04 november 2007
This is my last post
In English.
After a long period of hesitation, I have finally started a separate blog in English. The rationale for a separate blog in English is described in the first post at my new blog.
Since I am the least geeky biblioblogger around, I have not made the effort to transfer all English posts from this blog to the new blog and installed proper redirects. No. My previous posts in English will remain on this. Thus my brand new English blog will be starting from scratch and will need some time to grow and gain some impact.
So my dear readers, check the bearings for information in English on library 2.0 developments and library innovation in the Netherlands, reviews of databases or scientometrics go over to wowter.net and subscribe to the new feed.
After a long period of hesitation, I have finally started a separate blog in English. The rationale for a separate blog in English is described in the first post at my new blog.
Since I am the least geeky biblioblogger around, I have not made the effort to transfer all English posts from this blog to the new blog and installed proper redirects. No. My previous posts in English will remain on this. Thus my brand new English blog will be starting from scratch and will need some time to grow and gain some impact.
So my dear readers, check the bearings for information in English on library 2.0 developments and library innovation in the Netherlands, reviews of databases or scientometrics go over to wowter.net and subscribe to the new feed.
Labels: blogging, English, language thing
30 augustus 2007
John MacColl's presentation
Right at this moment I am listening to the presentation of John MacCol at Ticer. Just googling some facts he was just saying, and I found his current presentation on Slideshare. Thanks John.
Labels: English, John MacCol, Ticer
29 augustus 2007
Open Source Software and XML Workshop by Eric Lease Morgan
In advance I had thought really hard about attending this session or not. After all, it is a bit outside the scope of my daily work. The objective as I formulated it to my superiors to get permission to attend this module of the Ticer summer school, was that I would gain a little bit more insight in the things they were doing at our own IT department. Not that they are really secretive about things at all, but just that I would be able to understand their language a wee bit better.
Eric Lease Morgan actually asked some of the participants about their objectives to attend his workshop. What I just described was also what I answered on his question. Perhaps another objective was that I could use some of the stuff I learned today and apply that on my own little bibliographies, or perhaps even my websites.
The workshop was started with some OSS evangelism. While he was spreading the word, I really wondered what kind of OSS tools our guys and galls were using in our systems. I really don’t know, whereas we have a completely independent in house developed LCMS. Have to find out though.
That Eric is serious about OSS, is clear from the fact that all his material used for this workshop is freely available at http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/services/lis/ticer/07carte/publicat/oss-and-xml.zip. It includes, manuals, software and exercises. So if you are really interested you can go ahead. I think I you search a little bit around the same stuff can be found at other places as well (Lockss we call that). What you don’t get, though, when you do it yourself is Eric’s humoristic and enthusiastic way of presenting seemingly complicated matters. He is a gifted teacher.
Further on in the morning we did little exercises on writing and reading MARC records, extracting them from the Library of Congress, building a database of MARC records, indexing it and search the database. Interesting assumption on his part is that he assumed that most library catalogs were based on MARC records. That might be the case in the USA, but is not necessarily true in Europe. But this did not really matter for his exercises or the purpose of the exercises.
In the afternoon, we got around to XML. It really covered the mere basics, what I found interesting were some of the exercises where we actually transformed and presented the same texts (files) with different xsl or css. I new these things, but so far never actually did these little things myself. It was a bit of getting you hands dirty yourself. Some exercises were command line prompted, that gave those annoying little stupid mistakes. Reminding me of my days programming in Fortran.
All in all, an interesting day. We could have gone a bit deeper into the details and I would have loved a little instruction on Perl as well. There are only a limited hours in day though.
Eric Lease Morgan actually asked some of the participants about their objectives to attend his workshop. What I just described was also what I answered on his question. Perhaps another objective was that I could use some of the stuff I learned today and apply that on my own little bibliographies, or perhaps even my websites.
The workshop was started with some OSS evangelism. While he was spreading the word, I really wondered what kind of OSS tools our guys and galls were using in our systems. I really don’t know, whereas we have a completely independent in house developed LCMS. Have to find out though.
That Eric is serious about OSS, is clear from the fact that all his material used for this workshop is freely available at http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/services/lis/ticer/07carte/publicat/oss-and-xml.zip. It includes, manuals, software and exercises. So if you are really interested you can go ahead. I think I you search a little bit around the same stuff can be found at other places as well (Lockss we call that). What you don’t get, though, when you do it yourself is Eric’s humoristic and enthusiastic way of presenting seemingly complicated matters. He is a gifted teacher.
Further on in the morning we did little exercises on writing and reading MARC records, extracting them from the Library of Congress, building a database of MARC records, indexing it and search the database. Interesting assumption on his part is that he assumed that most library catalogs were based on MARC records. That might be the case in the USA, but is not necessarily true in Europe. But this did not really matter for his exercises or the purpose of the exercises.
In the afternoon, we got around to XML. It really covered the mere basics, what I found interesting were some of the exercises where we actually transformed and presented the same texts (files) with different xsl or css. I new these things, but so far never actually did these little things myself. It was a bit of getting you hands dirty yourself. Some exercises were command line prompted, that gave those annoying little stupid mistakes. Reminding me of my days programming in Fortran.
All in all, an interesting day. We could have gone a bit deeper into the details and I would have loved a little instruction on Perl as well. There are only a limited hours in day though.
Labels: English, OSS, Ticer, XML
Another teacher who understands it
I am about to post about the entertaining workshop of Eric Lease Morgan, all of his stuff is to be found freely available on the web. This evening, albeit 10 hours late, I found out that David Free has posted his presentation for tomorrow on Slideshare already. Interesting stuff. I wish I could be there as well. However I have chosen the other track.
Labels: English, Podcasting, Ticer, Vodcasting
28 augustus 2007
A well packed day at Ticer
Somehow somewhere I would have expected a kind of Library 2.0 day at the Ticer course today. But in the end it did not really materialize as such.
The first presentation was a sales pitch from OCLC. Well in the Netherlands we are always glad to receive some information from OCLC (Ohio) since we don’t receive that much information from OCLC Pica on their moves, strategies or plans. Should we therefore attend an expensive course to happily receive this sales pitch?
Robin Murray started to sell himself first, followed by outlining what OCLC actually is and does. His sales pitch was “synthesize, specialize, mobilize”. It is actually a well founded pitch, his whole story can be read in Ariadne.
To be honest he had some interesting observations and plans. But as was remarked later in the discussions, OCLC excels in plans, reports, and visions, but the actual products were lacking. Perhaps that is a little too harsh, since I really do like what they have achieved with open worldcat. But at the local or group level (considering the Dutch libraries as a group) there is a lot of misunderstanding as to how does open worldcat relate to the (expensive) service of NCC or Picarta. But I might be too stupid to see through all these things. The lecture was more of a sales pitch, some good ideas though. But the sales pitch was my lasting impression, rather than a round up of what direction the library world, is or should be moving too.
The second talk of today was a really nice summing up of the developments around the catalog since NCSU launched their Endeca powered catalog. Peter Binkley did his overview future enhancements of the library catalogue around the themes of clustering, ranking, exploiting, contributing and deploying. His presentation was very up to date. Peter’s preferred choice of new open source library systems was VUFind. Reminds me of Koha which he didn’t cover.
In the afternoon we had a really interesting presentation on the use of chatbots in German libraries. Anne Christensen covered 4 different chatbots in operation at German libraries. The idea is appealing. There are some serious costs involved, but they actually got used. It brings the fun on a library website, and that should be worth some money.
The last presentation was a tough one. A boring, albeit important subject, as identity management, and that spun out over an hour, at the end of the day. That was really testing us. And then going into some detailed technical level, it was a bit over the too much for me personally. It would be wonderful if people from our university IT service could have been present at this lecture as well. A scheme like this should be endorsed by the library and the IT department, and I am under the impression that there is a little disagreement on some points at my home university on this area. Interesting to hear about the developments in this field, but really and totally beyond my interest.
The first presentation was a sales pitch from OCLC. Well in the Netherlands we are always glad to receive some information from OCLC (Ohio) since we don’t receive that much information from OCLC Pica on their moves, strategies or plans. Should we therefore attend an expensive course to happily receive this sales pitch?
Robin Murray started to sell himself first, followed by outlining what OCLC actually is and does. His sales pitch was “synthesize, specialize, mobilize”. It is actually a well founded pitch, his whole story can be read in Ariadne.
To be honest he had some interesting observations and plans. But as was remarked later in the discussions, OCLC excels in plans, reports, and visions, but the actual products were lacking. Perhaps that is a little too harsh, since I really do like what they have achieved with open worldcat. But at the local or group level (considering the Dutch libraries as a group) there is a lot of misunderstanding as to how does open worldcat relate to the (expensive) service of NCC or Picarta. But I might be too stupid to see through all these things. The lecture was more of a sales pitch, some good ideas though. But the sales pitch was my lasting impression, rather than a round up of what direction the library world, is or should be moving too.
The second talk of today was a really nice summing up of the developments around the catalog since NCSU launched their Endeca powered catalog. Peter Binkley did his overview future enhancements of the library catalogue around the themes of clustering, ranking, exploiting, contributing and deploying. His presentation was very up to date. Peter’s preferred choice of new open source library systems was VUFind. Reminds me of Koha which he didn’t cover.
In the afternoon we had a really interesting presentation on the use of chatbots in German libraries. Anne Christensen covered 4 different chatbots in operation at German libraries. The idea is appealing. There are some serious costs involved, but they actually got used. It brings the fun on a library website, and that should be worth some money.
The last presentation was a tough one. A boring, albeit important subject, as identity management, and that spun out over an hour, at the end of the day. That was really testing us. And then going into some detailed technical level, it was a bit over the too much for me personally. It would be wonderful if people from our university IT service could have been present at this lecture as well. A scheme like this should be endorsed by the library and the IT department, and I am under the impression that there is a little disagreement on some points at my home university on this area. Interesting to hear about the developments in this field, but really and totally beyond my interest.
Labels: English, Ticer, Ticer07
27 augustus 2007
The Science Commons and the Library: Opportunities and Business Models
A provocative talk by John Wilbanks, the Executive Director of Science Commons. The interesting thing was that the first time I really noticed Willbanks work, or that of the Science Commons was in the last issue of CRWatch Quarterly. On which I blogged in Dutch just the other week. My problem then, was that in that issue a lot of noise was generated on the changing face of scientific communication, but none of the articles listed there actually mentioned libraries, or anybody from the library sketched their perspective on the changing face of the scientific discourse.
Today’s talk was different though. John Wilbanks pleaded strongly for an major library role in the changing face of scientific communication. That is encouraging. However, as to the exact role that libraries should take, there isn’t a single blue print yet. The Science Commons have some interesting examples of text mining initiatives on medically oriented databases, Bibliographic databases in combination with protein databases en genetic databases. I think it is an illustrative example of technologies and expertise most academic libraries have not easily, or readily available.
I think I can foresee technologies like this in the mid term future, but most libraries are not ready for the roles outlined by Wilbanks.
Should we just sit and wait for the blue prints for these future applications to arrive. No of course not. Wilbanks is also an OA advocate and presses the librarians to go out into the faculties and educate the researchers about Open Access and Copyright issues. Because at this moment copyright laws are hampering the kind of big science that e-science really stands for. In addition to his recommended reading I would like to add his paper in CRWatch Quarterly.
Willbanks, J. (2007). Cyberinfrastructure for Knowledge Sharing CTWatch Quarterly 3(3): 58-66. http://www.ctwatch.org/quarterly/articles/2007/08/cyberinfrastructure-for-knowledge-sharing/
Today’s talk was different though. John Wilbanks pleaded strongly for an major library role in the changing face of scientific communication. That is encouraging. However, as to the exact role that libraries should take, there isn’t a single blue print yet. The Science Commons have some interesting examples of text mining initiatives on medically oriented databases, Bibliographic databases in combination with protein databases en genetic databases. I think it is an illustrative example of technologies and expertise most academic libraries have not easily, or readily available.
I think I can foresee technologies like this in the mid term future, but most libraries are not ready for the roles outlined by Wilbanks.
Should we just sit and wait for the blue prints for these future applications to arrive. No of course not. Wilbanks is also an OA advocate and presses the librarians to go out into the faculties and educate the researchers about Open Access and Copyright issues. Because at this moment copyright laws are hampering the kind of big science that e-science really stands for. In addition to his recommended reading I would like to add his paper in CRWatch Quarterly.
Willbanks, J. (2007). Cyberinfrastructure for Knowledge Sharing CTWatch Quarterly 3(3): 58-66. http://www.ctwatch.org/quarterly/articles/2007/08/cyberinfrastructure-for-knowledge-sharing/
Labels: English, Open Access, ScienceCommons, Ticer, Ticer07
Ticer, first impressions
Today was the first day of the Ticer course 'Digital libraries a la Carte'. The 2007 version of the course, that is. A course, or a summer school? Or perhaps just another conference. Whatever wording you use to describe the course. It is well done. A lecture of an hour. Half an hour interesting discussions or Q&A followed by half an hour coffee break where you can mingle with the people. You don't fit many sessions in a day this way, but the sessions there are get the time and attention they deserve. So there were only 4 presentations today. Three really good presentations and discussions, and one definitely a lot less. But overall a very good day at Tilburg. Worth rising early, and commuting down.
Tomorrow lots more.
A tip to fellow bloggers: Use the Ticer or Ticer07 tag on your posts. I am collecting them on del.icio.us so everybody can have their read. Admitting at once there are a large number of dutch posts. Ecobibl has been most active up untill now (In Dutch).
Tomorrow lots more.
A tip to fellow bloggers: Use the Ticer or Ticer07 tag on your posts. I am collecting them on del.icio.us so everybody can have their read. Admitting at once there are a large number of dutch posts. Ecobibl has been most active up untill now (In Dutch).
Labels: English, Ticer, Ticer07
02 mei 2007
Verbazingwekkende webstatistieken
Het is weer even geleden dat ik wat heb laten zien van mijn webstatistieken. Over januari was ik nog Himmelhoch jauchzend over mijn webstatistieken. Over februari werd dat wat minder. Maart heb ik vervolgens nooit laten zien (met redenen), en nu dus maar eens de eerste vier maanden bij de kop pakken. Wanneer je in de Marcom top 100 staat lijk je je aan je stand verplicht te zijn.
Er is nogal wat gebeurd de laatste maanden met dit blog. Deze cijfers zijn bijna verplichtte kost voor alle SEM’s en SEO’s, stel dat het een van je betalende klanten overkomt? In februari begonnen de bezoekersaantallen terug te lopen. Wat? Het halveerde. Neen, een derde van de tot ddan toe gangbare aantallen! Het verval begon precies op 8 februari. Maart werd nog slechter. Pas na de live-blog actie tijdens de CWIS dagen trad het herstel op. Wat mij het meest verbaasd is het gedrag van Google. Normaal een betrouwbare aanjager van bezoek, maar in de periode van 8/2 tot 18/3 slechts een derde van de normale aantallen bezoekers. Op de een of andere manier lijkt de afname in Google afkomstige bezoekers gecorreleerd te zijn aan de andere bezoekers, of aan het aantal geschreven posts. Echt duidelijk krijg ik dat niet. Ik weet dat je je nooit afhankelijk moet maken van een enkel kanaal voor bezoekers, daarom houd ik ook van mijn RSS lezers (thans de 700 gepasseerd!) de bezoekers die er via de tags komen, en vooral via de vele verwijzingen via andere blogs.
Toch blijf ik me verbazen over die dip in februari-maart. Het herstel in bezoekersaantallen lijkt echter onderweg.
Er is nogal wat gebeurd de laatste maanden met dit blog. Deze cijfers zijn bijna verplichtte kost voor alle SEM’s en SEO’s, stel dat het een van je betalende klanten overkomt? In februari begonnen de bezoekersaantallen terug te lopen. Wat? Het halveerde. Neen, een derde van de tot ddan toe gangbare aantallen! Het verval begon precies op 8 februari. Maart werd nog slechter. Pas na de live-blog actie tijdens de CWIS dagen trad het herstel op. Wat mij het meest verbaasd is het gedrag van Google. Normaal een betrouwbare aanjager van bezoek, maar in de periode van 8/2 tot 18/3 slechts een derde van de normale aantallen bezoekers. Op de een of andere manier lijkt de afname in Google afkomstige bezoekers gecorreleerd te zijn aan de andere bezoekers, of aan het aantal geschreven posts. Echt duidelijk krijg ik dat niet. Ik weet dat je je nooit afhankelijk moet maken van een enkel kanaal voor bezoekers, daarom houd ik ook van mijn RSS lezers (thans de 700 gepasseerd!) de bezoekers die er via de tags komen, en vooral via de vele verwijzingen via andere blogs.
Toch blijf ik me verbazen over die dip in februari-maart. Het herstel in bezoekersaantallen lijkt echter onderweg.
Labels: English, Usage statistics
01 mei 2007
Google spam
Most of the time Gmail does a fair job on recognizing what's spam and what's not. However, today it seems a bit harsh on its own brethren.
