crazy ideas
By - Saturday, October 29, 2011 - 11:56am
I meant to write this almost two months ago, but if you are a regular, Gentle Reader, you know that I’ve been a little busy. I won’t bore you with the list of Big Life Changes again.
SO. Anyway, a little over six months in, and I’m declaring LISvendor.info to be a fabulous success. Granted, my definition of “success” was “someone other than me adds to it” and “I don’t get sued.” I’m pleased to report that people are slowly starting to use it and I haven’t had even a whiff of a cease and desist order. The latter is possibly because no one’s added anything truly juicy to it, but the important part is “Sarah Glassmeyer – Lawsuit Free Since 1975!”
(Although I must note that I have no real assets and a pantload of student loan debt, so anyone getting a judgment from me is gonna have to get in line behind Sally Mae and Bank of America. Good luck with that. Say what you will about the student loan debt crisis, but it does give one a certain sense of freedom. But I digress…)
One of the things that prompted me to remind y’all of the existence of LISvendor.info was a recent blog post by Barbara Fister called “Occupy Knowledge: It’s Ours After All.” Go on, go read it…I’ll wait. You back? Okay. So as you’ve seen, she presents a really interesting parallel between Occupy Wall Street movement and the scholarly publishing world. And like the OWS protestors, she creates a version a protest sign listing out the price increases her library has seen in journal subscriptions. (If you didn’t read her post, SPOILER ALERT: American Chemical Society journals have risen from $29,705 in 2010 to $41,741 in 2012.) Fister also encourages others to do the same, either by tweeting or facebooking it.
You could also post it on LISvendor.info…that is one of the reasons I created it.
Although I’m declaring LISVendor.info to be a fabulous success, it could be better. A lot better. I would love to see more people contribute to it. And not just “secret pricing information” either…for example, I love how the proposed AALL Consumer Advocacy Caucus is using it to organize and share information.
A few weeks ago I saw a report of a study on the roots of collaboration in humans. The pull quote:
When it benefits them, chimpanzees willingly work together. Otherwise, they can’t be bothered…For humans, collaboration is rewarding for its own sake, a behavioral split that may underlie key differences between human and chimpanzee societies.
Having participated in a couple collaborative projects now, I can’t say that this is true. I’m not sure that people will work together on something without an immediate reward. I really believe that contributions to LISVendor will ultimately be very beneficial to all, but I must admit that any benefits will not be realized immediately. It will be a slow building process before the collected knowledge reaches the usefulness tipping point. So, long story short, if you can think of ways to encourage participation in this, please let me know.
Finally, some housekeeping notes…initially I wanted to keep this wiki as open and anonymous as possible because I thought people wouldn’t contribute otherwise. Unfortunately, the spammers keep swooping in and wrecking the joint. (A big thanks to Nicole Engard and Amy Buckland for helping me to clean them out.) I’ve since reluctantly added an email to register requirement and then earlier this week a captcha, Hopefully that will cut down on the spamming. (And hopefully people will learn to not be ashamed to ask their doctor for cialis and stop relying on sketchy people on the Internet for their drugs and spamming innocent library wikis becomes impractical. HEY. A GIRL CAN DREAM.) Amy has been deputized as a admin on the wiki and if anyone else would like admin privileges, let me know…I will be happy to add you. I really didn’t want this to be “my thing.” I’m happy to pay for hosting and stare stupidly at the mediawiki php and attempt to fix problems, but this is something that the community needs to take ownership of for it to be successful even more fabulously successful.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunsetgirl_creations/
By - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 10:22am
(I’m a much better writer than public speaker, so here’s the text of my planned opening remarks delivered during AALL2011 Program H4: The Role of Law Libraries in Advancing Law.gov: Open Sourcing America’s Operating System.)
Hi. I’m Sarah. I’m am not supposed to be here today.
One of my favorite filmakers is a man named Kevin Smith. He was part of the big indie filmaking wave of the 1990s and his first film was a low budget movie called “Clerks.” It took place in a convenience store, not unlike 7/11s that Mr. Malamud suggested law libraries might turn into to last month at Harvard.
If you’ve not seen it, it’s a comedy. The main character – Dante – gets called into work on his day off and you know, hijinks ensue. Through it all, he has a catch phrase…”I’m not supposed to be here today.” I sympathize. I really am not supposed to be here today. I’m a last minute sub for this presentation and I could never fill Erika Wayne’s shoes, but I’ll try.
But that’s actually not why I bring up Clerks and the whole “I am not supposed to be here today” thing. I get the feeling that – when I talk to some other librarians about law.gov (and perhaps this is a feeling shared by some of you here today) that they think “I am not supposed to be here today.” This is not my job. Why are we even talking about this at AALL?
Some actual comments:
- It’s pointless to even worry about it until the state and federal governments step up
- I can barely get my day job done. I don’t have time or money to work on law.gov
- law.gov will never be able to compete with Lexis and Westlaw (so again, why bother)
- will firms even need librarians/research specialists any more if law.gov becomes a reality
- The next time Malaumd tells me to scan something, I’m scanning a picture of my butt and faxing it to public.resource.org
(Okay, that last one might have been me.)
