Walt at Random

When I was terminated as Editorial Director for the Library Leadership Network, I saved off the 104 (of about 180 total) essays that primarily represented my own writing, editing and gathering–about 360,000 words total, or the equivalent of seven contemporary books (I think of it as “roughly four books,” but at least within the library field, most nonfiction books now seem to be down to 50,000 words or less).

All of the material is under Creative Commons BY-NC licenses, so saving copies for later use was entirely legal. I let my former boss know that I might try to reuse some of it elsewhere; that wasn’t a problem. Because I anticipated reusing some of it for my own writing, I didn’t save off the other 70-odd articles, most of them either licensed from the original Library Leadership Network or composed of citations from the management literature.

Since then, Lyrasis has shut down the Library Leadership Network, which makes these articles unavailable. I think that’s unfortunate, since there’s a lot of good and relatively timeless material here, material that could be particularly helpful for new leaders (and, in some cases, new managers).

Finding a Home and Possible Approaches

I’d love to work with some agency–an association, a library school, whatever–to establish a new site that makes these pieces available, encourages discussion around the pieces and, possibly, continues to grow and improve as a library leadership resource.

At a minimum, for a modest one-time fee, I could do the second editing pass (to clean up links and remove additional extraneous material) and turn the pages (all HTML) over, and have done with it. The requirements would be that the new site be freely available, but it could certainly have advertising or sponsorship.

Well, there’s a subminimum: If no arrangement can be made and I continue to regard this material as important, I could always mount it as a set of pages attached to this blog–but I don’t think that’s the most effective way to proceed.

At a second level, with some modest level of ongoing support (at least $4,000/year, I think, and escalating based on level of desired activity), I could do that editing pass, help define the site itself–and then continue as an editor, both moderating discussions/comments (that is, checking for spam–if the site is, say, WordPress-based, advance moderation probably isn’t necessary) and updating pages/generating new pages. I don’t see going back to the “roughly half-time” level of LLN, but could see something that would aim for one significant upgrade or new article per month at a minimum, about one per week as a maximum.

Of course, it’s always possible that users of the new site could start generating most of the content–that was the original hope for PLN, the predecessor for LLN. Hope is a good thing.

Interested?

Get in touch. waltcrawford at gmail dot com, if you don’t wish to use the link.

I don’t anticipate doing much more to encourage such a site. (There are other things I’m working on. I might revisit this in two or three months.) If there’s simply no interest, that’s OK too–but LLN was nearing 50,000 article pageviews per month (excluding the home page and other overhead), which leads me to believe there is some demand out there.

Two miniposts for the price of one!

Gold star

I would be remiss if I did not mention that this here blog received a gold star from Salem Press in its library blog thingie, particularly since they were very quick to move this blog from Public Library Blogs (!) to General Blogs (I was hoping for Quirky, but you can’t always get what you want) after I let them know…

(There seems to be no shortage of links to the Salem Press list, so the lack of one here shouldn’t be an issue.)

Quick expert advice from librarians about web tools

Here’s an easy two-part test for modern librarians–or, better yet, just those who are considered web specialists. They’re honest questions, and presumably y’all should be able to answer them on the spot, in the comments:

1. I have a fully-formatted book ms. done using Word 2007, but also in PDF. How do I convert it to epub (without DRM), retaining as much of the formatting as possible? I even have Calibre, if that helps.
2. OK, so I have the new Facebook privacy tools now, but I just looked at my Privacy settings and I don’t understand what’s going on here:

Note: This is a straight screen capture, cropped but with no other changes. You may have to scroll right to see what I’m really interested in.

To wit: What does “Other” mean? How can I find out?

I await responses with some interest. Based on other discussions, I assume that any employable web services librarian should have answers…

Maybe that’s too broad a question. Maybe a better question:

Is it really reasonable to say that librarians must be involved in something they personally find unsatisfactory because lots of other people are?

You can probably guess my answer–but I’m not really a librarian. Of course, neither would I expect to use a librarian as my first source of helpful advice on, for example, tax deductions, which church I should attend, how to improve my golf game, whether I should be concerned about this mole on my neck…or how to manage privacy settings in Facebook. In all of those cases, the library might have useful resources–but I see no reason to expect each and every librarian to be an expert.

The background

I found the range and depth of commentary about Facebook’s betrayal of its users helpful changes to encourage openness in December 2009 so interesting and so relevant that I put together a Zeitgeist essay on it, which will appear in the July 2010 Cites & Insights. (Out well before ALA Annual–probably next week.)

That essay ends at roughly the point where FB announced the new easier settings, with the promise that they’ll remain in future updates–a promise that I can only interpret based on past performance and the CEO’s clear, obvious predilection to regard everything as preferably public (except, of course, for his own stuff). (The changes haven’t “rolled out” to my FB account yet, so I have no first-hand experience.)

Personally: I didn’t quit Facebook, mostly because I have family members and a few other acquaintances that I can keep up with, to some extent, through FB. I did lock down my settings, trim my already-sparse profile, and renew my self-promise not to Like, Join, or use Applications–the “you don’t mind if we harvest everything you’ve ever done, do you?” alert always did scare me off. My so-called Friends on FB, something over 200 of you, already know (at least implicitly) that I rarely update my status or post on my wall–most of my stuff goes on Friendfeed, this blog or C&I.

There’s my personal decision–and my understanding of what’s involved. It struck me (and strikes me) as entirely reasonable for a librarian or anyone else concerned with privacy and corporate behavior to leave Facebook as a principled decision. I didn’t choose that course.

The incident

Stephen Abram posted “Today is Quit Facebook Day – for Dummies” at Stephen’s Lighthouse on May 31, 2010. (If you go to the link, be sure to read “About the Author”–about which I will not comment.)

I thought it was an insulting post, right from the first sentence:

I wonder how many info pros will announce to the world they don’t have the information skills to manage privacy by leaving Facebook today.

