July 2010
35 posts
Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity →
We the undersigned universities recognize the crucial value of the services provided by scholarly publishers, the desirability of open access to the scholarly literature, and the need for a stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide open access to their journals’ contents. Those universities and funding agencies receiving the benefits of publisher services should recognize ...
Institutional Open Access Funds: Now Is the Time →
We believe that institutions (and the sub-institutional units that manage collection funds) should be open to exploring alternative funding models for scholarly communication. Institutions should highly value funding models that promote universal access to their research output.
Open Access in Canada: A Strong Beginning →
Scholarly open access (OA), one of CLA’s information policy advocacy areas, has reached critical momentum in Canada. New initiatives are being announced regularly in all areas of the open access movement, including OA publishing, repositories and mandates. Established projects are becoming regularized and growing. Most of these initiatives are library-based or are connected to libraries in some...
No Deposit, No Diploma →
I concluded that after spending a year on writing a public document, only to make it as inaccessible as possible, was antithetical to the purpose it was intended to fulfill. Indeed, consigning to lock up a dissertation on open access seemed inconsistent, if not downright hypocritical. And lastly, I have yet to find a publisher who has a hard policy against accepting a manuscript that was...
Numbers vs. Meaning →
Librarians keep a lot of statistics and measure a lot of things. Gate count, reference transactions, instruction sessions, website hits, visits to a specific tutorial or research guide, e-resource usage, etc. We are big on numbers. I have no problem whatsoever with measuring things like this and in many cases I think it’s essential. The thing I do have a problem with are the unsupported...
The Mandate of Open Access IR Managers →
Open Access (OA) Institutional Repository (IR) managers need to remind themselves that their mandate is to see to it that their IRs are filled with OA’s target content (peer-reviewed research journal articles) so as to maximize the accessibility, visibility, usage and impact of their institution’s research output. Their mandate is not to seek or provide alternative...
Open Folklore →
The American Folklore Society (AFS) and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries are creating a prototype of a new scholarly resource called Open Folklore. The vision for this open-access online portal for folklore studies is to make a greater number and variety of useful resources, both published and unpublished, available for the field of folklore studies and the communities with...
Reality Check on Open Access Monographs →
Open access (OA) publishing models, pricing concerns, and the cannibalization of print sales were the headline topics at the SPARC-ACRL forum session on Saturday at the ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting in Boston, titled “The Ebook Transition: Collaboration and Innovations Behind Open Access Monographs.” The conclusion? Open access monographs are an unprecedented boon to the scholarly...
Metadata Everywhere: the Catalog is Out of the Box →
Data-about-data is now used to track materials, assess needs, compare collections, inform research, manage workflows, plan budgets and even make friends. Catalogers have been joined by publishers, retail outlets, shipping companies, researchers, faculty, Web programmers, search engine optimizers and end users in the flow of metadata creation and modification. This puts libraries, and...
Scholarly Communication: Univ. of Toronto →
Open access urges scholars to self-archive, that is, to include their work in an online archive or repository accessible to all. Today there are 1,764 institutional and subject archives or repositories, including U of T’s T-Space, listed in the Registry of Open Access Repositories. The contents are discoverable through Google and an argument for self-archiving is that it makes your...
Oxford Sees Scholarly Hesitancy on Open Access →
Academics remain reluctant to allow their journal articles to be deposited in open-access repositories, according to the Oxford University Press. The press announced Thursday that the percentage of Oxford Press articles authorized for re-publication in its open-access repository decreased overall from 6.7 to 5.9 percent between 2008 and 2009.
Library Consortia and Academic Libraries →
Despite the emergence of open access as an alternative to the commercial publishing model, the need for libraries, consortia, and publishers to work together persists. While one can hope that new models will gain greater ascendancy, commercial publishing remains the dominant and preferred form of conveying scholarly communication among most faculty. Even with consortial collaboration, libraries...
ScholarSpace @ JCCC →
The concept of institutional repositories is frequently thought of as an exclusive implement of universities and other “Publish or Perish” four-year colleges. If this were the limit and scope of valuable repositories, the implication would be that they are the only entities that create scholarship worth preserving and sharing. Fortunately, a few community colleges have stepped up to reserve...
The Accessibility of Open Access Materials in... →
Librarians often champion open access (OA) as a sustainable alternative to the current scholarly communications system, which is widely accepted as being in a state of crisis. However, there has been little insight into how far libraries are making this support tangible by providing access to OA publications in their OPACs and other library pathways. This study conducted a large-scale...
Research Libraries Need a Strong FCC →
Today the Association of Research Libraries, along with the American Library Association and EDUCAUSE, filed comments in support of the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed “third way” forward for broadband regulation. You can read those comments here.
Using Library Experts Wisely →
Last spring I decided to try making a library specialist an ongoing part the writing seminar. I got in touch with Dave MacCourt at the University of Massachusetts library, the specialist assigned to my department, and we met for lunch. I don’t recall Dave’s exact words when I apologetically told him that I wanted to ditch the standard orientation for my writing class, but they were...
New Issue: D-Lib Magazine →
The July/August issue of D-Lib Magazine is now available. This issue contains four articles, an opinion piece, and a conference report. Also in this issue you can find the ‘In Brief’ column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in ‘Clips and Pointers’. This month, D-Lib features The Ruth Chandler Williamson...
Google and the Digital Humanities →
Proponents of the Google Books project have argued that the effort to scan every printed book in the world into a digital database will be a game-changer for scholarship. Now Google is trying help digital humanities scholars prove it. The company plans to announce today that it is bankrolling 12 university-based research projects designed to demonstrate the potential value to scholarship of...