LOL
26 april 2007
Balanced Libraries, the book has arrived
A while back we ordered Walt Crawford his latest book, "Balanced libraries : thoughts on continuity and change". We don't order these books ourselves directly at Lulu. No. We have our book supplier (from Germany actually) and that always takes a wee bit longer with the more exotic imprints. It works however. It is our second book from Lulu which we succesfully ordered.
According to de National catalogue (NCC) we are the second library in the Netherlands which added this book to their collection. The other one being Groningen, albeit it doesn't show up in their own catalog yet.
Our catalog record for the book can be found here. Via SFX the catalog record links through to discussion pages at Walt at Random and the linked list of referenced blogposts.
Luckily we have a short holiday next week. You may guess who is borrowing this book currently.
According to de National catalogue (NCC) we are the second library in the Netherlands which added this book to their collection. The other one being Groningen, albeit it doesn't show up in their own catalog yet.
Our catalog record for the book can be found here. Via SFX the catalog record links through to discussion pages at Walt at Random and the linked list of referenced blogposts.
Luckily we have a short holiday next week. You may guess who is borrowing this book currently.
19 april 2007
Food for thought
18 april 2007
CIL2007 from a distance
I wish I could have attended CIL2007. Alas not this year. Of course I do follow our Dutch correspondents Moqub en Weblogzonderhaast closely, but the most interesting development for those sitting at home was presented by David Rothman. He makes use of LibWorm, and all library blogs covered by LibWorm. A simple search query on CIL and its variants, generates a RSS feed which you can upload to your RSS reader. A really good suggestion to keep in mind when you're live blogging from other events. Just make sure that all blogs are known to Libworm. This nifty use of LibWorm makes a really good addition to the posts you van track on Technorati, Ask, Delicious, Clusty, Flickr or YouTube.
Labels: CIL07, CIL2007, English
16 april 2007
What is the value of a Web 1.0 company?
Only 3.1 billion!
In the defining Web 2.0 post by Tim O'Reilly "What is Web 2.0" the difference between DoubleClick and Google AdSense is listed as the first and perhaps most exemplary Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 undertakings.
Since Google acquired DoubleClick last Friday, we only should realize that there is still a lot of value in Web 1.0
In the defining Web 2.0 post by Tim O'Reilly "What is Web 2.0" the difference between DoubleClick and Google AdSense is listed as the first and perhaps most exemplary Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 undertakings.
Since Google acquired DoubleClick last Friday, we only should realize that there is still a lot of value in Web 1.0
Labels: English, Web 1.0, Web 2.0
28 maart 2007
ISI Web of Knowledge consortium day in the Netherlands
Thomson Scientific paid a long overdue to visit to their Dutch library customers today. In quite a posh hotel in Utrecht they had organized a whole day meeting in cooperation with the consortium of Dutch University Libraries (UKB). A whole day! Was that really needed? Well for somebody who uses WoS on a nearly daily basis, it was a little bit over the top. However for some attendees from some colleges of higher education it was quite a good grounder in to the basics of WoS.
Along the way we picked up some interesting bits and pieces as well. Such as the fact that the coverage of journals by all three ISI databases has increased from 8700 scholarly journals to 9200 journals. Despite the extensive explanation of journal selection by editorial committees it was admitted that the number of French and Spanish language journals increased under pressure from library consortia in those geographical areas. Let's assume that they included only the top journals in those languages.
The unique author identification aids which have been available since the end of last year has now finally moved beyond the authors listed in ISIhighlycited only. Apparently this is now available for some 180,000 unique authors that have collected at least more than 1000 citations each. For the science commons we have to wait a little longer.
We also heard that the term "correcting for self citations" in the fairly recent (and impressive) citation reports is in fact a little misleading. Since it only corrects for the citations from the journals in the original search results. Should have worked that out for myself before, but it reminds me of the discussions we had with Elsevier on Scopus in Utrecht last year.
It was a pity that the basic grounder on general searches took so long, that we hardly covered cited references searches. It passed the screen a few times though. Interesting to not that the marketers from ISI still talked about the citation look up results, and then always wanted to loop up the full search of citing references. I mentioned to them that many researchers are actually only interested in the citation lookup results and want to have a simple and direct export function from those results into, for instance Excel. I was under the impression that my arguments didn't make a big impression really. So we will continue for some time with our users complaining about the difficulty of downloading the cited reference search look-up results in to some other software (excel preferably).
Another nice one, well hidden in the depths of WoS, is the possibility of RSS feeds in addition to the e-mail alerts. With the latter I was familiar with. But at a certain point my vanity searches expired and I didn’t bother to extend anymore. The nice thing about the RSS alerts is that they don't expire. You need to register with ISI though, I really wonder how many users have profiles on ISI. ISI couldn't tell. I wonder if that is included in the usage reports. Something to check at a later date.
In the afternoon there was some more attention for EndNoteWeb. What really amazed me is that there was no EndNoteX account required. Which somehow was the impression that I had from all their advertisements. My neighbour was under that impression as well, so I wasn't the only one. But apparently we can make an EndNote Web account because the university has an WoS license. Interesting to hear from the audience all kind of little problems that I experienced myself as well. Toolbar configuration problems, login in to some external databases (which was later confirmed as an existing bug). Well, personally I can't get really serious about EndNote Web, but perhaps useful for beginning users. I will grill it more thoroughly in the future though.
The best was saved for the end. We got a look at some mock-ups for the major overhaul of Web of Knowledge that is planned for July this year. The colours are army green and soft yellow. The main pages focus on cross-search, and simplified boxes on the first screens. The refine search options will move from the top to the left, and some refine options are shown more clearly (more like Scopus?) but still offer more options to refine than Scopus does at this moment. The busy menu that appears on the right hand side of the screen is either much quieter or disappears. Can't remember exactly anymore. Cited reference searches are still similar to what they are at the moment. They are not going to improve their indexing, they are not going to correct citations when the mistakes are obvious. In a few years time you have to remember that author names were once only 15 characters long, then 18, than included diacriticals and spaces, and at some point in the future will include first names on some occasions as well. I really wonder if you change indexing policies, you shouldn’t try to correct as much as possible the repercussions of this change for your historical data as well.
And in the end they will still carry the brand ISI, and the databases SCI, SSCI and A&H but that is for historical reasons only.
Update Ecobibl was er ook en heeft een verslag geplaatst.
Along the way we picked up some interesting bits and pieces as well. Such as the fact that the coverage of journals by all three ISI databases has increased from 8700 scholarly journals to 9200 journals. Despite the extensive explanation of journal selection by editorial committees it was admitted that the number of French and Spanish language journals increased under pressure from library consortia in those geographical areas. Let's assume that they included only the top journals in those languages.
The unique author identification aids which have been available since the end of last year has now finally moved beyond the authors listed in ISIhighlycited only. Apparently this is now available for some 180,000 unique authors that have collected at least more than 1000 citations each. For the science commons we have to wait a little longer.
We also heard that the term "correcting for self citations" in the fairly recent (and impressive) citation reports is in fact a little misleading. Since it only corrects for the citations from the journals in the original search results. Should have worked that out for myself before, but it reminds me of the discussions we had with Elsevier on Scopus in Utrecht last year.
It was a pity that the basic grounder on general searches took so long, that we hardly covered cited references searches. It passed the screen a few times though. Interesting to not that the marketers from ISI still talked about the citation look up results, and then always wanted to loop up the full search of citing references. I mentioned to them that many researchers are actually only interested in the citation lookup results and want to have a simple and direct export function from those results into, for instance Excel. I was under the impression that my arguments didn't make a big impression really. So we will continue for some time with our users complaining about the difficulty of downloading the cited reference search look-up results in to some other software (excel preferably).
Another nice one, well hidden in the depths of WoS, is the possibility of RSS feeds in addition to the e-mail alerts. With the latter I was familiar with. But at a certain point my vanity searches expired and I didn’t bother to extend anymore. The nice thing about the RSS alerts is that they don't expire. You need to register with ISI though, I really wonder how many users have profiles on ISI. ISI couldn't tell. I wonder if that is included in the usage reports. Something to check at a later date.
In the afternoon there was some more attention for EndNoteWeb. What really amazed me is that there was no EndNoteX account required. Which somehow was the impression that I had from all their advertisements. My neighbour was under that impression as well, so I wasn't the only one. But apparently we can make an EndNote Web account because the university has an WoS license. Interesting to hear from the audience all kind of little problems that I experienced myself as well. Toolbar configuration problems, login in to some external databases (which was later confirmed as an existing bug). Well, personally I can't get really serious about EndNote Web, but perhaps useful for beginning users. I will grill it more thoroughly in the future though.
The best was saved for the end. We got a look at some mock-ups for the major overhaul of Web of Knowledge that is planned for July this year. The colours are army green and soft yellow. The main pages focus on cross-search, and simplified boxes on the first screens. The refine search options will move from the top to the left, and some refine options are shown more clearly (more like Scopus?) but still offer more options to refine than Scopus does at this moment. The busy menu that appears on the right hand side of the screen is either much quieter or disappears. Can't remember exactly anymore. Cited reference searches are still similar to what they are at the moment. They are not going to improve their indexing, they are not going to correct citations when the mistakes are obvious. In a few years time you have to remember that author names were once only 15 characters long, then 18, than included diacriticals and spaces, and at some point in the future will include first names on some occasions as well. I really wonder if you change indexing policies, you shouldn’t try to correct as much as possible the repercussions of this change for your historical data as well.
And in the end they will still carry the brand ISI, and the databases SCI, SSCI and A&H but that is for historical reasons only.
Update Ecobibl was er ook en heeft een verslag geplaatst.
Labels: EndNote, English, ISI, Web of Science, WoS
22 maart 2007
Google Sandbox Effect
When I started a new blog about the moving of our Library, at the request of the library, I asked for a domain on the library website. Starting a blog is allright, but some impact is to be desired. So A http://library.wur.nl/ domain would be desirable.
However installing wordpress on the library server was too much of a hassle.
Posting to a FTP site within the firewall was out of the question, so a redirect was proposed. And how useful that is. Look at the SERP for the simple query [forumgebouw verhuizing]. The first hit in Google is found at our library website whereas the real blog website is only to be found are rank 34 or so.
Just another example that the Google Sandbox is for real. So the bottomline, when you want to use a blog for promotional activities: Start early, or find other means to avoid the Google Sandbox.
Labels: blogging, English, Google Sandbox
08 maart 2007
The future of bibliographic control
Some time ago I wrote about the LOC working group on the future of bibliographic control. I was pleased that also people from outside the library world praticipated, not because it was Google, but they represent one of those companies that is redefining the information industry. It could have been Amazon, Microsoft, or.... as well.
They took my blogpost seriously, and their next meeting is tomorrow, or today -by the time you are reading it- in Mountain View, California. It is open to anybody. Just hop on the bus, and attend. If only the Concord would still fly, I could make it.
Can't get a real impression from the program, or the background paper the focus of the meeting. There is a lot to be said on those various issues.
Really interesting is the passionate plea of Karen G. Schneider on the ALATechsourceblog about her feeling on this meeting. It shouldn't be about control, bibliographic libration is a term I like much better. It is about how to navigate this sea, ocean or tsunami of information musch better. It is a very worthwile post. She give's some ideas to ponder a little further.
They took my blogpost seriously, and their next meeting is tomorrow, or today -by the time you are reading it- in Mountain View, California. It is open to anybody. Just hop on the bus, and attend. If only the Concord would still fly, I could make it.
Can't get a real impression from the program, or the background paper the focus of the meeting. There is a lot to be said on those various issues.
Really interesting is the passionate plea of Karen G. Schneider on the ALATechsourceblog about her feeling on this meeting. It shouldn't be about control, bibliographic libration is a term I like much better. It is about how to navigate this sea, ocean or tsunami of information musch better. It is a very worthwile post. She give's some ideas to ponder a little further.
Labels: Bibliographic control, Catalogs, English
07 maart 2007
Google books, some regrets
Peter Brantley has a very interesting post sharing some reflections on the Google book scanning deals that have been made with the participating libraries. From what I learned so far is that Google dealt with the libraries on a one to one basis, and they were sworn to secrecy. They all got their individual deals, not knowing each other terms.
Peter, the previous Director of Digital Library Technologies of CDL and current Director of the Digital Library Federation, shares some of his doubts about the deals that have been struck so far. And the way it has all been established.
Interesting reading.
Hattip: Lorcan Dempsey
Peter, the previous Director of Digital Library Technologies of CDL and current Director of the Digital Library Federation, shares some of his doubts about the deals that have been struck so far. And the way it has all been established.
Interesting reading.
Hattip: Lorcan Dempsey
Labels: English, Google books, Libraries, Regrets, Scanning
Flickr plz help Gerard
Some good pals are getting screwd in the process of moving from Old Skool Flickr to Yahoo! accounts. It all looks pretty desperate.
We wonder in the Netherlands if there is an efficient Yahoo! or Flickr webcare team in action. Please get in contact with Weblogzonderhaast
Update (March, 8th): It helped. Have a look at Weblogzonderhaast
We wonder in the Netherlands if there is an efficient Yahoo! or Flickr webcare team in action. Please get in contact with Weblogzonderhaast
Update (March, 8th): It helped. Have a look at Weblogzonderhaast
Labels: English, Flickr, migration, Old Skool, Yahoo
02 maart 2007
Open letter to David M. Leslie Jr. and Meredith J. Hamilton
Dear David and Meredith
I just read with interest your article on standardized citation styles in Serials Review. I can't agree more with your article. You addressed the issue from the time spend on writing and correcting reference lists in and for journal articles.
Another compelling argument however, is missed impact because of erroneous citation scanning by institutes like Thomson Scientific (ISI) when they capture references for their Web of Science. And recently Elsevier, they have to do a similar job for their Scopus database. The scanning programs do a fair job, but errors do occur. We all know by looking at the cited reference search results lists in the Web of Science. These errors are partly caused by the many different instructions to authors stipulated by the thousands scholarly journals out there. Errors in citation data is missed impact, is reduced chances of promotion or scholarship etc....
The entry of Elsevier in the arena of citation data is therefore interesting. On the one hand they have to recognize all the different reference styles because they publish electronic journals and want to link out to the full text wherever possible, secondly they want to capture citation data for their Scopus database. As a publishers of some 1800 different titles, with probably about 1800 different instructions to authors the are the most influential party to take steps on your idea on standardizing these rules.
Another interest I have in this matter, as a subject librarian we train students and staff to use EndNote. EndNote X comes with some 2,500 different journal styles, whereas we as a library subscribe to some 10,000 different titles. Chances are small that an EndNote style is already available for a specific journal. Of course you can compose your own styles. We do that quite often. But it is a frustrating experience. Instructions to authors often diverge from the actual reference list in the journal, they are often incomplete. And indeed, they don't match the modern metadata standards.
Yours sincerely
Wouter Gerritsma
PS, I will post this on my blog (http://www.wowter.nl/blog) so Elsevier can read it as well.
Reference
David M. Leslie Jr. and Meredith J. Hamilton, (2007). A Plea for a Common Citation Format in Scientific Serials, Serials Review, 33(1): 1-3.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2006.11.009 (Subscription required)
In humour: Serials review is an Elsevier imprint.
I just read with interest your article on standardized citation styles in Serials Review. I can't agree more with your article. You addressed the issue from the time spend on writing and correcting reference lists in and for journal articles.
Another compelling argument however, is missed impact because of erroneous citation scanning by institutes like Thomson Scientific (ISI) when they capture references for their Web of Science. And recently Elsevier, they have to do a similar job for their Scopus database. The scanning programs do a fair job, but errors do occur. We all know by looking at the cited reference search results lists in the Web of Science. These errors are partly caused by the many different instructions to authors stipulated by the thousands scholarly journals out there. Errors in citation data is missed impact, is reduced chances of promotion or scholarship etc....
The entry of Elsevier in the arena of citation data is therefore interesting. On the one hand they have to recognize all the different reference styles because they publish electronic journals and want to link out to the full text wherever possible, secondly they want to capture citation data for their Scopus database. As a publishers of some 1800 different titles, with probably about 1800 different instructions to authors the are the most influential party to take steps on your idea on standardizing these rules.
Another interest I have in this matter, as a subject librarian we train students and staff to use EndNote. EndNote X comes with some 2,500 different journal styles, whereas we as a library subscribe to some 10,000 different titles. Chances are small that an EndNote style is already available for a specific journal. Of course you can compose your own styles. We do that quite often. But it is a frustrating experience. Instructions to authors often diverge from the actual reference list in the journal, they are often incomplete. And indeed, they don't match the modern metadata standards.
Yours sincerely
Wouter Gerritsma
PS, I will post this on my blog (http://www.wowter.nl/blog) so Elsevier can read it as well.
Reference
David M. Leslie Jr. and Meredith J. Hamilton, (2007). A Plea for a Common Citation Format in Scientific Serials, Serials Review, 33(1): 1-3.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2006.11.009 (Subscription required)
In humour: Serials review is an Elsevier imprint.
