First of all, "Library Standards and E-Resource Management: A Survey of Current Initiatives and Standards Efforts" and "Standards for the Management of Electronic Resources" relate directly to my post last week. Both of these articles include great information on the acronyms and phrases I learned then while also focusing on data standards. For example, the first article includes a short definition I particularly like of COUNTER: "a collaboration between libraries, publishers, and content aggregators focused on creating guidelines that will lead to consistent, comparable, and credible usage statistics." After my exercise in definitions last week and reading these articles this week, I feel confident in my understanding of ERM terms.
I found some of the statistics in Carpenter's "Improving Information Distribution Through Standards" presentation especially interesting. First, he states that the average academic research library has approximately 40,000 serials. I knew that electronic resource management systems were important but this particular statistic makes it extremely clear why libraries need good ways to manage the license terms, publisher, cost and other metrics regarding their serials. When subscribing to such a large number of serials, keeping track of all of this information could easily get overwhelming. Second, I learned that only 25% of librarians' data analysis time is actually spent analyzing. The rest is spent primarily in obtaining and organizing the data for analysis. This statistic emphasizes the importance of SUSHI. Specifically, SUSHI will help librarians spend less time performing these menial tasks and more time doing actual analysis.
Speaking of analysis, I am curious about several aspects of the usage bibliometrics purposed in "Counter: Current Developments and Future Plans." Specifically, I am wondering about the impact of calculating usage statistics for individual articles. Might this have an effect on the author? Would universities evaluate their faculty partially based on the usage statistics of their articles rather than relying only on metrics such as the number of times an article is cited? Also, regarding the journal usage factor, I wonder how an article that has only an abstract in a database could be included in this calculation. Is there any way of knowing if the researcher actually obtained the print version of the article? Perhaps if the researcher clicked the button to search his or her local library's catalog that could be counted as a use.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Week 8 - Electronic Resource Management Systems: Vendors and Functionalities
In this week's readings, I noticed that ERMS and those who study them seem to use quite a few unique vocabulary words. For my own clarification, the following are the most important acronyms or phrases I wasn't familiar with and their definitions:
On a somewhat unrelated note, at MERIT yesterday a patron asked about emailing a particular article to their colleague in the Department of Education. The article happened to be from a journal published by SAGE so I was able to tell him that yes, a copy can be distributed to a single colleague who is also an authorized user.
- ONIX - ONline Information eXchange
- According to Wikipedia's citation from www.editeur.org, this is basically an XML schema for book product information
- PAMS - Public Access Management Services
- From reading "ERM Systems: Background, Selection and Implementation" it seems that these are essentially ERM systems offered by third party for-profit organizations
- MARC 856 field
- The guide for this field written by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office at the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/marc/856guide.html) states that this field is used for "electronic location and access information to an electronic resource," ie: a URL, DOI, or handle
- The "Panorama of Electronic Resource Management Systems" chapter as well as quite a few webpages (for example: http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/marc-856-i-dont-like-you/) seem to indicate that this field is not an effective way to maintain location and access information
- COUNTER - Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources
- An "international set of standards and protocols governing the recording and exchange of online usage data" according to COUNTER's official website (http://www.projectcounter.org/)
- From the website, it seems that COUNTER is aimed at aiding libraries and licensees by creating standards for usage reports and listing which vendors are compliant with them
- SUSHI - Standardized Usage Statistics Harvest Initiative
- According to "Project COUNTER and SUSHI: An Overview," a report on www.niso.org, SUSHI improves COUNTER by automating the process of gathering and managing usage data from a large number of providers
On a somewhat unrelated note, at MERIT yesterday a patron asked about emailing a particular article to their colleague in the Department of Education. The article happened to be from a journal published by SAGE so I was able to tell him that yes, a copy can be distributed to a single colleague who is also an authorized user.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Week 7: Technological Protection Measures
Overall I thought the "Technologies Employed to Control Access to or Use of Digital Cultural Collections: Controlled Online Collections" article revealed some notable survey results. For instance, the fact that only 44% of libraries use Network ID based Authentication seems to indicate that they are purposely lenient regarding who uses their "digital cultural materials." 81.7% of the libraries were academic libraries and, in my experience, it seems that all universities and colleges have some method of Network ID based Authentication in place to prevent unauthorized users from accessing library databases, course reserves, and other systems. As a result, it seems that academic libraries are purposely not using this system for their "digital cultural materials" probably because they want the public to have access.
