Research Libraries – Page 2

"Establishing a Library as an Open Science Partner for Economic Research through Impact-Oriented Public Relations Work"

The article describes how ZBW — Leibniz Information Centre for Economics is working to strengthen its perception as a competent partner and promoter of Open Science for its target group of economic researchers. This article describes the challenges, goals and opportunities of impact-oriented communication for libraries using the example of the ZBW. The article describes the path from the challenges and goals of the concrete communication activities and the evaluation of the impact-oriented communication work.

https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.15060

"E-book Acceptance by First-Year Undergraduate Students: A Longitudinal Examination and Implications for Library Researchers"

The frequency of electronic book usage by students, according to the research described here, appears fairly positive. On a six-level scale, ranging from 1 (I don’t use it at all) to 6 (I use it several times a week), the average score was 3.27, and the most frequent response, was "Use several times a month" (n = 84, 28 %). This suggests that, on average, students tend to use e-books approximately once or twice a month.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2024.102847

"Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative Releases Reports on Expenses of Making Data Publicly Accessible, Project Methodology"

This report presents data on the average yearly cost of DMS activities for institutional units, as well as direct DMS expenses incurred by researchers per funded research project. These expenses were then analyzed together, showing an average combined overall cost of $2,500,000 (with total institutional expenses ranging from approximately $800,000 to over $6,000,000).

http://tinyurl.com/5xsw32we

"The University of North Carolina Selects Ex Libris Library Solutions"

As part of its transition to Ex Libris library platforms, UNC will implement:

Alma and Primo

Leganto, Ex Libris’ course resource management system

Library Mobile, Ex Libris’ integrated mobile library app and

Rapido, Ex Libris’ interlibrary loan system

http://tinyurl.com/rvumvpeh

White Paper: AI Perceptions at the University of Baltimore

This white paper, produced by the UBalt AI team, explores the perceptions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and generative AI within the UBalt community. It aims to uncover how students, faculty, and staff view AI’s role and implications in the educational landscape. The university collaborated with Ithaka S+R to acquire established, reliable and valid surveys from the AI literature, which was then adapted by the UBalt AI team to meet the needs of our academic community. This survey included a blend of both quantitative and qualitative questions, ensuring a deep understanding of the respondents’ views. . . . The responses obtained were then analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as an exploratory qualitative analysis to extract meaningful insights, setting the stage for informed discussions and decision-making around AI in education.

http://tinyurl.com/mr47zx3j

"ChatGPT in Medical Libraries, Possibilities and Future Directions: An Integrative Review"

Positioned as a review, our study elucidates the applications of ChatGPT in medical libraries and discusses relevant considerations. The integration of ChatGPT into medical library services holds promise for enhancing information retrieval and user experience, benefiting library users and the broader medical community.

https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12518

"The Nelson Memorandum: How Two HELIOS Members Are Responding"

The fall 2023 Texas Open Science Summit (TOSS)9 raised awareness about the importance of the Nelson Memorandum and continued UT’s discussions about open scholarship and public access compliance, incentives, and good practices. This forum offered a publicly visible opportunity for scholars and open access advocates in the region and state of Texas to learn more about the federal Year of Open Science and support structures at UT. . . .

Building on a long history of open access support, the CSU Libraries has since created the Advanced Research and Scholarship Support group,10 providing resources for data management planning and openly sharing research outputs. The working group hosted the Opentober Event, highlighting initiatives and support services for furthering open scholarship and public access compliance at CSU.

https://tinyurl.com/4dtdjfjw

"TMU Libraries Immersion Studio: Overview of a Shared Immersive Tech Initiative to Enhance Education" (Video)

[This video] shares TMU’s [Toronto Metropolitan University’s] experience implementing a shared immersive extended reality environment to support teaching, learning, and research. The briefing includes specific domain examples and discusses the impact, limitations, and future of TMU’s Immersion Studio.

https://tinyurl.com/52664v32

From: "Edition Guide Coalition for Networked Information Pre-Recorded Project Briefing Series November 2023"e;

IFLA AI SIG: Developing a Library Strategic Response to Artificial Intelligence

The strategy most aligned to existing library practices and librarian identities, particularly in university, school and public libraries, is to take a lead role in promoting AI literacy. There is a widespread understanding that the public, as citizens and workers need to understand the new technologies. Students, whatever discipline they are studying, need such knowledge for employability. . . .

