Electronic Book Collection Development in Italy: a case study

"The paper reports the results of a research project that aimed to investigate how academic librarians are managing the integration of electronic book collections in their library holdings and focuses on the selection criteria and collection development issues. The background is represented by the Italian academic libraries that have been lately involved in electronic book collection development projects, and by the Italian digital publishing e-books offer."

(source: Agnese Perrone, IFLA 2009, Acquisition and Collection Development)

- Library 2.0 Gang 02/09: Google books and libraries
(source: ALA TechSource, 13/03/09)

- Harvard University Announces Formation of a Library Task Force
(source: Library Journal, 13/03/09)

- You Can’t Afford Not To Do These Things
(source: Library Journal, 14/03/09)
"We’ve written about ideas for improving customer service, boosting staff morale, fostering change, and building a management and communication style that is win-win for both staff and administration. There are no expensive technologies to purchase, no cutting-edge software to struggle with, and no $500-an-hour consultants. Our suggestions involve listening, dialog, and transparent actions."

- D-Lib Magazine (vol. 15, n° 3-4, mars-avr. 09)
> What's Wrong with Citation Counts?
> Going Grey? Comparing the OCR Accuracy Levels of Bitonal and Greyscale Images
> How Good Can It Get? Analysing and Improving OCR Accuracy in Large Scale Historic Newspaper Digitisation Programs
> Profiling Social Networks: A Social Tagging Perspective
> Search Web Services - The OASIS SWS Technical Committee Work
> Digitization Education: Courses Taken and Lessons Learned
> Toward Digitizing All Forms of Documentation
> International Data curation Education Action (IDEA) Working Group: A Report from the Second Workshop of the IDEA
> Report on the 2nd Ibero-American Conference on Electronic Publishing in the Context of Scholarly Communication (CIPECC 2008)

- 5 Things I Didn’t Realize I’d Be Working on…
(source: ACRLog, 17/03/09)

- BBF-Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France: nouveau site
(source: Klog, 18/03/09)

- Use Technology To Spend Less Time Working
(source: Forbes / via iLibrarian, 18/03/09)

- Consortium Purchasing Directory Edition 4 (2009)
(source: Frontline Global Marketing Services Ltd, mars 09 / payant)
"The Consortium Purchasing Directory remains the most comprehensive guide to the library consortium market currently available. It provides profiles on library consortia that acquire content for their member libraries, or those that have announced that they intend to do so. These are primarily academic, medical, public, school and government libraries. The Directory is devised to assist publishers and vendors and in dealing with the library consortium market. It contains information on some of the key issues of negotiation and provides links to the statements of policy and principle from major library groups around the world and further resources such as licensing models."

- Associates: The Electronic Library Support Staff Journal
(vol. 15, n° 3, mars 09)

- Modelling the Library Domain
(source: JISC, 20/03/09)
"The Modelling the Library Domain briefing paper resulted from JISC’s TILE project (Towards the Implementation of Library 2.0 and the eFramework); a programme of work with two key aims. Firstly, TILE investigated how libraries have incorporated web 2.0 applications and services into what they already do. Secondly, it sought to develop a draft conceptual framework (Library Domain Model) based on services it has specified for the international e-Framework. The project also makes recommendations on how the library community could the make the best use of web 2.0 approaches."

- Why Rutgers Faculty Agreed To Drop the “Library” Name
- It's Wrong for Rutgers to Drop the "Library" Name
(source: Library Journal, 23/03/09)

- Heard on the Street: DLF to Dissolve Back Into CLIR
(source: R. Tennant, 24/03/09)

- Growing Your Own: Building an Internal Leadership Training Program
(source: Library Leadership & Management, vol. 23, n° 2 / sur abonnement)
"Merrill and Lindsay present a comprehensive detail for building an internal leadership training program. Among other things, the task force provided an introduction to the program, as well as information on a foundational topic. It included a presentation about leadership styles, a mini case study, a discussion group activity that focused on organizational culture, and a personal inventory survey, which was given as a pre-test and a post-test."

