MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 11): Food and Shakespeare.

Cookbook author Gordon Ramsay is interviewed in the Observer on his annus horribilis (Observer):

After a year of scandal in his personal life and financial woes in his business empire, Gordon Ramsay looks back with some regret – and some anger – and looks forward to his latest British restaurant opening. ... He books under the name Gordon, not Ramsay, so as not to scare the chefs, but he still finds he has to wait 15 minutes longer than other diners for each course, so eager is everyone to impress. At Hotel Le Bristol he encountered a chicken dish for two costing €260. "I'd get stabbed in this country if I charged that! Even if the chicken had its arse wiped every day by the farmer and they said its feathers were shampooed by John Frieda – I'd be shot. Even if the chicken was delivered by the Queen's driver and had this little Armani dressing gown on before it got taken to the slaughterhouse." ... I ask about the swearing. "Fuck!" he said. "When you saw those two Kitchen Nightmares condensed into one – last year when they had those 298 'fucks' – I wasn't proud of that. There has come a time when, at the age of 43, I'm getting a bit tired of the foul-mouthed bully chef. But I've never tried to get the Great British blue-rinse nation to start falling in love with me. I don't want a radical change where I have to put a woolly hat and scarf on and go round every Women's Institute and improve their Victoria sponge or show them a much better recipe for spotted dick." ... "What have I learned?" Ramsay wonders in the car. "I've learned that outside the UK I'm not going to hold the baby with the liabilities coming out of my own pocket. One reason I lost €1.3m in Paris is because the French have become fucking lazy. They want to work 32 hours a week and they call themselves uniquely talented chefs. We do that work in two days over here.

And there is more where that came from. If you visit Chicago you have to go to Rick Bayless' restaurant Topolobampo and in addition to Gordon, Rick also has cookbooks (Observer):

For six years he lived part time in Los Angeles and part time in Mexico with his wife Deanne, working on his first book, Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking From the Heart of Mexico, written before he had opened a restaurant. "I would go into Mexico and detail everything that was available," he says of these years of research. "I would go into restaurants and list everything they were cooking, how they were cooking it. Because I was light-skinned, marketholders would view me with suspicion if I took notes." They would assume he was some kind of policeman. "So I had to memorise exactly what these ingredients were that they were selling. What they were used for."

With the book completed he was drawn back to Chicago. "I thought I was going to become a food writer but at the same time I knew I needed to do something else. Suddenly I was not driven to write about the food. I had to cook it." With the help of wealthy friends from Los Angeles he opened the Frontera Grill. I suggest to him that the restaurant was essentially his interest in anthropology expressed by another means. "I think that's exactly right." The title of his long-running television show for PBS and the book that has accompanied it, Mexico –One Plate at a Time, speaks to that sense of a man working to understand a country directly through its food.

Robert Crum picks on Americans as he discusses the question "Who really wrote Shakespeare?" (Observer):

Surely not that 'upstart crow' from Stratford? As James Shapiro's new book rehearses the loony arguments about our greatest playwright, we ask some of today's finest Shakespearean actors and directors their thoughts on the authorship question. .... Delia Bacon was a formidable advocate for her namesake. Of course no one individual could possibly have written the plays attributed to Shakespeare. He was little better than a "pet horse-boy at Blackfriars", "an old showman and hawker of plays", an out-and-out "stupid, illiterate, third-rate play actor". The catchy vehemence of her arguments eventually got debated by two riverboat pilots on the Mississippi, one of whom, Samuel Clemens, would become the most famous writer in the United States, Mark Twain. But it was not until the very end of his career that the author of Huckleberry Finn returned to Bacon's theories. At a dinner at his house in January 1909, Twain's circle decided that it was possible to find the coded signature FRANCISCO BACONO in a sequence of letters from the First Folio.

Those who are devoted to the belief that Edward de Vere is the real author of the canon have to swallow almost as much hocus pocus. Despite his inconveniently early death in 1604 – before Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest were written and/or staged – de Vere continues to fascinate the anti-Stratfordians for whom the plays are the surrogate autobiography of a secretive literary earl. This Oxford caucus derives a good deal of its confidence from the advocacy of Sigmund Freud. Possibly more embarrassing to the father of psychoanalysis, Freud's views are based on one book, "Shakespeare" Identified by John Thomas Looney, another American.

This is bibliographic "crack" and you will get lost for a while if you succumb (Link). From the twitter (@personanondata) National Post Canada argues halfheartedly for an Open Canadian Book market. Irony: it could help Heather monetize. Completely Novel announces an author blog award program and nominations are now open for (Link) Cengage Learning Unveils Suite of Digital Solutions and Services Focused on Improving Student Engagement (Link) Man U sees the return of Beckham to Old Trafford and we end the week on top again. Sadly, Becks is out of the World Cup (BBC).

Charity Bookselling - Repost

Originally posted on December 6th, 2006:

As a result of our annual clothes cull that ends in a trip to the Salvos I found myself in the basement of said 'mission' in Jersey City looking through their shelves of donated books. We ended up buying 12 books for $20. All were in reasonably good shape and some were worth more than the amount we paid for them. Earlier this year as a fun exercise (when I found myself with a lot of time on my hands) I set up a bookstore on alibris to sell books I knew I would never read again.

As it turns out, I have sold about $300 worth of books. The store front on Alibris cost $10/mth. I ultimately put some of the books I found at the Salvos in my Alibris store and it was easy to see that if you knew what you are doing you can easily buy low and sell high. There are many people who make considerable amounts buying books at yard sales and charity locations and selling them on. That is too much work for me.

It is surprising to me that Goodwill and The Salvation Army do not consolidate their bookselling activities. I hadn't really thought about this until I received a recent copy of Rare Book Review. Setting up a store front to sell second hand books could be beyond the abilities of Goodwill or the Salvos, but with so many easy online options and even 'wholesalers' such as blue rectangle who will buy titles in bulk (if they need them), it seems strange that these charities wouldn't be considering doing more with books. The story in RBR that caught my eye was on the increasing presence of Oxfam bookstores in UK high streets. Clearly, charities in the UK have recognized the value in selling donated books and have by accident or design taken on the small traditional local second hand bookseller. Not only is the traditional bookseller under cut on price but their supplies are also dwindling because the increased presence of charity bookstores serves to take away potential inventory.

The article notes the presence of Oxfam's Marylebone store which has an annual turnover of over £400K. As the article continues:

Oxfam's bookshops are the clear market leaders in the charity sector. Their transformations from ill-sorted repositories for unloved paperbacks to serious players in the secondhand and antiquarian book market has been swift and icily efficient. Between 1998 and 2005, sales rocketed year on year by 20% giving them an annual turnover of more than £16million, and making them Europe's largest bricks-and-mortar second hand book retailer. About 50 new stores have opened in the past year.

And they are not all in big city centers, as one local vendor in little Dumfies (I have visited) noted there are no second hand retailers left but there are four charity shops.

The crux of this article is the question of tax exempt status and it is a valid one. Regrettably, the poor second hand and antiquarian retailer is not going to garner much political support but it is a fair question whether it is right that charity shops can push for profit businesses out of business. On the other hand, as is argued in the article, perhaps the bookseller needs to compete better. Oxfam may become a victim of its own success with other charity organizations moving into 'their' market. They recognize this and are becoming more sophisticated in approach and have hired some expertise to make sure any actionable items are identified and indeed auctioned at specialist auctions such as Bloomsbury and Dominic Winter.

It is interesting how this phenomenon has developed as a physical storefront and not internet based and it will be interesting to see if the US market follows suit.