(I was having a bad day.)
(I really do respect Carl Malamud and all the work he has done and continues to do.)
(Really)
It’s absolutely true that library staff and budgets are stretched to the breaking point. And law.gov will never be a complete substitute for commecial providers. But before getting bogged down in the can’ts and won’ts and why things won’t work, I think it’s necessary to step back a moment and realize what law.gov is.
I think when I first heard the concept law.gov I thought it meant that the government would put up all the codes, cases, regs up online with a nice pretty interface that people could easily search. I maybe be moving to Chicago, but deep down I’ll always be a hillbilly from Southern Ohio and I have a strong feeling that this is the Godddman United States of America in the 21st century for god’s sake…there’s no reason that citizens should not be able to access the law via the Internet.
However, the more and more I got into it, I realized that it wasn’t that simple. law.gov isn’t just law.gov and the work that Mr. Malamud does at public.resource.org. I actually like to refer to it as “Open Law” just so there’s no confusion. it’s authentication, and nccusl, and state surveys and preservation and digitizing collections.. It’s really about the government to release the raw data and information – which we already own, after all – so that others can make it into something useful.
So law.gov is actually a whole host of things and it actually gets a little overwhelming. One starts to think that yes, this is an impossible task
I mean, don’t get me wrong..it’s going to happen. To deny this fact is to be a heliocentrist in the time of Galileo. It may take a little longer without the assistance of libraries adding to the corpus by digtizing their older holdings or might not be as stable because no one was able to convince a certain state legislature about the proper procedures to take when mounting their laws online. but rest assured, it is going to happen.
And this is a good thing. I’m into it because of the rah rah this is ‘murica goddammit reasons, but other people will tell you that by releasing this data non-profits and smaller information distributors can innovate and come up with exciting new projects and new ways to do research. And there may in fact be an economic bonus to the legal industry and libraries if primary law is made more open. Here’s the thing. I don’t care why you get involved, but please get involved.
Okay, so I don’t get all bogged down in language, as I tell my students, here’s the take home message from my opening statement.
1) open law is coming
2) librarians need to be involved because we care about the stuff that everyone else thinks we’re crazy to care about.
3) and remember when I was saying how overwhelming the issues surrounding open law are? well that’s a good thing. Because that means that there are thousands of ways to be involved.. but there’s one thing to note: there’s no real leader. So if you’re waiting for AALL or SLA or the government or Harvard or someone like Carl to say “here’s the plan, gang. you do this and you do this and it will get done.” That’s not going to happen. You have to just sort of jump in.
4) And yes, “just jumping in” is not an easy task.And it’ll be messy and probably not a perfect first (or second or third) attempt. So if you’ve thought about it and decided that either this issue isn’t important to you for either personal or professional reasons or you really don’t have the time or resources…okay. That’s fine. You know, I’d rather shoot myself in the face before spending any amount of time talking about RDA. We all have different things that light our fire. But nothing is gained and no one is helped by simply pointing out that something is not going to work. I think I saw a tweet saying something similar in an earlier session during this AALL…dont’ say “that’s stupid” but instead “here’s what would work.”
So, basically, I encourage (and beg) you to see where your talents can be applied in the open law movement and join in. And if you can’t, well…stop your bitching about it.
An addendum about Kevin Smith, the film maker I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks. He’s actually getting out of the movie business. He likes to make little 2-3 million dollar movies and once you roll in the marketing budgets that studios require the economics just became stupid.
He’s currently promoting what he declares to be his second to last film by travelling around the country in a bus and doing one off meet and greets and showing the movie in independent theaters. Not an easy task. And when he came to Chicago, I jumped at the chance to go see the movie and hear him speak.
He told a story about being at south by southwest in the mid to late 1990s and he was on a panel with Quentin Tarantino, and Robert Roderiquez and some other of the big indy directors. Tarantino asked the audience “how many of you want to be film directors?” and of course almost everyone raised their hand . And then he asked, “how many of you want to be film distributors?” and no one raised their hand. And Quentin said that people need to get into the distribution business because if film and film distribution is taken over by impersonal corporations instead of by the people that love it and respect it as an art form, then the art will be driven out of the industry..it’ll purely be about profits. And that is sort of what happened to Kevin Smith and why he’s no longer going to direct fillm but look into alternate ways of distributing film and other ways of expressing his creativity.
Now, it’s not a perfect parallel between the film industry of the 1990s and the current legal information landscape, but it’s close enough. And as you’ll see, I think we might have to start to get comfortable with the idea of “good enough” and so I bring it up as a way of suggesting that we need to brace ourselves..we (as librarians) may have to get into the content creation and distribution business whether we like it or not and whether or not we feel like it’s our job. There will be no more “I’m not supposed to be here todays.”
Thank you.
