Star Tribune Widget

Your (real) Impact Factor from PhD: Piled Higher & Deeper

"Your (real) Impact Factor"
daily web comic

PhD: Piled Higher and Deeper, a graduate student web comic by Jorge Cham
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1108

10/1/2008

Gross - Another interesting comparison can be made between Grad Enrollment and the GDP (although in this case, it's harder to tell which one causes which).



Source: http://www.phdcomics.com/images/GDP.gif

So Cal Fires: ArcGIS Server application and shapefiles available

ArcGIS shapefiles which depict the perimeters of the recent fires (2008) in Southern California have been made available. I have downloaded the shapefiles and used them to develop an ArcGIS Server online service
where you can view the most current fire perimeters. To access this service, point your Internet browser here: http://gis.nacs.uci.edu/socalfires/

The map will open to the "Freeway" fire event and show the most recent fire perimeter for that event. The "Tea" and "Sayre" fire perimeters are also available to view. To navigate to each fire event, use the Zoom Out
tool so that you can see the broader Southern California area, then use the Zoom In tool by dragging out a rectangle over the fire area which you want to view.

Unfortunately, for this particular service, the Full Extent tool goes to the full extent of the world, so that is not too useful for this application.

For each fire event the shapefiles are ordered in the Table of Contents on the left side oldest to youngest from the top down. For each event the perimeter associated with the most recent shapefile is activated. You can
click to activate any one shapefile for an event. You can do this in a time sequence to view how each fire perimeter expanded over time.

The shapefiles were collected by GEOMAC (http://www.geomac.gov/index.html) and then stored on the USGS website (http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/outgoing/GeoMAC/2008_fire_data/California/?C=M;O=A).
You can access the shapefiles directly at that location. Since I already downloaded these shapefiles, I copied them on my Webfiles account for you to use in ArcMap. To access the zip file which contains the shapefiles go here: https://webfiles.uci.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-5860175_1-t_RPbaA1Bn

Let me know if you have questions about the ArcGIS Server Southern California Fires application or the fire perimeter shapefiles.

Tony Soeller
Senior Research Computing Specialist
Network & Academic Computing Services, U. C. Irvine
949.824.3239 tsoeller@uci.edu

"Powering the Planet" - lecture on world's energy challenges

If you want a very sobering analysis of the world's energy problem, I suggest you attend Cal Tech Chemistry Professor Nate Lewis's lecture "Powering the Planet". If you can't see his lecture in person, you can view
a previously given lecture on his web site.

http://nsl.caltech.edu/energy.html

Yes We Can - Music Video Barack Obama

US Election Map Using Google Maps

Keep up-to-date on the 2008 election with Google Maps

"On election day, it will take at least 270 of the possible 538 electoral votes for John McCain or Barack Obama to win the Presidency. Use this map to predict possible state combinations each candidate needs to win the election. Clicking on a state will change the total electoral vote count per candidate."

Source: Elections '08 Map Gallery

Google lawsuit and UC project

It is good news that a proposed agreement has been submitted to the United States District Court to settle a lawsuit against the Google Book Search digitization project.

While the three major library partners (the University of California, the University of Michigan, and Stanford University) were not parties in the lawsuit, Google requested extensive input from us on issues of importance to library and university communities. For nearly two years, we strongly advocated for library interests including maximum public access to works in the public domain. Our efforts to preserve, maintain, and provide access to books played a critical role in achieving this agreement. While the settlement is not all we would have liked it to be, on balance the agreement is consistent with the libraries' mission and serves the public interest by providing the widest possible access to these materials.

The settlement agreement allows us to continue our participation in the Google Book Search project. The partner libraries and Google will review and update our original contracts to reflect the terms of the settlement.

I have attached a joint press release from the major library partners, and you can find more information from Google at http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/.

Gerry Munoff
University Librarian, University of California Irvine
----------------
From Metafilter:
"The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search."
---------------
Authors, publishers settle suit against Google
By HILLEL ITALIE - AP (Associated Press) October 28, 2008

Interactive video to ecourage participation

A new twist on "get out the vote" from MoveOn.org.


Mitchell Brown Loses the Election for Obama

You too can join in. See link to colleague, Bob Johnson Loses Election for Obama

DTIC Online portal deploys Deep Web Technologies' MultiSearch interface

Search solutions provider Deep Web Technologies, US, has launched an updated interface for the Defense Technical Information Center's new DTIC Online research portal (http://multisearch.dtic.mil). DTIC is part of the US’ Department of Defense (DOD). The interface, known as MultiSearch, offers four defence search channels from a single drop-down menu, allowing users to access a collection of scientific and defence-related resources in one simultaneous search. The search employs the latest version of Deep Web Technologies' Explorit Research Accelerator, which is seen to provide ‘smart’ clustering, encyclopedia sidebars from Wikipedia, and EurekAlert! science news.

DTIC supports the DOD and its community by centralising scientific, technical and related defence-information services, databases and systems. Its new DTIC Online significantly expands the breadth of information scanned and retrieved with its four search channels: DOD websites, DTIC Public Scientific and Technical Information, the DTIC Website, and Federal Scientific and Technical Information. MultiSearch also includes a federated search of other federated search websites, including Scitopia.org and WorldWideScience.org - both powered by the Explorit Research Accelerator. It therefore is projected to consolidate a number of advanced search engines within one search, delivering results users might never have uncovered.

The upgraded MultiSearch portal adds new features that seek to enrich the user experience and value of research. By taking advantage of Explorit's ‘smart clustering,’ MultiSearch provides relevance-ranked clusters that allow users to see their results organised by topic. It also retrieves and displays entries from Wikipedia and EurekAlert! that complement the search experience. Explorit delivers not only relevant results, but pathways and context to guide users to more relevant search results.

Deep Web's federated search technology is projected to enable fee-based or proprietary content to be searched publicly on the Internet, without giving it away. This content is not searchable by public search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

DTIC Online was created specifically for the defence community. MultiSearch can be accessed from the pull-down menu by selecting ‘Federal S&T’ or by going directly to (http://multisearch.dtic.mil).The search is free and much of the content is available at no cost. Some content - like that accessed through Scitopia - can be purchased on a pay-per-view basis or accessed by a subscription.

