Acquisitions and budgets
2012 Study of Subscription Prices for Scholarly Society Journals (pdf) is out from Allen Press. "[T]he average increase in 2012 dropped, more than a full percentage point below the average, to less than 6%." (The Consumer Price Index, according to the same figure, was less than 4%.) Much more detail, analysis and discussion is at the source (pdf).
The Librarian in Black writes I'm breaking up with eBooks (and you can too) on the poor deal that current models of ebook provision are for libraries and, by extension, our customers.
Marketing
Alison Wallbutton in #brandlibraries ponders what branding is, how libraries are branded, and whether we want to reposition that branding. She argues that libraries are successfully branded - as "books"; it's in the very word. But of course (segue to my own thoughts) we as librarians get twitchy about wanting to make sure that users know we're not just books, so we reject that outright - often without having put any thought into what we're going to replace that branding with. Which leaves us in a position where we can't effectively promote ourselves because we don't have any image to put out there.
Impact factors
Nixon, J.M. (2012). Core Journals in Library and Information Science: Developing a Methodology for Ranking LIS Journals. C&RL. Advance online publication.
--Outlines a methodology and resulting list of three tiers into which they've divided LIS journals according to "influence". Uses a mix of expert opinions, impact factors, circulation rate, and acceptance rate and, unsurprisingly, comes up with a similar list as those derived from expert opinions or from impact factors.
Probably a good measure of influence; it doesn't claim that quality follows. Which is good because Sick of Impact Factors which concludes that "if you use impact factors you are statistically illiterate" and has been so widely retweeted and commented on that the author has posted a followup summarising the long comment thread in sections: useful links; concerns about metrics; alternative metrics; and actions to take.
Just for fun
Library Shenanigans reports on The Stapler Obituaries - a mini-exhibition of dead staplers at an academic library.
Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ebooks. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 August 2012
Monday, 4 June 2012
4 #blogjune
Four fantastic links I want everyone to read:
Proceedings of Codcon 2012
A virtual, hypothetical, parodic library conference held by the Library Society of the World on Twitter and Friendfeed on Wednesday, May 16, 2012.
No, we can’t do it all by Meredith Farkas
"So many of us struggle with determining priorities in teaching. Few of us have a workload that would allow us to do everything we would like to do. We hear stories about embedded librarian programs, librarians who were able to co-grade student papers with a disciplinary faculty member, libraries that have co-taught entire classes, etc. and we think: wow, I’d love to do that. But can we?"
A failure of imagination – the problem with format neutrality
"I often hear librarians promoting their 'modern librarian' credentials by saying 'it's about the information, not the container'. By this they tend to mean that [...] we should not be concerned about in which formats information is available, as long as it is available somehow. But what if it is about the container?" Read more to inspire your imagination.
Collective action for ebook collections
"I still agree with the notion that unless ebook publishing and distribution changes, libraries are still screwed. So let's change things. Here are three things *you* can do." Read more to improve ebook access.
Proceedings of Codcon 2012
A virtual, hypothetical, parodic library conference held by the Library Society of the World on Twitter and Friendfeed on Wednesday, May 16, 2012.
No, we can’t do it all by Meredith Farkas
"So many of us struggle with determining priorities in teaching. Few of us have a workload that would allow us to do everything we would like to do. We hear stories about embedded librarian programs, librarians who were able to co-grade student papers with a disciplinary faculty member, libraries that have co-taught entire classes, etc. and we think: wow, I’d love to do that. But can we?"
A failure of imagination – the problem with format neutrality
"I often hear librarians promoting their 'modern librarian' credentials by saying 'it's about the information, not the container'. By this they tend to mean that [...] we should not be concerned about in which formats information is available, as long as it is available somehow. But what if it is about the container?" Read more to inspire your imagination.
Collective action for ebook collections
"I still agree with the notion that unless ebook publishing and distribution changes, libraries are still screwed. So let's change things. Here are three things *you* can do." Read more to improve ebook access.
Friday, 18 May 2012
How libraries can buy DRM-free ebooks
Libraries hate DRM because our customers hate DRM because it makes the ebooks we buy really truly appallingly horrible to use. I can never find the cartoon when I want it, but it's something like "How to download an ebook in 37 easy steps". It involves lots of installation of software and restarting of the computer and logging in to things and troubleshooting, and the final step is to give up and look for it on BitTorrent. (ETA: As per Andromeda's comment, here's the cartoon.)
But what can we do when publishers require DRM before they sell anything to us?
Well, the new venture Unglue.it could change things. The idea behind Unglue.it is that:
- author/copyright-holders pick a lump sum that they think is fair compensation for the rights to their book;
- people who want to read the book pledge however much they want;
- when the lump sum is reached, the book is released as a DRM-free, open-licensed ebook, free to the entire world. (If the lump sum isn't reached, no money's taken from your credit card.)
This is aimed at individual readers, but why shouldn't libraries get in on the game? There are apparently some 16,000-odd public library branches in the USA: if each one of those made a one-off pledge of US$1 then American Book Award-winner Love Like Gumbo would be available to their members (and everyone else in the world) in perpetuity. That's one heck of a cheap ebook. You can store a copy on the library server, or just link to it from the catalogue. You can print it out, if you want - as many times as you want. And you won't have to buy it again after it's been borrowed 26 times.
Currently Unglue.it has campaigns for five books. (If this takes off, and I'm convinced it will, there'll be more.) If any of these books would be of interest to the members of your library, then figure out what's a fair price (or what you can afford -- whichever's less) and then pledge just half of that from your book budget.
