How academic libraries may change when Open Access becomes the norm

From  Musings about Librarianship blog:   "The trend I am increasingly convinced that is going to have a great impact on how academic libraries will function is the rise of Open Access.  As Open Access takes hold and eventually becomes the norm in the next 10-15 years, it will disrupt many aspects of academic library operations and libraries will need to rethink the value-add they need to provide to universities....."

Information Literate

EdTech Digest: What 10,000 students and 1,200 librarians told us about research skills.

GUEST COLUMN | by Emily Gover and Michele Kirschenbaum

4 reasons why Google Scholar isn’t as great as you think it is

Education and Life-long Learning of an Academic Librarian

Do read the editorial in the latest issue of the Journal of Academic Librarianship

"The diploma that hangs in the wall of our offices is a reminder that we were given the foundation we need to achieve the things we have dreamt about, but it is up to all of us to develop new skills and learn new processes if we want to survive."

Google vs Librarians!

Article in the Chicago Tribune Jobs section
"....access to a wealth of information on the Internet has placed even more importance on librarians.."

Creating Innovators : Can the Library Contribute?

An interesting article by Natasha Johnson from Purdue University looks at  three common themes which characterize innovators, viz., play, purpose, and passion and wonders how academic librarians can foster creativity in "library as space", in information literacy (allow failures!), in stimulating students' interests (displays, social media, etc.??) and in encouraging their development.

(I have ordered a copy of the book which Johnson used as the basis of her article for the Rhodes Library -  Wagner, T. 2012. Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. New York: Simon and Schuster.)

Altmetrics for Institutions

Altmetrics for Institutions - excellent presentation by Jean Liu from Altmetrics.

Why I Gave Up Google Glass: form, function, and fashion

Why I Gave Up Google Glass

By Brian Mathews 

Since experiencing the Google Glass demo by Joe Murphy at SAOIM, this post makes for interesting reading.

 

 

SHIFTING FROM A KNOWLEDGE SERVICE PROVIDER TO A COLLABORATIVE PARTNER: notes from an ARL strategic thinking session.

 From The Ubiquitous Librarian blog by Brian Mathews

"An ARL strategic-thinking session back in May featured an exciting slide deck".

 http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/

Admission Policy Changes at UCT and HIV rates in Zimbabwe institutions : News from Southern Africa Higher Education

Cape Town’s new student admission policy sparks debate

the university’s new admissions policy is a hybrid procedure using three mechanisms for selection: one part of the class selected just on marks; a second component selected based on performance and ability, which takes account of school and home background; and a third component driven by achieving demographic targets based on an applicant's race and performance.

(University World News June 2014 Issue No:326)

Campuses hit by high number of HIV infections 

High numbers of new HIV infections are being recorded in tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe. It has become commonplace at graduation ceremonies for students to be awarded degrees or diplomas posthumously, after having succumbed to HIV-Aids.

 (University World News June 2014 Issue No:326)

Ten reasons you should put altmetrics on your CV right now

Altmetrics can:

1. provide additional information;
2. de-emphasize inappropriate metrics;
3. uncover the impact of just-published work;
4. legitimize all types of scholarly products;
5. recognize diverse impact flavors;
6. reward effective efforts to facilitate reuse;
7. encourage a focus on public engagement;
8. facilitate qualitative exploration;
9. empower publication choice; and
10. spur innovation in research evaluation.

Read the whole post.......

NISO Issues Altmetrics White Paper Draft for Comment

It had to happen!  Altmetrics is becoming "official"

"The paper summarizes community input to development of potential standards and recommended practices for research assessment metrics"

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has released a draft white paper summarizing Phase I of its Alternative Assessment Metrics (Altmetrics) Project for public comment. The Initiative was launched in July 2013, with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to study, propose, and develop community-based standards or recommended practices for alternative metrics. In Phase 1 of the project, three in-person meetings were held and 30 in-person interviews conducted to collect input from all relevant stakeholders, including researchers, librarians, university administrators, scientific research funders, and publishers. The draft white paper is the summary of the findings from those meetings and interviews, along with the identification of potential action items for further work in Phase II of the project.

“Citation reference counts and the Journal Impact Factor have historically been the main metric used to assess the quality and usefulness of scholarship,” explains Martin Fenner, Technical Lead Article-Level Metrics for the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and consultant to NISO for the project. “While citations will remain an important component of research assessment, this metric alone does not effectively measure the expanded scope of forms of scholarly communication and newer methods of online reader behavior, network interactions with content, and social media. A movement around the use of alternative metrics, sometimes called ‘altmetrics,’ has grown to address the limitations of the traditional measures. With any new methodology, however, issues arise due to the lack of standards or best practices as stakeholders experiment with different approaches and use different definitions for similar concepts. NISO’s Altmetrics project gathered together the variety of stakeholders in this arena to better understand the issues, obtain their input on what issues could best be addressed with standards or recommended practices, and prioritize the potential actions. This white paper organizes and summarizes the valuable feedback obtained from over 400 participants in the project and identifies a road forward for Phase II of the project.”

“More than 250 ideas were generated by participants in the meetings and interviews,” states Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “We were able to condense these to 25 action items in nine categories: definitions, research outputs, discovery, research evaluation, data quality and gaming, grouping and aggregation, context, stakeholders’ perspectives, and adoption. The highest priority items focused on unique identifiers for scholarly works and for contributors, standards for usage statistics in the form of views and downloads, and building of infrastructure rather than detailed metrics analysis. We are now soliciting feedback on the draft white paper from the wider community prior to its completion. The white paper will then be used as the basis for Phase II: the development of one or more of the proposed standards and recommended practices.”

The White Paper is open for public comment through July 18, 2014. It is available with a link to an online commenting form on the NISO Altmetrics Project webpage (www.niso.org/topics/tl/altmetrics_initiative/), along with the detailed output documents and recordings from each of the meetings and related information resources.

Snakes or Ladders? Evaluating a LibGuides Pilot at UCD Library

(Interesting - time we evaluated our LibGuides???? )

"Feedback that was gathered suggested that the LibGuides subject guides were generally viewed very positively by both staff and students. Notwithstanding this, awareness (as indicated through usage statistics) remained moderate during the pilot, pointing to the importance of the visibility, positioning and promotion of guides."

article in The Journal of Academic Librarianship

2 June 2014

Abstract

Online subject guides are commonly used by libraries to provide information support to students. LibGuides (a cloud-based commercial product launched in 2007) represents one of the latest incarnations of the traditional subject guide or portal, and are widely used across American academic libraries. In Ireland however, library subject guides of entirely local design and hosted on a local web server still dominate.

This paper outlines the project management process involved in implementing a LibGuides pilot at University College Dublin Library, including the planning, design and implementation of a new range of subject-related guides. The pilot nature of the project necessitated a strong focus on evaluation, particularly in assessing the effectiveness and suitability of LibGuides as a platform for delivering information literacy support, both from an administrative and end-user perspective. A two-stranded approach was used in this review process, incorporating quantitative web statistics and analytics alongside qualitative feedback from students, academic staff and Library staff.

Feedback that was gathered suggested that the LibGuides subject guides were generally viewed very positively by both staff and students. Notwithstanding this, awareness (as indicated through usage statistics) remained moderate during the pilot, pointing to the importance of the visibility, positioning and promotion of guides.

Resignations threat over Taylor & Francis ‘censorship’

“A journal’s editorial board has been left on the brink ofresignation after an eight-month standoff with its publisher Taylor &Francis over the publication of a debate on academic publishing and the profitsmade by major firms…..”