Completely Novel Launches Author Blog Awards

Book social site Completely Novel is launching an Author Blog Award effort to both reward great author websites and raise awareness of as many sites as possible. The company tells me their aim is to highlight to readers the great content that you can find in author blogs and microblogs and to reward authors who engage with their readers online and ecourage others to do the same.
All the blogs and microblogs that are nominated and shortlisted for the awards will get strong exposure from the competition and raise the profile of the authors behind them.

From their website:

The aim of the Author Blog Awards There are over 10,000 published and self-published authors blogging to readers, writers and industry professionals. Despite huge loyal followings and a remarkable wealth of new content, many readers remain unaware of these blogs. The Author Blog Awards is brought to you by CompletelyNovel and aims to honour the best blogs by both published and unpublished writers. They will recognise the writers who use their blogs to connect with readers in the most imaginative, engaging and inspiring ways. At the same time we hope to attract new audiences to these blogs and help readers find out more about the authors they love…and new authors too.

Edelweiss Is Blooming

Today’s announcement of the cooperative relationship between Above the Treeline and BookExpoAmerica is a perfect introduction to the potential of the book catalog and electronic promotion tool Edelweiss which launched just over a year ago. Edelweiss will power “Books@BEA” to create an online catalog of new titles from publishers exhibiting at Book Expo 2010 and will be free to both publishers and attendees. Since launch, Edelweiss has grown rapidly to 350 active catalogs containing more than 30,000 titles from nearly 600 publishers and their respective imprints. The exposure at Book Expo will allow new users to recognize the significant advantages that an Electronic catalog has over traditional printed book catalogs.

Building workflow solutions that embed an application into the production flow or process of a business or organization is a powerful way to build customer loyalty. Traditionally, those are not the type of applications you generally see in the book retail space less you happen to be the software provider Above the Treeline, which is doing exactly that.

When I was at Bowker in 2004, I met John Rubin who was rolling out the first version of his software product for small independent retailers. I was immediately taken by the product he was launching. Notably, his product development originated from real experience working with his family-owned independent store and this theme – taking a workflow approach to development – continues to serve the company well as it gains more recent success from Edelweiss, the company’s catalog application.

The core Above the Tree Line product enables booksellers to manage their inventory and store product mix in far more productive and profitable ways. For many stores, using this tool has probably enabled them to weather the recent cruel economic times far more effectively than they may have without it. Stores using the tool are able to see both their own inventory mix and turns and those of other stores in their geographic areas. This ‘collective’ knowledge encourages better market awareness and more intelligent buying decisions, supporting better sales performance.

Edelweiss is a newer product application that builds on the base Above the Treeline application. In speaking to John recently, he emphasized that, in the development of Edelweiss, the workflow approach was key to understanding how a typical bookstore, publisher and publicity person worked with book catalogs. The application has been in full roll-out for just over a year and continues to garner unsolicited positive comments from users. “Timesaver” and “efficiency” seem to be the recurrent themes of this feedback. Above the Treeline was able to establish an early relationship with the ABA and has recently announced an agreement with Association of American University Presses (AAUP).

Edelweiss allows any registered user to create a catalog which can then be marked up and emailed (distributed) to others. The users can order from the catalog and data is also integrated with a store’s point-of-sale system. Users can also add more information to a title such as covers, internal reference materials or other content, and using WYSIWYG screens makes adding this content very easy. From the publisher perspective, they can set up catalogs any way they want. No longer does a publisher or sales rep have to rely on a generic catalog: Building one by genre, previous seasons buys or any other criteria is simple, efficient and effective. The sales rep is also able to create custom address lists so they can create their own mailing lists within the system to make their communication far more productive.

This is a “publisher pays” model with free access to the service for retailers. The publisher pays a base administration fee and then a per-title charge for each six-month period. The payback for publishers should be obvious in reduced hard-copy catalogs, more effective sales reps and better and more efficient buy-in from the stores.

In coming months, the company expects to enhance Edelweiss with several new enhancements that they emphasize (again) come from the feedback they have received from the marketplace. These will include:

• Subject/Format Mapping: Retailers will appreciate the ability to map to POS departments using a combination of bisac subject category and bisac format code.
• Google Map Authors and Titles: Soon the company will introduce the ability to search Edelweiss based on geographic criteria in conjunction with the currently available filter criteria. Set an address and a radius to search, and results will be mapped on Google maps based on available author bio info (residence, birthplace, universities attended or affiliated) and title setting or relevance.
• Custom Market Views: As the number of users and publishers have grown, the company has seen a need to provide different views of the system. Soon retailers and other catalog readers will be able to choose between a number of different market views such as General Trade, Christian Trade, Academic and others. Each view will provide a custom set of publishers, catalogs and titles specifically for that market.

Not only is Above the Treeline expanding the functionality of Edelweiss, but they also continue to look for other opportunities to improve the relationship between independent retailers and publishers (such as the Book Expo relationship). Late last year, the company announced a partnership with Firebrand Technologies that allows integration of the Net Galley e-Galley service into Edelweiss. From their press release:

Edelweiss publishers will be able to use NetGalley’s powerful functionality to offer digital galleys, with or without DRM, directly from their Edelweiss catalogs. NetGalley supports a broad range of dedicated reading devices and platforms and publishers can select reading options and security features based on their specific needs.

For NetGalley publishers with Edelweiss catalogs, this additional functionality will come at no additional charge. Edelweiss publishers who are not currently using NetGalley will be able to purchase the NetGalley add-on on a per-title basis for their Edelweiss catalogs through Above the Treeline. The first electronic galleys provided by NetGalley will appear in Edelweiss in the second quarter of 2010.

As the Net Galley integration takes hold and more Edelweiss functionality is implemented we should see even wider acceptance of Above the Treeline products and services. Interestingly, other publishers outside the traditional independent retail segment are starting to take note of the Above the Treeline products with Moody Publishers and their 34,000 titles announcing that they have chosen Edelweiss as their web-based catalog of choice. And I am sure there will be more to come.

The New Library Model in Birmingham?

The guardian publishes a discussion of the plight of British libraries as they struggle for relevance and uses the proposed new Birmingham public library as the focal point of the article. While UK libraries are in particularly desperate circumstances, some of the issues remain constant with libraries elsewhere including the US. (Guardian):

Whitby's office looks out on to the existing Birmingham Central Library, an inverted modernist ziggurat built in 1973-4. This is the building Prince Charles famously described as a place where books were incinerated rather than borrowed. Unlike him, I once spent long, happy hours reading here, amazed that so many books (2.5m of them, stretching over seven floors) were at the disposal of a non-princely nobody like me. Now culture minister Margaret Hodge has given the go-ahead to flatten this Grade II-listed building; demolition will be completed over the next five years. Why must it go? "It leaks, and great big chunks of concrete keep falling from it," says Birmingham head of libraries, Brian Gambles. He keeps a souvenir chunk in his office to prove the point. "It's ugly and unfit for purpose and would cost too much to properly renovate."

In advance of a report on libraries, the Culture Minister sees volunteerism, loyalty cards and 'creative thinking' as avenues to reform:

Hodge wants such reforms to revolutionise the library service without adding to the cost. "It isn't enough to say, as some do, that all libraries need is more money to supply more books and have longer opening hours. The point is we have got to be more innovative, because the money ain't there." She cites the head of Norwich libraries as a success story. "She has reversed the national footfall trend. She told me that if she's ever stuck for an idea on how to run libraries, she visits Tesco." Hodge is also impressed by the ideas of Starbucks' UK MD Darcy Willson-Rymer, who argues that the best way to save libraries is to put coffee shops in them, as they have in the US. "I like the idea of browsing books in a library with a coffee." She is fearful for those libraries that won't embrace such changes, describing them as "sleepwalking into the era of the iPhone, the ebook and the Xbox without a strategy". Having no strategy, Hodge argues, runs the risk of turning libraries into "a curiosity of history, like telex machines or typewriters".

