Googling Google: Search Engines as Market Actors in Library Instruction

I wrote a lesson plan for Nicole Pagowsky and Kelly McElroy's Critical Pedagogy for Libraries Handbook, Volume 2.

The two-volume set is available for purchase at the ALA store. If you don't mind waiting, both volumes will go open access at some point in 2017 (this is very cool!), and many chapters are already available via institutional repositories and self-archiving, among other means.

My chapter (pdf) focuses on thinking critically about Google's search engine and how librarians can help foster a sense of critical inquiry around searching.

Google searches return sexist, racist, and homophobic results, which both create and reinforce dominant narratives of white supremacy and heteronormativity. That is bad; faculty, students, and librarians alike should know about it and attempt to mitigate the deleterious effects of search results.  

Did that read like a tumblr post to you? Good, because I think libraries should be about social justice (they are not neutral, never have been, nor should they be), and I try to hit that x-axis of practicing what I preach, otherwise known as praxis.

This is really really really bad. Google's algorithm is helping spread completely unfounded rumors. Net-negative for democracy. pic.twitter.com/jCwnL8TgUu

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) October 4, 2016

If you're interested in the topic, I encourage you to read the work of Dr. Safiya Noble, who teaches at UCLA, and note that library discovery systems are not free of bias. Not by a longshot.

The lesson plan is CC - BY - SA, which means you can use it, make it better, and then share it. Please do all these things. Feedback welcome, and thanks much to the editors above (buy the books!), and to the hundreds of students and handful of librarians and library staff who helped me refine the lesson.


Elsewhere on this site in me sneaking things through peer review, my ACRL 2015 paper: Faculty Perceptions of a Library: Paneling for Assessment

On Institutional Repository Success: Discovery, Search, Metadata

Over the summer I was asked to talk about institutional repositories and how to define what makes them successful as part of a job interview in an academic library. The text of what I said, along with some of the accompanying images, is below.

DIGITAL REPOSITORY SUCCESS

I've been asked to present my thoughts on what it means for a digital repository, an institutional repository, to be successful, and how to measure that success.

Very few people I know go into an institutional repository (IR) to look for something. It's not the way that search and discovery work. What I propose we do is to link the IR to our current search and discovery workflows, that is, link the IR to things that people already use.

It's not about making the repository more visible, it's about making the stuff in the repository more visible.

The IR is nothing without the things inside it; we need to have things that people want, and people need to know that they want those things, those items. Those items need to be where people can find them.

Don't have an IR just for the sake of having one. I turn here to one of my favorite library and information science theorists, Frank Zappa.

Thanks, Zappa estate.

Zappa once said that if a country wanted to be taken seriously, it needed two things: a beer and an airline. For Zappa, these are symbols of modernity. I want to make sure that an institutional repository isn't just a symbol of modernity, that we don't have one just because everyone else does, or because it's what academic libraries "should" have, but because it will be used. And for sure, having one is nice. On its own, an IR sends a positive signal concerning open access initiatives to faculty, to an academic community, and that's good, but it shouldn't be the main reason for having one.

Furthermore, we shouldn't have an IR because it's seen as a solution to non-existent or undefined problems. In organization theory, this is known as the "garbage can model" of decision making.

Not sure why PBS hosts this smushed image.

If we're going to have an IR, it should solve existing problems. It should help, not hinder, and it shouldn't exist for its own sake.

So with that in mind, we have an IR here, and an open access initiative and policy. We can improve the IR, and more importantly the stuff in it, in two ways, discovery and search.

For discovery, there are a few options. At my former place of work, we used widgets as well as a tab in our discovery search box.

Note the widgets, circled. (And yes, this is called burying the lede.) 

If possible, add a facet in the discovery layer search results. We already teach the use of these facets, may as well make the IR, and thus the stuff inside, more visible.

Note: no IR facet here. 

Results can also be expressed such that the IR is more visible. In "bento box" results, there could be an IR section of results, for example.

And of course if we don't have strong metadata for items in an IR, this won't matter. Application Platform Interfaces (APIs), Omeka has one, for example, are a good way to bring robust metadata into discovery. Digital Commons uses Open Authentication Interface, which is also workable. There's certainly room for collaboration with vendors here.

Metadata is also important in searching outside the library. Plenty of us, and faculty, use Google Scholar. With a link resolver we can bring faculty back to the library site, to the IR.

