Science Intelligence and InfoPros

Interesting predictionsby the ARL:

“Although the purpose of academic and research library collections remains the same – to support the creation and dissemination of new knowledge – the nature of collections is moving away from ‘local’ to collaborative and multi-institutional.  New forms of scholarship are transforming user expectations for broad, barrier free collection discovery and access.  Libraries must transform their approaches to meet new user demands.”

Some suggestions:

Key findings – the research environment

• Global/interdisciplinary research will grow
• Open content will proliferate

Key findings – the future of libraries

• Researchers must understand intellectual property frameworks – libraries can provide support
• Other new roles for research libraries include: digital preservation and data management experts and as supporters helping researchers collaborate even more
• There will also be roles to support the open content movement
• Metrics about value to the research community must be improved
• Resources will increasingly be allocated to the development of tools
• There will continue to be moves to providing just in time services rather than building just in case collections

Reported by the Information Today Europe blog, Research libraries in the 21st century, 21 may 2012, Available from: http://www.infotodayeurope.com/2012/05/22/reserach-libraries-in-the-21st-century/ [Accessed 23 May 2012]

Study:

Even though there is a pervasive use of the Internet, cell phones and social networking, the majority of students surveyed do not readily identify them as a means to access databases, the library catalog, or to retrieve full-text articles on demand or on the go.

The results of this study provide ample evidence that many of our students are accessing the Internet using various devices. Ninety-seven percent of them access library resources remotely, mostly using their laptops and other computers. Only 17 percent of them use their cell phones to access library catalog and subscription databases resources remotely.

Salisbury, L. (et al.). Science and Technology Undergraduate Students’ Use of the Internet, Cell Phones and Social Networking Sites to Access Library Information. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Spring 2012. Available from: http://www.istl.org/12-spring/refereed3.html [Accessed 23rd of May 2012]

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]

Good marketing by Springer, announcing the Frankfurt Book Fair:

http://www.springer.com/bookfair2011/Invitation.html

See also:

Putting the book back into the Library,

by Thomson-Reuters about the new Book Citation Index in the WoS

http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/webofscience/

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/

Great Prezi by EBSCO at latest LIBER 2011.. Listen at the end, the Lady Gaga cover by the Manchester library (don’t forget the catalogue!): a wonderful marketing lesson!

http://prezi.com/rs8bng3x0rxl/social-media-in-eu-libraries/

The Web 2.0 business case for public libraries: round-up and interviews in this new book published by Chandos…

Berube, Linda. Do you Web 2.0? Public libraries and social networking. Cambridge: Chandos, 162 p. ISBN 1 84334 436 X
Table of Contents

 http://www.topsharepoint.com/topics is a directory of more than 1,600 sharepoint sites rated by readers.

Among them:
- Pfizer UK: http://www.pfizer.co.uk
- BMS:  http://www.bms.com/pages/default.aspx
- Library of Congress: http://myloc.gov/pages/default.aspx
- CILIP: http://www.cilip.org.uk/Pages/default.aspx
- Auckland libraries: http://www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/EN/Pages/home.aspx
etc.

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

Twitter “is not, exactly, a blog killer.  But it has dramatically reduced the amount of routine news or links that I post. (…)

What have a learned, from this long sejour entirely in Twitterland?  First and foremost, I think one loses a lot by not blogging.  Twitter can to some extent maintain a presence online, but it can’t expand it or make substantial impact. 

Pretty much all of the opportunities that have come to me from sharing online came from sustained blog posting, from long-form sharing of my own ideas, not from tweeting or retweeting. 

If you want to share your ideas in a way that will generate substantial discussion and spark interest in a major way, you have to write in the long form. 

It’s the content creators who are the top of the Internet pyramid - to have an impact you must be writing your ideas, narrating your work. 

Twitter does a much better job of “ambient awareness” in a few senses – it lets me know generally what major events are happening… amd it is also a good way for me to find links of interest in specific topic areas.

Akerman, Richard. 18,000 tweets and counting… Science Library Pas. posted on January 30,2011.
http://scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/