up2date

Free webinar : "Keeping Up: Social Networking and Higher Ed"

From Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services :

March 23, 2011 at 2:00 pm ET - free to all.

Guests: Our "Keeping Up" panel - Charles Ansorge, Steven Bell, Ilene Frank, Lisa Star, Jane Harris, Beth Dailey, Jane Marcus, and Steve Gilbert

...

Source and Registration Links Available At

[ http://bit.ly/xMFU7u]

"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."

"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)

 

The codex is dead, long live the codex

Wayne Bivens-Tatum, over at Academic Librarian, writes a cogent explanation/defense of why humanists prefer print to e-books:

http://blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/2011/11/the-codex-is-dead-long-live-the-codex/

Essentially, he argues that working with multiple print texts is currently more efficient than working with multiple e-books, and that this kind of work is central to research in the humanities:

I think this is an exam­ple where breath­less ebook prophets are push­ing a for­mat that for now remains an inad­e­quate tool for human­is­tic schol­arly research, and I sus­pect they’re doing so because they never do any of that type of research, so they either don’t know or don’t care about the inad­e­quate tools. Tech­nol­ogy that doesn’t make work eas­ier is bad tech­nol­ogy, no mat­ter how much some peo­ple might like it for their casual read­ing. When the tools improve, no one will be protest­ing the demise of the codex.

Nothing perhaps that we don't already know, but a useful reminder of the pragmatics of the research process, particularly his description of the mechanics of his own research.

"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

Pew Internet report “The Digital Revolution and Higher Education”

From INFOdocket :

The Digital Revolution and Higher Education
By Kim Parker, Amanda Lenhart, Kathleen Moore

Report Also Available in PDF (29 Pages)

Below is a summary of key findings:

The Value of Online Learning.
The public and college presidents differ over the educational value of online courses. Only 29% of the public says online courses offer an equal value compared with courses taken in a classroom. Half (51%) of the college presidents surveyed say online courses provide the same value.

The Prevalence of Online Courses.
...

Online Students.
...

The Future of Online Learning.
College presidents predict substantial growth in online learning: 15% say most of their current undergraduate students have taken a class online, and 50% predict that 10 years from now most of their students will take classes online.

Digital Textbooks.
Nearly two-thirds of college presidents (62%) anticipate that 10 years from now, more than half of the textbooks used by their undergraduate students will be entirely digital.

The Internet and Plagiarism.
Most college presidents (55%) say that plagiarism in students’ papers has increased over the past 10 years. Among those who have seen an increase in plagiarism, 89% say computers and the internet have played a major role.

Do Laptops and Smartphones Belong in the Classroom?
More than half of recent college graduates (57%) say when they were in college they used a laptop, smartphone or tablet computer in class at least sometime. Most colleges and universities do not have institutional guidelines in place for the use of these devices in class. Some 41% of college presidents say students are allowed to use laptops or other portable devices during class; at 56% of colleges and universities it is up to the individual instructors. Only 2% of presidents say the use of these devices is prohibited.

College Presidents and Technology.
...

College Presidents and Social Networking.
Roughly one-third of college presidents (32%) report that they use Facebook weekly or more often; 18% say they use Twitter at least occasionally.

Direct to The Digital Revolution and Higher Education
By Kim Parker, Amanda Lenhart, Kathleen Moore

Report Also Available in PDF (29 Pages)

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."

"The Crisis in Research Librarianship"

From the latest JAL :

"The Crisis in Research Librarianship 

Rick Anderson 

^a Scholarly Resources & Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, USA

Article Outline

References

The academic research library, as currently configured, is designed and organized to solve a problem that its patrons no longer perceive: the problem of information scarcity.

When information is scarce, it presents two primary difficulties: first, it is hard to find; second, it is expensive. These may seem like trivial observations, but they go to the heart of a growing crisis in librarianship. The crisis does not stem from the fact that information is now universally cheap and easy to find, and therefore that librarians are no longer needed; on the contrary, some kinds of information (high-quality science publications, for example) are still expensive, and some (including unique documents like manuscripts and grey literature) are still difficult to find. In the face of these and other persistent information problems (such as the difficulty of distinguishing between authoritative and questionable sources), librarians continue to offer valuable help in their roles as brokers and as research guides.

So the problem is not that libraries fail to offer value to their constituents. The crisis stems, instead, from the following three facts:

..."