Photo credit: http://kevin-smith.wikia.com/wiki/Dante_Hicks
By - Thursday, April 14, 2011 - 11:41am
I have this recurring nightmare that one of these days I’m going to hit submit on a blog post and a tweet that says, “Congratulations, Sarah! You have unlocked the RABBLE ROUSER achievement badge on Legal Information Bonanza!” will be auto generated.
I don’t think of myself as a rabble rouser. Or a revolutionary. Or a force of nature. Or a hero. Or a rockstar. Or an obnoxious bitch. Or a petty amateur. Or unprofessional. Or hysterical. Or any of the other labels or names that people have applied to me in the past year or so.
I’m really not angry or confrontational. People always seem surprised when they meet me in person. “YOU’RE Sarah Glassmeyer?” I’ve mostly gotten over my initial inclination to apologize, but I can’t help but feel that people are somewhat disappointed at my countenance and demeanor. Maybe they expect me to whip a WestlawNext t-shirt out of my bag and light it on fire?
Long story short, there’s nothing really extraordinary about me. I just speak my mind. Granted, I have my own website to do it on, but it’s the 21st Century….anyone can have a blog. I guess my question is: why is the mere act of stating one’s opinion about vendors, professional organizations and the profession considered so radical? Why are so many librarians hesitant to speak their mind? It’s not just me wondering it. I spent the first part of this week in Chicago talking to vendors and legal info types and I was asked that very question on more than one occasion.
Sarah Houghton-Jan briefly mentioned some reasons why librarians may not do it. I agree with those reasons, especially the fear of vendors and the disinclination to hurt peoples feelings. Why do I do it? In my more self-deprecating moments I say, “well, I’m almost six feet tall, built like a brick shithouse and I have red hair. Blending quietly into the background was never in the cards for me.” But honestly, why NOT do it?
I reject the idea that dissent automatically equals disrespect. If you are coming from a place of honest belief and have done the due diligence to back your beliefs up with facts, why not state your opinion? Giving and receiving constructive criticism is a baseline professional skill. There’s a poster (often seen in librarian offices!) that says “Your poor planning is not my emergency.” Well, similarly, I think there should be one that says, “Your over-sensitive nature is not my personality problem.” Alternatively, I refer you to LibPunk Mentorship Rule 5.
On the other side of that, being polite doesn’t mean that you are a pushover. We can (and should!) have frank, unemotional and polite conversations amongst ourselves and between the various stops on the information distribution chain (content creators, vendors, publishers, librarians, etc.) about the biz. Because it is a business. And maybe – just maybe – also treat them as colleagues instead of considering them to be enemies. Guess what? I had lunch with a vendor on Monday. And had drinks with another on Monday night. MASS PANDEMONIUM. DOGS AND CATS. LIVING TOGETHER.
I also don’t want to diminish people’s fears about the perceived threat of retaliation from vendors, but can someone (either privately or in a comment here) actually remember an instance of it happening? What form of retaliation is expected? Higher prices? Personal attacks? I had a co-worker who always wanted proof of everything you said. So if you casually mentioned, “Oh, I heard that people are suing Nintendo because they keep throwing their wii controller through their TVs.” He’d say, “Prove it. What’s the case name?” Which was annoying, because I don’t source & cite my casual conversations. But he did sort of have a point that people tend to just accept what they hear without giving it too much careful thought and maybe change behavior when they don’t have to. So I would just like some evidence that vendors do retaliate against librarians that speak out. Otherwise, we might as well be telling each other that if you go into a dark bathroom and chant “Jenny Westlaw” three times, she’ll appear in the mirror and kill you.
One of my favorite movies is the musical 1776. As one might guess from the title, it’s about the writing of the Declaration of Independence. One of the big plot twists is if Congress will even debate the issue of declaring independence from Great Britain. Not actually do it, just talk about it. Stephen Hopkins, the crusty representative from Rhode Island says, “Well, in all my years I ain’t never heard, seen nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about. Hell yeah! I’m for debating anything.” And that’s sort of how I feel.
Photo credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/wemeantdemocracy/
By - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - 10:04pm
This is probably a bad idea.
I mean that two ways. One, I may very well be the only person interested in doing something like this and people looking at this project will think, “That’s dumb, Glassmeyer. Why’d you waste time setting that up?” Two, there is a great probability that this will cause me much more trouble and drama than it will ever be worth. And I’m really trying to stay out of the trouble and drama business in 2011. CUE THE MARY J. BLIGE!
Before I bury the lead amongst all my usual blog silliness, I’m going to just spit it out: I set up a wiki where librarians and other interested parties can share information about all aspects of the library/vendor relationship. It can be found at LisVendor.info . Which, handily, what I call it as well. It’s really a product of my own greed and laziness – I find that the more I get into looking at Library-Vendor relations, the more I realize that I don’t know. And I want a one stop shop to collect that information and learn from what others know.
