Karen Coyle has given us a thoughtful comparative analysis of the University of Michigan's and the University of California's mass book digitization contracts with Google. In the balance, it appears that these contracts give Google more latitude than either university has to use the files.

Michigan has decided that it will not allow display of Google digital books that are covered by copyright. That is a prudent stance. Google is already engaged in lawsuits with publishers over Google's right to digitize copyrighted books even if it displays nothing more than snippets of text. Let Google pay for the court fight and then see what can or cannot be done.

The University of Richmond library has recently added netLibrary audio e-books to its offerings. They are catching on nicely despite the complaint we have heard more than once, “What do you mean I can’t download this to my iPod?” OCLC/netLibrary sent us publicity materials, including bookmarks.

When netLibrary debuted about eight years ago, it handed out sturdy canvas tote bags at an ALA conference and gave away bookmarks. At the time I asked a netLibrary sales rep how I could stick a paper bookmark in an e-book and how I could carry e-books in the tote bag. I don’t think I received the answer she wished she could have given me.

But it’s not only netLibrary that promotes e-resources with bookmarks. I have seen other bookmarks from other publishers as well as bookmarks libraries have produced to promote their electronic collections and services. The bookmark as library publicity vehicle is certainly durable. But are bookmarks effective? Especially for promoting electronic resources? Does it make sense to use them this way?

One side of the netLibrary bookmark:

Today’s mail brought a handsome book from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. MacArthur Fellows: the First 25 Years, 1981-2005 provides brief biographies of all 700+ extraordinary individuals who have been named MacArthur Fellows. That’s their official name; popularly these are the famous “genius awards.” Indexes list the fellows by class and by field of endeavor. Librarianship doesn’t appear. So I checked the biographies of the 20 fellows listed under “education.” No librarian among them.

Will 2006 be the year that a librarian is named a MacArthur Fellow? If you were on of the nominators, who in our field would you nominate?

From a letter received this weeK: “It is my pleasure to inform you that you are being considered for inclusion into the 2006/2007 Cambridge Who’s Who Among Professional Librarians and Library Administrators ‘Honors Edition’ of the registry.” This courtesy of Cambridge Who’s Who of Uniondale, New York.

The letter notes that “Inclusion is considered by many as the single highest mark of achievement.” A generic personal information card accompanies the letter asking for name,title, company name, company address, business and home phones (neither for publication), e-mail address, “Web address,” industry, “principal product, service or activity, personal specialty and type of business.

The Web site says “The Cambridge Who’s Who Who registry is a compilation of member biographies highlighting their company, expertise, and achievements.” Since it requires a member login, it looks like one has to pay for the privilege to see his or her own entry. This registry is supposed to help one’s career through networking with others listed. Can you think of any other professional group as well networked as librarians?

I haven’t seen anything like this since my kids were in high school and received various come-ons from vanity press who’s who books published to list students’ names so that their parents would buy the book for bragging rights. I wonder how long after submitting this in-depth biographical information before those unpublished phone numbers start ringing with sales pitches to pay to join the registry.

One would think librarians would be the last group that such a scheme would target!

Today I read some student comments about our library. One includes a positive statement about our “study carols.” This immediately brought to mind an article I had read earlier in the day in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In “Like a Bowl in a China Shop,” [subscribers only] writing teacher Mark Peters recommended that eggcorns present a teaching opportunity richer than sending a student to a dictionary to learn (if the student knew where to look) that the correct spelling is “acorns.” Yet from those little nutty eggs mighty oaks do rise.

Other eggcorns are boggled down, girdle one's loins, on the spurt of the moment, getting one's dandruff up, and manner from heaven. I am not sure that “study carol” qualifies as an eggcorn, but it does appear in unexpected places–even on an Ivy League Website and the Website of a library at another prominent university.

Protecting Privacy, Challenging Secrecy, and Standing Up for the First Amendment

In the face of a government increasingly intruding into our private lives while it hides its own actions behind a veil of secrecy, courageous individuals are taking a stand. Come and hear some of their stories!

