Bill Mayer, the University Librarian at American University, has been implementing some fairly radical (for libraries) changes in how the library exists on campus and interacts with the university community:

Next Steps : Change at American University

I really don’t have much of an opinion on any particular changes, mainly because I think that any library needs to seek out the ways to best serve their community.  This means hanging on to traditional ways of service, while at the same time implementing out new tools and ways to connect people with what they seek.  The best results for this process will be different for different libraries and communities.

I was, however, impressed with his approach:

…one word kept coming up over and over again: trust. “Trust is the most important aspect of the work we do—without it, there can be no change, no movement, no growth,” he said. I asked him how one goes about building trust and his response was simple: listening. “You ask questions and then you listen to what others say and suggest, and then you build up together from there. That’s a key part. If an administrator doesn’t ask, or even worse, asks but doesn’t include aspects that staff suggest, then you lose trust.”

If he walks that talk, then I think he has a good chance of finding the right balance for American University.

The Lepper Library in Lisbon, Ohio has initiated a new program to deal with severe budget cuts:  they are asking their users to help out by sponsoring magazine subscriptions.

This is a creative and interesting way to help maintain and even expand a collection.  I could even see an effort to encourage people to purchase books by their favorite authors for the library’s collection (perhaps they could be given the first hold slot for checking out the item).

This isn’t as good of an option for academic libraries, but I suspect that there are some possibilities in this approach.

found via Save Ohio Libraries

Publishers Weekly is reporting that not only are they up for sale by their publisher, Reed Business Information, but that Library Journal and School Library Journal are available as well.

Without knowing the cost/profit information for each of these, I do wonder how  they are affected by the various pressures in the publishing world as well as the shifting of library information to the web (including social media such as blogging and Twitter).

found via LISNews

A Look at Librarianship through the Lens of an Academic Library Serials Review is a post from In the Library with a Lead Pipe.  It is not only a great examination of the options available, with their assorted benefits and risks, when deciding which serial subscriptions to keep/cancel, but it is an examination of what librarianship brings to the process of maintaining a collection.

This is a process that many libraries will be going through on a large scale within the next few years, as budget cuts and cost increases force us to rethink what serials we offer, and how we offer them.

This is one of those areas in which there are no easy solutions; every cut is likely to remove some resources from users, and not everything will remain available or affordable by alternate means.  Serials management has been the financial seven-headed-hydra, with every solution either creating or being replaced by a new problem.

Saw a post on TechCrunch that indicated that Amazon has opened their offerings of blog subscriptions for the Kindle reader to all blogs that sign up.  So now Libology is available to readers of the Kindle… with two caveats:

1. It costs.  A lot.  Way more than you are paying now.  A whopping $1.99 per month (and I have no say in the price, so there).
2. I get some of the money, a whopping 30% (that’s 66 cents per month per subscription).

So really, if you don’t feel the need to pay to read this stuff, don’t.  Keep reading this stuff for free, though.  And if you are philosophically inclined (or reclined) against my getting paid, then, again, don’t.

Seriously, if you are really into the Kindle, and find the blog-perusing experience to be great, then I am glad to provide Libology as an option, just as I have provided a mobile-browser friendly version.  They do offer a 14-day trial if you want an excuse to try it out.  Just don’t feel guilty about canceling… I understand, trust me!

Was the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine incident an isolated case, or is it the first of several Elsevier journals that only appear to be legit?

Michael Hansen, CEO Of Elsevier’s Health Sciences Division, issued a statement today that suggests that a division of the company may have created the bogus journal without the knowledge of the top levels of the company:

It has recently come to my attention that from 2000 to 2005, our Australia office published a series of sponsored article compilation publications, on behalf of pharmaceutical clients, that were made to look like journals and lacked the proper disclosures. This was an unacceptable practice, and we regret that it took place.

We are currently conducting an internal review but believe this was an isolated practice from a past period in time. It does not reflect the way we operate today. The individuals involved in the project have long since left the company. I have affirmed our business practices as they relate to what defines a journal and the proper use of disclosure language with our employees to ensure this does not happen again.

Note that this statement uses the phrase “published a series of sponsored article compilation publications”.  Some sleuthing by Jonathan Rochkind and Bill Hooker indicates that Excerpta Medica, a subsidiary of Elsevier, might have published quite a few of these sponsored-yet-unacknowledged journals.

