Librarian of Fortune

Is there planned obsolescence for information?

I attended a talk last night by John de Graaf Dave Wann, co-author of Affluenza, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SLA. He's a tendentious speaker; I don't like getting an hour of politics, even when I agree with the point of view. So I amused myself by looking for ways to relate his screed about over-consumption to the information industry. Yes, I'm an info-nerd.

One of Wann's topics was planned obsolescence. Having spent way too much time dealing with Intuit and its customer-hostile upgrade practices regarding QuickBooks, I couldn't agree more. But then I started wondering whether there was such a thing as planned information obsolescence. Are there instances where information is designed or presented in such a way that it has an artificially limited life span? By the end of Wann's talk, I'd thought of several.

• When data is delivered in a physical medium such as a DVD, it requires the continuing availability of equipment and software that can read data in that medium. The digital photos I took 10 years ago are still on Iomega zip drives, and I have neither the hardware nor software to read the disks.
• Business software is often complex enough to require some level of customer service and maintenance. Most software companies discontinue support for their products after a certain period of time, requiring customers to pay for extended service or newer versions of the software.
• Textbooks are notorious for being frequently updated, and consequently repaginated, requiring students to buy new editions rather than used copies.
• E-content subscriptions, in which the archive is only available as long as the account is active, turn subscriptions into rentals. 

Some of these issues can be circumvented by relying on open source software and open access publications. Yes, I now store all my digital photos in the cloud, and I download all the software I buy.

But it will take a radical change in the market to eliminate the financial incentive of information providers, in all their forms, to build obsolescence into their products. As with iDevices with their virtually unreplaceable batteries, sometimes we just hold our nose and, well, consume.

 

Information wants to be free... or expensive

I was reflecting today on Stewart Brand's famous quote, first said in 1985:

Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine - too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient [emphasis added]. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.

What I found most interesting is that the "cost" of information is not inherent in the information itself but is specific to the individual recipient.

This is yet another way of saying that the role of info pros has to be not just providing information but making sure it will be seen as valuable to each client. Is it distilled? Is it easy to read, repurpose and share? Is it customized and formatted in the way your client wants?

Want more thoughts on how to turn "free" information into "expensive" information? See the slide deck of a presentation I gave in July at the AALL conference: From Search to Insight: adding value where it counts, and other slide decks at BatesInfo.com/extras.

 

Who judges what "good" search results are?

I had a great conversation with Chris Sherman at Web Search University about search results, which brought up to me an enormous disconnect between SEO and info pro communities. (Gee, what a surprise!)

He and I were comparing Google results for a particular search technique. Of the first 10 results, the second and sixth hits were spot on. Since it was a somewhat amorphous topic, I expected to have to wade through a lot of stuff to find what I was looking for. Two good hits from the first 10 was pretty good for me. Chris labelled those results as a #fail, since 80% of the results weren't useful.

My response: It's a question of precision vs. recall. Search engine marketers consider results with less than 90% relevance to be a failed search, because the precision wasn't high enough. Info pros, on the other hand, are often more concerned about recall; we want to make sure that we find as many useful resources as possible. For a difficult search, 10% or 20% relevance is just fine.

And this comes back to my ongoing theme that we info pros are far more data-tolerant than most people. Wading through page after page of search results is just fine with us, as long as we find something useful. And we often forget that our clients are far less data-tolerant than we are. One of the biggest challenges of info pros is limiting our results to the depth and breadth that our clients need. We want to keep digging deeper, and to send our clients all the fascinating information that we found, forgetting that this may be doing the client a disservice.

For more on distillation and making information more user-friendly, see my talk on adding value at BatesInfo.com/extras

 

 

Show people WHY before you tell 'em HOW

Last week, I heard a great presentation at Computers in Libraries by Tasha Bergson-Michelson, a Search  Education Curriculum Fellow at Google. One of the first things she asked the audience was whether anyone remembered the specific search techniques they had learned the day before. Very few hands were raised.

That got me thinking about the disconnect between presentations that are intended to transmit skills and those that are intended to provide insight. The latter, if done well, are always memorable; one of the reasons I love Twitter is that I can tweet insights from a presentation so that I find them later. A presentation that teaches skills – search techniques, for example – can often devolve into a recitation of features. “Google does this. Google does this other thing. Bing does this thing...”

The challenge for speakers is to make the information in practical presentations sticky. Tasha and I both use stories to engage audiences. When Tasha is teaching children search skills, for example, she challenges them to find information on D.B. Cooper, or the curse of King Tut’s tomb using Google. Give them something fun to search and they’ll learn how.

