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The Google Gong Rings for ProQuest and Dissertation Content

A MOVIE CAMERA BUSINESS TRIES TO ADAPT

In June 1986, I was sold along with the electronic publishing assets of the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. to Bell+Howell. B+H owned a new media company, which in the late 1980s did business as University Microfilms with the acronym UMI. At that time, the company’s product line up spanned a number of media. At one end of the spectrum was the original business based on creating microfilm replicas of documents. These microfilms were sold to libraries. Generations of students used technology perfected during World War II for their access to information not in a library’s collection. At the other end were the electronic products from the Courier Journal: ABI/INFORM, Pharmaceutical News Index, and Business Dateline (the first full text local business news database with corrections made when the source updated the story’s facts).

Now this is an efficient research tool for today’s student. Source: http://www.archivalsuppliers.com/images/Picture%20284.jpg

When I was a student, I did research with microfilm. It was okay but it took a long time to get the reels, get them set up, and reviewed. Getting a hard copy of a document was a hassle. Some of the prints turned black and became unreadable quickly. I once dropped a reel and watched in horror as it unspooled, picked up dirt, and was unusable. I had to pay the library for a replacement. I think in the 1960s, a single reel cost me about $45 which was more than I made in my part time job. I loathed the stuff.

At the recent Online Information 2009 event in London, my colleague Ulla de Stricker was the keynoter for the “Publishers Delivering Value” track on December 3., 2009.  In her talk – which she mentioned the Google move into dissertations. Her reference inspired me to write this opinion piece. You can get iinformation about her at DeStricker.com. One of her example was the fact that Stanford University students may now submit their dissertations to Google while it is optional to submit them to ProQuest.

So I wandered over to the exhibit hall to visit with ProQuest, all the while reminiscing about my past experience with that company – known as UMI at the time.

MICROFILM: HARD TO USE, EASY TO DAMAGE AND MISFILE

When I was working on my PhD, I remember my fellow students talking about the costs of getting their dissertations “published” and then included in the Dissertation Abstracts index. I never had this problem because I took a job with the nuclear unit of Halliburton, never bothering to submit my dissertation once I got a real job.

A microfilm readers. Source: http://www.ucar.edu/library/collections/archive/media/photographs/481_1976_microfilm_lg.jpg

The whole system was a money making machine. When a library burned down, backfiles could be acquired when physical copies were not available. When a university got a grant for a new field of study, a collection of journals could be purchased from UMI on microfilm. Bang. Instant academic reference material. I don’t recall how much content the “old” UMI moved to microfilm. My recollection is that there were books, journals, newspaper, and, of course, dissertations. With all this film, I understood why B+H had paid tens of millions for the Courier Journal’s electronic publishing expertise. Buying expertise and using it are two different things, in my opinion.

MECHANICAL PRODUCTION WRONG FOR DIGITAL PRODUCTS

The production process for creating a microfilm was quite complicated and involved specialized cameras, film, and chemicals. The image I have of the UMI facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first time I visited was a modern day castle surrounded by a moat. The castle was a large, one-story building surrounded by a settling pond. The chemicals from the film processing were pumped into the moat in order to separate certain high value residue from other chemicals. UMI processed so much film that the residue silver from the photographic process warranted this recycling effort.

Dinosaurs struggle with the concept of an apocalypse. Adapt or get grilled I suppose.

UMI had a silver mine in its monopoly on certain types of content. My recollection of UMI was that its core product was getting universities to require or maybe strongly recommend that doctoral dissertations had to be “published” by UMI. The microfilm copies of the dissertations were sold back to the doctoral students and to libraries interested in having a compact, relatively easy way to store volumes on a mind boggling range of topics. I did a project that required me to use a microfilm copy of something called the Elisaeis by a wild and crazy religious poet named William Alabaster, and several dissertations written about that nearly forgotten literary work. I also did a project for the Vatican and worked through microfilms of sermons from the middle ages in Latin. Now that was fun! Pretty sporty content to. Nothing like a hot omelie.

I never paid much attention to the microfilm business processes, but I did quite a bit of thinking about craziness of making film copies of documents that could be converted or processed in electronic form.