- Deux services en un clic : traitement accéléré et réservation !
(source: SciencePo: le blog de la bibliothèque, 26/03/09)

- The Journal of Academic Librarianship
(vol. 35, n°2, mars 09 / sur abonnement)

- Collection development: selection and acquisition
(source: Salmoiraghi, María Paula, 2009 [Preprint] / déposé sur E-LIS, 27/03/09)
"The concept of selection and acquisition has changed notably in recent years, which has moved from an emphasis on the collections of the preponderance of the needs of users. It is generally associated with the acquisition, but these two processes have clearly identifier characteristics. The selection is a process of intellectual analysis is based on active policies and processes of each library. The acquisition, however, is an administrative process, which will be based on economic availability, discounts, quick answers to suppliers, is an outward."

- Managing the Collective Collection: Local Challenges, Global Opportunities
(source: Richard Ovenden, Bodleian Library, webcast OCLC, 16/03/09)

- Perspectives on Job Stress in the Serials Information World
(source: Serials Review, sur abonnement / via Marlene's corner, 27/03/09)
"Contrary to popular opinion, libraries are not stress-free environments. Working with serials can cause stress in libraries and in the professions that provide and manage subscriptions, content, delivery, archives, and other aspects of these continuing resources. The stresses inherent in the serials information chain are exacerbated in a climate of rapidly expanding content, technology, and end-user expectations compounded by a global economic downturn. Two science librarians, a cataloging coordinator, and a serials agent field representative describe challenges in their professions and offer advice on how to cope with the resulting stress."

- La biblioteca fuori di sé: come riconfigurare collezioni e servizi nell'era del Web 2.0
(source: Cassella, Maria, Gargiulo, Paola, Soluzioni per migliorare il workflow dell'utente nel processo di ricerca, Seminario Cenfor, Milano (Italy), 12/03/09 / déposé sur E-LIS)
"Per motivi di lavoro o di svago gli utenti sono sempre connessi, la scoperta delle risorse informative avviene ovunque, ma sempre meno attraverso i portali bibliotecari. Gli utenti organizzano il loro lavoro e la loro vita sociale in rete e ciò impone alle biblioteche un radicale ripensamento del modo di concepire e di offrire i servizi e le collezioni sulla base di una conoscenza approfondita delle preferenze e delle aspettative degli utenti. Servizi e collezioni vanno portati là dove sono gli utenti nel flusso della rete, negli strumenti di social networking e sui device mobili. Per le biblioteche si tratta di assorbire il cambiamento in modo veloce, di essere proattive, di sperimentare senza improvvisare, di essere coraggiose, di acquisire nuove competenze ma soprattutto di avere fiducia nei propri utenti e di aprirsi ai contenuti che creano in rete. Le biblioteche come conversazioni."
Comment adapter la gestion de nos collections et de nos services à l'ère 2.0

- Ariadne (n° 58, jan. 09)
> Supporting eResearch: The Victorian eResearch Strategic Initiative
> Preserving Local Archival Heritage for Ongoing Accessibility
> The MrCute Repository: The Next Phase
> Assessing FRBR in Dublin Core Application Profiles
> The European Film Gateway
> An Awfully Big Adventure: Strathclyde's Digital Library Plan
> Time to Change Our Thinking: Dismantling the Silo Model of Digital Scholarship
> Data Preservation and Long-term Analysis in High-Energy Physics
> Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) Fall meeting

- Zotero Library to RSS Feed
(source: Disruptive Library Technology Jester, 28/02/09)

- E08 Podcast: An Interview with David Consiglio on Merging Library and Computing Organizations
(source: Educause, 27/02/09)
C'est le début de la fin... (et vice versa).

- Start Now: 30 Days to Prepare for Your Next Position
(source: Stephen's Lighthouse, 01/03/09)
On ne sait jamais... ce que le sort nous réserve, n'est-ce pas?

- Computers in Libraries
- Information Today
- Searcher
(n° de mars)

- What is not available online is not worth reading?
(source: Webology, 2008, vol. 5, n° 4)
"This short article discusses an emerging trend in the information-seeking behaviour of scientists, i.e. mere reliance on online information. Based on a study of physicists and astronomers, this article shows that more scientists now assume that if articles are of enough quality and significance, they must be available online and vice versa. Though still in a low minority, a number of scientists believe that what is not available online is not worth the effort to obtain it."

