[LISNews] The LISNews For April 20th 2010

[The LISNews Librarian News By Email]

On Tuesdays we take a look at the stories that got the most comments in the last week.

-[1] - Celebrate Library Week with a Librarian Movie
   http://lisnews.org/node/36564/
-[2] - The DDC is Killing our Libraries
   http://lisnews.org/node/36579/
-[3] -  Every. Single. Tweet. Now on the LOC Blog
   http://lisnews.org/node/36570/
-[4] - Looking at the iPad from an ebook reader’s perspective
   http://lisnews.org/node/36566/
-[5] - Record Store Days: From Vinyl to Digital and Back Again
   http://lisnews.org/node/36584/


And here's the latest from LISNews:


--OpenSciNY Conference: Help Study The Impact of Publicly-Accessible Scientific Tools & Resources
- http://lisnews.org/node/36604/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Tuesday April 20th at 12:21 PM
-Read 7 times - 0 Comments
OpenSciNY (http://opensciny.com/) is a free, one-day conference to be held on May 14, 2010, at NYU's Bobst Library in New
York City, NY. It is geared toward academic faculty, students, and librarians interested in the impact of
publicly-accessible scientific tools & resources, open access publishing in the sciences, and open data/notebook efforts.
The hash tag for the conference is #opensciny   Organized by a group of science librarians from New York University,
Brooklyn College (CUNY), and Columbia University, OpenSciNY is a free, one-day conference to be held from 9:30am-6pm on
Friday, May 14, 2010, at NYU’s Bobst Library, situated in Greenwich Village in New York City, NY. All interested science
faculty, students, and librarians are welcome to attend.  The conference includes a series of presentations followed by
informal roundtable discussions, during which speakers and participants will discuss a broad range of issues related to Open
Science, including:  * the transformative impact of open access on traditional forms of publishing in the sciences;  * the
personal, professional, and greater societal issues regarding the provision of public access to science monographs,
articles, data, lab notebooks, and research wikis/blogs;  *the implications of the development and use of freely available
science tools/resources;  * tenure and promotion in an era of openness.  Bringing together a diverse group of speakers
(including scientists, software developers, librarians, and academics) the conference is designed to explore how increased
openness in science communication affects day-to-day research activities, publishing, academic policy and copyright, as well
as the world at large. 


--Amazon Sues North Carolina
- http://lisnews.org/node/36603/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Tuesday April 20th at 12:00 PM
-Read 46 times - 0 Comments
Amazon has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Seattle against the North Carolina Department of Revenue charging that its
demand that Amazon turnover the names and addresses of all residents who bought anything from the e-tailer since 2003 is an
invasion of privacy and a violation of the First Amendment. The request by North Carolina is part of that state's efforts to
collect sales tax on items purchased by North Carolina residents from Amazon. In the complaint, Amazon also said North
Carolina is demanding it turnover records of what each customer purchased and how much they paid.   When North Carolina
first announced its plans to collect sales tax from online retailers, Amazon closed down the affiliates program in the
state, arguing that without that program the state  had no nexus to collect sales tax.  Publishers Weekly reports.   


--The Open Access citation advantage?
- http://lisnews.org/node/36601/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Tuesday April 20th at 10:05 AM
-Read 142 times - 0 Comments
advantage, schmantage "Who loses the shell game? Academics whose work is less widely available than it should be, and
anyone who wants to read the primary literature. Who wins? Publishers, whose prices have been allowed to escalate because
they have largely escaped scrutiny (except by librarians, who for no good reason that I can see have been largely ignored,
at least until relatively recently, by academic and political decision makers). " 


--Safe Search Engine Alternatives to Google
- http://lisnews.org/node/36599/
-Blog Entry by Anonymous Patron Posted Monday April 19th at 9:13 PM
-Read 71 times - 0 Comments
Increasingly, school librarians feel a need for their students to access alternative search engines as safe alternatives to
Google and the other standard general search engines.  One way to do this is to make available collections of vetted or
"juried" sites, many times selected by other educators and librarians.  Some of my favorite such sites for secondary school
students include the Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org/), Digital Librarian (http://www.digital-librarian.com/),
and BUBL (http://bubl.ac.uk/).   There exist search engines on the Internet that search only sites similar to the three
listed above.  A lot of these are Google Custom Search engines, free to anyone who wants to sign up at
http://www.google.com/cse/ .  One such search engine is Infotopia, a Google CSE that I created last November 13, 2009. 
Infotopia, http://www.infotopia.info , searches only sites previously selected by librarians, teachers, and educational and
library consortia.  I have designed Infotopia to search with Google Safe Search always on.  No filtering needed, and you get
all of the precision and search features of the regular Google search engine.  The Internet can be a useful information
source for the experienced and discriminating user; however, there exist many dangers for students wanting to do research on
the World Wide Web. The number one danger in the minds of most teachers, librarians, and other information professionals is
the validity of the information retrieved via search engines. How factual, unbiased, and current is the information found
through the result of any particular search? We have no guarantees, because the Web search environment is ordered around the
profit motive, rather than any concerns familiar to most educators and librarians.  As educators and information
professionals, we may be concerned with the source of any information found. What are the credentials of the people who
presented the information? With whom are they affiliated? What assumptions do the website authors make? Is the website clear
about the criteria used to select and order the information? How current is the information presented? How often has the
website been updated? Is it possible to contact the authors of the website to clarify any concerns we may have as
information consumers? It is appalling how many websites fail to meet some or any objective criteria related to validity of
the information they offer.  As librarians, especially school and college librarians, we know that the first Internet source
that most students will turn to is the Google search engine. Indeed “googling” has entered the language as a synonym for
searching for information on the Internet. As of 2006, Google represented 59.3 percent of all online search queries
(TechWeb). How valid is the information retrieved by Google? Well, that depends. If you are searching for fairly
non-controversial topics, Google can do a very good job of finding solid, valid information. I searched recently for
“Abraham Lincoln” and the first Google results page presented a number of great links. (By the way, most students never look
beyond the first results page.) In this case, one of the first listed pages was one by a retired teacher whose passion was
anything related to Lincoln. The page listed the credentials of the author, sources consulted, and had been recently
updated. The author’s e-mail address was included. The other nine links on the page were of similar high quality.  However,
when students search for information on controversial issues, as opposed to straight factual information, things can get
dicey. In the not too distant past,I searched for the phrase “gun control” on Google. Of the ten “organic” (as opposed to
sponsored) links returned, two hits contained no information about the author(s) or any of their affiliations. Standards or
criteria for inclusion were absent. Three had no visible revision dates, and four hits had revision dates two or more years
old. One site included in the first Google search page for this important topic dealt with what the Bible has to say about
owning and using guns! It had no information about the author or standards of credibility, and was last revised in 1999.  We
all know that no one reviews pages indexed by Google. Rather, Google uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the “page
rank” of any particular website. We do not know exactly how Google page rank functions (they like to keep us in the dark),
but one important factor is the number of incoming links a particular page has, and the page rank of the pages linking to
the page. In other words, in all cases, popularity, rather than intrinsic information quality, determines Google page rank. 
In addition to the quality of information returned via search engines, another problem is that to gain revenue, most search
engines include “sponsored links” somewhere in their search results. As a matter of fact, a June 2005 study done by Penn
State reported that “businesses spent an estimated $8 billion to sell their products and services via sponsored links in
2004” (Science Daily, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050616055236.htm). Google places most of its sponsored
links over to the side of the page, and probably does the best job of making it clear to the user which are organic and
which are sponsored links. Most of the other search engines tend to mix sponsored and organic links in the main body of the
page. This can be very confusing to students who can have difficulty discerning between the two.  Another problem with
sponsored links is that they can lead students to some dangerous sites. In a 2006 article, The Safety of Internet Search
Engines, authors Ben Edelman Hannah Rosenbaum point out that “8.5 percent overall of sponsored links on Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft’s MSN, AOL and Ask.com point to sites rated as “risky” by (McAfee) SiteAdvisor.” They go on to state that these
questionable sites tend to, “distribute adware, send a high volume of spam or make unauthorized changes to a user’s
computer. (http://www.siteadvisor.com/studies/search_safety_may2006.html)”  As a related issue, PC World recently noted that
“In some cases, results at AOL and MSN seem to serve the companies’ corporate needs as much as searchers’ interests…. on AOL
and on MSN, the companies ranked their own affiliated e-commerce sites high on the first page. Though you might expect such
listings in the sponsored links, we noticed the phenomenon in the real results as well. (The Straight Story on Search
Engines PC World http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,97431,pg,5,00.asp)”   To paraphrase, its an information jungle
out there, and as librarians our role is to help students extract information from the Internet in the safest and most
productive way possible. We need to apply our traditional skills in selection and organization to the Internet. One of the
problems is that many librarians feel lacking in both computer and website development skills to make this happen. In this
series of blog entries I will try to suggest some ways, from simple to complex, of helping librarians better organize
information on the Web for safer and easier retrieval.  Dr. Michael Bell Former Chair, Texas Association of School
Librarians drmichaelbell at hotmail.com Retired school and university librarian webmaster at http://www.virtuallrc.com
webmaster at http://www.infotopia.info webmaster at http://www.virtuallrc.com/magbot webmaster at
http://www.virtuallrc.com/alphamarks webmaster at http://www.academicindex.net 