This seemed to me to say that librarians (“info pros” lost at SLA and I’m not about to use it) can’t reasonably quit FB based on principled objections; if they do so, they’re “announcing” that they’re dummies. Hokay. And I started wondering about this:

It seems to me that it should be a reasonable user expectation of librarians and information professionals that they should be able to manage privacy settings and use the full range of web tools.

Really? Every librarian should “use the full range of web tools”? Why? Well…

I also would expect to be able to receive informed, current and excellent advice and training on how to deal with the emerging social tools from my professionals in the social institutions I frequent (public libraries, schools, univerisities, colleges, etc.).

And here I come up short. [By the way, that was a direct cut-and-paste, not retyped.] Should I be able to take a workshop on Effective Facebooking at my library? Maybe. Should I expect that I can walk up to any librarian–every librarian–and get “informed, current and excellent advice” on every “social tool”? I think that’s unrealistic, and I think it privileges “social tools” over nearly everything else in life. I don’t expect every librarian (or any librarian) to tell me where I can find the best asparagus or whether I should sign up for Safeway’s Club Card. I don’t expect every librarian to offer informed, excellent advice on how to improve my (nonexistent) golf game. I don’t expect any librarian to be a source of current, excellent advice on which software would be best suited to producing a self-published book, and certainly not on how to use each program–although I might be delighted if the library (not every librarian) had a workshop on the topic. And I don’t believe I should be able to walk up to any librarian and say “should I be using Flickr or Picasa to organize my photos–and how should I set up my Picasa account?”

Abram then tosses in a stick:

Will they exit Twitter and Google too for collecting private information? I suspect that would make them unemployable. At least, ironically, they’ll be easily identified by professional recruiters and HR folks through the standard tools and the digital trail they leave as they exit and discuss their position.

Set aside the simplistic equation of FB’s deliberate undermining of its former policies with Twitter and Google policies. Is it plausible to regard a librarian who doesn’t Twitter as unemployable? Really?

I commented as follows:

Cites & Insights 10:7 (June 2010) is now available.

The 34-page issue is, as usual, PDF; each essay is also available as an HTML separate

(just click on the links, or use the highly sophisticated notational scheme, http://citesandinsights.info/vNiMx.htm, where N is the volume (10), M is the issue (7), and x is a lower-case letter indicating the article, starting with a, then b, then c…)

What’s Here

Bibs & Blather…pp. 1-3

Announcing the new book Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009, a 519-page 6×9 book combining all OA-related essays from C&I–free as a PDF, minimally priced ($17.50) as a trade paperback. Also a note on ALA and my rehearsals for [semi-?]retirement.

The Zeitgeist: There is No Future…pp. 3-19

You could think of this as a Making it Work Perspective on library futures, if you prefer–focusing on exclusionary vs. inclusionary thinking (OR vs. AND), The Future vs. many futures…and more.

Feedback and Following Up…pp. 19-20

Finally (and probably having missed some feedback), a little feedback–three items in all.

Copyright Currents: Catching Up with the RIAA…pp. 20-27

Yes, the RIAA says they’ve wound down their vastly offensive campaign of suing 30,000+ file-sharers for a few thousand bucks each–and, during that process, exactly two cases have gone to jury trial. Guess what? So far, the RIAA’s batting 1000 in those cases. This piece brings us up to date on the longest-running case (Jammie Thomas, now Jammie Thomas-Rassset)–and ads notes on the other one, Joel Tenenbaum, where a defense lawyer’s novel interpretation of fair use was so convincing that the judge ordered a directed verdict…in favor of the plaintiff.

Offtopic Perspective: Spaghetti Westerns…pp. 27-34

That’s the name of the five-disc set containing 20 movies covered in this set of offhand impressions (although in 2.5 cases I refer back to an earlier impression). For a few of you on FriendFeed, inclusion of this piece also means I don’t plan to do a special “summer silliness” issue–and will integrate my odd digital media archaeology project, if and when, into regular issues of C&I.

Sponsorship and Support

This is the penultimate issue sponsored by the Library Society of the World. Chances are, the final such issue (July 2010) will appear before the 2010 ALA Annual Conference (although that’s not guaranteed).

After that, I’m in need of sponsorship or, failing that, direct support. If you regard C&I as worthwhile, one way to show that is to provide some support: The PayPal link is right on the C&I home page.

Yes, I read Heinlein decades ago, including The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. He didn’t coin TANSTAAFL, but that novel certainly publicized it.

TANSTAAFL? There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Digression The First: As is so frequently the case with Wikipedia these days, the discussion on the article you wind up at–linked from TANSTAAFL, which apparently doesn’t meet Sacred Wikipedia Article Naming Conventions–is considerably more interesting than the article itself. Particularly when “Chuck” keeps arguing that “ain’t no” is a double negative and, thus, that TANSTAAFL means there is such a thing as a free lunch. End of Digression the First.

But That’s Silly

Yes, I understand the context Heinlein used, as part of the libertarian undercurrent running through much of his work: A saloon that provides free lunch when you buy a drink is likely to charge more for the drinks than one that doesn’t.

