Failing electronic library services
A scholar’s tale*
Jan Engh
Bibliotek for humaniora og samfunnsvitenskap, University of Oslo, Norway
Electronic services providing text and bibliographic information have become a necessary part of
today’s research libraries. They are, however, surprisingly unreliable and unfunctional, and when
they are combined locally, the deficiencies may get disastrous. However, these disadvantages have
not received much attention, perhaps because each of them appears to be utterly trivial. It is time to
focus on these drawbacks and the lack of attention that they have received from those responsible
for their implementation and management in the libraries.
Keywords: electronic library resources, texts, bibliographies, user experience, reliability,
management, economy
To the Norwegian linguist Tor Åfarli, internationally
recognised, however far from recognised by electronic
library resources
Introduction
Electronic services are a necessary part of any modern research library and great efforts
are spent introducing increasingly more of them. Unfortunately, less efforts are spent on
monitoring that the acquired services work properly in practice. This can be regarded as a
technical problem only. It has also a social aspect, though, as it is conditioned by the
relationship between the technicians introducing and managing the electronic services
and their users, including library staff, especially those members who are, at the same
time, active researchers. Further, malfunctioning of electronic services has economic
aspects that have been largely ignored.
Although basic logistics programs (on-line catalogues etc.) tend to work reasonably
well it is my experience from a university library for the humanities and social sciences,
that many other electronic library services are, in fact, infested with problems. The
services in question are those representing full texts and providing bibliographic
information1 among other things.
It is true that there are fewer problems now than for instance ten years ago, at an early
stage of electronic full text and bibliographic services. Still, there are problems and even
if these may seem rather trivial and/or unimportant as seen one by one, they may, as a
general phenomenon, cause frustration and even lead to complete resignation among
users.
Unfortunately, these problems are usually neglected by managers. Defects are fixed
on an individual basis and no general solutions are attempted in cases were this would
have been possible. Further, new versions or completely new software are purchased all
the time on the basis of what are clearly insufficient requirements.
*
Thanks to Astrid Anderson, Svein Engelstad, Rolf Furuli, Gunn Haaland, Knut Hegna, and Diana Santos
for providing examples or reading an earlier version of the manuscript.
1
Here, one may include even on-line lexicographic resources, e.g. Oxford English Dictionary.
1
Various kinds of defects are involved, relating to performance, conceptual quality,
and local maladaptations. Or, to put it differently: reliability and functionality. In the
following, these issues will be looked into. The perspective will be the one of a scholar
and user who is supposed to utilise these services personally in his/her own research. On
the other hand, aspects of electronic resources concerning the content of the services in a
strict sense will not be discussed here: The question of identity between the printed and
the electronic versions of journals that appear in the two modes,2 as well as the subject of
data quality – from blurred illustrations and graphs3 to defects such as errors in titles and
other bibliographic data, including incorrect representation of characters from outside the
A – Z area on the screen and in outprints.4 In this article, I shall focus on how the content
is transmitted, whether it can be used as intended and/or announced, and if it can be used
the way a qualified user should expect. Additionally, aspects of the commercial side of
electronic services will be discussed, as well as their management in a research library.
Research
Strangely enough, actual reliability and functionality for the individual user seem to have
received little attention in specialist literature as opposed to extrinsic aspects of electronic
library services: In fact, from Young (1997) to Evalued, passing other projects such as
those reviewed by Poll (2005) and Sheeja (2010), the focus has been on organisational
studies and sociological surveys. This applies even for titles that convey the suggestion of
approaching the everyday search practice of scholars, such as Bar-Ilan and Gutman
(2005), Ellis and Oldman (2005), and even Kiran and Singh (2008) and Buchanan and
Salako (2009).
What all analyses and surveys seem to take for granted is that the electronic services
work as intended. The services can always be accessed and the functionality is perfect.
One can always search and get what one wants. And, to the extent that the users are asked
directly, it is all about whether they are content or not.5 Leaving aside a few quotations of
user remarks, this is as close as one gets to the very personal experience of the users.
Hardly ever details about how electronic library services actually work or ought to work
in the everyday activities of scholars are accounted for. This impression is supported by
this author’s inability to find articles, books etc. on the subject by means of electronic
library resources available to him. However, as in other empirically based scholarly
activities it is difficult to conclude that a given phenomenon does not exist. This even
applies to what constitutes the object of the inquiry reported here.
2
For instance, the fact that the printed original of Clinical linguistics and phonetics 1988, 2/2 has 10 titles
while the digitalised version contains only 3.
3
Cf. Engh, Haaland, and Rangnes [in progress].
4
The “Helge Lødrup / Helge Lodrup syndrome”. These errors occur as a result of human decision,
“simplification”, pure spelling error, or codepage confusion. Especially in the English speaking world,
there is a tendency among technicians to regard letters such as à, ñ, and ø as “accented characters”, which
may be represented roughly as non-accented characters. This is totally unacceptable and incomprehensible
to any native users. As far as electronic texts are concerned, however, it is only fair to say that the situation
has become much better after the generalisation of the PDF format. Cf. the exclusion of non English
articles and the defective handling of non A – Z characters in English electronic journal articles offered by
EBSCO at the turn of the century.
5
Cf. also the popular LIBQUAL survey concept, which otherwise is marked by an amazing lack of validity
for linguistic and cultural reasons, at least in its Norwegian version.
