Mitchell C. Brown Project

Royal Society launches new open access membership

2012-01-16T12:23:00.000-08:00

Royal Society launches new open access membership programmes to encourage open access in scholarly communication

January 12, 2012

The Royal Society has this week confirmed that it is at the leading edge of open access in scientific publishing by launching two innovative new open access membership programmes.

The programmes allow institutions to support open access for their researchers by giving them a discount of 25% when they publish open access articles in the Royal Society’s renowned international scientific journals.

The new membership programmes acknowledge the growth of open access publishing as well as the increasing number of open access articles being published by scientists in the Royal Society’s journals.

The two new membership programmes have aroused interest from UK and international scientific institutions with three key Institutions signing up already. The Excellence in Science Membership is relevant for institutions publishing across all areas of science and Open Biology Membership for those who wish to just support researchers in the biological sciences at the cellular and molecular level. Institutions are given a personalised webpage on the Royal Society publishing site, showcasing their research and linking through to the full text of the article.

Speaking of the new membership programmes, Chair of the Royal Society Publishing Board, Professor Mike Brady, FRS commented, “The Royal Society is delighted to play such an active role in the future of open access publishing with the launch of Open Biology and the two new institutional membership programmes. Open access is an established means of delivering important scientific information to researchers wishing to access and publish content that is freely and openly available on the web.”

The Royal Society is one of the most ‘open access’ friendly of the established science publishers and its journals cover the broad spectrum of science from biology, physics through to mathematics, engineering and multidisciplinary sciences.

In 2005, the Royal Society introduced its first open access publishing model EXIS Open Choice, allowing authors to make their articles open-access via the payment of an article-processing fee. Following this, the Royal Society recently launched its first completely full open access journal Open Biology, publishing original, high quality research in the field of cell and molecular biology. All papers are made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution License permitting use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original work is cited.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

The Royal Society is the UK’s national academy of science. Founded in 1660, the Society has three roles, as a provider of independent scientific advice, as a learned Society, and as a funding agency. Our expertise is embodied in the Fellowship, which is made up of the finest scientists from the UK and beyond.

For further information on the Royal Society please visit royalsociety.org. Follow the Royal Society on Twitter at http://twitter.com/royalsociety or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/theroyalsociety .

For further information contact:

Daisy Barton

Press and Public Relations

The Royal Society, London

Tel: 020 7451 2510

Email: daisy.barton@royalsociety.org

Phil Hurst
Publisher
http://www.linkedin.com/in/philhurst

Tel +44 (0)20 7451 2630
Web royalsocietypublishing.org

The Royal Society
6-9 Carlton House Terrace
London SW1Y 5AG

Registered Charity No 207043
The Royal Society: supporting excellence in science

Royal Society Publishing offers authors a rapid and high quality publishing service. To find out more or to submit an article visit http://royalsocietypublishing.org/authors

JSTOR Register and Read

2012-01-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles

Chronicle of Higher Education - Wired Campus
January 13, 2012, 10:32 am

By Jennifer Howard

It’s about to get a little easier—emphasis on “a little”—for users without subscriptions to tap JSTOR’s enormous digital archive of journal articles. In the coming weeks, JSTOR will make available the beta version of a new program, Register & Read, which will give researchers read-only access to some journal articles, no payment required. All users have to do is to sign up for a free “MyJSTOR” account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles.

But there are limits. Users won’t be able to download the articles; they will be able to access only three at a time, and there will be a minimum viewing time frame of 14 days per article, which means that a user can’t consume lots of content in a short period. Depending on the journal and the publisher, users may have an option to pay for and download an article if they choose.

- More -

HathiTrust LibGuide

2012-01-13T14:19:00.000-08:00

HathiTrust Digital Library

LibGuide prepared by Washington University, St. Louis MO
http://libguides.wustl.edu/content.php?pid=269860&sid=2383922

What is the HathiTrust?
The HathiTrust is a partnership of major academic and research libraries collaborating in an extraordinary digital library initiative to preserve and provide access to the published record in digital form. Established in 2008 by 13 universities, it has grown to over 60 partners.

What Does the Name Mean?
hāthī (हाथी) (pronounced HAH-tee) is the Hindi word for elephant, an animal highly regarded for its memory, wisdom, and strength.

Springer launches interdisciplinary open access journal SpringerPlus

2012-01-13T11:52:00.000-08:00

Transparent and fast publication process for authors in a journal withguaranteed high scientific standards

Berlin / New York / London, 12 January 2012

Springer’s new open access journal SpringerPlus is a further additionto the publishing company’s SpringerOpen portfolio, underlining itsflexible publication strategy. It is the publisher’s first open accessjournal with a broad interdisciplinary approach covering the entirescientific spectrum. Papers from emerging areas of research arewelcome.

A transparent and fast publication process is the hallmark ofSpringerPlus. If a manuscript meets the necessary scientific criteriaas determined by peer review, the paper will be accepted immediatelyand without major revision. The only thing that counts is the highquality of research described. The peer review process is organizedefficiently so that authors can count on a very short time topublication. SpringerPlus is published as an online-only journal.

SpringerPlus will feature interdisciplinary manuscripts describingoriginal research, case studies and methods. The journal guarantees ahigh standard of scientific quality while extending the range of dataformats, accepting audiovisual formats, data reports, and extensivetables either as complete articles or part of the paper. There will beno restrictions on the number of words or figures, and articlesdetailing statistically negative correlation will be considered.

More information at www.springerplus.com

eScholarship Introduces New Submission Management System

2012-01-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

eScholarship Launches New Submission Management System

The eScholarship team is excited to announce the official launch of ournew submission management system.

This milestone marks the completion of a two-phased project, begun in 2009, to transition eScholarship (UC’s Open Accessscholarly publishing and institutional repository service) onto a new platform designed to better serve the publishing and dissemination needs of our users. The first phase of the project focused on creating a customized access interface for eScholarship content, emphasizing local branding and robust tools for interaction with the publications.

This most recent transition to a new submission management system has enabled increased flexibility and agile technical infrastructure, freeing us to adapt our services as user needs evolve and new research practices give rise to new forms of scholarship.

eScholarship's new submission management system provides users with targeted workflows for managing a range of publication types. Scholars working with any of eScholarship's 40+ original academic journals now have access to the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, favored by over 8,000 Open Access journals worldwide. OJS provides a robust, multi-lingual platform for managing the submission, peer review and editing processes associated with journal publishing. Scholars submitting other types of publications to eScholarship (including working papers, monographs and postprints) now benefit from an intuitive, streamlined submission management workflow built in-house by CDL.

In conjunction with the launch of this new system, the eScholarship team has developed a newhelp center for eScholarship administrators, editors, authors and reviewers. This help center features a series of shorttutorial videos that offer step-by-step instructions for completing specific tasks within the new submission management system, as well as detailedPDF manuals that provide more in-depth workflow description and instruction forusers.

Learn more about the advantages of publishing with eScholarship:

http://escholarship.org/publish_overview.html

View the eScholarship Help Center:

http://submit.escholarship.org/help

To inquire about publishing with eScholarship, contact us:

help@eScholarship.org

2012-01-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

Dissing the Dissertation
January 9, 2012 - 3:00am
By Scott Jaschik
Inside Higher Ed

Discussion at MLA 2012 (Seattle, 3-6 January 2012) about the evolution of the Ph.D. Dissertation, the length of time spent creating the document, and the role for digital publication, alternate forms of content, and the push to shorten the time to complete the Ph.D.

"The average humanities doctoral student takes nine years to earn a Ph.D. That fact was cited frequently here (and not with pride) at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Richard E. Miller, an English professor at Rutgers University's main campus in New Brunswick, said that the nine-year period means that those finishing dissertations today started them before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Kindles, iPads or streaming video had been invented."

"The MLA's discussion of the dissertation is in some ways an outgrowth of a much-discussed report issued by the association in 2006 about tenure and promotion practices. That report questioned the idea that producing monographs should be the determining factor in tenure decisions. When the report was released, many MLA leaders said that the ideas the association was endorsing also called for reconsideration of graduate education, and especially of the dissertation.
As part of the process of encouraging change, the MLA recently conducted a survey of its doctoral-granting departments. Among the findings:

62 percent of departments reported that their graduate schools have guidelines for dissertations, but most of those guidelines are general, dealing with issues such as timelines, composition of committees and so forth, and not dictating the form of a dissertation.
33 percent of departments have written descriptions of what kind of dissertation is expected of graduate students.
Minorities of departments have specific rules authorizing nontraditional formats for dissertations, and even smaller minorities of departments have approved a dissertation using one of those formats.
Of those with traditional dissertation length requirements, the range of minimums was 150 to 400 pages. Most maximums were 400 to 500 pages."

UC Library Reprints Service Launches

2011-12-02T11:16:00.001-08:00

Do you need holiday gift ideas? The UC Library Reprints service has been launched just in time! In partnership with Hewlett-Packard, many public domain volumes digitized from the UC libraries by Internet Archive and Google are now available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Currently, approximately 30,000 books are directly linked from HathiTrust via a "Buy a copy" link to a UC-branded portal (http://uc.bookprep.com) where users can view the HP-prepared version of the text and follow a link to purchase it on Amazon. Additional books are being ingested into the service continuously.

Three different possible access points exist for reprints: the "Buy a copy" link in HathiTrust described above, the BookPrep portal site, and Amazon.com. The Hathi links are intended to facilitate serendipitous discovery, while users specifically searching for titles available as reprints should be directed to the BookPrep site. Amazon's catalog will help to bring the reprints to a larger audience.

Here are a few examples:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822013514203
http://uc.bookprep.com/book/uc2.ark:/13960/t6tx36d5m
http://uc.bookprep.com/book/uc2.ark:/13960/t9g44ms65

http://www.amazon.com/Biographical-dictionary-followers-imitators-important/dp/1125241810/

Further information about the Reprints service is available on CDL's website: http://www.cdlib.org/services/collections/massdig/pod.html

CWRU Colloquium on Building a Culture for Digital Scholarship

2011-12-01T07:59:00.001-08:00

Videos Now Available: Case Western Reserve University Colloquium on Building a Culture for Digital Scholarship

On November 7-8, 2011, Case Western Reserve University held the Freedman Center Colloquium on Building a Culture for Digital Scholarship. The colloquium addressed the nature and state of digital scholarship, the support and infrastructure necessary to ensure faculty and student success, the changes in the academic culture that are essential for digital scholarship to thrive, and new forms of scholarly communication that are underway or essential to exploit the advantages of digital scholarship.

