K-State Libraries: Conference Reports

German Librarians' Conference: Use and Abuse of Statistics

P. Büning, Düsseldorf
J. Kreische, Düsseldorf
K. Südekum, Würzburg
S. Mundt, Stuttgart
A. Knapp, Karlsruhe

Rather than writing individual posts on all of the talks on the topic of statistics, it seemed to make sense to put it all into one post.

At the center of this talk was the German library statistical rubric BIX (Bibliotheksindex). It's a voluntary tool used to make comparisons between public and academic libraries. Everyone seems a bit critical of the rankings, since as one speaker put it, they are easy to misinterpret. The stated purpose of BIX is to make library performance and evaluation transparent and accessible to politicians and administrators.

Understanding Fair Use

Wes Blakeslee, Johns Hopkins University,
speaking at the KU Copyright Symposium, March 7, 2008

[This was an excellent talk. It was that rare opportunity to listen to someone who has both strong opinions and expert knowledge of fair use and other copyright issues. Moreover, he's on the 'right' side of fair use; most of the strong opinions come from content firms.]

There is no case law evidence that copies of scholarly articles for classroom use have ever impacted journal subscriptions, actually the opposite is generally true.

The worst disaster ever for fair use was the Classroom Guidelines. Why?

OCLC Symposium

I rarely arrive early enough at Midwinter to attend the OCLC Friday afternoon symposium. This year was different. The afternoon was titled, New Leadership for New Challenges. The two guest speakers provided a nice complement to one another. The first speaker was Leslie Crutchfield, co-author of Forces for good: The six practices of high-impact nonprofits. Crutchfield and co-author Grant examined successful nonprofits known as innovators in their given field. Their case studies yielded 6 practices shared by all of the successful nonprofits. The practices are: Advocate and serve, make markets work, inspire evangelists, nurture nonprofit networks, master the art of adaptation, and share leadership (a.k.a. lead and let go). Sitting there it struck me that libraries do at least one portion of this well, that is actively seeking collaborators.

The second speaker was Dr. Rush Miller, director of the University of Pittsburgh Libraries. Dr. Miller detailed the numerous organizational changes the University of Pittsburgh Libraries have gone through during his tenure and suggested that "claiming value is not enough." He explained libraries need to demonstrate how they connect to the university's mission in order to avoid marginalization. He also shared that organizational structure should not be the chief concern; our concern should be the people in the organization.

Digital Curation Conference: a general comment

Hopefully I've faithfully documented and commented on the presentations I've heard here at both CNI and DCC. I hope a few souls find this useful and that this might spark a few conversations.

To close down the week, I'd like to offer a general commentary on the intersection of science and social networking as it exists on the Web. Too often, the latter is dismissed as trivial, faddish, or simply a waste of time, while the former need never defend itself or its credibility. I just spent four days hearing over and over again, however, how thousands of scientists in many countries make use of the very same technologies used by your average teenager--namely, blogs, wikis, Facebooky things, etc.--to do essential work and collaborate with their peers. The head of Web publishing ...

Digital Curation Conference: Day One Closing Plenary

Rick Luce, Emory

[By this point, my enthusiasm for detailed notes was waning. He said something, however, that piqued my interest (remarkable considering when I had last consumed caffeine) and led me down a train of thought that has little to do with his talk or the conference. What appears below is that brain dump.]

Could it be that we are well enough funded to be too comfortable with our traditional roles? Rick Luce asked this question near the end of his first day closing keynote. Otherwise, his talk was a fairly standard review of what's going on and what needs to be done to solve some of the pressing issues, but this question struck me as unique. He's right, I think. Our funding is sufficient to continue operating much as we have for a long time; sure, making incremental changes, but never really taking the great leap forward to stop doing most of what we do now and really take on some major new challenges.

