The Web Difference

The business school is now offering a 2 + 2 admissions program, which permits college juniors to apply for admission. If accepted, the students work for two years before they matriculate at the business school. For a program of this type, good marketing is essential because most college juniors are likely unaware that they could apply and be accepted to an MBA program while still in college. Obviously I’m not privy to their full advertising strategy, but I’ve seen a bunch of their banner ads on Facebook. Seems like a pretty good way to get the word out to a group of digital natives that is probably not visiting the HBS admissions site at this stage of their academic careers.

This is an, ahem, provocative article that worries that the entertainment industry’s chosen vehicle for delivering content is going to be given preference over all else.

nbsp;Ask.com has implemented many new features that they hope will increase its position in the search engine space. These include automatically including things like images, event listings, news results, and interestingly an encyclopedia entry, that relate(s) to your search term. Today was the first time I noticed the encyclopedia feature and thinking it was neat, clicked on it. I honestly expected to be taken to the Britannica site. To my surprise, when I clicked on the link I was directed to the wikipedia page for my search term.

After the initial surprise passed the first question that came to my mind was: Why did I expect to be taken to the Britannica page? Am I a digital-natives impostor? I struggled with this guilty feeling for awhile before I began writing this post. Maybe, I thought, I still (somewhere in the back of my mind) think that a “real” encyclopedia is something published by someone other than me, or you, or anyone I know for that matter. Maybe I thought wikipedia lacked “real” credibility. But this wouldn’t do, I didn’t want to think that I was a traitor to my digital-native brothers and sisters. I had think of another rationalization for my thoughts.

The only thing I could come up with is this: It might be that wikipedia entries are so unique that people tend to refer to them as just that: wikipedia entries, not encyclopedia entries. Maybe Wikipedia has gained that coveted market position that only companies (product lines) like, Xerox, Kleenex, Q-tip, and most recently Google have attained. That is, the only (or most frequent) way that society refers to the good your company provides is by referring to it as a “your company name,” or even turning your company name into a verb. It is a “Kleenex” and you can “google” something. It is not a stick with cotton on the by Q-tip and it is not a search powered by Google (for the most part). Now it is a “wiki-entry,” not an encyclopedia entry on wikipedia.

Has wikipedia attained this level of marketing, or am I merely rationalizing my treason?

Library of Congress Reference Librarian Thomas Mann has a long, detailed and fierce argument against the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. He is quite specific about what will be lost to scholars with the Working Group’s more loosey-goosey, bottom-up approach.

1:05: Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We have guests today. 1. Kim, The head of Harvard’s Library. 2. Admitted students 2011. Introductions all around.

1:10: The future of (law) libraries. Palfrey is going to lecture for the first few minutes.

Do we think about libraries differently now because of the web? Consider three perspectives: 1. What is the role of the student? Digital natives (students) approach information differently than in the past 2. What is the role of a teacher? 3. What is the role of the law school library?

1:15:
Section 1: Students
Digital natives born after 1980. Things about the digital natives that may affect how we think about libraries: 1. The notion of “connective-ness”. In any given setting we are getting information from all angles. Leads to multitasking. 2. We perceive information as being of a digital nature, as opposed to analog. 3. Most important is the movement from consumers to creators. In the past, the only person doing cataloging in the library was a librarian, now the web could enable anyone do the cataloging.

1:20:
Pressures that come from this. Section 2: Teachers (Professionals)
How is the job of the teacher evolving to adapt the digital age? What are the “literacies” that teachers should strive to teach students? There is a huge gap between skills in the digital age (digital gap).
How do students and teachers connect? Is it appropriate to be friends with teachers on FB? How do we use emergent tools?

Section 3: The Harvard Law School Library
Information: There is a reorientation of what it is that the library is providing, Digital information. Does the Law School have an obligation to change how it presents its information? E.g. Open Access

In the world of non-rivalrous good, is there a need for constructive scarcity?

How would a digital library interact with copyright? If you spend all of the money on books, you own some at the end of the day. However, if you spend all the money on digital access, you may not be collecting anything. If someone turns the switch off, you don’t have the physical books anymore. You may be left with nothing.

How do we fund the credible creation of information? Should we partner with Google to digitize the library? Is this a good arrangement for libraries? Will this info be searchable to the public? Kim: only one million (7%) of books in Harvard are being scanned because Harvard is only scanning books not in copyright and a there are a lot of fragile or cumbersome works that Google will not scanned. The million works copied by Google will be searchable by Google library project and a “gold disc”, with the works digitized, may be created for Harvard to distribute as they see fit. Very secretive.

What is the role of those who work in libraries? Should it be different from the card catalog role of the past? Should libraries be copyright activists?

Palfrey: Libraries should continue to do what libraries did in the past and pair with new technologies. End of Lecture portion.

