Chris Bulock

OA in the Library Collection: The Challenges of Identifying and Maintaining Open Access Resources

While librarians, researchers, and the general public have embraced the concept of Open Access (OA), librarians still have a difficult time managing OA resources. To find out why, Bulock and Hosburgh surveyed librarians about their experiences managing OA resources and the strengths and weaknesses of management systems. At this session, they shared survey results, reflected on OA workflows at their own libraries, and updated audience members on relevant standards and initiatives. Survey respondents reported challenges related to hybrid OA, inaccurate metadata, and inconsistent communication along the serials supply chain. Recommended solutions included the creation of consistent, centralized article-level metadata and the development of OA collection development principles for libraries.

Knowledge and Dignity in the Era of “Big Data”

Private companies and government agencies are now creating and tapping into vastly more data than ever before. These data flows include enormous amounts of personal information and raise questions about privacy and intellectual policy that could have profound impacts on our lives. While data collection and creation are nearly ubiquitous, the instruments of collection and analysis are often hidden in order to track more natural behavior. Recent revelations of massive governmental data collection offer the country, and librarians in particular, an opportunity to discuss and question the societal implications of “Big Data,” and the policies that govern them.

Open Access and the Big Deal Sharing Space in the Netherlands

Open Access and the Big Deal are often thought to occupy opposite ends of the spectrum of openness in scholarly publishing. Universities in the Netherlands are changing that by negotiating OA publishing services into their Big Deals. This has been successfully arranged with three publishers already, and negotiations continue with Elsevier. While there are precedents for converting subscription payments to OA payments, such as the Sponsoring Coalition for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, this new arrangement could have a big impact. The deal has the potential to quickly convert a large number of articles from toll access to OA and to do so without dramatically disturbing the scholarly publishing ecosystem. There are questions about its sustainability and scalability, but its a project worth watching.

You Call That Perpetual? Issues in Perpetual Access

At the Mississippi State University Libraries’ eResource & Emerging Technologies Summit in August 2013, Chris Bulock, Electronic Resources Librarian at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, offered strategies on working through problems encountered with tracking and documenting access to electronic resources, with emphasis on the continuing challenge of perpetual access. He presented results of a survey he conducted to determine how institutions were doing in regard to access and preservation of electronic content.

Techniques for Tracking Perpetual Access

Tracking perpetual access entitlements is a challenging task that is too often simply ignored. Here, the presenter makes the case for the importance of systematically tracking perpetual access and outlines the information that is necessary to record. The presenter also draws on the literature and conversations with ten librarians working on the issue to provide a set of techniques for this task. These techniques incorporate several different systems common to academic libraries and include scenarios that illustrate the use in common situations.

Open access in the world of scholarly journals: creation and discovery

ABSTRACT Open Access publishing continues to grow, and it has profound implications for librarians in a variety of contexts. This report serves two functions. It provides background on Open Access publication of scholarly journals and the role of academic libraries in this movement. In particular, it examines the University of Lethbridge Journal Incubator as an example of library involvement in Open Access publication. The report also examines how hybrid journals, in an attempt to provide Open Access publication options in traditional subscription journals, have introduced a new discovery and access problem for libraries. While standards bodies have begun to address the problem, there are still many challenges when accessing open content in hybrid journals.

A publisher perspective: : How one publisher is responding to the changing world of scholarly communication

For this talk, Marks was tasked with summarizing the important trends in scholarly publishing in 45 minutes. The speaker reflected on the rapid changes that have occurred in journal publishing, which followed more than 300 years of relatively slow progress. Marks discussed key technology trends such as data curation, Open Access (OA) mandates, and the changes occurring in the global landscape of scholarly communications and library budgets. Wolters Kluwer Health has been responding to these trends with new publishing experiments including a Platinum OA model in emerging markets. Marks discussed the ways that publishers and libraries need to alter their traditional practices and instill a focus on their customers and communities.

Tracking Perpetual Access: A Survey of Librarian Practices

As librarians continue to grapple with licensed rather than purchased content, many have turned to perpetual access agreements to retain some of the norms of the print world. However, a license agreement only represents the beginning of a librarys relationship with a vendor, and perpetual access is not fully assured when the license is signed. In order to maintain perpetual access, librarians must continually track their perpetual access entitlements and adjust their holdings information when changes occur. The present study seeks to determine whether librarians are actively tracking their perpetual access, as well as the methods and systems used to accomplish this. A survey of librarians working with electronic resources found that many librarians were not tracking perpetual access, and they expressed uncertainty regarding their plans for ensuring this access.

Discovery on a Budget: Improved Searching without a Web-Scale Discovery Product

Discovery is a key component of a librarys services, and user expectations are high. Even if a Web-scale discovery system is not in the cards, there is plenty a library can do to improve discovery for their users. Librarians at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville have conducted a series of user studies focused on discovery tasks using the librarys website and catalog. The lessons learned from these studies have led to an ongoing redesign of the librarys website as well as recommendations for instruction. The presentation shares successful strategies for evaluating and improving discovery, no expensive software or programming skills necessary.