LoomWare

MIT to Make all Faculty Publications Open Access

Now We're Getting Somewhere!

I'm starting to think the whole open access thing just might work. With policies like the new MIT one requiring faculty to retain their publication rights (or get the OK otherwise) the momentum is finally swinging in the right direction. UPEI is working on a new open access policy for discussion and hopefully approval in the Fall, so I can only hope that other institutions follow suit.

The EOL.org codebase is now open source

My Fave Web App now OS

I haven't done any research on this one yet, but I thought I would flag it as an example of a great mash-up website. The EOL site is built in Ruby and MySQL. At one point I thought the site was based on Fedora, but that seems not to be the case any longer.

Revisiting Potential Research-Support roles for the Library

Why We Need to Embrace Research

Richard Akerman continues to be one of the few bloggers I follow in a full day full of meetings that has no opportunity for me to read, let alone write, tweets and posts. In this piece Richard highlights 3 key areas where academic libraries can take a leadership role in the research domain, redefining what we do and how the research enterprise can best be supported. It will come as no surprise that I think this is the only emerging service for academic libraries which will allow us to grow and prosper. Without this we will fade slowly into the world of print embalming and coffee shop-equipped study halls. Don't get me wrong - these traditional and newer functions are and will remain critical to our mission, but they will not help us remain a healthy and core part of the academic institution. The Library needs to be the information crossroads for all information management functions on campus: research, learning and administration. For now all the low-hanging fruit are in the research landscape, so go there we must.

I had the pleasure of speaking with external reviewers looking at our Chemistry department from a couple of perspectives (accreditation and new program) and it is clear to me from our discussions that that our research-intensive faculty colleagues want our expertise and support, but we are not responding. While some institutions in Canada, like UPEI, are responding with extensive partnerships between researchers and the library, we are failing from a community perspective to develop a clear and effective strategy. Where is the leadership in the Canadian library community for these efforts? Richard points to CISTI's Research Data Canada initiative, an important project which we should all support, but there is nothing else beyond individual efforts. I would suggest what we need is a national summit which pulls all the players together with the specific goal of developing that national approach. The ICSTI Conference in Ottawa may well be the best place to try and plan something, so I would hope that the academic library community is able to attend.

Good Thing We Have Libraries

Academic Information as Safe as the Banks

The latest pending sale of a key academic publisher. All I can say is that it is a good thing we have libraries to hold everything together when the businesses go bad.

IBM in Talks to Buy Sun

Juggernaut to Buy Beleaguered Juggernaut?

IBM and Sun: a potential powerhouse that would reach into virtually every academic campus in the world. Well worth watching.

Privacy activist asks FTC to halt Google apps

Huh?

I'm no big Google fan when it comes to their dominance of areas I think need to be unfettered and open, but this attempt seems stupid to me. Shutting down Google Apps so the lawyers can make a buck would be a really bad idea. As the article suggests, millions of people, some who pay for the service, would suddenly be without a key resource. I'm all for privacy and for making sure Google is a good corporate player, but not at the expense of the businesses we all work in. If Microsoft had to remotely disable all PCs running Windows while under investigation for all manner of questionable practices we would hear about it. And not from Microsoft.

Side Note: I found it especially funny that the ad that popped up when I came to this URL was a Microsoft one. Coincidence? Hah. Random is best.

Visual Science - Map of Knowledge

Following Researcher's Clickstreams

A interesting article that presents a visual map of researcher's clickstreams through the journal literature. The researchers harvested over 1 billion clicks from the use logs of key online journal sites and then analyzed them. This would include clicks moving from one journal to another via linked citations. The data presented is multidisciplinary and provides an incredible view on the interdisciplinary nature of research. The resulting colour map is an art-piece in itself, but also points to a technique that allows individual research expeditions to be linked to others which touch the same articles. Wow. This brings a whole new level of evolution to the Del.icio.us concept of linking to colleagues bookmarks! Follow my clickstreams...I sense a new app.

One Key Reason to Digitize

German History Buried Under Rubble

I tend to cringe and hold my tongue when I hear people say that digitization is bad for preservation because it makes people think we don't have to preserve the paper or microfilm, which is the only way to keep these cultural artifacts around for the long term. Bollocks. The only way to preserve ALL of our cultural heritage is to digitize it. When I think of the wealth of manuscript and print material that has been lost over the ages, whether like this most recent example in Cologne from disaster, or from war, religious or political book burning, it is clear that the only way to preserve everything, regardless of stripe, is to digitize. And not just digitize, but make freely available so it can be copied and preserved in multiple online libraries and never lost again. One need only think back to the selective "preservation" of the Bush regime when it came to information to also realize that allowing corporate or political interests to steward and preserve is a bad idea as well. Libraries have a critical role to play not just in digitization, but also in ensuring that all information is preserved for future generations.

Conors Comics 11