The website repository Sci-Hub, which enables users to freely download scholarly articles that normally require institutional subscriptions or individual payments, has found itself at the center of a series of conflicts over the past year. Many publishers are increasingly angry at the theft of copyrighted material, with the Association of American Publishers (AAP) going so far as to censure an academic librarian for his comments on Sci-Hub during a panel at the American Library Association (ALA) annual conference in Orlando in June.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Virtual reality has the potential to create a new language for experiential learning.
http://er.educause.edu/multimedia/2016/8/video-3-ways-virtual-reality-can-enhance-learning
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Complex data sets raise challenging ethical questions about risk to individuals who are not sufficiently covered by computer science training, ethics codes, or Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). The use of publicly available, corporate, and government data sets may reveal human practices, behaviours, and interactions in unintended ways, creating the need for new kinds of ethical support. Secondary data use invokes privacy and consent concerns. A team at Data & Society recently conducted interviews and campus visits with computer science researchers and librarians at eight U.S. universities to examine the role of research librarians in assisting technical researchers as they navigate emerging issues of privacy, ethics, and equitable access to data at different phases of the research process.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Library leaders are faced with no shortage of imperatives. They are building new strategies to align the library in support of the research enterprise and student success. They are grappling with the challenges of stagnant budgets and rising costs. They are rethinking their tangible collections and renovating their facilities.
In support of these types of efforts, library leaders are beginning to take on new approaches to management and organization. Especially at large research libraries whose employees number in the hundreds, organizational structure is essential to aligning resources with strategic objectives. In a new research project, nearly 20 library leaders were interviewed to understand the approaches being taken to organizational structure and related issues. They describe how they have re-defined leadership roles in their institutions...
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Wednesday, August 31, 2016
As the global open access movement continues to grow and evolve, the question of whether a wholesale shift of the scholarly journal publishing system to “gold” open access is a viable way forward is of increasing interest. In such a shift, all journal publishers would make all scholarly articles freely available to readers, with authors or their institutions paying to publish their work when required by the publisher, rather than readers paying to read it. Lending momentum to this discussion is the fact that gold open access journals have steadily gained market share, doubling in article volume every four years and now in excess of 14% of the total journal output.
http://icis.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/UC-Pay-It-Forward-Final-Report.rev_.7.18.16.pdf
Thursday, July 28, 2016
The International Linked Data Survey for Implementers conducted by OCLC Research in 2014 and 2015 attracted responses from 90 institutions in 20 countries. This analysis of the 112 linked data projects or services described by the 2015 respondents — those that publish linked data, consume linked data, or both — indicates that most are primarily experimental in nature. This article provides an overview of the linked data projects or services institutions or organizations have implemented or are implementing, what data they publish and consume, the reasons respondents give for implementing linked data and the barriers encountered. Relatively small projects are emerging and provide a window into future opportunities. Applications that take advantage of linked data resources are currently few and are yet to demonstrate value over existing systems.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july16/smith-yoshimura/07smith-yoshimura.html
