique visitors, 1.5 million page views and almost 15,000 registered researchers. Graduate Junction has featured in popular press such as the Chronicle of Higher Education (US) and the Times Higher Education (UK) and has been presented at a number of events, including at the Vitae Annual 2009 Conference. We have had a number of volunteers and recently Summer Interns from within the community who have help develop and promote Graduate Junction to whom we are very grateful. We have been overwhelmed by the responses we have had from researchers, academic staff and testimonials from Graduate Schools, which motivates us to continue, despite the severe lack of resources, to provide this opportunity for our peers.

Over the last 18 months I have become very interested in digital scholarship and the role of academic networks and online referencing tools. However, I have never had the opportunity to dedicate my time to investigate further. My Arcadia project proposes to investigate the information needs of early-career researchers and investigate particularly whether research masters and first year PHDs, require different and potentially additional support from University Library Services to help them develop efficient methods of searching and handling information resources in an ever progressing digital age.

Despite the last 18 months being heavily involved in the online community, I am still relatively new to blogging and hope to develop this skill during the project so watch this space.........

The 'perpetual beta' textbook

2010-03-01T15:31:00.002Z

Interesting post in iMedical Apps. Excerpt:

However, while renting textbooks may seem like a strange and wondrous departure for those of us who still pridefully maintain shelves of outdated medical textbooks, the more necessary revolution will actually be upending the illusion of completion when a textbook finally reaches the printing press.

By this, I am suggesting the barrier between finished textbooks and the rapidly evolving nature of medical knowledge most certainly needs to be more porous. Going even further, the interactive and non-linear nature of learning are at odds with the centuries-old format of a linear, immutable text.

This is not to say that textbooks are anachronisms. Something very valuable comes out of the care and scrutiny of an author polishing each paragraph and page with great care. But, why should the craftsmanship stop at the moment of publication?

Why indeed? I was thinking of this when reading the New Yorker's recent profile of Paul Krugman and the account therein of his struggles to complete an economics textbook.

Library Widget screencast

2010-03-01T14:59:00.005Z

The libraries@cambridge team have dipped a toe in the glamorous world of film making, the result being the Cambridge Libraries Widget Screencast, showing here:

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/toolbox/camlibwidget.html

Starring Emma Coonan, and written and directed by Rachel Marsh, it's a sweeping tale of romance and passion. Actually it's a short guide to using the Cambridge Libraries Widget, but you have to start somewhere.

We're keen to pursue the use of film and screencasts, so we're pleased to have made our first foray. It was a pretty steep learning curve, but thanks to Lihua Zhu, our friends at CARET, and Anton at the Streaming Media Service we think we managed to achieve a good result. Hopefully the sequels will be a lot easier!

New Arcadia Fellow

2010-03-01T14:33:00.003Z

Esther Dingley has started today as an Arcadia Fellow. She'll be working on "Supporting the information needs of early-career researchers in a digital age". Esther holds degrees from Oxford and Durham and is a co-founder of Graduate Junction, a non-for-profit network for early career researchers. She can be found most days in the Arcadia Office which she shares with Harriet Truscott, this Term's other Arcadia Fellow.

Development and research - the project seesaw

2010-02-26T17:29:00.000Z

Just a quick blog post to reflect on where I'm up to at the end of week 5 of my Arcadia project.

The project's always seesawed uneasily between been a 'technology' project and being an 'implications of technology' project, between attempting to develop a tool, and thinking about what the implications and needs of this tool might be. This week the seesaw's continued to rock back and forth, but perhaps there's now a more harmonious rhythm to it. Developing a real tool can be a good way to find out what future Library IT projects might need, and to find out the problems and delays that are likely to appear. This week's been a week of delays, in many ways, but I'm starting to see them as productive ones: the delays that I'm facing now (getting student data from MISD, getting contact names from every Department in the University, learning to use the range of different technologies necessary to connect together 3 very separate systems) are probably going to be ones that Library projects face again and again. So if I can document them now, and start working on making the process smoother, then the next Library project will perhaps be better planned, and work more efficiently. After all, Huw Jones in his Arcadia project had to spend days if not weeks wrestling with the widget code, which he was then able to copy straight into my project ready sorted. So things here are going slowly, but perhaps that's not a bad thing.

Duke University Open Access policy

2010-02-26T16:00:00.001Z

Interesting post by Cathy Davidson, co-chair of Duke Open Access, under the title "Information wants to be sustainable".

At this writing, we propose that the final draft of any article written by a Duke faculty member--not the printed article but the draft before it goes to press--be made available in pdf form and archived in a repository at Duke where it will be available to search engines and therefore to any searcher, yes, for free. This means that the fruits of our collective research can be made available to the world, even if the actual citational final paginaged publication copyright will still reside with the publisher. With modifications offered by Duke faculty in the various forums and committees to which we've now presented this policy, our Open Access policy is roughly similar to the ones already accepted at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, the University of Kansas, and a number of other public and private institutions. It is both modest in its scope and important. It allows faculty to use their own work in their classes; a member of our Taskforce in the Medical School reported that she was having to pay $500 for permission to use her own published article in her teaching. Recently, I took my class to visit the lab of a colleague and assigned several of his articles, listed on his website. We clicked. No article. The publisher had made him take the links down. My students were able to go through Duke University library to read these scientific papers but, if they had not been institutional members, they would have had to pay-per-view for each article, all of them written on grants that our tax payer dollars had supported. An Open Access repository at Duke also means that the work of faculty can be included in online searches by topic and that readers can find the work easily and read it in the pdf form even if they do not have an individual or institutional subscription to the journal. They will still need to go to the actual journal (the printed final copy of the article) for proper citations, but presumably there are many people who will want to read an essay even if they aren't planning on citing it in their own work.

Studies of citations also show that papers previously published in this preprint open access form are more likely to be cited, by a significant margin, than essays that are not available in this form, even when citation requires taking that extra step of going to the actual published journal to cite the paginated essay. In addition, the policy guarantees the future archiving of the article. So there are many benefits to the faculty member. However, if a faculty member has any hesitation at all about this method of open access archiving for any reason, there is also a "no explanation necessary" escape clause available to any faculty member who wants out. If you don't want your article archived in an open access repository, you don't have to have it archived. No questions ask. If you do, however, you can be assured that Duke will preserve it even if your journal collapses or sells its archives to some expensive commercial vendor.

So there seems to be considerable benefit to the scholar and to readers.

Date for diaries: the second Arcadia Lecture...

2010-02-25T21:28:00.002Z

... will be given by Dan Cohen of George Mason University (and the Zotero project) on April 30 at 6pm, in the Riley Auditorium, Clare College.

His topic is "The Social Life of Digital Libraries".

Abstract

The digitization of libraries had a clear initial goal: to permit anyone to read the contents of collections anywhere and anytime. But universal access is only the beginning of what may happen to libraries and researchers in the digital age. Because machines as well as humans have access to the same online collections, a complex web of interactions is emerging. Digital libraries are now engaging in online relationships with other libraries, with scholars, and with software, often without the knowledge of those who maintain the libraries, and in unexpected ways. These digital relationships open new avenues for discovery, analysis, and collaboration.

Daniel Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History and the Director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He is coauthor of ‘Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web’ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), author of ‘Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith’ (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), and has published articles and book chapters on the history of mathematics and religion, the teaching of history, and the future of history in a digital age in journals such as the Journal of American History, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Rethinking History. He is an inaugural recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Digital Innovation Fellowship. At the Center for History and New Media he has directed projects ranging from digital collections (September 11 Digital Archive) to scholarly software (the Zotero extension for the Firefox browser that enables users to manage bibliographic data while doing online research).

All welcome.

Cam.Talks page for this lecture.

The Data Deluge

2010-02-25T21:16:00.002Z

This week's Economist has a special survey (written by Kenneth Cukier) on the explosion in digital data that's already problematic for anyone working in the physical and biological sciences. The Leader that precedes it says, in part:

EIGHTEEN months ago, Li & Fung, a firm that manages supply chains for retailers, saw 100 gigabytes of information flow through its network each day. Now the amount has increased tenfold. During 2009, American drone aircraft flying over Iraq and Afghanistan sent back around 24 years’ worth of video footage. New models being deployed this year will produce ten times as many data streams as their predecessors, and those in 2011 will produce 30 times as many.

Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analysing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and everyday life (see our special report in this issue). It has great potential for good—as long as consumers, companies and governments make the right choices about when to restrict the flow of data, and when to encourage it.

Laptop rage

2010-02-25T00:22:00.000Z

Some academics really hate it when students spend the entire lecture updating their Facebook profiles.

Panton Principles on Open Data

2010-02-22T10:02:00.001Z

The principles are:

Where data or collections of data are published it is critical that they be published with a clear and explicit statement of the wishes and expectations of the publishers with respect to re-use and re-purposing of individual data elements, the whole data collection, and subsets of the collection. This statement should be precise, irrevocable, and based on an appropriate and recognized legal statement in the form of a waiver or license. When publishing data make an explicit and robust statement of your wishes.

