E-Lert # 292 / Cyberavis no. 292

Friday August 29, 2008 / le vendredi 29 août 2008

CARL COMMUNIQUE / COMMUNIQUÉ DE L’ABRC

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries is pleased to award the CARL E-learning Research and Development Grant to Mr. Marc Bragdon, Information Services Librarian at the University of New Brunswick Harriet Irving Library. CARL designed the grant to support librarians pursuing research into the development and delivery of e-learning tools and services. Mr. Bragdon is preparing to carry out a qualitative study with under graduate focus groups to arrive at a better understanding of how to provide optimal library support to students’ academic work in the virtual learning environment. Results of the study will also help inform further development of University of New Brunswick Libraries’ Library Blackboard project. The Blackboard application uses bridging technology to integrate library resources and services with online courseware by way of a “web gateway plug-in for delivering e-resources in a course context to the student desktop.” Mr. Bragdon said, “Our team is excited by the news. The funding will go a long way to ensuring that we can take care of all the details necessary to the project. We hope that, once completed, project results will have broad implications for how library services factor in e-learning - not just at UNB but across Canada."

L’Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada a le plaisir d’octroyer la subvention de recherche-développement pour l’apprentissage sur Internet de l’ABRC à M. Marc Bragdon, Information Services Librarian, Harriet Irving Library à l’University of New Brunswick. L’ABRC a créé cette subvention afin d’offrir soutien aux bibliothécaires qui poursuivent de la recherche sur le développent et déploiement d’outils et de services d’apprentissage sur Internet. M. Bragdon réalise une étude, en utilisant des groupes de consultation composés d’étudiants au premier cycle, qui vise à arriver à une meilleure compréhension de l’optimisation du soutien apporté par la bibliothèque aux travaux des étudiants et étudiantes au milieu d’apprentissage virtuel. Les résultats de cette étude aideront à informer le développement du projet Library Blackboard à l’University of New Brunswick. Le logiciel Blackboard utilise des technologies d’harmonisation pour intégrer les ressources et les services de la bibliothèque avec les didacticiels; le but est de créer un « plugiciel de passerelle Internet pour apporter des ressources électroniques dans un contexte des cours directement à l’étudiant ou l’étudiante à travers de l’ordinateur. » M. Bragdon a dit, « Notre équipe se réjouit de cette nouvelle. La subvention ira loin afin d’assurer que nous puissions prendre soins de tous les détails nécessaires pour la réalisation de cet étude. On espère qu’une fois terminé, le projet produira des résultats qui auront des conséquences majeures pour les services des bibliothèques qui factorisent dans l’apprentissage sur Internet – et non pas seulement à l’UNB mais aussi partout au Canada. »

NEWS / NOUVELLES

Queen's University’s DREAM team helping to build 8 libraries in India
August 28, 2008

The Queen's University Stauffer Library staff, Queen's DREAM (Discovering the Reality of Educating All Minds) student team and DREAM's partner organization Room to Read are gearing up for their fourth annual Live-in for Literacy event. This past year students from Queen's University, University of British Columbia, Laurentian University and Memorial University of Newfoundland came together to raise $26,000 to build 6 libraries in Nepal. The DREAM team encourages participation from more institutions to help build 8 libraries in India to enable hundreds more children to learn the joy and power of reading. Participating university libraries have received positive local and national press coverage each year. You can make a difference! To learn more about this event, contact the Queen’s DREAM Team Operations manager, Kenneth Mak at 6km49@queensu.ca or visit www.liveinforliteracy.com.

Prime Minister kicks off northern tour by expanding geo-mapping program
Office of the Prime Minister, August 26, 2008

The Canadian Government will use the full tools of modern geological science to encourage economic development and defend Canadian sovereignty throughout the North. The geo-mapping program will combine field research and advanced scientific analysis to provide Canadians with a fuller assessment on the extent of mineral and energy resources in the Canadian North. This information will help generate additional investment and economic development in Canada’s Northern communities.
http://pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=2242

McGill University to Scan and Make Library Materials Available Online
Library Journal, August 26, 2008

McGill University librarians used the occasion of the 74th IFLA General Conference and Council in Quebec City earlier this month to announce that the library is entering “a new era in digitization.” Janine Schmidt, director of libraries at McGill University, said the library has purchased a scanner and would begin plans to digitize its collections, both in support of the university’s educational needs, and even making some of its collections available for sale online as print-on-demand books.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/info/CA6590545.html?nid=2673#news1

Soon on the Web: Dead Sea Scrolls
Ethan Bronner
International Herald Tribune, August 26, 2008