However, the survey reported in "Technologies Employed to Control Access to or Use of Digital Cultural Collections: Controlled Online Collections" has a couple of weaknesses revealed by the statements "The lower response rate for the technology questions may stem from respondents' lack of technical knowledge to easily answer these question sets. Or, it may be that respondents are not using the systems and tools listed in the survey." This quote refers to the fact that some respondents answered questions such as those regarding motivations for controlling access but did not answer one or both of the questions about systems use and tools use. I feel that options for "Not Sure" and "None" should have added to the systems and tools use questions. This would remove some of the ambiguity resulting from the lower response rate for these questions and, additionally, allow for comparison between libraries, museums, and archives of the percentage of institutions not using systems or tools for controlling access.
I've actually seen one-time passwords in use as described in "Authentication and Authorization." My boyfriend worked for Livermore National Labs last summer and continues to do some work for them long distance this year. Livermore is extremely careful about security because they do nuclear research. They use a variant of one-time passwords in which a string of characters that changes every 9 seconds is appended to the user's password. Although the article says the "small device" that calculates and displays the current string of characters is "the size of a credit card," his is actually smaller and more like the size of a flash drive. I think this method of authentication strikes a good balance between convenience and security since carrying something the size of a flash drive is not difficult yet it prevents passwords from being easily guessed and prevents users from sharing passwords.
After reading "Every Library's Nightmare? Digital Rights Management and Licensed Scholarly Digital Resources" I decided to look at an article published within a SAGE Journal to compare its restrictions with those in the Terms of Use I reviewed last week. The first SAGE journal I found that UW-Madison licenses full text online for is American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and other Dementias. Looking through the articles in this journal, I noticed that SAGE actually uses very few soft or hard restrictions. Each article opens in a standard pdf window with options to save and print. Furthermore, a tool bar along the right side of the screen lists "Services" including "Email this Article to a colleague." A quick test of this tool reveals that the email may be sent to anyone and is not restricted to authorized users. This is especially interesting since the Terms of Use restrict distribution to "other Authorized Users within the institution for their personal use." Another of the "Services" of note is one that allows a user to "Request Permissions." This sends the user to a form for obtaining a "quick price estimate" for making photocopies, reuse in a coursepack/library reserve, and other reuses or republications. Filling out the form for a subscriber requesting reuse in a coursepack/library reserve shows a complete agreement with the Terms of Use because an announcement is displayed that use in a coursepack or electronic reserve is included in the Institutional subscription.
However, the survey reported in "Technologies Employed to Control Access to or Use of Digital Cultural Collections: Controlled Online Collections" has a couple of weaknesses revealed by the statements "The lower response rate for the technology questions may stem from respondents' lack of technical knowledge to easily answer these question sets. Or, it may be that respondents are not using the systems and tools listed in the survey." This quote refers to the fact that some respondents answered questions such as those regarding motivations for controlling access but did not answer one or both of the questions about systems use and tools use. I feel that options for "Not Sure" and "None" should have added to the systems and tools use questions. This would remove some of the ambiguity resulting from the lower response rate for these questions and, additionally, allow for comparison between libraries, museums, and archives of the percentage of institutions not using systems or tools for controlling access.
I've actually seen one-time passwords in use as described in "Authentication and Authorization." My boyfriend worked for Livermore National Labs last summer and continues to do some work for them long distance this year. Livermore is extremely careful about security because they do nuclear research. They use a variant of one-time passwords in which a string of characters that changes every 9 seconds is appended to the user's password. Although the article says the "small device" that calculates and displays the current string of characters is "the size of a credit card," his is actually smaller and more like the size of a flash drive. I think this method of authentication strikes a good balance between convenience and security since carrying something the size of a flash drive is not difficult yet it prevents passwords from being easily guessed and prevents users from sharing passwords.