Labels: Citation data, Elsevier, EndNote, English, journal styles, Scopus, WoS
01 maart 2007
February stats
Was january the month with the most visits and pageviews ever for this blog, February shows an enitrely different picture. Visits and pageviews dropped by 50%. It was both Google driven traffic wich dropped but also the direct and other referals.I see a link with updating frequency. I have been too absorbed with my work to get around to blogging regularly. Okay I blog mostly in the evenings, but even then work cropped up. Hopefully next week will be a better month.
Labels: English, Usage statistics
27 februari 2007
Do we need the evidence for library2.0?
The connection between Evidence Based Librarianship (EBL) and Library 2.0 is an item which has been nagging me for the last couple of days, but I had hardly time to get around blogging lately. Hopefully March will be a better month for blogging.
My point is, I see two important movements at this moment in librarianship. Library 2.0 is the one container of ideas and EBL is the other. To my knowledge I have not come across many, or any, discussions about both these issues in the same article or blogpost.
There were two occasions that prompted me to think about these two subjects and their possible relation. When I gave a presentation about library 2.0 some weeks ago, a colleague of mine jumped on the brakes. "It is all very nice, what you presented, but is it working ?" is what he asked me. "Well, we should try things out and see what happens", was my feeble response.
There is possible some evidence, scattered in blogs and wikis. But no one has systematically reviewed, the scanty evidence yet. Weblogzonderhaast presented some data for search actions from their library toolbar. Some time ago I presented some data on the personalization functionalities of our libray services. There is possibly more data to be found, but you have to look very hard. Crawford commented on some figures for uptake of IM reference which was about 1-2% (Crawford, 2006).
On the other hand I was introduced to the concept of Evidence based librarianship in a very interesting presentation by Andrew Booth during the 6th performance measurement conference in Durham in 2005. His approach made sense to me. As a researcher, I liked the outlined approach. As an avid reader, I practiced already to look for applications that worked for others, and see if we can apply this in our practice.
It was a post on a Dutch library discussion list, which asked for examples from the Dutch library world that were based on EBL, that actually triggered me to think about the question for more data supporting to invest in library 2.0 technologies more heavily. The discussion list did not give any clues, so I have to look a bit harder for the data myself.
The trade off, is of course, when we all wait for the data first to appear, nobody will start with innovations. So we need our follow our instincts, gut feeling and nerve to charge ahead, but not without gathering data to support our decisions. Even if it was only with hindsight that we can draw some conclusions.
Booth, A. (2005). Counting what counts: the link between Performance Measurement and Evidence Based Information Practice. 6th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, Durham. http://northumbria.ac.uk/static/powerpoint/Booth.ppt
Crawford, W. (2006). Finding a balance: Libraries and Librarians. Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 6(9): 2-19. http://citesandinsights.info/civ6i9.pdf
My point is, I see two important movements at this moment in librarianship. Library 2.0 is the one container of ideas and EBL is the other. To my knowledge I have not come across many, or any, discussions about both these issues in the same article or blogpost.
There were two occasions that prompted me to think about these two subjects and their possible relation. When I gave a presentation about library 2.0 some weeks ago, a colleague of mine jumped on the brakes. "It is all very nice, what you presented, but is it working ?" is what he asked me. "Well, we should try things out and see what happens", was my feeble response.
There is possible some evidence, scattered in blogs and wikis. But no one has systematically reviewed, the scanty evidence yet. Weblogzonderhaast presented some data for search actions from their library toolbar. Some time ago I presented some data on the personalization functionalities of our libray services. There is possibly more data to be found, but you have to look very hard. Crawford commented on some figures for uptake of IM reference which was about 1-2% (Crawford, 2006).
On the other hand I was introduced to the concept of Evidence based librarianship in a very interesting presentation by Andrew Booth during the 6th performance measurement conference in Durham in 2005. His approach made sense to me. As a researcher, I liked the outlined approach. As an avid reader, I practiced already to look for applications that worked for others, and see if we can apply this in our practice.
It was a post on a Dutch library discussion list, which asked for examples from the Dutch library world that were based on EBL, that actually triggered me to think about the question for more data supporting to invest in library 2.0 technologies more heavily. The discussion list did not give any clues, so I have to look a bit harder for the data myself.
The trade off, is of course, when we all wait for the data first to appear, nobody will start with innovations. So we need our follow our instincts, gut feeling and nerve to charge ahead, but not without gathering data to support our decisions. Even if it was only with hindsight that we can draw some conclusions.
Booth, A. (2005). Counting what counts: the link between Performance Measurement and Evidence Based Information Practice. 6th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, Durham. http://northumbria.ac.uk/static/powerpoint/Booth.ppt
Crawford, W. (2006). Finding a balance: Libraries and Librarians. Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 6(9): 2-19. http://citesandinsights.info/civ6i9.pdf
Labels: Bibliotheek 2.0, EBL, English, Evidence Based Librarianship, Library 2.0
24 februari 2007
Important OA proponent becomes minister of education in the Netherlands
With the installment of the new government in the Netherlands, an important OA proponent, Ronald Plasterk, has become minister of Education. Prof. Dr. R. H. A. Plasterk was director of the Hubrecht Laboratory in Utrecht (An English version of his CV can be foudn in the Google Cache, our ministers normally don't need a CV in another language than Dutch). Amongst others he is still listed at this moment as member of the editorial board of PLoS Biology. Plasterk is probably the best known advocate of OA publishing in the netherlands. Vouching his opinion on OA in his collums in the Dutch press, as well as figuring in many interviews on OA in the same press. He was not only advocating OA, he was also actively participating in the OA movement. As an editor of the first PLoS journal. Or through making his papers published elsewhere available on his website (Partly to be found in the Google cache, on being appointed as a minister some odd things happen to your webpages).
Policy makers at Dutch Universities are thrilled with his appointment. Since he was quite a popular columnist a lot of his opinions are well known. So far, his ideas on OA, and his active participation, and his open rebellion against copyrights of the big publishers, have not been highlighted yet. It is about time to do a review about this subject. It will be really interesting to see how he deals with the OA issue on the political agenda.
Policy makers at Dutch Universities are thrilled with his appointment. Since he was quite a popular columnist a lot of his opinions are well known. So far, his ideas on OA, and his active participation, and his open rebellion against copyrights of the big publishers, have not been highlighted yet. It is about time to do a review about this subject. It will be really interesting to see how he deals with the OA issue on the political agenda.
Labels: English, OA, Open Access, Science Policy, The Netherlands
Sometimes lists can drive you crazy
Currently I am working on a citation analysis job. Reviewing quite a number of researchers and an even larger list of publications. Our trick is that we make a comparison of the citation data extracted from Web of Science with the Baselines found in the Essential Indicators (ESI). Both are databases from Thomson Scientific. Not too much work you might think. Two databases, one is derived from the other, made by the same company.
Well, in theory no sweat.
When you try to work out one or two articles you can run already into some little annoyances, when you one to look-up thousands of journals ISI can drive you mad.
Once you have established that researcher x has published an article in the American Heart Journal and found y citations. The next step is that you look up this journal in ESI. You have to establish in which field the journal is categorized according to ESI. In ESI you have to look this up using the journal abbreviations, quite simple the abbreviation of this journal is AMER Heart J. Slightly odd since this journal is abbreviated in the Journal Citation Report as the AM Heart J. But a another article in the American Journal of Critical Care should be abbreviated as AMER j crit care in ESI. Similar happens with Advances in Advances in Atmospheric Science and Advances in Ecological research. In the first instance you should abbreviate Advances as Adv and in the second instance as Advan. These are mere two examples, doing this manually you run in hundreds of examples.
Ok, be smart don't do it manually. Let's automate. At In-Cites there is a list with all journal categories available. Really nice of Thomson to list a really handy help tool outside the product itself (Yes there is a help file with journal abbreviations available in ESI, but you can't search that list directly, you have to browse, and heck they miss the journal categories in that help file altogether)
Working with the list at In-Cites isn’t a real joy either. Have for instance a look at Abacus, that journal is listed twice at the In-Cites list. Not too much of a problem you might think. But when you want to use a database to make lookups of journal categories and baseline data a bit less labour intensive the best way is to use ISSN to couple the various tables.
Sounds simple. Use the table with all journal categories from In-Cites and match that on the full title against the Journal Masterlist of ISI where they have the ISSN listed as well. Soon you find out that the AUTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from In cites doesn't match with the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from the Masterlist because a stupid spelling error. Or the A N Z JOURNAL OF SURGERY doesn't match with the ANZ JOURNAL OF SURGERY. From the 12485 journals listed at In-cites I was only able to match 8346 journals on journal name. That leaves me some 4000 to match manually, or find out what went wrong.
What I really wonder is, how is it possible that all these little name variations, journal abbreviations differences and other mismatches are possible for a suit of products from a company that breathes databases. A company that has only data in its veins, that sweats information. A company that claims knowledge.
We all rely heavily on their products.
Well, in theory no sweat.
When you try to work out one or two articles you can run already into some little annoyances, when you one to look-up thousands of journals ISI can drive you mad.
Once you have established that researcher x has published an article in the American Heart Journal and found y citations. The next step is that you look up this journal in ESI. You have to establish in which field the journal is categorized according to ESI. In ESI you have to look this up using the journal abbreviations, quite simple the abbreviation of this journal is AMER Heart J. Slightly odd since this journal is abbreviated in the Journal Citation Report as the AM Heart J. But a another article in the American Journal of Critical Care should be abbreviated as AMER j crit care in ESI. Similar happens with Advances in Advances in Atmospheric Science and Advances in Ecological research. In the first instance you should abbreviate Advances as Adv and in the second instance as Advan. These are mere two examples, doing this manually you run in hundreds of examples.
Ok, be smart don't do it manually. Let's automate. At In-Cites there is a list with all journal categories available. Really nice of Thomson to list a really handy help tool outside the product itself (Yes there is a help file with journal abbreviations available in ESI, but you can't search that list directly, you have to browse, and heck they miss the journal categories in that help file altogether)
Working with the list at In-Cites isn’t a real joy either. Have for instance a look at Abacus, that journal is listed twice at the In-Cites list. Not too much of a problem you might think. But when you want to use a database to make lookups of journal categories and baseline data a bit less labour intensive the best way is to use ISSN to couple the various tables.
Sounds simple. Use the table with all journal categories from In-Cites and match that on the full title against the Journal Masterlist of ISI where they have the ISSN listed as well. Soon you find out that the AUTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from In cites doesn't match with the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF GRAPE AND WINE RESEARCH from the Masterlist because a stupid spelling error. Or the A N Z JOURNAL OF SURGERY doesn't match with the ANZ JOURNAL OF SURGERY. From the 12485 journals listed at In-cites I was only able to match 8346 journals on journal name. That leaves me some 4000 to match manually, or find out what went wrong.
What I really wonder is, how is it possible that all these little name variations, journal abbreviations differences and other mismatches are possible for a suit of products from a company that breathes databases. A company that has only data in its veins, that sweats information. A company that claims knowledge.
We all rely heavily on their products.
Labels: English, ESI, Essential Science Indicators, In-Cites, ISI, Thomson Scientific, Web of Science, WoS
23 februari 2007
The real top 5 RSS readers at this moment
Since Feedburner started to report the Google reader and Personal Google feed subscribers on Feedburder syndicated feeds, there have been many posts on feed statistics. Of course on this blog but also here, here or here.
The most interesting post related to this subject appeared today on the Feedburner blog "Burning Questions" itself. They give a fairly comprehensive overview of the most popular webbased feedreaders. myYahoo as measured by clickthroughs seems to be the most popular (but they only syndicate headlines). This is followed by Google, Bloglines and Netvibes. When measured by views Google Reader, Bloglines, NewsGator and Netvibes, in taht order, account for 98% of all views. Google by far and large the most popular.
The numbers reported here are a bit in contrast with a fairly recent post by Hitwise. Hitwise measure something altogether different, they measure web traffic. For webbased readers however, you'd expect some correlation. But on january 18th Bloglines was by and far the most popular webbased reader in the USA, according to Hitwise. LeeAnn Prescott writes "Google Reader has grown lately, but as of the week ending 1/13/07, it had only 1/13 of the market share of visits of Bloglines."
I can't believe Google Reader makes up this much in such a short time period. I myself was wondering about geographical influences. I notice on my feed that Netvibes has become the most popular reader. On some other Dutch blogs Netvibes is quite popular too, but not as popular as on mine. Still all substantially higher than in the USA. Might this be caused by the fact that it is a French company?
Just a question.
I have tried Netvibes for some time as well, but I think PageFlakes is actually more impressive since it allows you to share your resources more easily.
Interesting to note that Pandia just did a qualitative review of RSS readers. The sentence I liked most was their criticism on Google Reader: "I also often see the Google Labs test tube logo, which is displayed when Google Reader needs some seconds to work on a request." It really drives me mad so now and then. Where they can search billions of webpages in a fraction of seconds, and indicated my personalized results. The same Google can't resolve a few feeds (some 300) in less than seconds..... Otherwise the choice of Rojo and FeedShow seem a bit far off.
CleverClogs has also an interesting post on this subject.
Update: The RRW write-up includes Pheedo stats for comaprison
The most interesting post related to this subject appeared today on the Feedburner blog "Burning Questions" itself. They give a fairly comprehensive overview of the most popular webbased feedreaders. myYahoo as measured by clickthroughs seems to be the most popular (but they only syndicate headlines). This is followed by Google, Bloglines and Netvibes. When measured by views Google Reader, Bloglines, NewsGator and Netvibes, in taht order, account for 98% of all views. Google by far and large the most popular.
The numbers reported here are a bit in contrast with a fairly recent post by Hitwise. Hitwise measure something altogether different, they measure web traffic. For webbased readers however, you'd expect some correlation. But on january 18th Bloglines was by and far the most popular webbased reader in the USA, according to Hitwise. LeeAnn Prescott writes "Google Reader has grown lately, but as of the week ending 1/13/07, it had only 1/13 of the market share of visits of Bloglines."
I can't believe Google Reader makes up this much in such a short time period. I myself was wondering about geographical influences. I notice on my feed that Netvibes has become the most popular reader. On some other Dutch blogs Netvibes is quite popular too, but not as popular as on mine. Still all substantially higher than in the USA. Might this be caused by the fact that it is a French company?
Just a question.
I have tried Netvibes for some time as well, but I think PageFlakes is actually more impressive since it allows you to share your resources more easily.
Interesting to note that Pandia just did a qualitative review of RSS readers. The sentence I liked most was their criticism on Google Reader: "I also often see the Google Labs test tube logo, which is displayed when Google Reader needs some seconds to work on a request." It really drives me mad so now and then. Where they can search billions of webpages in a fraction of seconds, and indicated my personalized results. The same Google can't resolve a few feeds (some 300) in less than seconds..... Otherwise the choice of Rojo and FeedShow seem a bit far off.
CleverClogs has also an interesting post on this subject.
Update: The RRW write-up includes Pheedo stats for comaprison
Labels: Bloglines, English, Feedreaders, Google reader, myYahoo, Netvibes, RSS
21 februari 2007
AnswerTips look-up now enabled on this blog
AnswerTips is a really cool keyword look-up tool for any website. A few months ago I noted the experiment Marjoliein Hoekstra was having with Answers Tips on her blog Clever Clogs. I immediately liked the tool. You double click on any word, and a pop up opens the double clicked keyword on Answers.com. Try it yourself click on any word on this page. It is swell.
Marjolein blogged yesterday that the tool has become available to the general public as well. So I decided to give it a go. Answers.com is one of the better collection of instant reference works on the Web. Aggregating explanations from various dictionaries and encyclopedia's.
I doesn't work for Dutch words though.
Marjolein blogged yesterday that the tool has become available to the general public as well. So I decided to give it a go. Answers.com is one of the better collection of instant reference works on the Web. Aggregating explanations from various dictionaries and encyclopedia's.
I doesn't work for Dutch words though.
Labels: Answers.com, Dictionaries, Encyclopedia's, English
20 februari 2007
Google cheat sheets update
Google cheat sheet has been updated. They are currently in version 1.06, back in October they published edition 1.05 (which can still be found here). Other Google guides or quick reference pages can be found at Google itself, Google Librarian center, or at Google Guide and again.
Hattip: Dutch cowboys
Hattip: Dutch cowboys
Labels: English
18 februari 2007
Finally, Google and Feedburner talk with each other
As an avid watcher of (my) blog statistics I always thought it was a good idea when Google cooperated with Feedburner on their statistics program. This weekend it finally became reality. my subscriber number soared through the 500, registering an absolute maximum of 530 last Friday.
I known it is all relative.
I am probably the most frequently subscribed reader, with a Bloglines account, Netvibes, Google reader and a Google personal account. But studying the previous Information Professional, I know that Eric S. is using Feedburner and Bloglines to follow this blog. So there will be, and should be some inflation in these figures. My inquisitive colleagues are experimenting, testing with all kind of means to read and try RSS readers for their patrons.
But it is interesting to watch this jump in reader base anyway.
