Cites & Insights Spring 2006 - "Blogs, Google and [Prawn]"
Cites & Insights 6:6, Spring 2006, Walt Crawford's publication, is out. I haven't written as much about these as I wish I could. But this issue is chock-full of material to motivate me (such as several nice mentions of things I've written). For example, regarding blogs (my links):
It's probably important to say at this point that Seth Finkelstein and Jon Garfunkel are, as far as I can tell, right about what they call "gatekeepers"--within any given field, a relatively small number of bloggers commands most of the attention and, to some extent, dominates the topics under discussion. For relatively small fields, that may not be an awful situation: It's not too difficult to break into the top hundred library related blogs (or even the top fifty). But, as Finkelstein notes, that's little solace if the fields you're interested in aren't narrow fields--if you're interested in politics or the like. There, things seem to be getting worse: The chances of a single amateur to be heard aren't zero, but they're no better than in traditional media.
Elsewhere, there's a section with the obscure title of "Discovering Books" (subtitle - "The OCA/GBS Saga Continues"). Hidden away in the middle of this section is a Google Book Search (that's the "GBS") discussion compilation, including an argument with some dude named Siva [Vaidhyanathan] (since apologized for, and clarified, for hopefully less acrimony). Perhaps idiosyncratically, I found much of the section oddly disheartening. As I read through it, I spotted (what I considered to be) many significant flaws in several quoted assertions. But there's no point, or even negative incentive, to my detailing that, because (almost) nobody would hear me, and many are far more famous commentators than me. The Google Book Search debate is full of "advocacy", which makes it very difficult to sort out *accuracy*.
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in copyblight , cyberblather | on April 10, 2006 08:09 AM (Infothought permalink)