Knowledgespeak Newsletter 23 Oct 2008

PLOS AND SPARC PLoS and SPARC release new "Voices of Open Access" video series

PLOS AND SPARC RELEASE NEW “VOICES OF OPEN ACCESS” VIDEO SERIES
Clips describe a rich new world where access to research is open

San Francisco, CA and Washington, DC – October 14, 2008 – A new video series presents six unique perspectives on the importance of Open Access to research across the higher education community and beyond. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the organizers of the first Open Access Day with Students for FreeCulture, today released the series of one-minute videos capturing why teachers, patient advocates, librarians, students, research funders, and physician scientists are committed to Open Access.

The “Voices of Open Access” series defines Open Access as a fundamental component of a new system for exchanging scholarly research results, where: health is transformed; research outputs are maximized to their fullest extent; efficiencies in the research process enable faster discoveries; the best science is made possible; young people are inspired; access transcends the wealth of the institution; cost savings are realized across the research process; and medical research conducted for the public good is made available to everyone who needs it.

“These short videos vividly bring to life why Open Access matters to a broad range of people,” said Peter Jerram, Chief Executive Officer of PLoS. “From a teacher who used a mouse song to inspire her science class to a major funder of scientific research who believes that it helps scientists make the discoveries we need to improve health. These clips are a much needed resource for this growing international movement which now seeks to recruit even more members of the general public and the scientific community to its cause through Open Access Day, October 14, 2008.”

Added Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, “This series speaks to the heart of the broad appeal of Open Access; the new opportunities it creates for everyone to benefit from the results of science and scholarship.”

The series introduces:

* Barbara Stebbins, science teacher at Black Pine Circle School in Berkeley
* Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, London, U.K.
* Sharon Terry, CEO and President of the Genetic Alliance, Washington, DC
* Ida Sim, Associate Professor and a practicing physician at the University of California, San Francisco
* Diane Graves, University Librarian for Trinity University, San Antonio
* Andre Brown, PhD student, University of Pennsylvania

The series was created by filmmakers Karen Rustad and Matt Agnello.

The videos are available for the public to view, download, and repurpose under a CC-BY license at http://www.vimeo.com/oaday08. They are also available as a single file for viewing at events.

The Voices of Open Access Series is launched in conjunction with the first Open Access Day and the fifth anniversary of the launch of PLoS Biology, the flagship biology journal from the Public Library of Science. Open Access Day 2008 will help to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access, including recent mandates and emerging policies, within the international higher education community and the general public. The day will center on live broadcast events with leading scientists and will be marked by more than 100 campuses in 20 countries. For details, visit http://www.openaccessday.org.

#

About the Public Library of Science:

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.

Read the FAQs on PLoS and open access (http://www.plos.org/about/faq.html#openaccess), find out how the PLoS journals are developing new ways of communicating research (http://www.plos.org/journals/index.php), and visit the PLoS blog (http://www.plos.org/cms/blog/) and Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/pages/PLoSorg/47460995594).

About SPARC:

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC’s advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

American Physical Society now leaves copyright with authors for derivative works

Editorial: APS now leaves copyright with authors for derivative works
http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v78/e080001

"When you submit an article to an APS journal, we ask you to sign our copyright form. It transfers copyright for the article to APS, but keeps certain rights for you, the author. We have recently changed the form to add the right to make 'derivative works' that reuse parts of the article in a new work. The importance of this change is discussed below."

Banned Book Week: Speak Out!

Wednesday, October 1 , from noon to 1 p.m.

at the flagpole on Ring Road adjacent to Langson Library

You are invited to come and celebrate your freedom to read during the 27th annual celebration of Banned Books Week. UCI Department of English, Campus Writing Coordinator Jonathan Alexander and the UCI Libraries are presenting “Banned Book Week: Speak Out!” at the flagpole on Ring Road adjacent to Langson Library on Wednesday, October 1, from noon to 1 p.m. Librarians, lecturers, and colleagues will join to read passages from their favorite banned and challenged books. Admission is FREE.

Interested readers are encouraged to view the list of banned and challenged books and join us on October 1 from noon to 1pm and “Speak Out!” Titles from the list will be on hand for speakers to share passages.

About Banned Book Week

Sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and a variety of other groups, Banned Books Week (Sept. 27–Oct. 4, 2007) celebrates the first amendment right to free speech, which includes the right to read and write books that are considered unorthodox or controversial. A banned book is one that has actually been removed from a library or school system, a "challenged" book is the attempt to ban such material. Some of the most famous challenges have been to works widely considered classics of American literature, including J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Probably the most publicized challenge in recent years was to the highly popular Harry Potter series for promoting "magic."

Videos via YouTube.

Banned Books Week: I'd Like To Find *BLEEP*

A library patron needs some books. Famous, award-winning, acclaimed books. Seems simple enough. And yet... Video produced in recognition of Banned Books Week, September 27-October 4, 2008, and in cooperation with ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Runtime: 1:54

Source: http://alfocus.ala.org/videos/banned-books-week-id-find-bleep

New Permanent Exhibition Will Showcase History of Science

The 2,800-square-foot hall will examine great achievements from the 13th through 20th Centuries—from Ptolemy and Copernicus to Newton, Darwin, and Einstein

Opens Nov. 1, 2008
Press preview: 10 a.m. to noon, Friday, Oct. 31

Press release, images and background materials for media available at:
http://huntington.org/Information/news/dibnerpresskit.htm

SAN MARINO, Calif.—The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens opens a new permanent exhibition on Nov. 1, showcasing some of science's greatest achievements, from Ptolemy to Copernicus, Newton to Einstein. The 2,800-square-foot Dibner Hall of the History of Science comes as a result of the marriage of The Huntington's history of science materials with the Burndy Library, a 67,000-volume collection of rare books and manuscripts donated to The Huntington in 2006 by the Dibner family of Connecticut. Combining the two collections makes The Huntington one of the world's most important
centers for the study of the history of science.

