Enriching the local catalog with bibliographic data exposed online: interaction with the national catalog via web services

Statut

“Interoperability efforts represent a significant part within the fieldwork of documentary engineering. The enhancement of its catalog is one of its primary objectives. From that preoccupation came the idea of using a web service of the ABES in order to offer a functionality such as “Get more information about this author” accessible from a view on the authority record, usable during the consultation of the OPAC. This web service brings back directly pieces of information coming from IdRef, the authority database reference of the SUDOC and displays the abbreviated forms of the different records linked to a given authority, classified by relator code. The response in XML or in JSON is elaborated in order to be in compliance with the graphic charter of the ILS and to not create any disruption through the chain of information. A general problematic assumption shows the high stakes and the context in which this web service was imagined and designed. A global expertise of the general outline of the ABES network is useful when trying to understand this functionality; the collaborative structure is briefly described. The articulation between the local and the national bases is made possible with the mediation of a PHP script whose major steps are detailed. Finally, as this project is aimed at being an experiment to reach further and operate other interactions of this kind, it is also important to apprehend the perspectives for the future that such new methods of accessing information can open. The implementation of this functionality has contributed to explore and stabilize new methods of project developments, but also to question the opening of the catalog on the universe of knowledge and to its potential use as a discovery tool. It questions again the interdependence between the local catalog and the SUDOC and has the virtue to set the issues according to a user-centered design.”

URL : Enriching the local catalog with bibliographic data exposed online: interaction with the national catalog via web services

Alternative URL : http://library.ifla.org/815/

 

Can the impact of non-Western academic books be measured? An investigation of Google Books and Google Scholar for Malaysia

Statut

“Citation indicators are increasingly used in book-based disciplines to support peer review in the evaluation of authors and to gauge the prestige of publishers. However, because global citation databases seem to offer weak coverage of books outside the West, it is not clear whether the influence of non-Western books can be assessed with citations. To investigate this, citations were extracted from Google Books and Google Scholar to 1,357 arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) books published by 5 university presses during 1961–2012 in 1 non-Western nation, Malaysia. A significant minority of the books (23% in Google Books and 37% in Google Scholar, 45% in total) had been cited, with a higher proportion cited if they were older or in English. The combination of Google Books and Google Scholar is therefore recommended, with some provisos, for non-Western countries seeking to differentiate between books with some impact and books with no impact, to identify the highly-cited works or to develop an indicator of academic publisher prestige.”

URL : http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1993/papers/Univ_Press_Books_preprintx.pdf

“The sum of all human knowledge”: A systematic review of scholarly research on the content of Wikipedia

Statut

“Wikipedia might possibly be the best-developed attempt thus far of the enduring quest to gather all human knowledge in one place. Its accomplishments in this regard have made it an irresistible point of inquiry for researchers from various fields of knowledge. A decade of research has thrown light on many aspects of the Wikipedia community, its processes, and content. However, due to the variety of the fields inquiring about Wikipedia and the limited synthesis of the extensive research, there is little consensus on many aspects of Wikipedia’s content as an encyclopedic collection of human knowledge. This study addresses the issue by systematically reviewing 110 peer-reviewed publications on Wikipedia content, summarizing the current findings, and highlighting the major research trends. Two major streams of research are identified: the quality of Wikipedia content (including comprehensiveness, currency, readability and reliability) and the size of Wikipedia. Moreover, we present the key research trends in terms of the domains of inquiry, research design, data source, and data gathering methods. This review synthesizes scholarly understanding of Wikipedia content and paves the way for future studies.”

URL : http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/978652/

The Battle for Open : How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory

Statut

“With the success of open access publishing, Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and open education practices, the open approach to education has moved from the periphery to the mainstream. This marks a moment of victory for the open education movement, but at the same time the real battle for the direction of openness begins. As with the green movement, openness now has a market value and is subject to new tensions, such as venture capitalists funding MOOC companies. This is a crucial time for determining the future direction of open education.
In this volume, Martin Weller examines four key areas that have been central to the developments within open education: open access, MOOCs, open education resources and open scholarship. Exploring the tensions within these key arenas, he argues that ownership over the future direction of openness is significant to all of those with an interest in education.”

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/weller.pdf

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bam

Information literacy standards and the World Wide Web: results from a student survey on evaluation of Internet information sources

Statut

“Introduction. This paper aims to determine how appropriate information literacy instruction is for preparing students for these unmediated searches using commercial search engines and the Web.
Method. A survey was designed using the 2000 Association of College and Research Libraries literacy competency standards for higher education. Survey questions examined how subjects perceived the source evaluation criteria of reliability, validity, accuracy, authority, timeliness and point of view or bias.
Analysis. Quantitative analysis was carried out on the data collected from 389 survey respondents who answered twenty-seven multiple choice questions concerning their information search practice and their evaluations of information sources.
Results. Subjects primarily use Google as a research source for academic work and appear to be confused about how to determine the author of a source and how to determine the qualifications of the author. About half of the subjects indicated they may not be able to determine the author of an Internet source yet consider it possible to determine the objectivity of the source.
Conclusions. Information literacy instruction on source evaluation criteria may need to be reexamined in relation to the various information sources available today. More effective information literacy instruction methods which address the issues identified in this study may need to be implemented.”

URL : http://www.informationr.net/ir/19-4/paper645.html

A bibliometric study of scholarly articles published by library and information science authors about open access

Statut

“Introduction. This study aims to gain a greater understanding of the development of open access practices amongst library and information science authors, since their role is integral to the success of the broader open access movement.
Method. Data were collected from scholarly articles about open access by library and information science authors from 2003 until 2011 found in the Library and Information Science Abstracts database.
Analysis. A bibliometric approach is taken for the information gathered from 203 articles. Excel and SPSS were used to derive descriptive statistics and correlations.
Results. Overall an open access rate of 60% was found, which was lower than expected considering 94% of these articles appeared to endorse open access.
Conclusions. Although these results show a higher open access rate than previous studies, and a linear growth of open access publications over the years, there is still a large gap between theory and practice which needs to be addressed.”

URL : http://www.informationr.net/ir/19-4/paper648.html

Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future

Statut

“If you work in a university, you are almost certain to have heard the term ‘open access’ in the past couple of years. You may also have heard either that it is the utopian answer to all the problems of research dissemination or perhaps that it marks the beginning of an apocalyptic new era of ‘pay-to-say’ publishing. In this book, Martin Paul Eve sets out the histories, contexts and controversies for open access, specifically in the humanities. Broaching practical elements alongside economic histories, open licensing, monographs and funder policies, this book is a must-read for both those new to ideas about open-access scholarly communications and those with an already keen interest in the latest developments for the humanities.”

URL : http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316161012