Watch the new video about SciFinder Scholar!

View an interactive demo of the web version of SciFinder Scholar (Flash file).

Training

Beginner and intermediate training topics are available in various formats:

• Tutorials (via WebEx)
  Learn about exploring research topics, as well as structure and reaction searching in the web version of SciFinder, via WebEx. Available as short recorded sessions.
  

• How To Guides
  SciFinder How To Guides are quick overviews of SciFinder's basic functionality. These guides are designed for the beginning user and are in PDF format.
  

• Strategies
  Designed for the intermediate user, SciFinder Strategies help illustrate specific search strategies for: (1) Small molecule searching (2) Synthetic chemistry (3) Polymer chemistry

Mass de-acidification system for the National Library of South Africa

New on the Cory Library front page:

Mass de-acidification system for the National Library of South Africa

WebBridge Tutorial

Saint Anselm College's Geisel Library has created a useful WebBridge User Guide, which links to a WebBridge video tutorial showing users how to use WebBridge.

BibNuus

The November 2008 edition of Stellenbosch University Library's newsletter "BibNuus" is now available at the url below:

http://www.lib.sun.ac.za/Library/BIBNUUS/BIBNUUS_2008/BibnuusNov2008.pdf

It contains English as well as Afrikaans articles.

You can also read about the recent Stellenbosch Library Symposium here.

Previous editions of BibNuus can be accessed at:
http://www.lib.sun.ac.za/Library/BIBNUUS/Vorige_uitgawes.htm

RUL Newsletter - Issue 6 now available

The December 2008 RUL Newsletter is now available on the Library webpage - thanks to Irene for formatting and linking it.

Please remember to "refresh" your screen before accessing it at the url below:

http://www.ru.ac.za/library/whatsnew/newsletters

Thank you to everyone who contributed articles, and to Sue van der Riet and Jeanne who assisted with the proof-reading. Thank you, too, to Gareth for taking the photos.

Regards

Anne

A chance for the under 40s! (Scholarship)

http://www.scidev.net/en/announcements/international-training-program-about-information-.html
STIMULATE = Scientific and Technological Information Management in Universities and Libraries: an Active Training Environment.
The program is planned to take place mainly in Brussels, Belgium, for 3 months, May – July 2009: Language used is English.

Is Higher Education Ready to Switch to Digital Course Materials?

The Cost of Textbooks Is Driving Electronic Solutions
By MARK R. NELSON (user name: rulibrary password: ru2007)
"When I was an undergraduate, one of my favorite professors posted a cartoon from The Chronicle on the bulletin board outside his office. It was labeled "Library of the Future" and showed a librarian, near a row of computers, unpacking boxes containing spray cans with fragrances like "Odor of Old Books" and "Scent of Paper." Less than two decades later, I see there is probably room for a product like that. And, more surprising to me, I am part of the move toward digital and away from traditional print.
The latest edition of a semiannual study of students done by my own organization, the National Association of College Stores, finds that roughly 18 percent of them now say they are acquiring or gaining access to digital course materials. More than 90 percent of that content is being accessed or delivered through campus resources, such as the library, learning-management systems, and the college store. Political pressure associated with unhappiness over the rising cost of textbooks is driving a search for lower-cost alternatives, and some digital solutions may provide that option....."

Social media as an academic tool

I was interested to see this article ("2collab study reveals the future of social media will build friendships and support scientific discovery"
in the latest Elsevier "Library Connect" issue.

Abstract:
Scientists and researchers are using social media, but mostly for professional reasons. And according to a recent survey conducted by Elsevier’s A&G Products Group, which manages 2collab, Elsevier’s research collaboration platform, over 50% of scientific, technical and medical information specialists working in academia and government organizations believe social networking will play a key role in shaping the future of research.

WorldCat.org links to Google Book Search content

WorldCat.org users can now view digitised books in the Google Book Search collection, on the WorldCat.org website. This is thanks to the new Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that were released by Google on 22 September.
read more

Elsevier addresses plagiarism

Elsevier to contribute millions of articles to CrossCheck
27 June 2008
Elsevier is implementing CrossCheck to help combat plagiarism. The company has invested in CrossCheck to develop, pilot and implement a single database of published articles enabling publishers to easily verify the originality of submitted and published work.
Elsevier is now integrating CrossCheck into its editorial workflows as part of its efforts to support the peer-review process and assist the scientific community in all aspects of publishing ethics. Elsevier will contribute nearly nine million journal articles to the CrossCheck database, which is launching with a commitment of over 20 million journal articles from publishers.
CrossCheck, developed by iParadigms and CrossRef, was piloted for six months pilot with eight leading publishers. ‘By creating a pooled database of articles from multiple publishers and tested tools, we can provide assistance to the scholarly community on an unprecedented scale,’ commented Martin Tanke, Elsevier’s managing director of S&T Journal Publishing. ‘CrossRef has taken the principles of publisher collaboration far beyond reference linking. CrossCheck, combined with our recently launched Publishing Ethics Resource Kit and full journal membership in COPE (Committee on Publishing Ethics) further reinforce our commitment.’John Barrie president and CEO of iParadigms, LLC added: ‘Our customers, especially academic ones, have been asking for more medical and science content for checking the originality of work destined for publication. Elsevier’s adoption of CrossCheck powered by iThenticate lets us leverage their vast, industry-leading content to significantly enhance the effectiveness of our originality checking services. Likewise, Elsevier will leverage the CrossCheck and iParadigms database which makes for a powerful alliance and one that is extremely beneficial to our network of institutional subscribers.’