What success can look like. 

The library isn't a gateway, isn't always a starting point, so we need to bring what we have to where our users are. The library may not function as publisher, but it can certainly act as distributor.

Why is metadata so important here? Because Google Scholar works better with some schemas, some formats, than others. It doesn't play nicely with Dublin Core, for example. Without that robust metadata, we might come across our friend the paywall.

We've all seen one of these before, right? 

Ahhhh, the paywall, simultaneously too expensive, "you want how much for that paper?," and insultingly inexpensive given all that work that goes into research and publishing. Poor metadata will send people to a paywall instead of an IR for the same paper.

So discovery and search are two ways to build on IRs, to expand their capabilities. But if these methods work, how will we know? How can we track the output and measure the impact of an IR?

Traditionally, we use bibliometrics: citation tracking, pageviews, downloads, and the like. Our good friend COUNTER fits the bill. As the number of digital-only items grows, altmetrics become more important. Are articles being shared on LinkedIn or twitter? I know that one organization has tried to measure the effects of "#icanhazpdf," article sharing on social media, with mixed results. And increasingly, the line between biblio- and altmetrics are blurring.

Return on investment is also an opportunity to measure IR success, albeit crudely. Back to that paywalled article; we know that Elsevier thinks it's worth $36. Could we then write, in an annual report, that we added x-number of articles to our IR in 2015, or a fair market value of x times whatever the median article value is? That might be effective in terms of telling a story to academic administration.

Qualitative methods could also prove useful. Interview faculty, either individually or in focus groups, ask how IRs work, or don't, for them.

Speaking of faculty, this doesn't work without buy-in from them. It's why open access policies and initiatives are so important. Open access papers tend to get cited, get read, and get used more than those that are paywalled. Academic publishing looks like a moral hazard at times; faculty publish stuff and then we in the library have to buy it back from publishers.

Want one? Buy one!

We're asking a lot from faculty here, with the open access policy and the repository. We're asking them to trust us with their research, their work, and we librarians need to continually earn that trust. And that trust is part of success.

So to recap, institutional repository success is, to me, when you find the stuff, whether you notice the repository or not. When the repository is

• Easy to use. 
• Useful.
• Interoperable, in that it works with what we have in terms of discovery platforms and search.  
• Smooth and seamless, reducing friction so we don’t have to search in multiple places. That is, the IR can be unseen and still work! 
• Branding/marketing can be useful: be consistent.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present, and I look forward to your questions and comments. 

Take this with a grain of salt because I did not get the job.

More Thoughts on Discovery, Plus a Poster

Last week I presented a poster based on From Here to Discovery at the American Library Association's Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. That poster is below. Zoom in and have a look. Here's a link to the session.

From Here to Discovery Poster for ALA 14

We rolled out discovery during spring break, and it's too early to say what's working and what's not in terms of COUNTER stats and the like, in no small part because traffic to the library website is down, dramatically, from spring of 2013 to 2014. More on that later. Both student and faculty focus groups reacted positively to the website changes, and we're not done yet, that have come with discovery, as well as with the service itself. We've phased out our online public access catalog (OPAC) in favor of EBSCO Discovery Service's (EDS) blended platform, which makes for a prettier looking catalog (third column from the left, above). In addition, some introductory English courses received library instruction sessions featuring EDS, and others did not. We'll track these students over time to see what, if any, effects modes and methods of instruction have on student performance.

The gold standard in articles about discovery services comes from The Chronicle of Higher Education, which provides an excellent overview of the issues surrounding these platforms, including user experience, accuracy, efficiency, licensing, and bias, among others.

Next up, perhaps EBSCO and ProQuest can play nicely. At present, when a member of our community searches for something in EDS that comes from a ProQuest database, there is no mention of that database within the EDS search results. A journal article that we get via ProQuest that comes from Sage, for example, with metadata from Sage, but not from ProQuest. The exact database has been erased from the search. The issue here is not bias, but rather representation, and the branding that comes with it.

Since I wrote and presented From Here to Discovery in January of 2014, EBSCO, the vendor that provides us with discovery, and worked hard to bring us a dedicated open access search tool (see the poster above), has become more open in terms of sharing metadata and adhering to the Open Discovery Initiative's guidelines on fair linking. Though, as Carl Grant points out, more can and should be done. There are hundreds other EBSCO databases not covered by current agreements. We'll keep an eye out, but this is progress.

