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is an open access software platform which provides access to full-text publications as well as unique previously unpublished scholarly content.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.

Program works toward innovating Hicks’ library

June 22nd, 2012

UBorrow increases access to and availability of books

June 20th, 2012

Purdue University Libraries, as a member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), is implementing a federated catalog and direct consortial borrowing service known as UBorrow. This system allows users to search for, and request, available books from all CIC libraries, which includes all universities in the Big Ten as well as the University of Chicago, and the Center for Research Libraries.

The process is much like traditional interlibrary loan for book loans, but with a couple of major benefits. First, items requested through UBorrow are guaranteed a 12 week loan period with one four week renewal period. Second, because availability is determined as the request is submitted, items should be received within 5-7 days maximum.

Users can request print books that are available in circulating collections that are not owned by Purdue or are currently unavailable — checked out, missing, on order. If an item is available at Purdue, UBorrow provides the call number and location of the item. If all CIC copies are unavailable, UBorrow automatically makes the request a traditional Interlibrary Loan request. Users should be advised that requests that must be filled through traditional Interlibrary Loan channels will have varying loan periods and turnaround times.

Links to the service are located on the Purdue ILL website, or bookmark http://go.lib.purdue.edu/uborrow.

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About the CIC’s Center for Library Initiatives: The Center for Library Initiatives (CLI) focuses on three objectives–optimizing student and faculty access to the combined resources of our libraries; maximizing cost, time, and space savings; and supporting a collaborative environment where library staff can work together to solve their mutual problems. www.cic.net/Home/Projects/Library

About the Center for Research Libraries: The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries. Founded in 1949, CRL supports advanced research and teaching in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences by preserving and making available to scholars the primary source material critical to those disciplines. www.crl.edu

CIC awarded the 2012 Innovation Award for UBorrow

June 19th, 2012

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) partners develop innovative technical solution to improve consortial borrowing for users

The Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative announced that the winner of the Rethinking Resource Sharing (RRS) 2012 Innovation Award is UBorrow, a project of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).

This award honors individuals or institutions for changes they have made to improve users’ access to information through resource sharing in their library, consortium, state or country. The CIC was recognized for its innovative contribution to resource sharing during the Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee Program at ALA Annual in Anaheim.

Headquartered in the Midwest, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) is a consortium of the Big Ten member universities plus the University of Chicago.  Collectively CIC serves 46,102 faculty and nearly half a million students.  The combined collections of the CIC and the Center for Research Libraries contain approximately 90 million volumes.

The CIC UBorrow solution marries the strengths of two different resource sharing systems to create a fast, reliable, cost-effective, scalable and unmediated consortial borrowing service that is relatively quick and easy to implement.  The service uses Relais D2D to search CIC library catalogs through Z39.50 and to determine which libraries have available copies, while using OCLC ILLiad (developed by Atlas Systems) to manage the fulfillment of requests.

The addition of Relais D2D to the CIC technology mix allows member libraries to leverage their existing ILS and ILL systems to more effectively meet their user needs, significantly reducing the need for users to recall checked-out material or for libraries to purchase multiple copies. Most importantly, this unmediated consortial borrowing system effectively makes most of the 90 million volumes held in the CIC libraries and the Center for Research Libraries readily available to library users through a single interface with a fast and predictable turnaround time and a generous loan period.

UBorrow is the result of a unique, three-way collaboration among consortia members and resource sharing software developers and an innovative approach to consortial borrowing that had not been accomplished before. http://www.cic.net/Home/Projects/Library/ReciprocalBorrowing/UBorrow.aspx

Funding for the 2012 Innovation Award is provided by Relais International.

The Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative is an ad hoc group that advocates for a complete rethinking of the way libraries conduct resource sharing in the context of the global internet revolution and all of the developments that have arisen from that.  The group is advocating for a revolution in the way libraries conduct resource sharing. For more information, please visit www.rethinkingresourcesharing.org.

Source: Mary Lehane (mlehane@yorku.ca)

Purdue endorses FRPAA legislation as member of COAPI

June 15th, 2012

Survey of medical and other scientific libraries published

June 12th, 2012

Primary Research Group has published The Survey of Medical and Other Scientific Libraries ISBN 157440-203-X, a major international benchmarking study of scientific libraries from academia, government, private industry and scientific/medical associations.

