up2date

"Ithaka S+R Chemistry Project Now Available"

After all of my posts on the History Project, here's the release of the Ithaka chemistry project (from INFOdocket).

"From the ITHAKA Web Site:

Ithaka S+R is pleased to release the Interim Report on our Chemistry Project, part of the Research Support Services for Scholars program. This follows the release of the Interim Report on our History Project last month.

We hope to engage the community – librarians, research support professionals, scholars, researchers, and funders alike –  in discussions on both projects. Please share your thoughts and experiences with us. We welcome reactions and feedback via the comments section on our project blog."

"History Project Interim Report: Support Challenges" [including libraries]

3d(? I'm loosing count) part of the Ithaka report. The section that really caught my eye was the part about libraries and librarians :

"Expertise and skill building
“[We are] willing to contemplate a variety of futures for the library.”

Interviews with research support professionals from libraries often discussed the challenges of transforming a staff of professionals who have filled traditional library roles, and preparing staff to take on new roles within their organizations. ... In some cases, exposure and a degree of “literacy” in digital humanities is the end goal, and service models will rely on librarians to act as referrers within the organization – connecting faculty to the research support professionals on campus who can best meet their needs. In some cases, librarians are redefining their roles and assuming positions in library-initiated centers. In these cases a good deal of professional development is typically invested, or, opportunities for new hires are pursued. Organizations with any of these staffing structures are facing the challenges of managing an evolving staff with widely varied skill sets, and new service models that may be unique within the library.

Outreach

Some library-based research support professionals feel a disconnect from faculty research and publication work flows. Many continue to struggle to maintain an understanding of evolving faculty research practices. ...

Research support professionals expressed a clear need for more information and a deeper understanding of faculty research and scholarship practices in order to increase outreach effectively and expand services to meet new needs. ...

For those centers based in libraries, it was widely acknowledged that collaboration with faculty is key to success of a new service model. One interviewee indicated that this was more important than the facility – there is no guarantee that “if you build it they will come."

"Historians and Social Media"

Historians are certainly being studied recently (see the 2 previous posts re the Ithaka report). The latest, from INFOdocket :

"Academic Networking 2.0: Historians and Social Media

by Michael D. Hattem, PhD Student, Yale University

...

From the Article

For many, upwardly mobile interactions are only a small part of their social media activities. Facebook and Twitter are also used to connect with peers and colleagues and tap into or create various types of supportive communities. Katrina Gulliver, one of the most-followed historians on Twitter, coined the hashtag #twitterstorians just over two years ago in an effort to make it easier to connect with fellow historians on the social network. Similarly, historians, and other academics, are increasingly using pre-defined hashtags, such as #AHA2012, that are added to the end of a Twitter post to identify them in search results and to create a backchannel at academic conferences. Participants tweet about panels they have attended, conversations they have had, or their overall impressions of the conference, while others can run a search of the hashtag on Twitter and find all the posts about a specific conference.

Direct to Complete Article"

"Environmental Changes in History Research"

Part II about the Ithaka report of which I posted yesterday.

Ithaka History Project Interim Report

The interim report summarizes "our interviews with research support professionals who support the field of history."

LIBER Quarterly (new issue)

INFOdocket informs us of a new issue of LIBER Quarterly. The article that made me sit up and take notice is

How do Researchers in the Humanities Use Information Resources?
Ellen Collins, Michael Jubb

(also intriguing : The e-Reader — an Educational or an Entertainment Tool? e-Readers in an Academic Setting by Peter Ahlroos & Jonna Hahto)

 

"New From Ithaka S+R: Research Support Services for Scholars"

From INFOdocket -- it's the history one that particularly interests me, of course :

From an Ithaka S+R Announcement:

Ithaka S+R is pleased to announce a new program, Research Support Services for Scholars, that will comprise a series of discipline-specific research projects aimed to provide critically needed research about the evolving behavior and needs of scholars to the information support service providers who work with them. Based on this research, Ithaka S+R will make recommendations regarding the future of support services for scholars and how information service providers—such as libraries, computing support centers, scholarly societies, and publishers—can support their needs.

Ithaka S+R begins this international research program with two projects: a research project in chemistry, with support from JISC and an emphasis on the needs of UK chemists, and a research project in history, with support from the National Endowment of the Humanities and an emphasis on US historians.