The ALA Annual Post #alaac14

At the American Library Association Annual Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada I'm presenting a poster on Sunday, June 29th, from 2:30-4pm in the Exhibit Hall. The topic is how discovery searching alters library websites and search boxes, and is based on this giffy blog post.

On Monday, June 30th, from 4-4:45pm, I'm on a panel moderated by Daniel Ransom on the experiences of first-time library directors. Kristi Chadwick, Jessica Olin, and John Pappas are also on the panel, so it will be a good mix of public and academic librarians.

If any of this sounds interesting, or you just want to say hi, add me to your schedule.

Speaking of which, here's where I'll be. And yes, I'm overbooked for many of these. I'll wake up and see where the day takes me. If I missed something you think I might be interested in, please let me know.

My ALA Schedule

Useful Sites

Main conference website

Transportation

Vegas on a Budget

American Library Association Party Map

Unofficial Guide to Socializing via I Need A Library Job

Eater Las Vegas is your friend

Survival Tips and Vegas Eats from Library Journal

American Libraries Cognotes (pdf)

Arts Guide to Las Vegas from the Association of College and Research Libraries Arts Section (pdf)

Computers in Libraries Day 3: Ebooks and Content Management

While my first day at Computers in Libraries had the discrete theme of discovery, and I returned to the library to get some work done on day two, day three was spent bouncing around between tracks.

I attended Jennifer Waller's presentation on Google Glass. I'm a noted skeptic, for reasons that are hard to articulate. I find wearable technology with a built in camera creepy (and I'm not alone in that; a search for "google glass is creepy" in that search engine is chalk full of the same sentiment), yet at the same time I understand that in the past peoples' reactions to then-new-now-ubiquitous technology mirror my reaction to Google Glass. Wearable tech may be a bridge too far for me (us?) at present, or, as Polly-Alida Farrington put it

#cildc perhaps real fear of ggl glass is the instant dissemination & persistence of data, not so much the photography itself.
— pollyalida (@pollyalida) April 9, 2014

I appreciate that the Glass is an ice breaker, a conversation starter, something that gets a community excited about a library, and even a tool to start discussions of privacy, but I'm not sure if these benefits outweigh the risks. Does using the Glass to teach privacy subvert Google or further empower it? There are some tough conversations to be had concerning giving a community what it wants when technology like this comes into play, and I appreciate that Waller not only raised these questions, but engaged them. I suspect I'll have more to say about Google Glass later.*

Miami's excellent Shelvar application also made an appearance. It has the potential to liberate our student workers from shelf-reading.


I jumped over to Track C for a discussion of students' use of ebooks. This presentation had an impressive amount of quantitative data that corroborates the qualitative data I've seen: students do not like ebooks. They'll use them if they have to, and some will use them if they deem it convenient. Purchasing both an electronic copy and a physical copy of the book is, based on the data presented, a waste of money.

Survey results from Delaware County Community College (PA), however, countered the first half of the presentation. Even though DCCC's students often use mobile technologies, they prefer either print or a choice between print and electronic. Im sum, different communities have different wants and needs, and it's important that we library staff ask and listen.


At the 1:30 session for Track C I (re)learned that what we ask ourselves and faculty to do in order to embed or link content to within a Course Management or Learning Manage System (CMS or LMS) is nothing short of sadistic, wrought with friction.

I grabbed two cookies on the way out and went back to work.

Elsewhere on this site:
Computers in Libraries Day 1: Discovery
The BeerBrarian's Guide to Computers in Libraries

* Full disclosure, Waller and I are friends and she bought me lunch. I owe her at least a beer.

Computers in Libraries Day 1: Discovery Track

For the first day of Computers in Libraries, I attended presentations on discovery services. (I also presented a modified version of this in the expo hall between sessions.)

Mary Ellen Bates' "Super Searching" kicked off the discovery track, which was a slightly awkward fit. Bates presents this every year, and I try to go at least every other year to see what's out there in terms of tricks and tips that I don't know about topass along to students, faculty and staff. She's helpfully posted her slide deck online. 

Some takeaways from that session:

motherpipe.com has servers based in Germany, away from the prying eyes of the National Security Agency and Google. It also has robust search functionalities for twitter. 

social-searcher.com is potentially useful for searching social media. 