Naturally, cost cuts - rather than even unchanged funding levels - are a focus across the country:

Of course some Britons couldn't care less about saving their local library. When West Sussex county council recently announced it was planning to reduce opening hours for three out of four libraries, in order to save £200,000, several blog posts on the Brighton Evening Argus website suggested the cuts weren't deep enough. "I haven't been to the library for years," wrote Arthur of Horsham. "I read papers online, get information from the internet and buy books from Amazon. The people who most 'need' them – are the least likely to use them – too busy watching rubbish on TV. They are essentially outdated and should morph into more of an online information service."

Lastly, on the ground how does an average library manage patron experience:

Consider this vignette. Last week I was angrily returning a book to Islington Central Library when I passed a woman in the foyer drinking beer and swearing at people going in and out. It was 9.45am. But it wasn't her who made me livid. I was angry because when I read the book I had borrowed – the AA Guide to Los Angeles – it informed me that LA was looking forward to hosting the Olympic Games. Hold on: didn't LA host the Olympics in 1984? And wasn't that 26 years ago? It turned out that the book dated from the late 1970s. It's perhaps unfair to point out that Margaret Hodge was Islington council's leader from 1982 to 1992. But during that period someone, surely, should have thought of taking the AA Guide to LA out of service.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 10): Dave Eggers, WorldBook Day, James Joyce

Long review and interview with Dave Eggers about his recent book and about McSweeneys (Observer):

Well, you need to read Zeitoun. All I can tell you is that it is like something out of Kafka. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) should have been there only to help. But its absorption by the Department of Homeland Security, itself a creation of George Bush following 9/11, seemed somehow to have muddled priorities. As hundreds of Americans drowned, the people at the Department of Homeland Security were still worrying obsessively about the many and various ways in which a terrorist might seek to "exploit" a hurricane. Eggers found Zeitoun via his Voice of Witness project, a non-profit venture which produces books in which ordinary people tell their stories (the first book in the series told the stories of victims of miscarriages of justice in America; Zeitoun first appeared in a volume devoted to Katrina; the next will be about Zimbabwe). "A few weeks after the storm, we started working with local interviewers, sending them into Atlanta and Houston, and all the places people had fled. I was struck by Zeitoun's story, so the next time I was in New Orleans I met the family. I was angry about the war on terror and the suspension of all sense of decency. This seemed like the absolute nadir of all the Bush policies and here was this family squeezed between all these distorted priorities. We talked, and in the first hour it was clear that there was so much to say." Eggers the novelist found a pleasing watery symmetry in Zeitoun's story; his brother, Mohammed, had been a world-class swimmer, a famous man back home in Syria. The family came from originally from Arwad, an island. An island, off Syria? Eggers had never heard of such a place. He was hooked. .... What's more, when it comes to memoir, the line between truth and fiction is, for him, an agonising one and perhaps best avoided. When the James Frey row blew up – it was discovered that Frey's "memoir" about his drugs hell, A Million Little Pieces, was largely fiction – Eggers received at least 100 emails asking him to comment. "I am obsessed with explaining my processes, in my first book, and elsewhere. I didn't weigh in because I hadn't read the book. But I felt for everybody. For him, for his readers, for Oprah – I'm a fan of hers and what she does for books. He stretched things, but you can read the book how you want, and that's how it's read now. With a grain of salt." Sometimes, fiction takes you closer to truth. "Tim O'Brien's book about Vietnam, The Things They Carried, has won every award, is studied in college and is considered to be definitive. But it's fiction." He sighs. "Oh, I'm always sad at book controversies!"

Victoria Barnsley on World Book Day (Observer):

But arguably these gadgets will be serving an audience of existing readers. What interests me in particular is the ability to reach new readers through new devices or clever ways of getting content to existing devices. On Boxing Day 2008, Nintendo launched their 100 Classic Books collection for those who had just received a DS for Christmas. And they were overwhelmed by the take-up. It was one of their top-selling products of the season. Now – who would have thought that teenagers would be huddled together round their screens reading Oliver Twist? Not me for one. So there is huge potential if we provide the right content to get young audiences enthused about great stories.

No doubt those same younger audiences will devise many clever new ways to consume content, to read books, to view movies. But there is one thing that remains constant for me and connects us back to our forebears sitting around fires at the beginning of time – the fascination with storytelling, the desire to learn about ourselves and the world through the power of the imagination. The plethora of new ways to express those thoughts can only enrich this age-old culture.

It's true that World Book Day in the UK has always had a huge emphasis, rightly so, on children. We know that if they catch the bug young, children will become lifelong readers. But for those who have missed out on the opportunity, the Quick Reads series launched in 2006 has been a great success. Aimed at reaching out to the millions of adults in the UK with reading difficulties and the one-third of the British population that never picks up a book, they are written by bestselling authors for both emergent readers and for readers wanting a short, pacy read. And research shows that once they have acquired the habit of reading, they never lose it.

Joyce's Finnegans Wake has been re-edited (Observer):

Seventy years on, scholars Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon have reached the conclusion of 30 years of textual analysis. Poring over the tens of thousands of pages of notes, drafts, typescripts and proofs that make up, in Joyce's own words, his "litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of whirlwords", they have made 9,000 "minor yet crucial" amendments and corrections to the book, from misspellings to misplaced phrases, ruptured syntax and punctuation marks.

"I never thought I'd see this day," said Rose. "The complexity of the texts and the complexity of the social situation meant it was very, very difficult indeed, but we stuck with it and we got there. There were 20,000 pages of manuscript, and beyond that 60 notebooks, and beyond that it extended out into thousands of different volumes. It extends out and out and out – what Joyce was doing was distilling in and in and in. To reach the text we had to follow him back, and it's a lot harder to go backwards than forwards."

Author David Shields making the case for literary "appropriation" (Boston Globe):

“Reality Hunger” has a number of grievances and goals. Shields, the author of nine previous books, is sick of the traditional novel and calls for a “blurring” of genres, championing what he calls the “lyric essay” as the emerging vehicle of “chunks of ‘reality,’ ” emotional immediacy, and meaningful contemplation. In addition, the author praises the self-referential, ironic, and irreverent as seen in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” karaoke, Sarah Silverman’s stand-up routines, “Borat,” and other contemporary cultural productions.

He also makes a passionate case for the literary “appropriation” of the words of others (as in musical “sampling”). Indeed, he praises plagiarism, and more than two-thirds of “Reality Hunger” itself is unoriginal material, a collection of others’ words. The lawyers at Random House insisted that Shields cite the sources at the end of the book. The “author” reluctantly complies but advises the reader to cut these pages out.

From the twitter:

NY Law School Professor James Grimmelmann has self-archived "The Amended Google Books Settlement is Still Exclusive" in SSRN

This brief essay argues that the proposed settlement in the Google Books case, although formally non-exclusive, would have the practical effect of giving Google an exclusive license to a large number of books. The settlement itself does not create mechanisms for Google's competitors to obtain licenses to orphan books and competitors are unlikely to be able to obtain similar settlements of their own. Recent amendments to the settlement do not change this conclusion.

Project to develop "Open Bibliographic Data" (OpenKnowledge)

In the past few weeks there have been a number of developments related to opening up bibliographic metadata. At the end of January we blogged about CERN opening up their library data. Just recently Ghent University Library have published their data under an open licenseugent_biblio and ugent_catalog) - which is excellent news! (see

In the first instance this group will aim to:

1. Act as a central point of reference and support for people interested in open bibliographic data
2. Identify relevant projects and practices. Promote best practices as well as legal and technical standards for making data open (such as the Open Knowledge Definition).
3. Act as a hub for the development and maintenance of low cost, community driven projects related to open bibliographic data.