But…

• Later this week, probably, I’ll buy one of Safeway’s excellent special sandwiches, hand the checker a coupon, and walk out paying not a cent for lunch. Then, after paying for six sandwiches, I’ll do the same thing in a few weeks. (The ongoing promotion says “buy seven, get one free”–but, in fact, the one that you get free counts as a purchase, so after that it’s really pay for six, get one free.) Yes, it’s a loyalty program; no, the sandwiches don’t cost any more than sandwiches of equivalent quality I buy elsewhere. If they did, I wouldn’t buy them.
• We find that Marco’s pizza is better than any other chain pizza we’ve had, and have it for dinner roughly every other Saturday night. Three Saturdays from now (I think), I’ll walk into Marco’s and hand them a little card with six holes punched in it instead of the $17.50 I’d normally pay for a pizza. Since a medium pizza leaves enough left over for my Sunday lunch, I will indeed have a free lunch on Sunday…and we’ll both have a free dinner on Saturday. Yes, it’s another loyalty program; I think the pizza is fairly priced for its quality.
• “But you’re indirectly paying for those loyalty programs, so, you know, TANSTAAFL.” Maybe–if you can show me that I would get comparable quality for a lower cost (at a business that I’m willing to deal with) elsewhere. If not, then the lunch really is effectively free: I’m getting it for no added cost.
• Let’s take a more extreme case, back from Mountain View days. Pick Up Stix (a chain of “fresh Asian” restaurants, where almost everything’s prepared in woks when you order it) had just opened a new location and sent out cards to neighborhood houses offering a free entree. No gotchas, no “buy one, get one free,” no nothing–just hand them the card and walk out with what turned out to be a pretty good meal. The restaurant did the same thing a few months later. Those free meals were essentially a form of advertising, so somebody paid for them–but I’d be hard pressed to show that the restaurant would or could charge significantly lower prices if it didn’t do advertising. After all, many people probably returned to pay for meals after getting the freebies.

Yes, There are Lots of Other Cases

OK, I know about such “free lunches” as–

• Free meals that come with investment or retirement lectures, where you’re paying for the meal with your time and quite probably hard-sell marketing. Never signed up for one, never plan to.
• Free vacations that require only a mere 90-minute marketing session on time-share vacations. Ditto: Never signed up for one, never plan to.
• “Free drinks” on most ultra-luxury cruise lines and “free shore excursions” and “free airfare” on Regent Seven Seas, where “free” really means included and, for non-heavy-drinkers, the difference in fare may be significantly more than the inclusions are worth.

I’d rather see the third case, and many others like it, listed as “inclusive” rather than “free”–and, in fact, luxury cruise lines tend toward “inclusive,” just as all-inclusive vacation resorts do. In practice, actually, for some lines “free air fare” is an interesting way of handling discounts–the offer’s usually time-limited, but they don’t call it a discount as such.

TANSTAAFL and Win-Win Economics

Yes, I know, I’m being a literalist. Those who use TANSTAAFL don’t literally mean there’s never a free lunch (or maybe they do)–they mean that every form of refuge has its price, that we live in a closed universe, that there must be some form of cost or payment somewhere.

What I find a little too often–and why I’m writing this post (other than procrastinating on something else)–is that various forms of TANSTAAFL are used to argue zero-sum economics. I don’t buy that all or even most transactions must or should be zero-sum games, where A only “wins” because B “loses”: Where the lunch is only free because the business is overcharging, and in the end overcharging by more than the worth of the lunch.

I believe in win-win economics–not always, but often. In win-win economics, A and B make deals that are mutually beneficial: The benefits to each party outweigh the costs. Loyalty programs can work that way. Ideally, public libraries represent win-win economics: The cost to the community to prepay for library services through taxes is more than made up for by the benefits to individuals and to the community as a whole from library services. Benefit to the community as a whole is one reason that some people support public libraries that they don’t use–they recognize that a good library makes their town or city a better place to live. (The same can be said for parks and other non-emergency community services.)

I don’t have some stirring conclusion to wrap this all up. Hey, it’s Monday: Don’t expect miracles.

Cites & Insights 10:3 (March 2010) is now available.

The 26-page issue, PDF as usual (with HTML separates for each essay), includes two essays:

Making it Work: Philosophy and Future (pp. 1-22)

Two clusters–one on the philosophy and values of libraries and the other on high-profile statements on libraries and their future.

Perspective: Writing about Reading 5: Going Down Slow (pp. 22-26)

Slow reading and related topics.

I’d love to hear about blogs by people who work in community college or junior college libraries. You can either comment below or send me email (waltcrawford at gmail dot com).

There are probably a few among the 500 (or so) liblogs I subscribe to–but when I categorized libloggers for The Liblog Landscape, I didn’t distinguish them among the 170+ “academic librarian” blogs.

Why do I care?

• I was vividly reminded during at least one Midwinter session that academic libraries (and librarians) just aren’t the same as public libraries (and librarians). I always knew that, but it was driven home with some force.
• My sense is that many, if not most, community college/junior college libraries are hybrid institutions, with characteristics of both public and academic libraries.
• If that’s true, then I’d like to pay more attention to those librarians (and other library staff).

(If there are other equivalents for community college or junior college, the latter being what it’s called in my home town, I mean y’all as well–that is, publicly-funded institutions primarily offering 2-year degree programs with lots of continuing ed as well, usually with lower entry bars than state colleges and universities. City colleges? Whatever.)

Feel free to add your own blog or let me know about others you’re aware of. And thanks!

This appeared in the June 2008 Cites & Insights, as part of an omnibus Perspective “On Semantics, Reality, Learning and Rockstars.” I’m republishing it because I think it’s still relevant (maybe more so), although I’m not linking it to anything specific…

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One unfortunate undercurrent in the various discussions surrounding change and continuity has to do with lifelong learning for library people. Why “unfortunate”? I’ll get to that shortly…

On one hand, you get people saying every librarian needs to learn A and B and C and…well, you know, into the dozens. The answer to that is generally Nonsense, for several reasons:

• While each library above a certain size may need to have someone familiar with each item in a list, that doesn’t mean every person or every professional in the library needs to be familiar with every item. Very few cataloging gurus assert that every reference librarian and every rural/small library director needs intimate familiarity with RDA. It’s equally reasonable to suggest that some technical services librarians don’t need to be able to install wikis.

• For many of us, detailed learning substantially before the point of use is mostly wasted. We forget details and maybe even broad strokes. How’s your calculus these days? We need to be able to find out what we need to know when (or ideally, shortly before) we need to know it. Nothing new here either. One new thing, maybe: Some things that we’re told everybody needs to learn almost certainly will disappear or become irrelevant before many of us have the chance to put that learning to use. (How’s your understanding of Gopher navigation techniques? Updated your Orkut and Friendster profiles lately?)

