Category Archives: Digital humanities

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…

DH After Hours II

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Date: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Time: 5:15 pm

Location: The Asgard Irish Pub & Restaurant, 350 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA

This event is part of the Spring of Digital Humanities, an initiative started by the GSLIS Allen Smith Visiting Scholar, Professor John Unsworth. Meet with scholars, students, developers, artists, and other professionals to discuss the latest DH trends and technologies.

For more information, visit New England Digital Humanities.

Greg Crane at MIT: February 20

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Date: Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Time: 5:15 pm

Location: MIT E14-633 (New Media Lab)

Gregory Crane of Tufts University will present a talk at MIT titled “Automated Methods, Human understanding and digital libraries of Babel” on February 20, 5:15 pm, E14-633 (New Media Lab). The talk is organized by Stephanie Frampton, Classical Literature at MIT and co-sponsored by the MIT Literature Department, Comparative Media Studies, Ancient and Medieval Studies, and HyperStudio.

“Millions of documents produced around the world over more than four thousand years are now available in digital form — Google Books alone had scanned, by March 2012, more than 20 million books in more than 400 languages. Images of manuscripts, papyri, inscriptions and other non-print sources are also appearing in increasing numbers. But if we have addressed physical access to images of textual sources, we are a long way from providing the intellectual access necessary to understand the written sources that we see. This talk explores the challenges and opportunities as we refashion our study of the past from ethnocentric monolingual conversations into a hyperlingual dialogue among civilizations, where humans work with machines and with each other to communicate and where books do, as Marvin Minksy opined decades ago, talk to each other.”

Greg Crane has long been at the forefront of digital humanities, as the founder of Perseus.org (an especially important resource in Classics, but one the bridges many different temporal and linguistic specializations), and his current work is at the intersections of humanities, digital textuality, and developing tools to excavate the new sorts of materials now at our disposal. He’ll be on a Humbolt Fellowship in computer science next year.