Pests in the Library

Library bedbugs: Growing threat to borrowers of paper books—and another justification for library e-books?

READING in bed, once considered a relatively safe pastime, is now seen by some as a riskier proposition.  That’s because bedbugs have discovered a new way to hitchhike in and out of beds: library books. It turns out that tiny bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the spines of hardcover books. The bugs crawl out at night to feed, find a new home in a headboard, and soon readers are enjoying not only plot twists but post-bite welts.

The Librarian (I-III)

Entertaining movie series similar to the Indiana Jones series. The Librarian (of the New York Metropolitan Public Library), played by Noah Wyle, is curator of historical artifacts and treasures including the Arc of the Covenant, Excalibur and Pandora's Box.

The adventures of The Librarian are entertaining (albeit light) with corny lines and some interesting characters. At the least, the traditional image of librarians is challenged!

Available at the RUL.

30 tips for successful academic research and writing

Choosing something that you are passionately interested in to research is a great first step on the road to successful academic writing but it can be difficult to keep the momentum going. Deborah Lupton explains how old-fashioned whiteboards and online networking go hand-in-hand, and advices [sic] when it is time to just ‘make a start’ or go for a bike ride. 

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/11/28/lupton-30-tips-writing/

OA in Argentina

Interesting article which relates to the presentation at Berlin 10 OA conference by Silvia Nakano of the Science & Technology National Directorate of Physical Resources,Argentina.  She spoke about the Latin American experiences of institutional collaboration for accessibility and visibility of scientific and academic output

 

 Prospect for Development of Open Access in Argentina

From J of Acad Librarianship:

Abstract

This perspective article presents an overview of the Open Access movement in Argentina, from a global and regional (Latin American) context. The article describes the evolution and current state of initiatives by examining two principal approaches to Open Access in Argentina: golden and green roads. The article will then turn its attention to: the support that Open Access receives from governmental sources; collaboration with international projects; and the perspective of Argentine authors regarding Open Access and self-archiving. It concludes with a reflection on the outlook, the main barriers and opportunities for Open Access in Argentina.

Teaching Library Internet Workshops

Teaching Library Internet Workshops a free guide from UC Berkeley Library

Academic Libraries and Research Data Services

ACRL has released a new research report, “Academic Libraries and Research Data Services: Current Practices and Plans for the Future” to provide a baseline assessment of the current state of and future plans for research data services in academic libraries.... Academic libraries may be ideal centers for research data service activities on campuses, providing unique opportunities for academic libraries to become even more active participants in the knowledge creation cycle in their institution."

South African open access policy - a comparative overview

South African open access policy - a comparative overview

  Paper presented by Eve Gray at a Wits University research policy seminar on 9 November 2012. 

At the end of the day, the university signed the Berlin Declaration and announced that it would be adopting open access as a core component of its new research strategy."

Heather Joseph: Evaluating Scholarly Impact in Light of Emerging Models of Scholarly Communication

Well worth listening to!

The AU Library hosts Heather Joseph, Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), for a presentation on emerging trends in measuring scholarly impact, especially in relation to the open access movement. Developed by the Association of Research Libraries, SPARC is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.

Fighting back against the Big Deals: a success story from the UK

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=17065291&WT.mc_id=journaltocalerts


Purpose – The paper aims to describe the development of an alternative to the Big Deals that was deployed successfully in negotiations with Elsevier and Wiley for the 2012 settlement.



Design/methodology/approach – This is a descriptive account of the alternative plan.



Findings – There is a credible alternative to the Big Deals offered by most commercial academic publishers. Even if not implemented, the model provides a very useful tool to understanding the relationship between cost per use and document supply.



Originality/value – The paper provides an account of the first time that a practical alternative to the Big Deals has been developed, leading to a successful negotiating conclusion.

Easy paper collaboration for scientists

Launching very soon!

Mendeley: Teaching scholarly communication and collaboration through social networking ( Review )

Would anyone in the RU Library like to offer to investigate Mendeley (Debbie is presently testing Zotero)?

