Sustaining Scholarly Publishing

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In September, I sat down with the director of the Temple University Press Alex Holzman to speak about an AAUP report entitled “Sustaining Scholarly Publishing”, which he helped to organize during his tenure as president of the American Association of University Presses (AAUP). The 2011 report tries to make sense of recent changes in scholarly publishing. Though increasingly fractured by the proliferation of business models, the current publishing environment also provides excellent opportunities for future scholarship.

[The report is available from two different sources.]

The interview with Alex Holzman provides an excellent overview of the Temple University Press as well as the contemporary business, economic and academic environment in which university presses operate. Although we use the report as a touchstone for our conversation, there a lot of details included in the report that we do not cover. I strongly recommend taking the time to read the comprehensive and clearly written report.

Listen to the audio of Part I

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Audio Download Link (for later)

Listen to the audio of Part II

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Audio Download Link (for later)

 

—Fred Rowland

Library Prize: eligibility expanded

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The eighth annual Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and the second annual Library Prize for Undergraduate on Sustainability & the Environment will be held in the Spring 2012 semester. The purpose of the prize is to encourage the use of the Libraries’ resources and to highlight the best research among Temple undergraduates. This year’s prize submission deadline is Wednesday, March 28, 2012 at 5 pm.

This year the eligibility requirements have changed to include students participating in the McNair Scholars Program, The Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship (CARAS) Program, and students who finish their coursework in December 2011 and graduate in January. Below are the complete eligibility requirements.

To be eligible to win the 2012 Prize, applicants must:

  • be Temple undergraduates at any class level and in any discipline, and be enrolled, i.e. taking a class or classes, in the Spring 2012 semester or having completed all undergraduate coursework during the Fall 2011 semester (i.e. graduating in January 2012).

  • have completed their research project for a credit course at Temple during the Spring 2011, Summer 2011, Fall 2011, or Spring 2012 semesters, or began The Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program in the Summer of 2011 or received funding for The Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship (CARAS) Program during the Spring or Fall of 2011.

  • agree to contribute to a display about their research in theLibrary during the year following receipt of the Sustainability Prize

  • agree that all winning prize materials will become permanent property of the University Archives and may be displayed on the Library’s website

  • agree to attend the Library Prize Awards Ceremony during the week of April 30 to May 4, 2012.  (You need to attend the Awards Ceremony in order to win the Library Prize.)

We look forward to another great year for the Library Prize. If you have any questions about the new eligibility requirements, or any other questions, please email the libprize@temple.edu. 

Surviving Crunch Time – Know Where To Start Your Research

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As Temple students head home for the Thanksgiving holiday, thoughts of relaxing with family and friends may be more on the mind than research and final papers. But rest assured, when the calendar hits that last week of November, its the official start of crunch time – the last few weeks of the semester. The big challenge for many students is getting started on those final research papers. The librarians at Temple University know that getting started is the hardest part of any project. That’s why we have created lots of Research Guides to get you started in the right place.

Our Research Guides are designed to provide direct links to the top research databases and resources for students who may not be sure where to begin – and they are equally helpful for students who want to expand their research beyond the same one or two databases that always get used. We have over 600 databases, e-book collections, thousands of full-text journals and much more. Cut through the confusion. Start with a Research Guide. Where else could you get started? How about Summon. That’s our newest research tool for searching a huge amount of the content the Libraries offer – and you don’t have to even think about where to get started. Summon will get you there by providing lightning fast results that offer links to articles, books, and more – and when you follow these links it will lead to new resources – that’s why we call it a “discovery engine.”

Still not sure where to get started. Talk to one of our human discovery engines – your subject specialist librarian. No matter where you start your research, Temple Libraries has you covered for getting through crunch time.

Take the Open Access Quiz for Open Access Week

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Open Access Week is celebrated each year in late October. It is an opportunity to both create more awareness about the importance of creating more open access options in the world of academic and scholarly publishing, as well as celebrating the many accomplishments achieved so far, such as an expanding universe of open access scholarly journals, open access resolutions at a growing number of research universities and even successful efforts to promote open access sharing of federally-funded research. Here is a just-for-fun open access quiz to test your own knowledge of why there is an open access movement in academia. If you would like to learn more about open access, author rights or copyright issues and how individual faculty might make a difference email your librarians.

Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia

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Thanks to a state Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant, a Libraries project team has digitized more than 1,500 historical photographs, films, news clippings, manuscripts, oral histories, and pamphlets, documenting two events in civil rights history in Philadelphia: Girard College Desegregation (1954–1968) and the Columbia Avenue Riots (1964).

