LIBlog

The new LibQual survey is coming out soon.  We know from the previous surveys that (1) the library atmosphere needs help (renovations are coming this summer) and (2) students are still relying on Google, Wikipedia and other non-scholarly resources for research more than the teaching and library faculty would like. 

In the long battle over using Google or Wikipedia, some faculty say “never use them” others say use them wisely, like you would any tool.  For those of you who would be willing to do the latter, but need a little help, I have created the following tutorial — based on a help session, which turned out to be the perfect IL storm.  It guides the student through Google, Wikipedia, and the cited source in Wikipedia, Online Catholic Encyclopedia, a resource which is also “good for some things, but not for others” (as it is the digitized version of the 1912 edition of the encyclopedia!

If you ever wanted to demonstrate the benefits and deficiencies of these tools, feel free to add this tutorial to your IL-resources quiver, or contact me if you would be interested in re-creating your own IL-storm!

Craig Silverman’s Regret the error  blog  tracks the range of errors (and, in some cases, a lack of errata acknowledgements) found in various English-language news sources.  Recent entries include a posting on plagiarism in a March 11th NYTimes article regarding New York’s gubernatorial succession process, while another notes a  Sun-Sentinel  subtitle typo for an “AP story about the hallucinogenic plant salvia divinorum,” they mistakenly ran a subtitle which read “Bill makes possession of Saliva a felony.” 

While it could easily be passed over as a “Leno’s Headlines” site, upon closer examination it is a good resource for class discussions on the serious responsibilities writers have towards their reader, including fact-checking, spell-checking, plagiarism and ways to handle errors in online publications, since print, audio, video and online-text versions of a publication often handle error-correction in different ways, whether out of a desire to bury an embarrassing mistake or out of technical necessity.  An example of the latter would be the use of strikeout letters to leave original error text in a blog, but to put a line through it, and then add the corrected text – this practice alerts blog readers to post-publication edits.

In addition to providing timely examples of plagiarism, the blog’s 2007 Plagiarism/Fabrication Round-Up entry can provide a good springboard for discussing the different types of plagiarism and the consequences outside of a strictly academic environment.  The advent of  “digi-born” and multimedia resources, including blogs, wikis, videos, and podcasts requires resource-savvy authors to keep up with protocols for original citations and subsequent corrections.  The proliferation of online and social resources can also contribute to making the rules of plagiarism more confusing for some students, while simultaneously making intentional plagiarism both easier to execute and easier to discover for others.

Please note that the Library provides a number of Information Literacy resources to support you in your efforts to helps students understanding the role of information resources in research and scholarship.  For more assistance, please contact us at infoliteracy@stjohns.edu.

If you have ever been annoyed by the inability to listen to your downloaded audio book in more than one place (or more than one device), some publishers have heard your lament!  According to an article in the NYT, Random House and Penguin are moving away from the Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that was embedded into their AudioBooks. HarperCollins is still vacillating on their decision.  This move echoes some of the DRM policies in the Music industry; where publishers and producers are seeing that the ability for customers to share resources with others actually helps overall sales through “viral marketing,” that is, using the public (satisfied listeners) to get the word out to new listeners.  While this is an important step in “popular” publishing, it is worth keeping an eye on what happens to scholarly books and journals that are available in electronic format, and have DRM obstacles as well.

Open Minds, Open Books, Open Source is an article in this week’s InsideHigherEd which addresses the reasons why libraries are moving to Open Source software.  The St. John’s Libraries’ are part of a trial project using the OS application KohaZoom, and trying out LibLime support, on behalf of our WALDO consortium partners.  As our own library director mentions in reference to the article: “Please note that many of the reasons given by other libraries for moving away from the proprietary systems are those that pushed us toward KohaZoom.”  Not explicitly mentioned in the article, is the fact that our use of OS is also in keeping with StJ Libraries’ commitment to the University’s Social Justice mission.  When we spend money to develop features for our Library System, libraries in impoverished areas — with little or no technology budgets — can benefit.  (Note: A new blog dedicated to OS in Libraries can be found here)

If you have ever wondered about the “fuss” over Open Source in general, the article suggests reasons why anyone or any organization considers using Open Source software: 

With a bit of grant money and some eager developers, institutions have begun creating their own open-source solutions that are fully customizable, free for others to use and compatible with existing systems. …[T]he increasing availability of open-source software has nudged some libraries [and we could add, universities, organizations, businesses] to reconsider the role of their in-house technology gurus, and to wonder whether it would make more long-term financial sense to hire more developers than to continue paying for products over which they have limited control.

When proprietary software puts a technological or financial barrier in the way of the user accomplishing what s/he needs, OS code offers the opportunity to harness the power of collective intelligence.  Of course, “freely available code” does not mean OS is without “costs”.  Large organizations spend money “saved” from vendors to hire in-house developers to improve software functionality; the idea is that directed in-house developers can design changes with a quicker response time than vendor developers can.  Open source software isn’t just about access to code but also about distribution criteria as well, so that, on smaller scale, tech-saavy individuals, small organizations and developing nations benefit from distribution of improvements to software.  The latter may “get more than they give”, but any contribution means all users benefit from OS’ technological symbiosis.

