The Distant Librarian

Change to Google Scholar Advanced Search

Thanks to a thread on the Web4Lib list I just learned that Google Scholar has changed the way you get to the Advanced Search options.

Instead of looking for a link, you'll now hit the down arrow at the right side of the search box:

At that point you'll see the advanced search options:

Some thoughts on the Access Copyright - AUCC Model Licence

I honestly don't have anything new to add to this situation, but I wanted to throw together a few links for you to follow (legally even!) if you want to try and figure out what's going through the heads of the administrators at Canadian Universities that are planning to sign on with the Access Copyright - AUCC Model Licence. I can sure think of better places for a University to spend a large amount of money!

First, Michael Geist, as always, offers a clear and well-reasoned post: Why Universities Should Not Sign the Access Copyright - AUCC Model Licence.

Second, earlier today The Faculty Association of the University of Calgary (TUCFA) posted a link to a fascinating PDF in which CAUT, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, responds point by point to the University of Calgary's response to CAUT's concerns with the AUCC/Access Copyright model licence. 

Finally, earlier this month Ariel Katz, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, took a detailed look at how the recent decision in the Georgia State University copyright case is relevant here in Canada. He concludes that, "... American universities are much more willing to assert and defend their rights, while many Canadian ones, short-sighted, extremely risk-averse, and ill-advised, still cling to their habit of being dependent on Access Copyright."

Ouch, and spot on, IMHO!

Oh, and I notice Dr. Katz is also keeping a running list of members in the Canadian Hall of F/Sh/ame.

New Book: Screencasting for Libraries

Greg Notess, one of the first to see the possibilities of screencasting in libraries, has just announced that his new book, Screencasting for Libraries, part of the excellent ALA Tech Set series, has now been published. I had a chance to review this title a couple of months ago and found it an excellent guide for those getting started, and it also includes some good tools and suggestions for the seasoned screencaster. 

There's a companion website that provides a couple of useful tools, but I found the section where Greg covers chapter 5, Implementation, fascinating. In chapter 5 Greg walks you through 12 different projects, using several different approaches and tools. In the companion website, you can actually see the end result of each of those projects - a wonderful (and obvious, for this subject) was to complete the learning loop.

Go check it out!

Game Changers - new ebook from Educause

Educause has just released a new ebook called Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies, which you can download for free. I just ran a quick search through the 388-page PDF version and see that libraries are mentioned in a significant way about a half-dozen times, so you might find it worth your while to take a peek at least. Follow the link above to get to the table of contents as well; it's far too long to repost here! Here's the blurb from the site:

How can we reach more learners, more effectively, and with greater impact?

Education changes lives and societies, but can we sustain the current model? New models and new technologies allow us to rethink many of the premises of education—location and time, credits and credentials, knowledge creation and sharing.

Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies is a collection of chapters and case studies contributed by college and university presidents, provosts, faculty, and other stakeholders. Institutions are finding new ways of achieving higher education’s mission without being crippled by constraints or overpowered by greater expectations.

Find out who is changing the game and what we can learn from their different approaches in Game Changers.

11 tools for creating digital magazines

Can't remember how I came across this one, but over at NetMagazine you'll find a great post sharing 10 tools you can use to create professional-looking digital magazines, and most without any significant cost at all! Each entry lists the pros and cons of each tool, and links to a working example you can check out. The 11th tool in my title refers to the author's own startup, woop.ie, which is only a link at the end of the article.

 

After 244 years, Britannica announces it will discontinue its print version

As reported in the New York Times, "Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project."

It'll be interesting how this will change basic intro to research courses when "check an encyclopedia to get started" isn't actually an option...

First Annual Open Education Week - March 5-10, 2012

The OpenCourseWare Consortium announces the first annual Open Education Week from March 5-10, 2012.  Open Education Week is a global event that seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in education, especially Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are high-quality, free and open educational materials that offer opportunities for people anywhere in the world to share, use and reuse. 

“The vision of the open education movement is to create a world in which the desire to learn is fully met by the opportunity to do so, where everyone, everywhere, is able to access affordable, educationally and culturally appropriate opportunities to gain whatever knowledge or training they desire. The movement encompasses producing, sharing, using and modifying content, as well as innovative models of educational delivery,” said Mary Lou Forward, executive director of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. “Open Education Week will showcase projects, resources, people and ideas so that people around the world can see the breadth of what has been accomplished already, and participate in discussions about the future of the movement.”

