John Dupuis, science librarian at York University, is working his long running blog series “My Job in 10 Years” into a book. Dupuis has been working on this series since 2005 where he started to reflect on trends in collections. The series reflects on changes in publishing, the physical space of the library and advocating for the role of libraries in the university context. As we approach 2020, Dupuis argues that print books will still be produced but journals will change by moving from the concept of issues to simply publishing individual articles. There are many good points to the articles and blog posts that John has written over the past several years. The collections collection is an important one – as the free Web gets better and better, how and what should be bought? If the academic publishing industry goes the same way as newspapers, then few publications will be available for purchase at any rate.

While we all wait for the book, you can read an article version of the idea from York University’s repository.

I read and enjoy PhD Comics a great deal. Recently, the comic has done a series of comics exploring two of the world’s most well known science publications, Science and Nature (yes, that’s right, I read comics about science and publishing!). The fourth comic covers the recent history of open access in science and how it may impact the existing models. You can find part one, part two, and part three of the series on the Phd Comics website.

The comic refers to PLOS (Public Library of Science), a series of open access journals in biology, medicine, computational biology, Neglected Tropical Diseases and other topics. Open access in this case does not mean without fees though; authors have to pay publication fees that range from $1350 to $2900 USD. I gather that such fees are so common in science that these fees are often built into grants, so perhaps that is not much of a problem. In terms of copyright, PLOS uses a Creative Commons Attribution License: “Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in PLoS journals, so long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.”

Thanks to Stephen Abram for blogging this chart from the Ruder Finn Public Relations Firm.

This is the over all chart; there are also versions for men, women, youth and seniors (based on a survey of 500 Americans). Rather than looking at specific websites or services, this type of study looks at what people are trying to achieve. In examining this chart, I wonder if there is some overlap between “learning” and “having fun”: these activities often overlap for me in particular. The demographic breakdown is also worth remarking on: 93% of men surveyed “go online to be entertained” (75% for women). On the other hand, 50% of  youth (“youth” is not defined here but I presume they are using one of the standard definitions such as 18-25 years old) “go online specifically to rage against a specific person or individual.” The study scores highly in my book for visual design but is a bit weak in terms of definitions and content – maybe those aspects are restricted to paying clients though.

Libraries have great strength in the learning department and often do well in community. If we want our patrons to stay with the Library, then we need to enrich our online presence. Can we combine learning with other intents such as “socialize” and “express yourself”? There are still a lot of cases where the digital presence of a library only allows one-to-one communication. In the academic library context, what about encouraging students to create bibliographies and reading lists online? Something like, “Here are the 15 books and 15 articles I used for my European history paper,” inspired by the Amazon Wishlist concept but better – allow other users to rate it, comment and share their lists too. I think this Internet-enabled drive to connect socially and learn is an important trend that continue to provide librarians with the opportunity to innovate.

I just watched this video about the Toronto Public Library and I was impressed. This six minute video, available for free on YouTube since November 2008, really shows the value and values of the public library. The Library contributes to literacy, to the city’s economy (e.g. by assisting businesses in conducting research), providing employment opportunities, by offering community space and more. The high quality editing and variety of interviews told a very compelling story. Well done, TPL!

Recently, I have been to several museums and found some of the practices there to be interesting. Just as librarians ought to stay informed about trends in publishing, I think staying informed about trends in education and communication is also of value. I have found both good and bad points in physical layout and in communication that we can learn from. While I love visiting museums and could go on and on about them, I will focus on three themes in this post: signage, audio guides and the gift shop.

Signage: In one case, the signage was lacking enough that I not only got lost but ended up mising a fair portion of the exhibit area. In a more thoughtfully designed museum, progress through the institution was clearly marked. At the last museum I visited, progress through an area was marked symbolically so that one clearly knew how many rooms an area had in total and how far along one had progressed. In the latter case, I clearly knew where I stood.

The Lesson: Signs (this applies to the digital environment as well) should serve to orient the user. If there are steps to a process or procedure, indicate progress to the user.

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From the CASLIS Ottawa Blog, I recently learned that a wealth of Canadian health information will now be available online. The new resource is set to launch in the fall of 2009 and it looks promising. A number of American universities have recently adopted open access policies for faculty research, but I gather this is a first for Canada. The project, “PubMed Central Canada” is a collaboration between the National Research Council’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the US National Library of Medicine (NLM).

The CASLIS blog post describes the resource thus:

“PMC Canada will be a national digital repository of peer-reviewed health and life sciences literature, including research resulting from CIHR funding. This searchable Web-based repository will be permanent, stable and freely accessible.”

