Category: Research Libraries

"The ‘Digital’ Scholarship Disconnect"

Clifford Lynch has published "The 'Digital' Scholarship Disconnect" in EDUCAUSE Review.

Here's an excerpt:

Still, in all of these examples of digital scholarship, a key challenge remains: How can we curate and manage data now that so much of it is being produced and collected in digital form? How can we ensure that it will be discovered, shared, and reused to advance scholarship? We are struggling through the establishment of institutions, funding models, policies and practices, and even new legal requirements and community norms—ranging from cultural changes about who can use data (and when) to economic decisions about who should pay for what. Some disciplines are less contentious than others: for example, astronomy data is technically well-understood and usually not terribly sensitive. Reputation, rather than commercial reward, is wrapped up in astronomical discoveries, and there is no institutional review board to ensure the safety and dignity of astronomical objects. On the other hand, human subjects and their data raise an enormous number of questions about informed consent, privacy, and anonymization; when there are genetic markers or possible treatments to be discovered or validated, serious high-value commercial interests may be at stake. All of these factors tend to work against the free and convenient sharing of data.

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"The University Library as Incubator for Digital Scholarship"

Bryan Sinclair has published "The University Library as Incubator for Digital Scholarship" in EDUCAUSE Review.

Here's an excerpt:

The campus of the future will be increasingly connected and collaborative, and the library can be the community center and beta test kitchen for new forms of interdisciplinary inquiry. Libraries have always been in the business of knowledge creation and transfer, and the digital scholarship incubator within the library can serve as a natural extension of this essential function. In an age of visualization, analytics, big data, and new forms of online publishing, these central spaces can facilitate knowledge creation and transfer by connecting people, data, and technology in a shared collaborative space.

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"ARL Membership Refines Strategic Thinking and Design at Spring 2014 Meeting"

ARL has released "ARL Membership Refines Strategic Thinking and Design at Spring 2014 Meeting." Includes a video.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Here's an excerpt:

ARL president Carol Pitts Diedrichs of The Ohio State University (OSU) convened the 164th ARL Membership Meeting in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday afternoon, May 6, 2014. Almost all of the program sessions at this meeting focused on the current ARL strategic thinking and design process, upon which the Association embarked in the fall of 2013 to define its role in higher education and to maximize ARL’s ability to be agile and responsive to changing priorities and member needs. . . .

Throughout the spring, ARL design meeting participants began creating a system of action to help research libraries and ARL effect radical change and achieve their desired vision. Six potential components of a system of action were presented to the ARL membership on May 6:

  • Coordinated Management of Collective Collections—federate networks of print repositories, digital repositories, data repositories.
  • Scholarly Publishing at Scale (Short + Long Forms)—bring scholarly publishing back home to the academy with shared-infrastructure press.
  • ARL Academy—reshaping the profession by developing new leaders and leadership teams, establishing an agency with a talent pool to be drawn on by libraries.
  • Boundless Symposium—orchestrate meta-collaborations and meta-conversations across institutional boundaries to build new insights.
  • First Suite of Smart Libraries—design, fund, and build a coalition of libraries that create personalized content delivery.
  • Innovation Lab and (Venture) Capital Fund—create a think tank and pop-up innovation labs, use investment to spur innovation.

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EU Advocate General Issues Opinion on Library Digitization

The European Union's Advocate General has issued an opinion on library digitization.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Here's an excerpt:

Next, the Advocate General considers that the directive does not prevent Member States from granting libraries the right to digitise the books from their collections, if their being made available to the public by dedicated terminals requires it. That may be the case where it is necessary to protect original works which, although still covered by copyright, are old, fragile or rare. That may also be the case where the work in question is consulted by a large number of students and its photocopying might result in disproportionate wear.

However, Mr Jääskinen makes clear that the directive permits not the digitisation of a collection in its entirety, but only the digitisation of individual works. It is particularly important not to opt to use dedicated terminals where the sole purpose of doing so is to avoid the purchase of a sufficient number of physical copies of the work.

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"Developing a Research Data Management Service—A Case Study"

Jeff Moon has published "Developing a Research Data Management Service—A Case Study" in Partnership.