WHAT: Forum on Protecting Privacy, Challenging Secrecy, and Standing Up for the First Amendment

WHO: ABC News Reporters Brian Ross, Richard Esposito, Journalist/Author Mark Feldstein, New York Times reporter James Risen, John Doe Connecticut Librarians

WHERE: The National Press Club First Amendment Lounge 529 14th Street, NW Washington, DC

WHEN: Thursday, September 28, 200612:00 p.m-2:00 p.m.

The Campaign for Reader Privacy–a joint initiative of The American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American–presents this program in celebration of the 25th observance of Banned Books Week, an annual reminder that we can never take our freedom to read for granted.

CALL FOR COMMITTEE VOLUNTEERS

ALA President-elect Loriene Roy is seeking applications and nominations for appointments to 2007-2008 ALA and Council committees.

She will fill slots on the following committees: Accreditation; American Libraries Advisory; Awards; Budget Analysis and Review; Chapter Relations; Conference; Constitution and Bylaws; Council Orientation; Diversity; Education; Election; Human Resource Development and Recruitment Advisory; Information Technology Policy Advisory; Intellectual Freedom; International Relations; Legislation; Literacy; Literacy and Outreach Services Advisory; Membership; Membership Meetings; Nominating; Organization; Orientation, Training, and Leadership Development; Policy Monitoring (current Council members only); Professional Ethics; Public and Cultural Programs Advisory; Public Awareness; Publishing; Research and Statistics; Resolutions; Rural, Native and Tribal Libraries of All Kinds; Scholarships and Study Grants; Status of Women in Librarianship; Website Advisory; ALA-Children’s Book Council (Joint); ALA-Association of American Publishers {Joint) and ALA-Society of American Archivists-American Association of Museums(Joint). Committee charges can be found in the ALA Handbook of Organization (in a part of tha ALA Web site restricted to members).

All applicants must complete and submit the electronic 2007-2008 ALA Committee Volunteer Form. The deadline for submission is
December 4, 2006.

Geographical location, type of library, gender, ethnicity, previous committee work (not necessarily with ALA), ALA and related experience, and other factors are considered when the committee slates are compiled in order to ensure broad representation and diversity on all committees.
The ALA Committee on Committees and Committee on Appointments will assist Dr. Roy in making appointments. Committee appointees will receive appointment letters after the 2007 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. Appointees will begin their committee service after the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC.

Questions concerning appointments can be directed to Dr. Roy at Loriene@ischool.utexas.edu or Lois Ann Gregory-Wood, Council Secretariat, at lgregory@ala.org

A collateral value of Wikipedia (I am not stating what its other value(s) may be) is the public discussions it has engendered and the exposure it has received to many who might otherwise not know of its existence and the debate that swirls about it.

Which, ultimately, will Wikipedia offer the world–majoritarian “truth” or demonstrable truth? It seems that Jimmy Wales continues to harbor hopes for the latter. Will the Wikipedians who demonstrated an adversarial position rather than a NPOV in the Q&A with Giles accept and rise to founder Wales's challenge? Let us hope so; if so, Wikipedia may yet fulfill is lofty ambitions.