Now for a slightly longer explanation…
About a year ago, I was having dinner with someone at the Computers in Libraries Conference in Washington, DC. The conversation turned, as it does, to the legal information duopoly. (Seriously, Gentle Reader…I am a HELL of a dinner date.) Specifically we were talking – or maybe I was ranting, the memory is fuzzy (A HELL OF A DINNER DATE) – about the secrecy clauses that Wexis enforce in library contracts and Carl Malamud’s efforts to FOIA and release this information from government agencies. I said jokingly, “Someone oughta set up a wikileaks for library contracts.”
My companion and I looked at each other and laughed at the silliness of the idea. And then became serious as we realized, “hey, that’s actually sort of a good idea.” And then laughed again. Then my companion became deadly serious and told me to not do it, but if I was going to do it, keep my name the heck off of it so that I didn’t get personally or professionally harmed. Because “THEY” would come after me.
Undeterred, I came home from CiL, detoxed and then registered the LISVendor.info domain. And then realized that I’m not a computer programmer. Between trying to figure out a way to set up the web site, getting settled into my new job and new region of the country (only 2 weeks into it at that point!), then summer conference season, then trying to figure this new professor gig and survive fall semester, then fall conference season and organization responsibilities… well, the next thing I knew it was last week and I hadn’t really made too much progress on the site besides having the URL point to a drupal install and many many broken iterations of the site.
As you may have noticed, Gentle Reader, I think about library-vendor relations a lot. A LOT. And one thing that I keep discovering is that the things I’m interested in or information I want isn’t really easy to find. So I end up having to spend a lot of time searching around and creating things the Legal Information Providers Merger Graphic. Or those HCOD Math numbers. I also keep realizing that there are big chunks of history and information that I just don’t know because I’m a newer librarian and I’m in a pretty small subject corner of libraryland. So, for example, when Steve Lawson mentioned “The Big Deal” in a recent post, I had hunt around and figure out what the heck he was talking about.
So that’s a major part of what I’d like the site to become. I want a place where librarians can teach and learn from each other on this very important topic.
When I was thinking of the wikileaks idea last year around this time, I also had percolating in my head a post from The Librarian in Black about Unethical Library Vendors that encouraged librarians to share their opinions on vendors with each other. Since not everyone has the time or energy to maintain a blog – and the blogoshere is scattered and hard to keep track of - I thought it’d be nice for there to be a centralized place for librarians to share this info – a libraryland version of the “Shopping for a Better Planet” book that I mentioned in my last post , if you will. It’s forward movement and a way we can all do something that could have some use to others – not waiting for organizations or even our employers to do something.
So, again, I don’t know if anything will come of this. It’s going to take a lot of work from a lot of people to become successful. If you want to take the idea and run with it and put it somewhere else I don’t mind. And if nothing comes of it, that’s fine too.
I set up a rough shell to get things started. I invite you to dig in there and get involved.
By - Friday, March 4, 2011 - 11:21am
I was telling another one of my correspondents yesterday that I really need to stop poking my face into the Harper Collins boycott debates because, as an academic law librarian, it’s not my fight. But that’s not really true. I’m a librarian. I’m a public library patron. I’m a taxpayer. I have a vested interest in making sure that this current issue is discussed and approached in a thoughtful and hopefully successful manner.
But really, this isn’t just a public library issue. This isn’t just an eBook licensing issue. This is just a symptom of a larger problem facing all libraries everywhere. And how it’s approached will inform librarian/vendor relations – all libraries, all vendors – in the future.
Earlier this week, a group of law librarians, legal information vendors and other stakeholders met at the AALL Vendor Colloquium to begin the long process of trying to figure out some solutions. While I have had my issues with the transparency and openness of the event, I’ve always maintained that it was a good idea to get a bunch of people in a room together to see what shakes out. It speaks to a willingness to work together, which is what all members of the information ecosystem need to do if we’re all going to survive.
That’s one of the reasons why I was not too keen on the eBook User Bill of Rights. It seem too confrontational and yet didn’t go far enough. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think we need to include the rights and responsibilities of all involved. What follows is a reaction the #hcod/eBook User Bill of Rights thoughts I’ve seen as well as some ideas that I’ve been generating as a result of reading the AALL Vendor Colloquium public notes. It’s still definitely in the rough, first draft stages. Feel free to add or subtract from it or otherwise tell me I’m full of it.
Statement of Rights and Responsibilities for the Information Age
Content Distributors (aka Vendors, Publishers)
* are not the enemy.
* have the right to be a profitable business. However, they should have accurate business models and not make pricing plans based on guesstimates or short term goals.
* should communicate openly, honestly and often with customers
* should have competitors. A choice between a terrible product and a REALLY terrible product is not a choice at all.
* should provide quality products. Walled garden ebook devices, clunky software, etc are not acceptable. (And on a lighter note, can someone PLEASE invent a stapler that can last through a finals week at an academic library?)
* should engage in fair business practices. Incorrect invoices, barely changed “new editions” are not fair to libraries.
* should respect the role of Content Guardians as preservers of cultural artifacts. Libraries need to purchase ownership rights, not temporary licenses.