If you really can't afford it (or purchasing really has to go through approved suppliers, no exceptions ever), well, then promote the campaigns to your members instead.
Or do nothing. When the books are funded, you and your members will get them for free anyway. :-)
I just think that this is such a natural extension of our mission to use our funds wisely to provide resources to our communities that it's hardly an extension at all. I think it's the answer we've been asking for to the problem of ebooks. And I think it's the best consortial deal ever.
So let's go forth and Unglue!
Friday, 11 May 2012
Links of Interest - ebook lending, web design, bibliographic software, open access
Lending eBooks
Colorado's Douglas County Libraries has come up with a model whereby they buy, host, and manage the lending of ebooks (including DRM), rather than subscribe to publishers' platforms. See more details on the model and a letter to publishers about how it works.
Here's a cute way of reminding users of the value of libraries when they check out print books. It would be interesting to think of ways to make this work with e-resources...
Web design
See a demo of One-Pager, a free template for library websites designed and user-tested to make it easy to find the most important information - and to be immediately mobile-friendly and accessible. You can read more or download the code here.
Bibliographic software
Beyond Bibliographies: Collaborating with Citation Software (powerpoint) is a poster comparing Endnote, RefWorks, Zotero, and Mendeley.
Open Access
(I try to include a variety of stuff in these round-ups, but open access is kind of a strong interest of mine, so...)
Some keen-eyed librarians noticed that the previously open-access Reference and User Services Quarterly was suddenly open-access no longer; the Library Loon investigated and reported back. Apparently in future articles will be embargoed for a year, although as at writing older articles aren't available yet either.
(This reminds me that I keep meaning to find out whether The New Zealand Library And Information Management Journal is intended to be open access or if it's just openly accessible by default, so to speak. In any case they're there at the moment - as are all the LIANZA conference papers from 2004. They're not browsable/searchable in the most user-friendly format but I know from experience what the web group's dealing with, and that just getting them all in one place is a fantastic achievement.)
The Library Loon also has a fantastic discussion about how to recognise scammy "open access" publishers.
SCORE Library Survey Report "aimed to get a national [UK] perspective on institutional engagement in Open Educational Resources through their librarians".
Open Access in Chemistry - slides from a presentation at the 2011 ACS Spring Meeting giving an excellent overview of what it says on the tin - in terms both of numbers and of attitudes.
Colorado's Douglas County Libraries has come up with a model whereby they buy, host, and manage the lending of ebooks (including DRM), rather than subscribe to publishers' platforms. See more details on the model and a letter to publishers about how it works.
Here's a cute way of reminding users of the value of libraries when they check out print books. It would be interesting to think of ways to make this work with e-resources...
Web design
See a demo of One-Pager, a free template for library websites designed and user-tested to make it easy to find the most important information - and to be immediately mobile-friendly and accessible. You can read more or download the code here.
Bibliographic software
Beyond Bibliographies: Collaborating with Citation Software (powerpoint) is a poster comparing Endnote, RefWorks, Zotero, and Mendeley.
Open Access
(I try to include a variety of stuff in these round-ups, but open access is kind of a strong interest of mine, so...)
Some keen-eyed librarians noticed that the previously open-access Reference and User Services Quarterly was suddenly open-access no longer; the Library Loon investigated and reported back. Apparently in future articles will be embargoed for a year, although as at writing older articles aren't available yet either.
(This reminds me that I keep meaning to find out whether The New Zealand Library And Information Management Journal is intended to be open access or if it's just openly accessible by default, so to speak. In any case they're there at the moment - as are all the LIANZA conference papers from 2004. They're not browsable/searchable in the most user-friendly format but I know from experience what the web group's dealing with, and that just getting them all in one place is a fantastic achievement.)
The Library Loon also has a fantastic discussion about how to recognise scammy "open access" publishers.
SCORE Library Survey Report "aimed to get a national [UK] perspective on institutional engagement in Open Educational Resources through their librarians".
Open Access in Chemistry - slides from a presentation at the 2011 ACS Spring Meeting giving an excellent overview of what it says on the tin - in terms both of numbers and of attitudes.
Thursday, 8 September 2011
Links of Interest 8/9/2011 - news in e-resources
Michael S Hart, founder of Project Gutenburg, died on the 6th September - read his obituary.
JSTOR is making much of its public domain material openly accessible. (Library Journal also comments.)
The Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Information "is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, open-access publication for original articles, reviews and case studies that analyze or describe the strategies, partnerships and impact of library-led digital projects, online publishing and scholarly communication initiatives." It's put out a call for submissions for its inaugural issue in [Northern Hemisphere] Spring 2012.
JSTOR is making much of its public domain material openly accessible. (Library Journal also comments.)
The Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Information "is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, open-access publication for original articles, reviews and case studies that analyze or describe the strategies, partnerships and impact of library-led digital projects, online publishing and scholarly communication initiatives." It's put out a call for submissions for its inaugural issue in [Northern Hemisphere] Spring 2012.
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
On the Humanities and the Innovation Adoption Curve
I've been catching up on my reading and am currently up to:
Herrera, G. (2011). Google Scholar Users and User Behaviors: An Exploratory Study. College & Research Libraries, 72(4), 316-330.
which looks at usage data about Google Scholar cunningly culled from link resolver logs. There's some really interesting stuff, but something they quote in their conclusion made my mind go off on a tangent:
Could it instead be simply that new technologies are designed by computer scientists for computer scientists? Engineering and physical sciences work similarly enough that they can adapt their usage pretty easily. But the humanities -- a few of us have been doing some mini sessions on scholarly ebooks for faculty, and what we're hearing from faculty is that in the humanities they have completely different kinds of texts which need to be used in completely different kinds of ways, and these ways are not supported by the technology.
