[15725] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Current Cites, March 2005
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CITES Moderator)
Mon Mar 28 20:40:11 2005
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Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 18:46:29 -0800
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From: CITES Moderator <citeschk@library.berkeley.edu>
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Current Cites
March 2005
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2005/cc05.16.3.html
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
Contributors: [3]Charles W. Bailey, Jr., [4]Shirl Kennedy, [5]Leo
Robert Klein, Jim Ronningen, [6]Roy Tennant
[7]Serials: The Journal for the Serials Community 18(1)(2005) - This
issue of Serials has a number of interesting papers on open access. In
"A Mandate to Self Archive? The Role of Open Access Institutional
Repositories," Stephen Pinfield, tackles the controversial issue of
mandating the deposit of articles in institutional repositories. In
"Open Access: Evidence-Based Policy or Policy-Based Evidence? The
University Press Perspective," Martin Richardson describes experiments
at Oxford University Press with different OA journal publishing
models. In "Open Access: Principle, Practice, Progress," Jan Velterop
argues that the open access battle for hearts and minds is gaining
ground, but implementation issues remain and misconceptions about OA
persist. In "Open Access: Reflections from the United States," Ann
Okerson weighs the pros and cons of OA for US research libraries,
noting that institutional repositories are likely to be expensive, and
their focus in the U.S. is likely to be on locally produced scholarly
materials other than articles. Consequently: "It is unlikely that
under this kind of scenario in the US, scattered local versions of STM
articles would compete effectively with the completeness or the value
that the publishing community adds." She also suggests that library
cost savings resulting from OA journals are "unlikely, unless
substantial production cost reductions can be realised by many
categories of publisher." In "Open Access to the Medical Literature:
How Much Content Is Available in Published Journals?," Marie E.
McVeigh and James K. Pringle report that for the research and clinical
medicine journals that they studied "26% of the journals made their
most recent issues open access, and 21% of articles since 1992 were
available as open access." In "Overview of the House of Commons
Science and Technology Select Committee Inquiry into Scientific
Publications," Ian Gibson discusses the important activities of the
Select Committee that he chaired. Finally, in "Scientific
Publications: Free for All? The Academic Library Viewpoint," Tom
Graham examines the key findings of the Select Committee's influential
report and criticizes the U.K. Government's response to it. - [8]CB
Associated Press. "[9]Next Hot Trend for Cell Phones: Reading?"
[10]MSNBC.com (18 March 2005)(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7232995/).
- "Your eyes probably hurt just thinking about it," this article
begins, and...yep. Nevertheless thousands of Japanese folks are
downloading and reading full-text novels on their cell phone screens.
Of course, the average Japanese consumer is a sophisticated user of
wireless technology anyhow; the cell phone there is routinely used as
both "an entertainment and communication device." And now there are a
number of websites where folks can browse and select from among
classics, bestsellers and "works written especially for the medium."
Quite honestly, it does not sound very enjoyable. "Only a few lines
pop up at a time because the phone screen is about half the size of a
business card." The latest technology is Java-based and incorporates
such ease-of-use features as "automatic page-flipping, or scrolling."
According to the article, this trend could spread to the U.S., noting
that "Random House recently bought a stake in [11]VOCEL, a San
Diego-based company that provides such mobile-phone products as
Scholastic Aptitude Test preparation programs." Consumers in China and
South Korea hava already begun to embrace cell phone reading. What's
weird is that people are using this medium even when not on the go; a
recent marketing study found that 50 percent of cell phone readers are
female, and many are doing their cell phone reading in the home. What
sorts of books are people reading on their cell phones? Classics they
never got around to, sex manuals they'd be embarrassed to buy in the
dead.tree version...but the most popular content is an electronic
dictionary. - [12]SK
Babb, Nancy M. "Cataloging Spirits and the Spirit of Cataloging"
[13]Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 40(2)(2005) - Here's the
problem: take any spiritual communication in published form. You have
the medium who physically delivers the message and the originating
spirit who generated the message. Who should get credit? If you're a
cataloger, you'll know that this is no idle question since the work
has to be attributed to someone. The author of this article, Nancy M.
Babb, a cataloger at SUNY Buffalo, stresses that giving credit to the
spirit illustrates the advance in cataloging over the centuries in
that a "bibliographic" entity is preferred over a "biographical" one.
Such considerations are "exemplar of complex authorship", Babb argues.