Academic Libraries in 21st century

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/resourcediscovery/lmsstudy.pdf

Academic libraries shape their future through collaboration
13 July 2008
The report ‘Library Management Systems: Investing wisely in a period of disruptive change’ was used as a starting point by professionals from across the library community at a recent consultation in London.
Looking at how academic libraries can adapt to the 21st century learner, the consultation raised various questions regarding tensions facing the sector and how best to take the challenge forward.Findings from the report including ‘how libraries need to be more agile and responsive to meet a wider online role’ - was a view shared by the attendees at the consultation.Discussions at the consultation were focussed on the users’ experience from personalised delivery to how to overcome the technology challenges of legacy systems and interoperability between other university systems.The report was published by JISC and SCONUL (Society for College, National and University Librarians).

Citations and OA journal articles

Open-access articles don't generate more citations, says study

OUP and PubMed Central

http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=353

Oxford Journals has announced it will deposit articles published in any of its journals, identified by the authors as being funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), into PubMed Central (PMC).
Martin Richardson, managing director of Oxford Journals, commented: ‘Already all of our open-access articles are being deposited into PMC. Now any NIH-funded authors who publish their articles in one of our journals will not need to deposit them into PMC themselves – Oxford Journals will do so for no charge on their behalf.'Any NIH-funded manuscripts submitted to Oxford Journals from 31 July 2008 onwards will be identified and tagged, and the final published version will then be sent to PMC for them to include on their platform. NIH-funded articles which are open access will be available immediately, and those which are not open access will be available after 12 months.

Bloomsbury to publish Open Access academic books

Bloomsbury Publishing is launching into academic publishing with a new imprint: Bloomsbury Academic. The imprint plans initially to publish monographs in the humanities and social sciences. It plans to have approximately 50 new titles online and in print by the end of 2009.
These titles will all be published online under an open-access models. Free downloads, for non-commercial purposes, will be available immediately upon publication, using Creative Commons licences. The works will also be sold as books, using short-run technologies or Print on Demand (POD).
'The new Bloomsbury Academic imprint represents new thinking, new technology and new directions in academic publishing. We're making a major commitment to spreading knowledge more easily throughout the world – with a sustainable business model,' commented the newly-appointed Bloomsbury Academic publisher Frances Pinter.
The platform will also be available to showcase and promote other publishers' titles. The initiative is not exclusively in the English language, says the company. Bloomsbury’s German partner, Berlin Verlag, will be participating actively in the venture.

Information professions could become disconnected from users

http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=379
16 September 2008
Information professions including librarianship, archives, publishing and journalism could become increasingly disconnected from their users. This is one of the conclusions of a new book edited by David Nicholas and Ian Rowlands of the CIBER group at University College London, UK. (978-1-85604-651-0)

Digital Consumers, published by Facet Publishing, is based on intensive research by the CIBER Group. It states that the digital transition has led to disintermediation, easy access and massive information choice. Professional skills are increasingly being performed without the necessary context, rationale and understanding.

The book states there is a need for a new belief system to help information professionals survive and engage in a ubiquitous information environment, where they are no longer the dominant players nor the first-choice suppliers.

Reference Notes: Useful blog to join

http://ref-notes.blogspot.com/

The Reference Notes blog is devoted to providing profiles of significant or substantive developments and news of potential interest to Reference and Research Librarians worldwide.

LIFe magazine photo archive freely available

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

Some amazing photos here

Europeana - the European Union's new digital library launched

from: http://en.kioskea.net/actualites/massive-eu-online-library-looks-to-compete-with-google-10965-actualite.php3

Inspired by ancient Alexandria's attempt to collect the world's knowledge, the EU launches on Thursday its Europeana digital library, an online digest of Europe's cultural heritage.
Using the latest technologies, the European Union aims to draw together millions of digital objects, ranging from film, photographs, paintings, sound files, maps, manuscripts, newspapers, documents and, of course, books.

From its opening, users will be able to find major literary works like Dante's Divine Comedy, or masterpieces such as Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring or the manuscripts of composers including Beethoven. The Internet and digitalisation techniques will "enable a Czech student to browse the British library without going to London, or an Irish art lover to get close to the Mona Lisa without queueing at the Louvre," said Viviane Reding, EU commissioner responsible for new technologies.
Europeana is a chance to "give greater visibility to all the treasures hidden deep in our libraries, museums and archives," said Reding, and "compare masterpieces until now spread around the four corners of the globe."
With 14 staff members and at an annual cost put at around EUR2,5-million, Europeana is set for humble beginnings.
The prototype to be launched on Thursday will contain around two million digital items, all of them already in the public domain, as the most recent items are plagued by problems linked to copyright and their use online.
By 2010, the date when Europeana is due to be fully operational, the aim is to have 10 million works available, an impressive number yet a mere drop in the ocean compared to the 2,5 billion books in Europe's more common libraries.
The process of digitalisation is a massive undertaking.
Around one percent of the books in the EU's national libraries are now available in digital form, with that figure expected to grow to four percent in 2012. And even when they are digitalised, they still have to be put online.
The size of the task proved daunting even for Internet giant Microsoft.
The US computer firm launched its own online library project at the end of 2006, but abandoned it 18 months later after having digitalised about 750 000 works.
Google, one of the pioneers in this domain on the other hand, claims to have seven million books available for its "Google Book Search" project, which saw the light of day at the end of 2004.
Indeed Europeana was first seen as the 27-nation bloc's response to Google. Based on a proposal from France, several nations came together in 2005 to call for the creation of such a library at EU level.
A first attempt, with a few thousand works from France, Hungary and Portugal, was put online in March 2007 by France's national library, which has its own digital section, Gallica, launched in 1996.
Adding to the degree of difficulty, the EU project also aims to operate in 21 languages, although three - English, French and German - will be most prevalent early on.
In parallel with Europeana, Brussels will invest a total of about EUR120-million in 2009 and 2010 to develop digital technology, and put another 40 million into multilingualism techniques, like automatic translation. But it hopes the private sector will also invest and help speed up the work.

