I am becoming very excited about all the new Open Access journals and
journal papers on the web but I want to mention something new, Open
Access Books. A good definition of a journal paper is a paper,
describing scientific research results, which has undergone some form of
anonymous peer-review and is published in a regularly appearing serial,
usually by a third party publisher and not by the university of the
author. Open Access means anyone has access to the full text of the
publication on the web, with no limitations except possibly a
requirement to register. Two terms commonly used to describe open
access papers are gold and green. Gold journals that are open access
from the start. Green open access means author's posted copies of their
manuscripts to open access sites on the web.
I have found the practice becoming more popular on individual academics websites.
One of the larger Open Access Publishers OAPEN
(Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a consortium of
European and American university presses based at the National Library
of the Hague . It has run the Directory of Open Access Journals for
several years. There have been some questions by researchers if all of
these are refereed journals, but OAPEN's policy statement says they
screen publishers who wish to join the library. "Publishers or
publishing entities (usually research institutes with their own
publishing program) need to be predominantly academic publishers, which
primarily means they should have transparent procedures for peer review
of manuscripts..." "OAPEN requires publishers to describe their peer
review procedures and make these discriptions available for publication
on the OAPEN website."
On April 13, 2012 OAPEN announced the opening of the Directory of Open Access Books (www.doabooks.org)
a finding service for open access books and monographs in the OAPEN
LIBRARY. The OAPEN LIBRARY is primarily a library of the humanities and
social sciences.
DOAB can search by
>Titles
>ISBN
>Author
>Keywords
>Subjects
>Abstracts
>Publisher
>Year of publication
>Language
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Friday, October 14, 2011
Advanced Data Bases are appearing on Public Libraries
Academic Search Premier, one of the most used databases by college students, is available to any Charlotte Public Library member through their website. It allows one to search for articles in 3,250 periodicals total.
These include magazines, newspapers, and newsletters with 1,250 of them peer reviewed journals. In a peer reviewed journal the editors send articles out to other scholars in the same field (the author's peers) to get their opinion on its accuracy. This is the only type of article acceptable for college and advanced high school work.
For 1,850 magazines Academic Search Premier has the full text of every article. For the rest it has only short citations that will help locate articles from a different source.
A search on a local historical character, Thomas Belk of the mercantile family, summoned several hundred articles written by different Thomas Belks. An advanced search adding the word Charlotte to the name Thomas Belk found two articles, one a full text obituary from the New York Times.
Asking about Douglas Airport and Charlotte retrieved 112 articles. Eliminating all but full text articles cut the list to 105 articles. Eliminating all but full text articles from peer reviewed journals brought the list to a manageable 19 articles from such respected periodicals as the North Carolina Historical Journal.
To access Academic Search Premier one goes to the public library website (www.plcmc.org) touches the words Research/Homework then click on Resources in the drop down menu. Academic Search Premier is on the list of data bases. One clicks on it, enters the number on their library card and you are ready to search by key word, subject, title, or author, or combinations of them.
These include magazines, newspapers, and newsletters with 1,250 of them peer reviewed journals. In a peer reviewed journal the editors send articles out to other scholars in the same field (the author's peers) to get their opinion on its accuracy. This is the only type of article acceptable for college and advanced high school work.
For 1,850 magazines Academic Search Premier has the full text of every article. For the rest it has only short citations that will help locate articles from a different source.
A search on a local historical character, Thomas Belk of the mercantile family, summoned several hundred articles written by different Thomas Belks. An advanced search adding the word Charlotte to the name Thomas Belk found two articles, one a full text obituary from the New York Times.
Asking about Douglas Airport and Charlotte retrieved 112 articles. Eliminating all but full text articles cut the list to 105 articles. Eliminating all but full text articles from peer reviewed journals brought the list to a manageable 19 articles from such respected periodicals as the North Carolina Historical Journal.
To access Academic Search Premier one goes to the public library website (www.plcmc.org) touches the words Research/Homework then click on Resources in the drop down menu. Academic Search Premier is on the list of data bases. One clicks on it, enters the number on their library card and you are ready to search by key word, subject, title, or author, or combinations of them.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Ten Good Places to Learn about Library Technology
CNET Web Ware Weekly Newsletter (Cnet.online.com)
I read this Online Newsletter from the CNET News service regularly. While not our libraries IT person I find Software advances as important as hardware. Almost everything in this publication can be counted as Web 2.0. For example the two top stories in the October 2nd issue deal with the ways the online services Google and Facebook are improving their photo-sharing techniques.
