Cites & insights Crawford at large.

              Cites & Insights July 2009 1

Cites & Insights

Crawford at Large

Libraries • Policy • Technology • Media

Sponsored by YBP Library Services

Volume 9, Number 8: July 2009 ISSN 1534- 0937 Walt Crawford

Bibs & Blather

Sponsorship, Projects

and News

Since January 2005, YBP Library Services has pro-vided

sponsorship for Cites & Insights.

That sponsorship will end at the end of 2009.

I’m extremely grateful to YBP for the sponsorship;

it’s helped keep C& I going.

New sponsor needed

I need a new sponsor ( or group of sponsors) for Cites

& Insights, for 2010 and beyond.

Candidates could include any group involved

with or interested in library issues ( or the issues dis-cussed

in the journal). I’d be most comfortable with a

sponsor whose own activities I’d be unlikely to dis-cuss

in any case. That includes, for example:

 Library automation companies

 Library consortia

 Database and index companies

 Other companies directly serving libraries–

booksellers etc.

C& I has strong readership. As noted in the May 2009

issue, the journal’s had nearly 1.4 million pageviews in

more than three- quarters of a million sessions. Roughly

half the issues have had at least 4,000 readers, with 12

having more than 6,000 ( and one having more than

22,000). Adding pageviews for separate HTML articles,

more than 60 articles have been read at least 7,000

times and another 94 at least 5,000 times.

Please contact me

Send me email if you’re interested in discussing spon-sorship:

waltcrawford at gmail. com. The sponsor will

be mentioned on the website, on the front and back

page of each issue, and on every separate HTML article.

A note about other forms of revenue

Could I gain enough revenue, or comparable revenue,

directly from readers?

The paperback annual editions of C& I have been

priced to be direct revenue generators ( and if some-one

buys a downloadable version, they’re essentially

contributing $ 40). So far, revenue from that source

averages about $ 10 a year… not quite enough to re-place

sponsorship.

Early on, I had PayPal and Amazon Tip Jar links

to allow direct contributions. I did receive some– but

the total was, as I remember, in the low three digits.

I’m open to suggestions.

Inside This Issue

Thinking about Blogging 2: Why We Blog ......................... 2

Interesting & Peculiar Products ....................................... 12

Perspective: On Privatization ........................................... 15

Trends & Quick Takes ..................................................... 26

My Back Pages ................................................................. 27

Projects

I’m not quite ready to write that essay on “ Success and

failure at PoD publishing.” It may wind up as a col-umn

elsewhere, or it may appear here later. It’s fair to

say that one of my attempts has been reasonably suc-cessful—

and that the rest have pretty much failed. I

think there are some interesting lessons and some is-sues

specific to the books themselves.

On Walt at Random, I discussed four possible

“ book- size” projects for the future. These are all

projects that could result in PoD ( or traditionally pub-lished)

books and they’re all projects I suspect would

take a few hundred hours’ work. I’d planned to make

decisions right around June 1. As of this writing,

here’s where things stand:

 Balanced Libraries, Second Edition: Not going to

happen, at least not any time soon.

 Blogging for Libraries, a replacement for both

Public Library Blogs and Academic Library Blogs:

Not going to happen barring full sponsorship.

Period. If someone wants the core spreadsheets

used for the 2007 projects, get in touch; some-thing

might be arranged.

Cites & Insights July 2009 2

 The Liblog Landscape Revisited: Based on book

sales, this should also be a “ not gonna happen”

situation— but it’s not that easy. Consider this

one still up in the air. I could work on it any-way,

probably publishing most results in Cites

& Insights; I could postpone it until 2010 ( but

that’s tricky); I could abandon it.

 Libraries as short- run publishers: This could be a

combination of book and workshop. I’ve had

one or two nibbles of interest, and this might

be a slightly smaller project— but so far, I ha-ven’t

seen enough solid interest to assure me

that the work would yield a substantial tangible

benefit either to me or to libraries. I also ha-ven’t

entirely abandoned this idea, but I have

this fear that I could do a great book and work-shop

proposal, sell five copies of the book, and

have ten people attend the one and only work-shop.

That would be a lose: lose situation.

There are always other possibilities, of course—

particularly in a new home in a new city with a fairly

large library.

News

Walt at Random moves to a new home in early June:

ScienceBlogs. I’ve been invited to join the new group

of information science bloggers, a group that began

with John Dupuis and Christina Pikas. After examin-ing

the situation and other ScienceBlogs blogs, I ac-cepted.

You’ll find future posts at scienceblogs. com/

waltatrandom/

The archive will stay at walt. lishost. org ( I’m hoping

it will also be available at the new site), but if there are

new posts after the post announcing the move ( other

than announcements of Cites & Insights issues), they’ll

be under the banner Walt, Even Randomer— and yes,

I’m aware that “ randomer” is a dumberer kind of word.

You may see more substantive posts at the new

Walt at Random— that is, more posts with substance,

and possibly posts with more substance.

Cites & Insights is not part of this arrangement.

See the first section of BIBS & BLATHER: I’m looking for

new sponsorship.

Making it Work Perspective

Thinking about Blogging 2:

Why We Blog

Last time around ( April 2009, Cites & Insights 9: 5) I

discussed blogging as a median medium, comments

and conversations as part of blogging ( or as part of its

definition) and staying power ( whether blogs are here

to stay). One theme noted in that article, “ are blogs

plausible replacements for journals,” became part of a

LIBRARY ACCESS TO SCHOLARSHIP essay, “ The Death of

Journals ( Film at 11).”

That leaves two of the original themes: Why we

blog and how we blog. Why— the reasons people blog

and philosophy of blogging— is more than enough for

this installment.

Although most of the source material inspiring

this essay comes from liblogs and it appears as a MAK-ING

IT WORK PERSPECTIVE, it’s as applicable to other

blogs as it is to liblogs. ( I define “ liblogs” broadly, in-cluding

those from archivists and museum folk.)

Archives and Anonymity

Start with Kate T.’ s “ The role of blogs in professional

discourse in the archival profession,” posted June 26,

2008 on ArchivesNext ( www. archivesnext. com/). Por-tions

of it are about more than archival blogging—

they’re about anonymous blogs and comments.

Back in the very early days of this blog, I wrote a post

that asked whether or not there was an archivo-blogosphere

( comparable to the robust biblioblogos-phere

created by librarians). I came to the conclusion

that there was not. Recently, Heather ( of the Archives

Found blog) wrote on a comment on that old post

asking if my opinion has changed. I think it has, al-though

I would still say that our archivo- blogosphere

is in its infancy. This post will explain why I’ve

changed my opinion and will also address some

comments made at another blog about the value of

blogs for professional discourse.

That earlier post appeared in March 2007. Kate found

58 English- language blogs, 15 primarily repository

“ bulletin board” blogs and five dormant. She did se-rious

weeding— eliminating “ primarily personal or

social” blogs and those associated with niches or re-lated

professions, as well as those not originating in

North America. That left 23 blogs, including seven

averaging at least one post a week. That didn’t look

like an active blog community to her.

Around the same time Heather raised her question,

David Kemper ( of The DIGTAL Archive blog) wrote a

post called “ How Blogs Can Save Your Career.” He

said, in part:

As I walked down the bustling streets, I was

caught in my thoughts, wondering how I have

managed to stay current ( more or less) despite be-ing

on contracts or, more recently, unemployed.

One word kept surfacing: blogs.

Cites & Insights July 2009 3

Seriously, if it were not for the many library and

archives, Web 2.0, new media, digitization, digital

preservation bloggers and social networkers on the

Web, I would be far, far behind the curve.

It is thanks to those who, in the spirit of sharing,

write and talk about their work, projects, ideas ei-ther

daily, bi- weekly, weekly or monthly that I

have been able to stay current in the field…

I believe in the power of blogs, their immediacy,

their intimacy, and their uncanny ability to auto-generate

communities, because I know I have be-nefited

from them and learned from them. And

continue to do so.

… I think we are gathering a critical mass of archivists

writing and reading blogs. By my count we now have

over 25 blogs written by archivists or related records

professionals ( in English) that they use to share their

own opinions or items of interest… I think we’ve

seen some valuable discussion of professional issues

among the comments on this blog, and I’m told that

it generates even more conversations around the

lunch tables of many archival institutions.

So, we have archivists writing blogs, reading blogs,

commenting on blogs and talking about blogs. Blog-ging

is the subject of a seminar at the upcoming

RBMS Pre- Conference… Archivists are using blogs to

talk about our profession among ourselves and with

our public. Many of us are using them to meet our

information needs.

So you may understand my surprise when I read in

one of Geof Huth’s incredibly valuable posts about

the Archives Leadership Institute ( on The Anarchivist

blog) that:

During the course of our wide ranging conversa-tion,

we found ourselves discussing the need for a

more vibrant professional literature, and someone

questioned the reliability of blogs and other new

media, and the suitability of these to meet our in-formational

needs.

…[ Later] there was clarification about what was

meant by “ suitability.”

Paraphrasing for brevity: One person involved in the

conversation was concerned about the lack of real

names on archival blogs. Another seconded this: “ It is

difficult to have a useful, citable professional conver-sation

about issues when participants chose not to

identify themselves.”

Commenters offer reasons they remain anonym-ous��

e. g., so they can criticize institutional policies

without getting in trouble. Some people have con-cerns

about privacy— including, early on, Kate T.

Here’s an unusual comment, at least given my

experience with liblogs in general:

I have also observed that identifying oneself by in-itials

( or one initial, as my friend “ T” has often done

on this blog) or by a nickname is something of a con-vention

in the world of blogs. Many people may be

using nicknames or initials not because they’re trying

to hide something, but just because that’s the way it’s

commonly done.

I’ve observed no such convention in liblogs. Of those

studied in The Liblog Landscape 2007- 2008, only 7%

had the first name or first name and initial of the au-thor,

while 66% had full names and nearly 16% were

group- authored with full names. Perhaps the conven-tions

are different among archivists.

Kate T. comes down in favor of anonymity:

For the most part, I find myself agreeing with the ob-servation

Jim made in closing his comment over on

Geof’s blog:

In the end, I’d just suggest that a good idea,

though expressed anonymously, does not make it

any less a good idea. Anonymously posted infor-mation

can still have value, even if not conve-niently

citable and therefore “ scholarly.”

While I’d agree that anonymously posted information

can have value, I believe anonymity substantially

weakens contributions to the professional literature

and a blog’s “ suitability to meet our information

needs.” Kate T. asked for the views of others. She re-ceived

three responses. One blogger suggested “ fear of

not knowing where the line is” as a reason for ano-nymity.

Another cited privacy and perpetuity as rea-sons

for privacy. A third, saying how much blogging

has helped him, ends his comment: “ It’s a personal

choice, but I just think being easily identified gives a

blog more credibility and accountability.”

This post isn’t directly about “ why”— except that

the whys of anonymity also matter.

First- name bloggers

Who blogs using only their first name or first name

and initial ( as far as I could determine without inves-tigation)?

Here’s the list of liblogs that meet current

inclusion standards for an update of The Liblog Land-scape

and had at least one post a week during the

2008 study period:

Library Chronicles, Bad Librarianship Now!, Information

Junk, Jennie Law, Laurie the Librarian, Atomic Librarian,

The Misadventures of Super_ Librarian, Talking Books Li-brarian,

BentleyBlog, LibraryTavern, SemiConscious Dot

Org, The Utopian Library, Zee Says= Film Addict + Teen

Librarian, Library Stories: Libraries & Librarians in the

News, mélange, Gemini Moon, the strange librarian, Ter-ry's

Worklog, Bad Girl Librarian, maura and the library,

ADHD Librarian, Into the Stacks, Solvitur ambulando

Cites & Insights July 2009 4

Two or three of those have well- known authors and

are probably mischaracterized as first- name- only, but

how many would you consider to be important

sources of serious discussion of librarianship?

Here’s the list of anonymous blogs meeting those

criteria: Angels have the phone box, Incoherent Scrib-blings,

rawbrick. net.

Here are the pseudonymous blogs that would still

qualify for inclusion and that averaged at least one

post a week:

the. effing. librarian, Killin' time being lazy, zydeco fish,

TangognaT, Tales from the " Liberry," The Krafty Librarian,

Misadventures of the Monster Librarian, Chronicles of the

( almost) Bald Technology Trainer, Your Neighborhood Li-brarian,

lo- fi librarian, Bigenarian Librarian, Chez Shoes,

DrWeb's Domain, Quiescit anima libris, Pop Culture Li-brarian,

Dojo of the Library Ninja, The Well Dressed Li-brarian,

Dewey's Dartboard, Annoyed Librarian, Darth

Libris, BookBitchBlog, Right Wing Librarian, Linux Libra-rian,

The Soggy Librarian, The Hot Librarian, repressed li-brarian,

The Zenformation Professional, Miss Information

Maybe no comment is required. There are blogs in

those lists that I regard as significant sources of

thoughtful commentary— but not that many. ( I’d

probably name roughly half a dozen, but your stan-dards

may not be mine.) Of those I’d name, I’d guess

half are first- name or pseudonymous in name only—

that most readers of the blogs know the authors by

full name. I could be wrong on all counts.

