- The Canada Council for the Arts announces 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award winners.

- Library in a disaster zone after Hurricane Sandy.

- What Katrina Can Teach Libraries About Sandy and Other Disasters.

- Assessing the Market Value of eBooks Acquired by Libraries: An Economic Analysis Commissioned by ALA.

- Flat World Knowledge to Drop Free Access to Textbooks.

- Library Journal awards Best E-book Database to ebrary’s Academic Complete.

- EBSCO Publishing Releases K-8 and High School E-book Collections.

- LAC Modernisation – Does it Add Up?

- Pearson Project Will Let Professors Mix Free and Paid Content in E-Textbooks.

- Ferriss: Even if I sell a million Kindle books, some people will call it a failure.

- In praise of literature.  A literary scholar looks back, and ahead, to diagnose the problems facing his field.

- Sony’s Reader app on iOS: Better late than never?

“…innovators who are using data science and data visualization — and looking for patterns — to isolate relevant signals in the noise. Their efforts will have enormous implications for the way we practice medicine and discover new music and movies…”

A couple of interesting points I highlighted:

• “The Web has become a tragedy of the commons, a social system ruled by spam–over 90% of URLs today are pure junk!”
• “…there is an escalating need for expert-based recommendation engines to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
• “…knowledge is a love affair with answers; wisdom is a love affair with questions.”
• There are 3 kinds of searches: informational (most common); navigational (60% of search); transactional (trying to find something specific.)
• “The search of tomorrow is more about actions and decisions, not just about finding.”
• Old search:” static and specific”; new search: “predictive and personalized.”
• Discovery:” intimacy and personalization”

Discovery is something being explored by libraries and librarians more and more these days.  This Library Journal article from March 15, 2011 discusses how discovery services can help increase the usage and “findability” of resources, enabling people to get the information they want without having to wade through the information glut that exists in just plain Google or catalog searching. Another article (Coming into Focus) from the October 15 Library Journal (p. 34) discusses discovery services as well.

EBSCO Discovery Services offers a platform for discovery and touts not just “single search” but also high indexing which provides an intuitive experience.  The EBSCO people feel that discovery is critical to the future of libraries, and it may well be true. EBSCO even states that “as  EDS continues to evolve, the end goal remains the same—helping users to find and access the highest-quality content for the best-possible research experience.”

Librarians are and have always been a “discovery service”; they can take the information you give to them and parse it so that the library user comes away with a focused and finite result.  Librarians are often also people who draw upon their own experiences and knowledge of the community to offer suggestions of “other things to read”, or “if you like this museum, you may like this one.” I think this speaks to the “intimacy”, “predictive”, and “personalization” aspects of information search.

I have yet to use a discovery service in my role as either patron or librarian.  Based upon the Hornthal book, I can foresee this as a great search tool.  Having more finite and intuitive information at your fingertips could make the research process less daunting; however, the combination of both human and data analysis could more expertly bridge that gap between getting lots of junk and getting exactly what you need.

Have you used a discovery service? What is your impression?  Which ones have you used?  Is this the future or savior of the library?

- Thanks to Ashley for spotting this: Cory Doctorow’s Dystopian Future of Canadian Copyright.

- US Supreme Court Appears Divided on Copyright Case Affecting Libraries and Publishers.

- Sony Reader launches virtual book club.

- Library & Information Science Source now available from EBSCO Publishing.

- Assessing Digital Literacy Skills: Learn One Approach to Creating Online Assessment Tools.

- Here is some fun complements of the Dewey Divas and the dudes.  Digital marketing at its best or worst.

- What that Random House and Penguin Books may mean for digital reading.

- Pew study finds 60 percent of Americans under 30 used the library in the past year.

- From the desk of Christina Neigel, Reflections of a Thomas Frey Presentation: The Future of Libraries and Cities.

- EBSCO Publishing announces new e-book and audiobook collections providing sports and politics resources.

- Bowker: Number of self-published books up 287% since 2006.

- Review: iBooks 3′s new scrolling view, collections, sharing.

- Overdrive Media Console Now Available for Windows 8.

- Bibliotheca launches online customer discussion board.

- Wattpad tries serial fiction, with help from Margaret Atwood.

- Apple releases iBooks 3, expands to more countries.

- And finally here in stunning digital glory is the University of Washington’s Historical Childrens’ Literature database.

Registration is required at http://tinyurl.com/ab22t5z and the class offers 2 CE credits. Please note that the program will be cancelled if at least 15 people have not registered. For more information, please call Dustin Shilling, Northern Tier Library Director, at 724-449-2665.

