One of the oldest of printed books, New York Public Library's Gutenberg Bible

Not everything is available for free on the Internet.

Once upon a time, the list of material not available for free on the Internet included almost every book ever published. The problem was that unless a book or other printed format was either currently in print or available in multiple libraries, it wasn’t conveniently available to much of anyone at all.

Now, many libraries and archives are digitizing their collections. Not only old books, but old pamphlets, sheet music, maps, manuscripts, etc. have become more accessible than ever before.

I have been writing a series of posts on Civil War music for my blog Musicology for Everyone. I have relied heavily on the Library of Congress’ collection of digitized Civil War sheet music. Before it went online, I and anyone else interested in viewing the collection would have had to travel to Washington.

Besides the efforts of large and small libraries and archives, at least two major digitization projects are underway.

Project Gutenberg

The oldest predates the Internet. Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, obtained an account on the university’s mainframe computer with nearly unlimited time. To give back, he decided to make 10,000 or so heavily consulted books publicly available either free or very cheap by the end of the century. When he digitized his copy of the Declaration of Independence in 1971, Project Gutenberg was born.

The University of Illinois computer was an original part of what eventually became the Internet, but that was way in the future. Personal computers, if they existed at all, were made from kits by hobbyists. The first pre-assembled small computers (Apple II, PET 2001, TRS-80) all first appeared in 1977.

And yet Hart was convinced that the general public would one day have access to computers and wanted to make useful content available on them. The only available technology at the time was to type the content by hand, so Hart began to recruit volunteers to help him. Usable image scanners and optical character recognition software did not become available until 1986.

By this time, Project Gutenberg has far outstripped Hart’s original goal. It has digitized some 38,000 books. All of them are in public domain. That means most of them were originally published before 1923.

You can read Project Gutenberg books online or download them to any ebook reader. The books are free, but the project solicits donations.

Google Books

Just a few of the old books at the British Library

In partnership with several large, mostly academic libraries, Google began to scan both public domain books and works still under copyright in December 2004. More libraries joined the project. Beginning in 2006, these began to include libraries in non-English speaking foreign countries.

By now, Google Books, has scanned more than 20,000,000 books and magazines. In August 2010 it made an inventory of all known extant books worldwide and determined there are just under 130 million. It plans to digitize all of them by 2020.

Google Books makes several views available, depending on the copyright status of the book. If a book is in the public domain, “full view” enables readers to download it for free.

If a publisher has given Google permission to scan a book under copyright, the “preview” gives readers limited access to portions of the book. If a publisher has denied Google permission to issue a “preview,” Google provides only “snippets,” just two or three lines of text. Google has also scanned numerous book for which it provides nothing but the title.

Problems with Google Books

The project, originally called the Google Print Library Project, immediately faced lawsuits from publishers who claimed copyright violation and failure to give adequate compensation to authors and publishers. Most of these suits were settled by 2008, but in 2009 a French court forced Google to stop digitizing copyrighted books in France. A suit by visual artists (including photographers and illustrators) has resulted in a federal judge rejecting the original settlement of American suits.

Unlike Project Gutenberg, Google does not have its scans proofread before putting them online. As a result, pages may be in the wrong order, scanned upside down, or simply unreadable. Google doesn’t make it easy for readers to report these and other problems, either.

Possible futures

Not everything is available for free on the Internet.

But Project Gutenberg and Google Books, among other projects, have already made a tremendous amount of content freely available. If Google succeeds in its stated intention to digitize every extant book in the entire world, a disproportionate amount of the world’s information will be freely available.

And not only on the Internet, by the way. You can download them to your ebook readers, too.

Of course, material under copyright and other proprietary material will continue to cost a lot of money if they’re available on the Internet at all. The latest US copyright law put off by 20 years the time when anything published in 1924 or later goes into the public domain.

If by the time that’s over publishers get the copyright term extended again, maybe nothing will enter public domain ever again. In that case, much of what Google has digitized will likely never be available at all.

(Outrageous!)

Photo credits.
Gutenberg Bible. Public domain, from Wikimedia
British Library stacks. Some rights reserved by Steve Cadman.

eBook readers and potential eBook readers

How can a library add ebooks, something with no physical existence, to its collection? And why would it?

I can answer the first question easily. Libraries, like everyone else, have to pay for ebooks. An ebook goes through the same process as any other library material.

• Someone decides to acquire it.
• The acquisitions department orders it from the publisher and pays for it.
• The cataloging department describes it and puts the description in the catalog.
• Once it’s in the catalog, the reference department can call patrons’ attention to it and the circulation department can check it out.

Of course, no one has to mark it, label it, or put it on the shelf. The difference between someone buying an ebook and borrowing it from the library is that the borrowed copy disappears from their ebook reader when the loan period expires.

Why do libraries acquire ebooks?

The question why is always more involved and complicated than the question how. One short answer is that the library collects ebooks for the same reason it collects anything else: having selected ebooks in its collection enables the library to fulfill its mission to its public (whether that be the general public, an academic community, or a corporation)

Selection of appropriate materials only begins to describe how a library fulfills its mission. For another aspect, libraries have long led society in the adoption of new technology.

