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  • On 'The Marketplace of Ideas'

    By Joshua Kim February 9, 2010 8:07 pm EST

    Dean Dad and I just finished Menand's new book - and I'm here to convince you to move it to the 'front burner' of your reading list!

    • (Note to our academic librarian colleagues: Dean Dad read the book as an e-book through his Kindle app on his iPod Touch. I read the book as an audiobook from Audible on my iPod. Neither of us would have been able to read the book in the format we preferred if we had wanted to borrow the book from our academic library. How many books are going unread due to a mismatch in format availability vs. format preference? How can we leverage the costless and perfect duplication of digital books to allow multiple members of our communities to read and discuss important books such as The Marketplace of Ideas?).
    • 3 Reasons to Read Menand's The Marketplace of Ideas:
    • Reason 1: If we want to change the academy we first need to understand it. The Marketplace of Ideas situates the current governance and major challenges of academic institutions within their historical context. The absence of pedagogical training in graduate school has deep roots in how our Ph.D. granting research institutions and the training of faculty members evolved. Learning technology can provide a catalyst for change, but only if we fully grasp how the current system came into being and what supports the continuation of the status quo.
    • Reason 2: Menand writes beautifully. The audiobook is read by Michael Prichard, a master of the art form.
    • Reason 3: The book is concise. 4 hours and 7 minutes in audio format. 176 pages. We should have more short books on big topics. The length of the book, combined with the elegance with which it is written, means that most of us can actually get it read. The Marketplace of Ideas would make the perfect choice for a book club discussion sponsored by your teaching and learning center.

    The critique I'd offer for The Marketplace of Ideas is that Menand spends almost all of his time looking backwards instead of to the future. The opening up of higher education to new paradigms of learning and a new set of digital tools has the potential to disrupt what has been created. The open learning movement, online education, and the development of learning platforms around constructivist learning theory are but three examples. It is not clear to me that the institutions that have historically led the way in shaping the norms and structure of higher ed. will continue to do so in the future. Rather, our community colleges, online units and for-profit institutions institutions might be where we find successful innovations and new models that better meet the changing demand for higher education. Certainly the new models that the 'non-elite' institutions of higher learning are experimenting with are an important part of the story in understanding the direction of higher education.

    These critiques, however, should not discourage you from reading the book. In fact, I suggest using The Marketplace of Ideas as a starting place for a faculty / academic librarian / academic technologist / administrator discussion on the past and future of your institution.

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Comments on On 'The Marketplace of Ideas'

  • Re: Alternate book formats
  • Posted by Academic Librarian on February 10, 2010 at 9:00am EST

  • While I'll admit that there are academic librarians who may want to cling to the paper-only format, I think that most are more than willing to provide books in any format their users prefer. But there are a couple of huge, "invisible" elephants in this room--well, invisible to many users, but not to librarians.

    You mention Kindle and Audible: the electronic versions of the book you and Dean Dad read are owned by Amazon and Apple, respectively. And behind those two companies are the original publisher of the book, the author and, over-arching all: copyright. As far as I know, neither of those companies has developed a subscription or any other affordable method for libraries to provide *multiple uses* of the books their users want. In addition, there are multiple reading and listening devices and multiple e-formats. We libraries can push for the development of reasonable subscription plans and standard e-formats, but the for-profit industry that essentially controls copyright isn't quick to listen. I recently tried to negotiate a reasonable price for a collection of audiobooks--having impatiently waited for the last several years for a collection that would play on both iPods and other MP3 players. (The company was neither Amazon nor Apple.) We would have purchased a "package"--couldn't choose individual titles--but that wasn't the biggest problem, since this was to be a leisure collection for our students and faculty. The problem was the pricing model, which was not in line with models in use for academic libraries, and very expensive. My attempt to point that out and negotiate fell on deaf ears.

    I'm afraid you're essentially "preaching to the choir" when you address your note to academic librarians --and it's a choir that doesn't hold the money or the power. And I'm also afraid that your idea of "the costless and perfect duplication of digital books" is, at least for the foreseeable future, only a dream--especially that "costless" part!

  • Posted by Elizabeth , librarian on February 10, 2010 at 12:15pm EST

  • Academic Librarian is right - I purchase for several departments in a University that supports collecting ebooks. Many of the books that I am purchasing for my faculty are either unavailable as ebooks or prohibitively expensive (an illustrative case - the paperback may cost $30, hardcover $65, single user $200, and isn't even available for multiple users -- not all books are like that, but I did come across one with that pricing structure a few weeks ago).

    I would love to provide more multi-user ebooks...but until I can afford them and my students and faculty want to use them (I've had a number of students ask how to get a print copy of an ebook we already own), it's just a dream. (Oh, and all those ebooks we do own? They won't work on your kindle or ipad and sometimes even on your laptop.)

  • Amazon, not Apple, owns Audible
  • Posted by Christopher Heard , Assoc. Prof. of Religion at Pepperdine University on February 10, 2010 at 1:45pm EST

  • Just a slight correction to Academic Librarian: Amazon, not Apple, owns Audible. (This, of course, does not make the distribution or multi-user issues any easier to manage.)

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