News for Library Nerds, Sept 19, 2014

Retraction Watch and Peer Review Evaluation join forces to improve article retraction transparency. 

What is Peer Review Evaluation? They aim to provide more information about a journal’s peer review process to readers.

On the other end of the process, PubPeer puts post-publication comments in a single location. 

And another call to change publishing models to get around publishing bias: register the study before there is data, and publish no matter the results. For a brief overview.  For the full white paper. 

How free books for WWII soldiers created a nation of readers. 

The bi-literate brain: able to read long-form in print, and quick tidbits online. 

Commentary: digital obstacles for students with disabilities. 

Radical Librarians fighting for greater online privacy. 

For an overview of Discovery Tools, check out: Chickering, F., & Yang, S. Q. (2014). Evaluation and Comparison of Discovery Tools: An Update. Information Technology & Libraries, 33(2), 5-30. 

The Net Neutrality comment period has closed. Now we wait. 

Is it the terminology or the web design that's confusing?

Anyone who's tried to walk a student through using a website knows that it can be a pretty difficult process, especially if the student is lacking in either their knowledge of academic materials or basic website organization (or both!). That's what makes this particular study so interesting:

Imler, B., & Eichelberger, M. (2014). Commercial Database Design vs. Library Terminology Comprehension: Why Do Students Print Abstracts Instead of Full-Text Articles?. College & Research Libraries, 75(3), 284-297. http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/3/284.full.pdf+html

They found that undergraduate students were actually fairly good at understanding the terms full text, pdf, and abstract, but actually navigating a journal's website to get to the full text was where the process broke down.

I'm not particularly surprised. Most undergraduates don't have a lot of experience looking for full text links, and they're unlikely to pop out to the untrained eye. The terms they asked to define weren't particularly difficult, or even exclusive to libraries. I'd hope that basic critical thinking skills would help someone define "full text" (which was the term that was defined correctly most often).

I also liked their recommendation that links to full text get more prominence on the page. UX isn't rocket science, but hardly anyone seems to manage to do a half-way decent job of it.

Here are my random thoughts on the issues brought up in the article:

"Library jargon"

I actually hate that term. It implies that libraries are using a bunch of ridiculous terms that no one would ever have to know in any other situation in their lives. That may be true of the term monograph, but the vast majority of terms that are labeled "library jargon" are far from exclusive to the world of libraries. We're doing a disservice to students (and citizens) by acting as if these are words that will never show up in another context, and aren't particularly important to know anyway. The few terms that are somewhat exclusive to librarianship (and publishing) don't actually show up in library instruction these days anyway, so there's little reason to wring our hands over whether or not festschrift is a useful term.

Many of the terms that get labeled as "library jargon" are central for participating in the world of office work. Just about anyone who sits behind a desk is going to have to deal with PDFs, databases, and search limits. I don't understand how computer science careers and Big Data are constantly topics of conversation, but librarians act as if a "database" is this random thing that no one will have to know about past their last undergrad research paper. Instead of running away from these terms, we'd be better off embracing them: database, query, Boolean, metadata, etc. are the basic vocabulary for anyone who is going into a computer or data science career. By teaching these terms early, we're laying a groundwork that can help people move into IT-driven careers (if they so choose), or simply be better placed to incorporate technology in their non-technology jobs. Not to mention improving citizens' ability to understand what is happening when they read reports of government surveillance of citizens' communications. 

Web design

It never ceases to amaze me just how difficult it can be to navigate a journal's website. It's as if they didn't spend any time at all thinking about how annoying it is to have to dig for the links that are most-often needed by users. It's not just the full text links that get lost. It can be difficult to get a persistent link or the citation information in an easily copied-and-pasted format. It's also difficult to find the archive of previous issues on many journal websites, and others are poorly integrated into Google Scholar. 

I guess I shouldn't be complaining. Poor website design is actually job security for reference librarians. Who cares if "everything" is on the Internet if half the population can't navigate to it without help?

News for Library Nerds, Sept 12, 2014

ACRL looking for feedback on their New Standards for Distance Learning. 

Responsibly crowdsourced Internet research and finding an ISIS training camp. See? Doing online research right is tough but important!

Amazon adding a book every five minutes.

But ditching Amazon may be good for a publisher’s bottom line. 

A book buyer’s lament about Amazon vs. Hachette. 

The greatest innovation: the bookbook (very funny Ikea ad). 

Oldest public library in U.S. at risk of shutting down. 

What are librarians and what do they do? A philosophical investigation. 

Is the library dying? Not quite yet, but maybe? 

Pew tells us that young adults read books and think there’s useful information that’s NOT on the Internet.