Open Education Week is being coordinated by the OpenCourseWare Consortium.  The event will take place online and in different locations around the world, with opportunities to participate in webinars, discussions and live events. Projects and events will be featured from institutions and organizations from around the world, including: University of Cape Town, University of Michigan, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, University of California, Irvine, Delft University of Technology, and Creative Commons. Participation is free and open to all. Visit www.openeducationweek.org for more information.

About The OpencCourseWare Consortium: The OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC) is a community of more than 250 universities and associated organizations worldwide. The mission of the OCWC and its member institutions is to advance formal and informal learning for educators and self-learners around the world through the sharing and use of free, open, high-quality education materials packaged as courses readily accessible on a digital platform.  The Consortium showcases its members to a global audience and provides information and training through webinars, newsletters, and free and open materials.  For more information, visit http://www.ocwconsortium.org.

Libraries & the Post-PC era

Jason Griffey's currently Down Under, and last week he gave a plenary address at VALA2012 entitled Libraries & the Post-PC era. The whole address is available online, and it's a good use of an hour of your time.

When it started, I remembered a quote I'd heard a while back that if a keynote speaker said lots of things that were new to you, then you weren't reading enough, and for the most part I *had* heard what Jason was talking about. Where it got interesting to me was about halfway through when he started talking about gadgets, and some examples of just how connected our up-and-coming users really are.

I hadn't been paying close enough attention to notice that Jason's slides were all tricked out, but he just posted how he used Keynote to do this. "My goal with the presentation was to make it look and run like no other presentation that people had seen…I don’t think I got 100% of what I wanted to achieve, but I got about 75% of the way there, and definitely got the idea across."

Neat stuff, and good infomation!

How Users Search the Library from a Single Search Box

A preprint from College & Research Libraries is well worth your read, even if you're not a webmaster: How Users Search the Library from a Single Search Box (from NCSU, Cory Lown, Tito Sierra, and Josh Boyer)

Abstract

Academic libraries are turning increasingly to unified search solutions to simplify search and discovery of library resources. Unfortunately, very little research has been published on library user search behavior in single search box environments. This study examines how users search a large public university library using a prominent, single search box on the library website. The article examines two semesters of real-world data, totaling nearly 1.4 million transactions. Findings include that unified library search is about more than the catalog and articles, though these predominate. Additionally, a small number of the most popular search queries accounts for a disproportionate amount of the overall queries. Also discussed are the merits of ongoing evaluation of library user search behavior.

(it's not nearly as long as you'd think upon initial download; the last half of the PDF are the images and a couple of pages of references)

Call for nominations - Springhare Innovation in Academic Libraries Award

The Academic Division of SLA is very proud to present for the second year an award for academic libraries, sponsored by Springshare, Inc., creator of LibGuides!

This annual award recognizes a new program or service that demonstrates an innovative approach to academic librarianship. Please feel free to distribute to all innovative academic libraries you may know.

Award
A certificate and a $500 US award, donated by Springshare, are presented during the Academic Library Division Business Meeting at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference. The winning library is also recognized through the Academic Division’s various public relations outlets.

Criteria
Projects nominated for the award should demonstrate recognized innovation, creativity and quality. Nominated programs or services can have been developed in any facet of the library’s activities, including but not limited to:

• reference and research assistance;
• information literacy and library instruction;
• collection development;
• cataloging and/or technical services;
• space planning; or
• marketing and public relations

Eligibility
Academic or research libraries in a higher education institution are eligible to receive the award. Recipients must have implemented their program or service in an academic or research library no more than two years prior to the nomination submission deadline. Nominated libraries do not have to have a SLA or an SLA-Academic Division member on staff.

Submissions
Nominations must include a 500-1000 words description of the innovative program or service and must demonstrate usage and/or success of implementation using accepted assessment methods. Include any other supporting print or electronic documentation that would assist the committee in evaluating the purpose, content, impact, and innovative aspects of the program or service.

Send nominations to the Academic Division Awards Committee Chair, Catherine Lavallée-Welch, Director, University of South Florida Polytechnic Library, clw@poly.usf.edu.

Note: Electronic submissions are required.

Submission Deadline: April 1st, 2012

Thanks for nothing, big guys (UofT and UWO cave to Access Copyright)

This made a big splash up here in Canada last week, but then seemed to quickly quiet down, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong spots. Read many of the details on the Excess Copyright blog, but as Howard Knopf points out, "In an astonishing development that has caught all but a handful by surprise, U. of T. and Western have signed copyright deals with Access Copyright that appear to be an early and complete capitulation to an important battle over the costs and parameters of access to knowledge in Canadian post-secondary institutions."

