explodedlibrary.info

photos of the APEC fence

Police backed on photo ban of APEC fence, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 2007

Tourists forced to delete fence photos, The Australian, 2 September 2007

flickr search on the APEC fence

Fortress Sydney, Digital Photo Gallery of Ted Szukalski

John Howard Readies Fortress Sydney, Stuff-Em-Up the hill backwards

© 2007 Bruce Phelan

my rant on the afr.com fiasco

[6 October 2007 update: This post has been followed up here]

The Australian Financial Review, nicknamed the Fin and sometimes AFR, is perhaps the newspaper of record for the Australian business sector. It used to have arrangements with aggregators such as Factiva, Media Monitors and NewsBank. At some point, it decided that it wasn't making enough money from licensing its content online in this way. In addition, the head of Fair Business Media, Michael Gill, was convinced that AFR content needed to be locked down, "because because one bank used an AFR article to support a prospectus." So AFR decided to develop its own platform for online access to its content and abruptly ended licenses with Factiva and the others.

There's was more information about the afr.com debacle in the second article by Stephen Mayne in Crikey called "Remember the glory days of AFR.com", but sadly that's in the pay section of Crikey and I can't link to that. So I thought I'd add my impressions of afr.com and thoughts about the whole process. I am the first to admit that what follows is not a thoughtful objective review, but a rant. The afr.com fiasco has been a major inconvenience to me and many of my co-workers and faculty and students at MPOW.

I tried out the new afr.com both in beta and since its release on a trial subscription. My first impressions of the beta product was that it was an absolute dog. The current release is better than what I saw in beta, but I still think the product is a dog.

The product has a flash-driven interface. This has a number of effects. It makes afr.com a real memory hog. For example, when I'm running Firefox for Windows I don't use it lightly. I have multiple tabs open, I have various web apps running and maybe the Firefox application is using 90 MB of RAM. When I'm running afr.com in Firefox, that number jumps to 250 MB. The other thing is that the application is very slow. Don't bother trying to do anything quickly in afr.com, especially typing or scrolling or clicking on buttons. The other "feature" of the flash-driven interface is that it's impossible to copy and paste text from afr.com. This is a part of their strategy to eliminate copyright infringement by treating paying customers as if they were thieves.

Even if one pays for a monthly subscription (the cheapest being $A 25/month), it is not an all you can eat package. Usage is metered with credits. It costs one credit to open an article. What struck me as tremendously stingy - or clueless - is that if you do a regular search on afr.com, you do not see any page numbers in the list of results. That exclusive information only appears once you choose to spend a credit to open the article. Don't they realize that page numbers are needed in most citation systems?

I was expecting that afr.com would, if nothing else, be a good way of reading the Fin online, similar to wsj.com, the digital edition of the Wall Street Journal. But there seems no good way of browsing the current issue of the Fin in afr.com. The home page on afr.com seems to contain some articles from today’s paper, but it also contains links to other non-premium publications like Reuters or the Sydney Morning Herald – both of which can be viewed for free elsewhere. I've since learned that afr.com is different from the Digital Edition of the Australian Financial Review. The digital edition is only included with afr.com when people subscribe to the spendy ($A 150.00/month) advanced markets package. Compare that with wsj.com, that's available for $US 9.95/month [yesterday, that amounted to approximately $A 11.92].

I have one positive thing to say about afr.com. At least they bothered making it compatible with Macs. The product does work with Firefox and Safari, except that mouse wheel scrolling doesn't work in either Mac browser.  For some reason, they use the most unreadable font for full-text articles in the Safari browser.

And what's with the advertising? I don't mind ads on products I use for free, e.g. Google or smh.com.au. But afr.com is priced as a premium product. I think that somebody paying for a clunky product should be spared from ads.

I doubt that this going to be a huge problem for me, seeing that I don't intend to use the product again, but the online help in afr.com is very poor. They are large glossy-looking slow-loading pdf files which look and read more like marketing pieces than online help. It's a microcosm of the problems with all of afr.com, they go for bling and end up with something slow and unusable.

Afr.com’s major flaw as a product is that it provides all sorts of miscellaneous research tools, as if it’s aspiring to become its customers new research portal, but it doesn’t provide cost effective (or effective in any shape or form) access to the frickin' newspaper, which is only thing that I think 95% of likely subscribers would care about. But that’s not the only flaw in play here. An esteemed colleague of mine is convinced that in a few years from now, there will be books and business case studies about this afr.com fiasco. How could a supposedly smart company get it so wrong in so many different ways?