There's more that wasn't new to me, but may be new to you. It's worth a look, especially if you spend time on the reference or circulation desks. 

Marshall Breeding plugged the Open Discovery Initiative, which is worth keeping an eye on as it promotes transparency, and presented survey data that showed discrepancies between how discovery systems are viewed as effective, yet at the same time seen as biased. Given the data, a non-trivial number of librarians seem to think that effectiveness and bias are not mutually exclusive. 

In the first post-lunch session, Summon's Eddie Neuwirth presented data that shows how their product is used. In sum, that looks a lot like Google, complete with natural language searches, 45% of which are three words or less. Other search engine-esque uses of Summon include users not looking beyond the second page of results and typing typos when searching.

What's next for Discovery? Letting members of our community personalize and customize 

For more "future of discovery" fun, I took a pic of a slide from the next presentation, because I am "that guy." 

And then there was food. And beer. And more food. And beer. 

Crabcake, pretzel, decent beer? That'll do. 

Computers in Libraries Wrap-Up, Or, How to Attend a Conference

Last week I was fortunate to attend the 2013 Computers in Libraries conference. Unlike the American Library Association annual meeting, which I often find unwieldy, CIL is just about the right size in terms of attendees, panels, and vendor exhibits.

From looking at list the presentations and panels I attended, you'll notice a few patterns.

• How information is displayed and presented on the library website, and how that information can be made more user-friendly. Often times this means thinking more like a school media specialist or school librarian than one who works at a university library, thus I attended a few presentations in that track. I find them a refreshing antedote to "big picture" presentations that we couldn't afford to do at my place of work. More on that in a minue. 
• Managing electronic resources is challenging, especially for someone like me who's charged with these tasks, but has nothing in the way of formal learning, and very little in the way of informal learning. 
• Demonstrating the value of said resources, and more, and then displaying and presenting that value in a way that is persuasive to stakeholders. 
• I also want to be if not on the cutting edge, at least slightly behind it in terms of larger trends in larger libraries. Though my current place of work definitely does not fit that bill, I've worked at R1 institutions in the past. Much of what's presented at these panels doesn't apply and can't apply, to my current place of work, but it's nice to know what's out there and who's doing what.

Monday

D101 ● BYOD: Bring Your Own Device
10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.
Jill Hurst-Wahl, Director, & Christopher Lawton, Program Assistant, Library & Information
Science Program, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
Kateri Abeyta, IT Manager, Denver Public Library
Mobile devices are quickly becoming an essential element in both personal and workplace productivity. Library IT staff are faced with the challenge of maintaining network security with the flexibility of a mobile workforce. All types of libraries are being impacted by BYOD, whether they realize it or not. Do you have policies and guidelines in place regarding these devices? Our speakers share some insights, and then the audience shares their insights with their colleagues.

B102 ● Seven Deadly Sins of Websites
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Casey Schacher, Resource Discovery Librarian, &
Paige Mano, Web Communications & Social Media Coordinator, University of Wisconsin
Tony Aponte, Science & Engineering Librarian, UCLA
Is your library site all it could be? Far too often, library websites harbor major usability and design issues that prevent patrons from easily accessing the wealth of resources available to them. Speakers evaluate real-world library websites using authoritative guidelines and reveal the most common usability and accessibility sins being committed. Find out how your library website stacks up: Is it a sinner or a saint?

D103 ●
Innovative Library Tech: Practices & Services
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Carol Watson, Director; Maureen Cahill, Student Services Librarian; & Wendy Moore,
Acquisitions Librarian, University of Georgia Law Library
How is your library evolving? To meet changing demands at our institutions, many libraries have undertaken innovative technology initiatives over the past few years. Our libraries can develop best practices from sharing the results of our experiments with new services with each other. This is your chance to participate in an open forum. This session uses the “fishbowl” format to engage audience members in a discussion of creative library technologies. Speakers facilitate comments from audience participants in the fishbowl and encourage discussion from the audience as well on topics ranging from the latest whizbang gadgets to effective technology instruction tactics.