AI literacy is likely to include the ability to identify when AI is being used; to appreciate the differences between narrow and general AI; to understand what types of problem AI is good at solving; to understand how machine learning models are trained. It would also include awareness of ethical issues such as bias, privacy, explainability and social impact.

https://tinyurl.com/s6r6czrh

"Emerging Quality Assurance Practices in the Library of Congress Web Archives"

Building sustainable quality assurance practices is a challenge for today’s preservationists, who want to be sure that content preserved in web archives is not only the correct content, but in working order. This often means that archived web content should be replayed via Wayback rendering software in good fidelity when compared to the original website. The exponentially growing scale of web archives necessitates a multipronged approach to identify what is (and is not) being preserved, and where improvements can be made. This paper will explore actions that can take place iteratively throughout the web archiving life cycle, as part of a larger system of review where multiple individuals can contribute, including non-technical Library staff and subject matter experts. The processes described are part of a novel workflow in the Library of Congress Web Archiving Program.

https://tinyurl.com/2p9b4pve

"ARL Statistics 2022 Publications Describe Resources, Services of Member Libraries"

These three publications present information describing the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of 123 of the Association’s 126 member libraries in 2022. Of these 123 members, 118 are university libraries (16 in Canada and 102 in the US); the remaining 5 are governmental, nonprofit, and public research libraries in the US. The law and health sciences publications focus on the 72 law libraries and 57 medical libraries among the Association’s membership that completed the law and health sciences surveys.

https://tinyurl.com/mrxaej4e

"ARL Annual Salary Survey 2022 Reports Data on Professional Positions in Member Libraries"

The median salary for professionals in US ARL university libraries in 2022 was $80,454, an increase of 4.0% over the 2021 median salary of $77,353. The US CPI rose 8.5% during the same period. The Canadian CPI rose 7.6%, and median salaries in Canadian university libraries increased 1.9% from $105,431 (Canadian dollars) to $107,426 (Canadian dollars). The median salary for US federal, nonprofit, and public ARL libraries decreased by 11.3 from $90,197 in 2021 to $80,009 in 2022.

https://tinyurl.com/bdzjh3ex

"Introducing the LC Labs Artificial Intelligence Planning Framework"

To account for these [AI] challenges and realities, LC Labs has been developing a planning framework to support the responsible exploration and potential adoption of AI at the Library. At a high level, the framework includes three planning phases: 1) Understand 2) Experiment and 3) Implement, each supports the evaluation of three elements of ML: 1) Data; 2) Models; and 3) People. We’ve developed a set of worksheets, questionnaires, and workshops to engage stakeholders and staff and identify priorities for future AI enhancements and services. The mechanisms, tools, collaborations, and artifacts together form the AI Planning Framework. Our hope in sharing the framework and associated tools in this initial version is to encourage others to try it out and to solicit additional feedback. We will continue updating and refining the framework as we learn more about the elements and phases of ML planning.

https://tinyurl.com/4wuakvjy

"US Repository Network Launches Pilot to Enhance Discoverability of Open Access Content in Repositories"

In November, the US Repository Network (USRN) will launch a pilot project aimed at improving the discoverability of articles in repositories. This pilot project involves the use of services from CORE, a not-for-profit aggregator based at Open University in the UK, to evaluate and improve local repository practices. Additional technical support will be provided by Antleaf Ltd.

As part of the project, CORE will aggregate the metadata and full text of articles from a subset of US repositories, allowing them to be findable through a centralized discovery service with prominent links back to the original full text of the repository. At the same time, the project will assess current practices related to metadata quality, the tracking of Open Access deposits, the use of PIDs, technical support for OAI-PMH, and the adoption of more recent protocols, such as FAIR Signposting. At the level of the centralized aggregation, CORE will enrich the existing US metadata with information from its larger international aggregation. A Dashboard service for participating institutions will be provided, enabling them to assess, validate and monitor their practices.

https://tinyurl.com/2utfpvj3

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge is an open textbook and practitioner’s guide that collects theory, practice, and case studies from nearly 80 experts in scholarly communication and open education. Divided into three parts:

What is Scholarly Communication?

