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October 28th, 2019
Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies (PULSIS) will offer four new digital scholarship-related information and library science (ILS) courses in Spring 2020. According to Matt Hannah, assistant professor of Digital Humanities, PULSIS, the courses are designed to provide students with important skills related to Digital Humanities, data science, archival science, and data management.
For a complete list of Spring 2020 ILS courses offered through the Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies, visit www.lib.purdue.edu/initiatives/spring-2020-courses.
Filed under: Faculty E-Newsletter, faculty_staff, generalOctober 25th, 2019
by Beth McNeil, Dean of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies and Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science
During International Open Access week each year, those who work in libraries around the world lead conversations on our campuses, sparking discussion on the changing nature of scholarly communication and the benefits of open access. We often offer OA-related programming and sometimes celebrate our successes during the past year. This year’s theme, “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge,” is timely, as conversations have expanded beyond the benefits of open to the challenges of building new systems for sharing that offer full access for all.
Earlier this week here at Purdue, four faculty members from across campus described what “open” means to them during an engaging panel program moderated by Justin Race, director of Purdue University Press. Kris Bross, associate dean for research and creative endeavors, Honors College, and professor of English; Gaurav Chopra, assistant professor of chemistry; Wayne Wright, Barbara I. Cook Chair of Literacy and Language and associate dean for research, graduate programs, and faculty development, College of Education; and Michael Witt, associate professor and interim associate dean for research, Libraries and School of Information Studies, each offered examples of how open scholarship/open science influenced their individual academic work and teaching. Their personal experience, plus comments and questions from the audience, made for a very engaging program.
When I think about what open means to me, I know that I, as a librarian, care deeply about making information available to all who need it. In university research libraries we work hard and, sometimes very creatively, to find ways to meet the information needs of our faculty, students, and campus community. Finding the balance between a scholarly communication ecosystem that I know needs deep and sustained change and meeting day-to-day local research information needs can be challenging and complicated.
Oct. 21-27, 2019, is International Open Access Week. This is part of a series — written by Purdue faculty and staff — that demonstrates the benefits of open access scholarly publishing. For the entire series, visit https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/oaweek19/.
Each year personnel in libraries, including here at Purdue, are forced to make tough decisions regarding which journal subscriptions to renew. Subscription cost increases of 5-7 percent each year are not sustainable, and when major for-profit publishers report profit margins in the 30–40 percent range each year, higher than Apple, Google, and Amazon — it just seems wrong.
I believe the scholarship and data produced by our researchers, scholars, and faculty can change the world, but to do so, it needs to be open and freely available for all. Contracts and licenses with publishers and content providers should be transparent across institutions and equitable for all parties, and the costs of scholarship should be financially sustainable for libraries. Open. Transparent. Sustainable. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Learn more about Purdue’s Open Access resources, including Purdue e-Pubs, Purdue’s open access digital repository, at www.lib.purdue.edu/openaccess.
Filed under: Faculty E-Newsletter, faculty_staff, general, OAWeek19, Open_AccessOctober 24th, 2019
Oct. 21-27, 2019, is International Open Access Week. This is part of a series — written by Purdue faculty and staff — that demonstrates the benefits of open access scholarly publishing. For the entire series, visit https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/oaweek19/.
by Sandi Caldrone, Data Repository Outreach Specialist
Publishing open access data requires imagination. When I review datasets submitted for publication in the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR), I try to put myself in the shoes of a scholar hoping to reuse this dataset, and I try to imagine every question the scholar might have. When you share your data with the world, you open it up to new possibilities—possibilities that are hard to anticipate.
On November 10, 1981, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave a lecture on cinema in a Paris university. When he prepared his notes for class that day, he could have had no way of knowing that a student’s audio recording of that lecture, along with dozens of his other lectures, would eventually find their way to the French National Library, and from there to PURR, where anyone can download it to hear his words or text mine the transcriptions.
When Deleuze gave this lecture a little less than 40 years ago, that tape recorder was the most advanced technology in the room. Now, digital humanities students can plug his words into online tools that spin out word clouds, bubble charts, and network graphs. That’s why data curators are always pushing for richer descriptions of data. We want to give future researchers everything they might need to conduct analyses we can’t even imagine yet.
The cycle of imaginative reuse doesn’t have to take forty years. In PURR, we’re already starting to see second-generation open access data—open access data that has been combined, transformed, and republished as a new open access dataset.