Summary: show people why and then they’ll pay attention to how

Seth Godin to publisher: Buh-bye

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about Seth Godin's decision that, going forward, he would solely self-publish. He no longer needs a traditional publisher like Penguin Books. Notably, Godin defines "publishing" far more broadly than a traditional publisher; he plans on distributing his content in a number of media -- audiobooks, apps, podcasts, PDFs, print-on-demand, etc. As long as some version of it appears in Amazon.com, it's on the same virtual store shelf as any traditional book.

As for the value of publishers, Godin comments:

Publishers provide a huge resource to authors who don't know who reads their books... What the Internet has done for me, and a lot of others, is enable me to know my readers.

I wonder if we're seeing the beginning of a disintermediation between the content creator and the content user, similar to the old one between library users and high-end digital information.

There's still a role for content aggregators, but perhaps a far different one than in the past. In an environment in which we content creators interact directly with our readers - in multiple settings, no less - any intermediary (publisher / news aggregator) has to show its tangible value to both the originator and the user of the content.

If publishers can't find new ways to create a market for an author's content, and if more successful authors shift to Seth Godin's model, we may get to the point where print publishers are seen as the vanity press and high-quality self-publishing is the new professional standard.

As someone who has had 6 books published by traditional print publishers, I have seen the transformation of a manuscript to an edited, indexed, laid-out publication. It is a sight to behold, and certainly something I couldn't do on my own. And there are other ways that I can distribute content directly to my readers.

Traditional publishers have all the tools needed to create vibrant communities for their content providers authors. Can they, in essence, get out of the way and help their writers make direct connections with their readers? Can they expand their vision of publishing to include the media in which ideas flow most easily, if not freely?

Does information want to be free?

For your beach reading, don't forget to bring along my latest EContent column, Divas and D&B Reports, in which I opine:

I never did believe that information wanted to be free ... just respected for more than its good looks. Apparently, no one else got the memo.
[...]
E-content, in and of itself, often isn't seen as particularly valuable. We can find the same material elsewhere on the web if we look hard enough, or we can find something else that we perceive as good enough. For information-and access to it-to be priced profitably, the value of the content must be readily apparent.

WWMEBD, or, where's the info profession heading?

In April, I was invited by the SLA student members of the GSLIS program at Simmons College to host a conversation about where our profession is heading and how to position ourselves most effectively. I had a fabulous time, and met some LIS students who are going to be great assets to their employers.

You can listen to my presentation and the Q&A here. And yes, there were actually signs on the hallways pointing the way to WWMEBD. Obviously, it's time to start ordering wristbands...

Plus ça change...

In 2003, I was asked to give a short talk at the Information Online 2003 conference in Sydney on the role of information professionals in the online environment. I predicted the day when we saw the distinction between librarY and librarIAN, when info pros permeated the workplace, when we were seen as an essential component of every information management function within organizations and institutions.

I re-discovered it when migrating to a new laptop and realized that almost all of what I said then applies just as much today. It's here, on my Extras page. What do you think? Besides the Microsoft Watch, which is now a smartphone, I think it's still applicable today.

Competing on value, not price

I had a few talks that I had recorded and needed transcribing. I headed over to Elance to see how cheaply I could get it done. After looking through some listings of transcriptionists, I would up selecting Jenifer Toussant (jenifertoussant.elance.com), who's based in the US. I asked her how she survives while competing with $3/hour off-shore transcriptionists and here's what she said:

I do run into lots of people who use an offshore transcription service for about 1/3 of the price that I offer, but that has drawbacks for those clients, both tangible and intangible.  I  know I cannot compete on price so I must stand apart in quality, both the quality of my work and the quality of my relationship with my client.  To this end I also provide broader, one-stop services as far as article writing, editing and proofreading - skills that require an amount of critical thinking or artistic flair. I can build a larger network by offering higher-end freelance services than I could by just marketing to people in my local area, which is still depressed economically.

This is exactly how I think that info pros can also address the challenge of offshoring or outsourcing. Offer tangible value that an off-shored person can't offer, and you'll keep your clients, and your job.

Measuring the Intangible

Andrea Meyer is one of the smartest people I know, as well as a truly delightful person. I suggest you follow her on Twitter. And read this blog on Measuring the Intangible. It's a quick and thoughtful look at how companies can look at publicly-available data on your product, brand, or city...

Flickr, Twitter and blogs are all rich sources of user-generated photos, opinions or reviews. Analyze which features or aspects of your product are displayed or mentioned. This data helps reveal how customers portray, experience or feel about your product.