Well, it took me about a month, but I’m done with my blog spring cleaning. I’ve now posted or simply deleted all of the old posts that I wrote ages ago and have been sitting on for years. My Write Post tab is clear, and I feel the warm glow of a tidy desk. For those of you who have ever been in my office, you know that’s not a.. Read More
Peer review and institutional repositories
“Now you have two problems…”: On mandating Open Access, from Open Access Anthropology So, you might ask yourself: what in the world is the [scholarly society that publishes its own journal] providing authors who seek to publish in their journals? It certainly isn’t the article… The answer, to my mind is actually simple: prestige; high quality peer review; creative, path-breaking editorial vision; promotion and marketing; public policy relevance and creative.. Read More
Thoughts on meeting Abby Blachly and reading The Long Tail
I was on a panel earlier today at the LAUNC-CH Conference, which I think went well, though I killed the conversation at one point, never a good sign. Anyway, Abby Blachly of LibraryThing was the keynote speaker, and I had the good fortune to have some conversations with her during the conference, plus have lunch together. I’ve written here about LibraryThing before, and I fear that I came across as.. Read More
Democracy is Communism
This is another spring cleaning post, last updated October 2005, apparently. But it seems appropriate to yesterday’s post. Sure, you’re saying, upon reading the title of this post. And freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. But actually the title of this post is the exact opposite of my real point; I was just going for the catchy title. I’ve just started to reread Eric Von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation (on.. Read More
Niches and filters
I’m reading The Long Tail (the book, not the article), and something struck me. On p. 119, Anderson writes: As the Tail gets longer, the signal-to-noise ratio gets worse. Thus, the only way a consumer can maintain a consistently good enough signal to find what he or she wants is if the filters get increasingly powerful. I wonder if this is actually true. It seems to me that a significant.. Read More
La biblioteca digital com a lloc
This is a new post… not one of my backlog. Written in full this very day. Back six months ago or more Gary and I got an email from the Director of the Consorci de Biblioteques Università ries de Catalunya, asking if we would give permission for our paper The Digital Library as Place to be translated into Catalan. Well, why not? As long as the author agreement says it’s ok,.. Read More
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Another spring cleaning post… I came across a small group of students talking in the hallway a couple of days ago, working on developing a Prisoner’s Dilemma-style matrix for reference work: the patron has the choice to fully divulge their information need or not, the reference librarian has the choice to fully answer the question or not. What are the costs and benefits? This is an interesting exercise in and.. Read More
Virtual Reference = Necessary Evil?
This one is from October 2005. Someone please explain to me why I’ve been sitting on these posts for this long? I was looking recently at the slides from the presentation Realities of Virtual Reference, by Kathy Dabbour, Doris Helfer, & Lynn Lampert, from the 2004 Internet Librarian conference. Before I start this little rant, let me just say that this is a good presentation. Nothing earth-shatteringly novel perhaps, but.. Read More
Neutrality
Here’s my first Spring Cleaning post. The last time I edited this one was 29 November 2006, if you can believe it. I’ve decided to just post these more or less as is, with my only edits being spell checking, link checking, completing incomplete sentences, stuff like that. So I feel compelled to say: these reflect my thinking at the time they were written, not necessarily my thinking now. Thanks.. Read More
Distributed Science
After all that foofarah about purging my backlog of posts, here’s an actual new one. Ever since living in Syracuse, Yvonne and I have participated in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Great Backyard Bird Count, which took place the weekend before last. I was thinking about the GBBC the other day, and realized that it, and Project FeederWatch, are examples of distributed data collection. Now all of you regular PomeRantz.. Read More