Against the Grain

Volume 25 | Issue 2 Article 45

April 2013 At Brunning: People & Technology: At the Only Edge that Means Anything/How We Understand What We Do Dennis Brunning Arizona State University, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the and Information Science Commons

Recommended Citation Brunning, Dennis (2013) "At Brunning: People & Technology: At the Only Edge that Means Anything/How We Understand What We Do," Against the Grain: Vol. 25: Iss. 2, Article 45. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.6504

This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University . Please contact [email protected] for additional information. @Brunning: People & Technology At the Only Edge that Means Anything / How We Understand What We Do by Dennis Brunning (E Humanities Development Librarian, Arizona State University)

Where the Wild Things Are have been less inclined to go digital. their writing good and the publisher did what all in 2013 They seem to prefer the heft and dura- publishers do: it published good writing. bility, the tactile pleasures, of what we What would we do without the Pew Re- The problem may be the review went be- still call “real ”—the kind you can search Center? In the saga that is growth and yond literary or product criticism to a general set on a shelf…” decline in the disrupted world of the Internet, indictment of the publisher. The claim wasn’t they provide much needed data for what’s Carr concludes we have to consider that that just one product or a few were bad but happening online. Without Pew surveys, — and the that supplies it — all the books published were bad. Guilt by bloggers and journalists would have nothing. serves many purposes and that the Gutenberg association. NOTHING. Revolution is still the one going on albeit with Mr. Beall’s predicament is that an open a digital chapter. In 2013 academic publishers access publisher doesn’t like being listed on Well, not exactly. While Pew surveys the may tact into the ’s fickle breeze. public, other more commercial data crunchers Beall’s list of predatory open access publisher. are adopting and adapting their audience re- This list appears on Mr. Beall’s blog with crite- ria and comment on why the publisher is listed. search methods to evaluate users and use more Your Links: accurately for their commercial accounts. Taken We sense the publisher doesn’t see an even http://pewinternet.org/Presenta- playing field when such lists are on the public together these surveys help map what’s going on tions/2013/Jan/ALA.aspx in our reading habits, especially how we read. Web. And it may revolve around the word http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/ Since Amazon introduced Kindle in 2008, “predatory.” This is not a nice or unemotional Libraries-patrons-and-ebooks.aspx- word and Beall probably chose it for its lack Pew and Nielson surveys have shown a steady ?list=1 increase in the use of e-readers, purchase of of nuance. When you have a predator in your e-editions of books, and growth in the use http://www.pcmag.com/arti- midst you call the cops, pull out your weapon, of reading apps on a variety of computing cle2/0,2817,2414068,00.asp protect your family. You take on strength be- devices. A tipping point was reached in 2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000 cause the predator is focusing all energies and when Amazon, never terribly open about 142412788732387420457821956335 efforts at preying on the weak. sales figures, reported first purchases 3697002.html?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_ Now many publishers support critical re- of e-editions surpassed those of . It Books_5 views in their journals. These reviews warn meant that there were enough Kindles, custom- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/rich- us about products or services we should not ers, and Kindle editions to turn upside down ard-adams-blog/2011/jan/28/ama- engage because we risk some problem. These the traditional model of expensive hardcover zon-kindle-ebook--sales are usually about product quality, misinforma- release followed by paperback editions. In a http://www.ciscopress.com/store/eb- tion about what the product does, or its general flat industry and flat economy, eBooks showed ook-formats/ price to whatever we buy it for value. promise. http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/ Perhaps Mr. Askey and Mr. Beall should This raised a few eyebrows in the publish- publish in higher quality publications like ing industry. It meant that eBooks were chal- American Libraries or Library Journal. Or even Consumer Reports. They should avoid lenging growth in the consumer trade market. Beall Street Blues Even if the writing wasn’t on the wall, that wall the “everything goes” side of the new media — Recently librarians have been in the legal had been tagged. the blogs and the reading community. A good news. They’ve received letters from lawyers editor could make either of them bullet-proof In 2013, with data gathered from the 2012 representing publishers. Dale Askey, a librari- in this battle for quality in academic publishing. retail year, we are again confronted how wild an at McMaster’s University in Ontario, Can- this world is. In sales, Nielson Bookscan ada, is being sued for alleged damages to the reports that decline in overall print sales reputation and profits of a Canadian scholarly Your Links: has stabilized at 9% of total revenues — the publisher. Another, Jeffrey Beall who coined http://www.insidehighered.com/ same decline observed in 2011. In opinion, the term “predatory open-access publishers” news/2013/02/15/another-publisher-ac- Pew surveyed book readers and found that 89 and manages a Website devoted to identifying cuses-librarian-libel percent of regular book readers report they’ve whom he thinks fits this description, has been read a print book within the last year, while http://www.insidehighered. sternly asked in an attorney’s letter, to stop com/news/2013/02/08/academ- only 30 percent said that they had read an what he is doing to the attorney’s client, an eBook in the same time period. ic-press-sues-librarian-raising-is- open-access publisher. sues-academic-freedom Friend of libraries, Nicholas Carr, au- Mr. Beall and Mr. Askey have not said thor of The Shallows — a book about how much publicly which is smart and what their the Internet is making us dumb — has an legal advisers have told them. Across the Carpet and into the Stacks interesting take on this in a WSJ piece. In For a moment the library Web community I love the stacks, I don’t know why; I don’t an extremely non-Farenheit 451 spirit, Carr lit up with anger, chagrin, fear, and advice for get there often. Roaming the stacks is what I feels that the last few years the early adopters these potential defendants. Overall, the mood may want to do as my last act. Or if heaven is as made their move on the e-reader and eBook, was shock. we imagine, I want heaven to be a library with especially in light reading of consumer fiction. infinite rows of shelves and even more books. By definition, these are the “most disposable Askey’s case revolves around whether a Nothing would go overdue and the acquisition of books,” so why not buy them in the most librarian can write in a public forum negatively budget would be bottomless. disposable way? about a publisher’s products. A publisher, Ed- ward Mellen Press felt libeled by a blog post. I don’t know exactly where our library’s Another type of reader, Carr argued, buys Liability aside, some of this publisher’s authors building is. I may have been told but it makes and reads differently: expressed concerned that their writing and as much sense to me as knowing exactly where “Readers of weightier fare, including qualifications might have been damaged by the an Amazon or Wal-Mart warehouse is. It may literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, negatively reviewed company. They considered continued on page 55