- Management information systems and strategic performances: The role of top team composition
(source: International Journal of Information Management, vol. 29, n° 2, avr. 09, pp. 104-110 / pre-print)
"Organizations adopt sophisticated management information systems, which provide top managers with an ample range of information to achieve multiple strategic performances. However, organizations differ in the extent to which they improve their performance. This paper analyzes the role of top management team in the relationship between management information systems and strategic performance. Using data collected from 92 top management teams, it analyses how different team compositions interact with a sophisticated management information system, and how this interaction affects strategic performances, which are focused on cost reduction and flexibility. The findings show how the effect of management information system on strategic performance (focused on flexibility) is moderated by top management team diversity."

- Knowledge sharing in inter-unit cooperative episodes: The impact of organizational structure dimensions
(source: International Journal of Information Management, vol. 29, n° 2, avr. 09, pp. 151-160 / pre-print)
"We study how classic organizational structure dimensions should be altered to be more adapted to organizational knowledge sharing. In particular, we look at the dimensions: coordination, centralization, formalization, and specialization, in their relationship to the concept of knowledge sharing. Empirical data was collected by means of a questionnaire in two companies. Our findings indicated that expected relationships, such as the negative effect of centralization or the positive effect of lower formalization, were not found. Interdependency and knowledge complexity, caused by specialization, had an important interacting effect on the relationship between coordination and knowledge sharing. A comparison between the two companies revealed that the organization-specific context in which the coordination is applied influences the potential of this coordination for knowledge sharing."

- Understanding University Library Users' Mistreatment of Books
(source: The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 20/02/09)
"This paper analyses university library users' attitudes towards book vandalism in order to develop a basis for intervention. Using a customer oriented approach data was collected from users who attended an academic library exhibition on vandalized books at a University campus. Respondants were asked both for their reactions to the vandalism as well as to suggest measures to solve this problem. Punishment and surveillance were most frequently mentioned as preventative measures although users also recognized the utility of the exhibition in increasing awareness of book mutilation. Further implications of social marketing for libraries are also discussed."
En tant que gros lecteur, je consomme pas mal d'ouvrages de ma bib. Et quand je tombe sur des pages entières surlignées, des envies de meurtre m'envahissent...

- Print on Demand: What Librarians Should Know
(source: The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 20/02/09)
"Although “self publishing” has been around since publishing began, and “vanity presses” are nearly as old, the advent of digital printing both simplifies and complicates the situation for everyone."

- Révision complète de la maîtrise en sciences de l'information (EBSI, Montréal)
(source: B-n de J-M. Salaün, 04/03/09)

- Web 2.0 et information-documentation : évolution ou révolution?
(source: Documentaliste, ADBS, mars 09 / sur abonnement)
"Genèse et validation des contenus, prédominance de l'accès, externalisation de la mémoire, convergence du web social et du web sémantique, remodelage des processus cognitifs : autant de notions revisitées ou initiées par le web 2.0 et qui sont fondamentales pour les professionnels de l'information. Ceux-ci se sont majoritairement approprié ce phénomène et témoignent de leur expérience des outils, des usages et de la transformation des relations avec les utilisateurs. Un dossier conçu dans un esprit de questionnements et d'esquisses de scénarios."

- National Summit on Library Human Resources
(source: Canadian Library Association, 2008 / via ResourceShelf, 06/03/09)
"The outcome of the summit was to identify the strategies and key actions required over the next 5-6 years to move towards the goal of ensuring an adequate supply of well-educated, well-trained librarians and information professionals in order to meet Canada‘s knowledge and information management needs in the first three decades of the 21st century. The Summit objectives were the following:
To identify promising strategies that will help address the current and future human resource issues
To identify the actions that participants and stakeholders will undertake to implement the strategies over the next 5-6 years
To determine how the library community can move forward in a coordinated and collaborative way."

