SSP2008 – New Content and Business Models in the New Publishing World Order

1. Online Communities: A World of Opportunity (Sharon Mombru – BlueInsights)

Online community functions: networking (Facebook, LinkedIn)/ info sharing (YouTube, Limewire)/ info organizing (Connotea)/ social discovery (Twine, Plum, BlueInsights) – people prefer to get info from someone they trust or know, networks filter and distribute info

Benefits of sharing: visibility for brand/ content, drives traffic back to site, alternative sources of revenue

Business models should shift to article based search/ recommendations instead of journal based. Free promotion for content owners through sharing.

2. AACR Publishing: Portals as Products (Mike Beveridge – Am Assoc for Cancer Research)

Market journals to institutions as package covering breadth/ depth of cancer research. Add value to existing subscribers and try to find new customers – trying to do this through portals.

Portals: aggregate content of all types/ enable production of meta-content

Cancer Reviews Online – pulls review content from original journal sites, free access for subscribers to at least 1 journal, showcase reviews from all journals, expand audience for all reviews

Cancer Prevention Journals Portal – aggregates prevention articles, based on article topic not type, free to all currently – will move to sep product in 2009

Portals position publishers for article economy.

3. iTunes for Scholarly Publishing? Debate
Geoffery Bilder (Cross Ref) + David Durand (Tizra)

Bilder:
Development of iTunes by Apple was very disruptive to music industry. What would happen if someone did the same for publishing industry, especially someone other than publishers?

Assumptions about publishing: “Publishers and librarians are conspiring to annoy researchers.” – our interfaces are terrible.

Have to break out of publisher/ institutional silos. Only place that orgs content by publisher is Frankfort Book Fair. Researchers collaborate w/ others outside institutions and geographic area.

We don’t know who our audience is.

PPV pricing model is mental. iTunes model might help with pricing and distribution of topic specific content like disaster relief articles – stuff in one place/ pricing simple and cheap/ interface easy to use. Simple and cheap pricing harder in iPub, but content aggregation is possible.

“We have the equivalent of the iPod – it’s called paper.”

Publishers should move into this area before someone else (Microsoft/ Google) does.

Durand:
{This guy is like 8 feet tall!}
{I saw him later and he isn't 8 feet tall.}

“Books are not sausages.” – different points of view,

Sales doesn’t have to be tacky. Figure out what people want and give it to them.

Customer relationships are changing.

Work with competitors to find customers - likely to buy things on specific topics regardless of publisher.

You can organize and make content attractive to your audience better than someone larger like Google can. Work in smaller groups to be more nimble and respond better to market.

SSP2008 – The Deep History of the Information Age

Alex Wright - New York Times

{From his website I learned that Alex Wright is speaking at Tilburg University in the Netherlands this August. I spoke there last year! Cool. This talk was quite good. I'm going to have to pick up his book Glut soon.}

Old habits from old technology often get transferred to new technology. Library online catalogs are based on same principles as old card catalog.

People tend to think in hierarchies like folk taxonomy from oral traditions of past. Top down, nested systems as opposed to networks/ lateral associations. People also think in and create networks, New tech makes tensions bet hierarchy and networks – Internet creates tension/disruption to hierarchies.

Ice Age Info Explosion – mythic systems from hierarchies/ symbols beget wider networks/ release from social proximity

Age of Alphabets – writing began for accounting purposes and developed into other uses/ institutions developed around lists of stuff (laws, rituals etc)/ schism between oral and literate cultures

The Codex – networked book/ random access, pagination, index/ early mass production

Gutenberg – proliferation of books/ rise of secular literacy/ schism between “book” and “work”/ disruption of old institutional hierarchies/ period of drastic change

Industrial Info Explosion – development of what we think of as libraries (volume of books led to new framework of organization)/ mass literacy

