I published the article “Data Management Practices in Academic Library Learning Analytics: A Critical Review” in 2019. Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I omitted a couple of citations, instead listing them as “citation omitted in order to protect students’ … Continue reading
Category: Libraries
E-Textbooks – scandal or market imperative?
For academic and research libraries the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a significant shift of resources towards supporting digital online access to resources. As a result, the prohibitive cost of some of these resources, notably e-textbooks, has become a flashpoint, even breaking into mainstream media and public debate. Here, Johanna Anderson, Paul Ayris and Ben White … Continued
Volunteer Vignette: We’re all in this together!
In today’s post, Sam Schireson interviews a By the People volunteer, Judith, who has gone above and beyond! By the People is a crowdsourced transcription program launched in 2018 at the Library of Congress. Volunteer-created transcriptions are used to make digitized collections more accessible and discoverable on loc.gov. You can read our other Volunteer Vignette on the Signal […]
The Case of Bookcases
In this post David Beer reflects on what the attention given to bookcases during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about our enduring attachments to particular surfaces, spaces and presences and their role in the materiality of research, writing and teaching. This post, originally published in the author’s ‘Fragments of Modernity’ newsletter, and appeared on the LSE Review of Book’s … Continued
Finding By the People Transcriptions in the Library’s Digital Collections
Today’s guest post is from Dr. Victoria Van Hyning, who served as a By the People Community Manager at the Library from 2018-2020. Starting in Fall 2020, she will be an Assistant Professor of Library Innovation at the University of Maryland iSchool, where she will continue her research on crowdsourcing, outreach, and inclusion. The […]
Recent Publications
It’s always nice to have new publications to put up on the blog, especially when they’re all things I’ve been working on for at least a year. If you’re interested in privacy and data and libraries, I hope you check … Continue reading
The commercial model of academic publishing underscoring Plan S weakens the existing open access ecosystem in Latin America
Health emergencies such as those we face today reveal the importance of opening scientific knowledge; something that not-for-profit open access publishing has permanently and organically allowed for a long time. The expansion of Plan S, a research funder led initiative to promote a global transition to open access to scholarly research, to Latin America has … Continued
In a Web Archives Frame of Mind: Improving Access and Describing the Collections
This is a guest post by Lauren Baker, a Librarian-in -Residence on the Library of Congress Web Archiving Team (a part of the Digital Collections Management & Services Division). The Librarians-in-Residence Program offers early career librarians an opportunity to contribute to Library projects while learning from professionals in the field. In 2018, the Library of […]
Bibliodiversity – What it is and why it is essential to creating situated knowledge
Vibrant scholarly communities are sustained by publishing outlets that allow researchers to address diverse audiences. Whereas, attention is often focused on international publication, much of this work is supported by publications that address national and regional audiences in their own languages. In this post, Elea Giménez Toledo, Emanuel Kulczycki, Janne Pölönen and Gunnar Sivertsen explain the importance of bibliodiversity to […]
How to Decolonise the Library
Decolonising knowledge is an important topic, but what does it mean for libraries? Will it result in throwing away books by Nietzsche and Kant and replacing them with books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Binyavanga Wainaina? Jos Damen, Director of the Library of the African Studies Centre in Leiden, gives some practical tips on building a more diverse, decolonised library. […]