Impatiently Waiting for the Innovation to Begin: PDF & the Future of 'Reading'

Are you getting sick and tired of the PDF as a reading format for ebooks? Join the crowd.

So, why has this boring yet efficient format continued to vex users and clog our collections of ejournals and ebooks? Change is coming, however, PDF continues to meet some rather basic needs that will have to be worked into the design of future academic products. Academics like having page numbers, having a peer-review piece set in 'stone' of some type so that changes cannot be slipped in - think of all of the hacking of Wikipedia, for example.

Against the Grain recently asked me to figure out when we might see the demise of the PDF for a news piece and the resulting article is available here.

The answer would appear to be don't hold your breath, we have a long way to go finding ways to incorporate innovation, multimedia, interactivity and others wonderful options with a need for stability, integrity and archival access. Will the PDF ever completely go away? I doubt it, we will always have some around to support in legacy systems.

However....innovation is coming, it may just take awhile to really take hold in the research sector. Check out the article and let me know what you think!

The Challenge of Accessibility & New Media

Ebooks are starting to show the technological edge with EPUB 3 and HTML5 - however, a larger issue looms as far as market penetration. Accessibility. No institution of higher education, K-12, libraries or other institutions can acquire information products that are not meeting ADA requirements. This is a wonderful and important piece of legislation; however, ebook designers seem to be ignoring this elephant in the room.

I was asked to write about new media and accessibility for Against the Grain's news blog and you might find the article interesting - especially the perspectives from some very smart people I was able to talk with in doing the research.

Did you realize, for example, that we currently live with a "book famine that causes over 300 million visually impaired persons, the majority of them in developing countries, to be excluded from access to over 90 percent of published works" according to the U.N.? We face a major literacy challenge, let alone a starving marketplace, awaiting innovation and change.

Let's hope for a better world coming with access to all.

Cengage Learning Using Bankruptcy to Restructure for Future Growth

Earlier this Fall, Cengage Learning - a major publisher for academic markets - made a very open public disclosure of their bankruptcy action stated that "the traditionally stable higher education publishing make has recently gone in decline, furthermore, Cengage is underperforming the market primarily driven by its digital execution." Changes include "resetting our cost structure" and "creating stare of the art product management and development functions."

I was asked to write about this action in a news blog for Against the Grain's website and was able to talk with some very interesting, smart people about Cengage's position. Indiana University Kelley School of Business professor Alan Dennis, who has worked with Cengage in the past and has now set up his own etextbook company notes that "unlike other publishers, Cengage was very slow to consider and adopt new ideas in the etextbook space. They told me that Cengage's strategy was to price their books at a 20% premium over other publishers offering similar content, because they believed their books were better and commanded higher prices."

The textbook industry is finding itself in the same difficult position as other book publishers and print-based information industries. Course reserve packs and other innovations have cut into the profits for textbooks for years, and etextbooks and Open Access products (along with MOOCs for training/practice exercises have cut into the market even further.

What is the future of textbooks? Being in the middle of this maelstrom, we can only watch, wait and see.

Google Gives MOOC Development a Major Push

MOOCs - those massive open online courses - have made a big splash in terms of hype - and things only got bigger with Google's efforts to enter into this arena. I was asked to do a news piece for Information Today's NewsBreaks and you can read it here. The involvement of Apple, Google and other big Cloud Service providers is a natural given their provision of the massive storage that would be required if these systems take off - and imagine what they could make from algorithms applied to all this metadata!

So far, MOOCs seem less than perfect and only mildly popular. However, they do push institutions into moving more content to the web and moving away from both traditional classroom teachings modalities and the use of expensive textbooks - which is a move in the right direction.

Mark Yudof, former President of the University of Minnesota, Texas and California university systems, has frequently spoken of the fact that physical universities have reached the end of growth and that online resources, libraries and classrooms are the only way to expand their bases and increase revenues. Is this the future? I'm not convinced....unless we are moving into some type of retro Dark Age instead of a bright New World.
Your thoughts?

What's Next for the Bezos-Owned Washington Post

Late last Summer, Amazon's Jeff Bezos bought the flagging Washington Post for a quarter billion dollars and the sale appeared to shock staffers, but others I was able to talk with seemed less concerned. Bezos himself described this as a personal effort to try to find a way to save something he held dear:

"The paper's duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners. We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we'll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely. I won't be leading the Washington Post day-to-day. ... There will, of course, be change at the Post over the coming years. That's essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about--government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports--and working backwards from there. I'm excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention."

