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By David Brooks: Why would your local library, a symbol of print-on-paper respectability, embrace open-source software, a symbol of the digital world’s most anti-establishment streak? Money, mostly. Open-source software, which can be used and tweaked by anybody and which carries no corporate charges, is reasonably close to being free. But that’s the only reason, say some area librarians who are about to switch circulation, acquisitions, Web development, and other functions to one of two major open-source systems for libraries, called Evergreen and Koha. “With proprietary (software), if you want an enhancement, a new feature, you’ll have to wait until demand builds for it. With Evergreen and Koha, you have access to a developer network worldwide that can work on it,” said Charlie Matthews, director of the Rodgers Library in Hudson. It is about to switch to Evergreen, originally developed for the Georgia state library system.
If you are a librarian and do not know who Aaron Swartz is, that should probably change now. He helped developing the RSS standard, was the co-founder of Reddit, worked on the Open Library project, downloaded and freed 20% (2.7 million documents) of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database that charges fees for the United States federal court documents, out of which about 1,600 had privacy issues, played a lead role in preventing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and wrote the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto.
(Photo from Wikipedia)
by AUDREY WATTERS: "...the year’s major ed-tech developments. I’ve identified the 10 trends that I think have been 2012’s most interesting and important. I’ll string out the posts that cover these over the next 6 weeks — and not just because it’s time for the obligatory-end-of-year-wrap-up-crap posts that we bloggers churn out throughout the month of December. I find the reflection is useful (although time-consuming), and it’s a good process for me to go through all the news and all my writing to assess what’s innovative and what’s hype and what's changed and why."
OWF OCTOBER 11TH - 13TH, 2012 The leading global forum bringing together decisions-makers, developers and users from all over the world to cross-fertilize Open technological, business and societal initiatives to shape the digital future
Via João Greno Brogueira
A Day in the life of an “OER Librarian" looking for user-friendly collections of open textbooks (via @OER_center) Sleslie: To [...] find some suitable Open Textbook alternatives for a collaborative program in ICT here in BC, and I wanted to reflect on this process and this potential role of “OER Librarian.”
Via Andreas Link
"Hellzapoppin' in the world of intellectual property rights these days. In 2002, Google began scanning the world's 130 million or so books in preparation for the "secret 'books' project" that eventually became Google Books. In 2004, they began offering access to these scans, displaying the irritatingly-named "snippets" of books in their search results. And in no time at all, they were getting sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers for copyright infringement. These lawsuits, plus two more that were filed subsequently against Google, resulted in a six-year rollercoaster ride that, like all good roller coasters, exhilarated, terrified and rattled all the participants, and ended by thumping their quaking bods to a halt, last March, in very nearly the same place from which they'd started out. But during that time the world had changed, and an altogether new way of bringing printed books into the digital commons had emerged. Enter the nonprofit alternative for bringing the world's books online for all readers: the newly-funded Digital Public Library of America."
Learn. Share. Advance Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fourth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. “Open Access” to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole. Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year. Open Access Week is a key opportunity for all members of the community to take action to keep this momentum moving forward. Get involved. Participating in Open Access Week can be as simple or involved as you like. It can also be a chance to let your imagination have full rein and come up with something more ambitious, wacky, fun. OA Week is an invaluable chance to connect the global momentum toward open sharing with the advancement of policy changes on the local level. Universities, colleges, research institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks have used Open Access Week as a platform to host faculty votes on campus open-access policies, to issue reports on the societal and economic benefits of Open Access, to commit new funds in support of open-access publication, and more.
Many are happy to share their research but far more are reluctant to do the same with teaching resources. Do you value open educational resources? (RT @GdnHigherEd: We'd like to hear from librarians: are your #digital skills in demand?
Library of Congress - Lessons Learned for Sustainable Open Source Software for Libraries, Archives and Museums http://t.co/IFOilMAM... (Lessons Learned for Sustainable Open Source Software for Libraries, Archives and Museum | @scoopit via @Susan_Franklin1...
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Chief Librarian
Natural History Museum Los Angeles County:
"I recently had the pleasure to be ‘interviewed’ via e-mail by the Royal Society Publishing (UK) newsletter editor for their regular feature “Spotlight on a Librarian”. Here is the URL if the link doesn’t work for some reason: http://newsletters.royalsociety.org/q/1N7XofzaQvq0eb/wv.
Topics I discuss in the article include open source content access and affordable pricing to research articles among other points."