It’s all available at http://northerncity.library.temple.edu

The content, from the Libraries’ special collections, encourages students to use unique primary sources to study these significant events. Highlights include newly-created oral histories; several hours of local news footage not seen in over 40 years featuring Martin Luther King, Jr., Cecil B. Moore, and other movement leaders; and questionnaires that address Black-Jewish community relations in the 1960s.

Emphasizing that there were major events in the North that propelled the Civil Rights movement forward, the project’s consulting historian Matthew Countryman, associate professor of history at the University of Michigan and author of Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, believes that this project exposes students and scholars to new insights on the issues.

Stay tuned for new content—including sample lesson plans for middle and high school teachers and new modules on other milestones in the history of Philadelphia’s Civil Rights movement

Libraries Partner with Teaching and Learning Center to Provide Tips on Improving Student Research

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Next Wednesday, October 5, faculty are invited join the Libraries and the Teaching and Learning Center for a workshop on improving student research. Though today’s students may be tech savvy, that doesn’t mean they’re research-savvy. Many undergraduates have a very vague idea as to what academic research is and how to do it. Based on findings from Project Information Literacy, an ongoing national research project focused on student research practices, Temple librarians have identified practical steps you can take to ensure that your students produce high-quality research assignments. Please register for this program through the TLC. Date: Wednesday, October 5 Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. Location: TECH 112, TLC Seminar Room Facilitator: Thomas Heverin, Science Librarian; Susan LaValley, Education Services Librarian Audience: Faculty

We’re Back! Thanks for Your Patience and Support

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Whew! After the catastrophic failure of our library web site on Sunday, Sept. 11, we had activated our alternative homepage, a slimmed down menu of all our resources. As we explained on our alternate page, after a scheduled power outage ended Sunday morning, our usual webservers and a key backup failed to reboot. Many members of the library technology staff, working with colleagues from computer services, worked many hours to build several servers from clean installs and then restore the library web site from a new physical location less subject to the periodic power outages which afflict Paley Library . Our goal is to make sure the site runs reliably and consistently so that the resources can be reached anytime, from anywhere, 24/7. Owing to equipment failure that was not possible and so we had to make do with a stripped down alternate page that menued our resources. We greatly appreciate how understanding the Temple Community was during this difficult situation. Thank you for being patient – and putting up with our alternate site – until we restored the regular site. As of Thursday September 22, the website is up and we are actively testing and repairing minor issues. For example the text-only version of the site is not working this morning. We have asked our automatic text rendering service to redirect their scripts to the new IP addess of the website and hope the text only version of the site will be restored on Friday. Thank you! Originally posted 9/21/11 by Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian Augmented 9/22/11 by Jonathan LeBreton, Associate University Librarian.

In Memoriam: William McLean

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One of the richest resources in Temple Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center for the study of the history of Philadelphia and the region is the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin photographs and clippings. And one of the best friends and supporters of the archives and the Bulletin’s history was William McLean III, the last of his family to run the Bulletin. Starting in 1950, he worked in almost every department, serving as editor and publisher from 1975 to 1980. William McLean died on August 27, 2011, at age 83. Mr. McLean’s family took over ownership of the paper in 1895, and he ensured that its history and the history of Philadelphia it reported were preserved by beginning the donation of the photographs to Temple in February 1979. Most recently, Mr. McLean participated in an oral history interview Margaret Jerrido conducted with him on August 4. The recording and transcription of that interview will soon be available for research use. We are grateful for Mr. McLean’s lifelong commitment to documenting, studying, and learning from history.

Welcome Back Temple Students

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The staff of Temple University Libraries are excited about the start of the fall 2011 semester. We want to welcome all of our returning students back to campus, and we welcome all of our new students as well. Temple University Libraries has some new and exciting things in store for the fall campus, plus lots of interesting events for you to attend. Be on the lookout for our “Guide for Library Users” that will appear as an insert in the Temple Student News a few weeks from now. It’s your one-stop guide to everything you need to make great use of the Libraries at Temple. Keep following our library blog throughout the semester. You can also follow us on Twitter at /templelibraries and on Facebook. What’s new? Give our new Summon search a try. It searches the majority of our electronic research systems simultaneously – and fast! Now you can do one search and find the books and articles you need with one system. You’ll find the Summon search box prominently displayed on the Libraries web homepage. It looks like this:

Screen shot of the new Summon search box, (linked to larger version). When you visit Paley Library, take a look at the new flex-study space on the first floor in the computer commons. If you need a spot for your group or team to meet for a project, this is a good place for it. If you haven’t been over to the Science & Engineering Library recently, stop in (2nd Fl. of the Engineering Building). We improved all the furniture over the summer, but the project isn’t finished yet. We’ll be adding more computers during the semester. The staff of the Libraries wishes all our students a successful semester. Don’t forget. We are here to help you succeed. If you need any kind of help with research, finding books or articles, getting data, learning how to become a better researcher – we are the people who can help.