Month: August 2011

students at research universities are borrowing fewer physical items

From 1995 to 2008, library-item circulation per student fell 50% at the median across 71 U.S. research libraries for which data are available.[1]  This change can be roughly interpreted as meaning that, from 1995 to 2008, students substituted online resources for 50% of their prior university library borrowings.

University library circulation per student declined more rapidly than an earlier decline in public library circulation per library user.  From 1856 to 1978, U.S. public library circulation per user was roughly constant.  From 1978 to 2004, public library circulation per library user fell 50%.[2] That decrease across twenty-six years is the same magnitude as the decrease in university library circulation per student across thirteen, more recent years.

Younger persons have generally been early adopters of new information and communication technologies.  Universities, on the other hand, have not moved aggressively towards online learning.  Being lectured and taking notes is still a central feature of formal education. Students are probably leading the way in shifting learning media at universities.

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Notes:

[1] For discussion of this trend, see Rick Anderson, Print on the Margins: Circulation Trends in Major Research Libraries, Library Journal, June 1, 2011.  Anderson has commendably made the data from his study freely available on the Internet.  I calculated the above figure from Anderson’s Table 1 (Word document), with libraries not having data back to 1995 excluded.  Data on U.S. university research libraries are available back to 1907.  Library data hero Robert E. Molyneux has shared a well-documented, unified collection of such statistics from 1907/08 to 1961/62 (Gerould Statistics).  The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) shares online yearly collections of research-library statistics from 1969 to 2008/09.  These statistics are not, however, unified and most are not machine-calculable.  A machine-readable dataset of these statistics spanning 1988-89 to 2007-08 apparently is available.  See ARL Statistics Guide (MS Word document).  Analyzing long-term changes in university library statistics would best be done in conjunction with analysis of changes in university enrollments and curricula.

[2] Galbi, Douglas. 2007.  Book Circulation Per U.S. Public Library User Since 1856, at p. 2.

 

glamour and mystery in life


The December, 1920, issue of The Strand Magazine had its cover emblazoned with the title of a sensational article, “Fairies Photographed – An Epoch Making Event Described by A. Conan Doyle.” Arthur Conan Doyle was the famous author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories.  Above is one of the photos that Doyle presented as documenting the existence of fairies.  In that article, Doyle declared:

These little folk who appear to be our neighbours, with only some small difference of vibration to separate us, will become familiar. The thought of them, even when unseen, will add a charm to every brook and valley and give romantic interest to every country walk. The recognition of their existence will jolt the material twentieth-century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit that there is a glamour and a mystery to life.

The fairies came to be called the Cottingley Fairies.  In 1922, Doyle wrote a book, The Coming of the Fairies, providing further evidence of their existence and a “theosophic view of fairies.”

In our age of powerful photo editing software, no one would find in the above photo any glamour and mystery.  That’s not a loss to the wonder of life.

prisoners are promising customers for communication services

Communication between prisoners and their family and friends serves important public interests.  Prisoners often lack sufficient programs and activities to keep them busy.  Prisoners who are bored are more likely to foster tension and hostility within a jail or prison.  Communication with family and friends keeps prisoners occupied and peaceful.  Moreover, modern prison phone systems include powerful call control, call tracking, and call monitoring technologies.  The resulting massive dataset of prisoners’ social networks and communication contents provides a valuable forensic resource for detecting and stopping crime.  In addition, communication with family and friends help prisoners to maintain personal contacts crucial for their re-integration into society as law-abiding, productive members upon release from imprisonment.

Most prisoners and their family and friends intensely desire to communicate. Being imprisoned typically is an unplanned event.  Imprisonment can last for weeks, months, or years.  Without communication, prisoners and their family and friends cannot share current experiences, exchange guidance, advice, and encouragement, and provide each other with personal understanding and emotional support.  Moreover, the boredom often imposed in prison accentuates prisoners’ loneliness.

Given the public interest in fostering prisoners’ communication and the personal demand for it, spending for prisoner communication services is remarkably low. Based on Prison Legal News’ recent survey of U.S. state prison phone contacts, prisoners and their families spent on average $24 per month on communication services about the year 2008.[1] All U.S. households in that year averaged $149 per month on wireline phone, wireless phone, and Internet access services.[2]  The prison phone spending figure and the household communication spending figure differ in many ways.  The comparison, however, highlights that $24 a month is a relatively small amount to be spending on communication.  That’s particularly true given the high public and personal value of communication with prisoners.

Underdeveloped prisoner communication services partly explain the low level of prisoner communication spending.  Many prisoners have to share a single, immobile prison phone.  In many prisons and jails in the U.S., prisoners currently cannot make calls to wireless phones.  Since wireless phones are rapidly becoming the primary phone for most persons, not being able to call wireless phones is a significant limitation.  In addition, most prisoners currently cannot send text message, cannot access YouTube, Facebook, and other social networking sites, and cannot access the Internet generally.  They also cannot use rapidly developing video calling and conferencing services.  Implemented with appropriate communication control, tracking, and monitoring, such communication services surely would stimulate prisoner communication service spending.

