For the background on this issue, see Quis custodiet isos custodes.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Psychological Association has decided to offer copies of the second printing of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed as replacements for July’s first printing, which was found to contain a significant number of errors.

A quick search of the APA website hasn’t found any announcements or instructions, but a quick search of the social networks has turned up the following:

• A notice on the Inside Higher Ed Quick Takes site, linking to…
• A posting on the Boycott the APA Manual, 6th Edition Facebook page (membership required to view) by John Foubert, a faculty member from Oklahoma State, which states the following:

“I have just received word that After November 2, call APA at 1-800-374-2721, ext. 5510. Ask for instructions on how to go on-line and print a mailing label you can use to return your copy and receive a corrected copy.”

Whether this is all correct remains to be seen (and any incorrect information will be changed or removed as I learn more), but it appears that there is a window between November 2nd and November 15th to initiate replacing copies of the manuals.

found via Bill Drew on Facebook (more of that social networking)

The title is latin for “Who watches the watchers?”

The American Psychological Association’s current style book, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed., contains dozens of errors, several of them in examples and sample papers.  Needless to say, this is causing quite a stir among those who rely on the manual for defining the rules used for papers.

(It also makes me want to write a new verse for a certain Alanis Morissette song, but that isn’t the point…)

The APA has posted a pdf with links to other pdf files with categories of corrections.  Those categories are:

1. Errors in APA Style Rules
2. Errors in Examples
3. Clarifications
4. Nonsignificant Typos

Complete versions of the corrected sample papers can be found here.

Those libraries that serve students who use this style guide should decide how to handle the corrections.  Whether to include the correction pages with the book, or even to indicate the changes within the books themselves, are possibilities.  We should, as we ought to be prepared to do for any resource, inform users that there are known errors in the manual.

One option that we don’t have is the ability to exchange the error-containing manuals for corrected versions.  The APA will be correcting the errors in the second printing, and states that

The first printing was carefully proofed and vetted at multiple stages. The guidance provided in the book is accurate and sound.

I am not sure if I would recommend that a student use that approach when appealing a marked-down grade for typographical errors within a paper.  Of course, I wouldn’t recommend myself as a source for error-free work, as any careful reader of this blog could attest.

found via American Libraries Direct

Additional note:  it seems that the errors are not the only controversy surrounding the manual.  Many users are upset that the manual has changed the spacing recommendation after a period back to two spaces.  I learned to type on a typewriter (and still own the cast-iron glass-key Royal KMM typewriter (photo not my actual typewriter) I bought from the Brookfield Public Library’s book sale when I was a Page), and two spaces are a habit I haven’t even tried to break.  I still see it as a way to differentiate between an abbreviation and the end of a sentence.  I suspect that this will be a generational behavior.  It will be easy enough to search and replace two spaces with one, if it becomes necessary.

For those who have been following  H1N1 influenza virus news (and those who might expect to get questions about it), the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Google have launched a new mashup service:

PLOS Currents : Influenza is built utilizing Google Knol and a new service from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes.  This service allows the user an easy way to follow current research and search for relevant scientific information.

As we approach influenza season, expect greater levels of concern and interest in H1N1.

found via the Official Google Blog

The Open Humanities Press (OHP) has joined forces with the University of Michigan Library’s Scholarly Publications Office (SPO) to start up a series of open access monographs:

• New Metaphysics
• Critical Climate Change
• Global Conversations
• Unidentified Theoretical Objects

and my favorite…

• Liquid Books

According to the site, Liquid Books will be

“a series of experimental digital books published under the conditions of both open editing and free content. As such, you are free to annotate, tag, edit, add to, remix, reformat, reversion, reinvent and reuse any of the books in the series – and what’s more you are encouraged to do so. The most interesting results of such open editing and writing… will be ‘frozen’ and published by OHP”

This looks to be a great mix of scholarly publishing combined with open access, with some remixing thrown into the vat!  Also check out the press release (pdf).

thanks to Karen Schneiderman for the link

Publishers Weekly is reporting that not only are they up for sale by their publisher, Reed Business Information, but that Library Journal and School Library Journal are available as well.

