News

Project captures voices of science through the ages

A new British Library project is capturing the voices, memories and experiences of hundreds of British scientists. An Oral

History of British Science, led

by National Life Stories, is the first project of its kind in Britain and will gather 200 audio-visual interviews with the British scientists who have led the world in scientific innovation. The recordings and transcripts will be made available free of charge at the British Library as a research resource.

An Oral History of British

Science will capture the culture of science in Britain since the Second World War through 200 audio interviews, each

Snapshots of science history: glaciologist Charles Swithinbank (left) and a lab technician examining a brain.

averaging 10-15 hours in length, complemented by some shorter video recordings to document key events, instruments and locations. It will include interviews with both the well-

known names of British science and lesser-heard and neglected voices such as technicians and women scientists, to ensure their memories are preserved for historians of the future.

Report helps universities present OA business case

JISC in the UK has released a report revealing how universities can work out their potential cost savings using various open-access (OA) models.

Modelling scholarly

communication options: costs and benefits for universities,

written by Alma Swan of Key Perspectives, looked at four different types of institutions, which all see different benefits from the various open-access models.

The report shows that OA repositories bring benefits regardless of university type. OA repositories with overlay services such as peer review offer benefits for most universities too.

The gold OA route (where article-processing charges are paid to publishers to make the work OA) gives a more mixed picture. The benefits to individual universities depend on the level of the article- processing charges and the size

of the institution’s research output.

There may be funding available to help with these costs. ‘We need to think about gold OA, how universities set up publication funds and what researchers can bid for as part of indirect costs in grant applications,’ said Neil Jacobs, programme manager at JISC. ‘The main point of Alma

Swan’s work was to give universities a way to make a business model for open access.’

Libraries expect e-book growth but want simplicity

Librarians expect significant growth in e-book purchases, suggests HighWire’s recent ‘eBooks Librarian Survey’. The survey of 138 librarians from 13 countries was conducted as part of HighWire’s ongoing exploration of the fast-growing scholarly e-book market.

www.researchinformation.info

The survey data was analysed by Michael Newman, Stanford University’s head biology librarian. He concluded that simplicity and ease of use seem more important than sophisticated end-user features and that users tend to discover e-books through both the

library catalogue and search engines. He also observed that users prefer PDFs, but that format preference will likely change as technology changes. In addition, DRM seems to hinder e-book use for library patrons – print ability is essential.

EBSCO buys

NetLibrary

EBSCO is buying OCLC’s NetLibrary Division. It is also buying the rights to license some vendor- owned databases currently available through the OCLC FirstSearch service. The purchase includes the NetLibrary eBook and eAudiobook platform as well as operations and infrastructure in Boulder, Colorado.

NetLibrary eBook content and eAudiobook subscriptions will continue to be available on the NetLibrary platform. EBSCO also plans to provide access to the NetLibrary eBook content on its EBSCOhost platform. NetLibrary eBooks will also continue to be discoverable through WorldCat.org. OCLC says that it has partnered with EBSCO to ensure greater access to the important e-book resources of libraries. OCLC is still protecting libraries’ investment in NetLibrary eBooks, says the organisation. All NetLibrary eBooks purchased by libraries will be placed in a dark archive – the OCLC eBook Archive – at least until March 2013. EBSCO has also purchased the rights to license certain vendor- owned databases that are currently available via FirstSearch. Existing FirstSearch subscribers will continue to receive access to these databases on the FirstSearch service until the end of their current subscriptions.

Research Information April/May 2010 5 Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36