Friday afternoon a fierce storm tore through the region. It knocked out power and phone lines in a good sized area as close as a mile from home. When I got home my wife reported that our Internet access was down. I guessed it was storm related and ignored it. We went out for dinner. When we got back I unplugged the cable modem and plugged it in again. Still no access. This is the first time in almost two years of using this service that this has been a problem. So I assumed, even though the TV signal came through the cable just fine, that the problem might be at the other end with ISP's servers.
In the morning I stuck my PDA stylus tip into the little reset button on the back of the modem. Eureka!
Then I went grocery shopping. When I got home she informed that it was out again. So I called the Cox cable help number. I punched buttons through the menu, entered numbers for my account, and then got a cheery canned voice telling me, “I'm looking up your account. This will only take a moment.” This varied eventually to “I'm looking something up here;” it sounded impatient to me despite the same cheery voice. Yet I was the one who was in phone menu limbo listening to an increasingly suspicious promise from a computer generated voice in between being subjected to annoying music.
When the voice said “I found your account!” I expected to talk to a human. Nope, more cheeriness, walking me through various diagnostic tests, starting with the really really basic stuff necessary for someone not sure of how to turn on their computer. After 25 minutes or so we got to the point where I disconnected the IN cable from the TV/Internet splitter and hooked it directly to the modem and, lo and behold, everything worked! Cheery voice assured my that I had a failed splitter. So off to Radio Shack for a new one. Installed that and–no access!
I was determined not to have to fight my way through the Cox help menus again. So later in the day, off to Staples for a coaxial cable to replace the cable between the splitter and the modem, the only remaining untested variable I could identify. Got home and access was back! Did the existing coaxial feel threatened by the new cable and resumed operation out of self-preservation?
This afternoon I was merrily working on a hotel reservation when access again disappeared. So several hours ago I installed the new coaxial and so far no more problems. Time will tell.
Information technology is wonderful–when it works!

Several days ago the Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Council of Learned Societies released a draft of its Our Cultural Commonwealth report. The report identifies the needs and the challenges the humanities and social sciences face in assuring that the developing cyberinfrastructure meets their needs. These fields have not exploited information technologies as effectively as the sciences. No one thing explains the difference. Two factors are the comparative differences in funding and, especially in the humanities, a model of scholarship that is carried out largely in solitude rather than, as is common in the sciences, in collaborative teams.

The report’s summary articulates one set of issues better, I believe, than the more discursive discussion in the body of the report. Four of these are:

• the loss, fragility, and inaccessibility of the cultural record;
• the complexity of the cultural record;
• intellectual property restrictions on the use of the cultural record;
• uncertainty about the future mechanisms, forms, and economics of scholarly publishing and scholarly communication more generally

Sounds like there is an important role for librarians and libraries!

Reports from commissions are, of course, important. But so are stories people can relate to. Release of this report coincides with publication of the August 2006 issue of Smithsonian magazine. In his “Trial by Fire”in that issue David von Drehle, author of Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, tells a story about “the loss, fragility, and inaccessibility of the cultural record.” Only this is a story of the accessibility of part of that record.

Faced with having to tell his publisher that he had neither the promised book nor any of the advance he had been paid, von Drehle felt pressured. Despite the historical significance of this 1911 fire in New York, he could not find key original records from its era. His breakthrough came, not surprisingly, thanks to librarians. He dearly wanted to find a copy of the transcript of the criminal court proceedings from the fire’s aftermath. A citation in an entry in the Dictionary of American Biography noted that records of one of the principal lawyers “are in the N.Y. County Lawyers Assoc.” He googled the NYCLA, spoke with the librarian, and learned the library had no record of attorney Max Steuer’s papers.

Given a tough information challenge, many librarians take ownership for it like a dog with a bone. The NYCLA librarian posted the question to a local law librarians listerv, got a lead from another librarian who had worked at NYCLA, and they found the documents van Drehle needed. Actually, they found two bound volumes of the Triangle trial transcript. The other two, presumably once in NYCLA’s collection, remain missing. But those still at NYCLA, as well as part of a third held at Cornell University, allowed von Drehle to write his book.

Journalists such as von Drehle and scholars in the humanities and social science compile significant collections of research materials, notes, and data sets. These form the foundation on which they erect their published edifices. Many colleges and universities are building institutional repositories to showcase their students’ and faculty’s scholarship. Some repositories accommodate these foundational infohoards so other scholars can use them. The infohoard supporting Triangle: The Fire that Changed America has been digitized by Cornell’s Kheel Center. The Kheel Center offers a Web exhibit about the fire and the complete text of the remaining volumes of the court proceedings.

Librarians are already playing a vital role!