E-Lert # 358 / Cyberavis no. 358

Wednesday January 8, 2010 / le mercredi 8 janvier 2010

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CARL COMMUNIQUÉ / COMMUNIQUÉ DE L’ABRC

CARL Produces Data Management Awareness Toolkit

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) is pleased to announce the availability of Research Data: Unseen Opportunities. The purpose of the toolkit is to enable research library directors to raise awareness of the issues of data management with administrators and researchers on campus. PDF

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Trousse de sensibilisation à la gestion des données de l’ABRC

L’Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada (ABRC) est heureuse d’annoncer la disponibilité de la trousse intitulée Les données de recherche : un potentiel insoupçonné, dont le but est de permettre aux directeurs de bibliothèques de recherche de sensibiliser les administrateurs et les chercheurs sur le campus aux questions entourant la gestion des données. PDF

NEWS / NOUVELLES

Authors lobby U.S. court to reject Google deal
John Barber
Globe and Mail, January 7, 2010

A growing number of Canadian writers urge a New York court to reject the controversial deal giving the company free rein to digitize the world's books. Acting independently of the Writers' Union of Canada, some 250 writers from across the country have so far signed a petition, which includes a call for the federal government to speak on behalf of Canadians potentially bound unwillingly by the terms of a legal settlement achieved in a U.S. court.*
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/authors-lobby-us-court-to-reject-google-deal/article1421428/

Les applications pour téléphones intelligents ont le vent dans les voiles
Le Devoir, 4 janvier 2010

« En un temps record dans l'univers des technologies — dix-huit mois — est apparu un marché au potentiel considérable: celui des «applications mobiles». Avec des usages inédits, des acteurs et des modèles économiques nouveaux. Son essor aura été un des faits marquants de 2009. Comment va-t-il évoluer? Tiendra-t-il toutes ses promesses? »

How to Teach With Google Wave
Marc Parry
The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 4, 2010

For those wondering what use Google's new Wave tool might have for teaching, one online-learning leader has an answer: combining classes from different colleges. Ray Schroeder tried it last semester at the University of Illinois at Springfield, one of the first colleges to use Wave for online teaching since the preview version came out in September 2009. For about two weeks in December, he joined his "Internet in American Life" course with a class on energy studies at the Institute of Technology at Sligo, Ireland. The two classes created a "wave" to discuss the impact of the Internet on energy sustainability.*
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/How-to-Teach-With-Google-Wave/19501/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

NFB boss says Canada needs plan to compete, succeed in digital world
Nelson Wyatt
The Canadian Press, January 1, 2010

National Film Board chairman Tom Perlmutter says Canada risks being left in the dust by other countries on the information highway if it doesn't put serious thought into dealing with the digital age. Britain, France and New Zealand have already published careful examinations of the issue but Canada is" behind in this kind of coherent reflection" according to Perlmutter. Although Canadians have concentrated on the infrastructure of the digital world - the pipelines that deliver the material - the time has come to think about content and figure out "how do we actually create a vital Canadian space."*
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5j5UXpy2-NYqlxdDJ6cEi6WjE4nsw

New internet piracy law comes into effect in France
Hugh Schofield
BBC News, January 1, 2010

France's new law against internet piracy will begin to be felt as the new year begins. The law was passed after a long struggle in parliament, and in the teeth of bitter opposition from groups opposed to internet restrictions. Illegal downloaders will receive an e-mail warning, followed by a letter if they continue, and finally, if they offend again, they will be made to appear
before a judge.*
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8436745.stm

Bloomsbury Publishing, Qatar Foundation and Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) announce the launch of an ambitious new scientific publishing house to be based in Doha, Qatar
December 31, 2009

This initiative will extend the unique relationship between Qatar Foundation and Bloomsbury. The new publishing house, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals (BQFJ), will publish scientific research developed to the highest international peer review standards in order to connect the international research community to one of the fastest growing research and development centres in the world. The venture will largely adopt the Open Access Publishing model and will cover all research subjects, including medical, physical, engineering, Islamic and social sciences and the arts, supported by a highly sophisticated technical infrastructure. Articles and journals will be made available on the same platform as the institutional repository, currently under development in Qatar.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5315.html

Bibliotheca Alexandrina to Receive the Largest Book Gift Ever
December 31, 2009

The Bibliothéque nationale de France (BnF) donated the largest book collection ever given to a library to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The donated collection (500,000 volumes) is part of the BnF's legal depository and includes a wide range of subjects in different reading levels for users of all ages. Dr. Serageldin, Director of Bibliotheca Alexandrina expressed his gratitude to the Republic of France and president Nicolas Sarkozy for their generous donation and their commitment to cultural exchange. With this gift and the current BA French material holdings, the Library of Alexandria will become the 2nd largest library for Francophone resources, outside French speaking countries, preceded only by New York Public Library.
http://www.bibalex.org/English/media/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=2842

