SSP Top Management Roundtable

2007-09-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

He is pointing attendees to the 23 Steps to learning about Web 2.0 technologies, 5 Weeks to a Social Library. http://rameyerguam.blogspot.com where you learn something new everyday (100+ projects; nearly 200). He's suggesting that we as publishers need to look at what people actually *do* with these tools and make it possible for them to use those tools with our content to do great things.

His slides will be posted to his blog, Stephen's Lighthouse. (which is really good given that Blogger hiccuped and lost all the content I had captured from his talk).

2007-09-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

Abrams says optys exist with new discovery systems (JSR168) Open URL with federated Search.

You have to sit by the side of a river a very long time before a roast duck will fly into your mouth -- Guy Kawasaki

People learn through play. That's why Web 2.0 is popular.

2007-09-07T08:58:00.001-07:00

I'm going to publish much shorter entries in avoid losing anything. He's pointing to iReaders (popular in China) and the iphone. Those are indicative of growth possibilities in delivering content and then shows a cemetary of dead formats (vinyl, tapes, CDs and he says soon DVDs.) He says we need to simplify our systems.

2007-09-07T08:54:00.001-07:00

I apologize; Blogger experienced a hiccup and swallowed all of Stephen Abrams wrap-up. My apologies. He was talking about the massive changes that are still facing us with regard to global forces, economic forces, the disruptive technologies. I'm just infuriated. I hope the other attendees using low tech got the basic gist of it. Abrams emphasizes that we cannot base tools and formats on text -- that there is a world of other learning styles that are underserved.

2007-09-07T08:08:00.000-07:00

Bill Burger is talking about the growing public interest in copyright. It's due to the explosion of internet use and content creation. He notes the an increasing pace of technological and business innovation. The one-to-many model has broken down, replaced by niche economics. And of course content is inextricably woven into technology. Copyright is an attempt by society to balance a variety of factors to reward creators while fostering economic growth by innovation and new ideas.

Content comes in many new forms. Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia of Life, instances where you may get legitimate (and in the case of the Encyclopedia of Life, actually high-quality) information for free. The technology (Bill is showing a plug in that he has incorporated into his browser) allows users to share content with whomever they choose. He references the level of participation that has been made possible by all of these new technologies (Flickr, Blogger, etc.) and there are alternatives to the more formal traditional channels of publishing. However this means there is a certain amount of infringement of copyright. He's referencing something called Wolfgang's Vault. The site, launched in 2006, it offers up streams of old concerts from decades in the past. Bill asks whether an artist such as Bruce Springsteen should object to this practice and demand compensation for the content that's being disseminated without the artist receiving financial reward. He has no answer.

Talking now about the shift in the balance of power from being solely in the hands of the publisher as copyright holder and moving towards the end-user having a greater ability to share and remix content into new channels of dissemination. There's the loss of control. The technology providers have also absorbed a large part of the power in terms of making the passing around of content easier.

Bills is saying the environment will be increasingly information rich with living documents replacing static ones. Participation and collaboration will be increasingly central to our interactions with content and disruptive practices will be continuing.

2007-09-07T05:56:00.000-07:00

Pretty full room this morning! We're starting out discussing Music, Television and New Media today. How much relevance will this have for this audience, I wonder. The description indicates that it will focus on current uncertainties and future trends in the digital delivery of media and entertainment. Redistribution of power throughout the channels of delivery should be driving new approaches in the content industries and I can't help but wonder if any of these gentlemen can demonstrate success with any of the approaches in place in the entertainment content sector. (Sorry, that was my own little editorial snark. We return you now to formal journalistic practices....)

Jim Griffin of OneHouse LLC is the first speaker. He suggests that we should learn from all of their mistakes in the music industry (for example, "don't sue your customers" would be a good beginning.). There is no one business model; you have to choose what's best for your particular clientele or customer basis. He is referencing Gutenberg as a starting point and notes a story that Gutenburg was a pirate who was ripping off the Pope (now, there's a story I want to verify for later use and/or reference).

It is now voluntary to pay for music, according to Griffin, perhaps not morally or legally but technology has changed the economics for those in this industry. Scholarly publishing may not be quite in the same boat but he suggests that it's only a matter of time. Not only is it voluntary to pay now, but it will be even more of a voluntary act next year and even more in ten years. It's just the consequence of the progress in computing.

He uses the word - bionomic -- the rising tide of change in distribution means that the flow naturally finds the shortest route through which to flow. Depending on a deus ex machina is a really bad business model. And yet the music industry is learning that there is no such device on the verge of saving them. It's an untenable situation - if payment is voluntary, there will be a detrimental impact on the creative industries. Copyright is at best what we wish were true. If you depend on copyright to save your business, you're screwed (those were his precise words). Copyright has become the concept of copy-risk; we can't empower you to stop that copying that is a running part of our world of networks. Not surprisingly the licensing segment of the music industry is growing, whereas the revenue from sales of specific discrete artifacts is shrinking.

(1) He counsels moving to service models for distribution, maximizing the size of the crowd that can hear your music but not trying to control who can hear your your music.

(2) Do not look to the government to solve your problems

(3) You'll do better to address the motivation behind piracy as opposed to trying to attach the mechanism for piracy.

(there was something else but I missed it).

He was actually quite lively and entertaining.

Next speaker up is Peter Kaufman of Intelligent Television. (1) Everyone here is a producer of screen based media, based on every computer act we perform. (2) We are all involved in peer production. We draw upon the behaviors and talents of those who have gone before. (3) The cult of the amateur is actually a sum benefit to scholarship. Everyone can contribute and should do so to the assemblage of knowledge through Wikipedia, etc. (4) TV and video statistics; 20% of all Internet users watch or download a video online everyday. This statistic will grow and the demand for video in the educational sector alone will be exploding in size. Online video is also where the money is, a ten billion dollar business in 2010. This is growing in the STM sector. (5) The most important article anywhere in the past five years was Michael Jenson's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the new metrics of scholarly authority. It's a demand for new business models. We can succeed by competing on computability, making our content feedable into and findable via the online environment. This viewpoint is confirmed by various Wall Street gurus and consulting research firms. Publishers should be spreading their content across multiple partner platforms, he references CBS as a good example of how this is done. His organization has been funded to spend the next three years in creating an educational video studio; there will be commercial stakeholders, government support, and others working to develop this. Video producers and scholarly publishers have much to learn from each other. He references a report,"Reinventing scholarly communication", from USC published last month -- track this down and see what is said. References the success of students retention of content in experiement where they had to read a paper in 8 minutes vs. watching a video cast of the same content for 8 minutes. The latter group outperformed the former in terms of retential and this has long term significance.

Next up is Charles Nesson, Harvard Law professor and founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He's discussing an experiment in Second Life, and the use of avatars by students on a Harvard Law School like island in that environment. He taught a course in a regular classroom which was taped and then subsequently streamed as a video to the students in Second Life. Had some significant advantages -- he notes that the visual judgements that get erased by the self selected avatars impacted on the group dynamics. He suggests that this is a signficant point in the creation of education communities, facilitating greater comfort levels in discussion and other exchanges. He suggests that the Second Life experience can enhance and supplement what goes on in a face to face classroom. Feedback on projects, mock trial jperformances are improved through the use of Second Life. He considers this is just a suggestion for the future. Second Life isn't scaleable in many respects at present, but the vision is there that could vastly enhance distance learning.

He now turns to online Poker games. He advises his students to learn Poker because understanding a problem from your adversary's point of view is key to mastering courtroom evidentiary skills. He has become an addict of Poker as a development and educational tool on the basis of how it drives growth on the Web. Tying the two together, he points out that learning skills employed in online poker by a widely diverse population is a way of developing strategic skills. Subtlety and perception are honed by the activity.