Many widely recognized licenses are not intended for, and are not appropriate for, data or collections of data. A variety of waivers and licenses that are designed for and appropriate for the treatment of data are described here. Creative Commons licenses (apart from CCZero), GFDL, GPL, BSD, etc are NOT appropriate for data and their use is STRONGLY discouraged. Use a recognized waiver or license that is appropriate for data.

The use of licenses which limit commercial re-use or limit the production of derivative works by excluding use for particular purposes or by specific persons or organizations is STRONGLY discouraged. These licenses make it impossible to effectively integrate and re-purpose datasets and prevent commercial activities that could be used to support data preservation. If you want your data to be effectively used and added to by others it should be open as defined by the Open Knowledge/Data Definition – in particular non-commercial and other restrictive clauses should not be used.

Furthermore, in science it is STRONGLY recommended that data, especially where publicly funded, be explicitly placed in the public domain via the use of the Public Domain Dedication and Licence or Creative Commons Zero Waiver. This is in keeping with the public funding of much scientific research and the general ethos of sharing and re-use within the scientific community.

From Panton Principles.

Whither Legal Deposit for Online Publications?

2010-02-09T09:36:00.003Z

One of the mini-projects I started out on, and have to still to write up (and, indeed, complete!) during my Arcadia Fellowship was the life of a book, describing the travels made and processes applied to a work from the moment it is received via the legal deposit process into the University Library, through cataloguing and shelving, to the point at which it makes it back on to the shelf after its first loan.

One thing that didn't really cross my mind at all was the way in which born digital and published online content might be subjected to the legal deposit process, nor how legal deposit libraries might secure the long term availability and preservation of those works.

Anyway, it seems as if the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have been consulting on the subject, and now they've opened up the consultation to a potentially wider audience than might have originally been the case by republishing it, in commentable form, on the WriteToReply consultation platform: Proposal on the Collection and Preservation of UK Offline and Microform Publications and UK Online Publications

The consultation seeks opinions on several proposals relating to the legal deposit of Offline and Microform Publications as well as Online Publications.

Which is to say, DCMS have worked out what they want to do (the proposals) and now's your opportunity to comment on it. As well as formal institutional responses, I got the feeling from a meeting with DCMS a week or two ago that they were interested in seeing how things like WriteToReply might help encourage a wider range of contributions to might complement full institutional responses. It's also worth bearing in mind from the individual user comment feeds, it's possible to use WriteToReply to help draft a full response...

As well as the proposals mentioned above, the consultation document is soliciting feedback on several other related matters.

For example, an impact assessment for agencies likely to support the process is provided in Impact Assessments – Intervention and options, analysis and evidence, which reviews some of the legal constraints around harvesting, as well as the costs of maintaining a legal deposit service for online materials. Have they identified all the major risks, or are there practicalities that have escaped them?

Defining territoriality is a major consideration on which feedback is requested in Further Details on Territoriality. With intellectual property rights in such a mess, here's an opportunity to contribute your opinions to the process.

Finally, practical everyday considerations about the actual legal deposit process are raised in Further Details on Harvesting Process. At the end of the day, the techies are going to have to implement this stuff. Here's an opportunity for developers to raise any concerns in an informal way

[Disclaimer: I am co-founder of the WriteToReply platform]

Bloggers: queue here for bus passes

2010-02-08T22:19:00.000Z

Interesting insight from the Pew Project into the way the media ecosystem is evolving.

Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults. As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for microblogging with status updates.

Blogging has declined in popularity among both teens and young adults since 2006. Blog commenting has also dropped among teens.

* 14% of online teens now say they blog, down from 28% of teen internet users in 2006.

* This decline is also reflected in the lower incidence of teen commenting on blogs within social networking websites; 52% of teen social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the 76% who did so in 2006.

* By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one in ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog.

While blogging among adults as a whole has remained steady, the prevalence of blogging within specific age groups has changed dramatically in recent years. Specifically, a sharp decline in blogging by young adults has been tempered by a corresponding increase in blogging among older adults.

Clueless on copyright

2010-02-08T08:57:00.001Z

We complain that young students are casual or clueless about copyright. But it looks as though the Obama White House may be just as confused.

New uses for Google #56632

2010-02-08T08:55:00.001Z

Thanks to Dave Briggs for spotting it.

Cambridge Libraries Widget Launched

2010-02-05T10:23:00.003Z

Today sees the official launch of the Cambridge Libraries Widget:

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/toolbox/camlibwidget.html

Developed in partnership between the UL and CARET, the widget is a unified interface for Cambridge library users, drawing together search facilities, library profiles, loans and requests in one easy-to-manage application. It's live in CamTools (Cambridge's VLE), Facebook and iGoogle.

The Widget is very much a product of the Arcadia Programme. It draws on the ideas of centering services around the user and providing relevance in resources and functionality which have proved such strong themes. At it's heart is a cross-institutional collaboration - a very Arcadia idea!

You'll need to be registered with a Cambridge Library to try it out at the moment ... but we're planning to write up what we did and how we did it at some stage so others can benefit too.

Two weeks into the project... software, pedagogy and research

2010-02-04T10:11:00.004Z

So, two weeks into my Arcadia research project, how are things going?

Building on Huw's work for the library widgets, I've begun creating the prototype exam paper widget. As so often with technology, the bits you expect will be hard are easy, and vice versa! Raven integration turned out to be instantly sorted by a combination of folder settings and ready-made code from the library widget, but getting to grips with JQuery is taking longer than I'd hoped.

Meanwhile, I've been researching the current workflow for the paper archiving of past exam papers - you can see a first draft here. The coloured boxes indicate potential moments at which digital archiving could take place. I've also been researching the range of forms and media in which exam papers exist - from audio files to data sheets. I've visited a number of libraries and librarians across the University, who have all been extremely helpful.

I've been conducting a small scale literature review, looking for any research into best practice in using past papers to support exam preparation. Unfortunately, this does not seem to have been well investigated in the past: however, Cambridge itself has carried out a number of small scale projects around this issue, and I'll be talking to the instigators of these in the future.

Over the next week, I'm planning to continue the process of gathering together current digitised exam papers, and labelling them according to appropriate University schemas. I'll begin research directly with students, finding out more about their needs when revising. It would be interesting to hold a small focus group with supervisors as well, in order to chat about their use of past papers. And of course, I'll continue developing the prototype software, aiming to get it up to the point where the information is working in a web page, though without a determined user interface.

Introducing myself - Harriet Truscott, the new Arcadia Fellow

2010-01-28T16:34:00.003Z

To all the readers of the Arcadia Blog - greetings from the new Arcadia Fellow!

My name's Harriet Truscott, and I'm picking up the Arcadia baton from Huw Jones. By the end of my ten week fellowship, I'm planning to have a tool in use by students across the University. It'll be a race, so keep reading the blog to find out how it goes.

I'll be spending my time here investigating the potential impacts of digitising the storage of all past exam papers at the University. At the moment, college libraries are storing bound copies of all exam papers (6 fat volumes, taking up a lot of shelf space) for each year. It's been suggested that these could be effectively archived in D-Space, the University's digital repository. I'll be thinking about how students can use past papers to learn most effectively, and about the practical implications for digitising papers. I've already been impressed by the vast range of materials included in Cambridge exam papers, from audio files to Sibelius composition software files.

Over the past eight years, I've worked in a number of Faculties in the University, finally putting down my roots at CARET, the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology, where I'm Lead Researcher on the Coursetools project, looking at the way courses are designed and run at Cambridge.

I'm delighted to be taking up this Fellowship, and look forward to an illuminating 10 weeks. I'll certainly be learning a lot more about exam papers!

Gadgets - Robinson Lecture 2010

2010-01-28T13:42:00.001Z

"This year's Robinson Lecture will be given by Dr Alastair Beresford at 6pm in the Umney Theatre. His title is: 'Beam me up, Scotty: what the gadgets of the future will know about you, the good things they'll do, and their potential for harm'."

http://www.robinson.cam.ac.uk/college/newsitem.php?id=302

Mobile Barcode Scanning App and Library Catalogue Lookup, for Free...

2010-01-13T22:20:00.003Z

One of the advantages of having books that display universally recognised barcodes is that you can sometimes piggyback on top of other people's apps... Some of the library blog wires were buzzing today with news that OCLC's WorldCat library search tool has now been "integrated" into the RedLaser barcode scanning app for iPhone (WorldCat via RedLaser [Worldcat developer blog]). Just scan a barcode, flick through to thee "Look up in a Library" option, and you're there...

Over on the Musings About Librarianship blog, @aarontay describes another barcode reading app - ZBar - that allows you to add in your own URL's as search lookups keyed by the number identified by the barcodee scanning portion of the app. So if a Library catalogue has a nice OpenSearch URI keyed by ISBN (and there's absolutely no good reason for not supporting this sort of access, right?!;-) you can roll your own "scan and library lookup" app to at least prove the concept for your own library.