Learn More About the Program

• Chemistry Project Homepage
• History Project Homepage

Google Scholar Citation Metrics

From the Google Scholar blog :

We use a statistical model based on author names, bibliographic data, and article content to group articles likely written by the same author. You can quickly identify your articles using these groups. After you identify your articles, we collect citations to them, graph these citations over time, and compute your citation metrics. Three metrics are available: the widely used h-index, the i-10 index, which is the number of articles with at least ten citations, and the total number of citations to your articles. We compute each metric over all citations as well as over citations in articles published in the last five years. These metrics are automatically updated as we find new citations to your articles on the web.

You can enable automatic addition of your newly published articles to your profile. This would instruct the Google Scholar indexing system to update your profile as it discovers new articles that are likely yours. And you can, of course, manually update your profile by adding missing articles, fixing bibliographic errors, and merging duplicate entries.

You can also create a public profile with your articles and citation metrics (e.g., Alex Verstak, Anurag Acharya). If you make your profile public, it can appear in Google Scholar search results when someone searches for your name (e.g., Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac). This will make it easier for your colleagues worldwide to follow your work.

Google Scholar Citations is currently in limited launch with a small number of users. This is a new direction for us and we plan to use the experience and feedback from the limited launch to improve the service. Click here and follow the instructions to get started.

paper on academic users research tasks and search strategies

In JAL :

Academic Users' Information Searching on Research Topics: Characteristics of Research Tasks and Search Strategies 

Jia Tina Du and Nina Evans

"Abstract

This project investigated how academic users search for information on their real-life research tasks. This article presents the findings of the first of two studies. The study data were collected in the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. Eleven PhD students' searching behaviors on personal research topics were observed as they interacted with information retrieval (IR) systems. The analysis of search logs uncovered the characteristics of research tasks and the corresponding search strategies."

"Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community"

From the ResourceShelf, a new report from OCLC:

From an OCLC Announcement:

Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community, a follow-up to the 2005 Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, is now available. The new report provides updated information and new insights into information consumers and their online information habits, preferences and perceptions. Particular attention was paid to how the current economic downturn has affected information-seeking behaviors and how those changes are reflected in the use and perception of libraries.

The OCLC membership report explores:

+ Technological and economic shifts since 2005
+ Lifestyle changes Americans have made during the recession, including increased use of the library and other online resources
+ How a negative change to employment status impacts use and perceptions of the library
+ How Americans use online resources and libraries in 2010
+ Perceptions of libraries and information resources based on life stage, from teens to college students, to senior Americans.

The membership report is based on U.S. data from an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of OCLC. OCLC analyzed and summarized the results in order to produce this report.

On pages 94-97 (beginning on page 51 of PDF) some numbers from the original research Harris Interactive are reported for the first time. The section is titled, "2010 Hot Spots."

On pages 98-101 (beginning of page 53 of PDF) some advice for librarians from library users.

Download the Report (Free)
The report can be downloaded as one document (59 pages; PDF) or by chapter.

You can also purchase a bound version of the report for $19.00/U.S. Details here.

report on "How Different Generations Use the Internet"

From the ResourceShelf :

Generations 2010

HTML Version (Searchable) ||| PDF Version (29 pages)

From the Overview Page:

The dominance of the Millennial generation that we documented in our first “Generations” report in 2009 has slipped in many activities.

Milliennials, those ages 18-33, remain more likely to access the internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone. In addition, they still clearly surpass their elders online when it comes to many communication- and entertainment-related activities, such as using social network sites and playing games online.

However, internet users in Gen X (those ages 34-45) and older cohorts are more likely than Millennials to engage in several online activities, including visiting government websites and getting financial information online.

Finally, the biggest online trend is that, while the very youngest and oldest cohorts may differ, certain key internet uses are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. These online activities include seeking health information, purchasing products, making travel reservations, and downloading podcasts.

A Few Stats From the Report:

...

+ Few of the activities covered in this report have decreased in popularity for any age group, with the notable exception of blogging. ...

...

+ About six in ten American adults (59%) go online wirelessly, either through their smartphones or through a wireless card in their laptop.3 Adults age 45 and younger are the most likely to connect to the internet with a laptop, cell phone, or other internet-connected mobile device, as 82% of Millennials and 71% of Gen X connect that way. Only 9% of the G.I. Generation go online wirelessly.