* should understand that much intellectual property piracy is a result of laziness on the part of the Content Consumer. Make products that are easy to acquire and use and you will make money. Then you can stop punishing Content Creators and Content Guardians with complicated publishing and licensing agreements.
Content Creators (aka Authors)
* should be able to make a profit from their works. Their intellectual property rights should be protected and enforced.
* should take into consideration those downstream when negotiating publishing deals – e.g. academics should consider OA publishing options, other creators request that their materials are made as technologically open as possible – print, open electronic formats, etc.
Content Consumers (patrons/the general public)
* should respect the intellectual property of Content Creators and Content Distributors. (Piracy is bad, mmmkay?)
* should – via their representative government – sort out the current mess that is intellectual property law in the united states.
* need to decide if having an institution that acts to serve, protect and defend content for the current population and generations to come is important and if so, fund libraries adequately.
Content Guardians (aka librarians)
* should not consider Content Distributors the enemy. Any business negotiations conducted with them should occur in a non-emotional, professional manner.
* have the right to collect and circulate content regardless of the form it takes – DVDs, eBooks, print materials, etc.
* have a duty to preserve cultural artifacts and thus should work to own materials, not just lease or rent them. To do otherwise is poor stewardship of the Content Consumers’ monies.
* act as guides to Content Consumers in the information age – should educate about DRM, for example, and should continually educate themselves so that they can make adequate decisions.
* need to explore alternate business models – purchasing consortiums, shared collections, etc.
* should not rely upon professional organizations to lead the way – they have their uses, but at the end of the day they are also large corporations with business interests to protect and will be conservative in their actions as a result. Much of the change that needs to happen will occur on the grassroots level, individual purchasing decision by individual decision.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/f-r-a-n-k/
By - Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 3:01pm
As I was telling one of my correspondents yesterday, it feels like a weird coincidence somehow that the AALL Vendor Colloquium, The Harvard/Berkman Center Digital Library Project planning meeting, and the Harper Collins Boycott debate all happened at the same time. Each one is touching on just a segment of the larger issue, to wit, dependence of libraries on vendors in the digital age. And each one shows that we’re not entirely sure what to do next.
Right now the main reaction I’m seeing to these events is anger. Anger at professional associations. Anger at vendors. Anger at each other.
Anger is easy. The human brain is a marvel of evolution, but it maintains characteristics of that creature that first crawled out of the primordial goo. After all this time and change, humans still only have three main reactions to stimuli – the Three Fs: Flee, Fight or…..Ffffffornicate. (You thought I was going to say the other F word, didn’t you???Well, after my post on #hcod earlier this week, I have a lot of new eyes on this blog and I don’t want to scare people off just yet.) Everything that humans feel and do is just a nuanced version of these.
Anger and outrage (and most publicity and protest movements, really) owe more to the Flee feeling than Fight one. It manifests itself as outrage. Or pearl clutching. Or disgust. Or annoyance. Or impatience. Anger diffuses fear and makes one feel as if they’ve accomplished something, even if what they’ve done is no more productive than hiding one’s head in the sand.
I find it maddening. Perhaps ironically for a blogger, I’m tired of listening to people talk about things without any follow through or change. It’s why I ignore most library blogs and discussions and try to concentrate my energies on my day job and other things where I can actually make concrete changes. I’m reminded of Howard Beale’s famous speech in Network
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
That makes for a great scene in a movie, but nothing changed as a result of this. Actually, if memory serves correctly, the speaker was eventually killed. Not because of his radical ideas, but because his schtick got old and his ratings dropped.
I’m worried that the #hcod, #AALLVC and #ebookrights momentum will be lost to words and no action will ever result. Publishers will still only offer untenable licensing rights for libraries. Professional organizations will still do things the old ways and not embrace transparency initiatives. Demands for rights will be ignored.
(Someone yesterday said that “we don’t need an eBook Bill of Rights. We need a Declaration of Independence.” The history geek in me must note that the Declaration of Independence was only written and signed a year after the actual American Revolutionary War started and was only effective because it had an army (with an assist from allies such as the French) that actually did the fighting and won the war.)
Change will only occur through the fight response. Fighting doesn’t necessarily have to be violent, but does require engaging The Other. That’s hard. Which is why very few people actually choose to take that step.
And here’s where I get stuck and where I have been stuck. I don’t know what form that engagement should take. As I said, I don’t think an economic boycott will work. And I’m not sure that boycotts really are engagement. They may just another form of fleeing. (And as one of my social media shy correspondents shared with me, Harper Collins may choose to play legal hard ball over it and prevent it from starting before it even happens. I’m not saying that HC has a good merit claim..I’m just saying that most people are adverse to being served with legal papers.) I think rallying and educating our patrons and other allies (such as authors) to our cause is a good idea, but libraries are defenders and servants of the defenseless, so our patron allies may have less of a voice than even us. But again, that’s not really engaging the people we need to be engaging – the vendors.