After reading "Every Library's Nightmare? Digital Rights Management and Licensed Scholarly Digital Resources" I decided to look at an article published within a SAGE Journal to compare its restrictions with those in the Terms of Use I reviewed last week. The first SAGE journal I found that UW-Madison licenses full text online for is American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and other Dementias. Looking through the articles in this journal, I noticed that SAGE actually uses very few soft or hard restrictions. Each article opens in a standard pdf window with options to save and print. Furthermore, a tool bar along the right side of the screen lists "Services" including "Email this Article to a colleague." A quick test of this tool reveals that the email may be sent to anyone and is not restricted to authorized users. This is especially interesting since the Terms of Use restrict distribution to "other Authorized Users within the institution for their personal use." Another of the "Services" of note is one that allows a user to "Request Permissions." This sends the user to a form for obtaining a "quick price estimate" for making photocopies, reuse in a coursepack/library reserve, and other reuses or republications. Filling out the form for a subscriber requesting reuse in a coursepack/library reserve shows a complete agreement with the Terms of Use because an announcement is displayed that use in a coursepack or electronic reserve is included in the Institutional subscription.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Week 6: Distance Education and TEACH Act
The "ARL Issue Brief: Streaming of Films for Educational Purposes" caused some confusion for me regarding fair use. The authors refer to "recent judicial decision" that ruled in favor of fair use regarding digital technologies. At the end of the discussion of these court cases, they state "The courts nonetheless found these uses fair because the defendants repurposed and recontextualized the works." This left me confused because as far as I knew, fair use only involved four factors - purpose of the use, nature of the work, amount used, and effect on the market.
After a little searching, I found an article by Troy Hicks for the Conference on College Composition and Communication on "Transforming Our Understanding of Copyright and Fair Use." The most relevant section clarifies "If a copyrighted work is simply retransmitted, then it is a violation of copyright law. But, if the user 'transforms' the material in some way, repurposing it in a new media composition, for instance, then fair use likely applies." This makes sense because a "transformed" work is less likely to have an effect on the market for the original work. Furthermore, Russell in chapter two of Complete Copyright lists "transformative or productive use" as a factor under Purpose that favors fair use. So repurposing or recontextualizing a work does fall under the four factors after all.
The first thing I noticed in Lipinski's article is that he was a visiting professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. If it is at all relevant to our discussion on distance education, it would be neat to hear about his experiences there in class this Friday.
Since his article focuses on distance classes and I've only ever taken face-to-face classes, I have not experienced the effects of the TEACH Act personally. However, I was surprised to discover that performances or displays for "recreation or entertainment" are not allowed in face-to-face as well as distance classes. My teachers K-12 showed movies solely for that purpose routinely at the end of each semester. At first it seems strange that they all disregarded this rule but, on the other hand, who would have any motive for enforcing it?
For example, in middle school we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas more times than I can remember each December (probably because of its convenient length and G rating). We never once discussed, wrote papers, or otherwise integrated it into the curriculum so the viewing was solely for entertainment. The copyright holder wants to sell as many copies as possible so he/she has no interest in telling a school they can't purchase a non-educational movie. The teachers and students both enjoy the lack of effort involved in spending a class period watching a movie so they have no motivation to complain. The only potential enforcers could be school administrators or parents looking to improve the students' education but, in my experience, neither seem to raise the issue. Since this law is routinely broken and no one seems to have an interest in enforcing it, I wonder why it exists at all.
After a little searching, I found an article by Troy Hicks for the Conference on College Composition and Communication on "Transforming Our Understanding of Copyright and Fair Use." The most relevant section clarifies "If a copyrighted work is simply retransmitted, then it is a violation of copyright law. But, if the user 'transforms' the material in some way, repurposing it in a new media composition, for instance, then fair use likely applies." This makes sense because a "transformed" work is less likely to have an effect on the market for the original work. Furthermore, Russell in chapter two of Complete Copyright lists "transformative or productive use" as a factor under Purpose that favors fair use. So repurposing or recontextualizing a work does fall under the four factors after all.
The first thing I noticed in Lipinski's article is that he was a visiting professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. If it is at all relevant to our discussion on distance education, it would be neat to hear about his experiences there in class this Friday.
Since his article focuses on distance classes and I've only ever taken face-to-face classes, I have not experienced the effects of the TEACH Act personally. However, I was surprised to discover that performances or displays for "recreation or entertainment" are not allowed in face-to-face as well as distance classes. My teachers K-12 showed movies solely for that purpose routinely at the end of each semester. At first it seems strange that they all disregarded this rule but, on the other hand, who would have any motive for enforcing it?