Here's an excerpt:

Publicly-funded, researcher-generated data has been on the front burner lately, driven by a variety of factors, including evolving funding-agency policies and journal publisher requirements. In this context, Queen's University Library (QUL) developed and implemented a Research Data Management (RDM) Service to meet researchers' needs. This process is described here, framed around four main themes: planning, building, educating, and doing.

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"Ebook Pricing Hikes Amount to Price-Gouging"

Boston Library Consortium has released "Ebook Pricing Hikes Amount to Price-Gouging" as a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Here's an excerpt:

Consequently, the BLC will lower the price ceiling below which individual titles are eligible to be included in our ebook program, we will reduce the availability of back-list titles at high price points, and we will increase the portion of our consortial budget that is allocated to those publishers whose pricing remains reasonable. In this way, we mean to reward what we regard as fair dealing, as we attempt to limit the budget impact of what appears plainly to be price-gouging.

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Driving With Data: A Roadmap for Evidence-Based Decision Making in Academic Libraries

Ithaka S+R has released Driving With Data: A Roadmap for Evidence-Based Decision Making in Academic Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the past decade, libraries have expanded their use of various types of service assessment. Initially popularized by the LibQUAL+ service, there is now a robust library assessment community, including dedicated assessment librarians and coordinators at many institutions, who are charged with examining existing services and user perceptions with the purpose of documenting the value of the academic library's collections and services and identifying opportunities for improvement. At some institutions, assessment has become an important element of how libraries establish their key priorities on a regular basis.

Today library leaders must do more than build and manage collections, improve the quality of existing services, and find the funding to support this work. In addition, the library leader is called upon to reconsider or reassert the roles and objectives of the library in a changing information environment and to develop the strategy, services, spaces, and staffing to support these roles. In the remainder of this paper, therefore, we will be focusing on the use of data, including the types discussed in this section, to establish strategy and lead to a decision about future directions.

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Big Deals: Beyond the Damage: Circulation, Coverage and Staffing

Walt Crawford has published Beyond the Damage: Circulation, Coverage and Staffing.

Here's an excerpt from chapter one:

Big-Deal Serials Purchasing: Tracking the Damage looks almost entirely at four aspects of library spending and changes in that spending: total spending, current serials, "books" (all other acquisitions) and the remainder”what's left over for staff, automation, preservation, etc.

This book looks at some other aspects of academic libraries and how they have changed from 2002 through 2012: circulation, coverage and staffing. It's designed to complement the LTR report. Indeed, I assume that readers will have access to the report, as it includes details on which academic libraries are included and excluded. This book uses exactly the same universe of libraries (2,594 in all) as the report. I believe this book (and the supplementary PDF) will provide useful additional insights into what's happened in academic libraries over a decade in which Big Deals supposedly improved serials pricing problems”but still had serials spending taking more and more of a sometimes-shrinking overall pie…

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Web Accessibility Toolkit

ARL has released the Web Accessibility Toolkit.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

On the third annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is proud to announce the availability of a new resource for the ARL membership and the library community—a Web Accessibility Toolkit for research libraries. ARL's toolkit shares the fundamental goal of GAAD, which is to "raise the profile" of digital accessibility and provide resources for improving access to information to "the broadest audience possible." The toolkit aims to:

  • Promote the principles of accessibility, universal design, and digital inclusion.
  • Help research libraries achieve digital accessibility.
  • Connect research libraries with the tools, people, and examples they need to provide accessible digital content.

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"Funding Open Access Journal Publishing Article Processing Charges"

Christine Fruin and Fred Rascoe have published "Funding Open Access Journal Publishing Article Processing Charges" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Libraries are viewed as the primary resource at academic institutions for information on scholarly publishing issues, including OA. Faculty interest in OA publishing is increasing, and when recent federal mandates for OA are implemented, the interest from those doing federally funded research will grow quickly. As such, librarians should be prepared to answer questions from faculty and researchers on how they can cover the costs that are often attendant to publishing in OA journals. While librarians should advocate and educate their constituents on the availability of green OA and the cost-free options available with many gold OA journals, they should also be cognizant of the frequency at which faculty and researchers are publishing in gold OA publications that charge a fee and the available options for covering those costs.