D104 ● Metrics, Value, & Funding
3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Rebecca Jones, Managing Partner, Dysart & Jones Associates
Moe Hosseini-Ara, Director, Service Excellence, Markham Public Library
This interactive session starts with an overview of what metrics to look for and how to develop them from experienced librarians. It then proceeds with a whole-room discussion and brainstorming on how to get the right data to make an impact to funders and stakeholders

E105 ● Misinformation, Autopilot Thinking, and Credibility:
Teaching Information Evaluation
4:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Debbie Abilock, Co-founder, NoodleTools, Inc., Palo Alto, California
How does misinformation originate and spread? What cognitive factors come into play when students evaluate sources? And what can we do to teach them to de-bias their judgments? Ignite your teaching by learning to model quick-and-dirty “rules of thumb” that students can use or revise when they evaluate sources during short research tasks. And, conversely, learn when to add “points of friction” into your instructional design, so that your students will be willing to think deeply when their research project is “worth it.”

Tuesday

C201 ● Metrics That Work
10:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.
Karen Krugman, Chief, Research Library & Archives, Export-Import Bank of the United States
Kris Vajs,Chief Librarian, Research Library, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Karen White, Senior Librarian & Team Lead, USAID Knowledge Services Center
Are senior leaders getting the right message from your management reports? Are your reports a useful vehicle for your department or just part of the routine information you deliver to your manager? Do you want to learn how to communicate the importance of all of your library’s contributions to your organization but find that your metrics lack substance? Join our experienced leaders for this practical session to learn why management reporting is so critical for libraries, discover current management reporting trends, hear about management reporting at three federal libraries and see sample management reports, learn what statistics to track, how to turn them into real management information, and how to present your metrics effectively. Included are a list of metrics you can use in your own management reports.

B202 ● Creating a Culture of Usability
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Krista Godfrey, Web Services Librarian, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Paulette Hasier, Manager, Research Services, &
Jessica Sanders, Research Specialist, ARTI (DOD Contractor)
Library websites are slowly transforming into powerful, and more importantly, easy to use tools. In order to develop the latter, it is essential to perform constant and consistent usability testing. Hear how Memorial University of Newfoundland is trying to create a culture of thoughtfulness toward our users through the establishment of a web usability team. Learn why usability is important, how it implemented the new team and directions the schools are going in. Then hear how one library paid attention to the evolving needs of users, employed user-friendly open source tools to engage clients, created collaborative spaces, and improved the UX with new information delivery functionalities and mobile solutions.

A203 ● Negotiating Econtent & Tech Licenses
1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Mike Gruenberg, Gruenberg Consulting, LLC, & Author, Buying & Selling Information: A
Guide for the Information Professional & Salesperson That Ensures Mutual Success
Richard Hulser, Chief Librarian, Natural History Museum Los Angeles County
By setting clear goals and expectations, information professionals can make the most of the meeting and develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the content sales people. Get tips from a long-time salesperson, supporter of libraries, and recent author and from a librarian who has been on both sides—sales and purchase!

A204 ● Institutional Repositories
2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Julian Aiken, Access Services Librarian, Yale Law School
Hollie White, Digital Initiatives Librarian, Duke Law School
Duke and Yale Law schools have two of the most successful open access online institutional repositories in North America. Delivering more than 12,000 objects and 2-million-plus downloads to a global audience, the Yale Law School Legal Repository and the Duke Law Scholarship Repository are turning into indispensable resources for scholars and practitioners across the world. Join our speakers to hear how these two law schools are using their repositories to extend the global reach of their scholarship, and enhance their value within the academic community. Topics include platforms, permissions, staffing, workflows, outreach, and publicity.

E205 ● Open Educational Resources and the Open Web
4:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Heather Braum, Digital and Technical Services Librarian, Northeast Kansas Library System,
Lawrence, Kansas
Gary Price, INFODocket and FullTextReports, Washington, D.C.
Join two experts on the vital subject of finding free educational resources online. First, Heather Braum discusses open educational resources, a rising trend in classrooms, in libraries, and in DIY education circles. Learn how you can make the move from traditional textbooks and classroom resources and discover the what OER has to offer your library, school, and community. Then, hear veteran web resource locator Gary Price discuss discovery and finding tools, techniques, and even the necessary mindset you need to unearth the best digital content for education—so you can serve up just what’s needed for that social studies class, just when it’s needed.

