Category: Electronic Resources

"Developing Humanities Collections in the Digital Age: Exploring Humanities Faculty Engagement with Electronic and Print Resources"

Sarah Buck Kachaluba, Jessica Evans Brady, and Jessica Critten have published "Developing Humanities Collections in the Digital Age: Exploring Humanities Faculty Engagement with Electronic and Print Resources" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This article is based on quantitative and qualitative research examining humanities scholars' understandings of the advantages and disadvantages of print versus electronic information resources. It explores how humanities' faculty members at Florida State University (FSU) use print and electronic resources, as well as how they perceive these different formats. It was carried out with the goal of assisting the authors and other librarians in choosing between electronic and print formats when performing collection development responsibilities.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Open Discovery Initiative: Promoting Transparency in Discovery (Draft)

The National Information Standards Organization has released a draft of the Open Discovery Initiative: Promoting Transparency in Discovery.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Launched in 2012, the NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) aims to facilitate increased transparency in the content coverage of index-based discovery services and to recommend consistent methods of content exchange. This draft recommended practice provides specific guidelines for content providers on metadata elements, linking, and technical formats, and for discovery service providers on content listings, linking, file formats, methods of transfer, and usage statistics. The document also provides background information on the evolution of discovery and delivery technology and a standard set of terminology and definitions for this technology area.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"How Institutionalized Are Model License Use Terms? An Analysis of E-Journal License Use Rights Clauses from 2000 to 2009"

Kristin R. Eschenfelder, Tien-I Tsai, Xiaohua Zhu and Brenton Stewart have published "How Institutionalized Are Model License Use Terms? An Analysis of E-Journal License Use Rights Clauses from 2000 to 2009" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper explored the degree to which use terms proposed by model licenses have become institutionalized across different publishers' licenses. It examined model license use terms in four areas: downloading, scholarly sharing, interlibrary loan, and electronic reserves. Data collection and analysis involved content analysis of 224 electronic journal licenses spanning 2000-2009. Analysis examined how use terms changed over time, differences between consortia and site license use terms and differences between commercial and noncommercial publisher license use terms. Results suggest that some model license use terms have become institutionalized while others have not. Use terms with higher institutionalization included: allowing ILL, permitting secure e-transmission for ILL, allowing e-reserves with no special permissions, and not requiring deletion of e-reserves files. Scholarly sharing showed lower institutionalization with most publishers not including scholarly sharing allowances. Other use terms showing low institutionalization included: recommendations to avoid printing requirements related to ILL and recommendations to allow hyperlinks for e-reserves. The results provide insight into the range of use terms commonly employed in e-journal licenses.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Unintended Consequences: New Materialist Perspectives on Library Technologies and the Digital Record"

portal: Libraries and the Academy has released an e-print of "Unintended Consequences: New Materialist Perspectives on Library Technologies and the Digital Record" by Marlene Manoff.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital technology has irrevocably altered the nature of the archive. Drawing on materialist critiques and the evolving field of media archaeology, this essay explores new strategies for understanding the implications of computer networks in libraries. Although a significant portion of the contemporary literature within Library and Information Science (LIS) addresses issues of technological change, the materialist and multidisciplinary approaches proposed here provide a theoretical basis for investigating the current state of library technologies in new ways. These methods provide insight into the proliferation of digital products and the cycles of platform adoption and replacement that have marked the past decades of library development. They also help to reframe questions about content aggregation and the licensing of digital scholarship.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

eBook Use and Acceptance in an Undergraduate Institution

Springer has released eBook Use and Acceptance in an Undergraduate Institution.