- University of Arizona Libraries Collaborate with Faculty Member to Publish New E-Journal
(source: DigitalKoans, 06/03/09)

- CLIR Issues Newsletter (n° 67, jan-fév. 09)
EthicShare Examines Models for Online Communities
Report Examines Archival Management Software

- 2007 Academic Library Trends and Statistics
(source: ACRL, E.-U., 05/03/09 / payant)
"2007 Academic Library Trends and Statistics, the latest in a series of annual publications that describe the collections, staffing, expenditures and service activities of academic libraries in all Carnegie classifications, is now available from ACRL.
The publication includes survey data from 1,311 academic libraries covering five major categories:
* Collections (including volumes, serials, multimedia)
* Expenditures (library materials, wages and salaries, other operating)
* Electronic Resources (including expenditures, collections, services, usage)
* Personnel and Public Services (staff and services)
* Ph.D.s Granted, Faculty, Student Enrollment"

- The JAL Guide to the Professional Literature
(source: The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 05/03/09 / sur abonnement)

- [livre] Self-examination: The present and future of librarianship
(source: Library & Information Science Research, vol. 31, n° 1, jan. 09, pp. 70-71 / sur abonnement)
"Budd has written extensively on the changing landscape of libraries, along with issues of epistemology and values, and communication in librarianship. In this work, he offers a “serious examination…of librarianship—what it is and what it can be” and “provide[s] opportunities and suggestions for reflection” (p. vii). He provides a method—dialectical phenomenology—as a means towards these ends and encourages all library professionals to be reflective professionals actively engaged in dialogue as we search for meaning within the profession, individually and together."

- Emerging requirements of computer related competencies for librarians
(source: Library & Information Science Research, en ligne, 25/02/09 / sur abonnement)
"Computers and productivity tools help library patrons to access information, generate insights, structure results into a useful format, and produce knowledge. The use of these productivity tools by patrons requires librarians to alter their traditional professional role, which was primarily to provide information access for patrons, so that they can also provide expanded services and support to these patrons. This study focuses on understanding the computer and productivity tool skills that librarians desire for their new role in assisting patrons with information integration. Many aspiring and working librarians perceive their computer and productivity tool competencies as ranging from novice to proficient, and hope to increase their competencies to very skilled."

- Using citation analysis to develop core book collections in academic libraries
(source: Library & Information Science Research, en ligne, 28/02/09 / sur abonnement)
"Collection development in college and university libraries most often occurs using longstanding traditional selection methods, such as favorable book reviews or local user needs. This study uses citation analysis as a tool to select books for the social science book collection in one academic library and compares the circulation of books using traditional methods to those books using citation analysis. The journal impact factor was used to determine those journals and authors cited the most in the disciplines of business, anthropology, education, political science, psychology, and sociology. If those authors published books, the books were purchased and circulation data on the books were tabulated and compared to books chosen using traditional methods. Findings indicate that books purchased using traditional methods of selection circulated more, except when individual disciplines were measured. In the areas of business, political science, and psychology, there was no significant difference in circulation statistics, and together both the traditional and citation analysis methods accounted for circulation of nearly 95% of the social science collection. Since it is based on scholarly activity, citation analysis is a collection development method that could be used in all academic libraries."

- Classification of Library Resources by Subject on the Library Website: Is There an Optimal Number of Subject Labels?
(source: Information Technology & Libraries, vol. 28, n° 1, mars 09 / sur abonnement)
"The number of labels used to organize resources by subject varies greatly among library websites. Some librarians choose very short lists of labels while others choose much longer lists. We conducted a study with 120 students and staff to try to answer the following question: What is the effect of the number of labels in a list on response time to research questions? What we found is that response time increases gradually as the number of the items in the list grow until the list size reaches approximately fifty items. At that point, response time increases significantly. No association between response time and relevance was found."

- Knowledge Manager : un stratège au service de la connaissance
(source: Demain la veille, 14/02/09)
"Indépendamment de leurs origines, les gestionnaires de la connaissance auront pour principales missions de favoriser le partage et la transmission des savoirs, connaissances - ou toute autre donnée jugée utile à être capitalisée - pour accroître l'expertise individuelle et collective. [...]"