Without knowing the cost/profit information for each of these, I do wonder how  they are affected by the various pressures in the publishing world as well as the shifting of library information to the web (including social media such as blogging and Twitter).

found via LISNews

Copyfraud : Poisoning the Public Domain is an introduction to some of the ways that content providers (websites, publishers, etc.) abuse copyright protections when they use public domain materials.  A couple of minor points, however:

• The act of assigning a copyright to something already in the public domain is the issue; taking a Project Gutenberg text, formatting it, and publishing it is of great benefit to people, as long as one doesn’t claim protection that doesn’t actually exist for the material.
• The Creative Commons Public Domain Tools is not a license, nor is it  an attempt “to become the arbiter of  public domain licensing”, but a way to allow people to have an easy and effective way to display that a work belongs to the Public Domain.

found via LISNews

The World eBook Fair begins this Saturday, July 4th, coinciding with Project Gutenberg’s 39th anniversary.

To celebrate, the World eBook Fair members are providing free access to over two million books between July 4th and August 4th.

found via ResourceShelf

If you are involved with the selection or ordering process, then you are very likely to be familiar with searching for items by the International Standard Book Number, or ISBN.  The newer, 13-digit ISBN is actually based on the European Article Number, or EAN, which makes books consistent with most international trade goods.  The EAN was developed as an expansion of the common Universal Product Code, or UPC.

Enough theory?  How about web sites that offer lookup services that can help you find booksellers, prices, and even reviews and summaries of the books you wish to acquire?

• BookFinder – This site returns a large number of booksellers (many, many used booksellers!), although it seems odd that it doesn’t display the book’s title.
• CheckUPC.com – A good summary, and a variety of printable bar codes make this a decent site for book information.
• ISBN.nu – This is one I have used for years, and is still the one I turn to when our primary vendors don’t have a book in stock.
• ISBNdb.com – With summaries, subjects, similar items, and physical details, this site is a great resource for information about books.
• OCLC’s xISBN service – This service returns a list of related ISBNs, other editions of the book whose ISBN you append to their base URL ( http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/ ), in XML format.  It isn’t pretty, but when you need it, it is very helpful.
• ThingISBN – Similar to xISBN, LibraryThing provides a service where you append your ISBN to the end of their base URL ( http://www.librarything.com/api/thingISBN/ ) and get a list of related ISBNs in XML format.
• UPC Database – This site returns a large number of booksellers of the group; it also lets you know that the UPC is associated with that fictional country that so many people enjoy visiting:  Bookland.
• Wikipedia’s Book Sources – If you want a service that can give you dozens (and dozens!) of places where you can “Find This Book”, then you need to try this one.

For comparison, here are links to results for the same book (Stephen King : The Dark Tower):

• BookFinder.com
• CheckUPC.com
• ISBN.nu
• ISBNdb.com
• OCLC’s xISBN service
• ThingISBN
• UPC Database
• Wikipedia’s Book Sources

Sources and further information:

• Bibliographic Wilderness (and again)
• Comparing xISBN and ThingISBN (FRBR Blog)
• Official Web Site of The Dark Tower (The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed….)

Amidst a great many other topics, HTML 5 has been on my mind the past couple of weeks.  It started on Tuesday, May 26th, with Kevin Yank posting HTML 5 : Now or Never? on the SitePoint blog.  He was floating the question of whether or not they should look into publishing a book on HTML 5 now, or if they need to wait until it matures enough for developers to use with confidence.  If you read his post, and especially if you look over the comments, you will see that there is a full range of opinions (including that HTML 5 should never be implemented) by developers about the topic.

