Dept. of Bad Ideas
I'm hijacking the title of an editorial in the latest issue of Journal of Academic Librarianship because I believe it illustrates a problem rather than a solution to our approach as librarians to technology.
In the piece, the author describes two approaches to meeting user needs:
...[To] wait for someone to tell you what they want (which assumes they know their needs and the solution possibilities clearly) or to know your customer and the solution possibilities well enough to provide a useful solution that would likely never have occurred to them.
So which, according to the author, should we pick? Why the latter, of course, which the author calls "opportunity-driven" and characteristic of Steve Jobs:
As trained information specialists who are also dealing daily, upfront and personal, with the changing information environment, I believe we are particularly well positioned to develop the insights and perspectives that allow us to see opportunities and possibilities that are not as clear or as obvious to our patrons.
The obvious, almost classic problem with this approach is that it moves the focus from our users to ourselves and while that might make for applause lines at library confabs where we're basically talking to ourselves, it risks ending up with solutions more suited (surprise, surprise) to our own needs rather than to those of our poor 'benighted' users.
The fact is, the library doesn't exist in a vacuum. Sure, we're in the information business but so are a lot of others. When our users come to us, they don't want a "19th-century library" as the author jokes. They want everything online and easy to find -- just like they've come to expect on every other site that seeks to attract their business.
To do this, we don't have to reinvent the experience. We don't need Steve Jobs even if we could afford him. All we need is to do our homework, to keep the focus always on our users, seeing what they prefer and how they prefer to work, melding our own wares to their requirements. Our users have already told us what they want. It's in the usage statistics of the most popular websites. Now all we need are librarians smart enough and sharp enough to listen to what they're saying.
Nice quote from an article in this month's American Libraries:
Winner Carolyn Wheeler told the audience of well-wishers [at the 2009 I Love My Librarian Award Ceremony in NYC] that she has a poster in her library that reads" "Did you ask a good question today?" That, Wheeler noted, sums up the best way to learn to love your librarian.
As long as people ask those questions, there'll always be a place for the library in their lives.
I missed this article on ways to save money on college textbooks when it first came out. Most of it your average college student would know by heart after the first quarter or semester -- they'd know it that is, if they wanted to avoid bankruptcy. But what really caught my eye was this final warning from 'textbooks advocate' Nicole Allen about e-books:
The one option Allen warned students against buying was e-book versions of texts. A number of publishers offer online books for purchase, she noted, but they are one-year rentals.
By and large, the e-books are available only through an Internet connection, and many restrict the number of pages you can print at one time.
In this case, the calculus e-book cost $100, about $40 more than Chegg's rental and only about $20 less than buying a used hard copy. And you have nothing to resell. [Kristof, Kathy M., "Turning the page on pricey textbooks", Chicago Tribune (9/4/2009):1,29.]
Basically they're saying, why should you rent it for a limited time when for just $20 more it can be yours forever? I think this kind of calculation is absolutely de rigueur not only for students but for institutions thinking of investing in these potentially ephemeral yet costly products.
Actually they didn't but you'd think they would have right after their library director made the following comment to CNET:
[Library Director Ken] Frazier added that a suitable device would include better "accessibility, higher-quality graphics, and improved navigation and note-taking. I think that there will be a huge payoff for the company that creates a truly universal e-book reader."
Hmm, "accessibility, higher-quality graphics, and improved navigation and note-taking"? When, oh when, will we ever get a device like that? [/irony]
Of course, he forgot to include, a device 'already owned by 93% of the student body'.
This is so unfair! 'The Great Slump of 1930' by John Maynard Keynes which goes for the outrageous price of 'free' at Project Gutenberg Canada is being offered by Amazon to Kindle users for a mere $4.25. How does Amazon get away with it?
Because I'm sick and tired of their ads popping up on every other website I visit.
NYUonline (2001):
New York University is closing down its for-profit electronic learning operation, NYUonline, and moving some of its curriculum and staff into its School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
U of I Global Campus (2009):
[University of Illinois] trustees meeting in Chicago voted to follow a faculty task force plan to scrap much of the current version of Global Campus.