Subject Guides (LibGuides)

We now have theses Depts - Anthro, Chem, Ecos, Fine Art and Psycho - completed. Also Evaluated Websites, Virtual Reference and Newspapers

Please let Info Services have you suggestions and comments

Minnesota Press & Amazon revive out of print books

http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/11/7572n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medi
(user name: rulibrary ; password: ru2007)

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
University Press, With Amazon, Revives and Sells Out-of-Print Books
By JENNIFER HOWARD
Like homesteaders sitting on land with untapped oil reserves, many university presses possess a rich but underused resource: out-of-print titles. The challenge has been how best to drill into that resource—how to let readers know about books that have been out of print for years or decades, and then make it easy for them to buy a copy.
Many presses have been testing out print-on-demand and other ways of delivering old books to new readers. On Thursday, the University of Minnesota Press will formally announce a new program to put almost every book it has ever published back in print and make them readily available. The program, Minnesota Archive Editions, comes out of a partnership with Amazon.com, Google, and the Minneapolis-based company BookMobile, and is notable for its scope and how it outsources much of the heavy lifting to commercial partners.
Under the arrangement, Amazon has agreed to digitize the files of the press's out-of-print books; the full texts will be browsable using Google Book Search. If a reader comes across one online and likes what he sees, he can click through to Amazon.com and order a copy to be printed and shipped to him using Amazon's BookSurge publishing program. Or he can click over to the press's Web site and place an order, which Minnesota's distributor, the Chicago Distribution Center, will forward to BookMobile for printing and delivery. That option may be more appealing to library and bookstore clients who have specific warehousing and distribution accounts.
Either way suits the press just fine, says its director, Douglas Armato. The point is to get as many books as possible out there, and at very little cost to the press. It paid no money upfront to Amazon; the online book seller will recoup the cost of digitizing as copies are sold.
About 660 books are already available through the program, and Mr. Armato expects that number to reach a thousand. From the press's perspective, the hardest part has been researching the rights to everything it has published since it opened its doors in 1925. Contracts had to be unearthed, and living authors or heirs had to be contacted and informed about the plan. "It has familiarized us in a remarkable way with our backlist," Mr. Armato said. "It really amounted to an archaeological dig."
Most authors have been happy to hear that their work will be back in print, he said, but "they do have questions"—most involving what kinds of royalties might be involved.
That, of course, depends on sales and on the original contracts. Mr. Armato isn't expecting Minnesota Archive Editions to leave the press's coffers overflowing, but he already has evidence that a market exists for at least some of those books.
Without any publicity, the program has already generated sales through Amazon: about 200 units so far, with the highest concentrations in history and philosophy, where a classic is perhaps more likely to remain a classic than in more newfangled fields. A modest Minnesota Archive Editions best seller has even emerged: Essays in Ancient Philosophy, a 1987 collection by the late Michael Frede, who taught philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, has sold 12 copies.
The most surprising sale to date? One copy of a 1949 volume, Therapeutic Group Work With Children.
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

HeinOnline Wiki

The HeinOnline Wiki is HeinOnline's "Help Center" that contains various how-to's, FAQs, search examples, and more! The Wiki contains a dedicated page for specific HeinOnline Libraries that outlines how to navigate and understand the library, as well as how to search for a word, phrase or other term, and each page includes links to videos and training guides when applicable. In addition to library specific help pages, the Wiki also contains all HeinOnline User Guides which includes Quick Reference Guides, feature specific guides, searching guides, and more! It also provides links to each of the video tutorials that have been created for using HeinOnline.

The HeinOnline wiki is available at http://heinonline.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page or can be accessed from the Resources tab in any HeinOnline library.

New book on teaching Info Lit.

Off last week's display: 028.7 BUR

Great for those wanting to get an idea of what Info Lit is all about.

Tied to the ACRL IL Competency Standards for HE - with exercises

Reasons researchers really rate repositories

http://optimalscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/10/reasons-researchers-really-rate.html

Interesting article about weeding

Weeding: facing the fears by Eleonora Dubicki
Collection Building (2008) v 27 (4) p 132-135

http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01604950810913689

Library Quarterly added to JSTOR

The Library Quarterly (Arts & Sciences VI)
Release Content:
Vol. 2, No. 1 (January, 1932) – Vol. 72, No. 2 (April, 2002)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISSN: 0024-2519

Since 1931, The Library Quarterly has maintained its commitment to scholarly research in all areas of librarianship–historical, sociological, cultural, evaluative, statistical, bibliographic, managerial, and educational. Through unique and innovative approaches, LQ seeks to publish research that provides insights into libraries and librarianship for the library, research, and other communities involved with the collection of, access to, and dissemination of information.

Visual Dictionary Online

How cool is this!
A dictionary with a new point of view
that catches the eye and enriches the mind.
20,000 terms with contextual definitions,developed by terminology experts;
6,000 full-color images of a wide variety of objectsfrom all aspects of life

See: http://visual.merriam-webster.com/society/education/library.php for a library pic!