Visual Books - Love the London Underground world map. (NYTimes)

Heroes of “This Book Is Overdue” are resolutely high-tech, engaged in “activist and visionary forms of library work.” (NYTimes) And Manchester United are top of the table this morning.

Times Square: Thursday Evening

Is There a Future for Bibliographic Databases? - Repost

The following was originally posted on April 2nd, 2007 and since John and I met for dinner in NYC last night I thought I would re-post his article.


I have commented a number of times on what I view is the future of bibliographic databases - particularly those similar to Books in Print and Worldcat - and in keeping with that theme I asked John Dupuis (Confessions of a Science Librarian) what his views were on the same subject. The following article is written by John Dupuis, Science Librarian, Steacie Science & Engineering Library, York University. He told me to mention he is on sabbatical.


A week or so ago, Michael asked me to do a guest post here on Personanondata about bibliographic databases, based on some of the speculations I've made on my own blog, Confessions of a Science Librarian, about the future of Abstracting and Indexing databases.

Here's how he put it in his email:

I have read your posts on the future of information databases and bibliographies etc. over the past several months and I was wondering whether you had a specific opinion of the future of bibliographic databases such as worldcat and booksinprint? ... [O]n my blog I have skirted around the idea that the basic logic of these types of databases is beginning to erode as base level metadata is more readily available and of sufficient quality to reduce the need for these types of bibliographic databases. Assuming that is increasingly the case then these providers need to determine new value propositions for their customers. So what are they?

How could I resist? I'm not sure if I exactly answer his questions or even talked about what he'd hoped I'd talk about, but at least I've probably provoked a few more questions.

In my blog post on the future of A&I databases, I basically came to the conclusion that in the face of competition from Google Scholar and its ilk, the traditional Abstracting & Indexing databases would be increasingly hard-pressed to make a case for their usefulness to academic institutions. Students want ease of use, they concentrate on what's "good enough" not what's perfect. Over time, academic libraries will find it harder and harder to justify spending loads of money on search and discovery tools when plenty of free alternatives exist. Unless, of course, the vendors can find some way to add enough value to the data to make themselves indispensable. I used SciFinder Scholar as an example of a tool that adds a lot of value to data. I think we'll definitely start to see this transition from fee to free in the next 10 years, with considerable acceleration after that.

Now, I didn't really talk about bibliographic/collections tools like Books in Print (BiP), WorldCat (WC), Ulrich's or the Serials Directory (SD). Why not? I think it's because those tools are aimed at experts, not end users. Professionals, not civilians. Surely if a freshman only wants a couple of quick articles to quote for a paper due in a couple of hours, then we librarians and publishing professionals are looking for good, solid, quality information and we're willing to pay for it. This distinction would seem to me to be quite important, leading to quite a different kind of analysis, one I wasn't really aiming at originally. So, I didn't really think about it at the time.

So, now it's time to put the thinking cap back on and see what my crystal ball tells me.

In my professional work as a collections librarian, I am a frequent user of all the tools I mention above. I think that BiP is the one I use the most. Over the last 5 or 6 years I've built up a specialized engineering collection mostly from scratch so I've needed a lot of help and BiP has been an enormously useful tool. I use keyword searches. I also use the subject links on the item records a lot to take me to lists of similar books.

WC I use less frequently, mostly only when I want to look beyond books that are in print and want to identify older and rarer items that I'll end up having to get on the used book market. I've used this to build up various aspects of our Science and Technology Studies collection on topics like women in science. On the other hand, WC seems to have already found a big part of its value proposition with non-experts. Look at it's partnership with Google Book Search. Also look at the really innovative things it's doing with products like WorldCat Identities. It's not perfect by any means but you can see the innovative spirit working.

Ulrich's and SD I mostly use to identify pricing issues for journals I might want to subscribe to, so I don't use them that often. With the ease of finding journal homepages, this function is probably falling fast in it's uses. As for identifying the journals in a particular subject area, that's still a useful function but I wonder what the future is if that's all they offer.

For our purposes here, I'll concentrate on the one I use most: BiP. I presume a lot of what I have to say will also more or less apply to the other specialized tools aimed at pros.

So, I definitely need quality information on books to do my job, now and in the future. But if I need quality information, what will the source be? Although of course I use BiP, I also use Amazon quite a lot to find information on books I want to order; the features that they have that I like best and use most come out of the kind of data mining they can do with their ordering and access logs. When I'm looking at an interesting item, Amazon can quickly tell me what other books are similar, what other books people that have purchased the one I'm looking at have also purchased. I find this to be an extremely important tool for finding books, a great time saver and an incredibly accurate way of finding relevant items. Also, when I search Amazon, I'm actually searching the full text of a lot of books in their database. This feature gets me inside books and unleashes their contents in a way that can't be duplicated by being able to view or even search tables of contents.

I also very much like the user-generated lists and reviews. On more than one occasion I've appreciated multiple user reviews of highly technical books, especially when there are negative reviews to warn me away from bad ones. The "Listmania" and "So you'd like to.." lists are great sources of recommendations. On the other hand, it has some significant problems that keep me from going to it exclusively. For example, most any search returns reams of irrelevant hits. The subject classifications that Amazon displays at the bottom of the page I also find next to useless as they are often far too broad.

For BiP, the features I appreciate the most, the ones that draw me back from Amazon, include very good linkable subject classification and good coverage of non-US imprints. When I do keyword searches, the results seem more focused and less cluttered with irrelevant items. I also like that it gives me very complete bibliographic information, including at least part of a call number. While Amazon isn't geared to let you mark then print out a bunch of items (why would they want you to be able to do this?), I appreciate being able to generate lists and print them out using BiP. On the other hand, BiP has been slow to make their interface as quick and easy to use as Google or Amazon, to make use of the tons of data they have, to mine it to find connections, to harness user input and reviews in a massive way to compete with the Amazon juggernaut. When for-fee is competing with for-free, the one that costs money has to be very clearly the best.

Another threat to BiP is Google Book Search. As I've recounted in a story on my blog, Google Book Search in an incredible tool for research, reference and even collections. Once again, the ability to search the entire text of books is an incredible tool for revealing what they're really about, to surface them and make me want to buy them. As Cory Doctorow has said, the greatest enemy of authors (and publishers) is not piracy, it's obscurity. Google Book Search is an amazing tool for a book to get known and,ultimately, to get bought. As more and more publishers realize this (and even book publishers are smart enough to realize this eventually), they'll make darn sure all their new books are full text searchable by Google (and, presumably, Amazon and others). How can BiP compete with that?

I think it's safe to say, it wouldn't take much for me to completely abandon the use of BiP and only use free tools such as Amazon and Google. What could BiP do to keep in the game? What is their value proposition for me? What is the value proposition for all bibliographic tools hoping to market themselves to library professionals now and in the future?

Some issues I've been thinking about.

• The changing nature of publishing What's a book? What's a journal? What does "in print" mean? Print journals vs. online? Ebooks vs. paper books? Fee vs. Free. Open Access publishing. Wikis. Blogs. To say that bibliographic databases have to be ahead of the curve on all the revolutionary changes going on today in publishing is an understatement. Look at all the trouble newspapers are in, the trouble they're having adjusting to a new business model. Well, the book world is changing as well, especially for academic customers. The needs of academic users are quite different from regular users. They don't necessarily need to read an entire book, just key sections. Search and discovery are incredibly important to these users, almost more important than the content. They also really don't care about the source of their content, what they really care about is having as few barriers between the content and themselves. How will BiP and other bibliographic databases help professionals like me navigate this mess? Easy. By continuing to provide one-stop-shopping, only for a much wider range of items. Paper books from traditional publishers, for sure, but how about all those Print on Demand publishers? Sifting through the chaff to get the rare kernel of wheat is an important task, one I know that they're already doing to some degree. But how about digital document publishers like Morgan & Claypool? O'Reilly's Digital PDFs? White papers and other documents from all kinds of publishers? How about the incredible amount of free ebooks out there? And other useful digital documents and document collections, both free and for sale (The Einstein Archives is an example)? And breaking down the digital availability of the component parts of collections like Knovel, Safari, Books 24x7 and all the others. Any tool that could help me evaluate the pros and cons of those repositories would be greatly appreciated. The landscape out there for useful information is clearly far larger than it used to be.
  
