12 Dec 2011

European Commission to investigate possible collusion among ebook sellers

The European Commission recently launched an investigation into possible collusion and anti-competitive pricing practices among ebook publishers, including HarperCollins, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. Good news obviously, as such collusion is seldom a good thing in a market economy. However, many may misinterpret this as meaning ‘Great, ebook prices will fall now!’. Many readers still find it difficult to comprehend that ebooks often cost the same as the print book to purchase, believing instead that the cost should be significantly lower. I mean, how much can it cost to put together a pdf, right?

The editing, production and design costs of ebooks are in reality still substantial (think of a book that needs to be heavily edited with a very complex layout for example) – the real cost savings come through having no transportation costs or storage costs for unsold copies, and using channels of distribution with a lower cost base (such as online sellers compared with bricks and mortar stores for printed books).

However, the majority of people still do not seem to place as much (or perhaps any!) value on the content as the physical form. In reality, even with a printed book, you are paying mainly for the ‘finished’ content (including the publishers' services) – this is where the real value lies. Until people shift their thinking in this respect (as has largely already occurred with mp3s for example), they will still expect to be able to download ebooks for a few dollars - or at the very least substantially less than the cost of a paperback. Whilst this change in relative pricing may indeed occur in the future, it will likely be because the cost of print books increases due to lower economies of scale as people go digital, rather than the price of digital content falling. Some ebooks at present are certainly over-priced, but for the mass market typical paperback titles the current pricing at around $10 is not too far off the mark in my opinion.

11 Dec 2011

How do I conduct intelligent text analysis within the Digital Humanities?

Before one can answer this question it’s necessary to provide a conceptual picture of what the Humanities actually mean and encompass. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines Humanities as the arts: liberal arts, literature, history, philosophy, classical studies, and classical literature. So Humanism as a field of study is complex and multidisciplinary by definition, a multi-faceted, all-encompassing and overlapping field.

The ‘digital’ in humanities denotes the metamorphosis (or recasting for want of a better word) of text through the process of methodical digitisation. The idea is to increase, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, access to cultural information via computational means. It also means transformation of scholarly communication by embracing multi-media, hyperlinking, social media (blogging, YouTube, Flickr, delicious, Twitter, collaborative annotation…) and effective Web searching. This also affects research, teaching and learning practices in a sense that scope and opportunities for community-based learning and collaboration are continuously evolving.

All of this is realised through the cooperative effort of humanists, IT technicians, librarians, archivists, students, and members of the public. Why the public? The public contributes valuable cultural materials that would otherwise remain undetected and inaccessible to interested audiences. A random example of constructive public participation would be Europeana’s recently launched World War One in pictures, letters and memories archive (see also previous blog entry).

From a pragmatic perspective, research within the digital humanities environment requires effective management of electronic texts. TAPoR is an online gateway and on-going collaborative project, which provides tools for sophisticated text analysis and retrieval. It affords the user an online environment for keeping track of texts they want to study (located on the web or uploaded) and analyse in different ways. Essentially, computer assisted text analysis environments go way beyond the ‘Find’ tool of a generic word processor. They provide researchers with the means to analyse large texts in a multi-faceted way and allow for searching word lists and complex word patterns. Crucially, text analysis results can be displayed in a variety of ways.

So, for example one can employ TAPoR portal recipes  to locate and identify themes within a text or aggregate information to explore a concept. It is also possible to filter for specific themes or analyse theoretical foundations in a given text. The portal is expansive and offers a variety of analytical templates.

Go ahead and sample them...

Ref.

8 Dec 2011

So You Want To Be A Librarian?

Interesting perspective on librarianship in this film. How many librarians actually work with books and people these days? I'm not sure the profession has changed that much. However, the tools that we use to do our jobs have.
Love this footage!

Source: Richmond Town Library YouTube channel.
Date: 1947
URL: http://youtu.be/4RGccQFxi3U

While the daily tasks may have changed, the principles of the modern library are the same. Academic, Public, Special, Digital, Archival or otherwise, the ability to deal and communicate well with people should always be at the core of the profession.
They had cataloguers, reference librarians, circulation librarians (professional qualification not required), children's librarian, school librarians, college and univeristy librarians. The principle purpose of the librarian according to the film is "the improvement of the service to the people in the community".

Why is it that old black and white footage, however worn and crackly, looks better and more interesting than the slick high definition alternatives we have these days?