2
Methodological remark
The present article is based on my personal experience as a subject specialist (within the
areas of linguistics and computation for the humanities) - from a regular day-to-day use
of electronic library services in my capacity of active scholar and, at the same time,
advisor to other researchers and students.6 In periods, electronic resources have been
intensively tested in connection with separate linguistic research projects.7
Many of the specific cases referred to below occurred several years ago. Yet, they
have been included since they are typical of the errors that still occur – which was one of
the reasons why I started to write this article in the first place. No further extensive
empirical research is necessary to prove the continued relevance of these errors, as
anyone working in the field of humanities encounters similar cases almost on a daily
basis - at least those of us based in a small country outside the English-speaking
community and at a considerable distance from the publishers or agents.8
Essentially, this is a case study based on samples. As such, the result cannot be
disproved. Its validity, however, depends on the experience of other scholars at the same
institution, its interest in a wider context on the extent that scholars elsewhere experience
similar problems.
One caveat: Although the defects mentioned can be documented they cannot, in
principle, be reproduced, since they have been properly reported and should have been
subsequently fixed.
Performance quality
Do the electronic services function in the way intended or as announced? Do they work
out in practice? And, if not, where can the cause be found? Access problems are by far
more common in the case of electronic journals and books. So, I shall concentrate on this
type of services in this section. The domain of the inquiry will mostly be services
pertaining to linguistics and the humanities in general.
On the provider’s side
Many of the frequent failures to access the electronic journals or bibliographies are
brought about by factors on the provider’s (publisher’s or agent’s) side. Basically, there
are four possible causes: Failure to implement the subscription,9 insufficient computer
systems, bad communication, and what appears to be singular technical errors, for
instance alleged damaged files.
Surprisingly often, the provider simply has failed to open the access as stipulated in
the subscription contract, or the access has been switched off for one reason or another.
6
Working within the German “Fachreferent” tradition of academic librarianship well-known from the
European continent.
7
Accounted for in Engh 2008, 2009, and [forthcoming].
8
However, no further attempt will be made to relate the observations below to a geographical – or rather a
centre/periphery dimension. Whether the situation described differs radically from the one of a research
library localised in all respects close to the providers of electronic services has to be addressed elsewhere.
9
In fact, there is even the possibility of the library catalogue record announcing a non-existing/obsolete
access. This lack of library quality, however, is outside of the scope of the present study.
3
As a consequence, the user is asked to log in and/or pay a per view fee. This is, at best,
the direct result of mismanagement which is also indirectly involved when the computer
fails to open access because of inadequate capacity: Apparently, the provider’s computer
becomes unable to handle further requests as the number of concurrent processes gets too
high, thus generating an error message, “We are currently unable to deliver the requested
page due to peak demand. Please wait. Normal service will resume shortly”,10 or simply
causing timeout at the user’s end. Bad communication has the same negative effect.11
In such cases, it is fairly easy to understand where the cause of the problem is
localised. Other cases are less transparent in this respect. More or less intelligible error
messages can be displayed on the screen of the user. Sometimes even the user’s own PC12
stalls as a result. One example: When this author tried to access the article Marquardt,
Jacks, and Davis (2004) on 28 January 2005
Marquardt, Thomas, Jacks, Adam, and Davis, Barbara: 2004, ‘Token-to-token variability in
developmental apraxia of speech: three longitudinal case studies’ Clinical linguistics and
phonetics 18/2, 127-144
he was confronted with the message “The file is damaged and cannot be repaired”. This
was also the case after a look-up of Gibbon (2004):
Gibbon, Fiona E.: 2004, ‘Abnormal patterns of tongue-palate contact in the speech of
individuals with cleft palate’. Clinical linguistics and phonetics 18/4–5, 285–311
Repeated attempts to look up these two articles on 31 January 2005 resulted in the same
error message over and over again – before the PC stalled each time. Finally later on the
same day, the last article appeared after a five minutes’ delay. Trying to look up this
article 9 November 2009 resulted in the following error message:
In order to access this article you must be a subscriber or you need to purchase the article.
Please sign in to access your subscribed content, or select a purchase option.
This case is typical also because it shows that, despite improvements, the problem is still
there.
To keep the record straight, my library had/has paid the subscription of the electronic
version of the journal in question, and I tried to look up the article from a PC on the
library’s premises. In 2005, the cause of the malfunctioning was not easy to find. Later, it
became all too clear. There are, however, many cases where it may be almost impossible
for the average user to determine what may be the cause of the problem encountered.
And problems are, indeed, encountered. To get an idea about the frequency of failing
access to electronic journals, an inquiry into the accessibility of electronic journals was
carried out in 2004. During a one week test period (4 October to 11 October), I tried to
look up articles in all of the 41 electronic journals pertaining to the discipline of
linguistics and available at the library at that time. There were repeatedly problems
10
Error message from informaworld Taylor & Francis Journals Complete at a request for an issue of The
new review of academic librarianship 12 April 2010 at 13:40 Central European Time.
11
It is still difficult to access bibliographic databases abroad after 14 CET, i.e. when the American East
Coast started a new day.
12
During the last decade, the author has had at his disposal a series of state-of-the-art PCs, all of them
perfectly capable of handling any relevant scholarly task.