Digital Curation Conference: National Perspectives

Astrid Wissenburg, Economic and Social Research Council, UK
Chris Greer and Lucy Nowell, Office of Cyberinfrastructure, NSF, US
Mario Campolargo, European Commission, Europe
Rhys Francis, Australian eResearch Infrastructure Council, Australia

Wissenburg, UK

She spoke from a UK research funder's perspective. I did not record her overview of the funding system, since it is largely irrelevant from our point of view. The UK does have seven different research councils, ranging across the spectrum of research, i.e.- from the arts and humanities to medicine, and so forth. All receive a portion of the overall budget, with the engineering and physical sciences RC receiving 25%, while the A&H receives 4%. This is familiar turf.

CNI in DC: Closing Plenary on the Future of Scholarly Communication

Timo Hannay, Nature Publishing Group

Focused on five main areas:

• audio & video
• databases
• open data
• peer review & blogs
• online collaboration

CNI in DC: Electronic Publishing Systems

Mark Cyzyk, Johns Hopkins

In the scope of his study, Cyzyk did not interview the developers. His methodology began with an environmental scan, seeking any possible product and system. He showed a rather long list, many of which I've never heard of in the US context. From the many candidates, he chose seven: DPubS, GNU EPrints, Hyperjournal, OJS, Connextions/Rhaptos, DiVA, and Topaz. The first four are those that he installed and evaluated; for the latter three, he gathered data, but did not use the product.

CNI in DC: Opening Plenary

Tim Berners-Lee, Internet Überlord
Clifford Lynch

Berners-Lee was at CNI to present the 2007 MATC (Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration) prizes. Nominations for the MATC are open, and the next cycle begins within a few days of this conference (12/12). Rather than record the winners here, it probably makes more sense to consult the Website.

Cliff Lynch offered his review of the year and the major issues that have arisen since the last CNI meeting in April. As usual, recording his musings can be somewhat fraught, since he offers them largely via stream of consciousness. Additionally, while it is interesting to hear about the major issues facing Internet2, we, as K-State Libraries, are at least several layers removed from the implications of those issues. Perhaps at some point in the future we will be closer to such things, but, for now, we have different fish to fry.

NISO: Electronic Resource Usage Data

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Electronic Resource Usage Data: Defining a complex problem
Caryn Anderson
Doctoral Studies Program Manager
GSLIS, Simmons College

NISO: Building Frameworks of Organizational Intelligence

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

"I'm sorry, we didn't know we wanted to know that!" Building frameworks of organizational intelligence
Joe Zucca
Director for Planning and Communication
University of Pennsylvania Libraries

NISO: From Shoeboxes to Mashups

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

From Shoeboxes to Mashups: ERMs and Decision Support
Tim Jewell
Director, Information Resources and Scholarly Communication
University of Washington Libraries

Also sits on the SUSHI development committee

NISO: Searching for Value

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Searching for Value in a Changing Research Environment: What data do you have and how can you use it?
Patricia Brennan
Product Development Manager
Thompson Scientific

NISO: Real World Data

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Real World Data: Using Usage to Shape Libraries
Virginia Steel
University Librarian
University of California, Santa Cruz

NISO: Usage Statistics & Information Behaviors

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Usage Statistics & Information Behaviors
John McDonald
Assistant Director, User Services & Technology Innovation
The Libraries of the Claremont Colleges

NISO: Why Collect Data?

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Why Collect Data?
Colleen Cook
Dean of the Texas A&M University Libraries
Sterling C. Evans Chair in Librarianship

Also co-creator of LibQUAL

NISO: ScholarlyStats

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

ScholarlyStats: How it utilizes COUNTER and SUSHI standards, questions regarding effective use, and future strategic plans for the service
Tina Feck
Vice President, Customer Relations
Swets Information Services

NISO: Usage Data: an aggregator perspective

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Usage Data: An Aggregator Perspective
John Law
Director, Strategic Alliances and Platform Management
ProQuest CSA

(The conference wireless died in the middle of this post so I lost all my thoughtful analysis (ahem). This is the nutshell version posted later in the afternoon.)