So I rather suspect that it's rather less to do with the people than commonly implied, and rather more to do with systematic bias in the technology.
Herrera, G. (2011). Google Scholar Users and User Behaviors: An Exploratory Study. College & Research Libraries, 72(4), 316-330.
which looks at usage data about Google Scholar cunningly culled from link resolver logs. There's some really interesting stuff, but something they quote in their conclusion made my mind go off on a tangent:
On the other hand, the 2009 Ithaka faculty survey concluded that humanists "have been later and slower to change in many ways than their peers in the sciences, to be sure." --Schonfeld and Housewright, "Faculty Survey 2009," 34.Which is an observation that comes up time and again, and often it's implied that this is because the humanities are inherently conservative. But is that really the case? Correlation doesn't mean causation.
Could it instead be simply that new technologies are designed by computer scientists for computer scientists? Engineering and physical sciences work similarly enough that they can adapt their usage pretty easily. But the humanities -- a few of us have been doing some mini sessions on scholarly ebooks for faculty, and what we're hearing from faculty is that in the humanities they have completely different kinds of texts which need to be used in completely different kinds of ways, and these ways are not supported by the technology.
So I rather suspect that it's rather less to do with the people than commonly implied, and rather more to do with systematic bias in the technology.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
5 Reasons Why Print Books Don't Cut the Mustard
(With apologies to Wired.)
No-one can dispute that print books have been pretty popular over the last several centuries. But really they are fundamentally flawed. Unless they can precisely duplicate the experience provided by an e-reader they're doomed, because all people want the exact same reading experience and never compromise on some criteria in order to fulfill others.
Let's skip a page of boring context and cut to the bulletpoints that are the only things anyone cares about anyway.
1. An unfinished print book isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it.
You know the drill. You pick up a print book, start reading it, get distracted and leave it next to the sofa. Next day, when your eye's caught by another print book on the wooden bookshelf and you open its cover, the print book doesn't display the page of the print book you were reading yesterday to remind you where you were at. Two weeks later you've got a dozen half-read print books in a dozen obscure locations of your house (some of them with scraps of paper marking the point you left off - that's right, even if you pick up the same print book you were reading yesterday, it won't automatically remember your page number). Eventually you realise you're never going to finish any of them and in a tidying frenzy you dump them all back on your wooden bookshelf.
2. You can’t keep your print books all in one place.
Print books on the wooden bookcase, beside your bed, in your handbag, at work, in the car, at the physical library - it's impossible to keep track of them all. And if you finish reading a print book at the start of a commute, you can't just open it again to choose and start reading a new print book, because all the other print books are at home, on the wooden bookshelf.
Worse yet, you can't keep your print books all in two places. There's no app for syncing a print collection between two locations. If your print books are on the wooden bookshelf at home, they can't be in your handbag at the same time.
To add credibility and pathos to my opinions, I shall here mention a friend who lost access to her house post-earthquake and with it her entire collection of print books. When she got the occasional half hour to retrieve items she had to rapidly choose which to spend her time rescuing. If they'd been electronic they'd have been in her iPhone all along -- and if she'd lost that, she could have retrieved her computer on which they'd have all been synced.
3. Notes on paper margins are pointless
You spend hours reading a print book and making ink notes in its paper margins and what have you got at the end of it? All that useful information is still stuck inside the print book. You can't click and drag it into your word processor where you actually need it. You could cut and paste it and make a nice collage, but even librarians who appreciate marginalia are likely to look askance at that.
4. Print books are priced as disposable, but aren’t marketed that way.
I talked with someone today who had some print items he no longer wanted and wanted to donate them to the library. The library didn't want them and I couldn't think of any library or used bookstore that would. The best thing to do would be to throw them in the recycling bin. But he hesitated, and I found even I hesitated to make this suggestion in so many words. Because we've developed this utterly idiotic idea that the print book, each with runs of thousands or millions, is nevertheless a priceless artefact whose destruction is a kind of sacrilege.
5. Print books can't be used as a clock.
Look at the bottom of your print book and you won't see the time - only a page number. You can't go back to the title page and open up a game of sudoku. Storing too many polaroids in it makes the pages bulge. If you want to check a definition, you have to fetch an entirely different print book. The only thing a print book does is let you read that one novel.
Well, not quite the only thing. It does make nice kindling.
No-one can dispute that print books have been pretty popular over the last several centuries. But really they are fundamentally flawed. Unless they can precisely duplicate the experience provided by an e-reader they're doomed, because all people want the exact same reading experience and never compromise on some criteria in order to fulfill others.
Let's skip a page of boring context and cut to the bulletpoints that are the only things anyone cares about anyway.
1. An unfinished print book isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it.
You know the drill. You pick up a print book, start reading it, get distracted and leave it next to the sofa. Next day, when your eye's caught by another print book on the wooden bookshelf and you open its cover, the print book doesn't display the page of the print book you were reading yesterday to remind you where you were at. Two weeks later you've got a dozen half-read print books in a dozen obscure locations of your house (some of them with scraps of paper marking the point you left off - that's right, even if you pick up the same print book you were reading yesterday, it won't automatically remember your page number). Eventually you realise you're never going to finish any of them and in a tidying frenzy you dump them all back on your wooden bookshelf.
2. You can’t keep your print books all in one place.
Print books on the wooden bookcase, beside your bed, in your handbag, at work, in the car, at the physical library - it's impossible to keep track of them all. And if you finish reading a print book at the start of a commute, you can't just open it again to choose and start reading a new print book, because all the other print books are at home, on the wooden bookshelf.