This remained a relatively minor, background issue until two days later, Thursday, May 28th.  On that day Google announce the existence of a new project called Google Wave.  My initial thought was that Google was simply creating their version of a FaceBook/Twitter/Blogging style platform.  The more I looked, the more I realized that this was much different, and much more important, than a differently branded service.  Wave is something that has the potential to change many, many aspects of how we use the internet.

What is Google Wave?  I have spent a good part of last week trying to distill it into a couple of paragraphs, and am not having much success.  The overall essence of it is something that I haven’t yet wrapped my head around, but here are a few aspects of it that will hopefully illustrate some of it:

It is a communication platform that allows users to send, receive, and use a variety of information (think communications like e-mails, IM, tweets, feeds, etc.) in a way that offers greater control, speed, and usability.  Messaging becomes “real-time”, with your keystrokes being sent live to the person you are communcating with (unless you select to hold the message until you are ready).  The effect of this is that it becomes possible to hold a real-time conversation with others utilizing a variety of communication forms simultaneously.  You can incorporate text, images, documents, and other digital formats into the conversation in a free-flowing manner that saves time, effort and reduces confusion.

To quote from the introduction to an interview, “Email is asynchronous conversation. Instant messaging, by contrast, is synchronous. Wave is both.“  Possibly the best general description of Wave could be that it lets users and groups easily communicate and collaborate in one interface, using whatever editing/communication/collaboration techniques fit the task at hand.  Think of it as a collaboration mash-up tool.

A few places to find further info:

• Went Walkabout : Brought Back Google Wave. (Google Blog)
• Google Wave Drips with Ambition. (TechCrunch)
• Video Interview with the Google Wave Founders (TechCrunch)
• Live with the Google Wave Creators (TechCrunch)
• Sergey Brin : Google Wave Will Set a New Benchmark for Interactivity (TechCrunch)
• Google I/O A Real Eye-Opener (SitePoint)

Watch for the technological shift from these developments.  This will not only give us new and improved tools to perform tasks and work together (think of the possibilities for online meetings and conferencing), but will set standards for what will be expected from web presences.  Our OPACS may have some new goals to aim for.

Note added later:  I have had a busy week, and forgot to actually address the relationship between HTML 5 and Google Wave.  I do so in another post, Why HTML 5.  Apologies for not getting it right the first time!

Cory Doctorow has an interesting take on the differing attitude of copyright between those who wish to wish to honor a creative work and those who wish to diminish it.  An excerpt:

“The upshot of this is that you’re on much more solid ground if you want to quote or otherwise reference a work for the purposes of rubbishing it than if you are doing so to celebrate it. This is one of the most perverse elements of copyright law: the reality that loving something doesn’t confer any right to make it a part of your creative life.”

An added bonus is a reference to a Firefly-based fan fiction that I hadn’t encountered before, titled My Own Kind of Freedom.

found via Library Link of the Day (16 May 2009)

Saw a post on TechCrunch that indicated that Amazon has opened their offerings of blog subscriptions for the Kindle reader to all blogs that sign up.  So now Libology is available to readers of the Kindle… with two caveats:

1. It costs.  A lot.  Way more than you are paying now.  A whopping $1.99 per month (and I have no say in the price, so there).
2. I get some of the money, a whopping 30% (that’s 66 cents per month per subscription).

So really, if you don’t feel the need to pay to read this stuff, don’t.  Keep reading this stuff for free, though.  And if you are philosophically inclined (or reclined) against my getting paid, then, again, don’t.

Seriously, if you are really into the Kindle, and find the blog-perusing experience to be great, then I am glad to provide Libology as an option, just as I have provided a mobile-browser friendly version.  They do offer a 14-day trial if you want an excuse to try it out.  Just don’t feel guilty about canceling… I understand, trust me!

Was the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine incident an isolated case, or is it the first of several Elsevier journals that only appear to be legit?

Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier’s Health Sciences Division, issued a statement today that suggests that a division of the company may have created the bogus journal without the knowledge of the top levels of the company:

It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.

