Final Exam
-Locating a deep web resource.
Distad, M.
(2011). The Future of Print: The Book. Feliciter, 57(5), 182-184
To locate this
title I went to Clark’s library website and clicked the article and databases
link, and then started searching for the author in a few of the deep web
resources. I ended up finding this title by searching for the authors name (Distad,
M) in EBSCOhost. After searching the author’s name, this title showed up as the
first result.
-Locating an open web resource.
Morrison, E. (2011, August 22). Are books dead, and can authors
survive? The Guardian
To locate this article using an open web
resource I went straight to books.google.com. Once there I searched for the
title of the article (Are books dead, and can authors survive?). Searching for
the title I found it right away as the first search result.
A.S.P.E.C.T
A: Authority
Deep Web
For our deep web resource “The Future of
Print: The Book” we will look at the authority of this book to evaluate using
A.S.P.E.C.T. When evaluating the authority of a source we look at the author
and publisher to find the authors credentials as well as the reputation of the
publisher. Looking at the biography at the end of this article we see that the
author is a librarian at multiple universities, and has written other books on
the subject of libraries. Upon searching the publisher using an open web
resource we can see that they publish a magazine dedicated to libraries in
Canada and are known for having writers that are professionals in their field.
Open Web
For our open web resource “Are
books dead, and can authors survive?” We will also evaluate the authority of
this article. Using an open web resource
and searching for the author I found his blog that has a short biography as
well as other work he’s done. There is another title that he has written named “The
Last Book You’ll Read” as well as detailing his career as a writer. This
article is about writing and it is future so showing that his career as a
writer shows his authority. The publisher “The Guardian” however publishes
articles of all types and use freelancers, and is not a very good indication of
authority.
S:
Sources
P:
Purpose
Deep Web
Using A.S.P.E.C.T to evaluate sources we now look at the “S” or sources.
Sources are basically where the author received his information or works cited.
In this deep web article “The Future of Print: The Book” it does not contain a
works cited page though it does have in text citations. The author cites “The
End of Books,” as well as “As We May Think.” The purpose of this article is to
speculate the future of the book industry.
Open Web
We will again evaluate the sources of our open web resources. The
article “Are books dead, and can authors survive,” doesn’t contain a
works cited page as well, but the article does cite a few web pages mostly for
statistics. The pages of statistics do contribute to the article though I feel
that they are used to further the author’s biased opinion. The purpose of the
article seems to portray the book industry as a dying media, but without enough
material to maintain credibility. I don’t feel that this article looks at both
sides of this issue very well.
E: Evenness
C: Coverage
T: Timeliness
Deep Web
We get to the last 3 parts of the A.S.P.E.C.T method of
evaluating resources, evenness, coverage, and timeliness. I will first apply
this to our deep web resource “The Future of Print: The Book.” My overall impression of this article’s
evenness was that the author looked at both sides of the issue and I didn’t
detect much bias. The author covers issues about how researchers and
speculators in the past have foretold of media dying out and still surviving,
or even evolving into new formats. For such as specific topic I feel that this
article did well for coverage. This article was published last year so the
information is still current as information of this type needs to be.
Open Web
Looking now at our open web resource we can evaluate this
resource using A.S.P.E.C.T. Looking at this article and evaluating the evenness
of the article I found that it is very biased. The author is really trying to
push the idea that books as a media will die and that is just speculation. The author
does cover a lot of ground citing numerous statistics, and many sources.
Looking at timeliness of this article we find that it is a very recent article
just written in August of last year.
Are these articles Trustworthy?
After my evaluation with using A.S.P.E.C.T and applying it
to the Deep Web resource I found the article to be trustworthy, not very
biased, from a good source and publisher, and written recently. In contrast,
the Open Web resource I didn’t find it trustworthy as the bias of the author
was very present. Though most of his research is purely speculation he portrays
the information as fact.
Review of “Are books dead, and can authors
survive?”
Author Ewan
Morrison answers the question “Will books, as we know them, come to an end?”
coming to a doom and gloom conclusion that books will become obsolete, and authors
will be out of work. Ewan Morrison in the first paragraph of his article states
the answer to this question is “yes, absolutely, within 25 years the
digital revolution will bring about the end of paper books,” but he uses mostly
speculation to back up this claim. This article isn’t really about the end of
the book as it is about the end of authors. Morrison speculates that because so
much of the content that we receive is free, that we will in turn only consume
free media, eliminating the need for paid authors, moving towards literature
written by the layman.
I don’t feel that we as a society will ever be to the point
that we have no need for authors or physical books. Though so many more people
consume media digitally the readers are still not as easy to read and annotate
as physical media. The learning effect of physically annotating text with a
highlighter is said to allow a better understanding of the material, moving it
from short-term memory to long-term with active processing. Much of are
literature here in the US comes from authors who are college educated, often possessing
a Master’s degree. Though anyone can write compelling literature, to write
great literature does require a specific education.
Morrison makes a compelling argument of how piracy will lead
to author’s demise. Piracy has led to
loss of profits around the many media industries, such as music, gaming, and
movies. However what Morrison doesn’t hit on is that piracy is illegal and is
becoming more and more of a serious crime. Though it does happen so much with
the advent of new technology security gets tighter. Even the VCR had security
features that would put lines through movies that people attempted to copy.
Pirates and people who want to protect their intellectual property will always
be locked in the cat and mouse game of piracy. Though technology is getting
better at preventing it, the original Xbox was modified by many and very easily
to play pirated games, here 10 years later the new Xbox is extremely difficult
to do play pirated media on, so much so that it isn’t really done. Recently
about 4 days ago a popular pirate site known as Demonoid.me was shut down by
hackers known as anonymous in attempt to stop piracy. The laws are getting
strict, and the longer we go on the harder it will be to blatantly steal others
intellectual property. A new popular video game on the PC known as Diablo has
incorporated an anti-piracy mechanism that is close to impervious, simply
requiring that the user always be connected to their server, as well as
checking if the game files have been modified. Technology like this will become
an industry of its own before we will see popular media taken over by pirates.
100% protection from piracy is possible.
