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StephenK — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:50:34 -0500

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Hyperlinked History Presented by Great Western Dragon/The Faceless Historian	Link on Feedburner	E-mail service provided by Feedburner	iTunes Music Store
LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast Presented by Stephen Michael Kellat	Link on Feedburner	E-mail service provided by Feedburner	iTunes Music Store
Tech for Techies Presented by Michael J. Kellat	Link on Feedburner	E-mail service provided by Feedburner	iTunes Music Store
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Revenge of the Miscellany

StephenK — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:27:36 -0500

As it was suggested might happen, this is another one of the columns being posted.

Revenge of the Miscellany
By Stephen Michael Kellat

Why Kiwis Get Airtime So Much

It might be an interesting question to ponder why the Library Association of New Zealand, LIANZA, gets so much airtime on LISTen while the American Library Association and its myriad components do not. Was the air staff bribed? Are there agents of New Zealand's intelligence services working on the air staff?

What is going on is a simple point in terms of media relations. Libraries where library staff cannot afford the benefit of having a media relations officer stand to learn something here. When media people make an inquiry about setting up an interview or simply request information there is normally a deadline involved. It is a very grave offense to the media member when you ignore them entirely and act as if they do not exist. Timeliness is also a grave concern as taking over a week to even return a call generally means that not only has the pending story died but the media member likely moved on to the next project.

The main reason why LIANZA gets the airtime they do is that Megan Button, the media relations contact for the association, actually replies to our inquiries. After multiple repeated failed attempts to book guests from the ALA and OCLC since December 2007, we gave up on them. There are often plenty of stories out there and we have a hard upper limit on program length of thirty or so minutes anyhow. If we have to wait well over a week after the launch of a new product to even start discussing an interview, the editorial thought processes kick into high gear questioning whether the release is actually all that interesting if those making the release are so seemingly unenthusiastic spreading the word. If I had to choose between a product release that has no seemingly enthusiastic backing and a feature on Linux in Libraries, I will definitely be choosing Linux in Libraries when I put together the Order of Show.

While LIANZA has had plenty of cool stories come up as of late that have caught my eye, I do not doubt I have probably missed a few throughout the Anglosphere.

Release Frequency

What can I say? Frequency is a matter of concern to librarians. Librarians have such as an every day concern when it comes to serials like magazines and journals. We sometimes forget, though, that online resources fall under the relevant cataloging rules known as continuing resources that happen to be shared with serials.

Just as a serial item has to meet or exceed a minimum publication cycle to be considered an actual serial, so it may need to be with podcasts. At the barest elemental level, all a podcast happens to be is a set of audio or video files with appropriate XML description. The problem with that look at the barest level, though, is that it does not recognize distribution frequency.

What do librarians call a serial publication released only once per year? Our piece of jargon for that is annual. Such continues onward with weeklies, dailies, and more existing. When there is not a normal pattern, we often see coded in the 362 tag in USMARC-based records a notation of irregular frequency which recognizes leniency on the library's end when postal authorities might well decide the publication is not quite a serial.

When it comes to podcasts, though, cycles sometimes are ignored.

CNET's flagship podcast Buzz Out Loud is released weekdays with occasional special episodes. At LISNews you can find LISTen released weekly on Mondays with special episodes released on-demand by the air staff. Far too many library-related podcasts take months or years between making releases and do not follow any conformed release pattern. Podcasts are conventionally considered regular programs on regular schedules that mimic magazines and journals.

How could a cataloging record be best handled for a podcast? How can the library world include teaching not only about the preservation of cultural expression but also how new professionals can best create their own cultural expressions?

Internal Insecurity

In the past couple months we had a post at LISNews about a community in California having to choose between cutting the library budget and cutting the public safety budget. At the time, it was only a hypothetical exercise that led to plenty of hyperventillation. Nobody ever thought such could happen.

