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Category: Agriculture

Journals Cited by Wikipedia (JCW): Presentation & Discussion with Gaetan Landry

wikipediaJoin Gaetan Landry for an updated version of a talk originally given at Wikimania 2017 in Montreal of the Journals Cited by Wikipedia (JCW) system. The JCW system is used by the English Wikipedia’s community to keep track of which journals are the most cited on Wikipedia.

The JCW system is mainly used by WikiProject Academic Journals to prioritize the creation of articles on academic journals. However, the system has many side benefits and can also be used to evaluate the on-Wikipedia impact of academic journals, and provide another citation metric similar to the Impact Factor, Eigenfactor, or PageRank metrics used in academia.

Gaetan will discuss what motivated him to originally propose the JCW system and extensions to other topics such as Magazines cited by Wikipedia, Books cited by Wikipedia and Publishers cited by Wikipedia.  The talk should be interesting to all audiences, particularly those interested in Wikipedian history and academic publishing (including open/libre access supporters).

Gaetan is a faculty member on the Agricultural Campus and has been a Wikipedian since 2006. He has given multiple talks at Wikimania, created about 175 articles and contributed to over 200,000 edits. A member of the Bots Approval Group since 2011, he is responsible for overseeing the operation of several bots on Wikipedia. He has written articles in The Wikipedia Signpost and is involved with several WikiProjects.

You are encouraged to bring a laptop to this presentation. All are welcome.

Date & Time: Friday, February 23, 10–11a.m.
Location: Killam Memorial Library, Room 2902 & MacRae Library, Cobequid Room (the presentation will be held in Truro with videoconferencing to Halifax)

RSVP: Erin.MacPherson@dal.ca

The Lives of Dalhousie Digital Exhibit, Digital Editions & Dal 200th Timeline 

by Alice Albarda (Project Assistant, Dalhousie University Archives)

The faculty, graduates, and class of 1870.

The faculty, graduates, and class of 1870.

For Dalhousie’s 200th anniversary, Alice Albarda and Geoff Brown of the Dalhousie Libraries’ University Archives have created a two-part digital exhibit based on The Lives of Dalhousie, a comprehensive two-volume history of Dalhousie University written by Peter B. Waite. The goal of this project was to supplement the book by showcasing material from the Dalhousie University Archives. 

The Lives of Dalhousie University Volume One, 1818-1925: Lord Dalhousie’s College and Volume Two, 1925-1980: The Old College Transformed were written by Peter B. Waite, Dalhousie’s historian, from 1986-1992. The two-volume book chronicles Dalhousie’s history from Lord Dalhousie’s arrival in Nova Scotia in 1816 to the end of Henry Hicks’ presidency in 1980.  

The exhibit follows the format of the books, with a section for each chapter. Within each section, Alice and Geoff have selected a handful of topics to highlight. Some of the topics, like Thomas McCulloch or the Dalhousie No. 7 Stationary Hospital, are important parts of Dalhousie’s history that many people are already familiar with. However, the team tried to also select topics that were less well-known and might provide some insight into the everyday lives of Dalhousians throughout the school’s history.  

Each topic in the exhibit is illustrated with items from the Archives, which have been fully digitized and are also available through the Archives catalogue or DalSpace. Throughout the course of the six month project, Alice scanned material as needed and uploaded them to both the exhibit and the Archives catalogue. The material includes historical photographs, articles from the Dalhousie Gazette, academic documents, and personal mementos.  

Exhibit highlights: 

  • Roy Atwood, who operated the campus canteen for over 30 years. Roy’s canteen was one of the few places where students could hang out on Studley Campus and Roy was a fixture of campus life  
  • The Diary of Sam Peeps, a gossip and humour column that was published in the Gazette in the 1940’s and ruffled quite a few administrative feathers  
  • A collection of group portraits of Dalhousie athletes from the 1920’s and earlier  
  • James De Mille, one of Dalhousie’s first professors, who was also a popular author in the late 19th century  
  • A collection of postcards sent to a young Haligonian by his uncle, who was a member of the Dalhousie University No.7 Stationary Hospital during WWI  
  • Dixie Pelluet, an outspoken advocate for equal gender treatment in academics, due to unfair treatment that she received at the hands of Dalhousie’s administration  
  • George Vibert Douglas, a Dalhousie geology professor who also joined Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1921 Antarctic expedition  
  • The sheet music for Dalhousie songs and cheers, which were sung by the Dalhousie Glee and Dramatic Club  

The full text of The Lives of Dalhousie has been published on GitBook and is linked throughout the exhibit, so viewers can read more about Dalhousie’s history if they so desire.  

As a further celebration of Dalhousie’s 200th anniversary, the Dal Libraries has put together a timeline for each day of 2018 that includes many of the images found in our Lives of Dalhousie University exhibit. The timeline is our way of connecting Dalhousie to the broader community by featuring an event, historical photograph or other material for each day of 2018. With such a rich history, we had plenty of material to choose from. The timelines are being posted on a monthly basis and offer a fun, informative and sometimes whimsical view of Dalhousie’s past. 