Blogging and the archival profession

Heather Soyka ( fully named on the About page of her

blog Archives Found, archivesfound. com) posted this on

July 11, 2008, following up on her comment on Kate

T’s post. Soyka considers the role of blogging in the

archival field: “ I don’t pretend to have all of the an-swers,

but I’d like to raise some questions, and per-haps

provoke discussion.”

It seems to me that, as a group, we have been slow to

participate in the blogosphere. While there are fewer

archivists out there than say other groups with which

we might identify ( say, librarians or historians), it

seems that we’ve been comparatively reluctant to dip

our toes in the water. Why might that be? Are we less

tech- savvy, or uninterested in using new technologies

to communicate? Is it that we are mirroring the

somewhat apathetic national participation in civic

discourse? Is there a lack of interest in contributing to

the field, or that we have nothing to say? Are we reti-cent

about being record creators instead of worrying

about the disposition of records?...

Why do some fields gain a core group of serious blog-gers

faster than others? I doubt there are good an-swers.

If you go to state library conferences or even

ALA, you get the idea that librarians are surprisingly

social animals— and this may be true online as well.

Are archivists less social? Or was it a few evangelizing

early libloggers who got things going?

Is a blog a good place to have a professional conver-sation?

What about a peer- reviewed journal, or a list-serv?

How about a symposium, or a conference call,

or workshop? In order to have participation, there

needs to be a balance between “ if you build it, they

will come,” and meeting people where they already

are. In this case, my feeling is that a lot of folks are al-ready

doing everything else on this list, but not blog-ging

or actively participating in the blogosphere. It’s

professionally acceptable for us to have discussions in

all of those other places; why not online? Is a journal

article in the American Archivist going to provoke the

same type of timely discussion as a blog post? Maybe.

But a discussion in real time, with participants from

around the globe? Probably not.

Today, a librarian might posit that FriendFeed outdoes

either blogs or, by a long shot, journal articles in

terms of rapid conversation.

I’m not against more established forms of communi-cation

within the profession; far from it. But I think

that we need to look towards the example of many li-brarians

who have used their blogs to actively partic-ipate

and shape their experiences in the field.

There it is: Library folk ( some of us not librarians)

have set an example.

… Part of the problem that hasn’t been fully acknowl-edged

is this: elders and so- called “ names” in the field

have not really embraced blogging or maintained

their own blogs ( with [ one or two exceptions]). Arc-hivists

that are new to the field may be afraid of re-prisal

or blogging themselves out of their next job, or

simply not willing to jump into the conversation.

Those mid- career may have the same fears.

Relatively few “ elders” in the library field maintain

active blogs. Maybe libloggers fear reprisal less be-cause

the library field is so much bigger?

Soyka asks how archivists can move forward to-ward

lively conversations in blogs. There were no di-rect

comments on the post— in one sense, the

conversation stalled right there. But that’s not quite

true: There was a conversation, but in an alternate

mode, one that jumps from blog to blog.

Dani— first name only, but since she lists her

workplace it’s not a true disguise— posted “ Blogging

archivists” on July 17, 2008 at Curious child’s library

wanderings ( curiouschild. wordpress. com). She asked a

question in May 2008 about archivists and social media

in general— noting her astonishment at the number of

librarians and others using Twitter and the lack of arc-

Cites & Insights July 2009 5

hivists using this “ or any social networking service for

that matter.” Excerpts from this followup post:

Like Archives Next, I’ve noticed the abundance of li-brarians

who are tearing up the blogosphere and

creating a new pedagogy for library instruction. And,

after some digging, I’ve found some archivists who

are also paving the way for new archivists by sharing

project information, helpful suggestions, etc. The

problem is that these blogs are not getting the same

publicity as library blogs. Archivists have to be more

proactive in their marketing… [ She recommends ad-vertising

your blog on social networks, adding your

URL to email signatures, commenting on other arc-hivist

blogs and sharing problems and solutions]

… I rely heavily on blogs and tweets to keep current

and learn more about my profession. I rely on the

expertise of those who have been working in the field

for longer than I have, but I also like being able to

commiserate with those who are new to the field. I

know there are professional journals out there that

offer the same professional support that I’m talking

about but I like the instant gratification that comes

from blogging and social networking. And I believe

that we, as a profession, need to move forward by

granting blogs and other web 2.0 technologies pro-fessional

legitimacy.

Tearing up the blogosphere? Maybe. Creating a new

pedagogy for library instruction? Have libloggers done

that? Dani did draw comments— six of them, plus her

responses. DKemper called it “ A well- written and gut-sy

blog post that sheds light on what we as profes-sionals

need to do to encourage talk and discussion

not only amongst ourselves at conferences but online,

in the blogosphere, if you will, where so many col-leagues

in libraries have already congregated and push

enormous quantities of content from many different

voices out to readers.” Later in the conversation he

adds two notes, one a significant caveat:

To embrace these new technologies is really to em-brace

the ideals of sharing and communicating in-formation

and exchanging knowledge, either among

new archivists or between senior archivists and the

next generation of archivists…

[ T] he Social Web ( blogs, micro- blogging, podcasts,

social networking sites, etc) is time- consuming. It

takes time to write quality blog content, for example.

And for many archivists, time and other resources are

limited and mainly directed to taking care ‘ bread-and-

butter’ business.

Paul Lasewicz has an internal blog— but continues:

But to blog externally, well, that assumes that some-body

would read it! And even if that’s so, the time in-vested

produces too few benefits to justify taking

time away from other things … like my family.

The best argument against blogging is that it takes

time ( and if it’s not part of your workplace, you

shouldn’t be doing it on work time). “ That assumes

somebody would read it” is interesting, given the

number of libloggers who regularly talk about “ my

two readers” or the like— a phrase that could be false

humility but could also reflect the uncertainty most of

us have as to whether we’re reaching anybody.

Gordon offered a comment that may mirror the

thoughts of many libloggers and other bloggers on

why we blog ( substitute “ librarian” or other profession

for “ archivist”):

As someone who just recently started blogging, for

me it is an exercise in intellectual curiosity. Blogging

is a way to throw ideas up against the wall and see

what sticks. By communicating my active interests in

a blog I not only inform others, but I also educate

myself and hopefully make myself a better archivist

in the process by interacting with others.

From there, the conversation jumped back to Archi-vesNext

in a July 18, 2008 post:

Archivists and blogging, the conversation

continues

Kate T. sees this turning into something that “ kind of

looks like a discussion.” She doubts that archivists

don’t blog because they’re not comfortable with tech-nology

or with creating records— but does think

people fear disclosure and reprisal. She continues:

I think it’s a great sign that more and more people are

starting processing blogs and other blogs that share in-formation

about their repositories... But, I think the

kind of participation Heather is looking for, like me, is

in the area of opinion and discussion of professional is-sues.

That is where we are weak… I think risk-aversion

and fear are very real factors that hold people

back from writing or commenting ( and from signing

their full names, even if they chose to contribute).

I sincerely believe that stating an opinion that may be

controversial is potentially dangerous in our profes-sion

and this inhibits many people from publicly

sharing their views. This may be true in all profes-sions,

but I am only speaking here about ours. I think

people are right to be cautious. We are a compara-tively

small profession with a tight job market. No

one wants to risk that an all- too- honest comment on

a blog will cost them a job. I wish it were true that no

one would hold an honest opinion, expressed in a

professional manner, against you, but I do not think

we live in that world.

Are librarians more fearless? Probably not, but it’s a

much larger field. The Society of American Archivists

has some 3,100 individual members and 500 institu-tional

members. ALA has considerably more than

Cites & Insights July 2009 6

60,000 members, and there may be a lot more libra-rians

who aren’t ALA members than archivists who

aren’t in SAA. Proportionally, it’s possible that archiv-ists

are more active bloggers than library people.

I also think there’s an element of something like

snobbery at play. I think quite a few people in our

profession think blogs, and the people who write and

read them, aren’t “ serious” or “ scholarly.” ( And don’t

even think of bringing up something like Facebook!).

Our opinions are not reviewed or mediated and they

don’t come with footnotes. If blogs are not taken se-riously,

why would serious people spend time writing

or reading them?...

Are liblogs taken seriously? Yes, but it’s a slow process.

Are liblogs considered scholarly? Not so much.

… I think that a lot of us who are interested in writ-ing,

reading, and contributing to open, unmediated,

relatively informal professional discussions via blogs

are already here and doing it. We don’t care if the rest

of the profession doesn’t take what we do seriously.

We see the value for ourselves and our colleagues and

that’s enough. There are probably many more who

would do so if only they were given some kind of in-dication

that to do is accepted as a serious profes-sional

activity. One way to achieve this kind of seal of

approval is by word of mouth, and I think we’re

doing a good job of achieving that. Keep telling your

colleagues that there are some great blogs out there

that they need to be reading. Send them the links. If

you’re not commenting, take a few minutes to post a

comment ( with your name, of course) to show new-bies

that these blogs aren’t out there in a vacuum.

Most library people who start and continue liblogs do

so for similar reasons.

There’s more to the post— dealing with fears and

the desire for top- down recognition of blogs as valid

fora for professional discourse. A comment from

Jeanne offers another take on why we blog:

For me the driving reason to keep blogging is because

I love doing this sort of research - I love pulling ideas

together across disciplines. The handful of people

passionate about the topics I am most intrigued by

are so geographically dispersed that I feel that blog-ging

is the best way to keep the conversation alive be-tween

like- minded individuals.

Speaking bloggers and the bloggers who blog them

( and are in return blogged)

Another from Kate T. at ArchivesNext. Although the

post is a few months old ( November 11, 2008), it

marks a good closing point for this section— and with

a metatitle as rich as that, how could I resist?

Kate T. participated in a session on blogging at a

regional conference, a session that drew a good crowd.

Let me clarify– I don’t know if it’s “ good” to step up to

the podium and see three people who you know blog

all sitting there in the third row with their laptops or

mobile devices out and ready to go. And when they

start typing away when you start talking, it can make

you a bit nervous. Not me, of course. I was there to

talk about my blog– this one– but I thought that prob-ably

most people in the audience would be more in-terested

in more general tips and lessons learned

about blogs than in the specifics of this one.

Kate summarizes the presentations and notes some of

the blogging about the session. Then she draws some

lessons “ serious or otherwise” from “ all this blogging

about a blogging session”— lessons that apply equally

to librarians, museum people and others:

First, people were able to post live, or virtually live,

because the hotel had wireless in the meeting spaces.

Any conference that wants to encourage bloggers ( and

the free publicity they offer) must make arrangements

for free wireless. Going forward, I think this should be

part of the conference amenities all archival organiza-tions

look for when selecting a venue…

Second… our blogging friends weren’t quite prepared.

Two lost power on their laptops and one lost a post

because he was still learning how to work with some

new software… These are reminders to be aware of

the technical requirements of blogging.

Third… imagine the potential if we had fully po-wered,

connected, and organized bloggers at all our

conferences. I think a liveblogging session from an

opening plenary, for example, would be fascinating…

I have mixed feelings about liveblogging from confe-rence

sessions; it too often seems to yield bullet points

rather than holistic senses of what was being said,

with the blogger’s perspective added. I prefer well-prepared

reports written after a session— but I’m rea-listic

enough to know such reports are hard to come

by these days, and maybe liveblogging is better than

nothing. ( Such liveblogging now seems more likely

via Twitter or FriendFeed.) I’ve also realized that I

can’t safely respond to liveblogging ( after some difficult

examples), or even to post- session blogging about

speeches: That is, it’s simply not safe to assume that

what’s reported as being said has anything to do with

what the speaker intended. ( More to the point, speak-ers

feel free to complain bitterly of being misinter-preted

if you weren’t actually at the session.)

The post drew lots of comments— 19 in all, includ-ing

Kate’s five interleaved responses. The first commen-ter

wants to see more active blogging from sessions; the

second is “ my kind of blogger,” one who pulls notes

together after the fact and doesn’t find that liveblogging

works for her. ( Kate T. also blogs after a session.)

Cites & Insights July 2009 7

“ Paul” raised an issue discussed in C& I previous-ly,

one I’m starting to think of as a lost cause:

The problem with all this parallel activity during a

session is that it distracts— and detracts— from the

presentations. Doesn’t anybody remember note tak-ing

in college? Okay, let me qualify that a bit: diligent

note taking. It was hard to keep up with the speaker’s

train of thought if you were capturing everything

they said. Can it be any easier if you are typing or

texting? And if you are only twittering quick idea

captures, are you doing the speaker’s talk an appro-priate

amount of justice?

