Vaidhyanathan recently blogged this interview about his upcoming book, The Anarchist in the Library. I'm excited; I dug his last book, and I have a feeling this one will be even better. Here are a couple of provocative comments he makes about libraries and the pay-per-view model:
For some reason, libraries have become the site of conflict. Libraries are perceived now as a den of terrorists and pornographers. And this is not only a misdescription of how libraries work in our lives, but I think ultimately also a very dangerous assumption. What we’re doing though is making librarians choose among their values. Librarians believe very strongly in recordkeeping and in maintaining archives. It’s part of the historical record; that’s half of what they do. But the other half of what they do is serve and protect their patrons. The federal government has made librarians choose between retaining records that might be useful, for instance in budgetary discussions not to mention historical research, and protecting their patrons, so their patrons don’t feel intimidated by the books they choose to read or by the potential of oversight of the books they choose to read. There are a lot of librarians around the country right now who are taking a very noble and strong stand against this situation, and I think we need to celebrate them and support them in this effort.
[...]
Now, what does this mean for libraries? That means that there are incredible pressures on libraries to conform to this pay-per-view model. We’re seeing it first in the world of academic journals, which are coming to libraries in electronic form more and more, less in paper form. So imagine this: an electronic journal gets streamed into a library. A library never has it on its shelf, never owns a paper copy, can’t archive it for posterity. Its patrons can access the material, maybe can print it, maybe not. But if the subscription runs out, if the library loses money and has to cancel that subscription, if the company itself goes out of business, all the material is gone. The library has no trace of what it bought: no record, no archive. It’s lost entirely. This is not a good model for a library. It defeats a lot of the purpose of a library. You might as well be sitting at a computer terminal in Kinko’s at that point. We have to be very careful because librarians are facing this decisions every day. And because we’re not investing enough in acquisitions for libraries, they're having to make these very difficult choices.
Note: Look, I know I put the end-blockquote tags in this post. In fact, every time I post something with a blockquote and view it, it looks fine on my browser (Mozilla). What's the deal? Sorry if it looks weird here, but I don't know what else to do.
How Frightening...
the packrat in me shivers at the thought of NO ARCHIVES and how very possible it is for even a large institution in these cost-cutting times to discontinue an electronic subscription. I love the ease of use with the electronic journals, but I want eternal access, and that still means paper.
As far as the block quote/tags issue is concerned, I use Safari and there is no problem with this post. Just before the update all posts (not just yours) that had block quotes had that nesting problem. No longer--I think something about the Drupal upgrade took care of it.
But if there are electronic a
But if there are electronic archives, there are archives. Paper isn't necessary. Vaidhyanathan is just arguing against the streaming subscriptions, if I read it right. If everything lives at Elsevier, that's problematic, but if the library buys the subscription, then has to cancel it, but gets to keep the issues they bought, great.
Glad the blockquotes are ok. :)
CultureCat
nesting problem?
can you tell me more? i know for instance that there was a post on the main page that did not close the blockquote tag in the teaser. in that case, it could make all of the rest of the blockquotes behave strangely.
More details
Your description sums it up--the lead post had a block quote that didn't close in the main page view and the succeeding, previous posts formed inside each other in sequence, kind of like an upside-down ziggurat. It hasn't happened since the update this weekend, and I'm willing to believe, especialy if no one else saw things this way, that Safari had something to do with it as well. I like Safari, but I also realize it's a work in progress.
not safari
what happens is that when a blog/story post on drupal reaches a certain character length threshold, drupal automatically creates a teaser. you can see this when it goes into preview mode.
however, what it does not do is close any open html tags. so when the blockquote is broken, then the tag remains open. this will happen with blockquotes, italics, bold, paragraph, etc. some browsers just "fix" the broken html. some don't.
so it's not safari's fault. but we ought to steer you toward mozilla firebird :)
now what i do is use the break tag offered by when in preview mode to make the break after the closing tags. and there was a broken tag in the teaser of one of the posts last week. so i fixed it. that's why everything looks better :)
Kinko's Horror
The author's allusion to libraries as "sitting at a computer at Kinko's" shook me to the core. I can't imagine any place I wouldn't rather grace with my presence than Kinko's. It's overpriced, filled with kitsch, and when you don't have any other means AT ALL, you end up there sending faxes or making hard copies for $1.50 each. NO THANKS.
(shudder)
I'd have to disagree with the rest of it, though. I can't imagine libraries as we know them today existing much longer. I'm sure what'll end up happening is either more of the streams or, better yet, big electronic storage archives at every library. Students or patrons can access the puppies at home and print them at leisure.
I would probably never visit the library here if I didn't still need it for important books that aren't released online or need quiet place to study (AWAY from computers, mind you, which almost always lure me away from some banal memorization of French verbs.)
I do think there's potential for companies like Elsevier to rip off libraries, though--they've demonstrated those tactics in the past, and there's no reason to think they'll stop now. The only real solution I can imagine is for editors of ejournals to QUIT relying on a superfluous and overtly parasistic profit-mongering publishing company (the idea of the same company serving as an "e-publishing company" is simply ludicrous) and just do the work themselves. The only overhead I can imagine is the storage/bandwidth and, if so chosen, some "assistant" to do the graphical layouts. The editors and asst. editors typically handle all the peer review and editing process anyway.
I get very upset when I hear a colleague talking about working with one of these publishing companies. I don't think it'll be long before some of the big ones will go down like Enron. They've been practicing extortion for decades, charging $70 or more for a mass-produced textbook (of course, all the while giving teachers copies and dinners for free and not mentioning the price to the student)--and most of the money they suck out of the economy came from tax payers in the form of grants or scholarships.
Of course, it's a difficult situation. The textbook publishers have enough money rolling in to consistently bribe the right people to keep them silent, and they seem to know just how far they can push professors or administrators.
I don't know when it became necessary for college professors to help these parasites make a profit, but I'm tired of it. I didn't go into this "biz" to help someone else get rich. The textbook publishers are exploiting both students and professors, and it's time more of us got noisy about it!