After a couple of years laboring in the parched fields of Bell+Howell, I jumped to Ziff Communications and focused my attention on electronic products. I recall giving a couple of talks about the differences between information companies founded on mechanical and physical processes and companies focused on more digital processes. The example that I used repeatedly was the UMI thought process. Handling paper to make film affected everything the company did during my brief tenure. The collision of that type of rear view mirror information product and the forward looking digital products made me a casualty of the collision between the cultures of mechanical and digital work methods.

I know that the products with which I had been associated during my brief tenure at UMI have not changed very much. In fact, when I was in London last week, I stopped by the UMI booth—the company now calls itself “ProQuest”, which seemed more appropriate for a golf club company or a vacation planning agency for extreme adventures—for a briefing. I have to admit that I was disappointed. Not only did the knowledge of the sales person disappoint, the core features of the digital products on which I worked had not changed in a material way since 1986. A quarter century of innovation and a logo changed. Interesting.

The reason I am thinking about this subject is my reading in the Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Web log “Stanford Dissertations Moving from ProQuest to Google.” The story is simple: “Stanford is partnering with Google to make student dissertations available worldwide.” The blog post provides some detail about what’s going on. The key point for me was this exchange between Stanford professionals:

Minow: I understand that this move away from ProQuest means that Stanford student work will no longer be included in Dissertation Abstracts unless the student makes an affirmative effort to submit to ProQuest. What are the implications for the broader research world of such a step?

Calter: It is a concern, but our sense is that the wide availability and visibility of the dissertations through the Stanford catalog and Google will more than compensate for the lack of a listing in Dissertation Abstracts.

VALUE OF DISSERTATION CONTENT

Why is this single announcement from Stanford important to me? Certainly not for the reasons spelled out in SFGate’s “Google Publishers Stanford Dissertations Online”.

First, this is the beginning of the end for the “old” UMI monopoly on dissertations. Google can suck in this content, process it in the way it is parsing and tagging its legal content, and make it available under its subsidizing business model. The entire mechanism is simply more in line with what PhDs know how to do with information. I am surprised it took Google 11 years to move into this content space.

Second, the commercial database companies like ProQuest, Reed Elsevier, and Chemical Abstracts, among others, have a clear view of their future. I don’t think the Mayan calendar’s hint of an apocalypse was intended for traditional database publishers, but that end of history date a few years out may apply to the traditional electronic product business sector. Google has the scale and the demographic momentum. A single database company will find it tough to deal with Google’s combination of scale and its subsidizing business models.

Third, I think dissertations are useful in certain types of recruitment and competitive intelligence work. Dissertations are written by individuals with the help of some advisors. Useful details in my experience. Quite useful.

Fourth, the online world has begun to shift rapidly from proprietary, for fee services to the broader “search box” model available from a computing device equipped with a browser. I don’t think dissertations are viewed today as a particularly useful source of information by most users. If Google sucks in more dissertations and creates the type of value added tagging evident in its legal collection, dissertations will become a much more used source of information. I know the value of dissertations. These documents contain useful bibliographies. Some include tabular data not available anywhere outside of the dissertation document itself. Often a dissertation will contain a detailed description of a process that delivered a particular result. Process information or how to content is quite difficult to find in other types of source material. Finally, I have found dissertations a useful resource when researching prior art.

I hope the ProQuest team can adapt to this Google challenge. If it does not, ProQuest may become a case example of a company whose revenue stream was captured by an online service that combined better technology with a business model more in tune with users and the economy.

SOME COUNTER ARGUMENTS TO MY OPINION

I am offering my opinion, gentle reader. I can envision a range of arguments that traditional database vendors will throw back at me directly and indirectly. For example, look at these in the table below:

I won’t drag into this discussion the technical differences between UMI / ProQuest and Google. These are simply too different to warrant comment.

BEGINNING OF THE END FOR SOME INFORMATION COMPANIES

I think Google has a number of options at its disposal. I think Google will take baby steps toward commercial online content. Who knows? Maybe the Google will stumble and the world will go back to the good old days of microfilm and Dialog Information Services?

I think that after 11 years of viewing Google as a Web search company that sells ads, it might be tough for the commercial database companies to adapt quickly enough. I like the image of dinosaurs standing in a field watching fire pour from the sky.

Stephen Arnold, December 7, 2009

I have to confess that I wrote this because Tess licked my face. I suppose I need to report this to the Department of Health & Human Services. This outfit is responsible for unsanitary inducements from a rescue boxer with a physical deformity. I quite like Tess’s payoffs, however.

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