Author Archives: Steven Bell

Why Open Access Matters

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Today marks the start of Open Access Week, a global event celebrated each year to acknowledge the importance of continuing to work towards reform in our system of scholarly communication. There are two significant reasons why it is important for faculty, researchers and librarians to work together to create change in a system that is in need of change and demands our collective attention.

The first is economic. The current system is not financially sustainable for higher education. The cost of tuition is already unaffordable for too many students. The irrational high cost of many scholarly journals, particularly in the fields of science, technology and medicine, contributes to the expense of a college education. The budgets of academic libraries are challenged to support these costs. Even with the advent of digital technologies that make new and more open systems of distribution possible – well proven by hundreds of viable, highly respected open access journals – we still scratch our heads and wonder why higher education continues to give away faculty research only to buy it back from publishers at inexplicable high costs.

The second is openness. The current scholarly publishing system keeps important research information behind subscription pay walls. While there is notable progress in making scientific research available to the public, it still represents a small portion of all published scholarly content. There are already many examples of the benefits of making this content openly accessible to the public. Taxpayers certainly have the right to the information their tax dollars fund. If higher education transforms the scholarly communication to advance openness, we all benefit.

Open Access Week is designed to create awareness. It is about more than economics or creating access for the public. It also brings attention to the importance of higher education supporting its right to use copyrighted content under the guidelines for fair use. We must defend the right of faculty to use copyrighted information to support student learning. It is also a time to remind faculty of their rights as authors. Instead of surrendering the rights to their intellectual property to publishers, faculty will want to think about adding language to author agreements that allows them to retain their rights to reuse or share their published content. Too many Temple University faculty have signed standard author agreements only to discover later on that they had no right to use their own content or could only do so for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

We hope that members of our Temple University community will take some time this week to think about the current scholarly publishing system and how we can work collaboratively to improve it. Temple University librarians are available to meet with faculty members who would like to learn more about open access, fair use or author rights. Take advantage of Open Access Week webinar events. Visit the Open Access Week website to learn more about what you can do to create change. And watch this blog for more posts about open access throughout this week as Temple University Libraries honors Open Access Week.

 

Get Ready For Open Access Week – Oct.21 – Oct.25

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Each October academic librarians set aside a week to promote and celebrate the open access movement. Across the globe events are held to remind scholars of the importance of reforming the scholarly communications system in order to make the results of research and scholarship widely available to all the world’s citizens. According to the Open Access Week website:

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its sixth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.Open Access” to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted.

In recognition of Open Access Week, Temple University Libraries will use its website and this blog to share information about open access. We hope this will create more awareness about open access issues and opportunities across our institution.

There are two webcasts scheduled for Open Access Week that may be of interest to you. On Monday, October 21 at 3:00 pm ET the Open Access Week Kick Off Event is sponsored by SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the World Bank. The webcast is “Open Access: Redefining Impact” and will feature a panel discussion of multiple experts from different disciplines discussing their open access experiences. You can view a listing of other Open Access Week live events being sponsored by SPARC.

The live webcast “Protect Your Patrons From Predatory Publishers” will be held on Tuesday, October 22 at 3:30 pm ET, and it will feature Jeffrey Beall speaking about low quality open access journals that use misleading techniques and claims to lead faculty to publish for outlandish fees. It is important for researchers and scholars to be aware of predatory publishers.

Stay tuned for more information on open access the week of October 21, 2013.

 

Browzine Takes Your Journal Reading to a New Level

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Temple University Libraries provides access to thousands of journals in electronic format. The challenge is identifying all the ones relevant to your needs, and then setting up a system that makes it convenient to keep up with the latest issues and articles.

That’s where Browzine comes in handy. It’s an app for both Mac and Android tablet devices that makes tracking, reading and managing journals a simple task. The Temple University Libraries has acquired a site license for Browzine that will allow Temple community members to easily gain access to a vast majority of the journals to which we subscribe – as well as many more open access journals. While viewing articles, Browzine facilitates saving and sharing them.