1:35
First, what would Grafton of the New Yorker say about the lecture? The digital revolution is helpful but the books will remain. He would says that it is a difference of degree or an addition to library - not a replacement. A lot of stress is placed on the physical nature of libraries. You can find things out be physically touching the books that you can’t find by digital means.

1:40
The annotations are on the physical pages. His view of the library experience is more of a museum experience. Do you go to a museum for different purposes than a library? Shopping v. Appreciating.
Libraries purposefully invest in the aesthetics of themselves. They make themselves nice study areas with high ceilings.
Information can be found in different ways. The quality of the paper for example may indicate that it is a credible book.

1:45
Museum v. Library reveals the difference between the lay person and the historian. Makes us think about who the users are. Scholars will still go to libraries but therefore what?

1:50
All students use the digital form of works when they are available. The Harvard Law Review is the only example we can think of that actually needs the physical copy.

1:55
The meta data about the design of the book, the fact that it is at the book store and not out of print, the quality of books, etc can only be found in the physical form.
There is a mystical nature about books: Books signal knowledge. There is a long history of books being sacred knowledge.

2:00
Distinction of forms. The WSJ is created in a series of digital files then it is out-puted in two ways, the newspaper and the digital form.

2:05
Browsing and bookshelves are different online than in the analog world. But it is still there say DW. For example, “people who like this also like…” is an example of a digital bookshelf.

Push-back on DW’s article. DW insists that the the staying power of libraries is being stressed by the author, but maybe not. Maybe the author just got carried away with his writing.

2:10
What about the comfort of a book? You can’t curl up with your laptop. People will continue to want the physical form of the book.

Imagine you are designing the library of the future. What would be the attributes?
-Does it need a building? Yes, with tables and chairs.
-Reporters? No. Unless you are on law review or the reporters are really old.
-Librarians. Yes. But what are their roles? Helping research. Navigators. Experts. Do they have to be physically there? Yes.
-Digital Rights and prints.
-Physical books.
-We don’t need law reviews or anything that is categorized on Hine or Westlaw
-AV center
-Computers, really big screens
-Printers, pay for printers
-May want to hold off for quite awhile to see what the next technology is.
-What about the History, Prestige?

2:30
Is copyright law a road block to great libraries? It seems like there should be some sort of first sale doctrine in the digital library. Licenses would probably take then place of copyright.

Remember the next two classes are switched. Marketing is tomorrow. Come in with one example of really good or really bad web marketing.

Interesting piece up on TechCrunch over the weekend about file sharing / net neutrality in Japan. Full story here. It seems that the four Japanese ISPs have made an agreement with copyright holders to warn users on their first “offense”, temp bans on a second offense, and at some point perma bans. Details are sketchy but more info is over at Torrent Freak.

Sure, having your file sharing uploads slowed isn’t fun (and there certainly are a lot of legal uses of protocols like BitTorrent) but having ISPs in the business of shutting down access for file sharing seems like an even more dangerous precedent on the net than a lack of packet neutrality.

Every tag is a bookshelf.

A new bill in the Kentucky state legislature would ban anonymous speech in web forums, ostensibly in response to online harassment and “cyberbullying.” The bill would require forum posters to register their real name, address and e-mail with the forum. All forum posts would include the poster’s full name. Under the bill, any forum operator who allowed users to post anonymously would face liability.

The anti-anonymity bill seems to have arisen to some extent from the controversy over forums such as JuicyCampus.com and Auto Admit. Some are concerned that under current law – particularly Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – forum operators are immune from liability for their posters’ comments and the posters often are anonymous and difficult to track down. Thus, it can be difficult for plaintiffs to find someone to sue based on the postings.

This seems to me to be an example of lawmakers recognizing that the web is different – and, further, that these differences are bad and must be stopped. The bill would remove the protection of anonymity from certain forms of online speech, which correspondingly would suppress instances of speech that only would occur if the speakers believed they enjoyed the protection of anonymity. Online speech would track closer to real-world speech, which offers little chance for anonymity.

For more information, the Technology Liberation Front blog has an interesting discussion of the First Amendment ramifications of the bill.

The music industry is now lobbying for a file-sharing surcharge to compensate rights-holders for music shared online. It will involve ISPs collecting say $5/month from its broadband users.

It seems unlikely to me that this proposal willl be accepted by ISPs or the general public. There is no distinction made between broadband users who download music intensively and those who do not engage in such activities. Seems as if the music industry is making the general public responsible for their drop in CD sales and the increase in music piracy on the web.

I really liked the Rolling Stone article on how Obama is using the Web. It makes the case that the campaign has figured out how to break the traditional top-down command structure of campaigns.  FWIW, the article accords well with the problems I saw in the Dean campaign: Lots of online enthusiasm but no consistent way to turn it into feet on the street that can reach beyond the online enthusiasts. (The Dean campaign was working on that issue — it also viewed itself as a “mouse and shoe leather” campaign — but it came to an end before it made enough progress.)