Il
te
A Focus on Users at
ITHAKA Conference
A focus on using technology to en-
gage with library users kept participants
tuned into the second day ofthe non-
profit ITHAKA's Sustainable Scholar-
ship Conference 2011 in New York on
September 20. The program ran the
gamut from public domain accessibility
to ebook searchability to crowdsourcing.
What could have been the motto of
the day—listen to users and learn from
them—was the simple but powerful
message delivered by Susan Gibbons,
a 2005 LJ Mover & Shaker and cur-
rently the university librarian at Yale.
She spoke about a study she coauthored
while associate dean at the University
of Rochester, NY, and pointed out that
it was important to realize the difference
between what a librarian perceives users'
needs to be and what their actual needs
are. It's not enough simply to listen,
however. Gibbons pointed out. If users'
feedback doesn't lead to "real changes,"
she said, "they are going to stop partici-
pating."
In order to meet user needs, librar-
ies have to have the materials that us-
ers want. Content in the public do-
main, when combined with search tools,
may help provide them. In the opening
panel ofthe day, more than one speaker
pointed out the costs to digitize content
and make it searchable and useful.
Issues surrounding copyright had par-
dcular resonance for panelist Paul Cou-
rant, university librarian at the Uni-
versity of Michigan (UM), in light of
the recent suit brought by the Authors
Guild and others against HathiTrust.
UM, and four other universities, which
charged them with infringement for,
in part, digitizing in-copyright works
(see LJ editor-in-chief Francine Fi-
alkoff's editorial "Are You Kidding?"
LJ 10/1/11, and visit ow.ly/ótoVq for
more). Courant reaffirmed UM's com-
14 I LIBRARY JOURNAL | OCTOBER 15. 2011
16 Goodreads rolls out recommendations
18 UNC launches Digital Innovation Lab
18 InfoTech Briefs
Edited by David Rapp
teer their time for massive online proj-
ects. One project showcased by Ben
Vershbow, manager of NYPL (New
York Public Library) Labs, was
What's on the Menu?, in which website
visitors have so far transcribed the names
of nearly 565,000 dishes from 9,827 vin-
mitment to making public domain ma- tage menus in the NYPL archive.
terials available to the public.
Alexander Street Press president
Stephen Rhind-Tutt noted that even if UM PUTS HATHITRUST ORPHAN
digitized materials are free, they may not WORKS PROJECT ON HOLO
be very useful without additional tools The University of Michigan (UM)
to analyze them, transcribe them, and Library released a statement on Sep-
make them searchable—all features that tember 16 announcing that it would be
for-profit interests can bring to the table. examining its "flawed" pilot process for
Barbara Rockenbach, director of identifying orphan works, putting its
the humanities and history libraries at HathiTrust orphan works project ef-
Columbia University, pointed to mul- fectively on hold. This follows reaction
tiple surveys in which students had said about the status of several works on its
that ebooks were more useful than print publicly posted orphan candidates list.
books when it came to finding refer- The statement also comes in the
ences. Publishers, she said, should be wake of a copyright infringement law-
motivated to produce text in flexible suit filed by the Authors Guild and
digital formats to encourage these uses. others against HathiTrust, UM, and
The most radical notions of how to four other universities (see story above).
engage users explored the concept of The orphan works project was previ-
crowdsourcing—using technology to ously scheduled to make available to the
enable members ofthe public to volun- UM community starting October 13
TENNANT: THE POST-DVD WORLD AND LIBRARIES
LJ blogger Roy Tennant keeps a close eye on tech trends affecting
libraries. In a recent post, he wondered about the future of DVDs,
which are high-circulation items in many libraries:
"The other night I noticed a few TV ads pitching movies—not to
see them in the theater but to buy them on Blu-ray. That's when it
hit me.... Why would I want to buy a movie when I basically get it
for free with my monthly subscription to Netflix and Hulu?
"Add to this a growing consumer awareness that formats are
fleeting, and you have the makings of a real crash in consumer demand. How many
people do you know who collected movies on VHS only to watch them become
virtually worthless as they were replaced by DVDs?... The very idea of having a
collection of DVDs is so last century....
"So what are the potential ramifications for libraries?... One is that demand for
our movie collections may decrease, as low-cost monthly subscriptions take the place
of borrowing DVDs.... If overall demand for DVDs/Blu-ray tanks, we may also see the
cost of the physical item going up. Donations to library book sales of these items will
decrease as consumers buy fewer physical formats."
Tennant asked commenters to weigh in, and several have so far. Daniel Clark, for
example, noted decreased demand for DVDs at his library; commenter William Badke
pointed out that, in academic libraries, "there are many DVD and even VHS resources
that can't be replicated with streaming."
Readers can comment on the L/website at ow.ly/6Fq9d.
[ WWW.LIBRARYJ0URNAL.COM REVIEWS, NEWS. AND MORE
 INFOTECH I
some full-text electronic versions of or-
phans—in-copyright works for which
rights-holders cannot be found.
"Once we create a more robust, trans-
parent, and fully documented process,
we will proceed with the work, because
we remain as certain as ever that our
proposed uses of orphan works are law-
ful and important to the future of schol-
arship and the libraries that support it,"
UM said in the statement.
UM's announcement follows several
blog posts on the Authors Guild website
claiming to have found rights-holders
for a number of works on the HathiTrust
list. A number of books have since been
removed from the list.
UM university librarian Paul Cou-
rant told LJ that some of the rights-
holders for works in question "were, in
effect, too easy to find."
"We have to go back and look at each
one again and learn, from the mistakes
we made, how we can do this reliably,"
he said, adding that the process "will
take a little bit of time." As a result, the
works currently on the orphan works
list are "very unlikely" to be released as
UXPRESS
XLIBRARYJOURNAL'^o"^
16 I LIBRARY JOURNAL | OCTOBER 15, 2011
scheduled. Courant also said that the ac- members, based on star ratings and user-
tion was not in response to the recent generated genre categorizations. New
lawsuit but a response "to our own eval- users are asked to rate a series of popu-
uation that the process needs work." lar books to generate recommendations
immediately.
Otis Chandler, CEO of Goodreads,
GOODREADS ROLLS OUT BOOK told LJ that "down the road, we want
RECOMMENDATION FEATURE to be doing a lot more with this algo-
Goodreads, the largest social network- rithm," including suggesting books for
ing site for readers, launched its new Goodreads-based book clubs, as well as
recommendation engine on September recommending book clubs for members
15, which draws on ratings made by its to join.
nearly six million members on the 190 Last June, Goodreads struck a deal
million books in its database. with EBSCO's NoveList, a readers' ad-
In March 2011, Goodreads bought visory service used by libraries, in which
the smaller site Discovereads to ob- NoveList would integrate Goodreads'
tain its algorithm, which forms the ba- 11 million—plus book reviews and 100
sis of Goodreads' recommendation en- million ratings. Chandler said that he
gine. Books are recommended for site didn't know at this point whether Nov-
eList would be syndicating the new
Goodreads recommendations, though
on he did say that Goodreads was plan-
ning to make the information accessible
through its application programming in-
terface (API). (NoveList did not respond
For the latest news and
when contacted for comment.)
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