A corner seems to have been turned …

I haven’t used a blog in a long time (more often these days turning to Twitter, Facebook etc), but this thought require s a little more real estate.  I’ve been noticing recently that reference desk queries have been relying more and more lately on Google as not only the starting point, but also as the primary tool. A real change in this behaviour seems to have coincided with the introduction of new library catalog. Rather than navigate (the sometimes less than friendly) system, students simply go to Google schoalr, type in terms and then link back to our system for holdings, etc.  While this has traditionally been considered to be a bad thing in libraries, I’m finding myself making this choice as well.  Fact is, faced with having to find an article I think about navigating our system to a level numerous links deep, or going to Google and typing things into a single box.  Considering the success rate with the single box, Google is winning. Information research has shown for decades that anyone will choose the simplest route to the answer even if the answer isn’t quite as good as through a more complex route.  Lately, the answer through the simple route has been just as good … and less clicking is involved … and its intuitive … and …

I guess an interaction today really made this obvious to me.  A student was looking for material on techniques for parents socializing autistic children.  We first went through commercial journal indexes and had limited success with the terms “autism” “technique” “parent” and ”socialization”.  The articles coming up were not particularly relevent and it was clear that we’d have to start messing about with our choice of terms to refine the search. At a certain point I just decided to jump over to Google scholar to see what happened.  The same four terms provided articles right on the topic, beginning with those most relevant … it was just staring me right in the face … this was a better route.  The student was very happy and able to link back to our holdings, and I was left feeling like I’d somehow cheated … I even told her to make sure that she does use the commercial indexes at some point in her searching (but I’m not sure why …).  

I keep seeing library science articles in my mind suggesting that we should be forming more efficient search queries to get better results, or that there’s some reason for suspicion of the sources found in Google.  In short … I have no desire to refine my search if Google is going to retrieve relevent material with the searches that I’ve already done, and I’m going back through our system to actually view the material, so I assume these are decent sources. (plus … really … I’m quite capable of figuring that part out).

The simplest route to the answer …

Another reason to move to Europe

So, the Pirate Party has won at least one seat in the European Parliament, representing Sweden.  For those of you who have no idea, the folks who run the Pirate Bay file sharing site have a spin-off political party that got a rather small number of votes in the last election.  Since then, the Pirate Bay has been through the courts and convicted of something (aiding in copyright violation, or some such thing). Of course, the Pirate Bay obviously doesn’t even hide the fact that the do aid folks in violation of current copyright laws, although, to be fair, they host no content and do not provide any copyrighted material at all (they are an index to Torrents that are provided by other people).  The part that makes this really outrageous to their supporters is that it seems that the judge on the case has a conflict of interest, and the rather ludicrous claims of how much money is being lost as a direct result of the activities of the Pirate Bay.  It turns out that enough people were outraged by all of this that the Pirate Party received quite a few votes … enough, in fact, to trun them from a novelty into a real live sitting, participating,  political party.  In fact, among Swedes in their 20’s, they received about 20% of the vote.

No matter what you think about this, it is quite clear that the folks who want to protect copyright are playing this about as badly as is humanly possible.  By punishing the Pirate Bay in court, they have created a legitimate political party and created a world-wide news story that does not lo0k good (and will attract even more young people). In effect, they have created a movement that runs entirely against their cause.

There were far better options:

If the motion picture industry (for example) had the slightest bit of brain-power devoted to this they might have had a far more positive effect by convincing the Pirate Bay folks to hand over the site and have nothing to do with it in exchange for not being penalized for all of their “piracy”.  In fact, they might even have told them to keep on running Pirate Bay, but under certain conditions.  These conditions would be that the motion picture industry would provide nice, high-quality versions of all of the films found, to be offered for download at a reasonable price as an alternative to the often crappy handheld things to be found normally. The most important thing that the Pirate Bay has is visitors … bazillions of them … worth infinitely more than the fine that has been imposed on its founders, who shifted the site elsewhere where it hums along like nothing ever happened and still makes no money for the copyright holders. As a user of Torrent sites, I assure that if I could get a really nice copy of a hard to find film for a few bucks, I would pay … no problem … I would gladly pay.  There are millions like me, searching for millions of films.  

The money would roll in … I will not, however, go to HMV and spend 25 dollars on a 40-yr old film, so that I can own the phsyical media … that’s just plain stupid. (oh, and iTunes …the collection is nowhere near big enough for the back catalog, and the movies come along way too late in new releases).  Unfortunately, the motion picture industry is completely incapable of understanding that they could be making money on films that they are otherwise not making money on, and that the market is already there … fully formed … waiting to be offered product.  Instead, they try to shut down the market and force people to go back to HMV and buy a movie in a box, in a format that will be outdated next year.