All I know is if I had an audience of typers, I’d tole-rate

it because it’s marginally better than having folks

fall asleep on you. But I’m not sure how much toler-ance

I’d have for the first one who asks a follow up

question to something I covered that he missed due

to his sideline distractions.

I love Kate’s immediate response: “ Well, I had some-one

who was both typing and sleeping, but he’s a spe-cial

case…” She deferred to others to respond— and,

frankly, I didn’t see much in the way of responses.

“ RobinRKC” might be giving an answer:

How many of us attend a conference session, dili-gently

take detailed notes on paper, go back home,

type up those notes, add an in- depth analysis of what

was said, and then share them widely with our col-leagues?

Seriously? Twittering and blogging may not

capture much more than key concepts and phrases,

but that’s a whole lot more than I have seen from

most conferences. It allows us all to start and contin-ue

discussions that aren’t possible within the confines

of a traditional presentation.

But post- session blogging, summarizing and respond-ing

the same day, isn’t at all the same as the scenario

RobinRKC posits; it has the feel of a straw man.

The comments also discuss Twitter and how, with

hash tags, you can follow tweets about a session with-out

following people ( or even joining Twitter).

Why I Blog

That’s the title of an Andrew Sullivan article in the

November 2008 Atlantic ( www. theatlantic. com/ doc/

200811/ andrew- sullivan- why- i- blog). At 5,300 words,

the piece would be long for most blog posts ( although

I’ve read 10,000- word posts), but that’s a good length

for a thoughtful essay. A few excerpts and comments:

This form of instant and global self- publishing, made

possible by technology widely available only for the

past decade or so, allows for no retroactive editing

( apart from fixing minor typos or small glitches) and

removes from the act of writing any considered or

lengthy review. It is the spontaneous expression of in-stant

thought— impermanent beyond even the ephe-mera

of daily journalism. It is accountable in imme-diate

and unavoidable ways to readers and other

bloggers, and linked via hypertext to continuously

multiplying references and sources. Unlike any single

piece of print journalism, its borders are extremely

porous and its truth inherently transitory. The conse-quences

of this for the act of writing are still sinking in.

Spontaneous, sometimes— but “ impermanent”? That

depends. I can cite Jenny Levine from February 2002:

“ Under the DMCA, librarians are not protected from

criminal prosecution for crimes committed by others.

There's just so much wrong with this legislation that

we as a profession have to become active participants

in the debate.” Karen Schneider from November 2003:

“ A computer break- in at Bancroft Library ( UCB) high-lights

one of my concerns about RFID: many library

servers aren’t secure to begin with– and that, hand in

hand with a potent technology such as RFID ( full dis-closure:

I don’t have any indication Bancroft plans to

implement RFID), could lead to compromised user

privacy.” Jessamyn West from November 1999: “ As

many of you know, it is my not- so- secret dream to

work in a VT library somewhere near my place even-tually.”

I could go on…

We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our

thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear

pattern emerges. We blog now— as news reaches us,

as facts emerge… [ A] blog is not so much daily writ-ing

as hourly writing. And with that level of timeli-ness,

the provisionality of every word is even more

pressing— and the risk of error or the thrill of pres-cience

that much greater.

Simply not true. At least not for many bloggers. “ We”

don’t all blog on an hourly or even daily basis. Maybe

Sullivan feels compelled to “ commit thoughts to pix-els

several times a day”; most of us don’t.

Sullivan says interesting things, even if some of

them overgeneralize or make blogging a bit more “ re-volutionary”

than it is. He does exaggerate the power

of comments to correct errors in blogs, particularly as

more and more high- profile blogs either disallow

comments or moderate them. He argues that blogging

rewards brevity—“ No one wants to read a 9,000- word

treatise online”— and agrees with a questionable Matt

Drudge statement, that a blog is a broadcast, not a

publication. The first statement is largely but not un-iversally

true; the second is, I think, wrong— to my

mind, blogs are publications.

Why does Sullivan blog? I’m not sure. “ Because he

gets paid for it” would be snarky. Maybe you can

piece it together from:

Cites & Insights July 2009 8

Blogging is… to writing what extreme sports are to ath-letics:

more free- form, more accident- prone, less formal,

more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud…

[ A] blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It trans-forms

this most personal and retrospective of forms

into a painfully public and immediate one. It com-bines

the confessional genre with the log form and

exposes the author in a manner no author has ever

been exposed before…

From the first few days of using the form, I was

hooked. The simple experience of being able to di-rectly

broadcast my own words to readers was an ex-hilarating

literary liberation. Unlike the current

generation of writers, who have only ever blogged, I

knew firsthand what the alternative meant…

Wait. “ The current generation” of bloggers “ have only

ever blogged”? Talk about false generalizations…

Back to Sullivan’s “ why”:

Blogging— even to an audience of a few hundred in

the early days— was intoxicatingly free in compari-son.

Like taking a narcotic. It was obvious from the

start that it was revolutionary. Every writer since the

printing press has longed for a means to publish him-self

and reach— instantly— any reader on Earth…

A blog… bobs on the surface of the ocean but has its

anchorage in waters deeper than those print media is

technologically able to exploit. It disempowers the

writer to that extent, of course. The blogger can get

away with less and afford fewer pretensions of au-thority.

He is— more than any writer of the past— a

node among other nodes, connected but unfinished

without the links and the comments and the track-backs

that make the blogosphere, at its best, a con-versation,

rather than a production….

The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but

to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of

a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a

position, even passionately, but he also must create

an atmosphere in which others want to participate…

There’s more. I keep wanting to say “ But… That’s just

not true for all blogs.” A good essayist ought to re-member

that “ I” does not mean “ we all”; Sullivan

should not generalize so frequently and with so little

apparent reflection.

For that matter, Sullivan’s an odd host. His blog,

The Daily Dish, does not seem to support comments,

an interesting stance for one speaking so favorably of

conversation. After glancing through a day’s worth of

Sullivan’s blogging, I see that it’s a style I find annoy-ing

and not worth following, with lots of brief posts,

few of them saying much.

To some extent, I’m nitpicking— and Sullivan is

one of those writers who you can find valuable and

thought- provoking even as you occasionally yell. Why

Sullivan blogs may not be why I blog or why you

should blog ( if you should) or why ( some) scientists

should blog— but it’s a tale worth reading.

Still… “ Even the most careful and self- aware

blogger will reveal more about himself than he wants

to in a few unguarded sentences and publish them

before he has the sense to hit Delete… You can’t have

blogger’s block. You have to express yourself now,

while your emotions roil, while your temper flares,

while your humor lasts.” Again, false generaliza-tions—

Sullivan should know better. He seems to think

blogs have to be more balanced than print media; one

can only say “ Wha?” And sometimes he gets it wrong:

A traditional writer is valued by readers precisely be-cause

they trust him to have thought long and hard

about a subject, given it time to evolve in his head,

and composed a piece of writing that is worth their

time to read at length and to ponder. Bloggers don’t

do this and cannot do this— and that limits them far

more than it does traditional long- form writing. [ Em-phasis

added.]

A blogger will air a variety of thoughts or facts on any

subject in no particular order other than that dictated

by the passing of time. A writer will instead use time,

synthesizing these thoughts, ordering them, weighing

which points count more than others, seeing how his

views evolved in the writing process itself, and res-ponding

to an editor’s perusal of a draft or two. The

result is almost always more measured, more satisfy-ing,

and more enduring than a blizzard of posts.

The liblog field includes counter- examples, some even

using editors or at least referees. Sullivan appears to

have formed a mental model of blogs, presumably

based on his own experience— and ruled the rest of

the field out of existence. What Sullivan says may be

true for most blogs, maybe even 95% of them— but

there are shining examples of blogs that have not “ a

blizzard of posts” but well- formed, synthesized, satis-fying

essays. There is simply nothing about blogs as

media ( multiple essays on the web appearing in re-verse

chronological order) that rules out traditional

long- form writing or its more frequent 800- word cou-sin.

I would venture a suspicion that more first- rate

essays appear in blogs these days than in traditional

media; other than The Atlantic, The New Yorker and a

handful of others, the market for essays is a thin one.

Nicholas Carr comments on Sullivan’s essay in an

October 15, 2008 Rough type post ( www. roughtype.

com). He notes the assertion that blogging is “ a super-ficial

medium” and includes even more of the section

beginning “ A traditional writer” that I quote above.

Carr’s reaction? “ Well put.” None of the commenters

Cites & Insights July 2009 9

take issue with that limited view of blogs, although

Chris K comes close: “ If a reader is willing to invest

the time to follow postings over time, there is a track

record, as well as a pattern of thinking that evolves,

much as the personal essayist of the past.”

I’m in the minority on this one— and blogs con-sisting

of true essays are admittedly in a small minority

( but still they exist). Marcus Banks commented on

Sullivan’s essay in an October 25, 2008 Marcus’ world

post ( mbanks. typepad. com/), wondering about a cer-tain

excessive fondness for blogs in the first half and

praising the second half:

The old- fashioned essay, in its deliberateness, affords

a much greater space for thoughtfulness and profun-dity

than the typical blog musing. In between is the

print newspaper column, which comes out frequently

enough that profundity is harder... but infrequently

enough that there is more time to think clearly.

A worthy blog post will make interesting points, ref-erence

the relevant sources, and ( hopefully) get a

good online conversation brewing. A print newspaper

column will not be able to pull together relevant

sources as seamlessly, but will encourage deeper ref-lection

because the time pressures aren't as intense as

in the blogosphere. And the slow- bubbling essay will

usually be the deepest of the lot.

So that simple principle holds: A place for everything

and everything in its place.

Online conversations are unpredictable. This post

drew no comments. I continue to assert that blogs can

encompass the slow- bubbling essay ( In the library with

the lead pipe, anyone?).

After going through many posts that either just

quote portions of Sullivan’s essay or high- five him ( with

a remarkable paucity of comments), I finally found

Scott Rosenberg and “ Sullivan’s new blog manifesto”

( www. wordyard. com/ 2008/ 10/ 20/ sullivans- new- blog-manifesto/):

I think it’s important to say that Sullivan offers blan-ket

declarations about the nature of blogging that re-ally

ought to be understood as descriptions of his

particular mode of blogging. The picture of blogging

Sullivan paints is very much one from the perspective

of a writer trained as a print journalist. Nothing

wrong with that; I’m in the same boat. But blogging

is, as Sullivan says, an enterprise of the individual,

and individual experiences are all over the map —

many, almost certainly the majority, very different

from his, yet no less valid.

Rosenberg also points out a “ sloppy error” in Sulli-van’s

piece, describing Slate as “ the first magazine

published exclusively on the Web,” which is only true

if you define “ magazine” so narrowly as to exclude

Salon, Feed, Hotwired and Web Review ( probably

“ among others”).

There were, of course, more reactions— possibly

thousands of them.

Why Academics Should Blog

The key post with this title is probably Hugh McGuire’s

October 26, 2008 post at hughmcguire. net, but I only

saw that because of John Dupuis’ identically- titled Oc-tober

27, 2008 post at the old Confessions of a science

librarian. ( jdupuis. blogspot. com./; the new ScienceBlogs

version does not yet carry forward the archive).

McGuire, taking a media theory course that in-volves

“ a fair bit of reading,” concludes “ all academics

should blog.” Dupuis quotes his nine key points— but

without McGuire’s lovely expansions. I won’t quote them

in full, but I’ll include a few of the choice com-ments…

and save my own comments, if any, for the end.

1. You need to improve your writing. I have never

read such dismally bad writing as that which is pre-valent

in academia. Not all of it is terrible, but the

stuff that is bad is just atrocious. It’s wordy, flabby, re-petitive,

and filled with jargony mumbo- jumbo…

You need lots of practice writing clear, good prose

and saying what you mean. Blogging will help you

get that practice.

2. Some of your ideas are dumb. The sooner you

get called out on bad ideas, the better. Blogging has

an almost- immediate feedback loop…

3. The point of academia is to expand knowledge.

If you believe that the reason academics publish is to

expand knowledge, then expanding it beyond the few

tens or hundreds of your colleagues that read the ob-scure

journals you publish in should be a good

thing…

4. Blogging expands your readership. Cross-pollination

of ideas makes for a more healthy intellec-tual

ecosystem, and blogging means that anyone, not

just those in your discipline, will be likely to read

your stuff…

5. Blogging protects and promotes your ideas. By

blogging a new idea, you put your stakes in the ( cy-ber)

ground, with dates and readership to attest to

your claim…

6. Blogging is Reputation. In blogging links are cur-rency:

your reputation is made by who links to you

and how often. It’s a built in, and more- or- less demo-cratic

system of reputation as defined by interest…

7. Linking is better than footnotes… It allows your

readers to visit your source material immediately ( as-suming

it too is online), so again is likely to expand

knowledge by giving readers direct access to the ideas

that underpin your ideas.