Last week, the Board of County Commissioners here in Ashtabula County slashed the budget of Sheriff William Johnson pretty severely. Ashtabula County is the largest county geographically in the state even though the local population is barely above one hundred thousand. Over a county of slightly over seven hundred square miles in size, Sheriff Johnson's staff policed about six hundred to six hundred fifty of those square miles as municipal forces covered their municipalities. With the budget cuts the Sheriff was slapped with, there are now only two deputies on the road covering the county. If you need a police response now for anything less than a fairly drastic felony or an outright capital crime like murder, you will not be getting one. Many crimes will go undetected and potentially unpunished all for the lack of greenbacks.

Due to the byzantine complexity of budgeting for local government in Ohio with a system barely changed from that imposed in the 19th century, the county commissioners could not burgle the library budget to shore up public safety. Ashtabula County District Library will be safe. Kingsville Public Library, a separate library service district in which Erie Looking Productions operates, is also similarly safe as the county would automatically trigger a fiscal emergency situation if they tried to pillage Kingsville Public Library's tax revenue.

This creates a bizarre situation within the continental United States where a community has less of a policing presence than some Third World/Global South nations. That the budget cuts created a drastic enough change to where the fictional Mayberry of The Andy Griffith Show looks like a fascist police state in contrast does not help either. With the question of the county defaulting financially becoming not so much a matter of if but when, a new example for textbooks on failures in local government will soon be created.

Big questions arise from this. What good is it to have a library open when you have no legal way to eject ruffians and others who disrupt the order of the library? Self-help by library staff in kicking out those who might be defacing materials could potentially lead to lawsuits. Assuming good will on the part of all who may come is a nice ideal but as this is a fallen world it must be remembered that there is evil out there. If you like the odds of nothing bad happening to your library in such a degraded policing situation, there are casino owners who would love to take all your cash.

Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

It looks like economic pressures are forcing relocation of Erie Looking Productions by April. There is no plan yet as to what may come. Stay tuned for more.

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Kellat serves as the Head Writer of Erie Looking Productions.

LISTen 106 Delayed

StephenK — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:03:41 -0500

Due to the impending Super Bowl match-up on February 7th, it is anticipated that connectivity will be quite impaired for Erie Looking Productions at its rural operations site in extreme northeastern Ohio. Under optimal conditions not tied to major events like the Super Bowl, our cable broadband access has roughly one-third the throughput a conventional cable broadband connection in the United States would possess. We expect that access will be impaired during and immediately after the game. Recognizing such, LISTen #106 will not be released on February 8th as we will most likely repeatedly time-out during upload attempts.

Columns will still be released as deemed appropriate in the intervening time. These will be posted as text posts with Adobe Acrobat files injected into the podcast stream as enclosures so as to not leave podcast listeners without something.

Barring any further disruptions, LISTen #106 is anticipated to be released on or near 0500 UTC on February 15th. For those wanting to catch up on listening after ALA Mid-Winter might have put you behind, LISTen 105 remains available as does the column Defining Value.

An Occasional Column: Defining Value

StephenK — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:18:46 -0500

As promised in LISTen 105, this is one of the columns being released this week. Click on the "Read More" link to see the web-based view of the column or check your podcatcher for the PDF version.

Defining Value
By Stephen Michael Kellat

That special groundhog saw his shadow in the central Pennsylvania community of Punxsatawney. Six more weeks of winter supposedly loom ahead. Unfortunately groundhogs do not predict economic cycles.

Even the economy has caught up with libraries today. Those on the front-lines must avoid the temptation to blame funding problems on “the government”. Libraries are one of those sorts of governmental agencies that the average adult citizen potentially interacts with far more frequently than perhaps a mayor's office or the upper echelons of the various public safety commands.

The big problem throughout the economy that is now trickling down to libraries is the lack of definition of what value may be and how it is assessed. This was seen in late 2008 with the addition of the delightful piece of jargon known as “toxic assets” to the public's lexicon. Toxic assets were termed such as they were financial instruments that nobody in the financial services industry could figure out a fair market value for. If no value can be assigned, red ink appeared in bookkeeping due to the now-modified accounting rules. Multiple financial institutions cratered and due to the complexity of some insurance items known as Credit Default Swaps the damage was somewhat prevented from spreading to the rest of the planet due to payouts made by insurer AIG. The list of counter-party payouts made by AIG is not fully released yet but is expected to include prominent financial institutions in European countries at a bare minimum.

