AAUP Publishes New Guidelines on Librarians | Inside Higher Ed

AAUP Publishes New Guidelines on Librarians | Inside Higher Ed
....recommends that colleges and universities involve librarians in governance issues, such as curriculum development, said Deanna Wood, a reference librarian and associate professor of reference at the University of New Hampshire who helped draft the updated guidelines. That way, students won’t enter the library to do research and find “there’s nothing there to support it.”

Developing core competencies for library staff

January 2013 College & Research Libraries News vol. 74 no. 1 14-35

From the conclusion:
"...Library staff was keenly aware of the changing environment throughout libraries, particularly academic libraries, and as such, ultimately understood the need to enhance skills in order to meet the demands of our users. Resetting the performance bar, when explained as part of the overall support and development of staff personnel, can be and was accepted by the staff as an important part of moving the library into a new culture of highly skilled and professional individuals."

Secret Lives of Readers


Books reveal themselves. Whether they exist as print or pixels, they can be read and examined and made to spill their secrets. Readers are far more elusive. They leave traces—a note in the margin, a stain on the binding—but those hints of human handling tell us only so much. The experience of reading vanishes with the reader.  How do we recover the reading experiences of the past? Lately scholars have stepped up the hunt for evidence of how people over time have interacted with books, newspapers, and other printed material.

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......