PL 4/12: User behavior in digital libraries

JISC has published a metastudy – summarizing twelve separate investigations – about user behavior in academic libraries. I quote:

Among the central findings

• Disciplinary differences do exist in researcher behaviours, both professional researchers and students.
• E-journals are increasingly very important to the process of research at all levels.
• The evidence provided by the results of the studies supports the centrality of Google and other search engines.
• Google is often used to locate and access e-journal content.
• At the same time, the entire Discovery-to-Delivery process needs to be supported by information systems, including increased access to resources.
• Journal backfiles are particularly problematic in terms of access

PL 3/12: Picture the problem!

In its Annual Report for 2010, Oslo University Library presented a diagram (above or right) that showed

• the rapid increase in subscription rates for scientific journals, on an annual basis
• the (only) partial compensation for this in their budgets

Most graphics can be improved. We tend to spend time revising our written texts until they sound right. We draft and redraft, scrub and polish. We should apply the same amount of attention to our graphics.

PL 2/12: LATINA courses in 2012

LATINA is an international training program aimed at librarians, students, teachers and other professionals who want to develop their digital skills and understanding.

Picture: students from LATINA Summer 2010.

This summer we are offering two courses:

• a two week course in Kampala, Uganda, in cooperation with the Makerere University Library (June 18-29)
• a three week course in Oslo, as part of the HiOA International Summer School (July 2-20)

Recruitment for the Oslo course has already started – see LATINA Summer 2012 for details. Application details for the Kampala course will be announced in February – at LATINA in Africa 2012 and other web sites.

PL 1/12: Europeana 1.5

The future of culture is largely digital.

We will, of course, continue to visit monuments like the pyramids and Parthenon on the spot. Digital images cannot replace the experience of being there. But digital artifacts can enrich the physical visit. Good reproductions can also substitute for “the thing itself”.  A virtual Forum Romanum and a digital Beowulf allow much closer interaction with the historical objects than is possible in real life.

Web access is fast, cheap and convenient. Families cannot spend years and years traversing Europe in search of culture. For most of us, physical visits must be the exception. Virtual access will be the rule.

PL 75/11: Network like crazy

The notes for my final talk at LATINA Winter in Haikou were brief:

A culture is the way we do things:

• a way of acting
• a way of thinking
• a way of teaching
• a way of learning

A culture is a way of life.

• To learn a language is to learn a way of life. Wittgenstein.

Three guidelines on the web

• Be polite
• Be personal
• Be persistent

PL 74/11: Creativity required

Last week LATINA Lab conducted an intensive six-day training course in China.

The class had room for thirty students. They had been selected from a substantially larger number of applicants – and were young, bright and hard-working. The Chinese cult/ure of learning is very, very strong.

The tradition goes very far back. High Chinese officials (“mandarins”) were selected on the basis of their learning.

For around 1300 years, from 605 to 1905, mandarins were selected by merit through the extremely rigorous imperial examination [Wp]

PL 73/11: IFLA asked to reduce fees

Social media allow scattered individuals to mobilize.

In December, the first calls for papers for next year’s IFLA (in Helsinki this time) are published. This time, people started to complain about the high conference fees that IFLA charges. The original issue had to do with members of the IFLA sections – who are (s)elected for four years and have to find money for five consecutive conferences.

The debate has moved from the IFLA mailing list to a website change.org, which organizes petitions of all kinds. I just added my signature to the petition, with the following comment:

I am glad this debate has started – supported by  the power of digital technology

PL 72/11: Go this way!

LATINA training in Ramallah

PL 71/11: Tricky research

Statistical testing is tricky – as a newspaper article from yesterday shows.

Both publics, journalists and researchers tend to overemphasize the value of single studies. Publics want simple answers, journalists want spectacular news and researchers want results that will further their careers.

Science does not work that way. Knowledge accumulates slowly, through trial and error, missteps and detours. Established truths are never fully established.  Answers are valid until further notice. I quote the crucial parts:

How can two studies of the same topic reach opposite conclusions?

Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis has famously estimated that 90 per cent of published medical research is wrong, thanks to factors such as sloppy statistics, inadequate study size and duration, and bias – both conscious and unconscious.

Three common research failings.

PL 70/11: Bird-in-hand: entrepreneurs in HE

Last Friday we had an excellent conference on entrepreneurship in higher education at Oslo and Akershus University College.

I missed the opening, since I had to get my visum for China (where we’ll do a LATINA course in mid-December). I arrived in the middle of Vesa Taatila’s keynote on Passion, inspiration, networks and a little bit of Learning by Development.

Taatila works as a special advisor at the Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland, where learning basically takes through real projects that students do off campus.  He did not use the standard (unreflected) expression R&D (research and development), but referred to RDI: Research, Development and Innovation. The growing importance of innovation – or real changes in the world of production – has been clear in public policy making for the last two or three years, I think.