• Changing nature of metadata. Never underestimate the value of good metadata; never underestimate the value of the people that produce that metadata. It seems to me that one of the core issues is who should create metadata for books and other documents and how should that metadata be distributed to the people that want it, be it commercial search engines or library/bookstore catalogues. It would be great if all content publishers created their own metadata and that it was of the highest quality and free to everyone. There's a role for bibliographic databases to collect and distribute that metadata, maybe even to create it. The library world has a good history of sharing that kind of data, but I'm not sure how that model scales to a bigger world. It seems to me that there's an opportunity here.
  
• Changing nature of customers. I've publicly predicted that I will hardly be buying any more print books for my library in 10 years. Libraries are changing, bookstores are changing. Our patrons and customers are the ones driving this change. As my patrons want more digital content, as they use print collections less, as they rely on free search and discovery tools rather than expensive specialized tools, I must change too. As my patrons' needs and habits change, the nature of the collections I will acquire for them will follow those changes -- or I will find myself in big trouble. Anybody that can make my life easier is certainly going to be welcome. And that will be the challenge for the various bibliographic tools -- making it easier for me to respond to the changes sweeping my world. A good bibliographic service should be able to help me populate the catalogue with the stuff I want and my patrons need. I think a lot of progress has been made on this front in products like WC, but I think to stay in the game the progress will have to be transformative. There's lots of opportunity here.
  
• What's worth paying for. In other words, BiP, WC and their ilk have to be better than the free alternatives. And not just a little better. And not just better in an abstruse, theoretical way; if it takes you 20 minutes to explain why you're better, the margin may be too slim. Better as in way better on 80% of my usage rather than just somewhat better than on 20%. Better as in saving time, saving effort, saving more money than they cost, making my life easier.

To conclude, I can only say one thing. In times of intense change and uncertainty, evolutionary pressure is extremely intense. Only those products and services that can find an ecological niche, a way to satisfy enough customers, will survive. To thrive is another story. To thrive requires a redefinition of products and services, a way to jump ahead of competitors and to win new markets with something new and exciting. It's hard to tell where bibliographic databases will find their place: will they be dodo birds, or will they find a way to survive or even thrive in the coming decade. There's certainly a window to change. Nobody is going to cancel any of these core tools any time soon. But the window will close sooner rather than later.

John can be reached at the following email address: dupuisj@gmail.com

OnCopyright 2010: The Collision of Ideas - Conference

Hosted by Copyright Clearance Center is an upcoming conference in NYC On Copyright. Here is their spiel:

The debate over copyright—its value, its limits, its virtues and its future—is raging as never before. Technology innovation is creating new models for content distribution and disrupting the economics of entire industries. Ad-based media companies are wondering what the future holds and are questioning whether high-quality content is still a viable commodity. Artists are exploring new forms of creativity and pushing the edges of rights and ownership ever outward. And there are new calls from all quarters for changes in the laws governing fair use, search, aggregation and more. Join us at OnCopyright 2010 as we explore these questions and more with some of the leading experts, practitioners and thinkers of the day. It's our future. It's OnCopyright.

Speakers include:
William Patry Senior Copyright Counsel Google
Ben Sheffner Copyright & Media Attorney
Fred von Lohmann Senior Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation
Virginia Rutledge Copyright Attorney & Art Historian

Beyond the Book Interview with Cory Doctorow

Sounding more like a college economics professor than a bestselling sci-fi author, Cory Doctorow offers his suggestions for how publishers should arrive at the “right price” for e-books. As for copyright, he defends “fair use” and questions strict interpretations of the phrase, “all rights reserved.”

For publishers, authors and their readers, 2010 will likely go down as the year when e-books finally and decisively won a permanent place in the literary hierarchy. At Beyond the Book, we’re following this story from a number of angles, and we will continue this special coverage in coming weeks with a focus series on e-books available on BlogTalkRadio.

Penguin's View of the Future (Video)

Penguin CEO Makinson - Definition of the book itself is up for grabs and we're not sure yet what consumers are willing to pay for. We will only find out via trial and error and 'dynamic' pricing.

Video of his comments:



Video demo of some of their current ideas:



Via Paidcontent

Book Movement

This means little but it is intellectually interesting to me: On Sunday night 60Mins had segment on the Armenian mass murder that took place during WW1. During that segment, they noted Armenian Golgotha written by Grigoris Balakian which was written about the atrocity and published in March 2009. On Sunday night the hard cover, paper and Kindle books were ranked 108,172, 42,618 and 21,975 in their respective bookstores. By Tuesday morning, the numbers where significantly changed: 9,201, 2,036 and 7,623. As far out on the sales curve as 102,172 is probably means that any news or pr is likely to move the title significantly up the curve however, the title doesn't seem to have moved as far up in popularity in the Kindle store as it has in the hardcover and paper formats. There's probably some math equation there that explains all.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 9): Cool reading, Dick Francis, Reader's Digest, "Free" is Advertising

Lucy Mangan writing in the Guardian: How to make reading cool (Guardian)

World Book Day is a wondrous hive of activity. There are exhibitions, school visits by authors, story­time sessions, the distribution of vouchers, trips to libraries and book shops, and all of this is, of course, A Very Good Thing, pointing as it does the way for many to an unfamiliar source of entertainment. But it does all have that slightly worthy, top-down feel that only heightens the real problem with reading, which is that it is and always has been terminally uncool (even in Victorian times, the boy with the hoop and stick got more kudos than the one who got the third volume of Jane Eyre before anyone else). What it ­really needs to get kids reading en masse is a few initiatives to rupture that link. A free Bacardi Breezer with every book next year, perhaps. Or black T-shirts for everyone that say, "Fuck off, I'm reading." Or ­borrow a trick from cigarette ­advertising and warn that this ­volume might give you cancer.

Hand wringing over celebrity books (Guardian):

John Sutherland He rejoiced to concur with the common reader, said Dr Johnson. I don't exactly rejoice at the triumph of celebrity books, any more than I rejoice at the Economist, Spectator and New Statesman being elbowed off my local newsstand by the latest instalment of the Katie Price / Peter Andre / Alex Reid saga. But it's a fact of life. Live with it. We don't have much choice.

The book world's not so mystery bloggers (Guardian):

The most venerable of these is more of a traditional newspaper diarist rather than a faceless guerrilla blogger, but as Horace Bent has embraced the internet and does appear on his (we must, of course, presume masculinity from his name) Twitter profile with a bag over his head (though this has, in an indication that publishing is rising out of the recession, recently acquired a drawn-on face and a couple of authorial cats). Bent writes for the Bookseller and is, in his own words, the custodian of the Diagram prize for the oddest book title of the year.Bent's nuggets are often drawn from the dry sales figures the Bookseller avails itself of, with a nice line in arch commentary: "Sales of Andy Murray's memoir were up 150% last week – to 45 copies sold. Cripes, even A Scattering [small press Costa winner] sold more than that!" and sotto voce asides: "I wonder whether the three bespectacled members of Channel 4's TV Book Club went to Specsavers?"