As it was in Deleuze’s classroom, it is students who are in the vanguard.
In 2019, PURR has started to see examples of student-faculty collaborations in which students collect data from various open access datasets and put in the labor required to prepare those data for analysis. By publishing their transformed data, they give other researchers the opportunity to pick up where they left off and push scholarship forward, instead of reinventing the wheel. See two excellent examples:
It’s hard to imagine what students might do with data 40 years from now, but I’m really looking forward to finding out.
Explore the Purdue University Research Repository at https://purr.purdue.edu/.
Learn more about Purdue’s Open Access resources, including Purdue e-Pubs, Purdue’s open access digital repository, at www.lib.purdue.edu/openaccess.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, OAWeek19, Open_AccessOctober 24th, 2019
The HSSE Featured Database for October is ERIC (EBSCO Interface). This database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and stands for “Educational Resources Information Center,” which has been providing education research since 1964. It also explores research in other disciplines that have implications on educational theory and practice.
Filed under: database, general, HSSE, HSSE Featured Databases
October 23rd, 2019
Oct. 21-27, 2019, is International Open Access Week. This is part of a series — written by Purdue faculty — that demonstrates the benefits of open access scholarly publishing. For the entire series, visit https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/oaweek19/.
by Erla P. Heyns, Head, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, and Business Division
Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies
An issue very dear to my heart is providing access to published research for alumni. The professionals who graduate from our universities and enter such fields as veterinary medicine, psychotherapy, social work, and many more have been carefully trained to find and evaluate research literature while they are students. Once they graduate, they are cut off from this access, and they have to depend on employers who might or might not subscribe to certain needed journals. If not, they have to pay, if they are able, for access.
The consequences of deficient access are far-reaching for our society. How can it be acceptable for a veterinarian, for example, not to be able to stay current with the research literature? How can it be acceptable that a psychotherapist has to depend on learning about the latest research only haphazardly, at annual conference presentations, instead of being able to focus on current research in a particular area at the time of need? These critical fields, in which professionals make a significant difference in the lives of their clients, in our lives, typically do not have adequate access to important new research.
The urgency of having a holistic approach to provide access to research for all professionals cannot be overstated. Universities, not just libraries, should tackle the issue with renewed vigor, since we are not only infringing on the lifelong learning opportunities of our alumni, but we are also hurting ourselves and the entire population as consumers of professional care.
There is very little written about this subject in the library research literature, but what is published relates to two different approaches to the problem.
One is to think about alumni as an extension of the university they graduated from and to suggest ways to give them access, perhaps through subscribing on their behalf or providing a service through which they can request an article for a fee or the university will pay the copyright fee.
Another discussion that has been happening at some institutions is to try to convince publishers to create favorable funding models so that alumni can subscribe to journals in their fields of study. This has not been successful, except in very limited instances. Another issue with the solution of individual subscription access is, in most fields, research literature is not just published in a few journals. The problem, of course, is also bigger than just access to the journal literature; journals are indexed in databases that alumni also cannot access. Google Scholar provides valuable access to be able to identify research, but it is by no means comprehensive or complete.
The second context in which this problem is being discussed in the literature is in the context of open access. The benefit of open access is apparent since everyone will be able to access current research. Bruce Symphony, in “Open Access for Scholars Left Behind” (2018), emphasizes the importance of teaching students how to find and cite legitimate open access publications so that they are aware of these resources and are more likely to use them in their professional lives.
Providing access to alumni requires a university community working toward a comprehensive solution, and a main feature of the solution is awareness of and ability to use high-quality, open access material.
Information about other 2019 Open Access Week activities at Purdue is available at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/2019/09/26/oa-week19/.
Learn more about Purdue’s Open Access resources, including Purdue e-Pubs, Purdue’s open access digital repository, at www.lib.purdue.edu/openaccess.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, HSSE, HSSEB, OAWeek19, Open_Access, scholcommOctober 22nd, 2019
Oct. 21-27, 2019, is International Open Access Week. This is part of a series — written by Purdue faculty — that demonstrates the benefits of open access scholarly publishing. For the entire series, visit https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/oaweek19/.
by Darcy Bullock, Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and Director, Joint Transportation Research Program
The Purdue e-Pubs open access model for publishing Joint Transportation Research Program (JTPR) reports and conference proceedings is widely regarded as a best practice for rapid, cost-effective dissemination to transportation agencies, practicing professionals, and academia. Including JTRP reports, specialty series, and conferences, this open access material has received more than 2.3 million downloads from individuals in 29,000+ institutions, representing 230 countries.
