University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship–A Call to Action

"US Leading associations call for universities need to promote broader dissemination of research and scholarship 16 Feb 2009

Four leading associations serving research universities – the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) – have issued a joint statement, ‘The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship.’ The statement is a call to action for universities to ensure the broadest possible access to the products of their work.

The statement is an outgrowth of a roundtable discussion hosted by the four organisations that engaged provosts, chief research officers, chief information officers, senior faculty, and library and university press directors. These leaders identified a set of actions that should be taken to expand the dissemination of the full range of products of the university community’s research and scholarship. The call to action offers a broader vision for the university’s role and provides a series of recommended actions, both for campus leaders and for collective action by the university community.

The complete document, ‘The University’s Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship—A Call to Action,’ is available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/disseminating-research-feb09.pdf."

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Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter

University Libraries in Google Project to Offer Backup Digital Library

The Chronicle of Higher Education on Monday, October 13, 2008, has announced the formation of a giant library to serve as a back-up for Google Books, designated as the HathiTrust.

"The…HathiTrust, …consists of the members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the 11 universities in the Big Ten Conference and the University of Chicago, and the 10 campuses in the University of California system. The University of Virginia is joining the project, it will be announced today, and officials hope to bring in other colleges as well."

Already HathiTrust  (a shared digital respository ), contains the full text of more than two million books scanned by Google.  However, only about 16 percent of the books in HathiTrust—or about 327,000 volumes—are out of copyright so that their full text can be delivered to all readers.

To read the whole article: http://chronicle.com/free/2008/10/5061n.htm

 

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ScienceDirect Access Improvements

Princeton University has subscribed to all the Elsevier journals in ScienceDirect ,  so that most articles in this database should be available in full text. Where available, we have purchased the backfiles, otherwise our subscriptions begin with 1995.  There are a few journals in ScienceDirect from other publishers to which we do not have access.  You may contact the Library or submit a document delivery request, if you don’t get access.  Full text access may be denied unless you go through a PU path, like the e-journals links or the online catalog.

The "ScienceDirect EJ package" includes 2700 journals, but does not include the 6000 books.  You will, however, be directed to Related articles — which is very neat!  Their Preview button, as yet, does not seem to deliver. 

ScienceDirect home

Contributed by the Head of the Science Library, Patty Gaspari Bridges.

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New improvements to ScienceDirect, with the aid of researcher/collaborators:
  • Fewer clicks
  • Researcher comments and ratings will be integrated with the articles.
  • Preview tabs on tables of content or results pages
  • Navigation is improved by an article “toolbox” which clumps together functions:  ‘cited by”  “download PDF”, “e-mail article”
  • Instant, rollover access to cited reference papers within the body of the citing article
As reported by EContent Magazine XTra, 4/15/08