Informa has moved its tax domicile to Switzerland to save £12mm per year in UK tax. They are following the example set by others including UBM who relocated to Dublin. (Times) The Times reprints the last interview with Dick Francis from September 2009 and in it he talks of collaboration with his son Felix who will keep the books coming no doubt (Times):

The Dick Francis way of doing things is clearly a winning formula and Francis has sold more than 75 million books since he first put pen to paper in 1957 for his autobiography, The Sport of Queens. “You know what you’re going to get with a Dick Francis,” says Felix. “Horses, jockeys, danger, good triumphing over evil, but not on a smooth and even path. I like to think, or at least I hope I’ve made the books a bit younger, and given them slightly more humour.” Though Francis senior can hardly be accused of losing his sense of fun - since having a foot amputated two years ago, he signs his letters “Legless Dick”. Richard Stanley Francis was born in Lawrenny, south Wales, in 1920, and grew up in Berkshire with horses and racing in his blood. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been steeplechase jockeys and horse breeders. “I always loved riding, ever since I was so high” he says, stretching out his hand close to the floor. The outbreak of the Second World War delayed his foray into racing and in 1940, he joined the RAF, working as part of the ground crew repairing planes in the Middle East, before completing his pilot training and returning to England to fly Spitfires and Lancasters.

The Mail on Sunday is reporting 'significant interest' from possible buyers for Reader's Digest UK (Mail):

The administrators of Reader's Digest UK said today there was "significant interest" from potential buyers of the business and confirmed the magazine would continue to be published until at least April.The 72-year-old British edition of the magazine collapsed into administration earlier this month when its embattled US parent Reader's Digest Association (RDA) said it was no longer able to support it following a crisis in its pension fund.Today, administrator Philip Sykes, of Moore Stephens, said there was "significant interest" as he sought a buyer for the business.Mr Sykes said: 'While we are reasonably optimistic, it is difficult to predict a timescale, but negotiations with interested parties have begun.'

Research suggests free on-line content does not hurt paid student enrollment (Chron HEd)

New research takes a close look at what happened when one institution, Brigham Young University, experimented with granting free access to the content of some of its distance-education courses. The study examined the cost of opening up those materials and the impact their publication had on paid enrollments, a concern for institutions worried that giving away free courses could cannibalize their ranks of paying students. The data suggest they needn’t worry. Opening the courses “provided neither a large positive marketing effect that boosted enrollments nor a large negative free-rider impact decreasing enrollments,” wrote Justin K. Johansen, who conducted the study as a dissertation in instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young, where he also serves as director of independent study. “Really, the OpenCourseWare ended up serving as an advertising tool,” Mr. Johansen said in an interview. Over all, the six opened courses attracted 13,795 visits and 445 paid enrollments in four months. But Mr. Johansen cautions that the limited length of the pilot study meant that a “statistically significant” measure of the impact of opening the classes on paid enrollment “was not possible.”

And from the twitter (@personanondata) this week: Guardian:Teenage fiction's death wishes "why are teenagers so fascinated by tales of death and dying?" (Guardian) Seattle Public Library opens conversation on its future: Seattle Times "We want people to think big about the library," (ST) A Win For Publishers: Gain an injunction against German file-sharing company Rapidshare AG (Inside HigherEd) I've finally cracked Meacham's American Lion and hopefully I can find the time to finish it quickly.

Alibris Buys Monsoon Software

Alibris has announced they have purchased marketing services company Monsoon which helps companies manage their on-line retail operations (OregonLive)

The companies did not put a dollar value on the deal, but Gopalpur said Monsoon's early backers -- who invested about $2 million in the company in 2005 -- "got a very good return on their investment."

Monsoon employs 50 in Portland, and the company said all those workers will keep their jobs. Monsoon said it also plans to fill two open positions and add more jobs later in the year.

Monsoon's technology helps independent sellers on big online marketplaces -- Amazon.com and eBay, for example -- manage their inventory, pricing and order fulfillment, according to Gopalpur. He said its business fits neatly with Alibris' online book, music and movie store.

Monsoon's 2009 revenue totaled just above $7.9 million, according to Gopalpur. He said the company plans to add new services, and new employees, in 2010.

The interesting thing about Monsoon is whether the company offers an industrial version that medium and larger publishers could use.

From their press release:

Monsoon Chief Executive Officer Kanth Gopalpur, who will continue as CEO and join the Alibris Holdings executive management team post-transaction, said, “This transaction will provide the combined Monsoon-Alibris customer base with even more opportunities to expand their businesses and increase sales. We will be able to take advantage of additional resources, technology, and capital in order to deliver more and better solutions to grow our customers’ businesses on all online marketplaces.”

Leveraging the best of what each company has to offer, the Monsoon-Alibris merger will broaden sellers’ reach, giving them increased sales potential with the best tools, world-class customer support, and an extensive network of business partnerships, including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Chapters Indigo, eBay, and Waterstone’s. Monsoon will continue to run as a separate operating company led by Kanth Gopalpur and the Monsoon senior management team. Combined, Alibris and Monsoon managed more than $400 million of book, music, movie, and videogame sales for its sellers in 2009.

re-Set Conference Series from HarperStudio

HarperStudio is launching an interesting conference series featuring 'brand-name' authors and speakers. Sounds interesting - from the website:

re-Set Business is an innovative speaker series designed for senior-level executives to share thoughts with the world’s leading visionaries about how the world does business in a variety of fields, today and in the future.

Speakers on tap include Michael Eisner, Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin.

BISG Needs You!

In advance of this year's Making Information Pay (May 6th, McGraw Hill Auditorium), BISG is sponsoring a survey on "Exploring the Digital Transformation of the Book Industry" and will use the responses during the day's conference. Here is their press release:

A new Book Industry Study Group (BISG) survey, opened today, explores the ways in which new technologies are dictating “points of no return” in how books—both digital and physical—are being acquired, produced, distributed, marketed and sold.

The survey is being conducted as part of preparations for BISG’s seventh annual Making Information Pay conference, to be held Thursday, May 6, 2010 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City.

The survey is open to all members of the publishing community and can be found HERE. “The Making Information Pay Pre-Event Survey has become a vital learning tool for the conference over the past few years,” said Angela Bole, BISG’s Deputy Executive Director. “It’s a great way for members of the book community to become involved with the program and be sure their voice is heard.”

As new technologies revolutionize the book business, Making Information Pay 2010 will address key “points of no return” through an open exploration of how close we are to a fundamentally different publishing paradigm driven by:

• Books without bindingsBestsellers without agents or publishers
• Retailers without storefrontsSales efforts without sales forces
• Distributors without warehouses

Featuring a lineup of book industry leaders sharing practical insight into how they respond daily to the waves of change affecting the book industry, Making Information Pay 2010 will explore how we can know when systemic change is actually happening. Speakers and a full agenda will be announced at a later date.

If the above link doesn't work copy this: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8987JRX

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 8): Larsson Trilogy (or More), Learning, Reader's Digest, BGov.

If you want to see the first movie versions of those very popular Stieg Larsson books you will need to look hard because they don't have a US distributor this despite the fact that they have collected all kinds of critical support in Europe. The last (or is there a fourth?) title has been available in the UK for months but will not be out in the US for many more so while waiting amuse yourself with a profile of the actress who plays Lisbeth Salander and contemplate George Clonney for Mikael Blomkvist: Could it happen? - Times Online

It is Salander, the unlikeliest of literary heroines, with whom Rapace has become inextricably entwined. As the character’s screen embodiment, she has starred in all three film adaptations of the books, the third of which has just opened in Scandinavia. Belatedly, the first one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is about to launch in the UK; the other two follow later in the year. It has been worth the wait. The story of the wealthy Vanger family and the unresolved disappearance of the patriarch’s niece in 1966 is far from a trashy screen translation. A superior thriller, it has been nominated for gongs across Europe, not least for its female lead. There is a touch of Salander about Rapace in real life. “I am not senti­mental,” she shrugs. “The prizes, I give them to my manager.” At one point during filming, she even threatened to quit after a blazing row with the director, Niels Arden Oplev. “In every creative circus, it’s good to have some fights,” she offers. “In Sweden, in most film productions, everybody’s friends and everybody’s afraid of conflict.”

