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scholarly communication

Marginalia as Scholarly Communication

Although we may think of scholarly communication as the process of disseminating research through formal publication or online distribution, scholars have been communicating with and responding to each other since well before the advent of the Internet or even print journals. One way in which modern scholars can understand earlier processes of communication is through the study of marginalia, or the notes to themselves or others that previous scholars have left in the margins of the texts they read. Works have been published on the marginalia of single writers, such as Voltaire’s Marginalia on the Pages of Rousseau (Havens, 1971), or on marginalia as a topic unto itself. H.J. Jackson has published two books on marginalia:

(Note: Both titles are available as e-books to members of the NU community.)

Recently, the personal library of Charles Darwin was digitized and made available freely online through the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Darwin himself frequently made notes in the margins of his books, and one special feature of this online collection is the full transcription of all his marginalia. Being able to read the notes that Darwin made to himself as he read gives scholars today insight into how his ideas, well, evolved over time. Marginalia were also a way for Darwin and others to share their ideas informally with their contemporaries through exchanging personal copies of their books.

Of course, marginalia aren’t only created by the greatest scientific minds – one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins, wrote a poem on the margin notes left by everyday readers:

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive –
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” –
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

— From “Marginalia” (Billy Collins)

(Read the full poem here.)

RSS Feed Available for NU-Authored Articles

I’ve created an RSS feed for anyone who would like to be alerted when new scholarly articles are published by NU-affiliated authors. It pulls information from Web of Science, which includes not only the Science Citation Index but also the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index. In total, Web of Science indexes over 10,000 journals, including open-access titles.

For current NU faculty, students, and staff:
Click here to add the feed to your RSS reader of choice.
⇒ Using this version of the feed will allow you to click through to view more details about an article within Web of Science even if you’re off-campus. (You’ll be prompted to enter your myNEU username and password from off campus.)

For alumni and members of the public:
Click here to add the feed to your RSS reader of choice.
⇒ This feed still provides complete bibliographic citations for new articles, but if you’re off-campus, you will be unable to access further information, such as the abstracts, via Web of Science.

Note: Google Chrome requires a plugin/extension in order to handle RSS feeds correctly, however, Internet Explorer and Firefox are two browsers that work well.

Please let me know if you have any difficulties with this feed.

Northeastern Researchers Make the Cover of Nature

Our very own Northeastern researchers have offered a new look towards “merging the tools of network science and control theory” to better control complex systems. Their findings were featured on the cover of the May 12th issue of the journal Nature.

Albert-László Barabási, a professor in the Departments of Physics and Biology and in the College of Computer and Information Science, and Yang-Yu Liu, a postdoctoral research associate in Physics, coauthored the paper, along with an MIT colleague.

Their focus was to merge control theory with network science research in order to create more efficient methods of gaining control of a complex system, such as cellular networks or social media, by identifying the driving nodes of the system. Read more about their research in this news@Northeastern press release. You can also find more of Professor Barabási’s research publications in IRis, Northeastern’s institutional repository.

Congrats to our NU researchers for this inspiring breakthrough!

Snell Represents at Research & Scholarship Expo

Congratulations to two Snell Library staff: Maria Carpenter, Director of Advancement & Marketing, and Hillary Corbett, Scholarly Communication Librarian, who presented their research at yesterday’s Research & Scholarship Expo.

Maria presented her work, “Cheerleader, Opportunity Seeker, and Master Strategist: ARL Directors as Entrepreneurial Leaders,” which examines how entrepreneurial leadership can be used to generate income, build new partnerships, and improve services. This study examines how library directors who are members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) define and engage in entrepreneurial leadership and suggests how entrepreneurial leadership can improve finances, foster innovation, and build prestige.

Hillary presented the library’s vision for its researcher support services in her work titled, “Digital Solutions and Services to Support Research at the Northeastern University Libraries.” It describes Northeastern Libraries’ early project implementations and explores opportunities for future development and collaboration of its suite of researcher support services. The full suite of services discussed includes IRis (Northeastern’s Digital Archives), Digital Repository Service, and Data Curation Services.

To see the full schedule of events and to read about other student, staff, and faculty research visit the Northeastern Research & Scholarship Expo website. You can also read today’s NU News which spotlights work from two Northeastern students.

How Has the NIH Public Access Policy Affected You?

Heather Joseph at SPARC writes, “It’s hard to believe, but April 7, 2011 will mark the 3rd Anniversary of the implementation of the policy opening up access to articles reporting on the results of NIH-funded research.” (Read more about the NIH Public Access Policy here.)

SPARC is gathering stories from authors as well as readers about how having wider access to taxpayer-funded research has affected them. Joseph continues:

The policy has shown tremendous signs of success. PubMed Central now contains more than 2 million full text articles reporting on the latest NIH-funded research, and nearly a half million individuals access these articles each day.

With this new wealth of information now available, we’d like to know what your experience has been with it. Specifically, we’d like to hear:

1. How have you been using the database?
2. Have you used the articles to help inform yourself about new developments in a specific area?
3. Has the availability of these articles through PubMed Central helped you advance your research in ways that would not have occurred if they were not available?
4. Have articles that you have authored appeared in PubMed Central as a result of the policy?
5. Have you been contacted by other researchers who have found your work in the database, or vice versa?
6. Have you taken any of the articles to your doctor or other health care provider?
7. Has your healthcare provider used this database as a resource? (if you don’t know, please ask her/him!)
8. Has the availability of the articles in PMC had an impact on how you (or anyone in your community) manage your health care?

We’ve heard from people who have used the latest research in various ways, and the stories are extremely powerful. If you have one, please share it! It will help us to not only ensure that PubMed Central remains open as an important public resource, but also to make the case to open up additional publicly funded databases from HHS and other federal agencies as well.

If you’d like to contribute your story about PubMed Central and the NIH Public Access Policy, you can e-mail Heather Joseph directly at heather@arl.org.

(Source: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/issues/nih/nih_action/callforstories.shtml)