I asked this question not that long ago and got very little response. If you’ve been able to ignore everything up until a few weeks ago, then surely this can be your wake up call. We need a plan B. Something to do after the outrage ends or to do in lieu of outrage.
By - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 11:34pm
A few weeks ago, I was minding my own business and spending a lovely Winter Saturday antiquing in the Indiana countryside. The owner of one of the shops I like to visit keeps a small dog with her and the person ahead of me in line struck up a conversation about the animal. This then led to them recounting seemingly every dog that either of them had ever owned.
They began listing names and progeny in a manner worthy of a Nordic epic. I soon became bored with my eavesdropping – as any sane person would – and decided to pass the time by checking in on Twitter. Now, I generally try to avoid social media on the weekends, but this was a dire circumstance. It’s sort of good that I did happen to check in because…
SWEET FANCY MOSES, ALL HELL WAS BREAKING LOOSE ON TWITTER.
I mean, not the kind of Hell breaking loose that we saw on election night. Or in the recent Egyptian crisis. Or during the World Cup. Or even when Michael Jackson died. No, I speak of the special kind of Hell that happens when you have a bunch of librarians upset at an organization or vendor. The tweets and retweets fly fast and furious, the messages get lost in the medium and soon you have the virtual version of this (1).
So. Anyway. As it turns out, this particular breaking loose of the Hell was because of an incident that happened at ALA Midwinter. Some livestreaming of a meeting was attempted and the recorder was asked to stop. Cue drama. This was also the day that the shooting in Arizona occurred, so I stopped paying attention. For a more detailed explanation, Meredith Farkas has a summary of the situation and reactions here.
I’m not an ALA member. They don’t collect dues from me and so at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to me what ALA does. However, I think it’s interesting that ALA is now starting public discussions about streaming at meetings, what does “open meetings” mean, etc. A portion of the membership have indicated that transparency and openess in meetings are important to them, the organization responded yesterday (2), and now the members are responding to this response.
We in AALL are having a bit of a transparency issue ourselves at the present moment. On Tuesday, I read via the Law Librarian Blog that AALL was holding a Vendor Colloquium meeting in few weeks. I got official word of it today via the February e-newsletter/president’s thing. Here are the things that I do not have a problem with w/r/t this upcoming meeting:
- The venue – Sure, it’s a little fancy. And yes, we are in a time of economic crisis. But what are the other options? A Motel 6 by the airport? I personally don’t mind if AALL wants to spend a little money on a nice venue when they host events so that we don’t look like a bunch of rank amateurs. Hopefully (and this is a point that will also come up later) AALL will release the financials so we can all see how much of our money was spent on it.
- The attendees – I wasn’t invited. That’s okay. The format looks to be a lot more interactive than I would feel comfortable doing. However, (and this is a point that will also come up later) that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in what’s happening at the meeting. And, sure, I can think of a couple of people that I think would make interesting contributions to the event that didn’t make the list, but everyone on the list seems to be well qualified to be there and I’m sure that they will all make valuable contributions.
- The format – As I said above, not a way I would want to spend a day, but as I think my participation in unconferences show, I believe there is a lot to be said for getting a bunch of people in a room and seeing what kind of ideas shake out when they are allowed to have free form discussions. Having a professional facilitator is a good idea.
- The timing – Yes, it could be tacked onto the beginning or the end of the Annual Meeting and save some travel money and allow for more open attendance, but perhaps there is a reason for doing it this early – for example, perhaps they are hoping for a document to be created as a result of this to be presented at the meeting. Also, the Annual Meeting is crazy enough – for librarians and vendors – so maybe they thought to give participants the opportunity to direct their full attention to the colloquium.
So, what’s my problem?
Just one, really. But it’s a big one.
I see no reason why I (and all other AALL members) are being shut out of a meeting paid for with our dues monies and done for our benefit. It’s not like I’m asking to actually attend or have my opinions stated in the discussion. As a practical matter, it would be impossible for the thousands of AALL members to physically attend and I am confident that the selected librarian representatives can adequately represent me. I must admit, however, that it would be nice to have been polled as to what sorts of things I would like the librarian avatars to tell vendors – it’s entirely possible that this has happened and I missed the email or it’s forthcoming. (ETA: I have been informed that messages did go out over SIS listservs in November and I missed them. So everyone did get the opportunity to participate that way.)
All I’m asking to know what happens at the colloquium. Exactly what happens. Not a second hand summary live blogged or a later recollection written by a participant. I want a straight, unfiltered accounting of what happened. And I say this will all due respect to Mark Estes who will be providing the official blog of the proceedings. I’m sure he will provide the best blog possible. But it (and later accountings) will still all be filtered through the author’s experience of the event. Nuances can be missed, comments misheard…all humans are fallible and it can’t be a perfect recreation of the event.
Considering AALL has advocated repeatedly for authentic information sources in other areas, it’s pretty weird that they’d be okay with an imperfect record of such an important event, isn’t it?