NISO: SUSHI & COUNTER

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

SUSHI & COUNTER
Oliver Pesch
Chief Strategist, E-Resources
EBSCO Information Services

(Oliver was moving fast through his slides so there are lots of items I missed)

NISO: Usage Data: seeing the full perspective

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Usage Data: Seeing the Full Perspective
Kevin Cohn
Product Director, Atypon

(The conference wireless was down while Kevin was speaking. These are my notes captured off-line and posted later in the afternoon.)

NISO: The MESUR Project

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

The MESUR Project: An Update from the Trenches
Johan Bollen
Staff Researcher
Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library

NISO: From What to Why

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

From What to Why: Electronic Resource Usage Data in Collection Development and User Behavior
Karen Coombs
Head of Web Services
University of Houston Libraries
and
Library Web Chic

NISO: Aggregation & Analysis of Usage Data

NISO Forum: Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data

Aggregation & Analysis of Usage Data: A Structural, Quantitative Perspective
Johan Bollen
Staff Researcher
Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library

(Johan says he is afraid of yelling into the microphone, but it's quite difficult to hear him)

NISO at the sign of the Red Pegasus

Understanding the Data Around Us: Gathering and Analyzing Usage Data
November 1-2, 2007
Dallas, Texas

Initial Impressions:
Under the Magnolia Oil Company's red pegasus, I'm meeting with a big group of library hangers-on to discuss the pressing issues of the day. It starts to sound like a political meeting, but the topic is usage data in all its use/ful/less forms. Todd Carpenter from NISO is telling us this is the largest-attended forum this year, and the room is packed. We're meeting in a fabulous old Art Deco ballroom and it's impossible to divorce the architecture of our surroundings from the topic at hand. If we can depart with the same clear sense of structure and purpose regarding our data that the architects of these buildings possessed in their design schemes, we'll be doing very well indeed.

Entrepreneurship at K-State

This is a somewhat unstructured report from a presentation on the topic above from Friday, October 26. Lori G asked if I would be interested in attending; I believe she and other deans had been asked by the provost to have a few people from their organizations there. I'm morbidly curious when terms like entrepreneurship are used in the academy, so I agreed to attend.

The unstructured part has a couple of causes. First, I arrived a few minutes late and missed the intro for the first set of co-presenters. They had no slides, so all I caught was their first names; if you know who they are, by all means leave a comment with that information. Then, it ran over its time slot, so I had to leave before it ended. Last, it's a somewhat loose concept, so I didn't take a lot of notes, but have a lot of impressions in my head.

Now that those are out of the way, on with the summary ...

Repository Redux: Access 2007

Mark Leggott
University of Prince Edward Island

Leggott moved to UPEI in 2006, forever altering the Canadian library landscape. Either you were at Access and/or know Leggott and get the joke, or you have no idea what I'm saying. For my part, I always find listening to Leggott to be worth my while. He has both an effective manner of communicating and a lot of challenging ideas.

He gave an overview of UPEI and the library reorganization he led when he took over. He added two departments--Outreach and Communications & Data and Research Services--the latter of which is central to his talk. For K-State's purposes, the lessons he lays out that relate to Data and Research Services have import for our Repository Services initiatives. What he's doing differs fundamentally from our approach, as will be seen below, and I think a close look at what he's done could be valuable for us.

Open Source Software as a Service: Access 2007

Joshua Ferraro
LibLime

One of his main points was to address why one might need commercial support for open source software in libraries. Mr. Ferraro worked at the Athens County Public Library, the first (US?) library to go with Koha, an open-source ILS. Showed that OPAC to start the talk. LibLime uses the Zebra indexing backend, so relevance ranking is pretty slick. Koha has a templating system, which means the interface is quite malleable.

Opening Keynote: Access 2007

Jessamyn West
Librarian about Vermont and the world

As per usual with Ms. West, taking notes is a bit of a reach. Lovely talk, but short on structure and points to record. It is worth mentioning that much of what she spoke about was taking advantage of OS and simple tools to solve the IT problem at hand. Lack of scalability in this approach concerns her.