On the other hand, as a distant Internet business watcher, it is interesting to see Google approaching a small (but interesting) player in the Web statistics business. Will there be another successful takeover in the make?
Labels: English
14 februari 2007
Most important journals in entomology
ISI, Thomson Scientific, just released a top 10 of journals in entomology. Of course the IF factor of these journals are published each year about June, but this list is different. The list also includes the IF calculated over a five year and a twenty five year period.
Labels: English
The DOAJ membership program
The Directory of Open Access Journals has launched a membership program. Peter Suber strongly supports their membership program. Given the primordial stage they are still in, our library is going to support this request anyway. We are not yet on the list of member libraries, but sooner or later we will be. At least for this year, perhaps the next. Personally I am a bit weary of this initiative.
Consider for a moment seriously what the essence of DOAJ entails. It is a directory of open access journals. None of these journals is hosted at DOAJ. Not at all. In its essence it is a collection of, authoritative, high quality, links to peer reviewed, scholarly open access journals. A collection of some 2500+ links. And oh yes, they have build a search engine for some of the contents of these journals. Yes only partly. Around their website there is some information on OA and the OA movement, but that is about it.
What would it cost to maintain this all?
There are other initiatives in this arena as well. Perhaps not as well known but they are around. I have pointed out some of these before already. The most interesting I find Livre, Open J-gate, and Regensburg. These for the directories. On top of that you have many search engines that spider these collections. Scirus is probably the best of the rest (that is after Google, which does it very badly) And Google Scholar, we don't really know.
However, as a library we will support the DOAJ membership initiative.
What will we get in return? DOAJ Membership Benefits
- Acknowledgement as a DOAJ Member on the DOAJ Membership Pages, including link to your/your institutions/your company's homepage.
- Access to the list of recently added titles
- Subscription to e-mail list for DOAJ members
- Access to list of removed titles
- The right to use the DOAJ membership in marketing activities.
A backlink from DOAJ is nice since they have a substantial pagerank (8/10). Yet another mail list, is not what I am waiting for. Lists of newly added or removed titles sounds interesting, but in essence we are relying on the SFX knowledgebase. It is not only relying, we subscribe to it, and expect Ex Libris to maintain this knowledgebase properly (which they have done very well to date) -besides are they a member already, and what would their membership cost?-. The use of DOAJ in marketing activities is not really what we are waiting for.
What do we really want?
Give us some feedback on usage statistics. Please!
Most of the listed journals at DOAJ don't have the capacity to provide all various users or user groups with feedback on their personal or group usage. Libraries are more and more confronted with figures and data to back up their decisions and expenditures. We need to justify what we do each and every day. If DOAJ could provide us with usage reports for our institute we would be much more interested in their membership program. As far I understand they are not in the position to provide official Counter compliant reports, since they don't host. But they should be able to provide us some meaningful data. It is not only to justify they cost benefit relations from our point of view. It should provide us with data to justify the cause of OA as well. Show our users how much they are actually using these 'free' journal articles in comparison to the established publishers.
I think a membership program is in its place when we get some more solid data in return.
Labels: English
08 februari 2007
Avoiding personalized Google results
Over at Search Engine Land, the top SEO blog established by Danny Sullivan and compatriots, there has been quite some attention for the new personal Google search results. Danny gave a thorough explanation of the ins and outs of personalized search results. He remarked that "By the way, you used to know if personalized results were happening if you saw.....". But that message has disappeared from the horizon altogether. Personalized has been introduced for every computer nowadays, there seems to be no escape anymore. It is even worse when you use the Google Personal, Google Reader or Google Bookmarks. Google is using information, or will use information, from these resources for optimization of your personal search results.
Is there really no escape from Google personal results? So you can at least compare how Google optimizes your personal search engine results page (SERP)? I think there is a small loophole. Cleaning your cookies should help, but Google is storing some of your search and click behaviour on their sites as well. The other trick is to use a specific data center. When I use Google at http://216.239.51.19/ I do get a slightly different ranking of the SERP than using my standard http://wwww.google.com/ig or a Google toolbar search for the same keyword.
What I haven't checked yet, is whether Google is storing my IP and search actions there as well, and using that "against" me. They probably do. Well there are many clusters of IP addresses of Google data centers, and it seems improbable to me that Google is exchanging IP and search information between all data centers.
Is there really no escape from Google personal results? So you can at least compare how Google optimizes your personal search engine results page (SERP)? I think there is a small loophole. Cleaning your cookies should help, but Google is storing some of your search and click behaviour on their sites as well. The other trick is to use a specific data center. When I use Google at http://216.239.51.19/ I do get a slightly different ranking of the SERP than using my standard http://wwww.google.com/ig or a Google toolbar search for the same keyword.
What I haven't checked yet, is whether Google is storing my IP and search actions there as well, and using that "against" me. They probably do. Well there are many clusters of IP addresses of Google data centers, and it seems improbable to me that Google is exchanging IP and search information between all data centers.
Labels: English
01 februari 2007
The position of Wageningen UR in the European academic Web
Lists, rankings and top 10's.
Managers love these. That applies to the managers of our university as well. They really like the ESI rankings (albeit we're loosing some prestige) or those from Newsweek and THES. A new type of ranking is based on webometrics. Link analysis of websites that is. A group of researchers from Spain has been quite active in this field. They posted a preprint of their analysis from the European academic Web on E-Lis. Interesting reading.
In Europe, the UK and Germany are the two most inter-linked academic Web communities. The Netherlands sits somewhat closer to the UK. The UvA and VU are two of the better linked universities in the Netherlands. Wageningen UR is a midget somewhat distant from the center where the real action takes place. This is perhaps partly due to the older web address the researchers have used in their investigation. But looking closer at their Website Webometrics which is part of their ongoing research, reveals some real problems for the Web-identity of our university.
As main university website they have still listed our old domain, but next to that there is Larenstein (perhaps rightfully so). And they have listed a portal Bioinformatics at Wageningen University and the Graduate School Experimental Plant Sciences as separate identities as well. Our position as a combined university and research institute is even more diluted by the fact that some of the research institutes are treated as separate distinct identities as well. To mention a few: Alterra-ILRI, CIDC (listed at two Web adresses) CRC, RIKILT also listed under two addresses, Wageningen Feed Processing Centre, Wageningen Institute of Animal Sciences (should actually be listed as a school). Wageningen NMR center, Wageningen UR and ISRIC also with two addresses.
There is plenty of room for criticism on the Spanish website and their selection of websites of Institutes. They also list redirected pages. Our university website(s) don't make matters any easier for these foreign investigators. There is for instance no sitemap available (would improve spidering of the website by search engines as well). Furthermore there are still too many seemingly independent websites that bear hardly any relation (in their domain) with Wageningen UR. Take for instance WIAS, VLAG or Plantenwetenschappen. They are one hunderd percent related to the University, but nothing in the web address (or layout) that shows for this relationship. There are whole legions of exotic websites such as Syscope, de Natuurkalender or IBL etc.…These websites should be used to improve the web presence of our University by making them integral part of the WUR domain.
What does it matter?
Well those Webometricians do their research. Fair enough, but that is not only academic inquisitiveness. Those are not mere theoretical exercises. Popular search engines work on exactly the same principles. Our web presence is in dire need for improvement. Look for instance at the traffic of three of our major domains. Wau.nl generates more traffic than Wageningenuniversiteit.nl. And we had a very expensive operation to move everything to a single web domain, with a brand new layout, and it was declared a success. Only when you look at the traffic at the previous link over a somewhat longer period you get some interesting graphs. Since the change in December 2005, total traffic plummeted, and the Wageningenuniversiteit.nl site never attracted really more traffic than the old wau.nl site. It is now more than a year after the whole operation and all kind of redirect pages are still afloat and attract a lot of traffic. Improving visibility and performance of a single wur domain seems badly needed.
But what really pleases me though, our library website generates 39% of the all WUR traffic. The library in the heart of the organization that is. WoW!
This is of course a laughing farmer with a very serious toothache.
Literature
Ortega, J. L., I. Aguillo, et al. (2007) Maps of the academic web in the European Higher Education Area - an exploration of visual web indicators. E-LIS http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00005038/
Managers love these. That applies to the managers of our university as well. They really like the ESI rankings (albeit we're loosing some prestige) or those from Newsweek and THES. A new type of ranking is based on webometrics. Link analysis of websites that is. A group of researchers from Spain has been quite active in this field. They posted a preprint of their analysis from the European academic Web on E-Lis. Interesting reading.
In Europe, the UK and Germany are the two most inter-linked academic Web communities. The Netherlands sits somewhat closer to the UK. The UvA and VU are two of the better linked universities in the Netherlands. Wageningen UR is a midget somewhat distant from the center where the real action takes place. This is perhaps partly due to the older web address the researchers have used in their investigation. But looking closer at their Website Webometrics which is part of their ongoing research, reveals some real problems for the Web-identity of our university.
As main university website they have still listed our old domain, but next to that there is Larenstein (perhaps rightfully so). And they have listed a portal Bioinformatics at Wageningen University and the Graduate School Experimental Plant Sciences as separate identities as well. Our position as a combined university and research institute is even more diluted by the fact that some of the research institutes are treated as separate distinct identities as well. To mention a few: Alterra-ILRI, CIDC (listed at two Web adresses) CRC, RIKILT also listed under two addresses, Wageningen Feed Processing Centre, Wageningen Institute of Animal Sciences (should actually be listed as a school). Wageningen NMR center, Wageningen UR and ISRIC also with two addresses.
There is plenty of room for criticism on the Spanish website and their selection of websites of Institutes. They also list redirected pages. Our university website(s) don't make matters any easier for these foreign investigators. There is for instance no sitemap available (would improve spidering of the website by search engines as well). Furthermore there are still too many seemingly independent websites that bear hardly any relation (in their domain) with Wageningen UR. Take for instance WIAS, VLAG or Plantenwetenschappen. They are one hunderd percent related to the University, but nothing in the web address (or layout) that shows for this relationship. There are whole legions of exotic websites such as Syscope, de Natuurkalender or IBL etc.…These websites should be used to improve the web presence of our University by making them integral part of the WUR domain.
What does it matter?
Well those Webometricians do their research. Fair enough, but that is not only academic inquisitiveness. Those are not mere theoretical exercises. Popular search engines work on exactly the same principles. Our web presence is in dire need for improvement. Look for instance at the traffic of three of our major domains. Wau.nl generates more traffic than Wageningenuniversiteit.nl. And we had a very expensive operation to move everything to a single web domain, with a brand new layout, and it was declared a success. Only when you look at the traffic at the previous link over a somewhat longer period you get some interesting graphs. Since the change in December 2005, total traffic plummeted, and the Wageningenuniversiteit.nl site never attracted really more traffic than the old wau.nl site. It is now more than a year after the whole operation and all kind of redirect pages are still afloat and attract a lot of traffic. Improving visibility and performance of a single wur domain seems badly needed.
But what really pleases me though, our library website generates 39% of the all WUR traffic. The library in the heart of the organization that is. WoW!
This is of course a laughing farmer with a very serious toothache.
Literature
Ortega, J. L., I. Aguillo, et al. (2007) Maps of the academic web in the European Higher Education Area - an exploration of visual web indicators. E-LIS http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00005038/
Labels: English, SEO, Universities, University rankings, Wageningen UR
Embarrassing facts
The Netherlands likes to pose itself as a highly developed nation. Knowledge based economy, high standards of living etc…
How embarrassing, for such a developed country, the statistics on natural disasters that were published by the UNISDR. Netherlands ranked 4th on the lists natural disasters by number of deaths.
Apparently we can't keep our elderly and weak people protected from the heat. But even more amazing I found the fact reported in a Dutch newspaper that the data collectors had great difficulty collecting reliable information from the Netherlands.
How embarrassing, for such a developed country, the statistics on natural disasters that were published by the UNISDR. Netherlands ranked 4th on the lists natural disasters by number of deaths.
Apparently we can't keep our elderly and weak people protected from the heat. But even more amazing I found the fact reported in a Dutch newspaper that the data collectors had great difficulty collecting reliable information from the Netherlands.
Labels: English
It has never been so busy on WoW!ter
January was a really busy month on this blog. Google Analytics registered some 4,500 visitors that looked at around 6,800 pages. 3,500 unique visitors! The busiest day was Wednesday the 17th when I announced my plans for a new review of the Dutch biblioblogosphere. A message posted on the Nedbib-L, the most important discussion list for Dutch Librarians, resulted in a true spike of direct visitors.
21% of the visitors came from other countries than Netherlands or Belgium. Visitors came from 59 different countries. In the beginning of January I noted an unusual peak of visitors from Taiwan. Over the last couple of days I see all Italian universities dropping by on a single post of this blog, they all come directly to the blog. Strangely enough they did not visit this post, which is on the same subject. Apparently some e-mail traffic going around there, since a few are referred from e-mail hosting services.
Netvibes has finally overtaken Bloglines as the most popular feedreader for subscribers to the Feed. In the beginning of the month there were 156 Bloglines subscribers (using the Feedburner feed) and 123 Netvibes subscribers, the figures are now 168 vs 161. The success of Netvibes over Bloglines also confirmed by the referrals as measured by Google Analytics 147 vs 145. There is actually no real need for either system to click through to the blog since the posts are syndicated as a whole.
Labels: English
31 januari 2007
Citation analysis for research evaluation
Did I post yesterday the recommended reading list for our 1/2 day course on citation analysis already. Herewith the slides that I used over the whole morning. It was quite intensive, but I really enjoyed the discussions we had with the participants. It was also great, to greet a really external course participant (and blogger) as well.
Labels: English
30 januari 2007
Citation analysis and research performance, a reading list
Introduction
The two most current ‘bibles’ for citation analysis
Moed, H. F. (2005). Citation analysis in research evaluation. Dordrecht (The Netherlands), Springer. 346 pp.
This book deals with the evaluation of scholarly research performance. Its principal question is: how can citation analysis be used properly as a tool in the assessment of such a contribution? In order to be used properly as a research evaluation tool, it is essential that all participants have insight into the nature of citation analysis, how its indicators are constructed and calculated, what the various theoretical positions state about what they measure, and what are their potentialities and limitations, particularly in relation to peer review. (from the cover)
Moed, H. F., W. Glänzel, et al., Eds. (2004). Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research : The use of Publication and Patent Statistics in Studies of S&T Systems. Dordrecht (The Netherlands), Kluwer Academic Publishers. 800 pp.
And the most important journal on this subject:
Scientometrics ISSN 1588-2861, Springer.
Citation data
General
Roth, D. L. (2005). The emergene of competitors to the Science Citation Index and the Web of Science. Current Science 89(9): 1531-1535. http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1531.pdf
This article points to some interesting (free) resources for citation data.
Meho, L. I. and K. Yang (2007). Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of Science vs. Scopus and Google Scholar. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00008586/
Web of Science
Jacsó, P. (2007). Web of Science. Peter's digital reference shelf Retrieved. 24 January, 2007, from http://www.gale.com/reference/peter/200701/wos.htm.
A recent review highlighting the new Citation report features and the h-index
Scopus
Jacsó, P. (2006). Scopus revisted. Peter Digital Reference Shelf Retrieved 27 June, 2006, from http://projects.ics.hawaii.edu/~jacso/gale/scopus-revisited/scopus-revisited.htm.
Google Scholar
Jacsó, P. (2005). Google Scholar. Peter's digital reference shelf Retrieved Oct. 2005 http://www.galegroup.com/reference/archive/200412/googlescholar.html.
Benchmarking
ESI
Gerritsma, W. (2006). Wetenschappers gewogen : een systeem voor citatieanalyses in de praktijk. Informatie Professional 10(10): 12-17. (in Dutch)
http://library.wur.nl/wasp/bestanden/LUWPUBRD_00348170_A502_001.pdf
h-index
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. PNAS 102(46): 16569-16572. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508025
van Raan, A. F. J. (2006). Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics 67(3): 491-502.
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0511206
Journal quality
JCR
Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ 314(7079): 497-502.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/314/7079/497
Opthof, T. (1997). Sense and nonsense about the impact factor. Cardiovascular Research 33(1): 1-7.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0008-6363(96)00215-5
Dong, P., M. Loh, et al. (2005). The "impact factor" revisted. Biomedical Digital Libraries 2(7).
http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/2/1/7
Ranking universities
Popular lists
Shanghai Jiao Tong University http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm
THES World University rankings http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/
Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14321230/
van Raan, A. F. J. (2005). Challenges in Ranking of Universities. First International Conference on World Class Universities, Shanghai Jaio Tong University, Shanghai, June 16-18, 2005.
http://www.cwts.nl/cwts/AvR-ShanghaiConf.pdf
The two most current ‘bibles’ for citation analysis
Moed, H. F. (2005). Citation analysis in research evaluation. Dordrecht (The Netherlands), Springer. 346 pp.