Here's an excerpt :

The survey finds high use of eBooks at Wellesley College, with 70% of the respondents indicating they have used eBooks. Other recent international surveys of eBook use have shown 52-64% of students or faculty responding that they have used eBooks (Figure 10). Within the general U.S. population 21% of adults reported having used eBooks in 2011. Some eBook use by Wellesley students and faculty may be non-academic, leisure reading, but half of Wellesley's eBook users report having used eBooks from the Wellesley College Library's collection.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

Sustaining Our Digital Future: Institutional Strategies for Digital Content

Ithaka S+R has released Sustaining Our Digital Future: Institutional Strategies for Digital Content.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This study involved interviews with more than 80 project leaders and university, library, and museum administrators across the United Kingdom. In the first phase, we interviewed 40 practitioners in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors throughout the United Kingdom to gain an understanding of the processes in place to support digital content post-grant. In the second phase, we closely examined the digital strategies in place at three institutions to better understand the digital content the institutions support, their processes for creating and supporting that content, and, more generally, the role that digital content plays in the strategy of their institutions.

| Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works (EPUB file, PDF file, paperback, and XHTML website; over 650 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

EBook Business Models: A Scorecard for Public Libraries

ALA's Digital Content and Libraries Working Group has released EBook Business Models: A Scorecard for Public Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

The Digital Content & Libraries Working Group (DCWG) began documenting and describing attributes of various licensing arrangements libraries may have with publishers in the August 2012 report Ebook Business Models for Public Libraries. Now we are pleased to share The Ebook Business Model Scorecard, which more fully examines the variables often seen in ebook license agreements or contracts. At the same time, the variables, when considered as a whole, can help libraries conceptualize licenses holistically instead of fixating on one aspect of a contract in isolation.

| Google Books Bibliography (XHTML website; over 320 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

ODI Survey Report: Reflections and Perspectives on Discovery Services

NISO has released the ODI Survey Report: Reflections and Perspectives on Discovery Services.

Here's an excerpt:

The results of the NISO ODI survey demonstrate multiple complexities involved in the cross-sector teamwork required to support discovery of scholarly works. For a relatively new entrant into the academic technology space, discovery services have rapidly grown to provide researchers—as well as libraries and content providers—with many benefits. The various stakeholders, which produce and distribute the published product metadata that drives search and retrieval, have done fairly well to date with ad-hoc business and technical arrangements. Ultimately, the results of this survey support the work of the ODI, which aims to recommend streamlined and standard practices that might improve interactions across this complicated landscape.

| Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Digital Scholarship |

Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians

Ithaka S+R has released Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians .

Here's an excerpt:

In History, the Ithaka S+R project team found a discipline in transition. An expansion in the nature of the field over the past 50 years has introduced new sources, both in terms of subject coverage and international scope. However, only a comparatively small share of the primary sources required by historians has been made available digitally, tempering the opportunity for new methods to take hold.

Even if the impact of computational analysis and other types of new research methods remains limited to a subset of historians, new research practices and communications mechanisms are being adopted widely, bringing with them both opportunities and challenges.

| Digital Scholarship's 2012 Publications | Digital Scholarship |

How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Journals: Summary Edition

Renew Training has released How Readers Discover Content in Scholarly Journals: Summary Edition.

Here's an excerpt:

This summary report is the output of a large scale survey of journal readers (n=19064) about journal content discovery conducted during May, June and July of 2102.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog | Digital Scholarship |

FOSS Accessibility Tools for Libraries: Step-by-Step Guide

EIFL has released the FOSS Accessibility Tools for Libraries: Step-by-Step Guide.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Using technology appropriately can enhance the library experience for all users, but is particularly significant for users with disabilities. Creating electronic resources as accessibly as possible is a useful starting point, but for some users specific technologies will be needed to access those resources. There are many FOSS tools available to support library users with a variety of needs, ranging from those with visual impairment or blindness, to users with dyslexia or who have difficulty using a mouse, or simply users who have limited reading ability or prefer to listen to text than read it on-screen. Most librarians are not specialists in this area and can be discouraged by the sheer number and variety of FOSS tools available to support disabled users. This is why EIFL have created a step-by-step guide to some of the most helpful and easy-to-use tools.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Report of the ARL Joint Task Force on Services to Patrons with Print Disabilities

The Association of Research Libraries has released the Report of the ARL Joint Task Force on Services to Patrons with Print Disabilities.

