EBSCO 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.
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
Here 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.
If 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.
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.
Dalhousie Now a Member of SPARC: Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is a global coalition that advocates for open access, open data, and open education. They are committed to making “Open” the default for research and education.
SPARC works to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials with the goals of democratizing access to knowledge, accelerating discovery, and increasing the return on our investment in research and education.
How do they do this?
The Internet has changed the way we create and interact with knowledge. No longer do we have to be a world where knowledge is accessible by only the privileged few.
SPARC collaborates with stakeholders—authors, publishers, libraries, students, funders, policymakers and the public. As advocates, they build on the opportunities created by the Internet to promote changes to infrastructure and culture to make research and education Open.
With over a decade of experience and more than 200 members that are primarily academic and research libraries in the U.S. and Canada, SPARC members use its resources and support to promote Open Access to scholarly articles, the open sharing of research data, and the creation and adoption of Open Educational Resources on their campuses.
“Publishing models that restrict access to knowledge for the sake of profit limit everyone’s potential. Widespread adoption of SPARC’s Open Agenda will speed the pace of discovery, benefiting society in many ways, including medical breakthroughs, employment opportunities, and environmental solutions. As a research institution, Dalhousie has a responsibility to participate in this global movement,” said Donna Bourne-Tyson, University Librarian.
CARL’s Statement on Net Neutrality
Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.[4] For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content. (Wikipedia)
This is an important issue for Canadians and libraries. Recently, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries released a statement on net neutrality. Read it here: http://www.carl-abrc.ca/news/carl-statement-net-neutrality/
Dal Libraries Student Input Feedback Team Wants You
Have YOUR say about library services at Dal and tell us what you need from the Dal Libraries.
There will be free pizza and pop. All students welcome.
Carleton Campus
Mon., Jan. 22
3 p.m.,
C268, CHEB
Studley Campus
Wed., Jan. 31
12 p.m.,
Rm G70, first floor, Killam Library
Web of Science December 10, 2017 Release
Our Web of Science database has been updated with some new features.
Major Highlights
Early Access publications:
Peer-reviewed, final, accepted publications are available in Web of Science prior to publication. Records have a document type of “Early Access” and may accrue citations. The Early Access record is merged with the “Published” version of the record. Early Access record types will be included in InCites in early 2018.
Open Access expansion:
This feature identifies open, legal articles in gold journals, hybrid journals, and those open access articles that reside in repositories. Will be included in InCites in early 2018.
Other highlights:
- Redesigned Citation Network on the Full Record.
- Redesigned Sort Options on the Search Results page.
- Author disambiguation quarterly reclustering
- Last full reclustering was released in WoS 5.25
• Reclustering applies machine learning across entire dataset to algorithmically determine articles grouped from the same author.
- Last full reclustering was released in WoS 5.25
For more information, please contact your liaison librarian.
JoVE Video Journal (Journal of Visualized Experiments)
NEW: Several of the most popular sections of JoVE Video Journal (Journal of Visualized Experiments) are now available through the Dalhousie Libraries. JoVE publishes experimental techniques in a visual format with detailed text protocols to increase scientific reproducibility. The videos are peer-reviewed and JoVE is a PubMed-indexed video methods journal. The libraries currently subscribe to two of the most requested JOVE Journals: Medicine and Neuroscience and two additional titles are available on a trial basis throughout 2018: Biochemistry and Immunology & Infection.
Here is a direct link to access JoVE via the Dalhousie Libraries subscription: http://dal.ca.libguides.com/jove
JoVE has many other journals and sections and the content in most of these is available for viewing after a 24 month embargo. The early content is accessible via PubMed Central by clicking on the embedded videos links below each article abstract. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/637/
Welcome, Phil Laugher
Phil Laugher is the newest member of the Dal Libraries team, effective November 27. We are very pleased to welcome him (back) to Dal.
As a Library Services Assistant, Phil will have a busy schedule between serving the public at the Killam Library Service Point and cataloguing materials for addition to the collection. Fortunately, Phil — a Dalhousie alumnus with a degree in history — is up to the task with his background in customer service and his diploma in Library and Information Technology.
For seventeen years, Phil was the day manager at the iconic bookstore, John W. Doull, affectionately known by many as JWD’s. Phil handled day-to-day book sales, catalogued inventory and did research. He has also worked as a student reference assistant giving Live Help through Novanet, and he worked in the Dalhousie Archives earlier this year.
“One of my favourite parts of my previous work, and am excited to carry on with at Dalhousie in my new role, is handling the materials in order to create access points that may not have been readily apparent upon initial examination, making new connections along the way, both for myself and for the patron,” said Phil. “It is always satisfying to be able to first describe and then locate the most useful resources for patrons, whether they knew these materials existed or not, and whether they realized it is exactly what they were looking for. I look forward to providing access to these materials free of charge,” he said.
Phil is a third-generation librarian, whose grandfather, Charles, worked in Special Collections at the Killam Library in the late-1970s and early-1980s and previously as director of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College (Melvil Dewey’s alma mater); grandmother, Ann, worked in public libraries in Massachusetts and Ohio; and father, Stephen, worked for thirty years in technical services for Halifax Public Libraries. In his spare time, Phil enjoys travelling (“visiting the Swiss Alps and Reykjavik have been my favourite experiences so far”), cycling (“commuting can be fun too!”), and reading (“generally books about books, travel narratives, and European fiction”).
“I’m excited to be continuing my family’s tradition of librarianship; all the more so for it to be back here with Dalhousie Libraries, where I spent countless hours during my undergrad.”