Switching gears a bit - The Chronicle of Higher Ed looks at how scholars are looking into how the brain deals with multi-tasking particularly in respect to learning and memory: (Chronicle)

That illusion of competence is one of the things that worry scholars who study attention, cognition, and the classroom. Students' minds have been wandering since the dawn of education. But until recently—so the worry goes—students at least knew when they had checked out. A student today who moves his attention rapid-fire from text-messaging to the lecture to Facebook to note-taking and back again may walk away from the class feeling buzzed and alert, with a sense that he has absorbed much more of the lesson than he actually has. " Heavy multitaskers are often extremely confident in their abilities," says Clifford I. Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. "But there's evidence that those people are actually worse at multitasking than most people." Indeed, last summer Nass and two colleagues published a study that found that self-described multitaskers performed much worse on cognitive and memory tasks that involved distraction than did people who said they preferred to focus on single tasks. Nass says he was surprised at the result: He had expected the multitaskers to perform better on at least some elements of the test. But no. The study was yet another piece of evidence for the unwisdom of multitasking.

The problems of Reader's Digest UK and its imminent collapse may bewilder some but many long time readers will miss the title if it disappears. Here is Alexander McCall Smith's portrayal: Reader's Digest: a teacher, and a friend (Telegraph)

And that was the problem: the Reader's Digest was unashamedly middlebrow. It had no intellectual pretensions: it sought to entertain and, yes, educate its readers. This was at a time when everything was going the other way. It was no longer fashionable to claim an educational role in the mass media – everything had to be entertainment, everything had to be slick and, if possible, sensational. The Reader's Digest clung stubbornly to the notion that mass reading could be part of the process of educating the public about the world. It published popular science; it published factual articles about economics and business, about history and endeavour. This all continued at a time when radio and television were turning away from any serious educational objectives. The Reader's Digest stuck to its mission. It was a magazine for autodidacts.

The NYTimes is to implement sometype of pay wall later this year but some research conducted with smaller newspapers may mean the NYTimes will be forced to reverese its decision quickly thereafter. From Viewsflow, Early newspaper paywall results suggest that the New York Times' plan is doomed (Viewsflow) Fancy yourself a writer, then perhaps you should follow some of these simple rules: Ten rules for writing fiction (Guardian)

From Roddy Doyle, Number One: Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

News a few weeks ago that Bloomberg is to build a legal reference product to compete with West and LexisNexis is now followed by confirmation that the company also intends to build a government data reference business. (Acquisitions anyone?) Washington Technology

Mark Amtower first reported the rumor earlier today on his Amtower B2G blog. Bloomberg officials confirmed the acquisition when contacted by Washington Technology, but would comment on the value of the deal or expand on Bloomberg’s strategy in the government space. However, rumors have swirled in recent months about Bloomberg wanting to create a Bloomberg Government business to be named Bgov. The enterprise will compete with the likes of Congressional Quarterly, but with a focus on how government actions impact publicly traded companies.

United had a chance to go top this weekend and blew it.

Why don't Libraries Have Publishing Programs? - Repost

Originally posted 4/9/2007

My introduction to Charles Bukowski occurred via the display cases inside the Boston University library lobby, and I was drawn to them because I happened to be working in the library's special collections department at the time. The special collections department at BU is quite renowned and was established by Dr. Howard Gotlieb who recently died. (Gotlieb actually wrote one of my recommendations for business school). My job was less intellectual than hired muscle since the library was becoming so overwhelmed with boxed submissions they needed someone to unload the stuff and place the materials in uniform boxes on shelves. I didn't have too much time to peruse the material in some of these boxes but I do recall a wealth of material from Herbert Swope and Fletcher Knebel, who's boxes were filled with photos of JFK and his family while they were all in the White House.

Some of the material deposited wasn't quite so moving or important (at least to my eyes) and in many cases it was clear that entire desk draws had been upended into a box and sent off to BU. These boxes often included things like gum, blank paper, pens, pennies, paper clips and other detritus which had minimal residual value to scholars. BU did have several archivists responsible for cataloging the vast amount of stuff that was deposited. They seemed to work fairly methodically (slowly) to identify the important material and provide tables of content for scholars. Increasingly, the material in formal special collections libraries like BU and in local libraries is being digitized and there is little doubt that this will accelerate. Books constitute some of this material and are included in scanning projects but the bulk of material in these collections would be non-book format material such as documents, letters, posters, art work, banners, etc.

Displaying this material is regarded as an important activity at libraries. After all, they have expended the effort to collect and catalog the material and they want people to know they have it. Hence the display cases at BU and in the lobbies of many other libraries. On a sales call to a small public library in Redlands CA a number of years ago, our meeting was held in the special collections room which contained their collection of local southern Californian historical material. Much of this material probably doesn't exist anywhere else and sadly patrons had to ask for permission to enter the room. With the glacial progression towards digitization of this material it does mean that patrons will eventually have more access to this material online but it will take some time.

Digitization will enable more opportunities for the library to benefit commercially from this material and I am curious why more libraries are not recognising these opportunities. Two of these include the electronic version of the traditional display case and traditional publishing. Both of these require the touch of the archivist/curator to prioritize, explain and make relevant the chosen material. Not everything in a collection will be important or interesting enough for the average patron and the editing function remains important to ensure that the interest of the patron is held through the presentation. The electronic version of the display cases are computer terminals and/or online access that enable some self-directed exploration of the material and these are showing up in some libraries. In an electronic collection, this material should be available to other institutions that want to access it where the material could add to or enhance material they may be also be featuring. The network aspects of intermingling collections and expertise is nascent in the library world but could become a very exciting area of study. Increasingly, much like museums, libraries will be able to develop programs and special events that feature their special collections content not only at a reasonable cost but also as a revenue generator.

Traditional publishing can also support and enhance the display and exploitation of library special collections. Many of us are familiar with the Museum shop experience which can be irritating because it often appears overly commercial; however, the reason these shops exist is basic economics. The products sold are a material support to the institutions. In the case of virtually all museums the institutions retain extensive publishing programs for everything from books and exhibition catalogs, to greeting cards, post cards and posters. Digitization will allow even small libraries to leverage their content in revenue producing ways. Ideally, the most savvy library administrators are going to realize that the opportunity for revenue could actually pay for the the digitization. After I graduated from BU, I became the book buyer at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and that experience showed me the intense focus on leveraging their collection in all commercial aspects is critical to retail revenues, special events and shows and donor participation. Obviously, the correlation with your typical local library and the MFA is tenuous but the lessons are there to be learned in how to build new and recurring revenue streams that can be channelled back into the library.

Once in digital (leverageable) format it is no slam dunk that your typical librarian is going to be able to produce a printed book but today there are more readily available options for print production. All of the 'photo book' providers such as Blurb.com, picaboo.com etc. offer templates and functionality that could provide that basis for a publishing program. At least something they could test without too much downside. The downside of these providers is that the retail price point for these products would probably be too high to create much demand. On the other hand, the self-publishing programs offered by lulu.com, exlibris and iUniverse may be the answer especially as they become more sophisticated about format and color. Even now, quality from these vendors is high enough that patrons would pay for the books. As any Museum publisher will tell you, the popularity of their in-house titles published to support both specific events and to show case their collection would amaze in the number of annual units sold. I am convinced that there is a business opportunity or consulting practice here for someone to help libraries build publishing programs or digital collections that will enhance their revenue base.

Not every library is going to have a collection worthy of digitization, but those that do will increasingly see revenue opportunities from catalogs or a publishing program. Who knows perhaps BU will get around to publishing their Charles Bukowski collection.