We are currently conducting an internal review but believe this was an isolated practice from a past period in time. It does not reflect the way we operate today. The individuals involved in the project have long since left the company. I have affirmed our business practices as they relate to what defines a journal and the proper use of disclosure language with our employees to ensure this does not happen again.

Note that this statement uses the phrase “published a series of sponsored article compilation publications”.  Some sleuthing by Jonathan Rochkind and Bill Hooker indicates that Excerpta Medica, a subsidiary of Elsevier, might have published quite a few of these sponsored-yet-unacknowledged journals.

My own poking around Excerpta Medica’s website with Google has produced an interesting Pdf titled Best practices for managing publications through a drug’s lifecycle and balancing scientific rigour and credibility with commercial goals.  The document is a summary of a presentation given at by Hester Kuipers, who at the time was Program Director, Medical Communications for Exerpta Medica.  Here is a brief quote:

Scientific publications in peer-reviewed medical journals are a valuable and credible vehicle to support a medical marketing strategy. Though part of most marketing plans, publications are not a promotional activity, but rather a medical one. The relationship between scientific publications and marketing messages can best be described as the first supporting the second rather than the second driving the first.

The presentation makes it clear that the research must have primacy over the promotion; hopefully the “series of sponsored article compilation publications” turns out to be the exception and not the rule for Exerpta Medica.  Elsevier should investigate this thoroughly and publicly acknowledge the extent of the deception; the credibility of each and every one of their peer-reviewed journals is at stake.

some links found via ResourceShelf and through postings on the Cooperative Information Resources Managemnt (CIRM) list

Peter Murray has an incredibly good selection of links about the Google Book Search Settlement on the Disruptive Library Technology Jester blog.  Really.  Spend some time perusing them.

Ever hear of the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine?  Sounds official, as well as medically specific.  Did you know it was published by Elsevier?  That is is Peer Reviewed?  And that it published an article on the effectiveness of Fosamax?

How about that it was cooked up by Merck as a promotional tool, and that they paid Elsevier to publish it?

I worked in a pharmacy for eight years; I have seen first-hand the differences between the drug manufacturer’s publicity and the actual usefulness of medicines.  I am not too surprised that someone at Merck did this (though not as surprised as I will be if the FDA doesn’t lift a finger to make it clear that this level of deception is unacceptable), but am a little surprised that Elsevier went along (though maybe not too surprised (here, too)).

This is a horrible situation, and library organizations should be demanding that Elsevier establish the bona fides of the journals we pay for, and that our patrons use for their research.  Sure, we can probably trust that the big-name journals are what they say they are, but there are hundreds of obscure journals, with titles sounding just as official as the fake one, that we cannot know for sure who they represent, and how they conduct their research, without a great deal of research.  Elsevier needs to salvage their credibility, and soon.

found via Bibliographic Wilderness

Publisher Confidential is a creation by the Unshelved crew that strives to convey to publishers what libraries wish they would know.  It consists of brief statements illustrated with the familiar Mallville Public Library staff.  The booklet is being distributed to the BookExpo America (BEA) mailing list, so a lot of publisher’s representative will see it and hopefully take heed.

Some of the selections I especially like upon first reading:

• Start your periodical with Vol. 1, Issue 1.
• Unusual packaging creates problems.
• In the book, tell us how to pronounce the author’s name.
• Free Ebooks from the shackles of D.R.M.
• Not all fonts are created equal.

There are many more… and all are worth reading.

via the Unshelved Blog

ALA TechSource has a brief blogger forum post on the state of E-Book Readers.  The quote that I think is most worth thinking about comes from Jason Griffey:

E-books are the future of reading in a very real way, simply because at some point they will be too cheap to not use. One of my staff brought a receipt to me this week for a laptop that the library bought in 2000. It was $3600. I just priced netbooks for my library, and can get a machine that is ridiculously more powerful than the year-2000 laptop for under $350. The Kindle, and most other e-readers, are hovering around the $350 or so dollar mark right now. In ten years, what will they cost? How can paper continue to compete with Moore’s Law?

