News for Library Nerds, June 27, 2014

Ebook prices for libraries spike again.

And one university’s experience with the on demand lending program at EBL.

Academics still like print.

Hachette merger may help it against Amazon.

New book on librarian stereotypes. Also includes link to Librarian Wardrobe blog.

ALA’s declaration of the right to libraries.

Curious about Print on Demand? Here’s a rundown of the major players.

Why are articles retracted? Here are the top reasons: Distrust data/interpretations, plagiarism, fraudulent data, duplicate publication.

5 things researchers have learned about MOOCs.

Need a Wi-Fi Hot Spot? Get one from the library!

News for Library Nerds, June 20, 2014

Interesting facts about Google Scholar. (Including info about what happens to Institutional Repository results.)

Interesting facts about MOOCs.

Getting a Nano-degree via Udacity.

Netflix ending their public API.

Libraries as curators of the connections between ideas, or is information just flat?

Five myths about Net Neutrality.

Bendy screens may be coming soon.

News for Library Nerds, June 6, 2014

I haven’t posted for a while, but here are my current selections, plus stuff from May.

This week:

Harvard Business School enters the online education arena with a totally new offering: the Pre-MBA.

World’s largest book publishers.

How much time do people spend in front of screens? Here are numbers from around the world.

What happens when you read an entire shelf of library books? And how do you read them?

Sick of Hachette vs. Amazon yet? Here are some more takes on the conflict:

• What isn’t being talked about, and why one commentator thinks the ultimate resolution rests with government.
• Walmart is trying to capitalize on the conflict.
• The differing views of big publishers, small publishers, and regular folks.
• Some library commentators don’t like either party.

Age-old publishing issues of traffic and monetization: a perspective from the digital age.

Are there too many Humanities PhDs?

John Oliver’s humorous take on Net Neutrality. Which apparently has inspired many to follow his call to comment on the FCC’s website.

Older stuff:

Building a library . . . on the moon?

Wikiality, changed birthdays, and the “Brazilian aardvark.” How untruths in Wikipedia flow through to other sources, which then are cited in Wikipedia as evidence.

And Wikipedia may not be the best resource for medical information.

Amazon vs. Hachette is still going on. Here are some interesting reads:

• At least one blogger laments the inevitable and ponders options.
• Another points to Amazon's goal in this fight. 
• Where this fits in the publisher/distributor hierarchy.

When the police want your archive (Irish police and Boston College’s IRA interviews).

A librarian laments about what is wrong with Google.

What changes to net neutrality could mean for libraries.

A brief explanation of slow and fast lanes on the Internet.

Warning: this novel may disturb you! Colleges look at putting content warnings on course readings.

The Science Citation Index turns 50! 

The difficulties and politics of weeding collections. (Book excerpt.) 

Who’s the largest filer of copyright lawsuits? A small, online porn production company. 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art releases copyrighted images for scholarly use.

Why did that video go viral? Research is trying to find out. (Tip #1: don’t tell people the kitten died.) 

Short documentary about the NY Public libraries and the work they do every day. This one really tugs at the heartstrings.  

Confused by the Net Neutrality proposed rule change? Get some answers.

NIH pushing researchers to include females in their studies.

On The Media talks to Jeffrey Beall, the creator of the predatory journals list, about Gold Open Access.

What if you write it and no one reads it? A third of World Bank reports are never downloaded.

Amazon is creating extra delays for purchasers of books from Hachette.  Why you shouldn’t expect it to end any time soon.

Africa is more than an acacia tree, but you wouldn’t know it from book covers.

How Scratch & Sniff works.

NY Public Library decides to keep the stacks in its flagship library, but they are now empty.

Three truths about library website design.

Can reading make you smarter? (A little old, but awfully good news.)

Research in the social sciences is suffering from an emphasis on the single study, to little replication, data fabrication, and poor peer review (and other fields are starting to see the same issues). 

Trying to police those issues are research organizations . . . and maybe the federal government? 

Textbook publisher tries to enforce a “return the print book” requirement, and law professors push back.

Oregon public library launches “My Librarian,” which connects online users with a “personal” librarian. 

Has the Internet dulled your critical thinking skills? Well, what do you think about this amazing stairwell? (Also note the plan to create fake scholarship about it!) 

Deep reading and paper vs. screen. (Why paper may stick around.)

The library as a therapeutic place. 

Want to opt out of big data? Well, you may just look like a criminal. 

Some tricks for using PubMed (from a Scientific American editor)

BookTraces attempts to catalog the ephemera and notes 19th century readers left inside their books. Thanks to book digitization, these physical remnants of past readers may soon be gone. 

Slightly NSFW: optical book scanners are changing the word “arms” to another four-letter word (for a body part) with hilarious and disturbing results! (File this under: we still need editors!) 

Ending link rot in legal citations, so future generations know what the Supreme Court was talking about. 

Is it really true that 90% of papers are never cited? (Spoiler Alert . . . not really.)

Well, we do know that female authors are cited less often.

And an oldie on the same topic: Are scholars publishing too much research that goes unread and uncited? And what does this do to the peer-review process? 

All that skimming online can make it difficult to read deeply. 

And sometimes the old way of note taking is better. 

Library instruction and graduation rates.

Digital Information Literacy and sponsored content: The Onion style.

Online Marxists cry foul when socialist publisher asserts copyright. 

The Internet, continuous learning, and the workplace. 

Crowdsourcing plus politics can distort what’s being measured (in this case, the quality of a movie). 

To write (or not) in the margins. 

Whew! I better update this more regularly!