Remarkably, they have also managed to create an entire social movement devoted to opposing them, and have now managed to create seats in the European parliament devoted to opposing them. Great strategy.

Changing Nature of the Journal

 

 

In short, the paper has become the nearly universal currency of the scholarly enterprise. As

a consequence, the members of the invisible colleges, the movers and shakers in every discipline

and subspecialty thereof must press not only his/her local library, but the libraries of

other institutions that might have some bearing upon his/her position to subscribe to and hold

those journals in which he/she defines and delimits his/her turf and portrays his/her excellence.

Despite its relative irrelevance to his/her information-gathering needs, which are better

served by other technologies, the journal is absolutely requisite to defining his/her place

in a discipline and confirming and validating his/her place in the invisible college.

Comment on the journal … once the central communication tool of a discipline, but with much better tools now available, its role for the scholar has changed: 

“In short, the paper has become the nearly universal currency of the scholarly enterprise. As a consequence, the members of the invisible colleges, the movers and shakers in every discipline and subspecialty thereof must press not only his/her local library, but the libraries of

other institutions that might have some bearing upon his/her position to subscribe to and hold those journals in which he/she defines and delimits his/her turf and portrays his/her excellence. Despite its relative irrelevance to his/her information-gathering needs, which are better served by other technologies, the journal is absolutely requisite to defining his/her place in a discipline and confirming and validating his/her place in the invisible college.”

“Invisible Colleges, Information and Libraries” … Richard Abel, at the Charleston Conference, 1990.

Supporting scientists … maybe.

Another in a series of seemingly unrelated quotes on scientific communication … they’re too long to Tweet (and I’m tired of tweeting in general), and I like them.

” It is clear, however, that the productive scientist cannot be an isolated scholar who devotes years to reading scientific literature related to the phenomenon he wishes to research … Nor is he the recluse, more or less ignored by society, who can privately pursue his own intuition. … Instead, the scientist relies heavily on informal networks of information exchange to keep abreast of current activities and all of the current views of the community  on the value and relevance of specific research problems.”

“Scientific Communication: Its Role in the Conduct of Research and Creation of Knowledge”, Garvey and Griffith in Key Papers in Information Science, 1980.

Are we serving the research process in the best possible way?

More on informal communication:

“There appears to be no study of information seeking behaviour that shows libraries as the first place researchers look for information. Libraries are in effect part of the formal spectrum of information transfer, and as such, among the last places that scientists and engineers look for information.

As he describes the characteristics of the organizational gatekeeper, Allen writes: “librarians and other purveyors of information might well be able to perform their functions better if the were to know the identity of the gatekeepers in their orgnaization.” (Thomas J. Allen, Managing the Flow of Technology, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977) By identifying and interacting with the gatekeepers in his or her organization, the librarian can be more involved in the informal communication network.”

Jean Poland “Informal Communication Among Scientists and Engineers: A Review of the Literature” , Science and Technology Libraries, v.11, no.3, 1991.

Formal/informal sources

Commenting on the often circuitous routes that scientists may take to find reliable information (i.e. – not the formal routes but personal connections:

“it was hoped that this procedure would, on the one hand, illumine the operation of the informal avenues of communication, and that it would, on the other hand, point up the services which the formal reference facilities fail to perform. Eventually, such knowledge may may suggest ways of having the formal facilities do more adequately the job they presently fail to do.”

“It is to be hoped that most searches for information lead to their goal less circuitously, at least when the goal is so close at hand.  It is worth noting that the informal source of information, once located, proved very effective.  This episode indicates that much would be gained if finding the right personal source of information could be made more efficient.  It may well be possible to  make better formal arrangements for locating such informal source of information, even where it would not be practical or economical to have the actual information carried in the formal media.”

Barber and Hirsch, The Sociology of Science

Quick question.

I’ve got this question forming very slowly in my mind … what is the purpose of the ILS? (Integrated Library System for you non-library types)  I don’t call it the “library catalog” because that answers the question and is far too limiting … the catalog is, in fact, a catalog, and we should be far past considering that a great achievement.  Why do we have an ILS, and what are we attempting to do when we design a new ILS?  Is it simply an index?  Is it just a database of items that we allow to people to search, or is there more?  

You see, I’m beginning to suspect that the library business has been caught up in the business of creating ever more feature rich databases and has completely forgotten to step back and wonder exactly why we’re doing this.  Is it our primary purpose to facilitate searching through a lot of stuff and provide as accurate string matches as we possibly can (i.e. – keyword or phrase matches)?

If so, carry on.

