October 2013

Vol. 30 | Issue 9

FEATURE

Whats Trending in Ebooks

hile statistics dont lie, the actual state of the ebook industry depends on which facts and gures you view. When the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released its StatShot report for the rst 4 months of 2013, the results showed ebooks were on the decline. But wait: Although the total ebook market dropped by 6% during that time frame (from $2.13 billion to $2 billion), not all categories were in the red. The adult segment actually increased 1.3% (from $1.37 billion to $1.39 billion), and religious books posted a 1.9% boost (from $189.7 million to $193.2 million). However, the kids category weighed in with a 26.8% decline from last year, when The Hunger Games, the 2008 megapopular science ction book-recentlymade-into-a-movie by Suzanne Col-

Dont Get Caught With Your Servers Down

by DONOVAN GRIFFIN

lins, fueled readership in a big way. Writer Nate Hoffelder posted on The Digital Reader blog that Ebook Sales Remained Flat in First 4 Months of 2013Blame The Hunger Games that the lack of a blockbuster hit again this year is one of

the key factors in skewing otherwise positive results. But the good news is that ebooks are holding their own and still commanding a sizable portion of the
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Melissa, Olga, and Sebastien may be passing through town. Are you prepared? Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), wants to prepare people for the Atlantic hurricane season, which ofcially began June 1. This year, oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the Atlantic basin are expected to produce more and strong er hurricanes, said Bell on the NOAA blog.

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MOREINSIDE
24
George H. Pike

IFLA Trend Report

12
LUMO BodyTechs LUMOback

Copyright Norms Clash With MOOCs

Riding the Waves or Caught in the Tide

Text and photos by MARYDEE OJALA

21

hoopla digital

30

Paul Harwood

Ever wondered about the implications of a Google Glass wearer who walks into your library? Instantly, everyone who is there is under surveillance. And if automated translation tools benet us by breaking down language barriers, do they also remove the cultural context from the text being translated? It triggers the question For the latest conference coverage, turn to page 16.

of whether results from search engines, driven by algorithms derived by commercial entities, can actually be trusted. These are just a few of the perplexing situations that could transform libraries in the future. Ingrid Parent, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) president, touched
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In Search of a Smart Watch Hey, Fix Your Website Protecting BYOD Data

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Dont Get Caught

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In addition, researchers from the department of atmospheric science at Colorado State University are predicting an above-average probability of hurricane landfall: an estimated 18 named storms and four major (category 35) hurricanes. With the possibility of a bad hurricane season looming over the Atlantic and the thought of Hurricane Sandy still fresh on the mind of many on the East Coast, its only natural to look at emergency preparation and disaster recovery as an important aspect of information technology work.

The Problem
Companies on the whipping end of the hurricane belt know the benets of putting together a disaster plan. But that doesnt mean that living in an area that is largely free of natural disasters should exempt a business from having a Plan B. There are all sorts of different disasters that can threaten a business, including res, earthquakes, and just regular oods, says Jack

facet of business, especially for information professionals. A little planning can mean the difference between surviving and going belly up for a business. Examples of what works and what doesnt are rife in the stories that appeared in the months SunGards Mobile MetroCenter can support up to 50 workspace since Sandy hit. PEER 1, a data center in New positions, with phones, computers, and ofce equipment. York City, saw its baseCamp, public affairs specialist with ment-level generators flooded as the U.S. Small Business Administra- Sandy moved in, which forced the tions Ofce of Disaster Assistance. company to rely on backup generaBusinesses need to assess their risk tors that were tucked away on the from all different types of disasters 17th oor to keep the servers runand consider steps that they might ning. In order to feed the generators take to mitigate the effects of the 40 gallons-an-hour habit, the team at disasters that are most likely to af- PEER 1 had to get containers of fuel up the stairs at a constant pace for fect them. In the U.S. alone, Hurricane San- 2 days. The team members worked dys estimated damage was more with the resources they hada genthan $50 billion. The vast majority erator, a fuel supply, and a mixed of that loss was unavoidable, given group of personnel and volunteers the magnitude of Sandys destruc- to create a bucket brigade that effection. But good preparation, even in tively managed the fuel ow. CoreSite, another data center in the regions of the U.S. where disruptions are uncommon, is a critical New York, relied on fuel generators

for nearly an entire week because of Hurricane Sandy. Finding all that fuel might have been a problem, but CoreSite had a plan in place. In an interview with Slashdot, Billie Haggard, senior vice president of Core Sites data centers, explained, Ill tell you, the best investment I ever made was that we paid $9,000 at the beginning of the year to have a guaranteed fuel delivery within eight hours. So when everyone started scrambling, trying to nd fuel, ours was already paid for. Hurricanes may not strike New York and New Jersey with the frequency and strength that they hit Florida, but the destruction caused by Sandy demonstrates the need for up-to-date contingency and recovery plans, even in areas where natur al disasters seldom occur.

