1. OA helps combat social media misinformation and bias. Social media is the most popular news source for American millennials, with more than 43% of TikTok users reporting daily news consumption from that app alone. Thanks to social algorithms, information is easier to find than ever before, and it often comes with the bias and … Continue reading Five Things Public Libraries Should Know about Open Access
In a diverse local and global information ecosystem, maintaining community and trust is paramount, but increasingly difficult. Participatory processes and collective action can help address concerns and empower groups. Public open digital scholarship holds promise to achieve these ends. Below I highlight three of the Indiana University (IU) projects I have been involved in that … Continue reading Community Creation
“I think that to have a collection that is high-quality and has the layers of complexity you would expect from a collection, you need both OER and traditionally published materials,” said Robertson, assistant professor and outreach librarian at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, in the “It’s Not Either/Or!: How to Include Open Access Materials to Transform Curriculum … Continue reading Blending Open Access and Traditionally Published Materials
Our investigation of student habits used a simulated set of Google search results to identify how 175 students, from 4th grade through graduate school, selected and judged resources for a research project. We found that, while students have been generally discouraged from using Wikipedia as a source, it remains a popular starting point. We also … Continue reading Stop Source-Shaming
Cottom, associate professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, spoke about how these discussions inform the courses she teaches as well as her current thinking about the role of the academic library. One course, “Networks of Racial Capitalism,” examines the effects of information capitalism and structural inequality. … Continue reading Ascending into an Open Future
Paul Jones, professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) School of Information and Library Science, is one of a few who worked on the Lunar Library, a 30-million-page archive in the size and shape of a DVD. The archive—which includes the English-language Wikipedia among nearly 200 gigabytes of content with 1.5 billion … Continue reading Newsmaker: Paul Jones
Copyright: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Neil Weinstock Netanel, is intended for the general public and explores the various rationales for copyright. One goes back to the Statute of Anne—the first law to provide for copyright regulated by the government. Another is to compensate authors for the work of creating content. But even the … Continue reading Copyright Through the Ages
11 Number of years ago that International Open Access Week was first observed. In 2007, a coalition of US college students, researchers, and librarians celebrated Open Access Day, which was extended to Open Access Week the following year and has evolved into a global effort. 72 Number of countries represented by groups discussing issues of … Continue reading By the Numbers: Open Access Week
In Six Issues Facing Libraries Today: Critical Perspectives, John M. Budd calls these issues persistent and thorny—and they are. The first topic addressed is information: what it is and what it is not. Budd explores the criteria used to evaluate statements and suggests further avenues for considering the theory of information. Next is information literacy, an … Continue reading Future Strategies
Sixteen years ago, American Libraries published Mark Y. Herring’s essay “Ten Reasons Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library” (April 2001). Technology has improved exponentially since then—social media didn’t even exist yet. But even the smartest phone’s intelligence is limited by paywalls, Twitter trolls, fake news, and other hazards of online life. Here … Continue reading Ten Reasons Libraries Are Still Better Than the Internet
“It is time for you, at this conference, to engage and explore,” said Donna Scheeder, president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), to the crowd gathered for the Opening Session of the 2017 World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) on August 20. “I’m sure among this group is a future IFLA president somewhere.” Speakers seemed … Continue reading Welcome to Wrocław
“The legacy of the paper era is two opposing forces: what’s good for science and what’s good for the people who communicate science,” he told attendees at the “Being Open about Open: Academic and Research Libraries, FAIFE, Copyright, and Other Legal Matters” session of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) World Library … Continue reading Opening Up: Day Five at IFLA WLIC