Down in the comments someone writes, "I actually sit on the Access Copyright Working Group for Western. No one that I know on that committee knew anything about this agreement. It also comes hot on the heels of the entire student body (undergraduate and graduate students alike) voting to opt out of the Access Copyright Tariff. There are many, many questions about the deal and the entire process that need to be made public."

See also Sam Trosow's post on the subject.

Does anyone have words from the institutions about why they've caved like this? 

CFP: Fourth International M-Libraries Conference

Found onthe m-libraries blog, information about the call for papers for the 4th M-Libraries Conference, to be held at The Open University on 24th-26th September, 2012. The Open University is headquartered in Milton Keynes, UK.

Please submit your abstracts (up to 300 words) by 15^th of March 2012 to m-libraries-conference@open.ac.uk

CFP: Extend and Unify: Outreach and Education for Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy Programs

Call for Proposals: Book chapters on scholarly communication and information literacy
Title: Extend and Unify: Outreach and Education for Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy Programs
Book editors: Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Scholarly Communication Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University and Merinda Kaye Hensley, Instructional Services Librarian/Coordinator, Scholarly Commons at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Estimated publication date: ALA 2013 Midwinter Conference
Publisher: Association of College and Research Libraries.This book will be published in print, available for purchase in various e-book formats, and available as a free downloadable book.

Editors of the forthcoming ACRL publications book, Extend and Unify: Outreach and Education for Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy Programs, seek proposals for chapters from skilled librarians or

others involved in education around scholarly communication issues who have researched strategies and/or implemented programs on the intersections between scholarly communication (SC) issues and information literacy (IL). This book aims to create a roadmap for librarians to integrate scholarly communication and information literacy programs through instruction, outreach and other educative opportunities. Written for practicing librarians who wish to build a toolkit for integrating scholarly communication issues into information literacy and vice versa, this book will provide essays, case studies, best practices, lesson plans and outlines, and other material for building collaboration and promoting discussion on scholarly communication issues in libraries and in the academy.

Potential topics include:

• teaching strategies for addressing scholarly communication issues by population - undergraduates, graduate students, staff, administration, faculty as well as by academic discipline 
• examples of instruction and outreach through embedded librarianship and reference work 
• case studies detailing SC/IL program alignment, collaboration, partnerships between SC and IL librarians, student publishing, campus or discipline-specific research conferences 
• classroom-based, curricular integration for undergrads or graduate students which could include IL session outlines, lesson plans, outreach examples 
• essays focusing on educating students, faculty and/or staff, possibly by discipline, on specific issues e.g., author rights, copyright/Creative Commons, OA/public access or specific types of scholarly or creative work, e.g., data, images, performances, music, multimedia, etc. 
• addressing perspectives of faculty, staff, administration including buy-in, engagement, conversational openings, and educational programs 
• assessment of SC/IL programming and outreach efforts

Please note: We are looking for diverse perspectives on these issues across types of higher education institutions including community colleges, liberal arts colleges/universities, ARL institutions, etc.

Target audience: The target audience for this publication is both librarians who are responsible for instruction, information literacy, and/or scholarly communication; liaison librarians and/or bibliographers who are responsible for outreach and education of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff in any discipline, and program coordinators for both SC and IL.

Submission procedure and timeline: Authors are invited to submit proposal by March 2, 2012. Proposals should include author name(s), institutional affiliation, proposed chapter title, 2-page summary of proposed chapter and a current CV. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by April 2, 2012. Full chapters (4,000+ words) are expected to be submitted by June 30, 2012. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a blind review basis. Chapters should be unique to this publication - no previously published or simultaneously submitted material should be included. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

All inquiries and proposals should be emailed by March 2, 2012 to scil.book@gmail.com.

Stephanie Davis-Kahl
Illinois Wesleyan University

Merinda Kaye Hensley
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Canadian Learning Commons Conference - registration now open

Looking for an excuse to come check out our awesome new library building? Why not register for the 6^th Canadian Learning Commons Conference, to be held here at the University of Calgary, May 7-9, 2012. The theme of the conference is New Media, New Fluencies and Life Skills Development: Preparing Learners for the 21st Century, and you'll find the list of sessions here. Oh, and just 'cause it says "Canadian" in the title doesn't mean you guys south of the border can't come - Calgary should be pretty nice in early May (but no promises).

Mentoring a New Distance Education Librarian

A newish book popped up for me on an ego alert, and I learned that Mentoring in Librarianship: Essays on Working with Adults and Students to Further the Profession contains a chapter specifically on Mentoring a New Distance Education Librarian (it's chapter 27, written by Annie Knight). It's also available on Amazon, where you can search inside the book to decide if it's right for you.