Re: [CODE4LIB] the journal presence in online databases
I absolutely agree that reading articles online from a database is nothing like reading a magazine or a journal. But why must the experience be atomized? For example, I find reading The New York Review of Books online to be very nearly as satisfying as reading it in print was, and plus I don't have to recycle it. Online databases are not currently configured to simulate a journal's website but, as we used to say in the embedded systems world, SMOP. It's just a Simple Matter Of Programming. On 7/16/07, K.G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm doing some exploratory poking around an issue that is of dual importance to me as a librarian and writer: the fidelity of the print journal in online databases. I feel as if this is such an obvious issue that there must have been EXTENSIVE discussion about this over the last ten or fifteen years, so bear with me if I am missing the fly on the end of my nose. Here's the issue in narrative form: a library subscribes to a small-press journal. The journal's articles are also indexed in some database or other. The library runs out of space and money to physically house the journal, and drops the print edition. But... The journal issue itself now has no physical representation in the database. It's a series of articles. It is (and we now move into the alternate universe where Michael Gorman and I think alike and even use the same vocabulary) atomized. Even if you can force the database to bring together the related articles, it is a kludge at best. For some journals, maybe that never mattered anyway. But for many journals in the humanities, the issue is the experience. There are some very nice online journals, and increasingly, small presses, which operate just barely above cost-recovery, are reinventing themselves online. But take the recent issues of Missouri Review or The American Scholar... like a book, a journal issue is its own event (though unlike most book-length narratives, one that can be enjoyably experienced incompletely and in the reader's own preferred order, which is part of the fun as well). Even though the individual content of the journal may be preserved piece by piece, the totality of the journal has not. Let's set aside some of the characteristics that can't be dragged to the online medium (the feel and smell of paper, for example) or arguments I find specious (how many people take baths any more, anyway?). That said, to what extent do databases (or do not...) recreate the issue experience-that sense of aboutness and completion for a journal issue? Do we care? I see some work is done in metadata that can express the relationship between articles in a journal. But I'm curious how much we (librarians) care about this business of fidelity or whether it's just another silent victim of change. I worry that without intending to we could hasten the death of an entire area of literature. Though with some intentionality, we could also help save this literature, as well (because mailing and printing costs are the obvious threats to the small presses-a number have moved online, or started online, and thrive there in their small-press manner; if a database could represent, say, The American Scholar in a way that did it justice, that might be a very good thing). Again, maybe I'm just missing something really, really obvious... please do step in to say, Karen, where have you been? ... or perhaps there are some e-humanities initiatives already working in this area... but the more and more I engage with small presses, the more this concerns me. K.G. Schneider Free Range Librarian AIM/Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://freerangelibrarian.com -- Sharon M. Foster, B.S., J.D., 0.5 * (MLS) F/OSS Evangelist Cheshire Public Library 104 Main Street Cheshire, CT 06410 http://www.cheshirelibrary.org My library school portfolio: http://home.southernct.edu/~fosters4/ Any opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
Re: [CODE4LIB] the journal presence in online databases
On Jul 16, 2007, at 11:25 AM, K.G. Schneider wrote: I see some work is done in metadata that can express the relationship between articles in a journal. But I'm curious how much we (librarians) care about this business of fidelity or whether it's just another silent victim of change. I worry that without intending to we could hasten the death of an entire area of literature. Why does it matter what librarians think about the change in formats? The readers are the people who need to have a voice in how their publications work -- what makes them useful and what would make them better. In this case, it's researchers, not librarians[1], who should make the call. As someone who doesn't read and use Cell on a daily basis, I can't say whether its representation in a database is well- suited to its use in research or not. In other words... I think you're taking this question to the wrong audience. You'll probably get more relevant answers if you ask people who do research in a particular field. From our initial discussions with faculty on the Bibapp, I hypothesize that you'd see very different kinds of answers from researchers in different areas -- definitely between humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, and very likely at a more fine-grained level, too. In some cases, 'journal-ness' is probably important. In others, the traditional model is probably inferior to other options. [1] - Except, of course, for library-related journals. -Nate Wendt Library UW - Madison
Re: [CODE4LIB] the journal presence in online databases
