Internet Research - Final

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.