This book deals with the evaluation of scholarly research performance. Its principal question is: how can citation analysis be used properly as a tool in the assessment of such a contribution? In order to be used properly as a research evaluation tool, it is essential that all participants have insight into the nature of citation analysis, how its indicators are constructed and calculated, what the various theoretical positions state about what they measure, and what are their potentialities and limitations, particularly in relation to peer review. (from the cover)
Moed, H. F., W. Glänzel, et al., Eds. (2004). Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research : The use of Publication and Patent Statistics in Studies of S&T Systems. Dordrecht (The Netherlands), Kluwer Academic Publishers. 800 pp.
And the most important journal on this subject:
Scientometrics ISSN 1588-2861, Springer.
Citation data
General
Roth, D. L. (2005). The emergene of competitors to the Science Citation Index and the Web of Science. Current Science 89(9): 1531-1535. http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1531.pdf
This article points to some interesting (free) resources for citation data.
Meho, L. I. and K. Yang (2007). Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of Science vs. Scopus and Google Scholar. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00008586/
Web of Science
Jacsó, P. (2007). Web of Science. Peter's digital reference shelf Retrieved. 24 January, 2007, from http://www.gale.com/reference/peter/200701/wos.htm.
A recent review highlighting the new Citation report features and the h-index
Scopus
Jacsó, P. (2006). Scopus revisted. Peter Digital Reference Shelf Retrieved 27 June, 2006, from http://projects.ics.hawaii.edu/~jacso/gale/scopus-revisited/scopus-revisited.htm.
Google Scholar
Jacsó, P. (2005). Google Scholar. Peter's digital reference shelf Retrieved Oct. 2005 http://www.galegroup.com/reference/archive/200412/googlescholar.html.
Benchmarking
ESI
Gerritsma, W. (2006). Wetenschappers gewogen : een systeem voor citatieanalyses in de praktijk. Informatie Professional 10(10): 12-17. (in Dutch)
http://library.wur.nl/wasp/bestanden/LUWPUBRD_00348170_A502_001.pdf
h-index
Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. PNAS 102(46): 16569-16572. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0508025
van Raan, A. F. J. (2006). Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics 67(3): 491-502.
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0511206
Journal quality
JCR
Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ 314(7079): 497-502.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/314/7079/497
Opthof, T. (1997). Sense and nonsense about the impact factor. Cardiovascular Research 33(1): 1-7.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0008-6363(96)00215-5
Dong, P., M. Loh, et al. (2005). The "impact factor" revisted. Biomedical Digital Libraries 2(7).
http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/2/1/7
Ranking universities
Popular lists
Shanghai Jiao Tong University http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm
THES World University rankings http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/
Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14321230/
van Raan, A. F. J. (2005). Challenges in Ranking of Universities. First International Conference on World Class Universities, Shanghai Jaio Tong University, Shanghai, June 16-18, 2005.
http://www.cwts.nl/cwts/AvR-ShanghaiConf.pdf
Labels: English
27 januari 2007
Why Scopus doesn't add substantially to the number of citations found in WoS
When performing citation analysis to measure research impact of scientists, we still rely on data retrieved from Web of Science. When we report our findings back to researchers they often come up with their citation figures from Google Scholar, which are sometimes, but not always, higher. So now and then figures from Scopus are quoted. The citations from Scopus are normally not that widely different from WoS, but only marginally different. It depends on science field a bit, but given the nearly double journal base for Scopus compared to WoS it comes as a surprise to some people.
How come we are asked?.
It is actually quite simple to explain. Garfield (1997) showed already that 2,000 journals of the Science Citation Index generated over 80% of all citations. Web of Science as a whole covers some 8,700 journals (interesting to sort out how many exactly, since this appears a disguised number as well). Scopus nearly doubles the journal base compared to WoS. But considering the fact that WoS already covers the most prestigious, important, cited journals, the doubling in journals only increases the total number of citations a wee bit.
Some subject specific databases such as SciFinder Scholar for chemistry, or PsychInfo for Psychology/Psychiatry will find more citations for journal articles on their domain since they have an even wider journal base on their domain than either WoS or Scopus.
I have tried to indicate this in the following figure.
The WoS square has a journal base of 8700 journals and attract in total a certain amount of citations. The journal base of Scopus is nearly double that of WoS, but not overlapping. The CAS (SciFinder Scholar) has a smaller partly overlapping database with WoS and Scholar, but (not properly indicated) a substantial number of journal are unique to CAS. On that smaller domain you are likely to find a few more citations.
I am not yet happy with the figure, but I hope it helps to illustrate this whole explanation.
Literature
Garfield, E. (1997). The significant scientific literature appears in a small core of journals. The Scientist 10(17): 13. http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/currscience.html
How come we are asked?.
It is actually quite simple to explain. Garfield (1997) showed already that 2,000 journals of the Science Citation Index generated over 80% of all citations. Web of Science as a whole covers some 8,700 journals (interesting to sort out how many exactly, since this appears a disguised number as well). Scopus nearly doubles the journal base compared to WoS. But considering the fact that WoS already covers the most prestigious, important, cited journals, the doubling in journals only increases the total number of citations a wee bit.
Some subject specific databases such as SciFinder Scholar for chemistry, or PsychInfo for Psychology/Psychiatry will find more citations for journal articles on their domain since they have an even wider journal base on their domain than either WoS or Scopus.
I have tried to indicate this in the following figure.
The WoS square has a journal base of 8700 journals and attract in total a certain amount of citations. The journal base of Scopus is nearly double that of WoS, but not overlapping. The CAS (SciFinder Scholar) has a smaller partly overlapping database with WoS and Scholar, but (not properly indicated) a substantial number of journal are unique to CAS. On that smaller domain you are likely to find a few more citations.
I am not yet happy with the figure, but I hope it helps to illustrate this whole explanation.
Literature
Garfield, E. (1997). The significant scientific literature appears in a small core of journals. The Scientist 10(17): 13. http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/currscience.html
Labels: English
How many scholarly journals are out there?
Recently I read two articles where figures were presented for the number of scholarly journals that are out there. Figures that are actually way off.
Dong et al. (2005) start their article as follows: "The number of periodical peer-reviewed scientific publications is conservatively estimated to exceed 16,000 worldwide; nearly 1.4 million articles are published every year". They based their number on studies by Mabe published in 2001 and 2003. Another article (Ioannidis, 2006) Starts as follows "Despite a very large number of scientific journals (probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide), the concentration of scientific information is skewed to a minority of journals that publish the majority of the articles (Bradford's law) and receive the majority of the citations." It is the unsubstantiated remark between brackets "probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide" that really struck me.
Way back in 2003 I started a discussion with Stevan Harnad on the number of peer reviewed journals that existed at that moment. Based on Ulrich I came to the conclusion that there were about 18,846 academic journals out there. In that same discussion a manager from Ulrich came up with the figure of 24,116 refereed serials. Refereed serials include refereed journals as well as refereed proceedings. The last one in the thread was Carol Tenopir who has kept track of these numbers quite regularly and showed that the numbers vary a lot according to search strategy. The most comprehensive number was at that moment 43,667 academic/scholarly periodicals.
Slightly later Carol Tenopir wrote a column on this subject in Library Journal where she highlighted this seemingly simple question. She concluded "I can say with confidence that as of the end of 2003, there are just under 50,000 scholarly journals and somewhere between one-third and just over one-half of them are in digital form."
Actually, since then Harnad uses 24,000-50,000, which is more than 16,000 and a lot less than 100,000.
Literature:
Dong, P., M. Loh, et al. (2005). The "impact factor" revisted. Biomedical Digital Libraries 2(7). http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/2/1/7
Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2006). Concentration of the Most-Cited Papers in the Scientific Literature: Analysis of Journal Ecosystems. PLoS ONE 1(1): e5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000005
Mabe, M. (2003). The growth and number of journals. Serials 16(2): 191-197. http://uksg.metapress.com/link.asp?id=f195g8ak0eu21muh
Mabe, M. and M. Amin (2001). Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals. Scientometrics 51(1): 147-162.
Tenopir, C. (2004). Online scholarly journals: How many? Library Journal 129(2): 32. http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA374956
Dong et al. (2005) start their article as follows: "The number of periodical peer-reviewed scientific publications is conservatively estimated to exceed 16,000 worldwide; nearly 1.4 million articles are published every year". They based their number on studies by Mabe published in 2001 and 2003. Another article (Ioannidis, 2006) Starts as follows "Despite a very large number of scientific journals (probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide), the concentration of scientific information is skewed to a minority of journals that publish the majority of the articles (Bradford's law) and receive the majority of the citations." It is the unsubstantiated remark between brackets "probably exceeding 100,000 worldwide" that really struck me.
Way back in 2003 I started a discussion with Stevan Harnad on the number of peer reviewed journals that existed at that moment. Based on Ulrich I came to the conclusion that there were about 18,846 academic journals out there. In that same discussion a manager from Ulrich came up with the figure of 24,116 refereed serials. Refereed serials include refereed journals as well as refereed proceedings. The last one in the thread was Carol Tenopir who has kept track of these numbers quite regularly and showed that the numbers vary a lot according to search strategy. The most comprehensive number was at that moment 43,667 academic/scholarly periodicals.
Slightly later Carol Tenopir wrote a column on this subject in Library Journal where she highlighted this seemingly simple question. She concluded "I can say with confidence that as of the end of 2003, there are just under 50,000 scholarly journals and somewhere between one-third and just over one-half of them are in digital form."
Actually, since then Harnad uses 24,000-50,000, which is more than 16,000 and a lot less than 100,000.
Literature:
Dong, P., M. Loh, et al. (2005). The "impact factor" revisted. Biomedical Digital Libraries 2(7). http://www.bio-diglib.com/content/2/1/7
Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2006). Concentration of the Most-Cited Papers in the Scientific Literature: Analysis of Journal Ecosystems. PLoS ONE 1(1): e5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000005
Mabe, M. (2003). The growth and number of journals. Serials 16(2): 191-197. http://uksg.metapress.com/link.asp?id=f195g8ak0eu21muh
Mabe, M. and M. Amin (2001). Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals. Scientometrics 51(1): 147-162.
Tenopir, C. (2004). Online scholarly journals: How many? Library Journal 129(2): 32. http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA374956
Labels: English
26 januari 2007
Frontiers in Information provision for the Bio- and environmental Sciences (FIBS)
Walking this crispy morning through Hyde Park and along the closed shops of Oxford Street. It was London for real. A very early rise, and a late return. All this effort to attend the one-day conference for information specialists.
This post has not the usual number of links since, most of it was written at the airport, on the plain or train.
The conference was organized by Roger Mills from Oxford University Library Services. A fully packed day with eleven presentations. Was it worth it?
Yes.
My main goal to attend this conference was to establish contacts with the people from Intute and look at the possibilities to make use of the Wageningen UR Library resources by Intute. Now we have moved all of our systems to the oracle database in XML format it must be easy to think of services that could harvest our electronic resources, either from the catalog or our repository. After these initial contacts, meeting the right people, it should possible to pull this through. Intute is seriously looking into these new ways of sharing and re-use of information. Let's call it web 2.0ish.
There were also two presentations from Intute on the program. One from the people working of the Health and Lifesciences (formerly Biome) part of Intute, on the new site that launched in July 2006. Quite impressive they have catalogued currently about 31,000 Web resources. Most interesting I found the fact that they are harvesting other web resources as well. That is what I came for. The second presentation was a more exploratory presentation, attempting to sketch a possible road ahead, and the opportunities that are presented by web2.0 type solutions, technology and user participation. Intute is really looking at it, and with personalization within My Intute and RSS feeds they are making inroads. The discussion which followed exposed quite some hesitation on web2.0/library2.0 in the audience. Mostly female information professionals, perhaps not yet the next gen generation in these positions yet.
The British Library launched earlier this month the UK PubMedCentral. A site which mirror NLM PubMedCentral, and is aimed at adding UK content. Since the launch the first 250 British papers have been archived. This UK content is subsequently mirrored to the USA PMC. The presentation by the engagement officer for UK-PMC was a bit confusing at times, partly he was quite new to the subject, partly because it is also a brand new service that needs to create its niche. They hadn't thought about the question of institutional repositories versus subject specific repositories yet. Well at least he didn't have the answers but was willing to take back these questions. There were plenty ideas about the possible developments with UK PubMedCentral however. Where the British Library has really worked hard was to make it easy for the researchers to submit their articles, whether it are the scientists who actually deposit versus the lab assistants, departmental secretaries or librarians perhaps, who are left to do these jobs hadn’t sunk in yet.
Quite interesting was the presentation by M. Dvray from the Mann Library at Cornell. She was being relly proud at her background as a scientist, which enabled her to take up all kind of new roles for the library as a liason between the library and the scientist. Actually a sitatuation which is very much alike for the information specialists at our Library. But what I really liked was the the projects she pointed out she was working on like their VIVO website, which is in reality a service what our we@wur should be. They were a lot further already at Cornell.
A beautiful presentation by Sally Rumsey on the brand new Oxford repository. Well they call it Archive. Oxford Research Archive http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk/ in full. It had a soft launch last Monday. So this was actually real news. Sally pointed out that convincing the researcher to submit their work was their hardest, but most important job. The competition with UK PMC was not making things easier in that respect.
Roger Mills did a presentation on behalf of Michael Popham on the Google Book project. Interesting that Roger pointed out that they were going to link from the catalogue to their own copies in Google Books, but that wasn't working yet. Well actually the global library community is waiting for that one to happen. If they can do that from Oxford we can o it in principle from any library catalogue. More is to be found at http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/google/
The most interesting presentation for me personally was the one about curation of actual data. A subject that we were discussing at our department 15 years ago as well. But still can't get our grips on today. Those days I was working with crop growth simulation models. And these are really data hungry, to verify the models. So it is a really felt need, but there are no solutions. Unfortunately Chris Rusbridge didn't have the answers either, but in principle there is potentially an important role for libraries. We only have to develop the answers and craft our niche in this area. There is certainly room for us in that area. Worth thinking about.
There were three more presentations, one on evidence based forestry, where I really missed the small hint or step to evidence librarianship, a very new and important theme in our own profession. It was not mentioned at all. A bit strange. The last two presentation were actually sales pitches, one from CABI and the other from CSA. Just before that last presentation I had to leave. To catch the tube, train, plain etc…. to get home.
This post has not the usual number of links since, most of it was written at the airport, on the plain or train.
The conference was organized by Roger Mills from Oxford University Library Services. A fully packed day with eleven presentations. Was it worth it?
Yes.
My main goal to attend this conference was to establish contacts with the people from Intute and look at the possibilities to make use of the Wageningen UR Library resources by Intute. Now we have moved all of our systems to the oracle database in XML format it must be easy to think of services that could harvest our electronic resources, either from the catalog or our repository. After these initial contacts, meeting the right people, it should possible to pull this through. Intute is seriously looking into these new ways of sharing and re-use of information. Let's call it web 2.0ish.
There were also two presentations from Intute on the program. One from the people working of the Health and Lifesciences (formerly Biome) part of Intute, on the new site that launched in July 2006. Quite impressive they have catalogued currently about 31,000 Web resources. Most interesting I found the fact that they are harvesting other web resources as well. That is what I came for. The second presentation was a more exploratory presentation, attempting to sketch a possible road ahead, and the opportunities that are presented by web2.0 type solutions, technology and user participation. Intute is really looking at it, and with personalization within My Intute and RSS feeds they are making inroads. The discussion which followed exposed quite some hesitation on web2.0/library2.0 in the audience. Mostly female information professionals, perhaps not yet the next gen generation in these positions yet.
The British Library launched earlier this month the UK PubMedCentral. A site which mirror NLM PubMedCentral, and is aimed at adding UK content. Since the launch the first 250 British papers have been archived. This UK content is subsequently mirrored to the USA PMC. The presentation by the engagement officer for UK-PMC was a bit confusing at times, partly he was quite new to the subject, partly because it is also a brand new service that needs to create its niche. They hadn't thought about the question of institutional repositories versus subject specific repositories yet. Well at least he didn't have the answers but was willing to take back these questions. There were plenty ideas about the possible developments with UK PubMedCentral however. Where the British Library has really worked hard was to make it easy for the researchers to submit their articles, whether it are the scientists who actually deposit versus the lab assistants, departmental secretaries or librarians perhaps, who are left to do these jobs hadn’t sunk in yet.
Quite interesting was the presentation by M. Dvray from the Mann Library at Cornell. She was being relly proud at her background as a scientist, which enabled her to take up all kind of new roles for the library as a liason between the library and the scientist. Actually a sitatuation which is very much alike for the information specialists at our Library. But what I really liked was the the projects she pointed out she was working on like their VIVO website, which is in reality a service what our we@wur should be. They were a lot further already at Cornell.
A beautiful presentation by Sally Rumsey on the brand new Oxford repository. Well they call it Archive. Oxford Research Archive http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk/ in full. It had a soft launch last Monday. So this was actually real news. Sally pointed out that convincing the researcher to submit their work was their hardest, but most important job. The competition with UK PMC was not making things easier in that respect.