The Colloquium was organized under the aegis of the Freedman Center of the Kelvin Smith Library, in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences, and University Information Technology Services.

A playlist listing all of the sessions is available at:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL01C4BA2386A6553A

Below is a listing of the individual presentations, the names and affiliations of the speakers, and the URLs for each of the separate videos:

1. “Introduction to the Program.” Arnold Hirshon, Associate Provost and University Librarian, Case Western Reserve University

“Scholars and the Mind.” Dr. Laura Mandell, Professor of English and Associate Director of NINES, co-director of 18thConnect, and the director of the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture, Texas A & M University.

http://youtu.be/bnDLPuab91g

2. “Advancing Digital Scholarship.” Speaker: Stephen Chapman, Project Manager, Harvard Law School Library, Digital Lab. http://youtu.be/x19ojMr5k2E

3. “Cultural Change in Higher Education and Advanced Research: What We Are Learning.” Dr. Amy Friedlander, Senior Advisor in the Office of the Assistant Director of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences at the US National Science Foundation. http://youtu.be/281ytedJ7h4

4. “New Forms of Scholarly Communication.” Speaker: Dr. Neni Panourgia, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, and affiliated faculty at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Culture, and the Harriman Institute. http://youtu.be/ttSouSIc0is

5. “Moving Forward: A Panel Discussion.” Panelists: Dr. Laura Mandell; Stephen Chapman; Neni Panourgia; Dean Cyrus Taylor (CWRU Arts and Sciences); Lev Gonick (CWRU Vice President for Information Technology Services). Moderator: Arnold Hirshon (CWRU Associate Provost and University Librarian) http://youtu.be/WXgrgP6E4Fk

For further information, please contact: Arnold Hirshon, Associate Provost and University Librarian, Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University arnold.hirshon@case.edu 216-368-0688

The Occupy Wall Street Library Regrows in Manhattan | American Libraries Magazine

2011-11-16T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Occupy Wall Street Library Regrows in Manhattan | American Libraries Magazine
Christina Zabriske
American Libraries, Wed, 11/16/2011 - 12:05

"The People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street was destroyed in the early morning hours of November 15. Without warning or provocation hundreds of militarized New York police officers cleared the park starting at 1 a.m. The library was torn down in the dark of night and its books, laptops, archives, and support materials were thrown into dumpsters by armed police and city sanitation workers. Numerous library staff were arrested, and, in one case, a librarian strapped the notebooks of original poetry from the library’s poetry readings to her body before lending aid to comrades who had been pepper-sprayed."

"Prior to its destruction, the library had reached new levels of growth with laptops, a Wi-Fi hub, and a tent donated by author and rock legend Patti Smith and dubbed “Fort Patti.” The library also had thousands of circulating volumes. Library staff rightfully prided themselves on their collection, the entirety of which was donated by private citizens and corporations for the general public good. The collection included the holy books of every faith, books reflecting the entire political spectrum, and works for all ages on a huge range of topics. These were thrown into dumpsters amidst tents, tables, blankets, and anything else on the Zuccotti Park site."

"Amidst it all, there was also a functioning library, a small one under fire, but a library just the same. While the future of the Wall Street occupation is unclear, these protesters still believe in what libraries offer everyone. For these activists “The library is open” has become a battle cry."

CHRISTIAN ZABRISKIE is the founder of Urban Librarians Unite and coauthor of Grassroots Library Advocacy: A Special Report (ALA Editions, 2012).

Ed. note: Late Wednesday morning, the Occupy movement launched Occupy Educated, explaining the action as “an emergency response to the destruction of the library at Occupy Wall Street, a clear attempt to destroy the education of passionate people who are tired of living in a deeply flawed system. Razing libraries and burning books has historically failed every time; this will be the most colossal failure to repress education in history, because the education will not be centralized.”

American Libraries, Wed, 11/16/2011 - 12:05

Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science

2011-11-10T12:40:00.001-08:00

The New Einsteins Will Be Scientists Who Share

From cancer to cosmology, researchers could race ahead by working together—online and in the open

By MICHAEL NIELSEN Wall Street Journal OCTOBER 29, 2011

In January 2009, a mathematician at Cambridge University named Tim Gowers decided to use his blog to run an unusual social experiment. He picked out a difficult mathematical problem and tried to solve it completely in the open, using his blog to post ideas and partial progress. He issued an open invitation for others to contribute their own ideas, hoping that many minds would be more powerful than one. He dubbed the experiment the Polymath Project.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653573191370088.html

The Rowland papers: UC Irvine Special Collections

2011-11-10T08:26:00.001-08:00

The Rowland papers

UCI Libraries Special Collections & Archives unveil Nobel laureate's research archives

Deep in the dusty basement at Rowland Hall, more than 300 cartons filled with papers, photos, videos, transparencies, slides, cartoons, audio tapes, books and more lay in disarray that belied the meticulous scientific precision of their owner – F. Sherwood Rowland.

When the Nobel laureate in chemistry donated it all to UC Irvine Libraries’ Department of Special Collections & Archives in 2009, archivists began a kind of archaeological dig. They sorted, labeled, and cataloged scientific research and personal correspondence, and what has emerged is a portrait of a man internationally recognized not only for his work in the laboratory, but also for his efforts to inform other scientists, the public, and policymakers about threats posed by chemical pollutants to Earth’s atmosphere.

<more>

Mitchell Brown, exhibit curator and research librarian for Chemistry, Earth System Science and Russian Studies, says the collection is available to researchers who want to peruse the hand-written notes, lab cards and more. The only thing missing, he says, is the actual notebook in which the CFC discovery is noted. That notebook belongs to Molina.

Calling Rowland the "Galileo story of his time," Brown says much of the correspondence shows the atmospheric chemist as "calm, reasonable and thoughtful in the face of critics who weren't." Rowland saved editorial cartoons critical of his findings, and many of the originals hang in his home. He saved celebratory messages as well, including an answering machine message from "Al" (that would be Al Gore) congratulating him on his Nobel Prize.

<more>

The Partners of the UCI Libraries Present
The Opening of our Fall Exhibit

Discovery of a Lifetime: F. Sherwood Rowland and the Ozone Layer

Featuring a talk by

Ralph J. Cicerone
President of the National Academy of Sciences and
Chancellor Emeritus, UC Irvine

A special evening with F. Sherwood Rowland
With remarks by UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake, M.D.

Friday, November 18, 2011
6:00 pm
Langson Library, UC Irvine

The COAPI Cats: A directory of the 22 academic libraries setting the US open access agenda

2011-10-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

The word is getting around from places like Library Journal that the recently formed Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) will meet in person for the first time at a pre-conference meeting at the Berlin 9 Open Access Conference in Washington, DC, in early November 2011. Just as SPARC fostered a vibrant and participatory Open Access Week site that substitutes for in-person meetings, SPARC is also promising to lend its advocacy expertise and even support a COAPI meeting at their own first North American OA meeting, to be held next March in Kansas City, MO.
<continue> - Originally posted Thu, August 11 2011

Streaming video case dismissed - UCLA

2011-10-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a judge in Los Angeles dismissed the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by AIME, the Association for Information Media and Equipment, against UCLA. The lawsuit had alleged that UCLA was infringing copyright by ripping DVDs to create a digital stream, which was then made available through a closed course management system to students in a particular class. There are several technical issues that dominate the decision, but there is a little bit of good news, hardly definitive, for the fair use claim that was being made by UCLA.

The two major reasons for the decision were sovereign immunity — the doctrine that state entities can seldom be sued in federal court — and lack of standing. AIME tried to argue that UCLA had waived its sovereign immunity when it signed a contract with AIME, but the judge rejected that argument as too broad. So a major part of the decision applies only to state entities; it does not translate to private universities.

Source: Scholarly Communications @ Duke

Response from AIME - the Association for Information Media and Equipment

Launch of the Keepers Registry Beta service

2011-10-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

EDINA and the ISSN International Centre are pleased to announce the Beta release of the Keepers Registry, the e-journals preservation registry service. The Keepers Registry is available online at http://thekeepers.org.

The Keepers Registry renames and replaces the PEPRS Beta service which was launched in April 2011. The Keepers Registry is the product of JISC-funded project activity and provides freely available means to discover which e-journals are being preserved by the leading archival organisations. The metadata from an additional agency, HathiTrust, has been included in this release of the Keepers Registry, as well as new functionality to support browsing by journal title and publisher.

The PEPRS project was initially funded as a two-year project to scope, design and build a prototype, during which user requirements were gathered from librarians and preservation agencies. The present funding, until July 2012, is geared towards implementation of a service-quality system. Suitable developments from the PEPRS project activity will be implemented into the Keepers Registry.

The work of the PEPRS project and the launch of the Beta release of the Keepers Registry will be discussed at the annual meeting of the Directors of the ISSN National Centres to be held in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, from 5th - 7th October 2011.

The idea for the registry was mooted in various reports since 2003 and the findings of a JISC-commissioned report carried out by the University of Loughborough and Rightscom and published in 2008. Further background information on the project and details of relevant reports are available on the PEPRS project website at http://edina.ac.uk/projects/peprs/index.html

The six archiving agencies which have been participating in the project and have made metadata available to the PEPRS Beta service include:

It is planned to extend the scope of the service by including metadata from other archiving agencies. Additional functionality will also be added to the service throughout 2011 and 2012 and details of this are set out in the FAQ section on the service.

A programme to test new functionality is being developed and the project team would welcome offers from users to assist in the testing process.

If you would like to get involved please contact us at edina@ed.ac.uk.

--

Contact the EDINA HelpDesk at edina@ed.ac.uk
or at

+44 (0)131 650 3302 (telephone)
+44 (0)131 650 3308 (fax)

Causewayside House,
Univesity of Edinburgh
160 Causewayside,
Edinburgh,
Scotland,
United Kingdom
EH9 1PR

EDINA is a UK national academic data centre, designated by JISC on behalf of UK funding bodies to support the activity of universities, colleges and research institutes in the UK, by delivering access to a range of online data services through a UK academic infrastructure, as well as supporting knowledge exchange and ICT capacity building, nationally and internationally. http://edina.ac.uk/about/

The ISSN International Centre, established through agreement between UNESCO and the French Government, has the aim of introducing and operating an automated system for the registration of serials and maintains the ISSN Register. The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) is an eight-digit number which identifies periodical publications, including electronic serials. http://www.issn.org/
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn

Day of Digital Archives

2011-10-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

This Thursday, October 6th, 2011 is the first ever Day of Digital Archives. The Day of Digital Archives project has been created to raise awareness of digital archives among both users and managers. By collectively documenting what we do, we will be answering questions like: What are digital archives? Who uses them? How are they created and managed? Why are they important?