Here's an excerpt from:

This ARL task force report highlights emerging and promising strategies to better align research libraries with other institutional and related partners in ensuring accessibility to research resources while fully meeting legal requirements. The report addresses the technological, service, and legal factors relating to a variety of information resources with respect to print disability. These factors resonate closely with the existing research library agenda to make scholarly communication more open, to foster independence among its user base by teaching information literacy, to honor and invest in diversity, as well as to focus on the growing trend toward universal design in instruction.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: The Balanced Value Impact Model

King's College London has released Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: The Balanced Value Impact Model.

Here's an excerpt:

This document synthesizes information from the whole Impact Assessment sector and then proposes the Balanced Value Impact Model as a means to effectively carry out an Impact Assessment relating to the benefits of digitization and digital resources in general. It seeks to help the communities identified above to provide a compelling argument for future work. Thus, you will find in this document information on:

  • Where the value and impact can be found in digital resources,
  • Who are the beneficiaries gaining from the impact and value,
  • How to measure change and impact for digital resources,
  • What makes for good indicators of change in people’s lives,
  • How to do an Impact Assessment using the Balanced Value Impact Model, and
  • How to present a convincing evidence-based argument for digital resources?

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

"Developing Humanities Collections in the Digital Age: Exploring Humanities Faculty Engagement with Electronic and Print Resources"

College & Research Libraries has released an eprint of "Developing Humanities Collections in the Digital Age: Exploring Humanities Faculty Engagement with Electronic and Print Resources."

Here's an excerpt:

This article is based on quantitative and qualitative research examining humanities scholars' understandings of the advantages and disadvantages of print versus electronic information resources. It explores how humanities' faculty members at [removed for review] use print and electronic resources, as well as how they perceive these different formats. It was carried out with the goal of assisting the authors and other librarians in choosing between electronic and print formats when performing collection development responsibilities.

| Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Digital Scholarship |

"E-Content: Opportunity and Risk"

Shelton Waggener has published "E-Content: Opportunity and Risk" in the latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review.

Here's an excerpt:

During the last eighteen months, first as the Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer at the University of California-Berkeley and more recently as Senior Vice President at Internet2, I have been engaged in conversations with peers from around the country to determine the risks, challenges, opportunities, and best practices associated with a full e-content environment. Simply put, almost every institution is scrambling to develop and implement an e-content strategy. Even those schools that started early and thought they had a strong plan and a clear path forward are now revisiting their plans based on the rapid pace of change. The following guide has been developed as a quick reference "do and don't" checklist, providing a few observations from these discussions. Some of the recommendations are short-term strategies; others are better for a long-term approach. All can provide guidance during this time of momentous change.

| Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works | Digital Scholarship |

"How Institutionalized Are Model License Use Terms: An Analysis of E-journal License Use Rights Clauses from 2000-2009"

College & Research Libraries has released "How Institutionalized Are Model License Use Terms: An Analysis of E-journal License Use Rights Clauses from 2000-2009," a preprint by Kristin R. Eschenfelder et al.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper explored the degree to [which] use terms proposed by model licenses have become institutionalized across different publishers' licenses. It examined model license use terms in four areas: downloading, scholarly sharing, interlibrary loan and electronic reserves. Data collection and analysis involved content analysis of 224 electronic journal licenses spanning 2000-2009. Analysis examined how use terms changed over time, differences between consortia and site license use terms and differences between commercial and non-commercial publisher license use terms. Results suggest that some model license use terms have become institutionalized while others have not.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

COUNTER Code of Practice for Usage Factors, Draft Release 1

COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) has released the COUNTER Code of Practice for Usage Factors, Draft Release 1.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Draft Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Usage Factors, is one of the most significant outcomes to-date of the Usage Factor project, and is an important part of this, the final Stage of the project, which will take Usage Factor forward to full implementation. This Draft Release 1 is based on well-established COUNTER standards, procedures and protocols; it is designed to enable the recording and reporting by publishers of credible, consistent and compatible global Usage Factors for online publications hosted by them (and incorporating usage of these publications on other platforms that are capable of delivering COUNTER-compliant usage statistics). While Release 1 of this Code of Practice focuses on Usage Factors for journals, it is envisaged that its scope will be extended in subsequent Releases to cover other online publications, such as books and reference works.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital Bibliographies | Digital Scholarship |