When you become a Browzine user you begin by selecting the journals you wish to regularly follow, by title or by browsing different subject areas. The selection covers journals that the Temple University Libraries subscribes to, as well as open access journals. Browzine creates a virtual bookshelf on your device. Just click on individual journal issues to proceed to the table of contents for each issue.

Ipad screen showing thumbnails arranged as if on a wooden bookshelf.

Screenshot of the Browzine Bookshelf Where Journals Are Organized

 

 

To get started just download the Browzine app from the App Store or Google Play. If you are interested in learning more about Browzine take a few moments to watch this introductory video. Your Libraries subject specialist can also provide you with more information about or guidance with Browzine.

Do You Have My Textbook?

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One of the first things students do as the new semester begins is figuring our their textbook strategy. Which ones can they borrow from friends that took the course before. Can it be rented in e-format from B&N, Amazon, Google or Chegg? Does the bookstore have a used copy? For which courses could a textbook purchase be delayed or even ignored? With the high cost of textbooks, figuring out how to get them at the cheapest possible price is high on the students’ beginning of the semester to-do-list.

That’s why one of the most frequently asked questions at the Temple Libraries during the first week or two of the semester is about textbooks. Students want to find out if the Libraries hold a copy of their textbook. Some assume we buy them, but they find out that’s not the case. Sometimes their book is placed on course reserve by the instructor. Sometimes a fairly out-of-date edition, a past reserve item, can be found in the book stacks. Some students will choose to take that outdated edition over the current edition.

Student interest is growing  in having faculty point them to open education resources instead of assigning traditional textbooks. In a research paper titled “Online and Campus College Students Like Using an Open Educational Resource Instead of a Traditional Book“, Brian Lindshield and Koushik Adhikari of Kansas State University, report that data gathered over several semesters using an alternate textbook they called the “flexbook”, that utilized an open-source textbook platform to allow faculty to collaboratively offer freely available learning materials, was preferred by students over the traditional textbook. They conclude  “that students are willing to move beyond traditional print textbooks.” An article in Inside Higher Ed titled “Expense Experiments” identifies how different institutions are experimenting with both e-textbooks and technology for reading them.

Additionally in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Almanac of Higher Education 2013, there is a chart that summarizes student responses to a question asking them what technologies they would like to most see their professors using – and what they’d like to see used less often. Nearly half of the students surveyed indicated that they would like to see more use of freely available course content beyond the student’s own campus. A slightly lesser number of students wanted more use of e-books and e-textbooks.

The Temple University Libraries offers a resource page for faculty seeking more sources for open educational resources – such as the University of Minnesota open textbook catalog that can subject search the holdings of numerous open textbook repositories. The Libraries also owns thousands of e-books that may be used as an alternate to a textbook. Using the SUMMON search (on the Libraries homepage) it is possible to modify a search to locate book chapters in electronic sources:

With the growing number of open educational resources available to faculty, and the increasing student acceptance of e-resources, the possibility of replacing traditional textbooks with open learning materials is greater than ever.

Whitman, Poe and Sushi: Exploring Poetry at Paley

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As students traverse the main floor of Paley Library, rushing to and from classes this spring semester, a few stop every now and then to experience the poetry. Spread among the display cases on the first floor of Paley are books and documents from the Temple University Libraries Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) that invite us to explore 20th century alternative and small-press American poetry. As the crush of exams and final projects arrives, exploring this poetry display can be a great way to clear one’s mind and do a bit of de-stressing.

According to Margery Sly, Director of the SCRC,all the material in the exhibit comes from SCRC manuscript and rare book holdings. She adds that the display was designed as a journey into our poetry collections that begins with Philadelphia-region forefathers Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe, who were considered radical in their day and moves forward into the work of 20th century poets. The display was also intended to coordinate with a lecture about Whitman, and to also promote the use of the poetry collection for research by Temple students.

