Library News

Oxford Reference Online: Premium Is Now Available!

Oxford Reference Online: Premium is an online collection consisting of over 200 award-winning and scholarly reference titles from Oxford University Press — and it is now available at NU Libraries. The addition of Oxford Reference Online: Premium to the Library’s online collections is one of numerous, ongoing initiatives being taken by the Library to increase its support for the needs of students and faculty working or studying off campus or enrolled in distance courses. Titles include companion volumes to specific subjects, like the Oxford Companion to the Bible; discipline-specific dictionaries and encyclopedias, for example The Encyclopedia of Mammals; a good number of English and foreign language dictionaries; and grammar and style manuals. These reference works may be searched either individually or as a group in a single, unified search. Titles are arranged either alphabetically or in clear subject categories. Click here to access the online collection. For more information, contact Jamie Dendy at j.dendy@neu.edu. Press Release

Open Access Week: Annals of Environmental Science

OA Week DOAJ The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 5,553 journals produced worldwide that are fully open access. But did you know that one of those journals is produced here at Northeastern University? In 2007, faculty members Geoffrey Davies and Elham Ghabbour began publishing the Annals of Environmental Science, a peer-reviewed, open access international journal for the environmental sciences. It’s now publishing its fourth volume! Some of our faculty authors have chosen to publish their research in open access journals — for example, Biology professor Kim Lewis has been published in the prestigious Public Library of Science journals PLoS Biology and PLoS Genetics. Why not try publishing open-access yourself?

Open Access Week: The Right to Research for Students

OA Week Right to Research CoalitionThe Right to Research Coalition asserts that access to research is a student right. They’re working to redefine the current system of scholarly communication — in which access to published research is limited to those at institutions that can afford to subscribe to expensive journals and databases. The huge expense of traditional subscription-based information is another issue driving the open access movement — why should that information be limited to those who can afford it? And it’s not cheap, either — check out the introductory animation on RRC’s homepage. You might be surprised that a subscription to ONE journal can be equal to or greater than a year’s worth of tuition at Northeastern! (See Sticker Shock: The Price of Library Resources for some price comparisons between journal subscriptions and big-ticket consumer items.) To celebrate Open Access Week, the Right to Research Coalition is presenting a webcast tonight (Thursday, 10/21) at 7:00 pm Eastern time, in conjunction with UC Berkeley. You can find out more about it here: http://www.righttoresearch.org/blog/open-access-week-2010.shtml.

Open Access Week: Video Wednesday!

OA Week There are a lot of creative people out there making videos for OA Week about why open access to information is important. Here’s one that’s short and sweet at just over a minute long: And another one, appropriately titled “Open Access 101”: But they’re not all animations… there are lots of interviews out there with faculty about why they feel open access is important. Try this one, with Professor Christoph Bartneck of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands: There are many more videos available to enlighten and inform at http://www.openaccessweek.org/video.

Open Access Week: Data Management and Sharing

OA Week Today I’m blogging from UMass Amherst, where I came to attend three events being held as part of Open Access Week. I just came from the second event, which was a focus group with grad students on their data management needs. Data management is of increasing interest on university campuses — researchers are generating more data than ever before, and while we’re able to store more information in smaller physical spaces, it still seems like a challenge to keep up with the demand for more space. What I learned from the students at this session is that different disciplines have their own ways of managing data, and methods for doing so might differ between grad students and their advisors within a single lab or research group. They want their data to be accessible from anywhere in the world, and many find their current arrangements for managing and sharing data to be unsatisfactory. (E-mailing data to themselves or each other or transferring data on USB sticks is common.) And yes — they want more! space! One grad student estimated that his lab produces multiple terabytes of data on a weekly basis. Students are also concerned about the NSF’s new requirement that a data management plan be included in grant applications. And they would love someone to come and consult with their departments on data management. Many of them would be happy to share their raw data with other researchers. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you have other, different concerns about your data? At Snell, we are very interested in talking with you and your research colleagues, whether you are students or faculty. Attending this focus group really emphasized to me that we need to begin reaching out to researchers on campus to learn what your needs are. Feel free to get in touch with me about your data management concerns!