Making Good on the Promise of ERM: A Standards and Best Practices Discussion Paper

NISO has released Making Good on the Promise of ERM: A Standards and Best Practices Discussion Paper.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Our standards review and findings focused on five categories: link resolvers and knowledge bases; the work, manifestations, and access points; cost and usage-related data; license terms; and data exchange using institutional identifiers," states Tim Jewell, Director, Information Resources and Scholarly Communications, University of Washington, and Chair of the ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review Steering Committee. "We did a more extensive review of fourteen of the most relevant standards and mapped the data elements for each to the elements defined in the ERMI report. We also looked at how ERM systems could improve their workflow support-a shortcoming in most existing systems-and we include a detailed workflow best practices bibliography and a list of illustrative workflow diagrams."

"Our final analysis showed that there is value to updating and maintaining a data dictionary that encompasses ERM functions and evolves with technologies and business models," maintains Ivy Anderson, Director of Collections, California Digital Library and member of the ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review Steering Committee. "However, for practical considerations, we did not recommend that NISO pursue such a project at this time. Instead we identified a number of narrower initiatives targeting specific ERM functional needs and strategies aimed at furthering interoperability."

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

LYRASIS to License E-resources for ARL Libraries

Under a new agreement, LYRASIS will license e-resources for participating ARL libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

On November 18, 2011, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and LYRASIS signed an agreement designating LYRASIS as an agent to negotiate licenses for online content on behalf of interested ARL member libraries. This is the culmination of an effort that began in 2010 to identify a strategy for ARL to influence the marketplace regarding licensing rights, technical specifications, and business terms to meet the needs of research libraries.

This activity has involved task forces, the Reshaping Scholarly Communication Steering Committee, and the ARL Board. The initial task force drafted a white paper outlining the potential areas of action that ARL could take and content that could be considered, and a second task force developed an RFP that went to prospective agents. The Board approved the recommendations, RFP, and agent decision. The license offerings identified for this initiative will not be exclusive to ARL members, but may include libraries with which they have established licensing relationships.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Revenue, Recession, Reliance: Revisiting the SCA/Ithaka S+R Case Studies in Sustainability

The Strategic Content Alliance has released Revenue, Recession, Reliance: Revisiting the SCA/Ithaka S+R Case Studies in Sustainability.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2009, the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance commissioned Ithaka S+R to investigate the sustainability strategies of twelve digital content projects in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors, located in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Egypt, to see how their leaders were developing cost-management and revenue strategies to foster longterm growth for ongoing digital projects

Two years and one economic crisis later, Ithaka S+R, with the generous support of the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, conducted a new round of research and interviews with the leaders of the twelve projects that were the focus of our original case studies. Our goal was to see how their sustainability models had held up, where weaknesses might be starting to show, and what new strategies project leaders were adopting in response. How had budget cuts and other factors affected the projects? What had project leaders learned about making their resources valuable to users? Where did the resources—financial or non-financial—come from to make continued growth and innovation possible? And how could these lessons be useful to others?

The research is documented in updates to the original twelve case studies. The final report, Revenue, Recession, Reliance: Revisiting the SCA / Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability, provides a summary and analysis of findings across all twelve projects profiled.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

Single Search: The Quest for the Holy Grail

OCLC Research has released Single Search: The Quest for the Holy Grail .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report highlights successful strategies in providing a single point of access to library, archive and museum collections. . . .

To address this desire, OCLC Research facilitated a working group of nine single search implementers through discussions about the opportunities for, and obstacles to, integrating single search access across an institution. Members of this group told their stories, identified issues, and acknowledged similarities and differences in their approaches. This brief report summarizes those discussions and highlights the emerging practices in providing single search access to an institution's collections. The goal of the report is to foster successful single search implementations by sharing the experience of the working group with those who are just beginning to plan single search implementations

| Digital Scholarship |

Funding for Sustainability: How Funders’ Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources

Ithaka S+R has released Funding for Sustainability: How Funders' Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources.

