Moving beyond e-journals

Paul Ayris explains to Elspeth Hyams why scholarly communication has moved beyond the debate on e-journals pricing and open access

Open access: brave new world requires bravery

The year 2012 heralded significant developments in open access (OA) that impacted the relationships between the major stakeholders in scholarly publishing: researchers, funders, publishers and governments. In the UK, the clear preference for a gold OA policy enunciated by the government-backed Finch Report is now being implemented by the research councils. Although the policy has been modified to include green routes to OA publishing, arguments continue about the optimal route to a system of open access that can work on a global scale. Resolution of these disputes will require courage and imagination

Yours ever (well, maybe): Studies and signposts in letter writing

Electronic mail and other digital communications technologies seemingly threaten to end the era of handwritten and typed letters, now affectionately seen as part of snail mail. In this essay, I analyze a group of popular and scholarly studies about letter writing-including examples of pundits critiquing the use of e-mail, etiquette manuals advising why the handwritten letter still possesses value, historians and literary scholars studying the role of letters in the past and what it tells us about our present attitudes about digital communications technologies, and futurists predicting how we will function as personal archivists maintaining every document including e-mail. These are useful guideposts for archivists, providing both a sense of the present and the past in the role, value and nature of letters and their successors. They also provide insights into how such documents should be studied, expanding our gaze beyond the particular letters, to the tools used to create them and the traditions dictating their form and function. We also can discern a role for archivists, both for contributing to the literature about documents and in using these studies and commentaries, suggesting not a new disciplinary realm but opportunities for new interdisciplinary work. Examining a documentary form makes us more sensitive to both the innovations and traditions as it shifts from the analog to the digital; we can learn not to be caught up in hysteria or nostalgia about one form over another and archivists can learn about what they might expect in their labors to document society and its institutions. At one time, paper was part of an innovative technology, with roles very similar to the Internet and e-mail today. It may be that the shifts are far less revolutionary than is often assumed. Reading such works also suggests, finally, that archivists ought to rethink how they view their own knowledge and how it is constructed and used. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Brain and Behavior: we want you to share your data.

We at Brain and Behavior are happy, for one, that data sharing is now here

Data Management Roles for Librarians

In this Chapter:● Looking at data through different lenses● Exploring the range of data use and data support ● Using data as the basis for informed decision making ● Treating data as a legitimate scholarly research produc

Brave New World, 2050: The Implications of Shifting to Electronic Collections

This futuristic article discusses the shift in academic and research libraries to electronic collections in the context of information access, costs, publication models, and preservation of content. Certain factors currently complicate the shift to electronic formats and challenge their widespread acceptance. Future scenarios spanning skill ecosystems, technologies and workflows, and societal implications are explored as logical outgrowths of present circumstances

Scholarly publishing: digital dreams or nightmares?

The world of scholarly publishing is a complex one. At one end of the scholarly publishing spectrum are the annual multi-million dollar profits of STM global publishers such as Reed Elsevier; at the other the plight of university presses in Australia

Is There a Future for Library Catalogers

Is there a future for the library cataloger? For the past thirty years this debate has increased with the continual growth of online resources and greater access to the world wide web. This article focuses on the future of the cataloging profession and its importance to the needs of library patrons