That on-going financial crisis shows in large scale a problem which permeates other parts of life. What is value? How do we assign value to things? In a world where the intangible tries to gain equal footing with the tangible in the marketplace this gets very confused. From the perspective of librarians, we already have one place where we can observe this tension without having to resort to the macroeconomic level of Wall Street cratering. The prime example is the ebook marketplace on Amazon.

Thanks to the efforts of LISNews user bibliofuture, posts have been seen over and over about tensions relative to pricing. A large movement on Amazon purportedly wishes to cap ebook costs at USD$9.99 or less while publishers wish to charge more. At risk between those groups are those intangible blobs of bits called ebooks that previously would have been tangible codices made of paper and other ingredients which we otherwise would call books. Unlike physical books, Amazon will not run out of copies of the intangible blob of bits that is an ebook. That lack of scarcity helps contribute to a perception that that same intangible blob of bits is less costly to produce than a paper-based codex might have been instead.

The production of an intangible like an ebook is not without cost. Just as there are materials costs in producing widgets, there are also labor costs in producing widgets. As for the production of intangibles such as those that fuel today's supposed knowledge economy, the irreducible production is labor hours. The work an author undertakes is roughly the same whether the end-product work is a paper-based codex or an ebook. There is still a cost involved in creating a media manifestation of one sort or another. This is easily evidenced by the difference in the amount of time that textual blog posts, audio podcasts, and video podcasts require for creation.

With the opaqueness and lack of public understanding as to the costs involved in producing intangibles in today's knowledge economy, is it any wonder that there is a lack of any reference point to judge worth and value? When visiting a deli a customer has reference points to determine the worth and value of a piece of meat compared to what else is on offer. Intangibles do not provide those hooks which then leads to difficult discussions of public goods served and benefits derived. Outside bread and butter issues like device compatibility, how can one assign value to a single song for download let alone choose between retailers offering that song? With the ease of manipulating online reviewing and commenting systems, usable community-based reference points cannot be separated from the chaff otherwise called propaganda.

The root problem with this is the lack of community and by extension the degradation of society. Commerce is based upon the notion of some consistency and predictability in interaction. While many in the First World are more connected than ever with online tools and gadgetry, attention is taken away from the real world around you. When you functionally cease to be part of a community, value and cost make little sense to you. When you functionally cease to be part of a community, you become little more than alien without a grasp of the native language let alone culture. When you check out on society through electronic means, culture and knowledge wither as social stratification is increased through the reality of those who have electronic access and those who do not.

This is not something libraries can fix by themselves. While libraries have a role to play in this, they are not the ones to lead this dance so to say. That initiative can only come from other political elites or the religious orders. When voters chose in late 2008 change they could believe in it becomes more readily apparent that nobody is quite sure what the end result will yet be. The strengthening of communities and interpersonal ties is going to be essential for society to lift itself out of its current economic psychosis.

###

Kellat serves as the Head Writer of Erie Looking Productions and is working on raising capital to support production operations.

LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast -- Episode #105

StephenK — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:24:27 -0500

This week's episode features an interview with the President of the ALA's counterpart in New Zealand, LIANZA. A new situation has arisen in New Zealand where a library may be starting to charge for loans of materials to adults. Barbara Garriock joined us via the magic of Skype to talk about the situation.

An LISNews zeitgeist recap as well as a miscellany of news bits are also presented.

LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast -- Episode #104

StephenK — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:48:56 -0500

This week's episode brings an analytical essay. What is fueling this renewed drive for paywalls and exclusivity contracts for content? The essay talks about some of the economic pressures that may have been overlooked. Remember, the air staff used to work in print news which means that they have their bylines and photo credits in at least a vertical file out there somewhere.

A miscellany of brief items is also presented.

And now the cat is into head-banging...

StephenK — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:11:23 -0500

Our indoor/outdoor tomcat is having problems. We had to rearrange things. Since I got back from the day job, the cat has been spastic. He's been far more expressive than normal with fairly strange physical antics. Here's what happened.