Here's an excerpt:

With support from the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance, Ithaka S+R conducted a study to examine the ways that both public and private funding bodies in academic and cultural heritage sectors are defining sustainability and encouraging the digital resources they help to create to endure and continue to provide value well beyond the term of the grant. The project explored the funding practices of over 25 funders that support various forms of digital resources, and included over 100 interviews with more than 80 programme officers, foundation directors, project leaders and other experts. Our goal was to gain an understanding of how funders think about the long-term viability of the digital resources they support, and the policies and practices they have put in place to encourage successful outcomes.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

"’If It Is too Inconvenient I’m Not Going after It:’ Convenience as a Critical Factor in Information-Seeking Behaviors"

A preprint of Lynn Sillipigni Connaway, Timothy J. Dickey, and Marie L. Radford's paper "'If It Is too Inconvenient I'm Not Going after It:' Convenience as a Critical Factor in Information-Seeking Behaviors" is available from OCLC Research.

Here's an excerpt:

In today's fast-paced world, anecdotal evidence suggests that information tends to inundate people, and users of information systems want to find information quickly and conveniently. Empirical evidence for convenience as a critical factor is explored in the data from two multi-year, user study projects funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The theoretical framework for this understanding is founded in the concepts of bounded rationality and rational choice theory, with Savolainen's (2006) concept of time as a context in information seeking, as well as gratification theory, informing the emphasis on the seekers' time horizons. Convenience is a situational criterion in peoples' choices and actions during all stages of the information-seeking process. The concept of convenience can include their choice of an information source, their satisfaction with the source and its ease of use, and their time horizon in information seeking. The centrality of convenience is especially prevalent among the younger subjects ("millennials") in both studies, but also holds across all demographic categories—age, gender, academic role, or user or non-user of virtual reference services. These two studies further indicate that convenience is a factor for making choices in a variety of situations, including both academic information seeking and everyday-life information seeking, although it plays different roles in different situations.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Cornell University Library Will Not Sign E-Resources Licenses with Nondisclosure Clauses

The Cornell University Library has adopted a policy of not signing e-resources licenses with nondisclosure clauses.

Here's an excerpt from the policy:

To promote openness and fairness among libraries licensing scholarly resources, Cornell University Library will not enter into vendor contracts that require nondisclosure of pricing information or other information that does not constitute a trade secret. All new and renewed licenses submitted with nondisclosure clauses will not be signed but henceforth will be referred to the Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Special Collections for further negotiation. . . .

It has become apparent to the library community that the anticompetitive conduct engaged in by some publishing firms is in part a result of the inclusion of nondisclosure agreements in contracts.1 As Robert Darnton recently noted, by "keeping the terms secret, … one library cannot negotiate for cheaper rates by citing an advantage obtained by another library."2 For this reason, the International Coalition of Library Consortia's "Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information" states that "Non-disclosure language should not be required for any licensing agreement, particularly language that would preclude library consortia from sharing pricing and other significant terms and conditions with other consortia."3 The more that libraries are able to communicate with one another about vendor offers, the better they are able to weigh the costs and benefits of any individual offer. An open market will result in better licensing terms.

Read more about it at "Cornell U. Library Takes a Stand with Journal Vendors: Prices Will Be Made Public."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

"Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive’s Examination of URL Stability"

Sarah Rhodes has published "Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive's Examination of URL Stability" in LLRX.com.

Here's an excerpt:

In analyzing a single sample of these original URLs at annual intervals, the prevalence of link rot was 8.3% in 2008, within zero to twelve months of the content being harvested. One year later, twelve to twenty-four months after the content was harvested, link rot in the same sample was found to have jumped to 14.3%. In the most recent analysis, in 2010, link rot was found to be 27.9%. In other words, link rot increased from about one in every twelve archived titles in 2008, to one in every seven titles in 2009, and finally to about one in every 3.5 titles in 2010.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |