Librarians' Response to Web Scale Search (aka Resource Discovery): Assumptions and Challenges

The term information industry includes publishers, distributors, librarians, search engine optimizers, etc. This industry, as a whole, is in a desperate race to find the best means of finding information.

Discovery Tools (Library catalogs, content publisher's databases, etc.) as a term refers to multifaceted databases that are evolving as a single point interface (to search less and find more using 'all' library resources, in one click). For a background and state-of-the-art reading, click here: Paths of Discovery.


In short, Google, Librarians and Discovery Tools are in the competition. In the following are the challenges faced by librarians' context in relation to planing and implementation of resource discovery--it is all about the evolving nature of effective ways of finding information, easily and user friendly.

Here are a few important contributions by librarians to understand the myths, presumptions, etc.:

• Top 10 Discovery Tool Myths [doc file]

Myth #1: My discovery tool is the biggest and /or the best.
Myth #2: Discovery tools will one day search all of a given library’s collections.
Myth #3: Federated search software is still useful
Myth #4: Discovery tools compete with Google.
Myth #5: The single search box is the goal
Myth #6: Discovery tools don’t require library instruction
Myth #7: Discovery tools are for mostly just for freshmen
Myth # 8: Subject-specific databases are dead
Myth #9: Discovery software vendor X pushes their results to the top
Myth #10: It only takes a few days to implement a discovery tool

• 8 hypotheses why librarians don't like discovery 

Librarians don’t like discovery tools because…
 1.They are too much extra work.
 2.They weren’t our idea in the first place.
 3.Strange things happen to our metadata.
 4.Talking about the strange things happening to the data is hard.
 5.They mess with the concept of the catalog.
 6.They are hard to use in reference interviews.
 7.They make users lazy and dumb. Sometime ago, I asked people about what they thought where the perceptions of librarians of their users.
 8.They cost us our jobs. Continue reading: A growing organism: 8 hypotheses why librarians don’t like discovery 

• More articles on Discovery - Google Sites
• 8 things we know about web scale discovery systems in 2013
• Culture Shock: Librarians' Response to Web Scale Search
• As Researchers Turn to Google, Libraries Navigate the Messy World of Discovery Tools 

Many professors and students gravitate to Google as a gateway to research. Libraries want to offer them a comparably simple and broad experience for searching academic content. As a result, a major change is under way in how libraries organize information. Instead of bewildering users with a bevy of specialized databases—books here, articles there—many libraries are bulldozing their digital silos. They now offer one-stop search boxes that comb entire collections, Google style.
That’s the ideal, anyway. The reality is turning out to be messier. Continue reading: The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Library Resource Discovery Products: Context, Library Perspectives, and Vendor Positions  Marshall Breeding --Single Issue Magazine – January 31, 2014
• Planning and Implementing Resource Discovery Tools in Academic Libraries  Mary Pagliero Popp
• Recent Developments in the Design, Construction, and Evaluation of Digital Libraries: Case Studies (Premier Reference Source)  Colleen Cool

B&N Says Book Sample Downloads Don't Infringe Copyright, Law360

Extract:

Law360, Los Angeles (November 01, 2013, 8:32 PM ET) -- Barnesandnoble.com LLC asked a New York federal court Thursday to toss out an e-book author’s copyright infringement suit, arguing it cannot be held responsible for readers downloading digital samples of a book to their e-reader or computer after it was removed from the bookseller’s website. continue reading Law360

On the same shelf:

• My book was purchase(d) but all i see is the sample downloads - Askville
• Copyright extension opponents ready for new fight
• Google triumphs over Authors Guild in book scanning lawsuit
• Google wins against authors in book scanning case
• 8 Years Later, Google’s Book Scanning Crusade Ruled ‘Fair Use’
• The PA Joins European Commitment To Enable Text And Data Mining
• Going Out of Business, Nigerian Spam-Scam Style

10 banned books : The most infamously outlawed novels, ShortList.com

Info courtesy: Mayank Bhatt posted in Generally About Books

1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
2. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
3. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)
4. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
5. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988)
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky (1999)
7. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
8. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (1991)
9. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915)
10. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Continue reading the details + Why was it banned?