4
accessing 9 of them. Additionally, the current issue of one journal was not accessible
despite the contract. In the case of a couple of the nine defective journals, the probable
cause was that the provider did not open the access (to the correct IP interval) despite
contract and payment. One example: It took almost one week to re-establish the access to
Linguistic variation yearbook. Failing access in spite of subscription was reported 4
October 2004. The access was re-established by the publisher according to contract - after
two reminders - 11 October. In the remaining cases, bad communication or lack of
computer capacity on the provider side were the probable causes. Thus, it would be
possible to get access to the journals some other day – or even later in the evening that
very same day. However, not always when desired or needed. This pattern repeated itself
when I made daily attempts to download articles from the last issues of important
linguistic journals such as Linguistics, Studies in Language, and Syntax in 2010.13
Were all these defects due to conditions on the provider side? Probably yes, although
in other cases this may be a subject of discussion, for instance when an electronic journal
can be accessed only by means of a VPN client and not via the library’s VPN portal.
However, it is not of my business as a user to have any opinion on the issue.
On the user’s side
Clearly on the user’s side, though, (versions of) application programs may not work well
together. This is the case of Adobe Acrobat and Internet Explorer and even of the plug-in
version of Adobe Acrobat and certain Firefox versions. Some intermediary program or
function may also cause problems. One example: In the Metalib search engine, there was
recently a conflict between the portal and Internet Explorer version 8 concerning full text
electronic journals: The user was supposed to look up the electronic journal in the union
catalogue or in one of the other databases providing a link, then to click the link server
button, “SFX”. Subsequently, one was supposed to click one’s way to the electronic
article requested. So far, so good. However, if one wanted to look up a second article in
what seemed to be the normal way, returning to the database and clicking the SFX button,
while keeping the first article in its separate window on the screen, one would not
advance any further. Instead, the SFX menu window would display the following simple
but uninformative message: “Error on page”. In order to get around this problem, the user
had to close the first window. This was far from obvious, and, of course, utterly
unpractical for a user who needed to compare the two articles in one way or another – a
rather normal need for most scholars. As an alternative, one not so obvious solution was
to quit Explorer and use Firefox instead – but, at that time, it had to be versions 3.5.2 or
3.5.3.
Problems of this kind are particularly irritating when they prevent making printouts.
During the early autumn of 2009, for instance, it turned out to be impossible to print
articles from the medical journal Lupus from a staff PC at the library. One makeshift
solution was to mark the text of the PDF file on the screen and copy it to a Word file,
created for this purpose only. Then this ad hoc Word file could be printed. (With a
number of possible defects. See below.) Not exactly an elegant or efficient solution – and
certainly not one according to the terms of the contract.
13
20 and 21 April and 30 April 2010.
5
So much for conflicting application programs. In other cases, one may even suspect
that different versions of one single program, e.g. the full Adobe program used for
creating the PDF file or the Adobe reader, may represent a problem.
Finally, it goes without saying that the memory and the speed of the user’s PC are
critical, as the machine readable information tends to become ever more extensive.
During the first decade of the new century, at least my experience from an average
research library shows that the renewal cycle of the PCs for public use did not keep up
the same pace as the need for ever more computer power to display the articles of
scientific journals. During the final years of the previous generation of user PCs, it was
impossible to display – and make print-outs of – any electronic article except for the very
short ones. The situation was not significantly more favourable at the faculty, where the
staff’s PCs represented a broad array with varied characteristics as far as memory and
speed were concerned. In practice, the problem of too small and too slow PCs is likely to
repeat itself cyclically both on library premises and at the faculty, given the normal
phases of renewal and updating of PCs and other electronic hardware. This is probably
also the case with individual users off campus, having access through their own private
PCs as remote users.
Summing up
The user is faced with a considerable number of problems as far as access to electronic
library services are concerned, especially those providing texts. In general, these
problems are of a trivial nature. They may, nevertheless, have serious consequences for
the user. After all, fundamental aspects of electronic library services are concerned, such
as access, screen display, and printing. In any case, the result is that the user can never be
sure that (s)he will be able to use the electronic resources for which the library has a valid
subscription.
Conceptual quality
Are the programs and the functions well conceived? Character encoding is essential, and
we are, once more, talking about basic functions such as searching and copying. However,
let me turn to the simple representation of a text before I proceed.
Looking up the text
Even when the access works according to the contract,14 viewing the text may be tricky.
For instance, the NetLibrary instructions state that you just click on ‘View this book’ in
order to look up a book. However, for many books one has to open one page in PDF
format at a time. To see the next one, it is necessary to return to the appropriate
NetLibrary page and click on ‘Next’ in order to see the next page. This is hardly
functional, especially not when an entire book is concerned.
However, few scholars would like to read entire books - fiction or monographs - on
the screen. In the humanities, even articles tend to be rather extensive. So, reading the full
14
And nobody else is browsing the electronic book at the same time in the case of one loan at a time type
of electronic subscriptions.
6
articles on the screen is usually not an option. In my view, searchability is, by far, the
most important quality of electronic journals, ahead of copying for quotation. For this
reason, deficient search facilities cannot be tolerated.
Searchability
Although non-English characters may be correctly represented on the screen and in
outprints there are, in general, problems searching for anything else than A-Z, from
Greek or Hebrew characters to accented Latin characters, not to mention the Norwegian
(or Danish) characters Æ, Ø, and Å.15 For anyone with a scientific interest in the
Norwegian language, it is natural to look up the name “Åfarli”. Tor Åfarli (1955-) is a
renowned Norwegian linguist and a prolific scientific author. However, searching for
“Åfarli” produces no hits. Searching for “farli” instead of “Åfarli”, however, makes you
end up with a lot of hits, many of them “Åfarli”. It is, by the way, impossible to get
around the character problem by copying for instance a Hebrew or IPA16 character from
the article (or some other text format) to the search field, as any subsequent search does
not work out. No normal linguist will have the competence/insight necessary to think of
any more sophisticated way of searching.