Riffing on a t-shirt slogan she likes--"I will replace you with a small script"--she spoke for a bit about making technologies a little friendlier to appeal to users. Examples she gave are the 18 pt font WordPress uses for its login box (great for the older set) and the little AJAX lookup Yahoo does when you're picking a username for an account (tells you if your choice is taken and suggests alternatives). It's a neat notion: one need not fix everything, just enough to make it a little nicer and more approachable, gaining the good will of the user.

More about NASIG 2007

NASIG just gets better every year and this years speakers and presenters were really great.  While Char was busy preparing agenda's and the "Presidents guide..." I met with the new Conference Planning Committee and spent some time with the 2007 registrar in preparation for the job of registrar for 2008. 

Each day started with a vision speaker, and what a way to start!  Eye opening, refreshing and just like having a great cup of coffee, your brain and thoughts started to perculate with completley new ideas.  Each day ended with with net-working opportunities, including a cruise down the Ohio River on the riverboat Spirit of Jefferson.

Sessions I attended included:

• What's different about the Social Sciences - a comparison study on how the social science and science journals are used differently, and why the social scientists are less likely to care if their mateials are on the web. Publishers models and pricing are changing, yet this gave some insight into why science materials are changing so much faster, and why there seems to be no push to move the social sciences and humanities into some of those models.  Bottom line, "One size does not fit all!"
• Successive Entry, Latest Entry or None of the Above- was on using FRBR to revitalize serials management.  Two catalogers explained why for the sake of the user, FRBR could be used to create a one record approach to serial title changes.  As long as the journals intent is the same and the scope doesn't change one record could be used to show the current and previous titles, with all their many changes on one record.  From the users point of view this is an interesting idea, one that I would like to see some user studies done on before adapting. Of course along with all the cataloging changes, there would need to be some OPAC (or ILS) changes also.  It probably won't happen any time soon.
• Tumbling Dice: Publishing, Aggregators and ERM interelationships.  Presented by an ILS vendor, a LOC librarian and a library and information systems consultant, this updated the audience on several new standards and how critical it is for accurate metadata be input into the ERM.   
• We are all Winners :Training Silents to Millennials to work as a Team.  This session left the realm of serials to focus on training our staff.  Our workforce at this time includes 4 generations from the Silent Generation (who just turned 65) to our Millennial student assistants.  These groups work, think, learn and approach new ideas very differently.  One of the best all around sessions that would be of benefit everyone. Sources available at Download we_are_all_winners_references.doc

NASIG 2007

Great conference. Bob Stein, Karen Schneider, & Dan Chudnov were our vision speakers, and each one made us think. (Isn't that what visionaries should do?) I particularly enjoyed Bob showing us software that allows authors' and readers' marginalia to be maintained and his thoughts on "authorized version", Dan's non-techie description (hallelujah) of COinS, which I have struggled to read about, and Karen's thoughts on the Google book project.

Other sessions I attended:

• Betting a Strong Hand in the Game of Electronic Resource Management - presenters described their experiences with staffing and workflows; discussed using data once for multiple purposes - sounds like what we are doing (and will add to once we get Verde up & running)
• Column People: What’s Their Future in a World of Blogs? The Role of Columnists in Academic Journals - many attendees reported they are getting more of their library-related news through blogs, rss feeds; don't have much time to read the journal literature; most agree columns won't go away anytime soon
• On Your Mark, Get Set.... Talk! The First Ever NASIG Speed-Rounds - I was supposed to participate in this session but because of the initial incorrect published time, I secured the door in order to tell late-comers how the session worked and when they could 'scoot' in. The session got really good feedback from what I heard. There were 10 (or so) tables in the room: publishers sat at different tables, attendees picked one table then every 5 minutes rotated to the next table, etc. Discussion was supposed to be generic rather than specific to a library's account.
• Academic Journal Publishing - one of NASIG's purposes is to educate serialsts on all aspects of the serials information chain. This session was a panel discussion with 4 presenters from different publishers who covered the publishing process from inception of a journal to peer-review to editorial to marketing. Very interesting.
• A Needle in a Haystack: Finding that First Academic Serials Job... - This session was the final session on Sunday before the closing ceremonies so it wasn't too well attended. Presenters discussed the resume, how to dress for an interview, what NOT to do in your cover letter & during the interview, the tenure & promotion process. It might have been useful if they had included a sample interview day.