If, like me, you don't have an iPhone but you do have an Android phone, another interesting book related app is BookMobile. This also allows you to scan a book via its barcode, but the twist with BookMobile is that you can look up details relating to the book on Google Books and add the book to your Google Books library. I'm not sure if the app then allows you to do a full text search across those books within your library, but it should certainly be possible, because a similar approach is used in Wiltshire Heritage Library's full text (Google Books) catalogue search.

Should copyright on academic publications be ended?

2009-12-28T14:07:00.002Z

Interesting paper. Abstract reads:

The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem. Yet publishers would presumably have to impose fees on authors, because publishers would no longer be able to profit from reader charges. If these author publication fees would actually be borne by academics, their incentives to publish would be reduced. But if the publication fees would usually be paid by universities or grantors, the motive of academics to publish would be unlikely to decrease (and could actually increase) – suggesting that ending academic copyright would be socially desirable in view of the broad benefits of a copyright-free world. If so, the demise of academic copyright should probably be achieved by a change in law, for the “open access” movement that effectively seeks this objective without modification of the law faces fundamental difficulties.

Download from here.

Taking Google Custom Search Engines Further

2009-12-17T20:58:00.001Z

This presentation from the 2009 Google I/O conference goes into far more detail about how to craft a really customised search engine, and may for some readers be easier to digest than the Google CSE documentation. It's still pretty involved though...

With news out that support for the JISC Intute service is to come to an end - "Our current service level will be maintained until 1 August 2010. After this date, Intute will still be available but with minimal maintenance." (JISC announces Intute funding cut) - now might be a good time for the community to start thinking about how to maintain a community sourced, distributed resource hub. Note that the maintaining community could be made up of "university representatives", rather than being an open one. And potentially, a custom search engine might provide a suitable platform?

To this end, I'd appreciate any comments/feedback on the UK HEI Library website Custom Search engine (Open Library Training Materials and Custom Search Engines and Custom Search Engines On Library Websites). Could you see something like this being used on your Library website, and more importantly, meeting some sort of user need there? If not, why not?

The First Rule of Library Club is...

2009-12-11T15:56:00.005Z

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a NESTA Crucible reunion. The NESTA Crucible was on of the transformative episodes of my life, along with a month in Sante Fe on a Complex Systems Summer School, and I'm starting to think also with this Arcadia Fellowship...

One of the activities we did on our final Crucible weekend was go on a misguided walk. Although taken by a knowledgeable tour guide, the itinerary of a misguided walk (which I would probably now call an unguided walk) was largely left to chance. At every junction we took, a die was rolled, or some other random event invoked, to decide which way we went, the guide was knowledgeable enough to be able to talk about things of interest as we did so, as well as calling on us to engage in various practices that I suspect owe originally to the surrealist school...;-)

At the time, the misguided walk reminded me of several other (possibly misremembered!) things I'd come across before:

- Yoko Ono's Map Piece [PDF];
- an article (I think from an edition of Encyclopedia Psychedelica?) about a walking tour akin to a misguided tour in which the walking party was led through various London department stores and office blocks (or something like that) according to the rule: "if door is marked private, go through it, looking confident as you do so..."
- an article somewhere or other about "Guided holidays at home", where a holiday tour guide would come to your house and give you a guided tour of it through their eyes (a bit like a warped version of "Through the Keyhole", I guess?!)

So where's all this going....? Earlier today I tweeted a comment about one of the Cambridge University Library rules and linked to the rules on the Library website. This prompted several other people to visit the rules and comment back on them... For example:

So as I try to come up with some sort of report on my time as an Arcadia Fellow - as I try to come up with a post hoc rationalisation of what I've spent my time doing! - I keep coming back to this: that I've spent my time pointing at various Emperors and asking why they're wearing no clothes (or in the contemporary slang, pointing at various elephants in the room and asking: "Erm...?") Or looking at everyday things, and interpreting them the wrong way....

So for example, when I wandered into the English Faculty Library and saw a sign on a desk facing the entrance to the Library that said: "Staff Enquiry Desk", being a insecure type of soul I read it as "Enquiry Desk for Staff". (I'm not sure if the sign is there still...?!;-)

Or to take another example, how about the University Library Rules... Rules are funny things - they evolve over time to protect the current - and occasionally past - interests of an organisation; to outsiders, who don't fully appreciate the reasons for them, or the ramificiations of not having them, they can appear mysterious, overbearing, or even nonsensical; they ca be misinterpreted in all sorts of ways, either in terms of sense, or tone; they may contain inconsistencies; they may include legacy rules that may have made sense once but for whatever reason seem antiquated now; and so on.

And as with poster blindness, it's easy to for them, and their foibles, to become invisible, so that those familiar with them read them not so much as literally as in the local dialect, ("ah yes, what that actually means is..."). In turn, this means it can be hard to see the things with which we have become familiar as a newcomer might. Such as a new Arcadia Fellow, for example, or a new undergrad, new postgrad, new academic or new visitor. (And remember, you were new once, and may have made a similar joke, way back when...) So maybe it's worth looking at the rules once again, with as fresh a pair of eyes as you can muster...?

[The emphasis is/annotations are mine...]

Opening and closing

1. Except on the days when it is closed under Regulations 2 and 3 (Ordinances) the Library shall normally be open as follows:

Monday to Friday, 9.00 to 19.15 (22.00 during Full Easter Term).

Saturday, 9.00 to 17.00.

No person shall enter the Library less than fifteen minutes before the time of closing. [We operate an asymmetric opening/closing policy - if you're in, you can stay in in until later than you're allowed in; that is, you can benefit from a library lock-in...]

The opening hours of reading rooms are determined from time to time by the Syndicate. Details are given on the University Library's web-site ( http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/).

Admission

2. In addition to members of the University, the following persons may be granted a Reader's Card and admitted to the Library, but may not borrow books:

(a) Any persons over 18 who are engaged in private study or research, if supported by appropriate evidence of academic standing and fitness for admission. An administrative charge of £10 will be made for a Card valid for up to six months.

No charge is made for the single issue within any twelve-month period of a Card valid for up to seven consecutive days, or for the issue of a Card to a current member of the academic staff or a registered research student of any other university funded by one of the higher education funding councils in the United Kingdom.

(b) Undergraduates of other universities in the British Isles normally resident in the Cambridge area, if supported by appropriate recommendations.

Cards issued under this section shall be free of charge and shall normally be valid only during the vacations of this University.

3. Readers' Cards are not transferable. Every person to whom a Card is issued under Rule 2 shall sign an undertaking to observe the Regulations for the use of the Library and the Rules made by the Library Syndicate.

Holders of Readers' Cards issued under Rule 2 may be required to work in a particular reading room designated by the Librarian and shall comply with any special conditions laid down by the Syndicate. The whole or part of the administrative charge may be waived at the discretion of the Librarian. [We laughingly refer to this as "partition" - but don't tell anyone]

Readers must inform the library of any changes to their current address. [We know where you live...]

4. The Syndicate reserve the right to cancel at any time, without assigning cause for the cancellation, any Reader's Card issued under Rule 2. ["Brazil" is one of my favourite films; Josef K. is one of the dummy names we use to test library systems]

5. Persons over the age of 16 not holding a Reader's Card may be admitted to the Library for the sole purpose of viewing the building provided that they are accompanied throughout the visit either by a member of the University or by a member of the Library staff. No member of the University may introduce more than two visitors at one time except by arrangement with the Librarian. Visitors admitted to the Library under this rule may use the Tea Room but are not permitted to consult any books or other library materials. [You WILL NOT look at any of the books - got that? Whaddya think we are - WH Smiths...?]

6. The Exhibition Centre is open to all members of the University and the general public.

Borrowing

7. No book shall be borrowed from the Library on any day less than fifteen minutes before the time of closing. [So bearing in mind point 1. above, you need to arrive at least half an hour before closing time - plus time to navigate the OPAC, stacks, and raise and receive stack requests - if you want to actually borrow anything Whaddya think we are, a Library..? Claiming that you got lost finding a book in the stacks, or finding your way out of the stacks, is not our problem, it's yours; got that? It's your problem...So get here in plenty of time...]

8. Any borrower who fails to return a book in accordance with the provisions of Regulation 6 or Regulation 7 (Ordinances) shall be liable to a fine of 25 pence (50 pence for recalled books) for each working day (or part thereof) that elapses before the book is returned or the Librarian is notified that it has been lost and the replacement cost of the book has been paid.

9. Works of reference, unbound works, or parts of works may not be borrowed except by the special permission of the Librarian or a person appointed by him/her, but may be consulted in a reading room of the Library. Printed books not kept on the 'open' shelves may be borrowed unless this is prohibited by special restrictions.

