Day 7: SAGE

Today was a lot about publishing and a bit about data. To start the morning, Ruth Jones from Ingram talked to us about what they do and how their business models have changed in response to the Internet/new technology. They have come up with new platforms and services to better suit their partners and clients. For example, they recently launched Ingram Spark, a print-on-demand service for individual users to print their own content. It takes advantage of Ingram’s network of partners and allows users more flexibility for publishing their content (including in ebook format). One valuable thing she said was that the most important platform is the one that is the most connected: to achieve this, Ingram includes metadata from other publishers on their MyiLibrary platform. After all of these great publisher presentations, I keep thinking: Wow, there are a TON of platforms out there! Every publisher seems to have dozens of databases, services, platforms, ebook vending, etc. sites aimed at libraries and other institutions. It seems crazy to try and keep track of all those things, and after a certain point a library has got to just say, “Do I really have to create another account?” Services that simplify this process are invaluable.

Our next presenter was Graham Parton, who described his work as a data scientist working at a science data center (I’ll admit I’m a little fuzzy on the actual science bits, but it involves a LOT of data and the weather). Something he works very closely on is archiving data and the benefits of using a data repository to archive it (as opposed to a relying on personal archive/website, the cloud or a publisher). What stood out to me is that almost everything Graham described was something I had learned about in my digital archives class, but applied to datasets. I hadn’t considered datasets as something that would also need the same kind of rigorous archival work as say, manuscripts or websites, but it’s all the same. Datasets are meaningless without contextual information and metadata, and if lost the work can be completely irretrievable – we cannot always replicate an experiment or a measurement, particularly if that is historical information.

After lunch, we went to SAGE Publications’ very lovely office. Alex Molineux gave us an overview of the lifecycle of online products, from development to launch to maintenance, and some of the products SAGE is currently developing. I find market research very interesting, so I was happy to learn how they decide what products to develop and what goes into creating that product. Katherine Ryan gave a great overview of copyright and licensing issues, always vital for librarians and archivists. Copyright law, particularly in the US, is such a bonkers thing – I hope technology can drive some vital changes needed to those laws (separate issue, that). Unfortunately it seems like we are still in the reactionary stage, so it may be some time before that happens.

Here is a surprisingly festive street I passed while walking back from Sage. Maybe it was someone’s birthday, or maybe they are as excited to be in London as me.