On the 6th, more than 30 archivists, librarians, scholars, and technologists will blog or tweet about their work with digital archives. Check out the project blog at http://dayofdigitalarchives.blogspot.com/ or look for the twitter hashtag #digitalArchivesDay

Princeton's "ban" on giving copyright to publishers

2011-09-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University will prevent researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted.

The new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the reach of their scholarly work and encouraging publishers to adjust standard contracts that commonly require exclusive copyright as a condition of publication.

Source: http://theconversation.edu.au/princeton-goes-open-access-to-stop-staff-handing-all-copyright-to-journals-unless-waiver-granted-3596

SCOAP3 latest news - SCOAP3 tendering process has started

2011-09-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

22/09/2011, SCOAP3 tendering process has started
------------------------

The SCOAP3 partnership is moving towards the implementation of its OpenAccess initiative.

An international team of experts from institutions participating in SCOAP3has prepared a detailed description of the peer-review and open accessservices that the consortium intends to purchase through high-qualitypeer-reviewed journals, the conditions for the provision of these servicesand the implications on existing licensing agreements

CERN has now issued a Market Survey for the benefit of SCOAP3. It ispublicly available at: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1384149

Publishers of high-quality peer-reviewed journals carrying content in thefield of High-Energy Physics are invited to answer to this Market Survey,whose purpose is to identify potential bidders for the provision ofpeer-review and open access services to SCOAP3. The following phase of theprocess will be an invitation to tender to qualified providers by the endof 2011, for contracts to be placed during 2012 with services commencing 1January 2013.

The deadline for interested publishers to answer the Market Survey isOctober 19th.

---

HTML version of this news: http://scoap3.org/news/news88.html
http://scoap3.org
info@scoap3.org

What It Takes To Become A Scholar - Chronicle of Higher Education

2011-09-27T07:41:00.000-07:00

September 26, 2011
Chronicle of Higher Education

What It Takes To Become A Scholar: helping students scale the taxonomy

After interviewing grad students about the transition toscholarship, one of the overarching themes is the creation of newknowledge. What role do academic libraries play in thisprogression?

The Ubiquitous Librarian
Brian Matthews, UC Santa Barbara

The Fight Over the Future of Digital Books - Dan Cohen, Atlantic Magazine, September 2012

2011-09-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

The Fight Over the Future of Digital Books

By Dan Cohen

On September 12, 2011, the Authors Guild sued the University of Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, and Cornell University over digital copies of books from their vast libraries. Many of these scanned books are no longer in print and of interest only to scholars, but the lawsuit reflects the growing tension between professional authors and the libraries that hold their work.

This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/the-fight-over-the-future-of-digital-books/245577/

University of Michigan Puts HathiTrust Orphan Works Project on Hold

2011-09-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

University of Michigan Library is reexamining its pilot for identifying orphan works in the HathiTrust project.  The project could be put on hold.

"The University of Michigan (UM) Library today released a statement announcing that it would be examining its "flawed" pilot process for identifying orphan works, putting its HathiTrust orphan works project effectively on hold. This follows reaction about the status of several works on its publicly posted orphan candidates list.

The statement also comes in the wake of a lawsuit filed on September 12 by the Authors Guild, Australian and Canadian authors' organizations, and eight authors against HathiTrust, UM, and four other member universities to stop them from "reproducing, distributing and/or displaying" copyrighted works.

The HathiTrust orphan works project was previously due to make some full-text electronic versions of orphans—in-copyright works for which rights holders cannot be found—available to the UM community starting October 13."

http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/newsletters/newsletterbucketacademicnewswire/892061-440/university_of_michigan_puts_hathitrust.html.csp#.TnvF29QQev8.email

An open letter to J.R. Salamanca - Response to Author Guild suit over orphan works

2011-09-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

An open letter to J.R. Salamanca

A letter from Kevin Smith, Duke University Scholarly Communications Officer, on the Author Guild suit against the HathiTrust and five of Hathi’s partner universities over the Hathi Orphan Works project.

extraMUROS from the Harvard Project metaLAB

2011-09-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

extraMUROS is an open-source HTML5 infrastructure built on public APIs that aims to fundamentally change the way people discover, curate and share digital collections of books, images, sounds, video and other media. extraMUROS is a unique collaboration between the metaLAB (at) Harvard, Frances Loeb Library, the Harvard Library Lab and a network of journalists, designers and developers.

"extraMUROS is in the Beta Sprint of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Our vision is of a world in which libraries provide a user-centered experience that encourages all categories of citizens to engage with the cultural patrimony of humanity as if it were their own: to learn from it, make things with it, share these things, and become involved in a lifelong, society-wide process of learning. Most of all, we seek to cast the user in a proactive, participatory role, to complete the process of democratization that was the driving force behind the growth of the public library movement in the 19th century, but under digital terms."

Source: extraMUROS, Harvard Project metaLAB

Forms, fields and flows - Dave Gray

2011-09-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

Forms, fields and flows

Forms, fields and flows - Dave Gray
A short video introduction to some basic principles of visual language.

By Dave Gray, Tue, Apr 8, 2008

In this short video (about seven minutes) I introduce some basic principles of visual language: Forms, fields and flows. I think of this as the “alphabet” of visual language. This set of principles is the primary set of marks you need in order to create visual meaning.

UC Libraries expand access to orphan works

2011-08-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

The following press release was distributed August 24, 2011:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26172

UC Libraries expand access to orphan works

The University of California Libraries will join with the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin and University of Florida in a groundbreaking initiative to identify and make available digital versions of "orphan works" within the holdings of the HathiTrust Digital Library.

HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. The majority of HathiTrust holdings are in-copyright works, of which an unknown but likely large proportion are so-called "orphans" - works whose owners cannot be identified or located. The University of California will join the effort to identify orphan works and publicize information about them in order to give rights holders an opportunity to claim them and make informed decisions about their availability within HathiTrust. It is likely that many people with these rights wish to make the books fully viewable.

The majority of orphans probably are just that - lacking anyone to claim ownership. If the orphan works are not claimed by rights holders, the digital volumes will be made available in full view to HathiTrust partner library patrons if their libraries hold those works in their print collections.

"This effort promises to expand access to a great number of digitized scholarly works in the UC Libraries' collections that have previously been hidden from view," said Laine Farley, executive director of the California Digital Library. "In addition to the more than 2.5 million public domain volumes already available within HathiTrust, this important project will bring a larger percentage of our digitized works directly to our students and faculty in support of their work." The text of all of the works contained within HathiTrust is fully searchable today, but currently only works in the public domain or works whose copyright holders have given explicit permission can be consulted online in their entirety. The bulk of public domain works are pre-1923 books from the U.S. and government publications.

About the University of California libraries
More than 100 libraries on the 10 University of California campuses support the university's research, learning, patient care and public service missions. Collectively, they make up the largest research/academic library in the world and, with the California Digital Library, have taken the lead to harness technology in support of innovative forms of scholarly communication. To date, the UC Libraries have digitized more than 3.5 million volumes in their collections. For more information, visit http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu.

About HathiTrust
Launched in 2008, HathiTrust has a growing membership, currently comprising more than 50 partner libraries. Over the last three years, the partners have contributed more than 9 million volumes to the digital library, digitized from their library collections through various means, including Google and Internet Archive digitization and in-house initiatives. More than 2.5 million of the contributed volumes are in the public domain and freely available on the Web. For more information, visit http://www.hathitrust.org/about.

Ten-year study shows increased need for academic libraries | American Libraries Magazine

2011-08-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

Ten-year study shows increased need for academic libraries | American Libraries Magazine

Contact: Cathleen J. Bourdon
Office for Research & Statistics (ORS)

CHICAGO - The need for libraries on college and university campuses has increased, according to a new study released by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research and Statistics.

In "Trends in Academic Libraries, 1998 to 2008," researcher Denise M. Davis analyzes data from the Academic Library Survey administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), identifying changes in the number of academic libraries, circulation and reserve collections, interlibrary loan transactions and documents received from commercial services, public serve hours, volumes held and added, library staffing, library expenditures, electronic services and information literacy activities.

The report provides an informative look at how the academic libraries continue to provide valuable resources to their community through technology and increased service hours despite a loss of non-librarian staff.

NCES, in collaboration with the academic library community, conducts a biennial survey that captures information about libraries in all degree-granting colleges and universities. Data analyzed in this report are drawn from the NCES Academic Libraries series public use data for 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.

"Trends in Academic Libraries, 1998 to 2008" is available as a PDF download at http://www.ala.org/ala/research/librarystats/academic/index.cfm.

Klout - a measure of online influence

2011-08-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

What is Klout?

Klout measures influence online. When you create content or engage, you impact others. Klout analyzes that impact to find your Klout Score, influential topics, and your influencers. Klout is the standard for influence. Top brands such as Disney, Audi, and Turner use Klout Perks to reach and engage influencers. Over 3,000 applications and partners use Klout data to display Klout Scores, prioritize based on Score or topics, and segment users.

What is the Klout Score?
The Klout Score measures influence on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the most influential. Klout uses data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare in order to measure:

How many people you influence; (True Reach)
How much you influence them; and (Amplification)
How influential they are (Network Score)

http://klout.com/corp/faq

Crosscheck - text matching software for tracking duplication, plagarism

2011-08-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

What is CrossCheck?

"CrossCheck powered by iThenticate is an initiative started by CrossRef to help its members actively engage in efforts to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. Although there are several plagiarism screening tools already available, they are not well-suited to filtering academic content simply because they haven't had access to the relevant full-text literature to screen against. CrossCheck changes this by creating and continuously growing a database of current and archival scholarly literature.

This database is one of two parts that make up the CrossCheck service. The second part is the iThenticate tool, which compares authored work against the content in the database and highlight matching or similar text for further editorial review."

Referenced in NPR broadcast:

Plagiarism Plague Hinders Chinas Scientific Ambition by Louisa Lim
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague-hinders-chinas-scientific-ambition?sc=emaf
(broadcast August 3, 2011)

Citation tracking service by Google and Microsoft Academic

2011-08-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

Computing giants launch free science metrics

New Google and Microsoft services promise to democratize citation data.

