Author: andrew

Meet the newest Friends of the Library Board Member – Stephanie Dickey

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Hi, I’m Stephanie Dickey, and I’m delighted to be the newest board member for the Friends of the Libraries!

I was born and reared in small-town Ohio, but I grew up in hundreds of different worlds, maybe thousands, thanks to the power of books.  After school, I used to run to our tiny public library behind the fire station and wait until the magic porch light above the door flipped on. That was my signal to enter for dazzling escapades, mine for the reading. My co-conspiring librarian could always count on me to be the first adventurer of the afternoon. From Go Dog Go to Homer’s Odyssey, I explored my way through those two rooms of books with a passion and delight.

Books have always held transformative power for me. In fact, one entire summer I WAS Nancy Drew, searching for secret passages in my house and hiding clues behind loose limestone blocks in the foundation.  Alas, during a hot murder investigation, Nancy chanced upon a huge, moldy rattrap (sans rat—unless you consider my brother the rat for putting it there) under the cellar stairs. Through the alchemy of books, Nancy effortlessly banished the trap trauma by transporting herself from the rats in River Heights to the realm of The Once and Future King until Labor Day, becoming all the characters in succession. Except Guinevere. Too tame for the intrepid girl detective.

When my family moved to the country during middle school, the public library was not nearly as accessible.  Not to be deterred, however, Dad (not the successful lawyer Carson Drew but, even better, a hungry reader like me) piled all seven of us into the Ford station wagon every Tuesday night for our weekly trip to the larger and even more exotic public library of our new hometown. Sometimes my book haul took up more room in the car than I did.  If my cache of good reads ran out before the week was up, I lit out for town on my trusty Schwinn (lovingly dubbed, High Speed Wobble) for the 4-mile round trip. Who wouldn’t have done that? Of course, I was limited to the number of books I could carry on those trips, but I got pretty adept at negotiating the books, the bike, and the blacktop.

That was a long time ago, and I’m still a voracious reader. These days I consume a lot of media online, but my favorite format will forever remain real books. Real physical weight in my hands. Real texture of pages. Real smell of printer’s ink. Real. I don’t have quite as much time to read for pure pleasure any more, but I still steal time like an accomplished thief just to read for fun.  Even as I write, my house is a literal dust bowl, my kitchen floor is screaming out to be mopped, and my husband and I will likely have Cheerios for dinner, but I just have to finish the The Personal History of Rachel DuPree before bedtime.

I am so privileged to serve on the FOL board!  Just remember, if I’m ever late to a board meeting, send a search party to find me in the stacks. I’m not lost, just beguiled by the siren call of books. Forever and ever. Amen.

NaNoWriMo at the Library

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The month of November houses many events for activities and food, but one such event has increased in popularity over the past few decades, the National Novel Writing Month. The point of the event is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. There are rules on how, (see https://nanowrimo.org/how-it-works) but they are optional in most cases. Why 50,000? It’s a round number that is somewhere between Novella and Novel size. How does one write this much in 30 days? By tackling it 1,667 words each day. The trick is to focus on the writing and turn off the editor. There’s a whole other month set aside for the editing – it’s called February or NaNoEdMo.

How long has this been going on? In 1999, it was organized amongst a small group on the west coast. It’s now a worldwide event, run by a non-profit group that sets up sponsorship for young writers and educators. According to their website, 402,142 people participated last year.

The steps are easy. One just simply visits https://nanowrimo.org/ to sign up. Then, on November 1st sometime after 12:01am, the writer starts writing either by hand or by keyboard. At some point, before the end and often periodically all through the month, the writer updates the word count on the website’s tracker, or not. Finally, at some time before November 30th at midnight, the writer stops writing and uploads their document to the word count authenticator (there are ways to estimate with handwritten books – though I have never walked this route so I’m not certain how, but the information is on the site).

Why should someone do this? It’s an outlet of creativity. It’s a challenge. It’s fun sometimes. It gives one a chance to try something new. And… maybe the story is published like one of these hundred plus writers: https://nanowrimo.org/published-wrimos

What does this have to do with Wright State University? The Dunbar Library is going to host a Write-In on November 25th from 2-5 in the Library Group Study Room. Though some of the NaNoWriMoers tend to write at home or in dark corners of coffee shops, some gather at Write-Ins, where participants can write on their own, get inspiration from each other, challenge each other, and share in the community of other writers. Mark your calendar and join us. 50,000 words isn’t that much; this blog post is already just shy of 400 words.

Open Access Week 2018

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Open Access Week is an annual worldwide event that is celebrated in the last full week in October. Open Access Week is an opportunity for the academic world and research community to highlight Open Access (O.A.) and its potential benefits. The hope of this focus on sharing of information is that it will inspire and encourage the sharing of data, research, and scholarship. October 22-26 is Open Access Week this year, and to celebrate it we wanted to talk a little bit about how CORE Scholar supports Open Access.

