Andrew Glass 3/30/09
Prof. Pemberton LIB. 103
Annotated Bibliography (Part 3)
N/A. “Scholarly Communication Crisis.” Library Mosaics. 14.6 (2003): 23-23.
Despite the notable lack of author in this article, it can be used as a reliable and pithy introduction to the concept of scholarly communication and its current crisis. Perhaps intended for faculty room reading during a lunch break, this one page article dives right into how the scholarly communication cycle begins and how it ends; that is it starts when a faculty member does research and needs to have it published and ends when the university has to pay the publisher for the research its own faculty member wrote about. From here the article goes into the fact that the publishing costs have “skyrocketed” over the past fifteen years, and increasingly libraries are finding that they simply do not have the funding to spend on the subscription. Next is mentioned the various ways libraries are trying to manage this problem; from relying more on online databases to simply subscribing to fewer journals. One of the more interesting features of this article has to do with the suggestions it lays out for dealing with this epidemic. The article suggests that faculty members try to protect their copyrights to their work. Or more specifically that they should bargain with the publisher to allow them to at least distribute their findings to their students and their library. It closes with the sentiment that this problem is going to take a lot of time and effort on the part of many individuals working together to fix it.
Yiotis, Kristen. “The Open Access Initiative: A New Paradigm for Scholarly Communications.” Information Technologies & Libraries. 24. 4 (2005): 157-162.
Kristen Yiotis, a graduate of San Jose State University and their library technologies program writes an article on a subject that she is well acquainted with: the scholarly communication crisis. While at its heart her article is about the crisis surrounding scholarly communication, it makes the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the “whys”/ “how’s” and jumps right into a suggested solution for the problem. In her article she discusses what is known as the “Open Access Initiative” (or OA for short), its origin, the basic mechanics that lay behind it, and how this initiative offers a second option for scholars who want to be published (but do not want to go to a publisher). While this article is written in plain English, one really should have a background in the subject that she discusses in order to get the most out of her article. While at times it can drift to personal opinion, Yiotis remains grounded in solid fact and her article can be used in furthering the discussion on scholarly communication fairly easily.
Milne, Patricia. “Scholarly communication: crisis, response and future: a review of the literature.”Austrilian Acidemic & Research Libraries.30.2 (1999): 70-88.
Patricia Milne, a long-time libraian and writer for Austrilian Acidemic & Research Libraries first sets out in her article to do what many other authers in this field attempt to to: simply define what the scholarly communication crisis is and how it came about. In truth there is only so much
one may say about the means by which this present dilemma came to be; it’s the same the world round be it here in the US or over in Australia. However the interesting feature that stands out in her article is that she examines not the common three pronged explination to this problem (that being scholar, publisher, impoverished library), but rather she looks at, in addition to these concepts, what she calls the “learned societies themselves”. Milne also strives to examine how the digital age in which we live exasperates the situation by making unclear the “once-clear distinctions and relationships between them [“them” being the aforementioned elements of the crisis”]”. On the whole her work is intended for intorductory audiences to this subject.
Albert, Daniel M. MD, Liesegang, Thomas J. MD, and Andrew P. Schachat MD. “The Open Access initiative in scientific and biomedical publishing: Fourth in the series on editorship.” American Journal of Ophthalmology. 139. 1 (2005): 156-167.
The three authors of this article Albery, Liesegang, and Schachat are Editors in Chiefs of Archives of Ophthalmology in Madison Wisconsin, American Journal of Ophthalmology in Jacksonville Florida, and Ophthalmology in Baltimore Maryland (respectivly). They provide another intorductory, yet highly authoritative, look into the Open Access Initiative (OA); a hopefull soultion for the communication crisis. In their article they set out to outline the basic concepts of OA, it’s history, and “the value of the traditional print model”. They argue that it will be a financial impossibility to maintain both the traditional print model of publishing an dthe newer digital method. In either case they maintaine that pains must be taken so that knowledge is not lost, and that it can be disseminated as needed. While this is an introductory work it is still important that the audience has some prior understanding of the subject.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Reading Report #5
“Information Navigation 101”
Andrea L. Foster
Chronicle of Higher Education
According to Andrea Foster, despite all the technical know-how that the college student of today possesses he or she is not so good in evaluating their source materials. In her article she and others reminisce about the days when the only authoritative source for information was your college library. From here she moves onto what institutions are doing to help their students today. This help comes primarily in the form of information literacy programs that are part of both high school testing and some college courses. This concept of information literacy (and its various courses) is not a new one. It has been banging around since 1974 when Paul Zurkowski founded his now extinct “Information Industry Association”. But Foster dog-ears the date 1989 as the time when information literacy really took off with the backing of the American Library Association; who advocated the incorporation of information literacy based courses and testing into public high schools and colleges. After brining us up to date on the information literacy back-story, Ms. Foster reasserts that students are inept at finding and evaluating their sources. While she holds this to be true, she draws our attention to an underlying issue surrounding information literacy: how to interpret it. There are a couple schools of thought that are mentioned here. One of them has to do with the fear that in defining information literacy too stringently all creativity and pleasure in the subject is snuffed out. Another thought comes from Stanley Wilder, an associate dean of libraries at the University of Rochester. In his opinion he thinks that information literacy should not be treated as a separate discipline, but instead (presumably) incorporated into the subjects already being taught. He goes on to say that the entire concept is something of a moot point in that gaining access to information is becoming such that things like “Boolean qualifiers” simply do not need to be taught. Yet at campuses like Fullerton faculty and staff feel that these courses are essential in a student body over dependent on Google. After this “debate” Foster goes into the actual testing of the students. Here she covers what the test consists of and to whom it is administered to (usually freshmen…go fig). The view of librarians on this test is that they are unsatisfied in its scope saying that the test focuses on only one aspect of information literacy. They are said to favor more diversified means of testing such as papers and presentations that really make the student apply their knowledge of information gathering. Others, like Richard C. Pollard, would wryly disagree saying that “it is the faculty members who need testing”.