Worse yet, you can't keep your print books all in two places. There's no app for syncing a print collection between two locations. If your print books are on the wooden bookshelf at home, they can't be in your handbag at the same time.
To add credibility and pathos to my opinions, I shall here mention a friend who lost access to her house post-earthquake and with it her entire collection of print books. When she got the occasional half hour to retrieve items she had to rapidly choose which to spend her time rescuing. If they'd been electronic they'd have been in her iPhone all along -- and if she'd lost that, she could have retrieved her computer on which they'd have all been synced.
3. Notes on paper margins are pointless
You spend hours reading a print book and making ink notes in its paper margins and what have you got at the end of it? All that useful information is still stuck inside the print book. You can't click and drag it into your word processor where you actually need it. You could cut and paste it and make a nice collage, but even librarians who appreciate marginalia are likely to look askance at that.
4. Print books are priced as disposable, but aren’t marketed that way.
I talked with someone today who had some print items he no longer wanted and wanted to donate them to the library. The library didn't want them and I couldn't think of any library or used bookstore that would. The best thing to do would be to throw them in the recycling bin. But he hesitated, and I found even I hesitated to make this suggestion in so many words. Because we've developed this utterly idiotic idea that the print book, each with runs of thousands or millions, is nevertheless a priceless artefact whose destruction is a kind of sacrilege.
5. Print books can't be used as a clock.
Look at the bottom of your print book and you won't see the time - only a page number. You can't go back to the title page and open up a game of sudoku. Storing too many polaroids in it makes the pages bulge. If you want to check a definition, you have to fetch an entirely different print book. The only thing a print book does is let you read that one novel.
Well, not quite the only thing. It does make nice kindling.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Links of interest 26/8/10
Scandal du jour (aka the power of social media)
JSTOR's new interface made searches default to covering their entire database - so results might include articles students didn't have access to on JSTOR and which wouldn't even be linked via OpenURL to the library's subscription in another database. (Meredith Farkas describes the problems neatly.) Librarians complained loudly on blogs, JSTOR's Facebook page, and elsewhere, and a day later JSTOR has announced that they'll change the default while they continue work on OpenURL.
Tools
WolframAlpha has added widgets that focus on a specific kind of data and can be embedded into a webpage by copying and pasting the code. Categories cover all kinds of subject areas - some widgets might be relevant in a subject guide. (You'd need to add a new rich text box, then select the plain text editor and copy/paste in the embed code from WolframAlpha.)
Librarian as resource
University of Michigan Library's search results now bring back subject librarians as well as relevant databases, catalogue items, subject guides, institutional repository hits, and external websites. Their blog about this links to some examples.
eBooks and compatibility
Jason Griffey writes a clear explanation about why ebook filetypes and digital rights management means that purchasing an ebook doesn't mean you can read it on any old e-reader.
Library instruction
Cooke, R., Rosenthal, D. Students Use More Books After Library Instruction: An Analysis of Undergraduate Paper Citations College and Research Libraries (preprint)
JSTOR's new interface made searches default to covering their entire database - so results might include articles students didn't have access to on JSTOR and which wouldn't even be linked via OpenURL to the library's subscription in another database. (Meredith Farkas describes the problems neatly.) Librarians complained loudly on blogs, JSTOR's Facebook page, and elsewhere, and a day later JSTOR has announced that they'll change the default while they continue work on OpenURL.
Tools
WolframAlpha has added widgets that focus on a specific kind of data and can be embedded into a webpage by copying and pasting the code. Categories cover all kinds of subject areas - some widgets might be relevant in a subject guide. (You'd need to add a new rich text box, then select the plain text editor and copy/paste in the embed code from WolframAlpha.)
Librarian as resource
University of Michigan Library's search results now bring back subject librarians as well as relevant databases, catalogue items, subject guides, institutional repository hits, and external websites. Their blog about this links to some examples.
eBooks and compatibility
Jason Griffey writes a clear explanation about why ebook filetypes and digital rights management means that purchasing an ebook doesn't mean you can read it on any old e-reader.
Library instruction
Cooke, R., Rosenthal, D. Students Use More Books After Library Instruction: An Analysis of Undergraduate Paper Citations College and Research Libraries (preprint)
(They compared classes which received library instruction with identical classes which didn't.)"In Fall 2008, students from first-year Composition I and upper level classes at Florida Gulf Coast University participated in a citation analysis study. The citation pages of their research papers revealed that the students used more books, more types of sources, and more overall sources when a librarian provided instruction. When these results were compared to those produced by students in upper level classes (all of whom received instruction), it was discovered that as the class level increased, the number of citations and the percentage of scholarly citations generally increased and there was a high preference for books from all disciplines, especially history."
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Links of interest 11/8/10 - open access, accessibility, statistics and more
Open Access
- the Creative Commons NZ mailing list.
- The State Services Commission has released the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework.
- In a brown-bag lunch conversation about open access yesterday a bunch of us also talked about the digitisation of the AJHRs, the Directory of Open Access Journals, ways/issues with getting more open access content in our catalogue and/or Summon, and a bunch of other things.
- Char Booth writes about e-texts and library accessibility including a great quote that "ebooks were created by the blind, then made inaccessible by the sighted."
- NZETC has just posted about the 1064 works in DAISY format available in their collection for people with print-related disabilities. (DAISY = "Digital Accessible Information SYstem")
- Dave Pattern at U of Huddersfield blogs about how "non- and low-usage of library services/resources [...] relates to final grades"
- Some results from extending the Angers university library's opening hours - in French and in Google Translate's English
- Stats from the Toulouse library's standard OPAC vs its mobile OPAC - in French and Google Translate's English.