So what do I respectfully request of AALL? In a perfect world, I would like the entire event to be livestreamed and recorded for posterity. However, I do understand that some people may be uncomfortable with that and it could inhibit frank discussion during the “dialogue” portions of the day. But why can’t the opening remarks from Roberta Shaffer and the portions of the agenda labeled “presentation” be streamed/recorded? I think those are all pretty straight forward events and recording them wouldn’t change the material presented.
If that’s not possible, I would like a transcript of the presentations and copies of any presentation materials posted on AALLnet for the entirety of the membership to peruse. Again, this may be in the planning, but if it is, it hasn’t been announced. If nothing else, perhaps – as is happening with ALA – this will start a dialogue between the membership of AALL and the people that we have entrusted to operate it for us about the openness we would like to see in future events.
I’ve planned events before and I know it’s pretty much a thankless task. I do want to take the opportunity to thank the planning committee for the work they did planning this Vendor Colloquium. It looks like it’s going to be a great event. I’m just saying it could be better and that more people should be able to experience it.
(1) Just to nip a possible misinterpretation in the bud here, I don’t think there’s anything wrong generally speaking with publicly complaining about or trying to engage an organization or vendor on Twitter or some other public venue. HOWEVER sometimes things do get out of control and/or some situations may be better handled privately. Do what feels right to you.
(2) Rating the quality of this response is not for me to say.
By - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - 11:33pm
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReservoirDogs
The Houston Association of Law Librarians hosted a panel discussion today on “Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw.” As I am in the frozen tundra of Chicagoland, I did not attend, of course, but I was able to follow the tweets.
Editorial note: Since I only followed along via twitter and thus have my information second hand, I’m going to try to be very careful with language as it’s not always clear when reading tweets if you’re seeing someone’s personal opinion or if they are just reporting what they heard. With that being said, I don’t necessarily disagree with what was said and I’m not trying to play “gotcha” when I report tweets that conflict (for example). ETA: I also should have said that tweets have a way of oversimplifying a point made. Please check out the comments section for Ed Walters’ clarification of his point. If you’d like to go straight to the source, the video for panel discussion appears here and Ed’s comments are 10 minutes in or so, but I haven’t been able to get it to load – otherwise I would have linked to it when I first composed this.
It was tweeted that Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase, said it sends a message to Wexis when libraries renew their subscriptions even though they complain about the large price increase. (Source) Jason Wilson tweeted that librarians need to complain more and that complaining on a listserv is not always the best choice of action. David Curle commented that Walters was holding a mirror up to the audience, which Carl Malamud then retweeted and added the comment “they have met the enemy and they are them!”
Okay. Got that? Great.
Like I said, I don’t disagree with the idea that complaining on a listserv is not the most efficient or useful exercise in library/vendor relations. And we need to break away from the Wexis duopoly. But pointing out what people are doing wrong (or saying that they are not doing enough) without suggesting alternative actions that would be right isn’t that helpful. So, let’s brainstorm here…what exactly are we supposed to be doing? What can we do?
Cancel all West products? That is a romantic idea, but that’s simply not going to happen. As Kama Siegel noted, sometimes we’re not the ones making purchasing decisions. Even if we are, libraries are in the business of providing information to our patrons – in the cases of firms and corporate libraries, they do as part of a business. We can’t simply “go on strike” for acquisitions, especially in a discipline like law which is constantly being updated and created and analyzed. Libraries can’t break from West until we have a viable alternative.
I know the current situation can’t go on forever, but I’m also not sure how to stop it. Pressure from organizations? (On whom? What does “pressure” mean?) Consortiums engaging in an “acquisitions slowdown” and collaborative collection development? Wikileaks our Wexis contracts? Other ideas? Let’s hear it.
ETA: I’m glad Ed clarified his comments. As it turns out, he was oversimplified by the twitter medium. But even if he was being interpreted correctly, I wouldn’t have really disagreed. And this is far from the only time something along the lines of “librarians should do more than complain” has been said. I say it myself a lot! I really am looking for more ideas of concrete steps we (meaning librarians) can take. The UC/Nature dispute of last year gave me some hope, but our information creation stream is slightly different than other disciplines. (We can’t ask the government to stop creating laws and the writers of most of our secondary materials don’t do it for free and provide free labor like most academic writing.) So….what can we do?
By - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - 9:30pm
Here’s a couple things I believe:
- There are several providers of free legal information out there that are reliable enough to recommend to my patrons to use.
- Librarians need to collaborate and communicate more with information vendors – all information vendors…Wexis, ILS providers, independents and non-profits.
- Most legal research educational materials suck. They’re dry and the publisher bias contained within some is almost laughable.
- Legal information vendors use tactics to get law students hooked on their products that would make a drug dealer blush.
So, when Tom Bruce emailed me a few weeks ago and asked if I’d be interested in creating a Free Law Research Guide aimed at law students, I jumped at the chance. Without further ado, I present to you The Law Student Guide to Free Legal Research.
