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In the Comments
You have to learn to let go. The idea that books, magazines, databases or any form of information source can and should be kept for perpetuity is laughable. Items in a library need to be weeded and space is the major reason why. I know all of you want to keep your precious books, and I do to. But who’s going to pay for it, you?... — the other me
Library Protesters to Ohio State U.: Digital's OK, but Save Our Books!
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July 2, 2009
Advocates for the Blind Sue Arizona State U. Over Kindle Use
The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind are suing Arizona State University for its use of the Amazon Kindle to distribute electronic textbooks to students, saying the device cannot be used by blind students.
The groups say the Kindle has text-to-speech technology that reads books aloud to blind students, but that the device’s menus do not offer a way for blind students to purchase books, select a book to read, or even to activate the text-to-speech feature, according to a joint statement by the two groups.
In a lawsuit filed last week, a journalism student was also named as a plaintiff.
“While my peers will have instant access to their course materials in electronic form, I will still have to wait weeks or months for accessible texts to be prepared for me,” said the student, Darrell Shandrow, in the groups’ statement. “These texts will not provide the access and features available to other students.”
In a statement to the Library Journal, a university spokeswoman, Martha Dennis Christiansen, did not answer any specific questions pertaining to the lawsuit.
“Arizona State University is committed to equal access for all students. Disability Resource Centers are located on all ASU campuses. The centers enable students to establish eligibility and obtain services and accommodations for qualified students with disabilities,” she said. “These efforts are focused on providing the necessary tools so that all students with disabilities have an equal opportunity to be successful in their academic pursuits.”
The complaint asked the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate similar practices at Case Western Reserve University, Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Pace University, Princeton University, and Reed College. —Marc Beja
Posted on Thursday July 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [49]June 29, 2009
U. of Kansas to Make Research Available Free Online
The University of Kansas will make more of its faculty research free to the public online.
“The University of Kansas has been interested in reforming what has been kind of a dysfunctional system of scholarly communication for years,” said Ada Emmett, an associate librarian at the university. “People fundamentally agree with providing the widest possible access to our scholarship.”
The university already has over 4,400 articles in its digital repository of scholarly work, ScholarWorks, which was opened in 2005. Any new research will be added to that collection, and Ms. Emmett estimated that anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 articles are published by the university each year. She will oversee a task force to administer the program. The plan has not yet been finalized, but she hopes it will be in place by next year.
After Harvard University passed a similar plan last February, faculty members at the University of Kansas began to research how they could adopt one.
In April the University of Maryland rejected a plan to allow for open access to its research journals. Peter Suber, a research professor of philosophy at Earlham College and a longtime promoter of open access to scholarly publishing, wrote that the reason many of the faculty voted against the plan was because they feared that the policy would limit the freedom of professors to submit work to journals, or that it would harm subscriptions to other journals, and that there was no specified opt-out clause. The University of Maryland’s proposal was not a mandate, but a suggestion.
“Ironically, because the Maryland policy mandated nothing, there was no need to build in a waiver provision,” Mr. Suber wrote. “Hence, no one could point to an explicit waiver option to answer fears that encouragement might harden into an expectation.”
A. Townsend Peterson, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, said that similar issues arose there but that after the faculty members were able to ask questions of the university senate, their fears of publishing restrictions were dispelled. Faculty members can request a waiver if they do not want their work to be used, he said.
“Anybody who is in academia should be aware of and concerned about the commercialization of academic publication,” Mr. Peterson said. “Academic communication should not be about typing in your credit-card number. It should be something we’re trying to share globally.”—Marc Beja
Posted on Monday June 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [3]June 26, 2009
Northwestern U. Publishes Rare Photos of East Africa Online
Northwestern University has put online more than 7,000 rare photographs of East Africa that document the European colonization of the area from 1860 through 1960.
The images made available to the public today in the Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs were purchased by the university in 2002 for an undisclosed price.
David L. Easterbrook, curator of the university’s Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, said the collection contains photographs and postcards showing how Europeans used the landscape for commercial purposes, as well as images made by anthropologists that focuse on the daily lives of East Africans. The combination helps document how European colonization changed the area, as well as what existed before the Europeans arrived.
The visual record “adds to a written record,” Mr. Easterbrook said. The pictures “give us an opportunity to look at Africa in a different time.”
While several libraries have smaller galleries that include photographs of East Africa during this period, Mr. Easterbrook said Northwestern’s is the first large collection available online. The image-search feature on the Web site is extensive, tagging both dates and keywords. The Institute of Museum and Library Services helped cover the cost of digitizing the photographs.
The Web site was designed to be used by students as young as age 5. It has links to other resources as well as lesson plans and assignments for students at all levels. —Marc Beja
Posted on Friday June 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]June 19, 2009
Brigham Young U. Suspends Kindle-Lending Program
Brigham Young University’s library will no longer let professors check out books on Kindles — at least, not until it receives written permission from Amazon, the company that makes the e-book readers.
