CARL - ABRC

Phone: 613.562.5385
Facsimile: 613.562.5297
Email: carladm@uottawa.ca
www.carl-abrc.ca

Canadian Association of Research Libraries
Morisset Hall
65 University Street Suite 239
Ottawa Ontario Canada
K1N 9A5

E-Lert # 326 / Cyberavis no. 326


Friday May 15, 2009 / le vendredi 15 mai 2009

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NEWS / NOUVELLES 

Elsevier Journal Scandal Provokes Significant Librarian Response: Elsevier admits total of six problematic publications; Progressive Librarians Guild issues call for action
Josh Hadro
Library Journal, May 14, 2009

Merck's financial backing of the Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine (AJBM) through Elsevier's Excerpta Medica subsidiary came to light during testimony of a class-action lawsuit against the drug company.  Fewer details of the other five titles are known. according to an article in The Scientist, Elsevier has declined to provide the names of the sponsors of these titles. Though it appears that the sponsored publication, AJBM, was not sold or licensed to libraries as part of standard subscription packages, the scandal is nevertheless galvanizing librarians across the academic community. HTML

 

Recent senior level appointments at Library and Archives Canada
May 12, 2009

Doug Rimmer has been appointed Assistant Deputy Minister, Documentary Heritage Collection Sector at Library and Archives Canada. This is a position that has been held by Ingrid Parent. Mr. Rimmer has been the Chair of the LAC Services Advisory Board. Other appointments at LAC are Zahra Pourjafar-Ziaei, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Management Sector, Marie-Josée Martel, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs and Services Sector, and Sean Berrigan, Senior Advisor to the Librarian and Archivist of Canada.

 

Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation Join Together to Create DuraSpace
May 12, 2009

Ttwo of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, announced that they will join their organizations to pursue a common mission. They will provide joint leadership and innovation in open source technologies to manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content. DuraSpace will support both DSpace and Fedora by working closely with both communities and, as much as possible, develop synergistic technologies, services, and programs to increase interoperability of the two platforms.*
http://www.duraspace.org/pressrelease.html

 

Culture of Applied Research Emphasized as University of Alberta Libraries Hires Director of Research
May 8, 2009

Dr. Alvin Schrader has accepted a sessional half-time position with University of Alberta Libraries as Director of Research effective July 1, 2009. Dr. Schrader was formerly Director of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Alberta. “Dr. Schrader will be responsible for advising, assisting and encouraging librarians in all phases of research projects and activities, with a view to promoting a culture of applied research in the institution, and with a view of supporting a strong, evidence-based culture placing research as a foundation for our strategic operational decision-making,” stated Chief Librarian Ernie Ingles.*

 

Merck Paid Elsevier to Publish Phony Peer-Review Journal
Alliance for Human Research Protection, May 5, 2009

Merck has allegedly created a fake "peer-reviewed" journal to present favorable data that make its potentially fatal drugs - Fosamax and Vioxx - look good.  Reports are swirling about Merck's seemingly underhanded marketing scheme evidently cooked up to mislead doctors into prescribing its potentially fatal drugs - Fosamax (for osteoporosis) and Vioxx (for pain).
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/585/109/
[Also covered in The Scientist. Note: Free registration required to view article
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55671/]

 

Open Access policy a first in Canada
April 17, 2009

The Academic Council of Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary adopted a mandate to deposit their scholarly output in DSpace, the University's open access institutional repository. This is the second Open Access mandate for an academic library, and the first for an academic library in Canada.*
http://library.ucalgary.ca/news/news/open-access-policy-first-canada

 

Library and Archives Canada 2009–2010: Report on Plans and Priorities
April 10, 2009

The Library and Archives of Canada Act established an ambitious, wide-ranging mandate related to the acquisition, preservation and promotion of Canada's collective memory. LAC is applying a strategic perspective to its mandate, evaluating processes and rethinking practices to get the best results from available resources. Those steps are enabling Library and Archives Canada to become a knowledge institution fully in line with the evolving information environment in Canada and worldwide.*
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/rpp/2009-2010/inst/bal/bal01-eng.asp
[Français: http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/rpp/2009-2010/inst/bal/bal01-fra.asp]

 

ARTICLES

EScience in Practice: Lessons from the Cornell Web Lab
William Y. Arms et al
D-Lib Magazine, Volume 15, Number 5/6, May/June 2009