The Blueprint
A 2009 study in disaster prepared ness from disaster recovery company Agility Recovery Solutions found that while 94% of companies say they have formal data backup plans, only 28% have access to alternative ofce space, 54% could acquire temporary ofce equipment, and 57% have access to power generators. On top of that, 1 in 5 small and medium businesses (SMBs) do not maintain their continuity plan at all. SMBs can nd it difcult to prioritize disaster recovery. In general small to medium-sized businesses are a little less prepared than larger organizations, and oftentimes its really due to a lack of budget, says Susie Spencer, senior product marketing manager for Symantec. So a lesson in the basics of disaster planning and recovery would be useful. For most businesses, the rst line of defense against a disaster is insurance. But knowing the type of disasters likely to strike a given area and acquiring adequate coverage is only the rst step. After insurance is settled, the next issue is practical matters that relate to workers. Consider safety, including an evacuation plan with routes and established meeting places, as well as designated staff members to do a headcount to account for all your employees, says Camp. Camp also stresses the importance of documentation. Someone should accurately inventory business assets before a disaster occurs, he

Batten Down the Collections

ts not just big business that needs to be ready for potential disasters. Libraries can equally benefit from data backup and recovery in a disaster, but they have plenty of challenges all their own. Here are a few tips from Miriam B. Kahn, founder of MBK Consulting and author of Disaster Response and Planning for Libraries, Third Edition (American Library Association, 2012), as well as from Julie Page, co-coordinator of the California Preservation Program (CPP) and the Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service (WESTPAS).  Close off the building (or affected areas) to the public and shut off utilities.  Following a disaster, in the absence of a checklist prioritizing the librarys collections in terms of value and relative susceptibility to water, consult a subject specialist or bibliographer to create a priority list for water-damaged materials.  If your library is shorthanded, consider contacting the local library/archives consortium, the state library, the regional library consortium, or the Regional Alliance for Preservation for help.  Contact facilities maintenance staff or a disaster response/drying company to remove any standing water in the building.  Books that have partial water exposure (only the bottom is wet from standing water, or the top or

edges were affected by sprinklers) can be air-dried. Books can be distorted after they have dried and may need to be rebound.  If books are merely damp and the library has an enclosed area that isnt compromised, staff can air-dry books. Decrease temperature in the building (less than 65 degrees Fahrenheit), keep the relative humidity low (30%40%) with dehumidifiers, and spread the books out on clean, absorbent material. Stand the books upright and gently spread out the pages. Keep the air moving with fans but avoid direct exposure. This method is relatively inexpensive, but books may require interleaving (placing absorbent material between pages), flipping from head to tail, and monitoring so that the fans are well-placed.  If books are soaked through, freezing the volumes will buy time. Take a standard-sized box and line it with a large trash bag. Put in a single row of books, spine down, ensuring that the books are in snugly and dont slouch. Tie up the trash bag, seal up the box, and put the box in a commercial freezer. The deterioration process is halted, and books can be sent to a vacuum freeze-dry facility.  If you cant move undamaged items to another area, set up fans in the damaged area to lower the temperature, which decreases the chance of mold. D.G.

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says, and particular attention should be paid to purchase date, price, and estimated replacement cost. Beyond that, its a good idea to regularly photograph or create a comprehensive video inventory of your facility and the contents inside. And then theres IT. Perhaps one of the most important pieces of a companys disaster strategy involves a well-measured plan to keep IT alive, or at the very least, to bring it back up to speed quickly, with minimal data loss. Any number of actions can be taken to prepare an IT department for disaster, which largely depends on the type of equipment used inhouse and the type of information professionals who work there. Both data backup and work application mirroring are important. Common solutions include cloud backup, virtual machines, and alternate work or server sites. Its not always easy to get the upper management to embrace the need for a well-constructed continuity plan. The same Agility Recovery disaster report shows that only about half of the respondents feel that their management team takes an effective business continuity plan as serious ly as they do. But benecial ideas can often come from those who work with the technology directly. Youve got to involve your employees in it; theyve got to be aware of your plan, says Camp.

order. Training may be necessary, and third-party services may need to be checked periodically. [T]he other key component of a plan is testing, says Spencer. And we really recommend to test on a quarterly basis to make sure that everything is recoverable when it needs to be and they can keep their business up and running. Its also a good idea to make sure your plans are legible to outsiders, according to a document released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, titled, Contingency Planning Guide for Information Technology Systems, compiled in 2002. Plans should be formatted to provide quick and clear direction in the event those personnel unfamiliar with the plan or the systems are called on to perform recovery operations. Where possible, checklists and step-by-step procedures should be used.

