NSF Review Panel

I recently served on a review panel for an NSF program. We were asked not to say which one. But this is my first time doing this, & it was quite an education. When I first accepted, I had some moments of doubt & guilt over the seriousness of what I was being asked to do: tell, or at least suggest to the federal government how to spend taxpayer money… Read More

Database indexing & journal copyright agreements, Part 2

When I posted about this the other day, I hadn’t received a reply from Wilson yet. I have now, & here’s the crux of their reply: Library Literature & Information Science (like the other H.W. Wilson databases) indexes the contents of its journal list cover-to-cover. In practical terms, that means that any article of a least half-a-page in length will be indexed. The issue of who retains copyright to the.. Read More

Database indexing & journal copyright agreements

A while back I wrote that I was going to look into whether it’s possible for me, as an individual author, to submit my own article to be indexed in a database. Well, I finally got off my duff and actually looked into it. Actually I only contacted 2 database vendors: Wilson (re the Library Literature & Information Science db) and CSA (re the Library and Information Science Abstracts db)… Read More

vacation -I

I’m off to Croatia later today for the LIDA conference. I’m presenting a paper, of course – one doesn’t travel that far just to attend a conference, or at least I don’t. I also don’t travel that far & to a place that cool without making some vacation time, so Yvonne is joining me & we’re spending several days before the conference touring around the Southern Dalmatian coast. Sweet! I.. Read More

Cornell Faculty Senate resolution on scholarly publishing

The press release on the Cornell Faculty Senate resolution on scholarly publishing, passed 11 May 2005: Cornell University Faculty Senate Endorses Resolution on Open Access and Scholarly Communication (Ithaca, NY, May 17, 2005) The Cornell University Faculty Senate endorsed a resolution concerning scholarly publishing at its meeting on May 11, 2005. The resolution, introduced by the University Faculty Library Board, responds to the increasingly excessive prices of some scholarly publications.. Read More

Google Scholar @ UNC, Part 2

Just a quick follow-up on my previous post about Google Scholar @ UNC: if you go to Google Scholar’s Preferences page, you can now select UNC-CH. On that note, there was an article in The Chronicle today about Google Scholar: More Than 100 Colleges Work With Google to Speed Campus Users to Library Resources

Scholarly Communications Convocation: Final Report

The Final Reports from the Convocation on Scholarly Communications in a Digital World have been released. These include the brief final report made to the Faculty Council in March & the accompanying Powerpoint, & the longer final final report. The whitepapers were an effort to raise issues for discussion, & the convocation was an opportunity to have those discussions. The final report includes all of that, but also goes beyond.. Read More

Whitman archive at Duke

New Online Archive Offers Rich Details of Walt Whitman’s Works, from Duke News Contemporary scholars are painstakingly creating a comprehensive new annotated internet archive to enable poet Walt Whitman’s works to reach 21st-century readers in a way not possible before, according to Matt Cohen, assistant professor of English at Duke University and an editor of the Walt Whitman Archive. This is a seriously cool digital library. I call it a.. Read More

Copyright conundrum

A couple of days ago I got the copyright agreements in the mail for a paper I’ve had accepted to for journal publication. This journal has 2 different copyright agreements, & they let the author choose which to sign: I assign copyright to the publisher, & the publisher handles all reprint & other copyright requests, & maybe submits the article to database publishers & aggregators. I retain copyright, & the.. Read More

Google Scholar @ UNC

Lisa Norberg & Tim Shearer are my new favorite people. They told me today that the library has implemented a Google Scholar search box on the library’s main page. Here’s the announcement. Tim tells me that this search box is connected to EZproxy, so if I’m off campus & do a search I’ll be forced through the proxy login. Logical, yet a very nice piece of functionality. But it gets.. Read More