(homepagedaily.com): Far from sidelining academic and special collections, the digital libraries of the future make easy and free access to print-libraries even more of a priority: there is no way of predicting the price tag for that rare thesis or out-of-print title in its downloadable form. This is an issue that more academics and specialists need to be questioning now, especially as they are the ones often making the decisions about their libraries, and not the librarians.
(icis.com): Over the next few months, ICIS pricing will be enhancing the appearance and functionality of the weekly reports. The reports will be easier to read, with a new design and a wider range of supporting graphics. Subscribers will see improved visual clarity in the European reports, followed by Asia Pacific/Middle East reports, and finally US/Latin America reports.
(forbes.com): In the run-up to the April 3 launch of Apple's iPad tablet computer, all appears calm. But behind the veil that obscures all Apple product debuts, the company is making last-minute changes to its book-selling categories and its process for certifying iPhone applications to work on the new, larger device, says mobile media research firm Busted Loop. San Francisco-based Busted Loop uncovered the information as part of its new AppSlice project, which aims to help consumers locate the best iPhone, iPod and iPad applications amid the sea of current offerings. By leveraging data available to Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) enterprise partners, AppSlice can see what kinds of electronic books Apple plans to offer on the iPad, as well as other sensitive information, says Busted Loop cofounder Josh Kastelein.
(publishingperspectives.com): Publishers around the globe are taking different approaches to assigning ISBNs to e-books, that is if they are assigning them at all. The situation is like it was back in the 1960s, in the pre-ISBN days of printed books: a bit of a mess. Recently, a group of publishers focused their minds on the challenge at a meeting in London organized by the UK Publisher's Association and tried to answer the following question: Should publishers assign a different ISBN to each e-book format, or will a single ISBN suffice?
(emarketer.com): Social media marketing relies on sophisticated forms of word-of-mouth, a medium highly trusted by most consumers. But even social media users prefer face-to-face communication to give and receive information about products and services. A survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising&Marketing Association (RAMA) found that in-person communication was social media users' top impetus to start an online search for a specific item. Social media users were even more influenced by face-to-face word-of-mouth than average adults.
(eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk): This paper presents a summary of reported studies on the Open Access citation advantage. There is a brief introduction to the main issues involved in carrying out such studies, both methodological and interpretive. The study listing provides some details of the coverage, methodological approach and main conclusions of each study.
(bisg.org): The International ISBN Agency continues to recommend that publishers should assign ISBNs to each e-book format separately available. Publishers should supply their ISBNs to downstream intermediaries and channels if they are creating their own formats. There will, however, be instances of compressed supply chains where an e-book in a particular format is available exclusively through a single channel (e.g. Kindle). In those circumstances there is no requirement for an ISBN, unless the publisher needs it for control purposes. (A simple guiding principle is that a product needs a separate identifier if the supply chain needs to identify it separately).
(ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk): Currently there is limited knowledge of who is using Web 2.0 and for what purposes. Even less is known about why specific tools and services are chosen, especially in situations where JISC and institutionally-provided services are available. This survey has therefore focused on the current and active users of Web 2.0 tools and services in UK Higher Education institutions and identifying what they are using and why. Although mainstream use of Web 2.0 services is growing and will continue to grow over time, no specific predictions can be made regarding the rate of take-up. An increasing proportion of new entrants to HE and FE are already familiar with and using Web 2.0 services but this does not apply to everyone and there is a need to support a range of very varied learner backgrounds and expectations.
(papers.ssrn.com): The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem. Yet publishers would presumably have to impose fees on authors, because publishers would no longer be able to profit from reader charges. If these author publication fees would actually be borne by academics, their incentives to publish would be reduced. But if the publication fees would usually be paid by universities or grantors, the motive of academics to publish would be unlikely to decrease (and could actually increase) - suggesting that ending academic copyright would be socially desirable in view of the broad benefits of a copyright-free world. If so, the demise of academic copyright should probably be achieved by a change in law, for the "open access" movement that effectively seeks this objective without modification of the law faces fundamental difficulties.
(oclc.org): This report examines the role of research libraries in research assessment regimes in five different countries and helps establish a new set of responsibilities that is emerging for research libraries. Commissioned by OCLC Research, the report was written by Key Perspectives Ltd, a UK library and scholarly publishing consultancy, after studying the role of research libraries in the higher education reserach assessment regimes in five countries.
(Openaccesscentral.com): This presentation, by Matthew Cockerill, Managing Director, BioMed Central, gives a summary of some of the many significant developments in Open Access over the last 12 months. This presentation was presented at the 2009 Online Information in London.
This presentation by Lee Rainai, Director - Pew Internet Project, Wisconsin Library Assiciation, covers the Pew Internet Project's latest findings and why they suggest that libraries can play a role in people's social networks in the future. Lee describes the reasons that people rely more and more on their social networks - using old and new technology - as they seek information, share ideas, learn, solve problems, and look for social support. He examines why the internet and cell phones have changed the way people construct and operate their social networks and why this opens new - sometimes "magical" - opportunities for librarians to do what they naturally do: act as "nodes" in people's networks.
Knowledge, as published through scientific literature, is the last step in a process originating from primary scientific data. These data are analyzed, synthesized, interpreted, and the outcome of this process is published as a scientific article. Access to the original data as the foundation of knowledge has become an important issue throughout the world and different projects have started to find solutions. In this presentation Dr. Brase discusses the role that libraries can play in this new era of eScience. Dr. Jan Brase is with the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), and is coordinator for the DOI Registration Agency for research data sets - over 600 registered since 2005.
While today's digital data has the potential to transform our work and life, the challenges of managing it, retaining it, accessing it over the long term, using it, and sustaining it constitute some of the most difficult problems of our time. Solving these problems requires strategies that make sense from a technical, policy, regulatory, economic, security, and community perspective. This presentation by Francine Berman of San Diego Supercomputer Center, California, focusses on the opportunities presented by today's and tomorrow's deluge of data along with the challenges of creating useful information from this data accessible for the foreseeable future.
Open access combined with Web 2.0 networking tools is fast changing the traditional journals' functions and framework and the publishers' role. As content is more and more available online in digital repositories and on the web an integrated, interconnected, multidisciplinary information environment is evolving and Oldenburg's model disintegrates: the journal is no more the main referring unit of the scholarly output, as it used to be mainly for STM disciplines, but scholars attention is deeply concentrated on article level. New journal models are thus evolving. In the first part of this presentation authors discuss these new experimental journal models, i.e. - overlay journals - interjournals - different levels journals In the second part of the presentation authors drive readers' attention on the role commercial publishers could play in this digital seamless writing arena. According to the authors, publishers should concentrate much more on value-added services both for authors, readers and libraries, such as navigational services, discovery services, archiving and ex-post evaluation services.