Why does it matter what librarians think about the change in formats? Ah hah! That, sir, is the point. You are absolutely correct about the readers needing a voice in this. But I guess what I am getting at is that so far it has not worked out that way, at least in the humanities, and that has had unintended consequences. Databases started out as print ancillaries, but in many cases are replacing print as the format libraries are using to purchase that content (another place where it matters). Librarians have been the brokers for this content, wield tremendous power in the paper/print decisions, and in some cases are playing key roles in determining the direction of metadata used to describe the aboutness of serial publications (just as librarians active in the open-access movement have played influential roles in institution-wide policies about ETD requirements-again, sometimes with unintended consequences). In some cases, 'journal-ness' is probably important. In others, the traditional model is probably inferior to other options. Right, and in fact, context is important for the user; I'm not saying database soup can't be useful for this journal content. (Using a very broad writerly I) When I'm researching, I don't care (and in fact prefer spooning through the database soup). When I want to read the latest American Scholar or Pleiades, I do care. (One of the dangly bits floating around as I mull all this over is how in researching and using born-digital ejournals in the humanities, the library is fully out of the loop for me. I don't know what if anything that means.) Karen G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] the journal presence in online databases
On Mon, 16 Jul 2007, Sharon Foster wrote: I absolutely agree that reading articles online from a database is nothing like reading a magazine or a journal. But why must the experience be atomized? For example, I find reading The New York Review of Books online to be very nearly as satisfying as reading it in print was, and plus I don't have to recycle it. Online databases are not currently configured to simulate a journal's website but, as we used to say in the embedded systems world, SMOP. It's just a Simple Matter Of Programming. I don't think that a website is a fair substitute for a printed journal. Yes, there are journals that online-only, but I view the two publishing styles completely differently. I admit, I don't deal with bibliographic records, so I can only view the issues from a user's point of view. I view print publications as being more 'push' than 'pull'. They show up, and I read them. (well, lately, I've been so busy, that I haven't been reading them, but I have a stack that I go through when things calm down, and I need a chance to clear my head, and stop worrying about current projects). I use online database when I'm trying to research a specific topic, rather than trying to keep up on the general trends in a community. In that case, I find it harder to use the print publication -- but if I have the print copy, I'd rather read from that, once I've identified the articles of interest. The only online 'journal' that I read is on web design (A List Apart) ... as I think it makes sense that a serial on web design doesn't make sense as a print publication. There might be other fields where this is the case, as well. On 7/16/07, K.G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm doing some exploratory poking around an issue that is of dual importance to me as a librarian and writer: the fidelity of the print journal in online databases. I feel as if this is such an obvious issue that there must have been EXTENSIVE discussion about this over the last ten or fifteen years, so bear with me if I am missing the fly on the end of my nose. [trimmed] Let's set aside some of the characteristics that can't be dragged to the online medium (the feel and smell of paper, for example) or arguments I find specious (how many people take baths any more, anyway?). That said, to what extent do databases (or do not...) recreate the issue experience-that sense of aboutness and completion for a journal issue? Do we care? It's the 'grab it at the last minute, and you might find something interesting' aspect that I prefer from print magazines. It might be that I'm missing an aspect of RSS feeds or similar, but I still prefer reading from paper. So, if I know I'm going to have to kill some time (waiting at the DMV, airport, doctor's office, etc), I'll grab a couple to read. Although I think this is an important aspect for me, I don't know if it really translates to library usage. I see some work is done in metadata that can express the relationship between articles in a journal. But I'm curious how much we (librarians) care about this business of fidelity or whether it's just another silent victim of change. I worry that without intending to we could hasten the death of an entire area of literature. Actually, I'm interested in the FRBR work on aggregates, as I don't think the relationships for collected works (eg, serials) are as well defined in FRBR, and it's more difficult to browse at the collected level, and then find the individual works (articles) of interest. - Joe Hourcle
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Web4lib] the journal presence in online databases
Karen, I suspect one could find a parallel for the loss of the wholeness of a journal issue in the world of popular music. Does the album as those of us of a certain age knew it still exist when most music is acquired (I'd like to say purchased, but spend too much time around college-aged people to use such a ridiculous word)as single tracks rather than as part of a larger whole? That goes back to Nathan's astute question on Code4Lib. Clearly the modern music audience has returned to the model of my very early youth: the single. But from what I am hearing (based on interviews so far with writers and publishers) the audience (readership) for literary journals expects, well, a literary journal. The table-of-contents browsing enabled by some databases for some journals seems perfectly adequate from a research point of view - if you squint from a distance. But from both a literary and research perspective, it