• Most of us don’t have time to learn everything that might be useful for us, just as most of us don’t have time to keep up with as much formal and informal literature as might serve us well.

But there’s a huge caveat here. A huge caveat:

You don’t have to learn everything—but you do need to keep learning something.

Dorothea Salo objects to the comment “I don’t have time to learn all this!” She’s been writing about difficulties getting librarians to pay attention to issues that do affect them and notes this as one response. (The post is also about different learning styles—the notion that some people learn better in a “steady stream” of daily reading while others prefer the “single spray” method, attending a conference or workshop to pick up a lot of stuff at one point. I think she makes an excellent point—people needing to spread the word in some important areas may need to make more effort to reach those who primarily learn at conferences. All I have to say about the post as a whole is “I agree.” I’m expanding on one comment here.)

I can think of a way to hear that comment charitably, although I suspect it’s being a little too charitable. If a person is saying, “I don’t have time to learn all this,” that may sometimes be right: The person simply may not have room (time, focus, concentration) for a big learning agenda at the moment. But I don’t believe that’s what Salo’s objecting to, and I don’t think that’s what’s usually being said. What I hear, a bit less charitably, is “I don’t have time to learn any of this,” which translates to “I don’t think I need to keep learning.”

And that is simply not acceptable for anyone who calls themselves professional.

You don’t have to learn everything—but you do need to keep learning something.

So why did I say unfortunate? Because it’s easy to conflate two “don’t have time to learn” situations:

• This is too much for me to take in all at once, and some of it doesn’t apply right now or soon enough for me to retain the learning. That’s frequently valid and leaves room to find a comfort level, where learning appears more directly useful and doesn’t require loads of energy.

• I’ve learned enough. I don’t want to learn any more. Not acceptable. Not acceptable for professional librarians—and, I believe, not acceptable for anyone working long-term in the library field, professional or otherwise. That attitude wouldn’t be acceptable for doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers or accountants. Why should it be acceptable for library people?

Maybe this does loop back to the first discussion, which was (of course) about “Library 2.0.” Consider the very first paragraph of the very first page of Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change:

A library system that stands still is unbalanced and headed for trouble. A library staff obsessed with Hot New Things and aiming for new users at the expense of familiar services and existing patrons is unbalanced and headed for trouble. Very few libraries fall into either extreme, but sometimes it seems as though we’re urged toward one extreme.

Maybe I’m naïve here as well. I doubt that there are any significant numbers of libraries that look like the second strawman—but I wonder how many libraries (that is, library staffs) really do, to all intents and purposes, appear to be standing still? Let’s set this out as an opposition as well:

• I don’t want to sign up for the whole set of stuff called Library 2.0. You get no argument from me. Maybe your library shouldn’t be gaming. Maybe your patrons wouldn’t respond to social networking initiatives. Maybe you don’t have the staff to maintain a blog and don’t have any problem for which a wiki is a solution.

• I don’t want any of this Library 2.0 stuff. Our library’s fine, just fine. We don’t need to examine our operations, find better ways to stay in touch with our community or consider new technologies to support our routines. Now you get a big argument from me. I’m all for continuity, but continuity without awareness and change isn’t continuity: It’s rigidity—easily confused with rigor mortis. Even the smallest library staff needs to step back from time to time to look at how things are going, whether the library’s serving and effectively involving its community, and whether new tools could improve situations. Think you’re too small? The Wetmore Public Library (Kansas) and Seldovia Public Library (Alaska) serve communities of 362 people and 286 people respectively. Both libraries use blogs to good effect—to create an online presence they almost certainly couldn’t provide otherwise.

You don’t have to do it all (just as you may not be able to have it all). But you do have to do something—or at least make sure that you’re doing the best you can. That involves lifelong learning. That’s one of many things good public libraries support, and it’s an essential aspect of being a good library person.

I’m preaching to the choir—but maybe you can pass this particular sermon along to those who might think that old traditionalist Crawford is saying it’s OK for them to do nothing at all. They’re wrong.

Karen Coyle posted “Walt Crawford should read the document” on May 10, 2009 on her blog, Coyle’s InFormation.

Note two things about that sentence:

1. It includes a direct link to Coyle’s post.
2. I include the name of Coyle’s blog correctly, spelling and all.

Now consider the first paragraph of Coyle’s post, reproduced here exactly as it appears:

In his March, 2009 Cites & Insites, Walt Crawford does a roundup of comments on the Google/AAP settlement, and gets very agitated when reviewing some of my posts. I’m used to that. But agitation tends to cancel out reason, and Walt gets some things wrong that he might have understood better if he had kept a clear head.

No link–but then, how could there be a link, since there’s no such publication as “Cites & Insites”? (I don’t regard “Insites” as a word and assuredly would not use it for an ejournal.)

The March 2009 Cites & Insights (volume 9, number 4) consists of an essay on a proposed settlement involving Google, AAP, and the Authors Guild (not just Google and AAP). I regard that essay as considerably more than “a roundup of comments.”

I’m not sure whether Ms. Coyle is used to people in general getting agitated when reviewing her posts or whether that’s specifically aimed at me, but the last sentence is unquestionably aimed at somebody named Walt Crawford.

The suggestion that I was unable to reason clearly because I was so agitated by Ms. Coyle’s comments is either insulting or patronizing; your choice. It’s also false. (I checked the indexes for Cites & Insights. Except for March 2009, every time I’ve quoted or commented on Karen Coyle it’s been entirely positive comment–so I have to assume that other people get agitated by her comments. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.)

There is an ornithologist named Walt Crawford in the Midwest, director of the World Bird Sanctuary. In the overall scheme of things, that Walt Crawford (we have the same middle initial, but I’m not a “Jr.”) is probably more important to the world than I am–but he has a somewhat lower web profile. I’m pretty sure we’re both members of the Nature Conservancy… Still, I doubt very much that St. Louis’ Walt Crawford has a publication named Cites & Insites or that he wrote about the proposed Google Book Search settlement.

