A sustainable future for open textbooks?…

A sustainable future for open textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge story :
“Many college students and their families are concerned about the high costs of textbooks. E–books have been proposed as one potential solution; open source textbooks have also been explored. A company called Flat World Knowledge produces and gives away open source textbooks in a way they believe to be financially sustainable. This article reports an initial study of the financial sustainability of the Flat World Knowledge open source textbook model.”
URL : http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2800/2578

Recommandation de description des manusc…

Recommandation de description des manuscrits et fonds d’archives modernes et contemporains en bibliothèque :
“La présente recommandation a pour objet de donner des règles permettant la description de
manuscrits ou d’ensembles de manuscrits conservés dans les institutions publiques ou privées
(bibliothèques, musées, etc.). Ces règles fixent les éléments à prendre en compte pour la
description des manuscrits isolés, des recueils factices, des fonds d’archives ou des collections.
Elles s’appliquent au traitement des différents états de la rédaction d’une oeuvre, des
correspondances, des carnets, des papiers de famille et d’affaires, des archives privées d’une
personne physique ou morale (qui peuvent parfois inclure des documents de nature différente :
coupures de presse, photographies, dessins, cartes, enregistrements sonores ou audiovisuels,
documents informatiques, documents imprimés, objets, etc.).
Par le mot « manuscrit », on désigne, traditionnellement et conformément à l’étymologie,
tout texte écrit à la main. Cependant, par extension, on assimile aux manuscrits des documents
dactylographiés ou saisis sur ordinateur, voire imprimés, produits ou reproduits sans intention de
diffusion sous cette forme, en exemplaire unique ou en très petit nombre.
Les manuscrits concernés par la présente recommandation sont essentiellement les manuscrits modernes et contemporains. Par opposition au manuscrit médiéval, le terme manuscrit moderne recouvre les documents produits à partir de l’époque où la production normale des livres
devient le fait de l’imprimerie, soit entre la fin du XVe siècle et la fin du XVIe siècle.
Les règles énoncées dans la présente recommandation peuvent éventuellement servir à décrire des documents antérieurs à l’apparition de l’imprimerie.
Elles s’appliquent principalement aux manuscrits occidentaux mais pourront, le cas échéant,
s’appliquer à des manuscrits d’autres traditions.
Un fonds d’archives ou une collection peuvent se présenter sous une grande diversité de
formes et de supports. Pour les décrire, les présentes règles peuvent être complétées par d’autres
normes spécialisées : enregistrements sonores, images fixes et animées, etc.”
URL : http://www.bivi.fonctions-documentaires.afnor.org/content/download/19537/135613/version/4/file/demarch.pdf

User’s behaviour inside a digital library

CASPUR allows many academic Italian institutions located in the Centre-South of Italy to access more than 7 million of articles through a digital library platform. We analyzed the behaviour of its users by considering their “traces” stored into the web server log file.

Using several Web Mining and Data Mining techniques we discovered that there is a gradual and dynamic change in the way how articles are accessed; in particular there is evidence of a Journal browsing increase in comparison to the searching mode.

We interpreted such phenomenon by considering that browsing better meets the need of users when they want to keep abreast about the latest advances in their scientific field, in comparison to a more generic searching inside the digital library.

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/14805/

Adapting the information professionals t…

Adapting the information professionals to the digital collections universe :
“Libraries, Archives and Museums (LAMs) should respond as one articulated entity to the user informational needs and to the demands of the scholarly electronic communication. LAMs are stepping forward into the arena of digital stewardship and this move requires new skills and abilities. The specialists are adapting practices and instruments to the pressing needs for digital curation and preservation. The necessity for an active and continuous partnership between the information-intensive organisations, the scholarly community and general public, must be ensured while incorporating the paradigm of guiding the user and empowering the researcher. There are important questions that future digital stewardship raises related to how the professional profile will look like for those powering the specialised structures put in place to safeguard cultural and scientific heritage. What will be the core competences based on what set of skills and abilities? How will the facilities look like? What will be the general environment, and most importantly, will there be a space for common knowledge exchange for those entrusted with maintaining vast bodies of information. The article searches for answers related to the shifting core competencies, future set of skills and abilities and how future facilities will be shaped by these evolutions. The first step is the establishment of spaces especially destined for knowledge exchange to help converge disciplines within LAM framework. Different structural and cultural chances are revealed, starting from job adverts up to the policies addressing the needs of information and knowledge management.”
URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/18797/

Campus perspective on the National Insti…

Campus perspective on the National Institutes of Health public access policy :
“From the Background section: This communication reports the results of a survey conducted in the spring of 2009 to gauge awareness of the NIH public access policy among faculty and other academics at UCSF, as well as their feelings (positive and negative) about the open access movement. The UCSF Library has participated in many efforts in recent years to raise campus awareness about the possibilities of open access publishing, and this survey provided an opportunity to understand how best to focus future outreach to faculty on this topic.”
URL : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2901012/pdf/mlab-98-03-256.pdf

Open Access Week: Library Strategies for…

Open Access Week: Library Strategies for Advancing Change :
“Over the past several years, libraries have strategically brought to bear the power of a global awareness event we call “Open Access Week” to advance real, policy-driven scholarly communication change on campus. Initiated by students and marked by just a few dozen campuses in 2007, Open Access Week has evolved into a truly global phenomenon thanks to the ongoing leadership of the library community. Not simply an awareness-raising exercise, librarians have made Open Access Week a platform for advancing specific policy changes on researchsharing and dissemination, including institution-wide commitments to open access. In anticipation of Open Access Week 2010 (October 18–24) and beginning to formulate local strategies, SPARC has invited two leading participants from 2009 to share in the following two articles how the event helped them to advance open access to research.”
URL : http://arl.tizrapublisher.com/rli270/22