Les SIGB libres : opportunités d’innovations pour les bibliothèques

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Since 10 years, more and more libraries are choosing an Free and Open Source Integrated Library management System (ILS). We see that their evolution is very fast and the collaborative development fosters the emergence of innovative features for libraries and their users.

The innovation is as much about free ILS unique features as on the possibility of developing an ILS in collaboration with other libraries. The establishment of a collaborative structure enables the rapid development of innovations.

We present our observations on the innovative aspects of Free and Open Source ILS, especially with Koha. Libraries have to take advantage of opportunities for innovation offered by Free and Open Source ILS.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/15396/

Working Together to Reduce Plagiarism and Promote Academic Integrity: A Collaborative Initiative at Leicester

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This staff student collaboration arose from a staff-led research project that examined the potential for an American-style honor code system to reduce plagiarism in higher education.

This system promotes the positive benefits of good scholarship, encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning and is based on a community of trust between staff and students. Students’ Union Education Officers, student course representatives and academic staff worked together to re-frame advice given to students on plagiarism in a more positive light.

This ongoing collaboration has resulted in joint recommendations from staff and students to the institution on how to reduce plagiarism and promote a culture of academic integrity.”

URL : https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/9108

Characterising and Preserving Digital Repositories: File Format Profiles

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Steve Hitchcock and David Tarrant show how file format profiles, the starting point for preservation plans and actions, can also be used to reveal the fingerprints of emerging types of institutional repositories.

URL : http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue66/hitchcock-tarrant/

Intellectual Property’s Great Fallacy

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Intellectual property law has long been justified on the belief that external incentives are necessary to get people to produce artistic works and technological innovations that are easily copied.

This Essay argues that this foundational premise of the economic theory of intellectual property is wrong. Using recent advances in behavioral economics, psychology, and business-management studies, it is now possible to show that there are natural and intrinsic motivations that will cause technology and the arts to flourish even in the absence of externally supplied rewards, such as copyrights and patents.

URL : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1746343

How to choose an free and open source in…

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How to choose an free and open source integrated library system:

“Purpose : This paper seeks to present the results of an analysis of 20 free and open source ILS platforms offered to the library community. These software platforms were subjected to a three-step analysis, whereby the results aim to assist librarians and decision makers in selecting an open source ILS, based on objective criteria.

Design/methodology/approach : The methodology applied involves three broad steps. The first step consists of evaluating all the available ILSs and keeping only those that qualify as truly open source or freely-licensed software. During this step, the correlation between the practices within the community and the terms associated with the free or open software license was measured. The second step involves evaluating the community behind each open source or free ILS project, according to a set of 40 criteria in order to determine the attractiveness and sustainability of each project. The third step entails subjecting the remaining ILSs to an analysis of almost 800 functions and features to determine which ILSs are most suited to the needs of libraries. The final score is used to identify strengths, weaknesses and differentiating or similar features of each ILS.

Findings : More than 20 open source ILSs were submitted to this methodology, but only three passed all the steps: Evergreen, Koha, and PMB. The main goal is not to identify the best open source ILS, but rather to highlight from which, of the batch of dozens of open source ILSs, librarians and decision makers can choose without worrying about how perennial or sustainable each open or free project is, as well as understanding which ILS provides them with the functionalities to meet the needs of their institutions.

Practical implications : This paper offers a basic model so that librarians and decision makers can make their own analysis and adapt it to the needs of their libraries.

Originality/value: This methodology meets the best practices in technology selection, with a multiple criteria decision analysis. It can also be easily adapted to the needs of all libraries.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15387

Results of the SOAP Survey: EIFL Partner…

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Results of the SOAP Survey: EIFL Partner Countries :

“The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has run a large-scale survey of the attitudes of researchers on, and the experiences with, open access publishing. In the SOAP Symposium on 13 January 2011 in Berlin, the results of the SOAP Survey were made publicly available. “Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing” article is available in arXiv presenting preliminary analysis of the survey responses. To allow a maximal re-use of the information collected by this survey, the data were released under a CC0 waiver, so to allow libraries, publishers, funding agencies and academics to further analyse risks and opportunities, drivers and barriers, in the transition to open access publishing.

SURFfoundation made the first overview of the SOAP survey results, tailored to the situation in the Netherlands. Marnix van Berchum and Annemiek van der Kuil selected the questions and the selection should be considered as a first attempt to analyse the SOAP data for the Dutch situation. Further analysis could include different questions, and comparisons with other countries. SURFfoundation also invited others to make use of the SOAP data, to make their own analyses.

We followed the approach of the SURFfoundation and made the first overview of the SOAP survey results, tailored to the situation in 11 EIFL partner countries: Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand and Ukraine.”

URL : http://www.eifl.net/news/results-soap-survey-eifl-partner-countries

Open Access monographic publishing in th…

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Open Access monographic publishing in the humanities :

“In recent years, it has become widely recognized that in the case of monographs, the traditional business model for books is losing its sustainability. Academic publishers have been forced to become more selective in the books they publish, and authors, in particular young researchers and first time authors, have found it harder to find a press willing to publish their work. In response to the economic restraints of printed monographs, many publishers and academic institutes, in particular research libraries, have started to experiment with digital and Open Access publication of monographs.

OAPEN is the first international project to develop an Open Access model for publishers and stakeholders in scholarly communication. OAPEN stands for Open Access Publishing in European Networks. It is a 30 month project co-funded by the European Union, to develop and implement an Open Access (OA) publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).”

URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/l6wg61l0mg6426w8/