My own poking around Excerpta Medica’s website with Google has produced an interesting Pdf titled Best practices for managing publications through a drug’s lifecycle and balancing scientific rigour and credibility with commercial goals.  The document is a summary of a presentation given at by Hester Kuipers, who at the time was Program Director, Medical Communications for Exerpta Medica.  Here is a brief quote:

Scientific publications in peer-reviewed medical journals are a valuable and credible vehicle to support a medical marketing strategy. Though part of most marketing plans, publications are not a promotional activity, but rather a medical one. The relationship between scientific publications and marketing messages can best be described as the first supporting the second rather than the second driving the first.

The presentation makes it clear that the research must have primacy over the promotion; hopefully the “series of sponsored article compilation publications” turns out to be the exception and not the rule for Exerpta Medica.  Elsevier should investigate this thoroughly and publicly acknowledge the extent of the deception; the credibility of each and every one of their peer-reviewed journals is at stake.

some links found via ResourceShelf and through postings on the Cooperative Information Resources Managemnt (CIRM) list

Ever hear of the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine?  Sounds official, as well as medically specific.  Did you know it was published by Elsevier?  That is is Peer Reviewed?  And that it published an article on the effectiveness of Fosamax?

How about that it was cooked up by Merck as a promotional tool, and that they paid Elsevier to publish it?

I worked in a pharmacy for eight years; I have seen first-hand the differences between the drug manufacturer’s publicity and the actual usefulness of medicines.  I am not too surprised that someone at Merck did this (though not as surprised as I will be if the FDA doesn’t lift a finger to make it clear that this level of deception is unacceptable), but am a little surprised that Elsevier went along (though maybe not too surprised (here, too)).

This is a horrible situation, and library organizations should be demanding that Elsevier establish the bona fides of the journals we pay for, and that our patrons use for their research.  Sure, we can probably trust that the big-name journals are what they say they are, but there are hundreds of obscure journals, with titles sounding just as official as the fake one, that we cannot know for sure who they represent, and how they conduct their research, without a great deal of research.  Elsevier needs to salvage their credibility, and soon.

found via Bibliographic Wilderness

File this as a future wish-list item for your online catalog:

There is a new and interesting way to connect an OPAC search result for a journal to the full-text journal articles, and it is called ticTOC.  The application of this shows just how effective a well thought out mashup can be.

Last December, I ran across a blog post on RSS4Lib about the TicToc project, which has been in existence for a couple of years, but had just officially launched. I never got around to posting it, but I made a point to watch for further information.

TicTOC provides, via an RSS feed, the table of contents for the current issue of whatever journal you search for.  There are currently over 12,000 journals included in their service.  Read the RSS4Lib post (above) for a more detailed description.

There is now at least one library, Wageningen UR Digital Library in the Netherlands,  that has created a mashup in their OPAC that shows just how powerfully this can enhance an OPAC search.

Locate a journal using their e-journal search, or go straight to the result screen for the Journal of zoology : proceedings of the zoological society of London.

1. Click on “Show recent articles” on the right side of the screen.
2. To display an article’s abstract in the OPAC, click on “Show abstract”.
3. To get to the full text of an article, click on the title of the article, then click the full text link on the publisher’s site.

Two clicks from the journal result in the opac to the full text of an article in the current issue.  I am not sure what would need to be done to deal with proxys and journal databases, but for articles retrieved through the publisher’s web site, this is very straightforward and useful.

This appears to be a great service, and the Wageningen UR Library has done a fantastic job in creating the mashup.  I look forward to seeing how this is integrated into other collections.

found via RSS4Lib

Media-Morphosis : How the Internet will Devour, Transform, or Destroy Your Favorite Medium is an essay by Cory Doctorow on Internet Evolution.  Think of it as another way of describing the times in which we are living.  Then start thinking about things that the Internet will Devour, Transform, or Destroy that aren’t “mediums”….

found via LISNews

A little over two months ago, I decided to apply for an ISSN for this blog.  The notification letter arrived from the Library of Congress yesterday:  Libology blog has an ISSN of 1946-1852.  The link on the ISSN number doesn’t return a result (yet) but I recommend WorldCat’s xISSN History Visualization Tool.

There has been a debate over the use of ISSNs for blogs; my perspective is that I attempt to make this a responsible and professional ongoing commentary on library technology, sociology, etc., and as such it fits the definition of a serial.  And the LOC agrees.

Found via the posting of Beth Bernhardt’s ALA Midwinter presentation, Dealing with Free E-Journals : Are they worth the effort? (PowerPoint) , are several sites featuring links to free online journals:

• The Free Medical Journals Site
• Electronic Library of Mathematics : Mathematical Journals (plus a no-graphics version)

As well as these sites with article-level searching:

• SciELO (focusing on Latin American and Caribbean countries)
• HighWire Press

thanks to Open Access News

Gramophone Archive is the complete, searchable collection of every issue of The Gramophone since April 1923.