Declan Butler

Nature | Published online 2 August 2011 | Nature 476, 18 (2011) | doi:10.1038/476018a

"Mapping the landscape of science is about to get easier than ever before. Google and Microsoft are rolling out free tools that will enable researchers to analyse citation statistics, visualize research networks and track the hottest research fields.

The systems could be attractive for scientists and institutions that are unable — or unwilling — to pay for existing metrics platforms, such as Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge and Elsevier's Scopus database."

Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI)

2011-08-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

Universities Join Together to Support Open-Access Policies

August 2, 2011, 6:00 pm

By Jennifer Howard

Wired Campus: Chronical of Higher Education

"The University of Kansas has had a faculty-approved open-access mandate in place since 2009. What it hasn’t had is a group of like-minded institutions to share ideas with about how to support such policies.

Today Kansas and 21 other universities and colleges announced that they’re joining forces to form the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions, or Coapi. The new group will “collaborate and share implementation strategies, and advocate on a national level,” it said in a statement. The group’s members so far include Arizona State, Columbia, Duke, Emory, Harvard, Oregon State, Stanford, and Trinity universities as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oberlin College. “The goal is to provide more practical advice and ideas for refining and expanding policies on our individual campuses but also to leverage those policies into action,” said Lorraine Haricombe, the dean of libraries at Kansas."

"The group will meet at the upcoming Berlin 9 open-access conference, to be held in November in Washington, to talk about which issues to focus on first. It will also discuss establishing itself as a formal membership organization and inviting other institutions to join. The group has the support of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or SPARC, a national group that advocates for open access."

A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas

2011-07-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas

http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=13165

"WASHINGTON – A report (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13165) released [July 19, 2011] by the National Research Council presents a new framework for K-12 science education that identifies the key scientific ideas and practices all students should learn by the end of high school. The framework will serve as the foundation for new K-12 science education standards, to replace those issued more than a decade ago. The National Research Council is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering; all three are independent, nongovernmental organizations.

The committee that wrote the report sees the need for significant improvements in how science is taught in the U.S. [emphasis added] The new framework is designed to help students gradually deepen their knowledge of core ideas in four disciplinary areas over multiple years of school, rather than acquire shallow knowledge of many topics. And it strongly emphasizes the practices of science – helping students learn to plan and carry out investigations, for example, and to engage in argumentation from evidence."

Open Access journal for biomedical and life sciences by Wellcome Trust, Max Planck Society, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute

2011-07-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

June 27, 2011

Leading research organisations announce top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life science

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust announced today that they are to support a new, top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research.

"The three organisations aim to establish a new journal that will attract and define the very best research publications from across these fields. All research published in the journal will make highly significant contributions that will extend the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

A team of highly regarded, experienced and actively practising scientists will ensure fair, swift and transparent editorial decisions followed by rapid online publication. The first issue of the journal, whose name has yet to be decided, is expected to be published in the summer of 2012."

Wiley-VCH and ChemPubSoc Europe set to launch OA Chemistry journal

2011-07-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Wiley-VCH and ChemPubSoc Europe set to launch OA Chemistry journal - 19 Jul 2011

Wiley-VCH , part of the scientific and technical publishing business of John Wiley &; Sons, Inc., and ChemPubSoc Europe, an association of 16 chemical societies, have announced the launch of an open access journal - ChemistryOpen. The societies are joining a new open access publishing programme announced by John Wiley & Sons in February.

ChemistryOpen claims to be the first open access chemical society journal. It will publish peer-reviewed primary research in all areas of chemistry, and will thus satisfy funding organisations and institutes which require that the research funded by them should be accessible to all. As an additional feature, the new journal will publish short summaries of PhD theses with a link to the full version. This Thesis Treasury will make PhD theses in Chemistry readily accessible while linking them through CrossRef to all cited journal articles in the programme.

The first open access articles will be posted online later this year, with the first full issue following in early 2012. Dr Karen Hindson and Dr Haymo Ross will serve as editors of the journal. To guarantee the highest possible quality the journal will have an Editorial Advisory Board headed by Professors Ramón Martínez-Máñez and Thomas Wirth, whose expertise cover a broad range of disciplines. Professor Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry in 1987, also supports this initiative as an Honorary Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board.

Posted to Nanowerk (July 19, 2011)

Feds Charge Activist as Hacker for Downloading Millions of Academic Articles - Wired.com

2011-07-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

Feds Charge Activist as Hacker for Downloading Millions of Academic Articles
Ryan Singel | ryan@ryansingel.net | July 19, 2011 | Wired.com http://t.co/n3GBooF

"Well-known coder and activist Aaron Swartz was arrested Tuesday, charged with violating federal hacking laws for downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription database service that MIT had given him access to. If convicted, Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The grand jury indictment accuses Swartz of evading MIT’s attempts to kick his laptop off the network while downloading more than four million documents from JSTOR, a not-for-profit company that provides searchable, digitized copies of academic journals. The scraping, which took place from September 2010 to January 2011 via MIT’s network, was invasive enough to bring down JSTOR’s servers on several occasions."

"The indictment (.pdf) accuses Swartz of repeatedly spoofing the MAC address — an identifier that is usually static — of his computer after MIT blocked his computer based on that number. Swartz also allegedly snuck an Acer laptop bought just for the downloading into a closet at MIT in order to get a persistent connection to the network."

United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz - press release

Hiring Non-MLS Librarians: Trends and Training Implications - ALA Presentation

2011-07-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

The slides to the PowerPoint presentations for all four speakers at the “Hiring Non-MLS Librarians” session, LLAMA Human Resources Section, American Libraries Association Annual Confernece, New Orleans LA, 26 June 20111.

URL: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/l/IR00000459/00001

"Libraries hire professionals from outside librarianship for positions traditionally held by MLS-degreed librarians. Hear results of ALA-funded research to examine hiring practices in public and academic libraries and the essential elements of an orientation for non-MLS hires in librarian positions. We really need research on how to strengthen the MLS and stop this dilution of library staff. Hear and protest!"

Best of the web from American Association of School Librarians (AASL)

2011-07-01T16:10:00.000-07:00

Top 25 websites from 2011 (and from 2010 and 2009) chosen by AASL at an ALA presentation in New Orleans. There are a number of collaborative tools.

All of these are free or partly free tools with some great applications. For example, there is something that looks like a cross between Prezi and MindMap called SpicyNodes and a citation tool called iCyte.

Check out the winners at
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/bestlist/bestwebsitestop25.cfm

Data and the Scholarly Record: the Changing Landscape: Join us August 24-25: California Digital Library

2011-06-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

Data and the Scholarly Record: the Changing Landscape: Join us August 24-25: California Digital Library

June 29, 2011 | Category: Curation Micro-services,Digital Preservation (UC3),Digital Preservation Repository,Newsletter |
Author: Patricia Cruse

DataCite will hold its second Summer Meeting on August 24th and 25th at the historic Shattuck Plaza Hotel in Berkeley, California. The Summer Meeting — Data and the Scholarly Record: the Changing Landscape—will be a 1.5 day event hosted by the California Digital Library, and we invite you to participate. You can register at: http://datacite2011.eventbrite.com/ .

The Summer Meeting brings together people from research organisations, data canters, government, and information service providers to hear about the latest developments in data science, data citation, discovery, and reuse. It also provides opportunities to exchange experience and influence the next generation of data citation services.

This year’s 2011 program will include sessions on data citation, data publishing, and discussions on the new challenges that come with increasing access to scientific data.

The 2010 DataCite summer meeting brought together a strong program of speakers and participants (http://www.datacite.org/datacite_summer_meeting_2010).

Highlights were published in D-Lib (http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1045/january2011-contents).

DataCite helps researchers find, access, and reuse data. It is an international not-for-profit association founded in 2009 with members across the globe.

21st Century Scholarly Communication: Conversations for Change - ALA Presentation

2011-06-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

"21st Century Scholarly Communication: Conversations for Change" took place at ALA Annual on June 27, 2011. The presentation slides are now online at: http://connect.ala.org/node/150173

Panelists:

Speaker: Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, Senior Fellow and Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, University of California, Santa Barbara
Speaker: Jennifer Laherty, Digital Publishing Librarian, IUScholarWorks, Indiana University, Bloomington
Speaker: Martin J. Brennan, Copyright Licensing Librarian, University of California, Los Angeles
Moderator: Sherri L. Barnes, Humanities Collection Coordinator, University of California, Santa Barbara

The Twitter stream of this session can be viewed at: http://www.libr.org/wss/conferences/2011/index.html

Research Paper on Journal Article Mining - Publishing Research Consortium - May 2011

2011-06-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Journal Article Mining: A research study into Practices, Policies, Plans…..and Promises.
Commissioned by the Publishing Research Consortium

By Eefke Smit, BV Bronfonteyn, Amsterdam
and Maurits van der Graaf, Pleiade Management & Consultancy BV, Amsterdam
Amsterdam, May 2011 © BV BRONFONTEYN, 2011 (153 pp.)

"Overall, experts expect a further acceleration of text and data mining into scholarly content, sparked by a greater availability of digital content corpuses, the ever increasing computer capabilities, improved user‐friendliness of software tools and easier access to content."

The report is at: http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/PRCSmitJAMreport20June2011VersionofRecord.pdf

and there is an accompanying press release at http://www.publishingresearch.net/Media_page.htm

Librarians in the U.S. from 1880-2009 from OUP SocIal Explorer

2011-06-23T16:23:00.000-07:00

Social Explorer: Librarians in the U.S. from 1880-2009

Oxford University Press

An analysis using 120 years of census data
By Sydney Beveridge, Susan Weber and Andrew A. Beveridge, Social Explorer

"The U.S. Census first collected data on librarians in 1880, four years after the founding of the American Library Association. They only counted 636 librarians nationwide. Indeed, one respondent reported on his census form that he was the “Librarian of Congress.” The U.S. Census, which became organized as a permanent Bureau in 1902, can be used to track the growth of the library profession. The number of librarians grew over the next hundred years, peaking at 307,273 in 1990. Then, the profession began to shrink, and as of 2009, it had dropped by nearly a third to 212,742. The data enable us to measure the growth, the gender split in this profession known to be mostly female, and to explore other divides in income and education, as they changed over time.

We examined a number of socioeconomic trends over the duration, and focused in on 1950 the first year that detailed wage data were recorded, 1990 at the peak of the profession and 2009 the most currently available data.¹ We looked at data within the profession and made comparisons across the work world."