Open Access Versus Traditional Publishing -- A Survival of the Fittest Business Model Overdue

Note: This post got inspiration from Mayank Bhatt posted in Generally About Books

Open access (includes self-publishing, wired) versus traditional publishing (includes bricks and books). This is obviously all about a survival of the fittest business model that is long overdue. The debate about the perpetual death of traditional publishing has continued since a few decades. This debate continues, with not very clear signs of death as yet. The definition of the terms is more important, here is an extract (although this is not a general example, it is from UMI, just to illustrate the meaning of the respective terms) from Proquest

What is Open Access?
The now-common usage of the term "open access" means freely available for viewing or downloading by anyone with access to the internet. Sometimes a distinction is made for "limited open access" meaning that material is available free of charge to a limited group of authorized users. Our usage of "open access" means the former; that is, dissertations and theses published for Open Access with ProQuest/UMI will be available at no charge for viewing or downloading by anyone with access to the internet, indefinitely.

What is Traditional Publishing?
Traditional publishing at UMI® corresponds with the model that generated the publishing industry as soon as mass-reproduction of printed material was possible. That is, the owner of intellectual property and author of the work contracts with the publisher to reproduce, distribute, and sell copies of the work. The publisher pays the author a certain portion of the revenue thus generated. That is why we also refer to our Traditional Publishing model as the "copy sales and royalty payments" model. It's been our business model since 1938, and we've paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties to the authors of dissertations and theses over the decades.

The following is a review of literature that supports a discussion of pros and cons:

• The Self-Publishing Debate: A Social Scientist Separates Fact from Fiction (Part 3 of 3)

  Is self-publishing an amateurish endeavor, a means of sharing stories, a strategic move in a writing career, or an entrepreneurial activity? To gain insight into this question, I have been analyzing the responses from the nearly 5,000 authors who responded to the 2013 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey in relation to whether an author is aspiring (not yet published), self-published only, traditionally published only, or hybrid (both self-published and traditionally published). In Part 1, I compared the top priorities of these 4 types of authors, and in Part 2, I examined the differences in their stock of published unpublished manuscripts. Now I turn my attention to the differences in their income from their writing.

• Why are publishers the new villain in the digital age? As Amazon tears down the gates around literary culture, even independents are caught in the crossfire, Hero or villain? ... the Amazon warehouse in Milton Keynes. Richard Lea , 22 August 2013 theguardian.com
• Open Source Meets Textbook Publishing - Much Cash Freed Up, By Richard Adhikari, LinuxInsider 08/22/13
• Target reader: Want to publish a book? First use data to figure out who’ll read it,- There are better ways to give readers what they want. Reuters/Adnan Abidi, qz.com By Candy Lee August 21, 2013
• E-book revolution: Breaking through in the digital age, BBC News Aug 21, 2013
• Piracy a Major Threat to Digital Publishing in China, Good E-Reader (blog) by Sovan Mandal, 08/22/13
• Women Dress Like Sex, Men Dress Like Money: Business Marketing Strategy from the World of Love and Sex by Bill Harte
• Book publishing business tries a rewrite, Marketplace.org-Aug 19, 2013
• When Self-Published Ebooks Become Best-Sellers Jeremy Greenfield Forbes
• What Publishing Companies Do in a World Where Anyone Can Publish a Book Jeremy Greenfield Forbes
• When the Self-Published Authors Take Over, What Will Publishers Do? Jeremy Greenfield Forbes
• What Publishers Need To Do In The Era Of Self-Publishing Jeremy Greenfield Forbes
• How Do Literary Agents Fit Into The New Book Publishing Ecosystem? Jeremy Greenfield, Forbes-Aug 2, 2013
• Books aren't dead yet - Salon.com, by Laura Miller - in 121 Google+ circlesMar 21, 2013
• How Do I Decide? Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing (A Field Guide for Authors), Rachelle Gardner
• The next New York: Seattle moves in on the Big Apple to become a ... Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle), Emily Parkhurst Aug 15, 2013
• LIBRARY NEWS: Libraries Dealing with E-book Friction, Carole Howard & Library Staff Pagosa Daily Post 8/9/13
• Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future ... - Wired, Mar 19, 2013
• How to Start a Book Publishing Company Plus Business Plan
• Book Publishing for Professionals, Lisa Robinson-Davis Daryl D. Green
• Can Hard Case Crime solve the mystery of digital era publishing ... www.theguardian.com Nov 3, 2010
• Survival of the Fittest, Efficiency is key for printers and manufacturers in soft market by Ginger Curwen, Publishers Weekly Oct 27, 2003

