Two interesting events (Future of Libraries)

A couple of interesting events in the last few days:

The JISC Libraries of the future conference has inspired a lot of blogging, and rightly so I think, some serious minds at work on the future of (Academic) Libraries

Libraries of the Future website:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/librariesofthefuture

Hangin Together comment:
http://hangingtogether.org/?p=652

Also 'The Darien Statement'; a statement that emerged from an event at Darien Public Library.

John Blyberg on The Darien Statement:
http://www.blyberg.net/2009/04/03/the-darien-statements-on-the-library-and-librarians/

Kathryn Greenhill:
http://librariansmatter.com/blog/2009/04/04/on-writing-the-darien-statements/

Please post links to your favourite blogger's opinion on either of these.

Disciplinary Research Behaviour

I found this graphic in a blog post discussing a new study that contradicts a previous study whose findings indicated that increased electronic availability of journal articles was actually narrowing the range of articles cited.
The graphic itself is a different point entirely, but it nicely sums up the research behaviour differences between the sciences and the humanities and also maps interdisciplinary research behaviour, which is interesting.

Image source and original post: http://hangingtogether.org/?p=648

"Bitter Fruits" of Research Quality Evaluation

The UK has been running a research quality evaluation (RAE) for years longer than Australia has had the ERA/RQF, and they have just released the first round of funding that is directly tied to research quality output.

There is apost about the "bitter fruits" at Hanging Together

There is also a good article in the Guardian that discusses the winners and the losers.

Marginalia and other crimes

From Cambridge University Library, an online exhibition looking at damage to library resources "Marginalia and other crimes".

A wonderful (and quite humorous) display of pedantry, motivated clearly by a deep love of books. It makes me happy to know there are people willing and able to devote so much time to projects like this.

"Books damaged deliberately are replaced with the same edition. The reader is charged the replacement price plus an administration charge. The Library Syndicate levies a fine of up to ₤175, depending on the circumstances. On the first offence, once all fines are paid, the reader usually retains their privilege of using UL. We have not had a case of a second offence. These matters are usually settled in-house. But replacement costs quickly accumulate into large sums. One case cost the reader ₤2,500 in total."

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/marginalia/

Online Exhibition

This is a link to an online exhibition with the theme of books - I thought it may be of interest.

http://www.noise.net/curation_popup.asp?id=113

Academic Library websites

I came across this provocative article called "The Library Web Site of the Future" by Steven J. Bell. I found it worth reading for some ideas about the role of the website and how that should/could change to reflect scholarly preferences.

"Rather than attempting to mimic search engines academic librarians should aim to differentiate their Web sites. They should devote the most eye-catching space to information that promotes the people who work at the library, the services they provide and the community activities that anchor the library’s place as the social, cultural and intellectual center of campus. That shifts the focus from content to service and from information to people. Academic libraries must promote their human side. The library portal experience should emphasize the value of and invite stronger relationships with faculty and students. That means going beyond offering a commodity that, by and large, the user community can well access without the Web site. The next generation academic library Web site must leverage what academic librarians can do to help faculty and students improve their productivity and achieve success"

Opinions?

Scholarly information practices

I came across this recent OCLC publication today which aims to synthesize the wealth of dispersed information on this area into something more easily digestible. That said it's quite long so obviously I haven't read it all but along with reaffirming what we already know (they want everything online) it looks like there is some interesting data and visual representations about how researchers from different field go about their research and how we can better tailor our support.

Scholarly information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development

http://www.oclc.org/programs/publications/reports/2009-02.pdf

Flickr Commons

The Library of Congress have been using Flickr for a while now to increase the accessibility of some of their enormous collection of historically interesting and out of copyright photographs as part of the Flickr Commons project. many other cultural institutions are also participating, including the State Library of NSW.

Last october the Library of Congress issued a report that gave the experiment a thumbs up:

"In the first 24 hours after launch, Flickr reported 1.1 million total views on our account; a little over a week later, the account had received 3.6 million page views and 1.9 million total visits. That included over 2 million views of the photos, and over 1 million views of the photostream. By early October, LC photos were averaging approximately 500,000 views a month and had crossed the 10 million mark in total views and the 6 million mark for visits. Interestingly, 82% of this traffic was referred from within Flickr; only 3% came from search engines"

So, could UTAS Libraries be increasing the accessibility of some of our digital collections by using Flickr Commons? I would suggest it makes a lot of sense.

Full PDF Report(http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_report_final.pdf)

Flickr Commons (http://www.flickr.com/commons)

"BlueNet"

I came across this by accident, but it is an interesting development that UTAS is leading. There has been quite a bit of talk about the role of the Library in curating eScience research data, I am curious as to whether anyone at UTAS Library has heard of this project?

"The BlueNet project will establish a national distributed marine science data network linking universities to the AODCJF, to support the long term data curation requirements, and data access needs of Australia’s marine science researchers.

BlueNet will build infrastructure to enable the discovery, access and online integration of multi-disciplinary marine science data on a very large scale, to support current and future marine science and climate change research, ecosystem management and government decision making."

Bluenet.org.au

Search interface "MEST"

Australia's most cited paper for 2008

I came across this via Stephen Abram's blog, from Science watch comes a list of the most cited countries (Australia is 9th), and each country's most cited paper. It's more of a curiousity than anything, unless you are the author of one of the papers I suppose, but interesting anyway. So (drum roll) the most cited paper is:

Most-cited paper from Clinical Medicine with 2,634 citations:
Title: "THE BCL-2 PROTEIN FAMILY: ARBITERS OF CELL SURVIVAL"
Authors: ADAMS JM; CORY S
Source: SCIENCE, 281 (5381): 1322-1326 AUG 28 1998

Unsurprisingly all the most cited papers are science or medical research. Full list here (http://sciencewatch.com/dr/cou/2009/09janALLPAPRS/)