Purpose: This paper aims to highlight the productivity and collaborative features of Mendeley, a reference management tool, as well as recommendations on how Mendeley can be incorporated into an information literacy program. Design/methodology/approach: Results from a literature review and feedback from students and faculty were used to provide background for this paper. Mendeley's features and potential benefits to librarians and researchers are discussed. Findings: Feedback from students and faculty who use Mendeley are very positive owing to its productivity and social networking and collaboration features. The literature highlights Mendeley's usefulness in the context of citation management software. Practical implications: The paper provides useful tips and best practices for integrating Mendeley into information literacy sessions and workshops for students and faculty. The paper also discusses how teaching Mendeley can facilitate scholarly communication between researchers and broaden the role of librarians on campus. Originality/value: The paper shows that Mendeley enables higher level information literacy by helping users focus on locating and organizing information and spend less time on citation details. Mendeley's social networking features are compatible with emerging work practices, facilitating collaboration among researchers through group's functions and open sharing of information through groups and publication lists.

Changes in scholarly communication

New opportunities in scholarly communication - How the internet is transforming scholarship

What is Open Access? - What's in it for me?

Stop Being a People-Pleaser - Harvard Business Review

If you've always felt a compulsion to meet everyone else's needs before your own, it's hard to imagine being different. People-pleasing is not only what you do, but a strong part of who you believe you are. In some jobs,...

Now E-Textbooks Can Report Back on Students’ Reading Habits

some interesting discussion

E-Textbooks Can Report Back on Students’ Reading Habits

 Data mining is creeping into every aspect of student life—classrooms, advising, socializing. Now it’s hitting textbooks, too.
CourseSmart, which sells digital versions of textbooks by big publishers, announced on Wednesday a new tool to help professors and others measure students’ engagement with electronic course materials.
When students use print textbooks, professors can’t track their reading. But as learning shifts online, everything students do in digital spaces can be monitored, including the intimate details of their reading habits.

As Libraries Go Digital, Sharing of Data Is at Odds With Tradition of Privacy

Millions of people now share what they're reading through social-networking sites like Facebook, or smaller services including Goodreads and LibraryThing. They're accustomed to the personalized recommendations that Amazon provides by tracking customers' buying and browsing habits.  Libraries are following suit. They're beginning to share data to build tools for recommending and discovering books.

http://chronicle.com/article/As-Libraries-Go-Digital/135514/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Marketing the academic library with online social network advertising

Findings: In line with an earlier study, the results provide further support for the view that social network advertising has the potential to be a cost-effective means of marketing academic libraries. It was also found that advertising strategies that draw upon the social features of Facebook were more effective than traditional approaches.

From bibliometrics to altmetrics: A changing scholarly landscape

....librarians are in a key position to take the lead in bolstering researchers’ knowledge of current trends—and concerns—in the new art and science impact measurement......

An Overview of the Textbook Market and Strategies to Reduce Costs

An Overview of theTextbook Market and Strategies to Reduce Costs   

OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere

Today’s mobile computers provide omnipresent access to information, creation and communication facilities. It is undeniable that they have forever changed the way we work, play and interact. However, mobile interaction is far from solved. Diminutive screens and buttons mar the user experience, and otherwise prevent us from realizing their full potential.

Pick n Pay launches Kobo e reader

Pick n Pay launches Kobo e reader: Pick n Pay has announced that it is launching the Kobo e-reader in selected stores.

Supporting Digital Scholarship: Bibliographic Control, Library Cooperatives and Open Access Repositories

Calhoun, Karen (2012) Supporting Digital Scholarship: Bibliographic Control, Library Cooperatives and Open Access Repositories. Research libraries have entered an era of discontinuous change—a time when the cumulated assets of the past do not guarantee future success. Bibliographic control, cooperative cataloguing systems and library catalogues have been key assets in the research library service framework for supporting scholarship. This chapter examines these assets in the context of changing library collections, new metadata sources and methods, open access repositories, digital scholarship and the purposes of research libraries. Advocating a fundamental rethinking of the research library service framework, the chapter concludes with a call for research libraries to collectively consider new approaches that could strengthen their roles as essential contributors to emergent, network-level scholarly research infrastructures.

Hat Tip: Open Access Explained!

What is open access? Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it's all about.