To meet the high demand for popular new books, the library had purchased Kindles and used them to lend out digital copies. Campus officials said the university had received verbal consent from Amazon, but Brigham Young decided to put the program on hold until it received written consent.
“I understand the Inter-Library Loan Department had a few Kindles, and they set up a system to check them out as a test,” Rogen Layton, a university spokesman, told The Chronicle in an e-mail message. “Being a library, we will follow the rules and until the rules are clear we will wait.” Amazon has not responded to the university’s request for written permission, Mr. Layton said, but he did not offer further explanation of why the university had suddenly halted the program.
Library Journal reported that the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s library has been lending nine Kindles for more than a year without any argument from Amazon.
“We do not see a violation of the terms of service agreement,” Joyce Neujahr, the university’s director of patron services, told the publication.
Ms. Neujahr said the library did not feel that it needed to ask Amazon for approval. “We have purchased the content on the Kindle, and loan the Kindle just like we loan a hardcover, print book,” she said. “Whether it is on a shelf, or on a Kindle, we have still purchased the title.” — Marc Beja
Posted on Friday June 19, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [7]June 15, 2009
Podcast: How Google Book Search Affects Academe
Depending on whom you ask, Google’s Book Search book-scanning project lays the foundation for a universal, digitized library or creates a dangerous monopoly on information. The Chronicle sat down with Adam Smith, director of product management at Google, to talk about Book Search, the proposed settlement in the authors-and-publishers lawsuit against it, what it means for academic authors and researchers and so-called orphan works, and fears of a Google monopoly. Listen to a podcast of the conversation. —Jennifer Howard
Posted on Monday June 15, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [2]June 11, 2009
New Coalition Will Work to Bring Broadband Internet Access to the Public
A group of education, health, and library advocates has formed a new coalition to expand broadband Internet access. It will focus on how to most efficiently bring access to the public by using community institutions — including community colleges and other higher-education institutions — as a base.
The new Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition is made up of 28 commercial and not-for-profit groups, including the American Library Association, Internet2, and and Educause. It will seek federal money to provide broadband access first through “anchor institutions,” such as colleges, schools, libraries, and hospitals, since millions of people rely on those institutions already. The coalition says the high-speed connections could help schools and community colleges offer specialized courses and distance learning, could help health-care facilities make better use of telemedicine, and could help colleges and universities advance research.
“There’s not enough money in the stimulus bill to bring fiber optics to everybody’s home,” said the coalition’s coordinator, John Windhausen Jr. “One of the best ways is to bring the broadband to where the most people are likely to get it.”
“It would bring better education, higher quality research, and more collaboration,” said Gary Bachula, Internet2’s vice president of external relations. “You will get the most bang for the buck by reaching those institutions.” —Marc Beja
Posted on Thursday June 11, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [3]May 20, 2009
U. of Michigan Expands Book-Search Agreement; Google Makes Its Case to Librarians
The University of Michigan has expanded its agreement with Google’s Book Search program, the university announced today. The move takes into account the terms of the proposed settlement in the lawsuit brought against Google by the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers, the university said.
Michigan has been one of Google’s leading partners in the Book Search venture. The revamped agreement “opens up the U-M library’s extensive collections of 8 million works to readers and students throughout the United States with free previews, the ability to buy access to the university’s collections online and through subscriptions at other institutions,” according to the statement. It describes the new terms as a boost to Michigan’s efforts to preserve and promote public access to its library holdings.
Meanwhile, the American Library Association alerted its membership that Google appears to be conducting a charm offensive designed to allay librarians’ fears about the proposed settlement. “Google is reaching out to library leaders, likely in response to an increase in interest in the community and the press about the concerns libraries have raised in response to the proposed private settlement agreement,” the ALA said. The group advised librarians who do meet with Google reps to ask about such hot topics as access and pricing and patron privacy. —Jennifer Howard
Posted on Wednesday May 20, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]May 13, 2009
Library Protesters to Ohio State U.: Digital's OK, but Save Our Books!
About two dozen faculty members and students, clutching signs that read “Don’t Gut the Library” and “Keep our books on campus,” picketed the administration building at Ohio State University yesterday, The Columbus Dispatch and the Associated Press reported. The protesters were upset over the culling of printed materials—275,000 books and other works, they said—from the university’s libraries between 2005 and 2008. Another 55,000 items have been discarded in the past four months, according to the picketers.
“What people here are concerned about is the idea of a research collection, much of which will never be digitalized,” John Burnham, a professor of history and one of the protesters, told The Chronicle in an e-mail message. He said that researchers in disciplines like African studies “are particularly concerned” that the materials they work with will not be available in digital form.