+ Email and search engine use remain the backbone of online activities, with 88% of the oldest generation using email. Communicating by email is not as popular with teens, however; only 73% of teens use email.

Full Text HTML Version (Searchable) ||| Complete PDF Version (29 pages)

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

"Professors Publish Guide to Copyright Issues of Multimedia Projects"

From the Chronical's Wired Campus :

"...many students fail to understand the legal risks. A new study, titled “Copying Right and Copying Wrong With Web 2.0 Tools in the Teacher Education and Communications Classrooms,” attempts to educate students about both the appropriate and inappropriate ways to use copyrighted materials that are available to mass audiences on the Internet.

..."

New Tenopir article on importance of journal 'brand'

From the ResourceShelf :

"From the Announcement: (2 pages; MS Word)

A new study by Tenopir, King and others shows that researchers attach high importance to reading articles from recognised peer-reviewed journals.

‘These are very valuable findings’ said Bob Campbell, Chairman of the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), which commissioned the study. ‘They confirm what most publishers already believe – that the investment and effort that the community put into establishing journals of quality is well-appreciated by researchers when they come to use the literature.

[Clip]

Tenopir, who led the research team, said: 'readers of scholarly articles have an abundance of articles to choose from. In addition to topic, they use a variety of criteria and quality clues to choose which articles to read. This study reveals which of those clues are most important to readers from many different disciplines. For topically relevant articles that are available online at no personal cost to the reader, the quality of the authors and the journals in which the articles appear are important criteria in helping readers choose from among alternatives.'

..."

"Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research"

This looks very interesting!

From the ResourceShelf :

""Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research" Exhibition Opens at British Library

October 14, 2010 14:08

This major exhibition is now open at the British Library.

If you can't make it to London or just want to participate online, a significant amount of material is available. Of course, you can also participate in the online debates/discussions. Register here.

Website: Growing Knowledge: The evolution of research

"Growing Knowledge will inform and inspire today's researchers, and spark a debate on the future of research."
12 October 2010 - 16 July 2011

Twitter Hashtag: #blkg

Brief Video Interviews (Found on Home Page) Discuss:

+ Digital Research
+ Information Overload
+ The Modern Library
+ New Ways of Researching
+ New Challenges
+ Good Research
+ Scholarly Research
+ Search and Analyse for Data

Start Researching

On a single page, direct access to 21, "examples from the latest in research." The BL encourages users to rate each resource.

..."

"A Modern Scholar's Ailments: Link Rot and Footnote Flight"

From the ResourceShelf :

"by Jennifer Howard, The Chronicle of Higher Education:

In this column, the first of two on the topic, I'll look at some research that highlights the problem. Next time, I'll focus on some of the mechanisms publishers and others use to minimize the risk.

...

Access the Complete Article

Access the Full Text Article: "Disappearing Act" by Gebremichael, McKendree, Taylor, and Soltys ( Journal of the Medical Library Association (97.2, 2009) via PubMed Central

HTML ||| PDF ||| Correction

See Also: Info Page: Vanishing Act: The Erosion of Online Footnotes and Implications for Scholarship in the Digital Age by Bugeja and Dimitrova (Litwin Books/Library Juice Press, 2010)"

Historians Interested in Digital Scholarship, but where to publish?

From the Chronicle :

"Historians Are Interested in Digital Scholarship but Lack Outlets

By Rachel Ensign

A new survey of 4,000 historians found that most are willing to try digital scholarship—such as interactive maps or online databases—but that the number of journals interested in publishing such online scholarship is tiny.

Enter the Sustaining Digital History project, which is trying to make it easier for history scholars to publish digitally in well-established forums. The group held a daylong meeting last week at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where about 30 attendees tried to figure out how to translate this burgeoning interest in digital publishing into a new breed of scholarly work. Among the attendees were editors from eight historical journals (including the editor of the discipline’s flagship journal, The American Historical Review)—and by the end of the afternoon, each had committed to experimenting with digital scholarship.

...

Review of open access (COPE) after a year

From today's Inside HigherEd :

"It has been more than a year since five leading research universities agreed to establish “timely” mechanisms for paying the publication fees for faculty who decide to publish in open-access journals.

