Caveat Lector

The second wave of open-access and institutional-repository–related journal articles is a good deal less optimistic and a good deal more grounded in faculty practice than the first wave, which was all about “how we done it good (but we’re having trouble anyway).” Since I’m quite bullish on open access and institutional repositories (broadly viewed) but generally bearish on self-archiving in IRs (at least in the short term in the United States), I’m finding it healthful to see my views expressed by others.

This article is likely to feature prominently in the Roach Motel article I am slowly starting to work on. I have no particular opinion about their methodology, but their conclusions ring true to me: it genuinely is silly and pointless to ignore the entire composition process and then waltz in at the end demanding the final product.

Some things (she said vaguely) are happening at MPOW respecting this problem; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see something RepoMMannish eventually appearing. I’m all for it, as long as I get to hook up the IR to its back end; I don’t see how I make inroads without a better value proposition than I’ve got currently.

In other news, the OAI-ORE folks have got a whitepaper out. I got no particular religion on graphs (although I do wonder why nobody on the group seems to have heard of METS or DIDL, which operate in the compound-objects space and don’t have the brain-shattering overhead of RDF and other graphlike mechanisms), but I dearly hope the group drops the entire “trust mechanism” business before OAI-ORE vanishes into a warehouse-sized can of worms.

I know faculty want to privilege their own mashups, even to prevent other people from creating mashups at all. I know this, because the aforementioned “some things” happening at MPOW involved talking with faculty about such matters. That’s just too bad, you ask me. The Web doesn’t work like that, and all the trust mechanisms in the universe won’t make it work like that. If you need that much control, you need to stay off the Web altogether.

And everything I’ve read about trust mechanisms indicates that they’re fragile, obtuse, easy to game, and difficult-to-impossible to model. I believe these problems are intrinsic and insoluble. An object cannot force me (or my mechanized agent) to trust it; it can only tell me enough about itself and its provenance for me to make that determination on my own—and it can tell me that much without any of these fancy-dancy “trust mechanisms.” Don’t go there, OAI-ORE. It’ll bury you, and compound objects are much too important to get buried in ill-conceived thought experiments.

Edited to add: See also the APSR’s conference presentations. $DEITY love the Aussies—they’ve quit handwringing over the self-archiving situation and are actively looking for ways forward. This lets those of us in less forward-thinking societies go to our local management and say plainly, “This is what it takes to populate an IR. Fish or cut bait.”

When everything about me is remarkably random, why just eight? Nevertheless.

1. Despite considerable unfondness for the Harry Potter books, I just agreed to play Hermione Granger in a (rather deconstructionist, or I wouldn’t have done it) HP RPG. I am still wondering whether to have my head examined.
2. I appear to have gone up a second dress size. This is annoying, because I don’t really want to go clothes-shopping. It was, however, probably inevitable.
3. I’m still waiting to hear about the potential paycheck-enhancing activity I applied for. Latest news is that I may hear sometime this week.
4. I am liking the CSA thing so far. Anything I don’t manage to use up generally makes good soup stock.
5. I’m in a bit of a book doldrums at the moment. Nothing seems interesting enough to yank me away from the laptop. The fantasy-authors research guide may be partly at fault here, in which case I’ll get over it.
6. I’m considering a Netflix or Greencine subscription; there isn’t a good video store in anything like walking distance from our apartment, and with the demise of University Square 4, it’s even hard to see movies on the big screen.
7. I don’t like mushrooms. I can tolerate most uses of portabellas if I have to, but those slimy button things? Ugh. And black olives are a bit strong for me, though I cook with olive oil regularly.
8. Aside from a year or so during which I cut my hair short, I haven’t really changed the ways I wear my hair since high school. Sometimes I wonder about this, but really? What I’ve got is cheap (because my husband can trim it), functional, and good enough—what’s the point of slathering lipstick on this particular pig?

You’re tagged if you wanna be. Ipsa dixi.

Well, well, well. I’m a Dreamhost customer. Have been for almost two years.

Yep. I’m one of the ones that got hacked.