Libraries and Publishers postion themselves on issue of International Interlibrary Lending - Who Shares and How?

2011-06-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

Research Libraries, Publishers Stake Out Positions on International ILL

"The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), representing some of the major STM publishers like Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, among others, released a statement on June 8, which says that library exceptions for document delivery in the digital environment, particularly of individual journal articles, are justified only in very limited circumstances and with the permission of the publisher. Among other points, STM asserts that:

In order to "maximize legal clarity," cross-border deliveries "should be governed by voluntary licenses negotiated directly with publishers";
Direct digital delivery to an end-user "is best governed and coordinated by rights-holders";
Libraries should only be able to deliver on-site, print copies to walk-in library patrons;
Libraries should exercise "due diligence" to ensure that any deliveries to individuals are for "private, non-commercial use."

"We do believe that digital document delivery must take place in a licensed environment, especially for international deliveries and especially for commercial deliveries," said Michael Mabe, the chief executive office of STM." (more).

ARL Research Task force report on international Interlibrary Lending (ILL)

"ARL reaffirms precedence of copyright law
An ARL task force has published a three-part report this month that reaffirms the right of domestic research libraries to engage in international interlibrary loan and document delivery and to send copies of some copyrighted works to foreign libraries, "provided the libraries meet the requirements of the law."

ARL cautions its membership not to allow license agreements to supplant the rights granted by Section 108, which is "a leading legal support for the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works in ILL." (more)

Research Library Issues, no. 275 (June 2011)

Adjusting to new market realities
Kevin Smith, the scholarly communications officer at Duke University and another member of the ARL task force, wrote on his blog that STM has "been carrying on a quiet campaign of intimidation regarding ILL." (more)

Future of Academic Libraries: Taiga Forum 2011 Provocative Statements

2011-05-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/value/futures2025.pdf

Edited by Kara Malenfant (ACRL) with noted futurist David Staley. Not just statements about the future but also assessments on those statements by almost 400 ACRL members.

ACRL: Issues & Advocacy

Value of Academic Libraries
Increasing recognition of the value of libraries and librarians by leaders in higher education, information technology, funding agencies, and campus decision making is one of ACRL’s six strategic priorities. The current economic climate and the increased emphasis on assessment and outcomes have forced academic departments’ higher education administrators to make tough decisions regarding the funding of programs and units at their institutions. Recognizing the sense of urgency around this issue, ACRL is working to identify resources that will help members to demonstrate their value in clear, measurable ways.

Future of Academic Libraries: Taiga Forum 2011 Provocative Statements

2011-05-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

From the Taiga Forum blog:

"On 11/1/2010, Taiga Forum 6 met in Palo Alto to begin developing a new set of provocative statements regarding some future challenges to academic libraries. Another group discussed the draft statements at ALA Midwinter in San Diego in January, 2011. The Taiga Forum Steering Committee has taken that input and created this third round of Taiga Forum Provocative Statements. As before, the statements are intended to provoke conversation rather than attempt to predict the future."

Here's one of the ten provocative statements:

"Within five years, graduate students and faculty will fill all their information needs online, never coming into the library, yet they will continue to idealize the library as a sacred place to commune with books. Libraries will respond by flipping their stacks into designer reading rooms that use books as decor."

And another:

"Within five years, libraries will be forced to acknowledge that our boutique services have been collecting 'in the basement.' To clean house, libraries will implement planned abandonment."

See: http://bit.ly/l1URO1

Bernie Sloan

The disgraceful interrogation of L.A. school librarians - LA Times (May 13, 2011)

2011-05-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

If state education cuts are drastic, the librarians' only chance of keeping a paycheck is to prove they're qualified to be switched to classroom teaching. So LAUSD attorneys grill them.

The disgraceful interrogation of L.A. school librarians
By Hector Tobar
May 13, 2011
Los Angeles Times

"In a basement downtown, the librarians are being interrogated.

On most days, they work in middle schools and high schools operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District, fielding student queries about American history and Greek mythology, and retrieving copies of vampire novels.

But this week, you'll find them in a makeshift LAUSD courtroom set up on the bare concrete floor of a building on East 9th Street. Several sit in plastic chairs, watching from an improvised gallery as their fellow librarians are questioned. <more>"

Wisconsin Protests Inspire Morello’s ‘Union Town’—Download It Free

2011-05-05T16:40:00.000-07:00

Wis. Protests Inspire Morello’s ‘Union Town’—Download It Free
by James Parks, May 2, 2011 AFL-CIO NOW blog

'Singer Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has always been a strong supporter of working people. Morello was so inspired after taking part in a demonstration and headlining a concert in February [2011] for the protesters at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., that he wrote what he calls “fighting songs.”'

"The EP will be released in digital form on May 17 and on CD and vinyl on July 19 under Morello’s new deal with New West Records. Proceeds from sale of the album will go to the America Votes Labor Unity Fund to support mobilization for pushing back against the state attacks on workers."

Check out an interview with Morello today at Politico.com here.

Belen Aguilar and David Thornfield Wedding - July 2, 2011

2011-04-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

TheKnot

Belen Aguilar and David Thornfield
Wedding service at 1:47 pm
July 2, 2011
Crossline Church
23331 Moulton Parkway
Laguna Hills, Ca 92653

http://tinyurl.com/dbt7211

Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books - April 20, 2011

2011-04-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

Customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps
Whispersyncing of notes, highlights and last page read to work for Kindle library books

SEATTLE, Apr 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- (NASDAQ: AMZN)-- Amazon today announced Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps.

Amazon is working with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital content solutions for over 11,000 public and educational libraries in the United States, to bring a seamless library borrowing experience to Kindle customers. "We are excited to be working with Amazon to offer Kindle Library Lending to the millions of customers who read on Kindle and Kindle apps," said Steve Potash, CEO, OverDrive. "We hear librarians and patrons rave about Kindle, so we are thrilled that we can be part of bringing library books to the unparalleled experience of reading on Kindle."
Kindle Library Lending will be available later this year for Kindle and free Kindle app users.

To learn more about Kindle go to www.amazon.com/kindle.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1552678&highlight=

Newsy Video discussion of Amazon's new service:
Business News: Kindle Free Library
Amazon Kindle Lending Library Books?
April 20, 2011 (2:12)
http://www.newsy.com/videos/amazon-kindle-lending-library-books/

OpenID

2011-04-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

OpenID http://openid.net/get-an-openid/what-is-openid/

Gain Greater Control Over Your Online Identity

"OpenID is a decentralized standard, meaning it is not controlled by any one website or service provider. You control how much personal information you choose to share with websites that accept OpenIDs, and multiple OpenIDs can be used for different websites or purposes. If your email (Google, Yahoo, AOL), photo stream (Flickr) or blog (Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal) serves as your primary online presence, OpenID allows you to use that portable identity across the web."

Lawrence Lessig talk at CERN, 18 April 2011

2011-04-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Lessig on "The architecture of access to scientific knowledge: just how badly we have messed it up" - Library Science Talk given at CERN on 18 April 2011

The Library Science Talk "The architecture of access to scientific knowledge: just how badly we have messed this up", given on 18 April 2011 in Geneva at CERN is now online:

http://bit.ly/iciOtv

A new talk about open access to academic or scientific information, with a bit of commentary about YouTube Copyright School.

Periodicals Price Survey 2011 - report

2011-04-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

Periodical prices are on the upswing, and technology is advancing at a relentless pace
By Stephen Bosch, Kittie Henderson, & Heather Klusendorf Library Journal April 14, 2011

http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/newslettersnewsletterbucketacademicnewswire/890009-440/periodicals_price_survey_2011_under.html.csp

"There’s no way to sugarcoat the impact higher serials prices have on the information marketplace, or the dire state of funding for libraries. Libraries are no longer in a position of having to cut low-use journals in order to make room for high-use ones; instead, they are now being forced to cancel heavily used, even essential subscriptions, much to the dismay of their patrons. The economy still drives any discussion of serials pricing, and it remains a very ugly story."

I like the concluding paragraph, that starts with "Evolve or die? We are going to evolve..."

Small earthquake hits Orange County, California - 2.2 M

2011-04-07T16:18:00.001-07:00

A small earthquake was reported Wednesday afternoon (April 6, 2011) at around 3:23 pm near Costa Mesa, CA.

The 2.2 temblar occurred about two miles northwest of central Costa Mesa and about two miles southeast of Fountain Valley. That's about 32 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.

A magnitude 2.2 temblar is so small that I didn't feel any ground motion.

Presidential Task Force for Equitable Access to Electronic Content - March 28, 2011

2011-03-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Presidential Task Force for Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) establishes blog and forum

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Library Association (ALA) Presidential Task Force for Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) has established a blog and forum to invite commentary on the work of the Task Force and to discuss more generally libraries’ role in providing free and confidential access to e-content for the public.

The Task Force has divided its work into five categories:

Accessibility – issues, trends, education on providing accessible content to people with disabilities
Public Relations – building more support and awareness that libraries play an essential role in the e-content world
Model Projects – case studies of libraries trying different models for providing accessible content
Environmental Scan – the need to better understand the existing market and future trends that libraries should be aware of
Licensing – exploring new and emerging business models for obtaining content from authors, publishers, and vendors

“I hope that ALA members will take advantage of this opportunity to make their voices heard about these issues that are of importance to libraries in the U.S. and throughout the world,” ALA President Roberta Stevens said.

The Task Force welcomes all to initiate discussion, ask questions, and provide feedback in the web site forums where each issue is highlighted.

Google Book Settlement at the Crossroads: What Now, What Next?

2011-03-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

GBS at the Crossroads: What Now, What Next?
Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library - March 26, 2011

http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2011/03/26/gbs-at-the-crossroads-what-now-what-next/

Nature Publishing Index: Global Top 50 (BETA)

2011-03-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

Nature Publishing Top 50 - March 24, 2011

http://www.natureasia.com/en/publishing-index/global/

These rankings are based on the number of papers that were published in 2010 from the institutions listed below. These rankings only include primary research papers that were published as "Articles & Letters" in Nature and/or Nature monthly research journals.

UCSD, UCSF, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UCD are on the list.

See Footnote #2:

For some organizations such as CNRS, the Max Planck Institutes and the Chinese Academy Sciences that include numerous research entities we have aggregated results. On the other hand, we have, for example, chosen not to group the 10 universities of the University of California System and have presented each of them as distinct research entities. But, if they were grouped, the System would rank number one with an aggregate corrected count of well over 100 papers.

