Selection Assignment; Malinda Crom; 1
For this assignment, I chose to acquire books on legal issues surrounding the Internet. At
first, I thought I would just be finding law texts, and then I realized that we had to choose a
specific topic, and so I narrowed my focus to the Internet laws. The only downside to choosing
this as my topic is that these laws may be quickly out of date, or even inapplicable, due to the
nature of the Internet, and the way that it changes so quickly. But with some of the recent issues
that have come to people’s attention, like the Facebook Terms of Use, I thought it would be
worthwhile to invest in these materials. Some that I found probably won’t become quickly out
of date, and those that do will be good for seeing what previous stances have been taken with
legal cases involving the Internet.
Choosing Materials
When it came time to choose materials, I tried a couple different ways to find things. First I
went to the American Library Association’s Booklist website to see if I could find anything.
After looking in a few different places, and trying to narrow it down, I found a few books that
would be good to add to the collection.
I found Booklist helpful to use, but the focus is less on legal books, and more on popular
books that have recently come out. It seems like it would be more useful for a public librarian,
or even more useful for a non-library worker who just really liked to read, and was always
looking for new things to read. For those in a more specific or specialized library it wouldn’t be
as useful. Again, there are some titles that a specialized librarian might want to purchase, but
there are other places they could be looking as well.
After looking at Booklist, I decided to go to the American Association of Law Libraries
to see if they had any book reviews. From there, I looked at the website for their journal, the
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Law Library Journal. I did not find too much on this website, only because in order to look
through their book reviews, you had to look through the journals one by one. There was no way
to easily search the publications to find a book on the topic you wanted. In order to find a book,
you had to look through every journal online and read the reviews. I didn’t look through all of
them, but in the ones I did look through, I didn’t find anything relevant to my topic. It would be
easier if they had a way to search through the book reviews, or even the journal articles. Barring
that, it would be easiest to have a subscription where the magazine came every quarter to the
library, and to mark the books I would want to order.
When I couldn’t find the information I wanted from the Law Library Journal, I decided to
go over to some of the search engines that we have available to us through San Jose. I started
out using ARBA Online. I was disappointed with them again. When had the choice to try to use
them for one of our previous assignments, I found that the website didn’t have a lot of books that
I was looking for. When I was using ARBA again, I had trouble finding anything that had to do
with the laws on the Internet. I think, out of the 21 books I decided to buy, I could only find one
book that was useful.
From there, I went over to Book Review Digest Plus. I found this site to be very helpful.
Not only did it come up with a lot of books, but you could define the years that your hits came
from. There are also a lot of choices that you can make once you get your hits. First of all, the
hits all have at least one link to a review of the book. That tool is really useful when you’re
trying to decide if the book is one that you want in your collection. Not only that, but there is
also an abstract for the book in question. Thirdly, you can easily narrow down your search
results by author, subject, date of creation, or document type. It may not seem like a big deal,
but sometimes you just need to be able to narrow your focus.
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There are a lot of other great things about Book Review Digest Plus. There is an option
to mark your choices, so that it saves you favorites. Later, when you’ve made all of your
choices, you can go back and see them all, so that you know exactly which ones you liked. If
you’d gone through enough books, you may have forgotten one that was really impressive, or
possibly found a better version of a different book. Marking them lets you go back and review
your choices. There is also a tab for you to look up synonyms to your search choices. Instead of
searching “law” and “internet” it may switch your terms to “law” and “the web”, for instance.
Another thing that is really helpful is that export the citations to RefWorks, EndNote, or any
other bibliographic software. If you were trying to make sure you had all the vital information
for the books you wanted, exporting the citations would be one of the easiest ways to get that
information.
There is one thing that is really annoying about this database, however. It seems like a
small thing, but it supplies the price for the books on about half to a third of the listings. It’s not
the end of the world, but when it only has it sometimes, and you’re trying to stay within a
budget, it’s easiest if the price is available right there on the page. It has all the other information
you need, but not always the price. When it does have the price, it’s always exciting, because
that is one less step of research you need to do, and when it doesn’t have the price, it’s a bit of a
letdown.
Wanting to explore some of the other options available to me, I next went over to Choice
Reviews Online. I had a lot of trouble with this site. I don’t actually think I found any books
here that I could actually use. The Quick Search function brought up no results, and the
Advanced Search didn’t either. For all the reviews they do per year, I had trouble wading
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through all the books that had anything to do with the Internet, and nothing to do with any
current or past laws concerning the Internet.