10. Personal details of borrowers of Library materials may not be disclosed to other readers, nor shall any person use the computerized facilities of the Library to obtain or process data except in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Use of Library materials

11. The marking of any Library materials is forbidden; readers may be prohibited from using ink and may be asked to use pencils instead while consulting certain volumes in any of the reading rooms.

12. All persons borrowing Library materials, or ordering materials for use within the Library, shall produce evidence of identity at the time of borrowing or ordering if requested to do so. [This may include iris checking, fingerprinting, DNA testing, swabs, etc etc]

13. Use of University Library’s IT facilities is governed by the Rules made by the Information Technology Syndicate of the University (http://www.cam.ac.uk/ cs/itsyndicate/rules.html) and shall be only in accordance with the terms of the JANET Acceptable Use Policy (http://www.ja.net/services/publications/policy/aup.html).

Behaviour in the Library

14. Silence shall be maintained as far as possible in the Library. [Shhhh...]

15. Readers must present their Reader’s Card or University Card for inspection if requested by a member of the Library staff in the course of their duties. [You have no rights... You must carry identity papers with you at all times...]

16. The use of portable computers [does that include smartphones, notwithstanding 17 below?] is permitted in the Library provided that they are quiet in operation. Users of such equipment may be required to work in specified areas or to stop using a computer if it constitutes a distraction to other readers.

17. The use of equipment likely to disturb or distract other readers or to damage Library materials (e.g. digital scanners, radios, personal hi-fi equipment [psst, I se lots of people using iPods in the Library... just don't tell anyone...], or computers to perform any of the functions of such machines) is not permitted in the Library [but you are allowed to use the big photocopier/scanner things in the Photocopier room. It's not that it's a monopoly thing, but you know - we have to be able to say we're providing some added value, non-book services...]. Mobile telephones must be set to ‘silent’ mode in the Library; the use of mobile telephones is only permitted in the Tea Room, the Locker Room and the courtyards of the Library. [We do not like the idea of the mobile library. It's evil - evil, d'you hear? Nasty, nasty technology. Dirty... Evil...]

18. Overcoats, raincoats, and other kinds of outdoor clothing, umbrellas, bags, cases, cameras [so does that include phones, notwithstanding 17 above?], photocopying devices [so does that include phones, notwithstanding 17 above?], and similar personal belongings [like what? Mobile phones, maybe, notwithstanding 17 above?] shall normally be deposited in the locker-room adjacent to the entrance hall during each visit to the Library. [You may be subject to a search when entering or leaving the building. Bags may well be taken away and destroyed.]

19. Handbags, files, folders, coats, and the like, if allowed into the Library, shall be subject to examination on exit. [You may be subject to a personal search when entering or leaving the building.]

20. Bottles of ink, correction fluid, and other potentially damaging substances shall not be taken into the Library. [Everything you do take into the building needs to be in a clear plastic bag. Homeland Security rules apply.]

21. Food and drink shall not be taken into the Library generally, but may be admitted for consumption in the courtyards or in the Tea Room, provided that paying customers are not deprived of seats. [Whaddya think this space is? A social area?]

22. Smoking is permitted only in the courtyards.

23. No person may go barefoot in the Library. [No hippies.]

24. Library staff are empowered to stop any activity in the Library which they consider prejudicial to the safety, well-being, or security of readers or Library staff or to the preservation of the collections. [We pwn you..]

PS feel free to comment below... ;-)

PPS also feel free to try this exercise with your own library's rules...

[Tony Hirst has now left the building...

...though I like to think: I will be back...]

A Trip into the Stacks...

2009-12-10T11:13:00.001Z

A couple of days ago, I took a trip into the stacks in search of a book... a book about Luddites:

The location of the book - South Wing, Floor 6, 229.c.97.26 - is identified within the search results listing, as well as in the more detailed record for that item:

So I scribbled down the location and reference on a slip of paper, went into the stacks - the wrong stack at first (South Front... I think Huw said someone had mentioned proposing an Arcadia project on signage? Sign 'em up - please...) - and found the book. Now I remembered from the catalogue page that there were a couple of other works in a similar stack location - 229.c.97.* - but I hadn't scribbled down the actual reference numbers. The cataloguing system being as it is (categories, accession number within that category and size of book all feature) actual tracking down subject related works, even on the same stack, can be difficult without a reference number.

Being unfamiliar with the layout of South Wing, Floor 6, I wasn't sure where, or even whether, there was a catalogue terminal somewhere handy; what I really wanted was to be able to look-up the catalogue from my phone (not that using phones is allowed in the library...;-)

So what would this app have been able to do? Well what's immediately available:

- the book reference (229.c.97.26), which is a unique identifier for that work;
- the catalogue page for that work (see above).

The catalogue page contains a set of subject categories. Clicking through on the subject category link for Luddites leads to:

Clicking on the Luddites term on this page leads in turn to:

(Hmmm, that page doesn't say what subject term the results relate to?!)

That is, we have a list of works - along with their location, reference number and availability - available from the subject category.

So what would my first guess "In the Stacks" app look like? (I was going to do a quick run through using mockups generated using the Balsamiq mockup tool, but time is tight today:-(

The app would:
- take the reference number (e.g. 229.c.97.26)
- respond by showing the title of the work, its author, and related subjects (for confirmation).
- allow the user to click through on a subject and display other works classed using the same subject term, visibly grouped according to proximal location (e.g. grouping works 229.c.97.* first using the current example).

Then I would trivially be able to lookup items related by subject to a work I had discovered whilst in the shelves.

PS thinking on a little further, it might be handy to catalogue the range of reference number items as displayed on the end of each stack (a couple of days work, probably) so that the actual stack locations of each work could be identified, and maybe rendered on a map? (e.g. see e.g. Mashing and Mapping, Owen Stephens' description of his Middlemash hack looking at how the Google Maps interface might be used to display library floorplans).

Imagining further, how about users grabbing an image of the refrenc range sign on the end of a stack using something like Google Goggles, and getting a list back of works, possibly arranged by topic, on that stack?! ;-) Technology assisted serendipity! ;-)

Lost...

2009-12-10T09:45:00.002Z

[A story that could so easily be true...]

Several weeks ago, I thought I might go to a UL training session on "Known unknowns: discovering articles on your topic", which was to be held in the Morison Room, apparently (the location of many other of the Library's training events, I think...)

Looking on the library online floorplan to locate the room wasn't that much help:

nor were the floorplans that are distributed around the Library, although the name of the Morison Room was listed (just not mapped...)

I thought that maybe the University's centralised map search might help? It does claim to list lecture rooms, after all...

Hmmm, maybe not... So online was no help (nothing even in principle scrapeable for a quick mobile app to draw on...)

There is some useful signage, though, and once I'd managed to find a sign to get me started at the top of the main stairs, I could find my way; asking at the help desk also resulted in a set of workable directions (although the help was provided by showing me where to go on a map that didn't explicitly show the location of the room... down the stairs by the tea room, to a floor that does not appear on the Library floorplan...)

Being late when I started to look for the room, I was even more late when I found it... so when the door didn't easily open (it was locked: wrong entrance, maybe?), I gave up...

A couple of days later, having a vague memory that I'd seen the Morison Room signposted on my way in to the Library through the main entrance hall, I went in search of that sign; and it was quite prominent, to the right of the issues desk, pointing in the same direction as the Exhibition Room... which was lined with doors - some saying private, some signposting toilets, and some unmarked. No hint of which was the Morison Room... though maybe a day or two earlier it had been signposted as the venue of the "Known unknowns" training session...?

OPAC Ground Truth...

2009-12-09T19:09:00.002Z

For a long time now, I've been watching the way in which Google has been developing personalised search results (e.g. see most recently A Final Nail in the Coffin of “Google Ground Truth”?). "Ground Truth" here is taken to mean the return of identical search results for a particular search query whoever makes the query, whenever thy make, from wherever.

Whilst the default assumption may be that if you and I type the same query into Google we will get the same results, that is no longer true (if indeed it ever was....) This does of course have consequences for advice givers who say: "just Google it - it'll be the top result..."

In the Library world, however, I think there is an element of search result Ground Truth, particularly in the OPAC. Given the same search terms, I suspect that the results are returned in the same order pretty much every time.

(The same is not true for federated "one search" systems over distributed databases. My experience of many of these systems is that they return results in the order they are received, with no post-ranking, which means that often the lowest quality results, returned from the smallest (though potentially responsive) databases are displayed first. And as everyone anecdotally knows, if it's too far below the fold, most people won't ever see it... that said, infinite scroll can help her, I think?)

So does it make sense to return the same results to every user of a Library catalogue? Or does it make sense to allow results to be ordered "by relevance", where relevance is determined according to the current state of the user and/or the library?

Does anyone know what ranking factors go into the Voyager "relevance" calculation by any chance? So here are a few things that I think might be interesting in terms of possible ranking factors for an OPAC ranking/relevance algorithm...