"One of the clearest, concise, and entertaining explanations of open access I have seen. Check-out this animated comic, Open Access Explained! narrated by open access advocates Nick Shockey, Director of Student Advocacy at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and Jonathan Eisen, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology at University of California, Davis on the PHD Comics website.
The piece focuses on open access to publically-funded scientific research. I wished for more of a nod to Humanities scholarship and the unique challenges of our disciplines relating to open access. But the explanation still translates very well. For example, this excerpt—I believe it is Jonathan Eisen speaking—could just as easily be applied to Humanities scholarship:.:

The inexorable rise of open access scientific publishing

A new study shows that the rise of open access publishing of academic research is faster than anyone had previously realised

The impact of open access on librarians

"Open access (OA) is possibly one of the greatest (in a size sense) topics being discussed in academic publishing right now, and with just cause. It has a real chance to fundamentally change the research landscape and dissemination of its results, potentially facilitating greater productivity, collaboration and transparency in the research method.

The most vocal bodies or individuals to talk about this issue have generally been from either the researcher or the publisher side, which are the two groups it most affects. But what position should the library take in these discussions, and how will an increase in the volume of open access material (and a potentially exponential one) change the type and volume of work for the librarian?......

What it boils down to
So, to paraphrase this and run the risk of repeating in another short list what is said above a few times, the future of open access for libraries will involve:

1. More advanced discovery services
2. Communication, training and networking with own institutional community
3. Repository building and curation"

 see discussion on Swets Blog

Ditch the Monograph by Jennifer Howard

What if scholars, publishers, and tenure-and-promotion committees embraced short-form e-books as a respectable way to deliver serious scholarship?

Read more

Confronting the Crisis in Scientific Publishing: Latency, Licensing and Access

Confronting the Crisis in Scientific Publishing: Latency, Licensing and Access

".....research institutions would collectively develop and adopt publication agreements that do not transfer copyright ownership to publishers, but instead grant publishers a one-year exclusive period in which to publish a work. This limited period of exclusivity should enable the publisher to recoup its costs and a reasonable profit through subscription revenues, while restoring control of the article copyright to the author at the end of the exclusivity period. This balanced approach addresses the needs of both publishers and the scientific community, and would, I believe, avoid many of the challenges faced by existing open access models....."

SIERRA Blog page

Sierra Blog for useful info 

Rhodes Library in SA has just made the switch to Sierra

Looking back after 20 years

This is a really interesting (short) article about the development of journals - do try and read it.

"It has been approximately 20 years since distributing scholarly journals digitally became feasible. This
article discusses the broad implications of the transition to digital distributed scholarship from a
historical perspective and focuses on the development of open access (OA) and the various models for
funding OA in the context of the roles scholarly journals play in scientific communities.
..... It took hundreds of years to develop a finely honed paper journal system. In a mere 20 years, digitally
distributed journals are still evolving and have a long way to go in working out the format, conventions,
and economics that will allow the use of this new media to be as effective and as efficient as the paper
media that they are replacing...."

The entire print collection of the Library of Congress could fit on five to 10 discs!

Making computer data storage cheaper and easier

Case Western Reserve University researchers have developed technology aimed at making an optical disc that holds 1 to 2 terabytes of data -- the equivalent of 1,000 to 2,000 copies of Encyclopedia Britannica

Study of Unmediated Patron- Driven Acquisition of e-Books (thanks again to Brenda's Tweet!)

Give ’Em What They Want: A One-Year Study of Unmediated Patron-Driven Acquisition of e-Books
an ACRL article

Register Now

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Libraries, patrons, and e-books - Pew Report

Libraries, patrons, and e-books - Pew Report

Some comments from respondents:
"I am reading more because it is easy and accessible"
"...if I find myself with a free couple of minutes, I can read a couple of pages.”...:"
"I have always been a reader, but I’m reading more books now that I have an e-book reader, and I’m getting through them more quickly. … I find that my family members and I also spend more time discussing the books that we are reading..."
"I read a lot more with e-books. I’ve ventured out into new genres and authors that I would never have found in the print world..."
"“I read multiple books all the time. An audiobook for my car and commute. An e-book for ‘whenever’ and print books for relaxing at home...."
(librarian)  “I love the ecological benefit of not having the waste of needing to buy a lot of copies and then having to discard half of them two years later,” one library department head told us. “I love that we don’t have to hassle patrons to bring e-materials back. I love that there are no damages, no worn out items, no sticky stains.”

New Roles, New Responsibilities: Examining Training Needs of Repository Staff

This study reports on a survey of Australasian institutional repository staff to identify skills and knowledge sets.