“It’s true that a great deal has been opened up online and more will be,” the professor observed. But “the currently faddish business model” means that there is less and less physical space for books, and less opportunity for the kind of scholarly browsing that results in “serendipitous discoveries.”
Will we see other protests, on other campuses, about the streamlining of research-library holdings as the great digital shift accelerates, budgets shrink, and storage space becomes ever tighter? “The factors that led to the protest are those that face any great library now—and the research personnel who use the library,” Mr. Burnham said.
In a telephone interview with The Chronicle, Joe Branin, OSU’s director of libraries, said that the institution remains committed to its print collections. The university’s main library will reopen in August after a three-year renovation, and it will still contain more than a million volumes. But the book depository the university opened two decades ago for library overflow is almost full. The recent culling has targeted duplicate items “so we can make more room for material moving in,” he said.
“There’s a consolidation of print collections around the world. I don’t think that can be changed,” Mr. Branin said. “Keeping large collections is not inexpensive. And we want to keep a large collection, but we want it to be a useful, rational collection, not just whatever has been accumulated over hundreds of years.”
Tight space isn’t the only force at work. Researchers’ behavior is shifting away from print. “All the data that we gather indicate that there’s a growing preference for online digital access to information,” Mr. Branin said. That means, for instance, that it’s no longer economically feasible to maintain separate departmental libraries in journalism, business, theater arts, and social sciences. He understands that “for some faculty and students, that’s very emotionally upsetting.”
Not everything should be in a local collection, he believes. OSU is working with a statewide consortium of libraries to figure out how to make best use of one another’s holdings. “For us as research librarians—and I said this to the protesters yesterday—our goal is to try to preserve the record of scholarship,” he said. “We have to come up with a better system nationally and internationally. There are just so many inefficiencies in the way we’ve been doing it.” —Jennifer Howard
Posted on Wednesday May 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [59]March 2, 2009
Switch-Tasking and Twittering Into the Future at Library and Museum Meeting
WASHINGTON, D.C.—If you’re used to the decorum of a big academic conference—the Modern Language Association’s annual confab, for instance—the atmosphere at last week’s WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital Age comes as a bit of a shock. No more furtive tapping away at your laptop in the dark corners of meeting rooms. Laptops are not only tolerated at WebWise, they’re practically mandatory.
At this year’s WebWise conference, held here Feb. 26-27, the organizers—the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Wolfsonian museum at Florida International University—arranged for a designated conference wifi connection. They also set up a backchannel Twitter-style feed (via a service called Today’s Meet) where attendees kept up a lively running dialogue in short-message form during the presentations. Many were tweeting at the same time, tagging their posts to create a running Twitter stream of commentary and i-reports. (Twitter also turns out to be a handy way to solicit local restaurant recommendations.)
Don’t call it multitasking; “switch-tasking” was the term du jour. Welcome to the conference of the very, very near future.
“Digital Debates” was the theme this year, but one didn’t hear much debate among the 300 or so museum and library professionals who showed up and plugged in. (There were power strips on every table.) Most sounded eager to figure out how to use social networks—Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc.—to expand their audiences and draw on outside expertise. They seemed to agree with Michael Edson, director of digital media strategy at the Smithsonian Institution, who said in a presentation that “the future of knowledge creation is about putting it out there and building it collaboratively.” That’s how “tomorrow’s scholars” will operate, he said. Several presenters made similar points about today’s young people, the so-called digital natives who grew up with technology and use it as much to create content as to consume it.
Shelley Bernstein, chief of technology at the Brooklyn Museum, told a story about how social networking can benefit a cultural institution. The museum posted some images from its collection on The Commons, a space on the photo-sharing site Flickr dedicated to public photo collections. Not much happened at first, she said, and the museum was about to abandon the experiment until a group of devoted Flickr users began to make use of the material. One was so taken by the museum’s photos of the 1893 Chicago Exposition that he started adding tags to identify different buildings. Like a good curator or archivist, he even provided sources. “Now we see people who have a real investment in these materials looking at them and helping us,” Ms. Bernstein said. —Jennifer Howard
Posted on Monday March 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [8]February 23, 2009
Chinese Leader Gives 200,000 E-Books to U. of Cambridge
The donation of 200,000 electronic books by Premier Wen Jiabao of China has made the University of Cambridge’s library home to one of the world’s largest collections of Chinese monographs.
Mr. Wen’s “gift is one of the largest single donations received in the University Library’s 650-year history and almost doubles the number of electronic books at its disposal,” the university said in a statement.
Officials say that the e-book system used for the donated volumes was developed by Beijing Founder Apabi Technology Ltd. According to the company’s Web site, it was established at Peking University in 1986 and is one of China’s leading publishers of electronic works. —Aisha Labi
Posted on Monday February 23, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [2]