In Doodling Ideas for a Mobile Library App I described a variety of ways in which it might be possible to personally rank search results using criteria such as preferring works from libraries that are currently on-shelf, in libraries that I am allowed to use for reference, that I'm registered with, that I can register with, and so on.

The results might also be ranked according to whether they appear on a reading list for a course I am associated with, or potentially that have been borrowed by other people on the same course as I am, maybe even from previous years, or based on recommendations from MOSAIC (see, for example, JISC MOSAIC Competition Entries - Imaginings Around the Use of Library Loans Data). Or how about ranking books according to the grades of students who have borrowed them previously? Or based on patterns of borrowing, (relating my borrowing pattern to that of students who have gone before me?) Or based on "reading level', which is then correlated against my current year of study? And so on...

As far as thee search index goes, I would probably find it useful to be able to discover items based on a keyword search of the full text, rather than just a title and maybe a few keywords.

So how close are current typical OPACS to this, assuming that some of the more obvious, highly weighted ranking factors might be exposed in advanced search screens?

Hmmm...

To use a rather blunt turn of phrase, Google made - and continues to make - a shed load of cash through its ranking and auction algorithms, algorithms that rank content (whether that in the form of organic search results, sponsored links or AdSense adverts) that is relevant to a particular user in a highly effective way.

So I wonder - do Library folk get to tune their OPAC algorithms?

Prototyping a system need not even require the development of a ranking algorithm - a filter list can be used to report just a subset of works, e.g. based on a items listed in a reading list. (For a tangentially related example, see Mashlib Pipes Tutorial: Reading List Inspired Journal Watchlists.)

PS it's also worth considering for a moment the users, here... With the advent of the web, discovery and resource availability is no longer the sole preserve of the library. The OPAC exposes a tiny fraction of all available content, (admittedly curated content, which means that it's a just a locally convenient collection, albeit, just one of many that a typical student can now access). Surveys such as those described in Seeking Information in the Digital Age, Do Libraries Cater for Today's Undergraduate Students?, and Do Libraries Cater for Today's Researchers and Research Students? point at a present (not even a possible future) in which library users go elsewhere. The OPAC is just one place of many to look for information. In fact, if I was to be contentious, I would argue that the only significant thing an OPAC is good for is discovering the availability and location of known items within a particular library (ducks...;-).

Secondarily, it may also turn up items loosely related to a particular topic, based on the presence of search terms in metadata, or keywords in titles or subject classifications; but just bear in mind that subject classifications tend to reflect the preferences of the individual cataloguer and the controlled vocabulary they used, rather than the more general index that an information retrieval system based on text analysis system, and that most library users don't speak in subject classification language... (Maybe that's why asking what words to use is one of the few things that library users ask librarians for help with (Seeking Information in the Digital Age)?!

Lee Rainie's latest presentation on NetGen

2009-12-09T11:12:00.001Z

Networked Learners (MVU Keynote)

View more presentations from Pew Internet & American Life Project, Pew Research Center.

Much as previous presentations, as far as I can see.

No Cameras in the Library...

2009-12-09T10:12:00.001Z

One of the things that has got me in trouble a couple of times during my stint as Arcadia Fellow is using my phone as a camera within the confines of University Library (cameras, along with bags, are most defintely not allowed inside the Library). As the Library rules puts it:

18. Overcoats, raincoats, and other kinds of outdoor clothing, umbrellas, bags, cases, cameras, photocopying devices, and similar personal belongings shall normally be deposited in the locker-room adjacent to the entrance hall during each visit to the Library.

Which is not to say that photocopying, per se is not allowed in the University Library, because it is... either using self-service machines or via Imaging Services (UL: Photocopying). So the problem is presumably guarding against Library users photographing/photocopying works that they shouldn't? But from what I can tell, those works are accessible only in the Reading Rooms, so presumably a ban on photogrph/copying works in those areas would suffice? (If the books that may not be copied can be taken out of those rooms, then they can easily be copied in thre photopcopier room...)

Or maybe the photocopiers log and scan everything, so the Library knows exactly what copies have been made...?! (I think not...)

The photocopiers are modern ones, after all (I'd post a photo but I might get caught again...) which is to say that they are also scanners, capable of scanning books etc and emailing the scan to a supplied email address. Email addresses need to be entered manually (rather than being identified automatically from a scan of a Library card, or entry of the shorter CRSID for example) so it's user beware in terms of making sure you enter the correct details. (I know, I know, not every user will have those details... so in those cases, they could choose to enter their email address...)

Hmmm, so I wonder: what if I'm in the photocopier room when I take a photo/scan of a book title page, for example, using my phone rather than on of the photocopiers? Will I get shouted at if anyone sees me?!

But so what if a "no cameras" rule is enforced?

- no cameras means no scope for exploring services like the use of QR codes in the library.

- no cameras means no scope for exploring the use of cameras for grabbing universal bar codes using apps like BookMobile or SnapTell (Note that the Cambrdge University Library bar codes don't seem to be resolvable using the bar code readers I have on my phone (not that I've tried using that camera based functionality inside tjhe library, of course...;-), though with a few tweaks of the bar code reader code that could probably be addressed...)

- no cameras means no opportunity to explore personal photocopying services:

- no cameras means no opportunity to explore self-service checkout; I'm guessing that the UL currently uses magnetic strips to check whether or not a book is being taken from the library when it shouldn't be, and I also guess that RFID tag enabled books use the RFID tag and a record lookup to perform a similar role... which means that if the UL was to go with RFID, it would presumably be possible for patrons to scan out books using a client on their own phone that was linked to the UL book checky outy service (can you tell I've started picking up on library jargon?!;-)

- and no cameras means no chance of exploring what sort of role the toy of the moment, Google Goggles, might play in a research context*:

*I originally wrote "library context", rather than "research context" (or "study context") there... Hmmm... a symptom of it's our Library and we make the rules maybe?

If the Library wants to engage in the mobile revolution, then I would humbly suggest that it needs to think about its camera policy. According to a small, informal and what I guess should be best described as anecdotal survey - Mobile Phone Internet & Camera Usage - it seems as if it's only the minority of mobile phone users who aren't in the regular habit of using their mobile phone as a camera... More elaborate surveys (e.g. Global survey shows cell phone is 'remote control' for life) seem to come to a similar conclusion...

Seeking Information in the Digital Age

2009-12-08T19:20:00.000Z

Yet another report on "How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age" [PDF] skipped across my Twitter feed yesterday, courtesy of Scott Leslie.

So how does this one compare to the findings reviewed in Do Libraries Cater for Today's Undergraduate Students? and Do Libraries Cater for Today's Researchers and Research Students?...?

Many students in our sample used a strategy for finding information and conducting research that leveraged scholarly sources and public Internet sites and favored brevity, consensus, and currency in the sources they sought.

And as with the other reports, it seems that Google's up there when doing course related research:

as well as "personal" research...

The four categories reported in the above charts relate to the following typology which identifies the different ways in which students appear to approach a research topic:

The categories are defined as follows:

1. Big picture: Finding out background for defining and selecting a topic.
2. Language: Figuring out what words and terms associated with a topic may mean.
3. Situational: Gauging how far to go with research, based on surrounding circumstances.
4. Information-gathering: Finding, accessing, and securing relevant research resources.

To my mind, these research contexts relate to different ways in which a student may be said to be familiarising themselves with a particular topic, and leveling their understanding of the ideas contained within it. Maybe the term "presearch" is also relevant here?

Finding big picture context may indeed be part of what some students have called a “presearch stage.” Presearch is a time of thinking about and narrowing down a topic.

So what problems to students admit to having with respect to their research activities?

... students also reported they used different resources and workarounds that sometimes helped (and sometimes did not) as they tried to find the contexts they needed.
For most students, it was during these research interactions—the use of certain information resources to find different research contexts—when difficulties, frustrations and challenges arose.
Respondents stated that many of these frustrations were the effects of information overload and the sense of being inundated by all the resources at their disposal. We also found that students were challenged by their inability to find the materials they desired and needed on a “just in time” basis, especially if they had procrastinated on course-related research assignments.

A question of "appropriate tools for the job"...?

“When I’m doing research, usually it’s the material that I have from the class, or the stuff I’m looking up from the library databases. But if I don’t understand something from those things like a word or a concept, then I’ll go a search engine, or if I just need quick facts or something like that, I’ll use a search engine to find them.”
Student in a followup interview

So my reading of this is that students are comfortable with the way that "the web" can provide them with context at their level, and help them make sense of ideas presented to them through academic materials via a socially mediated filter (the Google algorithm, the link economy and the click-thru behaviour of other searchers!) That is, Google exposed "web sense" (cf. common sense...?) helps students make personal sense of their research topic through things that others researching the same topic have previously found useful...

Viewed this way, a concern raised by the report authors suddenly makes sense:

In our fall student discussion sessions we identified gaps between how faculty conducted research (usually primary research), especially at research institutions, and how students conducted research (usually secondary research) for course-related research. The gap in what research was and how it was conducted by each group, in this case, was the basis for frustrations with meeting instructorsʼ expectations for course-related research assignments.

