Science Intelligence and InfoPros

Based on a new report by Joseph McKendrick.  The Digital Squeeze: Libraries at the Crossroads surveyed 730 public, academic, special, education, and government libraries in the US.

“Librarians report a levelling off in the use of Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with customers and the use of wikis and blogs is declining.  However, more of them are using collaborative tools including the sharing of web pages, subject guides, and the use of document-sharing, photo and video sharing web apps.

Libraries, unsurprisingly, reported an increased demand for ebooks, wireless connectivity and other technology tools and services.  More than one-third of the respondents reported that they spent more money on information technology hardware, software, and related IT services over the past year. 

More libraries are moving to the cloud for operational support and content storage.  26% of them are already offering e-readers, with one respondent stating that this activity will be an area of ‘extreme growth’.

Skelton, Val. Libraries, the digital squeeze and ebooks. InformationToday Europe, 12th of April 2012. Available from: http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Libraries-the-digital-squeeze-and-ebooks-81910.aspx [Accessed 13th April 2012]

A recent study has has found quantitative evidence of a significant difference in search performance between paediatric residents or interns assisted by a librarian and those searching the literature alone.

Each participant searched PubMed and other online sources, performing pre-determined tasks including the formulation of a clinical question, retrieval and selection of bibliographic records. In the assisted group, participants were supported by a librarian with ≥5 years of experience. The primary outcome was the success of search sessions, scored against a specific assessment tool.

To read in Health information and Libraries Journal:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2011.00957.x/abstract

What will be the future technologies to be apllied in libraries?

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One year or less:

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two-three years

Kelly, Brian. What’s on the technology horizon. Implications for librarians.  UK Web Focus, Online, the 15th of September 2011.
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/whats-on-the-technology-horizon-implications-for-librarians/

The ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences) one day summer conference – Social Media, Libraries, Librarians and Research Support (held at Coventry University in July 2011) attracted over 30 delegates from university libraries, the British Library, hospitals and publishers.

Some findings:

• Adoption of Web 2.0 tools has little to do with the age of academics but seems to depend more on the ‘type’ of person they are.
• Academic adoption of Web 2.0 tools is hindered by their concerns about quality and lack of trust.
• There are a multitude of Web 2.0 tools that are freely available and it is essential that researchers use tools that are relevant to their needs.
• Librarians and information professionals are ideally placed to raise awareness of Web 2.0 tools and applications, to help academics find appropriate tools, and to provide any necessary training.

  Presentations are at:
  http://www.slideshare.net/heatherdawson

A very instructive article published by RightsDirect in the latest WIPO magazine.

“The use of copyrighted works – in particular text and image-based works – is intensive and pervasive in most companies, and not only those with a strong research component.  (…) Organizations use many different types of content, including scientific and technical information, financial, legal and business information, statistics, news, graphs and photographs and other images. Employees may obtain this information from a variety of sources including scientific, technical and trade journals, books, magazines, newspapers, websites and blogs. Access is typically gained through subscriptions with publishers or agencies, from document delivery and press-clipping agencies, and from corporate intranets and the Internet.

What do employees need to do when they want to share a scientific article, a blog post, a photograph or statistical information? How can they find out whether specific content is copyright-protected or who the copyright owner is? Whom should they contact in their company if they have doubts about copyright protection or to secure the necessary permissions? (…)

Studies show that most workers still lack sufficient awareness of their responsibilities under intellectual property (IP) laws, particularly when it comes to sharing digital content. Many believe that content available on the Internet can be shared without requesting permission. They either assume they can forward articles from journals they subscribe to, or they are unaware of whether – or how to – clear the necessary rights. (…)

In many cases, obtaining the necessary authorization means interrupting business workflows and delaying the dissemination of information. Corporate researchers who need to share scientific articles online with their colleagues require authorization mechanisms that are quick and easy to use. In an ideal world, these researchers would have a license that pre-authorizes this type of content use.

The good news is that there are solutions to these challenges. The “copyright compliance toolkit” at the disposal of private firms can be summarized in three key concepts: education, information and efficient licensing mechanisms.

Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and its European subsidiary, RightsDirect, for example, provide a license that gives corporations the right to share content belonging to thousands of different copyright holders. Employees are granted a consistent set of rights for sharing information with co-workers in multiple territories. CCC and RightsDirect also offer free resources to help companies develop copyright policies of their own and to educate staff about copyright law.”

