Guest Post — Research Support is an Enterprise Activity
Rebecca Bryant (OCLC) explains why cross-campus social interoperability is needed to adequately support today’s researchers.
Less Than Meets the Eye: Print Book Use Is Falling Faster in Research Libraries
Use of printed books in large North American research libraries is falling even faster than we think.
When the Wolf Finally Arrives: Big Deal Cancellations in North American Libraries
For years, we in libraries have been predicting the imminent demise of the manifestly-unsustainable Big Deal — and yet it has persisted. Now that may be changing.
Vindicated by Its Critics: The Kent Study in Light of Other Research on Library Circulation
In 1979, a study at the University of Pittsburgh Library found that 40% of the books added in the previous six years had not circulated. 37 years later, we librarians still cite that number and many of us use it (among other factors) to justify moving in the direction of patron-driven acquisition. A critic of that practice argues that many subsequent circulation studies contradict the Kent Study. But do they?
Vitamins, Painkillers, and the Entrepreneurial Library
What does it mean for libraries to be competitive and “entrepreneurial”? And is the very concept a Trojan horse for neoliberalism? Does it matter?
The Objectives and Organization of Scholarly Communications Functions in Research Libraries
Academic libraries today invest in scholarly communication in a variety of ways, pursuing an array of objectives and taking on a variety of roles. The variety of objectives that academic libraries have for scholarly communications is to some degree a reflection of the different levels of engagement and prioritization that their parent universities have on these issues.
Feeding the Goose: Thoughts on Fair Use and the GSU Decision
With the appellate court’s rejection of the district court’s decision in the Georgia State University fair-use case, we have yet another twist in this six-year-long saga of copyright litigation. It’s clearly a setback for GSU–but what about for fair use?
(Re)Defining the Library, Part 2: How?
After exploring why the library requires redefinition, this second part of a two-part post offers a new taxonomy for allocating library functions and roles.
(Re)Defining the Library, Part 1: Why?
With changes in the scholarly communications world, many old questions for the library are unsettled once again, and many news ones arise. In this first part of a two-part post, we’ll ask the questions.