Service To Industry By Independent Research Libraries

published or submitted for publicatio

Blockchain for Organising Effective Grass-Roots Actions on a Global Commons: Saving The Planet

An overwhelming majority of experts has been flagging for decades that “Saving the Planet” requires immediate, persistent and drastic action to curb a variety of catastrophic risks over the 21st century. However, despite compelling evidence and a range of suggested solutions, transnational coordination of effective measures to protect our biosphere continues to fall short. To remedy, we propose a novel platform for addressing the central issue of affording trust, transparency and truth while minimizing administrative overheads. This will empower an even loosely organised, global grass-roots community to coordinate a large-scale project on a shared goal (“Commons”) spanning the digital and real world. The Web3 concept is based on the swiftly emerging “Blockchain” and related cryptographic, distributed and permissionless technologies. “Wisdom of the crowds” mechanisms involving competitive parallelisation and prediction markets are enabled by formalised reputation and staking to incentivise high-quality work, fair validation and best management practice. While these mechanisms have been (mostly separately) applied to science, business, governance, web, sensor, information and communication technologies (ICT), our integrative approach around Blockchain-enabled ‘operating principles and protocols’ sets the basis for designing novel forms of potentially crowdfunded Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs)

Cost of Information Service

Any survey of the literature concerning the cost of reference service reveals the fact that the subject is one which has been much discussed but without arriving at any very generally accepted conclusions. About 40 per cent of the writing on the topic is devoted to remarks on how ridiculous it is to think that reference and information service is measurable; about 30 per cent on how ridiculous the results are where it has been attempted; about 20 per cent on reporting results (with many apologies for doing so); and the remaining 10 per cent on straightforward statements of procedures, limitations, and valid interpretations. One of the great difficulties seems to be the confusion or misunderstanding of such terms as "measurement, " "cost, " and "value. " The suggestion that reference and information service can be measured is immediately drowned out with a recital of all the variables of personnel, clientele, physical layout, etc. These have nothing to do with actual "measurement. " They do have everything to do with the use to which the measurement is to be put. "Measurement" is only the comparison of a standard unit with some entity and does not include the comparison of one entity with another. Similarly, one hears the objection that the "value" of a reference answer bears no relation to the time spent in finding it, and therefore why try to do anything? The basis of the objection is valid, indeed; there is no relationship between value and cost. But the objection itself is invalid in its assumption that valuation is the purpose of cost analysis. A cost study attempts, purely and simply, to find out what something costs. What it is worth is something entirely different. Information service can be measured quantitatively and the costs determined but comparisons cannot be made with the data; or the "value" measured.published or submitted for publicatio

Introduction to Library Trends 23 (2) Fall 1974: Library Services in Metropolitan Areas

published or submitted for publicatio

Network Alternatives and Solutions for Storage

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Problems of Selection in Science

Identifying the problems of selection in science has something in common with trying to decide how to vote for the next president. You can go just by the picture on your television screen, or you can review his existence back to the time when his father first smiled at his mother. Book selection can be considered a simple, daisy-picking game of love-you, loveyou- not, or you can bring into the picture the entire world of publishing, selling and readingand the lives of humankind, our readers. In this discussion, a selection will be made from the general as well as the particular, from aspects of library administration as well as the peculiarities of science literature. Problems there are many, of solutions there are some. Many of the problems attributed to the selection of science materials are common to selecting in any field. Indeed, one may say that there is no special problem with the science books; the real problem is with the librarian who is trying to do the selection. When dealing with fiction or family life or politics or history, the librarian wades right in (sometimes with his useful aids, of course), winnowing the harvest. Science, however, carries the stigma of a mysterious and impenetrable region, which only the initiated dare enter. The barrier is primarily one of terminology; the words are esoteric and meaningless, by themselves or together in a sentence. In the social sciences, we hear no complaints of trouble, even where words, perhaps meaningful when alone, are strung together in incomprehensible titles. There, we cope; with science, we give up. The basic fear, then, is that because we do not understand science, we cannot even begin to select materials on it. None of us is an expert in all the other fields of knowledge, yet we do select in them. There is no overwhelming reason to get fluttery or hysterical about science.published or submitted for publicatio

Robert A. Budington to Viktor Hamburger, February 3, 1944

Typewrittena letter discussing more details surrounding Caswell Grave's death and his property in Woods Hole2 pagesCorrespondenc