- Information Online 2009
(source: ALIA Information Online Group, 20-22/01/09, Sydney)

- A Library School By Any Other Name
(source: Annoyed Librarian, 16/02/09)

- Acquisition and Collection Development: Newsletter
(source: IFLA, fév. 09)

- Looking for what’s next: Is it time to start talking about Library 2.1?
(source: Journal of Web Librarianship, vol. 3, n° 2, fév. 09, pre-print /via The Ubiquitous Librarian, 16/02/09)
"For a while, the idea of social software was something that had to be sold. Although many librarians were experimenting with it, there were concerns. How is Facebook going to fit into our outreach program? What is the value in social tagging? Will patrons want to be “friends” with us? What do you mean we don’t control the wiki? The pendulum has clearly begun to swing. Social software and Web 2.0 have become hot. Our professional conferences, publications, and blogs are filled with reviews, how-to’s, practical applications, and hype regarding the latest and greatest web technologies. The impact is evident with the improved functionality of our websites and in the handful of emerging next-gen catalogs. Several notable vendors, including EBSCO and Elsevier, have also begun incorporating 2.0 features into their platforms. [...]"

- The Library Web Site of the Future
(source: Inside Higher Ed, 17/02/09)
"Professors don’t view academic library portals as their source for scholarly resources. Rather than fight that trend, Steven Bell writes, librarians should transform their Web sites and put their content where faculty and students can find it."

- Knowledge Management : Repartir de l’individu
(source: Olivier Le Deuff / déposé sur ArchiveSIC, 15/02/09)
"L'objectif de cet article est de démontrer les raisons des échecs de la dimension collective du knowledge management qui doit reconstruire ses objectifs sur une vision issue au contraire d'une construction d'abord individuelle. Le concept de personal knowledge management est issue de cette redéfinition."

- Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship
(N° 56, hiver 09)

- Centers of Excellence - Creating Innovative Learning Environments
(source: Educause, 10/11/07)
"This presentation explains the importance of the interaction between learning space, technology, and the teaching and learning process. “Learning Space Design-Creating Centers of Engagement” was originally presented as the plenary address at the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities at the National Institute of Building Sciences."

"EBSCO Publishing has launched a Sushi-compliant server to automate the collection of usage data from EBSCOhost research databases."

Approaches to Selection, Access, and Collection Development in the Web World
(source: Library Resources & Technical Services, vol. 52, n° 3, 2008 / sur abonnement)

Academic and research libraries are well-versed in collecting material from the print world. The present and future collections that are being produced on the Web require urgent attention to acquire, preserve, and provide access to them for future research. Many of the skills that librarians have honed through years of collecting in the print-based world are applicable to digital collection development, but will require ramping up technical skills and actively embracing digital content in current and future collection-development work. This paper reports on an exploratory project that aims to apply existing skills and knowledge to collect materials from the Internet and lay the groundwork for collection development in the future.

Voir aussi, dans ce même numéro, les critiques des ouvrages: "Handbook of Electronic and Digital Acquisitions" (sur Amazon) et "Organizing Information from the Shelf to the Web" (sur Amazon).

Journal Prices, Book Acquisitions, and Sustainable College Library Collections (pdf)
(source: College & Research Libraries, à paraître / via ResourceShelf, 15/06/08)

"Library collections are economically sustainable only if the rate of increase in costs is no greater than the rate of increase in the library acquisitions budget. Because book prices increase at a much lower rate than journal prices, undergraduate libraries can achieve economic sustainability through a renewed emphasis on books rather than journals. Book centered collections are consistent with the goals of many undergraduate colleges, and books rather than journals may provide the best teaching resources even in those fields that rely heavily on journals for the communication of original research results."

Des étudiants de la University of Michigan School of Information ont réalisé deux vidéos à propos de LOCKSS intitulées Why Libraries Should Care About LOCKSS et Why Libraries Should Consider Joining:

Why Libraries Should Care About LOCKSS


Why Libraries Should Consider Joining


Via C.-H. Nyns

Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections (version 3)

Source: NISO

[ pdf ]

Via ResourceShelf