Other problems constrain spending even within the narrow category of prisoner telephone service.  The Prison Legal News dataset indicates wide variation across states in average spending per prisoner per month.  Encouraging prisoner communication service spending requires supporting operational policies.  Prison and jail operational policies that lessen prisoners’ opportunities to use phones lessen prison phone revenue. In addition, contraband cell phones have become a significant problem in jails and prisons.  Spending on contraband cell phones is not captured in the figures for authorized prisoner communications systems and probably partly substitutes for such spending.  Authorized prisoner phone systems have much higher call prices than do normal phones.  Given the challenge of suppressing contraband cell phones and the high responsiveness of calling volumes to price, some prison phone systems may have calling prices above the revenue-maximizing calling prices.  That’s another possible source of lost prisoner communication revenue for service providers and prison systems.

The size of the prisoner communication service business could easily increase greatly in the future.  While this rather obvious truth is often not recognized, prisoners really are promising customers for communication services.

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Data source: Prison Legal News, v. 22, n. 4 (Apr. 2011) p. 16, “Prison Phone Contract Data / Kickbacks / Daytime Collect Call Rates,” filed in FCC CC Docket No. 96-128 (“Wright Petition”), Apr. 25, 2011.

Derived Needle dataset, with some augmentations and modifications.  Service provider names have been consolidated to reflect VAC’s recent acquisition of FSH and GTL’s recent acquisition of PCS.  State prison populations are for year-end 2008, from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2008, App. Table 2.  Here’s an alternate form of the Prison Legal News (PLN) Source (Excel file).  Consult the original PLN source to resolve any questions about the data.

Notes:

[1] Prisoner phone service providers typically share gross service revenue with the incarceration facility or jurisdiction awarding the prisoner phone service contract.  The revenue share to the incarceration facility or jurisdiction is commonly called a commission or kickback.  The dollar value of this commission, divided by the revenue share, estimates total spending for the state.  These data are available for states that imprison in total 71% of state prisoners. Total spending across these states, divided by total prisoners in these states, estimates spending per prisoner per year.

[2] FCC, Trends in Telephone Service , 2010, Table 3.4.

cursing in ancient and modern competition

While today cursing tends to be associated with expressive use of obscene words, in the ancient world cursing was one dimension of competition.  These ancient curses typically declared a constraint other than death on a rival.  The curses were usually written on lead and buried in a location associated with underworld gods.  For instances, about 2450 years ago someone buried in a necropolis in Sicily a lead tablet on which was written: “These people are written down for a downturn in profits.”  Another written about two hundred years later declared: “I bind the workshops of these men … so that they may not be productive, but be idle and without luck.”[1]  Because literacy was rare, writing curses was a service business in itself.  Collections of standard-form curse tablets, probably used in a cursing business, have been discovered.[2]

Hesiod’s Works and Days, written on the Greek peninsula about 2700 years ago, condemns war and praises commercial competition.  Hesiod describes commercial competition thus:

She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.[3]

A potter angry with another potter may well have directed obscene words at the other.  The potter may have also buried a curse against the rival.

Shouting matches are a form of competition.  Patent fights are a form of competition.  Political lobbying is a form of competition.  So too is better satisfying customers with better designed, more capable, cheaper products.  Getting competition is easy.  Getting competition to please customers is difficult.  If you merely advocate competition, than you’re just an ideologue.

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Notes:

[1] Quoted in Faraone (1991) p. 11.  In ancient ritual services markets, curses or spells directed at the financial interests of business rivals are relatively rare.  Curses or spells more typically concern rivalry in love, oratory, and sport.

[2] Id. p. 4 describes these artifacts, which are from the Roman period or later.  Plato described cursing as a service business:

Beggar priests and diviners go to the doors of the rich man and persuade him that the gods have provided them with a power based on sacrifices and incantations.  If he himself, or his ancestors, has committed some injustice, they can heal it with pleasures and feasts; and if he wishes to ruin some enemies at small expense, he will injure just and unjust alike with certain evocations and spells.

Plato, Republic, 364b-c, trans. Bloom (1968) p. 41. The Psalms in the Hebrew Bible probably were originally written as re-usable texts for temple visitors.

[3] Works and Days, ll. 11-24, translation from the Online Medieval and Classical Library.

References:

Plato, and Allan David Bloom. 1968. The Republic. New York: Basic Books.

Christopher A. Faraone.  1991. “The Agonistic Context of Early Greek Binding Spells” in Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (eds.) Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion.  Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 3-32.