I wonder if they thought they could get away with it because they thought, “we’re the Fin, the paper of record in the Australian business community, people will put up with this crap, because they need us.” The answer is no, if you make life too difficult and expensive for your customers, we’ll adapt to life without you. Some day you may realize that actually, it was you who needed the goodwill of your customers and suppliers – and try to win us back. That may work, but maybe by then we’ll have got used to not using the AFR at all.

[14 June 2007 edit: I wrote something else about afr.com here]

new Sarah Blasko album

I have just returned from something I have not been to before, an album opening. The occasion was the launch of the new Sarah Blasko* album, What the sea wants, the sea will have. As much as I like music, I have not yet got into the habit of enjoying live music. It’s likely that this will change.

Tonight’s concert was something a little different. It was invitation-only concert in a small venue. How did I manage to get a ticket to something like this? It was nothing to do with blogging. I’m on Sarah Blasko’s email list and there was a competition for members of it, and I entered and got lucky. It also turned out by happy accident that I got a front row seat.

Everybody that I know who’s seen Sarah Blasko live has said that she’s an amazing performer. Despite these high expectations, I was not disappointed. Her stage presence was powerful yet also subtle and understated. It’s hard to explain. And then her mesmerizing voice and music! The time went by very quickly. I enjoyed her first album, but I would only have described myself as a lukewarm fan. After the experience of seeing her live, and also because I think the songs on the new album are stronger and more varied, the lukewarm feelings have disappeared.

 

* One way that Sarah Blasko is known outside of Australian music circles is that her song, Always worth it, was played in the final episode of Six Feet Under – when Claire decided she'd go to New York, despite no longer having a job waiting for her there.

Edit: See the photo gallery of this concert on the triple J website.

back blogging

It's been nice to have a break. It's been a real break - I haven't even been reading  all but a handful of blogs. I'm now looking forward to getting back into my regular blogging habit. The complication is that nothing stays the same, and resuming normal service cannot meant the same thing today that it meant a month ago.

I'm quite excited to see that librariesinteract.info is up and running. I've been curious about being involved in a group blog for some time, and am looking forward to contributing to this one. I've been thinking about how my contributions to  librariesinteract.info will be different from what I do here. I'm pretty sure that the explodedlibrary is a place where I'll discuss (sometimes rant about) things in more detail. I expect that in the group blog, I'll be announcing things more succinctly and with a little more objectivity - or least less bias. This also means that I'll have somewhere to palm off my collection of Australian library-related blogs.

Another difference is that I'm still quite happily experimenting with Vox - sorry, I'm out of invites right now, but I'm sure that will change. It's likely that I'll be doing most of my more personal blogging in there, which includes my photos and books that I've read. This explodedlibrary blog will refocus slightly to be both more practical (refining information that's useful for me in my work) and theoretical (pondering ideas that I'm interested in).

Breaking news and being an earlyish adopter of tech toys is not really my thing, but I do have a little of this tonight. I've been mucking around with some of  the widgets I can use with TypePad. One of the more interesting ones is the Rollyo widget which is current near the top of my left sidebar. It allows you to search the Australian library blogosphere. Use the drop down menu to access the custom search, ozliblog search, which searches this blog and most of the other more active Australian library blogs. It still needs a bit of tweaking, I set up the current configuration in less than five minutes. It will be helpful to me if no one else, because it will help me refind old posts when I only have the vauguest idea of what I had written.

I'm also trying the category cloud, which I like so far and will probably keep. There's also the opinmind widget, which shows little quotes from this blog. I wasn't sure if it's more interesting or annoying, so I'm testing it here.

format-shifting in Australia

I guess this is good news. It's not so much a victory for consumers, but an acknowledgement of common-sense and pragmatism. All this decision does is legalize behaviour which people have been doing any way for over 30 years, since the adoption of the analogue audio cassette recorder. Now that this useless legal absurdity is likely to be removed, it will be that much easier to justify the creation of more modern absurdities in intellectual property law.

With the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is obliged to harmonize its intellectual property laws with the US. There was no way of justifying that harmonization only goes in one direction.  - adopting US copyright doctrine in all its 21st century post-DMCA glory - while retaining counter-productive anachronisms which even the US had abandoned.