Scholarly Communication and Open Culture

Voices from the Field: Perspectives, Intersections, and Case Studies

The book delves into the economic, social, policy, and legal aspects of scholarly communication as well as open access, open data, open education, and open science and infrastructure. Practitioners provide insight into the relationship between university presses and academic libraries, defining collection development as operational scholarly communication, and promotion and tenure and the challenge for open access.

https://bit.ly/SCLAOK

Walt Crawford: "Cites & Insights: Use It or Lose It?"

During its peak years, C&I had quite a substantial readership–as many as 55,000 downloads for one particular essay. There were more than 600,000 downloads from 2013 through 2015 and (maybe) 800,000 downloads from 2016 through 2019. But only about 38,000 in 2019. I had sponsorship for five years, and never charged for access.

I always hoped that a few people or institutions would find C&I worth preserving—and the annual print volumes even had indexes (of a sort). No print volume has ever sold more than four copies. Four have sold none at all.

But I would like to trim my Lulu catalog. (To see the list, just go to lulu.com and search for "walt crawford." I see 51 results.) So here’s the deal: The Lulu (trade paperback) versions of any C&I volumes that have no sales between now and November 12, 2024 will be deleted.

Also see: "Essential Reading: Walt Crawford’s Books on Open Access."

https://tinyurl.com/2et9ajuh

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Paywall: "Analyzing the Relationship between Citation-Based Impact Metrics and Electronic Journal Usage: A Case Study"

We focus on the impact of major JIFs on local e-journal usage and propose an alternative approach to conventional methods for collection selectors. By treating journal usage patterns as panel data and employing fixed-effects regression models, we find that journal popularity has the greatest influence on local e-journal usage and the effects of impact factors on academic article usage can vary across different disciplines.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2023.2230166

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"IGI Global Releases Annual OA Survey Results on Researcher Perceptions Surrounding Open Access Publishing Support"

The survey was sent to over 200,000 worldwide researchers of all ages, experiences, fields, ethnicities, etc. . . .

Respondents were asked "What funding resources have you used for OA publishing?" and they had the ability to choose all resources that they have used.

As IGI Global had expected, the majority of respondents indicated they were "self-funded" at 48%, 8% stated "national funding body," 5% answered "international funding body," 18% indicated "my Institution/library/entity affiliated to my institution," 4.5% stated "non-profit institutions," 2% claimed they received funding through "private donors," 5% indicated "associations/societies," 2.5% indicated "business enterprise," 3.5% stated "foundations," 1% claimed "crowdfunding," 14% claimed they received a "publisher waiver," and 2% indicated they received funding from a "platinum open access publication" where the APC is waived by the publication. A large portion, 34% of respondents, had not used an OA funding resource.

https://tinyurl.com/mv4ty6hf

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Paywall: "Nature and Characteristics of Global Attention to Research on Article Processing Charges"

This paper examines research on article processing charges (APCs) to understand the extent of attention given by researchers and assess the status. The study analyses document types, source types, source titles, affiliations, and open access types of APC research. It also explores countries of researchers’ affiliations, volume and growth of literature, and visualizes keywords based on data from Scopus. . . . Many papers addressing APC were published in Green Open Access sources. Researchers from all subject categories in Scopus have contributed to APC research, but the major focus of research in the area is library and information science. Interestingly, researchers outside the field, notably from biomedicine and computer science, have also contributed significantly, reflecting interdisciplinary engagement.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2023.2230166

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Paywall: "Cutting the Gordian (Workload) Knot? Adding Data Services to Academic Library Public Services"

The library and information science literature wants two irreconcilable things out of its workload data: 1) aggregate comparable data to document and measure use of libraries and its value; and 2) accurate descriptions to document and measure the individual work done by librarians. . . . We propose here to change the question asked: how can we achieve a reasonable balance of workload within a group of librarians? . . . The goal was to answer a common and longstanding question: we are in continual process of assessing what needs to be done and how/where to shift workloads, but how do we know we’re doing it in a reasonable and fair way beyond anecdotes and intuitions? We developed a weighted measure of public services workload in order to assess and track and assign a) areas of declining workload, b) areas of increasing workload (data services), and c) a balance between library divisions contributing to public services.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102801

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Stanford University Adopts FOLIO Library Services Platform"

Stanford’s FOLIO upgrade marks the first time Stanford has migrated to a new library services platform in over 20 years. To move from two separate legacy software systems to FOLIO, Stanford’s Library Systems team migrated bibliographic and holdings data for over 12 million library items, along with data for orders, patrons, loans, and requests. Stanford’s Digital Library Systems and Services team developed several integrations between FOLIO and other systems, including Stanford’s Searchworks discovery layer and a custom internal tool for managing vendor-supplied bibliographic data.