While much of society is trying to decide if some new technological marvel will catch on, libraries are typically acquiring it, learning how to demonstrate how to use it, and making it available. That means that libraries often wind up with formats that don’t catch on and materials that can only be used on machines that were only on the market a brief time.

Most libraries have long since discarded such losers as U-Matic or Betamax video tapes, 8-track players, the kind of laser discs that looked like LPs, etc. But don’t be surprised to find libraries who have kept their collections and continue to maintain their machines. After all, some people still want that content and are willing to travel to distant libraries to use it.

Something of the kind is currently happening with ebook readers. Amazon’s Kindle became the first commercially successful one. Apple and Barnes & Noble, among others, challenged Amazon with their own formats.

A is for Access

The various players in the ebook business struggle to protect their turf. The companies that make the content and those that make the readers argue over licensing, pricing, royalties, and copyright protection. In the process they have introduced something called Digital Rights Management (DRM).

What publishers call Digital Rights Management, readers experience as Digital Restrictions Management. In other words, DRM exists to protect publishers and manufactures of ebook readers from readers who want to move their collection of ebooks from, say, an old Kindle to a new Nook.

DRM is not limited to the book business. Music, movies, mobil phones, apps on various devices, and games are all subject to some kind of digital lockdown.

But while various aspects of the entertainment industry cling to DRM and other similar restrictions as a means of protecting their livelihoods and, according to their rhetoric, that of authors and creators, libraries continue to maintain their commitment to openness and sharing.

Of course, before digital media came into existence, there could be no DRM. So which is better for protecting authors’ livelihoods? The new world of DRM or the old way of readers sharing books with each other?

Libraryland, with its commitment to openness and its long institutional memory, knows that word of mouth has long led to increased sales of books. Someone wants a recommendation of what to read and asks either a knowledgeable book store clerk or a readers’ advisory librarian.Someone borrows a book, either from the library or from a friend and then wants his own copy.

Amazon has an algorithm to accomplish the same thing. Whatever you buy results in another screen that notify what other people who bought the same thing also bought.

Some ebook publishers are already catching on that their customers don’t like DRM. Some ebook publishers are already issuing new titles without it. It will take longer for a majority of publishers to move in the same direction. It will probably be much longer before manufacturers of ebook readers will allow cross-platform sharing.

But that’s another reason for libraries to own and lend ebooks. They provide ways of making it possible to share while so much of industry is afraid of it.

Photo credits:
eBook readers. Some rights reserved by Cloned Milkmen
A is for Access. Some rights reserved by Ben Zvan

Kindle at the beach

Amazon introduced the Kindle e-reader less than five years ago. It’s one of those devices that seemed like an enormous gamble, took off like wild fire, and now feels like it has always existed. And of course, not everyone is happy to allow Amazon to profit so much firm its revolutionary device.

Amazon didn’t invent the ebook or the e-reader. Some large publishing houses, including Wiley, HarperCollins, and Random House already offered ebooks for sale. The public had pretty much ignored earlier devices for reading them, however. Ebooks seemed like an idea consumers didn’t much want.

Successful ebook readers

The Kindle made it possible to download an entire book from Amazon in 30 seconds or so. It could store hundreds of titles. It used some kind of electronic ink, so its display looked like a printed page, and readers could use buttons on the gadget to turn the pages. On the other hand, it was black and white with no pictures. Who would pay $399 for that?

By now, we know the answer is that lots of people eventually bought one. The price plummeted. Today, a basic Kindle costs only $79. In 2008, the first full year after Kindle’s debut, ebook sales made up only 1% of the revenue of the largest publishing houses. And less than that for small and medium-sized publishers. After three years, ebook sales reached 20% of revenue for some of the major publishers.

Needless to say, Amazon’s rivals were not content to let the Kindle take over the entire market reading ebooks. Barnes & Noble responded with the Nook. Apple launched the iPad. By that time, people could not only read ebooks in color, but approach them interactively. More recently people are reading ebooks on their cell phones.

Publishers began a flurry of activity to get their lists available electronically, but until very recently, ebooks remained an afterthought, an extension of traditional print publishing. Now, they are eager to get in on the digital revolution in reading.

Roadblocks to revoultion

iPad as ebook reader

It won’t be easy. Change comes to the digital landscape rapidly. Each new device, each new file format requires a different approach to publishing ebooks. Once the publishers straighten out the basic issues, they have to customize them for Kindle, Nook, iPad, and whatever other devices their readers are buying.

For any company to produce anything, it has to focus on discerning customers’ needs and providing a quality product to meet them. In an atmosphere of constant technological change, focus becomes difficult.

Look for ebooks to become increasingly important to the publishing industry. Look for technical errors in digitizing and matching the digitization with the platform to continue to annoy readers with occasional garbled texts. Look for print books to occupy a diminishing portion of publishers’ output and income. But don’t look for print books to fade into oblivion any time soon. Print is still a stable and dependable technology. Electronic books and readers aren’t yet.