Cites & Insights July 2009 10

8. Journals and blogs can ( and should) coexist…

If academics blog, they can evolve and develop a se-ries

of ideas. When the ideas are clearer and polished,

they can move on to be journal articles…

9. What have journals done for you lately? Jour-nals

define your reputation, and don’t pay anything.

That’s like blogging. They are exorbitantly expensive,

have abusive and restrictive copyright terms, and are

not available online to the general public. You can’t

link to them, and often you can’t find them. That’s

unlike blogging…

A few quibbles come to mind ( as a non- academic, I

will steer clear of the first one entirely). “ Few tens or

hundreds” describes the readership of most blogs;

while blogging may expand an academic’s readership,

that’s not a given, any more than it’s a given that any-one

outside the specialty will care. I’ll pass on # 6, al-though

that one has problems, and on # 9 will note

that many journals ( particularly in the humanities) are

not exorbitantly expensive.

None of which erases the value of this list. Some

commenters seconded his notions. One took issue with

# 5 ( because you can change the time stamp on a post)

and # 6 (“ most scholars don’t really care about scholarly

blogs”). The comment stream is fascinating if some-times

frustrating— and includes an approving assertion

at one point that “ academics don’t write in order to be

understood.” What an interesting statement, given that

it’s apparently not intended as criticism!

Here’s what Dupuis has to say about the list:

What I love about the list is that it so perfectly cap-tures

the full range of reasons for academics to blog.

And not just academics and academic librarians— I

would say that the reasons more- or- less apply just as

much to any knowledge worker or professional, li-brarians

and library school students included, where

the idea is to both share what we know and to build

our professional reputations.

In other words, there are both altruistic and selfish

reasons to blog, free and open expression benefits

both the blogger and the larger social/ professional/

academic context in which she or he blogs.

Is this the full range of reasons for professionals to

blog? I’m not sure. It’s an interesting list, though.

The next few items aren’t part of a continuous

thread; they’re notes on why some professionals ( and

others) blog.

Different types of writing

Marcus Banks posted this on May 3, 2009 at Marcus’

world ( mbanks. typepad. com/ my_ weblog/). T. Scott had

commented, in relation to something else entirely, that

one writer was intent on making every word count.

“ That's why so much blog writing is so lousy— people

are focused on their ideas, not on the words they use

to get those ideas across.” Counterpoint to McGuire’s

# 1? Maybe, maybe not. ( Maybe most people are just

lousy writers, whether they’re academics or not.) But

here’s what Banks has to say ( in part):

This made me think, yet again, about the difference

between blog writing and more established forms of

publication. A few years ago I was very interested in

whether blogs would displace traditional news

sources; there was excitement in the blogosphere

about how this was inevitable, and much hand-wringing

in the mainstream media ( MSM) about the

temerity of those bloggers who wrote late at night in

their pajamas.

Today that battle feels ancient. News organizations are

under serious threat, but not from bloggers. The inabili-ty

to make money from online ads is the real culprit…

Harking back to the previous section, Banks now

notes Sullivan’s essay and the idea that “ many posts

are less fully formed than they would be as old-fashioned

essays.” Banks uses the word “ many,” back-ing

away from Sullivan’s generalization, removing any

disagreement I might have.

I usually re- read my posts a few times before clicking

the magic button. Once a post is up I'll only change

something if there is a typo or grammatical error …

or if a phrase seems particularly wordy or preten-tious.

I try not to tinker too much, grandly reasoning

that this random post of mine has become a teeny

part of history.

The blog post always represents a slice of time, how-ever

carefully it's written. You can grow into essays

and take as much time as you need, knowing ( of

course) that it could always be better.

Well said, and I’m in agreement for most blogs. It’s cer-tainly

true for my own writing, where posts ( few and

far between as they are) get the least review, C& I piec-es

get more review, true C& I essays ( many of which

have “ On” as the first word of their titles)— as op-posed

to these sections that are piecemeal essays— get

even more, and columns for print publications ( which

are, or should be, essays) get the most. Of course,

those columns also have length restrictions— and it’s

much tougher to write a good 800- word essay than it

is to write a pretty good 4,000- word piece.

Where I blog, and what I blog for

Leigh Anne Vrabel’s May 11, 2009 post at Library alc-hemy

( libraryalchemy. wordpress. com) makes a distinc-tion

between professional blogging and personal

blogging and offers her reasons for professional blog-ging.

Excerpts:

Cites & Insights July 2009 11

To demonstrate that it can be done… I wanted to

demonstrate to skeptics that it really is possible to keep

a professional blog and still get all your other work

done. From the day I started until now, I’ve managed to

balance collection development, refdesk time, database

stuff, and more meetings than you can shake a very big

stick at with, on average, twice- weekly entries…

To keep track of my professional accomplish-ments.

Writing and tagging has been really helpful

when writing up my self- appraisals, updating my

resume, applying for programs like Emerging Lead-ers,

etc…

To explore things that don’t make sense to me…

Writing things out helps me make sense and under-stand

them. Blogging about projects I’m working on,

or making observations about other 2.0 issues, has

helped me clarify for myself what I need to do now

or next in any given situation..

To become a better writer… It’s simply not enough to

have opinions - one must express them artfully if one

is to make an impact… If you’re going to speak public-ly

at all, you might as well take the opportunity to

hone your craft so that the people who stumble across

your work have a better chance of benefiting from it…

To express an under- represented point of view

about Library 2.0… I started noticing, as I was read-ing

Library 2.0 bloggers, that my experiences and

opinions weren’t exactly lining up on the same page.

So I figured I’d better engage with that. I find myself

disagreeing with the “ rock star bloggers” more often

than not, not to be a pain, but because my expe-riences

here– and those of my peers, and those of our

patrons– are often so radically different from what’s

presented as “ normal” that I can’t, in all good con-science,

NOT say something sometimes…

I’m sure my reasons for blogging will grow and

change as my career does…

Read the rest of the post. I see items here that aren’t

on McGuire’s list— and ones that may apply to quite a

few professionals, particularly if you generalize the

final one. I’m particularly fond of the third reason;

posts as a form of public exploration can be both re-vealing

and useful. Some of the essays here are also

public explorations in longer form— when you think

of it, LIBRARY 2.0 AND “ LIBRARY 2.0” was an elaborate

attempt to figure out what Library 2.0 meant.

why I blog

Barbara Fister offers a response to a blogging meme in

this May 19, 2009 post at Barbara fister’s place ( barba-rafister.

wordpress. com). Excerpts from sections dealing

with the “ why”:

[ My] first foray was to replace an irregular library

newsletter with a nimbler, more responsive means of

providing information ( and avoiding the huge head-ache

of layout and creating content for a newsletter

that was, frankly, one newsletter too many for most of

its potential audience). Later I started my personal

blog for a similar reason: to replace another static

web page that was tricky to update, one containing

book reviews…

My own blog has evolved into a place where I can in-tegrate

the various strands of my life – librarian, aca-demic,

novelist, citizen. Another thing about

blogging: since discovering FriendFeed I am finding

it a wonderfully communal activity.

My personal blog is, for me, a place to work out

things that I’m thinking about. There’s something

about the medium that is nicely informal and imme-diate,

which is a change from the more academic or

polished writing that I do elsewhere. I like the brac-ing

logic of an academic argument, and I like writing

fiction in someone else’s first person voice, but blog-ging

is like having a conversation with a friend.

In that final paragraph ( the first sentence, repeated in

different form earlier), I see Vrabel’s third item ex-pressed

differently. It’s an excellent reason to blog.

19 reasons you should blog and not just tweet

This one’s from way outside liblogs, a May 10, 2009

post at The FutureBuzz, “ Adam Singer on media | mar-keting

| PR.” I won’t get into a Twitter- vs.- blogging

discussion, but he does offer a few notable items,

along with some odd comments like “ Blogging is the

antithesis of easy,” an odd statement for something

that takes two minutes to set up and little more time

to do. Some of the points:

2. Old articles are valuable and still read years later,

given infinite life by the engines.

4. A compelling link in a blog entry will be clicked…

6. You own your work in a self- hosted blog and are in

total control over how it is presented.

8. Cumulative results over time from blogging, each

post incrementally adds value…

15. These are all just tools to share content and ideas,

no more, no less… A blog is the perfect place… if you

want focused attention and to build an interested

community.

Most of the other notes are more specifically argu-ments

for a blog as home, with Twitter as an outpost.

One of those is particularly cogent—“ 13. 140 charac-ters

is often more than necessary - but also it is often

less than necessary.”

There are lots of comments— including one from

a person who’s a Twitterer all the way, regards the

need to click on a link as too much trouble, and offers

this dystopian comment: “ Soon enough our needs will

Cites & Insights July 2009 12

get so great that the thought of reading news in more

then [ sic] 140 characters will be hard to imagine.” Set

aside the key point that many ( most?) good blogs are

not “ news,” this is one person who apparently has no

use for perspective or even complex thoughts.

If you don’t have a blog you don’t have a resume

That’s John Dupuis title for a trio of posts at Confes-sions

of a science librarian ( the old one) on February 4,

9, and 19, 2009.

The point here is to make the case that blogging is

good for your career. It's been good for me and it's

been good for a lot of other people and I think it has

potential for everyone.

Now, is everyone a blogger- in- waiting? Of course not.

Would absolutely everyone actually benefit from

blogging? Probably not. And if absolutely everyone

did take up blogging, would the massive amount of

noise generated actually cancel itself out and end up

hardly benefiting anyone at all? Probably.

This is an interesting take on generalization: Blogging

might have potential for everyone, but that doesn’t

mean everyone should blog.

Dupuis quotes other bloggers, specifically Daniel

Lemire, and I think you need to go to Dupuis’ posts

and continue from there. Dupuis has written a good

roundup of his own, adding value through his com-ments

and selections— and, as with most blogs, his

posts have live links.

I believe that if you blog to become famous ( in other

words, to explicitly build your reputation, with cynic-ism

not passion), that will be your reputation. If you

blog to share and grow and explore, it's that passion

that will hopefully influence your reputation- building

efforts and that any concrete benefits that you accrue

will reflect that…

Decide for yourself whether or not you could inte-grate

blogging into your own professional develop-ment

plan. It's definitely worth it for pretty well

anyone to at least give it a try. And if you don't have a

professional development plan, I have to say that

blogging will help you define and refine your goals

and interests. Believe it or not, just writing a little

about a lot of different things really will help you fig-ure

out what's important to you…

I believe that blogging has a lot of benefits for building

reputation at the very outset of a career, as it can really

help to distinguish one candidate from another…

Why do You Blog?

Do you find your own motives here? Do you have

different reasons?

There’s little here about making big bucks from

advertising, becoming a rockstar or other dubious

rewards for blogging. There’s a lot about professional

communication and personal growth. This is probably

as it should be.

Interesting & Peculiar Products

High- Def Bluetooth?

Not HDTV, in this case, but high- definition audio—

digital audio with higher sampling rates and larger

word length than standard CD ( 44.1KHz, 16- bit

depth, usually abbreviated 16/ 44). According to the

January 2009 Stereophile, Chord Electronics has dem-onstrated

a short- range transmission technique using

the Bluetooth 2.4GHz standard capable of 4.5Mb data

rates and used to transmit 24/ 96 stereo audio. The

digital protocol is called A2DP and it’s already in the

chipsets used in most cell phones.

Would you really use a cell phone as a storage

device for high- definition audio, transmitting it to

your high- end stereo system when you want to listen

to music? Anything’s possible, and high- end data

phones have gigabytes of storage, but this may be a

little out there. The storage requirements are non-trivial:

uncompressed data would appear to require

52.5 megabytes per minute of audio, so 8GB of storage

would hold less than three hours of music. With true

lossless compression, you might get that up to five

hours or 312 minutes. It would certainly be a differ-ent

mindset than packing 8GB of storage with thou-sands

of tunes at such low data rates that there’s clear

loss of audio quality on any decent headphones.

iHome Audio iH70SRC

This one’s a little mystifying, but maybe it’s just me.

The product’s clear enough: Powered PC speakers that

include an iPod dock in the base of one speaker, so

you can use them as both iPod speakers and PC

speakers. There’s even a remote ( really? you need a

remote control for speakers designed to be used a foot

or two away?). But… based on the photo, an iPod

Touch covers more than half the right speaker. That

seems like a recipe for muted sound that favors the

left channel. ( As you’d expect for PC World, the “ tests”

consist of casual listening and no testing, resulting in

“ I found the sound quality to be pretty good, though a

bit thin overall,” and there’s no indication at all of

what’s in the speakers.) I dunno: Maybe these make

sense at $ 150. Maybe not.

Cites & Insights July 2009 13

I investigated, going to the PC World review site

and from there to the manufacturer. Turns out the

extent of specs at the manufacturer’s site is 15 watts

amplification ( I’d guess that’s peak power)— and “ re-son8

speakers” with no mention what size speakers

or, for that matter, the size of the units. You gotta love

detail like that.