Still…there’s enough wrong with Ms. Coyle’s first paragraph (in a post that appeared nearly three months after the essay in question) that it’s tempting to leave it at that. If Coyle can’t be bothered to link to the essay being criticized or name the publication properly, and if she finds it necessary to patronize me in the post title and the lead paragraph, why should I take her comments seriously? (She knows how to do links: there are two links in the post. I can only assume that the decision not to link to my essay is deliberate.)

[Why did it take me two weeks to respond? Anyone who's followed this blog or my FriendFeed feed knows: Since May 10, I've been spending nearly all my energy moving to a new house--and from May 14 through May 18, I didn't have internet access. Also, I recognized right off the bat that a hasty response was a bad idea.]

A quick exercise

Before reading this response further, you should read the commentary. If you haven’t already done so, I suggest reading the whole essay (including but not limited to “Putting on several hats” on pp. 4-5)–but since I’m being charged with agitation and loss of reason, you could focus on pages 20-25. Consider particularly the language in “Google/AAP settlement” (pp. 20-21) with its “Ping!” refrain and the right-hand column on p. 21 (from “…this is the pact with the devil” through “THIS IS EVIL“).

If, after reading the extensive quotations from Coyle and my brief interspersed comments, you find that Coyle is consistently cool and logical whereas I’ve gone off the deep end and gotten things wrong, then it may not be worth your while to read the rest of this.

But as I reread it, twice, I see no agitation on my part, and less rhetorical fervor in my notes than in some of Coyle’s commentary. Maybe Coyle wasn’t agitated in those posts, but it certainly reads that way–or is it that Coyle is allowed to be agitated but I’m not?

Specific objections…

What of my comments does she object to?

All libraries as well-curated collections

In questioning the need for Google to digitize based on deliberate collection-building, I say “I don’t know of any big academic library or public library that’s a single disciplinary collection–or, realistically, a set of well-curated collections.” (Coyle omits the italics in “any.” No biggie.)

Coyle says “an academic library is INDEED a set of well-curated collections.”

Really? Good academic libraries include well-curated collections, but I’ll suggest that most big ones contain a lot of materials outside that set of collections, particularly for libraries using lots of standing orders and approval plans. [OK, I spent too many years at UC Berkeley. If anyone suggests to me that the Doe Library is entirely a set of well-curated collections, I'd probably snigger, much as I love and respect the library.]

But that’s a matter of definition–what constitutes “well-curated”? I could have simply taken issue with Coyle’s lead sentences in the paragraph in question:

So the main reason why Google Books is not a library is that it isn’t what we would call a “collection.” The books have not been chosen to support a particular discipline or research area…

Even if I overstated “any,” Coyle’s implicit definition of “library” here excludes an enormous number of libraries. If Coyle wants to say that “Google Books is not a research library,” I probably wouldn’t object–but “research library” and “library” are not synonymous.

Library costs

I said “I don’t remember public universities admitting to substantial costs in cooperating with Google.”

Coyle says “Dan Greenstein estimated $1-2 per book”–and offers a link.

The article linked to says no such thing. It says that Greenstein estimated Google’s scanning costs at $1 or $2 per volume. Here’s the link: read it for yourself. (It’s a Daily Cal article. Depending how you read it, Greenstein might have been estimating a cost for cooperating with Google elsewhere in the article, but certainly not as quoted by Coyle–and, frankly, I can’t be sure just what the article is saying about the UC costs of the Google project. In any case, it wouldn’t have been an admission: This article appeared before UC joined the project. It would have been a forward estimate.)

I’ll stand by my statement: I don’t remember public universities admitting to substantial costs in cooperating with Google. (The first three words represent a caveat–maybe somebody somewhere said it and I don’t remember or never saw it. Greenstein did not say it, at least not as quoted from the cited article.)

Changing library use of libraries’ own material

Adding one brief paragraph to a long Coyle quotation, I asserted that nothing in the proposed agreement changes the ways libraries use their own material.

That’s a factual statement. Coyle’s criticism:

Not of their hard copy materials, but legal minds think that this changes the landscape for digitization and the use of digitized materials, even closing some options that might have been available before.

She quotes one such legal mind. Is there unanimity or overwhelming consensus? I don’t know (although I’m pretty nearly certain that there isn’t)–but it’s irrelevant to my simple, factual statement.

Privatization, profiles and abusing the language*

Coyle said in one of her original post that “The digitization of books by Google is a massive project that will result in the privatization of a public good: the contents of libraries.”

I objected to that sentence, “as I’ve taken issue consistently with the same claim by others with even higher profiles than Coyle (who are even less likely to ever admit they could be mistaken).” Coyle takes me on for not making the “higher profile” people and adds this: “But thanks for letting me know that you consider me a ‘lower profile’ person, Walt.”

What? If I say Barack Obama has a higher profile than Rick Boucher, I’m not saying Rick Boucher is “a lower profile person”–except by comparison. If you want names, there’s Brewster Kahle and Siva Vaidhyanathan–and yes, I do consider them higher profile. (Based on Coyle’s post that I’m commenting on here, however, I withdraw the parenthetical clause in my comment.)

I went on to say the “privatization” claim was “Nonsense. Sheer, utter nonsense. The libraries and contents will still be there. OCA will still be there. I’m sorry, but this one just drives me nuts: It’s demonization of the worst kind and an abuse of the language.”

Coyle’s response?

There is general agreement that Google gets a monopoly…at least on out-of-print books.

Based on this “general agreement” she says the claim of monopoly “is a factual statement.” I haven’t seen any sort of unanimity on this claim, and I wasn’t aware that consensus constituted fact–but in any case, that has nothing to do with the wording I objected to: “privatization of a public good: the contents of libraries.”