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Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians

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

Here's an excerpt:

Having completed studies of historians and chemists, we turn in this report to art historians. This is a rich and diverse field of study, and the necessary support services must come from libraries, archives, museums, and technology providers. Digital technology has facilitated access to vast collections of resources that simply were not available before, and yet, the primacy of the actual art object has not diminished at all.

It would be unwise to draw conclusions from only three disciplines, but there are some interesting similarities among the three groups of scholars we have studied thus far. Scholars in the three fields have similar needs for assistance in managing and organizing non-institutional (i.e. personal or lab group) digital and digitized collections of primary source materials (digitized archival materials for historians, datasets for chemists, and image files for art historians). Meeting these needs will challenge support organizations to think differently about the services they provide and how they provide them.

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Director and University Librarian at University of Chicago Library

The University of Chicago Library is recruiting a Director and University Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Director will oversee a professional and support staff of 302 and will manage in a large and complex academic environment, engaging effectively with other university leaders and constituencies to advance the overall University mission. The Director oversees an annual operating budget of over $35M with over $18M in expenditures for acquisitions.

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"Developing Digital Scholarship Services on a Shoestring: Facilities, Events, Tools, and Projects"

Heather McCullough has published "Developing Digital Scholarship Services on a Shoestring: Facilities, Events, Tools, and Projects" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Libraries and academic technology divisions are increasingly developing and offering digital scholarship services. Yet, the term digital scholarship itself is quite fluid and seems to offer many interpretations depending on a particular university's culture, institutional organization, and environment. This article will outline how one university addressed a need for digital scholarship services at its campus.

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Director of Libraries at MIT Libraries

The MIT Libraries are recruiting a Director of Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Responsible for the MIT Libraries and oversight of the MIT Press, the Director of the MIT Libraries uses visionary leadership to guide both organizations through times of transformation in their respective industries. The Director is expected to leverage an increasingly networked and collaborative information environment as an important partner with MIT's academic and administrative units to advance the Institute's research, teaching, and global agendas in alignment with its mission and values. Reporting directly to the Provost, the Director secures the support and resources necessary for providing outstanding innovative and creative collections and services across a broad range of research disciplines to a world-class scholarly community. The Director will play a prominent role in shaping the larger scholarly communication landscape at MIT and beyond. S/he is expected to grow the Libraries resource development program. Key strategic opportunities for the Libraries include MIT's exploration of new modes of learning and global engagement, upcoming investments in reshaping library spaces, and advancing MIT's commitment and influence in the area of Open Access. S/he is expected to actively build and develop a diverse, skilled, and engaged workforce dedicated to an inclusive MIT community. As the senior officer at MIT with management responsibility for the MIT Press, the Director of Libraries provides strategic guidance to the Press in accordance with its goals, which include greater international engagement and a strong portfolio of evolving business models.

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"Digital Preservation File Format Policies of ARL Member Libraries: An Analysis"

Kyle Rimkus et al. have published "Digital Preservation File Format Policies of ARL Member Libraries: An Analysis" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

In the interest of gaining a broad view of contemporary digital preservation practice in North American research libraries, this paper presents the findings of a study of file format policies at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. It is intended to present the digital preservation community with an assessment of the level of trust currently placed in common file formats in digital library collections and institutional repositories. Beginning with a summary of file format research to date, the authors describe the research methodology they used to collect and analyze data from the file format policies of ARL Library repositories and digital library services. The paper concludes with a presentation and analysis of findings that explore levels of confidence placed in image, text, audio, video, tabular data, software application, presentation, geospatial, and computer program file formats. The data show that file format policies have evolved little beyond the document and image digitization standards of traditional library reformatting programs, and that current approaches to file format policymaking must evolve to meet the challenges of research libraries' expanding digital repository services.

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Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013

Ithaka S+R has released the Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In the Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2013 report we examine how the leaders of academic libraries are approaching systemic changes in their environment and the opportunities and constraints they face in leading their organizations. While exploring key topics covered in our 2010 survey of library directors, such as strategic planning, collecting practices, and library services, in 2013 we also introduced a new emphasis on organizational dynamics, leadership issues, and undergraduate services.