Blogs by college and academic librarians

http://www.academicblogs.org/wiki/index.php/University_Librarians

Blogs by college and academic librarians

The plausibility of computing the h-index of scholarly productivity and impact using reference-enhanced databases

I have linked up 4 references to articles by Peter Jacso, that focus on the pros and cons of the three largest cited-reference-enhanced databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science) for determining the h-index.

You can access them in the "h-index" folder on RefShare at the url below:
http://www.refworks.com/refshare/?site=037931147244400000/RWWS1A1306351/h-index

Boxes for books!

'BOOK NERD' BUILDS BOXES FOR BROWN'S RAREST VOLUMES:

At Brown U.'s library, one staff member busies herself with making boxes -- beautifully wrought, one-of-a-kind boxes -- to protect the books in storage.

user name: ru library
password: ru2007

SETTLEMENT REACHED IN GOOGLE BOOK-SCANNING LAWSUIT:

Under the terms of the deal, Google will pay $125-million to establish a Book
Rights Registry, to compensate authors and publishers whose
copyrighted books have already been scanned, and to cover legal
costs.

New RUL webpage Subject Guide link

You may have noticed the new Subject Guides link under Resources on the Library webpage This replaces the previous link which was a sub-link under Databases.

The new link presently leads to our old Subject Gateways. The links are gradually being replaced with links to our new (LibGuide) Subject Guides. As they are linked Anne Moon is marking them with a "NEW' icon. Once all the Subject Guides are completed we will change the link to lead to the new Subject Guide page where users will be able to select their subject/tag from the main page.

SAOUG Conference 2008

I have attached the PDF version of a conference report that appeared in vol. 25 no. 6 of Library Hi Tech News.

You can access it in the RefShare SAOUG_Conference-2008 folder at: http://www.refworks.com/refshare?site=037931147244400000/RWWS1A1306351/SAOUG_Conference-2008


ABSTRACT:

The purpose of this paper is to report on papers presented at the ninth annual Southern African online user group conference on 3-5 June 2008 in Pretoria.

The focus was very much on the changes facing librarians daily, changes in users as well as in technology. This was addressed in subthemes such as the Google generation, news alerting services, institutional repositories and end-user training.

The new research information management system (RIMS) was also discussed.

Zotero versus RefWorks

The little I could find about Zotero on the Web was pretty uncomplimentary ...

See, for example, the below:

Zotero Bibliographic Software at MIT: MIT Libraries
"There are still some kinks to be worked out of the software, so you may not want to use Zotero for writing your thesis or for creating complex bibliographies..."
http://libraries.mit.edu/help/zotero/

MIT Libraries uses Zotero in addition to RefWorks and EndNote - They've created a very informative table comparing Zotero with RefWorks and EndNote. It can be accessed at: http://libraries.mit.edu/help/bibliography/comparison.html

I also found an FAQs page about this Firefox extension at: http://www.zotero.org/documentation/#faq_and_troubleshooting (Here it is confirmed that Zotero works only with Firefox).

E-Books on Rhodes RefShare Folder

Some recent references to e-books articles have been added to the RefShare Folder at the url below:
http://www.refworks.com/refshare?site=037931147244400000/RWWS1A1306351/E-Books


You should be able to access the shared E-books Folder from within your RefWorks account by following the steps below:

1. Go to the View menu in your Refworks account. (It is on the top horizontal menu bar).


2. You will see “RefWorks Shared Area” at the bottom of this drop-down menu. Click on this.


3. Now click on the hyperlink under “E-Books”. The references should now be displayed.

New Subject Guides (LibGuides)

The first 3 new Subject Guides (using our new LibGuides software) are now linked under
http://oldwww.ru.ac.za/library/electronic_resources/dept/

They are: Chemistry, Economics and Psychology

Are Blogs Here to Stay?

Are Blogs Here to Stay ? : An Examination of the Longevity and Currency of a Static List of Library and Information Science Weblogs

Kay Johnson

The chronological entries in Weblogs or blogs record musings, opinions, news or other information supplied by individuals or groups. The nature of blogs is ephemeral in that the content is closely tied to the time period of the posting. The author examines the library and information science blogs listed on Susan Herzog’s “BlogBib: Select Librarian/Library Blogs” to see if they were being updated thirteen months after Herzog stopped maintaining the Web site.1 Active, inactive, ceased, and blogs with changed URLs were recorded. Extra content was noted.

http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2008.06.009

Google and Hathi Trust - online books

A group of major universities has been quietly working for the past two years to build one of the largest online collections of books ever assembled, by pooling the millions of volumes that Google has scanned in its partnership with university libraries.
One of the most important functions of the project, say its leaders, who plan to unveil the giant library today, is to create a stable backup of the digital books should Google go bankrupt or lose interest in the book-searching business.

http://chronicle.com/free/2008/10/5061n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

The Changing face of document supply: The British Library

The British Library: the changing face of document supply
By Mat Pfleger, British Library, Bookham, UK

The environment for document supply is rapidly changing.
The paper below provides an insight into the current response of the largest document supplier in the world, the British Library, to this change.
The link to the article is :
emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/02641610810897836

YEARNING AFTER BOOKS

YEARNING AFTER BOOKS: Why are so many artists and writers
preoccupied by the so-called demise of bookish culture?
see article at: http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/10/2008101001c.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