Most of the over 100 FOLIO libraries worldwide rely on a vendor to host the FOLIO software. Stanford opted for a self-hosting model, setting up a local environment that runs FOLIO.

In another notable aspect of Stanford’s FOLIO migration, five major library units (Stanford Libraries, Graduate School of Business Library, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Lane Medical Library, and Robert Crown Law Library) collaborated to harmonize workflows in FOLIO and to train 400 staff members in the technical and patron-facing service areas. . . .

Caia Software & Solutions developed a robust remote storage management integration to meet Stanford’s remote storage requirements that are not handled out-of-the-box in FOLIO. The integration automatically updates FOLIO inventory records as items are moved in and out of Stanford’s remote storage facility using the CaiaSoft storage management application.

https://tinyurl.com/yc5zvv83

| Research Data Publication and Citation Bibliography | Research Data Sharing and Reuse Bibliography | Research Data Curation and Management Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

NYU: "From Silos to Community: The Path to a Holistic Digital Preservation Policy"

While New York University Libraries has a long history of and commitment to digital collecting and preservation efforts, the institution did not have any policies governing the services and activities of digital preservation prior to 2022. This paper details the creation of a holistic digital preservation policy statement, with contributors from across ten functional units at NYU Libraries. The policy was grounded in the Libraries’ mission and values–including deep commitments to inclusion, diversity, belonging, equity, and accessibility–and drew on themes crafted by all members of the group to ensure their work was represented in the statement. The success of the policy group was rooted in its intentional formation and processes that acknowledged the distributed nature of digital preservation and emphasized the creation of a community of practice. Further, it laid the foundation for a more complete suite of preservation policies and forward-looking conversations about how to enact ethical and sustainable stewardship in digital collecting, access, and preservation practices

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/128309

"The Oligopoly’s Shift to Open Access. How the Big Five Academic Publishers Profit from Article Processing Charges"

This study aims to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the five large commercial publishers Elsevier, Sage, Springer-Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley between 2015 and 2018. Using publication data from WoS, OA status from Unpaywall and annual APC prices from open datasets and historical fees retrieved via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, we estimate that globally authors paid $1.06 billion in publication fees to these publishers from 2015–2018. Revenue from gold OA amounted to $612.5 million, while $448.3 million was obtained for publishing OA in hybrid journals. Among the five publishers, Springer-Nature made the most revenue from OA ($589.7 million), followed by Elsevier ($221.4 million), Wiley ($114.3 million), Taylor & Francis ($76.8 million) and Sage ($31.6 million). With Elsevier and Wiley making most of APC revenue from hybrid fees and others focusing on gold, different OA strategies could be observed between publishers.

https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00272

"How Well Does ChatGPT Handle Reference Inquiries? An Analysis Based on Question Types and Question Complexities"

To explore whether artificial intelligence can be used to enhance library services, this study used ChatGPT to answer reference questions. . . Overall ChatGPT’s performance was fair, but it did poorly in information accuracy. It scored the highest when handling facilities and equipment-related questions but the lowest when dealing with e-resources access problems. ChatGPT was weak in answering advanced research questions, complex inquiries, and known item searches relating to a specific local environment, but it could be adopted to enhance library communication with users.

https://tinyurl.com/3dabv5f8

Paywall: Generative AI and Librarians — "The Prompt Engineering Librarian"

In terms of training the public in prompt engineering skills, no single discipline or profession currently takes the lead, presenting an opportunity for professions like librarianship to step into this role. Librarians are already well-equipped to educate the public in a wide range of literacy skills and tasks, so prompt engineering may be a natural progression. The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential role of prompt engineering for library professionals.

https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-10-2023-0189

Also see: "Prompt Engineers or Librarians? An Exploration."