Marcus' World

Sometimes Activism Works

This week I was a displeased Verizon Wireless customer, given the news that the company had not allowed the National Abortion Rights Action League to send action-oriented text messages to people who chose to receive them. All other major cellular carriers established the service with no problems. 

Abortion is a very sensitive political issue, but surely the right to form an opinion about it (and to pay charges for receiving text messages) should not be.

Days after the story appeared Verizon overturned its decision, given an avalanche of public criticism about this blatant infringement on its subscriber's rights. The company  says its mistakenly interpreted its policies, and that this was an isolated incident. Others disagree. 

That debate is probably unresolvable, just like the recent tempest over whether the Times gave an inappropriate discount to MoveOn for its critical ad about General Petraeus.  Wherever the truth lies, I'm heartened by how quickly activists for the rights to take  political action made a difference. 

Sometimes those emails and phone calls really do work. 

Helen's YouTube Debut (ie, "The Problem with Facebook")

As Helen noted in a comment earlier today, her first ever YouTube video--of last week's karaoke performance--is online. Watching it is the best minute and 19 seconds you'll spend all day.

The video's been available to our Facebook friends for several days, but there was no easy way to share it with people we know who are not on Facebook. That's not good--your core profile should be private, only shareable with people you want to see it and who are on Facebook themselves. But it should be easier to share the auxiliary products with others; if nothing else, that's yet more promotion for Facebook.

Important caveat: There might actually be a way to share videos with non Facebook users. But it would be much better for loyal Facebookies if that process were transparent and seamless.

I'm jazzed up about all this because of today's news that Microsoft is considering buying a share in Facebook. (Google is too.) If Microsoft gets a stake the site could become even more closed off than it is now. Who knows? Facebook might even incur the wrath of European regulators ten years from now, given the European reaction to Microsoft's software bundling practices today. But let's hope it doesn't come to that; all Facebook needs to do is loosen up.

West Coast Live

Helen's not having all the fun, just the most outlandish varieties.

This morning I ventured to the San Francisco Ferry Building,  for a broadcast of the wonderful public radio show West Coast Live. I'd never heard of the show, which is hosted by Sedge Thomson, until we moved here to the West Coast.  Each week there's an interesting mixture of authors, musicians, and other performing artists. It's a mellow, more intimate alternative to the sometimes excessive boisterous Prairie Home Companion.

Helen and I saw Prairie Home in New York a few years ago, and had a wonderful time.  But now I prefer West Coast, because it offers the same stimulation in a much more relaxed setting.  Garrison Keillor presented Prairie Home at the grand Town Hall in New York, while Thomson plays to a small room where you can see everybody in the audience.

There's much more time for conversation on West Coast, since Thomson doesn't perform rehearsed sketches like Keillor. Today we heard from the director of the Ferry Terminal's farmers market, David Stockdale; the actor John O'Keefe, who intensely recited part of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"; and the liberal economist Robert Reich (the same man who I saw at the movies in Berkeley). There was lots of music too, and even a brief poetry reading by Thomson himself.

All in all, a lovely way to spend the morning.

Helen Is Having Too Much Fun

On Tuesday, at the business school karaoke party, Helen performed a rousing version of Shania Twain's anthem, "Man, I Feel Like a Woman."  If you're friends with her on Facebook, you can enjoy the video of the performance.

The karaoke event came after a unique evening with fellow business school students at Frugal Foodies, where you prepare the food yourself. That's a lot of fun in one night.

But that's nothing. Today she spent much of the day dressed up as a hot dog.

Helen was part of a fund-raising drive that supports the business school students who complete internships at non-profit organizations.  The for-profit gigs pay well, the non-profit jobs offer peanuts. So the students organize many programs to support their friends, such as selling hot dog and sausage on game days.

But rarely does anyone actually look like the merchandise. That's Helen's talent, to enjoy any activity to the limit. It's a great gift, and I'm delighted to be along for the ride.

In SF, Even the Drugs are Organic

On Tuesday night I went to the Red Vic Movie House for the first time.  The Red Vic is one of San Francisco's great independent theaters. I was there to see Burden of Dreams, a 1982 documentary about the epic struggle of director Werner Herzog to make the movie Fitzcarraldo.  I haven't actually seen Fitzcarraldo, but after seeing Burden I want to.

The Red Vic is on Haight St (of Haight/Ashbury fame).  As I left the theater and got back out on Haight, a lady sidled over to me and offered me some type of illegal drug (hashish, maybe--I heard "hish hash") for half price. Of course I declined; after all, I'm an upstanding member of polite society.  But before walking away, I  thought it was very funny when she informed me that the drugs were "organic."  Only in San Francisco, my friends; that wouldn't even happen in Berkeley.