Did Ansel Adams privatize the great views in Yosemite by taking photos that are so iconic they’ve made it difficult for anyone else to do as well? Obviously not; he created something by using a public good, and in doing so enhanced the public good (making Yosemite more popular).

If I go to a library, check out some books, and create something new based on those books, it would be nonsense to say I’d privatized the contents of the library. If I built an index by going through each book, and then returned the books, it would be nonsense to say I’d privatized the contents of the library.

How is Google’s project different? The books are on the shelves, at least as accessible as they were before Google scanned them…and realistically a lot more accessible.

The public good is not in any way diminished or privatized. If a possible future extension of the public good is less likely because Google has a first-mover advantage or because the language of the settlement gives them advantageous treatment, that’s a very different thing.

Preservation and longevity

Discussing issues of preservation and longevity, I said:

Won’t the fully-participating libraries have digital copies? I can’t think of institutions with better longevity.

Here’s how Coyle begins her refutation of my comment:

To begin with, only fully participating libraries will have digital copies…

Since Coyle agrees that “fully participating libraries will have digital copies,” there’s really no point in going further. (If I say “All Honda Insights are hybrids” and someone begins a critique of that statement by saying “To begin with, only Honda Insights–among Hondas–are always hybrids”–there’s little point in continuing the discussion.)

…without discrimination and without liability

Here’s one where I may be wrong. I assumed Google wouldn’t argue with the idea of carrying all scanned books.

Coyle points out that the settlement does not oblige them to do so. Since this is the single case in which she’s asserting I would have gotten it right if I’d read the full 134-page settlement, I assume this is the genesis for the post’s title.

If we assume that Google was 100% responsible for the language of the settlement (which I do not) then I’m clearly wrong here. Let’s assume that I am.

I’ve been wrong before, I’ll be wrong again. If Coyle had pointed out this single case in a more temperate manner, I’d be delighted to include that in an update to the essay as a useful correction and expansion.

There are legitimate reasons for concern about the settlement

That’s what Coyle says.

I agree. I say so repeatedly in the March 2009 Cites & Insights.

If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have produced a 30-page issue: A one-paragraph note would have been sufficient. I certainly wouldn’t have guided people back to Coyle’s posts.

Coyle doesn’t think that anything she has said is “nonsense.” Sorry, but I have to disagree. The “privatization” line is nonsense–just as it’s always been when Prof. Vaidhyanathan uses it, just as it is when Brewster Kahle uses it. It’s an abuse of the English language, and by demonizing Google it gets in the way of improving the settlement and the situation.

Frankly, if it hadn’t been for the tone of Coyle’s post and her accusation that I’d lost a clear head, I might not have written this post at all. Coyle has provided valuable service over the years in analyzing the Google Books project and the proposed settlement.

---

*Postscript: The comments on this post include various defenses of “privatization” as an accurate and appropriate term. They make interesting reading, and I urge readers of this post to read all of the comments–and decide for yourself. (I’ll probably prepare a commentary in a future C&I, incorporating most or all of this post and its comments.)

I still regard “privatization of public goods” as an abuse of the language as used for anything in the proposed settlement. When you create something new based on public goods, leaving the public goods intact, I can’t find that to be privatization as I understand the word.

But I should also clarify that it’s not Karen Coyle’s coinage or distinctive usage–if I’m saying it’s nonsense on her part, I’m also saying it’s nonsense on the part of Siva Vaidhyanathan, Brewster Kahle and probably quite few others. Which, to be sure, I am.

It’s a shame that an argument over books uses the language so sloppily–but “privatization of public goods” has a distinctive harshness to it that more accurate terms might not.

This postscript does not attempt to cut off the discussion of the term. I think it’s a fascinating discussion. Do note that I regard comments here to be bound by the same CC license as the blog itself, meaning I can (and will) quote them in their entirety in Cites & Insights–and, of course, that anyone else can quote them for noncommercial use.

An odd topic for me? Well, yes, given that I don’t work in a library and have never spent much time on the public-workstation theme.

But ALA Publishing sent me a copy of the April 2009 Library Technology Reports (v. 45:3), “Open Source Public Workstations in Libraries,” by John Houser–who, until recently, was Senior Technology Consultant at PALINET and handled the technology side of what’s now the Library Leadership Network.

Here’s the abstract:

In a time where an economic downturn and concerns about climate change are influencing decisions, many libraries are looking for ways to save money and to reduce their impact on the environment. This report provides detailed information about the operating systems, software, and approaches used by three libraries and one academic institution that have implemented open source public workstations. It explains how open source operating systems and applications, when installed on appropriate hardware, can decrease power utilization while providing a reliable and satisfying customer experience. It will help library decision makers who want to find out about alternatives to Microsoft Windows–based PCs running Microsoft Office, not only as a means of  cutting costs or reducing a carbon footprint, but also as a means of providing a better experience for library customers.

I suspect it’s worth buying if you’re in a library that has public workstations (if your library doesn’t subscribe to LTR, you can buy the issue for $43). Houser suggests reasons for considering open source solutions for public workstations, describes current open source products that may be suited for such workstations and offers several case studies, considering two of them in detail.

In some ways, I’m a skeptical audience for this report. I question the assumption that older/underpowered computers (inappropriate for XP or Vista but fine for Linux) necessarily use less power than contemporary computers–and Houser’s clearly uneasy with that particular argument.

For that matter, while I think the concept of open source software is great–the Library Leadership Network runs on open source software (MediaWiki), my blog runs on open source software (WordPress), and my primary browser is open source software (Firefox)–I’m also a happy Vista user who has no interest in trading Office2007 for OpenOffice.

But the reasons I prefer Office2007 and Vista at home probably don’t apply to public workstations. For such workstations, a set of open-source tools should be entirely workable and indeed more than is needed–and there’s no getting around the cost savings. Let’s be honest here: If and when I buy a netbook as a travel computer, there’s a very strong chance I’ll buy a Linux system.