Abruptly he reverts to the first gentleman's presention (Jim Griffin) and calls for scholarly publishers to essentially step up to the plate and figure out a new business model. He says that the current environment of the open Web isn't suitable to real scholarship because it is so frequently ephemeral; can't rely on it, can't cite it, etc. He isn't pounding the table but I do get a sense that he feels strongly about this.

He believes that the ways in which players interact in an online game of poker may hold the keys for publishers trying to migrate their content into environments that exist in the interests of education and research.

We're over to Q&A. How does Griffin think about DRM; he says it's not about locks and keys. The players should focus on how you get paid for the cotnent; you manage rights well when you get paid for your intellectual goods. If you want to make money, start a relationship that goes on forever. (He used a very colorful presentation that is inappropriate to a written account here just on the basis of language alone. Griffin is wonderfully pungent in his delivery. But clearly he's a fairly hard-headed business man.) Granularity is the enemy of creativity and artistic content; bundling is better for the copyright industries. He suggests that the ideal is that content should not be free but it should feel free at the moment of use. Google feels free but they are pulling down bundles of money.

Professor Nesson backs Griffin up by suggesting that MIT courseware is of tremendous value even as it is given away. The courses have become better, it's a great recruiting tool, and other universities are keeping a close watch on it in order to see how they can replicate it for their own institutions.

2007-09-06T18:15:00.001-07:00

As the evening lengthens, I am working through the actual sense of today's discussions:

Users today have so many ways of communicating. We heard a number of references to Twitter and to Facebook and to blogs, technologies that are useful in support of certain forms of communication. There's a disconnect between in-the-trenches publishing activities and the tools that are being pushed at publishers (or that publishing professionals perceive as being pushed at them) by the mainstream.

Digital publishing is less about communication and more about creating platforms or environments that weld content and technology together in support of a goal (such as learning) or workflow (such as developing a new pharmaceutical product or solving a technical challenge). Publishers individually have to figure out what combination of content and technology those platforms or environments must provide in order to sustain value to the customer. The only questions that scholarly publishers ask about the new technologies being made available today is "Does this technology do something that scholars find necessary in the performance of their work?". If so, publishers will try to integrate that technology into a service; if not, publishers will ignore the technology as irrelevant to their own objectives (ie. sustaining a revenue stream or a business).

If publishers are being pushed to explore new technologies, it is because those who have already adopted a specific technology see in it potential for enhancing processes or efficiency. Second Life is seen as presenting new ways of connecting members of dispersed teams. It may provide a better educational experience for certain individuals geared to visual or kinetic learning. Twitter and Facebook are seen as potentially offering more attractive ways of communication between co-workers or building relationships between buyer and seller. Blogging is seen as perhaps a better way of shaping a discussion or line of thought that may ultimately morph into a best-selling book. Wikis are seen as potentially offering a better way of eliciting tacit knowledge for subsequent delivery to others needing that knowledge in the future. What will hasten problem resolution? What will enhance learning? How much more rapidly and effectively can we preserve and pass along knowledge to those who follow after?

Those are really the challenges that face scholarly publishers.

2007-09-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

So at the close of the first day, what is that I think I heard? Between the actual presentations and the chat at the evening reception?

Well, I think the point made by Chris Meyer in the opening segment this morning is an important one. The shift from an industrial economy to an information economy is still very much in process and systems of all kinds have not yet adapted. We may not yet have determined where the value of digital scholarly content resides for users in an Information Economy. We're pretty sure that it needs to be reliable and authoritative and the pace of the workflow demands that, once vetted, it be efficiently disseminated.

But there are questions about how we establish the authority of the content. Do we do it through consensus (as in something like Wikipedia) or do we do trust experts and professionals to produce authoritative content (knowing that there have been instances where that trust has been abused as when news reporters don't do the necessary depth of research necessary to properly cover a topic or dig out the facts). That wasn't necessarily articulated in the newspaper panel, but I think it is the gist of the concern.

In the afternoon, the question (again not necessarily articulated) was "how do we package content appropriately for delivery and use and still derive profit from that activity?". Jenny Walker was talking about the transformation of reference works from massive print tomes on shelves into databases that are licensed by institutions and used by students and researchers. It isn't an area of scholarly publishing that will continue to be profitable on the basis of the old business model when the publishers' business was to deliver a physical artifact. The Credo Reference business model is similar to other online aggregator services. The business model is licensed access.

That licensed access is the same model being used in Pearson's textbook as outlined by Tobin. The deliverable is *not* a printed volume; it's the printed volume in conjunction with an online learning system. What the student pays for is the "engaged learning" environment. Again, the clear movement is toward the software licensing model. The speaker claimed that this was entirely satisfactory for the institutions and departments using the system. He claimed it was a more effective teaching tool for imparting knowledge. Indeed, he seemed to suggest that the only dissatisfied customers were students trying to "game the system" and escape without paying for any textbook. He was more open about the need to combat the mindset of "free information".

The contribution of Emlyn Koster of the Liberty Science Center was the idea that preservation, curation, and display of artifacts or collections may not be the most effective mechanism for communicating information and learning. Modern society appears to want more immersive and interactive experiences as being more conducive to natural (or painless) learning. The information is absorbed rather than mastered. Can such a model from the museum community be applicable to scholarly content?

The final discussion was perhaps aimed at determining whether the multiple offerings of magazines, events, data, online experiences and rich media of B2B publishers represented another strategy that might be employed by scholarly content providers. That is, might these publishers position themselves as the ultimate source of information about a specific niche, discipline or research activity in the same way that a business publisher might and essentially sell access to that wide variety of information delivery options?

I think the meeting organizers' actual intent was to spread a banquet of ideas before the attendees with the hope that the individual publishers would benefit by picking and choosing from a wide range of approaches in creating appropriately customized information tools suited to their particular community. Did the attendees actually get that experience?

2007-09-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

Final presentation of the day is by Rex Hammock who is a magazine publisher at Hammock Publishing but who is also well known as the author of the Rex Blog. In fact, his first slide is a joke "Oh, you're that blog guy". He's going to talk about Business-to-Business publishing and lessons applicable to scholarly publishing. They do consumer, association and B2B publications. He's encouraging his clients to embrace conversational media (wikis, blogs, podcasting, etc.). They have a small-business site (smallbusiness.com) which contains a variety of resources for that business sector.

"Business Information" is the new name for B2B; verticals dominate the sector and it entails more than publishing -- web development, research, consulting, etc. There are few publications in this sector have large circulations; less than 50 have circulations greater than 100,000. They are highly dependent on the Long Tail. Magazines, events, data, online, rich media are the ways in which they stake out a niche and establish a brand. Now however while those aspects are important, they are looking at customers and the markets of buyers and sellers and saying "Let's take the interaction that occurs at a trade show and move it online." They want to use those elements or aspects to strengthen their service to individual readers and the network of buyers and sellers. Revenue is derived and will be increased through advertising and registration data via both online and print presence.

Moderator MaryAnn Liebert is asking him how does he create that stickiness that keeps the individual on the site? He suggests that business information inserted into the workflow is high-value content because such content helps with decision-making. Hence it's not that hard to keep the visitor on their sites.

He is asked about his blogging activities and how that activity might be applied to scholarly publishing requirements -- that is, how might publishers benefit from this activity. He notes that blogging is a very personal, individual activity. He suggests that someone must have a reason for blogging. It's just a publishing platform and it can serve different purposes for different people.

Has blogging helped his business? He says that there is a correlation between the growth of his business and his blog, but again reiterates that the format of blogging is just one of many available channels for communication. (I think it's interesting that this audience is so hung up on the concept of blogging as a practice. It does seem very threatening to them, but really Rex is right -- it's just a publishing platform that is useful for communicating with some segments of the population, whether you're talking about Blogger or Facebook.) He predicts that books in five years will be published with wiki accompaniments. He is talking about adding digital components to print products; it's just a technology that may be used for successful delivery and dissemmination of information).