Today, many scientific fields can be described as data-intensive disciplines, which turn raw data into information and then knowledge. If this sounds familiar it’s because this represents the late and influential computer scientist Jim Gray’s vision of the fourth research paradigm. Gray divided up the evolution of science into four periods or paradigms. One thousand years ago, science was experimental in nature, a few hundred years ago it became theoretical, a few decades ago it moved to a computational discipline, and today it’s data driven. Researchers are reliant on e-science tools to enable collaboration, federation, analysis, and exploration to address this data deluge, equal to about 1.2 zettabytes each year. If 11 ounces of coffee equaled one gigabyte, a zettabyte would be the same volume as the Great Wall of China. (...) - by Adrian Giordani, MyScienceWork blog, 27 november 2012
Via Julien Hering, PhD, Pavlinka Kovatcheva
Exploring the potential impact of open access on the librarian and their role within the institution. "...the future of open access for libraries will involve: More advanced discovery services
Communication, training and networking with own institutional community
Repository building and curation
And to further summarise the above, they all point at developing a strong(er) service culture to look at end-users’ needs directly, rather than focusing on pure collection building. Not by coincidence, these themes are echoed in a paper presented in May 2012 by Lorcan Dempsey (Vice President and Chief Strategist at OCLC), which are nicely summarized on the OCLC’s website. It is easy to apply each of these points to the current and future OA landscape: “Education, local government, and publishing are being reshaped by economic and networking pressures. Changes here will increasingly drive library changes and libraries need to understand those environments.
Libraries continue to shift from a collection-based view to a service-based view, with deeper engagement with the research, learning and information behaviors of their users.
Community engagement drives the need for new skills, more responsive organizational structures, and a readiness to reallocate resources to important areas.”
"The Internet of Things & Services is a major driver for technological development and will dramatically change products, services, and markets. It not only empowers people to collaborate, but any product or service developed by people – or those emerging from such collaboration. The technology will definitely change business, but the social implications will change our society beyond our wildest dreams. We are in the transition to a new society: We are in the 2nd Renaissance."
Via Pierre Tran
"We love librarians. They’re the gatekeepers of knowledge and always looking to explore new ways to enhance the learning experience. I learned about the latest trends in libraries at this year’s CALICONin San Diego and love the move toward open source, cross-library sharing, and going digital. But what if you weren’t able to attend CALICON or simply want to get a regular update on all the fun stuff happening with libraries? Lucky for you, our friends at Online College shared the following post with us. It details 100 great blogs librarians around the world should add to their RSS reader." Looking for great Twitter chats for librarians? Click here: http://edudemic.com/2012/06/twitter-chats-library/ Looking for information on how libraries are using Pinterest? Click here: http://edudemic.com/2012/03/20-ways-libraries-are-using-pinterest-right-now/
Via Pippa Davies @PippaDavies
"Open source tools, CERP, JHOVE, DROID, Heritrix, for electronic records archivists to use in preserving digital files like WAV, PST, websites, and email. When it comes to electronic records there is no magic button that makes them readable or usable on a computer. Electronic records archivists rely on all types of hardware, software, and operating systems. Many pieces of software, which function as an archivist’s toolbox, can help files remain available or become usable again. Here is a small list of some open-source and/or freely available software we use at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. Keep in mind that tools are not perfect and should be used with caution. Don’t forget to have backups of your files. Before we incorporate a piece of software into our processes at the Archives, we research it by making sure it is from a reputable group and thoroughly test it on copy sample sets. This post is not an endorsement of any products listed by the Smithsonian Institution."
Librarians have played a crucial, leading role in advocating for Open Access worldwide. As a traditional focal point for scholarly communication innovation, libraries continue to exercise their leadership by encouraging faculty members, administrators, and students to engage in Open Access Week activities.
More Technology for the Rest of Us: A Second Primer on Computing for the Non-IT Librarian From cloud computing to data curation to open-source software, the world of technology offers great opportunity—and potential frustration. "Nancy Courtney and her team of IT experts have set out to enhance the former and alleviate the latter. More Technology for the Rest of Us: A Second Primer on Computing for the Non-IT Librarian follows up on Courtney's 2005 technology volume by tackling the most recent advances in IT. Each chapter describes a technology important to the library field..."
The Librarian As Essential Key to Connecting Open Educational Resources (old but relevant - The Librarian: Essential Key to Connecting OER and Information Literacy in the Academic World http://t.co/ixNGCfQs...
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