Moving among the cases provides insight into poets who be less familiar to us but whose work is significant in the world of poetry. The work of accomplished poets such as John Burnett Payne, Lyn Lifshin, Dorothea Grossman and Tony Quagliano are featured in this display. Browsing the poems, letters and related documents one senses the importance the small press has played in expanding the dissemination of poetry in 20th century America. A small (literally) book of verse, such as Grossman’s “The First Time I Ate Sushi” communicates “the fun of speaking English” (a line from her poem Future Past).

Glass display case in library with texts and photos for the Alternative American Poetry exhibition (links to larger version).

If you want to explore those other iconoclasts and innovators of American poetry, scattered among the display cases are rare artifacts for Poe and Whitman found in our Special Collections Research Center. Then proceed up the stairway to the mezzanine level where you will find several cases dedicated to Poe and Whitman. There you will find some unique items documenting the lives and works of these great writers. This exhibit will remain in Paley Library through August. Be sure to take some time to explore before it returns to the SCRC.

More Than Books…These Collections Will Surprise You

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Stop a student or faculty member on campus. Do a quick word association. Ask “What’s the first word that comes to your mind when you think Library.” Expect the answer to be “books”. That’s not unexpected. In an extensive national survey done in 2005 about libraries nearly everyone associated the word “book” with “library”. What you might not know is that in addition to the over 3 million books held by the Temple Libraries, there are also a number of non-book items that you might not expect a library to hold in its collection.

A few of them are pretty unusual.

Here are five unusual or less common non-book items you can borrow from the Temple Libraries:

Digital Gear

In addition to books, many of the Temple Libraries also offer electronic devices that community members can borrow. The photo below features some of the digital gear available at the Paley Library Media Services Desk. The digital SLR is one of the most popular items sought by students for completing projects. Don’t wait until the last minute to borrow it, as there may be a waiting list. We also have a digital recorder that is perfect for creating podcasts. Our iPads are also popular and these can be found at Paley, Science & Engineering, and Ambler.

a digital slr camera, an ipad, and a digital recorder.

Digital devices available for loan from Temple Libraries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of DVD Movies

Perhaps this one is less surprising, but there are still students who are unaware of the huge collection of DVD movies available for loan at Paley Library’s Media Services Desk. While many of the videos are instruction-related for courses, there are many popular feature films and we add new ones weekly. We now offer a browsing area, shown below, to make it easy to find DVD movies that you’ll want to borrow.

DVD cases in a wire rack lining the wall in the Media Services center.

DVD titles can be browsed at Media Services

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Box of Bones

It may seem a bit creepy for the Library to have a dis-assembled human skeleton, but it’s all in the name of learning. This is one of the more popular items kept at the Paley Library Reserve Desk, and it is used frequently by kinesiology students studying human anatomy. So how do we know that the box was returned with all the bones? Good question. Don’t worry. Our expert circulation/reserve staff is on top of it.

Cardboard box with fake spinal column and femurs visible.

Students can borrow a box of human bones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Box of Rocks

Looking for rocks to study. If so, you are probably a geology student – or maybe you just like to know your rocks. Either way, we’ve got them. You can find five boxes of rock samples just like the one shown below at our circulation/reserve desk. You’ll want to check this item out if your looking for a “rocking” good time (sorry).

 

Compartmentalized box holding various rock samples.

This is just one of several sets of rocks we offer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice Muscles

If you’re learning human anatomy and you need more than bones, we’ve got some nice muscles for you. This is a great way to study the human musculature system – or perhaps you just want to know what your muscles look like and a web image just doesn’t do it for you. This non-book items is also found at the circulation/reserve desk.

 

A box of anatomically correct plastic muscles on individual limbs.

These muscles look real but their just plastic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What else? Well, the Law Library was rumored to have a nifty clip-on tie collection. Those male law students never know when they’ll need to look their best. However, it’s just a tie – not a collection. But it is a great tie that goes with just about anything.

A black and beige striped tie with checkout slip.

Law Library’s circulating tie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the next time you hear someone say “The Library – yeah – that’s just lots of books” you can quickly point out that the Temple Libraries are about more than just books. Whether it’s electronic gear, movies or just rocks – there’s always something new and different to explore at Temple Libraries.