The opening reception took place at the Frazier International History Museum a few blocks from the Galt House. The sword-fighting demonstration was a lot of fun and we also had an interpreter describe the execution of Anne Boleyn.

I also spent some training time with incoming treasurer & conference registrar Peter Whiting, secretary Joyce Tenney, and president Denise Novak to get a handle on the daily hotel bills reconciliation process. Apparently, the Galt did a stellar job with their record-keeping so it wasn't too difficult. I understand that is not always the case.

Denise and I also worked on the agendas for the opening & closing ceremonies. She didn't have any written documentation so we were basing the agendas off memory! Considering that others are involved in these events, we decided it would be good to create a "President's guide to the annual conference" so we can ensure that everyone involved is notified well in advance!

DigCCurr 2007: Collection Development

Speakers: Michael Day (UKOLN), Janice Ruth (LC), Kathleen Murray/Mark Phillips (North Texas), Victoria Reich (Stanford)

Day:

Spoke on UKOLN's efforts to assist various institutions with the issues facing them in the realm of digital curation and preservation. The Digital Curation Centre for which he works is taking steps toward this end.

DigCCurr 2007: Designing and Implementing IRs Within Institutions

Speakers: Leslie Johnston (VIrginia), Sarah Michalak (UNC-Chapel Hill), Deborah Thomas (LC)

Johnston:

Virginia was one of the two lead development sites for Fedora (Cornell the other), funded by Mellon on two occasions. She wanted to be clear that Fedora is not a repository, but a toolkit to build one (a digital asset management system).

DigCCurr 2007: Plenary II - National Libraries and Archives

Speakers: Peter Bruce (Library and Archives Canada), Adrian Cunningham (Nat'l Archives Australia), Ken Thibodeau (NARA)

Bruce:

Gave a brief history of LAC, which came into being in 2004 as the body responsible for collecting and preserving the documentary heritage of Canada. They collect the full range of digital resources one would expect, from government records to Websites. Base their architecture on OAIS, and are working on building a TDR, trusted digital repository.

DigCCurr 2007: Incentives & Services

Speakers: Liz Madden (LC), Jinfang Niu (UMich), Soo Young Rieh (UMich)

Madden:

A digital curator has to know at least something about all of the pieces necessary: collecting, processing, etc.

Reporting on lessons learned from American Memory and the Archive Ingest and Handling Test (AIHT). The latter project tests the feasability of moving a digital archive in toto from one institution to another. She admitted that she actually had little to say about AIHT and that she should have removed it from her title.

DigCCurr 2007: Selection and Appraisal

Speakers: Richard Cox (Pitt), Michael Moss (U of Glasgow), William Underwood (Georgia Tech Res Inst)

DigCCurr 2007: Funders' Perspectives

One of my greatest questions before coming to the conference concerned how to say the name DigCCurr. It is pronounced DigSeeker, and stands for Digital Curation Curriculum. Wow, glad that's resolved.

Three speakers: Stephanie Clark (IMLS), Chris Greer (NSF), Carlos Oliveire (European Union)

In his introduction, Joel Wurl of NEH noted that there are a lot of funding agencies "jumping on the bandwagon" when it comes to funding digital projects. As such, the agencies represented on the panel are a relatively small subset of what's available. He noted that the agencies supporting this digital work want to see from applicants that these projects are part of the insititutional mission (and is thus part of the budget), and not wholly grant-supported.