I look forward to exploring this resource when it is launched and I wonder how it will work. Will past medical studies conducted in Canada be included? Will references to studies elsewhere be included (I gather the NLM has a method for coding references to facilitate cross-references) as references? Assuming the primary users of this tool are physicia, medical students and others with a background in medicine, how will consumer/patient issues be handled? A health librarian is one good option to consider, but system design should also take account of this.

After visiting the US National Archives in Washington D.C. last week, I found myself inspired. It is the only archive I have ever been anywhere in the world that had a line of people outside waiting to get in. Almost all of these people were interested in seeing a select few extremely well guarded documents; the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and some other related materials. Though I didn’t get a chance to go inside, I also noted that the Archives had a shop with plenty of books on American history and reproductions of documents. The good news just keeps coming though. A few days ago, the US Archives started a YouTube channel (here is the Archives press release about it).  There are 21 videos there now, mostly focused on US Presidents (hmm, maybe Library and Archives Canada could do something like this for all Canadian Prime Ministers?). The channel looks well designed and I hope it expands.

I also learned this week, via Stephen Abram, that the United States Army is now allowing its soldiers to access social media websites like flickr, Twitter and Facebook. You can read about it on this WIRED article. This new openness does not apply to American bases oversees. The powers that be are viewing social media as a tool. The order authorizing this change states, “IOT support the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to “tell the Army story” and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information.” While promising, this statement partly misses the point. Social media is a two way road and trying to use it like broadcast media will not be all that successful. Still, it is early days and maybe they will come around. I wonder if this originated as an order from the Commander-in-Chief who is well known for his embrace of social media tools. After all, the new White House website is a fine piece of work. I wonder what their usage statistics are like?

I am home from the SLA conference in Washington D.C. and getting other projects ready. This week, I will be presenting at the SHARP conference. My presentation is based on my major research project from my Master of Arts degree: “The Manchester Public Library: A Pivotal Moment in British Print Culture.” It will be good to revisit the topic and present on it again. Besides that, I have the Net Neutrality Thesis to revise and some other writing projects to work on.

Through Twitter, I was notified about two blog posts that offer some notes on Colin Powell’s SLA speech. Here is a post that provides a brief series of notes while this post offers a more detailed reflection.

I’ve been learning Open Journal Systems (OJS) this week at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. OJS is really best thought of as a customized content management system (CMS) for academic journals. Even though there are quite a few steps in setting it up, I can see the pay off it provides in better organizing workflow, version control of documents and communications. I’m taking plenty of notes and I can feel my confidence with the system increasing. From my perspective, there’s an opportunity for librarians to contribute here – libraries and librarians can serve as publishers, technical support, advisors and more. In addition to the tangible benefits, I am especially happy to see the rise of open access content that is encouraged by OJS.

Tomorrow, we are going to go over installation in greater detail, some PHP (which I am learning more about on my own, along with brushing up on my MySQL skills) and more administration. Already, I am wondering about how OJS (and other similar practices) may change the practice of publishing, tenure requirements and more.

While some may be unfamiliar with it, OJS is a major force in scholarly communication. According to the Public Knowledge Project (which produces and gives away OJS for free as an open source application), at least 2000 journals use it in fields such as law, banking, political science, applied mathematics and much more. Developed in North America, OJS is used around the world (+900 journals use it in South America and +300 in Africa). I’m curious to know what readers, editors and authors think of it and how it might compare against other methods (digital and otherwise) of managing journals.

In today’s Globe & Mail, there was an article about a conference being held at the University of Waterloo called Canada 3.0. Before I quote the Globe article, I have a brief word on Canada 3.0 – it is a major event that has drawn in cabinet ministers and a video of the keynote address is online. There is also an interesting reference to the somewhat mysterious “Canada Project” (an effort to make a great volume of Canadian content from archives and other places available online). There is a great opportunity here for information professionals to contribute in design, organizing systems, helping people find what they need and more.

‘Digital nation’ key to economic recovery, academics say (Globe and Mail, June 8, 2009)

At a time when governments are spending billions on ailing industries, roads and bridges, a group led by the University of Waterloo has grabbed the attention of politicians and corporate leaders with a pitch to make digital media a key part of the country’s economic-recovery plans. Organizers of a two-day conference that starts Monday in Stratford, Ont., are hoping to gain momentum for their push to make Canada a leader in the biggest technological revolution since the railway.

“We want to make Canada the first digital nation in the world,” said Ken Coates, dean of arts at the University of Waterloo. Getting there, he said, involves not just supporting high-tech tool makers, but understanding how the rising use of digital media is changing the way we communicate, do business and access news and entertainment.