Intwine (beta) →
Intwine (beta) is a supercharged “one search-box” arts & humanities search-tool, searching 100,000+ websites hand-picked by the specialists of the award-winning Intute service from 2005-2010.
AcademiX 2010 Videos Now Available →
Videos of AcademiX 2010 presentations are now available on the AcademiX 2010 iTunes page.
New Issue: portal →
Volume 10, Number 3 (July 2010). Subscription required with pre-prints available via open access.
New Issue: EDUCAUSE Quarterly →
Volume 22, Number 2 (July 2010). Theme: Cloud Computing. Available via open access!
New Issue: the Journal of Academic Librarianship →
Volume 36, Issue 5 (July 2010). Only available through subscription.
Welcome to Science 2.0 →
“Science 2.0. combines the hypothesis based inquiry of laboratory science with the methods of social science research to understand and improve the use of new human networks made possible by today’s digital connectivity. This website is a community where those interested in the advancement of research can share ideas, tools and build connections.”
Manifesto for the digital humanities →
“2. For us, the digital humanities concern the totality of the social sciences and humanities. The digital humanities are not tabula rasa. On the contrary, they rely on all the paradigms, savoir-faire and knowledge specific to these disciplines, while mobilizing the tools and unique perspectives enabled by digital technology.”
Developing a sustainable digital workflow →
“As a current MLIS student at the University of North Texas (and new LITA member) with a concentration in digital content management, I had the privilege of attending the LITA session Developing a Sustainable Digital Workflow, at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC. This session exhibited two very successful digital endeavors: the digital collections at my very own UNT, ...
What is your library doing about emerging... →
“LITA presented a panel at ALA’s 2010 Conference that posed the question, What is your library doing about emerging technologies? Bohyun Kim, the Digital Access Librarian at Florida International University, moderated the discussion with the aid of slides that posed questions for four groups of panelists.”
It's time to put the point back into the pen . . . →
“There is nothing wrong with articles and books that are of limited interest, but academic publications are often self-limiting due to their formats: crazily priced books that will be bought only by libraries; obscenely priced journals that are difficult to access; and protracted publishing timescales that limit contemporary relevance. Whether or not these limitations are economically...
History of the Institutional Repository →
“An institutional repository is an online resource for the storing in digital form of academic materials, such as theses, dissertations and research articles, on behalf of a university or other institution, whose history, while dating from the early 1990s, is a relatively short one. The average age of a repository in 2010 is about six years. Such materials, which would once only have...
Evaluating E-resources →
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Evaluating E-resources, SPEC Kit 316, which re-examines the ways in which ARL member libraries have (re)structured themselves to identify the availability of new e-resources in the market; evaluate them as candidates for acquisition; decide to acquire/purchase the e-resources; evaluate them prior to their renewal to determine their...
Creating Change in Scholarly Communication →
“Since the Rollins Arts & Sciences faculty passed their Open Access Policy a number of my librarian colleagues from around the country have expressed surprise that Rollins should be one of the first liberal arts colleges to pass such a policy. In fact I think we were third, after Trinity University in San Antonio and Oberlin. Well, I would argue that Open Access is not just...
Openness, Radicalism, and Tolerance →
“If someone has gone out of their way to waive some of the rights guaranteed them under the law so that they can share their creative works – even if that action is to apply a relatively restrictive CC BY-NC-ND to their content – why aren’t we praising that? Why aren’t we encouraging and cultivating and nurturing that? Why are we instead decreeing from a pretended throne on high,...
Brains Open Access Initiative →
“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research - coming from their brains - in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The problem with this approach is that the brains are not exposed, just the...
BibApp 1.0 →
“BibApp is a campus research gateway and expert finder. It matches researchers on your campus or research center with their publication data and mines that data to see collaborations, create visualizations of areas of research, and find experts in research areas. With BibApp, it is easy to see what publications can be placed on the Web for greater access and impact. BibApp can...
December 2009
65 posts
Business Ideas: Pun Edition
1. Donut Mind If I Do A coffee shop offering free donuts with purchase.
2. Donut Mind If I Do, Too A franchise of coffee shops offering free donuts with purchase.
3. Pastryarchy A feminist bakery.
As if in a dream, vol. 2
Last night—in my dream—I was riding my bike around Chicago. At one point I became so disoriented and lost that I was actually biking through the corridors of a hospital. Eventually, I ended up somewhere I’d never been before, a bad part of town, and called Pam in tears hoping she could direct me home. For whatever reason, I was only wearing a t-shirt and it was starting to rain/snow. Nobody...
Addendum to Resolution 2010
Aggregate less. Create more. Get a fucking job.
1 tag
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
I take my lessons from what’s poor That’s what God has put me for Wealth is death, of that I’m sure
For the record, I don’t think I could trust anyone who makes a list of the best records of the 00’s and doesn’t include Master and Everyone (2003) by Bonnie “Prince” Billy. This record is a fucking gem, and Oldham is a national treasure.
Life is like a song
I’m back in Chicago, all alone in my apartment. The only sounds I hear are the keyboard, radiators, the space heater. Oh, and I have Etta James singing “At Last” triumphantly stuck in my head. Cue the strings.
As if in a dream, vol. 1
I’d forgotten my 30th birthday, but a few friends had remembered, so we went out on the town. The first decision we made, naturally, was that we’d get pizza for dinner. On the way to the pizza place we decided to check out a nature museum. The museum had a slow motion roller coaster. It took us through all of the different climates of the world while the music of Spacemen 3 surround...
The Vocabulary of the Dead
Silence, mostly.
Resolution 2010
Be more succinct, but keep your comma quota high.