Google Boook settlement denied - March 22, 2011

2011-03-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

Judge Chin has denied the settlement agreement in the Google Book Search case. From the opinion:

"In the end, I conclude that the ASA is not fair, adequate, and reasonable. As the United States and other objectors have noted, may of the concerns raised in the objections would be ameliorated if the ASA were converted from an "opt-out" settlement to an "opt-in" settlement. I urge the parties to consider revising the ASA accordingly. The motion for final approval of the ASA is denied, without prejudice to renewal in the event the parties negotiate a revised settlement agreement."

The complete opinion may be found here:

The Authors Guild et al. vs. Google Inc. (05 CIV 8136) - March 22, 2011
United States District Court - Southern District of New York
http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases.php

The UC libraries have issued a statement on the March 22, 2011 federal court decision regarding the proposed Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement. The statement is available on UC’s Reshaping Scholarly Communication website: http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/google/settlement_decision.html

HathiTrust’s response is available at http://www.hathitrust.org/hathitrust_asa_response

Bookshelf Porn - Porn for book lovers.

2011-02-18T23:24:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

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.

New Nature Open Access Journal - Scientific Reports

2011-01-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today announces the 2011 launch of Scientific Reports. An online, open access, peer-reviewed publication, Scientific Reports will publish research covering the natural sciences - biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics. Scientific Reports is accepting submissions from today, and will publish its first articles in June 2011. More information is available on the Scientific Reports website (www.nature.com/scientificreports).

All articles published in Scientific Reports will be open access and subject to an article-processing charge (APC). The 2011 APC rate will be US$1350/GB£890/ EURO1046 per accepted manuscript*. Authors will have a choice of two non-commercial Creative Commons (CC) licenses. NPG will make an annual donation to Creative Commons equivalent to $20 per APC paid for publication in Scientific Reports.** Authors of the research paper concerned will be eligible for complimentary membership of the Creative Commons network, an international online community of people who support open access and open educational resources.

Scientific Reports will publish original research papers of interest to specialists within a given field in the natural sciences. It will not set a threshold of perceived importance for the papers that it publishes; rather, Scientific Reports will publish all papers that are judged to be technically valid and original. To enable the community to evaluate the importance of papers post-peer review, the Scientific Reports website will include most-downloaded, most-emailed, and most-blogged lists. All research papers will benefit from rapid peer review and publication, and will be deposited in PubMed Central.

*Scientific Reports will offer a 20% discount on the APC for manuscripts accepted for publication before 31 December 2011. From January 2012, the APC will be US$1700/GB£1112/EURO1308

** Total annual donation from NPG will be up to $100,000

http://www.nature.com/press_releases/scientificreports.html

Articles on Net Neutrality and Fair Use

2011-01-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

Following are links to recent articles of interest on fair use and the December 21, 2010 action by the Federal Communications Commission on “net neutrality.”

New Report “Fair Use Challenges in Academic and Research Libraries” Now Available (Association of Research Libraries, December 20, 2010; courtesy of Marsha Stevenson)
FCC’s Net Neutrality Order Protects Libraries as “Consumers,” Lacks Strong Protections for Library Services to the Public (Association of Research Libraries, December 21, 2010)
F.C.C. Faces Challenges To Net Rules (New York Times, December 22, 2010)

Google's Ngram Viewer

2010-12-20T16:04:00.000-08:00

I've been seeing many blurbs the past couple weeks about Google Books Ngram Viewer (way to mine text for word usage). I thought this blog entry provided some good links to the pros and cons of Ngram.

http://www.dancohen.org/2010/12/19/initial-thoughts-on-the-google-books-ngram-viewer-and-datasets/

From Google Labs (details):

See how often phrases have occurred in the world's books over the years. Google Books has scanned over 10% of all books ever published, and now you can graph the occurrence of phrases up to five words in length from 1400 through the present day right in your browser. We currently support the following languages:

Chinese
English
French
German
Hebrew
Russian

Holiday tree - Librarian-style

2010-12-17T12:32:00.000-08:00

Some librarians took National Union Catalog volumes and turned them into a Christmas tree.
Source: libraryland:softculture:anarchivist (17 Dec. 2010)

Also posted to http://booklover.tumblr.com/post/286319825/libraryland-softculture-anarchivist-some

[Click on the picture to learn to make your own.]

Real-time citation metrics

2010-12-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

An article in Inside Higher Education that discusses various uses of web-based data of article use, including implications for what libraries are asked to pay and are willing to pay.

Steve Kolowich. New Measures of Scholarly Impact - Inside Higher Ed (17 Dec. 2010)
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/12/17/scholars_develop_new_metrics_for_journals_impact

In the article is mentioned Springer Realtime, a tool to visualize download activity.

"Springer is launching a new free analytics tool realtime.springer.com which provides multiple visualizations of the usage that is generated worldwide by Springer's online products, including journals, books, images and protocols.

Realtime.springer.com aggregates the raw data on downloads of Springer journal articles and book chapters in real time from all over the world, and displays them in a variety of interactive visualizations such as: a map showing where the downloads are coming from, a constantly updating keyword tag cloud, and a visualization of total downloads. In addition, a search feature shows a chart of the downloads and the 'Top Five Most Downloaded' list for every journal or book. Springer launches realtime.springer.com (7 Dec 2010)"

If Web Browsers Were Celebrities [Infographic]

2010-12-07T19:03:00.000-08:00

This great inforgraphic was created by Shane Snow, a New York based artist and founder of Printing Choice
“If Web Browsers Were Celebrities” is brought to you by Wix.com. Use creative design to make a Flash website.

You are most welcome to share this infographic with your audience.

Official Google Blog: Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

2010-12-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

Official Google Blog: Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. The system is designed to be open, accessing ebooks via the new Google eBooks Web Reader from laptops and desktop computers, ebook readers, and smartphones. The reader can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.

"You can discover and buy new ebooks from the Google eBookstore or get them from one of our independent bookseller partners: Powell’s, Alibris and participating members of the American Booksellers Association. You can choose where to buy your ebooks like you choose where to buy your print books, and keep them all on the same bookshelf regardless of where you got them."

Research and Productivity Measurement Webcast - SLA D.C. Chapter - October 27, 2010

2010-11-23T11:14:00.000-08:00

Impact and Productivity Measurements in a Changing Research Environment
Hosted by Elsevier in conjunction with SLA Washington D.C. Chapter
The Library of Congress, Mumford Room - October 27, 2010

"Research productivity had been measured through citation metrics in much the same way for many years now. But in recent years, SNIP, SJR and h-Index have joined Impact Factor as leading performance metric providing new insights into research at the forefront of discovery.

In today's rapidly changing, global and collaborative research environment, the research community is looking for new methodologies to assess research that better reflect the complexities of today's research. Today's research assessments need to encompass many performance metrics and consider measurements that do not easily lend themselves to analytics such as patents, products, business initiatives and awards.

"Impact and Productivity Measurements in a Changing Research Environment" furthers this dialog. Watch the presentations and Q&A from a day of learning and discussion with the leaders of research & productivity measurements in the scholarly community, held on October 27th, in Washington, DC, USA."

Google Strikes Deal with French Publisher Hachette Livre to scan French titles

2010-11-18T13:11:00.000-08:00

A New York Times story reports: “Google said Wednesday [November 17, 2010] that it had reached a deal with the publisher Hachette Livre, which has broken ranks with its French rivals and agreed to allow Google to scan thousands of out-of-print books for its digital library project.

Under the agreement, which follows a landmark settlement with U.S. publishers last year, Google will be allowed to sell the books it scans as e-books or in other electronic formats.

But there is one important difference between the U.S. settlement and the deal with Hachette, the largest publisher in France and the No.2 trade publisher by sales worldwide, after Pearson. Hachette, not Google, will determine which of the books covered by the deal — those that remain under copyright but are no longer commercially available — can be scanned.”

How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age - Report from University of Washington I-School

2010-11-18T08:51:00.000-08:00

T ruth Be Told: How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age
BY ALISON J. HEAD, PH.D. AND MICHAEL B. EISENBERG, PH.D.
PROJECT INFORMATION LITERACY PROGRESS REPORT
NOVEMBER 1, 2010
THE INFORMATION SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
RESEARCH SPONSORED BY MACARTHUR FOUNDATION

A "Project Information Literacy" progress report. The project is based at the U of Washington I-School.

Here's one interesting finding:

"Evaluating information was often a collaborative process — almost two-thirds of the respondents (61%) reportedly turned to friends and/or family members when they needed help and advice with sorting through and evaluating information for personal use. Nearly half of the students in the sample (49%) frequently asked instructors for assistance with assessing the quality of sources for course work — far fewer asked librarians (11%) for assistance."

Full text at: http://bit.ly/chfOxe

Los libros de acedrex dados e tablas: Historical, artistic and metaphysical dimensions of Alfonso X's "Book of Games"

2010-11-17T09:54:00.000-08:00

Los libros de acedrex dados e tablas: Historical, artistic and metaphysical dimensions of Alfonso X's "Book of Games"

Musser Golladay, Sonja. The University of Arizona, 2007. United States -- Arizona: ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

Abstract
Combining three major facets of Alfonso's final and most personal work, this holistic study utilizes a philological approach involving codicology, hermeneutics, history of art, iconology, paleography, and philosophy. Like his Cantigas de Santa María, with its vast musical, poetic and artistic dimensions, the Book of Games is a largely unexplored multi-media treasure trove of knowledge about thirteenth-century games, art and symbolism as well as personal information about the Wise King himself. Chapter I explains the historical chess, dice, backgammon and mill games ands offers the first complete English translation of the Book. Descriptions and diagrams of all 144 games, including PowerPoint presentations of all 103 chess problems using a font specially designed to match the original manuscript exactly, are presented in an international format which brings these challenging and entertaining games to life. Chapter II surveys all 151 illuminations, exploring their cultural value and identifying portraits of Alfonso, his wife, his lover, his children, his friends and his sources. Alongside traditional medieval iconography, these may represent some of the earliest known likenesses in medieval portraiture and some of the first private, non-iconographic images of a Spanish king. Chapter III interprets the literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogical meanings of each game according to the Hermetic principle "As above, so below" as well as the numerological symbolism and didactic structure reflected in the book's Scholastic structure. Each game in the Libro de los juegos contains a clue " pora los entendudos e mayormientre pora aquellos que saben la Arte de Astronomia " (fol. 95r) for understanding the connection between astrology and human affairs. At the end of his ill-starred life Alfonso saw reflected in the microcosm of these games, the determinism inherent in the workings of the universe. By studying the patterns in these games, Alfonso hoped to discover how best to play the game of life using both his "seso," or skill, and his lucky number seven. The numerological and astrological significance of the numbers seven and twelve, present in the entire work's structure and especially the concluding games, relate the Book of Games to the Alfonsine legal, scientific and religious corpus.

Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/304894267?accountid=14509

SLA Chemistry Division (SLA-DCHE): Webcast Recording & Slides - Chem Info for the Non-Practitioner

2010-11-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

SLA Chemistry Division (SLA-DCHE): Webcast Recording & Slides - Chem Info for the Non-Practitioner

Webcast Recording & Slides - Chem Info for the Non-Practitioner

The recording of the October 19 webcast "Chemical Information for the Non-Practitioner" is now available for viewing. Some slides were difficult to read on the recording, so this file has been available separately (PDF format).

Webcast Recording:
http://goodwincollege.na4.acrobat.com/p65777557/
Slides:
http://units.sla.org/division/dche/webcasts/Currano-SLA-Oct19Webcast.pdf

Many thanks to Judith Currano for an excellent presentation!

Please contact Ted Baldwin (Professional Development Chair, SLA Chemistry Division) with any questions: Ted.Baldwin@uc.edu. I welcome your ideas on future professional development offerings.

Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides

2010-11-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides
By Dan Pink | Wired Magazine Issue 15.09

"Let us now bullet-point our praise for Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, two Tokyo-based architects who have turned PowerPoint, that fixture of cubicle life, into both art form and competitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed pecha-kucha (Japanese for "chatter"), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate clich into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art."

Dan Greenstein Keynote for Survive or Thrive conference, Manchester UK, June 8-9, 2010

2010-11-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

Opening keynote: Digital libraries in a networked world (49:25)
Dan Greenstein, Vice Provost, University of California
at Survive or Thrive: Making the Most of Your Digital Content, 8-9 June 2010, Manchester UK

Statement from the University of California and Nature Publishing Group

2010-09-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

The University of California and Nature Publishing Group are issuing the following joint statement concerning the status of our licensing discussions:

25 August 2010

Representatives from the University of California and Nature Publishing Group met on August 17, 2010 to discuss our organizations' current licensing challenges and the larger issues of scholarly communication sustainability. The discussion was positive, with a full exchange of views and mutual recognition of the value that each of us contributes to the scholarly communication enterprise. Our two organizations have agreed to work together in the coming months to address our mutual short- and long-term challenges, including an exploration of potential new approaches and evolving publishing models. We look forward to a successful planning and experimentation process that results in mutual agreement that serves all stakeholder groups—NPG, the UC libraries, and the scholar community, thus avoiding the need for the boycott that had been discussed at an earlier stage.

We are aware that many in the library, publishing, and academic communities are interested in the outcome of these discussions, and we will provide further updates on our progress as appropriate.

For the University of California:
Laine Farley
Executive Director
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President

Ivy Anderson
Director of Collections
California Digital Library
University of California, Office of the President

Brian E. C. Schottlaender
The Audrey Geisel University Librarian
University of California – San Diego
Past Convener, University Librarians Council

Karen Butter
University Librarian and Assistant Vice Chancellor
University of California – San Francisco

Richard A. Schneider
Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
University of California – San Francisco
Chair, University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication

Keith R. Yamamoto, PhD
Executive Vice Dean, School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco

For Nature Publishing Group:
Della Sar
Marketing and Sales Director
Nature Publishing Group

David Hoole
Director, Intellectual Property Policy and Licensing
Nature Publishing Group

See how a digital book is made - California Digital Library

2010-09-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

Millions of books from the UC Libraries have been digitized, but how? Go behind the scenes to learn about the UC Libraries’ digitization process and see several ways you can use these newly digital books. “The Story of the Digital Book” explains how UC’s books make their way from the shelf to the screen, the possibilities they bring to users, and how they’re preserved for the long term.

The video was produced by CDL Mass Digitization Project Specialist Jason Colman and Amy Rogers, a San José State University School of Library Information Science (SLIS) student, for the CDL Mass Digitization group. Amy interned at CDL this summer and we are very grateful for her help.

The video is also available with captioning for the hearing impaired.

Librarians Save The Day! 11 Great Movies In Which They Star

2010-08-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

Librarians Save The Day! 11 Great Movies In Which They Star
Posted 08-16-2010
Huffington Post

"While writers might seem more glamorous, librarians are the quiet heroes of the literary world. They stand up against censorship, they uncover ancient mysteries, they laugh in the face of computerization and stop the corporate world dead in its tracks. From Katharine Hepburn to Rachel Weisz, we've rounded up films that give librarians the center stage. Remember these?"

King Arthur vs. the Black Knight duel

2010-08-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Duel scene from King Arthur vs. the Black Knight
Directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones (1975)

Are we going to get that big table? Kids in the Hall - Brain Candy

2010-08-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

"So how are we on that, Marv?"

"You mean that thing you just mentioned...just now?"

"Yeah."

(pause)

"Oh we're on top of that, Don!"

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996)
Directed by Kelly Makin
Writing credits: Norm Hiscock, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson.

John W. Tukey quotations on Statistical Analysis

2010-08-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.
John Wilder Tukey. Ann. Math. Stat. 33 (1962)

If we need a short suggestion of what exploratory data analysis is, I would suggest that

It is an attitude AND
A flexibility AND
Some graph paper (or transparencies, or both).

John Wilder Tukey. American Statistician 40 (1986)

In a world in which the price of calculation continues to decrease rapidly, but the price of theorem proving continues to hold steady or increase, elementary economics indicates that we ought to spend a larger and larger fraction of our time on calculation.
John Wilder Tukey. American Statistician 40 (1986)

The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
John Wilder Tukey. American Statistician 40 (1986)

John Wilder Tukey.
The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard.

Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded Research Outputs (SPARC)

2010-08-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded Research Outputs (SPARC)

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) provided support for a feasibility study, to outline one possible approach to measuring the impacts of the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) on returns to public investment in R&D. The aim is to define and scope the data collection requirements and further model developments necessary for a more robust estimate of the likely impacts of the proposed FRPAA open archiving mandate.

The study was authored by John Houghton with Bruce Rasmussen and Peter Sheehan of the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University.

The model and this report can be found at http://www.cfses.com/FRPAA/.

Green Evolution: Creating a Sustainable Future (May 2010 - October 2010)

2010-06-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

Spring 2010 Exhibit

Green Evolution: Creating a Sustainable Future
The Libraries' spring exhibit, "Green Evolution: Creating a Sustainable Future," examines the changing conditions of our environment while showcasing a range of sustainability research and practice that is taking place at UCI and beyond. Topics covered include global warming and climate change, energy and alternative resources, water quality and management, and the latest practices for going green.
An array of materials will be on display to illustrate the evolution of environmental science and the scope of activity that has influenced progress in the field of energy alternatives. Local research and sustainability efforts such as advocacy and public policy, public health, environmental protection and transportation will be also be showcased. Julia Gelfand, Applied Sciences and Engineering Librarian and Mitchell Brown, Research Librarian for Chemistry and Earth System Science are the curators of the exhibit.

May 2010 - October 2010
presentation | checklist (pdf) | brochure (pdf) | event photos

National Science Foundation to Mandate Data Management Plans

2010-06-20T21:29:00.000-07:00

Scientists Seeking NSF Funding Will Soon Be Required to Submit Data Management Plans
Government-wide emphasis on community access to data supports substantive push toward more open sharing of research data

May 10, 2010

During the May 5^th meeting of the National Science Board, National Science Foundation (NSF) officials announced a change in the implementation of the existing policy on sharing research data. In particular, on or around October, 2010, NSF is planning to require that all proposals include a data management plan in the form of a two-page supplementary document. The research community will be informed of the specifics of the anticipated changes and the agency's expectations for the data management plans. [more]

The Future of NSF On Its 60th Anniversary

2010-06-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

The Future of NSF On Its 60th Anniversary [Flash Player]
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf_future

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) 60th anniversary was marked with a symposium that fortunately was captured on video and put on the NSF website. Past and present NSF Directors "reflected upon 25 years of experience and offered advice about the agency's future." Those videos can be found under "Select a Video: The Future of NSF". The videos of the discussions at the symposium can be found under "Select a Video: Discussions". The discussion videos are not always lengthy, and some are even comments from the audience
of science professionals. The video "The Role of Imagination in Science Learning" is one such video where a university science professor talks about the problem of her students' inability to imagine. She goes on to say that her experience with this prompted her to research the issue, which ultimately resulted in her university offering classes and exercises to teach students how to use their imaginations. Overall, it's an engaging
website and one that will be of general interest to a number of different groups. [KMG]

To find this resource and more high-quality online resources in math and science visit Scout's sister site - AMSER, the Applied Math and Science Educational Repository at http://amser.org.

Orginally posted at Scout Report

BP Spills Coffee - UBComedy

2010-06-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

UCBComedy — June 09, 2010 — This is what happens when BP spills coffee.
More comedy videos: http://www.UCBComedy.com
Like UCB: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UCBcome...
Follow UCB: http://www.twitter.com/UCBcomedy

Director: Peter Schultz & Brandon Bassham; Writers: Gavin Speiller, Eric Scott, Erik Tanouye, & John Frusciante; Editor: Peter Schultz, Starring: Eric Scott, Nat Freedberg, Kevin Cragg, Gavin Speiller, Kate McKinnon, John Frusciante, Zhubin Parang, Devlyn Corrigan, Erik Tanouye, Rob Lathan; Producer: Todd Bieber

Category: Comedy
Tags: BP coffee spills

Nature Publishing May Face Boycott - ACS Publications

2010-06-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

Nature Publishing May Face Boycott
Publishing: University of California libraries decry journal price hikes
Sophie L. Rovner
Published: June 11, 2010
Article Location: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/email/html/8824notw3.html

"The University of California is threatening to boycott Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journals in hopes of quashing the publisher’s attempt to raise subscription prices. NPG counters that UC is distorting the facts."
[more]

From Chemical & Engineering News http://www.cen-online.org
A service of the American Chemical Society.

Are we meeting the needs of our users? - App building for libraries

2010-06-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

Are we meeting the needs of our users?

This June 2010 ALA Policy Brief argues for the development of hand held services in libraries to "support the information needs of our users wherever they may be..."

