CalPoly

According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life presentation, libraries will be presented opportunities in data curation, content evaluation and serve as trusted resources on copyright/privacy issues.

View more presentations from Pew Internet & American Life Project, Pew Research Center.

An interesting study from ECAR (Educause Center for Applied Research) was released on Oct. 22. “The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009.”

The key findings are quite interesting. Here are a few of them.

· 79% of freshmen own a laptop one year old or newer.

· 2/3 of all students report owning a desktop or laptop 2 years old or newer.

· Almost 95% of students use the library website weekly.

· Over 90% students use social networking sites.

· Almost 90% students use text messaging.

· Use of instant messaging is down to 74% of students.

“Eager to attract digitally savvy patrons and capitalize on the growing popularity of electronic readers, public libraries across the country are expanding collections of books that reside on servers rather than shelves… ‘As young people become used to reading virtually everything online,’said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, “that is going to propel a change in terms of readership of e-books rather than readership of physical books.”  More in NY Times

Ever wish your library online catalog could search like Google? There are several groups out there attempting to bridge this divide, including open source initiatives like Blacklight and VuFind, and vendor-based solutions like Summon.

The problem with traditional search tools is that they “reinforce the idea that library users need a clear understanding of the different materials involved in research… such as the difference between articles and monographs. New interfaces that mix many different information sources blur all that…”

Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education

ACRL has released its Scholarly Communication Toolkit, designed to help academic librarians recognize naturally occurring opportunities to discuss scholarly communication issues with faculty.

I found the below case particularly relevant since the recent downturn in the economy and the resulting journal cancellation activities may open opportunities to discuss open access publishing with faculty.

<snip>
Case 1:
Professor Jameson was trying to get online access to a journal article for her research through the library, but the library did not provide access to it. So she asked her subject librarian why.

Opportunity:
The librarian could take the chance to talk about the access barrier and spiraling costs of journal subscriptions. She could also bring up the concept of open access and the publication of open access peer-reviewed journals. That would inform Professor Jameson of issues about commercial scholarly publishing and bring to her attention new scholarly publishing models. It would also be a prime opportunity to discuss what academic authors, editors, and reviewers can do to initiate change. Of course, this same discussion could follow questions surrounding journal cancellation activities necessitated by the recent economic climate.
</snip>

More on the ACRL website

While several universities have turned to Google’s Gmail to manage email,  many higher-ed institutions have been reticent to make the move. The Chronicle of Higher Education explores this topic deeper, explaining that many colleges hesitate to make the transition because of:

• “Security: Colleges like to think they can hold onto data better than anyone else. When a sensitive e-mail message from a professor is made public, no one cares wether or not the college made the mistake or whether it was a hired company—the college’s reputation is still damaged.
• Ferpa (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act): The federal law that protects student records covers e-mail messages that professors or administrators send to students. So faculty and staff e-mail accounts are full of files that colleges must keep private.
• E-Discovery: What would Google or Microsoft do if a professor’s e-mail on its system was subpoenaed as part of a lawsuit? Outsourcing raises that question and more.”

More at The Chronicle of Higher Education

As an undergrad at UT, I had a class focused on creating and exploring virtual worlds in an online environment. Fast forward a decade, and UTexas has taken the great leap into SecondLife.

“The University of Texas system has purchased land in the online world Second Life, betting the investment will improve teaching and research at all of its institutions.

The university system, made up of nine universities and six health centers, doesn’t have concrete plans for how each school will use Second Life. It hopes that administrators, faculty members, researchers, and students will take advantage of the virtual real estate over the academic year.

In Second Life, people create avatars that interact with one another. The avatars, which look like three-dimensional figures, can make friends, pursue hobbies, conduct business, and even practice religion.”

–From The Chronicle of Higher Education

Hook ‘em!

“In an effort to support alternatives to traditional scholarly publishing, five major research universities announced their joint commitment to open-access journals on Monday.

The institutions—Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley—signed a compact agreeing to the “timely establishment” of mechanisms for providing financial support for free open-access journals.

While conventional journals require institutions to pay subscription fees to access articles, open-access publications make their material free to the public, thus aiding libraries forced to cut back during difficult financial times, officials at the universities believe.”

More from The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University graduate student,  is being sued by Sony BMG Music Entertainment for up to $4.5-million for illegally downloading music. While his legal counsel had planned to argue in front of a jury that the 30 songs his client had downloaded would fall under “fair use,” since Mr. Tenenbaum downloaded them for personal use, the judge tossed out the possibility of such a defense in this case, since the fair-use defense that was proposed ‘was so broad that it would swallow the copyright protections that Congress has created”

Read more on  The Chronicle of Higher Education

Once of the most formidable of tasks as an IR manager is the copyright clearance of content. It is a chore that often falls squarely on our shoulders.When you first start out, it is often overwhelming and confusing to figure out how exactly to go about securing copyright for published scholarly content. For new repository managers, there are several well-known and other not-so-well-known resources out there for your disposal.

SHERPA/RoMEO
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

OAKList
http://www.oaklist.qut.edu.au/

WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (beta) - Useful for discovering the copyright status of books
http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence/registry

Despite these resources, you will quickly find gaps in the information, as not every publisher you will encounter will be listed on these resources. I suggest combing publisher websites for the author agreements, contacting publishers directly and recording their policy information for future use.