This gap in part arises because of the difference between the "approved" (re)search process:

and what I would claim is the students' use of web search engines to aid sensemaking and interpretation of scholarly resources (rather than for resource discovery, say... That is, the search is not for resources to cite, it's for "notes" that help them interpret or make sense of the (concepts contained in the) resources they are going to cite...)

This tension between how students do (re)search and "formal" models of how it should be done is also considered in the report:

1. Library guides often recommend a strategy for scholarly information seeking, underscored by the use of credible, authoritative sources. These sources are more likely to bring success by resolving many of the credibility issues facing digital natives.
2. The student approach is based on efficiency and utility. The student strategy attempts to satisfy context needs (identifying and developing a topic) by using a combination of instructor-sanctioned sources (i.e., course readings) and with open-access, collaborative public Internet resources (i.e., Google and Wikipedia) that return a lot of results early on.

That is:

As a whole, the findings suggest that students in our sample favored sources for their brevity, consensus, and currency over other qualities and less so, for their scholarly authority.

In the previous reports referred to at the start of this post, we saw that respondents did not necessarily call on the direct services of librarians; what did this report find?

No change there, then! However, it was reported that "respondents who needed to fill a language context need were more than 1.5 times more likely to consult librarians than were respondents who did not have a language need". That is: "please, Sir, Miss, what word should I use here?"

“It’s kind of tough to answer why I use librarian, but is really more when I’m trying to think of the word to use, how to narrow my search, so it’s not such a huge list to choose stuff from. Say you are searching a certain kind of plant, or something, and you end up with a 100 plus things to look and they are not even necessarily what you need, so you want to know how to cancel those out and have a narrower search—librarians help you with that process of narrowing a search down.”
Student follow-up interview

And again:

Students in our sample were much more likely to use a librarian when they needed help finding the meaning of a word or term related to a topic or figuring out what search terms to use. Also, respondents were more likely to turn to librarians for help with finding full text materials that were available from different sources.

So where are we at? Students use Google, and sometimes they ask for help about vocabulary. And if they do actually use subscription databases, what do they see as the benefits?

In other words:

The perceived reliability of content found on scholarly research databases was the most significant driver for respondentsʼ use. A majority of respondents (78%) used databases because they were a source of credible information—more so than what students might find elsewhere on the Internet. In addition, three-fourths of the sample (76%) used databases for the in-depth, detailed information, often found in journal articles, they could find with a keystroke.

Referring back to Figure 8 from the report (shown above) about resources used for course related searches, instructors rather than librarians scored highly as an important resource. So how did instructor support manifest itself?

Taken as a whole, these results suggest that most respondents definitely included instructors in some role during their course-related research workflow. In particular, respondents turned to instructors for coaching throughout the entire research process from defining a topic to developing an information seeking strategy to writing up their final papers.

On the upside, we could say that instructors are embdding infoskills in their teaching and support of students. Which means what?

We have come to believe that many students see instructors—not librarians—as coaches on how to consult research. This situation seems to occur whether the faculty may qualify as expert researchers in the area of student research methods, or not. Librarians and faculty should see the librarian-student disconnect as a timely opportunity, especially when it comes to transferring information competencies to students.
We recommend librarians take an active role and initiate the dialogue with faculty to close a divide that may be growing between them and faculty and between them and students—each campus is likely to be different. ... No matter what the means of communication may be, however, librarians need to actively identify opportunities for training faculty as conduits for reaching students with sound and current information-seeking strategies, as it applies to their organizational settings.

Finally, a question occurred to me whilst I was reading the report: If you viewed Google as a member of Library Staff, which staff member (role or actual person) would they be? If you had to write a job description for what Google currently does, and what it could do, what would that job description look like? Is there a post that fulfills a similar role in your Library already? If not, why not?

As the report puts it:

Librarians should systematically (not just anecdotally) examine the services they provide to students. This may require looking at things through a new lens, if need be. Questions should be addressed about how and why services and resources are used—not only how often (e.g., circulation or reference desk statistics). Librarians may want to initiate their analysis by asking what percentage of their campus are using the library, for what particular resources or services, and why or why not? At the same time, we recommend librarians seriously question whether they are developing a set of “niche services,” which only reach a small percentage of students.

You have been warned... ;-)

Researching early career researchers

2009-12-07T17:36:00.004Z

When considering the needs of academics as the users of a service, it's very tempting to divide them up into different groups. We tend to assume that scholars in STEM subjects have different needs to those in the arts and humanities; we imagine that a teaching focus might lead to differing requirements from those concentrating on research. And sometimes we seem to forget one key differentiator: the gulf between the needs of a young and enthusiastic postdoc, still building a network and a profile, and those of a well-known Professor who spends his time dashing between keynote opportunities.

CARET recently produced a report into the lives and technology use of early career researchers, and found their needs are clearly distinct from those of established, senior academics.

The early career researcher is a PhD student or postdoc, who has only been in their field of research for a few years. Early career researchers may be a force for change in research processes and technologies, flexible and willing to experiment with new systems, but this affect may be moderated by the more conservative researchers who work with, and in some cases supervise, them.

The report investigates some of the ways in which "ECRs" use technology, would like to use technology, try to use technology, and how higher education institutions and funding bodies may be able to help them in the future. One key finding is that a great deal of the scholarly activity of an early career researcher involves ICT in some way; but perhaps more interestingly, almost all their technology use involves people in some way.

You can download the full report here, but some of the highlights are included below.

Every early career researcher is uniquely situated in career stage, research area, discipline, networks, and objectives. Nonetheless, their experiences share some common features. Early career researchers (ECR) are attempting to build their professional research profile, whilst often trying to fit in to a new environment, be that a new discipline, institution, group or role. Short degree courses and short term contracts mean that many early career researchers have lives punctuated by change. Throughout, they are aware of complex issues of trust, an example of which is the delicate balance between mutual support from peers, and competition for funding, jobs, and publications.
Day-to-day, early career researchers’ lives have much in common, even across quite different disciplines. Their work involves them in a wide variety of tasks throughout the research lifecycle - seeking new information, gathering data, analysis, reflection and discussion, and publishing - plus teaching and administrative roles. ICT plays a role in almost all these activities, and ECRs choose the tools they use with care, balancing the costs and benefits of each. People and relationships play a key role in the ICT experience of the early career researcher.

Early career researchers are members of multiple networks, frequently overlapping, with subtly graduated relationship types and trust levels. For whatever reason, physically proximate relationships are currently dominant in the lives of many ECRs; particularly strong relationships are characterised by the use of multiple redundant communication channels or technologies. It can be argued that the development of early career researchers would be enhanced by a more distributed network, which is not always possible today due to the often limited travel funding for conference attendance and visits; online scholarly networking could support this instead. Work-life balance is important to early career researchers, who wish to retain their own boundaries between professional and social activities, even if those boundaries are blurred.

The culture and practices of a discipline, or research group, often dominate choices about the ways in which technology is used. Traditional methods - even pen and paper - still play an important role for many early career researchers. Email is also still widely used, although this is often forgotten in discussion of communication technologies today. Early career researchers are happy to repurpose non-academic technology tools for scholarly use, although this practice is not widespread. Awareness of novel ways of using tools spreads generally via networks. Serendipitous discovery of new tools and methods through word of mouth is also very common and appears to be one of the best ways to find out about new systems or practices.
Despite many ECRs being interested in trying out new technologies, 72% of early career researchers reported that they did not even use Web 2.0 or social media to share their research. This may reflect the many and varied constraints which limit ICT take-up amongst early career researchers, perhaps including norms of secrecy in research practice; this study found social, confidence, skills, institutional and participatory constraints on technology use by ECRs.

Any tool used for collaboration or communication requires that all those engaged in the work must have the tool available to them, and be capable of using it, and choose to do so. This can limit the adoption of new technologies, as many groups will include a mixture of more and less technically-savvy researchers (whether early career, or established), and any tool which is to be used across the group must be acceptable to all. Other researchers who may view new technology (particularly ‘social web’ tools) with scepticism, or as frivolous, can discourage early career researchers from using, or promoting, these systems.

What Can Academic Libraries Learn From Public Libraries...

2009-12-07T15:56:00.005Z

...how about a glimpse of the future?

In a consultation document published last week - Empower, Inform, Enrich - The modernisation review of public libraries: A consultation - and reprinted today in commentable form on WriteToReply* - Empower, Inform, Enrich on WriteToReply the following five significant challenges are identified for the (public) library service:

* I need to declare an interest here - I was involved with the republication of the document

How can the library service demonstrate to citizens, commentators and politicians that they are still relevant and vital?

How can we reverse the current trend of decline in library usage and grow the numbers using their local library?

How can all libraries respond to a 24/7 culture and respond to changing expectations of people who want immediate access to information.

How can all libraries grasp the opportunities presented by digitisation?