Houser writes clearly and knows his stuff. If there’s a major problem with this report, it’s a problem shared by other recent LTR issues: It’s on the short side, with a total of 34 text pages. On the other hand, that also makes it a quick read and easy reference. All in all, a good introduction to one interesting approach (or, really, three related interesting approaches) to providing public library workstation support.

It’s been almost exactly two weeks since I wrote “LTB–and a lot more.”

That post noted some of the reasons I’ve done very little contemplative or really new writing in the last six weeks or so–and am likely not to do very much of it for the next month (or so). That’s not entirely true: I did a future edition of “disContent” that I’m quite pleased with and I’ve been generating (and editing, and organizing) content for the Library Leadership Network. But the longer essays–whether contemplative or synthetic (that is, synthesizing from various posts)–weren’t happening.

During those two weeks, I did put out an issue of Cites & Insights. That issue should be a real bargain: It has the most important sections of two $29.50 books about library blogs, all yours for $0. It also has some notes on readership over the first two million words of C&I. So far, I can’t say that the issue has either aroused any obvious interest or even achieved the usual first-half-week level of downloads and readership, but these things (can) take time.

The title

The inspiration for this post is John Scalzi’s post “I Got Nothing” at his blog Whatever. Inspiration, that is–not parallel. Scalzi’s post concerns the fact that he has only one book in the publishing pipeline, with no other books under contract. For Scalzi, a successful and award-winning science fiction writer, this could be cause for concern–but, as he notes, it’s also an occasion to try new things…with no books he has to work on.

The situation here is not parallel. I’m not suggesting that I’m remotely in Scalzi’s league as a writer. I’m also not suggesting that anywhere near as many people would care (his posts get lots of comments, generally quite interesting ones–and he posts fairly regularly. For example, this post, which went up five hours ago as I write this, already has 35 comments–and doubtless more when any of you go to it).

But Scalzi’s post, and title, did encourage me to look at my own situation…and wonder.

Maybe it’s not just moving?

Yes, moving is disruptive–and when it’s from one house you’ve lived in for 11 years to another 30 miles away, when incidents add to the confusion (thanks to a misstep just as we started looking for the first time at the house we believe we’re buying, my wife’s hobbling around with a hairline fracture–since then and for the next month or so: as she says, she fell for the house), when you’re dealing with a truly strange real estate “market,” and when you factor in California’s, and especially Santa Clara County’s, increasingly extensive paper trail…well, it’s really disruptive for a very long time.

[An aside: Supposedly, local realtors are "going paperless"--but I'd say there's at least twice the paperwork there was 11 years ago, including incredibly detailed disclosure forms. We've spent hours just initialing and signing form after form after form...and, if I didn't have an all-in-one printer so we could print out "faxed" PDFs, sign them, scan them back in and attach them to email, I don't see how we could get through this at all--we'd be driving out to Livermore twice a day. I know our buying agent and selling agent will each give us a CD at close of escrow with copies of all the paperwork--but meanwhile, I'd swear we have more than half a ream of paper for the purchase transaction, and almost that much for the sale.]

But…well, I can’t honestly say that move-related stuff is occupying all my afternoons and evenings. Even as we start packing toward the actual move, deciding on a mover, contacting utilities (and, later, the post office, bank, magazines, credit card companies, IRS, etc., etc., etc.), all that stuff should take less than half the time I’d normally devote to writing-related work.

Work that, other than some column-related effort, isn’t really happening. If I sit down to start on an essay, even one that grows by bits & pieces (e.g., Trends & Quick Takes), I find myself checking FriendFeed, checking email, then going off for a nap…and reading a magazine or exercising or going for a walk.

Which makes me wonder whether the move isn’t a convenient catchall for something else…

In recent years, I’ve said I’d keep on writing as long as (a) people want to read what I have to say and (b) I find it interesting & worthwhile to do so.

Right now, I’m a little uneasy on both counts. With luck, this too shall pass…

No quick decisions

Once again, I’m not doing anything (including not doing anything, if that makes sense) in any great hurry.

As to “the four projects,” no decision yet–although I guess the second possibility (library blogs) is dead in the water, along with sales for the books. (Short-term lesson in Andersonomics: Giving away the meat of the two library blog books has, to date, resulted in zero, count them, 0 sales of either book. But, you know, T-shirts at my author’s reading concerts are doing just fine…)

Unless there’s a sudden change in attitude, there’s a good chance the June C&I will consist of a reformatted version of the first 121 pages of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008, which would probably yield a slightly large but not immense issue (I’m guessing 32 to 42 pages, depending on how I handle figures)–in other words, everything except the individual blog profiles. That book’s completely flatlined at this point as well, with no sales in at least three weeks (50 total to date), so we’ll see what giving (most of) it away does for sales or at least readership.

After that–we shall see. I’ve got lots of material ready to work on. (I’d still like to carry forward the Liblog Landscape study another year–I’m just not sure I can justify the effort on any basis, including “the good of the profession.”) The creative juices could start flowing again most any time…

Or the sense could grow that I’ve become an “old mind” that people are tired of hearing from, that my style of thinking and writing doesn’t have much place in Today’s Library Field and that I should just let it go.

Right now, I got nothin’.

Judith Krug died over the weekend. Krug headed up ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) for decades–since 1967.

Jessamyn West offers a brief post that says it as well or better than I could.

I was slightly acquainted with Krug, and had the chance to chat with her at one or two state library conferences. She was as charming and interesting in person as she was relentless in pushing for the freedom to read and intellectual freedom.

Krug was one of the good ones. She’ll be missed. The work will continue.

