Library Newsletter Volume 13, Issue 1

Highlights include: Sustainable New Paths for Scholarly Communication --New Resources: Streaming Videos --Considering Using Artstor and its 375,000 Open Access Images --SelectedWorks in Digital Commons@SHU New Look and Dashboard --Discovery Service Trials --Libraries are for Everyone --Welcome Back, Project Muse --Staff Book Reviews --Books Read by Library Staff --Staff Changes

Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies

The further rise of electronic publishing has come to change the scale and diversity of grey literature facing librarians and other information practitioners. This compiled work brings together research and authorship over the past decade dealing with both the supply and demand sides of grey literature. While this book is written with students and instructors of Colleges and Schools of Library and Information Science in mind, it likewise serves as a reader for information professionals working in any and all like knowledge-based communities

Astrolabe: Curating, Linking and Computing Astronomy's Dark Data

Where appropriate repositories are not available to support all relevant astronomical data products, data can fall into darkness: unseen and unavailable for future reference and re-use. Some data in this category are legacy or old data, but newer datasets are also often uncurated and could remain "dark". This paper provides a description of the design motivation and development of Astrolabe, a cyberinfrastructure project that addresses a set of community recommendations for locating and ensuring the long-term curation of dark or otherwise at-risk data and integrated computing. This paper also describes the outcomes of the series of community workshops that informed creation of Astrolabe. According to participants in these workshops, much astronomical dark data currently exist that are not curated elsewhere, as well as software that can only be executed by a few individuals and therefore becomes unusable because of changes in computing platforms. Astronomical research questions and challenges would be better addressed with integrated data and computational resources that fall outside the scope of existing observatory and space mission projects. As a solution, the design of the Astrolabe system is aimed at developing new resources for management of astronomical data. The project is based in CyVerse cyberinfrastructure technology and is a collaboration between the University of Arizona and the American Astronomical Society. Overall the project aims to support open access to research data by leveraging existing cyberinfrastructure resources and promoting scientific discovery by making potentially-useful data in a computable format broadly available to the astronomical community.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 22 pages, 2 figure

uSCRIPT: an AJAX-based Online Manuscript Transcription Service

This project, a continuation of the ongoing Emergent Transcriptions Initiative, redesigned and implemented the Transcription Assistant software system. The system provides tools for archivists and transcribers in order to preserve ancient documents in a digital, searchable format. Specifically, it converted the system to a more appropriate web-based architecture. The software is composed of a web browser based user interface, a series of server-side services, and a set of databases for storing all the related transcription and user information. The project also established a web home base for the past, present, and ongoing project

Expanding Horizons: Using Information in the 21st Century

A Quality Enhancement Plan for Trinity University, 2008-2013 The development of information literacy—the ability to locate, gather, evaluate, and use information analytically and effectively—is the focus of Trinity University’s “Expanding Horizons” Quality Enhancement Plan. Trinity has always valued critical reading, analytical writing, and reasoned judgment as key components of a liberal arts education, and it supports a variety of opportunities for student research. However, the sheer volume of information and its rapidly changing forms challenge us to move beyond what we have traditionally done in and out of the classroom. Expanding Horizons asks faculty to design a creative and systematic approach to information literacy that is an integral part of the academic curriculum, and it asks staff and student leaders to reinforce information literacy in the co-curriculum. Over the next five years, “Expanding Horizons” will ensure that students are better prepared to work conscientiously and ethically with information in their coursework, and it will provide opportunities for students to apply similar critical thinking and research skills in their co-curricular lives. The result will be a campus culture that is more thoughtful, more informed, and thus more energized. This, in turn, will lead to graduates who are well prepared for their lives beyond Trinity