Talking in the Library

Open Access Week 2011: Open Data #oaweek

The internet has opened new potential in many areas of the research and scholarly process:  open access journals, institutional repositories, open source software  – and more recently, open data.  Do you ever stop and think about the datasets that are the foundation of every scholarly journal article?  What happens to all that data?  Is it ever seen or re-used by other researchers?  Is it preserved somewhere? 

Programs like the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) DataNet are beginning to address the enormous challenges of managing and sharing research data in order to drive networked, collaborative and innovative science.  The challenges involve building infrastructure and setting standards for storing data, encouraging researchers to deposit their data for others to see and use for new purposes, and creating fewer restrictions on licenses, patents and copyrights that currently forbid re-use of data.

In the past raw data was not considered for publication primarily because it was not affordable or feasible to include in print journals.  But, the predominance of online journals has changed that model.  Also, large federal funding agencies such as the NSF and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are having a tremendous impact on the publication of data. NSF expects that all data will be made available after a reasonable length of time. Each proposal must now be submitted with a Data Management Plan.  Since 2003 the NIH has required applicants seeking $500,000 or more in direct costs to follow the Data Sharing policy  by submitting a plan for sharing their final research data with their application.

Data can be big like the Human Genome Project or small like thousands of datasets created by individual or small group researchers at universities and research institutes each year.  No matter what the size, the potential for sharing and reusing this knowledge is huge.

-Beth Turtle

This is our fourth open access post for the week.  Hope you're enjoying the series.

What's old is new

True confession: I may be a librarian, and therefore presumably a print fetishist, but like most people in networked nations, things have reached the point where if it is not online, I'm not going to go find it. Sad, but often true.

During a recent conversation with our dean, she suggested that I read a couple of Wikipedia pages for some background information on some interesting people (yes, a librarian referring a librarian to Wikipedia; this is a sign of the end of days). While checking these pages out, I ran across a citation to an album review in a 1977 edition of Rolling Stone. Being an online slave, I trundled over--which implies movement, but required perhaps a wrist movement of .06 cm and a slight tap of the index finger--to the E-Journals page with fingers crossed hoping to find a source for RS vintage 1977. Curses! Full text coverage begins with 1992.

Long story short: I trudged the 70 yards or so to the stacks, retrieved the volume, and read the review. While doing so, the ads caught my eye, not least those pictured on this missive. With many states seriously discussing the legalization of marijuana, and at least one state perhaps on the cusp of starting a trend in that direction, these ads reminded me that this issue is hardly new and that our national relationship to the "potent herb" has gone through many phases. I also discovered the Amazing Iso-2 Machine, and will now puzzle for days over how it worked. Seems clear, however, that spearmint extract was not its intended purpose, but I could be wrong about that.

Were one writing a paper on such a cultural issue, this would be fabulous primary source material, and the kind that one cannot find online. We should all take off our "online" blinders on occasion and flip through some of the crazy stuff found on libraries' shelves.

How Google works

The folks at PPC Blog have made this explanatory graphic to unveil the mystery:

Infographic by PPC Blog

And there goes my bet that it was magic.

News I'm talking about

News you can use...

When public records are less than public: How governments try to use copyright to limit access to data

Terrible News: Court Says It's Okay to Remove Content From The Public Domain And Put It Back Under Copyright (Can you imagine your favorite classics suddenly becoming copyrighted again?)

College 2.0: A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man 'Academy' on YouTube

A Failure to Communicate: In a lawsuit against Georgia State University over e-reserves, scholarly publishing faces a defining moment

-JO

Mind the Gap: Embracing Wikipedia

A colleague in the English Department forwarded to me Rob Weir's column, "Does Wikipedia Suck?" from Inside Higher Ed. In case you are expecting me to immediately jump up and declaim, "YES, Wikipedia is the spawn of ignorance and laziness," well, don't. I'm one of many librarians who extol the virtues of Wikipedia as both a starting point and an idea generator in the research process. We always point out the citations and more reading section at the bottom of an entry as a way to discover sources.