My one regret--I didn't think to ask if the hash was fair trade too.

Two Honors for Katie

Florida International University's public health students have developed two most appropriate honors for Katie Evans. Please read John's blog for further details.

Librarians of the Future: Some Characteristics and Suggested Reading

MarkD posed some trenchant questions a few days ago, when (among other things) I argued that providing access to articles will become less important over time, while access to "raw data" will become more important.  From Scott's note to the same post, I was pleased to see that I am in the company of people like Timo Hannay.

Mark D: "It seems to me that you are painting a very new picture for the role of the library and the librarian. What will be done in your ‘parallel system? ‘ What content would be there? In what formats? How would it be managed? And, In your view, what role does the librarian and the library play in this system? And, finally, and most importantly; how will it be funded?"

I wish I had clear answers to all (or any) of these questions, but I don't.  Right now most academic librarians are still figuring out their relationship to a scholarly communication system that is becoming more fragmented and democratic by the day.  Librarians definitely need to be part of the discussions about how scholarship is conveyed today and preserved forever. But it seems that--aside from passionate advocacy for open access publishing--we're not really sure how to be part of this conversation.

So rather than answering Mark's questions directly, I'd like to propose some useful characteristics for librarians who want to make a positive difference in the support of research and the advance of knowledge in the 21st century. Hopefully this doesn't come across an an artful dodge, because the questions Mark raises are all important. But we have some background work to do, I think, to answer them.

1. The most important characteristic of all: Recognizing that we really do have a place at this table.

For centuries now, libraries have been conservative institutions that made the works of others available.  Whatever ferment might be happening in the wider world would eventually reflect itself in a library's holdings, but the time horizons were always long-term. Libraries were reactive places, which codified and preserved the work of others.

Today, at least in academic publishing, the "ferment out there" is the whole story. We don't have the luxury of waiting for everyone else but us to sort things out; it might take 20 years or more to figure out how important the standard journal article remains to researchers. My personal view is that articles will eventually become archival capsules of a piece of work, but that the work itself will occur in more fluid spaces--blogs, wikis, chat boards, virtual environments--where people gather online. These spaces are what we need to preserve for the long term, and nobody else will care about this as much as  librarians.

But I could be wrong, and that's OK. This leads to important characteristic # 2.

2. Comfort with experimentation, and with making educated guesses that could be wrong...i.e., we need to be comfortable with ambiguity.

Last year's fad was folksonomy, this year it's Second Life, next year it will be something else. In the face of this, it's natural to re-trench and to focus on tried and true services like running the reference desk and offering instruction in literature searching. Those services are still important, as of today. But if in-person visits to the library continue to drop, and if formally published articles become less important over time, we'll have to re-think these approaches. People who do visit a library deserve excellent service, but their numbers are dwindling. We can't put all eggs in that basket.

With that said, the point is not that we should immediately abandon everything we've done for years. The point is that researchers are interacting with each other in new ways, and that they need access to information (and information management tools) as they do so.  We need to be in virtual spaces with the researchers, figuring  out what is important and worth keeping for the long term. And if we go down a path that turns out not to be fruitful--expanding on GenBank's functionalities at the institutional level, perhaps, only to discover that GenBank develops new features that make the local efforts obsolete--that's OK. The importance, at this point, is in making the effort.

3. The last characteristic I can think of today: The ability to discern connections between the silos of activity at an institution, and to develop services that bridge these silos while allowing researchers to maintain their own autonomy. 

Libraries are neutral ground, and librarians are well placed to help everyone they meet.  But we must recognize that people don't need help in the same way today as they did before; they can always retrieve an information source of some sort, even if it's usually not the best available. What people want are tools to make their work easier and more productive. Librarians are in the best position to build these tools, becoming true partners with researchers in the process. And when we're partners, we're in much stronger position to answer the questions Mark raises above.

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Finally, I wouldn't be a good librarian without suggesting some additional reading. If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend the August 2007  issue of CT Watch Quarterly, "The Coming Revolution in Scholarly Communications & Cyberinfrastructure."

Where We Live

Protesters have been sitting in trees near the University of California, Berkeley campus for nine months now, in order to prevent the construction of a new football stadium and other athletic facilities. The current stadium, Memorial Stadium, is seismically challenged. The new stadium would require chopping down the suddenly important trees.

The site is very close to Helen's business school; on the business school tour in May, taking a look at the tree-sitters was a new attraction.  I must confess that I don't have revolutionary fervor f0r this protest--it feels like protest for protest's sake, and just another example of how Berkeley is weird.