However, my belief is that libraries have been far more involved (and interested in) supporting the processes of research, teaching, and learning, of which string matching is but a tiny little part.  Research is a far more complex process than just finding matching information buried in a big pile of other information … if you really look into the process of research as practiced by academics (and others) there are a lot of very complex social interactions that go on to complete successful research.  One of interest that librarians should already know about, is the idea of the invisible college … whatever you call it, fields of study, areas of interest, etc. become collections of people who become aware of others who are doing work in similar fields … and then they communicate, share information, read each others work, cite each other, and become familiar with the literature.  Serious researchers are often aware of pretty much everything in their field before it is published and will be more likely to be unpleasantly surprised by the absence of a work in the collection of their library than pleasantly surprised by its presence.

What am I talking about? Search can be done well by anybody … that has been clearly demonstrated.  Supporting research, however, is something that librarians should have a talent for, and our expertise goes far beyond the ability to efficiently type keywords in to a search string (that is also something that we are good at, but there is less and less demand for that).  If we truly want to support research, rather than just searching, I think that we need to consider what that process entails, first of all, and then decide how to create systems that actually support more of that process than just the search … that process is rich and social, but our systems provide an isolated and very non-social experience … I truly think that there is something to think deeply about here … I’m going to go off and think deeply about it some more …  (and no, I’m not suggesting that researchers should just use Facebook more …)

TV?

I just finished doing my once-a-term “Tech Trends” talk for a consumer studies course and it has left me with lots of thoughts (it may not have left the students with any, but at least it helps me).  This term I was able to tie in an experience from just last weekend. 

I have always mentioned that television seems to be a concept on the way out, but last weekend it became really clear to me that it’s already becoming obsolete.  Now, what I’m talking about is TV as a model … having a device that requires that you subscribe to a service (like cable or satellite) and then watch things based on the schedule of that service provider. Last weekend the college basketball tournament was on “TV”, but it turned out that CBS was also providing all of the games in semi-HD over the web.  The picture was better than on my TV, I could choose between games, and I could watch multiple games at once.  CBS also supplied an archive, should I miss anything. This was perfect.  I was also amazed that CBS had realized that they could benefit from doing this … they were still selling advertising and likely could guarantee more viewers for ads than on TV, given that they didn’t have to deal with all of the local cable and satellite providers who insert their own ads.

While this all made me happy, there was an obvious question.  Why can’t I always just watch my programming streaming live over the web, in glorious HD, and with the ability to just watch whatever I choose?  The only thing between me and this viewing nirvana would seem to be the willingness of CBS (or whoever) to turn on the taps.   I’m sure there are more complications and perhaps this particular programming was well subsidized by various advertisers, or perhaps the bandwidth was donated by someone,  but still … if the only thing stopping this type of service is that fact that middle-men don’t like it, then let’s cut them out and continue the march of progress.   

(this reminds me of a question I’ve been asking for years … TV, when it was being received by an antenna from the “airwaves” was financed entirely by advertising.  Then cable came along and I had to pay for this “service” in addition to still having to watch advertising.  Where, exactly, had the value increased for me to justify my increased bills?  Same content, more people to pay.  Getting my content free over the web just seems like a return to sanity. I will watch ads if I’m not expected to also pay for the privilege.)

A Great Plan That Will Never Happen

Yesterday I was listening to the TWIT podcast (This Week in Tech) and heard this great story.  The New York Times has determined that they could save a huge amount of money by stopping all production of the physical paper, and then sending an Amazon Kindle to every single subscriber.  Turns out that the cost of producing and delivering the paper copy is so astronomically high that just giving a $350 device to 800,000 people so they could read the paper in digital format, would be an enormous savings.  It’s really too bad that they’ll never do this … they’d only have to give out the Kindle once (or infrequently, anyway), so it would be pretty much a one-time expense … the economics are pretty obvious. (I know, I know … people want the physical paper because, uh, they, uh, like the feel of it, or really enjoy throwing many pounds of newsprint away every week … or something … have you ever had the NY Times at home? … it’s like 5 pounds of paper a week at least).

Search and research

Conference attendance generally leaves me with things to think about (that’d be a pretty positive outcome, I think).  Sometimes just disagreeing with people provides some clarity to one’s thinking and constructing a counter-argument helps you to think through your own ideas.