I have been wanting to link to something more official on this, but so far, all the information seems to be on this seems to be from the print media and other blogs commenting on it. As yet, there is nothing on the Department of Attorney-General's website. I will link to this official information when it appears.

Update: I have just found via Kim Weatherall that there is information about this on the Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's website

updates to my Australian library bloggers sidebar

[18 August 2006: This post has been updated here]

Thank you for everyone who has let me know about Australian library worker and library blogs. Please excuse me for taking so long to update the list. I suspect that this is the last time that I shall be publishing this list of Australian library-type blogs. The numbers are increasing and the list is getting more cumbersome to maintain, and thanks to things like the ever-helpful LibDex and Frappr (although the way Frappr works for Australian bloggers leaves a lot to be desired) it's a bit redundant. Next time I'll probably just have a list of my favourite Aussie LIS blogs and new discoveries.

Anyway, here are the new inclusions:

• Bronwyn's Library Blog
• Dive into Information
• Dunn & Wilson Scholarship 2005
• Innovate
• Issues and Challenges of a Small School Library
• Jenelle.net
• the lateral literal librarian
• Library clips
• Shelter.nu
• TLNewsau

I also want to draw attention to the institutional blog which I'm adding here - (Melbourne) Eastern Regional Libraries.

The problem, as far as I see it, is that for Australian bloggers, Frappr only allows you to zoom to a city level. When there are 4 bloggers in a city like Melbourne, they are all clumped together and it is impossible to zoom further, it can be very difficult to view each of the four. Is there something very basic about Frappr that I'm missing here? Has anybody else noticed this?

Currently playing in iTunes: Flame Trees by Sarah Blasko

New Librarians' Symposium call for papers

Something I would definitely like to do in the next 12 months is submit, write and present a paper at a library conference. If I weren't involved in organizing it, I would definitely be interested in presenting a paper at the ALIA New Librarians' Symposium, being held in Sydney in December 2006.

Although I'm approaching the margins of what is a new librarian, I definitely feel that I am a new librarian in Australia. The new librarians/grads activities have been a great way to meet people who are in similar places in their career, with similar issues. It's quite possible that I'll be rubbing shoulders with many of these new librarian peers for the rest of my career, in some shape or form, so it's good to get know them in the more relaxed environment that is new librarian activities.

A similar thing applies with conferences and papers. Activities like the New Librarian's Symposium are an ideal way of testing the waters with presenting papers at conferences. It's a great opportunity to see if you have the skills  and interest to do this, in a friendlier and less intimidating environment than some of the major conferences.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that the actual topics are going to be bland and unremarkable. Activities that are run by and for new librarians usually have a characteristic edge. We know that we have things to say about this career which we're contemplating investing the next 30 or so years of our working life, and we expect to be listened to.

Although blogging is one outlet which allows me to exercise my reading, writing and analytical skills, it is not the same and cannot replace that direct and immediate contact with one's peers in a real life audience. Sometimes it just doesn't seem possible to attend conferences - sadly this has often been my situation. But remember, unless you have an extremely stingy employer, you are more likely to get funding to attend these conferences if you are presenting a paper.

The call for papers for the ALIA New Librarians' Symposium closes on March 31.

random mobile phone searches in Sydney

I understand the role of SMS messages in fanning the flames of the riot and reprisals in Sydney, but I wonder, isn't this going too far?

Jane, from Coogee, was surprised to find three police on her bus asking to inspect mobile phones. Each took a phone at random and scrolled through messages for five or ten minutes. Everyone obeyed. "The people were perfectly friendly about it," she said. "I thought it was a bit weird and a breach of privacy. But I didn't say anything. Nobody did."
[Australians are an obedient people - but for how long?, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 December 2005]

the ugliness of certain crowds

I have at times thought that flash mobs were more about people desperately trying to find a use for new technology than anything else. Now I wonder how long the innocent random chaos of the flash mob phenomenon will persist, now that there's been a foreshadowing of what a flash mob with a passionate purpose can cause.