Debi Ryder

- Oyster Wants to be the Netflix of eBooks and Raises 3 Million in Funding to Make it Happen.

- Kobo Acquires French company which could lead to offering more digital comics and illustrative material.

- To sell books to China, foreign publishers may have to play by its rules.

- In self-publishing push, Amazon expands Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to Europe.

- Around the world, no set rules for ebook pricing or digital reading.

- Frankfurt Book Fair 2012: Self-publishing, cell phones and startups.

- Applied Science and Technology Source new from EBSCO Publishing.

- Where your computer goes: an inside look Google’s data centres.

Scheduled System Maintenance on 19-20 October 2012

EBSCO will be performing scheduled maintenance from 19 October 2012 at 11:00 PM to 20 October at 3:00 AM Eastern Time (20 October, 03:00 – 07:00 GMT) on our e-journal full-text access servers.

Direct access to articles from EBSCO’s linking services will be unavailable for the following list of publishers:

National League for Nursing
American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP)
Intellect Ltd
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (MIT Press)
College of Business and Public Affairs
e-Med
IUPAC
NRC Research Press

Only articles from these eight publishers accessed via A-to-Z TOC Browse, EJS, or SmartLinks+ will be affected. These publishers account for only 80 of our more than 15,000 journals handled by our linking services, so the overall impact to your users should be minimal. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

• Personal User Authentication
• Checkout and Download of eBooks
• Alerts
• Access to My EBSCOhost folder items or the ability to save items to personalized folders from session

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this short maintenance interval.

I love books.  I’m talking about the paper and covers type.  I have a Kindle on my I-Pad and don’t get me wrong they have their place. You can take your entire library with you and read in the dark.  They let you mark pages type comments and several other handy features.  When we were raising a baby, I would often sit on the deck, in the dark, reading my Kindle while the baby slept.  It was rally convenient.  Now for the confession.  Most of the books on my Kindle,  I have the actual hard copy of the book also.  There is something about the feel of a book in your hands and of turning the pages.  I love the smell of books.  It’s one thing to type notes and leave marks in your Kindle but it’s nothing liking hi-lighting passages and scribbling notes in the margins.  And when you want to look back at your notes flipping through the pages.  I would say I’m really strange (which my readers already know I am) but on this one, I know several others like me.

I have a collection of books from the 1940′s and older on machining in my office.  Some are from the 1800′s.   I feel a sense of history just touching them. I found hand written, yellowed notes in the pages of one of them.  I felt like I needed gloves just to touch it.  I put them back.  They belonged to someone else that enjoyed that book before. I’m just the current librarian entrusted with it.

I used to read fiction.  Tom Clancy was my favorite.  When I was in the middle of a really good book I would find myself wondering what was happening to the characters when I was away from the book.  They became real people, experiencing real things.  I admire someone who can truly take you on a journey like that. Some writers have a way with their words and spinning the story to make you feel a part of their fictional world.  It’s a true art.

I now find myself reading mostly non-fiction business and manufacturing books.  When I left Walgreens for my new career in manufacturing I dove into piles of books, many on my I-Pad.  I studied Total Quality Management, Lean and my mentor company, Toyota.  It was a crash course.  Books prepared me to enter a new world in my career.  Books sparked my mind and creativity to enter this new world and have been a great contributor to the success I have found.  Books have been the major part of my personal continuous improvement project.  I have balanced my reading between general business, manufacturing and of course Toyota.

I have recently started a new test program at Ebsco I am calling the Ebsco Book Club.  I have identified books that have powerful messages and are easy to read and purchased them for specific departments.  I am asking the departments to read a few pages each day.  Led by the department team leader they are discussing how what they have read could apply to them, their department, and Ebsco.  They have these discussions at their morning department meetings.

 We are leading off with the sales department reading “The Simple Truths of Service” by Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz.  I was fortune to hear Ken Blanchard personally present this at a Walgreens meeting and was very moved.  Our sales department are reading the book and determining how they can apply it at Ebsco.

Our Quality Assurance department is reading “The Power of Teamwork” by Scott Beare and Michael McMillan.  I had the opportunity to hear Michael McMillan speak as I mentioned in a previous Blog.  I ordered several of his books with intentions of utilizing them for training.  Team members were excited when they received their personal copies of the book and I look forward to what messages they will find when reading them.