See A Publisher’s Perspective on Ebooks / by Andrea Fleck-Nisbet (American Libraries)

Photo credits:
Kindle at the beach. Some rights reserved by goXunuReviews
iPad as ebook reader. Some rights reserved by Michael Coghlan

By the way, I have avoided using library initialisms and acronyms in this blog, because it’s not aimed at the people most likely to understand them. Apparently at least one library shares them with its patrons. OPAC means Online Public Access Catalog. It’s part of the ILS. Now you know some libraryese.

Having all of this information in one system enables the online library catalog to let you do much more than determine what library resources meet your needs. It will tell you where to find your item. It will also tell you if it’s not there.

Perhaps it is still on order or still being processed. Perhaps someone else has checked it out. That saves you the trouble of going to look for it and not finding it. You can also place a hold on it. That way, when it comes back, the library will notify you and you can pick it up at the circulation desk. No more guesswork.

If the OPAC tells you your library doesn’t own something that you need, you don’t need to take another step to request an interlibrary loan (ILL). You can find and fill out the request form from the catalog.

So from one place you can

• search for the materials you need
• find out where in the library it belongs
• find out if it’s actually there
• place a hold on it if it’s checked out or still in processing
• request an ILL for materials your library doesn’t own

Oh, and once you have checked something out, you can renew it through the OPAC without having to take it back to the library. An online library catalog saves you so much energy! Now, use some of that energy to take a nice walk in the park!

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Enokson

Pour/Pore

In the cup! Not over the book!

A highly respected Bible teacher urged readers of a workbook to “pourover their Bibles” in order to find answers. Pouring over the Bible, or any other book, could make it impossible to read it until the mess is cleaned up. She doesn’t suggest just what students should pour over their Bibles, but almost any liquid would do irreparable damage.

“Pour” means to make a fluid (liquid or granular solid) flow. Pour water into a glass or perhaps on something you’ve just planted in the garden. Pour a little oil into a skillet. But please, not on books! The right word is “pore,” which means to study carefully and attentively. It also means to gaze steadily or meditate deeply.

I invite you to pore over my blog posts, too. It won’t hurt your computer or smart phone at all.

Maybe part of the problem is that “pore” is more commonly used as a noun, which means some kind of surface opening. Rocks and other porous substances have pores. So do our bodies; we sweat through them. Plants also have pores. The noun “pore” and the verb “pore” have the same spelling, but completely unrelated meanings.

So people choose the more common and familiar verb “pour” in place of the correct “pore.” Perhaps they are not aware that “pore” even exists as a verb.

Creak/Creek

This pair of homonyms have slightly different spellings and unrelated meanings. “Creak” is both a noun and a verb. It means a squeaking or grating sound or to make such a sound.

I’m not sure just why we have taken to complain that our bodies creak as they get older. A gate that needs oil moves with difficulty and makes an unpleasant sound. My knees might sometimes move with difficulty, but they don’t annoy anyone’s ears in the process.

It was some other fellow, probably a good twenty years younger than I, who complained, “my body creeks just a little more than it used to.” I know very well what he meant, but what he actually said makes no sense at all.

“Creek” after all means a small stream. Now, some streams called creeks seem wider and deeper than some other streams called rivers. That might cause some confusion, but regardless of what size it is, a creek doesn’t creak. It makes only wonderful sounds.

“Creek” is also the name of a confederacy of several Native American tribes that all spoke similar languages. My dictionary says they formerly inhabited parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. I suppose that means they were among the tribes forced to move to Oklahoma.

If there is any connection between Creeks and creeks, I don’t know what it is. I do know that “creek” is never used as a verb.

Chalk/Chock

Some health food advocate wrote, “Amaranth is a beautiful tall plant with a red plume.  Among the flowers are seeds used as grain, which are chalk full of protein.” Could that be why so many people resist whole grains and exotic-sounding foods? Chalk doesn’t seem very appetizing.

Before long, people will date themselves if they remember when teachers used something called chalk to write on something called a blackboard. As it turns out, chalk comes from fossilized seashells. It is mostly calcium carbonate, mixed with various other minerals.

If you write holding chalk at a ninety-degree angle to the blackboard, it will creak loudly. Now that it’s mostly obsolete in schools, I can say that say that without fearing the wrath of teachers who think their little boys discovered that from me.

To preserve the reputation of seeds and whole grains in food, I should point out that they are “chock full of protein.” “Chock” is a far less common word than “chalk.” As a noun, it means a block or wedge put under something to keep it from moving. If you change a front tire on your car, put a chock under the back wheels. Or to use a verb, chock the back wheels.

What does that have to do with the protein content of amaranth seeds? Nothing that I can see, but “chock” is also an adverb. It means as completely as possible or as close as possible. Adverbs modify verbs or adjectives. “Full” is an adjective.

