Library Stuff

“Ask someone to describe an academic in the throes of research and there’s a good chance that description will include a physical library (or at least a collection of office shelves not dissimilar to a library) with books and journals open on the desk, and a notebook – whether hard copy or digital. The reality may be somewhat different. Jisc and RLUK’s recent survey of around 3,500 UK academics highlighted that while academics primarily look to the library to provide the journals and books necessary to their teaching and research, they spend much less time in the physical library than the virtual one.” (via Guardian Professional)

“Yale University has chosen the Summon discovery service from Serials Solutions, a ProQuest business. With this purchase, the US university aims to improve access to its collection, which includes 15 million volumes and information in all media. Yale University Library is said to have chosen to work with Serials Solutions because of ease of customisation, integrity of search results, a unified index architecture and the company’s track record for rapid innovation of new discovery features.” (via Research Information)

“Penguin has unveiled a new program, aimed at raising the discoverability of its books, that will allow customers to read some of its most anticipated titles months before they go on sale. Called First to Read, the program will allow its members to access excerpts from forthcoming books, and to request e-galleys.” (via Publishers Weekly)

“Researchers, as well as health care providers and consumers, can now see the ingredients listed on the labels of about 17,000 dietary supplements by looking them up on a website. The Dietary Supplement Label Database, free of charge and hosted by the National Institutes of Health, is available at www.dsld.nlm.nih.gov. The Dietary Supplement Label Database provides product information in one place that can be searched and organized as desired. “This database will be of great value to many diverse groups of people, including nutrition researchers, healthcare providers, consumers, and others,” said Paul M. Coates, Ph.D., director of the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS). “For example, research scientists might use the Dietary Supplement Label Database to determine total nutrient intakes from food and supplements in populations they study.” (via NIH)

“Between the high cost of buying and shipping books and the decreasing expense of buying mobile devices and services, connecting students in the developing world to badly needed educational texts and visuals is becoming more realistic, in some cases, as a digital endeavor. But there’s no clear evidence that just handing out classroom sets of low-cost tablets and laptops—such as those manufactured through the One Laptop Per Child campaign— will bring substantial educational change. And that’s where Library for All hopes to step in.” (via MindShift)

“The U of T’s Martin Prosperity In?stitute will tell Toronto, in dollar figures, the worth of its public library system. The economic impact study, a first of its kind in Canada, will be funded by the Toronto Public Library Foundation with contributions from TD Bank Group and the estate of Norman G. Hinton. No city money will be spent. Councillor Paul Ainslie, chair of library board, said the idea crystallized for him during 2013 budget debate as community groups used economic multipliers to demonstrate the wisdom of city funding.” (via Toronto Star)

“The HathiTrust Digital Library will partner with the recently launched Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to expand discovery and use of HathiTrust’s public domain and other openly available content. DPLA provides an online portal to freely available digital material held by libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. By offering a unified discovery point for these disparate collections, DPLA aims to make readily available to the public the words, images, sounds, and objects of America’s shared cultural heritage.” (via Digital Public Library of America)

“A shipment of books removed from the shelves of the Urbana Free Library only a week earlier is making its way back to the library. Headed back to Urbana will be art books, gardening books, pet books and some cookbooks that were taken off the shelves as a result of what has been described as a “misstep” by the library’s director. “We’ll be more careful. We didn’t mean for this to happen. We are still very committed to having a good collection,” said Debra Lissak, executive director of the Urbana Free Library. (via News-Gazette.com)

“It is much harder and more expensive to digitize a national archive than those undertaking the task usually realize, a consultant warned Library and Archives Canada earlier this year. Éric Méchoulan of the Université de Montréal, hired on a $15,000 contract to advise LAC on issues involving digitization of its collection, produced a report in January outlining the three main challenges it faces:” (via Ottawa Citizen)

“Jeffrey Schnapp is on a mission to save our libraries. As the director of both the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the metaLab (at) Harvard, he typically spends his days grappling with the urgent questions of the wired world, but right now, his most pressing concern is more concrete. In a rapidly digitizing world, he is asking what will become of physical libraries — and their material soul, books. To answer the looming questions, Schnapp started an experiment called the Library Test Kitchen. It’s a laboratory class in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and this fall will mark its third year in operation. Dedicated to rescuing physical, book-dense libraries from obsolescence, the team of students and instructors dream up designs that, as Schnapp says, “create a hybrid space where analog and digital coexist.” >(via Boston.com)