Post-Industrial Web – look further back in history than last 15-20 years to understand development of web
*Cutter article in LJ from 1883 – describes something like Internet
*World Brain (HG Wells)
*Teilhard de Chardin – described info sharing membrane that would cover earth, work banned as being heretical (he was Jesuit), big influence on McLuhan
*Paul Otlet – universal decimal classification, Monde: Traite de documentation, Mundaneum (1934 installation in Belgium meant to be new library type, tried to make world depository of all human knowledge available to all, destroyed by Nazis and replaced by exhibit of 3rd Reich art). {He showed a clip from a video about the Mundaneum. The whole video seems to be available on the Internet Archive.}
*Vannevar Bush – “As We May Think” (1945 article in Atlantic) – Memex=desktop system that allowed associations between documents, blur distinction between reader and writer, election by association, two way links, visible pathways {There's an open source Memex simulation program available on Source Forge.}
*Eugene Garfield – citation ranking, SCI
*Doug Englebart – oNLine System (NLS), “Augmenting Human Intelligence”, tools for small group collaboration
*Xerox PARC
*Ted Nelson – inspiration for Berners-Lee, coined “hypertext” (1965), “Literary Machines,” today’s web=”vacuous victory of typesetters over authors” (he’s not a fan)

Today’s web has lots of rhythms/ patterns of oral cultures (additive, aggregative, participatory, situational).Wikipedia is literate object (encyclopedia) edited in oral way w/ discussions over edits etc. Same with online newspaper sites like nyt.com (readers have voice) and Amazon (editorial and user reviews).

SSP 2008 - Digital Preservation Parts 4-5

4. Victoria Reich – LOCKSS/ Stanford Univ. Libraries

Libraries are memory organizations.

Questions: What should be preserved? Who do I want in charge? What does the archive cost? What am I preserving against?

Digital preservation is a continuous process and has to be dirt cheap. Key reason stuff is lost is economic.

LOCKSS: empowers libraries to build and preserve collections – keeps libraries viable. Heterogenous, decentralized system designed to fail slowly.

LOCKSS doesn’t: redistribute or republish content, get between publisher and reader, take hits away from publisher website. Content delivered to readers when your site is unavailable AND content is preserved in LOCKSS box. Content only available to authorized users of a particular library in same format as publisher website. {Why use this if using something like HighWire to deliver e-content?}

Web formats become obsolete when the majority of browsers no longer render that format. LOCKSS reader sees is result of best technology at the time of access – preserves context/reduces costs by migrating & processing content when needed by the reader.

No publisher costs, libraries pay on sliding scale (not subscription – helps libraries provide info w/o building new infrastructure).

CLOCKSS: Community of libraries and publishers working towards global archive. Community governed comprehensive archive (CrossRef). Keep preservation in expensive. Don’t charge for access.

Trigger=content not available from any publisher for sustained period of time with little chance it will become available again. Available content is open access.

Q&A Comments:
LOCKSS designed from a user perspective to deliver content at same URL they are used to. Branding very important.

5. Carol Richman – Sage

How repositories differ: stated purpose/ dark v light/complete backfile v current/ deposits (who? what? why?)/ rights transfer/ access control/ costs.

Graft: ceased publication 3 yrs ago, kept hosting on web but eventually allowed to be trigger event for LOCKSS/ Portico/KB – needed approval from all kinds of areas that it was good idea to release.
*discontinued due to lack of subscribers, archive released through Portico first and handles DOIs

Reactions: positive – system works/content available/DOIs will remain active/ Sage acted responsibly; negative – why did you cease journal?

Auto/Biography – purchased by Sage and discontinued, never existed in online version but being digitized and will be release through CLOCKSS/ Portico

Q&A comments:
Publishers should have at least 3 archival arrangements with different places around the world.

SSP 2008 - Digital Preservation Part 3

Radhika Nurati – Apex CoVantage

{Digitizing backfiles}

Business objectives: preservation/genealogy (Mormons etc)/research/access/revenue generation

Issues with semantics – digitization can bring together similar content called different things (India/ Britain conflict in 1800s called different things in literature of each country)

Image quality/ source pages (varying quality of filming for fiche etc)/ OCR quality are big issues.

Index images when digitizing.

Break projects into pieces: do things when you have money – think about future up front, mark things to come back to later like cleaning captions.