Google loses domain dispute to Canadian startup
CBC News, December 30, 2009

For the second time in a week, a technology titan was legally humbled by a small Canadian company. First, it was Microsoft losing an appeal regarding its Word software to Toronto-based i4i. This time it's Google, which lost a domain dispute to Oakville, Ont.-based Groovle, a website that allows users to upload photos and create customized online portals. A three-person panel composed of two retired American judges and one law professor rejected Google's claim that the smaller website's name was "confusingly similar," effectively giving it clearance to continue operating.*
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/12/30/google-loses-domain-dispute-groovle.html

ARTICLES
The Top 100 Most Influential People in Government and Politics in 2010
Bea Vongdouangchanh
The Hill Times, December 14, 2009

According to political insiders, influence is the “ability or opportunity to persuade, motivate or guide” those who wield power. In Ottawa, influence comes in many different ways whether it’s having access to the levers of government, or quietly influencing the national political agenda from the outside. Vongdouangchanh presents the Hill Times’ third annual list of the top 100 most influential people in government and politics based on consultations with government insiders and political players.*

The 10 players who will shape technology law
Michael Geist
Toronto Star, January 4, 2010

Predictions about future technology law and policy developments may always be fraught with uncertainty, but identifying the key players is a somewhat easier chore. Although Parliament is not scheduled to resume until March, Geist suggests 10 players likely to lead the way in Canada in 2010.*
http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/technology/article/745444--geist-the-10-players-who-will-shape-technology-law

Why Hasn’t Scientific Publishing Been Disrupted Already?
Michael Clarke
The Scholarly Communication Kitchen, January 4, 2010

Looking back on 2009, there was one particular note that seemed to sound repeatedly, resonating through the professional discourse at conferences and in posts throughout the blogosphere: the likelihood of disruptive change afoot in the scientific publishing industry. When Tim Berners-Lee created the Web in 1991, it was with the aim of improving scientific communication and the dissemination of research. Put another way, the Web was designed to disrupt scientific publishing. It was not designed to disrupt bookstores, telecommunications, matchmaking services, newspapers, stock trading, music distribution, or a great many other industries. And yet it has. The one thing that one could have reasonably predicted in 1991 was that scientific communication—and the publishing industry that supports the dissemination of scientific research—would radically change over the next couple decades. And yet it has not.
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/01/04/why-hasnt-scientific-publishing-been-disrupted-already/

Open access in 2009
Peter Suber
SPARC Open Access Newsletter, January 2, 2009

2009 was Open Access Year in the Netherlands, but it might have been Open Access Year worldwide with extraordinary growth on every front. The OA round up includes, among other things, funding agency OA policies, University OA policies/mandates, growth numbers, a section on the recession, the most notable OA-related events of the year, as well as the “best and worst” of 2009.*
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-10.htm

L'année où Facebook est devenu grand public
Le Devoir, 31 décembre 2009

« Le réseautage social est sans aucun doute devenu la technologie la plus populaire en 2009 au Canada et à travers le monde, en grande partie grâce au fait qu'il n'est plus exclusivement réservé à l'usage des adolescents et des collégiens. Il est presque devenu cliché de voir de jeunes adeptes de sites de réseautage social se plaindre lorsque leurs parents ou grands-parents leur demandent de se joindre à leur liste d'amis virtuels. Mais, au grand dam de leurs cadets, les utilisateurs plus âgés sont désormais les plus nombreux, dans toutes les catégories d'âge, à se joindre au mouvement. »
http://www.ledevoir.com/societe/science-et-technologie/280305/l-annee-ou-facebook-est-devenu-grand-public

How E-Books Will Change Reading And Writing
Lynn Neary
National Public Radio, December 30, 2009

Ten years ago, few imagined that by decade's end, people would be reading novels on cell phones. A lot has changed in the book world. Writer Nicholas Carr says he's thought of himself as a serious reader all his life, but in an article in The Atlantic, he argued that the Internet is training us to read in a distracted and disjointed way. Does that mean writers will have to change the way they write to capture the attention of an audience accustomed to this new way of reading? Carr thinks so, and he looks to the past to make his point.*
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122026529

Technology gives the law a workout in 2009
Michael Geist
Toronto Star, December 28, 2009

2009 in law and technology was an exceptionally active year, with new legislation, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings, national consultations, and very public battles over digital issues. Geist takes a look back at 2009 from ACTA to Zoocasa.*
http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/technology/article/743129--geist-technology-gives-the-law-a-workout-in-2009

Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research
Y. Gargouri et al
Article manuscript submitted to PloS One, 2010

