Freeing Knowledge: Approaches to Foster Collaboration Between Academic Libraries and the Wikipedia Community

Wikipedia has become a ubiquitous source for information, as well as a global community of people dedicated to the free exchange of knowledge. While its convenience may seem at first glance to be a threat to the traditional role of libraries, an overlap of purpose fosters unique opportunities for working together to advance free access to high-quality information and empower learning. This article will address these opportunities by providing specific examples of ways in which libraries can collaborate with Wikipedia to achieve the common goal of making information more accessible, while increasing their utility beyond their local community. An overview of resources to facilitate this endeavor will be provided, along with example projects aimed at exposing library content, teaching information literacy skills, and engaging communities

Motley Crew: Collaboration across an Academic Library to Revive an Orphaned Collection

It can be difficult to find time and motivation to effectively address collection management for materials in specialized areas that fall outside the primary scope of one’s usual responsibilities. The pressure of crowded shelves in the authors’ largest library and the associated difficulties of helping users locate materials led a team of faculty librarians and staff to evaluate and consolidate an “orphaned collection” of books in health and medicine call numbers. The authors describe how a project team established a data-informed evaluation and weeding process that minimized affective decision-making and considered the nuances of collection management between disciplines

Citations for Software: Providing Identification, Access and Recognition for Research Software

Software plays a significant role in modern academic research, yet lacks a similarly significant presence in the scholarly record. With increasing interest in promoting reproducible research, curating software as a scholarly resource not only promotes access to these tools, but also provides recognition for the intellectual efforts that go into their development. This work reviews existing standards for identifying, promoting discovery of, and providing credit for software development work. In addition, it shows how these guidelines have been integrated into existing tools and community cultures, and provides recommendations for future software curation efforts.

PREX: PeroxiRedoxin classification indEX, a database of subfamily assignments across the diverse peroxiredoxin family

PREX (http://www.csb.wfu.edu/prex/) is a database of currently 3516 peroxiredoxin (Prx or PRDX) protein sequences unambiguously classified into one of six distinct subfamilies. Peroxiredoxins are a diverse and ubiquitous family of highly expressed, cysteine-dependent peroxidases that are important for antioxidant defense and for the regulation of cell signaling pathways in eukaryotes. Subfamily members were identified using the Deacon Active Site Profiler (DASP) bioinformatics tool to focus in on functionally relevant sequence fragments surrounding key residues required for protein activity. Searches of this database can be conducted by protein annotation, accession number, PDB ID, organism name or protein sequence. Output includes the subfamily to which each classified Prx belongs, accession and GI numbers, genus and species and the functional site signature used for classification. The query sequence is also presented aligned with a select group of Prxs for manual evaluation and interpretation by the user. A synopsis of the characteristics of members of each subfamily is also provided along with pertinent references

Software and the Scientist: Coding and Citation Practices in Geodynamics

In geodynamics as in other scientific areas, computation has become a core component of research, complementing field observation, laboratory analysis, experiment, and theory. Computational tools for data analysis, mapping, visualization, modeling, and simulation are essential for all aspects of the scientific workflow. Specialized scientific software is often developed by geodynamicists for their own use, and this effort represents a distinctive intellectual contribution. Drawing on a geodynamics community that focuses on developing and disseminating scientific software, we assess the current practices of software development and attribution, as well as attitudes about the need and best practices for software citation. We analyzed publications by participants in the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics and conducted mixed method surveys of the solid earth geophysics community. From this we learned that coding skills are typically learned informally. Participants considered good code as trusted, reusable, readable, and not overly complex and considered a good coder as one that participates in the community in an open and reasonable manor contributing to both long- and short-term community projects. Participants strongly supported citing software reflected by the high rate a software package was named in the literature and the high rate of citations in the references. However, lacking are clear instructions from developers on how to cite and education of users on what to cite. In addition, citations did not always lead to discoverability of the resource. A unique identifier to the software package itself, community education, and citation tools would contribute to better attribution practices