Top Five Academic Publishing Trends to look out for in 2013

January 18, 2013 by George Lossius, Publishing Technology Extract:
Here are five predictions of what are likely to be the prominent academic publishing trends and developments in the year to come:
1. R.I.P. Impact Factor?
2. Consolidation
3. The year of the textbook
4. The Inexorable Rise of Mobile
5. The future is data

continue reading

Amazon's Kindle (genre: e-book reader)

To be able to read you need literacy, information and a medium. Amazon facilitates all of the above. Let's stick to information (message) and medium (electronic book reader), i.e., Amazon's Kindle. The good news is, Kindle, is now available in Canada (it was US exclusive wireless e-book reader). In the following is a quick glance of the product:
Pros:

You don't need a computer or a connecting device - standalone, mobile via 3G wireless

Built-in keyboard -- helps in search, browse, notes, and navigation (back, forward, main home page)

Handy and light weight - just as holding a magazine

Lot of variety - Over 350,000 books plus newspapers, magazines, and blogs

Cons:

Pricey, starting @ $299 (No free Internet + taxes, if you are in Canada, for instance)

Wireless utility not available globally (i.e, outside US & Canada)

You can not add more memory

See also on the same shelf:

E-books take off on Amazon

News flash: the book isn't dead – yet John Barber, Tuesday's Globe and Mail,
Monday, Dec. 28, 2009

Kindle: Amazon's 6" Wireless Reading Device Price: $299.00

Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device (U.S. Wireless)

Stephen's Lighthouse: Kindle Comes to Canada

The E-Reader Explosion: A Cheat Sheet | Technologizer

Will tomorrow's libraries become more like museums of today -- A question for the coming decade

The Battle of Building Library's Digital Collection

Kindle guide to the the Internet Archive: More than a million free e-books for K owners to download @ TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Selling Your Book to Libraries -- Self-published or Privately Printed Books

Note: Its a open market and company's who promote self-publishing must be evaluated. The Idiot's guide gives you know how, the job is yours. Test the market, compare the competitors and do as-you-like-it. Read the bottom line, from the last link posted below.


"I'll make a guess that your dream is to see your book on the New York Times Bestseller list. To walk by a Borders or Barnes and Noble and know your book is stocked on the shelves. Those are great dreams and it is important to have a big vision for your book sales. But there is one market that you should not overlook - the public and school library market. Libraries have large budgets and some regional systems have buyers that purchase on behalf of 20 or more locations. " continue reading

On the same shelf:

• The real secret to a successful blog/book/business
• Book Publisher Experiments
• The book that never grew up
• BEWARE: Self-Publishing Scams ~~ Five Things to Watch Out for when Choosing a Self-publishing Company

Book Publisher Experiments

Publishers warm up to 'Net, sell chapters, give away books Nate Anderson, Arstechnica (Feb 11)

Two book publishers will be making more 'print' available online: Random House will sell selected chunks, and HarperCollins will make some titles free to read.

continue reading info posted by Gwen @ Internet News

I predict that this wiki will be none to sticky

NB. This is not from my desktop.

Posted by David E. Williams of the Health business blog

Reed Elsevier and other big scientific and medical publishers have had a hard time adjusting to the electronic age. Their expensive journals are taking a drubbing from open source alternatives like Public Library of Science (PLoS) –co-founded by my junior high school lab partner, Mike Eisen. And despite the fact that the Health Business Blog itself is delivered to Elsevier clients thanks to an agreement between Elsevier subsidiary LexisNexis and Newstex, Elsevier is still in rather deep trouble.
Unfortunately for them, their latest innovation WiserWiki, isn’t going to bail them out. From Information World Review: continue reading

Info courtesy: Informaticopia