The 25,000 peer-reviewed journals and refereed conference proceedings that exist today
publish about 2.5 million articles per year, across all disciplines, languages and nations. No university or research institution anywhere, not even the richest, can afford to subscribe to all or most of the journals that its researchers may need to use. As a consequence, all articles are currently losing some portion of their potential research impact (usage and citations), because they are not accessible online to all their potential users. Gargouri et al demonstrate that the greater citation impact of open access research is causal rather than an artifact of author bias (i.e., authors self-selectively making higher quality research open access) by showing that the citation increase is just as great when the open access is mandatory; the open access impact advantage is independent of other correlates of citation impact, and greater for higher quality research.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18346/

Educators Beware the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
David Robinson
CAUT Bulletin, December 2009

The proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has little to do with counterfeiting, or even with trade according to Robinson. It is instead a new global copyright treaty that would fundamentally ratchet up legal protections for rights-holders. If a deal is reached, it could have serious implications for heavy users of copyrighted material, including academic staff.
http://www.cautbulletin.ca/en_article.asp?SectionID=1207&SectionName=Commentary&VolID=292&VolumeName=No%2010&VolumeStartDate=12/15/2009&EditionID=30&EditionName=Vol%2056&EditionStartDate=1/9/2009&ArticleID=2956

User Engagement in Research Data Curation
Stuart Macdonald and Luis Martinez-Uribe
Edinburgh Research Archive, article pre-print, December 17, 2009

Digital repositories, built to support research practice, have struggled to encourage participation partly due to inadequate analysis of the requirements of the user communities. Macdonald and Martinez-Uribe argue that engagement of users in research data curation through an understanding of their processes, constraints and culture is a key component in the development of the data repositories. Curation activities must start early in the research lifecycle with strong links to researchers in order to maximize the effectiveness of such technologies. The authors suggest a pragmatic approach with the result that the use of open data as a mechanism to engage researchers may not be appropriate for all disciplinary research environments.*
https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/3206?mode=full&submit_simple=Show+full+item+record

RESOURCES / RESSOURCES
Digital Information: Order or anarchy?
Hazel Woodward and Lorraine Estelle, editors
Facet Publishing, 2010

If the vision for the future of digital information is order, ease of access, discoverable resources and sustainable business models, how might this be achieved? In an information environment shaped by an ever growing and persistent demand for more and more digital content from every direction, it has become increasingly important that publishers, libraries and information professionals understand the challenges and opportunities presented by the Google environment. This book addresses several issues, and proposes a strategy for the future of digital information. *
http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=680-0
[Note: the first Chapter of the book, Introduction: digital information, an overview of the landscape, is freely available: PDF]

Coalition for Networked Information – Introduction & Program Plan 2009-2010

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), a joint initiative of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and EDUCAUSE, promotes the use of networked information technology to advance research and education. In establishing the Coalition under the leadership of founding Executive Director Paul Evan Peters, these sponsor organizations recognized the need to broaden the community’s thinking beyond issues of network connectivity and bandwidth to encompass digital content and advanced applications to create, share, disseminate, and analyze such content in the service of research and education. CNI’s work is structured around three central themes deemed essential foundations of the vision of advancing scholarship and intellectual productivity: Developing and Managing Networked Information Content; Transforming Organizations, Professions, and Individuals; and Building Technology, Standards, and Infrastructure.*
http://www.cni.org/program/2009-2010/2009-2010-program.html

The Survey of Higher Education Faculty: Grants, Research Funding & Oversight
Primary Research Group, 2009

The survey presents data on the prevailing conditions in obtaining grants and other forms of research support for higher education faculty in the United States and Canada. The report gives extensive data on number of grants applied for this year and last, the percentage of faculty who currently have funding, the percentage of faculty who have ever received a grant of more than $10,000 and the percentage of total grants received accounted for by funds from US or Canadian federal government sources. Survey participants also give their impressions of trends in grant acceptance rates in their disciplines. In addition, The Survey of Higher Education Faculty: Grants, Research Funding & Oversight, gives highly detailed information on faculty supervision of student research, and faculty participation as referees and judges for research journals.
http://www.primaryresearch.com/

EVENTS / ÉVÉNEMENTS
The Evolving World of e-Science: Impact and Implications for Science and Technology Libraries
Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) and Chicago, IL, United States
June 20-24, 2010

As information technologies and computing power become ever more powerful and easy to use, the new frontier of science and engineering is to harness the collective power of researchers on a global scale. Some disciplines are far along in the process of sharing information and creating fully collaborative infrastructure to power innovation, and others are on the verge of embracing the power of cyberinfrastructure to transform their research. At IATUL 2010, participants will have the opportunity to probe the current state of e-science and how libraries and information professionals are contributing to the creation, visualization, accessibility, interoperability, and usability of research data and knowledge bases.
http://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/iatul2010/

*Text adapted from source / Texte adapté de la source