The space here on the farm where we record LISTen suffered some structural damage recently. I had a spaghetti pot catching the leak as water dripped down from the ceiling of that space. We just had a damage assessment that indicates that that whole space is going to have to be repaired. Before I had to shuffle off to the day job I worked with family to tear out that whole area and reconfigure another part of the farm house to compensate for the loss of space.

This truly sucks. I was worried that I was going to have to negotiate time to borrow somebody else's recording space to record the next episode. I was even more worried the podcast would be forced back into hiatus until I could figure out a solution.

After all that worry, I am pleased to say that we're still on the air barring any unforeseen complications. The acoustics profile has changed so things might sound slightly different. Listener discretion is encouraged.

LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast -- Episode #103

StephenK — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:43:45 -0500

This week's episode is truncated due to the holiday. A zeitgeist review is presented as well as a news bits miscellany.

Bridging The Divide: An Alternative Proposal

StephenK — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:37:00 -0500

By Stephen Michael Kellat, MSLS
Head Writer, Erie Looking Productions

It has been discussed in blog posts, columns, and episodes of LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast that regulation may not be the best way to bridge the digital divide. Some thoughts were obliquely mentioned at times as to how to carry out alternative measures for ameliorating the divide. Now is perhaps the time for some specifics for one facet.

Part of the problem with the whole digital divide view of things is that it insists upon rugged individualism in interacting with data. Quite unlike visiting a swimming pool, there are no lifeguards to jump in and save you when you drown in the sea of information. Economies of scale that can be derived from changing individual experiences into group experiences become of further interest as this drowning in information goes on.

For the consumption of online audiovisual content, it can be expensive putting personal media players let alone appropriate network connections into the use of every individual. Even the experience of having a television in everyone's bedroom in a home is a relatively recent phenomenon. As NCM Fathom has already shown through continuing to operate as a going business, people will gather together for communal experiences in watching programs. There are at least three movie theaters within easy driving distance of the eastern operations of Erie Looking Productions where one can watch the February 4th simulcast of the live production of A Prairie Home Companion.

The question then is how to do this sort of thing at your own libraries. Surprisingly some popular web video productions are available under Creative Commons licensing. Assuming you have your general ASCAP/BMI style licensing in play you may be able to show some of these programs without problem. Check with your library's legal counsel first to make sure that everything is in order, though.

The first matter of concern is selecting what to show. News feature program Rocketboom is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Many releases from the White House are public domain and give you uncut views of what President Obama actually said compared to the editing decisions of a video editor. More than that is out there but it is up to you to choose it.

The second step after you choose your content to show is to select resources in your library that highlights what is in the video content. Why leave it all to video? There is a world beyond and quite likely it is already on your shelves somewhat. This is the time when reference librarians can sharpen their group speaking skills and also introduce people to resources that would not normally be touched upon in one-on-one reference transactions.

After selecting your video, finding your books, and picking somebody to speak you still have two things left to do. First and foremost you have to promote the event. If nobody know it is happening, does it really matter outside of just being wasted labor costs?

Once you promote the event sufficiently, put your best foot forward. Popcorn might even be called for and might be something a friends organization, if it exists, could help with. The biggest thing to remember in putting on the show is that the library is but one beach on the sea of knowledge that thankfully has lifeguards the others most often do not. The key distinctive for libraries in this respect that allow for differentiation is the focus on service to the information seeker that the seeker will not be getting from a computer system like Bing or Google.

Once upon a time news reels were collective experiences where people saw moving pictures from beyond their own town. After a period of varying degrees of rugged individualism, economic pressures may make communal experiences more prevalent again. Until somebody takes the plunge and tries to implement something along these lines, though, who will ever know?

Bridging The Divide: An Alternative Proposal by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast -- Episode #102

StephenK — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:40:22 -0500

This week's episode features a chat with Blake Carver about the 2010 Blogs to Read list and the nascent essay contest. An essay as well as a miscellany of news bits are also presented.