Facilitating Content Discovery and the Value of the Publisher Platform—An Overview

Libraries invest heavily in content, both through purchase and licensing. This money is wasted, however, if faculty and students are unable to easily locate and use content for research and teaching. Designing and promoting tools to assist in navigating a variety of information sources have been the purview of both librarians and information providers—from the card catalog to sophisticated indexing and abstracting databases to discovery products such as Summon and Primo. Where, however, do publishers fall into the information discovery mix? Should they be investing resources and time into the development of their product platforms, or should they cede content discovery to third parties? Publishers have a vested interest in making their content discoverable through as many paths as possible, and once discovered, publishers want to offer the user additional related content to prolong their stay on the publisher’s own site. Librarians also want to provide as many options to our users as possible, rather than investing in a single discovery option

Data to Decisions: Shared Print Retention in Maine

Shared print initiatives are gaining visibility across the country. While the majority of programs up to this point, such as the West Storage Trust and the CIC, have focused on journals, a growing number of these cooperative ventures are exploring regional retention of both monographs and journals. The Maine Shared Collection Strategy is one such initiative. All of a sudden, libraries seem have too much print in their stacks, much of it unused, if statistics are to be believed. The usual solution is judicious de-accessioning, aka weeding, based on various factors such as circulation, age, duplication across formats, and collection policies. This may be fine for individual libraries, but what if you are part of group of libraries, interdependent and connected by a shared discovery catalog and delivery service? What if no one kept enough copies of stuff to supply users with needed books and journals in the future? And aren’t we all really parts of a larger library group? Learn how nine institutions in Maine—including public, university, and college libraries, the state library, and the statewide collaborative system—are deciding what to keep, rather than what to discard. At last year’s Charleston Conference, the Maine Shared Collections Strategy grant, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, presented as part of the Shared Print Archiving: Making It Work preconference. We have made great progress since then. Deb Rollins (Collection Services, University of Maine) and Becky Albitz (Collection Management, Bates College) will discuss the review and analysis of collections data for a collective three million monographs, OCLC shared print symbols and retention disclosure from local to national levels, HathiTrust and Internet Archive digital copies and their effect on decisions, implications of a multitype library group on what we are keeping, policy issues, and more

Moving Grid systems into the IPv6 era

This paper focuses on integrating IPv6 functionality into Grid systems. We outline the advantages of IPv6 and the benefit to Grid systems. We then introduce our methodology and our efforts to provide IPv6 support on Grid systems using the Globus Toolkit Version 3 as our concrete working example. The status of global Grid IPv6 activities is introduced. We conclude by summarising how to bring IPv6 into Grid systems

Promoting communication skills for information systems students in Australian and Portuguese higher education : action research study

This paper aims to examine the value of communication skills learn- ing process through various assessments in Information Systems (IS) postgrad- uate units in Australia and Portugal. Currently, communication skills are indispensable to students in expanding their social networks and their knowl- edge at university and in the future workplace, since businesses expect their employees to have strong communication and presentation skills. This paper provides empirical evidence based on the anonymous quantitative and qualita- tive data collected during 2 years from 126 postgraduate students, which were collected via formal and informal feedback. Various assessment methods were used in Information Systems units to promote and develop the communication skills; these assessments are: reflective journal, business plan and prototype, discussion forum, presentation, and final examination. A Communication skills model (CSM) was developed based on Action research principles to promote the assessments which will assist IS students to enhance their communication skills. The research outcomes indicated that integrating communication skills in the assessments will allow students to promote their communication skills and boost their self-esteem skills. Furthermore, this paper added a new theoretical and practical contribution to higher-education teaching and learning literature, especially the action research for teachers to promote and develop communica- tion skills among students. Finally, integrating these skills in the units should meet the objectives and aims of the units, Master’s degrees, universities, and businesses’ needs, and satisfy our student’s need