54 research outputs found
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 âSaving the Planetâ 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 (âCommonsâ) spanning the digital and real world. The Web3 concept is based on the swiftly emerging âBlockchainâ and related cryptographic, distributed and permissionless technologies. âWisdom of the crowdsâ 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 âoperating principles and protocolsâ 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
published or submitted for publicatio
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
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