To get the gist of the types of OS software that individuals might use, check out The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives.  The list reflects one person’s ideas, but the reader gets a sense of the variety of extant OS programs.  On the organizational and business level, OS isn’t strictly for “radicals” either, check out this entry on the “hidden” prevalence of OS in use in everyday operations: “A day without OS.” (The comments on that entry are worth a gander too!)

Monday’s (2/11/2008) most emailed aricle on the New York Times website was called How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free, by Maria Aspen. Apparently, it’s not that easy to remove all that personal information.

This 2/12/08 NYTimes article highlights Harvard’s recent move to support Open Access publishing in scholarly communications.  While some of the more recent articles have centered on NIH studies being available for free, this article discusses university-sponsored research being made freely available.  If Harvard goes through with the decision, it may help promote changes in scholarly communications and journal subscriptions that have lasting effects. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/books/12publ.html?ref=books

UPDATE:  Harvard approved the proposal:  Here is a CHE follow-up article (with lots of discussion in the comments!): http://chronicle.com/news/article/3943/harvard-faculty-adopts-open-access-requirement

There is a new study by iCrossing, a digital marketing company, called “How America Searches: Health and Wellness“. According to the study more people use the Internet to obtain health information over a given year than consult a doctor, with general search engines being the most popular gateway. It also found that people are predominantly using the Internet to research symptoms or specific medical conditions.

How might this apply to our students? The study found that young adults are the most likely demographic to use the Internet for health information and they use it the most frequently. They are also more likely to use social media such as Wikipedia or message boards. Wellness information, such as nutrition, exercise, and weight loss, is an area that especially attracts 18 to 24 year olds.

If you find the idea of “Dr Web” frightening, the study did find that people ultimately place their trust in physicians rather than the Internet when making medical decisions. Fortunately, this recent study from the journal Cancer discovered that websites contain overwhelmingly accurate information.

I attended the talk given by Craig Newmark of Craigslist at St. John’s yesterday. Craig was introduced by Prof. John Otero who is principal instructor in the Computer Security bachelor’s program. Evidently they became friends when Otero contacted Newmark during an investigation in his former role as Commanding Officer of the NYPD Computer Crimes Squad. I believe the lecture was also sponsored by the Learning Communities.

I didn’t take notes, but here are some of the points I remember from the part of the lecture I attended. Craigslist had its origins in a mailing list Craig started about 1994. Initially it featured cultural events in the San Francisco area and the odd job listing. When it became so popular that it broke the email software, Craig first migrated to a listserv, and ultimately to the website we know today. Craig was going to call it SF events, but people who knew about branding persuaded him to adopt the name Craigslist — a name that suggests quirkiness and a personal touch.

Initially Craig did all the programming himself so it wasn’t necessary to borrow money. Craigslist is run as a NFP and hasn’t needed to attract investors to this day. They did started charging for job and real estate listings a few years back and this their principal source of revenue. Doubtlessly they have had many buy-out offers — in fact, Ebay has acquired 25% of the company from a former employee – but so far it appears the company is still in the hands of its founders.

As a self-proclaimed nerd, it seems Craig established the site because he was looking to develop the kind of trusting, democratic community he would like to be included in. Though Craig doesn’t see himself as possessing “vision”, the nerd ethic of giving other people a break is one his guiding principles. Craig attributes Craigslist’s success to the fast and simple interface, first mover advantage, branding, and the sense of community. Most features have been added in response to user requests. According to Craig, it also didn’t hurt that many media people found their apartments through Craigslist during the first dotcom boom. Though evidently Craigslist was started with neither a business plan or vision statement, it seems clear Craig’s sense of fairness and unwillingness to be tempted the prospect of huge profits are important components behind the site’s enduring popularity. And thank you Craig, I adopted my cats though your list.

As libraries are moving their collections from print to electronic and digital formats, information becomes product(s). 

If we remember the days when we started to incorporate microforms into our collections, for the same print journal article, we have to buy microform reader and other equipment to support the access to the collections.  

In this electronic and digital world, we still deal with contents that are copyrighted or identified as valuables to our user community, but the means to assemble, deliver, and access to the collections have been innovated in such a way that  information can be interwoven, aggregated, and disaggregated from the lowest meaningful atomic level.  

The convergence of enabling technologies, networks, and media has promoted even more opportunities for libraries to empower their users’ experience on the Web. 

What we deliver to the users is not only just the authenticated and high quality contents, but also information product(s) along with their associated infrastructure, and the means to assemble, deliver, and access to the collections.  In expert’s view, libraries have to manage information as product(s).

For more information, please refer to the article titled “Data Quality Policy,” published by MIT Press in the book “Journal to Data Quality” by Yang W. Lee, etc. in 2006.

Here is the bibliographic information from OCLC Open World Catalog: http://worldcat.org/isbn/9780262122870

Enjoy!

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As an alternative to journal rankings, Faculty of 1000 Medicine and Faculty of 1000 Biology asks experts to rank individual articles as “recommended”, “must read”, and “exceptional”. Though F1000 is a subscription-based site, you should be able to access Hidden Jewels in Medicine and Hidden Jewels in Biology. These are significant articles from less-widely read journals. You should be able to click through to the full text if St. John’s owns it. You won’t be able to read the article evaluations, though.