"We're calling this 'Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World,'" says Dan Lewis, The Huntington's Dibner Senior Curator of the History of Science & Technology. "We want people to think about the beauty of science in a historical context—the elegant breakthroughs,the remarkable discoveries, and the amazing people and stories behind them."

Based on the strengths of the Library's holdings, Lewis has highlighted four areas of exploration: astronomy, natural history, medicine, and light. A gallery on each focuses on the changing role of science over time, particularly the astonishing leaps in imagination made by scientists over the years and the importance of written works in communicating those ideas. Works in the exhibition represent centuries of thought, showing how knowledge has become more refined over time.

For example, until the 15th century, Earth was generally considered the center of the universe, and the gallery devoted to astronomy will show just how that perspective shifted—beginning with a 13th-century
copy of Ptolemy's Almagest, a classic Greek text from the second century. The version on display is a Latin manuscript transcribed by monks in southern France in 1279. The work was heralded as a remarkable mathematical achievement and did a sophisticated job of predicting the position of the planets. But it wasn't until sometime later that scientists determined that the planets revolved around the Sun, points made in various degrees by Copernicus and Kepler. The 1566 edition of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus includes censor marks by the first owner, a concession to the pressure of Church officials who considered the work blasphemous. Over time, the planets would be further studied, and their motion better understood, through the works of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. Also in the exhibition: a 1913 letter from Einstein to the great astronomer George Ellery Hale and a 1923 logbook from astronomer Edwin Hubble, writing about the
observations he made using the 100-inch Hooker Telescope atop Mt. Wilson.

"I see this as an extremely important moment for The Huntington," says Steven Koblik, Huntington president. "This exhibition has the potential to give visitors a much deeper understanding of how we know
what we know, how knowledge has advanced over time, and how we have relied on a base of evidence to build that knowledge. People will walk into this exhibition space and be completely awestruck by the power and range of human achievement on display." An accompanying education program for middle and high school students will highlight the scientific method of experimentation: observing, testing, measuring results, and reporting on them.

The four themed galleries in Dibner Hall comprise a reconfigured wing of the Huntington Library, which was built in 1919. A fifth gallery will be a designated reading area, where visitors can curl up in oversized chairs with a copy of Origin of Species or one of a number of books and ponder great moments in the history of science.

Working with in-house designer Karina White, Berkeley-based Gordon Chun Design has transformed a space formerly occupied by 18th-century French art, installing books among vibrantly colored walls, interactive computer terminals, and replicas of scientific instruments, including a Galilean telescope and a 17th-century
microscope. A prism experiment shows how white light can be split into the colors of the rainbow and how those colors can then be recombined into white light.

"One of the challenges of library exhibits is that we are limited to showing just one opening of a book at a time," says White. The team working on the display is addressing that challenge by reproducing dozens of pages from books and scattering them on the surrounding walls.

The impact is particularly effective in the gallery devoted to natural history. "The effect, we hope, is reminiscent of the curiosity cabinets so popular in the 18th and 19th centuries," says Lewis, referring both to rooms and small boxes that were assemblages categorized by scientific theme and meant to evoke wonder. An
additional goal is to get people as close to the original books as possible—"to see the detail they would miss even at a modest distance," says Lewis.

A display in the reading room carries the goal further, allowing visitors to leaf through a 300-year-old book. They can also turn virtual pages of rare volumes at a computer terminal in the natural history section.

The exhibition hall is made possible by the Dibner family, celebrating Bern and David Dibner and the Burndy Library; the Ahmanson Foundation; and Anne and Jim Rothenberg.

[Editor's Note: High-resolution digital images for publicity use are available on request.]

About The Huntington
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is a collections-based research and educational institution serving scholars and the general public. Public hours: weekdays from noon to
4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
(Summer hours, between Memorial Day and Labor Day: weekdays 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.).
Closed Tuesdays and major holidays.
Information: 1-626-405-2100 or www.huntington.org.

Publisher version/PDF use in Institutional Repositories

Publisher version/PDF use in Institutional Repositories

[Forwarding from Jane Smith via the JISC-Repositories list.]

Publisher version/PDF use in Institutional Repositories

SHERPA runs RoMEO as a service to academic authors and repository managers around the world to summarise publishers' contracts relating to open access archiving.

There is often a question about the use of the publishers own PDF version of research articles and whether these can be archived. It is often believed that all publishers prohibit the use of their own PDF: in fact the situation is very different.

SHERPA has analysed its records to determine which of the 414 publishers listed allow authors to deposit the publishers' version or publishers' PDF of a journal article into the author's institutional repository. 50 publishers allow immediate, un-embargoed deposit into repositories -- even more allow use in restricted circumstances. This means that there is a large volume of work which can be deposited directly into repositories even if the author has not retained their own final draft. We hope that this information will help repository administrators in encouraging deposit into their repositories.

The results have been mounted on the RoMEO site - http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PDFandIR.html

We have separated the publishers into sub-sets, indicating any restrictions that are imposed by the publishers on the use of their versions. The sub-sets are: no restrictions, embargos, fee required and embargo & fee required.

In total this shows that 69 out of the 414 publishers listed in RoMEO, allow the use of the publishers' final version of an article in an institutional repository in some manner. These 69 publishers cover approximately 1334 journal titles.

RoMEO
www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

RoMEO is an online service which allows users to search for publishers' policies on self-archiving. Each entry is broken down into which versions the author may deposit, the location of the deposit and any attached conditions.

RoMEO is seen as an essential resource by many in the Open Access community. RoMEO is funded by JISC and the Wellcome Trust. Journal information is kindly provided by the British Library's Zetoc service hosted by MIMAS


SHERPA
www.sherpa.ac.uk

The award winning SHERPA is based at the University of Nottingham and works on a portfolio of projects related to Open Access and repository development.

SHERPA is a 33 member consortium of research-led universities within the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. SHERPA specialises in promoting and advising on the development of open access repositories. Other services developed by SHERPA include JULIET and OpenDOAR.


