Who Owns the News Media? website includes data re market share

The Who Owns the News Media? website http://stateofthemedia.org/media-ownership/ includes data about market share of companies over the news media in all formats. You can compare companies across media sectors. Plus do much more. The website is an outgrowth of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Thanks to Lee who found this on the Resource Shelf Blog and shared it with us.

Re-learning management discoveries of the past

An article in alternet summarizes research done over the course of about a century or so that shows 40-hour work weeks make the most sense and that when people work more than 40 hours per week their productivity falls off and errors (sometimes catastrophic) increase.

But the conventional wisdom in many workplaces today is "everybody knows that working crazy hours is what it takes to prove that you’re “passionate” and “productive” and “a team player” — the kind of person who might just have a chance to survive the next round of layoffs."

Why crunch mode doesn't work, a study prepared for the International Game Developers Association, combats this conventional wisdom with a historical survey of the research which found that longer than 40 hour work-weeks simply do not pay off.

From The Prosperity Covenant:

That output does not rise or fall in direct proportion to the number of hours worked is a lesson that seemingly has to be relearned each generation. In 1848, the English parliament passed the ten-hours law and total output per-worker, per-day increased. In the 1890s employers experimented widely with the eight hour day and repeatedly found that total output per-worker increased. In the first decades of the 20th century, Frederick W. Taylor, the originator of "scientific management" prescribed reduced work times and attained remarkable increases in per-worker output. [emphasis mine]

Past the eighth hour of work in a day there exists no 1 to 1 correlation between hours worked and productivity. That is to say, increasing the hours 50% does not obtain 50% more production. This goes for office work as well as factory work and even for managers. "Follow-up investigations on the Exxon Valdez disaster and the Challenger explosion ... found that severely overworked, overtired decision-makers played significant roles in bringing about these disasters. There’s also a huge body of research on life-threatening errors made by exhausted medical residents, as well as research by the US military on the catastrophic effects of fatigue on the target discrimination abilities of artillery operators."

And, (from Why we have to go back to a 40-hour work week to keep our sanity):

… research shows that knowledge workers actually have fewer good hours in a day than manual laborers do — on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight. It sounds strange, but if you’re a knowledge worker, the truth of this may become clear if you think about your own typical work day. Odds are good that you probably turn out five or six good, productive hours of hard mental work; and then spend the other two or three hours on the job in meetings, answering e-mail, making phone calls, and so on. You can stay longer if your boss asks; but after six hours, all he's really got left is a butt in a chair. Your brain has already clocked out and gone home.

Sorry, but managers will most times have to hire more people if they want more work done.

Google Introduces Over Optimization SEO Penalty

Internet marketing efforts often focus a large amount of time and energy on "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO). This means placing the right keywords and meta tags in your site in order for it to rank high (preferably the first page of results) on Google. Google uses secret algorithms to determine its result rankings. Google constantly does a kind of code battle with web site developers over whether the users see what Google "thinks" they want or what the pages marketers want people to see. Developers work to reverse-engineer the algorithms, Google tries to refine them.

SEO is not dishonest in and of itself, however, some sites have great SEO but hardly any content other than advertising. Now Google has decided to penalize "over optimized" sites. Read Google Introduces Over Optimization SEO Penalty for more details.

Copyright math

A TED talk with comic Rob Reid who breaks down the claims of entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists using "copyright math."

This may be of interest to researchers wishing to make sense of the numbers we often see thrown around on all sorts of topics.

Re-discovering Ogilvy on the web

A post of the blog KISSmetrics gave us a useful blast from the past in applying a discovery by Ogilvy, one of the seminal researchers in advertising, to the present day, in particular to web graphics. Not all that is old is out of date and not all that is new is improved.

Ogilvy's discovery? That graphics do not always have the desired effect and that badly executed graphics will drive away readers, not keep them. Why should web graphics and layout prove any different? Technology is not magic: whether on a page or a computer screen, what we have discovered about human cognition and behavior still matters.

Ogilvy came up with 4 principles governing the use of graphics. Read The Shocking Truth About How Web Graphics Affect Conversions to learn more.

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Fake "Peer Review" Journals

These are growing like weeds as a result of the open access movement. On the one hand, legitimate open access journals online help scholars and students by keeping costs low while making research more readily available. But hucksters have tried to cash in, creating a "reader beware" environment in which anyone can have his/her crank theory validated with the imprimatur of having been published in a "scholarly" journal.

Think of it as job security for librarians as our job has long ago morphed into educating people about how to evaluate information. But this one's easy. Hint: if its editor wins a fictitious person of the year award it's probably not a reliable source of authoritative information.