Lastly, I went over to World Cat and looked there. World Cat is very easy to use, and I
got a lot of useful hits there. The basic search was very simple to follow (in case the librarian
isn’t that great at searching), and the expert search has a cheat-sheet for searching. You can also
limit what type of materials you come up with. Another really great thing about World Cat is the
option to look for versions of the book with the same author and title, essentially looking for
newer or older versions. You can also see inside on some of the books, and they have links to
access points online. You can view things like the table of contents, the publisher’s description,
or contributors of biographical information, for instance.
My biggest problem with World Cat is that there aren’t necessarily reviews. Users can
upload their reviews, but you have the same problem with that as if you were reading one on
Amazon. You have no idea who the reviewer is, or if they have any credibility when it comes to
reviewing a certain book. They could be an editor for the book, or a disgruntled student who had
to read it and thought it was boring.
Recommendations
Of the sources that I looked at, I think I would recommend Book Review Digest Plus and World
Cat. I found both of them easy to use, and also had a large selection. I would recommend
Booklist, though not to a specialized librarian. I don’t think I’d recommend ARBA, though. I
just haven’t had any good encounters with ARBA.
Internet Shopping and Book Choices
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Of the books I chose, all of them are available on Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s online shopping
site. I actually found this to be really helpful. Not only could you easily check the price, but in
some instances, you could get a discount on the book just by being a member. Amazon often has
a sale going on, and if you are a member, you pay about eighty dollars a year and enjoy free twoday shipping. With Barnes and Noble, membership is twenty five dollars a year, and you can
save up to forty percent on a regular basis.
I found that searching on Barnes and Noble’s website was not only very easy, but very
useful as well. The books they suggested were good books, and many of them more recent than
the ones I found on any of the other websites. The only problem I could foresee would be the
same problem that I would have on World Cat. There is a place for reviews, but there is no way
to judge the quality of the reviews, nor any way to ascertain information about the person writing
the review.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I found some of the websites available helpful, while I found some of them to be
not so helpful. I think that if I were really an acquisitions librarian, I would choose a mixture of
ways of finding new books. To begin with, I would keep an eye on the ALA Booklist journal,
but I would also keep up with a few other professional journals, and read their book reviews,
marking any that I may want to purchase in the future. An Amazon Wishlist would be a
possibility with that concept. Secondly, I would check on Barnes and Noble’s website for any
new books coming out, and would then search for any reviews on the more professional
websites, such as Book Review Digest Plus.
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Appendix 1- Selection List
1. Angwin, J. Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in
America. Book. $27
2. Lih, A. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s
Greatest Encyclopedia. Book. $24.95
3. Doctorow, C. Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the
Future of the Future. Book. $14.95
4. Farmer, L. Teen Girls and Technology: What’s the Problem, What’s the Solution? Book.
$35
5. Schwabach, Aaron. Internet and the Law: Technology, Society, and Compromises. Book.
$95
6. Gkoutzinis, A. Internet Banking and the Law in Europe. Book. $129.
7. Collins, M. The Law of Defamation and the Internet. Book. $305.
8. Sparrow, A. The Law of Internet and Mobile Communications: The EU and US
Contrasted. Book $49.95
9. Grabosky, P. Electronic Theft: Unlawful Acquisitions in Cyberspace. Book. $64
10. Aspray, W. Chasing Moore’s Law: Information Technology Policy in the United States.
Book. $27.95
11. Jenkins, P. Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet. Book. $21
12. Mintz, A. Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet. Book. $24.95
13. Lloyd, I. Information Technology Law. Book. $82.
14. Finley, L. Hawking Hits on the Information Highway: The Challenge of Online Drug
Sales for Law Enforcement. Book. $32.95
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15. Barnett, B. Untangling the Web of Hate: Are Online Hate Sites Deserving of First
Amendment Protection? Book. $99.95
16. Reed, C. Computer Law: the Law and Regulation of Information Technology. Book. $90
17. Stuckey, K. Internet and Online Law. Book. $159
18. Ramberg, C. Internet Marketplaces: The Law of Auctions and Exchanges Online. Book.
$115
19. Stokes, S. Digital Copyright: Law and Practice. Book. $78
20. Smedinghoff, T. Online Law: the SPA’s Legal Guide to Doing Business on the Internet.
Book. $49.99
21. Nimmer, R. Licensing of Intellectual Property and Other Information Assets. Book. $84.
Total Cost: $1609.64