Someone might not think it good enough that amaranth seeds are full of protein. “Chock full” sounds more impressive. It also sounds like “chalk full.” If only people learned parts of speech in school and remembered outside of English class!

Bare/Bear

Man bares child! And she doesn't care.

“Bare” as an adjective has several meanings.

• Simple, without adornment
• Lacking usual furnishing or equipment
• Exposed to view, undisguised
• Naked

As a verb, it means to strip of covering, reveal, or of course, make bare. If you take all the furniture out of a room or strip the linens off the bed to launder them, you have bared the room or the mattress. The only way you can bare a person is to remove his or her clothes. Babies and the disabled need someone else’s help. No one else does.

Conceiving a child has nothing to do with baring a child, but once a woman conceives, she bears the child until its birth. Leaving aside the creatures you’re not supposed to feed in national parks (or anywhere else for that matter), “bear” means to carry or support.

By the way, the past tense of “bear” is “born” when we’re talking or writing about the completion of a pregnancy. Otherwise, it’s “borne.” Once my mother finished bearing me, I was born. I took on a life of my own. I suppose I caused her to wonder what she’d gotten into.

I can bear a box or something. After I’ve borne it, I can just put it down. Maybe that’s the end of it. Of course, if there’s something inside I have to assemble, I, too, will wonder what I’ve gotten into.

Photo credits:
Pouring coffee. Some rights reserved by Jennifer Chernoffl
Daddy and poopy nappy. Some rights reserved by Ambernectar 13

Damaged book awaiting repair

As I have written earlier, libraries preserve the past. That often means that they must preserve artifacts of the present. Many libraries simply send repair work out to another company. Others have an in-house preservation department. Others have one person who repairs damaged books as part of their job.

At my first library job, I learned how to mend torn pages and make other minor repairs. Instead of tape, I chose from a variety of Japanese tissue papers that have long fibers and applied it with a wheat paste. After the paste, I could tear off the edges of the tissue, leaving behind a permanent repair that would never turn yellow.

What else can happen to library books and bound journals?

• Covers of cloth-bound books get frayed around the edges or even break. Sometimes, they even fall off the book, and the innards (called the book block) come out.
• The same things can happen with paperbacks, but the book block is usually made differently and requires different repair techniques.
• Acid in the paper of books printed after the Industrial Revolution and before acid-free paper became standard for book printing makes pages very brittle. In order to avoid losing historically important parts of the collection, libraries often send them out for mass deacidification

Damaged book sign

• The book block itself can break. If it’s sewn, like a hardcover book, the sewing can come loose, another consequence of acid damage, I just recently carelessly broke one of my own books by leaving it open and absent-mindedly piling lots of stuff on it. If it’s glued together, like most paperbacks, it’s more difficult to repair, but there are ways.
• Bookworms are real worms that get into books and eat the pages. There’s not much that can be done to fix what they’ve damaged, but at least it’s possible to get rid of them before they do any more.
• Preservation departments shudder now that more and more libraries are allowing food and drink. Spilled food attracts cockroaches, and there’s not much they like better than the glue that holds books together.
• And of course, water does all kinds of damage. Coffee and wine aren’t very good for books, either.
• Unfortunately, damaged books are not only the result of wear and tear or carelessness. Vandals cut pages out of books or otherwise commit deliberate acts of destruction. In those cases, it is necessary to get another copy of the book on Interlibrary Loan, make high-quality photocopies on good paper, and reinsert them into the damaged book. I once watched a colleague carefully repairing an anthropology text from which someone had childishly cut out pictures of naked people. The book he borrowed had been similarly vandalized, although not as much. So he was fixing both books at once and hoping that he wouldn’t find the same pages missing from both.

A library preservation department will have a variety of tools, machines, brushes, glue, the kind of heavy cardboard used for book covers and various colors of buckram (the cloth used for library book binding), among other things. I mentioned that I repaired torn pages with Japanese paper. Tape suitable for the same task exists. Of course, it’s acid free and applied with glue.

The preservation department at the last library I worked for also inserted pamphlets, sheet music, etc. into stiff bindings with a special stapler. They frequently made boxes from book binding materials in order to house sets of parts for musical scores, groups of maps, books with spiral or comb bindings, and other things that could otherwise easily be damaged and possibly lost in the stacks.

When you see a book not in its original cover or otherwise showing some sign of repair, keep in mind that a highly skilled person devoted time, attention, and maybe even love so that you could safely use it.

As I was looking for pictures, I came across several by a book conservator who found a book with much more damage than he expected. I once sent one that turned out to be in not much better condition to our in-house bindery and got it back with a note saying, “We’re good, but not this good.”

Book damaged beyond repair

ILL book

Yes, libraries borrow books from each other. They’ve been doing that for generations. Any library with more than a dozen or so employees probably has at least one person devoted to borrowing materials from another library and someone else devoted to lending materials to another library. Larger libraries typically send more books to other libraries than they borrow. Smaller libraries typically borrow more books than they lend.

