Why Wikipedia May Go Dark on Wednesday

If you're like me and you like to look up the occasional obscure fact on Wikipedia, you may not be able to do so on Wednesday, 1/18. According to news reports, the online encyclopedia plans to shutdown for the day to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that is currently under consideration in Congress.

While no one really likes piracy, this legislation has the potential to have some serious repercussions beyond simply stopping unauthorized distribution of content. Blogging for the New York Times, Jenna Wortham notes that SOPA "may force search engines and Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that offer or link to copyrighted material." Basically, if SOPA is passed as it was originally conceived, when a website is accused of containing pirated content, it can be wiped off the digital map without any real due process. Any website can be accused and be essentially shut down. Declan McCullagh writing for CNET put it best: "[SOPA is] kind of an internet death penalty."

So while a day without our favorite online encyclopedia may be a pain, it is for a worthy cause. Imagine an internet with no Wikipedia, ever. Or no New York Times. With SOPA as law, that could be very possible.

For more information about SOPA and its potential impact, see this CNET article.

Reporting When a Sex Abuse Scandal Hits Home

This morning the lead story in the Philadelphia Inquirer was probably one that no one at the paper ever imagined they would have to write. Award winning baseball writer Bill Conlin had been accused of multiple instances of sexually abusing children back in the 1970s. The story on philly.com details horrific acts and how the allegations managed to remain secret until now. Also accompanying the article is another piece from the editor of the Philadelphia Daily News talking about how it was difficult, but necessary for the Inquirer/Daily News conglomerate to report on these allegations against one of their own.

While editor Larry Platt pledges vigilance in their coverage of these accusations, I wonder how this story will impact their coverage of the Penn State and Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. Will they be less likely to write about the ignorance of those closest to the alleged abusers since they themselves didn't know an alleged abuser was in their midst for 30 years? I did notice that neither of the Bill Conlin articles online allowed for comments and I'm interested in why that is. Perhaps the papers have seen the hurtful comments that people have left on their stories about the other two scandals and don't want to have all that venom spewed in their direction? What does that say about the value of comments left on news stories?

It will be interesting to watch how the Inquirer/Daily News conglomerate handles the Bill Conlin abuse scandal and others going forward.

Plagiarism Goes to Court

When I teach my library session on citation and plagiarism, I always like to throw in the story of Adam Wheeler, the former Harvard student who was criminally prosecuted, in part because he was awarded scholarship money for works of literature that he plagiarized.

Now, I have another story I can add to my repertoire: Apparently reporter Susan Bradford has sued the Huffington Post and the New York Times alleging that they stole her stories about notorius financier Jack Abramoff.

So students, let this be a warning to you: If you steal someone else's work and claim it as your own, you may not only fail out of Towson but you may end up in court.

Baltimore Sun is Going Pay Wall!

If you blinked, you may have missed it. The Baltimore Sun will be putting up a pay wall on October 10th. What this means is that through the Sun's website, you get 15 free story views per month and you will need to pay a subscription fee after that . They estimate the fee will come to about 35 cents per day and even if you subscribe to paper copy, you still need to purchase a digital subscription for to get past the pay wall. For all the nitty gritty, see their relatively well-hidden FAQ. I think it is relatively interesting that the paper has somewhat kept quiet that this is coming and I also wonder how effective it will be. After all, look how quickly advice on how to break the New York Times' pay wall appeared when it was launched...

Of course, I'd be remiss as a librarian if I didn't remind all you Towson folks that you can access the Sun all the way back to 1837 through our databases and this won't cost you a dime :-)

Mediamark Missing the Mark

A new semester is underway and with a new semester invariably comes the semi-annual updating of my library instruction handouts. One of the updates that I usually make in late August is to my MRI+ Quick Guide and Powerpoint because Mediamark adds last year's data to MRI+ around that time. (For those of you who don't know, MRI+ is a consumer data set that advertising students can use to learn how to best target their campaigns).

This year was different. The new data was just added yesterday and as of my writing this, it appears to be less robust in some areas than last year's data. For example, it is missing the data for women throughout.

Also, we are still trying to get clarification on what some of the categories mean. An example of this is the listing of dollar amounts in the Contributions to Public TV/Radio report. This report also seems to list contributions to other types of charities such as religious organizations so this raises the question of whether the dollar amounts refer to just public media contributions or to charitable giving in general. A colleague of mine began investigating the meaning of this report last school year and still hasn't gotten an answer.

I think that Mediamark's MRI+ can be a great teaching tool for communication students, but I wish they would do a better job of communicating with their customers about product changes and what their data means.

Fix the Broken APA Please!

Just last week I was looking at an article in the Communication & Mass Media Complete database and when I clicked on the cite link, a new screen popped up. Instead of the usual pop-up box containing a tiny disclaimer and the incorrect APA citation for the article, I now see a larger disclaimer and still the incorrect APA citation in the middle of the page. This is not what I meant EBSCO when I asked you to fix your broken APA this summer at the American Library Association conference!

While the new disclaimer is a step up from the old one (which was minuscule), it doesn't really make anything better. I highly doubt that students will give it a second or even a first glance. They want to be able to get their citations and get on with their research. Even if they do look at it and click on the EBSCO support site, they still have to go through pages of text to find examples and some of those even aren't correct.

As a librarian, the new disclaimer doesn't help my credibility. I need students to be able to trust the library and the information we provide--that is the only way for us libraries to survive--but how can I do that when one of the primary resources I am telling students to use is riddled with errors? I've had students lose points on assignments over incorrect EBSCO citations and it breaks my heart. They trusted us and I now have to tell them that sometimes they are better off doubting us.

Basically the only one the bigger disclaimer helps is EBSCO. It allows them to feel like they have addressed a complaint. But it doesn't really accomplish anything. Please EBSCO, I am begging you, fix the APA citations in your databases--for the good of everyone.

NBC Learn Higher Ed

As many of you know, streaming news video can be tough to locate. That's why I was more than happy to take a look at NBC Learn Higher Ed at a recent library conference. This product makes thousands of NBC news videos, as well as content from their partners such as the Washington Post, available to universities. Also interestingly enough, they have collections of educational videos in chemistry and environmental science too.

I have registered for a free 30-day trial of this resource and you can too at http://highered.nbclearn.com/portal/site/HigherEd/freetrial. I think it is at least worth a look because streaming news content is so hard to get.