Copying text
Copying text to other formats is equally a problem. Now, one may always object that this
was never a requirement, despite all talk of compatibility between programs. Neither do
the software producers promise any function of copying directly between their respective
distinct formats. Yet, copying is one of the central assets of electronic texts, and
definitely one of the reasons why they come in handy for scholars. That is: in theory.
Depending on the purpose, copying means two things in our context: Copying from
electronic journals to a database for further research use or quoting, i.e. copying to a
manuscript (report, article, monograph etc.). In the following, only the latter will be
looked into.
It is a nuisance not to be able to copy margins, tabs etc. For instance copying from an
electronic article in PDF format to a manuscript in Word format, using the special PDF
copy function, inevitably leads to a collapse of the original format. Cf. this excerpt from
Gavruseva (2000):17
5.1. Case and agreement relations in Germanic possessives
The Germanic languages share two characteristics that distinguish them from the
[+extraction] languages examined in sections 3 and 4. One characteristic is that some
prenominal possessors are overtly marked for Genitive case by means of the ’s affix.
The other characteristic is that they do not display ‘possessor agreement’ of the Hungarian type.13 In fact, the agreement relations in Germanic possessives are quite different. Consider first the data set in (27) that illustrates the Saxon genitive construction. Notice that in Norwegian, only pronominal possessors are allowed to bear the
15
I.e. ‘AE ligature’, ‘O slash’, and ‘A overcircle’.
International Phonetic Alphabet.
17
This an the subsequent examples quoted in this paragraph result from copies made 19 April 2010 – with
one notable exception. (See below.)
16
7
’s affix:
13
An anonymous reviewer points out that the ’S affix in the data set in (27) below could be analyzed
as a person marker due to its compatibility with a restricted set of possessors (proper names, third person singular or plural possessors, etc.) and the possible origins of ’s in the third person possessive pronoun (at least, in languages like Dutch). In this article, I follow an extensive body of literature that analyzes ’s as a Genitive case marker. I would like to note, however, that my arguments hold regardless of
what analysis the ’s affix receives.
[s. 761]
(27) a.
a.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Peter’s book (English)
bok-en hans (Norwegian, from Taraldsen, 1990)
book-the his
‘his book’
Fyrirlestur Peturs (Icelandic, from Sigurðsson, 1993)
lecture Peter’s
‘Peter’s lecture’
Johans bok-en (N. Swedish, from Svenonius, 1993)
Johan’s book-the
‘Johan’s book’
Jans auto (Dutch, from Corver, 1990)
‘Jan’s car’
Peters Hunde (German, from Webelhuth, 1992)
‘Peter’s dogs’
(Gavruseva 2000, 760-761) which results in
5.1. Case and agreement relations in Germanic possessives
The Germanic languages share two characteristics that distinguish them from the
[+extraction] languages examined in sections 3 and 4. One characteristic is that some
prenominal possessors are overtly marked for Genitive case by means of the ’s affix.
The other characteristic is that they do not display ‘possessor agreement’ of the Hungarian
type.13 In fact, the agreement relations in Germanic possessives are quite different.
Consider first the data set in (27) that illustrates the Saxon genitive construction.
Notice that in Norwegian, only pronominal possessors are allowed to bear the
’s affix:
An anonymous reviewer points out that the ’S affix in the data set in (27) below could be analyzed
as a person marker due to its compatibility with a restricted set of possessors (proper names, third person
singular or plural possessors, etc.) and the possible origins of ’s in the third person possessive pro(
27) a.
b.
C.
d.
e.
f.
E. Gavruseva I Lingua 110 (2000) 743-772
Peter’s book (English)
bok-en hans (Norwegian, from Taraldsen, 1990)
book-the his
‘his book’
Fyrirlestur Peturs (Icelandic, from SigurBsson, 1993)
lecture Peter’s
‘Peter’s lecture’
Johans bok-en (N. Swedish, from Svenonius, 1993)
Johan’s book-the
‘Johan’s book’
Jans auto (Dutch, from Corver, 1990)
‘Jan’s car’
8
Peters Hunde (German, from Webelhuth, 1992)
‘Peter’s dogs’
Of course, not only traditional formatting such as tabs, margins etc. are ignored. Graphs
and diagrams are misrepresented as well. If, for instance, one tries to copy the following
analysis tree from PDF to Word:
Agr/DP (order of heads and specifiers irrelevant)
(25)
Agr/D’
Possessork
Agr/D
[+person]
[+number]
[+case] tk
Possessum
NP
Spec
N
j
Tj
(Gavruseva 2000, 757) the result is
(25) Agr/DP (order of heads and specifiers irrelevant)
Possessor, AgrP’
AgrP
[+person] >\
[+number] Spec N
[+case] tk
Possessum , G
Imploding formats and graphs is a defect that most scholars can tolerate. After all, we
are talking about different formats, not only different brand names. A systematic defect
of greater importance when copying to a format outside the electronic journal is the
garbling up of non Latin characters. Instead of the original characters, one gets
nonsensical sequences of Latin characters and special characters. Cf. this excerpt from
page 396 of Poirier (2004) after being copied to a Word file:
“Podella writes of the [yqr in Ezekiel 1, “[yqr sonst nur noch im priesterschriftlichen
Schöpfungsbericht als Bezeichnung des Firmaments, das den Himmelsozean
abtrennt, an dem sich die ‘Leuchten’ des Himmels befinden, und als Bereich der Vögel,
vgl. Gen 1,6.7.8.14.15.17.20; mehrfach in Ez 1:22.23.25.26 + Ez 10,3; den ‘Glanz des
Firmaments’ nennt Dan 12,3. Ps 150,1 kennt in synonymem Parallelismus neben ‘in
seinem Heiligtum’ (wvdqb) die Wendung “in der Feste seiner Macht” (wz[ [yqrb). Ist
das eine Anspielung auf das himmlische Heiligtum? Und schließlich kennt Ps 19,2 die
[yqr als Parallelbegriff zu ‘Himmel’ und als Ort, wo die Sonne ihr ‘Zelt’ hat, vgl.
