The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

2020 Vision (Note: PDF)

From the British Library website

The British Library has launched its 2020 Vision, which sets out the UK national library's priorities and aspirations for the next decade. The vision highlights what are likely to be the key trends and opportunities over the next ten years, indicating how the British Library plans to take advantage of those opportunities to remain a great national library and a major hub of the global information network.


Driving UK Research. Is copyright a help or a hindrance? A perspective from the research community (Note: PDF)

From the British Library website

The following collection of essays present varying views to the working and interpretations of the UK’s intellectual property laws. They are not intended to reflect nor endorse one another, but instead together present the ‘grassroots view’ of the UK’s copyright framework and ideas on how it could be updated to work in this new and changing environment. There is a consensus that the laws on copyright and their interpretation must be redefined in the context of a modernising world and developing research techniques.
A key point that resonates throughout these essays is that the role of teachers, researchers and creative artists as well as rights holders must all be recognised within any new intellectual property framework.


An Emergent Micro-Services approach to Digital Curation Infrastructure / Stephen Abrams, John Kunze, David Loy

From the International Journal of Digital Curation website

In order to better meet the needs of its diverse University of California (UC) constituencies, the California Digital Library UC Curation Center is re-envisioning its approach to digital curation infrastructure by devolving function into a set of granular, independent, but interoperable micro-services. Since each of these services is small and self-contained, they are more easily developed, deployed, maintained, and enhanced; at the same time, complex curation function can emerge from the strategic combination of atomistic services. The emergent approach emphasises the persistence of content rather than the systems in which that content is managed, thus the paradigmatic archival culture is not unduly coupled to any particular technological context. This results in a curation environment that is comprehensive in scope, yet flexible with regard to local policies and practices and sustainable despite the inevitability of disruptive change in technology and user expectation.


No knowledge but through information

From the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) website

This article argues for the following:

• Information is a thing to be handled and controlled; knowledge is not
• Knowledge can be managed only indirectly, through the management of information
• Personal knowledge management (PKM) is, therefore, best regarded as a subset of personal information management (PIM) - but a very useful subset addressing important issues that otherwise might be overlooked

Who owns our work?

From the MINDS@UW website

Much turmoil in the scholarly-communication ecosystem appears to revolve around simple ownership of intellectual property. Unpacking that notion, however, produces a fascinating tangle of stakeholders, desires, products and struggles. Some products of the research process, especially novel ones, are difficult to fit into legal concepts of ownership. As collaborative research burgeons, traditional ownership and authorship criteria are stretched to their limits and beyond, with many contributors still feeling short of due credit. The desire for access and impact brings institutions and grant funders into the formerly exclusive relationship between authors and publishers. Librarians, stripped of first-sale rights by electronic licensing, wonder about both access and long-term preservation. Emerging solutions to many of these difficulties threaten to cut publishers out of the picture altogether, perhaps a welcome change to those stakeholders who find publishers' behaviour to block progress.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Trends in the Finances of UK Higher Education Libraries: 1999-2009 (Note: PDF)

From the Research Information Network (RIN) website

The last decade has been a period of unprecedented change for university libraries. The rapid growth in numbers of students and staff across the higher education sector has been accompanied by the move to a substantially digital environment, with some fundamental changes in how libraries and their users operate.
As they have responded to new developments over the past decade, and changed their operations, most university libraries have seen continued growth in their budgets in real terms. The next few years are going to be much more difficult in financial terms. Libraries therefore face a period in which they will have to cope with continued rapid, perhaps transformational, change, accompanied by reductions in their budgets.
Overall, this briefing presents a picture in which library expenditure has been rising in real terms, but not as fast as expenditure - and activity - in the HE sector as a whole. So libraries face some real challenges as they prepare for a more difficult financial climate, with real and substantial cuts in expenditure.


The Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report (Note: PDF)

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

Academic libraries have long enjoyed their status as the “heart of the university.” However, in recent decades, higher education environments have changed. Government officials see higher education as a national resource. Employers view higher education institutions as producers of a commodity - student learning. Top academic faculty expect higher education institutions to support and promote cutting-edge research. Parents and students expect higher education to enhance students’ collegiate experience, as well as propel their career placement and earning potential. Not only do stakeholders count on higher education institutions to achieve these goals, they also require them to demonstrate evidence that they have achieved them. The same is true for academic libraries; they too can provide evidence of their value. Community college, college, and university librarians no longer can rely on their stakeholders’ belief in their importance. Rather, they must demonstrate their value.


Museums, Libraries, and 21st Century Skills (Note: PDF)

From the Institute of Museum and Library Services website

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has an aggressive research programme dedicated to providing cutting-edge information about the trends in library services and other matters. This report is intended to "support museums and public libraries in envisioning and defining their roles as institutions of learning in the 21st century." To achieve this goal, this report brings together case studies of successful 21st century projects at different institutions, outlining a "vision for the role of libraries and museums in the national dialogue around learning and 21st century skills." Along with the main report and the case studies, the report also includes a self-assessment tool, which allows museums and libraries to determine where they fit on the continuum of 21st century skills operations and programming.


School Libraries: A plan for improvement

From the Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) website

Whilst effective school libraries form a vital part of every child's education, enabling them to greater attainment; many school libraries are under-utilised resources, which are not embedded into the school's infrastructure and fall short of fulfilling their potential. These are the key findings in this School Library Commission report.
It is critical that all the resources available to support pupil achievement are being targeted effectively and used efficiently. The research for this report has demonstrated the powerful role a high performing school library and schools library service plays in raising pupils’ literacy levels and improving their access to knowledge. Young people who read above the expected level for their age are twice as likely as young people who read below their age to be school library users (77.7% as opposed to 35.9%). This link is not necessarily causal but it does suggest that if school libraries do not perform to the highest level there will be significant implications for pupil achievement. Cuts to schools library services will exacerbate this problem. What this Commission has established is that in many schools the school library is a wasted resource, poorly embedded in the infrastructure of the school:

• encouraging reading for pleasure but resistant to “teaching” literacy and phonics
• absent from school development plans, official guidance and inspection frameworks
• staffed (in one third of primary school libraries) by people who have no specialist knowledge of children’s literature
  

The report has a series of strong recommendations directed to governors, head teachers, sector bodies and local authorities that, if implemented, would improve literacy and attainment levels. All the recommendations aim to make school libraries more focused on supporting the educational objectives of the school by promoting literacy and access to knowledge.


QR Codes – using mobile phones to deliver library instruction and help at the point of need

From the Loughborough University Library Open Journals website

With the rise of smartphones that contain integrated GPS (Global Positioning System) chips, increasing numbers of devices are aware of their own location. For most libraries, however, taking advantage of this functionality to introduce services which “augment reality”, that is overlay physical reality with a virtual layer of information in users own devices, is unfeasible.
An easier alternative to full augmented reality is to use QR (Quick Response) codes in places that link to location or context appropriate information and resources, using information embedded in the codes that is translated and acted upon by a mobile device such as camera phone. QR (Quick Response) codes are matrix codes, like two dimensional bar codes, that are easily readable by the majority of camera phones using a freely downloadable or occasionally pre-installed application.


Meeting Australia's research workforce needs (Note: PDF)

From the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Australia website

The paper identifies issues influencing Australia’s capacity to produce the quantity, breadth and depth of research-qualified individuals it requires and to provide viable and productive career pathways to its researchers. Issues are organised under the following broad themes:

• Employer demand for researchers
• Supply of researchers to Australia
• Research career pathways
  

These issues reflect the advice of a high-level reference group, established to support the strategy development process, along with feedback and information garnered from a range of consultation and analysis activities undertaken by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research over 2009-2010, including two commissioned studies and a number of targeted roundtables and workshops with stakeholder groups.
The paper then proposes a set of priority focus areas and related actions for Australia to enhance its research workforce over the coming decade. Specific consultation questions are posed throughout the paper on which all stakeholder views are sought (government, public and private sector research employers, research training providers, individual researchers, students, relevant peak bodies, unions and other interest or advocacy groups).