Until teleportation devices move from the realm of science fiction to reality, when you fill out a request for ILL services, someone has to go to the stacks, physically take the book off the shelf, and send it to the other library. Most libraries now belong to some kind of library network, with some kind of currier service that operates among the members. They prefer to conduct interlibrary loan services within the network. If that’s not possible, then they use the mail or the various commercial delivery services like UPS.

If transporting books from one library to another has to be done the old fashioned way, at least it’s not necessary for you to go to the library in order to start the process. Log on to your library from home and check their catalog. If it does not own what you want, you can find an ILL form on the library’s site and fill it out. Of course, you must have a library card with that library. When the book comes in, you’ll probably get an email, and you can go to the library to check it out.

I have consistently written “book.” Libraries have more than books, of course. You might want a video or audio recording, for example. Not all libraries will send these materials out on ILL, however. In fact, they will not even let all of their books out of the library. Any library will have a non-circulating collection of reference books. Academic libraries, at least, will have a reserve collection, and patrons can typically use it only in the building or take it out for only a few hours. Typically, the library’s collection of bound magazines and journals don’t circulate, either.

Document delivery services

ILL office

In fact, they will not even let all of their books out of the library. Any library will have a non-circulating collection of reference books. Academic libraries, at least, will have a reserve collection, and patrons can typically use it only in the building or take it out for only a few hours. Typically, the library’s collection of bound magazines and journals don’t circulate, either.

In the old days, you would have been out of luck if you wanted any of these materials. Once dependable copy machines became common in libraries, document delivery services were born. If you specified a limited number of pages, ILL lending staff would find the book or journal, photocopy the pages you wanted, and send them to your library. You didn’t borrow the copy. It was yours to keep. Nowadays, ILL lending staff scans those pages and sends along a PDF. ILL borrowing staff at your library will send it to you as an email attachment.

Technology exists to send sound files, video files, and high-quality photographs and art reproductions. Copyright law probably does not. You might be able to obtain these kinds of information if the lending library owns the rights. It might be worth asking about, but don’t bet the ranch on it.

The great thing about any kind of document delivery service is that the library often absorbs the cost. That is, some libraries may ask you to pay for a photocopy or PDF file, but most will not. You haven’t gotten your information free on the Internet, but your only cost is printing out a PDF. Not bad. That’s one reason why you can’t get things on ILL that your library owns unless it’s checked out for a long time and you need it right away–something much likelier at an academic library.

Still, if you need a document, as opposed to a book, and your library owns the (non-circulating) book or journal, you can always go there and photocopy it yourself. Or, if a library database makes the full text available online, you can access it from home and email it to yourself. The library pays an arm and a leg for the database, which is why you won’t get to it from a search engine. But it’s free to you. Aren’t you glad you have the library card that let’s you use it?

Photo credits:
ILL book: Some rights reserved by Morris County Library (NJ)
ILL office: Some rights reserved by born1945

Hey, look! You don't even need a computer!

So when should a writer use “that,” and when “which?” Although writers have been arguing for more than a century whether it matters, the most careful writers recognize that the rule is fairly simple. Use “that” to introduce a relative clause that defines or clarifies the meaning of the antecedent noun and “which” to introduce one that does not. Or to put it another way, “that” limits the meaning of the noun and “which” does not.

Consider how a previous sentence would change if it used the opposite pronoun: “Use ‘that’ to introduce a relative clause, which defines or clarifies. . .” Using “that” defines what kind of relative clause is meant, or limits the meaning of “relative clause,” while using “which” does not. In the revised sentence, it gives a parenthetical fact about relative clauses in general, which in this case is incorrect; some relative clauses define or clarify, but not all do.

Notice that there is a comma before “which,” but not before “that.” Many writers would simply use “which” and omit the comma: “Use ‘that’ to introduce a relative clause which defines or clarifies. . .” Without the comma, “which” functions as if it were introducing a defining clause. It is factually correct and, in this case anyway, clear enough.

Sometimes, unfortunately, such a construction is ambiguous. Consider: “The package that arrived in bad condition had been shipped without insurance.” “The package, which arrived in bad condition, had been shipped without insurance.” The first sentence implies the arrival of several packages. One of them arrived in bad condition. The second does not. It simply adds a fact about a single package.

Take away the commas, but still use “which,” and how is anyone to decipher the exact meaning of the sentence without stopping to study the context? And why should a reader have to stop and ponder when the writer could make the meaning obvious simply by using the correct relative pronoun and punctuation? Unfortunately, many writers find that identifying the correct relative pronoun is not simple.

1. There is no preposition that can be used before “that.” If one is needed, the writer must either substitute “which,” for example “for which,” or put the preposition at the end of the clause. Lots of writers try to avoid the latter construction,but there is nothing wrong with a preposition at the end of the clause or sentence. English is, after all, a Germanic language, and a preposition at the end of a clause or sentence is a vestige of the German separable verb prefix. The prohibition is a leftover of a long-abandoned attempt by some grammarians to make English as much like Latin as possible.

