I’m including a link here to a blog posting by Karen G. Schneider at the ALA TechSource Blog. It’s pretty scorching, and I think all of us who work on the publishing side of the library marketplace equation should read it and understand just how much debate and soul-searching is going on among librarians about the digitization projects underway by Google and others. I think she makes many valid points, and I continue to fear for the future of libraries in our society, just as do many librarians. If libraries as we know them cease to exist, then so will a company like ours–unless we can find a way to succeed in the digitial universe dominated by Google, Microsoft, Thomson, and others. Our challenge is to find a way–using all the flexibility and nimbleness that a little company like ours has at its disposal–to carve out a sustainable niche in an information industry buffeted by enormous change. My hope is that libraries will continue to be a huge portion of that niche.
In a recent post I blogged about the ongoing rumor that President Bush will choose Southern Methodist University as the site of his presidential library, and that part of the package will be a new conservative think tank that presumably will churn out scholarship that supports the policies he followed throughout his tenure. Today’s Dallas Morning News brings word that some SMU professors are asking for more discussion about this before the university signs on any dotted line. Theology School professor Susanne Johnson has circulated a letter among the faculty to this effect, commenting: “There are two different visions of the library. One is for the library as a place for academic inquiry … but the other vision is a strictly partisan center to promote the president’s platform.” An English professor who signed the letter, Beth Newman, told the newspaper: “I am troubled by the likelihood that [the library] will bring with it a right-wing think tank, an institute that advocates for right-wing causes.” It will be interesting to follow this debate, but I have a hard time imagining it will matter in the end. If the president chooses SMU for the library and think tank, the university will sign wherever it has to sign as quickly as it possibly can.
On another topic, I want to apologize to any of you who may try to read this blog through a news aggregrator such as Technorati or NewsGator. I have tried my best to get the RSS feed of the blog to work properly, but for some reason those sites seem to have trouble picking it up. My suspicion is that the fault lies with the blog software, which is provided by Hostway.com. This company does a great job of hosting our company website, but their blog software has many serious flaws. For instance, it cannot provide usage statistics. In the new year I will be switching to a new blogging software, but which one is a question mark. I’m waiting and hoping that the SuiteTwo software, which promises RSS feeds, blogging, wikis, and more, will arrive quickly–and that it will be affordable to a small company like ours. If not, I’ll choose another route. But for now, you’ll have to come directly to this site to see my latest postings.
Earlier this week various companies announced a new product offering called “SuiteTwo.” Despite the odd name, I’m actually quite excited about this service. What it will do is offer small businesses an integrated suite of online tools: a blogging platform provided by MovableType; a wiki platform provided by SocialText; an RSS aggregator provided by NewsGator; and RSS syndication featured by SimpleFeed. It may all sound like a lot of techno mumbo-jumbo. But for a business like ours, which is tiny and struggles to incorporate these new kinds of Internet tools (they’re referred to as “Web 2.0″ tools) into our daily lives, it is potentially a big deal. The blogging feature, for instance, promises to be far richer and more powerful than our current blogging tool. (Among other frustrations, I cannot track the number of readers of this blog. Not that there are very many. But the principle is important.) Being able to adopt wiki technology would be completely new for us, as would the ability to think more seriously about adding RSS syndication to some of our content/projects. We’re actually giving a lot of thought these days to how we can overhaul and streamline our existing project work with some of these and similar tools, and to how we can incorporate them into upcoming efforts to create some of our own proprietary content. In any event, SuiteTwo sounds very promising, and I look forward to its roll-out.
Encyclopedia Britannica has started a blog, and among the roster of employees who are posting to it is our friend and colleague Michael Levy, who contributed to the World Encyclopedia of Political Systems and Parties. In keeping with his background in political science, Michael’s early posts are related to politics. However, like all of the posters, he is free to write about anything he likes. Take a look.
I’ve re-inserted a link to the Berkshire blog, as they have corrected their family of websites after being hacked last weekend. Interestingly, the same weekend the Thomson Gale site was also hacked–although I only found one page that was affected. Frightening for a small-business owner like me, but I’ve talked with John Wilson, our computer consultant, about ways to protect us from hacking. There is never any sure way to protect one’s site, of course, but John has given us some helpful hints about how to guard against as many attacks as possible.
The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has finally created a blog. I’ve added this blog to our links on this page.
One of our contributors to Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia: Reptiles, Erik Pianka at the University of Texas, has found himself under seige by certain members of the politico-blogging community for comments he made about the Earth’s overpopulation (click here for article). He made the comments in speeches to scientists last month, and somehow they made their way to the Drudge Report. From there the controversy spread to talk radio and various blogs. I haven’t read any of the blog postings, nor have I seen the true context of his remark, but it seems like folks are ganging up on Erik to make cheap political points. (I know–that never happens in America.) In other words, I’m fairly skeptical about the motivations of those who claim to be up in arms over Erik’s remarks.
Got an email earlier this week from a former contributor, Judson Knight, who contributed to many of our publications (or wrote them outright, e.g. the Science of Everyday Things) before joining his wife, Deidre, full time in operating her literary agency, The Knight Agency. We were sorry to lose Judson’s talents, but he has obviously gone on to great things with the Knight Agency (http://www.knightagency.net/). Judson has his own blog at http://www.judsonknight.blogspot.com/, and the Knight Agency has a separate blog at http://www.knightagency.blogspot.com/. One of Deidre and Judson’s agents, Nephele Tempest, also writes for Contemporary Authors, which we produce. Take a look at their blogs/website for a perspective on another corner of the publishing world.
I am slowly but surely figuring out how to manage this blog and navigate the blogosphere. I have added a few RSS links; you should be able to click on these links and see a summary of the news items posted recently on those sites. (All the sites I’ve added so far are blogs, but I could also syndicate news and other kinds of sites, if I were so inclined.) If you want to read a particular item, simply click on the specific line and you will be taken to that site.
There are numerous librarian blogs around, and some of them have lots of good tidbits about the industry. One that I like is at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/. It’s run by J. Baumgart at Harvard. While reading through that blog this week, I found lots of interesting posts, including references to a new Wikipedia-like project called Digital Universe, which was founded by an early Wikipedia employee. Another posting referenced the new Google Librarian newsletter.
Welcome to the first Schlager blog! I plan to use this blog to share my thoughts about our business, our projects, our customers, and the reference industry in general. (I will try to spare you my boring thoughts about politics or society or culture–unless, of course, they relate directly to something we’re working on or want to work on.) SG staff members know that I love my tech gadgets but can hardly be called a “techie,” so you’ll have to bear with me as I learn how to communicate effectively and engagingly in this new format.
I am writing this blog on my screened-in patio. It’s a beautiful day here in South Florida–the kind of day that those of us who live here take for granted, but those in colder climates envy. After living here for less than 2 years, I’m still amazed at the weather, which is darn near perfect 95 percent of the time. (The other 5 percent, of course, is Hurricane Hell.) In any event, I’m using a brand new wireless broadband card to connect to the Internet here on the patio. This card is a small start in our drive this winter to better equip ourselves for future hurricanes and their aftermath–lack of power, no Internet connectivity, etc. The card can be used in any computer but is especially perfect for laptops. The connection speed is nothing to write home about, but it’s better than dial-up (usually) and, most importantly, can be used anywhere. If Verizon’s towers don’t fall down in a hurricane (they didn’t during Wilma), then we can use this card and others like it to access our email and keep our business running even if everything else goes down. They say we’re 10 years into a hurricane “peak era,” and that such eras usually last 20-30 years. We’ll continue to seek out ways to protect our ability to work in the midst of such storms.