The New York Times online has an interesting article about "Animal Farm" and "1984" being deleted from Kindle users after Amazon realized they did not have the right to have sold it in the first place. This is interesting in two ways, IMHO:

1. "Owning" something digital is not always clear cut: This is something that librarians have come to realize with the advent of online content. In the past, we have purchased journals and books comfortably knowing that whatever we bought we would have until it was destroyed beyond repair which, if care was taken, would be quite a long time. With electronic journals and books, ownership of content disappeared, to be replaced with something more like renting the works. We can purchase a whole run of a journal with back files and everything, often for not much less than the print would have cost, but if the distributor decides that something needs to be changed, anything from a typo to our access to it at all, we have very little control and sometimes no knowledge of it even. My suggestion: we should refuse to "buy" anything that we don't have actual control over. If it's digital, we need to factor in the cost of hosting it on our sites if we want to ensure future access at all.
2. Our concept of rights is confused: In this Amazon case, the reason for the deletions was that Amazon had mistakenly sold something they should not have sold. Do we really think we have the right to something just because we spent money on it? What if someone stole your TV, then sold it off the back of their truck to your neighbour? If you COULD get it back, wouldn't you think it was your RIGHT to have it back? Just because we haven't been able to return "stolen" merchandise to its rightful owner in the past, doesn't mean we shouldn't ever do so in the future. And they got their money back. No one lost anything (except the poor shmuck who lost his notes saved in the ebook - remember, keep control of your digital property). There are millions of copies of these books, some you can get for free, say, at your public library for example.

Both of these issues are summed up in a great quote from the article:

"I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased."

So either accept other's rights along with yours or hold on tighter to your stuff. Or maybe I'm wrong... What do you think?

[ From Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle Devices by Brad Stone at NYTimes.com ]

Labels: aboutBooks, aboutEthics, aboutEvents, aboutInformation, aboutMoney, aboutTechnology

 

Library Journal has reported on a new deal between the University of Michigan and Amazon where hundreds of thousands of digitized public domain books will be made available through their print on demand business.

Sounds good. Hopefully UMich is getting tons of moolah for the deal. And it's good to see efforts made to support the interests of the long tail, those people looking for works otherwise out of print and therefore much more difficult to obtain. I only have two problems with this. One, I see nowhere in this article any mention of any efforts to make this huge pile of etexts available to or through other academic or public libraries. They said that a lot of them are already available through UMich's catalog and Google Book Search but that limits the potential discoverers to those at UMich (and maybe a bit of the outlying area) and those who actually know that Google Book Search exists (I'm always amazed that people don't even try there). Make it easy to link through or host the content elsewhere and make those works supposedly owned by the public available for use by the public.

My other problem is in regards to Roy Tennant's comment that this is a sign that print is not dead. Well, no it's not but this doesn't suggest that it's going to live any longer than we thought before. Print's got it's place but speaking for myself, if it's a choice between paying for something in print and getting it for free online, I'm taking the latter. Even if the fee is nominal. But I'm a geek, so... All this will do it delay print's demise for certain otherwise doomed genres because the majority of those searching for books will pay Amazon not knowing that it could be free somewhere else.

[ From Michigan Deal A New Twist on Access to Scanned Book Content at Library Journal 7/23/2009 ]

Labels: aboutBooks, aboutEvents, aboutInformation, aboutMoney, aboutReading

 

...and confused.

We have all felt frustrated with a large (or small) company before, after an experience with a sales person, a service person, a help desk or even website. Why does this happen? Why do large groups of people (a business) cooperating (somewhat) on a common goal (to provide a service or product for a fee) but then fail so miserably so consistently in achieving that goal? Are they all incompetent? Well, some people plainly are, whether aware of it or not, but I'm not sure that's the reason in most cases. Are they evil? Perhaps we'd like to think so... that we're running into the BOFH every single time, but alas there is only so many and they can't have taken over civilization yet.

I think, for the most part, it's a matter of a lack of respect for one's own work, our preoccupation on money, and, often, simple miscommunication.

Too many people in too many jobs are there because they simply need a job. They may or may not have been well-trained for their position but, however they go there, they're there now and they're not moving. It's almost as if, in today's Western society (at least in the USA and Canada), no one can actually LIKE their job. I enjoy being a librarian but I feel almost guilty telling anyone other than a librarian that. If you don't like your job, or at least keep saying you don't, you will certainly limit your motivation for doing it well. You can only say TGIF so many times before you start calling in sick on Monday.

Along with our lack of preoccupation with our work is our preoccupation with the reason why we're there: Money. We are constantly needing things and therefore needing money. Again, I'm made to feel awkward (which I don't mind, because I'm just weird like that) when I say my family doesn't have cable TV (and therefore any TV at all). We "need" all these standard "trappings" of society. They may be different around the world but we all have them and the West has them in spades. I think it's getting better but it's not reached "good" yet. This preoccupation with money keeps ours eyes on the prize instead of where we're running and the people we trip over on the way.