Steve Abram makes the point that you have to actually use these tools in order to properly grasp the function and use. Judith Turner is sitting beside me muttering in disagreement. (This really is getting to be a fun discussion.) How do you leverage the value of these tools in this business, whether Twitter, Facebook, Second Life? Geoffrey Bildur is backing Steve Abram up and noting that many businesses are blocking these services which is counter-productive.

What a pity; this was really heating up and they just called time. Time for the evening reception...

2007-09-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

Next session - Redesigning College Mathematics with Greg Tobin, president of Pearson Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall Mathematics.

It looks like this session will also have some relation to the concept of natural learning processes. How do we deliver educational content in ways that are engaging? Apparently, based on moderator Thane Kerner's comments, Tobin has created something called MyMathLab which has proved to be a bit of a dream success within this discipline. The critical need to focus on service and support in the current environment is so different from the old world of publishing where we used to deliver a finished, static product. It was a bound issue of a journal or a book volume. Apparently Tobin has succeeded in living up to the expectation of service and support in his product.

He is talking a bit about the current state of higher education. There is a boomlet in enrollments due to peak in 2009. Career schools are booming; demographics of students are changing. The age spread ranges from 18 on up, well beyond the mid-thirties. Greater need for remediation as determined through placement exams which allow students to capture the learning that perhaps they didn't grasp in K-12 educational levels. The colleges are redesigning courses for greater effectiveness while still ensuring that students stay and graduate on time. Retention is a major concern as indicated by the Spellings report. (I'll link to coverage a little later). Institutions are also expected to cater to varied learning styles as well.

MyMathLab was launched in 2001 and was in use at 1607 colleges and universities. Today approximately 1.1 million students will be using it during the 07-08 academic year. It is an online homework and tutorial program that offers diagnostic assessment and personalized study plan. It's fully customizable by the instructor and it is available with or without a print component. Mathematics is apparently a key strength of Pearson's offerings.

He rates the value to students as being: instantaneous feedback (personalized), a non-judgmental, private learning environment, flexibility (anywhere/anytime access). Educators find value in the automation of time consuming tasks, customization, measuring learning outcomes and achieving them and ultimately higher retention rates (more effective learning in the classroom). Tobin is displaying a graphic that offers displaying the success rates at a number of institutions at various levels (4 year institution through a career commercial learning institution). High success rates at University of Alabama are what he is focusing on.

The online service is specifically tied to various textbooks; if I'm understanding him correctly, the online experience depends upon the specific title adopted by the instructor. That means it's not a stand-alone. He's got a number of screenshots that show the interface. The service includes a separate grade book functionality that he is saying is an improvement on the Blackboard service for the purposes of mathematical instruction. He's talking about higher level of engagement in student learning with the online instructional components. He's talking about bundling software in with the book (ostensibly as a supplement to the actual textbook but let's face it also as a way of combatting the used book market). They do allow students just to purchase access at $45.00 (again if I'm understanding him correctly) but will not allow blanket access to the online portion just on the basis of textbook adoption. The access codes that are part of the software sold with the book are only good for one semester/student or for however long the specific course itself lasts (two semesters). The service is not intended as a stand-alone self-directed learning product.

We're on to the interview segment now. He's talking about pouring content into the shell of a learning management system like Blackboard which saved them a huge amount of development time and costs.

They've invested alot into putting people into the field to offer support to instructors following an adoption. He considers that to be a critical aspect to the success of this product. The moderator is commenting about the precision metrics that can be offered to the instructor as a way of seeing whether the product is succeeding with students.

Apparently in the career school market, the business model is one more closely aligned with a software licensing business model. Pearson is trying to get away from selling a physical product and move in the direction of offering a service. Scaling their service support at the same rate as their adoption rate is going is challenging apparently.

Someone asks who is demanding greater levels of service support, students or instructors. He thinks that there is a steady volume of calls throughout the semester from instructors and a period of high volume of calls from students early on.

2007-09-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

Judy Luther is up next with Emlyn Koster, President and CEO of Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. His presentation title is "Museums in Greater Service to Society and the Environment". Heritage and cultural institutions include museums, botanical gardens, zoos and aquaria and site interpretative centers. He will naturally discuss museums most specifically which he indicates have gone through three stages of evolution. Initially they just collected researched and presented artifacts and specimens to understand the past. Then in the '60's, science museums took on the job of increasing scientific literacy in the younger generation. Now they illuminate how science and technology are integral to our culture and future. They teach the community about the science underlying major issues facing our society. LSC is an innovative learning resource for lifelong exploration of nature, humanity and technology; that's part of their mission statement. They seek to serve as a new model of sustainability and relevancy for the museum community. They seek to get attendees up close and personal with science. They want to get the message across that it is within the power of the museum's attendees to take informed action on any scientific subject.

The fact that they aren't burdened by legacy collections of artifacts that must be preserved and displayed allows them to operate differently and perhaps more economically than other members of the museum community. (That to me seems significant and he is consistently referring to his institution as a science center rather than as a museum.) They don't have curators or conservators. Those aren't key skill sets in their delivery of services to the public.

They're using such technologies as video conferencing to support teaching in the classroom. They are trying to integrate Web resources into the overall discussion but in ways that perhaps influence viewers in adopting more enlightened life style choices. Clearly they see their educational mission in entirely different lights from the traditional museum. For example, how they mount an exhibit on the topic of infectious disease in an urban environment? They would do surveys to attempt to define what people don't know and why they would like to know about the topic and then design an exhibit that focuses on the experiential learning for attendees rather than a static learning experience. They don't preserve the exhibition. They want attendees to come away with a new and practical insight from their museum experience. That's more important to him than the number of people who cross their doors (ie. standard metric of attendance within the traditional museum community). He'd rather have fewer one-time visitors and more repeat traffic for laboratory experiences and multi-media theaters. He thinks science centers can be a channel for public dissemination of research results.

Judy references the shift from institutions offering snapshot views of information (as done by museums and publishers) to finding new ways of presenting information in a broader context. He responds with a comment about science pulsing all around us, not dealing with factoids but dealing with the here and now.

Funding is a continuing issue for the museum community. LSC has about 15 different sources of revenue to depend upon rather than some national museums that are strictly dependent upon a single stream of funding from the government alone. Institutions have to be both "nice" as well as necessary; they must be relevant. They must combine entertainment (painless learning) with education (intensive learning).

2007-09-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

This next session is The Changing World of Online Reference; Alma Wills of Kaufman-Wills Group, Inc., is moderating and interviewing Jenny Wakler, currently Executive VP of Marketing with Credo Reference.

Walker opens with a discussion of the various types of reference content -- subject dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, books of quotations -- all of which are intended to save the time of busy people who need verification, explanations of jargon and/or acronyms, or a general overview of a core concept. Directories (which is what she says the Washington Post initiative is closest to) is another service. Users are trying to answer a quick question but with a desire for something definitive. Other times users are trying to figure out where to start in exploring a subject, whether with the help of a guide or without that intermediary. They browse, following whatever appears intriguing or relevant -- serendipity. The final category she references is games and puzzles (crosswords or a game of Scrabble).

Reference rooms serve as a gateway to a specific arena of knowledge; Credo Reference (her organization) is an online aggregated collection of reference works, launched in 1999 as Xrefer. The online environment encourages tight linking between various sources. She notes that her service must support both textual and visual learners. They have had to move from an existence as a free service to a subscription service over the course of the past eight years (hence the name change to Credo Reference in 2007). Key concerns are accessibility and findability of this information.