CNI Phoenix: 21st-Century Libraries

Speaker: David Lewis (IUPUI)

CNI site for this talk

His talk was based on a paper he wrote; I recommend reading it.

Laid out his assumptions:

• Libraries are a means, not an end. It's about providing an information subsidy for a community.
• Libraries confront disruptive technologies, like book digitization.
• Real change requires real change. Make major changes, and do so deliberately.
• We have a window of opportunity; people like libraries and we have some banked good will

CNI Phoenix: Google at UMich Update

Speaker: Paul Courant (UMich)

CNI site for this talk

Courant offered a review of the origin of the project, which has been widely reported and analyzed elsewhere. He pointed out that a project such as this fits their mission statement, and should fit anyone's mission statement.

The digitization began in July 2004, which the first large upload to Google Book Search taking place in November 2005. Books are gone for about 5-7 days for scanning, and are returned in the same condition in which they left. Of course, both the process and technology used are confidential, and he made something of a joke of this.

CNI Phoenix: Open Access Publishing

Speakers: Nancy John (UI Chicago), Edward Valauskas (First Monday)

CNI site for this talk

The full title for this talk was "Trying the Gold Road on a Shoestring Budget: Open Access Publishing with PKP's Open Journal System." Needless to say, I was drawn to this session not only because I am quite familiar with PKP/OJS from attending Access in Canada, but because we in K-State Libraries have discussed moving into the role of publisher, and this desire recently found expression in our strategic plan. While Cornell and other partners (including the U of Utah as I learned at dinner last night) are busy at work on DPubs, it has yet to become a full-fledged publishing platform, as opposed to OJS, which can handle the full lifecycle of journal publishing, from submission to archiving.

Electronic Resources & Libraries: ERMS

Paving the ERM Highway: Expanding role of ERM systems and the drive to streamline their data population.
Tina Fieck - Swets and Deberah England - Wright State Univ.

Tina and Deberah shared ways the library and vendor can help each other in preparation of populating an ERM.  Tina spoke of the information the vendor can provide. She spoke of the amount of information the vendor has and how one journal title may have over 1000 different prices based on who the user is, where they are, tier, # of users, publisher packages, etc.  She also spoke emphatically about the need to have standards and how the librarian must help promote this to the publishers.

Deberah talked about their experience in populating their new ERM with information about their 256 databases.  At this time they have not entered any journal information.  Challenges ahead include discussions about the use of the ERM, standards to follow, the inoperability between products from different vendors, what is relevant e-data, will the ERM replace the bib or acquisitions records? While some of this sounds extremely revolutionary, until we see the ERM in action we simply don't know what it really is capable of doing. 

Electronic Resources & Libraries: Opening Keynote

Rick Luce is the Vice-Provost and Director of Libraries at Emory University.  Before coming to Emory, he was the Research Library director at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 15 years.

While it seems like a stretch to compare libraries and science, if you consider how the computer affects each by adding new information to our world daily and complicating how you can find it, you  see a clear connection.  Luce spoke of the need for librarians to take greater control of serving up the content (information)to the users, but looking for ways to use the proven web ideas and tools to design, tweak and then push out the information that our users are looking for. He suggested using more graphical displays and interactive mapping as a way of cutting back on the text that we as librarians cling to. He states that it is all about "integrating everything."  Luce states that we should focus on "working the puzzle" rather than the puzzle pieces.  We need to look at how technology will influence how our users will behave and what they will expect, then we should refine and re-define our own roles by asking "dangerous" questions. We need to continuously look for ways to make renewal an integral part of our organization.

Electronic Resources & Libraries: Closing Keynote

Jane Burke, ProQuest & Serials Solutions

NASIG Board Meeting

The NASIG Board met all day Thursday in Seattle prior to the start of ALA MidWinter We had a great session with topics ranging from membership development, contributions to help support our awards program and student scholarships, update on conference planning for Louisville, a technology RFP, and site options for future conferences.

