COUNTER: Consistency, Clarity, Simplification, and Continuous Maintenance

COUNTER provides a Code of Practice for recording and reporting the usage of electronic resources. The Code of Practice evolves as the information environment develops to meet the needs of the vendors, publishers, and libraries. COUNTER usage reports are an important tool for libraries, recording how often a given resource has been accessed and thus making a vital contribution to collection development and decision making. COUNTER is now developing of its next release of the Code of Practice, with the objective of addressing changing needs and making the Code of Practice less complex, so that providers of content and of usage analysis tools find it easier to use

Collections Supporting Women's Studies Majors in the United States

Women's studies, because it is highly interdisciplinary and because its materials are often published by small, lesser-known presses, is a notoriously difficult field for which to collect. However, this complexity of collection does nothing to diminish the responsibility of an academic library to support a women's studies program. This study provides an overview of the quality of collection of women's studies materials at ten academic libraries through the list-checking method, sampling from three distinct bibliographies. A comparison of these results to the size of the women's studies programs at those institutions, determined by the number of courses offered by those programs, is used to see whether or not there is a correlation between the size of a women's studies program and the collection relevant to the field

It\u27s Not Just About Weeding: Using Collaborative Collection Analysis to Develop Consortial Collections

From fall 2013 to the present, the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) has undertaken a pilot collection analysis project with Sustainable Collection Services (SCS). This pilot has involved analyzing the main stacks holdings of 12 of the VIVA member libraries, a total of almost six million records. As is usual for an SCS analysis, the project involved comparing the pilot libraries’ holdings with each other, the consortium as a whole, the state, and the United States, as well as with HathiTrust, the internet archive, and selected peer library groups. The goals for this project were varied, but unlike most library groups, which have used SCS analysis services to inform collaborative print preservation and deselection projects, a primary interest for VIVA was to use the analysis to inform future collection development. The hope was that learning about titles that had been acquired and used across this representative cross‐section of the consortium could be effectively translated into collaboratively acquiring e‐books in a more thoughtful, data‐driven manner, in addition to other collection development initiatives. This paper presents four different collection development approaches that have been applied to this shared data set

Valuing Consortial Resources: A Framework for Assessment

Grounded assessment begins with establishing the goals of an institution and its users, but there is an added layer of complexity in determining value at the consortial level, where individual institutions will naturally perceive the value of a particular resource differently. The shared resources of a consortium are also often diverse in both format and acquisition method. How should the relative value between e-books and streaming media be compared? Between leased and demand-driven acquisitions? Between open access and collaboratively owned models

Flipping the Model: A Values-Based Consortial Approach to Journal Negotiations

When negotiating journal pricing, the disadvantages libraries face are well documented. In addition to financially incompatible acquisition models that are out of sync with both library budgets and any predicted growth, libraries are also presented with rising inflationary costs, content added to an already overloaded system, and vendor consolidation. Pricing issues are further exacerbated by traditional negotiations, where libraries begin negotiations based on the offers made by publishers and vendors. These offers too often are predicated on historical spend and coupled with list prices that come with few explanations for their sums. Big package deals, that arguably expand access to resources and may lower costs on an article basis, have also increased overall costs and pushed out diverse resources. In attempting to move away from such deals institutions are faced with similar pricing for dramatically reduced access. The difficulties in navigating our way to a sustainable model become clear when the loss of researcher access is coupled with the increased staffing needed to manage individual subscriptions. New, and potentially viable pathways are beginning to emerge, including open access initiatives and the application of new models, such as read/publish. Although these pathways are not yet fully formed, they are promising developments that attempt to more holistically account for the contributions of the academy, the public good, and the costs of publishing. This presentation detailed the efforts of a task force within VIVA (Virginia’s academic library consortium) to create a bridge-solution between the current acquisition model and the future vision of its members. It creates a space to rethink what these deals could be and relies on consortial criteria to determine the value of content. The approach remains conscious of the real long-term institutional trust and communication risks to such endeavors, and is built on concerted, collective action

Estimates of success in patients with sciatica due to lumbar disc herniation depend upon outcome measure

The objectives were to estimate the cut-off points for success on different sciatica outcome measures and to determine the success rate after an episode of sciatica by using these cut-offs. A 12-month multicenter observational study was conducted on 466 patients with sciatica and lumbar disc herniation. The cut-off values were estimated by ROC curve analyses using Completely recovered or Much better on a 7-point global change scale as external criterion for success. The cut-off values (references in brackets) at 12 months were leg pain VAS 17.5 (0–100), back pain VAS 22.5 (0–100), Sciatica Bothersomeness Index 6.5 (0–24), Maine-Seattle Back Questionnaire 4.5 (0–12), and the SF-36 subscales bodily pain 51.5, and physical functioning 81.7 (0–100, higher values indicate better health). In conclusion, the success rates at 12 months varied from 49 to 58% depending on the measure used. The proposed cut-offs may facilitate the comparison of success rates across studies

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 38, No. 4

• Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Quintessential Quilts • The Folk Art of Fraktur • Molding & Spinning Pewter • Kaleidoscopes & Unique Stained Glass • Dolls are Not Just for Children Anymore • Paint Decorated Chests of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Festival Focus • Festival Programs • Tiffany-Style Stained Glass Lamps • Be Aware of What Might be Hiding in Grandma\u27s Attic • The Medicine Show • Pennsylvania Dutch Music & More • A Poor Damsel\u27s Fate • Silk Screening • Long Time Favorite Festival Foodshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1124/thumbnail.jp

Mechanistic Insights on the Inhibition of C5 DNA Methyltransferases by Zebularine

In mammals DNA methylation occurs at position 5 of cytosine in a CpG context and regulates gene expression. It plays an important role in diseases and inhibitors of DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs)—the enzymes responsible for DNA methylation—are used in clinics for cancer therapy. The most potent inhibitors are 5-azacytidine and 5-azadeoxycytidine. Zebularine (1-(β-D-ribofuranosyl)-2(1H)- pyrimidinone) is another cytidine analog described as a potent inhibitor that acts by forming a covalent complex with DNMT when incorporated into DNA. Here we bring additional experiments to explain its mechanism of action. First, we observe an increase in the DNA binding when zebularine is incorporated into the DNA, compared to deoxycytidine and 5-fluorodeoxycytidine, together with a strong decrease in the dissociation rate. Second, we show by denaturing gel analysis that the intermediate covalent complex between the enzyme and the DNA is reversible, differing thus from 5-fluorodeoxycytidine. Third, no methylation reaction occurs when zebularine is present in the DNA. We confirm that zebularine exerts its demethylation activity by stabilizing the binding of DNMTs to DNA, hindering the methylation and decreasing the dissociation, thereby trapping the enzyme and preventing turnover even at other sites