......."The most eloquent reflection I have found on the future of books is Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night (2006), which strikes a balance between romanticism and realism, nostalgia and foresight. His reflections on books and technology emphasize complementarity rather than conflict: "The birth of a new technology need not mean the death of an earlier one: The invention of photography did not eliminate painting, it renewed it, and the screen and the codex can feed off each other and coexist amicably on the same reader's desk."
And, it may be that electronic technology is even more fragile than books. "There may come a new technique of collecting information next to which the Web will seem to us habitual and homely in its vastness," Manguel writes, "like the aged buildings that once lodged the national libraries in Paris and Buenos Aires, Beyrouth and Salamanca, London and Seoul."
We are pained by the change of familiar bookish institutions, but, before long, I expect we will begin to feel nostalgia for the microfilm and the CD-ROM and yearn for a time when the Internet was as fresh and young as our belief in its capacity to replace the printed book and the library."

Free online marketing textbook

Textbook Marketing, Radiohead Style
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3375&utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en

Please will some more people put something on this blog!!!!

Why We Need A New Approach to Putting Library Collections Online

see full article in the CHE:
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3362&utm_source=at&utm

Presidents of major universities want more library materials distributed online, without prohibitive charges.
At the Universal Access Digital Library Summit, held on September 24 and 25 at the Boston Public Library, Mark Huddleston, president of the University of New Hampshire, Peter Nicholls, provost of the University of Connecticut, and Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts, called for new approaches to the digitization of library collections that will allow access for all. The presidents urged libraries to halt what they described as an assault on the public’s right to knowledge, done in the name of copyright.

HSRC leads the way in free online publications

This is fantastic - Bloomsbury to have free online books (our HSRC cited as a good example to follow!)

2 NEW DIGITAL MODELS PROMISE ACADEMIC PUBLISHING FOR
PROFIT:
New ventures explore ways for academic publishers to put
monographs online without driving themselves out of business.
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/10/4842n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_mediu
m=en

How to build a Web we can trust

from SciDevNet
http://www.scidev.net/en/editorials/how-to-build-a-web-we-can-trust.html
The World Wide Web's inventor wants to make websites more trustworthy. This should be done by encouraging good practice, not imposing strict rules.

Interesting that under the section entitled: "Dangerous inability" in this article mention is make of Thabo Mbeki's night-time web-surfing excursions!

e-textbooks on demand

College Bookstores to Begin Selling eTextbooks on Demand
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3342&utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3342&utm_source=at&utm

Regional journals can boost science capacity

This week's issue of Sci.Dev.net has some interesting articles about scholarly publication including one by Wieland Gevers on the above topic

http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/regional-journals-can-boost-science-capacity.html



Wieland Gevers was, until recently, the executive officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa, and is the chair of its Committee on Scholarly Publishing.

Excellent book for Academic Librarians

Just finished this very readable book
"The academic library and the Net Gen Student" / Susan Gibbons

Only 99 pages! Gives an excellent overview of the 'new' digital student and the types of technologies we need to get our heads around.

Dewey: 027.7 GIB

On Stupidity, Part 2 Exactly how should we teach the 'digital natives'?

AN ACADEMIC IN AMERICA

On Stupidity, Part 2
Exactly how should we teach the 'digital natives'?
By THOMAS H. BENTON

Last month I reviewed a collection of recent books (The Chronicle, August 1) arguing that Americans, particularly those now entering college, have been rendered "stupid" by a convergence of factors including traditional anti-intellectualism, consumer culture, the entertainment industry, political correctness, religious fundamentalism, and postmodern relativism, just to name some of the usual suspects.

Of course the anticipated consequences of the "stupidity crisis" seem dire enough — the end of democracy, the economic decline of the United States, the extinction of humanity as we know it — that one feels compelled to register opposition to the "Age of Unreason" by buying a few books.

I bought seven of them. And I am convinced — as if I ever doubted it — that, over the past several decades, we have become less knowledgeable, more apathetic, more reliant on others to think for us, more susceptible to simple answers, and more easily exploited.
The Link to the article is :

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/09/2008090501c.htm

Library Connect newsletter from Elsevier

The latest issue is now available at:
http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcn/0603/lcn060301.html

The overall theme is E-Learning.

Includes some useful insights on how libraries can support e-learning on campus and lots more.....

Book Southern Africa

For those of you who haven't discovered it (I have just come across it)
http://book.co.za/
"BOOK Southern Africa is a literary news and social network for publishers, authors and the general book-buying and -reading public. BOOK SA reports on local fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, book happenings, reviews and more: you can start exploring now by clicking the links above.
BOOK SA is also a free author and publisher website service for those involved in the world of Southern African literature. Our sites' special features help drive information about books throughout the web, attracting new audiences and creating more space for literary endeavours. Our goal is to help build the Southern African literary marketplace to new heights. "

Libraries go digital with Ipod

http://www.women24.com/Women24/BooksAstrology/News/Article/0,,1-12-68_20014,00.html

Online literacy

Two more interesting articles from the Chronicle of HE on this topic.

ONLINE LITERACY IS A LESSER KIND: Web skimming may be a kind of
literacy, says Mark Bauerlein, but it's not the kind that
matters most.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i04/04b01001.htm?utm_source=at&utm_me
d
ium=en
* DISCUSSION OF DIGITAL TOOLS' ROLE IN LEARNING:
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bauerlein/?utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en

Digital generation???