They don’t seem to have done any damage to CavLec or yarinareth.net proper. You folks whose blogs I host, please check your front pages with View Source to be sure you didn’t get damaged either (the link above tells you what to look for). I have changed passwords on the account, of course.

I’m hacked off. My account with Dreamhost expires in a couple months, and I think I’ll (ugh ugh UGH) be moving. Pair Networks has a nice deal this month…

I moved Thursday’s driving lesson up a few hours to avoid the severe weather (which didn’t actually happen, but I’m not objecting). I can’t be doing too badly if my instructor takes me out on the interstate my second trip out, can I?

My left turns are better now, I don’t mess up my lane position, and I can handle that bizarre median at Tokay and Segoe just fine. I could use a bit more practice merging into interstate traffic, because my instinct to slow down in order to be safe is just exactly wrong, but I’ll get it right next time.

Can’t say enough about how good my instructor (”Drew” of Four Lakes, ask for him by name!) is. He’s been doing this for umpteen years and is very laid-back about it without letting me get away with stuff. I never got my license the first time because driving with my mother freaked me out. Her screams are being replaced in my head with Drew’s calm litanies, and that is all to the good.

I might just pass my road test in late July. I might just. And then, ph34r me, all you drivers! Maybe we’ll do another southern-Wisconsin road trip in August…

Point.

Counterpoint. (Link is not directly to resource because resource is not OA.)

I hold considerable sympathy for both viewpoints, but my sense still is that in the social-scholarship world, the marketing function of journal publishers will diminish considerably in importance. (Besides, if uni presses had been so good at that stuff, would they be in the dire straits they’re in now?) I also think that librarians are better at nurturing writing and research talent than we’re often given credit for.

So we’ll see. Fascinating debate, isn’t it?

Late May and early June are primetime baby-critter season around these parts. Ducklings and goslings, of course—one intrepid goose couple in the bay has ten youngsters, which has got to be a hassle and a half. The goose families are fairly social; more than once I’ve seen a sort of goose playdate, three or four families mowing the lawn together. The mallards aren’t like that; they keep their families separated, because adults will attack ducklings that don’t belong to them.

There’s also a baby rabbit living near Brittingham Park. Bit nervous, but insanely cute, right down to its little tuft of a tail. I think the dark-gray finch-sized birds hanging out in a dark-gray posse are juvenile starlings, but I could be wrong.

Should I tire of younglings, I can always keep an eye out for the green heron, who gets huffy and flies off if I get too close, or the purple martins and swallows in the martin-houses on the west side of the bay, or the little bunch of goldfinches who hang out at one house’s thistle-seed bags.

Goldfinches are wonderful. They are just joy in bird form. There’s no better way to start or end a day than to happen upon goldfinches.

We hadn’t seen Third Goth in quite a while, but this morning there was An Incident that ran something like this (allowing for PG-13ing of language):

Third Goth: O HAI THAR

Dream: WHO R U?

Third Goth: IM IN UR YARD, CHASIN UR BIRDEEZ

Dream: NO WAI!

Third Goth: WAI!

Didi: NO WAI!

Third Goth: WAI!

Dream: DO NOT WANT.

Didi: I made u a cookie, Third Goth, but I—

Dream: DO NOT WANT!

Didi: ‘k, DO NOT WANT. Sheesh.

Third Goth: EFF U!

Dream: EFF U 2!

Third Goth: I chase moar birdeez nau, kthxbye.

Dream: ??!!!!!???

Third Goth came up to me as I left the house to go to work, and purred and rolled as long as I would consent to give pettinz. Third Goth howled after me when I finally said I had to go.

I wouldn’t mind adding Third Goth to the Goth menage, but Dream would kill me.

(with apologies to I.B. Singer)

So the biblioblogosphere’s gotten out its monocles (sans ponies, alas) and its ascots and is responding with all seriousness and decorum to M-ch–l G-rm-n’s latest sallies on Brittanica. Ahem. If you care to learn more, a Technorati search will provide most necessary reading.