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or fewer books and more space for learning, @Brunning: People & Technology tutoring, teaching, and refreshment centers. Rumors from page 54 Once you have scanned copy you can index it from page 53 and once you index it you can store it and once be just down the street; I may pass it every day you compare with other similar databases of last week! I understand from a report recently released in my commute. holdings, you can weed it. by Publishing Technology at the LBF that the number of publisher-owned online communities is set to more We’ve delivered many books and journals No matter how horrific or unpleasant than double over the next two years. The study was to off-site storage or what we call High-Density Mao’s reeducation programs must have been conducted by Bowker Market Research, a service Storage. I recall we had a naming contest and I because they were secret, brainwashing, and of ProQuest affiliate Bowker and included U.S. and guess this won. Or our suggestions were, unlike framed in the logic of doing what was right, UK publishers across trade and academic sectors. The Google’s, suggestions that simply didn’t click. these present-day efforts of moving the books full results are available now on the publishingtech- Like Amazon, we deliver in a day. And away from shelves, may feel to some of us nology.com/blog at http://web.mail.comcast.net/ like a reeducation effort. What once was our zimbra/h/search?si=0&so=0&sc=37175&st=mes- better than Amazon Prime, we deliver sage&id=1479866&xim=1&action=view. at no cost. The fee is a more ob- comfortable world of library shelves teeming with books, deep in scholarly journals, Just learned. Mr. Richard Abel died peacefully at scure price — a debt we’ve paid home on April 17, at 6:30 am. He had been enduring to space by moving books from and piled with government documents, heart failure for several months. Mr. Abel (“Dick”) was the premises. Our books are now has become the clinical environment of 87 years old. He is survived by his wife Kathy and his diamonds in the rough, awaiting searching a database for an online copy, two daughters, Kit and Cori, and five grandchildren. our renewed interest. while never having to take the walk up Dick was the founder of Richard Abel & Co., best That a book be plucked out of the the stairs and into the stacks. known perhaps for developing automated Approval pile our memory, a memory recorded in I’ve just returned from the PS call Plans for academic libraries in the 1950s thru 1974. The assets of the Abel Company were acquired by Black- digital database zeros and ones, ought to grant number range, my arms stacked with a pile of well’s in 1975. According to his wishes, Dick will be that book a new shelf life. We ought to lend the present-day American authors. Six or so novels buried in a wooden casket, there will be no funeral, and book in perpetuity to its ardent re-discoverer, no and poetry books from writers I remember as no memorial service is planned. (Information provided matter what rank or status on campus, so he or important to me as life itself. Their magic is by Don Chvatal, who requests that former employees she will have books near to them again. Yes, one with their content, their publishers, their of the company contact him to provide their email and create a shadow shelf network in the offices and font, their words and my own giddy feeling that physical addresses. Former employees will be listed rooms of our users, a Napsterish peer-to-peer I’ve read them, the words have endured, and in a monograph that will re-publish Dick’s history of storage system. my experience of them is that walk down the the Richard Abel Company. To be published by Against the Grain, the book will be edited by Katina I’ve always suspected the big gun libraries book aisles with the expectation that I will find Strauch and Scott Smith and include personal rem- that lent many of their books to Google for more and more and just need to reach out… iniscences by others who knew Mr. Abel. As one of scanning into the Google Library Project, did I’ve yet to find an online equivalent to this Dick’s last requests, former employees are to receive so for housekeeping and not scholarly reasons. simple and direct experience. Let’s create an complimentary copies. Contact: Don at 503-309-2589 They needed to make room for more books app for that. or .) Against the Grain / April 2013 55