Checking a little further, it turns out that the

magazine photo is reversed— the iPod cradle is in the

left speaker, not the right. Other reviews indicate that

the speaker is at the top of each 3.2" x8.5" ( 7.5" deep)

unit, so maybe the iPod doesn’t block it— but that

also means you’ve got a single speaker probably

around 2.5" in diameter. Hi- fi this ain’t. ( Checking

still more sites, looks like they are indeed 2.5" speak-ers

with “ high- fidelity Reson8 ® speaker chambers,”

whatever that might mean.)

When is a Netbook not a Netbook?

I would argue that a “ netbook” that costs $ 650 and

weighs 3.7 pounds including power brick is really a

cheap ultraportable— it’s too expensive and too heavy

to be a netbook. But Asus calls the NJ10C a net-book—

and it has some netbook characteristics, such

as the 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and

160GB hard disk, along with a 10.2" 1024x600

screen. I guess the question is whether, compared to a

budget notebook, the lower weight ( 3.7 pounds as

compared to, say, six pounds) and somewhat more

compact case balance the slower CPU, somewhat un-dersized

keyboard, less RAM and smaller screen, since

you’re paying about the same price.

PC World uses the title “ Not quite a netbook” for

a full- page review ( April 2009) of Sony’s VAIO P,

which starts at $ 900 and can cost as much as $ 1,499.

The tested model, with 64GB solid- state storage ra-ther

than a hard disk, runs $ 1,199, putting it way out-side

the netbook class— and it runs Vista Basic. That

seems odd, given its use of a netbook- class 1.33GHz

Atom processor. What it does have going for it: Size

( 9.6x4.7x0.9"), weight ( 1.4lb.), a decent ( 88% of full-size)

keyboard and an 8" widescreen with 1600x768

resolution. Running Vista, benchmark results were

pretty awful. This seems more like a UMPC, whatever

those are these days— ultralight, ultracompact, also

pricey and slow. ( The rating is a 68, “ Fair.”)

High- Resolution Downloads

Most early legal audio downloads offered inferior

sound quality, although even a couple of years ago

some sites offered 256K MP3 or equivalent ( still com-promised,

but good enough for many people most of

the time).

But what if even full CD quality isn’t good

enough— as it clearly isn’t for some people? There are

options. According to the April/ May 2009 Sound &

Vision, there are two main sources for high- resolution

music downloads.

MusicGiants offers Super HD High Definition

downloads, transferred from SACD and DVD- Audio

sources at 88.2kHz/ 24 bits or 96kHz/ 24 bits, both

potentially substantially better than the 44.1kHz/ 16

bits of standard CD. Both use Windows Media Audio

Lossless encoding and offer 5.1 channel and stereo

selections. HDtracks ( as with MusicGiants, just add

. com for the URL) sells the same resolutions but uses

the lossless FLAC format.

Glancing at the sites, I see that MusicGiants

( HDGiants on the home page) includes music from all

the major publishers and features Music Concierge

Collections, $ 500 to $ 5,000 packages of preselected

songs delivered on hard disk. Browsing the download

site ( which only works on IE— or from Windows Me-dia

Player), I see 78 albums as of late May 2009

( mostly jazz and classical), with most album-equivalents

priced at $ 19.99 and up and none of the

one I checked available on a per- song basis.

HDtracks doesn’t push big- label affiliations as

much and seems to have mostly independent and

smaller labels. A late- May check shows just over 300

albums in high- def format ( also mostly classical and

jazz). A quick check of a couple samples shows some

by- song availability ($ 2.50 and up) and lower prices

for complete albums ( but still around $ 16).

If you have the ear and audio equipment to ap-preciate

the difference, both may be plausible

sources— and both sites have much larger collections

of CD- quality downloads.

More about Streaming Video

The April/ May 2009 Sound & Vision devotes five pages

of a “ Tech Trends ‘ 09” theme to Ken Pohlmann’s

breathless coverage of “ another paradigm shift,” this

time to streaming video. Pohlmann’s always been a

digital absolutist, so it’s no surprise that he says flatly

“ it will be improvements in streaming that will even-tually

kill off Blu- ray.” ( OK, so Blu- ray is digital, but

it’s delivered on a physical object with all those messy

first- sale rights, and anything physical is so 20th cen-tury.)

He gives as the biggest factor in deciding

whether to skip Blu- ray for streaming: “ your tolerance

for lower picture quality.”

Cites & Insights July 2009 14

The only write- ups of streaming video I’ve seen

that haven’t mentioned picture quality as an issue are

those done by people who apparently don’t give a

damn. Pohlmann doesn’t quite avoid the issue, with

“ not necessarily terrible” being high praise. On the oth-er

hand, he confuses two issues ( not unusual): He says

some streams are at 720p— but without knowing how

much excess compression that involves, that tells you

nothing. Actually, near the end of the article, he’s a little

more forthcoming, just after advising us to “ test the

waters” of streaming. Well, he’s only a little more forth-coming

on YouTube video quality: “ bad on a PC screen

and abysmal when blown up on a big- screen TV.”

How Many Channels

Will You Install?

Another “ Tech Tends ‘ 09” story in the April/ May 2009

Sound & Vision was a tough call: Should I mention it

here or in MY BACK PAGES? The story: “ Taking you

higher,” a discussion of 9.1- channel sound systems,

adding height to the expanded surround sound of 7.1.

Yep. Onkyo’s introducing six receivers with Dolby

ProLogic IIz technology. The “ z” stands for the z axis,

height. You put two more speakers above the front left

and right speakers, each at least three feet higher.

The writer’s enthusiastic. I may not be the right

one to comment: Even in our new house, I can see nei-ther

any plausible way nor any desire to install a sur-round-

sound system, much less a 7.1 or 9.1 system.

Ten speaker cabinets in our living room? Right… But

for someone with a quarter- million- dollar home thea-ter,

it might be just the thing, particularly for gaming.

Two Terabytes, One Drive

Remember the wait for the first one- terabyte hard

disk? It finally arrived in Summer 2007, a few months

later than many of us expected. The Hitachi Deskstar

7K1000 cost $ 399 when reviewed in July 2007.

Come April 2009— and here’s the Western Digital

2TB WD20EADS. It costs $ 299. It holds two tera-bytes.

It’s also environmentally friendly, a relatively

low- power device and offers competitive perfor-mance.

The PC World writeup says, “ The $ 299 price

tag may seem high; but at 15 cents per gigabyte, it is

fairly competitive with that of other drives.” Did I

mention that it holds two terabytes? That’s two thou-sand

gigabytes or two million megabytes ( accepting the

usual hard- disk caveat that two terabytes is probably

2,000,000,000,000 bytes, not 2 times 1024 to the

fourth power, which is how you’d specify two tera-bytes

of RAM).

Editors’ Choices and Group Reviews

A December 2008 PC World group review calls them

“ mini- notebooks,” a quaint usage for netbooks. ( The

author offers other synonyms and favors “ laptots,” but

hasn’t this particular issue already been settled? If I

describe a sub-$ 500 portable device with a screen

somewhere between 8 and 10 inches, weight not

much more than 2 pounds, full keyboard that’s a bit

undersized and Atom- class CPU… wouldn’t you say

“ netbook”?) It’s a rapidly changing category, so even a

December 2008 review may be too dated to be very

useful, but it’s a snapshot of sorts. All five units in the

group use Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom chip and 1GB RAM

and all include Ethernet, Wi- Fi, a Webcam, two or

three USB ports and an ExpressCard slot, and none

costs more than $ 500. They’re heavier than some net-books,

ranging from 2.7 to 3.7 pounds ( surprisingly,

the heaviest is the Asus Eee PC 1000H 80G XP— but

it also has the best battery life and a 10" display, as

well as “ a great keyboard”). Best Buy in the group is

the cheapest unit, the $ 349 Acer Aspire One.

All- purpose notebooks show up in the April

2009 PC World, but the category’s getting fuzzy. That

said, the Best Buy in the category goes to Acer’s $ 999

TravelMate 6293, which is light weight ( 4.8lb.), po-werful

( 2.26GHz Core Duo), small ( 12.1" screen) and

has great battery life ( just under eight hours). It comes

with 2GB RAM and a 250GB hard disk, and includes

Bluetooth, Wi- Fi and a webcam.

The same April 2009 PC World includes a big roun-dup

of ultraportables or netbooks ( the magazine uses

mini- notebook, ultraportable and netbook somewhat

interchangeably). The price range has broadened ( the

five top units range up to $ 649). This time, the winner is

the same Asus Eee PC 1000H 80G XP that was the hea-viest

in the December 2008 roundup; somehow, the

same unit now weighs 3.2lb. The Acer Aspire One also

seems relatively unchanged, but it’s dropped to third

place; apparently the criteria have changed.

“ The future belongs to tapeless high- definition

camcorders. But the future isn’t quite here yet.” A De-cember

2008 PC World group review covers six high-def

camcorders, five using either hard disks or flash

drives— and gives the Best Buy award to the single tape

unit, Canon’s $ 1,000 Vixia HV30. MiniDV videotape

may not be Shiny, but it’s inexpensive, easy to work

with, and the camera produces good video— with few-er

pixels than most AVCHD ( high- def) models but also

less compression and better video quality. The best bet

for those wanting to avoid tape is the Sony Handycam

HDR- SR12, but it’s heavier and more expensive.

Cites & Insights July 2009 15

Home Theater does an annual HDTV Face- Off,

where a panel compares several HDTVs under proper

conditions. This time ( as reported in the February

2009 issue), they compared four high- end designs:

two 50" plasmas and two 55" LCD sets, both with

LED “ local- dimming” backlighting ( clusters of LEDs

that can be dimmed separately to improve black level

in images). These are all relatively expensive sets,

ranging from $ 2,500 to $ 7,000. Overall winner: the

$ 5,000 Pioneer Elite KURO Pro- 111FD Plasma HDTV.

Second- best performer, but also most expensive: the

$ 7,000 Sony BRAVIA KDL- 55XBR8 LCD HDTV. Ama-zingly,

the Sony had the deepest blacks— but, as with

most LCD sets, its picture gets a lot worse if you’re

sitting off to the side. One interesting sidebar shows

the power consumption of each set— and it’s a shock-er,

if not really surprising. For a peak white window,

the Samsung ( LCD) draws 90.5 watts and the Sony

108 watts— while the two plasma sets, with smaller

screens, draw 271 and 292 watts respectively, nearly

three times the power. ( For full- white screens, a really

tough test, the LCDs draw 139 and 170 watts— and

the plasmas draw 419 and an astonishing 585 watts.)

So, basically, if you watch TV three hours a day and

the white- window consumption is typical, you’ll be

burning an extra 600 watt- hours a day or 220kWH a

year with a big plasma screen. ( How significant is

that? Well, moving from an old CRT to a big- screen

LCD almost certainly saves power, while moving to a

big- screen plasma may burn more power. In our

household, the difference stated would be about 5%

of our usage; your mileage may vary. And, to be sure,

we don’t watch anywhere near 3 hours a day.)

From HDTV to Blu- ray, the way to get the best

possible high- def picture. The February/ March 2009

Sound & Vision tests four reasonably- priced Blu- ray

players that support BD- Live, the odd feature that

provides for live networking to add to Blu- ray discs.

All four list for $ 250 to $ 350 and all are name brands.

Two score well enough for the “ certified and recom-mended”

seal: the $ 350 Samsung BD- P2550 and

$ 250 Panasonic DMP- BD35. The Samsung’s fairly

fast— five seconds to power up and open the disc tray,

23 seconds after insertion to display an image ( for

regular Blu- ray discs; BD- Live ones with lots of Java

can take more than a minute to load). The Panasonic

takes 20 seconds to power up, but only about 10

seconds after insertion to play a normal Blu- ray disc.

Speaking of Blu- ray, the April 2009 PC World

tests ten Blu- ray players costing anywhere from $ 175

to $ 400. The Best Buy is also the most expensive, Pa-nasonic’s

$ 400 DMP- BD55K. The review’s caveat on

most inexpensive units: They do fine with Blu- ray but

don’t upscale standard DVDs as well as more expen-sive

units. The Samsung BD- P2500 is a close second

to the Panasonic and costs $ 350; while its images are

great, it doesn’t decode DTS- HD Master audio directly.

That may not matter for most users. If what you want

is fast loading of Blu- ray discs, go for the third- place

finisher, still one of the best Blu- ray drives: the Sony

PlayStation 3. The Panasonic takes about a minute to

start playing a disc, the Samsung about 56 seconds—

but the PS3 takes 24 seconds from disc load to play-ing

the movie.

PC World reviews the “ top internet security

suites” in a March 2009 report that’s considerably

longer and more informative than the magazine’s

usual one- page mini- roundups. Probably no great

surprise on the highest score ( 89 out of 100): Norton

Internet Security 2009. Second place: BitDefender

Internet Security 2009.

Perspective

On Privatization

Privatization: The noun formed from privatize.