The agreement, called the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity, or COPE, was designed to “provide a sufficient and sustainable funding basis for open-access publication of the scholarly literature.” And last year’s signatories — which include among others Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of California at Berkeley — were as good as their word, setting aside funds to subsidize the publication fees some open-access journals charge authors to cover editorial costs.

...

But while the original signatories' establishment of reimbursement funds has been "timely" as promised, slow uptake by faculty and other universities suggests that COPE is not going to tip the scales in favor of open-access publishing anytime soon.

..."

"Emerging Genres in Scholarly Communication"

From the ResourceShelf :

"New Report: "Emerging Genres in Scholarly Communication"

SCI 8 (Scholarly Communication Institute) meeting took place at the University of Virginia from July 14-16, 2010.

The summary (3 pages) and the full report (25 pages) are now available online as PDF files.

From the Summary Report:

Over two days of presentations and intensive discussions, the group assessed current trends and identified a quartet of developing genres that are quickly moving into the mainstream of scholarly production. These genres—the digital collection or curated database, the scholarly blog, the multimedia argument, and media-based sound studies—were analyzed in terms of their full range of scholarly production and use, from authoring to publication and dissemination, stewardship and preservation, and reuse.

Participants found that four elements of scholarly production—authorship, dissemination, stewardship, and use—remain core, but how they are done and by whom has shifted significantly. In the Web environment readers and users are also authors, expecting to annotate, review, and re-use content. The role of publisher is now additionally played by libraries, scholars, students, and indeed anyone who posts content directly to the Web. That said, most participants—though not all—see the role of scholarly presses remaining as great as ever, if not greater, because the need to vet and validate content, prepare a manuscript for publication and long-term sustainability, and capture a user’s scarce attention all require the skills that publishers have cultivated over the decades.

Four near-term actions are listed at the conclusion of the summary. One of them mentions librarians:

Professional development: new skills and "alternative academic" career paths should be developed for many scholars, librarians and publishers, all of whom are critical to collaboration in new scholarly production.

Other near-terms actions include education:

Scholars should develop literacies in media that help them create multimedia scholarship, understand how to assess such scholarship, and make explicit to their audiences—fellow scholars, students, and the public—how to understand the meanings of multimedia scholarship.

..."

Comparison of Student and Faculty Academic Technology Use Across Disciplines

From EDUCAUSE :

"By Kevin R. Guidry and Allison BrckaLorenz

Key Takeaways

• Students and faculty use course management systems much more frequently than any other technology.
• Professional students use classroom response devices ("clickers") and Education students use e-portfolios more often than students in other fields use either.
• Faculty in all disciplines rarely use blogs, collaborative editing tools, and games and simulations.
• Students and faculty have different expectations and use technologies in different contexts, which can create tension and misunderstandings between the two groups.

...

Conclusion

Not only do students and faculty use some technologies in different frequencies, students and faculty in different disciplines use different technologies in different frequencies. Hence a "one-size-fits-all" approach to providing and supporting academic technologies will not suffice. Moreover, students and faculty have different expectations and use technologies in different contexts, which may create tension and misunderstandings between these two groups. Although this study confirms the general belief that students use technology more often than faculty, it also reminds us that the academic technology landscape is complicated and ever changing, always challenging our assumptions and demanding more context and deeper examination."

article in DHQ : "The Landscape of Digital Humanities"

The Landscape of Digital Humanities, Patrik Svensson, HUMlab, Umeå University

From the abstract :

"The digital humanities is increasingly becoming a "buzzword", and there is more and more talk about a broadly conceived, inclusive digital humanities. The field is expanding and at the same time being negotiated, and this article explores the idea of a broadly conceived landscape of digital humanities in some depth.... The study starts out from typologies of digital humanities, a "flythrough" of the landscape, and a discussion of what being a digital humanist entails. The second part is an exploration of four concrete encounters: ACTLab at University of Texas at Austin, the Humanities Arts Science Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), the Humanities Computing Program at the University of Alberta, and Internet Studies. In the third part of the article, it is suggested that a model based on paradigmatic modes of engagement between the humanities and information technology can help chart and understand the digital humanities. The modes of engagement analyzed are technology as a tool, study object, expressive medium, exploratory laboratory and activist venue."