Hossfeld/Zenger, NEB 29, 133f; vgl. auch Keel, Jahwe-Visionen, 250ff.” (ibid., 201
n. 183). See also Morray-Jones’s discussion of the “celestial pavement” (A Transparent
Illusion, 96-100).”
9
Here,
[yqr
wvdqb
wz[ [yqrb
is the rendering of
the one of
the one of
‫רקיע‬
‫בקדשׁו‬
‫ברקיע עזו‬
etc.
Neither are phonetic characters rendered correctly. For instance, one paragraph on page
289 of Gibbon (2004) looks like this after being copied:
EPG is a particularly valuable technique for investigating cleft palate speech
because it provides information about a wide range of frequent errors. Errors in
cleft palate speech most frequently affect sibilant fricative and affricate targets (/s/,
/z/, /b/, / /, /tb/, / /), followed by plosive targets (/t/, /d/, /k/, /g/), then approximants
(/l/, /r/, /j/, /w/) and finally nasals (/n/, /n/) and vowels (Spriestersbach, Darley and
Rouse, 1956; Van Demark, Morris and Vandehaar, 1979).
where /s/, /z/, /b/, / /, /tb/, / / and later /n/, /n/ are the renderings of /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /Ʒ/, /tʃ/, /ʤ/,
/n/, /ŋ/ respectively, and a table containing, among other things IPA fonts on page 488 of
van Alphen and Smits (2004) reappears as:18
NW+comp bark daart bluim draan
/b>rk/ /da7rt/ /bl!ym/ /dra7n/
bech dest bluk droost
/bew/ /dest/ /bldk/ /dro7st/
biek dint brijs dwaalf
/bi7k/ /dint/ /breis/ /dua7lf/
bijn doon broef dwijg
/bein/ /do7n/ /bru7f/ /dueiw/
The original table looks like this:
NW+comp
bark
/bɑrk/
bech
/bɛ/
biek
/biːk/
bijn
/bɛɪn/
daart
/daːrt/
dest
/dɛst/
dint
/dɪnt/
doon
/doːn/
bluim
/blɶym/
bluk
/blʉk/
brijs
/brɛɪs/
broef
/bruːf/
draan
/draːn/
droost
/droːst/
dwaalf
/dʋaːlf/
dwijg
/dʋɛɪ
Here, we are talking about systematic defects, in a number of electronic journals from
different providers.19
This means that the very functions that constitute the basis for our need of electronic
versions of scientific journals turn out to be deficient. But there is more. Not being able to
copy characters outside the A – Z range is serious. Still, attempts at copying single words
18
Copied some time in 2009. Unfortunately, the very issue containing this article was defect 19 April 2010.
Just for the record: Defect copying has no connection at all to installed fonts of Word etc. Further,
exporting the text from the full Acrobat program into Word format is no viable solution, since the result is a
copy which cannot itself serve as the source of screen copies.
19
10
or phrases usually results in easily detectable errors. However, even less easily detectable
errors may be provoked by attempts at copying between different formats and programs.
One such error is the omission of words at unpredictable places in the area marked when
the word contains one single “Å”, a perfectly normal Norwegian character. This creates a
critical situation when one intends to copy a paragraph relating to Åfarli, for instance.
One example drawn from The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics: Haider
(1997). Using the PDF copy function to copy the following paragraph (page 18),
According to Åfarli, the incorporated version is confined to participles in the analytic passive
construction, as the contrast between (i) and (ii) illustrates. Herslund points out that prefixed
particles are lexically conditioned and syntactically unproductive.
the result is
“According to farli, the incorporated version is confined to participles in the analytic passive
construction, as the contrast between (i) and (ii) illustrates. Herslund points out that prefixed
and syntactically unproductive.”
For the keen observer, the sequence “particles are lexically conditioned” of the last line is
missing, and “Åfarli” has lost his/its “Å”! Oddly enough, there seems to be some kind of
relationship between the “Å” and the sequence of words missing somewhere else in the
paragraph.). Now, this is what happens as long as the user does not have one of the last
updates of Adobe’s Acrobate reader.20 With version 9.0 installed, for instance, this is the
resulting copy:
According toA°
farli, the incorporated version is confined to participles in the analytic passive
construction, as the contrast between (i) and (ii) illustrates. Herslund points out that prefixed
particles are lexically conditioned and syntactically unproductive.
This time, the entire text has been copied. However, the uppercase “Å” gets transformed
to an uppercase “A” with no prior space and with a trailing circle plus the insertion of a
new paragraph. This problem does not disappear when one moves from the free reader to
the purchased (and presumably complete/extensive) version of the Adobe program. But
this is beside the point anyway, since the users – at the faculty, at home etc. – have quite
a number of different versions of the program. In fact, one cannot expect every student
and every professor to have the most recent version of all programs. This is, in turn,
related to the fact that their PCs vary considerably in terms of capacity, rapidity etc.
