Oxford Flexes Its Reference Muscles
April 22, 2010
I go to a gym every couple of days when I am in town. So happens that that a number of semi pro wrestlers go to the gym. Big people. Tattoos. Muscles. I an old wimp and I graciously give up my place when one of these steroid stallions trots to the workout station I favor. Academics have muscles, but I think that my image of a muscular academic and one from Oxford University at that is of a milder, more gentle giant.
The Oxford muscle builders have turned their attention to creating online bibliographies. I think, based on reading the write up “Oxford University Press Launches the Anti-Google” that these will be variants of the old Goldentree bibliographies or the type of reference book Constance Winchell cranked out.
Here’s a synopsis of the product:
The OBO [Oxford Bibliographies Online] tool is essentially a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines. Users can drill down to a specific bibliographic entry, which contains some descriptive text and a list of references that link to either Google Books or to a subscribing library’s own catalog entries, by either browsing or searching. Each entry is written by a scholar working in the relevant field and vetted by a peer review process. The idea is to alleviate the twin problems of Google-induced data overload, on the one hand, and Wikipedia-driven GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), on the other.
Sounds good but there may be some challenges:
First, these hand crafted bibliographies are expensive to create and keep current. The rush of enthusiasm for a project of this type gets some bibliographies out the door. However, the ongoing costs are likely to be an issue because libraries may not have the agility to buy this online service. Oxford University has the money, but once the reality of the costs sink in, my hunch is that push back from the finance person will be coming in 12 months.
Second, revenue. The spreadsheet fever makes the project look pretty tasty. Oxford will find itself dancing with some big outfits in the commercial database world. My view is that Oxford will have to find a partner quickly because, let’s face it, universities are not exactly the top guns in the marketing arena.
Third, the anti Google thing is cute but irrelevant. The Google is muddling along with probes into different market sectors. The Google is in the “good enough” game and that’s where Google’s search and reference services will aim. Google may end up with some academic wonder products but that will be exhaust from the Google revenue machine. Red herring to even mention Google.
Fourth, users want to click and get the full text. When I am doing research, I know how to do the primary and secondary research drill. The problem is that time and resources force me to use my own tools like the Overflight system. But for some tiny percentage of folks looking up information online Bing, Google, and Yahoo will pretty good. To dig into the next level, libraries have Ebsco products. Those who need more are going to be Oxford level researchers, and I am not sure a product aimed for this tiny slice of online users can generate enough revenue to exist without subsidies. Will Oxford fund the rowing team or the bibliographies? Time will tell.
In short, interesting but a bit of anachronism in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, April 22, 2010
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2 Responses to “Oxford Flexes Its Reference Muscles”
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I agree; it appears Oxford has created a product of interest only to people who don’t really need it. We’re working on an alternative called SweetSearch (www.SweetSearch.com), which is a Google-powered custom search engine that only searches 35,000 sites we’ve evaluated and approved. And we’re creating separate versions for K-6 and scholars, as no one search engine can meet the needs of all researchers at every level.
Here’s an interesting blend of social/expert: “The best five books on everything”
http://fivebooks.com Every day an eminent writer, thinker, commentator, politician, academic chooses five books on their specialist subject. When a reader purchases one of the books through the site, FiveBooks gets a percentage back from Amazon. FiveBooks is majority owned by The Browser Publications, AG, and is a sister site of The Browser, “an intelligent general reader edited by Robert Cottrell.