Not only does it make sense, for reasons of legality (terms of use) and usability, to wait before purchasing and implementing E-Readers in a library, but it also makes sense from a monetary standpoint.  Amazon’s Kindle is king of the hill right now, but I think the big one is yet to arrive.  Watch for it, however:  when the convergence of price, usability, and usefulness happens, you want to be ready.

Library Journal has announced the winners of the 2009 Movers & Shakers awards, and as usual, the recipients are fantastic and enthusiastic innovators who look for new ways for libraries to be better:

• The Alphabetical List (follow the links for profiles of the 2009 recipients).
• Movers on the Map (scroll down for a state-by-state listing).

I hope each of them has read What We Need, and that this year marks a reversal of the trend of institutional discouragement that has plagued recipients in the past.  If you have a Mover & Shaker in your organization, celebrate the award; if you have people who are potential movers and shakers (and I am not limiting this to the award), be sure to find ways to encourage them.

seen first on Stephen’s Lighthouse

Added 16 March 2009:  LISNews posted a link to a Photo Gallery page on Library Journal… lots of smiling professionals!

Authors Guild:  Contracts Forced Amazon to Flip on Kindle is an article on CNet.com in which the Authors Guild asserts that Amazon turned off the Kindle’s Text-to-speech function (unless authorized by a book’s publisher) due to contractual obligations, not pressure from the Guild.

The response from Amazon’s spokesperson was simply “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal.”

previously

found via LISNews

Amazon.com has given in to the Publisher’s Guild on the issue of text-to-speech capabilities in the Kindle 2.

In their press release, Amazon states up front that “Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.“  In this statement, they are correct.  If I read a book to someone who is visually or otherwise impaired, it takes a stretch of the imagination to suggest that I am actually staging a performance.

In addition, as I stated when the issue was first raised:

“How would someone with a visual impairment be able to order the audio book version of a title without using a screen reader?  In addition, how would they know whether a website allows for the use, under copyright law, of their own website by someone with a screen reader?”

To state that a feature of your product is legal, and to understand the benefit that the feature would bring to users of the product, but to then allow it to be disabled arbitrarily by third parties strikes me as a company that is attempting to placate the “squeaky wheels” simply because they threaten legal action.

BookFinder.com Journal makes a comparison to the relationship between large-print books and magnifiers.  Should the ability of consumers to use magnifiers while reading be controlled by the publisher (after all, it might be costing them large-print sales).

If you still feel that publishers should have the final say, then consider whether they should have this ability to control works that are in the public domain.  It doesn’t matter whether it is the consumer’s right to use text-to-speech, according to this decision; it only matters that individual consumers cannot respond with the apparent impact that the Writer’s guild can muster.

There has been a similar theme in the bibliographical world lately – rules being put in place that attempt to ignore or even circumvent that which already exists, whether it is Public Domain, Fair Use, or the First Sale doctrine.  OCLC, Google, and now Amazon have all implemented restrictions to their various offerings.  OCLC, to their credit, has stepped back and is in the process of re-evaluating its approach towards licensing records.  Google hasn’t even blinked about restricting access to Google Book items waaay beyond even the tightest of copyright interpretations.  Amazon asserts the rights of users to use text-to-speech, but then allows those with a vested interest against it to control its use.

Yes, there is a pattern to all of this, and we need to figure out how to prevent it from continuing.

Media-Morphosis : How the Internet will Devour, Transform, or Destroy Your Favorite Medium is an essay by Cory Doctorow on Internet Evolution.  Think of it as another way of describing the times in which we are living.  Then start thinking about things that the Internet will Devour, Transform, or Destroy that aren’t “mediums”….

found via LISNews