In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on an historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file - among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth - available to all on the Internet. Equipped with highly powerful cameras with resolution and clarity many times greater than those of conventional models, and with lights that emit neither heat nor ultraviolet rays, the scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections and letters of the scrolls, discoveries that could have real scholarly impact.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/26/mideast/scrolls.php

Wikimedia pegs future on education, not profit
Chris Cadelago
San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2008

Analysts have pegged Wikipedia's value between several hundred million dollars and $7 billion, the latter by Silicon Alley Insider, a technology blog known for its list of the World's Most Valuable Digital Startups. But its keepers have thus far refused to sell ad space. They are adamant that the encyclopedia's value is tied up not in potential advertising revenue but in something much loftier - its ability to positively affect the news industry, educational publishing and the nature of open-source knowledge creation and dissemination.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/24/MNIJ12ETP4.DTL

Out in the open: Some scientists sharing results
Carolyn Y. Johnson
The Boston Globe, August 21, 2008

Openness has always been an integral part of science, with scientists presenting findings in journals or at conferences. But the open-science movement, with many of its leaders in the Boston area, encourages scientists to share techniques and even their work long before they are ready to present results, when they are devising research questions, running experiments, and analyzing data. In such open forums, the wisdom of the crowd could offer the ultimate form of peer review. And scientific information, they say, should be available without the hefty subscription fees charged by most journals. HTML

Etched language data will last for 2,000 years
Matthai Kuruvila
San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 2008

Several Bay Area and national nonprofit groups that are seeking to preserve a record of languages unveiled on Tuesday five small glass spheres to highlight their efforts. Micro-etched on a 2.8-inch-diameter disc inside each sphere were 15,000 pages of information detailing some 1,500 languages. The information contained in the five spheres is expected to endure for at least 2,000 years, according to the Rosetta Project [see bellow under Resources], which is a collaboration between the Long Now Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Stanford University Libraries and the National Science Digital Library to build the digital library of languages.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/19/BA3M12EI41.DTL

Higher Education Authority adopts Open Access mandate
August 19, 2008

Following a public consultation earlier this year, Ireland's Higher Education Authority has adopted an Open Access mandate effective from June 30th 2008. The HEA is the second major Irish research funder to adopt an OA mandate - the first was IRCSET with an OA mandate effective from May 1st this year.
http://www.hea.ie/files/files/file/Open%20Access%20pdf_.pdf

ARTICLES

Open access and evolving scholarly communication
Heather Morrison and Andrew Waller
College & Research Libraries News, September 2008

The open access movement in Canada is very active in many areas. This is not surprising; of the 16 people at the Budapest meeting which was the foundation of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), three were Canadians, all global leaders in this arena: Leslie Chan, Jean-Claude Guédon, and Stevan Harnad. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) was among the earliest signatories of the BOAI, and quickly initiated a nationwide institutional repository program. This article presents an overview of Canadian Library Association (CLA) advocacy and open access in Canada, with a focus on initiatives with a strong library involvement or leadership.
http://acrl.ala.org/crlnews/september08/openaccess.pdf

Incompetence Tops List of Complaints about Peer Reviewers
Jeffrey Brainard
The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 27, 2008

Incompetence by their reviewers was the most common problem reported by scientists who submitted manuscripts to scholarly journals. The supposedly expert reviewers, scientists complained, had not carefully read articles, were unfamiliar with the subject matter, or made mistakes of fact or reasoning. The survey results, the first of their kind, were reported in the September issue of the journal Science and Engineering Ethics.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/08/4366n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

RDA: a cataloguing code for the 21st century
Ann Chapman
CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Update, August 15, 2008

Resource Description and Access is the new cataloguing code due to be published next year. The development process has generated (sometimes heated) discussion. It is designed as an online resource. Ann Chapman discusses whether it is the tool the profession needs.
http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine/archive/archive2008/september/rdachapman.htm

La préservation numérique à la Bibliothèque nationale de France
Emmanuelle Bermes et al
Actes du Congrès mondial des bibliothèques et de l’information, 74e conférence annuelle de la Fédération internationale des associations de bibliothèques et institutions (IFLA)
Québec, Canada, 10 – 14 août, 2008

Les bibliothèques nationales passent au numérique : l’accélération de la croissance des collections numériques, le changement de nature et d’échelle du dépôt légal, le développement du dépôt légal de l’Internet et du records management confrontent la bibliothèque à de nouveaux défis, dont la question de la préservation de ce nouveau support sur le long terme. Ce changement d’environnement constitue un défi technique et organisationnel : il impose de repenser les missions de la bibliothèque en termes d’infrastructure, de gestion de projet, de ressources humaines et d’activités courantes.
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/084-Bermes_Carbone_Ledoux_Lupovici-trans-fr.pdf