NYUonline (2002):
In two and a half years of operation, NYUonline received nearly $25 million from the university, but enrollment remained anemic at best: just 500 students at its peak.
U of I Global Campus (2009):
The $10 million program had only attracted about 360 students as of last month.
NYUOnline (2001):
The university blames last month's closure of the distance-learning company, called NYUonline, on the economy.
U of I Global Campus (2009):
...[Prof. Nick Burbules] said, a global recession has changed conditions under which the older initiative was established.
NYUonline (2001):
"I believe that the value of our work -- some of which will continue to be carried on by the university, and some non-academic portions of which may be acquired by third parties -- will become even clearer with time," [NYUonline CEO Gordon] Macomber said in the release.
U of I Global Campus (2009):
Burbules said the 2.0 model draws from the UI's experience with the initiative. "I think what is driving this process is the belief that the mission of expanding the online offerings is important," he said. "I give [U of I President White] full credit for inspiring this work, and I personally believe it is the future of higher education."
Note, there were significant differences between the programs, though stated goals tended to shift over time. Nevertheless, what the two shared was an inability by the people in charge to truly understand what the technology was capable of and what it wasn't. Decision-makers themselves had no strong background in online content development for higher education. This lack of background made it hard to evaluate alternative strategies. Instead of identifying successful initiatives already in place and extending those, they chose to concoct their schemes out of whole cloth.
The outcome should come as no surprise.
The seventh edition of the MLA Handbook has just come out. The Chronicle of Higher Education points to the considerable effort the publishers have made to give this "bible of the undergraduate paper-writing process" a substantial web component. They have a password-protected website that contains the full text of the manual along with a whole ton of support material.
Good for them! It's great they're making such an effort. But what I want to know is why they still refuse to acknowledge that 'website' consists of only one word. Doing so would be a sign of true progress.
Just got my new HTC Fuze from AT&T. Going through the always helpful forums at XDA-Developers, I came across the following cry of pain:
Why did AT&T (and others like Verizon) have to make changes to it?
Why can't they just leave it as it is as the Touch Pro? I can't stand the fact that they had to change the keyboard to be different!
No tab and Ctl key.....come on!!!!!
The guy has a point.
First there's the load of AT&T crapware that's included. You can't escape this since the good folks at AT&T thoughtfully re-engineered the default interface to include a prominent link to it. It mainly features fee-based services that ordinarily can be found elsewhere for free. Did I mention that you have to hack into the system to get rid of this stuff?
But back to the above lament.
The keyboard on earlier versions of this phone only had four rows. This allowed for larger keys. By squeezing in a fifth row, HTC, the manufacturer, had to reduce the size of the other rows and hence the keys. This made the keyboard slightly more difficult to use but no doubt HTC felt this reduction in functionality was justified since consumers now had a 'full qwerty' keyboard including a row of numbers.
Unfortunately when AT&T got its hands on the device, it simply said, 'qwerty, schmerty' and replaced the top row of numbers with punctuation marks. Worse, it replaced the normal function of certain keys on the lowest row with (surprise, surprise) yet more links to its fee-based proprietary services.
There is a conflict of goals here. The consumer wants a device to communicate with while the company wants a gateway to its proprietary fee-based services. This conflict results in interface decisions that alter how hardware and software traditionally function.
To the question then, what would a keyboard or operating system look like if it were designed by a telecommunications company, we now have an answer. For those of us concerned with the results, working towards a regulatory framework that separated the two -- i.e. the provider of the network from the provider of the network device -- might be a safe option.
First people, please don't mention the Kindle and the future-of-print in the same breath. That would imply that one has something to do with the other and why do Amazon's marketing for them?
But ignoring that for a moment, I think the whole concept of a dedicated "ebook" reader is somewhat dodgy. I mean, if that's all they do, why bother?
You can't copy out bits and pieces of the text, import them into something you're working on, share them with friends, blog about them -- or do any of the million other things you're used to doing on electronic devices that are increasingly just as small and inexpensive.
In other words, an 'eBook' reader completely sucks as an 'eBook' reader because it treats what you're reading as a complete digital dead-end.