--A Look from the 'Inside' as a Rikers Library Volunteer
- http://lisnews.org/node/36598/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Monday April 19th at 2:08 PM
-Read 305 times - 0 Comments
Jamie  Niehof, Intern, Correctional Services Program  writes:  Another day of volunteering at Rikers Island with the NYPL
has come to a close. Thursday I went to one of the male detention houses along with my mentor and two other staff members
from NYPL. We were there for "book cart service," which is a little different than what I remember from Shawshank
Redemption.  We delivered books to both solitary confinement and two different "houses," which are the names of blocks
within the building. The inmates in solitary confinement are allowed to request books off a list, so we filled these
requests from the "library" within this particular building, which was really just two tall shelves of paperback books in
the back of the Chaplain's office.  We felt like Indiana Jones capturing the golden statue when we found a book one of the
prisoners had requested. Usually the titles were listed on their slips of paper as Cold Moon. That's it. No author, just
words. If we couldn't find one of the prisoner's specific books (they can request three and we try to find one of them) we
will substitute something simliar, same author, plot, etc.  A request via The Village Voice: Sarah Ball, another intern,
reports that Rikers is in need of book donations, particularly of urban lit, popular fiction (Patterson, Grisham, Rice,
Meyer, Rowling, etc.), sports and music biographies, conspiracy theory non-fiction, African-American history, small business
and investment, GED study guides, and dictionaries.  If you've got that kind of thing hanging around the house and want to
donate, email the Correctional Services Librarian, Nicholas Higgins nicholas_higgins at nypl.org. Paperback is vastly
preferred. 


--Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and Save the Book Business? 
- http://lisnews.org/node/36597/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Monday April 19th at 11:49 AM
-Read 332 times - 0 Comments
Ken Auletta of The New Yorker writes:  On the morning of January 27th—an aeon ago, in tech time—Steve Jobs was to appear at
the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in downtown San Francisco, to unveil Apple’s new device, the iPad.  Hundreds of
journalists and invited guests, including Al Gore, Yo-Yo Ma, and Robert Iger, the C.E.O. of Disney, milled around the
theatre, waiting for Jobs to appear. The sound system had been playing a medley of Bob Dylan songs; it went quiet as the
lights came up onstage and Jobs walked out, to the crowd’s applause.  In the weeks before, the book industry had been full
of unaccustomed optimism; in some publishing circles, the device had been referred to as “the Jesus tablet.” The industry
was desperate for a savior. Between 2002 and 2008, annual sales had grown just 1.6 per cent, and profit margins were
shrinking.  The industry’s great hope was that the iPad would bring electronic books to the masses—and help make them
profitable. E-books are booming. Although they account for only an estimated three to five per cent of the market, their
sales increased a hundred and seventy-seven per cent in 2009, and it was projected that they would eventually account for
between twenty-five and fifty per cent of all books sold. But publishers were concerned that lower prices would decimate
their profits. Amazon had been buying many e-books from publishers for about thirteen dollars and selling them for $9.99,
taking a loss on each book in order to gain market share and encourage sales of its electronic reading device, the Kindle.
By the end of last year, Amazon accounted for an estimated eighty per cent of all electronic-book sales, and $9.99 seemed to
be established as the price of an e-book. Publishers were panicked. David Young, the chairman and C.E.O. of Hachette Book
Group USA, said, “The big concern—and it’s a massive concern—is the $9.99 pricing point. If it’s allowed to take hold in the
consumer’s mind that a book is worth ten bucks, to my mind it’s game over for this business.” 


--The professor, his wife, and the secret, savage book reviews on Amazon
- http://lisnews.org/node/36596/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Monday April 19th at 7:27 AM
-Read 496 times - 1 Comments
The professor, his wife, and the secret, savage book reviews on Amazon An extraordinary literary "whodunnit" over the
identity of a mystery reviewer who savaged works by some of Britain's leading academics on the Amazon website has culminated
in a top historian admitting that the culprit was, in fact, his wife.  


--All (Advocacy) in the Family
- http://lisnews.org/node/36595/
-Blog Entry by AndyW Posted Monday April 19th at 1:16 AM
-Read 118 times - 0 Comments
   I’d like you to meet my parents. This is my current favorite picture of them; it was taken during their formal night out
on a vacation cruise. With all of the advocacy meetings and talk I’ve had in the last couple of weeks, I have been thinking
about them. For me, they represent the two tiers of library supporters that are needed in order to preserve (or possibly
even expand) library funding in the future. Allow me to elaborate.     This is my mother Ann. She is a regular patron of the
Cherry Hill Public Library. On any given week, she is borrowing books, movies, and television series. When I was growing up,
she would take my brother and I to the library to borrow books and movies. In hearing about the cuts to library funding in
New Jersey, it has inspired her to write a letter to the editor that she is going to send to the local papers. To my
knowledge, she has never done anything like this before. I was so proud of her when she read me her rough draft; I certainly
hope they publish it.     This is my father Bill. Unlike my mother, he is not a regular library user. This is not to
say that he would not use a library, but it’s not a regular deal. However, he is also a library supporter. He sees the value
in the services provided as a community good; he understands the importance of information access. With a background in
finance, my father is also appreciative of the positive rate of return for taxpayer money invested in library services and
materials. I know I can count on his support not simply because he is my father, but that he is informed as to what the
library does for the community that I serve.  I’ve been thinking of my parents as they represent the two important types of
library supporters: overt and latent. In practical terms, my mother is the person that libraries have coming through their
doors everyday. They would be the low hanging fruit of advocacy since they already understand what the library has to offer.
It’s not a giant step to connect them to our funding cause and encourage them to take action.  The library supporters like
my father, on the other hand, present a different question. How do libraries reach the people in the community who support
the library on ideological grounds yet never grace our doorsteps? While I’m fortunate to be in a position where I can
educate my father about the value of the library, there are many others out there like him who do not have an advocate for a
wife, son, and daughter-in-law.    So, here’s the question: how do we reach people like my dad? 




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