Jane H Smith B.Sc (Hons) M.Sc
SHERPA Services Development Officer

SHERPA - www.sherpa.ac.uk
SHERPA/RoMEO - www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
OpenDOAR - www.opendoar.org
Juliet - www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet
Nottingham E-Prints - http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/

SHERPA
Greenfield Medical Library
University of Nottingham,
Queens Medical Centre
Nottingham
NG7 2UH

OCLC pilots WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry

OCLC pilots WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry

News releases

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 25 August 2008-OCLC is piloting a new service for libraries that encourages librarians and other interested parties to discover and share information about the copyright status of books.

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry is a community working together to build a union catalog of copyright evidence based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 million bibliographic records describing items held in thousands of libraries worldwide. In addition to the WorldCat metadata,
the Copyright Evidence Registry uses other data contributed by libraries and other organizations.

Digitization projects continue for books in the public domain, but books whose copyright status is unknown are destined to remain in print and on shelves until their status can be determined. The process to determine
copyright status can be lengthy and labor intensive. The goal of the Copyright Evidence Registry is to encourage a cooperative environment to discover, create and share copyright evidence through a collaboratively created and maintained database, using the WorldCat cooperative model to eliminate duplicate efforts.

"Having a practical registry of copyright evidence is vital to our objective of providing our scholars and students with more digital content, one goal of Stanford's mass digitization projects," said Catherine Tierney, Associate University Librarian for Technical Services, Stanford University. "By leveraging the value of its massive database, OCLC is in a unique position to champion cooperative efforts to collect evidence crucial to determining copyright status."

The Copyright Evidence Registry six-month pilot was launched July 1 to test the concept and functionality. Users can search the Copyright Evidence Registry to find information about a book, learn what others have said about its copyright status, and share what they know.

"The Copyright Evidence Registry builds on the WorldCat cooperative model envisioned by OCLC founder Frederick Kilgour," said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "OCLC, and its network of libraries and librarians, is in a position to take a leadership role in this cooperative effort to build a database of copyright status information for all to share."

During a later stage of the pilot, OCLC will add a feature enabling pilot libraries to create and run automated copyright rules conforming to standards they define for determining copyright status. The rules will help
libraries analyze the information available in the Copyright Evidence Registry and form their own conclusions about copyright status.

"The Copyright Evidence Registry is a resource being created by a cooperative network of librarians coming together to share their knowledge and findings about copyright status for the benefit of the entire community," said Bill Carney, OCLC Content Manager.

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry Beta can be accessed at http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence. Catalogers should feel free to use their OCLC Connexion cataloging authorizations to log in. Others are welcome to create or use their current WorldCat.org authorization. There is a "sandbox" record available to try out the system.

OCLC is encouraging feedback on the Copyright Evidence Registry from the library community on the WorldCat.org Web site http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence/registry/feedback.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC is a nonprofit library service and research organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing, eContent, preservation, library management and Web services to 60,000 libraries in 112 countries and
territories. OCLC and its member libraries worldwide have created and maintain WorldCat, the world's richest online resource for finding library materials. For more information, visit www.oclc.org .


Find out more about OCLC OCLC and WorldCat are trademarks/service marks of OCLC, Inc. Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks/service marks of their respective owners.

Recent earthquake in Southern California

MAP 3.8 2008/07/29 11:51:52 33.959N 117.809W 15.3 5 km ( 3 mi) SSE of Diamond Bar, CA

MAP 3.8 2008/07/29 11:51:29 33.941N 117.790W 16.8 6 km ( 4 mi) N of Yorba Linda, CA

MAP 5.4 2008/07/29 11:42:15 33.955N 117.765W 13.6 4 km ( 3 mi) WSW of Chino Hills, CA

ASPP Guidelines for "Best Practices for Locating Copyright Owners of Photographic and Visual Art".

The American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) has just posted its "Best Practices for Locating Copyright Owners of Photographic and Visual Art". These guidelines can be found at http://www.aspp.com/pages/257/189/0/

Any questions to Cathy D-P Sachs , Executive Director , American Society of Picture Professionals
Email: cathy@aspp.com
Phone: 703.299.0219
Fax: 703.299.9910
http://www.aspp.com

Mellon Foundation Essay of Scholarly Publishing Initiatives

Scholarly Publishing Initiatives

2007 Annual Report

Donald J. Waters
Program Officer for Scholarly Communications

Joseph S. Meisel
Program Officer for Higher Education

In 2007, the Scholarly Communications and Research University and Humanistic Scholarship programs collaborated in launching two new initiatives in the area of scholarly publishing, one aimed at increasing the capacity of university presses to publish first books by junior scholars in fields where publication opportunities have become constrained, the other at strengthening the substantive relationship between university presses and their home institutions. These initiatives are described in greater detail in the President’s Report (on pages 16 and 22). This essay is intended to provide some background by focusing on the factors that prompted staff to direct Foundation resources in these particular ways. It begins with an overview of the conditions under which scholarly publishing is currently carried out in university presses. This summary is followed by a brief outline of historical concerns about the role and functions of university presses and a discussion of previous Foundation efforts to support scholarly publishing. Finally, this essay turns to the two new initiatives and considers their objectives in the broader context outlined in the previous two sections.

Full Essay

Digital Copyright Slider

From the Copyright Advisory Network, the Office for Information Technology Policy is now featuring the digital copyright slider to go alongside the first-life slider. Thanks to Michael Brewer, OITP Copyright Advisory Committee member and desiger of both tools.

Digital Copyright Slider -- http://librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/

link: http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/?p=557

The Scholarly Kitchen: What's Hot and Cooking in Scholarly Publishing?

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) has established the Scholarly Kitchen - a comprehensive resource and place to go to for exciting dialogue on current trends and information on what's happening in the scholarly publishing community!

The blog, launched this spring, is primarily written by Kent Anderson, an SSP board member and Executive Director, International Business & Product Development at Massachusetts Medical Society/The New England Journal of Medicine. Other frequent contributors include Howard Ratner of the Nature Publishing Group and Phil Davis from Cornell University.