Although sponsored by Justia and the LII, I had total editorial control over what resources got selected. (I also didn’t get paid anything, so I have no real conflicts of interest to declare. Tom has promised to buy me the beverage of my choice upon our next meeting, though.) My only real direction was that I should only recommend sources that I – as a librarian – would use but that I should make it fun and interesting for the average law student. As for that…well, if you’re reading this, you’re probably a librarian. I just want to warn you that you may feel the need to do some pearl clutching at what you read in the guide. I make statements like “Legal research is boring and tedious and nothing can change that.”
Listen…legal research is boring and tedious.
You know, for normal people.
Librarians love it, but that’s why we became librarians. If it makes me a bad librarian to admit that publicly and I’m gonna go to Librarian Hell for doing so, well….I’ll be sure to pack marshmallows.
ANYWAY, the project evolved over the course of the past few weeks from the initially planned 3 page PDF that they could post on their social media outreach sites to the website linked above. (A great big thank you to CALI for hosting it on their Classcaster site!) There is still a PDF available that contains the basics of the site, but there’s much more available. For instance, there is a blog that will allow us to highlight developments in the #lawgov movement, new resources that are available or just general thoughts on legal research. I really love Austin Groothuis’ inaugural post. Guest bloggers are invited and welcome!
Although the site is primarily aimed at law students, there is also a section for law librarians and legal writing instructors. Just as one goal of the site was mirror the student-aimed Wexis offerings, we wanted to offer a similar assortment of teaching aids in the hope that it would encourage the introduction of free legal resources in the classroom. If you have a handout or powerpoint show that you’d like to share, please contact me and I’ll happily load it and give you full credit. Check back often for more updates.
Speaking of teaching free legal resources, there’s currently a short (~30 seconds) poll on the law librarian resources page. Aside from my anecdotal evidence, it occurred to all of us during our planning that we had no idea how, when or if free legal resources were being taught in law schools and firms. We would really appreciate it if you could share your experiences. Thanks!
One benefit of the website is that I can constantly add or make changes. The next section that seems obvious to add is a foreign and international law one. But I’m always open to suggestions. Similarly, if you find something that you think should be changed, drop me an email or tweet and I’ll look into it. I’m generally pretty low ego when it comes to things like this and am open to constructive criticism. So, look around and let me know what you think!
By - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 - 8:47pm
A collection of the signs I removed from my library
I never thought I would care passionately about library signage, let alone write a blog post about them, but here we are.
My job title is “Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian” and I have joked that “Outreach Librarian” is the job duty equivalent of “other duties as assigned.” For me, anyway, “outreach” includes making the library a welcoming, friendly place for our patron base.
You know…marketing.
Unlike my academic and public library brethren, when I think about marketing and the library, I don’t really have to worry about getting bodies in the door. Law students will pretty much always use the library. Heck, they’d live here if we’d let them.
Why bother trying to make them feel welcome? Marketing goes beyond getting them in the door. Or even checking out books (especially in an academic law library where much of the collection doesn’t circulate.) I hate to break it to you, Gentle Reader, but students don’t always separate the “library” from “the librarian.” For all they differentiate, you might as well be physically attached to your reference desk.
If the library doesn’t feel friendly and welcoming, then the librarians don’t seem friendly and welcoming. If the librarians don’t seem friendly and welcoming, then the students are not going to feel comfortable asking us questions when they need to. (Law students are already having to overcome the perceived sense of weakness by having to ask for help in the first place – let’s not make it harder than we have to, eh?) So I’m implementing alternative venues for students to ask questions and making the website more user friendly and pondering creating Social Networking profiles and revamping the blog and yes, worrying about the library’s signs. Any gateway to the library, be it real or virtual, is getting the once over from me.
So, let’s talk about the signs.
The picture above is a collection of the signs I removed last week from my library’s walls. Every day, in getting from the front door of the library to my office and then to the magic coffee machine in Tech Services, I would pass by six of these. An outdated picture of a cellphone with a giant international no sign over it and “CELLULAR PHONES PROHIBITED” in capital letters.
Granted, I have a well-documented problem with Authority and The Man, but these signs just seemed unnecessarily harsh. I’d look at them and think, “Geez, did cell phones make fun of your mom? Did they run over your dog? Did one steal your prom date? WHY THE HATE FOR CELL PHONES???” Not only were they harsh, but they were also inaccurate. We don’t care if people text or play games or surf the web with their phone. (I guess there’s also a chance they might be using them productively.) All we cared about was that the library stayed quiet so that our patrons could study.
After clearing it with the Powers That Be and consulting with the library communities on FriendFeed, I came up with the following new sign….TA-DA!
New Library Cell Phone Sign
This is for the front doors of the library and there are similar ones for the restrooms, stacks, etc. Clean, peaceful, friendly and up-to-date. Instead of telling our patrons what they CAN”T do, we’re telling them what they CAN. Plus, it accurately reflects our cell phone policy. I am pleased.
Sometimes it’s the little things.
