up2date

"Environmental Changes in History Research"

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

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.

EDS also includes HathiTrust data

Following hard on the heels of OCLC's announcement yesterday, EBSCO makes a similar press release (thanks to INFOdocket for the pointer).

I can't help wondering what this means for precision, when precision is helpful -- sometimes you need an eye-dropper & not a spray bottle.

NEH Announces Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants, New Institutes & more

From INFODocket :

From the National Endowment for the Humanities

1. 32 New Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant Awards 

2. 5 New Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities

3. DFG/NEH Bi-Lateral Digital Humanities Grantees
From Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft  (Germany) and NEH

"Usability Testing for e-Resource Discovery"

From the latest issue of JAL :

Usability Testing for e-Resource Discovery: How Students Find and Choose e-Resources Using Library Web Sites

Amy Frylow and Linda Rich

ABSTRACT In early 2010, library staff at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio designed and conducted a usability study of key parts of the library web site, focusing on the web pages generated by the library's electronic resources management system (ERM) that list and describe the library's databases. The goal was to discover how users find and choose e-resources and identify ways the library could improve access to e-resources through its web site. This article outlines the usability study conducted at BGSU, presents its conclusions about how students at BGSU find and choose databases, contextualizes these findings with other current research about user behavior, and makes recommendations for increasing student use of library e-resources.

...

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."

limits to bibliometrics

Blog post pointing to the limits of bibliometics, using GoogleScholar as an example.

Des limites de la bibliométrie

Par Christelle Di Pietro, le 29 novembre 2010

Connaissez-vous Ike Antkare ? Non ? C'est pourtant l'un des dix premiers chercheurs en science informatique, et il figure parmi les 100 scientifiques les plus renommés du monde, devant Albert Einstein. C'est du moins ainsi qu'il apparaît à partir des mesures de Google Scholar, basé en partie sur la mesure des citations.
En fait, Ike Antkare n'existe pas : il a été inventé par Cyril Labbé, enseignant et chercheur à Grenoble, afin de démontrer l'absurdité de l'évaluation strictement bibliométrique. Il a donc créé de toutes pièces un universitaire, appartenant à un organisme de recherche fictif et auteur d'une centaine d'articles rédigés grâce à un programme qui fabrique des textes ayant les apparences de travaux scientifiques mais qui n'ont rigoureusement aucun sens.

Lire la suite : Le sacre du vrai-faux chercheur [sur abonnement], L'Expansion, décembre 2010 & Comment "Ike Antkare" est devenu un des scientifiques les plus cités du monde moderne, et comment vous pourriez faire de même, Pactualités n°17, octobre 2010.

...

Trust Online: Young Adults' Evaluation of Web Content

Interesting study from Northwestern.

http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/636/423

Little of the work on online credibility assessment has considered how the information seeking
process figures into the final evaluation of content people encounter. Using
unique data about how a diverse group of young adults looks for and evaluates Web
content, our paper makes contributions to existing literature by highlighting factors
beyond site features in how users assess credibility. We find that the process by which
users arrive at a site is an important component of how they judge the final destination.
In particular, search context, branding and routines, and a reliance on those in one’s
networks play important roles in online information-seeking and evaluation. We also
discuss that users differ considerably in their skills when it comes to judging online
content credibility.

review of wiki use in academia

Inside HigherEd has an interesting article on wiki adoption & use in academia -- the failures, a few successes, proposing reasons for both, and looking towards what may happen in the future.

A Process Approach to Defining Services for Undergraduates

From Current Cites:

Prescott, Melissa Kalpin, and Jerilyn R  Veldof . "A Process Approach to Defining Services for Undergraduates"  portal: Libraries in the Academy  10(1)(January 2010)

The goal was to make a significant impact on the learning experience of undergraduates at UMINN through new or revamped library initiatives. How they went about this, how they identified needs and prioritized solutions, makes up the heart of this article. They started with focus groups. They analyzed data. They brainstormed solutions. What they finally came up with, 12 top initiatives, was reduced to five through a final survey of students. While the process was admittedly elaborate, the authors conclude that is was also transparent, well publicized and ultimately almost 100% fully funded.