Q&A - Wills starts out making reference to the threat that Wikipedia may represent to a service such as Credo Reference. Walker notes that there are different types of reference works as previously mentioned and the currency possible in Wikipedia is not necessarily as critical as aspect of other types of reference content. Reference works don't always require constant updating, depending upon the type of content and/or subject matter covered.

What are the trends in this sector of publishing? It's all moving online and much of it is free. Walker notes that at one point, reference publishers could count on selling 2000 copies of a particular edition of a reference work and now that number seems to have fallen to 600-700 copies; the break-even point for a publisher may well be at the 1000 copies level. So many publishers are having to reconsider their activity in this arena. On the other hand, publishers have been able to repurpose their electronic content so many are finding subsets in niche areas to be profitable product options. She stresses however that the aggegator platforms are frequently valued in the marketplace because users really don't much care about publisher brand name. They just want the information without regard to whose product or service the item was pulled from.

Wills asks what criteria librarians use in making a decision to acquire a specific work or license a particular aggregation of content? Walker mentions suitability for a particular library in terms of the scope of the collection and the community being served. Usage of course is important but there aren't necessarily statistics gathered for books and reference works in the same way that gathering of statistics for journals has achieved. Walker references Project Counter as doing a lot of work in this area.

Reference works are sense-making tools for users? That's not sounding familiar to me from my coursework in library science. I suppose you could make a case for it but it isn't the way I usually think of reference publishing.

Value for publishers in allowing their content to be contained in an aggregated service such as Credo Reference? She suggests that publishers who have never particularly focused on selling into libraries (rather selling into a specific geographical region) might find Credo's service to be of value. She notes that publishers may benefit from linked content to a wider variety of resources that also reside on the platform, including those citations that appear at the end of an article in a reference work. So the value is in allowing the user to navigate across a broader body of information in fulfillment of pinpointing a good answer.

What about the way that the younger generation tends to depend on friends on a social network in locating an answer? Walker points out that using a Web-based resource is like shouting out to a whole new community of knowledge.

Publishers get compensated through royalties based on actual usage. If a publisher's database is included on the platform but never gets used, it would appear then that the publisher would not be paid a royalty from presence on that library's platform.

October Ivins inquires about inclusion of images in publisher reference works that have been migrated onto an online paid service. Walker says that isnt as much of a problem these days as it had been ten years ago.

Their links are generated through logical inference in many instances.

Change of speakers.

2007-09-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

Lunch was lively with discussions about peer review, the Ithaka report and the divide between book and journal publishing divisions. It's a good crowd with representation from such diverse organizations as the Massachusetts Medical Society, ProQuest, Sage Publishing, Thomson Scientific, Amigos and many more.

We're starting again; got to start a new session post!

2007-09-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

Representatives from the New York Times, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group (WSJ), and the Washington Post are here. We're hearing from the Times guy first.

Change is daunting for the "Grey Lady" but they are moving in new directions. Users want customization, they want to interact and comment, and they want exposure to diverse views. They began in 1996 with a very simple home page. Eleven years later, they've made some progress albeit probably not as rapid as the critics would think necessary. Initial years were fraught with battles; would the print side or the electronic side of the divided news staff predominate? Editors loathe to free up resources from print for the sake of digital enhancement. This divide has however diminished in size. Journalism online can be fun and perhaps even invigorating. The most immediate and compelling news in a 24/7 digital environment is demanding and has its own rules.

The Times launched six months ago a mobile site which is up to 7 million views (per month?). Other adversaries outside the standard news environment include CraigsList and Wikipedia as well as the now more generally accepted news bloggers. The Times has therefore partnered with outside providers to enhance the content they offer whether dealing with illness or dealing with leisure travel. He can't foresee the nature of the next five to ten years but he ends on a highnote with regard to the "aircraft carrier" that is the Times should be well positioned to respond.

Simon Alterman of Dow Jones is next up. They have of course just been acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which is supposed to be finalised by years end. An Evolving Concept of Information Usage is where he is beginning. Information got stored, users had to go somewhere to find it and access it but at present exponential growth of the digital information is making discovery of relevant information increasingly different. One used to search headlines for customer news, but of course, there significant issues with that approach. But nobody has that has their sole job. They seek information within a specific context. Access needs to be in the place where that information is needed in the workflow. Currently, we think of information more in the sense of "Is one of my clients in the news?" or "Might that company in the news be interested in my services?" How can I apply the news to the goal I need to achieve for my organization. PR professionals want to use text mining and visualization to display themes of interest and drill down to underlying content. So the current focus is to put the news where it is needed. How can Dow Jones use new technologies to create new value? Of course, you don't want the user to have to do all the work, particularly as customization and personalization add huge value. That's how he sees his organization surviving and thriving.

Jonathan Krim from the Washington Post is the third speaker. All the parrots within the Beltway community have mastered the same phrase which is "To the best of my knowledge" which is a light way of saying that they too are in the midst of change and have no hard answers or guaranteed paths to success. There are 3 things they try to be (#1 in providing local news, they want to be the main reference source for information on what's happening locally and the third is that they want to be the main hub for community exchange and debate).

They offer a service known as Local Explorer. First thing that you get is a map thathighlights local services but then you can also move into local home sales which offers the sale price, details about the property and then they direct you to the Wash Post real estate section. Local Explorer is something of a research tool that newspapers are positioned to offer. They can also point you to local crime reports, particularly difficults as jurisdictions frequently try to sit on this type of data. If a particular form of data lends itself to mapping, then the journalists want to provide the platform that will serve the community as a reference tool. It's a legitimate approach for a news organization to provide to its community. Get outside of just the data you're used to working with and try to add value through maximizing the depth of the data offered to the community you serve. The Post will add a local Blog directory because citizens see them as a reference source. Recently updated blogs, new blogs that have been created -- the Post will be giving publicity to the blogosphere. The Post will drive traffic to them and eventually the traffic will then be returned to the Post.

The Post will be working in the hyper-local space by offering in-depth coverage by local individual who actually lives in a particularly suburb or county (he shows the Loudoun country segment of their site which is particularly successful). That individual covers restaurants, places of worship, and school systems with depth of understanding previously not possible by low-level reporters (the most junior on staff usually) who were never really committed to the local community. He references the pain of trying to offer personalization to the individual; they've been banging their heads against this wall for years. However, he believes that this is the area that will offer the most opportunity for the news industry and they do have to figure it out. It just makes perfect sense.

Now we have the question and answer period; this year's format has allowed far more time for open discussion than others. One question is whether the local coverage that's done by individual local talent is getting much in the way of editorial oversight. Krim admits that the level of editorial input isn't as great for that local service as it might be for something that was actually going into the print edition. The guy from the Times admits that it is a problem for them as well (which was why he asked the question). Perhaps (and this is my own editorializing) we have to recognize that levels of editorial quality will fluctuate and will not necessarily be considered a value-laden activity?

Quickest engine of revenue is Internet advertising says the Washington Post representative when queried about monetization and economic models. You can't however get the same rates for Internet ads that you get for print ads and that's an issue. The Times representative agrees that they're growing revenue through that advertising stream but still about 86% of the Times' revenue is derived from the print advertisements. As internal budgets shift within the organization, that is going to be increasingly an issue as units have to compete. The Dow Jones representative mentions that they are likely to be testing whether ads in an online subscription product will be an acceptable revenue option for them. For all of these gentlemen, they have to combat the perception that the public has that news on the Web should be given out for free.