For example, in middle school we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas more times than I can remember each December (probably because of its convenient length and G rating). We never once discussed, wrote papers, or otherwise integrated it into the curriculum so the viewing was solely for entertainment. The copyright holder wants to sell as many copies as possible so he/she has no interest in telling a school they can't purchase a non-educational movie. The teachers and students both enjoy the lack of effort involved in spending a class period watching a movie so they have no motivation to complain. The only potential enforcers could be school administrators or parents looking to improve the students' education but, in my experience, neither seem to raise the issue. Since this law is routinely broken and no one seems to have an interest in enforcing it, I wonder why it exists at all.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Week 5 - Pricing Models and Consortial Arrangements
After reading "UC Libraries, Nature Publishing Group in Heated Dispute Over Pricing; Boycott Possible" as well as "The Librarians Dilemma: Contemplating the costs of the 'Big Deal,'" it seems clear to me that the current commercial publisher model needs to be changed. It seems ridiculous that research professors are essentially required to submit their articles for free to commercial publishers and then professors from the same university have to pay to access these articles. University of California estimates that their faculty generates $19 million in revenue for Nature Publication Group and yet, at present, they will have to pay $17,479 for subscriptions to these journals in 2011.
Furthermore, somehow commercial publishers have convinced researchers to donate their time in the form of peer reviewing articles at no cost. I have never really understood this except that it must operate in a similar way to Frazier's description of cooperation in game theory. Humans or animals who have to interact in the same way repeatedly realize that cooperation is more beneficial to all involved. Similarly, a researcher is more likely to peer review someone else's article if he or she wants to publish a peer reviewed article in the future.
I was intrigued by Frazier's mention of the Public Library of Science which, as an example of the open access model, hopes to be an "online public library that would provide the full contents of the public record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form." I searched the internet a bit to determine how this project has progressed since Frazier's article in 2001. According to a July 7th, 2010 article in the Los Angeles Times titled "UC takes scientific journals to task over fees" (originally I was looking at this article to see if UC and NPG had come to a resolution) by Michael Hiltzick, the Public Library of Science is still in existence and, in fact, doing quite well. In their model, researchers are charged a fee up to $2,900 to publish in one of their journals. However, the article is then available to anyone free of charge and the researcher keeps the copyright for his or her article. Additionally, the National Institute of Health encourages researchers to use their grant funds to pay these publication fees so that "the work they [NIH] pay for be made available without unreasonable delay and without pay barriers."
Lastly, I have a question regarding the conclusions drawn by "8.6 Reasons Why Journal Subscription Prices Spiraled Upward" in Economics and Usage of Digital Libraries: Byting the Bullet. The authors believe that journal prices significantly increased from 1975 to 1995 in part because most journals had smaller circulations in 1995 than in 1975. In addition to the increase in overall number of journals, this is because "the average number of personal subscriptions per scientist dropped more than 50 percent over a twenty-year period." What they don't consider, however, is that the human population increases each year. I would like to know how this affects the size of circulation from year to year or if the change is small enough to be negligible compared to the other factors mentioned.
Furthermore, somehow commercial publishers have convinced researchers to donate their time in the form of peer reviewing articles at no cost. I have never really understood this except that it must operate in a similar way to Frazier's description of cooperation in game theory. Humans or animals who have to interact in the same way repeatedly realize that cooperation is more beneficial to all involved. Similarly, a researcher is more likely to peer review someone else's article if he or she wants to publish a peer reviewed article in the future.
I was intrigued by Frazier's mention of the Public Library of Science which, as an example of the open access model, hopes to be an "online public library that would provide the full contents of the public record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form." I searched the internet a bit to determine how this project has progressed since Frazier's article in 2001. According to a July 7th, 2010 article in the Los Angeles Times titled "UC takes scientific journals to task over fees" (originally I was looking at this article to see if UC and NPG had come to a resolution) by Michael Hiltzick, the Public Library of Science is still in existence and, in fact, doing quite well. In their model, researchers are charged a fee up to $2,900 to publish in one of their journals. However, the article is then available to anyone free of charge and the researcher keeps the copyright for his or her article. Additionally, the National Institute of Health encourages researchers to use their grant funds to pay these publication fees so that "the work they [NIH] pay for be made available without unreasonable delay and without pay barriers."
Lastly, I have a question regarding the conclusions drawn by "8.6 Reasons Why Journal Subscription Prices Spiraled Upward" in Economics and Usage of Digital Libraries: Byting the Bullet. The authors believe that journal prices significantly increased from 1975 to 1995 in part because most journals had smaller circulations in 1995 than in 1975. In addition to the increase in overall number of journals, this is because "the average number of personal subscriptions per scientist dropped more than 50 percent over a twenty-year period." What they don't consider, however, is that the human population increases each year. I would like to know how this affects the size of circulation from year to year or if the change is small enough to be negligible compared to the other factors mentioned.
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