'Scholarly Perspective' webinars

From the ResearchShelf --

From the Announcement:

Elsevier [has] announced it is partnering with several universities from around the globe to launch Scholarly Perspectives 2009, a webinar series for librarians and researchers. Senior researchers and librarians from the University of Aberdeen, Princeton University and HKU (The University of Hong Kong) will discuss best practices and share case studies on a range of topics including the strategies and tools needed to support multidisciplinary research as well as the role of Ebooks, among others.

The webinars to come :

Webinar #2: “A Life Science Lens: Connecting to Relevant Sources” – Hosted by Princeton University November 20th, 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. EST.

Webinar #3: “Enriching Research and Teaching Through Ebook Content” – Hosted by Hong Kong University, November 30th, 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. GMT

rent-an-article

DeepDyve is a new model in which several 'big name' academic publishers are participating (thanks to a WESS colleague for the notice). From the Society for Scholarly Publishing's blog, the scholarly kitchen :

'DeepDyve — iTunes comes to Science Publishing

... DeepDyve announced a rental model for scientific papers, prompting one news outlet to call this new business, “Netflix for Researchers.”

DeepDyve is a search engine specializing in indexing and providing direct access to scientific articles.  But it does so in a novel way — by renting, not selling, access.

Their motto is, “Research. Rent. Read.” It forgoes the ownership model of access.  Like DVDs that need to be mailed back to Netflix, DeepDyve is based on a short-term rental period of journal article access.

Users can sign up for three types of membership:

...

The list of publishers who have teamed up with DeepDyve include:  Oxford University Press, Sage, Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, and PLoS, along with many of the society publishers hosted by HighWire and BioOne. DeepDyve is also indexing open access repositories like the arXiv and PubMed Central. Conspicuously missing from list are some of the biggest publishers that charge the highest pay-per-view prices, Elsevier and Springer.'

Information Seeking in the Digital Age

New C&RL Preprint Available (better read it as a preprint, or else wait a year until it's officially pbd):

Article Title: Information-Seeking Behavior in the Digital Age: A Multi-disciplinary Study of Academic Researchers

Author: Xuemei Ge

Accepted: October 11, 2009

Anticipated Publication Date: September 2010

Information Overload – email, yes, but (poor) searching, too

From all the reports & news about 'information overload,' I have seen few that look at the results of poor searching -- something we can use to promote our expertise, perhaps.

from the ResourceShelf:

Information Overload – It Isn’t Just Too Much E-mail

From a Post by Basex Analyst Jonathan B. Spira:

One might assume that pinpointing the sources of Information Overload is relatively black and white, i.e. it’s just too much e-mail. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth. ...

... 50% of all searches fail and we know about the failure. What isn’t generally recognized is something that comes out of our research, namely that 50% of the searches you think succeeded failed, but the person doing the search didn’t realize it. As a result, that person uses information that is perhaps out of date or incorrect or just not the right data. This has a cascading effect that further propagates the incorrect information.

Source: Basex

5 next-gen library catalogs and 5 students: their initial impressions

Brian Matthews, a user experience librarian at Georgia Tech, did a quick and dirty assessment of five students' initial impressions of five next-gen catalog interfaces, including our very own Lens (which he refers to simply as Aquabrowser). All of the catalogs elicited both positive and negative feedback; here's what they had to say about Lens:

• General feeling of too much text up front. “Put the search in the middle” Overall, a feeling that it looks too-hard-to-use and confusing. I think it is safe to say that compared with others this one appeared less intuitive.
• The one student raved about the suggested spelling feature. “This is what they all need!”
• There were mixed feelings about the call numbers box showing up before the results. “This should be on the side” Others were confused by why it was there or what it was to be used for.
• Four of five loved the concept map feature. One said it was lame. As they clicked through it, some got lost or found it “strange” but it definitely brought the “wow-cool” factor.
• The interface was perceived to be “old” “clunky” “minimalist” and even “an early-web-edition” Even though it offers many of the modern features, like tags, it didn’t seem to come across as contemporary as the other catalogs.
• “I like how I can report an item that is not on shelf.”
• Issues again with [book] covers on the right, instead of left.