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Dean of Libraries and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair at University of Houston

The University of Houston is recruiting a Dean of Libraries and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The University of Houston invites nominations and applications for the position of Dean of Libraries and Elizabeth D. Rockwell Chair. The Dean of Libraries leads the University Libraries and advances the University's mission of research and teaching by ensuring the provision of outstanding library services. The University Libraries comprises the M.D. Anderson Library and three branch libraries (Music, Optometry, and Architecture and Art). The Dean of Libraries serves as the chief executive of the Libraries, with responsibility for oversight of all administrative activities, including budget and personnel management. The Dean provides programmatic and strategic leadership to the Libraries and plays a critical role in the Libraries' development activities. The Dean represents the Libraries within the University, and at the local, state, and national levels. The Dean reports directly to the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and is a member of the Council of Deans. . . .

The University Libraries employs over 69 professionals and 135 support staff. Overall, the campus libraries provide access to over 3.1 million volumes. The UH Libraries are a member of the Association of Research Libraries, the Greater Western Library Alliance, the Hathi Trust, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Digital Library Federation, and the Texas Digital Library. The Libraries enjoy an endowment of over $7 million, including three endowed chairs.

The Libraries actively supported the University's Tier One effort and continues to focus on UH System's Strategic Initiatives. The Libraries' 2013-2016 Strategic Directions reflect the University's top priorities and position the Libraries to be a contributor to these priorities.

The University of Houston is a publicly supported university, enrolling nearly 40,000 students. The University of Houston campus comprises 13 colleges and schools offering close to 80 degree programs. The University holds the classification of research university with very high activity, the highest Carnegie Foundation designation. Reflecting the multicultural community of metropolitan Houston, UH is one of the most ethnically diverse research university campuses in the nation.

An overview of the UH Libraries and a video are available. Short biographies of Paula Myrick Short (Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, UH System, and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, UH) and Renu Khator (Chancellor, UH System, and President, UH) are available on UH's leadership page. Information about the UH System and its four component universities is available at its website.

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Participatory Design in Academic Libraries: New Reports and Findings

The Council on Library and Information Resources has released Participatory Design in Academic Libraries: New Reports and Findings.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report looks at how staff at eight academic institutions gained new insight about how students and faculty use their libraries, and how the staff are using these findings to improve library technologies, space, and services.

Participatory design is a relatively recent approach to understanding library user behavior. It is based on techniques used in anthropological and ethnographic observation. The report's editor, anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster, led several participatory design workshops for CLIR from 2007 to 2013.

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Université de Montréal Will Cancel about 75% of Wiley Online Library Periodicals

The Université de Montréal will cancel about 75% of its Wiley Online Library periodicals.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Out of 1510 periodicals in the Wiley Online Library, the Université de Montréal is cancelling subscriptions to 1142 titles at the end of January. As a result, and from this point on, the articles found in the cancelled titles will no longer be available on-line. However, access to earlier issues will be entirely maintained.

This action results from a process that started a long while ago. The financial cut-backs imposed by the Québec government only accelerated the decision process. The result of the analysis is simple: libraries have been driven to the wall because of the yearly rise of subscriptions to periodicals that hover between 3% and 6%. They cannot go on cutting back the acquisition of monographs to compensate for such price increases. As a result, this conclusion, as well as the adopted solution, would have been the same a few years down the line, independently of the financial context.

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SCOAP3 High-Energy Physics Open Access Publishing Initiative Launches on 1/1/2014

The SCOAP3 High-Energy Physics open access publishing initiative will launch on 1/1/2014.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

After intense preparations and consensus building, CERN1 has today confirmed that the SCOAP3 Open Access publishing initiative will start on 1 January 2014. With the support of partners in 24 countries2, a vast fraction of scientific articles in the field of High-Energy Physics will become Open Access at no cost for any author: everyone will be able to read them; authors will retain copyright; and generous licenses will enable wide re-use of this information.

Convened at CERN this is the largest scale global Open Access initiative ever built, involving an international collaboration of over one thousand libraries, library consortia and research organizations. SCOAP3 enjoys the support of funding agencies and has been established in co-operation with leading publishers. . . .