Now someone is inquiring about how newspapers drive usage in an online environment. What strategies are used in order to build the ad revenue necessary? If the little e-alerts are the only thing users are seeing (as opposed to scanning a printed front page), then what's the answer? One guy on the dais quips "Send out more of the little alerts". Another speaker indicates that they are working actively on building the interest fed to them through the blogosphere; additionally, he admits that they are looking into learning from experts in search engine optimization. He also talks about targeted behavioral marketing which he admits is a little creepy but it's definitely going to be part of the overall equation.

What's the role of email? The Times representative says it's a big one; they've been successful with the Times Today email which highlights the day's stories in a particular email format. It is hugely valuable to them, but resources devoted to it are inc omparison rather small. Pushing the news to people is important.

Someone asks about whether the brand identity is changing, noting that the Post talks about becoming a reference source-type site rather than talking about being primarily a news source. That may be happening to some extent but the paper doesn't want to lose either.

Hugely more costly to produce a print paper than it is to run a web site, says the guy from the Times. Much of what a print product requires is labor intensive (truck delivery as an example) but gauging the costs of producing the Web site are perhaps under-estimated if you consider the value of human contribution. Lots of people programming the code and that makes a difference; people used to print have to adjust to the idea that the code creation and technical elements of putting up the paper online is not necessarily immediate. Sometimes the coding takes alot of time and alot of money although the impression is that you're just moving around pixels.

Steve Abram asks about generational shifts; have we yet reached the tipping point where the digital is the primary vehicle as opposed to the supplement that one of the speakers suggested it might be. The speaker asks for the next question [laughter erupts]. The revenue lines are approaching each other much more rapidly than the readership lines apparently; they know it's coming but no one knows when. He believes in the utility of the print product but the younger generation will use the digital as their primary feed source. A little later, Abrams notes that none of the speakers referenced the importance of non-traditional news sources such as The Colbert Report or the Daily Show as a source of information for the younger generation.

What about multi-media in this environment? Are the papers hiring people with the specific skills necessary to produce high-quality multi-media content. Video, flash, other formats need to be incorporated into the systems but the training of the rising generation is lagging just a bit. We produce new journalists trained in silos (print, web, multi-media) and the cross skill set building isn't occurring as rapidly as perhaps might be necessary. Training on the job is taking place to help navigate them through the transition. Saying "I only type" or "I only do Web stuff" is not going to be an adequate response from their staff. A certain amount of partnering between newspapers and broadcasting organizations goes on to exchange content for online purposes.

Geoffrey Bildur follows up with a question about establishing authority or credibility in creating content. Again, "Next question, please?". What is the balance between authoritative and authenticity? This is a really difficult question for the panel. Point of view journalism is more valued than perhaps the professional journalistic community has previously been willing to grant. As the gentleman from the Post indicates, "This is going to be interesting to work out."
Another discussion erupts about the value contributed by the bloggers as opposed to the work of the professional journalist.

2007-09-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

A slightly delayed start this morning as we work through wireless access issues in the hotel.

The morning opened with a keynote from Chris Meyer, Chief Executive of Monitor Networks. His focus was discussion of the shift from the industrial economy to the information economy and what mechanisms or approaches might be adapted by scholarly publishers to survive and thrive. Meyer noted that the shift in economic paradigms meant that we are living through a period of waiting until new institutional entities and legal mechanisms emerge to smooth and simplify the economic operations. He noted that more value is created in making new markets rather than through trying to shift market share. Meyer noted that successful entities such as Linux Red Hat and Google had emerged as leaders because they had mastered Seth Godin's mantra of "You give it away until you charge for it" -- Google giving away search and discover while subsidizing it through the advertising revenue and Linux Red Hat providing the missing support services for open source software.

The key question for the audience for Meyer was what kind of incentives might be offered to encourage participation. There will be some communities where participants forge ahead in creating the value while other communities, similar in scope, languish from lack of interest. What is the magic ingredient that can gently encourage as many people as possible to actively contribute their knowledge. No sure answer has been identified.

That will have to do for now. Once I've processed the depth of his comments, I'll add an update on this.

The audience is clearly ready to interact with the speakers so the next session which will be moderated by Judith Turner will build the interest. Her speakers are drawn from the news industry, an industry that is facing increasing competition from new entrants even as they attempt to navigate the transition from a well-entrenched print product to the digital dissemination of news content.

Whoops, we're getting started; gotta' run

2007-09-04T11:57:00.001-07:00

I'm so looking forward to again blogging the SSP Top Management Roundtable. Just look at this year's program. Differing from previous years is the format for presentations which will make the blogging perhaps more challenging as it sounds as if there will be few if any powerpoints! The format, as I understand it, is largely given over to individual interviews with such outstanding speakers as Stephen Abram, Rex Hammock, and Jenny Walker with an eye to investigating the approaches adopted by other content industry sectors (news, television, B2B publishing, etc.). It should also make possible livelier interaction by attendees. The venue is once again Philadelphia's own Four Seasons, certainly one of the Northeast's great hotels. The weather is outstanding at the moment -- a sunny 85 degrees without too much humidity.

Wonderful!

2006-09-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Official Description:

Closing Keynote:

The Stamp of Truth: Brands in the Marketplace of Ideas
Paul Duguid, Adjunct Professor, University of California Berkeley

Technological innovations have continuously raised hope that everyone who chooses may be his or her own publisher. Faced with this new-found openness, old, closed monopolies - newspapers, publishing houses, television stations - will fall away and a pure marketplace of ideas will emerge to be, as Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested, "the best test of truth." It hasn't quite turned out like that. Bloggers who champion the overthrow of "old" or "mainstream" media also value the credibility that established media provide them. This paradox suggests that getting ideas out into the world may be more complex than sticking them in cyberspace. Indeed, acting on too naive a view of the old institutions may tend neither to replace nor to reform them, but only to enhance them. Paul suggests that to understand "the power of thought to get itself accepted," we can think less about "markets" for ideas and more about "supply chains" and brands, and, in attempting to go it "alone" - from "home" or elsewhere - to consider not just independence but interdependence.

My live blogging notes:

Indicates that he's going to talk about brands.

Information wants to be free
problematic freedom
information in chains
chains & brand wars
The Search for Quality

Lively opening with humor but he notes that there is a global anxiety with the issue of quality. This is a segue from our earlier discussion in the intellectual property segment regarding the quality "watermark" publishers feel they provide.

The market vs. hierarchy (classic economic forms). Current culture -- hierarchy bad; markets good. He touches as well on the same network effect that Kevin Guthrie opened with. Sometimes networks operate like markets and sometimes like hierarchies.

Info-fundamentalists (information wants to be free). Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, where is the knowledge we have lost in information." TS Eliot. (verify that I got it right).

Paul Otlett and the "burden of the book" - need to manage somehow to elicit the information from the book and leave all the unnecessary padding, extraneous material behind. (Hard to blog when the man has such a humorous delivery and you're laughing too hard to type. Story of dealing w/ a historian researching cholera when they used to soak mail in vinegar in order to "fumigate" it before delivery in a town outside the quarantine zone. You get that "information" in the physical environment, but wouldn't necessarily pick on that in a digitized environment. "All cretans are liars." (couldn't type fast enough to get source of the quote). A Cretan cannot testify to his own veracity. Documents cannot tell you how to read them (sense of irony, tone of sarcasm, etc.) Information doesn't stand up on its own.

Marketplace of ideas Refers to news stories out of Google (where you can't just rely on the algorithm; must add in additional context). His slide reads "Not so independent?" and shows painting of Pygmalion and Galatea. Institutions become invisible when they're most effective and efficient. Y'know he's so good and so glib, you really need this man's slides to get the full sense of what he's saying. Old hierarchies begin to break down - shows table indicating how IBM declined and rose again (Again, referring back to Kevin talking about the turnaround of IBM).