2. A defining clause is not set off by commas, but a non-defining clause is. That is why “Use ‘that’ to introduce a relative clause, which defines or clarifies. . .” is incorrect. The sentence is true with a defining clause and false with a non-defining clause. A general rule of thumb is to use “which” if a relative clause has a comma before it, and to use “that” if it doesn’t.

But consider the following: “The Pope attempted to abolish the use of instruments, including trombones, that he considered unsuited to the sacredness of a church.” The antecedent of “that” is “instruments.” Structurally, the parenthetical reference to trombones could be omitted, leaving an obvious defining relative clause. But if it is necessary in its context, then “which” would introduce a non-defining relative clause and change the meaning of the sentence.

3. With a defining clause, “that” can frequently be omitted. If it can be, it probably should be. “Which” before a non-defining clause, on the other hand, cannot be omitted. Consider: “The book that I read last night was absorbing.” vs “The book, which I read last night, was absorbing.” The first of the alternatives limits the entire universe of books to the one I read last night. “That” can be left out without disturbing the meaning of the sentence. In the second, presumably the book has been identified some time earlier, and the non-defining clause calls special attention to when I read it. “Which” cannot be taken out without changing the emphasis in the sentence.

4. In conversation, “that” is much more common than “which.” After all, complex sentence structures are much less common in speech than in writing. Apparently, some writers have concluded that “that” is most appropriate in speech, but “which” is preferable in writing. That may be why we read so many defining clauses introduces with “which.” One easy way to decide whether “that” or “which” is correct is to examine a piece of writing (yours or something someone else published) and hunt for every use of “which.” Read the sentence and mentally substitute “that.” The substitution may ruin the sense of the sentence. In that case, “which” is correct. If “that” works, get rid of the “which.”

Does it sometimes require some thoughtful analysis to determine whether a defining or a non-defining clause best suits an author’s purpose? Certainly. But just as certainly, the author, not the reader, should make the effort. Laziness on this point results in either ambiguity or inaccuracy.

Originally published at Factoidz

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Star for Life

Acquisitions

Professional librarians still select what gets added to the collection. Instead of choosing each title as they used to, however, they oversee automatic purchase plans from various vendors. In any case, the librarians’ role in collection development has always stopped with selection. Clerks used to handle the details of ordering books, etc., checking in shipments, paying invoices, and keeping up with all the details that involves. Nowadays, acquisitions staff must do everything on the computer. There probably aren’t many strictly clerical positions left in modern libraries.

Much of the library collection comes through automatic purchase plans. The librarians maintain a collection development policy, which determines which parts of the collection are most important, and therefore get the largest budget. They negotiate automatic purchase plans with vendors. Therefore, in addition to checking in materials and paying for them, the acquisitions staff must make sure that the vendors send whatever the plan covers, and nothing other than that.

Not all library materials come through these plans. Especially in academic libraries, where faculty request specific titles, the acquisitions staff must also handle that kind of ordering. That requires a somewhat different kind of communication and most likely different vendors.

By the time materials are ready to move on from the acquisitions department, the paraprofessionals on the staff have had to deal with a number of different computer systems: whatever the vendor uses, the acquisitions and catalog modules in the library’s library management system, and the accounting software of whatever larger entity the library serves. They have had to communicate with vendors, the collection management and cataloging departments in the library, and people in the accounting department.

Cataloging

Once the acquisitions staff has completed its work with a shipment, it is still not ready to go out on the shelves. It has to be cataloged before anyone will either know that the library has it or be able to find it. Nowadays, most libraries deal with a large utility called OCLC, which among other things, maintains WorldCat. Libraries from all over the world contribute their cataloging records to OCLC for other libraries to use. So do many of the major vendors.

It used to be that only librarians were qualified to perform cataloging. In this day of shared records, it became possible for paraprofessional staff to find records and add them to the library’s own catalog. That’s called copy cataloging. Unfortunately, not all cataloging records are of high quality. Fixing substandard records to make them worth using in the catalog is called complex copy cataloging. If no suitable record exists, someone must make an original record and contribute it to OCLC.

Paraprofessional staff used to perform only simple copy cataloging. Then some of them took over complex copy cataloging as well. I haven’t attempted to find a survey of what paraprofessionals do nationwide, but I do know that in many libraries, at least, paraprofessionals also perform original cataloging. What does that leave for professional catalogers? Plenty. Not only do they still do them most difficult cataloging, they supervise and train the paraprofessionals and help solve whatever puzzles and riddles turn up.

Once cataloging has been completed, the materials need labels, bookplates. and, unfortunately, anti-theft devices. That is one of the tasks still suitable for clerical staff, if the library has any. In that a case, paraprofessional probably supervises the clerks or student help and serves as the final quality control before the materials go out to the shelves where the public can find them.

Circulation

Circulation desk at Newburyport Public Library

The general public probably never sees or much thinks about acquisitions and cataloging. Anyone who ever checks out library materials deals with the circulation staff–probably all paraprofessionals. The library management system includes a circulation module, which contains library card numbers and other necessary information for every patron.