Summing up
Programs have problems communicating despite all talk about compatibility. The
technical reasons for this may be clear and declared: The text formatting is different and
PDF uses UTF-8, while Microsoft Word uses a proprietary Windows-based character set.
Still, this represents a general - mostly ignored - problem. In fact, one may wonder why
this problem hasn’t been fixed long time ago. However, the users have every reason to
expect a seamless transition between them. The lack of it is a true annoyance and may
20
In this case, version 5.0.
11
even result in loss of material/content and errors for those unsuspecting and/or in a hurry.
In the last case above, even being aware that defects of this kind may happen requires an
extraordinary level of attention from the user – or a stronger competence in basic
computing that can be expected from normal academic users.
In the extreme, lack of conceptual quality will harm the aspects of higher education
and research that electronic library services are supposed to facilitate. The search results
may be distorted, and, in their daily use, the library services may appear to be unpractical.
Local maladaptations
Deficiencies may occur due to local administration of the respective purchased programs
or functions as well. Both electronic full text databases and bibliographies may be
involved. One outstanding example is the ARTIKLER option of the search field in the
very centre of the homepages of all the library branches at the University of Oslo. This is
a federated search in a selection of resources via Metalib. In order to look up every record
related to a linguist or a writer of fiction, for instance, one is compelled to search a
bundle of preselected electronic resources labelled “humanities”:21 Humanities Index,
JSTOR, MLA international bibliography (PQ), Periodicals index online, and
Philosopher's Index (Ovid). These are truly odd bedfellows from several points of view.
On the one hand, a medley of bibliographies and full text scholarly journals. On the other
hand, radically different disciplines such as linguistics, literature, philosophy, and - as
will be shown in an instance - history of art.22 As a consequence, no result satisfying the
needs of higher education or research is obtained. Two examples will make this clear:
once again the linguist Tor Åfarli and Thomas Hardy, the British author.
As already indicated above, “Å” has the potential of messing up the result of even the
simplest program or function. Thus, searching for “Åfarli” in ARTIKLER will give as its
result23 a small but awkward number of hits - 13 in all:
1
2
Afarli, Tor A.,
reviewer
ýfarli, Tor A.
3
ýfarli, Tor A.
A promotion analysis of restrictive relative
clauses
1994
4
Haegeman, Liliane
Review of Tor A. ýfarli, “The Syntax of
Norwegian Passive Constructions”
1994
Back Matter
Publications Received
“The Syntax of Norwegian Passive
Constructions”, by Tor A. ýfarli (Book
Review)
1993
1993
1993
5
6
7
Lýdrup, Helge
Coordination (Book Review)
2000
A Note on the Syntax of Adverbial Phrases
1995
21
Humanities
Index
Periodicals
index
online
Periodicals
index
online
Periodicals
index
online
JSTOR
JSTOR
Periodicals
index
online
“Humaniora” in Norwegian.
Of course, the user has the possibility to search a variety of relevant resources as well, which are listed
“deeper” inside the library pages. However, ARTIKLER is the one that the library promotes for any
scholarly search.
23
Via Firefox.
22
12
8
ýfarli, Tor A.
Passive in Norwegian and in English
1989
9
ýfarli, Tor
Nonsubject Pro-Drop in Norwegian
1987
10
ýfarli, Tor
Norwegian Verb Particle Constructions as
Causative Constructions
1985
11
Deborah Marrow
1979
12
13
Malcolm Waddingham
Keith Andrews
Maria de’ Medici and the Decoration of
the Luxembourg Palace
Elsheimer Revised
The Elsheimer Inventory and Other
Documents
Periodicals
index
online
Periodicals
index
online
Periodicals
index
online
JSTOR
1972
1972
JSTOR
JSTOR
The weird character returned for “Å”, “ý”, is quite funny, but this error has no
importance.24 What is important, though, is the fact that there are only 13 hits. 13
extraordinary hits, indeed:
1
is a review written by Åfarli.
2, 3, 8, 9, 10 are articles written by Åfarli
4, 7
are reviews of two of Åfarli’s works (written by others)
So far, so good. However, the following hits
5
6
is an advertisement for Åfarli’s monograph The Syntax of Norwegian
passive constructions by John Benjamins
is an item in a list of books received, Language 69/2, 441-448
are hardly enlightening and of marginal relevance. But the worse is still to come:
11
is one token of the sequence “afarli”25 in a quotation in Italian in an article
on the history of art:
3. Med., 4639, not paginated, 31st December 1623, Picchena to Gondi. ... Quanto ai quadri di Pittura che la Regina vorrebbe per
adornare le gallerie del suo Palazzo, V.S. potra dirle che Lor Altezze n 'hanno gia dato l'ordine, et procureranno che ella sia servita nel
miglior modo che sia possibile, sebene questi Pittori, massime i principali, sogliono per ordinario esser molto lunghi, et non basta il
sollecitarli, durandosifatica afarli uscir di passo. Perb se questo servizio andasse un poco alla lunga, non bisogna maravig- liarsene, et
io in particolare non mancherb di dar lor fretta, accib S. M..t sia servita presto.... 4. Med., 4
From Marrow, Deborah: 1979, “Maria de’ Medici and the Decoration of the Luxembourg
Palace”. The Burlington Magazine 121/921, 783-79126
12
refers to two token of the sequence “farli” in a quotation in Italian in
another article on the history of art:
24
Remark that “ý” is also used to represent “ø”, ‘o slash’. “Lýdrup” instead of “Lødrup”. Additionally,
even “A” is used instead of “Å”, cf. “Afarli”.