MediaWeek (Vol 3, No 7): Amis, Plagiarism, Demand Media, "Botulism"

Martin Amis muses about the fourth estate (Guardian):

About 90% of the coverage has passed me by, but some new tendencies are clear enough. What's different, this time round, is that the writer, or this writer, gets blamed for all the slanders he incites in the press. Some quite serious commentators (DJ Taylor, for one) have said that I'm controversial-on-purpose whenever I have a book coming out. Haven't they noticed that the papers pick up on my remarks whether I have a book coming out or not? And how can you be ­controversial- on-purpose without ceasing to care what you say? The Telegraph, on its front page, offers the following: "Martin Amis: 'Women have too much power for their own good'." This is the equivalent of "Rowan Williams: 'Christianity is a vulgar fraud'." I suppose the Telegraph was trying to make me sound "provocative". Well, they messed that up too. I don't sound ­provocative. I sound like a much-feared pub bore in Hove. And yet experienced journalists will look me in the eye and solemnly ask, "Why do you do it?" They are not asking me why I say things in public (which is an increasingly pertinent question). They are asking me why I deliberately stir up the newspapers. How can they have such a slender understanding of their own trade? Getting taken up (and recklessly distorted) in the newspapers is not something I do. It's something the news- ­ papers do. The only person in England who can manipulate the fourth estate is, appropriately, Katie Price. But there I go again. No, the vow of silence looks more and more attractive. That would be a story too, but it would only be a story once. Wouldn't it?

Is plagiarism the new black? Interview with a young successful author/artist who admits to 'mixing' rather than steeling content from others. She even gets and endorsement from one of the 'victims' (NYTimes):

For the obviously gifted Ms. Hegemann, who already had a play (written and staged) and a movie (written, directed and released in theaters) to her credit, it was an early ascension to the ranks of artistic stardom. That is, until a blogger last week uncovered material in the novel taken from the less-well-known novel “Strobo,” by an author writing under the nom de plume Airen. In one case, an entire page was lifted with few changes. As other unattributed sources came to light, outsize praise quickly turned to a torrent of outrage, reminiscent of the uproar in 2006 over a Harvard sophomore, Kaavya Viswanathan, who was caught plagiarizing numerous passages in her much praised debut novel. But Ms. Hegemann’s story took a very different turn. On Thursday, Ms. Hegemann’s book was announced as one of the finalists for the $20,000 prize of the Leipzig Book Fair in the fiction category. And a member of the jury said Thursday that the panel had been aware of the plagiarism charges before they made their final selection.

NY Times reporter Bill Carter, who wrote the book on the 'Late Night Wars' is set to pen an up-t0-date book on the recent Conan-Leno fracas (Gawker):

Carter said he isn't taking a Team Conan or Team Jay stance now—or in the book. "I obviously have to reach out to all sides," he said. "For the longest time, I personally tried to watch as many episodes of all the shows as I could to get sense of each show, and what each guy does. I don't just pick one and stick with that guy." Although the book will touch on many of the TV industry's struggles, Carter said he is focusing on the recent late-night infighting. "It's fun to have something to write about again," he said. Carter's 1992 The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night had exclusive details about one of televisions most infamous power struggles: the original battle between NBC, CBS, Jay Leno and David Letterman for Johnny Carson's seat on the Tonight Show. The Late Shift revealed secret NBC documents; Johnny Carson's role in Letterman's decision to join CBS; and ridiculous scenes like Jay Leno hiding in a closet to spy on a secret NBC staff meeting. It was later turned into an 1996 HBO movie.

Libraries seeking to migrate to eBooks and send print volumes to deep storage find it's not so easy: InsideHigherEd (And, yes that is the worst web site design ever).

But campus resistance to digital creep might not boil down to simple antiquarianism. Notwithstanding Apple’s new iPad, the e-reader market may be as unprepared to be embraced by academe as academe is to embrace e-books. “Although some e-book standards such as ePub are beginning to emerge, there is still significant flux and divergence from those standards,” Henry and Spiro write. “Standards are important in enabling consumers to read content from multiple publishers on their devices, to move content around to multiple devices, and to preserve books for the long-term.” Though e-books are poised to gain a firm foothold in higher education within the decade, the authors predict, academics and e-reader vendors aren't yet on the same page. This is largely due to the fact that e-readers have not managed to replicate certain aspects of the traditional book-reader's user experience: “You can do a lot with a print book: photocopy or scan as many pages as you like, scrawl in the margins, highlight passages, bookmark pages, skip around, read it in the bathtub, give it to someone else, make art out of it, etc.,” the Rice researchers note. “Due to constraints imposed by some [Digital Rights Management] regimes, readers of e-books may find that they only can print a limited number of pages, have to navigate awkwardly through the book, cannot take notes or bookmark pages, and cannot give the book to someone else.” While they enjoy the searchability of electronic documents and databases, academics still prefer holding a book in their hands to read it. These advantages come at a price, though. Print volumes are, after all, voluminous — a property that implies a series of relatively pricey preservation costs. According to Courant and Nielsen, these work out to an average of $4.26 per book, per year when you take into account, maintenance, cleaning, electricity for temperature control, staffing, and circulation, as well as the considerable funds that go into building and renovating centrally located, open-stack facilities to house the volumes

Profile of Demand Media and their 'factory' approach to content creation (Guardian):

And it is changing, indeed. It is not only that 7,000 freelance editors, writers and video producers as well as 650 copy editors work for the company. Demand Media produces more than 4,500 items of content a day, and it uses algorithms to produce that content most effectively. Previously, news organizations published content based on what their editors thought readers were interested in. Now, the internet gives publishers access to hundreds of millions of people's search queries. That is where Demand Media's algorithms come in. "Our search algorithm delivers keywords like 'pruning roses', 'naming babies', or 'hiking'," says Rosenblatt. "We take these keywords and turn them into article titles, and use that to influence what we are going to create." But Demand Media is taking it further. After learning about web users' interests, Demand Media calculates if an article is commercially relevant. The company calculates the advertising demand by using another database, and looks if there isn't too much competition for its content because the topic has been widely reported online. If the outcome is correct, it assigns a freelancer to produce content.

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy extensively cites a fake philosopher in his new book (NYTimes):

For the debut of his latest weighty title, “On War in Philosophy,” the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy made the glossy spreads of French magazines with his trademark panache: crisp, unbuttoned white Charvet shirts, golden tan and a windswept silvery mane of hair. But this glamorous literary campaign was suddenly marred by an absolute philosophical truth: Mr. Lévy backed up the book’s theories by citing the thought of a fake philosopher. In fact, the sham philosopher has never been a secret, and even has his own Wikipedia entry .... In his newest book, Mr. Lévy attacked the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant as a madman, and in support cited the Paraguayan lectures of Jean-Baptiste Botul to his 20th-century followers. In fact Mr. Botul is the longtime creature of Frédéric Pagès, a journalist with the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné. “We’ve had a big laugh, obviously,” Mr. Pagès said of Mr. Lévy. “This one was an error that was really simple that the media immediately understood.” Mr. Pagès has never made a secret of his fictional philosopher, who has a fan club that meets monthly in salons throughout Paris. Mr. Botul’s school of thought is called Botulism, his followers are botuliennes and they debate such weighty theories as the metaphysics of flab. As they describe it, Mr. Botul’s astonishing ideas ranged from phenomenology to cheese, sausages, women’s breasts and the transport of valises during the 1930s.

Hamstrung by computer issues over the past week or so that accounts for the tardiness.

All about the T Shirt

I had some fun with my latest blurb book. It is quite silly but I got to the point where I had to throw out some of my collection and thus decided to commit them to print posterity.

It's all about...

By Michael Cairns

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