Bookshelf Porn - Porn for book lovers.

Bookshelf Porn

Porn for book lovers. A photo blog collection of all the best bookshelf photos from around the world for people who *heart* bookshelves.

http://bookshelfporn.com/

Report from the SOAP Symposium - 13 January 2011, Berlin

Report from the SOAP Symposium

The SOAP project (Study of Open Access Publishing), presented its final results on January 13^th, 2011 in Berlin to an audience of publishers, librarians and funding agencies, including the European Commission.

The project, which runs from March 2009 to February 2011 describes and analyses the open access (OA) publishing landscape and provides facts and evidence allowing libraries, publishers and funding agencies to assess drivers and barriers, risks and opportunities in the transition to OA publishing.

The event showcased the main findings of the project regarding:

• the OA publishing landscape (http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSoap/soap-symposiumtalki);
• the beliefs and attitudes of researchers in respect of OA publishing (http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSoap/soap-symposiumtalkii);
• and the drivers and the barriers for the submission of articles to OA journals (http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSoap/soap-symposiumtalkiii).

The key findings of the project are:

• The number of OA articles published in “full” or “hybrid” OA journals was around 120’000 in 2009, some 8-10% of the estimated yearly global scientific output (see also http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0506). Journals offering a “hybrid” OA option had a take-up of around 2%.
• OA journals in several disciplines (including Life Sciences, Medicine, and Earth Sciences) are of outstanding quality, and have Impact Factors in the top 1-2% of their disciplines.
• Out of some 40’000 published scholars who answered a large-scale online survey, approximately 90% are convinced that OA journals are or would be beneficial for their field. The main reasons given for this view are: benefit for the scientific community as a whole; financial issues; public good; and benefit to the individual scientist. The vast majority disagrees with the idea that OA journals are either of low quality or undermine the process of peer review.
• A separate survey of scientists who published in OA journals reveals that their drivers for this choice were the free availability of the content to readers and the quality of the journal, as well as the speed of publication and, in some cases, the fact that no fee had to be paid directly by the author.
• The main barriers encountered by 5’000 scientists who would like to publish in OA journals but did not manage to do so are funding (for 39% of them) and the lack of journals of sufficient quality in their field (for 30%)

Google Art Project - digital images and art

Google Art Project: http://www.googleartproject.com/

Google is tackling the brave new world of digital images and art.

What is the ‘Art Project’?

A unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.

• Explore museums with Street View technology: virtually move around the museum’s galleries, selecting works of art that interest you, navigate though interactive floor plans and learn more about the museum and you explore.
• Artwork View: discover featured artworks at high resolution and use the custom viewer to zoom into paintings. Expanding the info panel allows you to read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.
• Create your own collection: the ‘Create an Artwork Collection’ feature allows you to save specific views of any of the 1000+ artworks and build your own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family.

Why is there a difference between the museums in terms of the number of galleries, artworks and related information?

Google approached the museum partners without any curatorial direction, and each museum was able to chose the number of galleries, artwork and information they wanted to include, based on reasons specific to them. All content in the information panel pertaining to individual artworks was also provided by the museums.

Why are some areas or specific paintings in the museum Street View imagery blurred?

Some of the paintings and features captured with Street View were required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.

Are the images on the Art Project site copyright protected?

Yes. The high resolution imagery of artworks featured on the art project site are owned by the museums, and these images are protected by copyright laws around the world. The Street View imagery is owned by Google. All of the imagery on this site is provided for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the art project site, in the manner permitted by Google’s Terms of Service.