Accidental branding "I didn't really know what a brand was, but it became evident that we had created a brand - Denis Carter (Intel). Everyone putting Intel Inside on their boxes. Compaq having to fight back promoting the semiconductor company at the expense of Compaq's brand (Compaq) Dell, intel, Windows logo -- all these people trying to hold on to importance of their brand.

Accidental un-branding (Who knows who makes the disk drive in their PC? Only two people raise their hand in the room. ) Yet critical element of the operation.

Books in chain. What's the nature of a book -- he shows two separate definitions. - notes that the writer isn't given precedence in the supply chain shown in the lengthier, more detailed definition.

1518 -- first printing patent

1557 -- The stationers' charter; "binders, stitchers, sellers, publishers, etc" printers v. booksellers. Wouldit be the printers or the booksellers who would control in this environment?

1694/5 End of that licensing model "publisher's profit". Change to intellectual property thinking

1709 Statute of Anne (the author's due) printers v. booksellers didn't want the other to get control of the pile and thought they could themselves control the third party, the author.

Author's role - (quote from Daniel Defoe "injurious piece of violence and grievance to all Mankind -- robs Men of the due reward..." Publisher offers imprimateur (sp?)

Post modern flights? "The stationers made 'Shakespeare." - Erne

Who "brands" When you go to a play is it due to author director producer actor? When you go to a movie? Who knows the name of the author of the last movie they saw? Television another example. Music -- composer condustor orchestra soloists? Different markets for Different products the key name will change.

Whose brand is it then? This came up in the intellectual property discussion segment. The brand name is really the journal rather than anyone else in the supply chain. The dynamics and tensions of the relationships shift in our business.

How do you buy expertise? Lawyers, doctors, etc. Certification by ABA, AMA, etc. "The market for lemons" Akerlof's academia "education and the labor markets themselves have their own "Brand names." Brands as a form of validatin information are very important.

Moves over to Google. "incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly orgnaizae searchable online." incredibly condescdending quote from Page & Brin. translates to we'll help librarians or we'll replace librarians. Sought out the name libraries to recruit for their book initiative (Harvard, Bodleian, etc.)

Supply chain - academics - univerities - libraries -- publishers. Refer back to point in Postmodern flights above. Everyone is struggling to achieve the preeminent position (note: Libraries as DRM mechanisms for librarians, what a great line!) Supply chains are falling apart and being re-engineered. Who will be the last person standing.

Not a marketplace of ideas - a network of ideas. We form networks and again they may either be like marketplaces or like hierarchies. Plusses and minuses - tensions in our chain. Journals provide quality assurance but there are some hesitations about that. Can turn into monopolistic practices. Can't tell us how the fight is going to resolve itself. Visibility is going to be a key element to survival.

Nature's hatchet job on Encyclopedia Britannica in comparing w/ Wikipedia is an outstanding classic sense of this battle. (Bios on wikipedia may or may not be any good but they pop up third in the results listing. EB would be better but its not visible.)

Applause from audience is really quite enthusiastic! Enjoyed him immensely.

2006-09-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER - Please Bear in Mind

Just a very quick post to remind any reader of this blog that I am in fact blogging and may not be quoting the content entirely as presented. I've done my best, but...

There is some truth to the rumor that I was frightened by punctuation marks as a small child and have never fully resolved the trauma. In many instances, if it seems as if there OUGHT to be a period at a particular point in the blogging and if the next word actually begins with a capital letter, please be charitable and mentally apply the appropriate punctuation.

Contacting me through the Society of Scholarly Publishing will allow me to correct any truly egregious errors in my rendition.

2006-09-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

Official Description:

Uncommon Ground? Intellectual Property in a Flat World

Ed Colleran, Publisher Relations, Copyright Clearance Center, Moderator
Thinh Nguyen, Counsel, Science Commons
William Strong, Partner, Kotin Crabtree and Strong, LLP
Ben White, Copyright Compliance and Licensing Manager, British Library

As the Internet has opened up the global distribution of content, publishers and libraries are facing changing attitudes and needs of readers and scholars who want access whenever and wherever, at no cost in this digitally flat world. How is the concept of intellectual property changing, nationally and internationally? How will new open access legislation and the growing popularity of depositing pre-publication content in institutional repositories affect a publisher's copyrights and business models? Does the trend for libraries to reshape their role to include the management of e-collections, e-reserves, and institutional repositories collide with copyright? What new rights and licensing models can we expect next?

My Live Blogging Notes:

"What are we to make of copyright in a world of infinite redistribution" - was it Bob yesterday or was it AKMA in the discovery tools session who said that?

Plenty of challenges - e-reserves, institutional repositories, open access, and the new legislation popping up all over the world.

CCC distributed 112 million dollars last year to publishers, an increase of 13 percent. Honor systems

Bill Strong, Kotin Crabtree and Strong

Enforcement programs in which he's been involved. going after copyshops, docdel cos, and other more exotic types. Major names (ELS, Sage, ACS, various university presses) who've been involved. Doc del providers who charge cc fees w/o paying it back to the publishers. "Whenever we sue a non-compliant shop, they're always surprised...." ActiMed (swiss based company) not charging c'right fees; suit filed in both Switzerland and in the US.

Other areas more problematic -- univ libs in this country and attempts to serve users (via the Internet) w/o verifying rights. Some success in changing their behaviors. somewhat shielded by the eleventh amendment. customer relation concerns make this a very difficult area to handle. Acknowledges that the bulk of the library community very concerned w/ copyright and trying to work w/in the confines of the law but otehrs push the envelope.

E-reserves and coursepack activity. In-house online coursepacks to be expected over the course of time - essentially indistinguishable from e-reserves. This is a growing area of concern. More and more widespread. There will be a lawsuit filed in the near future on this one because the parameters need to be established and publishers feel that this is a significant troublespot. His stance is that ILL is limited to bricks and mortar, print artifacts and is clearly not intended to apply to the digital environment.

Questions arise over what copyright protection extends to one version (say 90% of the final version of an article) placed in an IR and the final version as distributed by the publisher. Properly crafted copyright assignment/release form should protect the publisher in this instance.

Thinh Nguyen, Counsel, Science Commons

He's speaking from not exactly the opposing side but provide different perspective of what's needed in this new environment. He will speak about Creative Commons, Science Commons focuses on policy.

Creative Commons founded 2002; basically open-source licensing models (GNU is his example). Legal format, metadata format (machine readable) and human readable (set in terms appropriate to the lay person). They see themselves as accidental tourists in scholarly publishing; 30 law journals are using their creative commons license, PLoS is using creative commons license. Univ libraries are using creative commons licenses for some activities. Researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust are encouraged to make their research available via the Creative Commons license.

Scholar's Copyright Project - SPARC author addenda used to reserve some rights to the author. Right to archive in the IR after a certain embargo period is one such right. CCommons is still working on building this. Berlin, Bethesday, Budapest signatory.

Forces that he sees going on that require creative solutions. (1) Technological - basic problem is that there's lots of information. References the haves and the have-nots in the context of the Parable of the Talents. Need for immediacy of access in the research environment. Technology allows use of data to move towards uncovering new factual information. Now you can have a computer read stuff for you and uncover the patterns that used to require human effort to read and process. Time-efficiency of data-mining but we're slowing that process because so much of the literature under copyright and search engines can't do that w/o permission from the copyright holder.

Make facts available as a form of metadata (computer readable form) is one way out of this dilemma.

(2) Economic forces. Rising costs. (cites ARL statistics with regard to pricing of scholarly journal material). There are marginal audiences who cannot access content as a result. North-South divide in universities; forcing researchers from other countries to come here to the US because that's the only way they can get access to the literature they need. This brain drain is an on-going issue on an international level.