You can read the full post here.

"Blind Spots: Humanists must plan their digital future"

From the Chronicle Review:

Johanna Drucker makes a strong argument for faculty in the humanities becoming more involved in the creation of digital research tools:

"The design of new environments for performing scholarly work cannot be left to the technical staff and to library professionals. The library is a crucial partner in planning and envisioning the future of preserving, using, even creating scholarly resources. So are the technology professionals. But in an analogy with building construction, they are the architects and the contractors. The creation of archives, analytic tools, and statistical analyses of aggregate data in the humanities (and in some other scholarly fields) requires the combined expertise of technical, professional, and scholarly personnel.

The task of modeling an environment for scholarship (not just individual projects, but an environment, with a suite of tools for access, use, and research activity) is not a responsibility that can be offloaded onto libraries or technical staffs. I cannot say this strongly or clearly enough: The design of digital tools for scholarship is an intellectual responsibility, not a technical task."

Research blogging (not an oxymoron)

Today's RSS4Lib post discusses an initiative to create a "nexus for peer-reviewed literature and serious academic blogging..."As Ken Varnum writes:

Research Blogging helps readers find critical analysis of scientific reporting by pulling these scholarly blog posts together. Many of these blog posts in reaction to published articles are written by experts in the field and can help you put the article in context. From the Research Blogging site:

Do you like to read about new developments in science and other fields? Are you tired of "science by press release"? ResearchBlogging.org is your place. Research Blogging allows readers to easily find blog posts about serious peer-reviewed research, instead of just news reports and press releases.

While the majority of posts indexed by Research Blogging are in the hard sciences, there are a reasonable number in the area of information and library science, broadly construed.

being a college student in the digital age

ACRLog (Steven Bell) discusses the results of a new report done by Project Information Literacy, from the University of Washington’s Information School.

Among the results:

"We have found that no matter where students are enrolled, no matter what information resources they may have at their disposal, and no matter how much time they have…Research seems to be far more difficult to conduct in the digital age than it did in previous times"

"The majority of the students we intereviewed [sic] did not start on an assignment - thinking about it, researching or writing - until two or three days before it was due.
- Even though students had the freedom to write on topics of their own choosing, the ability to choose a topic, itself, could be daunting. Many students reported they often had little or no idea how to choose, define and limit the scope of a topic. As one student said “I just didn’t know where to begin.”
- Students used words such as “angst”, “dread”, “anxious”, “stressed”, “disgusted”, “confused” and “overwhelmed” as the one word that describes their reaction to receiving a research assignment.
- Students at smaller, teaching focused institutions see their professors as more helpful with research assignments whereas students at research universities find their faculty harder to reach for help and less understanding.
- Students said they were overwhelmed by all the choices and in general have trouble finding what they are looking for, both online and in the library.
- Wikipedia is the go to resource for students. It helps them grasp the topic, helped them with the language and provided context for their research. What about the library’s databases? Too much too soon is the general consensus."

Also: "They view librarians as “navigational sources” and “information coaches” who are able to help with everything from refining thesis statements to making sense out of the library system. On the downside many participants considered formal library instruction of little value to them - not because it wasn’t helpful or informative but it was hard to recall what was learned when it was needed for an assignment."

Sound like a good topic for an up2date reading group, perhaps?

Abbott: The Traditional Future: A Computational Theory of Library Research

Andy Abbott's article, "The Traditional Future: A Computational Theory of Library Research," appears in the Nov 2008 issue of College and Research Libraries.

Online Hunting and Gathering

Ah, how we've (not) evolved?

Online Hunting and Gathering: An Evolutionary Perspective on Sex Differences in Website Preferences and Navigation
Stenstrom, E.; Stenstrom, P.; Saad, G.; Cheikhrouhou, S.
Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on
Volume: 5, Issue: 2 June  2008
Page(s): 155-168
Summary: Despite numerous sex differences found in spatial navigation, perception, and verbal abilities, the manner in which these differences manifest themselves ...