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Open Access Week Tidbits

It’s not actually a holiday, but for me Open Access Week seems more exciting than ever this year. There’s lots going on during this 5th annual international advocacy event, which runs from October 24-30. Here are a few highlights:

Kicking things off last week, John Dupuis over at Confessions of a Science Librarian blogged about one strategy that researchers can use to regain control of their scholarly communications: blogging. (I’m not entirely sure, but I believe this was the first use of the #occupyscholcomm hashtag, which continues in heavy rotation on Twitter this week.)

In her column over at Inside Higher Ed, our own Barbara Fister shares the gory details of the price increases for her library’s subscriptions to ACS and Sage journal packages. And she’s not the only one — others are taking up the call to make the rapidly increasing price tags for scholarly communication public. So many of our colleagues outside of the library are still unaware of these high and growing prices, and sharing this information is vital to our advocacy for open access.

Alex Holcombe, a Psychologist at the University of Sydney, has created a lovely, simple way for faculty and researchers to demonstrate their open access advocacy: the Open Access Pledge. Holcombe’s pledge calls for scholars to commit to doing peer review primarily (though not exclusively) for open access publications (both gold and green). It’s a simple pledge that calls on us to recognize that our volunteer peer review efforts have an impact on the economics of scholarly publishing, and we can use our labor to help address the disparities in access to research and scholarship.

Last but certainly not least: a little humor always makes difficult discussions easier, even discussions about the frustrations and challenges of scholarly communication. So if you’re on Twitter you should most definitely follow @OpenAccessHulk, who will SMASH TOLL ACCESS PUBLISHING.

Lots of libraries feature special programming for Open Access Week (including mine). If your library’s hosting events or programs this week, please share the details below. Happy Open Access Week, everyone!

Sudden Thoughts And Second Thoughts

Cooperation or Duplication

Here’s an interesting project from a few libraries out west that have decided to cooperatively build a library of video instructional tutorials. So far the tutorials cover the usual things, such as popular vs. scholarly journals, why you need to cite sources, and how to develop search terms. The Cooperative Library Instruction Project makes sense because why should every library be creating its own tutorials. Why not just have one generic tutorial, not specific to any library, that can be locally customized for use by many; wasn’t that the point of TILT. That saves time and faculty could also be directed to the site for incorporating the instruction into their courses. But isn’t the idea of sharing academic library tutorials the whole point of ACRL’s PRIMO repository of instructional materials? And why create new tutorials when there may be perfectly good ones out there? For example, I think this tutorial on scholarly versus popular is quite satisfactory. Why wouldn’t the cooperative include this rather than create a new one? Isn’t that the point of cooperation – not to reinvent the wheel? All that said, take a look at the Cooperative’s tutorials. You might prefer them to others you’ve tried.

Overheard on the Quiet Car

I recently took the Acela to Boston, and was able to get on the quiet car for the 5-hour ride back to Philadelphia. I couldn’t help but notice the conductor’s announcement: “This is the quiet car. There is no cell phone use allowed. All conversation must be kept at a whisper. In the quiet car we like to keep a library-like atmosphere.” I can’t say for sure but I’m guessing it’s been a while since that conductor visited a library.

Does This Mean They Liked Me?

It used to be that when you made a presentation at a library conference or symposium you’d get a few polite “nice job” comments after the talk, and if an attendee really enjoyed it he or she might send you a note afterwards – just as a token of appreciation for a job well done or to follow up with a question or two. Times have changed. After a recent presentation, when I next logged into my gmail account I saw I had eight new followers on my Twitter account. Now, I don’t know for sure if they all attended my program, but at least one or two of the names looked familiar and it seemed more than just a coincidence. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m just not sure quite what it means. I’m guessing this is the contemporary way of signaling that someone’s presentation resonated with you. It’s kind of interesting in a way. In the old days we just exchanged notes and had it done with. There’s something more permanent about following someone. Sure, you can always stop following, but how often does that happen. It’s a commitment. It’s flattering (I think), but on the other hand I feel like I”m going to disappoint these folks because my tweets are far from stimulating and are rather few and far between. Perhaps I need to pick it up and deliver more. Ah, the pressures of modern life.

News for ALA Swag Whores

Heard something interesting on the radio today. The simple pen is no longer the number one swag item being given away by corporate exhibitors. It looks like 2009 was the year of hand sanitizer. That’s right. Exhibitors have replaced their cheesy pens with little hand sanitizer bottles emblazoned with their corporate logos. So if your main reason for going to ALA is to stock up on all the pens you’ll need to keep your family and friends well equipped with writing instruments for the year, you may be disappointed in 2010. Then again you could become everyone’s go-to-guy/gal for hand sanitizer. I will be looking closely for those truly savvy vendors who put two and two together and think creatively when coming up with swag that will keep those librarians coming back for more.

Proselytizing for twitter

Recently I find myself quite absorbed by twitter, and with the zeal of a new convert I’m now going to add to the enthusiastic clamor surrounding it. I’m sure for many readers here I’m preaching to the choir. However if, like me a month ago, you don’t fully understand what twitter is, I recommend an article called “Twittering Libraries” written by an LIS student in the Fall 2008 term.

First, I acknowledge that skepticism is natural (and not helped by the recent headlines about twitter’s phishing snafu). I too used to wonder if it was *really* worth trying to figure out yet another 2.0 buzzword. Believe me, I am not the queen of all things tech, although my youthful appearance often conceals this fact. I’m not trying to claim twitter expertise (I suppose that’s called twexpertise) by any means, but I am starting to feel as affectionate toward it as toward firefox and gmail.

As I’ve already written a few posts (here and here) about twitter and libraries on my personal blog, rather than repeat myself I’m going to report some of the more illuminating and entertaining moments I’ve had on twitter recently:

-Twitter searching. Every so often I search “library” and see what non-librarians are saying about us. A couple of days ago I tried to find mention of my institution and realized there wasn’t much buzz about us in the twitter universe. Maybe it’s time to change that?

-Expanding on that thought, which one is worse: To be distantly at risk of a twitter hack, or to have no input about your twitter identity? Take FakeRodBlago, for example, which is a comedic account of the proceedings against Rod Blagojevich, written by “The Rod.” Taken from a public relations perspective, what happens when you are not representing yourself, and your identity is at the mercy of people making fun of you?

-Bear in mind that Twitter is a fairly basic tool. To designate a subject term, use a # symbol. So for example, if you use twitter as a chat tool and include a unique identifier like ‘#butterfly322’ in your tweets, you can later go back and search for #butterfly322 to review the discussion.

-There is impressive diversity to the tweets coming out of libraryland. I’m glad to see so many of us on twitter, because it means we are in more places more of the time. In this way we can stay relevant and in the consciousness of our patrons. (Never mind staying on top of things with each other and the profession!) Check out these examples: Disobedient Librarian, Infodiva, TextALibrarian, MdLawLib, Bill Drew.

-There are an array of crazy twitter tools that I haven’t even begun to play with, and the list is growing all the time. Who knew about some of these?

-Twitter is evolving. I believe it’s still in its infancy in terms of relevance, but I keep hearing new uses for it every day. People use it for all kinds of things, from the important to the mundane — breaking news stories, personal status updates (of the type “mmm, grilled cheese sandwich” etc.), automated updates, favorite links, technology troubleshooting, marketing new products, and a lot more. There are students, tech folks, religious folks, parents, shameless self-promoters, educators, recruiters, and average joes all using twitter. So pretty much any type of person — just create an account and watch Everyone to see.

In summary, I think this tool is definitely something that academic libraries should pay attention to. Please come find me if you decide to join!