Re: Olivia Judson

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

I don't believe I have ever even hinted that these things are 
easy to change.  I have said quite the opposite:  that the 
demands on information system design are growing and will 
continue to grow, making a number of services in existence today 
(including some that are beloved) obsolete.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Law" <jamesblaw@gmail.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 4:39 PM
Subject: Re: Olivia Judson

> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:40 AM, Joseph J. Esposito 
> <espositoj@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>But, Bernie, the researcher shouldn't have to do this.
>
> Perhaps, if we were in a world where reasearchers are the ideal, or even a
> customer.
>
>>  The system should do it.
>
> The system offering the file gives the file a perfectly
> understandable name - to that system. What is the incentive to
> name it something else?
>
>> The mark of a well-designed car is that the owner/driver never,
>> ever opens the hood.
>
> Car manufacturing would seem to be a broken system at the moment.
> Aside from that, most recent cars are not user servicable, even
> though the hood gives the appearance of opening.
>
> My intention is not to be snarky. I have a problem with this idea
> that these problems are easily solved and that there are clear
> parties at fault. The evidence is that it is a tangled mess, with
> few incentives to change, many dis-incentives to change, and
> groups such as researchers who rely on outputs they have no
> control over.
>
> Jim Law
> LiquidPub Project
> <http://project.liquidpub.org/>
>
>
>> ----- 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