(Interesting to note that this is talking about American students)

[from the Chronicle of HE]
NOT ALL YOUNG PEOPLE ARE TECH-SAVVY: Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a "digital generation," writes Siva Vaidhyanathan.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i04/04b00701.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

user name: rulibrary
password: ru2007

Exceprt:
Every class has a handful of people with amazing skills and a large number who can't deal with computers at all. A few lack mobile phones. Many can't afford any gizmos and resent assignments that demand digital work. Many use Facebook and MySpace because they are easy and fun, not because they are powerful (which, of course, they are not). And almost none know how to program or even code text with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Only a handful come to college with a sense of how the Internet fundamentally differs from the other major media platforms in daily life.
College students in America are not as "digital" as we might wish to pretend. And even at elite universities, many are not rich enough. All this mystical talk about a generational shift and all the claims that kids won't read books are just not true. Our students read books when books work for them (and when I tell them to). And they all (I mean all) tell me that they prefer the technology of the bound book to the PDF or Web page. What kids, like the rest of us, don't like is the price of books.
Of course they use Google, but not very well — just like my 75-year-old father. And they fill the campus libraries at all hours, just as Americans of all ages are using libraries in record numbers. (According to the American Library Association, visits to public libraries in the United States increased 61 percent from 1994 to 2004).

Recycle your A4 discarded paper

One of our student technical officers has kindly offered to be responsible for taking suitable paper to the computer labs on campus which offer students a facility for using recycled paper for printing. There is a box on the table in the photocopy room where you may deposit used A4 paper. This should be printed on one side only.

Journal of Library Innovation

The Western New York Library Resources Council is pleased to announce
plans to publish The Journal of Library Innovation, one of the first
journals devoted explicitly to innovation and creativity in libraries.
This peer reviewed, electronic journal will publish original research,
literature reviews, commentaries, case studies, reports on innovative
practices, letters, as well as book and product reviews. The journal will
also welcome provocative essays that will stimulate thought on the current
and future role of libraries in an Internet Age.
The inaugural issue will be published in January 2010. Please watch for a
call for papers in the near future. For more information, please contact
Editor-in-Chief Sheryl Knab (sknab@wnylrc.org) or Managing Editor Pamela
Jones (pjones@medaille.edu

KNOL: Google's new encyclopedia

WHAT GOOGLE'S NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA MEANS FOR ACADEME:
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i02/02a01701.htm?utm_source=at&utm_m
edium=en

Drop in textbooks sales

TEXTBOOK SALES DROP, AND UNIVERSITY PRESSES WANT TO
KNOW WHY:
A negative trend in textbook sales has accelerated in the last
couple of months, and online piracy may be one cause of the
decline.
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/09/4480n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_mediu
m=en
--> MANY STUDENTS SEEK PIRATED TEXTBOOKS ONLINE:
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/09/4477n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medi
um=en

Top 25 articles in Journal of Academic Librarianship

Yesterday (2 Sept) at the Scopus/ScienceDirect workshop with Sunette Steynberg we were again alerted to the facility on SD for finding the top most cited articles in specific disciplines/journals.

These are the top 25 from the J of Academic Librarianship (Jan-Mar 2008) - for your interest.

SABINET Gateway - African Online Journal Archive

Sabinet Gateway, an organisation promoting and supporting library and information services in Africa, has chosen OCLC's CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software to store, manage and make available an African Online Journal Archive.

read press release at:
http://www.itweb.co.za/office/sabinet/0808260725.htm

"The Next Scholarly Communication"?

(I know this is a very long post but it is interesting. It is cut from Gerry McKiernan's latest offering to the
SPARC-OAForum@arl.org)

Colleagues

As some may be aware, I have long proposed The Wiki as The Next Scholarly
Communication/Publishing Environment
Gerry McKiernan. "Disruptive Scholarship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Re(Use) / Re(Mix) / Re(New)." Invited keynote presentation delivered at
Transforming Practice for An Authentic Future, 3rd International
Conference on Plagiarism, June 23-25, 2008, Northumbria University,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Director' Cut version self-archived at:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/IPC2008-DC.ppt (30 August 2008)
"Wikis: Disruptive Technologies for Dynamic Possibilities," Invited
presentastion delivered at Digital Libraries à la Carte: Choices for the
Future. Module 2: Technological Developments: Threats and Opportunities
for Libraries, Tilburg Innovation Centre for Electronic Resources BV
(TICER), Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, August 23, 2005.
Self-archived at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/TICER2005.ppt
(30 August 2008)

Thanks To Bernie Sloan, Sora Associates, Bloomington, Indiana has have
learned about a wiki called Mememoir and its associated implementation in
the WikiGenes project that I believe is a A Major Realization of The
Disruptive Scholarship Vision
"Reporting in [the September 2008 issue] Nature Genetics, scientist Robert
Hoffmann develops the first Wiki where authorship really matters. Based on
a powerful authorship tracking technology, this next generation wiki links
every word to its corresponding author. This way readers can always know
their sources and authors receive due credit.
[snip]