So far, there seems to be no cause for concern. And, given the deep hole that most papers find themselves in today, it will be interesting to see if Bezos can find a way to leverage 21st technologies to save these institutions.

The article I wrote for Information Today's NewsBreaks is available here if you want to check out my reporting on the sale.

Can we really live without our daily paper? I guess many do. How might you work to save the venerable daily paper?

PRISM and the First Amendment: A Critical Issue

Are you starting to feel rather squeamish about all of the personal data that is being collected on you, your choices, your opinions, your habits? You aren't alone.

I was asked to write about the PRISM program of our government last Summer when information on it was first released for Information Today's NewsBreaks and you can read my findings here.

Since then, things haven't really changed, although it's very interesting - as a lifelong information professional - to see how the government is creating their own metric connections and relationships in tracking 'security' issues.

Timothy Lee wrote a good summary of what we know from government testimony and leaks in a good Washington Post article that you might want to check out as well. London's The Guardian is also doing a good job of pulling together key information on the program.

Maybe its time to pull out a copy of 1984 for a good read!

Altmetrics: NISO Project Brings Scientific Evaluation Into the 21st Century With Altmetrics

Measurement is the big thing today in academe and NISO has finally entered the area hoping to bring some definitions, credibility and standards into this arena. I was asked to write about this for Information Today's NewsBreaks and you can read my report here.

The Altmetrics.org site explains the dilemma this way:

No one can read everything. We rely on filters to make sense of the scholarly literature, but the narrow, traditional filters are being swamped. However, the growth of new, online scholarly tools allows us to make new filters; these altmetrics reflect the broad, rapid impact of scholarship in this burgeoning ecosystem. We call for more tools and research based on altmetrics.

As the Altmetrics.org group notes: "Altmetrics are in their early stages; many questions are unanswered. But given the crisis facing existing filters and the rapid evolution of scholarly communication, the speed, richness, and breadth of altmetrics make them worth investing in."
Hopefully we will soon start to see some of the results of the NISO effort.

Stay tuned! And, feel free to share your thoughts here!

Apple Takes on the US Department of Justice on Ebook Pricing Scheme

"The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) came out swinging in its opening statement of its antitrust suit against Apple in New York on June 3, 2013. The April 2012 suit alleged that what was then the Big Six trade publishers conspired with Apple to "limit ebook price competition ... [and] reached an agreement whereby retail price competition would cease (which all the conspirators desired), retail ebook prices would increase significantly (which the publisher defendants desired), and Apple would be guaranteed a 30 percent 'commission' on each ebook it sold (which Apple desired)." In the past year, all of the publishers settled with the DOJ, ending their involvement in the case. Apple, however, has chosen to fight the charges in court."

The Big Six (really five) publishers settled with DOJ on the charges, but Apple decided to fight the charges in court. I was asked to write up a summary of the case as it was being tried in federal court for Information Today's NewsBreaks. You might want to give the article a read.

The DOJ gave their summation late last week and in over 100 presentation slides, DOJ reiterated their charges that Apple and the publishers violated antitrust laws in their agreements on ebook pricing. Their presentation appears to be quite strong.

Who will win? Stay tuned. I'm sure this will be covered in all major news outlets!

Amazon Finally Begins Work to Make Kindles ADA-Compliant

Imagine having visual problems and trying to deal with the new world of ebooks and digital information. Most ebook vendors (and especially Amazon) have been dragging their feet when it comes to accessibility.

I was asked to look at this for a blog entry in Information Today's NewsBreaks and gladly took on the assignment. It allowed me to look at Amazon's activities with Kindle over the past few years. How they

I was able to get the reactions and comments of many experts whose opinions I respect on all of this. One of these is Jim Denham, assistive technology coordinator at the Perkins School for the Blind. He made this important comment:

"The accessibility improvements to the Amazon Kindle iOS app opens a whole new library of reading materials for persons who are blind. Historically, titles available in the Amazon Kindle store have been, at best, only marginally accessible to individuals who rely on screen reading software. As many books and magazines are available only via Amazon, this meant individuals who were blind had very little access to this content. This long awaited app upgrade finally resolves these issues and has resulted in individuals who are blind gaining full access to all text-based materials available from Amazon. As an individual who is blind, I appreciate these long-awaited accessibility improvements and am thankful that I, as a screen reader user, now have the same access to Amazon Kindle books that my sighted colleagues have enjoyed for years."

Accessibility isn't just a good idea - it's the law. More than 40 years ago, Section 502 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 legally codified the concept of accessibility--and this was followed by the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 (amended in 1976), the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (amended in 2009), and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act (2009). Simply put, these laws require businesses (with 15 or more employees), government agencies, and those nonprofit service providers to make accessibility accommodations to enable the disabled to access the same services as non-disabled. For a company such as Amazon, which has been courting educational markets for years, this lapse in planning and execution of products is a mystery.


