Connector, Catalyst and Common Good: Defining the Academic Library of the 21st Century

Authors : Janice Jaguszewski, Lisa A. McGuire

Clearly articulating how an academic library inspires and transforms teaching, learning and research is critical for library leadership. Conveying the library’s deep expertise throughout the knowledge lifecycle (discovery, use, creation, and sharing) and demonstrating its ability to provide solutions to information problems are core to what an academic library brings to campus collaborations.

At the University of Minnesota, the Health Sciences Libraries have developed a “Space as a Service” model of collaboration that positions them as a vital component of a larger Interprofessional Learning and Education Center within the University’s Academic Health Center.

We describe and discuss six fundamental principles that guide our vision of an academic library as a Connector, Catalyst, Common Good and Service-Rich Environment, and offer a template for applying this model to a range of disciplines.

URL : https://journals.tdl.org/llm/index.php/llm/article/view/7227

Assessing Research Data Deposits and Usage Statistics within IDEALS

Author : Christie A. Wiley

Objectives

This study follows up on previous work that began examining data deposited in an institutional repository. The work here extends the earlier study by answering the following lines of research questions: (1) What is the file composition of datasets ingested into the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) campus repository? Are datasets more likely to be single-file or multiple-file items? (2) What is the usage data associated with these datasets? Which items are most popular?

Methods

The dataset records collected in this study were identified by filtering item types categorized as “data” or “dataset” using the advanced search function in IDEALS. Returned search results were collected in an Excel spreadsheet to include data such as the Handle identifier, date ingested, file formats, composition code, and the download count from the item’s statistics report.

The Handle identifier represents the dataset record’s persistent identifier. Composition represents codes that categorize items as single or multiple file deposits. Date available represents the date the dataset record was published in the campus repository.

Download statistics were collected via a website link for each dataset record and indicates the number of times the dataset record has been downloaded. Once the data was collected, it was used to evaluate datasets deposited into IDEALS.

Results

A total of 522 datasets were identified for analysis covering the period between January 2007 and August 2016. This study revealed two influxes occurring during the period of 2008-2009 and in 2014. During the first timeframe a large number of PDFs were deposited by the Illinois Department of Agriculture.

Whereas, Microsoft Excel files were deposited in 2014 by the Rare Books and Manuscript Library. Single-file datasets clearly dominate the deposits in the campus repository. The total download count for all datasets was 139,663 and the average downloads per month per file across all datasets averaged 3.2.

Conclusion

Academic librarians, repository managers, and research data services staff can use the results presented here to anticipate the nature of research data that may be deposited within institutional repositories.

With increased awareness, content recruitment, and improvements, IRs can provide a viable cyberinfrastructure for researchers to deposit data, but much can be learned from the data already deposited.

Awareness of trends can help librarians facilitate discussions with researchers about research data deposits as well as better tailor their services to address short-term and long-term research needs.

URL : Assessing Research Data Deposits and Usage Statistics within IDEALS

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2017.1112

L’archivage des revues scientifiques électroniques pour les bibliothèques universitaires en France

Auteur/Author : Lore Metrat

Les résultats de la recherche, quel que soit le domaine d’étude, sont de plus en plus publiés au format numérique. Les grands éditeurs proposent aux bibliothèques des abonnements à des bouquets de revues indispensables aux chercheurs, mais de plus en plus chers.

Ainsi, les bibliothèques universitaires payent des prix élevés sans aucune garantie de conservation. En effet, le paiement des bouquets de revues consiste à obtenir un droit d’accès, ne tenant pas compte de l’archivage de celles-ci.

Si une revue venait à disparaître, l’ensemble de ce qui avait été acheté disparaitrait aussi. Partant de ce constat, l’enjeu réside dans la nécessité d’assurer la conservation des revues de façon pérenne, tout en garantissant leur lisibilité et leur intelligibilité à long terme.

URL : L’archivage des revues scientifiques électroniques pour les bibliothèques universitaires en France

Alternative location : http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/notices/67745-l-archivage-des-revues-scientifiques-electroniques-pour-les-bibliotheques-universitaires-en-france

 

The role of the library in scholarly publishing: The University of Manchester experience

Author : Simon Bains

The emergence of networked digital methods of scholarly dissemination has transformed the role of the academic library in the context of the research life cycle. It now plays an important role in the dissemination of research outputs (e.g. through repository management and gold open access publication processing) as well as more traditional acquisition and collection management.

The University of Manchester Library and Manchester University Press have developed a strategic relationship to consider how they can work in partnership to support new approaches to scholarly publishing. They have delivered two projects to understand researcher and student needs and to develop tools and services to meet these needs.

This work has found that the creation of new journal titles is costly and provides significant resourcing challenges and that support for student journals in particular is mixed amongst senior academic administrators.

Research has suggested that there is more value to the University in the provision of training in scholarly publishing than in the creation of new in-house journal titles. Where such titles are created, careful consideration of sustainable business models is vital.

URL : The role of the library in scholarly publishing: The University of Manchester experience

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.380

 

Research Data Management Practices in University libraries: A study

Authors : Manorama Tripathi, Archana Shukla, Sharad Kumar Sonkar

The paper has studied the research data management (RDM) services implemented by different university libraries for managing, organizing, curating and preserving research data generated at their universities’ departments and laboratories, for data reuse and sharing.

It has surveyed the central university libraries and the best 20 university libraries of the world to highlight how RDM is extended to the researchers. Further, it has suggested a model for the university libraries in the country to follow for actually deploying RDM services.

URL : Research Data Management Practices in University libraries: A study

Alternative location : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/11336

Evaluation of research activities of universities of Ukraine and Belarus: a set of bibliometric indicators and its implementation

Authors : Vladimir Lazarev, Serhii Nazarovets, Alexey Skalaban

Monitoring bibliometric indicators of University rankings is considered as a subject of a University library activity. In order to fulfill comparative assessment of research activities of the universities of Ukraine and Belarus the authors introduced a set of bibliometric indicators.

A comparative assessment of the research activities of corresponding universities was fulfilled; the data on the leading universities are presented. The sensitivity of the one of the indicators to rapid changes of the research activity of universities and the fact that the other one is normalized across the fields of science condition advantage of the proposed set over the one that was used in practice of the corresponding national rankings.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.02059

Research Data Management Services in Academic Libraries in the US: A Content Analysis of Libraries’ Websites

Authors : Ayoung Yoon, Teresa Schultz

Examining landscapes of research data management services in academic libraries is timely and significant for both those libraries on the front line and the libraries that are already ahead.

While it provides overall understanding of where the research data management program is at and where it is going, it also provides understanding of current practices and data management recommendations and/or tool adoptions as well as revealing areas of improvement and support.

This study examined the research data (management) services in academic libraries in the United States through a content analysis of 185 library websites, with four main areas of focus: service, information, education, and network.

The results from the content analysis of these webpages reveals that libraries need to advance and engage more actively to provide services, supply information online, and develop educational services.

There is also a wide variation among library data management services and programs according to their web presence.

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16788/18346