Last week, we had Micah Vandegrift (of Hack Library School and In the Library with the Lead Pipe fame) come in to talk with us about a topic I get really excited about: Open access and scholarly communication. I tweeted the talk, and saved the tweets here. I’m really excited that OA is picking up steam, and I’m looking forward to seeing it continue to blossom in the years to come!
Open Access Resources
>I am doing a presentation in one of my classes (Search and Discovery with Cliff Missen) about OA vs proprietary journals. In order to keep all the sources I use in one spot that students can access later on, I’ve compiled them into this blog post. Another bonus? LIS students (and everyone else) can use this post as a way to learn more about Open Access too!
Here’s the article I’m reviewing for the class:
The Importance of OA, OSS, & Open Standards for Libraries
Basically, the author discusses the benefits of ‘open’ models (Open Access, Open Source Software, Open Standards) for libraries. I chose it because it covers the basics without being intimidating, and is a good way to nudge those who are scared of giant, wordy research papers toward an understanding of the topic. What I like about it is it’s short and to the point (probably as long as most of my blog posts) and gives a great, easy-to-understand overview of how libraries can benefit from implementing OA and OSS into their day-to-day running.
>Academia.edu’s Journal List
>This article was brought to my attention today, and it discusses the creation of Academia.edu’s list of journals. For those who’ve been reading my blog for a while, you probably remember my earlier post where I mention it as a great resource for new LIS students. For those who haven’t read the blog for that long, Academia.edu is a site I love because it’s a social networking site for academics: I love getting to connect with folks all over the world, and I wouldn’t have found them otherwise!
The reason folks are excited about Academia.edu’s journal list is that you can follow journals online and receive updates, but you also benefit from the social component (i.e. what are my fellow students/professors reading to stay current?) The article mentions another site (ticTocs) that allows you to search journals in a similar way, although I don’t have any experience with it.
I just went through and added a smattering of journals to my list (you can view them here), and I was pretty impressed by the selection. However, there was one big discrepancy I noticed, and that was a lack of Open Access journals! I’m sure there are some OA journals in the list (although I didn’t have the time to go through all of the thousands of entries to verify that), but I could not find my favorites, like First Monday, B Sides, and Library Student Journal. I love that they are open to suggestions, however, and so I hit the ‘suggest a new journal’ button and fired away! As OA becomes a more accepted venue for scholarly publication, I’m excited to see these journals get more recognition and more followers! If you don’t have an Academia.edu account, I would definitely recommend getting one. Once you do, just go to this link and start following! And make sure to suggest journals you don’t see, I bet they would appreciate having an even more comprehensive list!
>Another article on Scribd
>Second time this week!
I posted my article: “Learning from the Past: Digitization and Information Loss” on Scribd where you can read it for free using this link. It was originally published in B Sides this last May, but since B Sides is awesome and lets authors keep control of rights over their work, I can distribute it as I wish! To see the article on the B Sides site, go here.
“Learning from the Past” is an article that provides an overview of digitization issues and current solutions to information loss for those who are somewhat new to the subject.
As always, let me know if you have any questions or noticed anything in the article that piqued your interest!
March 2011 update: Somehow, Scribd lost my account, so these are no longer available.
>The Library of Tomorrow…Yesterday!
I ran across this rather lengthy quote while adding to my chapter on libraries from 1914-1916, and was so pleased by it I couldn’t wait to share it with you! It’s from the 1914 annual report, written by Iowa City Public Library’s librarian, Helen McRaith. Unfortunately my Internet was down yesterday (and most of today), so I had to contain my excitement until now:
“The modern idea of the function of a library is this—to study the literary needs of its own community and then to endeavor to meet these needs to the fullest extent, even if tradition must be violated in so doing.
The old-fashioned library was a cloistral place appealing only to the scholar, who moved silently among dust-covered tomes. The modern library possesses a different atmosphere and one more akin to that of a business office; most of the readers have the appearance of seeking information which will be of assistance in their daily problems rather than abstract knowledge.
There is a similar change in the appearance and attitude of the librarians. Formerly they seemed to look on the library as an end in itself and as a collection of interesting curiosities, they were willing to let it remain a stagnant literary pool. Now they must be alert specialists, keen to keep a stream of vital, useful knowledge flowing from the library to all parts of the community.” (Iowa City Public Library 1914 annual report, pg 1).
This reminds me so much of some of the current discussion circulating around the changing field of librarianship, even though it was written almost 100 years ago. Her writing has the same tone of excitement that I feel in my own blog and in reading the posts of other LIS bloggers, about the library as a place of expanding opportunities and of librarians as being people who are redefining the field rather than just participating in it.
There are a couple places in particular where her writing sounds like it could have been lifted out of a modern blog (and then had the language antiquated a bit, of course): there is so much concern right now about justifying the value of libraries, and a lot of that justification comes through pointing out that the library is used for practical purposes, as McRaith says, “…seeking information which will be of assistance in their daily problems rather than abstract knowledge.”
>Free Resources for Students and Researchers
>There are a ton of great free resources out there both for students and for researchers, and I wanted to share some that I’ve found before the semester kicks into high gear. I know I’ve mentioned some of these resources before, but I’ve come across so many more that it’s good to keep the list updated. If you know of anything that I missed, please include it–I’d love to make as complete a list as possible!
Continue reading “>Free Resources for Students and Researchers”
>Crowd-Sourcing Peer Reviews
>While procrastinating and staring blankly at my Twitter feed a moment ago, I noticed this post by ACRL (ALA’s Association of College and Research Libraries):
@ALA_ACRL: RT @chronicle: Open, crowd-sourced peer review works for one humanities journal:http://bit.ly/9HIDJC
As an OA journal editor, I was intrigued. When you click the link above, you’re lead to a Chronicle article about Shakespeare Quarterly‘s new approach to the review process. Basically, a draft of the publication is placed online, and is open for comment by a pool of reviewers with varying specialties. The process is not an anonymous review, so those comments that are made about a submission are attached to the reviewer’s name.
Julia C. Skinner 