ITaP’s Customer Service Center moving to HSSE Library

July 27th, 2012

ITaP’s Customer Service Center moving to HSSE Library

July 27th, 2012

Ask a Librarian service expands to text

July 25th, 2012

Starting this fall semester, Purdue Libraries will offer a text message reference service, in addition to email and chat services.

Get a brief answer to your simple question. TEXT Purduelib to 66746 to get started!

Purdue Libraries’ reference service has many options available, whether the physical library is open or not. In fact, Libraries is never closed to people who need information. Choose text for short answers, chat for 1:1 conversational assistance or email for more comprehensive assistance.

Purdue Libraries’ NEW Ask a Librarian website focuses on letting students choose the assistance which fits their needs. For more information visit: www.lib.purdue.edu/askalib

Databib Links Data Repositories and Researchers

July 24th, 2012

A new tool, Databib, has been developed to help researchers identify and locate repositories of research data on the Internet. Its development was led by the Purdue University Libraries with collaborators from Penn State University and the support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Many funding agencies like the National Science Foundation require researchers to submit data management plans with their grant proposals and have encouraged researchers to share their data in repositories. Sharing data improves the ability of researchers to validate each other’s work as well as to avoid duplicating effort by reusing existing data. Sharing data in repositories also helps make the results of federally-funded research available to the public.

But the lack of a catalog or directory of data repositories presented a barrier to data-sharing and left many researchers wondering where they could find and deposit datasets.

“Databib answered many questions that researchers were left with when funding agencies gave the data mandate. What repositories are appropriate for us to submit our datasets to?  How do I find appropriate data repositories and discover datasets?” asked Xiaolin Zhang, Executive Director at the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Researchers now have a resource that spans the global community.”

Over 200 data repositories have been cataloged in Databib, which is guided by an international board of advisors from Australia, China, India, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It is expected that 500 repositories will be cataloged before the end of the year.

Librarians and other information professionals from around the world are using Databib to catalog and curate information about data repositories that users can browse and search.

“Librarians have expanded our role in e-Science and data curation,” said James L. Mullins, Dean of Purdue University Libraries. “By presenting, linking and integrating information about data repositories in innovative ways, Databib adapts library practice to help organize and describe where research datasets are located.”

For more information about Databib, or to locate data repositories in your area of research or learning, visit http://databib.org.

Libraries faculty publication recognized on LIRT’s Top Twenty Articles list

July 20th, 2012

“Determining Data Information Literacy Needs: A Study of Students and Research Faculty” has been selected as one of the Top Twenty  Articles, by the Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT).

The article, co-written by Libraries faculty members, Jake Carlson, Michael Fosmire, Chris Miller and Megan Sapp Nelson, was published in portal: Libraries and the Academy in 2011 and introduced the concept of data information literacy, providing some preliminary insight into how data information literacy might be defined.

LIRT’s Top Twenty Committee published their annual annotated bibliography of top publications in the field of instruction and information literacy in the June 2012 edition of LIRT News. The Committee is responsible for monitoring the library instruction literature and identifying high quality library-instruction related articles from all types of libraries.

RCUK requires researchers publish in journals that allow deposit of articles in repositories

July 17th, 2012

Purdue e-Pubs reaches milestone, 2.5 millionth download

July 16th, 2012

The Purdue e-Pubs digital repository (www.purdue.edu/epubs) is an open access software platform which provides access to full-text publications as well as unique previously unpublished scholarly content. In June, its 2.5 millionth download took place. With over 26,194 publications uploaded to date, this puts Purdue e-Pubs among the most popular university repositories in North America.

Purdue University Libraries began providing the Purdue community access to Purdue e-Pubs in 2006, as a solid platform for publishing. It provides online publishing support for original publications as well as hosting for Purdue-affiliated articles, technical reports, white papers, conference proceedings, student scholarship, and more.

Many faculty have begun seeing Purdue e-Pubs as one of the many potential services provided by the Purdue Libraries to assist faculty with research. “Purdue e-Pubs is providing value and visibility to my research.” said Professor of Computer Science, Dr. Eugene H. Spafford. Purdue Libraries also offers services through its e-Archives repository and through the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) to members of the Purdue community.

Professor Spafford’s technical report, “The Computer Viruses–A Form of Artificial Life?“ was the 2.5 millionth download. This report is only one of 36 he has uploaded.

Dr. Spafford, one of Purdue’s inaugural recipients of the university’s Morrill Award, went on to say “Uploading my reports to Purdue e-Pubs is what I see as another way to bring the Land Grant mission of Purdue University to the global community.”

“Institutional repositories have a proven track record of success in managing ones research. When servers move or websites are reorganized, informal types of publication often become lost to scholarship. Purdue e-Pubs is increasingly used by workshop and symposium organizers to issue calls-for-papers, review submissions, and present proceedings in a sustainable, stable, and citable way,” said James L. Mullins, Dean of Libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Professor.

Purdue is able to offer access to the basic publishing infrastructure at no cost, while also offering valued-added editing, design, and marketing services under the umbrella of the Libraries’ Scholarly Publishing Services. Staff from Purdue University Press and the University Copyright Office collaborate with other Libraries’ units and faculty to provide varied resources to faculty, staff, and students, to aid in the process of publishing and providing global access to their work.

Purdue e-Pubs tracks usage of publications, issues monthly download notifications to authors, and with Google Analytics allows authors the opportunity to demonstrate global access and impact of their scholarship, not only to academic colleagues, but to policy makers and media outlets

For more information about Purdue e-Pubs visit www.purdue.edu/epubs or contact Dave Scherer, Scholarly Repository Specialist for Purdue e-Pubs at dscherer@purdue.edu or 49-48511.

New Book Analyzes “Occupy” Movement

July 5th, 2012

Now available to order, Voices of Resistance: Communication and Social Change by Mohan J. Dutta, explores voices of resistance from across the globe and presents a theoretical framework for understanding topical, popular resistance movements such as Occupy Wall Street. The book emphasizes the core idea that creating spaces for listening to voices of resistance fosters openings for the politics of social change—interweaving the stories of the local, the national, and the global.

Based on the re-presentations of disparate voices from global margins, each section of the book documents the various ways through which positions of power are resisted through communication processes, strategies, and tactics. Dutta’s case study approach makes Voices of Resistance: Communication and Social Change useful supplementary reading for advanced undergraduate or graduate classes in disciplines such as political science, communication, and media studies, and the ethnographic method gives a human face to political and social movements that are otherwise difficult to conceptualize.

Mohan J. Dutta is a professor of communication and Director of the Center on Poverty and Health Inequities (COPHI) at Purdue University. Spanning over one hundred articles and six books, his research examines marginalization in contemporary health care and the ways in which participatory, culture-centered processes and strategies are organized in marginalized contexts.