25
“farli” is a form of the Italian verb FARE ‘do’ plus an enclitic pronoun. “a” is a preposition.
26
Even including “farli” as a constituent of the compound verb SATISFARE ’satisfy’.
13
B.mo Padre. Carl' Antonia figlia del Conte Vilglierm di Stuard Scozzese devotissima serva de V. B.ne ch' in Roma, e venuta
solamente per fuggire I'heresie di quel paese, e seguire lafede catolica, mentr' era vedova, non sendo socorsa d'alcuni aiuti, ch' aveva al
tempo di Clemente VIII, per alimentare se stessa, et unfigliolino, e stata costretta difare qualche debito, per li quali e, molestata, et
ogni giorno si rilassano contra di lei mandati, e perche non si trova commodita di denari, per satisfarli, accio non gli si levi, quanto ha
in casa et cosi resti, in tutto nuda, suplica V. S.ta afarli gratia di comandare a Monsignor Governatore, nel cui tribunale, e stato ora
relassato un mandato che li ceda competente dilatione, di pagare una certa somma ogni mese, altrimente sara forzata di ritornarsene
alla patria sua, che il tutto ricevera, per somma gratia di V. B.a Quam Deus, Carl' Antonia d' Stuart
From Waddingham, Malcolm: 1972, “Elsheimer Revised Author(s)”. The Burlington
Magazine 114/ 834, 600-611
13
refers to a fourth token of the sequence “farli” in a quotation in Italian in
an article on the history of art:
This token is identical to the one of 12. The very same Italian manuscript is quoted in
Andrews, Keith: 1972, “The Elsheimer inventory and other documents”. The Burlington
Magazine 114/ 834, 595-607
This means that the result of a search for “Åfarli” produces as a result 2 reviews of
Åfarli’s works and 6 references to his own works, which is rather unsatisfactory, given in
the fact that Åfarli himself has included 175 titles in his own personal bibliography
(November 2009).27 On top of it all, the remaining 5 hits are either slightly irrelevant (5,
6) or bizarre (11, 12, 13). (Apparently, somewhere in the system a code page error deletes
the “Å” or converts it into an “a”, and a search for the distorted name of the linguist,
“farli” returns as a result 4 tokens of the Italian inflicted form of the verb FARE plus an
enclitic pronoun in articles from English arts history journals reproduced by JSTOR.
Clearly, “Å” represents a problem. However, this special Norwegian character is not
the only cause of the unsuccessful search. Unfortunately, the same lack of sensible results
ensues from a search where the search condition contains only characters from the A – Z
range and where the subject is of general international interest. One such example is a
search for the British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). The result is 117 hits.
Their nature or quality may be more relevant. What is important, however, is that they are
much fewer than one should have expected: A similar search in Literature online
(‘Criticism & Reference’ > ‘criticism’ > ‘subject’ = ‘Hardy, Thomas’, October 2009)
results in 8704 hits. So, even in the case of central British authors with names well inside
the A-Z range the result represents a tiny fraction of what one will get from one single
search in one of the constituent bibliographies. Confronted with such a catastrophic result,
any user will drop the ARTIKLER function or worse.
27
http://wo.uio.no/as/WebObjects/frida.woa/wa/fres?action=sok&etternavn=%C3%85farli&fornavn=tor&er
Norsk=1&erNordisk=1&erNasjonalt=1&erInternasjonalt=1&erUkjent=1&visParametre=1&bs=50
[November 2009]
14
Discussion
Using electronic full text and bibliographic library services, one may experience repeated
access failures, failures to print, and copying problems, lack of search possibilities or
absurd search results - at least within the domain of linguistics and the humanities in
general. From a management point of view, each instance of such defects may be
dismissed as singular, or in the case of conceptual defects, as irrelevant to library services.
Inevitably, users will look at this in a different way. The importance of the defects
increases because of their quantity and the users get the impression of negligence and
general lack of reliability on the part of the library. Persistence over the years emphasises
this negative impression.
On-line full text and bibliographic services have been around for more than a decade
in their actual forms. Still, their reliability is poor and their functionality far from
adequate, at least as far as services within linguistics and the humanities are concerned.
How can this have continued for such a long time? Indirectly, one reason may be that, in
many academic disciplines, for instance in the humanities, electronic journals and
bibliographies are not indispensable. As opposed to what many seem to believe, they are,
basically, just an extra asset. A complimentary explanation is that researchers may have
made private/individual arrangements or local contracts at department or research group
level doubling those of the research library.28 This may also be reflected by the fact that
relatively many defects are reported by library staff members, not by ordinary users.29
From a direct point of view, the defective performance of these services has continued
because of lack of managerial attention, which manifests itself in two ways: Lack of
commercial attentiveness and technical management’s negligence of users experience,
including the one of qualified members of the library staff.
As distinct from what is common business practice, just the mere functioning of
services is checked by the library – however, only at the point of reception. No
systematic check of their continued functioning, their day-to-day availability, is
performed,30 not even their continued functioning after contract or term renewal. It is
simply presupposed that all acquired electronic resources work well and the users are
expected to report possible errors on an individual basis. To judge from the diversity
between defects experienced by library personnel and those reported by ordinary users,
the inevitable result is that far from all cases are reported. Further, the scarce individual
error reports are redirected to a librarian, who checks if the library has a subscription or
not and eventually makes a complaint to the provider of the service in question. From one
28
In fact, many researchers have their own subscriptions of printed scientific journals.