Pinch Hitters
While its feasible for larger, enterprise-level businesses to create backup and disaster services inhouse, SMBs arent usually so lucky. Fortunately, there are a variety of outside resources to call on. For those SMBs, its imperative to back up business data so that it can be reached in case of disaster, downtime, or data loss. Businesses should have a copy of the data onsite, but more importantly, they should have access to the same backup data off-site at a second location in case a local facility is compromised, says Spencer. Symantecs disaster recovery solution for SMBs is a product called Backup Exec. Businesses can restore virtual machines, applications, and databases in a single pass following data loss. Spencer says Backup Exec can help even if a business needs to recover an individual le and folder, or if they do have a server failure or a natural disaster and theyd have to recover that complete system. On the flip side, Symantecs disaster recovery for enterprise-sized businesses is the NetBackup platform, which offers recovery for physical, virtual, arrays, and Big Data, with data-storage options ranging from tape to cloud. Zetta.net, which describes itself as an enterprise cloud backup pro-

Keep Me Updated
While a disaster plan may take into account all the aspects of your business, theres more to it. Theres also the practical implementation. Keep a well-stocked disaster survival kit on hand in a safe place thats regularly checked. Common items to include are cash, a 3-day supply of nonperishable food and water, a can opener, rst aid supplies, medications, radio, ashlight, batteries, blankets, a whistle, sanitation supplies, and a basic toolkit. And beyond that, you might want to consider getting some big ticket items or situational gear such as generators, re detectors, and waterproof containers. Add to this the continually changing nature of IT worknew hardware, software, or processesand even for companies that put together a sound contingency plan years ago, an entire new plan might be in

vider, is an option for companies that need data backup, rst and foremost. Rather than copying data to magnetic tapes, Zetta gives customers a hybrid-cloud backup, which is composed of local backup, cloud backup, and archiving for use in disaster recovery. Westinghouse Lighting, a company with more than 30 Offering 982 square feet of workspace per unit, SunGards Mobile servers, switched to Zetta MetroCenter can be set up for business within 1 hour after it arrives. for backup recovery less than a week before Sandy hit, a pro critical pieces back in place without cess that took 8 hours. The servers worrying about local infrastructure were backed up in Zettas West Coast going in and out; the Mobile Recovdata center while the hurricane rav- ery units work as an island, each including diesel-generated power, aged parts of the East Coast. TwinStratas CloudArray Disas- high-speed internet, and mobile very ter Recovery as a Service looks to- small aperture terminals (VSATs). Depending on the level of services ward SMBsthose that cant afford to have separate buildings and in- a company contracts with SunGard, frastructure up and running when the mobile recovery units can be predisaster strikes. They give custom- programmed with a clone of the apers both the data they need as well plications that workers use every as the VMware-based infrastructure day so that critical systems can be necessary to call up their applica- accessed without wasted setup time. tions in 24 hours after local re- Its your desktop, your call trees, LaPedis says. sources shut down. For the public sector, the U.S. For larger companies in need of a wide range of services, SunGards Small Business Administration Availability Services division can pro- (SBA) has strategies and resources vide the total package. SunGard of- for disaster recovery. If a disaster is fers tiered levels of service, which particularly ruinous, a state governor scale according to clients needs. can call on the federal government These services range from backing for help. If that happens, businesses up data with cloud computing to can directly apply for SBA disaster mobile-recovery hot sites, which can loans for help with payroll, building be launched to an area of your choice leases, and other expenses. Disaster plans and recovery opwithin 24 hours. Three avors of mobile recovery tions arent just protection against units are standard fare in the Sun- once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters. Gard eet, according to Ron LaPe- Aspects of a well-constructed plan dis, workforce continuity strategist can apply to anything from the munfor SunGard Availability Services: dane (the power went out expectant the Mobile Data Center (a trailer ly for a few hours) to the unlucky that supports midrange and server (an employee leaving a laptop with platforms, seating up to 22), the Mo- sensitive data on the train). The Fedbile MetroCenter (a workplace to eral Emergency Management Agensupport up to 50 workspace posi- cy (FEMA) estimates that 40% of tions), and the Mobile MetroCenter businesses never reopen after a di2 (a contiguous raised-oor series saster, and of those that do reopen, of trailers that provide a workspace 25% fail within a year. between 768 and 3,070 square feet). Chances are that youre never In a context where there might going to account for everything that be no power and limited connectiv- may be lost, but planning for the ity to the outside, SunGard Mobile worst is the best chance a company units let workers focus on getting has when facing a natural disaster.
Donovan Grifn is the assistant editor of Information Today. Send your comments about this column to itletters@infotoday.com.

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