Our partnership with Purdue University Press enables JTRP research to have global impact through the e-Pubs online publishing system. JTRP reports provide a treasure trove of invaluable information for transportation professionals and academia, but were previously buried in the basement of the engineering library [now the Library of Engineering and Science]. To promote knowledge sharing and increase impact, JTRP partnered with Purdue Press in 2011 to modernize report publishing and digitize previous reports.
As an example, when Purdue Civil Engineering Emeritus Professor Sidney Diamond published his report on “Methods of Soil Stabilization for Erosion Control” in 1975, he expected it to be read by state engineers to assist them with improving Indiana’s transportation infrastructure. Today, however, his report has been downloaded 1,883 times, with readers just as likely to be in India, Brazil, and China as in Monticello or Frankfort, Indiana.
Thanks to Purdue e-Pubs, Diamond’s research is helping practitioners worldwide to cheaply and safely reinforce dirt roadways made unstable by heavy rainfall. More recently, Professor Rodrigo Salgado published a technical report entitled “Dynamic Cone Penetration Test (DCPT) for Subgrade Assessment” in 2003 that has been downloaded more than110,000 times.
These examples show how making JTRP research openly and freely accessible online increases the value of the state’s investment in transportation research, while providing worldwide impact.
In addition to technical reports, JTRP publishes a variety of conference proceedings on e-Pubs. One example is the Purdue Road School Transportation Conference and Expo, produced in collaboration with the Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program, which attracts more than 3,000 attendees annually.
Approximately 4,000 Road School presentations and proceedings have been posted on e-Pubs. These publications have been downloaded more than 447,000 times, extending the impact of Road School well beyond the conference attendees. Downloads for Purdue Road School have exceeded 131,000 in just the past year. We are particularly pleased by the magnitude of these Road School downloads, as approximately 65% are from government agencies and private sector companies. This demonstrates the impact the scholarly work is having on government and private sector entities.
Information about other 2019 Open Access Week activities at Purdue is available at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/2019/09/26/oa-week19/.
Learn more about Purdue’s Open Access resources, including Purdue e-Pubs, Purdue’s open access digital repository, at www.lib.purdue.edu/openaccess.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, OAWeek19, Open_AccessOctober 21st, 2019
Oct. 21-27, 2019, is International Open Access Week. This is part of a series — written by Purdue faculty — that demonstrates the benefits of open access scholarly publishing. For the entire series, visit https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/oaweek19/.
by Monica Cardella and Senay Purzer, School of Engineering Education, Purdue University
As editors, we have had countless conversations with prospective authors and other colleagues about the model used for the Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER): an online, open access, common good journal. Free for readers to access articles, free for authors to publish their work. What? Free for readers and free for authors? How is that possible?
It’s possible because of the commitment of the University and the University Press—it is not possible to maintain a reputable journal without any costs, but through the commitment of Purdue’s School of Engineering Education, Purdue University Press, Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, authors and readers are not limited in their ability to access and publish papers.
Even more important, however, is the question of why.
Open access journals reach those readers who most benefit from the research in those journals: J-PEER disseminates research findings from studies of engineering learning in pre-college settings. This includes studies of how children learn engineering in elementary school classrooms, how teachers learn to teach engineering, how people learn engineering in museums and through “maker” activities. Some studies focus on broadening participation in engineering; others focus on how we measure or assess what children or teachers have learned.
While many of our readers are other researchers who learn from the articles we have published in order to advance their own research, the fact that J-PEER is an online, open access journal means that teachers, museum exhibit designers, afterschool program managers, parents, superintendents, and the general public have access to this research. For us—as not only journal editors, but also as researchers—this resonates with a core commitment of our research—that it not only benefits the research community, but also has the potential to impact practice.
Open access journals help accelerate the growth of our field. For us as scholars in the field of pre-college engineering education research, we also believe that the open access model supports our growing field. The journal started eight years ago in 2011, when the field of pre-college engineering education research was still “young” and emerging. At the time we were members of the original editorial board, under the leadership of the founding editor, Johannes Strobel. We joined the editorial board for the same reason he started the journal: a way to support the growth of this field. The hope was we could provide a venue for scholars to publish their work and a way for people to quickly learn about other work underway in this interdisciplinary, emerging area.