Lives of Dalhousie University (digital edition, downloadable versions on DalSpace): https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/73583 

Online versions on Gitbook  

 Dalhousie 200th Anniversary Timeline https://libraries.dal.ca/find/university-archives/dal-200th.html  

 

Fair Pricing for Journals: public consultations for the Dalhousie community

The “big deal” as a model for purchasing scholarly journals is no longer sustainable for mid-sized universities like Dalhousie.

What is a “big deal,” anyway?

It’s when scholarly publishers bundle 100s or 1,000s of journals and sell them for a discounted price. When publishers introduced the big deals, it made economic sense to buy in. As time went on, publishers increased the size of the bundles, adding titles of dubious value while driving up the costs significantly.

The five largest bundles we subscribe to have increased in cost by 78% since 2010. One bundle costs $850,000. In another bundle, fewer than 40% of the titles are being used by Dalhousie researchers, scholars and students. We subscribe to dozens of bundles.

https://vimeo.com/255570271

This year, we are examining over 7,000 titles in six bundles that are up for renewal. We want your input. Attend a public consultation and select which journals are important to you at https://fairprice.library.dal.ca

Attend a public consultation session:

Agricultural Campus
Wednesday, March 7, 2 p.m.
Riverview Room, Jenkins Hall

Studley Campus
Thursday, March 8, 4:15 p.m.
MacMechan Auditorium,
Killam Library

Carleton Campus
Wednesday, March 14, 12 p.m.
CHEB, Room C264

RESCHEDULED DUE TO WEATHER:
Sexton Campus
Tuesday, March 20, 4:15 p.m.
B Building, Room B229

Fine-tuning Dalhousie’s eBook Subscriptions

pexels-photo-844734The Dalhousie Libraries lease and buy eBooks in many subject areas to meet student and faculty research, teaching, and learning needs. We acquire eBooks from multiple publishers and vendors. We currently provide ebooks on twenty different platforms.

As part of managing our collections, we regularly analyze our eBook and journal subscriptions to ensure the collection meets your current needs and that our spending is sustainable. In the fall of 2017, we examined a large collection of eBooks we lease from EBSCO.

EBSCO’s NA Academic eBook subscription has provided temporary access to more than 160,000 eBooks from a wide variety of publishers. Over the last four years, the content of this collection has regularly shifted as publishers change their approach to leasing eBooks and add or remove titles. In some cases, this collection duplicates our print and eBook holdings. Since 2013, only 4% of the EBSCO collection has been used by the Dalhousie community. The annual cost for leasing this collection is more than $10,000 CAD. The cost per title is very low (less than ten cents per book), but the cost per title is fourteen times higher when only the used titles are considered (approximately $1.40 per book)

After considering how the books are used, the collection’s overall fit for Dalhousie, and the sustainability of leased eBooks, we have decided to cancel this subscription.

Since there are some books in the collection that are consistently well-used, we will be redirecting the funds budgeted for this subscription to purchase eBooks of the most highly needed books. In early spring, the Libraries’ catalogue will be updated to remove the leased titles.

If you have questions or concerns about a specific EBSCO eBook, please contact Library.Collections@dal.ca

UPDATE: Off-campus Issues Logging into Proxy Server (RESOLVED)

Off-campus users are experiencing problems logging into the proxy server to access Dalhousie eResources. This issue has been reported to IT who are investigating the problem.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Update: This issue should now be resolved. 

Intermittent EBSCO ebook Access Issues

eBooks_Logo_CMYK_StackedEBSCO has received multiple reports of customers unable to access their eBook collection. Their engineering teams are currently investigating the issue and we will update you when more information is available.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

 

Get an Open Researcher & Contributor ID (ORCID)

ORCID_logo_with_tagline.svg

by Ann Barrett

Looking for an easy way to keep your author profile up to date? Are your publications under multiple name variants making them hard to collect? Tired of having to enter the same information in multiple submission systems?

An ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) may be the solution for you.  ORCID is a unique number used to distinguish scholars around the world from one another. Over 1,000 student and faculty researchers affiliated with Dalhousie have already registered with ORCID.

ORCID provides researchers with a persistent identifier plus an easy mechanism for linking research outputs and activities to that identifier. ORCID is open, non-proprietary, transparent, community-based, and available free of charge.

Your ORCID record will belong to you throughout your scholarly career to distinguish you from other researchers and ensure consistent, reliable attribution of your work.

ORCID is also integrated into many systems used by publishers, funding agencies, institutions, and other research-related services, allowing you to input once, reuse often.

As members of the ORCID Consortium in Canada the Dalhousie Libraries encourage graduate students and faculty members register for a free ORCID.

To get started:

  1. Register for your unique ORCID identifier
  2. Add your professional information and link to your other identifiers (such as Scopus or ResearcherID)
  3. Set permissions and use your ORCID ID regularly when you submit publications or apply for grants to ensure you get credit for your work.

Want to know more? Check out the ORCID Knowledge Base , watch this short 4 minute video from ORCID, or contact your Dalhousie Libraries’ subject specialist.

