THE FREE LANCE

by Tabitha M. Powledge

Beyond Google

When Google was first warmly praised in this column way back in the last century, it was still just one of many search engines. Today google is a verb and many of us-me included-rarely go beyond it. But there are still lots of other Web search engines of varying utility. More to the point, there is the Invisible Web.

The Invisible Web is what the search engines don’t collect. Some of it is lodged in paid databases such as Nexis. Undeniably valuable for our research, but we won’t go there, because The Free Lance has always been about The Free Info. A lot of the Invisible Web IS free; it’s just that you can’t google for it.

One of the NASW workshops at the Denver meeting in February sought to increase the visibility of some Invisible Web resources useful to science writers. It was organized by Craig Hicks and Tom Roberts, both from The National Academies. The lead speaker was Michael Jensen, NAS Director of Web Communications, who trotted us through the new, improved NAS Web site [nationalacademies.org]. The site hasn’t been discussed in this column for a while, so it’s time for an update.

I’ve been using the NAS site for several years. Like most sites, it has evolved substantially in that time; what follows draws on Jensen’s remarks and my own experience. Navigation is better than it used to be, although still imperfect. Three of the site’s features (two of them newish) have made the site into a valuable research tool for science writers.

The first is the headline service. Scroll down to the bottom of the home page, below NAS news, to find it. It offers brief summaries of selected news of the moment, but its main value is the links to related NAS reports and other resources. The service does not pretend to be comprehensive. It publishes a few items every week, and along with hot news (monkeypox in prairie dogs), it also covers below-the-fold topics (states suing EPA over carbon dioxide emissions)-items where NAS material can provide matchless background to flesh out whatever story you are telling.

The second change is a much-improved search engine [www.search.nationalacademies.org]. Plug in your search term and you will pull up links to official NAS statements, information about related current projects (including meeting dates), free articles from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, related activities at the many NAS divisions, like the Institute of Medicine, and links to reports.

Ah, the reports. That brings us to item number three, the National Academy Press [www.nap.edu], publisher of the reports. Academy reports may not be the last word on a topic, but they are almost always the most authoritative and comprehensive. Even when a report’s conclusions are limp, the body of the report always presents a thorough background and exploration of all sides of issues. Sifting through an Academy report is by far the fastest and most trustworthy way to get a rounded picture, set it in context, collect a reading list, find out who some of the experts are, and figure out what questions to ask them when you pick up the phone.

So count yourself fortunate if your current writing project is related to an NAS report; it will save you a ton of time and tsouris. Moreover, for several years most of the reports and many books can be had free online, even reports long past, via the National Academy Press. Jensen says that now totals 70 million pages. This is a remarkable beneficence, and the NAP can scarcely be praised enough for its public spirit.

The reports and books are available free as HTML summary, and some as full HTML or PDF. But NAP’s latest brainchild is OpenBook. NAP calls Open Book the “highest lowest common denominator” of its formats. Open Book permits page browsing, and you can jump to particular pages likely to be of interest after scanning the table of contents. Open Book’s integrated search engine can search the whole full-text NAP catalog, an entire book, or just one chapter. You can build a complex search by compiling terms from any single page or group of pages.

But, from the beginning of its unconventional venture in online distribution, NAP has permitted people to read or print the reports only one page at a time. This is rational. NAP needs report buyers in order to support its operations, so it’s not inclined to make it too easy to read or reproduce a report or book for free. NAP would prefer you to buy a copy (paper only at the moment, although e-reports are said to be on the way). How can that be wrong? And how can I look this wondrous gift horse in the mouth?

The problem for us is speed. More than once I would have been pleased as punch to buy a report I needed, but if my deadline is two hours away, or even the day after tomorrow, I can’t wait for delivery of a paper copy. And if your connection is dial-up like mine, loading a page and printing it is slooooooow. That’s partly because Open Book is an image format, which makes it just as sluggish as PDF.

The result is that I scan the TOC, mosey around in hopes of finding what I need, and experience tooth-grinding frustration as I wait for each new page to load. (Tip: the first page of a chapter is usually useless wheel-spinning, and often the last page too.) Jensen reported that they are soon to begin replacing page images with text. That should help speed up page loading, she said hopefully. E-texts would also be a boon for those of us who are happy to pay but need it yesterday.

Watch this space

As you know because you have received e-mail survey questions about them-and hundreds of you have replied, bless your hearts-NASW has undertaken two projects of significant interest to freelances. Some results will, I hope, be ready around the time you read this.

One project explores the options for buying medical insurance when you are self-employed. Many freelances can get insurance in other ways, such as through a spouse. But for some of our members, the barriers to getting insured are terrifying. David Lindley and his committee are putting together your survey reponses and coming up with suggestions for what NASW can do to help.

The other project is even more complex and affects us all: contracts. Even more than medical insurance, contracts are a subject most of us are not temperamentally suited for and wish would just go away. Yet decent contracts are essential not just to our livelihoods, but to our self-respect. A Contracts Committee, headed by Freelance Committee chair Kathryn Brown, has tabulated your survey responses and is getting together suggestions for what kind of information NASW can provide, and activities it can undertake, that will help you get better contracts. I can already tell you one of our conclusions: there are no easy answers. But you knew that.

#

Tabitha Powledge can be reached at tam@nasw.org.