Comments on: More Walled Gardens to Tear Down: Technical Libraries

By: Dean Meadows

Dean Meadows — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:08:56 +0000

I agree with DrWex, the authors should publish a copy themselves, you even published your own Masters Thesis Dan, so it looks like you agree? And your site/BLOG is a complete reference library. Freedom of information is an academic given, so academics should take personal responsibility for the dissemination of their own research, if you don’t know how, learn, it’s very easy?

By: DrWex

DrWex — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:47:49 +0000

dan, I think you’ve missed the mark by shooting at ACM. Blogged here: http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2007/09/20/tear_down_the_digital_science_publishing_walls.php

By: Henrik Olsen

Henrik Olsen — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:30:03 +0000

I’m shocked. Is this 2007?

By: Cornelius’ Rants & Thoughts » Blog Archive » Technical Libraries - Tear Down The Walls!

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:56:56 +0000

[...] just read an interesting article at the AdaptivePath homepage. The comment is about technical libraries, for example the Association [...]

By: Donna Maurer

Donna Maurer — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:20:01 +0000

I so agree. But what’s worse is when I hear criticisms of the UX/IA/whatever fields about how we are reinventing the wheel and condescending ‘don’t you know, we solved that problem years ago’. Aaarrrrgggghhh - it is impossible to know what’s been done if it is locked away.

I joined the ACM for a year just to get access to papers, but stopped as it is a ridiculous amount of money for a tiny freelance business.

I’ll give ASIS&T one plug though - all papers from the IA Summit are available (if the author provided them) with no restrictions. They are a little hard to dig out at the moment, but plans are afoot to do something about that…

By: mark

mark — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:21:20 +0000

Your community library can probably help you here: many libraries have subscriptions to ACM, IEEE and many other academic research publications. I used my local library’s online access heavily, getting PDFs of the articles I was interested in. Free of charge and from home, exactly what I want. Sadly, library funding was cut here this year so no more library, period.

I agree fully with the complaint - it’s one of the reasons I’m no longer a member of ACM or IEEE. They don’t do that much for the community, so much as for themselves via their paid member base.

By: Chiara Fox

Chiara Fox — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:04:44 +0000

The problem isn’t the Associations themselves, but the whole academic publishing model. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not supporting the publishers. It’s highway robbery what they do and many of them are evil. Having worked in scientific libraries where we had to subscribe to these journals, it’s just mind blowing what is charged.

But folks don’t get little things like, oh, say TENURE, unless they publish in these types of journals. The publishers charge the associations an arm and a leg to publish their papers, so the costs just flow right down. It’s a messed up model, but it’s going to take A LOT to fix it.

However, you can walk right into any public university and get access to these for free. Sometimes if your city is big enough you can get them at a public library too. Yes, that means having to leave the comfort of the couch, but if it’s to visit a library, perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing. Who knows what else you’ll find there?

By: Joe Lamantia

Joe Lamantia — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:59:39 +0000

Amen. The user experiences offered by the digital libraries of both organizations are so unrelentingly bad that I avoid them as much as possible.

In fact, I generally use secondary sources like Connotea to find things in the ACM and ASIST libraries…

Go social discovery mechanisms!

By: Bri

Bri — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:43:41 +0000

You mean something like arXiv?

arXiv started in the physics community in relation to the exact problem that you’re talking about, and then was expanded to other fields such as math and computer science. It has always existed online-only, and has always been hosted by a government or academic sponsor. (Originally Los Alamos National Laboratory, now Cornell University.)

arXiv does contain a Human-Computer Interaction category under Computer Science, along with some relevant content in other subcategories such as Information Retrieval.

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:58:48 +0000

I’m a bit surprised the HCI/IxD/IA community hasn’t created something analagous to the Public Library of Science (at least as far as I know). We certainly have the expertise to do it, it’s just a matter of focusing effort on it. I do think we could bring a unique perspective to the problem, not just reheating the traditional publication model with open access.

Of course, this wouldn’t really help unlock the historical research, but at least it could prevent new research from being held captive. This is a problem that is plaguing all areas of research, and is really stifling innovation. Only large university libraries can afford to pay the licensing fees, which are (exponentially increasingly) ridiculous since the publisher’s costs are minimal. It’s even more ridiculous that we have to pay anyway, since much of the research is publicly funded, so we’re really paying twice.