Me? I’m still stuck on the funny. C’mon, people, this is comedy platinum here! Laugh! I think I’ve still got one or two “One of the Blog People” buttons left. Who’s with me on a mass snailmail of same to Mr. Now One Of Us?

It does appear that G-rm-n was his usual insultingly privileged self. He’s pulled overt privilege trips before, and damn it, I am past annoyed and getting downright angry that my tribe is not calling him on them louder and more often. My personal thanks to those who have. Mr. G-rm-n can have my “alternative medicine” Armaid when he pries it out of my working-very-well-thank-you hands, the same hands that standard Western medical practice ignored for years and even damaged further.

For the most part, though, I’m kicking back and letting myself enjoy the joke. Much more fun than getting offended yet again at G-rm-n’s unshakable beliefs and offputting personal style. (I say “personal” rather than “writing,” incidentally, because I have met him, and he went out of his way to put me down. I’m not sure what it says about the personality of our profession that many of us revere this man when that same repellent condescension crisscrosses every bit of his written output I’ve ever seen. I’m damn sure it says some ugly things about elitism and privilege.)

I think Jane is on to something. “I’m better than the common man” is exactly what’s going on here. I do not, however, think that we need to be looking out for “trivia,” because the content of blogs is not the real meat of the attack. If it were, maybe we’d get cited and formally refuted once in a while, instead of merely sneeringly alluded to!

No, what’s going on here is captured neatly in this blog comment:

I think the main problem the presenter was trying to illustrate was the use of casual prose and an expression of personal feelings in a professional-themed post, which would never occur in a column because they have to meet Editorial Standards.

Aha. It’s not the content. It’s the register. The G-rm-ns of this world aren’t afraid of what we might say; they’re confident enough in their superiority and their privilege to think they can outargue us or just plain shut us down within the profession—no one who’s anyone reads blogs anyway, right?

What they’re scared of—and I wish I understood why, but I don’t; it can’t just be a control issue, it’s too visceral for that—is that conversations can be had, lessons learned, and decisions made without a choking cloud of turgid prose and rigid process descending over everything.

It’s almost an identity issue. If we don’t write the way librarians have heretofore written, are we still librarians? If we don’t do things the way libraries have heretofore done things, are we still working in libraries? Librarians are librarians. They behave a certain way and have certain narrow interests. They’re not knitters or gamers or parents or genre partisans (much less ficcers) or football fans or political activists (well, okay, maybe that last). So when they’re presenting themselves as librarians, librarianship should be the whole of the self-presentation. All that other stuff? Is other than, and therefore less than, librarianship. It should not be presented alongside it for fear of lowering the lofty communicative register that makes librarianship what it is.

That’s my read on all this. That’s my best guess about why G-rm-n hates bloggers but still contributed to a blog. He’ll never be a “blogger” as long as he still writes like a (G-rm-n–style) librarian. And he’ll slam me (metaphorically speaking) every chance he gets, because even when I’m writing for publication, I don’t write like a G-rm-n–style librarian. G-rm-n–style librarians don’t put “Roach Motel” in their article titles.

Now, it should be noted that the friction between work demeanor and non-work demeanor has been a CavLec theme since CavLec’s earliest days, with work-versus-blogging a common subtheme. I may well be reading my own issues into this kerfuffle; I was glad to see Jane’s and the Mad Strategerist’s contributions because they happened completely independently of me while still capturing pieces of my sense of the issue. Adjust your internal bias sensors accordingly.

And now I am done being all buttoned-down and serious, and shall therefore go off into a huge gale of laughter again, on my way back to my usual court-fool stance. Mr. Blog People his own self, blogging! How bloody hilarious is that?

ETA: And what should come up in my aggregator mere seconds after publication of this post? Some days I wonder why I bother. Except, the funny, the funny!

I haven’t been one of the Google Books doomsayers heretofore, because the participating libraries have observed Dorothea’s First Law of Digitization: “Always control your bits.”

I’m not happy with the CIC right now (despite, I should note, working for a CIC institution), because from all appearances they didn’t heed the First Law. Bad contract negotiators, no biscuit.