- And Meredith Farkas writes about "the unsupported interpretations" librarians often make based on our statistics
- The first year of research on the Researchers of Tomorrow (pdf) study finds that "in broad approaches to information‐seeking and use of research resources, there are no marked differences between Generation Y doctoral students and those in older age groups. Nor are there marked differences in these behaviours between doctoral students of any age in different years of their study. The most significant differences revealed in the data are between subject disciplines of study irrespective of age or year of study."
- Assessments of Information Literacy collects links to infolit tests, assessments, rubrics and tutorials available online.
- Christina Pikas lists a Rundown of the new [database etc] interfaces this summer. There were some surprises, including a ScienceDirect/Scopus merger apparently due August 28...
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Links of interest 2/2/10
Foursquare
Not a chain of convenience stores - this Foursquare is a website/application that lets you use your cellphone etc to "check in" when you reach locations like cafes, movie theatres, libraries, etc. At its worst this floods your friends with endless notifications: "Now I'm at the dairy! Now I'm at home! Now I'm at the busstop! Now I'm at work! Now...!" But at best you walk into your favourite cafe and:
EBSCO buys up exclusive electronic access to a number of popular periodicals which will be removed from other databases that used to provide them. Reactions:During negotiations between Amazon and "big 6" publisher Macmillan over pricing of ebooks, Amazon removed all Macmillan titles (electronic and print) from its database. Reactions:
Bookcovers in LibGuides
Springshare have announced a partnership with Syndetics so we can now use Syndetics bookcover images in our LibGuides. This is just like using the images from Amazon before - when adding a featured book just insert ISBN, click icon, and voila a cover image - but click the "S" (Syndetics) icon instead of the Amazon icon. An added advantage is that Syndetics works with ISBN-13 as well as ISBN-10 (Amazon is limited to ISBN-10).
European theses
The DART-Europe E-theses Portal gathers and provides "access to 123327 full-text research theses from 210 universities sourced from 16 European countries".
Not a chain of convenience stores - this Foursquare is a website/application that lets you use your cellphone etc to "check in" when you reach locations like cafes, movie theatres, libraries, etc. At its worst this floods your friends with endless notifications: "Now I'm at the dairy! Now I'm at home! Now I'm at the busstop! Now I'm at work! Now...!" But at best you walk into your favourite cafe and:
- read tips from other customers about what to order or avoid;
- win a prize from the cafe itself;
- discover that your friend is in the area and arrange for them to meet you for a quick cuppa.
- Foursquare, Libraries, and Librarians;
- Foursquare and Libraries - Anything There?;
- and its followup Foursquare and Libraries - Definitely Something There!
EBSCO buys up exclusive electronic access to a number of popular periodicals which will be removed from other databases that used to provide them. Reactions:During negotiations between Amazon and "big 6" publisher Macmillan over pricing of ebooks, Amazon removed all Macmillan titles (electronic and print) from its database. Reactions:
- the breaking news;
- Macmillan's CEO responds promptly;
- among many many others, authors Charles Stross, John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell, Cory Doctorow weigh in;
- and finally Amazon responds in an obscure location two days after it all happened (this is months in internet-time).
Bookcovers in LibGuides
Springshare have announced a partnership with Syndetics so we can now use Syndetics bookcover images in our LibGuides. This is just like using the images from Amazon before - when adding a featured book just insert ISBN, click icon, and voila a cover image - but click the "S" (Syndetics) icon instead of the Amazon icon. An added advantage is that Syndetics works with ISBN-13 as well as ISBN-10 (Amazon is limited to ISBN-10).
European theses
The DART-Europe E-theses Portal gathers and provides "access to 123327 full-text research theses from 210 universities sourced from 16 European countries".
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Links of interest 13/1/10
Web collaboration
- Tinychat lets you instantly set up a temporary chatroom with its own short url you can share with anyone you want to join you. Once everyone has left the chat it disappears.
- Flockdraw does the same for the virtual whiteboard.
- Virtual provider pessimism: analysing instant messaging reference encounters with the pair perception comparison method looks at how users vs librarians are satisfied with IM reference sessions. They find that users are frequently happy with results even when the librarians haven't felt confident with how things went.
- Cyberspace or Face-to-Face: The Teachable Moment and Changing Reference Mediums looks at instant messaging, chat, and face-to-face reference in terms of levels of instruction in each medium. They find that "patrons wanted to be taught regardless of medium, and that librarians responded by providing instruction in all mediums." (Although different techniques are used in the different mediums.) "These patrons’ consistently high desire for instruction reinforces the notion that the ideal teachable moment can be found in reference work."
- "But I Want a Real Book": An Investigation of Undergraduates' Usage and Attitudes toward Electronic Books
- This Open Access mindmap covers what open access is, what supporters are motivated by, what it applies to, how materials are made available (eg journals and repositories) and organised. Many of the nodes have links to articles for further information.
- Discussion of a simple system a Dutch library set up to encourage users to recommend or 'tag' books as they returned them - and discussion of how this system became so successful that the library discontinued it.
- Karen Schneider writes Reflections on strategic plans that are neither strategic nor plans
- And finally, Beyond the Bullet Points: New Years Resolution says "Let us make a resolution together. Let’s make 2010 the year of the librarian – not the library."
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Links of Interest 4/11/09
Resources
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has posted a list of online texts for current courses at VUW.
The Dept of Internal Affairs has launched Government datasets online, a directory of publicly-available NZ government datasets (especially but not exclusively machine-readable datasets).