Yesterday's race riots in Cronulla, Sydney - which spread to other suburbs such as Maroubra (close to where I work), Brighton le Sands and Rockdale and Tempe  (close to where I live) were fuelled partly by broadcast sms messages, emails and discussions on electronic forums. Of course, the role of this technology is very minor compared with the mainstream media, particularly the Daily Telegraph and talk back radio, the influence of alcohol and the usually buried but ever-simmering racial tensions in Australian society (in saying  this, I am in disagreement with our Prime Minister). I think that Australia has real racial problems, but then I think most places in the world do, it's just the problems aren't as obvious where the population is more homogenous.

A mob of 5000 is very substantial, but bear in mind that the population of Sydney is over 4 million. It looked huge on the TV, and it has shocked me and everybody else whom I've spoken to about it - but nobody has been very surprised that it happened. I wonder if there were many people who just wanted to make a non-violent but assertive stand to "reclaim the beach", as it seemed to be at the beginning, before it got out out of hand and the crowd took on an ugly life of its own. I don't excuse them, I'm sure that most knew that there was an extremely high likelihood that such a mass gathering could degenerate into violence, even if they weren't planning on throwing the first punch.

Given how much people like to talk about the wisdom of crowds, and the power of folksomonies, it's interesting to see such a graphic illustration that sometimes crowds are very destructive things. This isn't to attack the legitimacy of the whole concept, just to point out that it is not an absolute. Sometimes the crowds are wrong and sometimes they should be avoided.

Currently playing in iTunes: Jets by Decoder Ring

a year in Sydney

At first it was to be temporary thing - I'd move to Sydney, but still keep an eye on the job situation in Tasmania. If something good came up, and if (definitely the more uncertain if, given my experience of unexpectedly brutal job market in Tasmania) I got the job, I'd move back in a heartbeat.

Now I see that my time in Sydney is not so going to be so temporary. I'm likely to be here for at least 3 more years. I'm not going to be looking at jobs in Tasmania anymore. My new job in Sydney is just what I've been looking for, and I have no pipedreams that there might be an equivalent job available in Tasmania which could entice me back. This isn't to put down Tasmania, it's just stating the fact that the way my career has developed, I am most competitive in legal and special library positions - of which there are very few in Tasmania. Although I'd be willing to work in just about any sort of library position, in most situations employers would prefer somebody with a background in their particular sort of library - whether it be public, school, academic science / humanities etc. This hasn't changed.

I can't just breeze into a public library position feeling all superior because of my academic or legal or special library experience, and expect a public library to fall over itself to hire me.

Yes, some specialties are generally paid more than others. Others might be more comfortable places to work - or provide access to more expensive resources/toys or be more intellectually interesting. While others may be rewarding in other ways. How is it possible to quantify the knowledge that one's work is clearly and unambiguously furthering one's goals in politics and social justice? The best or most ideal sub-specialty will vary according to each individual's priorities and situation.

I have made the decision although Tasmania is a beautiful place, and although I miss family and friends who are there, I cannot be sustained by these alone if I am miserable because I am unemployed or underemployed. I'm better off living in Sydney, where I have far superior employment options, and deal with feeling homesick for Tasmania. I can alleviate these symptoms by participating in the annual or bi-annual pilgrimage rites observed by other Gen-X members of the Tasmanian diaspora. I've already booked my trip back to Hobart for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

A few words about my current home in Sydney. Sydney gets a very bad rap amongst the rest of Australia. It is viewed as the epitome of the excesses of Australia's urbanization. Most Australians live in cities, and for the majority who don't live in Sydney, it's comforting to think, well at least my place is not as crazy and frantic as Sydney. In some ways it's true. Nowhere else in Australia can you see the extremes and chasms in Australian society than in Sydney, where the beggars and derelict haunt the same streets frequented by the Armani and Prada-clad beautiful and successful people. I've never seen people as hurried and stressed as certain people in Sydney - but having lived here for a year, I understand how people can stress out here. You can't really judge Sydneysiders until you've stood in their shoes and can see what it's like to live here. I've also found people in Sydney refreshingly accepting of people from different places, as many are from other places themselves. After all the negatives, why would any one move to this huge city which seems to be choking its own growth and expensive real estate? The bleak view is that people move to Sydney when their hopes dry up in their original home. But I prefer to think maybe it's that fairy tale notion of moving to the big city to find one's fortune. I vaguely remember Mary Donaldson from my high school, Taroona High. She certainly found her dreams in Sydney.

Currently playing in iTunes: Confessions on a Dancefloor (Non-Stop Mix) by Madonna