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec : Agir pour le patrimoine documentaire du Québec
Mireille Huneault
Actes du Congrès mondial des bibliothèques et de l’information, 74e conférence annuelle de la Fédération internationale des associations de bibliothèques et institutions (IFLA)
Québec, Canada, 10 – 14 août, 2008

Conformément à son mandat, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) met en oeuvre des projets visant à constituer un inventaire complet de l’édition sur le territoire québécois, dont les débuts remontent au XVIIIe siècle. Depuis cette époque, la notion d’édition s’est élargie pour inclure l’édition électronique. À l’instar de plusieurs bibliothèques nationales, BAnQ est confrontée aux défis posés par les ressources électroniques, notamment en matière d’acquisition, de traitement et de diffusion.
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/096-Huneault-trans-fr.pdf

RESOURCES / RESSOURCES

Statistiques générales des bibliothèques universitaires québécoises 2005-2006
28 août 2008

Les Statistiques générales des bibliothèques universitaires québécoises 2005-2006, compilées par le secrétariat de la CREPUQ et publiées par le Sous-comité des bibliothèques de la Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ), sont maintenant disponibles. Les Statistiques générales des bibliothèques universitaires québécoises sont publiées annuellement par le Sous-comité des bibliothèques de la CREPUQ, depuis 1978-1979. Elles constituent un véritable portrait collectif quantitatif des ressources documentaires aussi bien que matérielles, financières et humaines des bibliothèques universitaires québécoises, de même que de leurs activités et de leurs services.
http://www.crepuq.qc.ca/spip.php?article1039&lang=fr

Proteopedia - a scientific 'wiki' bridging the rift between three-dimensional structure and function of biomacromolecules
Eran Hodis et al
Genome Biology, Volume 9, Issue 8, August 3, 2008

Many scientists lack the background to fully utilize the wealth of solved three-dimensional biomacromolecule structures. Thus, a resource is needed to present structure/function information in a user-friendly manner to a broad scientific audience. Proteopedia (http://www.proteopedia.org) is an interactive, wiki web-resource whose pages have embedded three-dimensional structures surrounded by descriptive text containing hyperlinks that change the appearance (view, representations, colors, labels) of the adjacent three-dimensional structure to reflect the concept explained in the text.
http://genomebiology.com/content/pdf/gb-2008-9-8-r121.pdf

Podcast: Uncovering the social and economic benefits of open access
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), August 25, 2008

Professor John Houghton's work to explore the social and economic impact of open access has had a significant impact on debates in his native Australia. Currently working for JISC to investigate the UK experience in this area, he talks to Philip Pothen about his work, the wider benefits of institutional repositories and why he thinks the open access argument is now won.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2008/08/podcast55johnhoughton.aspx

Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education
Ross Housewright and Roger Schonfeld, August 18, 2008

In the modern era, academia has been faced with unprecedented and ubiquitous change, largely driven by technological developments like the personal computer and the internet. Changing technologies have been accompanied by changes in research habits, scholarly communications patterns, campus roles, and more. In order to be effective, librarians, information technologists, academic administrators, and others concerned with facilitating research, teaching, and scholarly communication in a changing world must keep up with the complex and evolving needs and attitudes of scholars.
http://www.ithaka.org/research/faculty-and-librarian-surveys

The Rosetta Project: Building an Archive of all Documented Human Languages

The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible digital library of human languages. Since becoming a National Science Digital Library collection in 2004, the Rosetta Archive has more than doubled its collection size, now serving nearly 100,000 pages of material documenting over 2,500 languages—the largest resource of its kind on the Net.
http://www.rosettaproject.org/about-us/about-us

EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS

Upcoming Webcast: The Engaged Library Strategies for Building Vibrant Learning Communities
Association of College and University Libraries (ACRL) & Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), September 12, 2008

The library’s core roles of developing content, creating access services, and supporting inquiry have been fundamentally stretched with the evolution of the digital library and parallel development of digital learning and scholarship. What does the transformation of content and methods of scholarship mean for the library and for campus communities? Do the core physical assets of collections and facilities have the same draw and focus? In this webcast, you will gain an understanding of how these changes are influencing the development of libraries (both physical and virtual) in the 21st century.
http://www.scup.org/profdev/notravel/2008/engaged_library.html

Powering Innovation: a National Summit
CANARIE and ORION
Toronto, Ontario, November 3 & 4, 2008

ORION and CANARIE - Ontario’s and Canada’s advanced research, education and innovation networks - invite you to mark your calendar for a national Summit in Toronto,. Join distinguished Canadian and global leaders and innovators in science, research, and education and information technology to discuss and showcase new and innovative technologies that are transforming the way we conduct research, collaborate, teach and learn.
http://www.canarieorionsummit.ca/index.html