My response to this article is one of insult. I cannot and hope never to have to speak for the rest of the student body, but I for one feel as if I can interpret my sources well enough. I must admit, however, that as I am writing this I have already gone through a couple of information literacy/ critical thinking courses to date. So maybe my indignation is a bit unfounded.
Andrea L. Foster
Chronicle of Higher Education
According to Andrea Foster, despite all the technical know-how that the college student of today possesses he or she is not so good in evaluating their source materials. In her article she and others reminisce about the days when the only authoritative source for information was your college library. From here she moves onto what institutions are doing to help their students today. This help comes primarily in the form of information literacy programs that are part of both high school testing and some college courses. This concept of information literacy (and its various courses) is not a new one. It has been banging around since 1974 when Paul Zurkowski founded his now extinct “Information Industry Association”. But Foster dog-ears the date 1989 as the time when information literacy really took off with the backing of the American Library Association; who advocated the incorporation of information literacy based courses and testing into public high schools and colleges. After brining us up to date on the information literacy back-story, Ms. Foster reasserts that students are inept at finding and evaluating their sources. While she holds this to be true, she draws our attention to an underlying issue surrounding information literacy: how to interpret it. There are a couple schools of thought that are mentioned here. One of them has to do with the fear that in defining information literacy too stringently all creativity and pleasure in the subject is snuffed out. Another thought comes from Stanley Wilder, an associate dean of libraries at the University of Rochester. In his opinion he thinks that information literacy should not be treated as a separate discipline, but instead (presumably) incorporated into the subjects already being taught. He goes on to say that the entire concept is something of a moot point in that gaining access to information is becoming such that things like “Boolean qualifiers” simply do not need to be taught. Yet at campuses like Fullerton faculty and staff feel that these courses are essential in a student body over dependent on Google. After this “debate” Foster goes into the actual testing of the students. Here she covers what the test consists of and to whom it is administered to (usually freshmen…go fig). The view of librarians on this test is that they are unsatisfied in its scope saying that the test focuses on only one aspect of information literacy. They are said to favor more diversified means of testing such as papers and presentations that really make the student apply their knowledge of information gathering. Others, like Richard C. Pollard, would wryly disagree saying that “it is the faculty members who need testing”.
My response to this article is one of insult. I cannot and hope never to have to speak for the rest of the student body, but I for one feel as if I can interpret my sources well enough. I must admit, however, that as I am writing this I have already gone through a couple of information literacy/ critical thinking courses to date. So maybe my indignation is a bit unfounded.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Reading #3
“The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google”
Steven Bell
Chronicle of Higher Education
In this article the author, Steven Bell, makes the argument that the search engine Google is beginning to challenge the place of academic libraries in terms of patronage. This is compounded by the fact that people, in particular students, are begging to ignore their libraries to the point of being surprised that they actually have one available to them. In essence Bell makes his argument that “the academic library has clearly lost its monopoly as the campus information gateway”. However he maintains that this need not be the case; libraries can revamp themselves to draw back wayward patrons and students. But the question is how exactly to do this? One way is to simply make finding information easier. It seems one of the main complaints students have is that when they search a library data base they get frustrated with how difficult it is and in that frustration give up their search. Now, however, libraries are trying to “Google-ize” their data bases to be less restrictive and broader in their search results. While this is a good idea, many libraries don’t wish to “lower” themselves to Goggle standards. Instead they are coming out with programs to help their students make sense of the complicated methods in which they can find information at their libraries. Programs like “the information-literacy initiative” try to teach students how to trudge through electronic and paper resources; but for the most part many more people are of the opinion that libraries should simply get with the times.
Personally I have never had too much trouble finding the information I needed at a library. This may be due to the fact that both my parents were teachers and I spent many a weekend of my childhood in a library while they did research for one thing or another. I recognize that most people don’t have this…background, and so I sympathize with them and support the modernization of the library catalogue.
Steven Bell
Chronicle of Higher Education
In this article the author, Steven Bell, makes the argument that the search engine Google is beginning to challenge the place of academic libraries in terms of patronage. This is compounded by the fact that people, in particular students, are begging to ignore their libraries to the point of being surprised that they actually have one available to them. In essence Bell makes his argument that “the academic library has clearly lost its monopoly as the campus information gateway”. However he maintains that this need not be the case; libraries can revamp themselves to draw back wayward patrons and students. But the question is how exactly to do this? One way is to simply make finding information easier. It seems one of the main complaints students have is that when they search a library data base they get frustrated with how difficult it is and in that frustration give up their search. Now, however, libraries are trying to “Google-ize” their data bases to be less restrictive and broader in their search results. While this is a good idea, many libraries don’t wish to “lower” themselves to Goggle standards. Instead they are coming out with programs to help their students make sense of the complicated methods in which they can find information at their libraries. Programs like “the information-literacy initiative” try to teach students how to trudge through electronic and paper resources; but for the most part many more people are of the opinion that libraries should simply get with the times.
Personally I have never had too much trouble finding the information I needed at a library. This may be due to the fact that both my parents were teachers and I spent many a weekend of my childhood in a library while they did research for one thing or another. I recognize that most people don’t have this…background, and so I sympathize with them and support the modernization of the library catalogue.
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