Our production supervisors all received a copy of “Fish” this week. Fish is based on the famous Pikes Fish Market in Seattle.  I have read the book several times and always get something new from it.  I am going to act as lead in this group.  My challenge as mentioned in a previous Blog is to listen and not try to hijack the discussion.  If I try to lead the conversation we will only discussion what I have already taken from the book.  If I sit back and listen I will be able to learn from all of their insights as well. 

These three books are a great starting point for the Ebsco Book Club.  As most companies focus this type of training on management, Ebsco is again focusing on the people who actually do the work.  With their energy, I am excited to see what these books un-lock.

On a personal note I am having the first of two knee replacements this week.  Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of a year-long battle I have faced.  I think I will still be Blogging every week but if I miss a week here and there I hope you will be understanding.  Until then, keep reading.

We hope you will enjoy a more seamless, distraction-free database searching experience from now on.  Please alert the Library of any problems you may experience from this point forward…  Hopefully it will be smooth sailing from here on in!

Profiles are summaries or overviews of a company and its history and activities, case studies or cases are slightly different in that they focus on a particular activity of the company or discuss the company in terms of a certain methodology.

Case Studies

Source One : Inside text books

You will find cases inside many business textbooks that students will find on their core reading lists. Here’s an example from a core undergraduate textbook “Strategic Management” by Henk Volberda. Use LibrarySearch to find books like this.

Source Two: as part of journal articles

Case studies on various topics can be found in journal articles. Search a business literature database such as ABI Inform or Ebsco Business Source Premier with your topic and the words “case study” after it.

An example is given in the image below:

Company profiles

Company profiles give you a largely text-based, descriptive profile of a company and it’s history and activities.

Ebsco Business Source Premier has a searchable Company Profiles section which holds information such as history, SWOT analysis, competitors, summary financials.

- Starting in October, libraries will pay an average of 220 percent more for Hachette’s ebooks.

- Amazon Publishing shares some sales numbers in email to agents.

- EBSCO releases 2013 Serials Price Projection report.

- Kobo partners with Livraria Cultura to sell e-readers in Brazil.

- The serious business of Kindle Serials.

- Innovative services at public libraries highlighted in new ALA issues brief.

- Australian librarian to visit Canada to see how Canadian libraries engage the community.

- More cloudy days ahead when it comes to the Cloud.

- Thanks to Annette for mentioning this opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun about the important of libraries to community.

- Netflix exec: Canada’s broadband caps “almost a human rights violation”.

Just a note that EBSCO will be down for maintenance tonight from 11 PM until 3 AM. If you’re having problems accessing any of the titles listed below or any other EBSCO title after that time frame, please contact us and let us know what titles you’re having problems with so that we can investigate.

EBSCO will be performing scheduled maintenance from 21 September 2012 at 11:00 PM to 22 September at 3:00 AM Eastern Time (22 September, 03:00 – 07:00 GMT) on our e-journal full-text access servers.

Direct access to articles from EBSCO’s linking services will be unavailable for the following list of publishers:

• National League for Nursing
• American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP)
• Intellect Ltd
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press (MIT Press)
• College of Business and Public Affairs
• e-Med
• IUPAC
• NRC Research Press

Only articles from these eight publishers accessed via A-to-Z TOC Browse, EJS, or SmartLinks+ will be affected. These publishers account for only 80 of our more than 15,000 journals handled by our linking services, so the overall impact to your users should be minimal. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

joncandy – CC

Entering the Depths of the Search Maze

I have ventured further into the information search maze by searching the EBSCO Host database. I was continuing to look for articles on inquiry learning in a secondary school setting in the area of science. My initial search string was: “inquiry learning” OR “inquiry-based learning” AND science AND secondary OR “high school”. I was rewarded with 47 relevant results on my topic.

Search string for EBSCO Host database

EBSCO Results

I decided to broaden my results by adding another search term. As science inquiry can be different to other inquiry models from other disciplines, I decided to add the search term scientific inquiry. My new search string was: “inquiry learning” OR “inquiry-based learning” OR “scientific inquiry” AND science AND secondary OR “high school”. The database now returned 148 results as it now included articles that referred to or included the term scientific inquiry.

“Scientific inquiry” search in EBSCO Host

“Scientific Inquiry” Results

I did find one issue with this particular database. Even though I put the term “inquiry-based learning” in inverted commas so that only that entire phase would be searched for, the database still returned searches with the term “based” highlighted.