If this is something of interest to you, you might want to give the article a good read.

Simon & Schuster Joins 'Big 6' in Moving Ebooks Into Libraries

Finally, all of the major trade publishers have committed to at least test new models for distributing books - and especially ebooks - into libraries. This may seem like a no-brainer (after all when you think of books, you think of information which means books, journals, etc.), however, publishers are caught in a bind with changes brought on by technology. Self-publishing is now very real, aggregators like Amazon are squeezing them for better margins on sales, and they need to develop whole new models for their activities as they move from paper to digital.

After this was purchased, even Hatchette announced efforts to provide some testing of ebook sales to libraries.

In years to come, we will all hopefully be able to laugh about all of this - but for libraries and information professionals this has created very difficult situations. Books have to be sold through third-party aggregators (like ebrary) and many dislike their interface (me too). Again, things are slowly improving. So, hang in there with us!

Give my article a look for more information @ http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Simon--Schuster-Joins-Big--in-Moving-Ebooks-Into-Libraries-89200.asp

SAGE Strikes Gold with Andy Field's New Statistics Textbook/Ebook

Think back for a minute: Do you remember your college class in research methods? Was it inspiring? Fun? Innovative? Engaging? Well, perhaps not. Mine wasn't. It was more something to survive. However, a Sussex University professor is proving that apparently any class can be made engaging and yet successfully convey the concepts and information needed.

I was asked if I would cover the first book in the planned SAGE MobileStudy series - Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics, 4th edition. It's officially being released next month in both print and ebook formats. However, I found that MobileStudy and other innovations of the series were far less interesting and important than the author - so the just-released NewsBreak on the book instead focused on the author's approach not only to learning but also his relationship to his readers. In this age of social media, Andy Field, the author, has much to teach other academics.

From his experience and perspective, it was clear that textbooks as we have come to know them, are probably going to change massively - in many ways. Here at the University of Minnesota we are doing far more eReserves an linking from course Moodle pages to course materials. We are buying more ebooks as well - although the interfaces for many are still a major issue. Open Access is another key change-maker.

However, another key element is the author - his experience, expertise, approach to his subject and relationship to his audience. This is something that Andy Field excels at. He has his own Facebook Andy Field facebook-149856.htmlaccount, TwitterAndy field twitter-149859.html account, webpage - called Statistics Hell - and his own View imageAmazon page that links not only to his books but to his favorite heavy metal rock albums.

Not your average academic! But a truly successful academic at that! And one from which the rest of us can learn a great deal. For the article, I found ten major aspects of his example that I think are key for any academic writer today:

1. Texts are no longer limited to the printed (or e-printed) page.

2. Add value where it counts: Creating community

3. Using technology where it counts (mobility for students, teaching aids for faculty)

4. An author that is present, & approachable

5. Connections to the real world in terms of examples and and applications

6. Branding is key to the new altmetrics

7. Focus on the audience as much as the content

8. Embrace creativity and change

9. Accept criticism, as well as plaudits, as part of the game.

10. 'It isn't over 'til it's over' Always look for improvements and enhancements.

Take a minute to look at the article and then check out Field's credentials (which are impressive) as well as his use of social media. Engagement is one of the big themes of academe today - and Andy Field is way ahead of the rest of us on that one! Change is coming and Field gives us an excellent example of how to weather the change and come out a winner!

Enjoy!

The Internet in the Crosshairs - Governments and Politics Challenge the Future of the Internet

In the past 20 years, we've all come to rely on the Internet for quick information, for commerce, communication, cloud storage and more. What if the Internet as we know it - a reliable, relatively free and open 'information superhighway' - was gone? This may sound like some bad science fiction - but it could be a reality.

At last December's WCIT conference, leaders from the world's countries met to talk about the Internet and many of the global leaders were pushing for more controls and less centralization in setting standards.

I'm not an alarmist, but the pressures of many governments today is for a much less free and open Internet. Add to that the recent statement from President Obama noting that some of the cyberattacks on Western governments and companies are, in fact, state-sponsored.

I was happy when asked by Online Searcher magazine to look into the meetings in Dubai for an article. The article is available freely here and you might want to give it a good look. Just like our freedoms, the Internet is something we can't take for granted, but requires the diligence of everyone to protect its future.