Privatize. Merriam- Webster’s Tenth Collegiate

keeps it simple: “ to make private; esp. to change ( as a

business or industry) from public to private control or

ownership.”

Wiktionary defines privatization as “ The transfer

of a company or organization from government to

private ownership and control.” Privatize? “ To release

government control of a business or industry to pri-vate

industry.”

Wordnet defines privatize as “ change from go-vernmental

to private control or ownership.”

Answers. com adds a second meaning: “ The tran-sition

from a publicly traded and owned company to

a company which is privately owned and no longer

trades publicly on a stock exchange. When a publicly

traded company becomes private, investors can no

longer purchase a stake in that company.”

Other than that secondary meaning, it all seems

fairly straightforward, doesn’t it? When you change a

business or industry— say rail travel, postal service

and the like— from public ownership to private own-ership

( or maybe control), that’s privatization.

Paul Starr doesn’t think it’s simple. His paper

“ The meaning of privatization” in the Yale Law and

Policy Review begins “ Privatization is a fuzzy concept

that evokes sharp political reactions.” Indeed, he

manages to bring up a whole bunch of fuzzy forms:

Cites & Insights July 2009 16

the “ privatization of emotion,” for example. One note

may be relevant to this discussion:

Privatization can also signify another kind of with-drawal

from the whole to the part: an appropriation

by an individual or a particular group of some good

formerly available to the entire public or community.

Starr offers two primary meanings for privatization in

late- 20th- century political discussion:

( 1) any shift of activities or functions from the state to

the private sector; and, more specifically, ( 2) any shift

of the production of goods and services from public

to private.

He clearly finds the second, narrower definition more

useful. ( Among other things, converting from the US

Post Office, a government organization, to USPS, a

public corporation, was not privatization in that nar-rower

sense.)

I could go on— but let’s stop with the Universal

Source of Wisdom & Truth. Here’s what Wikipedia has

to say in the first paragraph on Privatization, before

covering the stock- company definition ( and a related

situation, converting a mutual or cooperative to a

stock company):

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring

ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public

service from the public sector ( government) to the pri-vate

sector ( business). In a broader sense, privatization

refers to transfer of any government function to the

private sector including governmental functions like

revenue collection and law enforcement.

Dr. H. Dumpty’s Theory of Language

As far as I can determine, the mainstream version of

American ( and English in general) has a fairly

straightforward meaning for privatization— even after

it’s been enhanced by lawyers.

There is, of course, an alternate view, as ex-pounded

by a learned linguist in a book by the noted

logician Charles Dodgson ( published under a pseu-donym):

` When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather

a scornful tone, ` it means just what I choose it to

mean— neither more nor less.'

` The question is,' said Alice, ` whether you can make

words mean so many different things.'

` The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, ` which is to

be master— that's all.'

Consider me the old- fashioned Alice in this scena-rio—

and a surprising number of people as propo-nents

of the H. Dumpty theory, that words mean

whatever you assert they mean.

In DumptyWorld, it’s fair to say that the Google

Library Project privatizes the collections of publicly-owned

libraries— for, after all, each of those words

means whatever you choose it to mean. (“ Privatizatizes

the collections of publicly- owned libraries” could just

as easily mean “ Offers jam tomorrow and jam yester-day,

but no jam today”: The question is which is to be

master— that’s all.) In traditional English, I believe it’s

not only unfair, it’s an abuse of the language.

Background

Siva Vaidhyanathan has been using “ privatization” to

describe the Google Library Project since at least

2006. I have never found the usage reasonable, nor

his arguments for it convincing. Of course, he’s cer-tainly

not the only academic to use “ privatization”

loosely, either with regard to Google or in other cases.

I’ll posit a definition for this NewSpeak version of

“ privatization”:

Privatization: Creating something of value in the

private sector based on public resources, without de-structive

or exclusive use of those public resources,

that may preclude something similar being created in

the public sector in the future, even though no such

thing currently exists.

Brewster Kahle has used a NewSpeak vesion of “ priva-tization”

since at least 2007. I had this to say in a Walt

at random post on October 22, 2007:

First, there’s “ privatization.”

Here’s the quote ( from an article that’s appeared in

NYT and IHT):

“ Google could be privatizing the library system by

offering a large, but private interface to millions of

books,” Kahle said.

Brewster Kahle’s certainly not the only one to misuse

the language this way– just the latest.

I’m not in love with Google by any means. I think

OCA is a great idea ( although I wonder where the “ al-liance”

has gone, given Yahoo’s almost- total silence

and Microsoft’s diverging effort).

But “ privatizing the library system” or, which I’ve also

read, “ privatizing the public domain”– I’m sorry, but

horsepucky.

If Google negotiated exclusive contracts, maybe.

Otherwise, that language is like saying that, if I check

a book out from my library that happens to be in the

public domain, scan it, and return it to the library,

I’ve “ privatized” the book.

Google is borrowing books from libraries ( in large quan-tities

thanks to special arrangements), scanning those

books, and returning them to the libraries with the

promise that the books won’t be damaged. Its deals are

nonexclusive. Google’s scan does not in any way modify

the terms under which the book itself can be used.

Cites & Insights July 2009 17

Google Book Search absolutely expands findability for

books and in no way restricts anyone else from build-ing

and maintaining book- search systems. Google

Book Search for public domain absolutely expands

access to the text within books, and in no way restricts

anyone else from providing similar access. ( For that

matter, Google’s silly first- page “ conditions” are sugges-tions

for use of their PDFs, not legal restrictions.)

How can expansion be viewed as contraction? How

can improved access be regarded as privatization?

Want to attack Google? Fine. But is it necessary to

debase the English language to do so? Or does it just

make a great soundbite?

When Karen Coyle used the same language in one of

her many ( generally very useful) posts about the pro-posed

Google/ AAP/ AG settlement, I took exception, as

part of PERSPECTIVE: THE GOOGLE BOOKS SEARCH SET-TLEMENT

( Cites & Insights 9: 4, March 2009).

I planned to say nothing about the proposed set-tlement

for several months after that special issue—

probably until the settlement had been approved,

modified or denied, or at least until we know more

about things like pricing for access to the collection.

Meanwhile, I have more than three dozen items

flagged for review in a later discussion.

I still plan to hold off on another general com-mentary

until the dust has settled— but Karen Coyle’s

reaction to my comments makes the situation more

interesting. Three months after Cites & Insights 9: 4

appeared, Coyle wrote a detailed response in her blog.

When I was able to devote time and attention, I re-sponded

to her post.

Her post— quoted in full and unchanged as feed-back

to Cites & Insights— follows, as does my later

post and some of the comments on that post.

Walt Crawford should

read the document

[ Originally appeared as a May 10, 2009 post on

Coyle’s InFormation. Specific link: kcoyle. blogspot. com/

2009/ 05/ walt- crawford- should- read- document. html. Links

appear as underlined text.]

In his March, 2009 Cites & Insites, Walt Crawford

does a roundup of comments on the Google/ AAP set-tlement,

and gets very agitated when reviewing some

of my posts. I'm used to that. But agitation tends to

cancel out reason, and Walt gets some things wrong

that he might have understood better if he had kept a

clear head.

In response to my criticism that Google is digitizing

without regard to collection building, Walt says:

" I don’t know of any big academic library or pub-lic

library that’s a single disciplinary collection—

or, realistically, a set of well- curated collections."

I'd like to hear from academic librarians on this one.

My understanding was that an academic library is

INDEED a set of well- curated collections.

Walt:

" I don’t remember public universities admitting to

substantial costs in cooperating with Google."

What's the cost? Dan Greenstein estimated $ 1- 2 per

book. Cheap, but still considerable for a library scan-ning

millions of books. The cost is primarily in staff

time, shelving and reshelving books. Under this

agreement, there is also the cost of meeting the secu-rity

requirements that are imposed. ( That's in Appen-dix

D) These requirements, which are possibly quite

reasonable, will have a greater cost than what most

libraries do today for digital materials, and will be

one of the primary reasons why some libraries do not

contract to receive copies of the digitized items. ( Note

that some of the potential library partners are work-ing

hard to collaborate on the Hathi Trust, which

does appear to meet the standards of the agreement;

others, however, have decided that they will not at-tempt

to store digital copies.)

In a post I argued that had libraries gone ahead and

digitized their own collections ( for the purposes of

indexing and searching), that this probably would

have been considered fair use.

Walt:

" Well… this is not a judicial finding. I find it un-fortunate

that Google didn’t fight the good fight,

and I think it will make things much harder for

another commercial entity to attempt similar digi-tization

and use— but I don’t see that library use of

“ their own materials” has changed in any way."

Not of their hard copy materials, but legal minds

think that this changes the landscape for digitization

and the use of digitized materials, even closing some

options that might have been available before.

" The proposed settlement agreement would give

Google a monopoly on the largest digital library of

books in the world. It and BRR, which will also be

a monopoly, will have considerable freedom to set

prices and terms and conditions for Book Search’s

commercial services.... If asked, the authors of or-phan

books in major research libraries might well

prefer for their books to be available under Crea-tive

Commons licenses or put in the public do-main

so that fellow researchers could have greater

access to them. The BRR will have an institutional

bias against encouraging this or considering what

terms of access most authors of books in the cor-pus

would want." Pam Samuelson

Cites & Insights July 2009 18

And to my statement:

" The digitization of books by Google is a massive

project that will result in the privatization of a pub-lic

good: the contents of libraries. While the libra-ries

will still be there, Google will have a de facto

monopoly on the online version of their contents."

Walt first prefaces it with:

" I take issue with the very first sentence, as I’ve

taken issue consistently with the same claim by

others with even higher profiles than Coyle ( who

are even less likely to ever admit they could be

mistaken)."

Well, it would have been nice if he had said who they

are. But thanks for letting me know that you consider

me a " lower profile" person, Walt. He goes on to say:

" Nonsense. Sheer, utter nonsense. The libraries

and contents will still be there. OCA will still be

there. I’m sorry, but this one just drives me nuts:

It’s demonization of the worst kind and an abuse

of the language."

Well, I'm not sure how this abuses language, but

there is general agreement that Google gets a mono-poly...

at least on out- of- print books, which is the vast

majority of books in libraries. ( Not on public domain

books, which is what the OCA digitizes, but anyone

can digitize public domain books.) So although the

libraries and their contents will still be there, and can

be used in hard copy as they are today, no one but

Google can digitize the in- copyright works without

incurring liability. So " monopoly on online version of

their contents" is a factual statement, if you under-stand

that public domain is public domain. ( Note,

this settlement agreement is extremely complex, with

some real zingers hidden in its 134 pages. It's not

possible to cover it all in a blog post, so anyone who

is interested really needs to read the document itself,

painful as that process is.)

In terms of preservation and longevity concerns, Walt

asks:

" Won’t the fully- participating libraries have digital

copies? I can’t think of institutions with better

longevity."

To begin with, only fully participating libraries will

have digital copies, and we don't yet know how many

libraries will choose that option. Other libraries, even

those that are only allowing Google to digitize public

domain books, do not get to keep copies of the digi-tal

files. ( Not only that, public domain libraries that

have been cooperating with Google have to delete all

of their copies of the files that they hold today, as per

this agreement. See Appendix B- 3.) The only party

with copies of all of the files will be Google.

There are statements in the settlement about what

happens if Google " fails to meet the Require Library

Services Requirement" or simply decides not to con-tinue.

I refer you to page 84 of the settlement, and

hope that someone can make sense out of it. The way

I read it, libraries can then engage a third- party pro-vider,

who will receive the files from Google.

The key thing here is that even in the event of the

failure of Google, libraries are not allowed to make

uses of their own scans, such as those that are per-mitted

to Google by this settlement. The restriction to

" computational uses" and some other minor uses

stands, even in that eventuality.

When I say:

" Google should be required to carry all digital

Books without discrimination and without liability."

Walt replies:

" You mean “ all digital books that Google’s scanned”?

I suspect Google wouldn’t argue with this."

That is exactly what I mean, and Google does indeed

argue with it. As a matter of fact, the settlement only

obligates Google to provide access to at least 85% of

the books it scans. That " access" refers to the sub-scription

service that will be available to libraries and

other institutions. The settlement says:

" Google may, at its discretion, exclude particular

Books from one or more Display Uses for editorial

or non- editorial reasons." p. 36

That's followed by an affirmation of the " value of the

principle of freedom of expression," which I must say

rings a bit hollow in this context. Google has to noti-fy

the Registry if it has excluded a book, and to pro-vide

a digital copy of that book to the Registry. The

Registry can then seek out a third party to provide

services for excluded books. Here, however, is James

Grimmelmann's concern on that front:

" The second is that no one besides the Registry

might ever find out that Google has chosen to de-list

a book. If the Registry doesn’t or can’t engage a

replacement for Google, the book would genuine-ly

vanish from this new Library of Alexandria.