Unusual results in EBSCO

Google Scholar

As I now had enough background information on inquiry learning in science in a high school setting to complete my literature review, I wanted to see what lessons plans other teachers had prepared on this topic.  I was interested in how other teachers structured their lessons and what activities they used to develop the particular skills required.  I completed a search on Google Scholar using the search string: (“inquiry learning” OR “inquiry-based learning”) AND science AND (secondary OR “high school”) AND “lesson plans”.  The brackets or parentheses are used so that the search engine will process the two related terms as a unit.  This is called forcing the order of processing.  The inverted commas mean that it must search for the exact phrase.  The Boolean operator OR means the search engine will retrieve records in which at least one of the search terms is present (eg. secondary or high school).  This operator is most commonly used to search for synonymous terms or concepts.  The Boolean operator AND means the search engine will retrieve records in which both of the search terms are present (eg. inquiry learning and science).  The more terms or concepts that are combined in a search with AND logic, the fewer results will be retrieved.  Google Scholar has been linked to the QUT Library so that full text documents can be accessed.

Google Scholar Search

http://politico.ie/social-issues/8706-the-workers-strike-back-.html

Ebsco’s activities have also received attention from other sources:

LitRoost Blog

We’ll keep you posted on new developments.

Some findings:

“Budget cuts have become inevitable, forcing publishers to restrategize and libraries to make even tougher purchasing decisions. (…)

2012 journal prices increased but not at the levels seen in prior years… (…)

Pressure on Publishers:

• Publishers are also faced with the ongoing erosion of their subscription bases. Some institutions  simply cannot make ends meet when it comes to their shrinking or flat budgets…
• Publishers are also struggling to get the advertising dollars they once did to help financially support their publications. (…) Online advertising has not proved to bring in revenue equitable to that of its print counterpart
• Increasing competition, especially from new Open Access and mega journals, has added to the struggle of publishers as well

Despite implementing cost-cutting actions, many libraries continue to struggle to keep up  with increasing serials pricing. Libraries do not have the resources to continue to exist in a world of ever-increasing prices, nor can publishers survive without positive cash flow. (…)

The results indicated that in order to achieve budget goals, 78% of librarian respondents will likely cut print
journals for the next fiscal year and 86% of librarian respondents are likely to move print plus online subscriptions to online only. In 2010, approximately 27% of publishers surveyed reported a decline in their print business greater than 10%. (…)

Mobile access:

Publishers need to be responding to the surge of such technology by making their content readily available on mobile devices. (…) Mobile technology allows library customers to connect to their local library’s virtual catalog for  audiobooks and eBooks. Scientific journal content  is also becoming more available with mobile options such as SciVerse Mobile from Elsevier and EBSCOhost Mobile from EBSCO Publishing. Opportunities to have information anytime and anywhere are constantly growing. (…)

We are now in the middle of a new transition where users demand the ability to consume content anywhere and at all times. Online access is a necessity rather than a novelty or add-on. Content is still key, but it is moving mobile. Libraries, publishers, and users can all benefit, but only if pricing becomes sustainable. (…)

New models suggestion:

We live in a time where library patrons want immediate access to even more journal content, and libraries are searching for ways to meet these demands with even tighter budgets. Thus, pay-per-view (PPV) or transactional access may be the way of the future for some as an alternative to Big Deals. (…) It’s not seen as a replacement, but rather as a supplement to other existing models. Traditional subscriptions still make sense and are the most cost-effective choice for high-usage title (…)

Another emerging option is the read-only short-term loan or article rental. It has a low cost and offers 24-hour access; however, it is not available for download or print, and each use equals another payment… (…)

The End of Big Deal:

In fact, business models have changed tremendously since the arrival of consortial purchasing and the Big Deal. Now, however, libraries are looking for different ways to meet user demands for information in the digital realm. As current methods of selling content become outdated, it may be necessary for publishers to reevaluate their business models(…) …, analysts are suggesting that the end of the Big Deal is approaching.

Open Access:

Librarians and researchers are pushing for a move toward Open Access (OA) because of ever-increasing prices, and it is has become a practical channel for distributing scholarly information. But publishers believe their current business models are a must to maintain the quality of their products, and they have concerns about how to develop a sustainable business model to support OA. (…)

Solution: improve the content

With Big Deals and smaller publishers struggling  to compete, the focus should be on content. (…) Researchers read articles, not journals. Every article needs to be significant and contribute to driving usage of your journal.

Read the full report at:

Tillery, Kodi. 2012 study of subscription prices for scholarly society journals: society journals pricing trends and industry overview. White paper, Allen Press, 2012. 19 p. Available for free from: http://allenpress.com/system/files/pdfs/library/2012_AP_JPS.pdf