How can the library service cope with limited public resource and economic pressures?

These challenges are also faced by academic libraries in one form or another, so it's worth looking through some of the questions raised by the consultation (a compilation of the question can be found here: Consultation Questions).

The consultation also includes several case studies about recent initiatives in various local library services. (Is there a collection of similar case studies relating to academic libraries, I wonder, or maybe scenario planning reports produced while developing strategic plans for academic libraries?)

View Library Consultation Case Studies in a larger map

A series of essays from a range of "thinkers, commentators and leaders in library services, as well as individuals working in retail, digital media, education, publishing and local government" was also commissioned by the organisers of the consultation, including one from Dame Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive, The British Library, who wrote:

Whilst there are often informal links between university libraries and the British Library, and in the case of the latter we certainly play a part in supporting public libraries through a range of activities, these links could be better promoted to increase public access to a wider range of materials. The Inspire scheme already plays a valuable role in supporting libraries across England in working together, whether they be public, higher education, health, specialist or national libraries. Together these libraries offer a hugely powerful resource and the challenge is to create seamless access to all citizens.

It might well turn out that the public and academic libraries face a shared future - and even shared services. So if for no other reason than that, maybe it's worth familiarising ourselves with the current consultation, and maybe even responding to it? Comment on Empower, Inform, Enrich at WriteToReply

PS a quick search on the Inspire/Find it! service for "University of Cambridge" related libraries turned up five, all related to St John's College.

Reading List Management with Mendeley

2009-11-26T10:45:00.005Z

If anyone ever asked, I'd be the first to admit that my knowledge of current citation/reference management tools and their capabilities is patchy, in part because I tend to live in the flow rather than the world of scholarly articles. That said, I do occasionally play with some of the free tools that out there such as Zotero:

and Mendeley:

Playing around with Mendeley earlier today, I started to wonder whether it might be an appropriate tool for publishing reading lists, and it seems that this is on of the possible use case that the Mendeley team have been exploring: Share recommended readings using Mendeley’s Public Collections.

The idea is to create a collection, add the reading list items you have selected to it, and then publish the collection as a public one. Once published, the recommendation list appears on it's own web page with tools that allow individual items to be added to another user's personal collection, as well as letting them subscribe to the whole list either in Mendeley or via RSS in a generic feed reader:

The list can also embedded in a third party site as the following example demonstrates:

References collected using Mendeley

This approach looks like it might be particularly useful for reading lists that are built around journal references. A good example of such a list can be found at the Department of Plant Sciences in Cambridge - Part II Reference Lists: Module M1:

That said, it seems like the Plant Sciences folk have a pretty good system in place already - list contents can be displayed for the course as a whole, or for individual lectures, which I suspect is really handy; citations by author and journal can also be identified. What they don't do, though, is provide the portability that Mendeley Public Collections do via the Mendeley Collection subscription feeds...

PS just in passing, it's also interesting to note how the Plant Sci lists link trhough to documents - via DOIs: e.g. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0605129103; I wonder - could they also offer a link for Cam users by running the resolved DOI through something like libezproxy to handle authentication issues?

Resource "Item Types" and Loan Periods in Cambridge University Libraries

2009-11-24T10:45:00.002Z

One of the things I have come to realise about the wide variety of university related libraries in Cambridge is that they are, to a large extent, independent entities that make their own rules and lending polices, and maybe even use their own classification systems. Conveniently, however, they do all tend to make use of an account on one of the centrally managed Voyager catalogue servers, which meant I was able to ask for the made up records of a fictional undergraduate user who was a member of several college and department libraries to get a quick feel for the different sorts of loan policies (item_types) that are currently in place.

Although far from ideal (many of the x-axis column labels are missing) this chart shows the number of libraries using a particular item_type:

Omitting singletons, we get the following duplicated types (count loan_period is actually a count of the number of libraries using the corresponding item_type):

(Arghh - the data appeared to have a handful of duplicates... Never mind - if you discount the CYM and 14day Loan rows (!), the table is more or less correct (and it was intended only to be indicative anyway, given the sample of College and Department libraries used). Note: this disclaimer applies to the charts shown above and below as well!)

Within a particular item_type, there may be significant differences in the actual loan periods, which might cause confusion for an undergraduate who has borrowing rights in more than one library using nominally the same item_types.

So for example, if we look at Short Loans:

Reserve:

or Overnight related:

we see that different Libraries interpret the same nominal item_type differently.

The case of Open Shelf is even more extreme: again the chart is not ideal (it was generated using my Google Datastore explorer tool which still needs some work!), but what it indicates is the loan period (y-axis, in days) for Open Shelf items across a wide selection of libraries:

The most popular periods are 7, 14 and 28 days (can you spot where the duplicate entries came from?;-).

Now it might well be that the borrowing needs of undergrads across different departments and colleges is necessary, and represents differences in study patterns associated with courses in a particular department (or teaching style in a particular college?), or it might be that the differences are the result of historical accidents, but whatever the case: for a user of multiple libraries, it may not be obvious to them based on experience of other libraries how long they can borrow a particular item_type for!

PS I will consider in a later post how borrowing records and teaching calendars, along with local librarian knowledge, might be able to provide an evidence base for a simplified (maybe even universal...?!;-) set of item_types...

Doodling Ideas for a Mobile Library App

2009-11-20T00:17:00.005Z

Chatting with Libby Tilley (English Faculty Librarian) yesterday, we got on to the topic of how students know what Libraries they have access to. On joining the university, undergrads are assigned a University Library number, but they also need to register with their College and Departmental Libraries.

Things being as they are, various policies relate to who can do what in which library (more on this in another post!). As I understand it, most departmental libraries allow anyone with a University Library card to use the Library for reference purposes, but College libraries are only open to members of that College (?). Members of certain departments, or students taking particular Subjects, may also be eligible for membership of Libraries outside their 'home' department. And so on...

Reflecting the complex nature of the Cambridge Library scene, the organisation of the OPAC is non-trivial. Looking on the Library homepage, we see links to 8 Voyager catalogues (University Library and Dependent Libraries, University Library Manuscripts and Theses, Departments and Faculties A-E, Departments and Faculties F-M, Departments and Faculties O-Z, Colleges A-N, Colleges P-W, University of Cambridge Affiliated Institutions).

(A side effect of this organisation is presumably the requirement that any updates to the system need to be applied eight separate times?)

There is also a link to a Universal Catalogue which I think represents a federated search over the independent Voyager installations.

Looking at a universal search result on Newton for a likely held book, you are presented with results of the form:

Finding which actual library holds the book, what it's status is (on shelf, or out on loan, for example), whether I (currently) have membership/borrowing rights in that library et cetera is none trivial (= lots of clicks).

So the question now arises:
- where can I browse just "a copy" of the Preliminary Studies for Philosophical Investigations (assuming I don't need a particular edition.translation)? i.e. supposing I just need to refer to it in a library and not borrow it;
- where can I borrow that work from *now* (i.e. where is it available for loan in a library I am a member of), and for how long?
- where can I borrow it from for an extended period (which may require recalling it from a library with a generous loan period bearing in mind which libraries I have access to)?

And this, it seems to me, is an ideal scenario for a mobile application, which I'll define in general terms as one that I can refer to while at a reading desk in a library via my phone.

So what does this app need to be able to support?

- I need to declare who I am, so it can look up what Libraries I'm a member of; [as previous Arcadia Fellow Huw Jones pointed out, this functionality exists in the Library Facebook app (available via the Library Toolbox) via a Library API call...]
- search for a book across catalogues and return availability by Library; [an email earlier today from Ed Chamberlain suggests an API call that is pretty close to this is currently under testing...];
- see a personalised results list showing where *I* (me, not just anyone, me, a member of certain libraries and in a particular year of my studies) can:
- - access those works now, in a reference context; [discussing with Huw, now is also sensitive to time of day and whether a Library is currently open or not....]
- - access those works for reference now-ish (or at a bookable time) via a stack request (see also Stack Request Delivery Slots service idea )
- - borrow those works (given the libraries I currently have access to) immediately (or via a stack request)
- - recall a currently on loan item so that i can borrow it (given the libraries i currently have access to)

A map display showing the location of works, maybe using colour coded markers on the map to denote "available now to you for reference", "available to you now for loan", "available for loan if you join this library (which you can)" etc, would bring in both elements of time and place to the display, both key features of a practical mobile app.