Perhaps that should happen for some books, but

decisions like that shouldn’t be made in secret.

When Google choses to exclude a book for edi-torial

reasons, it should be [ R13] required to in-form

the copyright owner and the general public,

not just the Registry. "

What might Google exclude? Perhaps very little, but

at the ALA panel in Denver in January, 2009, Dan

Clancy of Google gave an off- the- cuff remark that, as

I recall, had the word " pornography" in it. Given the

recent embarassment of Amazon when it had to face

the fact that many of its best sellers are rather sala-cious

in nature, I can imagine Google also developing

concern about the visibility of the texts that make us

uncomfortable.

Cites & Insights July 2009 19

There are a lot of legitimate reasons for concern about

this proposed settlement. And I don't think that any-thing

that I have said is " nonsense."

Responding as politely as possible

[ Originally appeared May 23, 2009 on Walt at Ran-dom.

Specific link walt. lishost. org/ 2009/ 05/ responding-as-

politely- as- possible/ Links appear as underlined text.]

Karen Coyle posted “ Walt Crawford should read the

document” on May 10, 2009 on her blog, Coyle’s In-

Formation.

Note two things about that sentence:

1. It includes a direct link to Coyle’s post.

2. I include the name of Coyle’s blog correctly, spel-ling

and all.

Now consider the first paragraph of Coyle’s post, re-produced

here exactly as it appears:

In his March, 2009 Cites & Insites, Walt Crawford

does a roundup of comments on the Google/ AAP

settlement, and gets very agitated when reviewing

some of my posts. I’m used to that. But agitation

tends to cancel out reason, and Walt gets some

things wrong that he might have understood bet-ter

if he had kept a clear head.

No link— but then, how could there be a link, since

there’s no such publication as “ Cites & Insites”? ( I

don’t regard “ Insites” as a word and assuredly would

not use it for an ejournal.)

The March 2009 Cites & Insights ( volume 9, number

4) consists of an essay on a proposed settlement in-volving

Google, AAP, and the Authors Guild ( not just

Google and AAP). I regard that essay as considerably

more than “ a roundup of comments.”

I’m not sure whether Ms. Coyle is used to people in

general getting agitated when reviewing her posts or

whether that’s specifically aimed at me, but the last

sentence is unquestionably aimed at somebody

named Walt Crawford.

The suggestion that I was unable to reason clearly be-cause

I was so agitated by Ms. Coyle’s comments is ei-ther

insulting or patronizing; your choice. It’s also

false. ( I checked the indexes for Cites & Insights. Ex-cept

for March 2009, every time I’ve quoted or com-mented

on Karen Coyle it’s been entirely positive

comment– so I have to assume that other people get

agitated by her comments. That’s not necessarily a

bad thing.)

There is an ornithologist named Walt Crawford in the

Midwest, director of the World Bird Sanctuary. In the

overall scheme of things, that Walt Crawford ( we have

the same middle initial, but I’m not a “ Jr.”) is probably

more important to the world than I am– but he has a

somewhat lower web profile. I’m pretty sure we’re both

members of the Nature Conservancy… Still, I doubt

very much that St. Louis’ Walt Crawford has a publica-tion

named Cites & Insites or that he wrote about the

proposed Google Book Search settlement.

Still… there’s enough wrong with Ms. Coyle’s first para-graph

( in a post that appeared nearly three months af-ter

the essay in question) that it’s tempting to leave it at

that. If Coyle can’t be bothered to link to the essay be-ing

criticized or name the publication properly, and if

she finds it necessary to patronize me in the post title

and the lead paragraph, why should I take her com-ments

seriously? ( She knows how to do links: there are

two links in the post. I can only assume that the deci-sion

not to link to my essay is deliberate.)

[ Why did it take me two weeks to respond? Anyone

who's followed this blog or my FriendFeed feed

knows: Since May 10, I've been spending nearly all

my energy moving to a new house-- and from May 14

through May 18, I didn't have internet access. Also, I

recognized right off the bat that a hasty response was

a bad idea.]

A quick exercise

Before reading this response further, you should read

the commentary. If you haven’t already done so, I

suggest reading the whole essay ( including but not

limited to “ Putting on several hats” on pp. 4- 5)– but

since I’m being charged with agitation and loss of rea-son,

you could focus on pages 20- 25. Consider par-ticularly

the language in “ Google/ AAP settlement”

( pp. 20- 21) with its “ Ping!” refrain and the right-hand

column on p. 21 ( from “… this is the pact with

the devil” through “ THIS IS EVIL“).

If, after reading the extensive quotations from Coyle

and my brief interspersed comments, you find that

Coyle is consistently cool and logical whereas I’ve

gone off the deep end and gotten things wrong, then

it may not be worth your while to read the rest of

this.

But as I reread it, twice, I see no agitation on my part,

and less rhetorical fervor in my notes than in some of

Coyle’s commentary. Maybe Coyle wasn’t agitated in

those posts, but it certainly reads that way– or is it

that Coyle is allowed to be agitated but I’m not?

Specific objections…

What of my comments does she object to?

All libraries as well- curated collections

In questioning the need for Google to digitize based

on deliberate collection- building, I say “ I don’t know

of any big academic library or public library that’s a

single disciplinary collection– or, realistically, a set of

well- curated collections.” ( Coyle omits the italics in

“ any.” No biggie.)

Coyle says “ an academic library is INDEED a set of

well- curated collections.”

Cites & Insights July 2009 20

Really? Good academic libraries include well- curated

collections, but I’ll suggest that most big ones contain a

lot of materials outside that set of collections, particu-larly

for libraries using lots of standing orders and ap-proval

plans. [ OK, I spent too many years at UC

Berkeley. If anyone suggests to me that the Doe Library

is entirely a set of well- curated collections, I'd probably

snigger, much as I love and respect the library.]

But that’s a matter of definition– what constitutes

“ well- curated”? I could have simply taken issue with

Coyle’s lead sentences in the paragraph in question:

So the main reason why Google Books is not a li-brary

is that it isn’t what we would call a “ collec-tion.”

The books have not been chosen to support

a particular discipline or research area…

Even if I overstated “ any,” Coyle’s implicit definition of

“ library” here excludes an enormous number of libra-ries.

If Coyle wants to say that “ Google Books is not a

research library,” I probably wouldn’t object– but “ re-search

library” and “ library” are not synonymous.

Library costs

I said “ I don’t remember public universities admitting

to substantial costs in cooperating with Google.”

Coyle says “ Dan Greenstein estimated $ 1- 2 per

book”– and offers a link.

The article linked to says no such thing. It says that

Greenstein estimated Google’s scanning costs at $ 1 or

$ 2 per volume. Here’s the link: read it for yourself.

( It’s a Daily Cal article. Depending how you read it,

Greenstein might have been estimating a cost for

cooperating with Google elsewhere in the article, but

certainly not as quoted by Coyle– and, frankly, I can’t

be sure just what the article is saying about the UC

costs of the Google project. In any case, it wouldn’t

have been an admission: This article appeared before

UC joined the project. It would have been a forward

estimate.)

I’ll stand by my statement: I don’t remember public

universities admitting to substantial costs in coope-rating

with Google. ( The first three words represent a

caveat– maybe somebody somewhere said it and I

don’t remember or never saw it. Greenstein did not

say it, at least not as quoted from the cited article.)

Changing library use of libraries’ own material

Adding one brief paragraph to a long Coyle quotation,

I asserted that nothing in the proposed agreement

changes the ways libraries use their own material.

That’s a factual statement. Coyle’s criticism:

Not of their hard copy materials, but legal minds

think that this changes the landscape for digitiza-tion

and the use of digitized materials, even closing

some options that might have been available before.

She quotes one such legal mind. Is there unanimity

or overwhelming consensus? I don’t know ( although

I’m pretty nearly certain that there isn’t)– but it’s irre-levant

to my simple, factual statement.

Privatization, profiles and abusing the language*

Coyle said in one of her original post that “ The digiti-zation

of books by Google is a massive project that

will result in the privatization of a public good: the

contents of libraries.”

I objected to that sentence, “ as I’ve taken issue consis-tently

with the same claim by others with even higher

profiles than Coyle ( who are even less likely to ever

admit they could be mistaken).” Coyle takes me on

for not making the “ higher profile” people and adds

this: “ But thanks for letting me know that you con-sider

me a ‘ lower profile’ person, Walt.”

What? If I say Barack Obama has a higher profile

than Rick Boucher, I’m not saying Rick Boucher is “ a

lower profile person���– except by comparison. If you

want names, there’s Brewster Kahle and Siva Vaid-hyanathan–

and yes, I do consider them higher pro-file.

( Based on Coyle’s post that I’m commenting on

here, however, I withdraw the parenthetical clause in

my comment.)

I went on to say the “ privatization” claim was “ Non-sense.

Sheer, utter nonsense. The libraries and con-tents

will still be there. OCA will still be there. I’m

sorry, but this one just drives me nuts: It’s demoniza-tion

of the worst kind and an abuse of the language.”

Coyle’s response?

There is general agreement that Google gets a mo-nopoly…

at least on out- of- print books.

Based on this “ general agreement” she says the claim

of monopoly “ is a factual statement.” I haven’t seen

any sort of unanimity on this claim, and I wasn’t

aware that consensus constituted fact– but in any

case, that has nothing to do with the wording I ob-jected

to: “ privatization of a public good: the contents

of libraries.”

Did Ansel Adams privatize the great views in Yose-mite

by taking photos that are so iconic they’ve made

it difficult for anyone else to do as well? Obviously

not; he created something by using a public good,

and in doing so enhanced the public good ( making

Yosemite more popular).

If I go to a library, check out some books, and create

something new based on those books, it would be

nonsense to say I’d privatized the contents of the li-brary.

If I built an index by going through each book,

and then returned the books, it would be nonsense to

say I’d privatized the contents of the library.

How is Google’s project different? The books are on

the shelves, at least as accessible as they were before

Google scanned them… and realistically a lot more

accessible.

Cites & Insights July 2009 21

The public good is not in any way diminished or pri-vatized.

If a possible future extension of the public

good is less likely because Google has a first- mover

advantage or because the language of the settlement

gives them advantageous treatment, that’s a very dif-ferent

thing.

Preservation and longevity

Discussing issues of preservation and longevity, I said:

Won’t the fully- participating libraries have digital

copies? I can’t think of institutions with better

longevity.

Here’s how Coyle begins her refutation of my com-ment:

To begin with, only fully participating libraries will

have digital copies…

Since Coyle agrees that “ fully participating libraries

will have digital copies,” there’s really no point in

going further. ( If I say “ All Honda Insights are hybr-ids”

and someone begins a critique of that statement

by saying “ To begin with, only Honda Insights–

among Hondas– are always hybrids”– there’s little

point in continuing the discussion.)

… without discrimination and without liability

Here’s one where I may be wrong. I assumed Google

wouldn’t argue with the idea of carrying all scanned

books.

Coyle points out that the settlement does not oblige

them to do so. Since this is the single case in which

she��s asserting I would have gotten it right if I’d read

the full 134- page settlement, I assume this is the ge-nesis

for the post’s title.

If we assume that Google was 100% responsible for

the language of the settlement ( which I do not) then

I’m clearly wrong here. Let’s assume that I am.

I’ve been wrong before, I’ll be wrong again. If Coyle

had pointed out this single case in a more temperate

manner, I’d be delighted to include that in an update

to the essay as a useful correction and expansion.

There are legitimate reasons for concern about

the settlement

That’s what Coyle says.

I agree. I say so repeatedly in the March 2009 Cites &

Insights.

If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have produced a

30- page issue: A one- paragraph note would have

been sufficient. I certainly wouldn’t have guided

people back to Coyle’s posts.

Coyle doesn’t think that anything she has said is

“ nonsense.” Sorry, but I have to disagree. The “ priva-tization”

line is nonsense– just as it’s always been

when Prof. Vaidhyanathan uses it, just as it is when

Brewster Kahle uses it. It’s an abuse of the English

language, and by demonizing Google it gets in the

way of improving the settlement and the situation.

Frankly, if it hadn’t been for the tone of Coyle’s post

and her accusation that I’d lost a clear head, I might

not have written this post at all. Coyle has provided

valuable service over the years in analyzing the

Google Books project and the proposed settlement.

* Postscript: The comments on this post include var-ious

defenses of “ privatization” as an accurate and

appropriate term. They make interesting reading, and

I urge readers of this post to read all of the com-ments–

and decide for yourself. ( I’ll probably prepare

a commentary in a future C& I, incorporating most or

all of this post and its comments.)

I still regard “ privatization of public goods” as an

abuse of the language as used for anything in the

proposed settlement. When you create something

new based on public goods, leaving the public goods

intact, I can��t find that to be privatization as I under-stand

the word.

But I should also clarify that it’s not Karen Coyle’s

coinage or distinctive usage– if I’m saying it’s non-sense

on her part, I’m also saying it’s nonsense on the

part of Siva Vaidhyanathan, Brewster Kahle and prob-ably

quite few others. Which, to be sure, I am.