NIH public access policy (ended w/ voluntary recommendation of deposit) compliance just over 4 percent. References proposed legislation in 2003 (Sabo) and in 2005 (?) and the 2006 Corwyn-Lieberman proposal (doesn't look like it will pass). Clearly there is an on-going push.

The Wellcome Trust is requires the open-access deposit in PubMed (after 6 mos.) for the research it funds. This goes into effect next month so effects to be seen...

Need to extend the reach of the research they are funding.

Ben White, British Library

"Things happen differently where I'm from" and he states up front that he's not a lawyer nor is he a librarian. Digitization project w/ Microsoft for Xmillion pages that will go up under a creative commons style arrangement. They will be hosting a UK PubMed style repository. All of their projects (and he named a couple) indicate that they understand the value of the intellectual property to the UK economy but also the need to maximize access. They are active in a variety of sectors (publishing, database producer, etc.) so they understand the various pressures.

We're living in a paradoxical world ( a hybrid world) -- wrestling w/ idea of "digital lockdown" even as we don't want to yield up the rights and exceptions that serve a practical purpose and preserve a balance that is good for all. Issues include: DRM, anti-circumvention methods, commoditization of knowledge down to the most granular levels, contracts that prevent access (ie more restrictive in their terms than international copyright would allow).

Update by author: I realized that my comment to the panelists may not have been properly stated. I do believe that education of users is a key element here and I do think that we need to do more in that regard. The second portion of my statement however (and this may not have been stated clearly) is that we need to simplify what the rules are -- what we expect the user to understand and abide by. The practices currently in place that serve the publishers and the librarians are not simple or sensible or clear to users. Users will conform more readily if the rules we ask them to abide by are sensible and practical and perhaps most importantly, time-efficient!

2006-09-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

SO what do I think I heard today? This isn't intended to be polished. I'm thinking about this at about 11:30 at night.

We're operating in a highly competitive environment. If we're to be faulted for anything, it's that, for the most part, we're not thinking or behaving like entrepreneurs in this competitive environment. (That "we", by the way, refers to content providers as a very general population). We need to be nimble, able to adjust our services almost on demand.
The researchers and scholars scattered across the various panels indicated that they are seeing the gaps in the services offered to them. They realize that there are publishing alternatives and explore those alternatives for the sake of their research and academic endeavors. Some disciplines are tentative in their approaches (Brent Shaw, the classicist in Session #2, talking about adopting the working papers approach already proven in the STM sector.) You get some communities of practice that are moving ahead w/ new collaborative approaches as Bob Hanisch in Session #4 illustrates. Should content providers be looking for a community of interest or a community of practice whose transition they can support? Show willingness to support their efforts and act as a partner!
The competitive environment on a global scale (think about expanding Asia-Pacific markets) means that others will go ahead and do all the things that content providers are seemingly slow to do. Governments will move forward (and some of them, like the Japanese, are incredibly well focused on achieving the prize). One wonders if we've forgotten how the Japanese revolutionized the automotive industry because of their willingness to address the interest in and need for fuel-efficient cars. Scholars are looking for time-efficient tools.
Tomorrow we'll be thinking about intellectual property as well as hearing from Paul DuGuid. More to come.

2006-09-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

Official Description:

Discovery Tools: Replanting the Tree of Knowledge

Jill O'Neill, Director of Planning and Communication, NFAIS, Moderator
Reverend AKM Adam, Professor of New Testament, Seabury Theological Seminary
Robert Hanisch, Project Manager, US Virtual Observatory, Space Telescope Science Institute
Amanda Spiteri, Product Marketing Director, Elsevier

The current digital information landscape provides more avenues to content than ever before: distributed and federated data, sophisticated human and machine search, specialized portals, wikis, and blogs. How are traditional and new indexing services blended to maximize discovery? How are researchers and educators navigating disciplinary and geographic boundaries? What is the yield of increased interactivity, in research labs, classrooms, hospitals, field work - any location? Are content creator and content user expectations matching up along the way? Where are publishers breaking new ground? What do users envision for the future? This panel discussion will encompass the entire spectrum of discovery in scholarship in today's digital environment.

My Not-Quite-Live Blogging Notes (compiled in a joint initiative between me at the podium and Judy Luther of Informed Strategies in the back of the room...Collaborative effort!):

The intent behind this panel was to spotlight the various channels available to users in the current networked environment -- they have the highly functional traditional indexing services (such as Scopus from Elsevier), the portals developed by communities of practice such as the Virtual Observatory that Bob Hanisch will be discussing, and the view from an educator and researcher in the humanities, specifically theology, where available tools are more limited.

Amanda Spiteri (Director Product Marketing Elsevier)

Amanda briefly delineates the profile of an average user of Scopus (36-45 year old researcher w/ variety of pressures and responsibilities in terms of productivity of research, teaching, and mentoring/advising undergrads and grad students. They are faced literally with a plethora of potential resources full of electronic full text (logos pop up for most of the significant providers). How does the researcher maneuver in this context and perhaps more immediately of concern to the audience, how do the libraries themselves direct users to appropriate resources. Increasingly complex automation to build and sustain. Note as well that users rarely move past the first two pages of results.

Quotes Charlie Mingus -- "Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity!"

NOTE: That's the real issue. Our systems are still far too complex. Not too complex to understand if users were willing to work at it a bit but they aren't and we have to re-create the situation. AKMA echoes later on the same difficulty with interfaces! You can have complex arcane systems or the alternative of Google regurgitating oceans of mixed relevant and irrelevant stuff.

One interesting note from my perspective. She shows the volume of referrals to Elsevier content from a variety of sites which are in this order (1) Elsevier customer sites (2) PubMed (3) other ELS sites such as Cellpress.com (4) Crossref and in fifth place (5) the search engine referrals including Google. She does say that's a growth area but still not as big as folks might think.

She presents some of the functionality of Scopus to the audience. Recently Elsevier announced the availability of additional source materials indexed through Scirus (content housed in institutional repositories). They're making this additional material available to existing customers w/ Scopus at no additional cost. Tabs can be customized to reflect the institution's branding of the content. They've added RSS to the tool, but admit this is only the first step and they expect to go further.

WHere will Web 2.0 take them? Unclear but she references Connotea, Zotero, folksonomies, social software, etc. -- ELS appears at least to be aware of what's going on out there in the marketplace which may mean that they will implement into their services once they can prove the value of the mechanisms for the demographic they serve.

Robert Hanisch, US Virtual Observatory

Astronomy is one of the first disciplines to pioneer epublishing. Underlying data links to ejournals through a system of persistent identifiers. These services point to each other.

Data deluge – the virtual observatory is about data discovery, access and integration and combing data with computational services. Metadata and interoperability are the key words.

Virtual Observatory (VO) in Astronomy includes basic data, simulations, analysis and interpretation and name resolution services. Note that these aren't discoverable via standard text-based search tools. Name resolution services in this field are particularly of interest or concern given that naming conventions across the discipline are varied. The tool they've developed uses a unique position in the sky rather than a multitude of terms. The VO is a mediator that knows which archive is appropriate and where to route a query. This is a portal that provides access to all the resources located in different areas.

The new understanding is through data integration which uses metadata standards to support discovery with distributed applications, web services and distributed storage with authentication and authorization.

There is a data preservation problem as images are stored but not the underlying data sets. He says ".jpg and .tif formats are not a good basis for deeper research in this field." (expresses exasperation w/ available tools) To correct it they want to integrate digital data management into the publication process (data capture, review metadata tagging and validation, storage). Note that there's a pilot program for publishers to participate in this process.

Digital data discovery and access is essential for the research community.

Reverend Adam (AKMA), Seabury Theological Seminary

What’s available in the humanities – or the lack thereof – is depressing in contrast to the STM arena. Database discovery falls into 2 categories: unfriendly (one-size-fits-none) database interfaces or Google. The user community in theology is at a distinct disadvantage.

