Category Archives: Special libraries

Experience a private collection in our own backyard

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French Cultural Center - Online Library

French Cultural Center – Online Library

Please join ASIS&T and SCIRRT this Friday (Nov 6th) as they tour the private collection of The French Cultural Center.

 

The group will first meet up at 1:15pm at the Arlington T Station.  From there the group will continue on and meet at the French Cultural Center 2pm. Please plan to arrive promptly at 2:00pm.  The Library is closed to the public on Fridays, but will be open for this special Simmons tour.

The tour of the library will be led by head librarian, Marie Lalevée. The French Cultural Center and Library was founded in Boston in 1945. It began as a one-room collection of 500 books. Today, the library holds 28,000 French language materials for all ages. It is the second largest private collection of French books, periodicals, DVDs, and CDs available in the United States.

Please contact ASIS&T Co-Chair Jesse Moskowitz or SCIRRT Co-Chair Sam Quinon with any questions.

Seems that journal bills are beloved like cable bills

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As I sit down and think about ASIS&T’s strategic plan and what it means to me, I thought about the usual …career, jobs, how to find the unlisted ones (hint hint strategic plan)….Then my thoughts went to the future a little bit more. What happens when I leave school and don’t have access to all the databases that I currently wander around in? There are public libraries, but what if I wanted more specific journals?

  • There is value in membership to associations (like ASIS&T) who offer journal subscriptions built into their membership.
  • As an alum, you can have access to your schools library, but you usually need to come in person. Maybe university libraries could partner with off-campus alumni and share some cost?
  • Along those same lines, maybe small business could partner with public libraries to purchase some of the larger databases of journals.

Has this happened already? If you are a librarian can you envision this working? Tell us your story

If someone wants to consult or work independently – How much would it cost me to buy my own suite of journals? What if I want to build a library for my organization and incorporate industry specific online journals? It is impressive how libraries are managing the cost and this article from lj.libraryjournal.com highlights some of the costs:

  The Winds of Change | Periodicals Price Survey 2013

Some summary highlights:

  • The authors noted that “All elements of the information marketplace-libraries, publishers, and vendors- will continue to be impacted by the changing market conditions.”
  • Changes in how a e-journal packaging is defined
  • Cost rising easily over 6% in one year
    • High Schools and Public Libraries: 5-6%
    • University and College libraries: 5-7%
  • Open-Access
    • A business model to pay attention to
    • Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR)
      • Open access to well-funded federal agencies research articles
    • SCOAP3 and CERN working with publishers towards open access  (oh, don’t go too crazy DaVinci conspirators…)
    • Open Access to science journals-great! They have funding…but wait, say it isn’t so…the humanities are not big fans of open source? Oh the humanity of it all.

So could LIS associations be one part of the solution? Can partnerships between entrepreneurs, small business, and libraries off-set journal costs? Could there be a NETFLIX model for these professional groups and public libraries and strategically move away from the costly grip of publishing cable companies offering 100 journal channels?

Check out our facebook page and let us know your two cents…

Spring into Summer

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Why not take advantage of some free time and get a head start on some upcoming classes.

Free being the important word here….LIS Grad students love these sites.

Only after your morning bike ride and reading some chapters from your summer novel…there are free opportunities to learn some LIS skills.  First, Simmons offers a free account to lynda.com to their students using their own Simmons user name and password.  You can review html, Google analytics, or Excel to name a few general ones plus more advanced tutorials.  Second, check out Treehouse.com which my local library (mhl.org) offers as a free subscription.  Your local library might too!  They have individual courses or tracks to complete that focus on starting your own business, android development, or CSS.  Personally, I like healthcare and medical subjects so if you are interested as well take some free courses offered by the National Library of Medicine.  They have online courses specifically geared towards librarians using PubMed.  Finally, if you came to our ASIS&T Year End Event you would have heard about Kanopy.  This database is full of video based learning, documentaries, and independent films.  Just log into your Simmons Library account, [Research&Resources], [Databases], and [K] for Kanopy.

After your hard work learning on the couch don’t forget to relax.  Keep your local library card handy because they might have free subscriptions for you to use Hoopla or Freegal.  Also, take in some art, chase the ice cream truck, and head to the beach!

 

Wednesday Spark: Indianapolis Museum of Art

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One of my favorite examples from yesterday’s tutorial is the Dashboard from the Indianapolis Museum of Art.? What a fantastic way to demonstrate value to insiders and outsiders alike.

dash

I’m unclear on their methods for generating the Dashboard – the page source seems to suggest that values are hard-coded into each widget (and presumably updated by hand).

Does anyone know more about the technical details of this project or others like it?

New ASIS&T Bulletin

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This Tuesday we’re skipping the tutorial to bring you the latest issue of the ASIS&T Bulletin.

This issue is focused on search and includes an excellent article from Daniel Tunkelang on human-computer information retrieval:

In economic terms, HCIR aims to offer users better return on investment. Instead of slavishly accepting the constraints of the current interaction metaphor (users enter two words as input and see a ranked list of ten results as output) and attempting to optimize the user experience within those constraints, a search engine can allow users to get more if they give more. But what should it ask users to give? And what will users get in return?

For one perspective on what users should get in return for their search input, don’t miss this Thursday’s Lunchtime Lecture by Prof. Benoit: The ‘beautiful’ in information: philosophy of aesthetics and information visualization.