Enjoy audiophiles!

found via MetaFilter

The Library and the Bazaar is an essay by Greer Hauptman that discusses copyright options, libraries, and the freedom to read.

Of note is his argument that with greater control being exerted by publishers over access to content (think e-journals) it becomes important to recognize how critical access to information is to the library’s mission.  Now think about this in terms of e-books where we might be ten years from now.

found via Open Access News

Mike Dunford writing in of The Questionable Authority has written a post that compares the business model and profits of journal publishers with oil companies.  One figure that he arrives at is shocking, to say the least, but also illustrative of the current journal market:

Gas prices are going up. You’ve been combining trips, cutting your milage as much as you can, driving a more efficient vehicle, and your fuel costs are still going up. You drive home from work, stopping along the way to put $30+ dollars worth of gas into the 10 gallon tank in your Prius. You sit on the sofa, turn on the news, and hear that Exxon-Mobil just reported quarterly profits of about $1,500 per second. The price of something that you need to buy is going through the roof, it’s making things inconvenient for you, and the people who sell it are making money faster than the mint can print it. How happy are you?

If you want to understand the anger that the major publishing houses are generating, that’s a good place to start.

Publishers don’t make money at anything close to the clip that Big Oil does, but they’re not doing badly. Elsevier is probably the biggest fish, and they come in at a respectable $1,700 per minute. That’s 60 times less than Exxon-Mobil, but it’s still a nice chunk of change.

He goes on to discuss the relationships between authors and publishers, and the reaction to the open access movement.  All in all, this is a good essay that can provide some perspective for those outside of the library and publishing worlds.

found via Open Access News

One area of scholarly research that I enjoy following is Therapeutic Massage.  Having taken an introductory class taught by an excellent instructor, as well as enjoying regular sessions, I have found the benefits to be many.

So it is a pleasure to see an overlap between my massage interest and libraries with the forthcoming introduction of the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork : Research, Education, & Practice by the Massage Therapy Foundation.

I used to keep up with a couple of the journals in this field, but since changing jobs have not had access to them.  The added bonus of this journal’s Open Access format will let me keep up with new ideas and studies via the web.

found via Open Access News

In an article in today’s New York Times about magazines making their backfiles freely available online, there is a discussion about one magazine in particular:  Sports Illustrated.

Starting this Thursday, March 20th, the entire run of SI will be available through their new site, called The Vault.  Read the article to get the gist, but it sounds like they have gone the extra mile to make it easy to use, comprehensive, and powerful.  I am not terribly interested in sports, but I suspect that the Vault will be my first stop for sports-related questions (maybe second after Wikipedia, depending on the question).

from the SerialsT list

Kind of an interesting post on Open Access News over the weekend.  It seems that the license requirements for Elsevier’s electronic journals include printing a copy of the article, then scanning the article, before a library can provide that article as an interlibrary loan (ILL).

Part of my job is the scanning of articles for ILL, a task that is simultaneously interesting and monotonous.  I cannot think of any reason for their policy, except perhaps to make it inconvenient to provide their articles via ILL.  I will be watching to see if there is further developments….

Kind of an interesting post on Open Access News over the weekend.  It seems that the license requirements for Elsevier’s electronic journals include printing a copy of the article, then scanning the article, before a library can provide that article as an interlibrary loan (ILL).

Part of my job is the scanning of articles for ILL, a task that is simultaneously interesting and monotonous.  I cannot think of any reason for their policy, except perhaps to make it inconvenient to provide their articles via ILL.  I will be watching to see if there is further developments….

SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding is an attempt by libraries and publishers alike to break out of the licensing process that many in both camps find problematic.

Simply put, it is a straightforward agreement that a particular library subscribes to a given resource, and that the “shared expectations” of each side will be respected.  All this with no licensing contract.  An invoice and payment, and their presence on a registry maintained by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), serves as the legal basis for the transaction.

This reminds me of those business deals where you know that the person you are dealing with is thinking long-term, and that a handshake means more than a legal contract would with someone else.  It will be interesting to see how well this works in practice… it would be great to streamline access to information in a way that benefits everyone involved.

found via the SERIALST list

Review : Directory of Open Access Journals (Pdf), by Heather Morrison is a very good introduction to what is becoming a top-tier collection of journals.

Although some of the statistics are a bit dated (due to a strength of the DOAJ – they are adding journals fairly rapidly, and are currently past the 3,000 mark) the review hits the mark, making a great case for libraries to connect their patrons with this excellent resource.

from ResourceShelf