Twin issues of ease of use and delivering full capabilities even if they might disrupt established business models. There is a tidal wave of users depending on e-first and scholarly publishers must prepare for this change by changing their approach to publishing.

He stresses w/ a certain amt of vehemence that publishers need to move towards capturing content that is not considered traditional (audio, video representations, things that don't "parse neatly". More vehemence regarding expectations of ease of use, fine grained search, (missed one item) and durable archiving. He suggests that we learn how to derive micro-profits in a mega-use world. Deal with copyright issues and concerns (this comes up on the Friday segment). "Publishers should do it in the face of our retrograde tendencies!"

(Note: I speak w/ him before he leaves and he assures me he'll be blogging about what he's heard here today! Ought to be VERY interesting to see what he took away from this event.)

Question for this segment had to do with browsing and serendipity and loss thereof in an electronic environment. Panelists all agree that this is an issue. Bob points out that browsing as an activity is getting harder and harder to do and research is tending to "stove-pipe". This is an issue certainly.

At the cocktail reception that closes out the day, I'm chatting w/ someone who reiterates the gap between humanities and STM (not just w/ regard to discovery tools but with all kinds of full text as well). This is such a significant issue. Requires that we do SOMETHING about it.

2006-09-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

Official Description:

Global Exposure: New and Emerging Models and Strategies from Bangkok, Tokyo, Seattle, and Brooklyn

Dan Tonkery, Vice President of Business Development, EBSCO Information Services, Moderator
John Burns, Manager, eBook Conversion & Creation Technologies, Amazon.com (cancelled participation)
Pote N. Lee, Chairman, iGroup
Asako Omi, cofounder, J-STAGE
Bob Stein, Director, Institute for the Future of the Book

Marketing and technology innovations occur at the edges, where societies meet and industries collide. And disruptive technologies often breed best in the slip-stream of traditional R&D activity. In this session we'll look at some inventive and influential activities from the "off ramp" side of scholarly publishing, including new trade routes in Asia from the perspective of a multi-national information provider, the development of a nationally supported infrastructure for the publishing and archiving of e-journals in Japan, novel technologies being incubated at Amazon that will take us beyond Search-Inside-the-Book, and a powerful and transformative open source authoring system, called Sophie, from a small band of researchers on the East River.

My Live Blogging Notes (Society for Scholarly Publishing, Top Management Roundtable):

Dan Tonkery of EBSCO opens with a few slides from his recent overseas travels (China and Korea specifically) discussing global exposure and the "appetite for information". Expectation that there will be a forthcoming volume of papers of increasing quality from these institutions. He notes that overseas libraries are better at marketing their resources as gauged by the display of posters and advertiseements directing users to the appropriate tool/service/product. Awareness of the Thomson Scientific journal impact factor as a metric for productivity and publication. Awareness of open-access as well. STM information worldwide is generating high volume activity. Dan predicts a major sea-change coming out of the Asia Pacific region.

Pote Lee, iGroup

Overview of the Asia Pacific marketplace and iGroup's approach to that market, the challenges, the trends and the solutions. Lee's background is as an engineer and he is the chair of iGroup, representing publishers overseas in this market. Employee base of 400 serves academic and corporate institutions.

Overview

Asia is very broad geographical region, highly diverse in a variety of ways -- linguistically (with multiple dialects even within a specific nation), religious, political, cultural differences do exist throughout. Economically Asia Pacific region has a variety of economies (Aus, NZ, Japan are high income nations; China and Korea qualify as middle income, etc.) Main market is the academic institution. Research institutions are less common in that region and corporate customer base is further behind (although starting to pick up). His personal view is that India will be the most important market in another five-ten years, surpassing the levels of China at the present time.

Only a few nations have official formal consortia management entities; iGroup has found it useful in certain locations to establish "virtual consortia" in areas where the concept is not widespread. The idea of a consortia differs with regard to negotiations and fee-structures. Demanding environment -- vendors may have to negotiate for purchases that are only hovering at the thousand dollar mark (very different from experience with Western library consortia).

Infrastructure in Japan is very robust; other countries' infrastructure are less so. In China for example ISPs are actually operated in large part by the government. Speed of access may be significantly slower because the infrastructures may be limited in what they can handle.

His organization advises customer base in what publications may be most useful to them, depending upon national priorities. They also do training on the various resources. Translate manuals into the local languages. Support for information literacy and usage is key in these markets as is offering various forms of professional development and continuing education for the library and information professionals. The range of library budgets also requires that his organization provide technological support for library automation.

Challenges faced? Only 3-5% are actually buying due to budgetary constraints so growing the revenue requires an ongoing commitment on the part of both vendor and publisher.

Asako Omi, Professor, Tokai University

J-Stage Japan Science and Technology Information Agregator, Electronic. Used by 380 academic societies. 330 journals, 98 conference proceedings, 200,000 articles. 450,000 downloads per month. The aim is dissemination of journal content from Japanese academic societies. All abstracts are free. Full Text access is controlled by individual participating publishers (access/authentication controls are in place). Language demands: Abstracts English 62% 48% for journals. Also mix of English and Japanese publications. 57% of the articles on the platform are accessible w/o charge. The disciplines covered span the spectrum of disciplines.

JST LInk Center (subsystem of JStage) enables linking between e-journals and bibliographic databases. Cross Ref Chemport STN PubMed Google (lots of traffic in referrals) PubMed appears to be the largest and most important referralsource. More than half of the traffic is directed to JST from standard A&I services.

Moving to add new functions (alerts when article is cited; and COUNTER compliance)

JSTAGE has Journal @rchive. Full text pdfs from major journals published in Japan. Expect to cover 500 titles in five years. All abstractsand most full text content available for free. Use the archive to make Japanese intellectual heritage more visible and attract youth to the various scientific-tech professions. Content dates back as far as the 1880's.

Japan has focused on developing their science and technology policy over the past ten years and will continue over the course of the next five. Increasing allocation of government funding to the sciences and preserved even in periods of economic constraints in other forms of government funding. Hope to achieve more efficient and effective management of government R&D and break-up any existing institutional or operational bottlenecks.

Mission is promotion of R&D from basic research to commercialization w/ particular emphasison the creation of new technology and (2) to improve infrastructure. Hence the importance of these STM information activities.

Live demo of Journal @rchive

Bob Stein, Institute for the Future of the Book

Locating a book inside of a network is a critical activity. Without Gods: Towards a history of atheism. Author is thinking out his process online at his blog and the readers of his blog are becoming collaborators in the development of his text. This is one way of increasing value and visibility of the text.

Author of the Hacker Manifesto has a new book two-thirds completed and wanted to put it online. He writes in paragraphs, sections, chapters and wanted input (comments and other forms of annotation) to display in parallel with his text. Comments may appear even as you are reading online, giving a sense that the book is alive.

Two experiments in moving the book from a less static form to a more fluid form of discursive process.

References a work from the '90's in which he was involved where the creator was introducing Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" to audience (musical concepts, scoring displayed as music is played, instruments separated out from full work) It was a linear process and the original creator was leftout of the process and ever since Stein has wanted "to create an authoring environment that would allow creative people to assemble robust and elegant documents without having to resort to extensive programming. (Hence Sophie) Tool uses what appears to be Ajax technology to drag and drop modular elements of the work (text, images, etc.) Done in small talk which is an object-oriented language. Demos mechanism for going to a url to pick up a video clip (not housed on his machine) and embed that element into the page of the book for subsequent users. Sophisticated layout of elements on the page. Clickng on word in page launches music and/or a timeline. Teachers and students in higher education will have the means whereby they can express ideas in new ways. Document is created in an XML format so with some limited intervention Google will be able to index the content published in this format.