Wednesday

B303 ● Evolving Tech Services to Manage & Discover E-Resources
1:30 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.
Li Fu, Digital Services Librarian, &
John Coogan, Systems Librarian, University of Maryland University College
Candice Kail, Web Services Librarian &
Colleen Major, Electronic Resources Librarian, Columbia University Libraries
Both of these libraries are transitioning their technical support functions to ensure access, discovery, assessment, sharing, and development of digital content and applications. Hear how these libraries are shifting their approaches to authentication, link resolvers, discovery tools, cataloging, usage statistics, web technology, the relationship between e-resources and virtual library environment, and the influence this is having on staff in systems and technical services.

A304 ● New Face of Reference
2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
David Stern, Associate Dean, Public Services, Illinois State University
Crystal Shiffert, Reference Librarian, Monroe County Library System
Shari Clayman, Internet Reference Librarian, &
Abbey Gerken, Assistant Library Network Coordinator, ASRC Primus, EPA
Krista Schmidt, Research & Instruction Librarian/Science Liaison, &
Joel Marchesoni, Technical Support Analyst, Western Carolina University
Stern talks about shared workspace collaboration tools and describes the use of a shared workspace for manipulating multiple media materials and the sharing of real-time workstation screens to understand and demonstrate more sophisticated search methods and to facilitate the mastery of more advanced tools and techniques. While increasing collaboration and interaction at a distance, remote control is also the next step in offering advanced instruction, assistance, and collaboration. The next two presentations include reference librarians who partnered with a library technical support analyst and a vendor to develop a tablet-based app and a mobile app to extend reference service. The last talk focuses on how an ask-a-librarian service leverages the time and expertise of EPA librarians across the country to present a unified service to all EPA staff. It shares lessons learned during the last 3 years and future plans.

C305 ● Data: Digging Deeper & Displaying
3:45 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Jeff Wisniewski, Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh
Data you gather is just data until it is analyzed, interpreted, and conveyed in a meaningful way. With Google Analytics incorrect conclusions can be drawn without doing an in-depth analysis. Wisniewski provides a framework for accurately assessing the data to make informed design decisions in combination with other user tests, surveys and focus groups. See how Pittsburgh is mining data to learn about user behavior.

My notes on these sessions may or may not be useful to you. They're not as good as these notes. But here they are, all the same.

Computers in Libraries 2013 Notes

Here is a link, via Storify, to my tweets during the conference. I'm a big believer in using the back channel during conferences.

A full conference program, in pdf, is here.

Open Access: A World Without Database Vendors?

As a thought experiment, let's say we "win." Professional and academic associations go open access, as much of physics has. The Directory of Open Access Journals is able to capture the far majority of these newly free works, and in turn these are snapped up by library catalogs thanks to link resolvers and discovery services. The same happens with the Directory of Open Access Books with regards to chapters in edited volumes.

But there's a catch: DOAJ's search function is not, to put it politely, robust. And there's a larger problem behind search functionality thanks to incomplete metadata. Link resolvers and discovery services that pull from that search, culling that metadata, will lead to frustrated end users who cannot access and discover what they're looking for.

In addition, the DOAJ is overrun with new items to catalog in this scenario, creating a backlog of epic proportions.

This is not my desk, but it feels like it sometimes. 

There are roles for vendors in this universe: generating better metadata for these newly open access items; designing stronger, more relevant search functionalities; and creating attractive and user-friendly platforms; among others.

There's a less maximalist, more realistic, "winning" option here, too: more journals, and more publishers, allow for pre-prints to be housed in institutional repositories, which are cataloged by member institutions, and perhaps shared via consortia, and with a wider audience via interlibrary loan.

However, these repositories do not solve access problems, in fact, they exacerbate them by creating not only a patchwork network of databases, but also at least two discrete classes of items: pre-prints and final products, each with a different symbolic value attached to them despite containing the same information. Vendors can solve the first of these, a coordination game, by designing, creating, and implementing databases that allow access to the pre-prints among and between libraries, including negotiating licenses and usage rights with publishers. Only vendors have, as of now, been able to create inter-library databases with robust network effects and positive externalities. That is, the more libraries, the more repositories, that join an inter-library database containing items that might otherwise only be found in a repository, the stronger, the more useful said database is. Some of those vendors in our current information ecosystem were founded by libraries, such as OhioLink, JSTOR, and OCLC, as well as The Digital Public Library of America (perhaps), though they have now taken on lives of their own.