FASTR Supports Expanded Public Access to Research Results

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Scholars and researchers in the sciences and medicine have become more familiar with the NIH Mandatory Public Access policy that requires authors to deposit their research articles into PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. This has added many thousands of research articles into the public domain. Legislation to expand this public access policy to other fields has been proposed but not yet adopted. Despite that failure, a new effort to broaden public access has begun again.Here is a summary of FASTR, a new piece of legislation introduced recently to create even more public access to research, that comes from the ACRL Insider newsletter.

On Thursday February 14, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) was introduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. This bi-cameral and bipartisan legislation would require federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. In addition to requiring greater access, the legislation would require agencies to examine whether introducing open licensing options for research papers they make publicly available would promote productive reuse and computational analysis of those research papers.

 

FASTR would apply to quite a few other federal agencies including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services,the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. Those interested in learning more about FASTR can find more information at SPARC’s Alliance for Taxpayer Access site.

It is difficult to say if FASTR will fare better than its predecessor FRPPA. It is likely that the commercial publishers of scholarly journals will oppose this legislation as they have in the past. Faculty generally support the idea of offering open, public access to their research articles once they have been published in journals. With support from the academic community, FASTR could become a reality this time.

Digital Commons Network Offers Open Access to Scholarly Research

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This week Bepress, a company that creates institutional repository software, announced it had created a new multi-disciplinary repository of open access research content. According the announcement:

Bepress Digital Commons invites you to explore a new database of open access scholarship (600,000+ articles) that is curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, and represents thousands of disciplines and subject areas — from Architecture to Zoology. Researchers will never run into paywalls or empty records, because only full-text, open access research and scholarship are included. This new resource for researchers includes scholarship from hundreds of universities and colleges, including peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work. It continues to grow rapidly thanks to the contributions of researchers, librarians, faculty, and students who believe that scholarship is a community enterprise.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the Digital Commons Network grows and whether it will catch on as a valued research resource among scholars, but we welcome this new entry into the world of open access scholarship.

Read ‘The Teaching Professor” for Inspiration To Teach Better

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The Chronicle of Higher Education has a worthwhile essay about a unique publication called The Teaching Professor.  Titled “Inspiration From ‘The Teaching Professor” it sings the praises of this publication. This is how the author describes it:

What struck me as most distinctive about the newsletter was the feature that remains most valuable to me today: brief summaries of recently published articles on teaching and learning from a wide range of journals. The summaries not only evaluated the quality of the latest research but also teased out its practical implications.

The Teaching Professor is a monthly newsletter that averages about eight short articles per issue. They provide either first-hand accounts from faculty of their own teaching experiences with advice on some technique they’ve tried to improve student learning or it might be a summarization of a research article about a pedagogical technique.

The good news is that the Temple Libraries subscribes to a site license version of The Teaching Professor. That means every Temple University community member has free access to the newsletter. Click on this link to get to our group page. Keep in mind that this link will work on campus. You can then subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when the latest issue is published. When you are off campus you will be prompted to authenticate to our network. The other great thing is that you can search the complete archive of all past issues. This is invaluable when seeking advice on a particular teaching issue, such as how to generate better class discussions, how to improve grading or how to deal with class disturbances.

You will find this essay a good source of inspiration, and it just may motivate you to become a regular reader of The Teaching Professor.

 

It’s True. College Students Use the Library Website More Than Social Networking Sites

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Not that we’d ever run through campus shouting “We’re Number One”, but a set of data from the latest Chronicle Almanac does lead one to conclude that the greatest majority of college students indicate they use the library website at least once a week. While the students indicate they use a social networking site daily – only 90% of them can make that claim. That’s good enough for us to proclaim that we’re tops. And if it’s published in the Chronicle of Higher Education then it must be true.

Chart listing percentage of students by internet and computer activity on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Activities include: using the libraries web site, using presentation software, text messaging, social networking sites, and learning management systems, (linked to larger version).

The Library Website Tops Social Networking Sites