Beyond books and buildings: Always-on libraries

You'll find more questions than answers, but plenty of food for thought, in this First Monday article on Libraries in a world of permanent connectivity by Lorcan Dempsey, vice president for research and chief strategist of OCLC, the Online Computer Library Center.

(First Monday is an online peer-reviewed journal about the Internet and related topics. It requires no library-database subscription to view its full-text and heavily linked essays. Check out other articles in the latest issue.)

Dempsey puts together an extensive review of devices, software and services that have changed our use of communication and information over time and space, complete with an array of Web links to services from Twitter to Boopsie.

"As mobile communications diffuse networking into more of what we do, it reconfigures our relationship with time, space and other people, just as earlier networks did. Affordable air transport shortened the distance between home and college; now they are a phone call or text apart. Selective social networks live alongside face–to–face interaction in new ways. For example, individual students may participate in multiple communicating groups: short–term as in a particular class on a particular day, or longer term as with family or old school friends."

So where does "the library" fit in this new comm/info world? Library services have changed dramatically in the past 10 years, at least at the university libraries I've used in that time, but Dempsey hints that the institutional image may not be keeping up with its services.

"The library needs a brand which is meaningful and engaging, which communicates its value, and which transcends the caricatural impression many have based around the building and print collections," Dempsey says.

Maybe next to the "No one knows you're a dog on the Internet" cartoon, we need one that says, "No one has to say 'shhhh' in a digital library"?

New York Times Sells Out

Was it the media history students, or the nostalgia fans, or the first-edition collectors? Maybe friends made The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages 1851-2008 the top Christmas gift choice for newspaper reporters who lost their jobs last year.

For whatever reason, in one month, someone has made the book and DVD-ROM collection a best-seller. The New York Times Store (nytstore.com) says its supply sold out -- at $60 a copy. Amazon and Books-a-Million are also sold out, but were offering the package at $37.80.

The Times Store says the collection is only "temporarily out of stock," and will be back sometime this month. (Note: My own copy is back-ordered. If another arrives as a belated Christmas or birthday present, I'll donate it to my university library and ask that it be put on reserve for students in my media history class.)

The Times store site carries one blurb promoting the book. For a subtle comment on the media world of today, notice the source:

“This satisfyingly hefty volume, with three accompanying DVD-ROMs, gives you access to 54,267 pages of pure undiluted history, reminding you of how the experience of reading the newspaper is at once public and intimate, of the enduring, essential, all-important power of the printed word.” – O, The Oprah Magazine

Hmm. The publisher's Web site, Black Dog & Leventhal, differs on the page count -- by one page:

"The 3 DVDs include each of the 54,266 front pages printed by the Times over the past 157 years. Completely searchable and user-friendly, the disks are designed to provide access to the full stories that made front-page news each day since the paper’s founding in 1851. Click on a page—the day you were born, for example—and you're instantly transported to the Times' online archive."

Of course you don't have to buy the book to search the historic back issues of the Times. Every page of every issue of the Times has been part of a searchable online archive for several years -- some of it free, the rest available on a pay-per-view basis to casual visitors, but also available to university students and library patrons through the Proquest Historical Newspapers service.

Audio reports on The Complete Front Pages:

• NPR's Robert Siegel interviews NYTimes executive editor Bill Keller, who wrote the book's introduction. "I like the ones that give you a sense of humility," Keller said, citing a headline skeptical of the future of Edison's electric light, and the way the Times downplayed Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
  
• WAMC's Joe Donahue interviews Times metro reporter James Baron, who wrote timeline summaries for the pages. Baron mentions that the stack of papers would be 300 feet taller than the Empire State Building.

Afterword:
If reading great journalism in PDF files on a computer screen interests you, you also should investigate The Complete New Yorker. The magazine's was founded in 1925, so you won't get the Times' 19th century perspective, but the DVD ROM edition of the New Yorker's weekly editions includes the full text of every page, including ads and cartoons. It's available for $39.99 on DVDs or $179.99 on a palm-size hard drive.

Now if Apple would just introduce a tablet-format Macintosh with internal DVD to read these things...

