Faculty and Student Perspectives Toward …

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Faculty and Student Perspectives Toward Open Courseware, and Open Access Publishing: Some Comparisons Between European and North American Populations :

“Instructor and student beliefs, attitudes and intentions toward contributing to local open courseware (OCW) sites have been investigated through campus-wide surveys at Universidad Politecnica de Valencia and the University of Michigan. In addition, at the University of Michigan, faculty have been queried about their participation in open access (OA) publishing. We compare the instructor and student data concerning OCW between the two institutions, and introduce the investigation of open access publishing in relation to open courseware publishing”

URL : http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/handle/10609/5261

An analysis of open access schorlarly co…

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An analysis of open access schorlarly communication Tanzanian public universities :

“The aim of this study was to investigate factors affecting the adoption of open access in research activities within Tanzanian public universities in order to device mechanisms of enhancing the use of this mode of scholarly communication. The study adopted the UTAUT model to formulate an open access research model comprising of six constructs and five moderators for guidance of this investigation. A triangulation approach for data gathering was adopted. In the first instance, a semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 398 respondents selected using the stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers from six public universities in Tanzania. The interview involving 63 policy makers and structured records review were also conducted to complement the questionnaire survey. The descriptive and binary logistic regression statistics of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) were used for data analysis. The study established that majority of the policy makers (90.5%) and researchers (72.1%) were aware of open access. Attitude, awareness, effort expectancy, and performance expectancy were established as the key determinants for researchers’ behavioural intention of open access usage while age, awareness, behavioural intention, facilitating conditions and social influence were found to significantly affect researchers’ actual usage of open access. It was concluded that researchers’ and policy makers’ general perceptions about open access were very positive signifying the acceptance of this mode of scholarly communication in the study area. Current poor research conditions and researchers’ low Internet self-efficacy such as inadequate information search and online publishing skills were cited as the main hindrances for researchers to use open access in scholarly communication. The study recommends institutionalisation of open access publishing in Tanzanian public universities and other similar research institutions so as to improve the dissemination of research output emanating from such institutions. Six areas for further research to establish more insights regarding the feasibility for open access development in the country are also recommended.”

URL : http://uir.unisa.ac.za/dspace/handle/10500/3684

The Historical and Legal Underpinnings o…

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The Historical and Legal Underpinnings of Access to Public Documents :

“Identifying and limiting access to public documents in a world of instant transmission has created new problems for government and citizens alike. This article reviews
the historical uses and value of public documents in order to aid those responsible for describing which government documents can be confidently migrated to digital form.”

URL : http://www.aallnet.org/products/pub_llj_v102n04/2010-35.pdf

Le libre accès : entre idéal et nécessit…

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Le libre accès : entre idéal et nécessité :

“Les débats qui se développent autour de la question du libre accès sont bien souvent menés comme des combats idéologiques, mobilisant des registres d’expression militants autour des notions de biens publics. La très grande visibilité de ces débats occulte deux éléments qui pourraient en relativiser la portée. L’analyse du développement des initiatives de libre accès montre que la dimension politique de la question est loin d’être prédominante dans toutes les disciplines et varie considérablement selon les communautés. Par ailleurs, les modifications profondes que le développement des réseaux numériques entraîne dans les pratiques de communication scientifique pourraient rendre moins pertinente l’approche volontariste et militante du libre accès. La multiplication du nombre de documents disponibles, l’effacement relatif des frontières entre les différents modes de publication, l’abaissement des barrières d’accès à la publication contribuent à relativiser la portée des dispositifs de fabrication de rareté artificielle et à soumettre progressivement le système de communication scientifique à un régime d’économie de l’attention. Il est dès lors possible que le secteur de l’édition scientifique connaisse une évolution comparable à celle des secteurs de la presse et de l’édition musicale.”

URL : http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_00534136/fr/

Free/Libre Open Source Software, Liberal…

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Free/Libre Open Source Software, Liberalism, Conviviality and Private Property. An anthropological view of Zotero advocates :

“This study examines Free/Libre Open Source Software and its inherent
problematisation of property rights. An ethnographic study of a network of FLOSS advocates based in academic libraries supporting the use of bibliographical management tool Zotero is used as a way of teasing out themes of community, conviviality, liberalism and definitions of ‘free’ to examine how property rights around ideas formed into software question commercial proprietary forms of commoditisation.”

URL : http://www.mumbles.mojo.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Zotero-FLOSS-and-Private-Property-Anton-Angelo.pdf

GeoScience Information: User Needs and Library Information

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Geoscience libraries and their users were the subjects of a two part questionnaire dealing with user background and attitudes in conjunction with library organization systems. The 23 libraries responding to the first questionnaire varied in size, setting, and organizational systems. A variety of classification systems are utilized in the libraries, but the majority (82.6%) of responding librarians felt the systems they use meet their users’ needs.

In contrast to this, the majority of libraries make use of Library of Congress subject headings, but there is a clear trend in librarians’ views that this system is not adequate for their users’ needs. 336 library users responded to the second questionnaire. A picture of the “average” geoscience information user emerged as a highly educated male geologist in his early thirties to forties.

Users generally took a positive attitude toward the library and their skills as a user. The information access points they consider the most important are: author name, subject heading, asking the librarian, and title. No difference was found in the type or importance of information access points used in libraries using only Library of Congress subject heading.

Further study into users’ information seeking habits in differing library environments is recommended, as well as an increase in libraries’ use of bibliographic instruction.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/15070/

Evaporation of Information in Data Trans…

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Evaporation of Information in Data Transition Process :

“From a long time ago, information has played a vital role in different aspects of human being life and constantly has flowed in human’s various aspects of life and activities. By progressing of science, profound changes for the meaning of information have accomplished so that it has reached to its modern meaning and significance despite of all relative inadequacies and deficiencies. Since human beings have stepped for transmission and recording of his thoughts unconsciously the meaning of information appeared. First stages of humankind life, meaning of information had been limited to the kind of its carrier, in case inscriptions, papyrus and codex, themselves had been inferred as information and this is the same meaning “solid information “in this domain which has been set with appearances of print industry and possibility prompt duplication of becoming liquid – that is acceptance of each carrier to the amount of that information. At this age this is middle age, information has become liquid and from the book to other electronic information sources, considering to the kind of information carrier, has take other various modes. At this age, organization, dissemination and maintenance of information have been confronted with its own specific challenges. In other words, existing information on an inscription, printed document and or any other type of information carrier could be saved in other carrier simultaneously. This is the same meaning that has been attributed to “liquid information “in the essay. At the close future, however, by appearance of many kinds of computer networks and information systems, this information becomes like gas and would expand in every place without needing to any specific carrier. At this period, one of the characteristics of information concept is instantaneous potential of expansion and instance. Present essay has settled to studying and clarifying of above modes and considering this question “if this information would be convinced to be condensation and change to its old modes?” and what processes on information is covered from production to distribution.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/19288/