What is CORE Scholar?

CORE Scholar is Wright State University’s Institutional Repository (IR). An institutional repository is a website maintained by the University Libraries where we collect the scholarly output Wright State faculty, students, and staff and make it freely and openly available to the world. CORE Scholar currently provides access to a growing collection of over 30,000 records that have been accessed by 39,000 plus institutions in 229 countries. Some of the items that we collect and host are:

  •        Scholarly Articles
  •        Monographs
  •        eBooks
  •        Course Materials
  •        Online Journals
  •        Conference Proceedings
  •        Videos
  •        Audio Recordings
  •        Gray Literature

How does CORE Scholar support Open Access?

Open Access (O.A.) is the concept of making scholarship and research materials open and freely available to users/researchers. This democratizes access to important scholarship and data, allowing everyone to have the same access to information, thus allowing anyone to learn, replicate, or research information further.

CORE Scholar supports Open Access by actively searching for the scholarly output of our WSU scholars The IR provides a centralized web presence of over 30,000 records in this repository. In addition to that, we work to provide consistent metadata and organization with all items in CORE Scholar to enable anyone in the world access to Wright State’s scholarship. The metadata that we collect, edit, and create enhances discovery, access, and delivery of content.  

Open Education Resources (OERs)

This year, as part of our continuing efforts to provide access to the scholarship in CORE Scholar, we have created a new section called Open Education Resource (OER). Open Education Resources are education materials that are any open and free for users to potentially share, copy, or adapt. OER’s may include syllabi, books, curricula, and more. This new community within our IR collects a variety of materials within CORE Scholar, that we hope to grow over time.  

To learn more about Open Access and Open Access Week visit http://www.openaccessweek.org/.

 

What Happens When a Journal Title is Cancelled?

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It’s complicated.

The University Libraries’ have finished the journal cancellation process and sent the resulting cancellations to our vendors. Although cancellations are difficult, we appreciate the input that we received from faculty members as we identified titles to cancel. The Libraries cancelled about 285 titles costing over $500,000. Cancellations were spread across disciplines. A complete list of the cancelled titles can be found here.

When the library cancels an online journal subscription, we lose access to new content published after the cancellation. Most of the University Libraries’ subscriptions run on a calendar year, so our access to new content ends on December 31. However, with few exceptions, our licenses guarantee us continued access to content published during the years we had a subscription.

Example:

The Libraries subscribed to the online version of International Journal of Plant Sciences from 2007-2018. Beginning in 2019, we will still have access to content published between 2007 and 2018, but we will not have access to new content from 2019 forward.

Short Backfiles:

It is common for publishers to give libraries complementary access to short backfiles of titles to which they have current online subscriptions. In those cases, when the library cancels subscriptions, it loses access to the short backfiles as well.

Example:

Using International Journal of Plant Sciences again, the publisher gave complementary access to content back to 1998 with the library’s current subscription. After cancellation, the library will retain access to the subscribed years (2007-2018), but will lose access to the years 1998-2006.

Full-Text Content in Aggregator Databases:

Journal content is often available in aggregated databases such as Ebsco’s Academic Search Complete, although new content may be subject to an embargo. While this access is not guaranteed (publishers can stop providing their content or the library could cancel the database subscription), this access can reduce the impact of losing access to short backfiles and allow ongoing access to new content, albeit with a delay.

Example:

International Journal of Plant Sciences has full-text coverage in Academic Search Complete from the year 1993 forward with a 1-year embargo on new content.  Now, post-cancellation, the loss of the short backfile is not an issue and new content will become available with a one-year delay.

Full-Text Content in JSTOR Archives:

Unlike content in aggregator databases, JSTOR is a permanent archive of journal content. It also provides coverage for all of the titles included back to the first volume and issue.

Example:

International Journal of Plant Sciences is included in JSTOR’s Life Sciences Archive Collection. There is a four-year embargo on new content, but content under the current title and the previous titles (Botanical Bulletin and Botanical Gazette) is available back to volume 1 published in 1875 with a four-year embargo.

What’s the Bottom Line?

For International Journal of Plant Sciences, after cancellation we will continue to have access to all content with a one-year embargo on new content.

For current content of this journal and for access to content from all of the journals the Libraries have been forced to cancel, interlibrary loan services will be available. For more information on interlibrary loan, see the Libraries’ website and our earlier blog post.

Have Questions?

Our librarians are available to help you navigate journal access.  Please direct other comments and questions to Karen Wilhoit (karen.wilhoit@wright.edu; 775-3039).