DTD/ Specifications:
*NLM DTD is standard
*Match publishing DTD and archival DTD to make things easier
*Item boundaries – what do you consider an item? Harder to tell in older journals – not broken up as well, more like paragraphs/mishmash of formats. Decide on boundaries and give guidance to digitizer.
*Item categorization: decide on article types – 50 types in NLM DTD, consistency and ease of use by users

Digitization phases: pilot – range of types of pubs and different time periods (variations of content)/ system test – let users see if content is usable, user analysis is good/ stead-state production

SSP 2008 - Digital Preservation Part 2

Eileen Fenton – Portico

Why worry about digital preservation? E-resources can and do disappear! (about 13% of linked content in articles can’t be found in 27 months, obsolescence due to format/ devices, loss – NASA lost the original moon landing recordings, funding, orphans)

Digital preservation is NOT: reformatting from print to digital for access (digitization doesn’t result in preservation – creates digital object that can be preserved)/ back-up or byte storage on various media/ mirror sites or networks designed for delivery/ carried out within delivery systems

Digital preservation IS: active content management designed to ensure enduring usability, authenticity and accessibility over the very long term – active and ongoing activity, not passive (have to remain actively engaged in object over time, not just scan once and leave alone)

Core requirements for preservation: 3rd party w/ mission to carry out preservation (outside environment object created in)/ sustainable economic model/ technological infrastructure/ clear legal rights with current providers/ compliance with digital standards and best practices

Emerging models: national libraries (should national libs collect e-journals produced outside their countries?) – Natl Lib of Netherlands, British Library/ community supported 3rd party preservation/ networked library efforts

Portico: preserves scholarly literature published in electronic form (born digital and digitized versions) and ensures that materials remain available to future generations – intellectual content (text/tables/images/supplements) available over long term – access to archive kicks in when content isn’t available from any other source (only libs and publishers who participate), publishers can choose to allow post-cancellation access through Portico

Insights: publishers are developing strategies to manage risk and meet lib requirements/ working with multiple partners/cooperative interaction with archival partners//libs actively evaluation preservation options/multilayered strategies//archives must be flexible

Q&A comments:
Digital publishing blurs the lines of what constitutes an “item” – not just what’s between the covers anymore. Includes audio, video, user comments etc now.

Different preservers are taking different approaches, which is good. Helps build more robust collective network for future.

Portico is non-profit with a board from lib/publisher/academic community.

SSP 2008: Digital Preservation - Part 1

Daniel Dollar – Yale University Medical Library

shifting formats: content (online journal version of record/ digital backfiles)/ scholarly sharing/licensing/usage (COUNTER compliant)/accessibility (easy/clear path to content, no passwords, open url)/ownership(purchase content not lease, archival access rights, post cancellation access to content you subscribed to)/preservation (trusted 3rd party)

CLIR study – E-Journal Archiving Metes and Bounds (2006): archiving programs of non-profits working w/ peer reviewed lit published in digital form, international scope
*7 indicators of viability: explicit mission/negotiate rights/identify titles/ minimum defined services (receive store, guard)/ preserved into available/ organizationally sound/work as part of network (sharing, coordinating)
*Conclusion: current license terms for libs mostly inadequate, viable options emerging, no single program will meet all needs, coverage uneven, libs should influence developments, programs need greater support transparency

Digital repository certification: Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist – Center for Research Libraries doing in US

Section 108 Study Group Report {woohoo!} – libs/museums have clear rights to make preservation copies in print, not so clear in digital

{Yale Medical Historical Library has a steak that Pavlov autographed preserved in formaldehyde! Coolest thing ever.}

Conclusions: online journals are version of record (Yale Medical only collects e-versions, don’t subscribe to print-only journals)/ issues are complex (technical/risks/costs/trust)/ submit content to certified and trusted 3rd party preservation archives (submit to more than one – Yale uses LOCKSS and Portico)

{Sounds like Yale Medical does lots of cool, comfortable stuff with space and electronic environment. Get out of the library and into residency spaces etc. Responding to needs of students.}

Q&A comments:
Multiple partners hedges on making the wrong decision at the present. Not good to depend on one system.

Mr. Eddy Arnold Came From Tennessee

Smooth as butter countrypolitan superstar Eddy Arnold passed away today at age 89.



Let's give old Tennessee credit for music indeed.