Is predatory scientific publishing “becoming an organized industry”?
Renewed media attention focuses especially on the problems for biomedicine. Read More
All About Predatory Publishing
Brigitte Burris said that the knowledge we bring as collection development librarians is relevant to the predatory question. We need awareness. OA removes some of the curatorial function that we do as librarians, but there is still a need to share our knowledge. We have developed expertise in assessing the quality of journals, and this expertise can be shared to teach authors to identify predatory journals. Read More
Assessing Your Readiness for Implementation of Learning Analytics: Making a Start
As an institution, you may find yourself asking, “How do I know if we are ready for learning analytics? Is there a way to ‘feel out’ where we are before having someone come onsite for a more official assessment? What kinds of things can I do on campus to prepare for an on-site Readiness Assessment?” Read More
Five Trends Changing Higher Education That Librarians Need to Watch | From the Bell Tower
Higher education has a reputation for staying the same. That’s never been more of a myth than right now. Some of the changes have little impact on academic librarians. Others require more of our attention. Read More
The three types of library professionals who absolutely must read the new ACRL/OCLC Academic Library Impact report
The report’s introduction includes a key question, familiar to librarians: “How well can academic library administrators and staff demonstrate that the academic library is useful to students?” Read More
How Real-World Learning Could Help People Compete With Machines
When machines come for our jobs, we will need skills in communication, creativity, collaboration, and complex thinking to compete, says Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University. It will take a completely different kind of education system, he says — not the current one, created at the height of the farm and factory economies — to prepare people for the future work force. Read More
The Book Stop pop-up library project
The Book Stop Project is a design concept offering a huge potential for community libraries to evolve from monolithic buildings to activated public spaces. Read More
Libraries Look to Big Data to Measure Their Worth—And Better Help Students
These days, though, libraries are finding new ways to measure their worth. They’re counting how many times students use electronic library resources or visit in person, and comparing that to how well the students do in their classes and how likely they are to stay in school and earn a degree. And many library leaders are finding a strong correlation, meaning that students who consume more library materials tend to be more successful academically. Read More
How Technology Is Leading Us Into the Imagination Age
In many ways, the future is unpredictable. A report by the World Economic Forum reveals that almost 65 percent of the jobs elementary school students will be doing in the future do not even exist yet. Combined with technological automation and the disappearance of traditional jobs, this leaves us with a critical question: how can we survive such a world? The answer may be imagination. Read More
Championing the Library’s Role in Sustainability
This week, I had the opportunity to catch up with Madeleine Charney, a Sustainability Studies Librarian at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Through connecting sustainability communities across campus and supporting them with key library resources and services, Madeleine demonstrates how libraries can help to further the field of sustainability science. Read on to learn how she integrates sustainability issues into class curricula, and how other librarians can go about integrating sustainability into their careers. Read More