It’s a shame that an argument over books uses the

language so sloppily– but “ privatization of public

goods” has a distinctive harshness to it that more ac-curate

terms might not.

This postscript does not attempt to cut off the discus-sion

of the term. I think it’s a fascinating discussion.

Do note that I regard comments here to be bound by

the same CC license as the blog itself, meaning I can

( and will) quote them in their entirety in Cites & In-sights–

and, of course, that anyone else can quote

them for noncommercial use.

About the only thing I would add here has to do with

the treatment of “ monopoly��� as fact rather than asser-tion,

or the claim that there’s general agreement. At

least based on what I’ve seen in the press, Paul Cou-rant

explicitly denies that the proposed settlement

grants Google a monopoly. I’m nearly certain there are

other informed parties who also disagree with the

sources Coyle quotes. In any case, it is overreaching to

call it a factual statement; it’s a claim or an opinion.

Comments on the post

In general, I’m reproducing comments ( and my res-ponses)

exactly as received. I’ve omitted pseudonym-ous

and anonymous comments.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, May 24, 2009:

Hi Walt,

I just thought I would weigh in on the privatization

question. I see that you and Karen are in the midst of a

Cites & Insights July 2009 22

heated argument. I don’t need to speak to every point

of what seems at this time to be one of diction and

manners. I respect both of y’all very much. So I hope I

can push the argument beyond its current domain.

To be clear: the privatization indictment does not fall

on Google. Google is private. It does what is good for

it. Google is not the problem here.

The privatization accusation is one that bears on the

university libraries that have — for the most part —

given away millions if not billions of dollars worth of

collections to a private entity with no clear return and

at great risk of liability. The libraries are committing

self- privatization. That has two levels: the terms of

the original deals with Google and the new vending

machine proposal that comes from the settlement.

This whole project is gross corporate welfare. The

currency at stake is a non- rivalrous good. So it’s not

like federal subsidies to Agribusiness. It’s of a lower

scale and stake. But it’s welfare nonetheless. The sys-tem

profits Google and Google alone. The libraries

see little or no benefit from the deal. So let me ex-plain

what I mean by that.

You raised a strong rebuttal: Google as patron. Let’s

say I walk in to a library. Use the collections. Check

books out. Make copies of some of the content. Then

I set about creating something new that relies on that

content that I sell on the market. That’s in fact what I

do with the books I write. Good enough.

How is Google different? No patron taxes or binds li-braries

like Google has.

First, when I use a library I do not tie up the staff time

of dozens of employees for years at a time ( at least I

hope I don’t). This is happening at every Google part-ner

library. I do not make librarians sign non-disclosure

agreements that prevent them from discuss-ing

the pros, cons, and costs of the my use with the

public ( or even their own faculty). My use of the li-brary

is compensated by the taxpayers of the Com-monwealth

of Virginia and by the fees my students pay.

Google, in contrast, “ pays” directly for this windfall

through an illegal barter arrangement by which it

agrees to make low- quality wholesale copies of mil-lions

of books ( that Google chooses, thus not neces-sarily

serving the interests of the library).

Why is it illegal? Well, because of the un- litigated and

thus unsettled copyright infringement issue: Google

is transferring copies as payment for a commercial

transaction. Nothing in Sec. 107 0r 108 or any case

relying on these sections grants a right to make cop-ies

of copyrighted works and transfer them as pay-ment.

Nothing in the settlement prevents publishers

from suing universities if they don’t like how univer-sities

are using the material. That’s such a scary pros-pect

that many Google partners — including my

employer — have declined to download these images

from Google’s servers. University lawyers are rightly

alarmed at the liability prospects. So for many uni-versities

it’s worse than a something- for- nothing

prospect. It’s a loss. They lose staff time, lawyer time,

and books from circulation for weeks at a time. Yet

they get nothing.

Now, I am willing to say at this point that if Hathitrust

flowers into what its visionary leaders predict, I am

willing to withdraw many if not all of these concerns.

Let’s remember that the UC system deal and the Mich-igan

deal are the exceptions within the Google Book

Search universe. These universities negotiated better

terms for themselves early on. Michigan is still cutting

better deals even now ( see http:// www. wired. com/ epi-center/

2009/ 05/ umich- gets- better- deal- in- googles-library-

of- the- future- project/) The rest of the libraries

are finally coming around to realizing what a bad deal

this was for them and the extent to which they were

scammed. Harvard did not back out just because Bob

Darnton likes the smell of books. He dislikes the smell

of the contract he inherited from the Larry Summers

regime. I have heard clandestinely that a number of

other partners are considering terminating their deals if

they are not substantially renegotiated.

The second part of the privatization is the vending-machine

model of delivery that Google is pushing on

libraries through the settlement. Libraries will for the

first time have little bookstores inside of them. That’s

bad enough. But libraries will have no recourse if

Google overcharges for the service or ( more likely)

puts onerous terms on the use of the material. That’s

blatant privatization of public library space. Now, I’m

no purist. And I recognize the value of hot- dog ven-dors

in Central Park. But this has not been part of a

process by which the libraries have been invited to

the table or been able to stand up for traditional val-ues

of librarianship: free and open access; user priva-cy

and confidentiality; preservation; a public space

free of commercial influence; etc.

So while the word “ privatization” is unsubtle and im-perfect,

it’s relevant and important in public discourse

about this project that will have tremendous impact on

the future of libraries and the public sphere. I use it

because I have to pop the bubble of perception that

Google works for us. And I use it because I have since

2004 wanted libraries to see that Google does not

work for them. Google works for its shareholders — as

it should be. We as citizens and members of the library

community have not been as critical or vigilant as we

should have been. And sometimes strong words like

that serve the purpose of waking people up and pull-ing

them into the conversation. The fact that criticisms

of Google Book Search and the settlement have grown

louder and wider in recent years is evidence of the val-ue

of such tactics.

Cites & Insights July 2009 23

Privatization is not a boolean quality. It has grada-tions.

If I can’t convince you to see this massive

project of text- giving by public libraries to one of the

world’s most successful and aggressive corporations

as part of the process of privatization, so be it.

Brewster, Karen, and I are hardly naive about the

steady privatization of library services through ex-pensive

vendors etc. Brewster, after all, made his kill-ing

through the private sector in the first place. But

we all recognize the virtue in minimizing the influ-ence

of private interests within and among public in-stitutions

— especially libraries.

Oh, and BTW, OCA will not necessarily be around

forever. It depends on philanthropy. And philanth-ropists

don’t like to duplicate what the private sector

is already doing. Moreover, if the settlement goes

through OCA will not be able to compete at the level

of full- text availability for most of the books of the

20th century. So there is no point even comparing

them. And I think we all have to consider the pres-sures

that non- librarian boards and administrators
put on libraries to reduce their collections whenever
there is a potential “ alternative” to the physical item.
And Google is just that sort of poor substitute for the
original. I wish I were as confident as you that the
OCA will be part of the mix 20 years from now. I
think a bigger danger, however, is that Google either
goes bust or transforms into something very different.
What if its board in 2020 decides the book project is
a money- loser. What then?
These are serious issues, even if you don’t want to traffic
in terms like “ privatization.” I know that you get that
and I value your contribution to their consideration.
So what do you want to see next? What should libra-ries
do in the case the settlement is approved? What
should they do if the court rejects the settlement or
the Feds pursue anti- trust action against Google?
I have some big ideas. I would love to hear yours.
Thanks for the detailed comment. No, you haven’t
convinced me that “ privatization of public goods” is a
reasonable term for what you say is going on. But you
state the case well.
I don’t expect to be contributing Big Ideas in this particular
area. There are plenty of others more qualified
to do so. I’m mostly commenting and synthesizing, in
this case as in many others. ( I’ve never been a “ public
intellectual,” and at age 64 I may lack the drive to become one.)
I certainly agree that these are serious issues. I think
serious issues deserve clear language, and I continue
to think “ privatization” is so unclear as to muddy the
issues in general. But I’ve said that before, and may
be getting repetitious with it. I’ll let it go at that.
I think where the idea of “ privatization” does come in
is when considering the possibility that libraries will
weed their collections in response to the online
Google corpus. If they start trashing old “ duplicate”
PD works– which many public libraries will indeed
do– this means that Google has effectively privatized
the public domain for many users.
Academic research libraries may not be as willing to discard
their books, but some will, at least a part of their
collection. The political pressures will be too great.
This will give Google a very real monopoly on access.
Factor in the profit potential of these “ Google machines”
and it’s very likely that the only way you’re
going to get ahold of many books in the future is
through the Google.
I must have missed something here, as my understanding
is that the settlement wouldn’t change the status of
scanned public domain works at all– they can be
downloaded and reused freely. Even if research libraries
took the unprecedented step of tossing out their
PD collections ( is Harvard really going to abandon pre-
1924 books? Are there political pressures on the many
private ARL libraries to toss out stuff that Google’s
scanned? Really?), I don’t see any probability that the
only point of access to PD books could be Google. I
thought the whole “ privatization” argument had to do
with the majority of the scanned books, which are out
of print but still covered by copyright.
Apart from that, this is a series of speculations about
what might happen– at best a slender rationale for,
say “ potential privatization through inattention.”
Walt: Looking at the language used in this discussion,
I’d have to say that your characterization of Karen’s
“ privatization” claim as “ nonsense” is inaccurate. It
may sound odd to describe publishers who sell copyrighted
translations of “ Romeo and Juliet” as “ priva-tizing
Shakespeare,” but it’s not nonsense.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the use of
the word “ privatization” is that strictly speaking, the
works covered by the settlement agreement are all
“ private” under US copyright law. In fact, opponents
of the settlement agreement on the rightsholder side
are criticizing it as an unfair “ compulsory license”
which infringes on the property rights of authors.
I think it’s fair to say that there is “ general agreement”
that the settlement agreement gives Google an “ initial
monopoly” on works that remain orphans. There is
divergence on how to describe Google’s position with
respect to other classes of works.
Jim Carlile: The settlement agreement has nothing to
do with public domain works. It covers only works
that are in copyright.
Eric: If someone translates a public domain work, the
translation is, I believe, legitimately copyrightable–
and does not in any way lessen access to the original
work. So I wouldn’t buy calling that “ privatization”
either. It doesn’t fit any of the definitions of the word
that I’ve found.
As to “ general agreement” on a monopoly situation– if
there’s actually a consensus among all lawyers and
commentators, then isn’t the proposed settlement
doomed on antitrust grounds? ( There was surely nev-er
“ general agreement” as to the strength of Google’s
fair- use argument; I’m really surprised if there’s legitimately
consensus on the monopoly claim. Are
Google’s own lawyers really that far out of touch with
the entire legal community?)
Siva Vaidhyanathan, May 25
I believe Eric has raised a very important point that
reflects on a very different notion of “ privatization,”
and that is of policy. There was this problem or chal-lenge:
It’s safe to say that creating a text- searchable
digital index of millions or billions of books, and
making them available via the Web would benefit the
republic and the planet. Let’s just assume that.
Given that assumption, what prevented us from
doing that? Three things: the concentration and expense
of the delivery technology ( the Web); the expense
of scanning, indexing, maintaining, and
supporting the collection ( what Google is doing but
libraries should have been doing); and changing copyright
law to facilitate this scanning under the right
conditions.
The first challenge took care of itself for most of the
United States and Europe — mostly through libra-ries.
But we still have a long way to go with the rest
of the world.
The second challenge is being met ( poorly, I would
say) by Google boldly reaching out and doing it.
Whether libraries should have given away their riches
to Google was the subject of most of the debate with-in
the library community before the settlement.
That third challenge is a doozy. Congress should have
decided this issue. I firmly believe that if we want
something in this country we should petition the leg-islature
and launch a political movement toward that
end. Going to courts to solve the problem is unheal-thy
and risky. This was one of my main criticisms of
the Google project before the settlement.
Now, if the settlement prevails, we will see a radical
change in the law. Private law is being used to shape
public policy over one of the most precious aspects of
republican ideology: the incentive system we rely on
to fill the public domain with rich texts. This settle-ment
establishes one company as the sole arbiter of a
compulsory license over millions of books. It does so
through the class- action process. It would establish
an elaborate system not unlike ASCAP or BMI, but
without the legislative scrutiny, deliberation, and spe-cific
exemption from antitrust.
This is too important to be left to the discretion of
one search engine company, a small group of major
publishers, a small group of elite authors, and one
federal court in the Southern District of New York.
The rest of us should have stake in this process. We
do not. We can blog about it all we want but none of
the parties cares about our issues and concerns.
A handful of private actors are making public poli-cy—
thus privatizing the policy- making system.
That’s actually a bigger problem than whether the act
of capture “ privatizes” the library. We can dispose of
semantic disagreements. We can’t dispose of this ra-ther
radical change i