Library Publishing Coalition--A Milestone in Evolution of Scholarly Publishing

As soon as I read some of the first reports of the new Library Publishing Coalition I knew this was going to be a milestone. Paula Hane of Information Today's Newsbreaks asked me if I wanted to research and write up a news report for the blog - I was thrilled just to be asked!

The NewsBreak was just published this morning and is available here.

Anytime you do interviews or research there is always so much that just doesn't fit into the article. Here is some background information and perspective on the motivation to establish this two-year effort from Rebecca Kennison, Director of Columbia University's Center for Digital research and Scholarship:

"The LPC arose from the perception - rightly, I believe - that the existing organizations were limited venues for discussion and collaboration among those of us within academic libraries who provide services in support of scholarly communication endeavors on our campuses. Are we publishers, so should we attend publishing conferences? Are we librarians, so should we attend library conferences? Or are we "liblishers," as John Unsworth famously put it in his keynote address to the Society for Scholarly Publishing meeting in 2005, "Pubrarians and Liblishers: New Roles for Old Foes." (I know my colleague Charles Watkinson of Purdue University Press has proudly claimed that title: http://librarypublishing.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/my-name-is-charles-and-im-a-liblisher/.)

While, as Unsworth observed, library-based publishing was already starting to emerge more than a decade ago, the number of libraries engaged in publication support has exploded in the last few years - for several reasons. First, the barrier to entry into publishing has been lowered by increasingly easier-to-use software and open-source platforms. Second, several university presses have recently undergone reorganizations that have resulted in their now reporting to the university librarian/director of the library/dean of the library. Third, many university librarians/directors of the library/deans of the library have embraced scholarly communication services as a primary role to be played by their libraries and have created positions and (in some cases, such as Columbia's Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, the group I head) entire units devoted to fulfilling that role.

I do think the membership of the LPC will grow, if the LPC can establish itself as a organizational venue in which those of us who are providing publication services - however those are defined now, however those might be defined in the future - within the library context can converse with colleagues about problems and solutions unique to that environment. It remains to be seen whether the LPC can coalesce around a shared sense of what it means to do library-based publishing, what it means to be a "liblisher." That is the current challenge: to create a mission statement for the coalition, to craft the goals the group would hope to achieve as an organization, and then to construct programs and projects that would fulfill those goals. It is my hope that by the end of the two-year planning stage that the LPC will emerge with a clear mission, clear goals, and clear programs, particularly in bringing together like-minded colleagues who not only can but will collaborate on projects.

To that last point, the reason Columbia is a founding member of the LPC is our commitment not only to library-based publishing, a role in which we are seen to be leaders, but also to forging collaborative partnerships with our colleagues. As you observe, the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship provides robust support throughout the entire research and scholarly communication life cycle via an operation that enjoys backing from the highest levels within the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services. Even so, we recognize that we cannot and should not "go it alone," as it were, and we are always looking for collaborators and collaborative projects with others. Our hope for the LPC is that more of these collaborations will develop among members of the community, so that we can be even more effective on our campuses."

If you have any interest/concern about the future of scholarly communication, new roles for libraries or potential publishing futures, you will want to give this article a read!

Do you see a future for libraries as publishers? Feel free to share your thoughts here.

Ebook Trends 2013--The New World of Ebook Publishing

In a second NewsBreak blog entry on what's happening with ebooks, I focused on the changes in publishing, self-publishing and how this is impacting authors, readers and publishers.

For Barnes & Noble, the challenge will be to look beyond the device to position themselves against online vendors, self-publishing models that parallel music distribution and the increasing encroachment of retail titans. I'm a read who longs for spaces where readers can discover serendipitously ideas, authors and good reads - in both libraries and bookstores. However, both libraries and bookstores are in peril, especially as places for discovery, contemplation and learning. And the social web is no replacement.

Publishers face their own issues in terms of redefining their roles in the new publishing ecosystem which allows anyone to master publishing, writing and promotion. And, for authors themselves, taking on these tasks forces them into new relationships with readers but also with their creative works. If you are actively marketing yourself, it can't help but influence the development of your work.

I've mentioned some of my concerns, do you have some of your own to share?

Ebook Trends 2013--The Transformation Accelerates

The role of digital in the publication, access and consumption of information - in whatever format - is no longer in any doubt. I was asked recently to try to look at what I think are some of the key trends for ebooks and publishing in general in the coming year. I've been covering ebooks since the emerging days of what was then called multimedia in the 1980s. The pace of change is quickening due to the snowball effect of standards, platforms, and other issues.

The article is posted at the Information Today Newsbreaks page. Take a look at the first part of this piece and it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on ebooks today!

Enjoy!