Complementary Twitter accounts:
Information Literacy
There was a lot of interest at and after LIANZA09 about the Cephalonia Method of library instruction (basically, handing out pre-written questions on cards to students to ask at appropriate times during the tutorial). A recent blogpost by a librarian worn out from too many tutorials wonders "what if the entire class session consisted of me asking students questions? What if I asked them to demonstrate searching the library catalog and databases?"
Scandal du jour
A document by Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix) on open source library management systems (pdf, 424KB) appeared on WikiLeaks. The biblioblogosphere saw this as evidence of SirsiDynix secretly spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) against their open-source competition. Stephen Abram replied on his blog that it was never a secret paper and he's not against open source software but it's not ready for most libraries. Much discussion followed in his blog comments and on blogs elsewhere; Library Journal has also picked up the story.
For fun
Also at Library Journal, The Card Catalog Makes a Graceful Departure at the University of South Carolina - rather than just dumping it the library is hosting events such as a Catalog Card Boat Race and What Can You Make With Catalog Cards?
Things Librarians Fancy.
Deborah
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has posted a list of online texts for current courses at VUW.
The Dept of Internal Affairs has launched Government datasets online, a directory of publicly-available NZ government datasets (especially but not exclusively machine-readable datasets).
Complementary Twitter accounts:
- APStylebook (Sample: Election voting: Use figures for totals and separate the large totals with "to" instead of hyphen.)
- FakeAPStylebook (Sample: To describe more than one octopus, use sixteentopus, twentyfourtopus, thirtytwotopus, and so on.)
Information Literacy
There was a lot of interest at and after LIANZA09 about the Cephalonia Method of library instruction (basically, handing out pre-written questions on cards to students to ask at appropriate times during the tutorial). A recent blogpost by a librarian worn out from too many tutorials wonders "what if the entire class session consisted of me asking students questions? What if I asked them to demonstrate searching the library catalog and databases?"
Scandal du jour
A document by Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix) on open source library management systems (pdf, 424KB) appeared on WikiLeaks. The biblioblogosphere saw this as evidence of SirsiDynix secretly spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) against their open-source competition. Stephen Abram replied on his blog that it was never a secret paper and he's not against open source software but it's not ready for most libraries. Much discussion followed in his blog comments and on blogs elsewhere; Library Journal has also picked up the story.
For fun
Also at Library Journal, The Card Catalog Makes a Graceful Departure at the University of South Carolina - rather than just dumping it the library is hosting events such as a Catalog Card Boat Race and What Can You Make With Catalog Cards?
Things Librarians Fancy.
Deborah
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
The role of libraries in emerging models of scholarly communication
a faculty-library publishing partnership
Sigi Jöttkandt, John Willinsky, Shana Kimball
abstract (pdf)
Crisis in scholarly publishing
Exponential rise in subscription prices, decline in library budgets, consolidation of the publishing industry. Affects everyone in academia but especially the "book disciplines" eg humanities. Crisis for readers (access to scholarly materials decreases) and for authors (fewer publishers to be published by).
Open access as a response
Definition by Peter Suber.
Alternative publication models
"Green road" - institutional repositories freely available. Discipline-specific eg arXiv.org, CSeARCH.
"Gold Road" - open access publishing - Directory of Open Access Journals
Open Humanities Press
Slow uptake of OA among humanities scholars, perhaps because of perceptions among humanities researchers that internet isn't an appropriate publishing/researching venue. Open Humanities Press founded to counter these perceptions. Primary importance for humanities is not time to publication but prestige. Author-side fees would be inappropriate and didn't want to waste time fundraising, so instead of starting new journals, looked to gather pre-existing efforts.
Launched Open Humanities Press with seven journals. Aim to raise profile and credibility of these journals. Assess journals according to various policies
Libraries Scholarly Publishing Office. Use open source publishing software.
Found there was a perception that OHP would soon be involved in books so ran with it. Formed a model where international scholars get together to edit, peer-review, and publish books - eventually e-publishing. Aim to double publishing of books each year.
Hope model will take off more widely. Doesn't require much change from academics.
Still a community/volunteer project.
Public Knowledge Project
Open journal systems, open conference systems, developing open monograph systems
Made a dummy OA "LIANZA Journal" and Sigi says she'd be happy to talk to people about actually making the journal open access!
They're modularising the journal system to create a software platform for a monograph system.
Q: Would publishers use this system to set up open access monographs? What's the role of the library?
A: Scholarly Publishing Office is just for the conversion side of things - academics still do editing and peer review. Would like to see more libraries offer these services to scholars.
Q: Who does subject headings - authors or SPO?
A: Authors do add keywords. Journals are catalogued by libraries so subject headings are added there too.
Sigi Jöttkandt, John Willinsky, Shana Kimball
abstract (pdf)
Crisis in scholarly publishing
Exponential rise in subscription prices, decline in library budgets, consolidation of the publishing industry. Affects everyone in academia but especially the "book disciplines" eg humanities. Crisis for readers (access to scholarly materials decreases) and for authors (fewer publishers to be published by).
Open access as a response
Definition by Peter Suber.
Alternative publication models
"Green road" - institutional repositories freely available. Discipline-specific eg arXiv.org, CSeARCH.
"Gold Road" - open access publishing - Directory of Open Access Journals
Open Humanities Press
Slow uptake of OA among humanities scholars, perhaps because of perceptions among humanities researchers that internet isn't an appropriate publishing/researching venue. Open Humanities Press founded to counter these perceptions. Primary importance for humanities is not time to publication but prestige. Author-side fees would be inappropriate and didn't want to waste time fundraising, so instead of starting new journals, looked to gather pre-existing efforts.