I frequently have conversations with students about the appropriateness of sources, including Wikipedia. My favorite example is the "coconut milk transfusion" investigation. It was my last in a long day of classes and the students were chatting before class about how much money you could earn selling your plasma. We decided to research selling and donating plasma. As part of an exercise to come up with other search terms, one student insisted that they write down "coconuts." I was as baffled as you are. The student explained that he had heard that soldiers in the Pacific during World War II carried coconuts with them because the coconut milk could be used like plasma. If you look at the Wikipedia article on coconuts, you will find that "fact." I turned to the rest of the class and asked if any of them would inject coconut milk in their veins on the say-so of a Wikipedia article. I am delighted to report that not one of them would. We then set about trying to answer the coconut milk transfusion question--and each time someone found a source, we asked, "Would I inject the coconut milk into my veins based on this source?"  In the end, we found one article in PubMed. Not one of us ever reached the point when injecting coconut milk seemed like a good idea. If, at any point, it seems like a good idea to you, I strongly advise that you consult a doctor. If you want to research this further, you should try the term "coconut water,"  which, as Wikipedia tells us, is not the same thing at all as coconut milk.

So, for me, Weir's column made me go "Hmmm" and  immediately wonder how we could use Weir's assignment evaluating Wikipedia (and truly, any other information source) here at K-State. My first thought is that such an assignment could be readily incorporated into any intro/research methods/capstone course, particularly those courses that focus on how research in the field is communicated. I also like one of the comments that suggests assigning students a Wikipedia entry to revise entries that have been identified as needing more citations. (Or cowbell. Everything could use more cowbell.) I would suggest that the coconut article could use a few more sources.

What are you doing with Wikipedia?

Image source: coconut.http://www.flickr.com/photos/bionicteaching/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Read about the King Arthur Flour tour of Kansas (and K-State)

Recipes like the Chocolate Stout Cake* have made the King Arthur Flour blog, Baker's Banter, a permanent fixture on my blogroll. King Arthur Flour (KAF) is located in Vermont, so the closest I get to their establishment is the catalog in my mailbox that teases me with dreams of warm homemade cinnamon rolls dripping with frosting and proffers of candied fruit for my rum soaked fruitcake. (That reminds me, I'd better get to soaking that fruit soon.)

Lest you think I'm the new pitchwoman for KAF, we have a Kansas connection to KAF--a K-State connection, even. It turns out that KAF buys a lot of Kansas wheat for their flour. A lot of wheat. And last summer, representatives from KAF converged on Kansas to learn about our wheat, from soil to mill, as you can read about in Our Kansas wheat tour. Now, it's cool enough that Kansas wheat farmers are featured in the tour. But the coolness factor moved up a few notches on the Cool-o-Meter when I saw K-State Research and Extension agents in the video, and then an even bigger bump when I saw the photos of our Grain Science and Industry labs. And it went over the top when I realized at least one of the KAF folks was a K-State grad.

Because I compulsively tie anything I read about back to K-State Libraries, I'll share a few outstanding resources that we have here in support of K-State's Grain Science and Industry program (which turns 100 this year, if you forgot.)

• The Grain Milling and Processing site provides "electronic access to selected, high quality grain milling and processing resources."
• Grain Science and Industry Subject Guide
• Tod Bramble's thesis (mentioned in the blog post) Wheat protein variance components in a commercial production system

*Yes, I've baked the chocolate stout cake--although I prepared the recipe as cupcakes. A few friends who don't like stout didn't like them. I despise stout, but I loved this recipe and am planning to bake the cupcakes again for St. Patrick's Day this year. You should, too.

Esposito on open access

In a recent article in The Scientist, Joseph Esposito takes some interesting views on the current state of open access before proposing his own alternatives. While I don't agree with many of his points, not least his near blanket dismissal of open access as a naive enterprise and his very inflated numbers for what it costs to build and maintain a repository--with that kind of money, anyone could hopefully do many more things than just that one--he does raise some interesting ideas about the current state of affairs. At the very least, it was useful to see that the very first comment asked Mr. Esposito to reveal his affiliations and backgrounds. That's a wise thing to do with anyone who speaks of open access and publishing.