Stones–milestones, that is

• This appears to be the 1,000th post in this blog. Not “post #1000″–for various reasons, if I was still using post numbers, it would be higher than that. The celebration of this milestone–which, if I was still blogging at the frequency I originally anticipated, would be about six years away–will be muted.
• Cites & Insights reached a milestone this year–twice. The milestone? Two million words. How twice? The raw word count, including the masthead, “Inside this issue,” and repeated material from previous issues, passed two million words in the January 2009 issue. The refined word count–excluding repeated material longer than (roughly) a paragraph and excluding mastheads, banners and “Inside this issue”–passed two million words in April 2009. (The publication also passed 2,500 pages in January 2009. Word and page counts exclude annual indices and the phantom COAP issue.) You’ll see more about that, overall readership, and the most widely-read essays for the period 2004-2009 in the May issue. (Yes, there will be a May issue, probably in a week or so, despite the continuing upheaval. Most of the issue will be “free books”–in one sense at least.)

Bones

The “bones” of houses, in this case–that is, structural integrity, pest control, proper maintenance. We’ve learned a few things about appreciation for “good bones” and about just how local today’s odd real estate market really is.

(The distinction here is between remodeling and obvious visual “improvements” vs. things like cracks in the eaves, termite damage, apparent standing water…the kinds of things a good home inspector and pest inspector will find.)

Our house has great bones–we’ve always kept it in good shape, even though the kitchen still has the original (1950s) tile. That was critical for two of the offers we got, including the one we accepted. We finally asked why they’d chosen ours over the one nearby that’s roughly the same price but freshly remodeled. The answer boiled down to bones–turns out the remodeled house showed significant problems in the inspection. (And, as is frequently the case, the owners planned to remodel anyway, so remodeling wasn’t a big selling point.)

The house we’re buying–and yes, we did get the house–also has great bones. We spent two hours yesterday walking through it with a home inspector (the right kind of inspector: all the company does is inspections, no repairs, and he’s not a moonlighting realtor), noting a variety of tiny things to be resolved and a couple of slightly-larger repairs, but also noting that the important stuff was all great. He was as enthusiastic about the house as I’ve ever seen an inspector be–”this house is in great shape” is a literal quote. (I think he was also pleased, because he’s been inspecting a lot of bank-owned properties, which tend not to be in great repair.) And I suspect the bones were one reason this house also had four offers.

If you’d like a moral here, there is one:

• Pay attention to household maintenance first. Keep your house in great condition. Remodeling and the like can come a little later.

The broader story, though, is the truly peculiar and local state of real estate at this point. The Experts continue to say California’s in trouble, especially since there are probably more foreclosures coming–and, they tell us, foreclosures drag down the whole market.

It depends. From what we’ve seen in these transactions–and in the fact that both of the other houses up for sale in this neighborhood sold as rapidly as ours did [the remodeled one is off the market for now] and that the agents we talk to say multiple offers are now becoming normal again in nearby towns–it’s more complicated. I suspect the “foreclosure market” is largely separate from the traditional home-buying market.

What feels good: The sellers in Livermore are happy with our offer (yes, we paid more than asking, but they’d priced it fairly)–and we’re delighted with the house. The buyers in Mountain View are delighted with the house–and we’re happy with their offer. Two win:win transactions–that’s how business and real estate should work, but win:win seems to have been in short supply recently.

Broader implications? I’m not sure there are any. I do know this: Broad statements about The Real-Estate Market or even The California Real-Estate Market are too broad to be very useful. Even broad statements about the Mountain View or Livermore markets may be too broad. Local, local, local…

Footnote

I haven’t written anything about the Darien statement, and not much of anything about the latest Taiga list. Nor do I intend to at this point. Once things become more peaceful and after there’s been enough time for various folks to digest and respond, I might do a “preserving the zeitgeist” piece or I might not. If I do, I’m likely to be more observer than participant.

Readers of ONLINE magazine may feel that I’ve already responded, though, since my March/April 2009 “Crawford at Large” column, “Futurism and Libraries,” includes a section entitled “The library” fallacy, with “The library” in quotes. That column was written long before the Darien statement–but I’ll stand by my unease with the whole notion of “the library” either as Platonic ideal or useful universalism. (I’ve already gone on record as finding “one big library” more unfortunate than useful.) I’m not strong on universalisms in general. Beyond that, I’m just not taking part in this discussion at the moment.

I am not now, never have been, and never will be a director, AUL or AD at a major academic library–but I pay a fair amount of attention to what they’re talking about, at least indirectly.

I’d read some of the Taiga statements and found them, well, a little extreme. But for various reasons (self-preservation, laziness, inarticulateness), Ive never commented on them.

John Dupuis, braver and more articulate than I am, has posted a commentary that has a Daily Show feel to it: It’s amusing–but also makes a lot of serious points, and makes them well.

Go read it.

I may yet do something on Taiga in a future C&I–or maybe I don’t need to, with colleagues like Dupuis out there.

Cites & Insights 9:5, April 2009, is now available.

The 32-page issue is PDF as usual, with HTML versions (such as they are) for each essay available via the links below.

The issue includes:

Making it Work Perspective: Thinking about Blogging: 1

Do comments make a blog a blog? Is the “blogosphere” imploding? Have conversations moved elsewhere? And some offhand notes about blogs as a median medium, in an “interesting sweet spot in a casual media hierarchy of length, thought and formality.”

Perspective: Writing about Reading 2

Ignoring the Death of Serious Reading, which is as specious as the Death of Blogs, the Death of Print Media and even (in my opinion) the Sudden Death of Newspapers, we look at some other reading-related topics: Aliteracy and Online and Print Reading. A third topic somehow moved over into…

Library Access to Scholarship

The Death of Journals (Film at 11). That’s the overall title, and no, I don’t believe journals are nearing sudden death either…but the topics this time around do relate to journals: Are print journals obsolete? Should professional journals evolve into blogs?

Net Media: Beyond Wikipedia

It’s not about Wikipedia–or maybe it’s (indirectly) all about Wikipedia. After some questions as to why so many people seem to love monopolies so much, there’s a bunch of Knol knotes and some catching up with Citizendium–and a few brief notes on Wikia (which is not Wikipedia).

And that’s it for April.