Launched Open Humanities Press with seven journals. Aim to raise profile and credibility of these journals. Assess journals according to various policies
Libraries Scholarly Publishing Office. Use open source publishing software.
Found there was a perception that OHP would soon be involved in books so ran with it. Formed a model where international scholars get together to edit, peer-review, and publish books - eventually e-publishing. Aim to double publishing of books each year.
Hope model will take off more widely. Doesn't require much change from academics.
Still a community/volunteer project.
Public Knowledge Project
Open journal systems, open conference systems, developing open monograph systems
Made a dummy OA "LIANZA Journal" and Sigi says she'd be happy to talk to people about actually making the journal open access!
They're modularising the journal system to create a software platform for a monograph system.
Q: Would publishers use this system to set up open access monographs? What's the role of the library?
A: Scholarly Publishing Office is just for the conversion side of things - academics still do editing and peer review. Would like to see more libraries offer these services to scholars.
Q: Who does subject headings - authors or SPO?
A: Authors do add keywords. Journals are catalogued by libraries so subject headings are added there too.
Monday, 12 October 2009
Copyright vs community in the age of computer networks
Richard Stallman (homepage)
abstract (pdf)
Brenda Chawner, chair, says Stallman is "The most influential people no-one has ever heard of."
Talking about whether the idea of free software extends to other works. User deserves:
Text isn't the same exactly as software - no source code. So mostly affected by copyright. This has developed along with copying technology. Originally had no economy of scale - ten copies took 10 times as long as 1 copy. Copies were made in a decentralised manner. Anyone who had a copy and wanted to copy it could. --Unless the local ruler didn't like the book, "but that's not copyright, it's something closely related, which is censorship".
Printing press has economy of scale. Took time to set up, required money and skill, but once it was set up you could produce many many copies. So copies were made in a centralised manner. And this is when copyright began. In England it began as a method of censorship in 1500s (originally to censor Protestants, then to censor Catholics). You'd apply to crown and get perpetual monopoly to publish a title. This was abolished, and in the 1680s reestablished as a temporary monopoly for the author of 14 years. It was a means of promoting writing.
When US Constitution was written they decided that Congress could optionally adopt a copyright law in order to promote progress, and it must last a limited time.
In time of digital technology, one-off copying has benefitted so we're back almost to the time of decentralised copy-making. Copyright is no longer adapted to the technology. It's now a restriction on the public, controlled by publishers in the name of authors. "It's no longer easy to enforce, no longer uncontroversial, and no longer beneficial."
Copyright is supposed to encourage authors to write more - but how does extending copyright in 1998 encourage the authors of the 1920s to write more? And the value of 20 years of copyright 70 years in our future is too small to actually change anyone's actions. The real reason of the law is that certain companies have lucrative monopolies and want them to continue.
Originally copyright regulated certain activities while others were simply allowed. Now, companies want to set up a pay-per-universe by turning our computers against us using DRM. First by technology, until people figured out the formats and published free software - then by law, by criminalising this software. Then by technology again. Stallman says that a conspiracy to control our computers in this way should be prosecuted to price-fix.
AACS was broken and the key was published (illegally) by being included in a photo with cute puppies so it got shared faster than it could be deleted. (cf also this story)
Blue Ray. "Corrupt disks" will play in audio players but not on a computer. Sony discs install a program to take control of your computer, to hide itself and resist deletion - these are crimes. Also included GNU code which was on a GNU copy-left license - which Sony didn't comply with. People sued Sony but focused on these specific crimes instead of on their evil purpose.
Fortunately music DRM is receding. But we're seeing a renewed effort to impose DRM on books. First by taking away freedoms from ebooks; second by convincing people to switch from print books to ebooks.
Publisher wanted to get Stallman's biography as an ebook to promote their line. He said only if it's not encrypted. They wouldn't do it. Eventually he found a publisher which would.
He thinks probably the reason there's so many stories about electronic ink is companies want us to get excited about ebook readers - which have DRM, backdoors, spyware. Eg Amazon knows everything you've bought on the Kindle. You can't lend it, can't sell it to a used bookstore, and Amazon can delete your book (which they've done with 1984).
"They want to create a world where nobody lends books to anybody anymore."
Encourages us to spread the message that by using these devices, "Other readers will no longer be your friend" because we'll be acting like a jerk by having them in a non-sharable form.
He's happy with an ebook reader which runs free software, no DRM, doesn't have backdoors, restrict your files. It's possible to have such a thing. But the companies pushing ebooks "are doing it to attack our freedom and we mustn't stand for that."
Stallman says:
Also proposes:
abstract (pdf)
Brenda Chawner, chair, says Stallman is "The most influential people no-one has ever heard of."
Talking about whether the idea of free software extends to other works. User deserves:
- Freedom 0 - to run the program
- 1 - to look at source code, verify what it's doing, fix it to make it work as you need
- 2 - to help friends by sharing software with them
- 3 - to help community by publishing changes to software
Text isn't the same exactly as software - no source code. So mostly affected by copyright. This has developed along with copying technology. Originally had no economy of scale - ten copies took 10 times as long as 1 copy. Copies were made in a decentralised manner. Anyone who had a copy and wanted to copy it could. --Unless the local ruler didn't like the book, "but that's not copyright, it's something closely related, which is censorship".