The moderated blog keeps all those interested in scholarly publishing at the forefront of new developments in publishing by pointing to relevant research reports and projects and helps to interpret the significance of this information in a balanced and, occasionally, provocative way. The Scholarly Kitchen also reports and translates findings from related business endeavors in other areas of publishing as well as from online businesses and other related emerging trends.

Since launching, the Scholarly Kitchen has had over 9200 hits and has featured top posts like The "h-index": An Objective Mismeasure? and Market-based Solution to Info-glut.

Come visit us at the Scholarly Kitchen :
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/ and join us for A Balanced Diet of Ideas, Interpretation, and Inspiration!

Submitted on behalf of the Society for Scholarly Publishing by Karen King

DOE Data Explorer (DDE)

From Jannean Elliott on OSTIBlog <http://www.osti.gov/ostiblog/>

If you're ready to discover data, then OSTI's newest product is ready for you! The DOE Data Explorer (DDE) <http://www.osti.gov/dataexplorer> is a unique tool that identifies collections of Department of Energy sponsored numeric files, figures and data plots, multimedia and images, computer simulations, specialized databases, and interactive data maps. Browse, run a quick search, or advanced search, then click a link to results. You'll be amazed at the data you can freely see and use, the highly specialized interfaces developed by the owners of the data that will help you delve deeper into their collections, and the software toolkits that allow you to manipulate, compare, visualize, download, and re-use the data.

The DOE Data Explorer will guide you to data collections at national laboratories, data centers, scientific user facilities, colleges and universities ...and across all of the science areas with DOE involvement. The DOE Data Explorer development team sifted through hundreds of these websites so that you would not have to, selecting each collection for inclusion according to strict criteria. <http://www.osti.gov/dde/faq.html>

The Department of Energy has several data centers <http://www.osti.gov/dde/datacenter.html> that provide excellent collections and expert services. Each of these centers specializes in data belonging to a specific subject area or scientific discipline. The DOE Data Explorer will help you find those centers and their collections. However, its unique usefulness is in helping you find the collections that are NOT in a data center. In addition, what if you want to do cross-disciplinary research? Or what if you don't even know what data might be out there or what discipline it might belong to? You need a data discovery tool that will allow you to see ALL of DOE's data - regardless of scientific discipline, regardless of format, and, even, regardless of where the data collection resides. The DOE Data Explorer can do that.

Is it possible that the team missed a collection somewhere? Yes, of course. This is why we invite each one of you out there to let us know if we neglected to include a collection of data that you generate or maintain or even just use. The DOE Data Explorer website has a comment form <http://www.osti.gov/dde/comment.html>, and we want you to use it!

Stay tuned to the OSTI blog <http://www.osti.gov/ostiblog> over the next few weeks as we write about the data included in the DOE Data Explorer. We will try to give you a feel for the vast amount of unique information represented by this exciting new product.

Tim Byrne
Information International Associates, Inc.
DOE/Office of Scientific and Technical Information
P.O. Box 62
Oak Ridge,TN 37831
Phone: 865-241-2358
E-mail: byrnet@osti.gov

British Medical Journal to shift to 'continuous publication'

BMJ 2008;336:1450 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a491

Editorials

Continuous publication

The next logical step

The BMJ is about to undergo another shift in the way that it publishes its content, which we hope will provide benefits for both readers and authors. From the beginning of July we will be publishing content continuously on bmj.com. All our articles will be published on line as they become ready, so bmj.com will update several times a day. Once published, articles will then be selected for a subsequent print issue.

Why are we doing this? It’s a logical extension of what we’ve been doing for some time with online first publication of research, and it will give all articles the benefit of faster publication.¹ This makes most sense in the context of research, news, and other topical items, but all authors appreciate seeing their work published as soon as possible.

Continuous publication also gives readers more flexibility in the way they engage with our content: as a continuous . . . [Full text of this article]

Fiona Godlee, editor, Tony Delamothe, deputy editor, Jane Smith, deputy editor

¹ BMJ, London WC1H 9JR

jsmith@bmj.com

Citation Statistics; report from IMU of imapct factors and citation ranking

International Mathematical Union announces Citation Statistics report
Numbers with a number of problems

http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Report/CitationStatistics

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

The International Mathematical Union today released the Citation Statistics report. Citation-based statistics, such as the impact factor, are often used to assess scientific research, but are they the best measures of research quality? Three international mathematics organizations have today released a report, Citation Statistics, on the use of citations in assessing research quality – a topic that is of increasing interest throughout the world's scientific community.

The report is written from a mathematical perspective and strongly cautions against the over-reliance on citation statistics such as the impact factor and h-index. These are often promoted because of the belief in their accuracy, objectivity, and simplicity, but these beliefs are unfounded.

Among the report’s key findings:

• Statistics are not more accurate when they are improperly used; statistics can mislead when they are misused or misunderstood.
• The objectivity of citations is illusory because the meaning of citations is not well-understood. A citation's meaning can be very far from "impact".
• While having a single number to judge quality is indeed simple, it can lead to a shallow under-standing of something as complicated as research. Numbers are not inherently superior to sound judgments.
  

The report promotes the sensible use of citation statistics in evaluating research and points out several common misuses. It is written by mathematical scientists about a widespread application of mathematics. While the authors of the report recognize that assessment must be practical and that easily- derived citation statistics will be part of the process, they caution that citations provide only a limited and incomplete view of research quality.

Research is too important, they say, to measure its value with only a single coarse tool.

The report was commissioned by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the International Council on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). It draws upon a broad literature on the use of citation data to evaluate research, including articles on the impact factor (the most common citation-
based statistic) and the h-index along with its many variants. The work was also based on practices as reported from mathematicians and other scientists from around the world.

IMU, ICIAM, IMS
About the International Mathematical Union (IMU): IMU is an international non-governmental and non-profit scientific organization, with the purpose of promoting international cooperation in mathematics. More information at http://www.mathunion.org/.

Contact: Martin Groetschel, Secretary of the International Mathematical Union
Zuse Institute Berlin, Takustr. 7 D-14195 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: secretary@mathunion.org, phone: +49 30 84185 210

To Share or Not To Share: Publication and Quality Assurance of Research Data Results

Recently released report from UK Research Information Network (RIN) http://www.rin.ac.uk/data-publication has a summary as well as links to the full report. The report is based upon analysis on 100+ in-depth interviews.