Footnote: Review -- The Platform: Front Pages by
Peter Osnos, The Century Foundation, 12/30/2008

Mining irony for media paychecks -- hyperlocal portals, niche news and non-profit patrons

When NPR senior correspondent Ketzel Levine got turned down for travel expense money for her series on American Moxie: How We Get By, it was a hint of what was about to come: layoffs at NPR that included her. (More here)

The great irony "Moxie" was about linking together stories of folks affected by the economic crisis, so Levine's own experience became the closing episode. Never reluctant to get her hands dirty, she has launched a new blog -- and a small-group botanical trip to Turkey... "OK, so maybe I feel a little betrayed," she said on the blog. "But when the company you love finds itself operating at a 23 million dollar deficit, come on, something's got to give."

Ironically, NPR's patronage/contribution model is one of the hopes we keep mentioning to journalism students as the old advertising-supported-mass-media model fades, especially as a way to support public interest journalism.

For more examples, Mark Glaser's MediaShift blog at PBS offers a guide to Alternative Business Models for Newspapers:

"It's easy to see the problems plaguing the business of daily newspapers in America. The Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Christian Science Monitor said it would publish weekly in print instead of daily. Detroit newspapers announced they would be cutting home delivery to three days per week. Layoffs are rampant and newspaper company stocks are down in the dumps.
"What's difficult is finding solutions to these business problems."

Elsewhere, back on NPR, reporter Alex Cohn explored new media entrepreneurship in an interview with dean of the UC Berkeley School of Journalism Neil Henry, author of the book American Carnival: Journalism under Siege in an Age of New Media.

Note: After writing all of this, I went back to double-check the reference to Ketzel's travel expense request at NPR and couldn't find it. Was it only in the broadcast audio? If you notice the source, add it as a comment here. Speaking of comments, they're also talking about the New York Times story about Ketzel Levine at Huffington Post, with more criticism of NPR for being too "soft news"; perhaps there's more irony in Ketzel's departure coming during a series on the economy, when she's been better known for covering arts, sports, plants and the environment.

Additional links:
PBS TV interview with Ellen Weiss, NPR's senior vice president for news

TVA Coal Ash Flood Coverage

Over at my other blog, which is better for accumulating long lists of things, I've saved a bunch of links to the developing coverage of the Tennessee Valley Authority 'ash flood' in East Tennessee after reading Knoxville bloggers' comments on the slim coverage by national media.

Included are links to brand-name media, TVA, environmental organizations and area bloggers.

Defiantly soothing news

Teaching news writing, I've seen "defiantly" before as a typo for "definitely," but combining it with "soothing" might be ironic juxtaposition. I'm not 100 percent sure what's going on in the item below...

If there's any real threat of people calling a genre of sound-wallpaper "stepno music" (combining "techno" and "dubstep") I'll feel compelled to listen once in a while. The idea was raised in the "comment" thread on this Top 20 list:

Little White Earbuds -- LWE’s Top 20 Singles of 2008 (Part 1):

"If there was a running meme of the techno-dubstep hybrid in 2008, “Circling” was the first to organically complete the cycle. Appleblim and Peverelist created a track with both the sensual space of Berlin with all the tickling Bristol bass. Defiantly soothing, “Circling” is the perfect twist to the cartoonishly aggressive dubstep scene."

Thanks for the musical education... It's nice to have some new music in my ears on Christmas, much as I love Bing. (I don't think the "Berlin" mentioned above was Irving.)

As an admitted ukulele player with ethnomusicological tendencies, whose personal musical goal for a few years has been to successfully merge "I wish I could shimmy like my" Sister Kate with Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," I have to admit I found "Circling" more fun to listen to than many of the 15 items ahead of it on Buds' top-20 list.

The touch of synth rainstick and rainforest sounds is soothing, in a defiant sort of way.

Feliz navidad and happy Chanukkah.

PS If you want one more new audio experience for the new year, a quick search for "ukulele" and "Hanukkah" found this.

12.5 Tips from a year ago

A search of journalism-related sites at MediaGeeks.org led me to a vague comment I'd made on a page that eventually led to this January 2007 item, which I'd forgotten about.