There’s an App for That! Libraries and Mobile Technology: An Introduction
to Public Policy Considerations
ALA Policy Brief No. 3, June 2010

http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oitp/publications/policybriefs/mobiledevices.pdf

As the information revolution continues to unfold, libraries will experiment with mobile devices and services to support the information needs of their users wherever they may be. The adoption of mobile technology alters the traditional relationships between libraries and their users and introduces novel challenges to reader privacy. At the same time, the proliferation of mobile devices and services raises issues of
access to information in the digital age, including content ownership and licensing, digital rights management, and accessibility. This policy brief explores some of these issues, and is intended to stimulate further community discussion and policy analysis.

We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research - CHE june 13, 2010

2010-06-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

June 13, 2010
We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research

Michael Glenwood for The Chronicle

Michael Glenwood for The Chronicle
By Mark Bauerlein, Mohamed Gad-el-Hak, Wayne Grody, Bill McKelvey, and Stanley W. Trimble
Everybody agrees that scientific research is indispensable to the nation's health, prosperity, and security. In the many discussions of the value of research, however, one rarely hears any mention of how much publication of the results is best. Indeed, for all the regrets one hears in these hard times of research suffering from financing problems, we shouldn't forget the fact that the last few decades have seen astounding growth in the sheer output of research findings and conclusions. Just consider the raw increase in the number of journals. Using Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, Michael Mabe shows that the number of "refereed academic/scholarly" publications grows at a rate of 3.26 percent per year (i.e., doubles about every 20 years). The main cause: the growth in the number of researchers.
Source: We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research

Support for UC-Nature ban - The Scientist

2010-06-10T14:17:00.000-07:00

Posted by Megan Scudellari

[Entry posted at 10th June 2010 03:36 PM GMT]
The Scientist
Read more: Support for UC-Nature ban - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences

University of California scientists are speaking out in favor of UC's threat to boycott Nature Publishing Group over a proposed 400 percent hike in licensing fees.

"Nature is making a very unfortunate move here," said Alex Bell, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. "Multiple-fold increases are unjustified. I think it's bordering on exploitation."

In a letter mass e-mailed to faculty earlier this week and posted on the UC Libraries website, the California Digital Library and the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communications say the school is facing an "impending crisis," a proposed licensing price hike that would raise the cost for 67 Nature Publishing Group (NPG) journals by well over $1 million per year. The proposed new fees come at a time when UC libraries are in an economic pinch and worked all last year to reduce their electronic journal costs by $1 million per year.

Nature Publishing Group Defends Its Price Increase for University of California

2010-06-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

Nature Publishing Group Defends Its Price Increase for U. of California
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Jennifer Howard
June 11, 2010

The Nature Publishing Group has responded publicly to the challenge issued on Tuesday by the University of California system over a proposed 400-percent rise in the cost of Nature and the group's other scientific journals. In a long, strongly worded statement http://www.nature.com/press_releases/cdl.html released to the news media on Wednesday, the publisher disputed assertions that it was unfairly increasing its prices in California's case. It accused the California Digital Library, which negotiates the UC system's subscription licenses, of sensationalism and spreading misinformation. And it said that the digital library's threat to cancel its subscriptions and organize a faculty boycott of the Nature group's journals had taken it by surprise.

Source: http://chronicle.com/article/Nature-Publishing-Group/65848/

University of California response to Nature statement [11:29 am PST]

UC threatens ‘systemwide boycott’ of Nature Publishing Group - June 09, 2010

2010-06-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

The University of California is mulling a boycott of Nature Publishing Group in response to what it claims is a proposed 400% increase in subscription fees to the group’s journals, a letter from the university’s libraries reveals.

Dated 4 June, the letter says that unless NPG keeps to the current subscription agreement, faculty will be asked to cease submitting papers and undertaking peer review for NPG journals, to resign from all NPG editorial and advisory boards, and to not advertise jobs in NPG journals. Staff would also be urged to encourage “sympathy actions” from researchers outside the UC system.

The letter describes the proposed price increase as “of unprecedented magnitude”.

“NPG has made their ultimatum with full knowledge that our libraries are under economic distress,” it says. “...Capitulating to NPG now would wipe out all of the recent cost-saving measures taken by CDL [California Digital Library] and our campus libraries to reduce expenditures for electronic journals.”

It further points out that UC authors have produced 5,300 articles in Nature journals over the past six years and claims that these have contributed “at least” $19 million to NPG in revenue.

Speaking to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Keith Yamamoto, the executive vice dean of the School of Medicine at UC-San Francisco, points out that publisher Elsevier was forced to backtrack on proposed price rises for Cell Press journals in 2003 by a similar boycott. “There’s a strong feeling that this is an irresponsible action on the part of NPG,” he says.

Nature News has asked NPG for a response to the letter. It will be posted here as soon as we have it.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 09, 2010

University of California Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs

2010-06-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

U of California Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Jennifer Howard
June 10, 2010

The University of California system has said "enough" to the Nature Publishing Group, one of the leading commercial scientific publishers, over a big proposed jump in the cost of the group's journals.

On Tuesday, a letter http://libraries.ucsd.edu/collections/Nature_Faculty_Letter-June_2010.pdf
went out to all of the university's faculty members from the California Digital Library, which negotiates the system's deals with publishers, and the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication. The letter said that Nature proposed to raise the cost of California's license for its journals by 400 percent next year. If the publisher won't negotiate, the letter said, the system may have to take "more drastic actions" with the help of the faculty. Those actions could include suspending subscriptions to all of the Nature Group journals the California system buys access to-67 in all, including Nature.

The pressure does not stop there. The letter said that faculty would also organize "a systemwide boycott" of Nature's journals if the publisher does not relent. The voluntary boycott would "strongly encourage" researchers not to contribute papers to those journals or review manuscripts for them. It would urge them to resign from Nature's editorial boards and to encourage similar "sympathy actions" among colleagues outside the University of California system.

See the complete article at http://chronicle.com/article/U-of-California-Tries-Just/65823/.

CLIR Report: The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship]

2010-06-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship
Council on Library and Information Resources Publication 147 (June 2010)

Part two of the report, "On the Cost of Keeping a Book" by Paul Courant and Matthew "Buzzy" Nielsen. is particularly interesting. Table on page 91 shows the costs for keeping a book forever. Worth thinking about in terms of shared print, digitization, etc.

Famopily by Karen Hammer

2010-06-08T14:50:00.000-07:00

Art meets boardgame.

Famopily | 1999 | $800 until January 1, 2011, thereafter $1200

Ready to play board game: pigment inkjet prints, binder’s board

18.75 x 18.75"

Edition of 20
Family scrapbook images on game board, game cards collected by moving about board contain recollections about growing up in the 1960s.

Also available:
Famopily (codex), Inkjet prints | 1999 | $40
7.5 x 15.75" open | 7.5 x 8" closed
Wire bound book with text from game cards and photos from Famopily game board.

University of Washington MLIS Students

2010-05-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_uzUh1VT98

UC Santa Cruz Students Protest Library Budget Cuts

2010-05-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

UC Santa Cruz Students Protest Library Budget Cuts

Three-day study-in prompts mediation

April Boland -- Library Journal, 5/19/2010

Police called in when students remained in library until midnight
Library staff, caught in the middle, say protests create a “hardship"
Facilitated dialogue helps end student action

More than 100 University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) students protested ongoing and projected library budget cuts (totaling about 10%) with a three-day "study-in" last week at the Science and Engineering Library.

The protest began Monday, May 10, when students occupied the library until midnight in violation of the building’s 10:30 p.m. closing time. The library was forced to close early at 4:30 p.m. May 11, leading protesters to study right outside of the building.

Michael P. Johnson, 2010 Vanderbilt Graduate

2010-05-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

Michael P. Johnson 2010 Commencement from Vanderbilt University, May 14, 2010 with a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Copyright for Librarians

2010-03-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Copyright for Librarians is a joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL), a consortium of libraries from 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. The goal of the project is to provide librarians in developing and transitional countries information concerning copyright law. More specifically, it aspires to inform librarians concerning:

copyright law in general
the aspects of copyright law that most affect libraries
how librarians in the future could most effectively participate in the processes by which copyright law is interpreted and shaped.

Hurtling Toward the Finish Line: Should the Google Books Settlement Be Approved?: California Digital Library

2010-02-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

Hurtling Toward the Finish Line: Should the Google Books Settlement Be Approved?
February 16, 2010

Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections
California Digital Library

"Late last week, Google and the plaintiffs filed their final briefs in defense of the Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) that is before the New York Southern Federal District Court. As the rhetoric around the Settlement heats up to white-hot intensity in the final days before the Fairness Hearing on February 18th, I’d like to offer a few personal thoughts from my vantage point at the California Digital Library."

InfoMail becomes Voicemail

2010-01-04T19:02:00.000-08:00

InfoMail becomes Voicemail

Third day of fee protests at California universities

2009-11-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

Third day of fee protests at California universities
November 21, 2009 7:43 p.m. EST (CNN)

"Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Demonstrators entered their third day of a building takeover at UC Santa Cruz on Saturday in protest of a tuition increase, an undertaking that a school spokesman called futile.

The occupation of Kerr Hall is just one of several demonstrations across University of California campuses this week after the regent's board approved a 32 percent increase in tuition Thursday.

University officials said the $505 million to be raised by the tuition increases is needed to prevent even deeper cuts than those already made due to California's persistent financial crisis."

Source URL: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/21/california.student.protest/index.html

iReport videos and photographs

1979-2010 annual undergrad fees to attend a UC campus (LA Times)

2009-11-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

Friday, November 19, 2009 Los Angeles Times carried a front page article, "UC ready to raise student fees by 32%," which can be read in full at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucfees19-2009nov19,0,6237361.story

In case we get reference questions about the trajectory of these fees, which have actually gone down in some years, here's the 1979-2010 chart, but not in constant dollars, and excluding campus-specific fees:

California students occupy buildings to protest fee hike

2009-11-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

California students occupy buildings to protest fee hike
By Alan Duke, CNN
November 20, 2009 3:00 p.m. EST

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Students were occupying buildings Friday on campuses of the University of California system in protest of a 32 percent tuition hike.
Students took over portions of buildings on campuses in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Davis late Thursday, and two remain occupied Friday morning.

Student organizers said they would escalate their protests after the system's regents approved the tuition hike during a meeting Thursday on the UCLA campus.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/20/california.tuition.protests/index.html