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Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:49:08 -0500

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 their collective and individual responsibility for that funding, and this recognition should be ongoing and public so that publishers can rely on it as a condition for their continuing operation.

Institutional Open Access Funds: Now Is the Time

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:22:27 -0500

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

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:09:46 -0500

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 way.

No Deposit, No Diploma

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:33:14 -0500

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 derived from a graduate thesis. While most serious journals have statements about only accepting original material, filing a dissertation does not seem to constitute “prior publication,” or at least none are willing to state this.

Numbers vs. Meaning

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:20:32 -0500

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 interpretations we often make based on these numbers and the direction they’re going in.

The Mandate of Open Access IR Managers

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:17:00 -0500

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 “business models” for journal publishing.

Open Folklore

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:24:00 -0500

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 which folklore scholars partner.

Reality Check on Open Access Monographs

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:37:38 -0500

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 mission of dissemination, yet challenge the financial sustainability of an academic press.

Metadata Everywhere: the Catalog is Out of the Box

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:16:35 -0500

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 catalogers, right in the middle of a revolution in how we think about representing and describing information. And the more partners we can involve in these processes, the more chances libraries have to add value up and down a variety of data supply chains.

Scholarly Communication: Univ. of Toronto

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:12:38 -0500

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 work available to the global community.

Oxford Sees Scholarly Hesitancy on Open Access

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:08:20 -0500

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

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:03:00 -0500

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 have found it challenging to manage a large-scale peer-reviewed open access publishing operation, making it difficult for libraries to convince faculty that open access alternatives can replace the dedicated commercial publisher.

ScholarSpace @ JCCC

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:57:00 -0500

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 space within the Web’s global scholarly community. With the creation and maintenance of ScholarSpace @ JCCC, Johnson County Community College (JCCC) in Overland Park, Kansas, is preserving the intellectual output of its faculty, staff, and students.

The Accessibility of Open Access Materials in Libraries

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:55:32 -0500

The Accessibility of Open Access Materials in Libraries:

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 survey of US library holdings to determine the extent that records of journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals are held by WorldCat-affiliated Academic libraries. It then followed up with a questionnaire inquiring into the attitudes and practices of librarians from 100 libraries that were ranked highest out of the total population in terms of their holdings of DOAJ journals.

Research Libraries Need a Strong FCC

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:13:00 -0500

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

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:43:55 -0500

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 something to the effect that he had been waiting for years for someone to say that! We munched, brainstormed, and hammered out a work-in-progress whose basic premise was: do less, but do it more often until less became more.

New Issue: D-Lib Magazine

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:35:38 -0500

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 Gallery of Scripps College collection of Japanese woodblock prints.

Google and the Digital Humanities

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 08:59:32 -0500

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 its growing digital vault.

Intwine (beta)

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:02:43 -0500

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

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:58:17 -0500

AcademiX 2010 Videos Now Available:

Videos of AcademiX 2010 presentations are now available on the AcademiX 2010 iTunes page.