The Disappearing Web: Decay is Eating our History

The Disappearing Web: Decay Is Eating Our History

By Mathew Ingram on September 20, 2012

Bottom of Form

One of the characteristics of the modern media age—at least for anyone who uses the Web and social media a lot—is that we are surrounded by vast clouds of rapidly changing information, whether it’s blog post,s or news stories, or Twitter and Facebook updates. That’s great if you like real-time content, but there is a not-so-hidden flaw—namely, that you can’t step into the same stream twice, as Heraclitus put it. In other words, much of that information may (and probably will) disappear as new information replaces it, and small pieces of history wind up getting lost.

According to a recent study, which looked at links shared through Twitter about news events such as the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East, this could be turning into a substantial problem. The study, which MIT’s Technology Review highlighted in a recent post by the Physics arXiv blog, was done by a pair of researchers in Virginia, Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson. They took a number of recent major news events over the past three years—including the Egyptian revolution, Michael Jackson’s death, the elections and related protests in Iran, and the outbreak of the H1N1 virus—and tracked the links that were shared on Twitter about each. Following the links to their ultimate source showed that an alarming number of them had simply vanished.

In fact, the researchers said that within a year of these events, an average of 11 percent of the material that was linked to had disappeared completely (and another 20 percent had been archived), and after two-and-a-half years, close to 30 percent had been lost altogether and 41 percent had been archived. Based on this rate of information decay, the authors predicted that more than 10 percent of the information about a major news event will likely be gone within a year, and the remainder will continue to vanish at the rate of .02 percent per day.

It’s not clear from the research why the missing information disappeared, but it’s likely that in many cases blogs have simply shut down or moved, or news stories have been archived by providers who charge for access (something that many newspapers and other media outlets do to generate revenue). But as the Technology Review post points outhttp://www.technologyreview.com/view/429274/history-as-recorded-on-twitter-is-vanishing-from/?ref=rss, this kind of information can be extremely valuable in tracking how historical events developed, such as the Arab Spring revolutions—which the researchers note was the original impetus for their study, since they were trying to collect as much data as possible for the one-year anniversary of the uprisings.

Other scientists, and particularly librarians, have also raised red flags in the past about the rate at which digital data are disappearing. The National Library of Scotland, for example, recently warned that key elements of Scottish digital life were vanishing into a “black hole” and asked the government to fast-track legislation that would allow libraries to store copies of websites. Web pioneer Brewster Kahle is probably the best known digital archivist as a result of his Internet Archive project Open Library).

Although the Virginia researchers didn’t deal with it as part of their study, a related problem is that much of the content that gets distributed through Twitter—not just websites that are linked to in Twitter posts, but the content of the posts themselves—is difficult and/or expensive to get to. Twitter’s search is notoriously unreliable for anything older than about a week, and access to the complete archive of your tweets is provided only to those who can make a special case for needing it, such as Andy Carvin of National Public Radio (who is writing a book about the way he chronicled the Arab Spring revolutions).

As my colleague Eliza Kern noted in a recent post, an external service called Gnip now has access to the full archive of Twitter content [http://gigaom.com/2012/09/19/for-a-price-gnip-brings-you-access-to-all-public-tweets-ever-sent/], which it will provide to companies for a fee. And Twitter-based search-and-discovery engine Topsy also has an archive of most of the full “firehose” of tweets—although it focuses primarily on content that is retweeted a lot—and provides that to companies for analytical purposes. But neither can be easily linked to for research or historical archiving purposes. The Library of Congress also has an archive of Twitter’s content, but it isn’t easily accessible, and it’s not clear whether new content is being added.

Twitter has talked about providing a service that would let users download their tweets at some point, but it hasn’t said when such a thing would be available—and even if users did create their own archive in this way (or by using tools like Thinkup from former Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani) it would be difficult to link those in a way that would provide the kind of connected historical information the Virginia study is describing. And it’s not just Twitter: There is no easy way to get access to an archive of Facebook (FB) posts either, although users in Europe can request access to their own archive as a result of a legal ruling there.

For better or worse, much of the content flowing around us seems to be just as insubstantial as the clouds it’s hosted in, and the existing tools we have for trying to capture and make sense of it simply aren’t up to the task. The long-term social effects of this digital amnesia remain to be seen.

  http://www.businessweek.com/