Internet Scout Project (scout.wise.edu)
I have subscribed to the weekly Internet Scout Report for over a decade now. Each week they list new online sites using digital technology to spread important information in new and interesting ways. When ever a new service seems to have a direct connection to one of my college’s classes I copy the Scouts report and e-mail it to the appropriate instructor. For example recent gems include an international on-line magazine of poetry in English translations, a website with java based user operated exercises in basic physics, and a photo montage of a French Cathedral with commentary in English and French text. Each week also lists at least two free programs being offered on the web. I have found their archives very useful in making subject and keyword searches of well run websites.
I subscribe to three of the RSS Feeds from this magazine. Each has at least one story a week about new means of using technology to either spread or display information. They also have descriptions of other new websites that can prove useful.
Fumsi Focus is an online newsletter that lists the more interesting articles and discussion from the Fumsi Forum an online group in England dealing with ways in their on words to “ Use, Manage and Share Information” . The September article on Treasuring Twitter: the How and Why of Preserving Tweets is one I am going to have to spend a lot of time on.
Resource Shelf (web.resourceshelf.com)
Resource Shelf is a blog that reports on free quality resources on the web. Probably the best way to use it is subscribe to the free ResourceShelf Newsletter. In the most recent issues was a reports about the National Archives issuing Guidelines on Cloud Computing, a cheat sheet for librarians on eBook Devices and my personal favorite and article on the DocsTeach site at the National archives. This web site not only offers PDF images of several hundred important historical documents it incorporates seven new tools, customizable by instructors , that attempt to teach specific historical thinking skills such a weighting evidence, interpreting data and focusing on details. That’s a web 2.0 feature
Association for Education Communications and Technology (http://www.aect.org/)
AECT was the only major group for those “whose activities are directed toward improving instruction through technology” when I got my degree in Audiovisual Education in the seventies. I still like to review its publications on a regular basis since it is one of the few groups to deal with classroom presentation technology (data projectors, smart boards, etc.)
American Library Association: Office for Information Technology Policy (wwww.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oitp/index.cfm)
The ALA is of course an obvious choice but in terms of technology I believe the OITP is their most interesting unit. It doesn’t actually deal directly with technology but with the theory of information exchange and the polices of the Department of Education and other government agencies that affect information technology.
This blog from The Chronicle of Higher Education has a set of amusing writers working on different aspects of Library Technology. On the week of Sept 23- Sept 29 it had articles running from how to use university only Networking sites to encourage academic discussions across different campuses to the spread of open source course management programs. The rest of the technology section is also excellent
The IMLS has just completed one exciting project a wiki called UpNext! designed to share ideas, resources and projects that could help libraries and museums plan for the future. They are now starting a series of free webinars called Connecting to Collections dealing with ways to both publicize collections to possible users. These are in addition to their normal online publications on finding the best material for preserving archives.
Google Shopping: www.google.com
This is normally my starting point when I need to buy either equipment or furniture. Never my last stop, but I can use this and its customer reviews to narrow my choices, and to find the vendor websites where I can get more specifications and exact costs. For example recently my boss need a suggestion in one working day for a podium with a built in speaker and a shelf for a data projector. I had never even seen one but the Google Shopping service showed be about 15. Once I narrowed it down I sent a quick e-mail to the local vendor who can usually do things in a hurry.
Five Data Bases You Should Know About
DOAJ: the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/) is dedicated to increasing “the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals“ Open Access journals do not charge readers for access and allow users to “read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles.” The DOAJ tries to select peer-review journals that report primary results of research or overviews of research results. It allows text, keyword, and subject searching. Currently there are 4148 journals in the directory but only 1497 are searchable at the article level. Periodicals range from Applied Theatre Researcher (from Australia) to Fishery Bulletin (USA) to Clinical Epidemiology (UK).
As a test I looked up a new subject I am interested in MEMS (Microelectro-Mechanical systems). MEMS are made up of components in between 1 to 100 Micrometers in size. I found 81 articles from different journals such as Sensors, Journal of Applied Sciences, Acta Montanistic Slovaca and BMC Medical Research Methodology.
J-Stage: The Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator, Electronic (http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/) offers a list of titles 21 pages long, all free. You can search by Keyword, Article Title, Author’s name, and Journal Title. Titles go from Annals of Japan Prosthodontic, to the Society Journal of Chemical Software to Turbomachinery.