This sort of app would also act as driver for other services, and demonstrate an authentic way of how they might be combined together:

- what libraries am I currently registered with? [as mentioned above, a service for this already exists]
- search over an arbitrary set of libraries (not just universal, collegesA-F or whatever) [apparently a service that might fulfil this is currently under testing]; and hence
- search over libraries that I am:
- - allowed to use for reference;
- - registered with;
- - can register with;
[As far as I know, there currently is no way of filtering a set of Voyager results through a personal profile filter to only display books I can currently access. But this is just a case of filtering, if you know: which Libraries I can access, what time it is, and what time the Libraries are open. The Library opening time data is available after a fashion, but not in a structured form. A 1-2 day tidying up job could fix that...]
- Voyager results on a map (showing libraries where holdings are held); [as Huw pointed out once again, some library records point to a map display that locates a library a book is held in (eg this example for a particular book identified via the URI arguments. Looking at the data from the Library details webservice, not all Libraries have lat/long data associated with them, though they do have postcode data. I posted a Google MyMap that I had hoped to use to start collecting accurate-ish GPS data but that's not something I'v got round to yet,... sigh... (see By Way of Introductionfor a link to the map). One thing that would make building an app easier is to provide canned GPS data for all libraries based on postcode data to begin with, maybe with a flag that says it's postcode derived or verified as accurate? ]

If the app was architected as a potentially generic app, other time and place services that might be integrated include:
- my current lecture list CalMap (a map with calendar settings to show eg today's lectures, their times and locations);
- raven wifi access points i can use;
- Cambridge talks calendar-map (I've already done a mobile listings demo, though it doesn't (yet!;-) include maps... )
- More general local listings etc

We could also push "adverts" to the front page of the app, eg suggesting Library training sessions that might be relevant to a recognised user.

As to what it might look like, I started some doodles...

A simplistic front page:

A map of libraries I'm a member of (well, not me obviously ;-), pulling data from the service that feeds the Facebook app:

The info bubble could display the books I currently have on loan from that library, perhaps, or address info, etc etc.

That same data as a list:

Each of these items links to a page containing data from the Library info web service - address information, opening times, a link to the Library's home page etc, but either Yahoo Pipes has gone, or the Library's running a batch job or something, but the app has stopped working again and I'm sick to death of it wimping out on me for tonight, so there'll be no more screenshots tonight...!

(Seems I managed to find a cached copy...)

To make life easier, the app either needs to pull in the XML direct from the (same) browser, and parse it on the app, call on a JSON feed from the originating webservices (rather than go via a pipe) or pull in an HTML page via XHR that is generated on the server from the user's details. Note that the pipework I currently use annotates the list of libraries "I" have access to with the additional Library details from the library info service. If that info directly annotated the record of each Library I'm a member of, it would reduce the amount of pipework required.

PS I considered not posting this in case the local feeling was that a fully complete and working mobile app should be launched as if from nowhere; but then it occurred to me that three or four conversations really drove the thinking captured above and helped crystallise out what might be achievable given current service availability. If nothing else, I'd like for my time on the Arcadia project to demonstrate how free and open conversations can lead to innovation in an institutional setting, and record, albeit informally, one way of how that process might work.

PPS as to whether this sort of app is on the right track, here's a survey result from Keren's M-Libraries: Information use on the move [pdf] Arcadia report:

:-)

The bookless library

2009-11-19T21:09:00.002Z

Mark MacEachern has been speculating on what happens after libraries stop buying physical books. "Some libraries will cease and desist sooner than others", he writes. "Medical libraries, for instance, will cut back before Humanities libraries. But at some point 99% of all book purchases will be electronic. To be read online and on mobile devices – on devices that, I suppose, libraries will start lending out en masse. The other 1% will comprise rare books and other print curios. To be read in ill lit rooms by people wearing smoking jackets."

Which leads us to the next question: What will librarians be doing in this new environment?

In some ways, there mightn’t be much change. Librarians will still be milling about, helping those who need help, doing things that librarians in libraries typically do (i.e., sit in meetings, form committees to do stuff). But there won’t be as many of them. Not that there’ll be fewer librarians overall – just fewer in the library. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if librarians begin to live outside the library. In departmental offices. In more accessible locations, where partnerships and collaborations can more conveniently happen. I hold weekly office hours in one of my liaison departments and I’ve experienced the advantages of proximity firsthand. As more and more students attend university remotely, the less and less meaningful the centralized and well-defined librarian role becomes. Perhaps we’ll maintain a floating existence with amorphous responsibilities, moving from information need to information need, from the physicals to the digitals, without being tied to a specific library. Perhaps we’re already doing this.

There’s been much talk of the profession’s future over the years (and over the last few days), and the only thing that’s certain is that librarians will be doing completely different things in completely different environments. And, that's the extent of my oracular abilities.

Custom Search Engines On Library Websites

2009-11-18T15:09:00.001Z

As part of the standard header of Cambridge's University Library web pages is a search box:

The search tool is actually a Google custom search engine, defined over the www.lib.cam.ac.uk domain as well as a couple of other different subdomains, with an exclusion applied to an old part of the website. The results are returned in an embedded frame on the Library website, without adverts...

In the post Open Library Training Materials and Custom Search Engines, I showed how I created a Custom search engine that searches over UK HEI websites (a tutorial video on setting up Google CSEs is included in that post).

Adding additional sites, and search refinements that limit searches to a subset of those sites is easily achieved by adding search labels to selected sites.

Embedding a search engine is also trivial - the Google CSE Control Panel provides you with some embed code that can be cut and pasted directly into a document:

So for example, the above embed code relates to a proof of concept "UK HEI Library Community CSE" that I have pulled together from resources in several other CSEs I've developed over the years - hopefully it should be embedded here:

LOADING....

.....LOADING

Note that because the CSE code is quite clean, just on it's own it presents a reasonable mobile client (though the tabs can be quite hard to click on - so a minor style tweak is required there, I think...?)

You can try the CSE out here - UK HEI Library Community CSE (QR code)

As it currently stands, the UK HEI Library Community CSE has very little fine tuning - it's just a (sub)domain limited search engine over sites I've picked that may be relevant to the UK HEI community. However, it is possible to tune a Google Custom CSE quite significantly, which I'll start to explore in future posts.

Planning for the long term

2009-11-17T15:33:00.001Z

From David Isenberg's classic essay -- "The Rise of the Stupid Network"...

Former Shell Group Planning Head, Arie deGeus, in his master work, The Living Company (Harvard, Boston, 1997), examined thousands of companies to try to discover what it takes to adapt to changing conditions. He found that the life expectancy of the average company was only 40 years - this means that telephone company culture is in advanced old age. De Geus also studied 27 companies that had been able to survive over 100 years. He concluded that managing for longevity - to maximize the chances that a company will adapt to changes in the business climate - is very different than managing for profit. For example, in the former, employees are part of a larger, cohesive whole, a work community. In the latter, employees are 'resources' to be deployed or downsized as business dictates.

This is interesting in the context of the Google Book Agreement and the responsibilities of academic libraries in the area of digital preservation and curation. When people say to me "why not let Google do it?" I ask: how many commercial companies have been around for 800 years?

Universal Borrowing Across Cambridge University Libraries?

2009-11-16T11:37:00.002Z

A couple of news stories relating to the public library sector here and in the US caught my eye recently which might have some loose relevance to the fragmented (or should that be federated?!) academic library system that students are presented with in Cambridge.

To set the scene, and as I understand it, students, researchers and academics in Cambridge may be members of the University Library, their College Library, their Department Library, maybe another Department or college's Library, maybe a special collection, etc etc, each with their own user policies and terminology, none, all acting (as far as I know), independently of each other.

First up, universal borrowing - a few weeks ago now, it was announced that public library users with a valid library card would be able to borrow books from anywhere and return them anywhere (SCL [Society of Chief Librarians Announces Universal Membership).

From 28 September, more than 4000 public libraries across England, Wales and Northern Ireland are open for borrowing by any member of the public regardless of where they live. Customers will be able to borrow books from any library, and in some cases use other services such as DVD rental, online resources and classes. Library users simply need to show their existing library card, or proof of address, to join or access the library they are visiting.

The same is true for Cambridge's University, College, Department and specialist libraries, right? Erm, I think not...

Second up, a Netflix like subscription model from the US to get round the problem of fines. Subscribers to a variety of different monthly fee plans get to borrow a set number of books for an unlimited period of time - no fees attached (Hayward, CA Public Library Will Launch “Fines Free” Borrowing Packages Beginning at $2.99/Month). If a book that is unavailable because it's out an an extended/who knows when it'll come back sort of loan is requested by enough other users, the Library will buy another copy (seems like a reasonable collection policy heuristic to me!;-)

So I wonder, maybe there's a combined model here for academic libraries, either within the confines of Cambridge itself, or more widely across the UK. Imagine it: a 'Cambridge University libraries' subscription card that lets you borrow freely from any of the Cambridge University libraries, and return books to any of them, potentially for an indefinite period. Shocking thought...

I can already imagine the screams of indignation, of course, ("you can't do that - we need to make sure we can provide our students with the books they need at the times they need them"), to which I'd reply: maybe a bit of MOSAIC like usage data analysis could model - and thence predict - how the books might flow around the system? Maybe we need to start working loans data, or at least start looking at how whether supply and demand are optimally matched across the university libraries at the current time, and then question whether there is room for improvement? (See also: Lorcan Dempsey on availability and Libraries and the long tail: intro.)