Nothing to be done about it now, I suppose, but let me suggest this to all libraries in any stage of Google Books negotiations (including just considering such negotiations): If we must have escrow for copyrighted bits—and I don’t have an opinion on that, not being a lawyer or a copyright strategist—at least don’t leave the fox in the henhouse. Google should not be the escrower. Toss the bits at Portico, toss them at the Library of Congress, toss them at the DLF, toss them at a dark archive, whatever—but find a trusted third party.

I suppose I’m fine with Google funding that third party to hold the bits for the time being, though I don’t consider it ideal and I hope the third party would be smart enough to have a backup funding plan. I’m not fine with Google demanding the escrow, not (to all appearances) having a clear plan for taking work out of escrow, and holding the bits. That’s unsound practice.

Truthfully, I think Google’s missing a trick here too. Publishers are slavering to go after deep-pocketed, for-profit Google for the least hint of an actionable cause. Publishers aren’t slavering to fight libraries. They do it, to be sure; I thought the AAP’s e-reserves hunt would die a quiet and ignominious death owing to fears of awakening the slumbering faculty behemoth. I was wrong. The hunt hasn’t stopped; it’s just gone underground.

But at least it’s gone underground. That’s protection that I would think Google would find intriguing. Apparently not.

Please, library contract negotiators. Google out of the henhouse. Please.

So I promised colleagues a while back that I’d do up some marketing materials for the repository. And there’s nothing like a nice flyer, right?

I have no budget. Repository-rats never do. Hey, we work on open access, what do we need money for? So I can’t do spiffy four-color stuff; I run on a strictly grayscale basis. I mention this not to whinge, but to point out that it’s a pretty serious design constraint in a full-color world.

I also don’t have Photoshop (see above about “no budget”), so I’m working with the GIMP.

The story I wanted to tell in this particular flyer is “Librarians have always cared for your books and your journals… now we take care of your digital works too!” (I dearly hope that’s both/and enough to be inoffensive. I’m never sure about these things.)

So I got the bottom half done fairly quickly. Screenshot, list of Things To Put In The IR with nice arrows pointing to the screenshot. (The GIMP doesn’t do auto-shapes such as arrows. Google kindly informed me that the way to do arrows is to use a wingdings font at a suitably-enlarged size. Worked a treat.) Logo, URL, and contact info at the bottom. No sweat. (Well, some sweat, because ever so not graphic designer. But it wasn’t bad.)

And then there was the top half…

My first thought was a photomontage of books and libraries and stuff. I zipped over to Flickr, searched materials marked with the Creative Commons Attribution license on the tags “books” and “library” and whomped one together with the results. It looked stupid and square and amateurish. I got rid of it, though I kept its individual components.

Going back to my search turned up these awesome old-book cutouts. I snagged one and got to work.

My first thought was to outline the book, cut the outline away from its background, and use the background as a border for photos. The way to do this is not by tracing with the mouse; I figured that one out in two seconds flat. Google to the rescue again—the way to do it is to blow up the picture a bit and use the Bezier path tool. This lets you select points all around the outline of your thing, turn that outline into a selection, and clear everything inside it. Once I grokked the concept, I had my outline pretty quickly.

So I slapped the outline back on the flyer and popped a few photos in behind it. And I printed it out. And it didn’t look too bad… people know what an open book looks like in outline, don’t they?… it’ll work, kinda… okay, okay, it looked like a squashed butterfly with ragged wings. No good. Try again, genius.

My next idea was to outline the top pages and the edges of a couple pages underneath—again, the Bezier tool lets you do this—and layer photos as though it were a book of photos. After a while, it became clear this wasn’t going to turn out well, so I abandoned it.

And then, finally, I did the right thing. Outline the open pages, recto and verso, clear the interior of the outline, pop the photos underneath, and leave the rest of the book image alone. This? Looked awesome after a bit of photo tweakage. Even in grayscale it looks good.

I had my husband critique it, and I’m going to fix a couple of layout and font issues tomorrow. But in the main, I am well content.

A graphic designer would have figured this out in much less time than I took. But I added a few tools to my amateur’s arsenal, so I consider it time reasonably well spent.