A simple search for MEMS uncovered 1006 articles. On advanced search I selected only English language articles in peer reviewed journals and got 173 hits from periodicals like IEEJ Transactions on Sensors and Micromachines, IEICE Electronics Express and the Journal of Photopolymer Science and Technology.
SciELO: The Scientific Electronic Library Online (http://www.scielo.org/) is the result of cooperation between a number of Latin American and Caribbean scientific and medical institutions offering 619 titles. Almost every article is available in English and you can search with several different systems. Its titles include Vaccimonitor (Cuba) to Mastozoologia Neotropical (Argentina) to the Brazilian Political Science Review. A search for MEMS found five hits from the Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering, the Brazilian Journal of Physics and the Journal of the Argentine Chemical Society. The article from Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP has an abstract available in English but the text was only in Portuguese. However this article turned out to be about MMSE (Mini Mental State Examination).
Hindawi Publishing Corporation ( http://www.hindawi.com/) is a Cairo-based for profit publisher of journals in science, technology and medicine. It is an open access item publisher were every article is open for free. Is survives becausecontributors pay to have their articles appear but every article is subject to a professional review. They currently have over 200 journals. When I asked my MEMS test question I got 28 responses. The ones that seemed mostly directly related to MEMS as I understand the term were from Advances in Mechanical Engineering, Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Journal of Sensors, Journal of Nanomaterials and Active and Passive Electronic Components.
The Online Books Page (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu) is a project run by John Mark Ockerbloom of the University of Pennsylvania, which hosts the site. It lists 35,000 free books on the Web, which they mostly found thru recommendations from readers. You can search by author, title and subject. I have been able to help students find original pamphlets from the Chicago Black Panthers and slave narratives that are out of print here.
I found nothing under MEMS but ten books under microelectromechanical systems. I decided to not include “Tom Swift and His Photo Phone" or it would be eleven.
As a test I looked up a new subject I am interested in MEMS (Microelectro-Mechanical systems). MEMS are made up of components in between 1 to 100 Micrometers in size. I found 81 articles from different journals such as Sensors, Journal of Applied Sciences, Acta Montanistic Slovaca and BMC Medical Research Methodology.
J-Stage: The Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator, Electronic (http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/) offers a list of titles 21 pages long, all free. You can search by Keyword, Article Title, Author’s name, and Journal Title. Titles go from Annals of Japan Prosthodontic, to the Society Journal of Chemical Software to Turbomachinery.
A simple search for MEMS uncovered 1006 articles. On advanced search I selected only English language articles in peer reviewed journals and got 173 hits from periodicals like IEEJ Transactions on Sensors and Micromachines, IEICE Electronics Express and the Journal of Photopolymer Science and Technology.
SciELO: The Scientific Electronic Library Online (http://www.scielo.org/) is the result of cooperation between a number of Latin American and Caribbean scientific and medical institutions offering 619 titles. Almost every article is available in English and you can search with several different systems. Its titles include Vaccimonitor (Cuba) to Mastozoologia Neotropical (Argentina) to the Brazilian Political Science Review. A search for MEMS found five hits from the Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering, the Brazilian Journal of Physics and the Journal of the Argentine Chemical Society. The article from Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP has an abstract available in English but the text was only in Portuguese. However this article turned out to be about MMSE (Mini Mental State Examination).
Hindawi Publishing Corporation ( http://www.hindawi.com/) is a Cairo-based for profit publisher of journals in science, technology and medicine. It is an open access item publisher were every article is open for free. Is survives becausecontributors pay to have their articles appear but every article is subject to a professional review. They currently have over 200 journals. When I asked my MEMS test question I got 28 responses. The ones that seemed mostly directly related to MEMS as I understand the term were from Advances in Mechanical Engineering, Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Journal of Sensors, Journal of Nanomaterials and Active and Passive Electronic Components.
The Online Books Page (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu) is a project run by John Mark Ockerbloom of the University of Pennsylvania, which hosts the site. It lists 35,000 free books on the Web, which they mostly found thru recommendations from readers. You can search by author, title and subject. I have been able to help students find original pamphlets from the Chicago Black Panthers and slave narratives that are out of print here.
I found nothing under MEMS but ten books under microelectromechanical systems. I decided to not include “Tom Swift and His Photo Phone" or it would be eleven.
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