Printing press has economy of scale. Took time to set up, required money and skill, but once it was set up you could produce many many copies. So copies were made in a centralised manner. And this is when copyright began. In England it began as a method of censorship in 1500s (originally to censor Protestants, then to censor Catholics). You'd apply to crown and get perpetual monopoly to publish a title. This was abolished, and in the 1680s reestablished as a temporary monopoly for the author of 14 years. It was a means of promoting writing.
When US Constitution was written they decided that Congress could optionally adopt a copyright law in order to promote progress, and it must last a limited time.
In time of digital technology, one-off copying has benefitted so we're back almost to the time of decentralised copy-making. Copyright is no longer adapted to the technology. It's now a restriction on the public, controlled by publishers in the name of authors. "It's no longer easy to enforce, no longer uncontroversial, and no longer beneficial."
Copyright is supposed to encourage authors to write more - but how does extending copyright in 1998 encourage the authors of the 1920s to write more? And the value of 20 years of copyright 70 years in our future is too small to actually change anyone's actions. The real reason of the law is that certain companies have lucrative monopolies and want them to continue.
Originally copyright regulated certain activities while others were simply allowed. Now, companies want to set up a pay-per-universe by turning our computers against us using DRM. First by technology, until people figured out the formats and published free software - then by law, by criminalising this software. Then by technology again. Stallman says that a conspiracy to control our computers in this way should be prosecuted to price-fix.
AACS was broken and the key was published (illegally) by being included in a photo with cute puppies so it got shared faster than it could be deleted. (cf also this story)
Blue Ray. "Corrupt disks" will play in audio players but not on a computer. Sony discs install a program to take control of your computer, to hide itself and resist deletion - these are crimes. Also included GNU code which was on a GNU copy-left license - which Sony didn't comply with. People sued Sony but focused on these specific crimes instead of on their evil purpose.
Fortunately music DRM is receding. But we're seeing a renewed effort to impose DRM on books. First by taking away freedoms from ebooks; second by convincing people to switch from print books to ebooks.
Publisher wanted to get Stallman's biography as an ebook to promote their line. He said only if it's not encrypted. They wouldn't do it. Eventually he found a publisher which would.
He thinks probably the reason there's so many stories about electronic ink is companies want us to get excited about ebook readers - which have DRM, backdoors, spyware. Eg Amazon knows everything you've bought on the Kindle. You can't lend it, can't sell it to a used bookstore, and Amazon can delete your book (which they've done with 1984).
"They want to create a world where nobody lends books to anybody anymore."
Encourages us to spread the message that by using these devices, "Other readers will no longer be your friend" because we'll be acting like a jerk by having them in a non-sharable form.
He's happy with an ebook reader which runs free software, no DRM, doesn't have backdoors, restrict your files. It's possible to have such a thing. But the companies pushing ebooks "are doing it to attack our freedom and we mustn't stand for that."
Stallman says:
- Copyright should last 10 years from date of publication. The publication cycle has got shorter and shorter - almost all books are remaindered in 2 years and out of print in 3. (Was once on a panel with a fantasy author who said 10 years was intolerable - it should be 5! He wanted to distribute his own book.)
- Functional works (software, recipes, educational, reference) should be free - these are necessary for your life. (Imagine if the government tried to stamp out "recipe piracy". Points out that attacking ships is bad, sharing with people is good, so should reject propoaganda use of term 'piracy'.) Works will still get made - cf recipes, Wikipedia, etc.
- Works about what people thought - eg diaries, letters, memoirs - should allow noncommercial redistribution of exact copies.
- After 10 years goes into public domain and you can publish your modifications.
- Remixing snippets from many places should be legal outright.
- Sharing copies on the internet should be legal.
Also proposes:
- Distribute tax revenue directly to artists to promote the arts. This means not in linear proportion to popularity. Based on popularity, yes (eg through polling) and then take the cube root - so 1000x more popular would get 10x as much money.
- Voluntary payments - micropayments so you could send a dollar anonymously to the artist of the song you're listening to. You could get a certificate of having supported your favourite artists as encouragement. Make friendly advertising campaigns encouraging "push the button". (Me: make it a big red button and everyone will want to push it!) Need a good system.
Monday, 14 September 2009
Links of interest 14/9/09
The National Library of China is celebrating its centennial.
Nga Upoko Tukutuku korero is a new blog for discussion on Maori Subject Headings - each week they post a new question for readers to answer/comment on.
Reference
Resources
Twitter
There seems to be a revival in posts about Twitter recently - in the last couple of weeks I've come across:
Nga Upoko Tukutuku korero is a new blog for discussion on Maori Subject Headings - each week they post a new question for readers to answer/comment on.
Reference
- Promoting Library Reference Services to First-Year Undergraduate Students: What Works? (feature article in RUSQ this month) "describes a study that sought to answer three questions:
- What percentage of first-year undergraduate students are aware of reference services?
- What percentage of first-years seek information from reference librarians?
- Through which media are first-years comfortable communicating with reference librarians?"
- The Swiss Army Librarian posts a "Reference Question of the Week" describing the question and the way he found (or didn't find) an answer. His recent post on "What's in your ready ref?" is also fascinating.
Resources
- The British Library Sound Archive has made over 23,000 sound recordings available for listening online (where copyright permits) to anyone anywhere in the world. This includes music (classical, popular, traditional), oral history, nature, and linguistic recordings.
- The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has released 1000 NZ classics in e-book format
There seems to be a revival in posts about Twitter recently - in the last couple of weeks I've come across:
- The Twitter for Organizations tutorial
- How your library may not be using Twitter but should
- The Satisfaction of Already Being There
- Data showing that the 12-17 and 18-24 year-old demographics are Twitter's fastest-growing audience segment
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