The objective of SCOAP3 is to grant unrestricted access to scientific articles appearing in scientific journals, which so far have only been available to scientists through certain university libraries, and generally unavailable to the wider public. Open dissemination of preliminary information, in the form of pre-peer-review articles known as preprints, has been the norm in High-Energy Physics and related disciplines for two decades. SCOAP3 sustainably extends this opportunity to high-quality peer-review service, making final version of articles available, within the Open Access tenets of free and unrestricted dissemination of science with intellectual property rights vested in the authors and wide re-use opportunities. In the SCOAP3 model, libraries and funding agencies pool resources currently used to subscribe to journals, in co-operation with publishers, and use them to support the peer-review system directly instead.

The SCOAP3 initiative looks forward to establishing further partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, where scientists will enjoy the advantages of Open Access and many libraries and library consortia will benefit from reductions in their subscription costs. . . .

More information–publishers and scientific societies participating in SCOAP3:
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft
Elsevier
Hindawi
Institute of Physics Publishing
Jagellonian University
Oxford University Press
Physical Society of Japan
SISSA Medialab
Springer
Società Italiana di Fisica

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"Knowledge Level of Library Deans and Directors in Copyright Law"

John Eye has published "Knowledge Level of Library Deans and Directors in Copyright Law" in the latest issue of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

A random sample of academic library deans and directors was asked to complete a web-based survey articulating their level of copyright knowledge and perceptions associated with how they are able to apply it toward their work with policies. . . .

Deans and directors of academic libraries have a working knowledge of copyright law but more training is needed to provide library professionals with the tools necessary to carry out the work of effectively managing collections and services, especially in this new and emerging digital environment

.

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"Cost Differentials between E-Books and Print in Academic Libraries"

College & Research Libraries has released an e-print of "Cost Differentials between E-Books and Print in Academic Libraries."

Here's an excerpt:

A survey conducted at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) has confirmed for academic libraries the work of Gray and Copeland on e-books being more expensive than print for public libraries. For AUM, the mean cost for e-books are significantly higher than for the print counterpart of those titles. The cost differentials between the two formats show e-books as being consistently higher than print in initial price. This consistency holds true across all LC classifications, regardless of whether or not the title is published by a university press or a commercial press.

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Library Publishing Directory

The Library Publishing Coalition has released the Library Publishing Directory.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Published in October 2013, the Library Publishing Directory provides a snapshot of the publishing activities of 115 academic and research libraries, including information about the number and types of publications they produce, the services they offer authors, how they are staffed and funded, and the future plans of institutions that are engaged in this growing field. . . .

Specifically it is hoped that this Directory will:

  • Introduce all readers to the emerging field of library publishing and help articulate its unique characteristics as a distinctive "publishing field."
  • Facilitate collaboration among library publishers and other publishing entities, especially the university presses and learned societies that share their values.
  • Alert authors of scholarly content to a range of potential publishing partners dedicated to supporting their experimentation with new forms of scholarly communication and open access business models.

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"A Look at Altmetrics and Its Growing Significance to Research Libraries"

Emily Puckett Rodgers and Sarah Barbrow have self-archived "A Look at Altmetrics and Its Growing Significance to Research Libraries" in Deep Blue.

Here's an excerpt:

This document serves as an informational review of the emerging field and practices of alternative metrics or altmetrics. It is intended to be used by librarians and faculty members in research libraries and universities to better understand the trends and challenges associated with altmetrics in higher education. It is also intended to be used by research libraries to offer guidance on how to participate in shaping this emerging field.

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"Copyright in the Digital Age"

Kyle K. Courtney has self-archived "Copyright in the Digital Age" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The goal of this chapter is to provide the fundamental instruction for some of the most popular topics facing law libraries in the digital age. Whether it is scanning chapters for e-reserves or accessing databases online, knowledge of copyright law can help mitigate risk, and enhance our patron's services. As librarians, we want to provide whatever our patron's desire. But, we also must balance the law versus the patrons needs. Fortunately, copyright law does not always restrict a patron's uses. In many cases a solid understanding of copyright can help ease a patron's fears, or provide legal alternatives to a patron's request, or help educate the community at large.

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