Although the trees are on university property, for months campus officials have treaded softly so that they couldn't be accused of violating the protester's civil rights. But a few weeks ago officials ordered that a fence go up around the grove of trees, claiming that it was for the safety of the protesters who would soon be surrounded by drunken football fans on Saturday afternoons.  Others see it differently, and have labeled the fenced-in site a "Guantanamo Berkeley" which will starve the hardy protesters to death.  But as of today, everyone in the trees is still alive.

This tempest in a teapot is partially funny, partially exasperating. But it's all Berkeley. Every now and again I shake my head and think to myself, "Wow...this is where we live."

Ethnic Cleansing is Our Friend

Today there will be a major protest against the war in Washington, and a smaller one here in Berkeley. This comes after a week in which our leading general and ambassador in Iraq glossed over the hard realities there, and in which the President sought a non-sensical "return" on a "success" that we have never achieved.  George Orwell is squirming in his grave.

I'm not in favor of a precipitous pull-out, but neither do I want a generations-long occupation of a land where we do not belong. Democracy cannot be imposed by guns, tanks, or whispered prayers to God in the Oval Office.

Of all the arguments for maintaining our presence in Iraq, the supposed benefits of ethnic cleansing are the most chilling.  After all, once the Shiites have killed all the Sunnis in a neighborhood, there will be no more fighting. And vice versa; let the blood spill, so freedom can reign.

Am I being excessive? You be the judge.

Here is David Brooks in the Times on September 11, 2007--precisely six years after the anniversary of a date that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction (emphasis mine):

"First, there’s clearer evidence than ever that U.S. forces can inhibit violence. Despite all the debates over the data, violence over all is on the decline. In neighborhoods where 30 and 40 bodies used to show up a night, now only one or two do. After rising in 2006, violent civilian deaths of all kinds are down 45 percent since December.

Second, the worst of the ethnic cleansing may be over. For years, Shiites and Sunnis have been purging each other from towns and neighborhoods. That ugly process may be nearing its completion, and stabilization may be possible. As Damien Cave and Stephen Farrell wrote in The Times last Sunday, “Iraq’s mixed neighborhoods are sliding toward extinction.”

At least Brooks acknowledges the ugliness, but in a dispassionate way that sees ethnic killing as just one step towards a better world. That's a mighty low standard indeed.

Scholarly Communication Battles: A Look Back Through the PRISM

Lately I've been paying little attention to the twists and turns in the scholarly communication battles. But I need to get with it soon, because on November 1 I'll be a guest speaker at a Public Library of Science staff meeting. My unenviable (yet self-imposed) task is to argue to PLoS staffers that excessively zealous promotion of open access publishing--as an absolute ideal, without any concern for complicating factors like the concerns scholarly societies have about losing subscription revenue--does more harm than good.

A case in point is the recent creation of the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine, or PRISM. This is a consortium of publishing groups, who argue that movements to enhance access to publicly funded research will equate to government censorship and the destruction of the peer review system.  As Peter Suber has shown clearly,  these arguments are full of holes.  All the relevant legislation seeks a balance between the interests of the public, publishers, and librarians, and would have absolutely no bearing on currently existing peer review practices.

But PRISM's arguments have resonance nonetheless. Their web site lists two legislators who supported their position before the coalition even existed; we can expect more political support in coming months.

Scholarly communication is on a different plane than a hot button issue like the war in Iraq. In that case, it is understandable (but infuriating) that emotions and larger political objectives always seem to carry the day.  Schol. comm. is "dry" in comparison, and thus seemingly more amenable to rational analysis.  But I have no doubt that PRISM will garner an irrational level of support in Congress.

Why? I think we're witnessing scholarly communication's analogue to Newton's Third Law of Motion: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."  The clamor for open access has been  great in the library community, albeit often tempered with the implausible caveat that we're not really trying to put the publishers out of business.

But we are. And publishers know it. So they're fighting back.

In retrospect, the "to the barricades" approach to advocating for open access was a mistake. It's led to a retrenchment that could put the traditional publishers in just as strong a position as they were before. 

Rather than attempting to dismantle the existing publishing system, we should instead build a parallel system that captures all of the raw and somewhat ephemeral data that is still not "published" in a consistent way.  Publishers produce articles; as scholarly communication becomes ever more dynamic, articles will become artifacts--they'll be handy for printing when your friends ask what you do at work all day, but not really how ideas or shared or knowledge is generated.  Librarians should be in this dynamic space, figuring out how to preserve and provide access to the guts of modern scholarship.

Let the publishers keep their articles. We've got more important things to worry about.