As for the latter, pre-prints versus final products, I have no solutions other than to hope that academics "get over it" by incentivizing open access. Giving preferences to OA publications as part of tenure and promotion, for example, would be an important and powerful signal.

Thus, academics hold their chains in their hands, but there are no worlds, no futures, without database vendors. I write this not only to reassure vendors, but also to argue that we librarians are inexorably tied to vendors, even knowing that vendors do not always behave as we wish them to.

QR Codes: Quick, Easy, Cheap

A quick and easy use for QR codes at the library: take your online serials to the print serials. Here’s how.

1. You’ve got a master list of all print serials you subscribe to, right? If not, make one.
2. For each print serial, use your link resolver (my place of work doesn’t have one of these, which is a problem. I’m working on it) and/or database and/or OPAC (yeah, I just used that term, I'm old) that holds the online version, and get a stable URL for each title.
3. Use these URLs to create QR codes, for free, at QRStuff.com. Feel free to pretty them up.
4. Get yourself a smartphone, even if you’re borrowing one from another staff member. Install the free app ATT Scanner on an iPhone, or the QR Droid app, also free, on an Android phone.
5. Quality control: make sure even first generation smartphones, like my 3G iPhone, for example, can read the QR codes. Expand or contract the size of the codes as needed.
6. Print out the QR codes, and make sure to protect the paper, which might include laminating (expensive) or well-deployed packing tape (cheaper). Perform more quality control.
7. Place the corresponding QR code next to where each print serial is shelved. Post instructions in clearly visible locations. Don’t forget the details; at some libraries patrons may have to join a wireless network to access online serials.
8. Shamelessly promote it. Library blog posts, table toppers, posters... you get the idea.

Why do this?

1. Having the ability to search past issues of a title next to the more current paper issues can help patrons conduct research.
2. QR codes are hip, modern, and interactive. Making your library a hipper, more modern, more interactive place to be will pay off for you.
3. Many of the patrons at MPOW (my place of work) don’t have internet access at home, except for smartphones. It’s a tool that they’re comfortable with. We as librarians should be comfortable with it as well, and as we see smartphone use on the rise, I hope that vendors begin to design easy to use mobile sites alongside more traditional interfaces. In the meantime, let's bring the library to our patrons, via QR codes and mobile computing.

Net Neutrality and Federated Searching

Net neutrality is a topic of frequent discussion in libraries, which makes sense given how many people use libraries as little more than an internet service provider. Unfettered and impartial access to the world wide web is an important part of library programming and activities, and many libraries and librarians have responded in kind, lobbying to keep the Internet neutral. However, the neutrality of federated search engines is often overlooked. Federated (or “Integrated,” according to at least one vendor) search engines “sit on top” of existing library resources, allowing patrons and staff to search multiple databases using one search. For many people that search may be their only experience with a library’s holdings in a search session. Federated search platforms are provided by vendors. Increasingly, the vendors that offer these services are the ones that also offer content, such as databases that contain articles and other documents. EBSCO’s Integrated Search (EHIS) and ProQuest’s relationship with Serials Solutions, developers of Summon, should have librarians and library administrators on edge because of the potential for conflicts of interest. Summon could funnel users to ProQuest’s content at the expense of content from other vendors. Summon has repeatedly stated that it is vendor neutral as libraries can purchase it without any ProQuest content. Will EHIS deliver neutral content, or content that favors EBSCO products?

When deciding on which federated search platform to use, net neutrality becomes part of the equation. A federated search that returns biased, non-neutral, results is one that may not deliver the information your patrons need. Disconcertingly, they may not realize that.

How do you test federated search engines for net neutrality? I am credentialed at an institution that uses EHIS. I searched for dozens of terms, and the results weren’t pleasant for EHIS. It’s a crude test, but EHIS failed it.

EHIS consistently promoted EBSCO resources, favoring Academic Search Premier, an interdisciplinary EBSCO databases, over product from other vendors that are more specialized. For example, a search for “anorexia” returned ASP results before PsychInfo* and allied health results.

Conversely, another library I have access to uses WebFeat by Serials Solutions as a federated search engine. Using the search terms from EHIS, WebFeat showed no favoritism.

In sum, be aware of the relationships among vendors, and between vendors and their products, when shopping for a federated search. If you have other ways to test the efficacy of federated search engines, drop me a line.

* This institution gets PsychInfo through ProQuest.