CRL GRN forum

From INFOdocket :

Recently Released: CRL Website Features Global Resources Forum With Reviews, Profiles, and More

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Gary D. Price

...

From a Center for Research Libraries Announcement:

CRL recently opened the Global Resources Forum section on its website. The section offers four main tools to help CRL libraries make informed collection decisions:

• Reviews include information on major primary source databases and collections—such as Times of India, Pravda, and British Records on the Atlantic World—from specialists in the CRL community.
• Profiles of major repositories like Portico and UMI analyze the trustworthiness and sustainability of electronic resources and repositories for the research community.
• Topic Guides to collections and resources in CRL areas of focus, dealing with subjects like water resources and medieval studies.
• Data & Tools has a searchable knowledge-base about print archive initiatives like the Print Archives and Preservation Registry, including archive conditions, holdings, and collection analysis.

The Forum is intended to foster community exchange of information, through analysis, reviews, feedback and comments contributed by individuals at CRL libraries, and discussions in Forum webinars and teleconferences.

Direct to Global Resources Forum

"5 Reasons Librarians Are the Future of Ed Tech"

From the Technology & Learning blog at Inside HigherEd :

"...The future of campus computing belongs to the librarians and the libraries, and that is a very good thing. Here is why:

Reason 1 - Service Orientation:...

Reason 2 - Strong Relationships:...

Reason 3 - Multilingualism:...

Reason 4 - Technology Experience:...

Reason 5 - Collegiality: This last reason that librarians are the future of educational technology is perhaps the most important. Librarians are universally the most collegial professionals on campus....

"

Kindle ebooks will have page #s

& Catherine called it!

As reported by the ResourceShelf :

- A general discussion, "It's [sic] Can Be a Challenge to Cite Page Numbers From E-Books"
- Specific to the amazon.com Kindle announcement, "No More "Location" Numbers: Amazon.com Announces Real Page Numbers Coming Soon to the Kindle"

& in Wired.

collection of apps for scholarship from MIT Libraries

As announced on the MIT Libraries twitter feed, this well-designed page (libguide) offers suggestions for useful academic apps, from dropbox to ACS mobile to the catalog. They also did a workshop on mobile apps that has a good page -- with an RSS feed of mobile-app related news relevant to academics.

Discoverability Report (part II)

From the University of Minnesota, as signaled by Lorcan Dempsey whose comments on the report are the subject of his blog post entitled "There is more to discovery than you think ...":

Abstract

The Discoverability Phase 2 group was charged in spring 2010 to generate a vision for the University Libraries’ discovery environment. In addition, the group was asked to build on the work of Phase 1 (see the Phase 1 report here: http://purl.umn.edu/48258), addressing some of the practical implications of decentralized discovery by recommending strategies for making local collections discoverable in external systems, and for integrating remotely-managed data into the local discovery environment.

 

"Privacy Considerations in Cloud-Based Teaching and Learning Environments"

From EDUCAUSE :

"...a new white paper, Privacy Considerations in Cloud-Based Teaching and Learning Environments,...we outline the privacy issues relevant to using cloud-based instructional tools or cloud-based teaching and learning environments for faculty members and those supporting instruction."

"Millennial Students' Mental Models of Search: Implications for Academic Librarians..."

From the latest JAL (corrected proof) :

"Millennial Students' Mental Models of Search: Implications for Academic Librarians and Database Developers

Lucy Holman

Abstract

Today's students exhibit generational differences in the way they search for information. Observations of first-year students revealed a proclivity for simple keyword or phrases searches with frequent misspellings and incorrect logic. Although no students had strong mental models of search mechanisms, those with stronger models did construct more complex searches."

EDUCAUSE Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2010

From the EDUCAUSE blog :

... The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2010 ... is a longitudinal extension of the 2004 through 2009 ECAR studies of students and information technology. It is based on quantitative data from a spring 2010 survey of 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions; student focus groups that included input from 84 students at 4 institutions; and review of qualitative data from written responses to open-ended questions. In addition to exploring student ownership, experience, behaviors, preferences, and skills with respect to information technologies, including ownership and use of Internet-capable handheld devices, the 2010 study also includes a special focus on student use of social networking websites and web-based applications. Because of the critical importance of this topic, ECAR has made the full study, roadmap, and key findings available online to everyone now.

"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.

..."

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.

..."