Couple of suggestive results to us are:

1. a number of factors (e.g. lack of explicit career rewards, a wish to retain exclusive use of the data until their publication value has been exhausted, a lack of time, resources, expertise, or an appropriate archive service) constrain the publishing of research data; and
   
2. there is need for evaluating quality of research data and making them more searchable accessible, and usable.

UC Irvine 10 Things winner!

After ten months since the program was announced I was awarded the "First Finisher" of the UC Irvine 10 Things Library event. Wow! I finished the ten Web 2.0 tasks before Thanksgiving 2007 so we can get to the main issue - using these tools in a practical sense. Let us move forward, please ...

Microsoft Pulls Plug on Live Search Books

Microsoft Pulls Plug on Live Search Books
By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 5/23/2008 8:53:00 AM
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6563730.html?nid=2286&source=title&rid=

In an early morning post, Microsoft announced that it is ending Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and taking down both sites. Through the programs, Microsoft has digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles. Those results will now be integrated into general search results. Effective immediately, Microsoft has stopped digitizing new materials in both its library scanning and in-copyright book programs.

According to Microsoft, "based on our experience, we foresee that the best way for a search engine to make book content available will be by crawling content repositories created by book publishers and libraries."

Microsoft will be providing publishers with digital copies of their scanned books, and is working with Ingram Digital, which was doing much of the scanning, to provide publishers with sales and marketing opportunities for titles already in Live Search Books.

From Publisher's Weekly -- see also the blog post - http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2008/05/23/book-search-winding-down.aspx

Microsoft Announcement
http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2008/05/23/book-search-winding-down.aspx

New York Times
Friday news brief: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/technology/24soft.html?ex=1369281600&en=04f58de95a70d498&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Fuller article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/technology/24soft.html?ex=1369368000&en=afece5de206c92e4&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Internet Archive Statement
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=194217

PLoS Biology article on teaching evolution and creationism in high-school biology classes

Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait

Michael B. Berkman^*, Julianna Sandell Pacheco, Eric Plutzer

Citation: Berkman MB, Pacheco JS, Plutzer E (2008) Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait. PLoS Biol 6(5): e124 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124

Published: May 20, 2008

Copyright: © 2008 Berkman et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abbreviations: ID, intelligent design; NSES, National Science Education Standards

Michael B. Berkman is Professor of Political Science, Julianna Sandell Pacheco is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, and Eric Plutzer is Professor of Political Science and Academic Director of the Penn State Survey Research Center in the Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America.

Create an avatar Mii for Wii

Create your own unique avatar (called a "Mii" for the Wii) online at: http://nosheep.net/story/create-your-mii/.

ARL Scholarly Communication Discussion Guides Updated and Expanded

ARL Scholarly Communication Discussion Guides Updated and Expanded

Washington DC--The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Office of Scholarly Communication has enhanced its popular series of free discussion guides on current scholarly communication issues to facilitate summer discussion programs among library staff.

As the scholarly communication system continues to change rapidly, the Library Brown-Bag Lunch Series on Issues in Scholarly Communication is a valuable resource for library staff to use in expanding their own awareness of key issues and preparing for campus outreach. The series now offers eight guides and a discussion leader's introduction. Entirely new discussion guides on new model publications and author rights have been created. The series now includes both an introductory guide for discussions of author rights and a second guide for discussions of institutional policies on author rights. Several others of the original guides have been revised to reflect advancements occurring in the past year and new suggestions for further reading have been added.

ARL's discussion series was developed by Karla Hahn, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication, and covers:

• Starting discussions of scholarly communication
• Talking with faculty
• Access to publicly funded research
• Author rights
• Institutional strategies for rights management
• Scholarly society roles
• Peer review
• New model publications

Each guide offers prework and discussion questions for a meeting, along with resources that provide further background for the discussion leader of an hour-long session. The guides can serve as a starting point for a single discussion or for a series of conversations.

Using the discussion guides, library leaders can launch a program quickly without requiring special expertise on the topics. A brown-bag series could be initiated by a library director, a group of staff, or by any staff person with an interest in the scholarly communication system. The only requirements are the willingness to organize the gatherings and facilitate each meeting's discussion.

Electronic copies of the guides are freely available at http://www.arl.org/sc/brownbag/.

Webcat of Scholar2Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication

Webcast of the the 5th Annual Scholarly Communication Symposium: Scholar2Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication is now available from its web site: http://scholar2scholar.wikispaces.com/

See:

Watch webcast: Jean-Claude Bradley’s presentation
Watch webcast: Panel discussion

See also: Round Table Discussion for notes from various topics discussed and Further Reading on additional readings on Web 2.0 and scholarship.

Panelists

Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor, Chemistry, Drexel University
Andre Brown, Ph.D. Candidate, Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania
Nicole Engard, Open Source Evangelist, LibLime
James Mitchell, Associate Professor, Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering, Drexel University
Banu Onaral, H. H. Sun Professor & Director, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science & Health Systems
Beth Ritter-Guth, Instructor of English & Communication, Lehigh Carbon Community College
Scott Warnock, Assistant Professor, English & Philosophy, Drexel University.

Panel Moderator: Karl Okamoto, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Business and Entrepreneurship Law Concentration, Drexel College of Law.

From: Jay Bhatt, Information Services Librarian (Engineering), Drexel University

This article, "New Open-Access Humanities Press Makes Its Debut" is available online at this address:

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=jghhr4Qw8wcwVqhpx3Jwq9pMt4mMFJmd

This article will be available to non-subscribers of The Chronicle for up to five days after it is e-mailed.

New Open-Access Humanities Press Makes Its Debut

By JENNIFER HOWARD

Scholars in the sciences have been light-years ahead of their peers in the humanities in exploring the possibilities of open-access publishing. But a new venture with prominent academic backers, the Open Humanities Press, wants to help humanists close the gap.

