Bespoke Bookselling for the 21st Century: John Smith’s and Current UK Higher Education

The JS Group is the business home to the prize-winning chain of booksellers for higher education institutions, John Smith’s. Under the deceptively simple term ‘bookseller’, however, lies a shift in thinking about books published by John Smith’s, which deserves articulation. This shift moves from regarding books as a source of knowledge conveyed through the book’s text to books as an agency capable of producing a range of notably different outcomes, of which knowledge is one, for each of the actors involved in its book-retail network. Through their aggregated engagement with what Darnton calls the communications circuit, John Smith’s manages to deliver different outcomes for students, lecturers, parents, student support services, for university executive management and for the state. These outcomes are only heightened when combined with Smith’s smart card system, sometimes called ASPIRE. In conjunction with a Samsung tablet, ASPIRE is then able to deliver ‘free’ digitized learning, funded through the UK fair access bursaries. The article examines John Smith’s model and questions the trade-off between effectiveness and freedom, finding the alternatives to be wanting. The research emerges from ongoing work into reading within the frame of commodity culture and, as such, the disciplinary fields supporting it are sociologies of literature, economics and book history studies, expressed in terms of cultural and critical discourse. The combination, it is hoped, will provide a fresh perspective

You can't judge a digital book by its POD cover: e-books and scholarly communication futures

The chapter examines digital publishing (E-books)within the context of recent developments in scholarly communication, academic publishing and pricing. It emphasises the need for global access to eScholarship, scholarship that combines authority with public accessibility

Electronic Resources and Academic Libraries, 1980-2000: A Historical Perspective

published or submitted for publicatio

An International Prospectus for Library & Information Professionals: Development, Leadership and Resources for Evolving Patron Needs

The roles of library and information professionals must change and evolve to: 1. accommodate needs of tech-savvy patrons; 2. thrive in the Commons & Library 2.0; 3. provide integrated, just-in-time services; 4. constantly update and enhance technology; 5. design appropriate library spaces for research and productivity; 6.adapt to new models of scholarly communication and publication, especially: the Open Archives Initiative and digital repositories; 7. remain abreast of national and interanational academic and legislative initiatives affecting the provision of information services and resources. Professionals will need to collaborate in: 1. Formal & informal networks – regional, national, and international; and; 2. Library staff development initiatives – regional, national, international Professionals will need to use libraries as laboratories for ongoing, lifelong training and education of patrons and of all library staff ( internal patrons ): the library is the framework in which Information Research Literacy is the curriculum . Professionals will need to remain aware of trends and challenges in their regions, the EU, the US and North America, of models which might provide inspiration and support: 1. Top Technology Trends; 2. New paradigms of professionalism; 3. Knowledge-creation and knowledge consumption; 4. The shifting balance of the physical library with the virtual-digital librar

Why Print and Electronic Resources Are Essential to the Academic Law Library

Libraries have supported multiple formats for decades, from paper and microforms to audiovisual tapes and CDs. However, the newest medium, digital transmission, has presented a wider scope of challenges and caused library patrons to question the established and recognized multiformat library. Within the many questions posed, two distinct ones echo repeatedly. The first doubts the need to sustain print in an increasingly digital world, and the second warns of the dangers of relying on a still-developing technology. This article examines both of these positions and concludes that abandoning either format would translate into a failure of service to patrons, both present and future

Digitisation-on-Demand in Academic Research Libraries

The investigation finds that digitisation-on-demand and print on-demand services have the potential to provide greater value access to libraries’ collections and could help a library to realise its true potential as a ‘long tail’. There are at present a number of practical and financial limitations that prevent this from being fully realised. Whilst the concept remains a viable one and demand is noted, copyright legislation restricts the material available for full digitisation to a niche subset of a library’s’ whole collection. For digitisation-on-demand, start-up costs remain high, which itself endangers a higher level of risk if a self-funding service is not used. Lease hire models for equipment could help mitigate this. For print on demand, start-up costs are also relatively high. Third party solutions could provide an alternative. In both cases, users may object to additional costs.This work was conducted as part of the Arcadia Programme, a three year programme funded by a grant from the Arcadia Fund

Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Colleges and universities should embrace the concept of increased openness in the use and sharing of information to improve higher education. That is the core recommendation of this report. The report was produced by CED's Digital Connections Council (DCC), a group of information technology experts that advises CED's business leaders on cutting-edge technologies

Shadow Libraries

How students get the materials they need as opportunities for higher education expand but funding shrinks. From the top down, Shadow Libraries explores the institutions that shape the provision of educational materials, from the formal sector of universities and publishers to the broadly informal ones organized by faculty, copy shops, student unions, and students themselves. It looks at the history of policy battles over access to education in the post–World War II era and at the narrower versions that have played out in relation to research and textbooks, from library policies to book subsidies to, more recently, the several “open” publication models that have emerged in the higher education sector. From the bottom up, Shadow Libraries explores how, simply, students get the materials they need. It maps the ubiquitous practice of photocopying and what are—in many cases—the more marginal ones of buying books, visiting libraries, and downloading from unauthorized sources. It looks at the informal networks that emerge in many contexts to share materials, from face-to-face student networks to Facebook groups, and at the processes that lead to the consolidation of some of those efforts into more organized archives that circulate offline and sometimes online— the shadow libraries of the title. If Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub is the largest of these efforts to date, the more characteristic part of her story is the prologue: the personal struggle to participate in global scientific and educational communities, and the recourse to a wide array of ad hoc strategies and networks when formal, authorized means are lacking. If Elbakyan's story has struck a chord, it is in part because it brings this contradiction in the academic project into sharp relief—universalist in principle and unequal in practice. Shadow Libraries is a study of that tension in the digital era. Contributors Balázs Bodó, Laura Czerniewicz, Miroslaw Filiciak, Mariana Fossatti, Jorge Gemetto, Eve Gray, Evelin Heidel, Joe Karaganis, Lawrence Liang, Pedro Mizukami, Jhessica Reia, Alek Tarkowsk