Re: Olivia Judson

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

But, Bernie, the researcher shouldn't have to do this.  The 
system should do it.  The mark of a well-designed car is that the 
owner/driver never, ever opens the hood.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 12:37 PM
Subject: Re: Olivia Judson

> Olivia Judson's 12/16 NY Times blog seems rather uninformed. 
> Her big gripe seems to be the naming conventions used for PDF 
> files:
>
> "The journal articles arrive with file names like 456330a.pdf 
> or sd-article121.pdf. Keeping track of what these are, what I 
> have, where I've put them, which other papers are related to 
> them, is hopeless. Attempting to replicate my old way of doing 
> things, but on my computer - so, electronic versions of papers 
> in electronic folders - didn't work, I think because I couldn't 
> see what the papers actually were."
>
> As a number of commenters on her blog pointed out, she easily 
> could have renamed the PDF files as she downloaded them so that 
> the file names indicated author/title information. This would 
> have solved her problem of not knowing "what the papers 
> actually were".
>
> For someone with such great intellectual/scientific curiosity, 
> Judson seems surprisingly unimaginative when it comes to 
> scholarly communication.
>
> Bernie Sloan
> Sora Associates
> Bloomington, IN
>
> --- On Fri, 12/26/08, Joseph J. Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Joseph J. Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: Olivia Judson
>> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
>> Date: Friday, December 26, 2008, 11:21 PM
>>
>> Some scientists could be called content.  The question is how
>> many, and for how long.  If Judson's article is in any way
>> representative, I would hazard that the answer is, most and for
>> quite some time.  Your project may be a harbinger, but
>> harbingers by definition are outside the mainstream.
>>
>> But as to your specific questions, I had in mind the very
>> things that you are working on.  The population at large--the
>> Internet population, at any rate--is at home with social
>> networks, certification systems, and the like. The form they
>> take is hardly suitable for serious research, but the raw
>> elements are there. MySpace is much more sophisticated than
>> DSpace, FaceBook more complex than ScienceDirect.  The future
>> of peer review is augured in the recommendation systems of
>> Digg, Slashdot, and even Netflix.
>>
>> People who disparage the consumer Internet usually point to the
>> quality of the content, which ranges from the stupid to the
>> simple-minded.  But that is not really the point:  what will
>> come to matter are the forms that encapsulate and disseminate
>> content, and this is where the research community has a
>> distance to travel.  But I was hanging my thought on Judson's
>> single article, which may not be fair.  I will admit that every
>> time I see a PDF I reach for my revolver.
>>
>> Joe Esposito
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jim Law" <jamesblaw@gmail.com>
>> To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
>> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 9:41 AM
>> Subject: Re: Olivia Judson
>>
>>> Judson's article is a good intro to some of the problems of
>>> personal information management. It doesn't even touch on some
>>> of larger scientific information problems such as
>>> collaboration, peer-review, dissemination, attribution, and
>>> evaluation. I work on an EU-funded research project that is
>>> trying to address a number of these issues, so I hardly think
>>> scientists could be called content. So, I'm curious about your
>>> perspective here. Could you expand on what it is that students
>>> take for granted, but scientists lack?
>>>
>>> Jim Law Liquid
>>> Publications Project
>>> <http://project.liquidpub.org/>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 5:31 AM, Joseph J. Esposito
>>> <espositoj@gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Olivia Judson has an interesting New York Times blog post,
>>>> which can be found here:
>>>>
>>>> http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/defeating-bedlam/?ref=opinion
>>>>
>>>> The topic is software tools to help scientists fight through
>>>> the "bedlam" of information.  She reviews two products:
>>>> Zotero and Papers.  People familiar with Judson's work will
>>>> find here her admirably clear writing and talent for
>>>> instruction.
>>>>
>>>> Still and all I could not help but wonder how it is that the
>>>> scientific community could be content to work with software
>>>> that is at least a half step, maybe a full step or more,
>>>> behind what students take for granted. Desktop applications?
>>>> PDFs? No, I don't think so.  Compare this piece to Dana
>>>> Goodyear's infinitely more sophisticated article in the Dec.
>>>> 22 issue of "The New Yorker" on so-called cell phone novels.
>>>>
>>>> Joe Esposito