They illustrate a more "inclusive and expansive concept" of
authorship; one that is centered on "what will be of most value to
catalog users". Babb in this breathless review of cataloging history
confirms what many of us have long suspected, namely, that "an author
need not physically exist to have recognized bibliographic identity
within the library catalog." - [14]LRK
Bailey, Jr., Charles W. [15]Open Access Bibliography: Liberating
Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals Mountain
View, CA: Association of Research Libraries, March
2005.(http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/oab.pdf). - Long-time Current Cites
contributor Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has published a bibliography on the
movement to free the scholarly literature. Available both online and
in print from the Association of Research Libraries, this thorough and
authoritative bibliography will serve as the seminal bibliographic
source for this movement. Over 1,300 selected English language books,
conference papers, journal articles and a number of other sources
(including digital videos) are included. Anyone interested in the Open
Access movement will likely find this contribution to the effort to be
an instant classic. - [16]RT
Fescemyer, Kathy. "Serials Clutter in Online Catalogs" [17]Serials
Review 31(1)(March 2005): 14-19. - Dealing with serials records in
the OPAC can be confusing even to librarians. It isn't always apparent
what record is the microfilm and what record is the electronic
version. The author looked at how easy it was to find a number of
titles in nine large academic libraries. Next she measured the
physical length of the records she found. In many cases, it was
difficult to find the right record when using titles such as "Science"
or "Nature". Many of the records contained holdings information that
ran to several hundred lines. The author argues for simpler records
with one bibliographic record per journal regardless of format. She
also points to the need to prioritize information making less
information the default setting. Someone looking for a call number
ought not to have to trudge though a sea of volume and issue listings.
Of course, this is as much an OPAC-Vendor problem as a library
problem. Doing what the author suggests (i.e. making a simpler
interface for serials) can only be achieved in certain OPACs (if at
all) through considerable customization. It ought not to be so hard! -
[18]LRK
Mao, Ji-Ye, Karel Vredenburg, and Paul W. Smith, et. al."State of
User-Centered Design Practice" [19]Communications of the ACM
48(3)(March 2005): 105-109. - Some interesting results from a survey
of people involved with User-Centered Design (UCD). The authors
suggest that UCD is meeting with growing acceptance as a necessary
component of software development. This is thanks to the realization
on the part of developers that if users can't use their software,
they'll go elsewhere. Nevertheless, UCD continues to be plagued by
difficulties in measuring success and establishing clear goals. Some
of the more common techniques used are "iterative design, usability
evaluation, task analysis, informal expert review, and field studies".
The authors found that techniques tended to be either used or avoided
due to the perceived cost in time and money. They argue for a more
complete approach. (Note, CACM also has an interesting section on the
"Disappearing Computer" -- featuring interesting projects that make
use of ubiquitous computing). - [20]LRK
Mendoza, Martha. "[21]AP Review: Gov't Reducing Access to Info"
[22]Guardian Unlimited (13 March
2005)(http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4862137,00.h
tml). - In a piece that will likely suprise few librarians, an
Associated Press review has documented a major clampdown on the
release of government information to the American public. "The federal
government - not including the CIA - created 14 million new classified
documents in fiscal year 2003, a 60 percent increase over 2001,
according to the Information Security Oversight Office. At the same
time, the agency reports that it cut back on the number of documents
that were declassified" the article states. The Associated Press
documents a number of other findings from its review that anyone
interested in government by the people, for the people, will find
chilling. - [23]RT
Olsen, Stefanie. "[24]Yahoo's Game of Photo Tag" [25]CNet News.com
(22 March
2005)(http://news.com.com/2102-1032_3-5630403.html?tag=st.util.print).
- A number of web sites such as the photo sharing site [26]Flickr and
the link sharing site [27]Del.icio.us hav e provided a way for users
to attach their own topics (or "tags") to their links and photos. This
activity inspired Thomas Vander Wal to coin the term "folksonomies"
for user-created taxonomies. The purchase of Flickr by Yahoo! has
provided even more attention to this phenomenon, highighted in this
article. Although this is one of the hottest new topics in the press
at the moment, the jury is still out on just how effective this
technique will be in making things easier to find. As quoted in the
article, information architect Peter Merholtz thinks that "the future
of folksnomies involves meshing these user-generated categorizations
with more standardized categorizations, such as the Library of
Congress or the Getty Thesaurus of place names, so you could start to
connect data to allow more of these associations to be made." - [28]RT
Rossman, Parker. "Beyond the Book: Electronic Textbooks Will Bring
Worldwide Learning" [29]The Futurist 39(1)(January-February
2005): 18-23. - Gee whiz! And you'll eat your dinner in a tasty little
pill ... when you need a break from soldering the wiring of our
utopian days to come, take a look at this. It's worth it because it's
the kind of writing that creates unrealistic expectations and causes
purse string-holding politicians to salivate over the spending cuts of
the world of tomorrow. It's part Futuramaesque boosterism (I'll admit
to a pang of nostalgia for the Disney shows of my childhood), part
mid-90's Wired magazine wipe-the-slate-clean prognosticating (without
the fuchsia and lime green) and part laundry list of the kinds of
educational technology which divert students' attention from the
content to the medium. You'll notice that "academic rigor" isn't an
ingredient in this recipe, but it is meant for a general audience.
Granted that this mix of fact and imagination does give some plausible
examples of how some of the poor or handicapped might benefit from
digital information, but it does a disservice to the teachers who
struggle daily with aging infrastructure, shrinking resources and
students who want to hear that books are obsolete. But I forgot -
that's not a futurist's job. - JR
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites - ISSN: 1060-2356 is hosted by the community at
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Copyright © 2005 by Roy Tennant [33]Creative Commons License
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7. http://www.uksg.org/serials.asp
8. http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/bailey.htm
9. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7232995/
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11. http://www.vocel.com/
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21. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4862137,00.html
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24. http://news.com.com/2102-1032_3-5630403.html?tag=st.util.print
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