Open access journals foster global impact of research. Research in engineering education tends to concentrate on specific regions of the world, where universities can afford to fund robust databases and high invoices from journal publishers. J-PEER is able to reach a wide global readership that would not have been possible without open access. With this ability, OA democratizes readership and globally inclusive access for scholars.
Open access can help debunk “false” information. People in their everyday life communicate through social media and share with each other information found on the Internet. Often challenging false information can be a problem when access to “real,” academic work is only available to scholars. With open access, anyone can freely and easily disseminate their work.
Open access is a defense against phishing journals. The funding structures of journals that charge authors per page, and the pressures of the tenure and promotion process, have created a vacuum resulting in myriad phishing journals. The recent increase of fake journals is especially confusing for new scholars and graduate students, who are under great pressure to publish their research. Open access is a defense against such exploitation.
For some, a journal that is freely and openly available to the public may generate concern for quality and respect. Yet it is a journal’s review process and the editorial board that matters the most. For us, the choice between an open access vs. a traditional journal was easy. Open access is the future of a democratized readership of research.
Information about other 2019 Open Access Week activities at Purdue is available at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/2019/09/26/oa-week19/.
Learn more about Purdue’s Open Access resources, including Purdue e-Pubs, Purdue’s open access digital repository, at www.lib.purdue.edu/openaccess.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, OAWeek19, Open_AccessOctober 21st, 2019
Purdue University College of Education Associate Dean for Research, Graduate Programs, and Faculty Development and Professor and Barbara I. Cook Chair of Literacy and Language Wayne Wright has been selected as the recipient of 2019 Leadership in Open Access Award from Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies and the Office of the Provost.
This week (Oct. 21-27) academic institutions and libraries across the globe are celebrating the benefits of Open Access for research and scholarship during the 12th annual International Open Access Week commemoration.
According to Dean of Libraries and School of Information Studies and Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science Beth McNeil, Wright was chosen this year for his exceptional advocacy for Open Access (OA) at Purdue and beyond. Currently, Wright serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, an OA publication.
“Wayne also actively promotes Open Access by sharing open access news and events with his faculty and provides engaging learning opportunities for Purdue’s emerging scholars,” McNeil said.
In 2018, Wright collaborated with faculty in the College of Education and in Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies to help organize a workshop on trending OA topics for graduate students.
“This workshop brought together faculty, graduate students, and librarians, generating rich, cross-disciplinary discussions that continued beyond the workshop,” McNeil added.
Wright noted he’s grateful for Purdue’s commitment and the OA resources provided by Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies Scholarly Publishing Services to facilitate open access.
“It is a great honor to receive this award,” he explained. “Open Access research is premised on the idea that most research is produced by public universities; thus, the research should be freely accessible to the public.”
Information about other 2019 Open Access Week activities at Purdue is available at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/2019/09/26/oa-week19/.
Learn more about Purdue’s Open Access resources, including Purdue e-Pubs, Purdue’s open access digital repository, at www.lib.purdue.edu/openaccess.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, OAWeek19, Open_AccessOctober 16th, 2019
We talked with celebrated writer, author, and humorist John Norberg about the second edition of Wings of Their Dreams: Purdue in Flight, his second book with Purdue University Press this year.
The second edition of Wings of Their Dreams continues and updates the story of an aeronautic odyssey of imagination, science, engineering, technology, adventure, courage, danger, and promise. It is the ever-evolving story of the human spirit taking flight, expanding Purdue’s legacy in aviation’s history.
Q: What originally inspired you to write Wings of Their Dreams?
John Norberg: I started working on it in 1999 as the 2003 centennial of flight approached. Purdue has a great history in flight and space and I thought the centennial of flight would be the perfect time to highlight it. There was no book where the stories of all our historical figures in flight and our astronauts were brought together in one place. As with several of the books I’ve written I talked about the idea with Joe Bennett, then vice president for university relation. This was before I started at Purdue in October of 2000. Joe liked the idea and took it to President Steve Beering who authorized it with financial support from the Purdue Research Foundation.
Q: Purdue is often referred to as the “cradle of astronauts”, what do you think are some of the main reasons Purdue has been so successful in producing astronauts?
Norberg: I have researched this and talked with all our astronauts about it. I’ve concluded there are five specific reasons we have so many astronauts.
Q: What’s something you think that people may not know about Purdue’s history in flight?