Per Reuters, SOPA won't address international piracy, could devastate Internet industries

Online Piracy is a problem, but SOPA would only address the issue in the U.S., it would not address international piracy. On the other hand, the effects of SOPA on the Internet industry could be devastating, according to Reuters video on SOPA
http://www.reuters.com/video/2012/01/13/reuters-tv-online-piracy-war-hollywood-vs-silicon-v?videoId=228671511&videoChannel=117772

The DSM-5 and its Discontents

A controversy has arisen over the draft of the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (called the DSM-5 for short). Of interest to the students and faculty in the Health Services Management Program as well as the Psychology Program, The DSM classifies mental disorders, its code numbers serving as a kind of numerical language between practitioners and insurance companies. A diagnosis classified in the DSM determines whether the insurance company will reimburse for medication.

The recent drafts of the DSM-5 have provoked a revolt among practitioners. David Elkins, professor emeritus at Pepperdine University and president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association, posted a petition online last October, which gathered over 3,000 signatures within three weeks. The the British Psychological Society posted an open letter to the DSM-5, detailing its objections. Allen Francis, the person who chaired the task force which produced the 4th edition of the DSM has compiled numerous blog posts documenting the reaction against the DSM-5 and voicing his objections to it in no uncertain terms. American Counseling Association president Don Locke wrote his own letter to the APA (link uncertain).

Critics of the draft contend that its new diagnoses will lead to over-medicating patients. For example, here's a quote from the British Psychological Society's letter: “clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalisation of their natural and normal responses to their experiences.”

You can read The American Psychiatric Association response to Dr. Locke's letter.

If you are interested in investigating this issue further please feel free to ask the librarians in the University Library for assistance.

Special report on Online Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education has release a special report on online education featuring two white papers on lecture capture plus 10 Faculty Perspectives on What Works in Lecture Capture.

Go to this link to download the white papers

The University Library has ordered a copy of the full report. Please call or e-mail us if you are interested in reading the report when it arrives.

New Features on PrivCo database

New features on PrivCo Database

Dan Gingert, Manager, Academic Subscriptions, for PrivCo, LLC
alerted us to new features on PrivCo Database. Excerpt from his e-mail of December 5, 2011 follows:


1. Data export to Excel: All of PrivCo's private company financial data tables, as well as search results, are now easily exported to Excel, making it very easy to analyze a private company's financial data, create graphs and tables in Excel, as well as to integrate PrivCo financial data into your own existing data sets.

2. Research reports available in PDF format: All PrivCo private company research reports and investor profiles are now available in PDF download format for cleaner viewing, printing, and PDF sharing with colleagues.

3. Added investment firm principles and direct contacts: We have added a list of key management with individual contact information to thousands of our investor profiles, from venture capital firms to angel investment groups to university business incubators.

4. Company revenue growth rates added: In addition to location, revenue size, and employee size, PrivCo has also added 1 and 3 year revenue growth rate as a criteria when conducting an advanced search of private companies, and for company-to-company analysis, comparison, and valuation.

Message from Dan Gingert, Manager, Academic Subscriptions, for PrivCo, LLC
PrivCo LLC

Wikipedia redactions

According to a news item in the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" Wikipedia has started removing not only content but also the history of that content ever having existed on the site. (Read What Wikipedia deletes, and why).

Two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have completed a report redacted content during 2010 : What Wikipedia Deletes: Characterizing Dangerous Collaborative Content. (.PDF, 4 p.).

Wikipedia has had to resort to the same human-labor-intensive work that characterizes scholarly publications due to the libelous nature of the offending content, in addition to blatant violations of copyright law.

My favorite comment on the Chron's Wired Campus story: "Plagiarism in Wikipedia - Do not copy and paste stuff into the place that everyone copies and pastes from."

Gartner's 10 most strategic tech trends of 2012

In Tech Republic's Tech Sanity Check "Look out: The 10 rising tech trends of 2012," October 17, 2011, Jason Hiner alerted us to Gartner's list of the 10 most strategic tech trends of 2012:

1. Media tablets and beyond
2. Mobile-centric applications and interfaces
3. Contextual and social user experience
4. Internet of Things
5. App stores and marketplaces
6. Next-generation analytics
7. Big data
8. In-memory computing
9. Extreme low-energy servers
10. Cloud computing

Gartner analyst David Cearly explained how IT leaders should think about the “strategic technologies” on this list:

“A strategic technology is one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise during the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment or the risk of being late to adopt… Companies should use the list as a starting point and adjust based on their industry, unique business needs, technology adoption model, and other factors.”
Information and quote above is from
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/look-out-the-10-rising-tech-trends-of-2012/9470?tag=nl.e053, retrieved October 19, 2011

See also Gartner's Press Release, http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1826214

Higher education leads to fewer job losses, per OECD Education at a Glance 2011

Excerpt from OECD article re Education at a Glance 2011 begins:
"People with university degrees have suffered far fewer job losses during the global economic crisis than those who left school without qualifications, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Education at a Glance. Good education and skills are crucial to improving a person’s economic and social prospects.
Unemployment rates among university graduates stood at 4.4% on average across OECD countries in 2009. But people who did not complete high school faced unemployment rates of 11.5%, up from 8.7% the year before. This adds to the huge problem of youth unemployment that today exceeds 17% in the OECD area."