has some disturbing limitations: lack of cover art, loss of design (a poem on a page, for example, presented with a specific font), loss of advertising and ephemera... even the context and juxtaposition of the content in a print journal has meaning. Then there may be another curious problem with the small-journal economy. If the subscriber base for a journal dries up, then it is likely to go away. So the action intended to help ensure access to the journal - moving from print to electronic-may kill it. I still have to do some research into the economics of journals (a vendor's help here would be useful) so this is more provisional thinking. This has even greater ramification if you consider that part of the journal economy (more of an ecology, reall) includes the writers and artists who contribute its content (often for no more than the grand sum of a subscription to the journal, if even that). I think librarians have been trying to do the right thing: the move from print to electronic is terrifically useful for a great deal of content, and if you have to choose-and we often do-then electronic access is an improvement. I wouldn't want to *not* have electronic access to what we have. But there isn't a 1:1 correlation between a literary journal and its online indexed articles. It's like replacing a statue on a college green with a fiche reader and a fiche of pictures of the statue that was there. You have some of the raw information (though as noted above, definitely not all of it), but you do not have the thing itself. Karen G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] the journal presence in online databases
I agree with you that each format is better some purposes, worse for others. But rising postal rates may make the ultimate decision. And an online journal can simulate the print experience better than a print journal can simulate the online experience (if you just ignore the hyperlinks). I love paper just as much as anyone, as you would know if you could see my abode...maybe even more, as I used to do a lot of drawing and calligraphy. But I saw the Sony eBook for the first time a few months ago, and if the price weren't so high, I might have bought. I'll wait for 2.0. Someday there will be a generation of college students--maybe even high school students--who will be issued a future version of the eBook at the beginning of their school career, and each semester they'll get all their fully searchable textbooks loaded on it wirelessly. Professionals will receive their journals the same way. Meanwhile, all of my recommended Digital Libraries textbooks are hardcopy, every single one of them. On 7/16/07, Joe Hourcle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think that a website is a fair substitute for a printed journal. Yes, there are journals that online-only, but I view the two publishing styles completely differently. I admit, I don't deal with bibliographic records, so I can only view the issues from a user's point of view. I view print publications as being more 'push' than 'pull'. They show up, and I read them. (well, lately, I've been so busy, that I haven't been reading them, but I have a stack that I go through when things calm down, and I need a chance to clear my head, and stop worrying about current projects). I use online database when I'm trying to research a specific topic, rather than trying to keep up on the general trends in a community. In that case, I find it harder to use the print publication -- but if I have the print copy, I'd rather read from that, once I've identified the articles of interest. The only online 'journal' that I read is on web design (A List Apart) ... as I think it makes sense that a serial on web design doesn't make sense as a print publication. There might be other fields where this is the case, as well. Joe Hourcle -- Sharon M. Foster [affiliations omitted] Any opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
[CODE4LIB] technology demo of Open Library - Now Open!
Hi all, I spoke to a few of you at the code4lib conference in Georgia about this, but it's finally up and ready for people to take a look. Open Library is an effort to catalog every book in the world, while keeping the technology and all of the data open to everyone. After months of hard work by a very dedicated group of people, Open Library is now open: http://demo.openlibrary.org/ This is a technology demo, so it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles just yet. But we're looking for help! If you've got data, we want it! If you're a programmer interested in helping, please let us know! We have a series of pages describing our project and goals, a marvelous demo site that shows off what we're capable of, and a new series of mailing lists to bring more people into the project. Please subscribe to the lists that interest you, poke around the site, and let us know what you think. Thanks! Alexis Rossi Internet Archive
[CODE4LIB] kinosearch++
kinosearch++ # for fast indexing and searching Kinosearch is a set of Perl modules written against a set of C code for indexing and searching. It mimics itself against the venerable Lucene. See: http://www.rectangular.com/kinosearch/ In conjunction with MyLibrary and Kinosearch, I am creating a rudimentary library catalog. It currently consists of 250,000 MARC records stuffed into a MyLibrary instance. I then export the records and index them with Kinosearch. I then use a Perl-based SRU client to search the Kinosearch index. Kinosearch is pretty cool because it indexed my 250,000 records in just over an hour. Searches results are speedy fast enough for me, especially since it has to go through the SRU abstraction layer and the machine is only running with 2 700 Mhz CPU's. Try (the temporary and incomplete): http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mylibrary/demos/catalog/ -- Eric Lease Morgan University Libraries of Notre Dame