I was at a session on the “discovery layer” last week …  to be frank, I find that term objectionable to begin with, simply because it makes something relatively simple sound like it must involve a room full of NASA technicians.  In this case, the “discovery layer” is just library talk for a search interface that allows one to search through a number of databases simultaneously (so, you type something into a box, and a search is performed on, say, some journal indexes, some library catalogues, and some other stuff, but you never see all that and just get results).  You could call it “search” …

But this is not where I was going.  One of the things that one has to think about when designing the “discovery layer” is what it’s going to look like.  Will it just be a single box like google, or do you want to add all kinds of extra search options to slice your results up in more way (like by material type, or publication date range, or any criteria you can think of)?  To be frank, this is not a difficult decision for most designers of search.  Generally, one attempts to make the search process uncomplicated and hopes that the results returned withh be relevant and reasonably comprehensive. So, at Amazon, I usually just type some word in the box provided and press “Go”, or whatever.  A bunch of results come back, they are pretty much always at least close to what I was looking for, and I go from there (clicking links of recommended things, etc).  I might choose to drop down a menu and specify that I am searching for a DVD or something like that, but for the most, that’s totally unnecessary.  I know that I’ll get close or right on with the search box, so that’s all I worry about.

Libraries are, and since the introduction of the computer-based catalogue have always been, different.  No simple search box awaits you here, and even if you do encounter one, you are expected to specify what index you wish to search through (title, author, etc).  Then we get even crazier when you enter “advanced” search and begin to offer you all kinds of things, like publication dates, formats, locations, etc etc etc.   Get in to a journal index (which is entirely, and securely, separate from the rest of our indexes, and things get even more complicated.  Librarians have proudly learned how to use all of these tools, and spend a great deal of time guiding people through them to get what we call “precise” and “comprehensive” results.  That means that ideally we come up with a search  result that contains almost entirely relevant material, as well as every single related thing that there is to find (that’s ideal … never happens, of course).

 This seemed to make a great deal of sense to me about 20 years ago when I first started learning online searching. At that time we’d dial up some place in California and pay a great deal of money to search a big mainframe there and get results.  We’d actually sit down and plan our search so as not to waste too much time online.  I quite seriously believe that this is why we worry so much now about being precise and comprehensive.  Somewhere in the back of our minds we believe that if we miss something, or spend too long searching, our online charge will be astonomical.  Of course, in the mean time the world has passed us by and we can search as long as we want  at our leisure and just find stuff. We can browse a few pages of Google results looking for that one perfect thing that will springboard us into the motherload of good stuff … but, I digress a whole lot.

Something happened at the “DiscoveryLayer” session that set me off on this tangent.  While discussing whether the mother of all search boxes should be just a simple box for putting words into, or a series of menus and choices of a hundred ways to slice the search, one of the classic librarian discussions suddenly reared its head. People started suggesting that if we offered a single search box with a really spiffy mechanism behind it to automatically come up with your results without you making choices, that we wouldn’t be offering the user “everything”. There seemed to be this idea implied that we’d be “dumbing it down” or something (if I misrepresent someone here, I’m sorry, but you should consider this is a somewhat fictional account).  For a moment, I went along with the idea that we should, indeed, offer all kinds of search options and ways of refining searches, and those searches should bring back “everything” and give people “control”.  Then I stopped to think about it and raised my hand.     

Me: “Excuse me, but research isn’t about finding everything.  That’s not really how it works at all … this idea of a single search that brings back every relevant item is not like the process of research as it is actually practiced. Research involves finding a few, or even one, good thing, then checking what that one thing references, and checking those sources … then branching out rapidly from there.  Literature is not made up of a colection of items connected by having common keywords … a literature is composed of a collection of items connected by common ideas and a community of thinkers who are influenced by each other’s works. It’s about following the network of citations, really.”

Crowd : (nodding)

Me:  (now all excited)  ”So, what search should do is get your foot in the door, not hand you “everything” … Google works because it gets you some stuff, not everything … and yes, it’s very true that its precision and comprehensiveness are limited, but it does what people need it to do, and does it easily.”  And I might have added … “this whole business is summed up with the old nugget, “it’s about the finding, not the searching (stupid)”".   

And that’s the deal.  Research, long before the advent of digital stuff, was about following trails of influence through the literature.  Heck, it’s even about finding the one call number on the shelf and browsing the books around that area.  It might even be so primitive as looking at the books on the shelf and noticing that some have been heavily thumbed, and some never touched.   The types of searches that we’ve been doing in libraries since the advent of the electronic catalogue have been strictly un-social and very much based on matching strings of characters.  Research is very much a social activity and not actually concerned at all with matching strings of characters.  Now that systems have matured to include social aspects of search (and Google’s page-rank is most certainly a social algorithm), all of this precision and comprehensiveness seems kind of silly.  Give me a single search box, and get my foot in the door with some key stuff in the area … get me started on introducing myself to the social circle made up of the people working on my topic …  and I’ll work the room, thankyou very much.

(You know, I thought about it this way … my father, as an academic trained in the 50’s, would find the concept very odd that one would do a search and be handed the list of all of the good stuff … that would be entirely foreign to how he finds material … he reads, looks at the shelf, and gets to know the community of scholars … a very different process).