Excerpt above is from
http://www.oecd.org/document/21/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_48651029_1_1_1_1,00.html, retrieved September 13, 2011


The full report is available via http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/2/48631582.pdf
OECD (2011), Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2011-en
ISBN 978-92-64-11420-3 (print)
ISBN 978-92-64-11705-1 (PDF)

Inside Higher Ed Sep 13, 2011 alerted us to the annual OECD report.

Google Books Bilbliography

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.s Google Books Bibliography, available via http://digital-scholarship.org/gbsb/gbsb.htm "presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Books. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Books and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it." Quote from website listed above, retrieved August 15, 2011

Tips for Managing Your Digital Life, from New York Times

Article in New York Times on Friday, August 12, provides tips for managing your digital life. Check it out at

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/fashion/tips-for-managing-social-networking-burnout.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26

Finding Foundation Support for Your Education, Foundation Center workshop

Greetings, wanted to make sure you all know about the upcoming workshop at the Foundation Center, 312 Sutter Street, San Francisco, on Finding Foundation Support for Your Education 1-2:15 pm. You can register via
http://grantspace.org/Classroom/Training-Calendar/San-Francisco/Finding-Foundation-Support-for-Your-Education-2011-08-19-San-Francisco-CA2

Plus check out the Foundation Center for other workshops and resources.

With StatPlanet, Create Interactive Maps and Graphs Using World Bank Data

New York Times article "World Bank Is Opening Its Treasure Chest of Data" today includes mention of StatPlanet
http://www.sacmeq.org/statplanet/ which "lets people explore more than 3,000 World Bank economic indicators with interactive maps and graphics." It was developed by Frank van Cappelle, a doctoral candidate at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in Australia. Check it out! And check out, too, the GGU University Library Data for Decisions LibGuide http://ggu.libguides.com/data Want more? Join us for the Data for Decisions workshop at the GGU University Library on July 23 at 3 pm.

For StatPlanet, Frank van Cappelle was awarded first prize in the World Bank's Apps for Development Contest.

For World Bank Data, see http://data.worldbank.org/

Quote is from The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/global/03world.html?pagewanted=3&src=recg retrieved July 3, 2011.

StatPlanet requires Flash.

Need for more college graduates, differences in wages for college and high school graduates

In The Undereducated American, Anthony P. Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose contend that if the U.S. were to add 20 million postsecondary-educated workers to the U.S. workforce by 2025, income inequality would decline.
They envision:
15 million would hold Bachelor's degrees,
1 million Associates degrees
4 million would have attended some college but earned no degree

They include in their report a chart showing wage differential for college and high school graduates in various fields. The report, issued by Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, was described in today's Academic Impressions e-mail alert Higher Ed Impact, Daily Pulse: News & Trends in Higher Ed, June 27, 2011.

See http://cew.georgetown.edu/undereducated/

Wikipedia revisions to watch out for

Librarians do not hate Wikipedia. We just regard it with skepticism and caution. Some articles on Wikipedia may prove useful, but we advise against relying on it. When the subject proves a bit controversial, a "revision war" can erupt, making the content of a Wikipedia article change from one minute to the next. Keep this in mind if you cite Wikipedia in your papers that you may have to specify the time as well as the date you read the cited article. But usually you can trust that the authors and editors will provide a useful overview of a non-controversial subject.

Notice my use of the word "usually" in that last sentence. You wouldn't think of something like the Ride of Paul Revere as controversial, would you? All people who grew up in the U.S. learned about this in elementary school. But alas, now the story of Paul Revere has descended into controversy. How did this happen?

Sarah Palin garbled the story of Paul Revere's ride last week. But rather than admit to the error, she insists that her account really was accurate. Then her followers tried to edit the Wikipedia article about Paul Revere (See the Wikipedia revision history here also the discussion of the revisions here).

(18th century face-palm originally posted on Boing Boing)

Some may argue that this proves Wikipedia has a built in defense against less than completely honest revisions. But how can you tell? Standard reference publications employ professional editors and fact checkers. That's why they cost money. The University Library has spent some of Golden Gate University's students' money on solid, reliable sources of information. Please take a look at this list of databases and also contact the librarians by phone (415-442-7244), e-mail or Chat if you have any questions or need any help with your research.

Let's see Wikipedia offer that service.

Financial Planning Workshop on June 9 has been canceled

The Financial Planning Workshop with Larry Souza, scheduled for June 9 at Golden Gate University, has been canceled.