It will be worth discussing and arguing about in my January 2008 classes if I post a reminder here... which is also a "stealth" way of point people to MediaGeeks.org

12 and a half rules to be a good journalist

Briefly, they are:
12. DO WHAT YOU LOVE
11. WAKE UP ANGRY, AMBITIOUS
10. DON’T BE THE LOYAL MEMBER OF ANY PARTY, GROUP, CLUB, NGO
9. BE CATHOLIC OF WRITERS AND WRITING
8. FIND YOURSELF A ROLE-MODEL/MENTOR
7. BE A THRIVER, NOT A SURVIVOR
6. NEVER WORK WITH SUCCESS/ REWARD IN MIND
5. WRITE, DRAW, SHOOT, CREATE EVERY DAY
4. KEEP LEARNING EVERY DAY
3. FEAR NOBODY, QUESTION EVERYTHING
2. NEVER BE EMBARRASSED TO ASK STUPID QUESTIONS
1. CHASE YOUR DREAM
1/2 If POSSIBLE MARRY OUTSIDE THE PROFESSION

Another bit of stealth-educational broaden-your-horizons linkage: The list's origin/inspiration link to the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media.

Online commerce failure: A book I'm not reading

I thought I might spend this afternoon listening to the audiobook edition of British journalist Andrew Marr's My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism, but I'm not.

Roy Greenslade of The Guardian said this in his review of the book back in 2004:

It is not, thankfully, one of those hand-wringing laments for a mythical golden past. It does contain anecdotes, though they are always relevant to his wider argument. It is not a sermon, but it does raise questions about the ethical morass of modern journalism. At the same time it is often witty, consistently self-deprecating and, most importantly, makes an important contribution to the increasingly bitter debate about the nature of the British media.

Sounds like just the thing for any of my media history students who become more interested in the British side of English language journalism.

Alas, my library doesn't have it. I was pleasantly surprised when I found it at Amazon, because of a link to a downloadable audio book version. "Great," says I, "I can download it, pop it in the iPod or PalmTX (if not my Sony or Olympus MP3 recorders), and listen on the road..."

You can listen to Mr. Marr himself reading from the book in the Audible.com sample. He's charming, self-deprecating and very funny. I think journalism students would enjoy the book as text or audio. I was a bit disappointed that the audio version was abridged, but decided to create an Audible.com account and buy it.

I went through the process... filled in "shipping information" or "billing information" -- even though both the "shipping" and "billing" would be done online. When I was done with the fill-in form, Audible returned me to a screen that congratulated me on creating an account.

It didn't say anything about downloading my new book.

It didn't give me a receipt for crediting my Visa card.

I checked Audible's "library," "shopping basket" and "your account" pages, but found no record of my ordering the book.

I started worrying that I had been "phished" by some link spoofing Audible's address to steal my credit card information.

I went back to the book's page at Amazon/Audible, and noticed that I was no longer being offered the "first time customer" discount on the sales price. And when I tried to order a copy, I was sent to a new page headed "We are sorry but your geographic location prevents us from selling you this product."

I don't think that screen turned up the first time, because I was redirected to the "create a new account" pages. That would have been a nice place to tell me I was not going to be able to buy the book.

Enough with the computer. I found an 800 number and called Audible's technical support to complain that -- assuming international copyright or a publisher's restrictions are involved -- Audible should have interrupted my transaction much sooner. The customer support rep said they've tried, but couldn't figure out a way, short of putting a disclaimer on all of their pages, which would be misleading to most readers, since (he said) very few books actually have this problem. (A few readers, like me, might be interested in learning about the copyright issues or publisher's contractual obligations involved.)

I think online readers should expect more. Maybe my play-by-play account (which I emailed to Audible as well as pasting here) will inspire someone. If they get back to me about it, I'll add something here.

And maybe they'll pass the note on to the publisher, who just missed a chance to sell audiobooks to anyone reading this blog. As for me.... back to Amazon, but maybe I'm annoyed at them for linking to Audible in the first place. I wonder if its on the shelf at my local bookstore...