A phenomenon that strikes me as similar to the use or non use of other optional electronic functions. As a
member of an advanced international research and development team in the 1980s, I was puzzled to see the
users’ reactions to the earlier and not so intelligent software. Using word processing software, for instance,
they easily lost confidence in spelling checkers completely when they saw that a screenful of text contained
many “incorrect” or “unrecognised” words that were, in fact, correct. The users tended to turn the function
off, never to turn it on again. This author’s experience as a tutor of electronic library resources is that the
same tendency manifests itself as far as certain electronic library services are concerned. After just a few
failures, the users simply do not use them again – without reporting any errors.
30
Unlike the traditional checking of every purchased book or journal issue at the point of reception and
later at regular shelf reviews and in more singular occasions, for instance when complete volumes are
selected for binding.
29
15
point of view, this is a rational way to proceed, but it functions on a case-to-case basis,
and no statistics of the defects are established that could serve as the basis for general
administrative action.31 In fact, the users may even have problems understanding where
to report what, since they have every reason to be confused as to where their problem is
localised in the chain of journal – publisher/agent – communication – library/local net own PC.
As for conceptual quality, this is, primarily, not the responsibility of local electronic
services’ management once a program has been acquired and put into production. Still,
the latent partial lack of compatibility between existing programs and functions is of
great importance for the users and should attract the library’s attention as such.
Unfortunately, problems of this kind are never properly addressed. No systematic testing
of functionality is carried out at any stage prior to acquisition, nor are functional defects
systematically reported – unlike what is common in software industry. And, perhaps most
important, no firm requirements as to true compatibility are set when electronic resources
are acquired.
What is the clear responsibility of local managers, though, are local solutions built on
purchased services of various kinds. In the end, the result will constitute the product of its
sub-systems’ defects and inherent weaknesses despite the quality of its components when
used one by one. One prominent example is the ARTIKLER function described above.
Lack of checking, testing, and adequate requirements all have to do with the libraries’
lack of professionalism as software customers. Apparently, this is a property that
characterises the entire trade: Since the unreliability of electronic resources has turned out
to be a persistent phenomenon it is obvious that the research libraries have not
collectively exerted their power as customers.
Another dimension of the lack of managerial attention is, ironically enough, the
negligence of the qualified users, including in-house expertise where that can be found.
In the case I am referring to, the experience of subject specialists is systematically left out
of account. This holds for reliability, conceptual quality, as well as for locally concocted
functions. The ARTIKLER function was introduced despite unison criticism and thorough
documentation of its contra productive effects from the library’s own staff of subject
specialists. Later on, reports of malfunctioning have been ignored and those raising the
subject turned away.32
31
Here, it should be added that the users often have no obvious place to turn to report errors. In the
University of Oslo Library case, for instance, one tiny button “Hjelp/tilbakemelding”, literally
‘help/feedback’, hidden in the list of providers and stock information in an intermediary screen is hard to
find and clearly not enough in order to create an impression of readiness to help on the library side. Cf. for
instance http://x-portsfx.uio.no/sfx_ubo?sid=BIBSYS&date=9999&sfx.ignore_date_threshold=1&rft.object_id=1109789665591
44 [19 April 2010]
32
Postlude: When, after one year, the ARTIKLER function was finally removed from the library home page
in 2010, the motive was to copy the new homepage of another university library. Thus, the ARTIKLER
function was finally substituted by – a pointer to Google Scholar. Without any previous consultation of the
local scientific staff or scholars of the faculty.
16
What needs to be done?
Obviously, a first measure33 would be to abstain from improvising local “solutions” such
as ARTIKLER. Further, existing services have to be monitored systematically. Software
for checking that the respective resources are fully accessible at any time should be
implemented - for the benefit of the users, but also for obvious economy/audit reasons.
Why should libraries pay for services not provided …?
In this context, it is even appropriate to suggest that one ought to control all issues of
an electronic journal at reception. This, however, will inevitably be more complicated
than the traditional control of printed issues, since a scientific officer will have to check
that the printed and electronic versions are identical as far as content is concerned,
perhaps even the functionality of the electronic version.
As far as further acquisitions are concerned, new and tougher purchase requirements
must be set up, taking formal errors (e.g. failing to open access according to contract) and
technical aspects (e.g. access capacity, virtual network software compatibility) into
consideration. Additionally, requirements should be established for true compatibility
between all new programs and their functions as far as conceptual quality is concerned
and serious and decisive efforts should be made to harmonise partly incompatible
functions in different existing programs.
As a prerequisite, however, a change of attitudes is required among managers of
electronic library services: Apart from adopting a less naive approach as far as the
commercial aspects of electronic services are concerned, they have to be less driven by
advertisements, fashions, and impressions from meeting their equals. Instead, they ought
to take an interest in the users’ concrete experience with the electronic services and how
they actually want to use them.34 Here, cooperation with the rest of the library staff is
essential, especially with members who have full experience as students and researchers
within the academic disciplines involved. Their insight in the multifaceted properties of
the various academic disciplines provides the key to both the adaptation of electronic
library services as well as to their continued control and future development.
Bibliography
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Ellis, David and Hanna Oldman: 2005, The English literature researcher in the age of the
Internet. Journal of information science 31/1, 29-36
33
As far as software is concerned. A precondition is, of course, that the research library’s hardware is
conform to an adequate standard. The PCs, for instance, ought to have a capacity matching the technical
requirements of the acquired software, or, to put it differently, it should be possible to run new software on
all the PCs of the institution and on those of every user.
34
For obvious reasons, surveys of general levels of contentment are not sufficient.
17
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of defective documentation. München: LINCOM
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18