As VP, the next few weeks will be fairly busy as I contact our current committee chairs to discuss the 2007/2008 committee assignments process, then start identifying individuals who can replace outgoing committee members.  It's a complicated process!

More from CULS

A session presented by Terri Summey and Cynthia Akers from ESU on Library Ambassadors sparked my interest.  How exciting it was to learn that we at KSU have just started a Library Ambassador program.  (See KSU Libraries News & Events blog) A theme that came up several times at CULS was that students are more likely to ask questions of other students. Who better than student Library Ambassadors could promote the library at public events, in classrooms and or even in the resident halls.  I hope we will be hiring more and have an opportunity for the staff to meet our library ambassadors and for them to met some of us.  Part of ESU’s program includes training or some in-service time for the Ambassadors in different parts of the library to give them a better understanding of the areas that are more behind the scenes. 

Several Pittsburg State librarians presented a session on Outreach.  The question came up to define “outreach” and we found it could be any number of things depending on the context.  Suggestions of things that could be done went from article linking with SFX to library (and Friends) hosting receptions for new faculty or faculty authors on campus.  Seems to me the library is the perfect venue for a new author reception. 

Mass & Matter Symp: John Wilbanks from Science Commons

Why Share?

Fun and easy to demonize publishers and drug companies, but we're all in this together.

The "tragedy of the commons":
sheep grazing on common pasture:
advantage - more sheep for each shepherd to shear
disadvantage - more grass eaten, eventually no grass - a justification for fences

The enclosure movement - lawyers believe a second enclosure movement is ongoing.
Old models of rivalrous-based publishing are being applied to non-rivalrous models (digital networks).

Current copyright law is created because of entertainment lobby. Scientific papers by Einstein are not in the public domain. The public domain keeps moving to protect popular entertainment - uses Mickey as example.

Creative Commons - 5 versions from most restrictive to most permissive. Language is readable by lawyers, humans, and machines.
140M works under CC licenses w/ exponential growth. Why? He believes humans want to share.

Science Commons tries to put together science law and economics to create licenses that make sense for science research. Asks, "where are imbalances in scientific research cycle?"
Policies for author self-archiving - some publishers make it easy; many do not.
Incentives to share research - many authors don't see or don't have

Science Commons is releasing a Scholar's Copyright to easily generate an author's addendum that specify various kinds of author's rights. Librarians, take note and link soon.

Discusses difficulties in transferring and sharing scientific materials - DNA, cell lines, bones, rocks, etc - this is a culture problem. Scientists are rewarded for hanging on to their materials and sharing only rarely - certainly not with little-known labs in foreign countries.
Science Commons is working on changing this culture by creating a clearinghouse of scientific materials and standardizing licenses to cover exchanges.

Impossible to process all of information that we already know (uses research on p53 protein as an example) under current usage models - print, reading, article-based.
Text-mining works better, but will work even better with semantic web implementation - author-provided keywords and associated hyperlinks. The goal is a model of reading/processing that works as well as Amazon.com - they are really good at processing tons of data, knowing what you like to read, and making recommendations to you. Why can't scientific research be this easy?
A problem with many major publishers - like Elsevier - licenses forbid crawling, spiders, robots - so enabling this kind of Semantic Web work over a current subscriber's web pages would be illegal under the DMCA.

http://sciencecommons.org
willbanks@sciencecommons.org

[edited for spelling and URLs 10/12/06]

Mass & Matter Symp: Alice Ra'anan from American Physiological Society

American Physiological Society is not for profit publisher and scholarly association.
Publishes 13 peer-reviewed journals, 12 mo. embargo

Has a history of online publishing going back to 1993.
Selected articles are free at publication; provide patient access via a web request form ( ~ 5 per week - not clear if this is # allowed per patient, or # of requests they are receiving)

Now publishes online via HighWire Press - free after 12 months - APS retains copyright.
Authors can't self-archive, but can pay $150 for "toll-free" link - doesn't work until 12 months later. [Correction from A. Ra'anan 11/27/06; see comments]
Articles reside only on APS website; not distributed to aggregators.
Why?
Believe journals survive on their subscriptions; believes that subscriptions will be harmed by open access to their material.
Spreads costs between readers and authors - believe is sustainable and allows for innovation.