EScience is a popular topic in academic circles. A new form of scientific enquiry is emerging in which fundamental advances are made by mining information in digital formats, from datasets to digitized books. Arms et al describe their experience in developing the Cornell Web Lab, a large-scale framework for eScience based on the collections of the Internet Archive, and discuss the lessons learned. The authors’ experience is summarized in seven lessons: (1) build a laboratory, then a library (2) for sustainability, keep the staff small (3) extract manageable sub-collections (4) look beyond the academic community (5) expect researchers to understand computing, but do not require them to be experts (6) seek for generalities, but beware the illusion of uniformity (7) keep operations local for flexibility and expertise.*
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may09/arms/05arms.html

 

Library Protesters to Ohio State University: Digital's OK, but Save Our Books!
Jennifer Howard
The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 13, 2009

About two dozen faculty members and students, clutching signs that read “Don’t Gut the Library” and “Keep our books on campus,” picketed the administration building at Ohio State University. The protesters said they were upset over the removal of printed materials—275,000 books and other works—from the university’s libraries between 2005 and 2008. Another 55,000 items have been discarded in the past four months, according to the picketers.*
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3768&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

 

Elsevier published 6 fake journals
Bob Grant
The Scientist, May 7, 2009

Scientific publishing giant Elsevier put out six publications between 2000 and 2005 that were sponsored by unnamed pharmaceutical companies and that looked like peer reviewed medical journals, without disclosing sponsorship, the company has admitted. Elsevier is conducting an "internal review" of its publishing practices since allegations emerged that the company produced a pharmaceutical company-funded publication in the early 2000s without disclosure of the "journal’s" corporate sponsorship.*
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55679/
[Note: Free registration required to view article.]

 

Le Japon à l'heure du savoir partagé
Le Devoir, 2 mai 2009

Le Japon imagine de nouvelles transmissions du savoir, gratuites, civiques, ancrées dans la communauté. Ce «buzz» ne saurait surprendre, à l'heure où l'archipel succombe à l'attrait des jeux vidéo ludico-éducatifs, ou des open colleges, des services de cours ouverts à tous mis en place par les universités ou certains groupes des médias pour apprendre une langue, suivre des leçons d'histoire ou s'adonner à une activité artistique. Autant d'initiatives - et souvent de succès - qui illustrent une soif de découverte qui a conduit les universités à profiter du développement d'Internet pour multiplier les cursus à suivre à distance et à tout âge.*
 


RESOURCES / RESSOURCES

Making the Case for an Institutional Repository to Your Provost
Berkeley Electronic Press, May 2009

Successful Institutional Repositories have campus-wide support that comes from a committed top-level stakeholder. The provost’s office is critical to opening  doors for the library and the IR manager to promote the repository, and to have others help market it. With provost sup­port, dean support and faculty uptake are likely to follow.*
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=ir_research

 

SPARC and ACRL release new SCOAP3 FAQ
April 28, 2009

A new set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) highlights key details about the SCOAP3 proposal to change the dynamics of publishing in High-Energy Physics. The purpose of the FAQ, prepared in consultation with SCOAP3 and members of SPARC and ACRL, is to support U.S. libraries in evaluating their commitment to SCOAP3, and to clarify for all libraries details of the proposal and how the new business model is intended to work.*
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/scoap3_09april.pdf

 

Usages des bibliothèques chez les étudiants de Bordeaux 3
Septembre-décembre 2008

Le Service commun de la documentation de l'Université de Bordeaux 3 a mis en ligne le rapport qui rassemble les principales conclusions issues de l'enquête menée de septembre à décembre 2008 auprès de ses étudiants. L’étude vise à apporter une meilleure connaissance des pratiques en vigueur dans les bibliothèques, en dressant un « état des lieux » des usages mais également des besoins et des attentes concernant les bibliothèques de l’université.*  HTML

 

EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS

Access 2009 Conference and Hackfest
Charlottetown, PEI, Oct 1 – 3, 2009

Access,  Canada’s Premier Library Technology Conference, is the place to learn about the latest in library technology. Library technologists south of the border have recently discovered Access and consider it a “don't miss event.” This event provides  “fruitful and interesting cross-fertilization between the latest developments in Canada and the U.S., as well as Europe and points more distant." The 2009 Hackfest takes place September 30, 2009.*
http://vre.upei.ca/access2009/node/9

 

*Text adapted from source / Texte adapté de la source

 

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