Colodron, Victoriano. Copyright compliance in private companies: challenges and solutions.  WIPO Magazine, June 2011. Online:
http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2011/03/article_0007.html

Preliminary programme is announced… sounds promising…

UCB, Merck, Astra, Nycomed, etc.

BizInt, Dialog, etc.

Helen Malone, Shaida Dorabjee, etc.

http://www.pharma-bio-med.com/

Based on 1,108 professional and personal blogs (Library and Information Science related) indexed by LibWorm, this study tends to show that adoption of FaceBook and Twitter has a negative effect on blogs production.

Some findings:

The importance of blogs, however, has been affected by the arrival of new tools for social networking (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), which now rival blogs as primary communications media tools on the Internet.

Once blogs were at the core of social networks, but now the Web 2.0 conversation has fragmented, with general interest shifting away from blogs in favor of other platforms. Indeed, the bloggers themselves are the ones who, as early adopters, have popularized the newer applications.

Libraries and information centers have been especially active in the creation and management of blogs as part of a communications strategy for offering new services for their patrons

The results obtained show a loss of significance for blogs as a communications medium for the LIS community, as indicated by the closure of blogs and the reduction in gross number of posts being published. These losses have been constant and steady and have affected all the blog types studied, personal and corporate.

These figures could merely be showing that bloggers have been migrating to other services and applications that are increasing in usage, specifically Twitter and Facebook.

 In all cases the corporate blogs presented values thatwere significantly lower than personal blogs and only blogs of academic or public libraries had figures of any significance, demonstrating that success and visibility in the blogosphere is closely linked to personal initiative.

Conclusion:

The decline in personal blogs is less pronounced than in corporate, and productivity and visibility patterns in both categories show that personal blogs are more active and have greater impact than corporate blogs. A small core collection of blogs, a reference group for the LIS community, seems to persist despite the general decline.

Torres-Salinas, D., et al., State of the library and information science blogosphere after social networks boom: A metric approach, Library & Information Science Research (2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2010.08.001

It is still early days, writes David Stuart, but there are plenty of potential benefits.

“Whenever a new social network site appears, librarians are often amongst the first to be found putting it through its paces (…)

However, if you delve below the surface, you quickly discover a far more complex information landscape. There are vast differences in the extent to which libraries are making use of the social network site opportunities, from the academic libraries that have been quick to embrace the potential of social network sites, to the corporate sector, which has been more circumspect. (…)

… there is the problem that other methods of communication, such as email and the phone, are already well established within many organisations. According to the principle of least effort, if the established methods of communication are ‘good enough’, most users won’t make the effort to try something new.

The challenge for libraries is to find ways to embrace social network sites and technologies without killing their potential. To do this they need to strike a balance between the risks of an open system and the lack of communication in a closed system. They must also balance strict rules that protect an organisation from potentially damaging staff behaviour with giving staff the room to innovate.

Stuart, David. Librarians and researchers network online. Research Information, August/September 2010, pp. 12-13
http://www.researchinformation.info/features/feature.php?feature_id=279

When compared to human judgments by Experts, automated citation data by Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar are bot so bad, after all.

This paper studies the correlations between peer review and citation indicators when evaluating research quality in library and information science (LIS). 42 LIS experts (Bar-Ilman, Jasco, Tenopir…) , provided judgments of the quality of research published by 101scholars.

“citation data from Scopus was more strongly correlated with the expert judgments than was data from GS,which in turn was more strongly correlated than data from WoS“

Li,J., et al. Ranking of library and information science researchers : Comparison of data sources for correlating citation data, and expert judgments. Journal of Informetrics (2010), doi:10.1016/j.joi.2010.06.005

… of the Golden Age!

According analysts at Forrester, let’s prepare for the Splinternet.

“We are entering a new world full of mobile computing devices, iphones, social web, television connecting to web and so on. (…)

This means the standardised internet is fraying. The web is cracking. This splinters the web as a unified system – meaning each system, device and application will have its own format and network and technology. Internet’s 15 years of golden age is coming to an end.”

“In the splinternet world the website per se becomes less important, so start understanding and trying out different platforms and devices. Choose those you think is useful in your information management and integrate them in your own unique way“

“The content is important but it is no longer the king“

“Information management means not just managing content but community, customer experience management and archiving and retrieval management. It’s time to move on to web experience management – WEM“

Tim Walters, interviewed by Information World Review, 30/04/10.