The History of Search Engines and Browsers

Two sites have come to my attention recently which provide an interesting overview of the history of internet searching and the historical development of web browsers. The first one is searchenginehistory.com As much as Google enjoys dominance today, it is interesting to think that at one stage Yahoo! was the thought and market leader and that in 1994, Lycos ranked first on Netscape's list of search engines only to see other developers come in, innovate and gain huge market share. It just goes to show that the dominant search engine of today may not be so tomorrow unless they continue to innovate. This site also has an excellent overview of Search Engine Optimisation as well as aspects of Search Engine Marketing such as Pay Per Click and Google AdSense.

The Evolution of the Web site has an interesting interactive chart which shows the development of the various web browsers. A surprising fact I found was that the Opera browser has been around for even longer than Internet Explorer, beginning a few months earlier in 1995. It also gives a timeline of the stage the various versions of CSS, HTML etc, came in. Furthermore, it links to useful guides about new exciting elements such as CSS3 3D Transforms and video tags and when browsers are expected to support them.

6 Dec 2011

2011 saw more ebooks sold than hardbacks for the first time

And that’s because ebook readers have become respectable gadgets and are relatively affordable (sort of…).  Amazon and Waterstones reported earlier this year “that ebooks now easily outsell hardbacks in the UK” (Hughes, 2011). Once you’ve scored an e-reader  (Sony Reader, ipad or Kindle) you’re instantly tuned into thousands out-of-print classics at the press of a button via, say, Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive or the Open Content Alliance.

It’s certainly hard to predict what will happen to the printed book in the long run. David Hayden of the Folio Society (cited in Hughes, 2011) reckons that publishing will adapt by producing fewer books that are of much higher quality with regard to utilised materials and individual design effort.

The prevailing perception among many private presses seems to be that readers of all persuasions will more readily adopt e-readers as a matter of practical and cost-efficient choice. Buying hardcopies becomes a retroactive purchase in a sense that they are acquired as collectors’ items. They become objects of art where form seems as important (more so) than content. This trend clearly requires new business models rendering the traditional bookshop a side show. Hardbacks are sold online via mail order. An interesting alternative approach is that adopted by Unbound. Here, would-be authors pitch their books on the company’s website. They will only actually write the book if a sufficient number of would-be readers pledge to buy a copy (ebook or hardcopy). The advantage of this model is that various up-front publishing costs are avoided (Hughes, 2011).

This is the world of recreational consumption in fiction and nonfiction texts. Catapult yourself into the academic library and the story is much simpler in a way. Here, it’s about three things: reduce costs, free-up/increase at-premium library space and adapt to users’ changing information behaviours. In our place, ebooks are rampantly on the increase. Over 1000 titles can be accessed online now. At the same time, hardcopy equivalents are still provided for. However, this may change over time for secondary, non-core texts. So an interesting question at this point is whether ebooks will tip the balance to the detriment of their analogue counterparts at some point in the future…

1 Dec 2011

To print or not to print

I have to admit that one of the aspects of my job which I treasure the least is dealing with print journals -in every aspect: renewals, missing issues, shelving, the difficulties involved in measuring usage, repairing damaged issues, the idea that users have to physically visit the library to access them, and last but definitely not least, storage.

Aside from my view as a librarian however, as a user I would never consult a journal in print unless it were the only format accessible to me. I find online journals much more convenient and quicker to navigate, and if I really want to read an article in hard copy on the train for example, the option of printing is still there. But yet, my experience is that many users still prefer print journals over e-access only. This is obviously partly a function of the specific nature of the library and users in question, but I do find it strange when I see somebody standing over a photocopier with the latest BMJ when they can access it online from anywhere on-site - including their own desk - without even having the hassle of remembering usernames and passwords etc.

I ask myself if it is perhaps largely an awareness issue; maybe the library is not promoting electronic resources sufficiently? But no, I approach these same users and explain how they can access our journals online, and it seems to have no effect. I wonder is it habit? It can be difficult to change the way you do something after a long time, especially when it is something relatively trivial, such as the way in which you access research and information. Or maybe in fact, some users come to the library to get away from their desk, paperwork, their PCs and other distractions. If we stopped providing print journals would these individuals stop using the library altogether, rather than reluctantly switch to downloading pdfs instead? In some cases, I really do think so.

However, I still hate print journals.
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