Everyone sees library paraprofessionals in action when they check out materials, but that’s only part of the job. Eventually, borrowed materials have to come back to the library, where the circulation staff checks them back in. Not everyone who uses library materials takes them out. Maybe they just make photocopies or read them in the library and leave them on a table. Circulation staff collect these materials as well. Then it all has to go back on the shelves.

Those same call numbers that enable patrons to find things also tell the staff exactly where to put them back. Shelving library books requires knowledge of library shelving rules. Have you seen signs that request that you not put books back on the shelf? That’s one reason why. You’ll probably not put it back exactly right, making it hard for the next patron to find it. Also, many libraries want to know what materials have been used but not taken out. Staff can use a bar code reader to count materials left on tables or other designated areas. They can’t if someone has used something and then put it back.

Having everything in the right place is so important that someone (very likely but not necessarily paraprofessional circulation staff) has to read the shelves regularly to find whatever is in the wrong place. Circulation staff likewise keep the copiers filled with paper and otherwise take care of the various machinery.

Reference

Besides circulation staff, the next most familiar people in the library would be the reference librarians. Except that nowadays, paraprofessionals serve there, too. Formerly, answering reference questions depended so heavily on a collection of non-circulating reference works that it took a professional librarian to keep track of what was most suitable for each kind of question.

Nowadays, everything is online. Yes. The reference staff uses Google or some other search engine to answer questions, but what I mean is that much of what used to be in the reference collection is now on the computer. You can’t necessarily get to it from home, though. These databases cost an arm and a leg. Although there is probably more information in any given library’s databases than used to be available in all but the largest reference collections a generation ago, searching them has become easier–both because of the computer’s inherent search capabilities and the fact that half a dozen large companies offer the majority of databases. Anyone who becomes familiar with one company’s user interface will have little difficulty navigating all of its databases.

Once, anyone who had reference questions had to visit the library to speak with a librarian. It has long been possible to call the library on the phone to speak with someone. But today, reference service is also available by chat, texting, and various other new communications technologies. I know of one library where one paraprofessional’s entire job it to handle telephone and chat reference. After all, everything she would ever have to look up is available through the computer on her desk.

I have certainly not exhausted all of the different departments in a modern library. There are also interlibrary loan and special collections, not to mention taking care of all of the computers and software. But this overview should be enough to highlight the important and highly skilled work performed by paraprofessional library staff.

Photo credit: Some rights reserved by Newburyport Public Library
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Academic Search Complete, like all databases, is organized by fields. That is, a complete record will contain separate fields for such things as author, title, subject, journal title, various standard numbers, etc. You can limit your search to a single field or you can search multiple fields at once. You can use a single term or several terms. But in one very important way, you can’t search a database the way you do a search engine. In a search engine, you choose your terms and type them all in the search box. The search engine assumes that you want to use all of the words you type as your search. It therefore assumes “and” between terms.

If you are doing research about plastic in landfills using a search engine, simply type “plastic landfill” (without the quotation marks) in the search field and hit enter. The search engine will search its index for everything that contains plastic or plastics, everything that contains landfill or landfills, and return only the items that contain both. Unless you narrow your search by using lots of terms, including uncommon words, you will get back tens of thousands of results, or maybe multiple millions. Not everything will have anything to do with your research topic. Maybe not even everything on the first page of results.

Online library databases (including the catalog) do not assume that you mean “plastic and landfill” unless you say so. When you use a database in your research, you must enter the Boolean operators (and, or, not) explicitly. And if you only want to search in a particular field, you must also indicate that to the database. Here is the opening (basic) search screen for Academic Search Complete:

I see that the full width of my screen shots does not appear, at least on the browser I used for checking. The only thing missing is the name of the library I used in the upper right corner. This information is not free on the Internet. It is very expensive. You can’t afford your own subscription online databases. I searched Academic Search Complete from home because I have a library card with Greensboro Public Library. From time to time I need to consult research databases that my public library does not offer. I am fortunate that there are several colleges and universities in Greensboro, and more in neighboring towns, but I have to go to their libraries in order to use their databases. They may or may not let me print or save searches to a thumb drive. Many databases allow users to send citations or even complete articles by email.

Academic Search Complete has the familiar single search box. It looks like a search engine box, but if you enter more than one term and forget the “and,” it will look for all words as a phrase. Most databases will tell likely you that they can’t find anything. Academic Search Complete has one helpful feature not found on every research database: you can enter terms as you would in a search engine and then use the “search options” to specify whether you want all of the terms (that is, putting “and” between them and narrowing your results) or any of the terms (that is, putting “or” between the terms and widening your results).

If one of your key words is an author’s name and another is a word from the title of an article, how can you express that in a single box? As you learn to use this particular database, you’ll learn the abbreviations you have to use. You’ll also learn, with the next screen in this post, actually, that it’s so easy with the advanced search that there is no need ever to bother with basic search at all unless you have only one term–and are prepared to wade through maybe hundreds or thousands of hits. That’s much less than what you’d get from a search engine, but still lots of items useless for your research.