Roger Mills did a presentation on behalf of Michael Popham on the Google Book project. Interesting that Roger pointed out that they were going to link from the catalogue to their own copies in Google Books, but that wasn't working yet. Well actually the global library community is waiting for that one to happen. If they can do that from Oxford we can o it in principle from any library catalogue. More is to be found at http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/google/
The most interesting presentation for me personally was the one about curation of actual data. A subject that we were discussing at our department 15 years ago as well. But still can't get our grips on today. Those days I was working with crop growth simulation models. And these are really data hungry, to verify the models. So it is a really felt need, but there are no solutions. Unfortunately Chris Rusbridge didn't have the answers either, but in principle there is potentially an important role for libraries. We only have to develop the answers and craft our niche in this area. There is certainly room for us in that area. Worth thinking about.
There were three more presentations, one on evidence based forestry, where I really missed the small hint or step to evidence librarianship, a very new and important theme in our own profession. It was not mentioned at all. A bit strange. The last two presentation were actually sales pitches, one from CABI and the other from CSA. Just before that last presentation I had to leave. To catch the tube, train, plain etc…. to get home.
Labels: English
24 januari 2007
Delicious library use of del.icio.us
A while back I posted on smart library use of Del.icio.us. But most of the examples only showed lists of interesting tags. Today I was pointed to the Influenza internet guide of the University of Michigan on Avian Influenza. It is constructed of a simple html page but all collections behind the links refer to collections on Del.icio.us.
Gives you at least some doubts about the inherently library eagerness to catalog all valuable resources.
Hattip: Gwen Harris
Gives you at least some doubts about the inherently library eagerness to catalog all valuable resources.
Hattip: Gwen Harris
Labels: Avian influeza, delicious, English, Libraries, Portals
23 januari 2007
Web of Science reviewed by Jacsó
My favourite database reviewer still is Péter Jacsó. His digital reference shelf is a column to keep an eye on. This month he reviews Web of Science. Since the introduction of the Citation reports it was about time.
The review is very thorough and I really would love to learn some of his tricks which he uses in his database reviews as well. It was a pleasure to digest it all. One of those things that I never realized was the fact that abstracts were only included systematically from 1991 onwards. I knew they were more often lacking from the older material but this sharp demarcation line in the change of policy was not known by me. It should have been good if Jacsó had pointed out the changes in naming policy as well. Once it was 15 characters, later 18 and nowadays first names are indexed as well. All this makes comprehensive searches for long standing researchers sometimes difficult. Well, challenging at least. Especially when you're dealing with double names. "F.C.T. Penning de Vries" is one of my favourites. He can be found as DEVRIES P in the cited references. ISI has promised author disambiguation, but this has not reached the science commons yet. And Penning de Vries was not a bad scientist after all. On Author disambiguation Scopus does a better job.
The new citation reports in WoS are swell indeed. The h-index (not Hirsch index so Hirsch told us) implementation is good indeed, and very useful to apply to all kind of search results. Journals amongst others, as Jacsó did for some of the LIS journals. I also hope to see these results included in the Journal citation reports next year.
But after all this praise some grumps as well. It is a rather old one. Sloppy indexing by ISI. Jacsó came with the example of author names. Also issues, volumes and page numbers go wrong quite often. Although Moed (2005, p.175) has established that this is only in the order of about 7-8%.
We use WoS quite often within the library setting itself for collection development. We look at our authors and examine their reference lists. That runs quickly into the tens of thousands references, and we would love to see some uniformity in the journal names of those references. This is clearly illustrated when you do a search for a journal in the cited reference search. With the cited reference search you should use the abbreviated journal name (as opposed to the full search where full journal names are requested, but I am not complaining). Take for instance the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, the official abbreviation is AUST J AGR RES. But don't dare to think that on entering you have found all instances of this journal. Oh no!. You have found only 33,276 citations for this abbreviation. But you missed AUST J AGR RESEARCH (1), AUST J AGRIC RES (1158), AUST J AGRIC RS (23), AUST J AGRIS RES (1) AUSTR J AGR RES (11417) AUSTR J AGR RESEARCH (1) AUSTR J AGR RESER (6) AUSTR J AGR RS (2) AUSTR J AGRI RES (24) AUSTR J AGRIC RES (127) AUSTR J AGRIC RESEAR (1) AUSTR J AGRICULT RES (6) AUSTR J AGRICULTURAL (251?) AUS J AGR RES (35) AUS J AGRIC RES (3) AUS J AG RES (19) AUST J AG RES (90) AUST J AGIC RES (3) and there are probably a few other variations I missed. My point is however, if you analyze a large number of references you inevitably end up with a lots of variations of journal names. This doesn’t only apply for this particular instance. We try to monitor the usage of about 8000 journals. With sloppy data as in the above example it becomes a real tour de force, which I would love to see better facilitated on the side of ISI. Obvious corrections in the data should therefore be done on the primary data, rather than in the software which takes place to some extent.
But to end this post on a positive note, I quote Jacsó's conclusions in full
References
Jacsó, P. (2007). "Web of Science." Peter's digital reference shelf Retrieved Jan 2007 from http://www.gale.com/reference/peter/200701/wos.htm.
Moed, H. F. (2005). Citation analysis in research evaluation. Dordrecht, Springer. 346p.
The review is very thorough and I really would love to learn some of his tricks which he uses in his database reviews as well. It was a pleasure to digest it all. One of those things that I never realized was the fact that abstracts were only included systematically from 1991 onwards. I knew they were more often lacking from the older material but this sharp demarcation line in the change of policy was not known by me. It should have been good if Jacsó had pointed out the changes in naming policy as well. Once it was 15 characters, later 18 and nowadays first names are indexed as well. All this makes comprehensive searches for long standing researchers sometimes difficult. Well, challenging at least. Especially when you're dealing with double names. "F.C.T. Penning de Vries" is one of my favourites. He can be found as DEVRIES P in the cited references. ISI has promised author disambiguation, but this has not reached the science commons yet. And Penning de Vries was not a bad scientist after all. On Author disambiguation Scopus does a better job.
The new citation reports in WoS are swell indeed. The h-index (not Hirsch index so Hirsch told us) implementation is good indeed, and very useful to apply to all kind of search results. Journals amongst others, as Jacsó did for some of the LIS journals. I also hope to see these results included in the Journal citation reports next year.
But after all this praise some grumps as well. It is a rather old one. Sloppy indexing by ISI. Jacsó came with the example of author names. Also issues, volumes and page numbers go wrong quite often. Although Moed (2005, p.175) has established that this is only in the order of about 7-8%.
We use WoS quite often within the library setting itself for collection development. We look at our authors and examine their reference lists. That runs quickly into the tens of thousands references, and we would love to see some uniformity in the journal names of those references. This is clearly illustrated when you do a search for a journal in the cited reference search. With the cited reference search you should use the abbreviated journal name (as opposed to the full search where full journal names are requested, but I am not complaining). Take for instance the AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, the official abbreviation is AUST J AGR RES. But don't dare to think that on entering you have found all instances of this journal. Oh no!. You have found only 33,276 citations for this abbreviation. But you missed AUST J AGR RESEARCH (1), AUST J AGRIC RES (1158), AUST J AGRIC RS (23), AUST J AGRIS RES (1) AUSTR J AGR RES (11417) AUSTR J AGR RESEARCH (1) AUSTR J AGR RESER (6) AUSTR J AGR RS (2) AUSTR J AGRI RES (24) AUSTR J AGRIC RES (127) AUSTR J AGRIC RESEAR (1) AUSTR J AGRICULT RES (6) AUSTR J AGRICULTURAL (251?) AUS J AGR RES (35) AUS J AGRIC RES (3) AUS J AG RES (19) AUST J AG RES (90) AUST J AGIC RES (3) and there are probably a few other variations I missed. My point is however, if you analyze a large number of references you inevitably end up with a lots of variations of journal names. This doesn’t only apply for this particular instance. We try to monitor the usage of about 8000 journals. With sloppy data as in the above example it becomes a real tour de force, which I would love to see better facilitated on the side of ISI. Obvious corrections in the data should therefore be done on the primary data, rather than in the software which takes place to some extent.
But to end this post on a positive note, I quote Jacsó's conclusions in full
"ISI has kept adding new content and software features through regular updates. The latest services clustering of results set by several criteria, the instant calculation and superbly informative and compact visualization of new citation measures, such as the sum of times a paper was cited (including and excluding self-citation, the average citations per item, the Hirsch-index, the almost instant display of charts for the distribution of articles and citations per year by authors, journals, organizations or topic, the exporting of these details into a spreadsheet format, or downloading to a free Web version of EndNote, represent more than a series of evolutionary steps. It is a breakthrough for those interested in citation analysis, but did not have the resources to calculate key citation performance measures, or did not have the software to format them to the whims of the publishers' manuscript guidelines."
References
Jacsó, P. (2007). "Web of Science." Peter's digital reference shelf Retrieved Jan 2007 from http://www.gale.com/reference/peter/200701/wos.htm.
Moed, H. F. (2005). Citation analysis in research evaluation. Dordrecht, Springer. 346p.
Labels: English
19 januari 2007
Google's webcare team in action
In the Netherlands there is a elaborate discussion about the involvement of companies in the blogosphere. Marketingfacts has taken Unilever as a case study. Last Thursday an interesting starting Dutch newspaper, NRC Next, had a really interesting example of the installation of a so called webcare team by UPC. UPC is a Dutch cable company that has a really pitiful reputation for service. The UPC webcare team takes part in discussions in the blogosphere, and has the capacity to rectify reported problems etc. UPC did not go as far as Microsoft to rent a top blogger to give UPC a more human face.
Interesting to point this discussion to Google (once again). Google had already for a long time the famous GoogleGuy who reacted on forum discussions and the blogosphere. Later Matt Cutts started its own blog and has organized some really great PR for Google. It is speculated that GoogleGuy and Matt Cutts are the same person. I don't know for sure and don't really care.
On my grumpy post yesterday on the erratic behaviour of Google Blogsearch, there was a prompt reaction from a Google engineer. Yes indeed, there was something wrong on the Blogsearch end of the spectrum. It had nothing to do with the tango from Blogger to Blogger Beta to New Blogger. He will investigate the matter into detail and will report back later. That's great. Jeremy I eagerly await the results.
It is also exemplary how Google tackles this whole complex marketing issue of blogs and virals. Interacting in blogs and forums was not sufficient anymore, so they had Matt Cutts starting his own blog with a strong voice. Matts' blog can also be effective in setting the stage, commanding the discussion, and in the worst case scenarios function as a lightning rod. Thereby is Matt a frequent keynote speaker or attendent of all kind of Search Engine Conferences.
In conclusion the UPC webcare team is not sufficient to improve their image. They are on the right track, but have to take it a step further.
Interesting to point this discussion to Google (once again). Google had already for a long time the famous GoogleGuy who reacted on forum discussions and the blogosphere. Later Matt Cutts started its own blog and has organized some really great PR for Google. It is speculated that GoogleGuy and Matt Cutts are the same person. I don't know for sure and don't really care.
On my grumpy post yesterday on the erratic behaviour of Google Blogsearch, there was a prompt reaction from a Google engineer. Yes indeed, there was something wrong on the Blogsearch end of the spectrum. It had nothing to do with the tango from Blogger to Blogger Beta to New Blogger. He will investigate the matter into detail and will report back later. That's great. Jeremy I eagerly await the results.
It is also exemplary how Google tackles this whole complex marketing issue of blogs and virals. Interacting in blogs and forums was not sufficient anymore, so they had Matt Cutts starting his own blog with a strong voice. Matts' blog can also be effective in setting the stage, commanding the discussion, and in the worst case scenarios function as a lightning rod. Thereby is Matt a frequent keynote speaker or attendent of all kind of Search Engine Conferences.
In conclusion the UPC webcare team is not sufficient to improve their image. They are on the right track, but have to take it a step further.
Labels: English
18 januari 2007
Am I?
Perhaps just a little, but that I would make the headlines in Wired News I had never imagined.Labels: English
16 januari 2007
What is going on?
A day or two ago the sidebar on the main page of the blog went missing. It is still there, but all the way down the posts on the mainpage. It is published in the main collum of the blog. But when you open an individual blogpost at its permanent link, the sidebar is there where it should be.
Probably just another hiccup of the new Blogger.
What is badly missing though is a cure.
Has anybody any ideas?
Probably just another hiccup of the new Blogger.
What is badly missing though is a cure.
Has anybody any ideas?
Labels: English
Library as place
"Libraries should aim to be uplifting, innovative and inspiring
cultural, social and intellectual spaces, encouraging debate and collaboration,
and desirable as places to be in, even in the age of ubiquitous internet
access."
Lynne Brindley, 2006
Sometimes you have those scholarly articles that read themselves. Re-defining the Library, based on a keynote speech presented by Lynne Brindley (the director of the British Lbrary) at a conference in Bielefeld is one of those little gems. Well written, easily read, and filled till the brim with inspiration.
Brindley, L. (2006). Re-defining the library. Library Hi Tech, 24(4): 484-485.
Sometimes you have those scholarly articles that read themselves. Re-defining the Library, based on a keynote speech presented by Lynne Brindley (the director of the British Lbrary) at a conference in Bielefeld is one of those little gems. Well written, easily read, and filled till the brim with inspiration.
Brindley, L. (2006). Re-defining the library. Library Hi Tech, 24(4): 484-485.
Labels: English
15 januari 2007
Extreme makeover of academic library websites
September last we saw a new layout of the Tilburg University Library website. The new layout was part of the overhaul of the university Website. In December it was our Library of Wageningen UR website underwent a complete facelift. Wait, it was more. Also the underlying database for the library content managemet systems changed from a (outdated) minisis database to Oracle.
It was only last week that I noticed that the library website from Utrecht University also underwent some major changes, looking at the date of the Dutch news item announcing the changes it appears that the makeover took already place in November. On the English version of their website this newsitem announcing the new website design is still the first newsitem.
What is really striking are the two main entrances to the resources offered at the front page. The catalogue for the paper heritage collection next to Omega, the interesting database giving access to most of the electronic content. Most, since not all licensed content can be added at the moment yet. The user is apperently forced to search in either one or the other database. The remainder of the rich library resrouces are well hidden behind a simple text link indicating 'general collection'. There you find the Electronic databases (general) link, on the susbequent page you can select for either the alphabetical list of databases or a selection of databases per descipline, eg. medicine. When you're English speaking doctor and in the need to consult PubMed, attempting to browse to pubmed, he or she might end up with RSI. In the Dutch version there is a click less. Odd inconsitencies.
It is also interesting to visit the various faculty libraries when you are in for surprises. Have a quick look at Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics or veterinary science in comparison with Geosciences. Only the last one has a clear relation with the main library website.
What I misses most, are some decent library newsletters. I think I should start with some spies to be alerted on changes on their news pages.
It was only last week that I noticed that the library website from Utrecht University also underwent some major changes, looking at the date of the Dutch news item announcing the changes it appears that the makeover took already place in November. On the English version of their website this newsitem announcing the new website design is still the first newsitem.
What is really striking are the two main entrances to the resources offered at the front page. The catalogue for the paper heritage collection next to Omega, the interesting database giving access to most of the electronic content. Most, since not all licensed content can be added at the moment yet. The user is apperently forced to search in either one or the other database. The remainder of the rich library resrouces are well hidden behind a simple text link indicating 'general collection'. There you find the Electronic databases (general) link, on the susbequent page you can select for either the alphabetical list of databases or a selection of databases per descipline, eg. medicine. When you're English speaking doctor and in the need to consult PubMed, attempting to browse to pubmed, he or she might end up with RSI. In the Dutch version there is a click less. Odd inconsitencies.
It is also interesting to visit the various faculty libraries when you are in for surprises. Have a quick look at Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics or veterinary science in comparison with Geosciences. Only the last one has a clear relation with the main library website.
What I misses most, are some decent library newsletters. I think I should start with some spies to be alerted on changes on their news pages.
Labels: English
14 januari 2007
Highly cited scientists in the Netherlands and their Alma Mater
ISIhighlyCited.com is a free database from ISI in which they list all of the 250 most cited scientists, over the last 10 years, in the world for each of the 22 major subfields of science. These fields range from Agriculture to Social sciences and everything in between.
Once a scientist is selected for this database they are notified by ISI (Thomson Scientific) and are kindly requested to complete their scientific CV which is listed in the database. So the researchers themselves are in charge in the way they are presented in this database. For instance when Martijn Katan moved from Wageningen University to the VU in Amsrerdam he changed his address in that database.
Once a scientist is selected for this database they are notified by ISI (Thomson Scientific) and are kindly requested to complete their scientific CV which is listed in the database. So the researchers themselves are in charge in the way they are presented in this database. For instance when Martijn Katan moved from Wageningen University to the VU in Amsrerdam he changed his address in that database.
One little thing that still puzzles me, is that ISI lists 91 highly cited researchers, but that includes one scientist from Belgium, and another one probably from Spain (I did not bother to sort that out any further) but it is striking for the impression that it leaves for the quality of ISI databases in general. So I consider that the Netherlands has only 89 highly cited scientists.