Clear authorship attribution in this next generation wiki makes it also
possible that users can rate each other based on their contributions. For
the first time, collaborative publishing can therefore be enhanced with
the advantages of a reputation system. Hoffmann describes how a
self-regulating reputation system can help to settle editing conflicts,
which were an important problem in first generation wikis and used to
depend on slow and refutable top-down decisions.
The scientific wiki project, introduced in the September issue of Nature
Genetics and released online today, is the first of its kind and a
milestone in the Mememoir project. "This release is an important proof of
principle, but our ambitious aim with the Mememoir project is to
revolutionize publishing in all of science," says Dr. Hoffmann, "with a
knowledge base that is open access, interdisciplinary and combines the
altruistic possibilities of wikis with explicit authorship."
Robert Hoffman / A Wiki for the Life Sciences Where Authorship Matters /
Nature Genetics / volume 40 / number 9 / 1047 - 1051 /September 2008 /
Published online 27 August 2008 / doi:10.1038/ng.f.217
Access to sample text from the paper as well as links to the full text of
the article (for subscribers (?)) in HMTL and PDF format as well as links
to the WikiGenes site and associated components (e.g., Introduction &
Tutorial, Sample 'Author' Contribution Page, Sample 'Author' Contribution,
etc.) are available at
[ http://tinyurl.com/582jq2 ]

Please share your thoughts/reactions/etc as a Comment on the entry for
this posting on the Scholarship 2.0 blog
BTW: Recommendations Of Any And All Other Radical Scholarly Wikis
Like/UnLike Mememoir / WikiGenes Are Most Welcome.
Regards,
Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck@iastate.edu

Online journals on technology and libraries

Ariadne
Biblio Tech Review
D-Lib Magazine
Info Technology & Libraries
Library Hi Tech
Library Journal Digital
Library Technology Now
MC Journal

Techie blogs for Librarians

ASC Online
blogwithoutalibrary.net
Dave's blog
Free Range Librarian
iLibrarian
Library Technology Guides
LibrarianInBlack
LITA
Loomware
The Shifted Librarian
Tame the Web
NEKLS Technology Weblog
TechnoBiblio
walking paper

Amazon goes for E-Book reader for textbooks

Amazon Plans to Market Its E-Book Reader to Colleges
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3268&utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en

Libraries as portals

SCHOLARS' VIEW OF LIBRARIES AS PORTALS SHOWS MARKED
DECLINE:
The shift toward digital scholarship is changing the
relationship between libraries and faculty members at
institutions of all sizes, a new report says.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/08/4351n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medi
um=en

user name: rulibrary
password: ru2007

Survey of behavior and attitudes of faculty members and academic librarians

(this has been put on for Jeanne Berger - Eileen)

Ithaka has recently released the datasets from our 2006 surveys of the behavior and attitudes of faculty members and academic librarians. These complementary studies, co-sponsored by JSTOR and by Ithaka's incubated entities Portico, Aluka, and NITLE, have been of interest to academic librarians and scholarly publishers alike in presentations over the past year, but now we are making the dataset available as well. The faculty study focuses on attitudes and behaviors in the transition to an increasingly electronic information environment, examining perceptions and use of information services in the research and teaching processes. The findings shed light on the relationship between faculty and the library, faculty perceptions and uses of electronic resources, the transition away from print for scholarly journals, faculty publishing preferences, e-books, digital repositories, and the preservation of scholarly journals. The librarian survey provides the perspective of senior collection development officers on many of these same issues and thereby provides the opportunity to examine the similarities and differences between faculty and librarian views. We have prepared an in-depth white paper which details our findings and provides analysis and recommendations based on these studies, which may be found on the Ithaka website at http://www.ithaka.org/research/faculty-and-librarian-surveys. For those who are interested in investigating our data in greater depth, we have deposited the raw datasets from these studies with ICPSR, and the faculty and librarian studies are available at http://tinyurl.com/6rm3df and http://tinyurl.com/6hk6lg, respectively.

On Stupidity

AN ACADEMIC IN AMERICA
On Stupidity
By Thomas H. Benton

A cartload of recent books suggests that it's time to reverse the customer-service mentality plaguing academe.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," said H.L. Mencken in the era of Babbitt and the Scopes "monkey" trial. Several generations later, one might speculate that no publisher has ever lost money with a book accusing Americans — particularly young ones — of being stupid.
The link to the article is :
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/08/2008080101c.htm

New online learning community for librarians

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

WebJunction, an online learning community for librarians and library staff, has launched new social and learning applications for the site. The site, first started with money and backing from the Online Computer Library Center and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, had 30,000 individual members even before the revamp.
There are three new items of note:
A “friending” utility allowing librarians to connect with friends, peers, and colleagues from across the library community. There are also public profiles, the ability to tag useful bits of information, and recommendations.
Librarians can now create their own content with tools provided by the site.
There are more flexible online courses covering business, technical, and library skills.
A report on Blogjunction, the site’s blog, says that since the new tools launched last week, the library site had had 15,000 unique visitors, a pace that, if it keeps up, will give them more traffic than in any other month of their 5-year existence. —Josh Fischman

Libraries step into the age of iPod

read article

NEW YORK (Reuters) - It may be about time to dig out that old library card. Hoping to draw back readers, libraries have vastly expanded their lists of digital books, music, and movies that can be downloaded by their patrons to a computer or MP3 player -- and it doesn't cost a cent, unlike, say, media from Apple Inc'siTunes or Amazon.com Inc.
In Phoenix, for instance, branches have banded together to create a digital library that currently has about 50,000 titles of e-books, audiobooks, music and videos that can be "checked out" from anywhere.
Once discovered, says Tom Gemberling, the electronic resources librarian for the Phoenix Public Library, the program often proves wildly popular.