Norberg: People are always interested in stories about Neil Armstrong and the first landing on the moon. It’s in the book. I also wanted to give readers surprises, stories they didn’t know about. Most people don’t know that a Purdue alumnus worked with the Wright Brothers in the earliest days of flight. They don’t know Purdue graduates taught flight to Billy Mitchell and Hap Arnold – icons in U.S. military. They don’t know one of the nation’s first test pilots was a Purdue graduate, that a Purdue graduate and Charles Lindbergh were involved in a mid-air crash, an incident that marked the first time two pilots parachuted to safety. They don’t know about a Purdue graduate who flew beneath a balloon to the stratosphere. The first pilot to be called “Mr. Space” when there were no astronauts was a Purdue alumnus. The second person to break the sound barrier studied at Purdue (and some say he was the first). There is much more. Wings tells the history of flight and space through the stories of Purdue graduates. I think people will also be surprised that some astronauts apply four or five times before being selected. It is very competitive. The man who assigned astronauts to flights says Grissom would probably have been the first person on the moon, had he survived.
Q: What was the thing that surprised you most when you did the research for this book?
Norberg: If I tell all the surprises they won’t be surprises. The most pleasant surprise was that Neil Armstrong agreed to let me interview him for the book, something he rarely did. It was before Jim Hansen released his excellent biography of Neil, First Man but they were working on it. When I finished Neil’s chapters I sent them to him for accuracy review. He responded that the chapters were good, but he thought they were “about one-third too much me.” I wasn’t sure what that meant. So, I took quotation marks off some of his statements and paraphrased them. I sent it back and he said it was perfect. Shortly after Wings was published, Purdue held an event at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Neil was there and spoke. He started telling stories about pilots in Purdue’s history. The first one I recognized as someone in the book. Then there was a second and third. It finally dawned on me that he was repeating the stories from the book. I sent him a copy of the book and he had read it. That surprised me. At the end of his talk he said “All these stories are from John Norberg’s book Wings of Their Dreams that I heartily recommend.” I thanked Neil after he spoke. Someone came up to me and told me I needed to go to the table we were using to sell and sign books. There was a line of people waiting that stretched down the first floor of the museum. Neil wrote a statement for the cover of another book, Spacewalker, I wrote with Purdue astronaut Jerry Ross: “Spacewalker is the book for anyone who ever dreamed of flying in space.” There are many surprises in the stories about the people I wrote about in the book. I hope people enjoy them.
Q: What is new about the second edition of Wings of Their Dreams?
Norberg: Much has changed from 2003 to 2019. All the profiles and stories that were in the first book are in the second edition, but many of them have been updated. I interviewed all our living astronauts again (there are 24 associated with NASA and one commercial astronaut) and updated their information and thoughts. In addition to Grissom and Chaffee, who died in 1967, four other Purdue astronauts have died since 2003 – Janice Voss, Armstrong, Cernan, and Don Williams. I updated those stories. I added profiles on two additional astronauts since 2003. I also added a chapter on Sullenberger’s 2009 landing of a commercial airplane on the Hudson River, saving all the souls onboard.
You can get 30% off of Wings of Their Dreams by entering the discount code PURDUE30 when ordering from our website.
Filed under: UncategorizedOctober 16th, 2019
Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies (PULSIS) seeks a creative social media specialist student employee for 20 hour per week the remainder of Fall 2019 and for Spring 2020. The ideal applicant will possess strong knowledge of the digital media landscape, particularly in Instagram and its storytelling functionalities. The successful candidate will be responsible for contributing content to PULSIS Instagram (and other social media platforms at various times) via their own mobile device to share the story of PULSIS and the resources and services we provide for Purdue students. This position requires a student with exceptional public relations judgement, the ability to maintain our unit’s brand voice, and one who has photo-composition skills and/or aptitude. This position will also require developing and maintaining rapport with PULSIS faculty and staff—who are integral in helping tell our story—and include Instagram-monitoring duties. Those looking to gain valuable online media experience with an established organization are encouraged to apply.
1+ years’ experience in social media/marketing
Excellent oral and written communication skills
Working knowledge of Instagram
Basic knowledge of Photoshop
Beginner-level knowledge of video content best practices
Photo composition skills/aptitude
Please send resume and cover letter to:
Teresa Koltzenburg, Director of Strategic Communication
tkoltzen@purdue.edu
Filed under: general