RE: batch download was RE: Olivia Judson

[richards1000@comcast.net]

Ms. Pikas:

Some listmembers don't have access to ScienceDirect or Scopus. 
Would you please describe how Quosa works?  What does the user 
see, and what choices of metadata are presented to the user?

I ask because I think this issue is complicated.  Multiple 
metadata elements are associated with each journal article (such 
as authors (who are sometimes numerous), title, journal title, 
date, volume/issue number, abstract, topical keywords describing 
the article's content, both the general topic and subtopics, and 
URL or digital object identifier).  Many users use citation 
organization software (such as ProCite or RefWorks) to organize 
all of their documents, but some don't, and may encounter the 
difficulties that Dr. Judson describes.  One user may wish to 
index an article by certain metadata elements (say, lead author 
and date), while another author may wish to use different 
metadata elements (say, article title or journal title and topic 
or date).  In fact, the same user may wish to use different types 
of metadata elements to index different articles pertaining to 
the same research project, or to index the same article for 
different research projects.

What's more, metadata for digital documents is presented in 
different ways.  Many digital documents have embedded metadata 
that conforms to international standards (such as Dublin Core) 
and that can interact with citation organization software, but 
many digital documents do not--e.g., an image-only PDF file may 
contain only human-readable metadata, which a user will have to 
index manually.  Moreover, some versions of citation organization 
software can automatically extract embedded metadata from a 
digital document, but some versions can't, in which case another 
piece of software must mediate between the document and the 
citation organization software to enable the user to obtain the 
metadata in an efficient manner.  If the citation organization 
software doesn't include it, that extra mediation software must 
be provided by the user or the publisher.

Citation organization software obviates the filename problem, and 
enables indexing and retrieval using multiple metadata elements, 
but it's labor intensive to use if the publisher doesn't offer 
the metadata embedded in the document, or if the citation 
organization software doesn't automatically pull metadata from 
the digital document and the user does not have (and the 
publisher has not provided) extra mediation software.

What would be ideal is if every digital document had complete, 
embedded metadata conforming to international standards, and if 
every academic user had easy-to-use citation organization 
software that contained mediation software that would 
automatically extract metadata from every digital document, as 
soon as downloaded by the user.  But I think we're not there yet. 
And until we are, many users of digital documents will be faced 
with a time-consuming and confusing indexing task, about which we 
can reasonably expect them to complain.

Robert C. Richards, Jr., J.D.*, M.A., M.S.L.I.S.
1000 S. 49th St. #1F
Philadelphia, PA 19143
E-mail: richards1000@comcast.net
* Admitted to practice in New York only.

____

     * To: "liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu" <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
     * Subject: batch download was RE: Olivia Judson
     * From: "Pikas, Christina K." <Christina.Pikas@jhuapl.edu>
     * Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 22:47:33 EST
     * Reply-to: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
     * Sender: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu

Bernie said:

"Maybe there's room for a personal information management system
for scholars that allows researchers to define how downloaded
files should be named and organized...something that allows the
"driver" to specify how things should work "under the hood"? (For
all I don't know, there may already be software that does this.)"

Quosa, and the quosa add in that's part of ScienceDirect and
Scopus does this.  It's actually quite nifty.

I keep "testing" it by accident in Scopus, because "download" in
another major database means citation to RefWorks instead of full
text pdf.

Christina K. Pikas
R.E. Gibson Library & Information Center
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

________________________________________
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu On Behalf Of B.G. Sloan [bgsloan2@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 7:33 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Olivia Judson

Joe Esposito said:

"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."

The point is well-taken regarding cars. I've never once popped
open the hood of my 2005 Honda Accord, and I'm happy with that.
But I'm not sure it applies to scholarly communication.

I think a researcher should WANT to have control over how their
files (paper or electronic) are named and organized. Everyone has
their own idiosyncracies when it comes to personal information
management, so there's no one-size-fits-all solution. A solution
that works for some will certainly confuse others.

Maybe there's room for a personal information management system
for scholars that allows researchers to define how downloaded
files should be named and organized...something that allows the
"driver" to specify how things should work "under the hood"? (For
all I don't know, there may already be software that does this.)

Bernie Sloan
Sora Associates
Bloomington, IN


--- On Sun, 1/4/09, 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: Sunday, January 4, 2009, 7:40 PM
>
> 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