What does it further matter you might wonder. The ISIhighlyCited is being used for the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings. The number of highly cited scientist accounts for 20% of the score. Okay, so what for these rankings? Only that these ranking are regularly quoted in the Economist, which is read by potential students, or by people in charge of allocation of research funds. But there is more. The (yearly?) ranking of Newsweek is for 1/6 determined by this same data as well. Which is read by potential students or people in charge of...... You get the gest. It all has to do with branding, with name building, with reputation. In the scientific world that is dependent to a large extend on the affiliations mentioned in the scholarly papers published in peer reviewed journals, and subsequently abstracted in bibliographies and other databases such as ISIhighlycited.com.
Researcher connected to our university who has decided to list himself under the affiliation of his sub-institute. I really wonder if the It is therefore very interesting to see under which affiliations these top researchers list themselves. In Wageningen the naming of the university appears to be very difficult. 13 research use 4 different names. We see Wageningen Agricultural University (4x), WageningenUniversiteit (5x), Wagenignen University (3x) and Wageningen University and Research Centre (1x). Slightly odd to see the Dutch name of the Univerity listed in an international database. But perhaps the people from Shanghai are smart enough to count all of these variations as one. However there is a 14th highly cited researcher from Wageningen. I do really wonder if the people from Shanghai recognize whether RIKILT - Institute of Food Safety is also part of Wageningen University?
So we score in Wageningen 14 of the 89 highly cited researchers in the Netherlands. Not too bad. Not too bad at all. Looking at the other Universities, Leiden has 15 highly cited researchers, who produced 6 different affiliations. Utrecht ends ex aequo with Wageningen on a shared 2-3 place behind Leiden. In Utrecht I count 6 different names for the university. 4th is the VU with 10 highly cited researcher (including Katan) they came up with only 4 different variations of their university's name and the UvA is only 5th with 8 highly cited researchers.
Not bad for Wageningen University anyway. Only next time should these highly esteemed professors spell the name of their Alma Mater correctly. Then we will really celebrate.
Not bad for Wageningen University anyway. Only next time should these highly esteemed professors spell the name of their Alma Mater correctly. Then we will really celebrate.
Labels: Affiliations, English, ISI, isihighlycited.com, University rankings
Probabilities of bibliometric indicators
That Library and information science is not exactly big science should come as a surprise. Sometimes I complain about the lack of scholarly discourse in this field in the Netherlands. On the other hand when looking at table of contents of the LIS scholarly journals I am sometimes very disappointed as well. I do see a lot of journals in this field on a week to week basis. The lack of any data supporting articles, proper testing or statistical analyses are sometimes lacking entirely.
Perhaps the sub-field of scientometrics has advanced the most in theory formation and testing of quantifiable hypotheses. I am still struggling with fully comprehending the dense article by van Raan (2005) on the statistical properties of bibliometric indicators.
Who sketched my surprise when I noted a commentary in the last issue of 2006 of Nature by Lehmann et al. (2006). Who simply write "there have been few attempts to discover which of the popular citation measures is best and whether any such measure is statistically reliable." In their paper, they go on and demonstrate, based on an analysis of papers by theoretical physicists deposited in Spires, that average number of citations is a superior indicator for the scientific quality, in terms of both accuracy and precision, of an individual scientist than Hirsh's h-index. Another quote from their paper "The best that can be said of publication frequency is that it measures industry rather than ability." Followed by "The widespread use of publication frequency — with or without an impact factor — is disturbing and requires further study."
This paper should gain a lot of attention by scientometricians, and open up new research into the foundations of the statistical properties of bibliometric indicators.
Interesting note about this commentary in Nature (which is only available to subscribers) , is that this commentary is based on a slightly longer article deposited more than a year ago in ArXiv which is freely available. According to Citebase this papers has only been downloaded 8 times to date. I assume this will increase considerably after this publication in Nature.
Literature
Lehmann, S., A.D. Jackson & B.E. Lautrup (2005). Measures and mismeasures for scientific quality. Arxiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512238.
Lehmann, S., A.D. Jackson & B.E. Lautrup (2006). Measures for measures. Nature 444: 1003-1004. 10.1038/4441003a.
van Raan, A.F.J. (2005). Statistical properties of bibliometric indicators: Research group indicator distributions and correlations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57(3): 408-430. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.20284 .
Perhaps the sub-field of scientometrics has advanced the most in theory formation and testing of quantifiable hypotheses. I am still struggling with fully comprehending the dense article by van Raan (2005) on the statistical properties of bibliometric indicators.
Who sketched my surprise when I noted a commentary in the last issue of 2006 of Nature by Lehmann et al. (2006). Who simply write "there have been few attempts to discover which of the popular citation measures is best and whether any such measure is statistically reliable." In their paper, they go on and demonstrate, based on an analysis of papers by theoretical physicists deposited in Spires, that average number of citations is a superior indicator for the scientific quality, in terms of both accuracy and precision, of an individual scientist than Hirsh's h-index. Another quote from their paper "The best that can be said of publication frequency is that it measures industry rather than ability." Followed by "The widespread use of publication frequency — with or without an impact factor — is disturbing and requires further study."
This paper should gain a lot of attention by scientometricians, and open up new research into the foundations of the statistical properties of bibliometric indicators.
Interesting note about this commentary in Nature (which is only available to subscribers) , is that this commentary is based on a slightly longer article deposited more than a year ago in ArXiv which is freely available. According to Citebase this papers has only been downloaded 8 times to date. I assume this will increase considerably after this publication in Nature.
Literature
Lehmann, S., A.D. Jackson & B.E. Lautrup (2005). Measures and mismeasures for scientific quality. Arxiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512238.
Lehmann, S., A.D. Jackson & B.E. Lautrup (2006). Measures for measures. Nature 444: 1003-1004. 10.1038/4441003a.
van Raan, A.F.J. (2005). Statistical properties of bibliometric indicators: Research group indicator distributions and correlations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57(3): 408-430. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.20284 .
Labels: English
11 januari 2007
Why I get a kick out of this
When you get linked from another country where I even don't understand the language, or be able to read their writings. But Evan linked me allright.
Edwin, this is one of those sweet encouragements to continue to blog in English.
Labels: English
10 januari 2007
Best free reference Web sites for 2006 anounced
The Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of American Library Association (ALA) updated their list of the best free online reference sites of the past 10 years with the new additions for 2006. I have singled out the 2006 addition in the list below. Even for non Americans some very useful resources.
AF: Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com/)
Mountain Data Systems, LLC
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
American Rhetoric (http://www.americanrhetoric.com)
Michael E. Eidenmuller
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Art & Architecture Thesaurus (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat)
BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/)
BBC News
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
The Big Cartoon Database (http://www.bcdb.com)
Constitution Finder (http://confinder.richmond.edu/index.php)
University of Richmond
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Crash Course in Copyright (http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/Intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm)
University of Texas System, Georgia Harper
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Documenting the American South (http://docsouth.unc.edu/)
University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
E-how (http://www.ehow.com)
E-how, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Encyclopedia of Chicago (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/)
The Chicago Historical Society, The Newberry Library and Northwestern University
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Eternal Egypt (http://www.eternalegypt.org/)
Egyption Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
globalEDGE (http://globaledge.msu.edu)
Center for International Business Education and Research, Michigan State University
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
How Products are Made (http://www.madehow.com/)
Thomson Gale
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
In the first person: An index to letters, diaries,oral histories, and other personal narratives (http://www.inthefirstperson.com)
Alexander Street Press
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
The Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov)
The Library of Congress
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Merriam-Webster Online (http://www.m-w.com)
Merriam-Webster, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/)
CNET
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
National Atlas (http://www.nationalatlas.gov/)
United States Department of the Interior
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) (http://www.nih.gov)
National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
National Weather Service (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Peterson's Planner (http://www.petersons.com)
Thomson Peterson
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
POTUS: Presidents of the United States (http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/)
Internet Public Library/School of Information University of Michigan
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
The Pulitzer Prizes (http://www.pulitzer.org/)
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Radio-Locator (http://www.radio-locator.com/)
Theodric Technologies LLC
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Recalls.gov (http://www.recalls.gov)
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
SchoolMatters (http://www.schoolmatters.com)
Standard and Poors, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
SkyscraperPage (http://skyscraperpage.com/)
SkyscraperPage.com
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Urban Legends Reference Pages (http://www.snopes.com)
Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
WebMD Health (http://www.webmd.com/)
WebMD, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Hattip: Open Access News
AF: Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com/)
Mountain Data Systems, LLC
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
American Rhetoric (http://www.americanrhetoric.com)
Michael E. Eidenmuller
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Art & Architecture Thesaurus (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat)
Paul Getty Trust
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/)
BBC News
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
The Big Cartoon Database (http://www.bcdb.com)
Dave Koch, The Big Cartoon Database (bcdb.com)
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Constitution Finder (http://confinder.richmond.edu/index.php)
University of Richmond
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Crash Course in Copyright (http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/Intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm)
University of Texas System, Georgia Harper
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Documenting the American South (http://docsouth.unc.edu/)
University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
E-how (http://www.ehow.com)
E-how, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Encyclopedia of Chicago (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/)
The Chicago Historical Society, The Newberry Library and Northwestern University
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Eternal Egypt (http://www.eternalegypt.org/)
Egyption Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
globalEDGE (http://globaledge.msu.edu)
Center for International Business Education and Research, Michigan State University
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
How Products are Made (http://www.madehow.com/)
Thomson Gale
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
In the first person: An index to letters, diaries,oral histories, and other personal narratives (http://www.inthefirstperson.com)
Alexander Street Press
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
The Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov)
The Library of Congress
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Merriam-Webster Online (http://www.m-w.com)
Merriam-Webster, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/)
CNET
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
National Atlas (http://www.nationalatlas.gov/)
United States Department of the Interior
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) (http://www.nih.gov)
National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
National Weather Service (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Peterson's Planner (http://www.petersons.com)
Thomson Peterson
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
POTUS: Presidents of the United States (http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/)
Internet Public Library/School of Information University of Michigan
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
The Pulitzer Prizes (http://www.pulitzer.org/)
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Radio-Locator (http://www.radio-locator.com/)
Theodric Technologies LLC
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Recalls.gov (http://www.recalls.gov)
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
SchoolMatters (http://www.schoolmatters.com)
Standard and Poors, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
SkyscraperPage (http://skyscraperpage.com/)
SkyscraperPage.com
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Urban Legends Reference Pages (http://www.snopes.com)
Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
WebMD Health (http://www.webmd.com/)
WebMD, Inc.
Reviewed: Mars Best 2006.
Hattip: Open Access News
Labels: English
09 januari 2007
Google Tool Bar Page Rank update underway (updated and confirmed)
In the Dutch Blogosphere there is a a lot of speculation on the Google Pagerank changes that are taking place at the moment. Most of the discussion took place on Marketingfacts. For my own blog I noticed this as well. Where it was only 3 yesterday, this evening I see the more regular 5, as observed in the Google Toolbar.
On two large Webmaster/SEO fora similar discussions are taking place. Over at WebmasterWorld Forums as well as over at Search Engine Roundtable Forums these discussions are currently underway. For the Dutch readers, TBPR is Tool Bar Page Rank.
For the English readers, in yesterday's post I linked to quite a number of Pagerank Tools. I liked Rank Alert tool most, albeit a bit slow, but impressively comprehensive.
It is now confirmed by Matt Cutts, and illustrated by Blogoscoped
On two large Webmaster/SEO fora similar discussions are taking place. Over at WebmasterWorld Forums as well as over at Search Engine Roundtable Forums these discussions are currently underway. For the Dutch readers, TBPR is Tool Bar Page Rank.
For the English readers, in yesterday's post I linked to quite a number of Pagerank Tools. I liked Rank Alert tool most, albeit a bit slow, but impressively comprehensive.
It is now confirmed by Matt Cutts, and illustrated by Blogoscoped
Labels: English, Pagerank, Pagerank tools
07 januari 2007
500th post
Google Scholar still 5 months behind with PubMed indexing
Rita Vina has repeated her research she did last year on the indexing delay of PubMed content by Google Scholar. GS has improved considerably, but the indexing delay is still 5 months!
The conclusion? The latest PubMed citation to appear in both Google Scholar was from August 2005 -- almost 5 months ago. Yes, it's an improvement over the last test, and a significant one. However, for physicians and those who need to know, PubMed continues to be an important tool for accessing the current medical literature. (Source: Sitelines)For the latest research results it is better to use other (often paid) library resources.
Labels: English
Uncontrolled wildcard searches in Google
One of the frequently asked questions on Google I receive regularly concerns word stemming. When you search for car Google also looks for the plural cars. It even works for more complicated word variations e.g. diet or dietary (see Google Help Basics). When you use the Dutch version of Google there is apparently no word stemming (see Leer de Google Standaard). It becomes confusing when you search for Dutch words in Google.com. In the above example I did a search for this Dutch name at Google.com with the interface language switched to Dutch (hl=nl). In this case Google came up with the first result Albers rather then the searched Aalbers. Only the third result is correct. On switching to the English interface setting at Google.com (hl=en) it seems that only Albers is retrieved.
Also interesting are the number of retrieved results the Dutch interface yielded 1.240.000 or 1.230.000 only minutes later, whereas the English interface yielded 64,400 results.
With the Dutch interface version you appear to have some form of word stemming, albeit quite unclear what is done exactly. Excluding Albers in the Dutch interface gives a far more reasonable number of results (46.200). With the English interface there is no word stemming performed with a lot less and as far as I can estimate much more accurate results.
Google remains fascinating.
Labels: English
02 januari 2007
"Search" on the banished word list for 2007
The funniest suggestion on the Lake Superior State University Banished Words List 2007 is Search.
Hattip: Resourceshelf.
Search -- Quasi-anachronism. Placed on one-year moratorium.
"Might as well banish it. The word has been replaced by 'google.'" -- Michael Raczko, Swanton, Ohio.
Hattip: Resourceshelf.
Labels: English
New reference management software for mac lovers
I am an avid user of EndNote. At our library we even run a string of courses to teach te beginnings or the nitty gritty of the EndNote program. It is a real pity that mastering even the basics of EndNote requires some set courses. But my real complaint with EndNote is the continuous stream of updates. I wish these continuous updates stopped. Although I am the first to admit that the program needs some serious improvements, certainly with te current EndNote Web, which I still don't grasp entirely.
Once I pointed already to Zotero a free web based reference manager. I liked it, but I still kept on using EndNote. Found EndNote the more versatile of these two programmes. And the 2000+ journals styles is also an attraction.
If only publishers reduced, formalized and equalized their instructions to authors for the journals in their portfolio, that would be a big relief. Elsevier perhaps?
Today RSS pointed met to a new (Mac) program, Papers, that will be released soon. From the screenshot it looks real cool. Albeit I get the impression that the accent is on the article management and resource discovery, and less in the assistance of inclusion of references in papers or reports. That is really one of the strong points of EndNote. The screenshot looks so nice that I am really interested to find te odd Mac users at our university to give this program a try.
Hattip: Sidi
Once I pointed already to Zotero a free web based reference manager. I liked it, but I still kept on using EndNote. Found EndNote the more versatile of these two programmes. And the 2000+ journals styles is also an attraction.
If only publishers reduced, formalized and equalized their instructions to authors for the journals in their portfolio, that would be a big relief. Elsevier perhaps?
Today RSS pointed met to a new (Mac) program, Papers, that will be released soon. From the screenshot it looks real cool. Albeit I get the impression that the accent is on the article management and resource discovery, and less in the assistance of inclusion of references in papers or reports. That is really one of the strong points of EndNote. The screenshot looks so nice that I am really interested to find te odd Mac users at our university to give this program a try.
Hattip: Sidi
Labels: EndNote, English, Papers, Reference management, Zotero
01 januari 2007
Cooperation between cinema and library
Just a few days ago I blogged on this theme already in Dutch. The example, is so nice, and the suggestion from Jan * in the comments on my post are two excellent examples of additional library services that it begged for a post in English as well.
My personal experience with the meme 'going where your users are' was when I encountered links from the film pages at our local cinema to the local library. You selected the latest James Bond movie, in extra information section you find the link to the local library catalogue (Zoek in catalogus bblthk) as well. So, you can read Ian Fleming his origial book at your local library if you wish. Well, at least it notifies the cinema lover that somthing extra can be get at the local library. Some library awareness is raised!
The other example came from Haarlem, where the local cinema and library have a common website cinebieb where library patrons can vote for (older) movies to be shown at a selected occasion, and where they can watch the move at greatly reduced prices (on showing you library card). This is an example of adding value to your library card.
Just thought it is useful to exchange these two ideas on a wider scale than the Dutch Biblioblogosphere.
Technorati tags: library awareness; added value; public libraries
My personal experience with the meme 'going where your users are' was when I encountered links from the film pages at our local cinema to the local library. You selected the latest James Bond movie, in extra information section you find the link to the local library catalogue (Zoek in catalogus bblthk) as well. So, you can read Ian Fleming his origial book at your local library if you wish. Well, at least it notifies the cinema lover that somthing extra can be get at the local library. Some library awareness is raised!