The nonprofit operation—described by those involved...

http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/05/2759n.htm

About Open Humanities Press
Gary Hall and Sigi Jottkandt met with faculty and librarians at UC Irvine on April 3, 2008 in a stimulating discussion. I know that I got a lot of useful information, and I sensed that it may have been the same for each of you. Here is a group of urls compiled by Maureen Burns (thank you, Maureen!), to which I've added a few, that came out of the meeting. I've also indicated where participants in today's meeting have affiliations with these journals/repositories, etc. If any of you would like to add others, or if you have some fine-tuning to the following, please respond to this e-list.

I also have gotten feedback from some of you expressing further interest in the e-Scholarship repository, for which I imagine a few of us could put together a workshop. Let me know if you have other ideas that came out of this meeting.

Open Humanities Press http://openhumanitiespress.org/ (Co-Founders: Gary Hall and Sigi Jottkandt)
Postmodern Culture http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/contents.all.html (Editor: Eyal Amiran)
Project MUSE http://muse.jhu.edu/about/index.html
Council of Editors of Learned Journals http://www.celj.org/history.php
Karagarga Info (e-mail Mark Poster poster@uci.edu for an invite) http://criticalculture.blogspot.com/2007/03/karagarga.html
UC CDL eScholarship Repository http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/
Journal for Learning through the Arts http://repositories.cdlib.org/clta/lta/ (Systems Administrator: Maureen Burns; Copy Editor, Barbara Cohen)
ibiblio http://www.ibiblio.org/
Public Knowledge Project http://pkp.sfu.ca/
Open Journal Systems http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs
Sample of Journals http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs-journals
First Monday http://www.firstmonday.dk/
Culture Machine http://www.culturemachine.net (Co Executive Editor: Gary Hall)
Cultural Studies e-archive (CSeARCH) http://www.culturemachine.net/csearch (Gary Hall)
Thomson Scientific http://scientific.thomson.com/

Make Textbooks Affordable campaign
http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/textbooks.asp?id2=14215
Open Students
http://www.openstudents.org/

Open Access Directory by Peter Suber and Robin Peek

Open Access Directory: A wiki to organize information about the open access movement

Boston, April 30, 2008. Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project in order to collect OA-related lists for one-stop reference and searching.

The wiki will start operating with about half a dozen lists --for example, conferences devoted to open access, discussion forums devoted to open access, and journal "declarations of independence"-- and add more over time.

The goal is to harness the knowledge and energy of the open access community itself to enlarge and correct the lists. A list on a wiki, revised continuously by its users, can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about open access.

The URL for the Open Access Directory is http://oad.simmons.edu .

To contact us, email Athanasia Pontika, the Assistant Editor (OAD.contact@gmail.com), or the Editorial Board (OAD.editors@gmail.com).

The wiki is represented by an editorial board consisting of prominent figures in the open access movement. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Simmons College hosts and provides technical support to the OAD.
http://www.simmons.edu/gslis/


Editors and administrators
Robin Peek. Editor, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College
Athanasia Pontika. Assistant Editor, Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College
Terry Plum. Technical Coordinator, Assistant Dean for Technology and Director, Simmons GSLIS at Mount Holyoke College
Editorial board members
Charles Bailey. Publisher, Digital Scholarship
Leslie Chan. Program Supervisor for New Media Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough
Heather Joseph. Executive Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Melissa Hagemann. Open Society Institute
Peter Suber. Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School, and Senior Researcher at SPARC
Alma Swan. Key Perspectives Ltd
John Wilbanks. Vice President, Creative Commons

About the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII)

Berkeley Research Impact Initiative:
Advancing the Impact of UC Berkeley Research

co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Research and the University Librarian

The Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) supports faculty members, post-docs, and graduate students who want to make their journal articles free to all readers immediately upon publication.
An 18-month pilot program, BRII will subsidize, in various degrees, fees charged to authors who select open access or paid access publication. The pilot will also yield data that can be used to gauge faculty interest in — as well as the budgetary impacts of — these new modes of scholarly communication on the Berkeley campus.
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/brii/

About the speaker: Charles (Chuck) Eckman is the Associate university Librarian and Director of Collections at the University of California, Berkeley where he provides leadership for the library's collections and scholarly communications programs. Prior to coming to Cal in June 2006, he worked at Stanford university as Head of Social Sciences Resource group (1997-2006) and Principal Government Documents Librarian (1995-20060. While at Stanford he also served as project director for the GATT Digital Library, a collaborative endeavor with the World Trade Organization aimed at digitizing and providing access to the historic record of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade <http:/gatt.stanford.edu/>. He also served as consultant to the California Digital Library (2002-2003) on a project sponsored by the Mellon Foundation assessing the challenges of preserving web-based government information. He holds an MLIS from UC Berkeley (1987) , Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton (1986), and BA in Political Science from Indiana (1979). His intellectual and professional energies are focused on expanding both scholarly and public access to research, a passion he attributes to his expriences working as a government documents depository librarian.

The New Polish Selena? My 15 minutes...

I was looking at this because I'm Don DeLillo fan, but then I saw the sidebar ad...and thought for a second that it was a picture of Mitchell!

http://www.theonion.com/content/magazine/author_tom_delillo

Meet the Polish Selena, April 11, 2008

• 

Steven R. Harris

Collection Development Librarian

Utah State University

(435) 797-3861

http://collections2point0.wordpress.com/

Down with E-Reserves - Andrew Albanese , Library Journal (10/1/2007)

Down with E-Reserves
Confusing, contentious, and vital, e-reserves fuel higher education—and an ongoing copyright battle
By Andrew Albanese -- Library Journal, 10/1/2007

"Although it claims the copying is in excess of what is permitted as fair use, the publishers do not offer a specific discussion of what it considers to be the bounds of fair use, nor does it adequately define course packs, nor offer any interpretation of the cited cases against copy shops, other than to broadly claim that they act as guiding precedence." Claire Stewart, Northwestern University

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6483876.html

Copyright lawsuit - Cambridge University Press et al v Carl V. Patton et al (GSU) (April 2008)