Even so, take a good look at the rest of that basic screen. Ten ways of limiting your search are visible, and there are a few more that you must scroll down to see.

• Some entries in this database will give you only a citation, or only a citation and abstract. You will need to get a printed journal to read these articles. If you don’t want to do that, you can select full text and never have to look at anything else.
• Some entries in this database may be popular magazines, newsletters, or anything else where an editor selects the content without getting specific approval of a panel of experts. This kind of material may or may not be suitable for your research. You can select peer reviewed journals if you can’t use the other stuff.
• Some articles have references to other publications in either footnotes or bibliographies. Not all do. You can also check a box to eliminate these from your results. That limit especially comes in handy in the early stages of research when you’re collecting useful sources. If the article is good, raid its references!
• You can also limit your results to articles mentioned on the cover of a journal or magazine
• By selecting the number of pages, you can decide whether you want only full-scale treatments of your subject, or only a short overview.
• Can’t read anything but English? You’re looking for something that you know appeared in a Russian journal? Limit your results by language.
• There are many research projects where you might not be interested in anything that appeared before or after a certain date, or outside a range of dates. Limit your search by publication date. If you fill in only the top value, your results will include everything written since. If you enter only the bottom value, your results will include everything written before. You do not need to select a month if you don’t need to.
• Besides the publication types visible on the screen shot, other choices are Primary Source Document, Educational Report, and Health Report.
• The document type menu has too many items to list. Other choices besides what’s visible include Book Chapter, Erratum (list of errors), Interview, Obituary, Recipe, Short Story, and.various kinds of reviews.

Here is the advanced search screen for Academic Search Complete:

I can’t figure out how to get a screen shot showing the pull-down menus, but this one is enough to show that you do not have to select a field. The top entry in the menu is “TX All Text” and the bottom one is “AN Accession Number.” Besides Author, Title, Subject, Journal Name, the menu allow searches for author-submitted keywords, the abstract, product reviews, and other textual content, along with several different numbers you can use for searching. Each has a two letter abbreviation. You can use these abbreviations, along with Boolean operators, in Basic Search, but why bother?

If you use more than one term, the default Boolean operator is “and.” Other choices are “or” and “not.” These three are not the only Boolean operators that exist, but they are the only ones you can use with this database. You are not limited to three terms. By clicking “Add Row” you can have as many as you need. Advance Search offers the same ways to limit your search as Basic Search.

Most online research databases have a controlled vocabulary. In a library catalog, it means that there is one and only one way to express a given term. For example, “Cancer” is a valid subject heading in most public and academic libraries; medical libraries use “Neoplasms” instead. If you look up “Cancer” in a medical library, the cross reference structure will send you to “Neoplasms.”

Other online library databases may not be so careful to exclude synonyms. If you notice both “Cancer” and “Neoplasms” in the subject list, you need to search both terms to find everything the database has. (Using the advanced search and two pulldown menus set to subject, search “Cancer OR Neoplasms.”) Academic Search Complete makes its controlled subject vocabulary easy to find:

One very good thing about this database is that its subject list actually does have entries for non-preferred terms. Not all of them do. In fact not all online library databases make their subject list as easy to find. I remember giving up on one database because it was so difficult for me to force it to give me any information at all. It was a citation index, meaning it was supposed to let me look up an article or book and see what later authors had cited it. Apparently it had a hidden controlled vocabulary for authors in the form of last name followed by initials with no spaces. It would have been nice if it said so somewhere in the instructions. Looking up a simple last name yielded nothing at all, and I could find the right term only if I stumbled on to an article by the right person more or less by accident. I could use so few of the citations for my research that using the database wasn’t worth the effort.

On the bright side, usually if you can’t find a list of terms fairly easily, it means that the database does not have a controlled vocabulary at all. Historic newspaper databases, for example, simply search the full text of the newspaper articles. These are great resources for any kind of historical research. It is easy to find fascinating information in them. You have to try various key words to be sure you have found everything of interest, but even if you content yourself with one good term, you’ll get more material than you can use. Chances are no one else is looking there for the same information, and you can offer your readers (even if it’s only your teacher) things no one else knows.

Some online library databases are very well designed, others are so terrible as to be almost useless. They’re all different. I hope my mention of one turkey does not scare anyone off from trying them. Here are two important ways to simplify learning databases for your research:

• As long as you have to use a library to gain access to them, ask a reference librarian to show you how to navigate. Librarians have learned to use even the most balky databases.
• On all the screenshots, the logo for EbscoHost is much larger than the name of the database. The link “choose database” will show you other EbscoHost databases available from the library you’re using. EbscoHost is one of half a dozen or so companies that supply large numbers of databases to libraries. The user interface for any one of these companies will be the same across all the databases they offer. You don’t have to start from scratch every time you look at a new online library database.

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