Not-for-profit journal publishers feel threatened by federally mandated open access (FRPA - S-2695), depending on how "open access" is defined. If define same as PLOS and BMC, then where are revenues from copyright fees, subscriptions for pre-embargo material, etc going to be replaced?

[10/12 - There was more from her presentation, but my laptop battery died. I will try to link to her slides when they become available. In the meantime, I have a paper copy at my desk. She also distributed suggestions for further reading and a nice poster from APS on "Ethical Issues when Writing a Scientific Paper". These are also at my desk if you are interested.]

11/27 update - Alice graciously emailed me her slides, and has granted permission for me to post them here:
Download Alice Ra'anan's PowerPoint slides

[edited for spelling and URLs 10/12/06]

Mass & Matter Symp: Gavin Yamey, MD, from/on PLOS

PLOS = Public Library of Science

3rd world country researchers and doctors can't afford access to papers and other work they need to update and maintain their public health efforts. PLOS looks at open access publishing from a global perspective.

Private ownership of research results:
researcher does the work, gives to publishers who sell to readers; tie work up in tight copyright restrictions. Estimates $1M profit to NEJM for reprints of Vioxx trials article that resulted in yanking
drug from market. Offers other specific examples of journals and articles in hot-button public health issues - AIDS, obesity, malaria, etc - where cost or accessibility are prohibitive for a global audience.

Argues that that audience, especially health professionals in developing world, can't be equal partners in global public health conversation because they don't have all the information.
Also, for-profit publishers don't make money on articles focusing on diseases of the poor - wealthy readers don't want to pay for reprints of articles on leprosy (for example). So generally publishers don't accept or publish research on those health issues.

Compares open access publishing to a midwife - help give birth to the baby, but don't keep it. Once costs of processing article are paid for, should be free for anyone to access.

PLOS started as an advocacy group, became a publisher - now publishes 7 scientific journal; will be launching a new one on neglected tropical diseases in about 1 year.

Publishing in a PLOS journal:
free online access
creative commons license allows users to download, copy, distribute, use
author retains copyright
deposited immediately in public database

Addresses myths of open access publishing:
poor quality
publication fees punish authors from developing world
no impact factor
plenty of free online journals
abstracts are good enough
open access costs too much

Knowledge commons:
"Knowledge...is the common property of all" - Benjamin Franklin
What kind of global development is possible when public health research is made "common property"?
Examples:
Genbank
Bios - Biological Innovation for Open Society
Human Genome Project
Science Commons  [Exec. Director John Wilbanks is keynote speaker in last post]
DNDi - Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative
Open source beer! University of Copenhagen students' beer recipe developed for open access
[note: link is to Wired News article about students and their recipe]

Is it ethical to submit research to a closed-access journal?

gyamey@plos.org

[edited for spelling and URLs 10/12/06]

Mass & Matter Symp: Daviess Menefee from/on Elsevier

"Darwin and the Evolution of Access in the Electronic Age"

Ironic to present this title in Kansas? drew laughs

Evolving nature of the publishing business; background of STM (scientific, technical, & medical) industry; respond to changes in access; reacting to future.

STM Journal Publishing - competitive:
Every journal and editor competes for best authors and articles; growing, but not as much in the past.
Looks at current situation differently than previous presenters - journal budgets have decreased to pay for fewer journals, rather than cost of journals increasing to necessitate cuts in titles.

A big village necessary to maintain scholarly communication - 2 referees per article; 250,000 articles per year; roughly 500,000 authors per year - ~1 million contacts per year that Elsevier makes.
Elsevier estimates 500 articles downloaded every minute from Science Direct.
"Village" includes server power, digital storage, generators, chillers - huge resources in Dayt