In the end though, miscommunication is to blame for much of these problems we have with businesses. Face it, we are none of us experts at communication. Even between two people who speak the same language, come from the same culture and have the same expectations can get tripped up on the words we use to collaborate and transfer data. As a librarian, I know full well how difficult people find it to simply explain what they need help with. Many people are too busy trying to convince me that they don't need help to get their question out in a understandable way. We have a hard time seeing things from another persons perspective, especially when those "things" are the words flying out of our mouths.

So the moral of the story is:

1. Find a job you like, or like the one you have (as much as you can);
2. Chill out about money... you don't need as much as you think; and
3. Think about your communication a little more - you may be surprised at the difference between what you're saying and what you think you're saying.

Of course, sometimes, it is their fault. Give 'em hell! lol

[ Inspired by an article from Mon Jul 30 2007 entitled "Dell Tries To Repair $10 Battery, Hoses $150 Video Card" from "The Consumerist" ]

Labels: aboutCommunication, aboutMoney, aboutWork

 

No, I'm not referring to the Chinua Achebe novel (of course, it just made me think about the novel and, realizing how little I remember of it since I read it years ago, I had to go find a quick plot outline to refresh my memory). I'm talking literally: things fall apart.

• Tried to cut the lawn and only managed to finish the backyard since the right front wheel fell off.
• Found a cracked glass in the cupboard. Many of our dishes are being dropped or getting cracks or chips in them.
• Opened a window the other day and some little piece of plastic, plugging a hole in the other pane frame, was jutting out just a little too much and the edged was snapped off.
• And, of course, the "0" button on the laptop I'm writing this on has been waiting in the case for weeks now, for me to get it reattached.
  

Things fall apart. I was thinking about how horribly unfair this is, how this is all I need, what with money being tight and having no luck in finding a new job for after my current contract ends. But of course, things fall apart. Things break. Things die and rot and gather dust and get loose or get rusted or whatever the age-related verb is for any given inanimate object.

Get over it, bub.

Things fall apart. Get new things.

Labels: aboutLife, aboutMoney, aboutWork

 

From Tomorrow's Professor Blog, I read an article about the current push for universities to offer 3 year undergraduate degree programs instead of, or in addition to, the standard 4 year programs. The claim is that it will save money, both for the institution and for the student, get people into the work force faster, and result in a more streamlined, "fuel-efficient" education system.

Bah, I say. As soon as I read this, I hung my head in despair. This is not the direction we need to be going. On a biological level, there's an inborn need for more formative years (i.e. more education of immature individuals in the species... not intended as an insult lol) the more complex the lifestyle or society the individual is born into. Everyone seems to be saying that life is much more complex now, and is getting more so... There are simply more things to learn and more specialized nooks for people to fit themselves into. We don't want less educated generalists, generally - we want better trained, better educated, more mature workers. Actually, we need everyone to be more educated generally, I think.

I have to reveal my bias in this of course. I am a librarian in a university, and although I think our library, serving our faculty, within our university helps the students (and staff and faculty) more than average, I still don't think we have enough time with them. We are integrated into their classes almost entirely but we still see the vast majority of the students about 3-4 hours for formal education sessions in information literacy throughout their time here. For a subject and skill set that most people don't think is useful or think they have already (wrong on both counts), this is hardly enough time to change their opinions AND teach them what they need to know. Shortening the time some of them are in university, will simply decrease our time with them, and increase the pressure of the faculty members to give us even less.

As it says in the article, "the push for three years [is] coming from those whose ideas about higher ed amount to: 'get it over with and get it over with fast.'" Yes. In all likelihood, shortening the amount of time students are required to spend in higher education would be cheaper all round. But so would not attending university at all! That's not the direction we want to be going. Honestly, our education system here in Canada and the United States is not perfect. But cutting the time in it is not the answer. More time might be. At least, better teaching strategies and an improved societal atmosphere of "education is a good thing" would help. And more money too. Cutting funds from higher education just destroys all the work that we have done in the past several years to improve our teaching as it is.

The funniest part of the article is the quote from Richard Vedder saying that "Thomas Jefferson's two-year program at the College of William and Mary didn't stunt his intellectual growth." Ignoring the tiring habit of Americans to bring up their founding fathers every chance they get, couldn't Thomas Jefferson be an exception? And besides, I think the almost 250 years since Mr. Jefferson graduated has seen a few developments that may make even a general liberal arts degree require a little more effort. LOL

934 The Buzz and Spin on 3-Year Degrees (via Tomorrow's Professor Blog, RSS feed)

Labels: aboutEducation, aboutMoney