If you haven't kept up on the recent lawsuit against Georgia State regarding online course materials, an excellent, and pointed, summary is given (if I may be permitted to plug a local resource) by Claire Stewart at her Northwestern University Library Copyright blog
http://www.library.northwestern.edu/blog/nulcopyright/2008/04/what_does_the_lawsuit_against.html

Bob Michaelson
Northwestern University Library
Evanston, Illinois 60208
USA
rmichael@northwestern.edu

New Copyright Report from study group (on copyright in digital environment)

This meaty report is worth perusing, with implications for all of us (incl. ILL and digital preservation) if recommendations for legislative change are adopted and enacted.
http://www.section108.gov/docs/Sec108StudyGroupReport.pdf

American Libraries story on it:
http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2008/april2008/copyrightreport.cfm

"The Section 108 Study Group was co-chaired by Laura N. Gasaway,
associate dean for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina
School of Law, and Richard S. Rudick, former senior vice president and
general counsel of John Wiley and Sons. The Library of Congress acted as
a facilitator for the study group but had no influence over its
conclusions."

ACRL has slated an Onpoint Chat session April 29 on this:
http://www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlproftools/OnPoint/onpoint.cfm#schedule

ALA Washington Office Section 108 Website:
http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/woissues/copyrightb/section108/Section108.cfm

RLG Partner Copyright Investigation Summary Report

RLG Partner Copyright Investigation Summary Report
is now available. This report summarizes interviews conducted between August and September 2007 with staff from eight partner institutions. Interviewees shared information about how and why institutions investigate and collect copyright evidence, both for mass digitization
projects and for items in special collections. This report is one of the deliverables of the Contribute to the Development of a Registry of Copyright Evidence Project
<http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/infrastructures/newservice/copyright.htm> that is part of our Create New Structures and Service Areas
<http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/infrastructures/newservice/default.htm> work agenda program.


Participating partner institutions and staff include:

Cornell University
Peter Hirtle

Emory University
Lisa Macklin

New York Public Library
Tom Lisanti

Rutgers University
Grace Agnew

Stanford University
Mimi Calter

University of California, Los Angeles
Angela Riggio

University of Michigan
Judy Aronheim

University of Texas at Austin
Dennis Dillon

RLG Programs is grateful to these partner institutions and staff for participating in this project and sharing their knowledge and perspectives to form the basis for this report.

You may link directly to the report here:
www.oclc.org/programs/publications/2008-01.pdf

Minor earthquake shakes Newport Beach area

By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 27, 2008

A magnitude 3.1 earthquake was recorded near Newport Beach Thursday evening, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The temblor struck at 9:28 p.m. at an underground depth of 4.7 miles.

The earthquake's force was recorded as far as the Los Angeles Civic Center 36 miles away.

There were no reports of injuries.

Paper on Building Digital Libraries for Scientific Data

A 2006 paper presented at the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, "Building Digital Libraries for Scientific Data: An exploratory study of data practices in habitat ecology" appears to address many of the issues that were discussed at
the meeting in Philadelphia in January. Attitudes of scientists toward sharing data, presentability, cleanup and publishing are all addressed in this piece which is available at:

SUGGESTED CITATION:
C L. Borgman, Jillian C. Wallis, and Noel Enyedy, "Building Digital Libraries for Scientific Data: An Exploratory Study of Data Practices in Habitat Ecology" (September 1, 2006). UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Publications. Paper ecdl06.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/gseis/pubs/ecdl06

ARL study of new model publications

Invitation to participate in ARL Study of Emerging New Model Publications

About the study

ARL is conducting a study of new kinds of scholarly works, generally described as new-model publications. A field study will begin April 1 that will engage librarian volunteers in interviewing faculty members at their institutions to learn about new model publications that are currently in use by scholars and researchers. ARL has contracted with Ithaka to manage the field study and to write a final report based on an analysis of the collected works. The field study will be open to participation by individual librarians and to libraries that wish to engage all of their liaison librarians. Participating librarians are asked to commit to conducting a minimum of one faculty member interview between April 1, 2008 and June 1, 2008. The database of collected works will be made available as a publicly accessible web resource with the release of the study’s final report, but during the field study phase only participants will have access to the information gathered.

Who can participate

Participation in the study is open to institutions and individuals. Libraries can partner in the field study by committing to participation by all of their liaison librarians. Individual librarians can volunteer to join the field study team. Three institutions are already partnering in the field study activities and are assisting in the development of training and support mechanisms for the field study team members. The University of British Columbia, Cornell University, and the University of Washington are playing this role.

Participation is also open to individual librarians willing to make the commitment to interview at least one faculty member at their institution. Participation is not limited to librarians at ARL member libraries. While a special invitation to participate is extended to alumni of the Institute on Scholarly Communication, any interested librarian can participate as an interviewer. Institute alumni should feel free to extend an invitation to participate to colleagues.

Why participate

Many librarians are initiating conversations with faculty members from their user communities to build understanding of their scholarly communication practices. Data collection for the field study provides a reason to initiate a conversation and a structure for a positive discussion of change in scholarly communication. The field study conversation can focus just on the study question or can be part of a more extended conversation covering additional topics of local concern. The time commitment is quite brief; field study participants can choose to speak to several faculty members or only one. The exploratory conversation can occur in a half hour or less while the other time commitments are for learning about the interview guide and entering any information gathered into a database of new model publications. The database will include only basic data from the interview or information that can be collected by inspecting the web publication.

How to register

To register as an individual field study team member complete the registration form at https://www.formspring.com/forms/?248527-DZgG1MAKU9.

Libraries wishing to partner in the field study should contact Karla Hahn karla@arl.org.

What is involved

To participate as a field study librarian, individuals will

· View an instructional webcast and otherwise familiarize themselves with the study interview guide.

· Interview at least one faculty member to identify new model publications in her/his research specialty.

· Enter basic information on new model publications identified by faculty members into the study’s database.

------

Karla Hahn, Director

Office of Scholarly Communications

Association of Research Libraries

21 Dupont Circle

Washington, D.C. 20036

voice: 202-296-2296

fax: 202-872-0884

email: karla@arl.org