Taking my second MOOC - Copyright for Librarians and Educators

Not too long ago I completed my second MOOC with Coursera. This time it was shorter (4 weeks), and directly related to my professional life. Although just about every librarian has a smattering of information about copyright, it was useful to have an organized course format to put it all together, force me to think about it systematically, and fill gaps in my knowledge.

I have to say that this is where MOOCs seem to be the most useful. And the statistics on MOOC takers appears to bear this out. MOOCs are taken by those who already have jobs and already have college degrees, and about half expect to use them to improve their current or future working lives.

This may be in part due to the actual distribution of MOOCs. While you can find some humanities courses today, MOOCs were originally very computer science and math oriented. Let's face it, not many people who take math or computer science classes for fun are not employed in math or computer-related fields. I also wonder how much this contributes to the gender gap in MOOCs. If people are taking MOOCs in areas related to their professional lives, and the professions skew male, then it makes sense that those courses would skew male in attendance. My copyright course skewed female, but it also aligned with career fields (education and librarianship) that skew heavily female. As the mix of courses changes, I wonder if the surplus of male MOOC students will start to shrink.

Of course, that may never happen. As MOOCs move toward trying to produce some profits, there may be a move away from the humanities. One of the income streams that I keep seeing is the sale of certification. That was an option for my MOOC, and it makes sense for MOOCs that are directly related to a professional field. But certifications are far more common in fields like computer science than they are in humanities-related fields. Will there be certifications in Renaissance poetry? Film studies? Social psychology? And if there were, would it make sense for people to pay for them? If certification becomes the route toward profits, I would expect courses that don't result in certification purchases to drop away. Since certification seems to dovetail with male-dominated professions, we could see an ever-more male MOOC world. (One exception I see is grant-writing, where certification could enhance the resumes of many people with humanities degrees, and is more likely to have gender parity.)

I do intend to try more MOOCs. I'm thinking I may try a self-paced MOOC next, to see how I do without the time-pressure of traditional course deadlines. I'm also interested in taking a MOOC that is more developmental (instead of designed for professionals in that field). If MOOCs are supposed to take the place of formal learning for the millions of people who can't geographically or financially access traditional college education, both of those features will be important.

News for Library Nerds, August 22, 2014

Researchers and the social web: how they are using ResearchGate, Academic.edu, and other websites. Not everyone is pleased with how they work, but they’re beginning to change the research landscape.

For some of the criticism, you can see this blog post on ResearchGate.

What’s wrong with peer review? Here’s one author’s take.

New Florida University opens their bookless library (well, kind of, since students can access the print collection of the university next door). I’m still not sure why universities are so keen on choosing this, given the limitations it puts on your collection.

Is the Big Deal really good for libraries? Here’s some info about the latest analysis by Walt Crawford.

That leads to this interesting fight over the value of open access in academic publishing:
Against it: Jeffrey Beall
For it (or, at least, contradicting Beall): Walt Crawford and Wayne Bivens-Tatum

German authors join the Amazon/publisher fight.

How socioeconomic status affects what you search for on Google. 

Who has a floating library on a lake? Minnesota, of course!

News for library nerds, August 15, 2014

Scholarly laziness, secondary citation, and the creation of academic urban legends; or, how Popeye and spinach got a raw deal.

Use confusion to increase learning. I've often thought we've been a bit too helpful in library instruction. Perhaps we need to force them to scratch their heads and think a bit more . . .

Should individuals be able to make Google remove unflattering (or untrue) auto-complete suggestions?

Online data a boon to researchers but ethical quagmire.

The “free” Interent + add blockers = an Internet that is designed to appeal to people who are too clueless to install add blockers. Is it possible to maintain high-quality content in an open-access form? One author writes about his experience.

Definition of plagiarism is plagiarized. Seriously.

Wimbledon is plagued by plagiarism.

Banning anonymity may not get rid of trolls, so what are the other options?

News for Library Nerds, August 8, 2014

I was off on vacation, but I've returned with some more articles:

Thought about Creative Commons licenses for library-created resources? Maybe you should!

Of course, if a monkey creates it, there’s no copyright to worry about (seriously, this is an issue that’s come up).


What’s behind the fraud in stem cell research.

Meanwhile, all the retractions are calling into question the value of peer review and journal publishers.

That begs the question: Should academics move to self-publishing?

Big 5 publishers are all on board with ebooks in libraries (YAY!), but there are still a long of wrinkles to the process (not so yay).

Here are some vintage book reviews by kids - and they’re pretty harsh!

What’s your plagiarism defense?

Instructional Design Essentials eCourse from ALA.