Webcast: Combating “Predatory” Publishers

SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is a global coalition that advocates for open access, open data, and open education. They are hosting a webcast free for all individuals from SPARC member institutions (yes, Dalhousie is a member). Registration is required: https://sparcarldc.memberzone.com/eventregistration/register/25

SPARCHere is some information from SPARC about predatory publishers:

The problem of “predatory” publishers is often the first issue raised by faculty in conversations about Open Access. Authors (rightly) complain of being spammed with solicitations to publish in questionable journals. Attempts to combat the problem with “blacklists” and similar tactics have met with only limited success. However, there are emerging efforts to provide the community with reliable information on how to distinguish low-quality predatory publications from legitimate Open Access journals.

These efforts include work by the well-known Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which has undergone a rigorous process of strengthening its criteria for inclusion in its index to ensure that those journals listed meet stringent editorial standards. At the same time, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the international trade association of Open Access publishers, is enforcing similar standards before a publisher qualifies for membership. A multi-lingual, cross-industry collaboration called “Think. Check. Submit.” has also been launched to provide a resource directly to authors to walk them through reviewing potential publishing venues and weed out predatory journal options.

Please join us on Thursday, March 1 at 3 p.m. for a SPARC webcast on community-based efforts to combat “predatory” publishing with representatives from these three initiatives. The discussion will focus on equipping librarians to address these quality concerns as they come up on campus.

Registration is free but required, and all individuals from SPARC member institutions are invited to attend. You can register by clicking here.

Upgrade Old Browsers to Access Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis Online will be upgrading the security settings on their platform beginning January 31st. If you use an older browser, specifically IE10 or earlier, you will receive an error message when trying to access the platform. Many other vendors are making similar changes so they can continue to offer a secure online experience.

TFIf you do use an older browser, we encourage you to upgrade it now to continue to access our online resources seamlessly and securely. If you have any questions about how to upgrade your browser, please contact one of the IT Help Desks https://libraries.dal.ca/help/it-help-desk.html

Kipling Scrapbooks Digital Exhibit Now Available

A stack of Kipling scrapbooks that were recently digitized.

A stack of Kipling scrapbooks that were recently digitized.

The Dalhousie Libraries is excited to announce the launch of the Kipling Scrapbook digital exhibit: http://kipling.library.dal.ca

 This project involved digitizing and contextualizing the Rudyard Kipling Scrapbooks — part of the internationally renowned Kipling Collection held in the Dalhousie Libraries’ Special Collections. The project was profiled in 2017 as part of a series of blog posts — one highlighting  the project and the collection and another exploring the scrapbooks themselves.”

 “Digitizing the Kipling scrapbooks is part of the Libraries’ ongoing efforts to digitize its archival and special collections and make them broadly available to the world as well as to preserve the unique and rare materials that the library holds. It is hoped that by making these collections more broadly available that new forms of research and scholarship will be enabled through the use of these materials,” said Roger Gillis, Digital Humanities Librarian.

“The entire Kipling Project Team are to be congratulated on a beautifully prepared exhibit that highlights one of the Libraries’ important and valuable collections,” said Michael Moosberger, Associate University Librarian for Archives, Special Collections and Records Management. “The development of this project, which integrates geospatial technology along with high-resolution digitization and sophisticated metadata, will allow students and faculty the opportunity to engage with these historical publications in new and innovative ways.  The project also illustrates how the field of digital scholarship is an important and growing part of the Libraries’ mandate and can breathe new life and new opportunities into iconic library resources whose importance to teaching and learning has not diminished.”

About the Kipling Collection

The Dalhousie Libraries Kipling Collection has an international reputation as the most comprehensive collection of Rudyard Kipling’s publications in the world. Containing an exhaustive selection of Kipling’s literary and journalistic works, the Kipling Collection holds important research ephemera and support material by and about Kipling, such as manuscripts, letters, pamphlets, original illustrations included in Kipling’s works, autographs, sketches, and sheet music for poems set to music.

The Kipling Collection also contains the Kipling Collection Scrapbooks: eleven scrapbooks created by notable nineteenth and twentieth century Kipling enthusiasts from England and the United States. There are seven known collectors: Sir William Garth, Ellis Ames Ballard, G. D. Wells, James Todman Goodwin, and three unidentified collectors. (The collectors of these scrapbooks will be explored in a future post in this series.) These scrapbooks are informal compilations, which preserve Kipling’s early journalistic works, as well various versions and editions of poems, short stories, and serials, many of which no longer survive in their original form. The full scrapbooks are available in Dalspace.

About the Exhibit

In 2017, Dalhousie Libraries’ digitized the scrapbooks and developed a digital exhibit via the Libraries’ new digital exhibit space using Omeka, an open source web-publishing platform. The project team consisted of Roger Gillis (Project Manager / Digital Humanities Librarian), Diana Doublet (Digitization Assistant), and Jessica Ruzek (Digital Exhibit Assistant), and Karen Smith (Special Collections Librarian).

The Exhibit features contextual information on Kipling, the scrapbooks, as well as British travel writing, as well as an interactive timeline and map that features a Map exploring some of Kipling’s travels and writing during his time as a journalist in late nineteenth-century India.

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