VRD 2005 Conference: Call for Proposals

A post to the Dig_Ref listserv yesterday announced the Call for Proposals for Papers and Presentations for the VRD 2005 Conference: The VRD 7th Annual Reference Conference Recognizing the Success of Reference November 14-15, 2005 San Francisco, CA The VRD conference explores all aspects of reference service in a broad range of contexts, including libraries and information centers, government, business, education, and other industry sectors or organizations. The theme of.. Read More

I Get Ink

No, not a tattoo… I spoke to a reporter from the Daily Tar Heel yesterday who was writing (was writing at the time; has written now, of course) an article for today’s paper on open access journals. He spoke to Paul last Friday & Paul directed him to me on account of my having been on the planning committee for the Scholarly Communications Convocation. Here’s the article: Faculty touts online.. Read More

Commercial publishers object to education

Legal Battle Brews Over Texts on Electronic Reserve at U. of California Libraries, from the Chronicle Publishers are objecting to an electronic reserve system at the University of California… Offering limited amounts of supplementary materials for educational purposes, without having to pay royalties, is allowed under fair-use doctrine. But how much access libraries can provide is not always clear under the law. Mr. Adler [vice president for legal and governmental.. Read More

Duke iPod program re-upped for ’05-’06 AY

Duke released a memo to faculty today about the iPod project for next year: The iPod will continue to serve as the core technology to enable digital audio and beginning in Fall ’05, DDI will shift the iPod program from a class based (i.e., all freshmen) to a course based distribution method. This will enable faculty members who see uses for iPods in their courses to build them into their.. Read More

Funding to Support Open Access Fees

VC Announces Funding to Support “Open Access” Authors’ Fees Support for author fees of up to $750 per article is available upon faculty request from a new fund established by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development. I personally consider this a major step for the university. I was on the planning committee for the Convocation on Scholarly Communications in a Digital World, & we recently.. Read More

Fieldwork = Spying?

Cloak and Classroom, from The Chronicle of Higher Ed Anthropologists, he said, should be permitted – indeed, should feel a duty – to conduct classified research that might help the U.S. government understand global conflicts. His opponents said that secrecy had no place in academe, and that his proposal would put scholars in bed with clandestine agencies that have, at best, a spotty record of protecting human rights. … Since.. Read More

Good Advices

I’ve mentioned before that I ride the bus to campus with a man who’s the Assistant Editor of an Elsevier journal here at UNC. We talk scholarly publishing a lot, as you might imagine. Our latest conversation has been him giving me some advice on how not to piss off journal editors. First, don’t send nasty-gram emails to the editor. That one seems obvious, but apparently it escapes some people… Read More

Will turnitin.com change scholarly publishing?

I heard recently that some reviewers for journals and conferences have started using plagiarism-prevention tools such as turnitin.com when reviewing submitted manuscripts. I think it’s kind of sad that these reviewers think this is necessary, though I suppose it’s worse if it actually is necessary. But the issue of plagiarism aside, what I’m wondering about is this: scholarly publications are supposed to be original contributions to the scholarly literature. But.. Read More

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? NCknows!

Yesterday I sent off the final report for the NCknows evaluation. This was my first big project as a faculty member, my first as a PI. And now it’s over, and I think successfully. Or, I should say, I consider it a success, and I think the NCknows folks do too. Though I would imagine for very different reasons. This project met several of my major goals in the Tenure.. Read More