Group items tagged

Blog posting re: the SUL library council's report

Blog entry about micro-publishing

Blog entry by Georgia Harper about the implications of the Copyright Act and the inability to copy orphan works.

"Andrew Savikas is one of today's most prominent writers, speakers, and thinkers about digital publishing and the e-book revolution. As Vice President of Digital Initiatives at O'Reilly Media and Program Chair of O'Reilly's annual Tools of Change for Publishing conference-a massive three-day industry powwow about publishing technology and business strategy, held last month here in New York City-he keeps his finger pressed steadily to the ever-racing pulse of the digital media world"

Blog about 21st century medical libraries

Blog about 21st century medical libraries, with handy list of resources and of newly founded med school libraries

he RIN guide, Ensuring a bright future for research libraries: a guide for vice-chancellors and senior institutional managers which aims to inform this audience on how to ensure library and information services keep pace with the evolving needs of researchers.The guidance was written by the working group set up to consider the findings and conclusions from the RIN and RLUK report on Researchers' use of academic libraries and their services (April 2007).

Copied from the summary: "Digital technologies and online information resources have brought fundamental changes in how research is done, and also in what researchers expect from library and information services. The services that librarians and information professionals provide have also changed fundamentally over the past decade, and they now offer much more in providing leadership that brings improvements in research performance and effectiveness. New resources, services and technologies continue to create new opportunities, new challenges and new expectations. Librarians and information services need the resources and the continuing top-level support within their institutions to ensure that they can fulfil their potential and meet these challenges. " This article looks excellent and will merit a blog entry.

Head of NY PL explains value of libraries in future: "brilliant research collections such as ours will always be relevant to students, writers, and scholars who need to exploit all of our unique collections - manuscripts, archives, and so on - that will not be on the World Wide Web."

The article is interesting, but I truly question the claim that Amazon will sell $1 Billion dollars worth of Kindle hardware and software by 2010. What is relevant to our study is the reader comments. It's not a scientific random sample, but they are easily accessible opinions of the Kindle.

This is just a news announcement with speculation as to the new features.

James Evans on his Science article about impact of eresources on research

This author argues against the "long tail" theory of internet research. Interesting, but directly relevant to our study.

It seems that Amazon.com's Kindle is not the flop that many predicted when the e-book reader debuted last year. Citibank's Mark Mahaney has just doubled his forecast of Kindle sales for the year to 380,000. He figures that Amazon's sales of Kindle hardware and software will hit $1 billion by 2010.

Some of the findings that have proved to be of greatest interest have focused on these topics: * Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs * Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing * Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time * Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources * Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

Follow the link on this page to the "in depth white paper" which is entitled, "Ithaka's 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education" dated August 18, 2008. The Table of Contents lists: INTRODUCTION; RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LIBRARY AND THE FACULTY; DEPENDENCE ON ELECTRONIC RESOURCES; THE TRANSITION AWAY FROM PRINT FOR SCHOLARLY JOURNALS; FACULTY PUBLISHING PREFERENCES; E-BOOKS; DIGITAL REPOSITORIES; PRESERVATION OF SCHOLARLY JOURNALS; RECOMMENDATIONS; CONCLUSION. I have tagged this article, but it has some great research and will merit a blog entry.

While interesting, this article doesn't point toward the feasibility of an all digital library. This can be deleted.

Newspapers are closing left and right, as the model for sharing news and information has changed. This blog entry discusses the publishing revolution in terms of what is happening in the newspaper industry.

Peter Brantley: "It could well be the case for most libraries that acquisition of print titles essentially ceases within 10 years, perhaps earlier (N.B. I had originally written 20 years; most independent commentators felt that was far too conservative; some think 5 years for ARL-class main libraries). More and more frontlist content is available digitally, and there is an inexorable transition toward the licensing of digital books - past, present, and future - along-side journals that are increasingly unavailable in print. On this battleground the skirmishes of the future will have more to do with licensing terms (could there be a SERU for Google Book Search?) and the timely acquisition of use data, rather than figuring out what to curate. Soon, the bulk of the world's published literature may be available online; libraries will just have to determine which content package they want, or can afford, to subscribe to."

NYT asks: Do schools need to maintain traditional libraries? What are the educational consequences of having students read less on the printed page and more on the Web? * James Tracy, headmaster, Cushing Academy * Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, English professor, University of Maryland * Liz Gray, library director, Dana Hall School * Nicholas Carr, author, "The Big Switch" * William Powers, author, "Hamlet's BlackBerry" Comments indicate strong belief in the importance of books