The report gives detailed data on trends in staffing, budgets, salaries, information literacy efforts, use of vendor supplied info literacy materials, info literacy training requirements, patron training in scholarly collaboration networks, materials spending overall and for books, databases, ebooks, journals and other information vehicles,  developments in open access and digital repositories, use of eBook readers and tablet computers, patent information procurement efforts, special collections budgets, special collections digitization, video streaming, use of cloud computing services, use of RFID, barcoding and other inventory tracking technology, binding technology and services, developments in library computer centers and many other factors affecting the operation of medical and other scientific libraries.

Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:

• Just 4.35 percent of the libraries in the sample include training in scholarly collaboration networks such as Vivo or Collexis in its patron education efforts and most of these libraries are in emerging economies.

• Most libraries sampled spent nothing on content for eBook readers but those that did spent a mean of nearly $18,000 in the past year.

• Overall spending on eBook subscriptions rose nearly 20% in 2012-13.

• Traditional print book spending exceeded eBook spending but by a narrowing margin.

• Librarians in institutions with library budgets exceeding $1 million spent more than 8% of their staff time promoting the institutional digital repository.

• Mean spending by the libraries in the sample for information accessed online in the past year was $683,551.

• 8.7% of libraries sampled employ a PHD in the subject area on which the library focuses (apart from library science PHD’s or other degrees related to library or information science).

• More than 62% of government and international organization scientific libraries in the sample considered their information literacy efforts to be minimal at best.

• Only six libraries reported aggregated spending on patent information including use of patent databases, search services and outsourced research and these libraries reported mean spending of $177,750.00.

Data for this 200+ page report is broken out separately for four subject areas: medical libraries, engineering/mathematics/physics libraries, chemicals and energy, and all other scientific libraries.  Data is also broken out for various measures of library size, as well as for three country/region areas: 1) USA, 2) Other Developed Economies and 3) Emerging Economies, and also by type of library, ie, higher education, government, private industry, scientific society, etc.

For further information view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.

Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works

June 12th, 2012

Digital Scholarship has released the Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works: http://digital-scholarship.org/dcpb/dcb.htm

In a rapidly changing technological environment, the difficult task of ensuring long-term access to digital information is increasingly important. This selective bibliography presents over 650 English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation. It covers digital curation and preservation copyright issues, digital formats (e.g., data, media, and e-journals), metadata, models and policies, national and international efforts, projects and institutional implementations, research studies, services, strategies, and digital repository concerns.

Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2011; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2000 are also included. The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works, such as e-prints and open access articles.

The bibliography is available as a paperback and an open access PDF file. All versions of the bibliography are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

For a list of all Digital Scholarship publications, see:  http://bit.ly/ffWu9D

Translate (oversatta, oversette, prelozit, traducir, traduire, tradurre, traduzir, or ubersetzen) this message:  http://digital-scholarship.org/announce/dcb_en.htm

OR2012: Seventh International Conference on Open Repositories

June 4th, 2012

The draft  program for the Seventh International Conference on Open Repositories (OR2012) on July 9-13  2012 is now available at: https://www.conftool.net/or2012/sessions.php

This is provisional and, as such, timings may change. Further details including Pecha Kucha and Repository Fringe sessions, closing keynote, session chairs etc will also be incorporated in the coming days. Please check the website for updates.

As a reminder delegates can register for OR 2012 via the conference electronic payment system (http://or2012.ed.ac.uk/registration/). The early booking rate of £295 is available until June 11, 2012 with a full-price rate of £350 thereafter. There is also a day rate of £115.

Delegates can also register for the workshops on Monday and Tuesday at www.or2012.eventbrite.com. Please note that the workshops are free but you will need the EDN number from your receipt from the conference electronic payment system to register for the workshops.

Accommodation is booked separately –http://or2012.ed.ac.uk/delegates/accommodation/

Additional information about the conference is provided on the OR2012 website – http://or2012.ed.ac.uk/