IFLA medal for work in developing countries awarded

eIFL Director receives IFLA Medal for groundbreaking work with libraries in transition and developing countries

Rima Kupryte, Director of Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net) was honoured by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) at the 74th World Library and Information Congress in Quebec, Canada. The IFLA Medal is one of the highest professional accolades and

Publishing jargon

A Publishing Primer

Don't know your French flaps from your headbands? Here's a guide to the arcane terminology of the book world

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/08/2008081101c.htm

Bibliometric indices

Interesting papers on the use and misuse of bibliometric indices in evaluating scholarly performance available at:
http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/esep/v8/n1/
"Quantifying the relative performance of individual scholars, groups of scholars, departments, institutions, provinces/states/regions and countries has become an integral part of decision-making over research policy, funding allocations, awarding of grants, faculty hirings, and claims for promotion and tenure. Bibliometric indices (based mainly upon citation counts), such as the h-index and the journal impact factor, are heavily relied upon in such assessments. There is a growing consensus, and a deep concern, that these indices — more-and-more often used as a replacement for the informed judgement of peers — are misunderstood and are, therefore, often misinterpreted and misused. The articles in this ESEP Theme Section present a range of perspectives on these issues. Alternative approaches, tools and metrics that will hopefully lead to a more balanced role for these instruments are presented."

Unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24096948-25132,00.html


The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried
beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its
long-held secrets
STORED in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca
Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive
from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections
-- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome - - all perished in the chaos of the
centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved,
paradoxically, by an act of destruction................

User name and password for Chronicle of HE

Sorry - you will need this to view the article about Muhammad's Bride

user name: ru library
password: ru2007

CONTROVERSY OVER NOVEL ABOUT MUHAMMAD'S BRIDE

CONTROVERSY OVER NOVEL ABOUT MUHAMMAD'S BRIDE ENDURES:

A novel about a wife of Muhammad has been canceled by Random House,
sparking a controversy over freedom of speech and the role of
a University of Texas history professor.

http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/08/4190n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medi
um=en

Website for researchers to share scientific papers

Share Scientific Articles ... and Network, Too
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3222&utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en

"Labmeeting, the document management and networking site, which is free for individual scientists and students, allows researchers to upload PDF files of research papers and other documents, mark them, organize them, search them, recommend them to colleagues, and see what their peers are collecting. Each scientist has a profile page and can create groups, inviting the members of their labs to add their documents to a shared collection accessible from anywhere."....

Judy online

Hi Everyone
Quite exhausting all this blogging, definitely need some help in how to add articles of interest (in the unlikely event of coming across one!)
Judy

August newsletter

The August RUL newsletter is now available on the Library webpage - thanks to Irene for formatting and linking it

Cory Library blog

Hello Everyone

Please have a look at the Cory Library blog.

This is intended to be a noticeboard and for sharing Cory information. There is no provision for comments however as I have no time to moderate these!

The final design may change to come more into line with the look and feel of the new corporate website.
Sally

Reasearching Librarian blog

Found in my cybertravels
Sally

Web resources helpful for librarians doing research

FREE ACCESS TO SCIENCE PAPERS FOUND NOT TO INCREASE CITATIONS

FREE ACCESS TO SCIENCE PAPERS FOUND NOT TO INCREASE CITATIONS:
Randomly selected papers that were made freely available
online were cited slightly less often than papers that were
not, a study described in "BMJ" found.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/08/4070n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medi
um=en

user name: rulibrary
password: ru2007

MICROSOFT ROLLS OUT PUBLISHING AND RESEARCH TOOLS FOR ACADEMICS

MICROSOFT ROLLS OUT PUBLISHING AND RESEARCH TOOLS FOR
ACADEMICS: Microsoft makes a bid to become a big player in
academic publishing with new tools that help scholars
collaborate, determine fair use, and format papers for online
databases.
http://chronicle.com/free/2008/07/4049n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_mediu
m=en

Information about LibGuides

"LibGuides is a popular content management and knowledge sharing system for Libraries. Over 4,100 librarians at 250 libraries use LibGuides every day to share information and connect with patrons, wherever they are." [http://www.springshare.com/]

At the staff meeting this morning we talked about LibGuides, to which the Library has just started subscribing.

The idea is for information services/faculty librarians/departmental librarians to develop subject guides to replace our present static Subject Gateways which are at:[http://www.ru.ac.za/library/electronic_resources/dept/index.html].

The new LibGuides will be dynamic and interactive (e.g. users can make comments, contact their subject librarian, link to webpages/site/videos/feeds, etc.). We hope that this new service will prove useful in connecting users with information and information sources.

We are presently in the process of setting up the access to LibGuides (with the IT Divisoin). Once this happens LibGuides will be linked to the Library webpage and we can start develooping the Guides. This will obviously be a learning process as we become familiar with the functionality and possibilities. Please have a look at the examples of what other libraries are doing with LibGuides and give us your suggestions for RUL.

See a collection of examples and more information about LibGuides at:
http://del.icio.us/aloeferox/LibGuides

How deep does Google go?

From the Chronicle of HE:

Does Google's Web Search Go Deep Enough Into Scholarly
Archives?
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/?id=3205&utm_source=at&utm
_medium=en

"Many scholarly archives on college and public Web sites don’t show up in Google because the search engine doesn’t index them — they’re in what many call the “deep Web,” below the level that most search engines look. A new study found that fewer than half — just 44 percent — of a sample group of deep-Web pages from scholarly archives showed up in Google searches."

Comments on a study http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july08/hagedorn/07hagedorn.html done by digital librarians at the University of Michigan who are also involved in the Open Archives Initiative, an effort to help search engines find items deep in Web archives.

Welcome to the RU Library Staff Blog

Let's use this blog to share ideas with each other.
what do you think about this?