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!
>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:
>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):