The other example came from Haarlem, where the local cinema and library have a common website cinebieb where library patrons can vote for (older) movies to be shown at a selected occasion, and where they can watch the move at greatly reduced prices (on showing you library card). This is an example of adding value to your library card.
Just thought it is useful to exchange these two ideas on a wider scale than the Dutch Biblioblogosphere.
Technorati tags: library awareness; added value; public libraries
Labels: English
Blog first, then check your rss
I don't believe in new year's resolutions, so you will not read them here. What I want to share, though is a really good tip to increase your blogging productivity. At least it will work for my productivity (hopefully). Blog first, then check your rss.
Reading my rss regularly cost me at least an hour a day, if not 2 to 3 hours. Normally I clear the backlog of blogs before jotting down a post, or none whatsoever, because time is lacking. I suspect when I commit myself to do it the other way around. I might be able to blog a bit more and read perhaps a little bit less. Meanwhile, it gives me the opportunity to digest the matter slightly better, before (over)reacting through my blog.
Sounds like a new years resolution, but it isn't. It is just a good plan.
Hattip: Edwin (in Dutch)
Reading my rss regularly cost me at least an hour a day, if not 2 to 3 hours. Normally I clear the backlog of blogs before jotting down a post, or none whatsoever, because time is lacking. I suspect when I commit myself to do it the other way around. I might be able to blog a bit more and read perhaps a little bit less. Meanwhile, it gives me the opportunity to digest the matter slightly better, before (over)reacting through my blog.
Sounds like a new years resolution, but it isn't. It is just a good plan.
Hattip: Edwin (in Dutch)
Labels: English
31 december 2006
Another End of Year overview
Quite a year: 29,366 visitors and 49,255 pageviews. In the previous post I listed the most succesful posts.
Best wishes and happy New Year to all my readers, and keep on reading!
Labels: English
29 december 2006
Libraries using Del.icio.us
The excellent German blog netbib has a very interesting entry on libraries that are making use of Del.icio.us. They have compiled a list of a few USA libraries that make use of tagging systems such as Del.icio.us. Recently they discoverd the impressive collection from the Sorbonne University Libary with nearly 2000 tagged items.
Now we have libraries that blog, podcast, wiki, use flickr and or tag as well.
Now we have libraries that blog, podcast, wiki, use flickr and or tag as well.
Labels: English
27 december 2006
Google, eat your heart out
Great promotion for the UK higher education search engine/web directory Intute in the Education Guardian. What I didn't realize is that Intute is compatible with Blackboard (and Mooter). Perhaps we can make use of that knowledge.
Hattip: Gwen Harris
Hattip: Gwen Harris
Labels: English
26 december 2006
The laguage thing evaluated
The language thing is becoming trilogy on my blog. You are reading the third installment of the sequel. The first part introduced the language musings of a non-native english blogger. The second installement announced more frequent posts in English. This third part of the trilogy is at the request of Edwin who quizzed me about the statistics of this blog since I started blogging in English. I was looking into the statistics of this blog anyway. It is the end of year. I have collected just over a year of usage data with Google Analytics. A program I seriously recommend to any serious blogger. So I was considering some posts on this subject anyway. This is the first to start it all off.
So the question posed by Edwin was "Have u seen any changes in your blogstats since u've been written a lot of posts in English?"
I made a start with blogging in English on August 26th. So I have looked at the 4 months prior to September and the 4 months from Spetember till now. Okay the month hasn't been finished yet, but with the holiday season traffic is slow anyway.
For the short answer: In the period May-August I had a 9,693 pageviews from 68 countries. In the period September-December I had 11,102 pageviews from 85 countries. From these figures I can't conclude that the readership of my blog had grown because of the language thing. If I had continued to blog in Dutch the audience was likely to have grown as well. What I can't measure is the missed impact because of the language shift.
In the period prior to the change 87% of the pageviews were from the Netherlands and since September this share has dropped to 77%.
Please scroll on, this post continues, but it si Blogger which can't handle tables..............
Looking at the details, you see a clear stabiliazation of pageviews from the Netherlands, and the growth over the last four months is all due to a larger number of international visitors.
Grasping it all together, I have probably lost quite a number of potential Dutch visitors. But luckily the remainder came along and passed by. On the other and the international pageviews have increased considerably. These are probably not only due to visits through Google, but due to selectively seeding interesting stories and receiving inlinks from popular English language blogs, such as Catalogablog, The kept-up Academic Librarian, Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog, or Open Access News. But the direct referals from these sites don't account for all the increase in International traffic.
It is an interesting exercise to start to build an altogether new audience once again.
And Edwin did this answer you questions?
So the question posed by Edwin was "Have u seen any changes in your blogstats since u've been written a lot of posts in English?"
I made a start with blogging in English on August 26th. So I have looked at the 4 months prior to September and the 4 months from Spetember till now. Okay the month hasn't been finished yet, but with the holiday season traffic is slow anyway.
For the short answer: In the period May-August I had a 9,693 pageviews from 68 countries. In the period September-December I had 11,102 pageviews from 85 countries. From these figures I can't conclude that the readership of my blog had grown because of the language thing. If I had continued to blog in Dutch the audience was likely to have grown as well. What I can't measure is the missed impact because of the language shift.
In the period prior to the change 87% of the pageviews were from the Netherlands and since September this share has dropped to 77%.
Please scroll on, this post continues, but it si Blogger which can't handle tables..............
| Country | Pageviews Sep.-Dec. | Pageviews May-Aug. |
| All | 11102 | 9693 |
| No. countries | 85 | 68 |
| in detail | ||
| Netherlands | 8574 | 8406 |
| USA | 726 | 209 |
| Belgium | 703 | 623 |
| UK | 187 | 69 |
| Canada | 80 | 11 |
| Germany | 76 | 59 |
| Australia | 72 | 20 |
| France | 61 | 39 |
| Spain | 54 | 36 |
| Switzerland | 42 | 7 |
Looking at the details, you see a clear stabiliazation of pageviews from the Netherlands, and the growth over the last four months is all due to a larger number of international visitors.
Grasping it all together, I have probably lost quite a number of potential Dutch visitors. But luckily the remainder came along and passed by. On the other and the international pageviews have increased considerably. These are probably not only due to visits through Google, but due to selectively seeding interesting stories and receiving inlinks from popular English language blogs, such as Catalogablog, The kept-up Academic Librarian, Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog, or Open Access News. But the direct referals from these sites don't account for all the increase in International traffic.
It is an interesting exercise to start to build an altogether new audience once again.
And Edwin did this answer you questions?
Labels: English
25 december 2006
Google grants a christmas wish
Sometimes it takes ages before Google actually listens to the blogosphere. Hhow long did the improvements on Blogger take, yout might wonder. On other occasions Google is swift to make changes.
Pandia had a very interesting Christmas wishlist for Google. Matt Cuts was pleased by the well balanced tone, sympathetic suggestions and politness breathing through this post. And Google reacted as well! Last Frinday, the Google.com version now comes up with a small pop up screen when you hit the 'more' button. At Pandia they have a real merry Christmas.
Now we only ave to wait before it will be impleeted in Google.nl as well.
Google Benelux, do you listen as well?
Pandia had a very interesting Christmas wishlist for Google. Matt Cuts was pleased by the well balanced tone, sympathetic suggestions and politness breathing through this post. And Google reacted as well! Last Frinday, the Google.com version now comes up with a small pop up screen when you hit the 'more' button. At Pandia they have a real merry Christmas.
Now we only ave to wait before it will be impleeted in Google.nl as well.
Google Benelux, do you listen as well?
Labels: English
24 december 2006
Merry Christmas Everybody
With or without snow,
With or without venison,
Or meat altogether.
Merry Christmas for all my readers!
Labels: English
23 december 2006
The persuasive Web 2.0
The last issue of New Scientist (23/30 december 2006) had an interesting take on the feel good factor underlying the popular Web 2.0 sites. Celeste Beaver based her article on an interview with B.J. Fogg from Stanford University's Captology Lab or here.
Fogg and his compatriots have studied the behaviour of web surfers on the participation on popular website such as Flickr or YouTube. Their findings can easly be applied to your weblog. Or mine. How do you persuade users to contribute content?
Simple said Fogg "You offer someone a context for gaining status, and they are going to work for that status". "The secret is to tie the acquisition of friends, compliments and status to activities that enhace the site, such as inviting new users and contributing content" Biever concludes. It is and interesting news item because it applies to weblogs as well. How do you build a community? How do you get you users to comment? Worthwhile to get your hands on this article and have a look at it.
I think I have to start neogtiations with my blog software provider, or shoulf i finally swith over to Word Press, this holiday. Well, at first I have to install a new modem on this PC.
Interestlingly, the research hinted on in the New Scientist hasn't been published yet. Fogg wrote me in an e-mail, that they will present some of their findings at Persuasive'07. Late april 2007 in California. That is a persuasive location!
Literature:
Biever, C. (2006). Web 2.0 is about the feel good-factor. New Scientist 2583/84: 30.
Fogg and his compatriots have studied the behaviour of web surfers on the participation on popular website such as Flickr or YouTube. Their findings can easly be applied to your weblog. Or mine. How do you persuade users to contribute content?
Simple said Fogg "You offer someone a context for gaining status, and they are going to work for that status". "The secret is to tie the acquisition of friends, compliments and status to activities that enhace the site, such as inviting new users and contributing content" Biever concludes. It is and interesting news item because it applies to weblogs as well. How do you build a community? How do you get you users to comment? Worthwhile to get your hands on this article and have a look at it.
I think I have to start neogtiations with my blog software provider, or shoulf i finally swith over to Word Press, this holiday. Well, at first I have to install a new modem on this PC.
Interestlingly, the research hinted on in the New Scientist hasn't been published yet. Fogg wrote me in an e-mail, that they will present some of their findings at Persuasive'07. Late april 2007 in California. That is a persuasive location!
Literature:
Biever, C. (2006). Web 2.0 is about the feel good-factor. New Scientist 2583/84: 30.
Labels: English
21 december 2006
Scopus reviewed and compared: the coverage and functionality of the citation database Scopus, including comparisons with Web of Science and GS
At Utrecht University Library they have gone through a lot of effort to compare, the new entrant in the market for comprehensive bibliographies with citation data, Scopus with, the sleeping giant in this field, Web of Science. Their findings were presented and report was published a while back already. But it was all in Dutch. Today the English version became available. In their impressive excercise they also looked at Google Scholar and their in-house developed AI system 'Omega'. From the abstract:
From the summary:
Reference
Bosman, J., I.v. Mourik, M. Rasch, E. Sieverts & H. Verhoeff (2006) Scopus reviewed and compared : The coverage and functionality of the citation database Scopus, including comparisons with Web of Science and Google Scholar. Utrecht, Utrecht University Library. 63p. http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/DARLIN/2006-1220-200432/Scopus%20doorgelicht%20%26%20vergeleken%20-%20translated.pdf
Scopus is a new entrant in the market for multidisciplinary citation databases. This report analyses the coverage and functionality of Scopus and compares it to ISI's Web of Science and Google Scholar. Scopus comes out as a user-friendly product with an overall broader coverage of life sciences and physical sciences, compared to Web of Science. In social sciences coverage is not yet fully convincing. There are some volume/issue gaps in Scopus coverage as well.
From the summary:
Research results on coverage
Number of records, titles. Scopus has almost 28 million records; the number of records in our version of WoS, at 19 million, is smaller, but the number in the full WoS (with backfiles stretching back to 1945) is larger, at 37 million. Scopus covers over 15,000 journals, versus 9,000 in WoS. Scopus covers 64% of our digital journals, as against 53% in WoS.
Period covered. Scopus is 5-15% smaller prior to 1996, and 20-45% larger than WoS after 1996 on the basis of the number of records. For publications before 1996, the coverage offered by Scopus for the various subjects is highly uneven.
Types of documents. 95% of the total database of Scopus consists of the records of descriptions of articles in journals. For the years prior to 1996, the number of non-journal articles in Scopus is low, subsequently rising to over 10% in 2005. That means that for recent years the proportion of non-journal articles is significantly higher than in WoS (4%).
Subject-specific. Scopus covers only scientific fields. WoS additionally covers the classics. The coverage provided by Scopus is 4 or more percentage points higher than that of WoS in 16 of the 18 UBU subjects on the basis of the numbers of titles of journals in the range carried digitally by the UBU. The two subjects in which WoS is stronger are both in the arts/humanities. On the basis of a number of searches, Scopus appears to be relatively weak in sociology, physics and astronomy (but caution is in order here, as further investigation is required), but very good on biomedical and geosciences.
Up-to-dateness. In terms of the inclusion of issues of journals and on the basis of the ‘progression percentage’ for coverage of the current year, there is hardly any difference between WoS and Scopus as regards the speed with which new publications are included.
Nature of data per record. Scopus has more keywords, for authors but often also from ‘controlled vocabulary’ (e.g. MeSH). Besides author keywords, WoS has no keywords from controlled vocabulary but it does have Keywords-plus: keywords generated from references.
Citation data. The difference between Scopus and WoS in terms of citation data is comparatively slight, there is a strong overlap. A count on the basis of references to 64 articles from 1995 and 2000 shows that WoS has 6% fewer references to citing articles. The difference between these two and Google Scholar is larger. While Google Scholar has 2% fewer references to these articles than Scopus, it does on average include 5 times as many ‘unique’ citing publications. For socio-economic sciences in particular, including economics, Google Scholar has many more and more unique citations.
Research result functionality
Difference in capabilities. Scopus is slightly more versatile and has a few clear advantages in functionality in the form of default refine, the table format of results of the Citation Tracker and author identification. WoS has slightly more extensive options for citation analysis for institutions. Note: In June 2006, WoS also included a Refine tool and ISI also announced author identification for WoS.
Speed. There is above all a substantial difference between WoS and Scopus with GS, which produces virtually instant results, and also, depending on the type of search, with the Omega search engine, which is also often very quick. This can (subconsciously) be a major reason for users to choose Google Scholar. While there is little to choose between
WoS and Scopus in terms of speed, Scopus is slightly faster.
User ratings
Interviews. Heavy users from the faculties rate the clarity of the Scopus interface and refine and the citation tracker particularly highly. The majority of interviewees values Scopus more highly than Wos, but also ‘demands’ that JCR has to remain available.
Survey. A survey among 81 users shows that Scopus and WoS are less well-known than Google Scholar, but the results generated by Google Scholar are rated less highly, especially among research trainees/researchers, and among those, largely the scientific disciplines. Scopus is rated best in use, followed closely by Google Scholar. According to the respondents, WoS clearly has some ground to make up here. In terms of the relevance of the results, Scopus is likewise rated most highly of these three citation databases.
Reference
Bosman, J., I.v. Mourik, M. Rasch, E. Sieverts & H. Verhoeff (2006) Scopus reviewed and compared : The coverage and functionality of the citation database Scopus, including comparisons with Web of Science and Google Scholar. Utrecht, Utrecht University Library. 63p. http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/DARLIN/2006-1220-200432/Scopus%20doorgelicht%20%26%20vergeleken%20-%20translated.pdf
Labels: English
17 december 2006
G'bye Profusion
Profusion has always been on my list when teaching students about deep web resources. In due course it had changed a bit. But in the preparation of the my most recent Internet class, I noted that Profusion had become defunct. The standerd search interface was just a simple metasearch engine. But their directory with deep web search possibilities is what I liked most. But it doesn't exist any longer.
So even at times when search seems to be a hot commodity again, some trusted and reliable sources cease. A real pity.
Along these lines. A while back ago I found out that the companion website to the Invisible Web book by Sherman and Price (2001) went down. (After Gary left Search Engine Watch?). Nowadays the site bears a remark that they will be back. If the current notice will function as an example for the quality of the refurbished site, I have my doubts. We have to wait and see.
So even at times when search seems to be a hot commodity again, some trusted and reliable sources cease. A real pity.
Along these lines. A while back ago I found out that the companion website to the Invisible Web book by Sherman and Price (2001) went down. (After Gary left Search Engine Watch?). Nowadays the site bears a remark that they will be back. If the current notice will function as an example for the quality of the refurbished site, I have my doubts. We have to wait and see.
Labels: English
DOAJ larger again
It was only 5 days ago that I published a list on the various collections of Open Access (OA) journals. I had checked the numbers, 2492 journals in the Dorectory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Last Friday however, they reached the 2,500 peer reviewed OA journals milestone.
There are other collections of OA journals that boast larger numbers of journals, but the DOAJ is amongst the most prestigious collections. From DOAJ:
There are other collections of OA journals that boast larger numbers of journals, but the DOAJ is amongst the most prestigious collections. From DOAJ:
This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 2500 journals in the directory. Currently 743 journals are searchable at article level. As of today 123095 articles are included in the DOAJ service.Source: Biomedbiblog; OA News
Labels: English
15 december 2006
Yet another reason to tag
We are librarians. David's post on the new developments in Libworm is really an encouragement to tag your posts. Perhaps, try Keotag to generate them for you.
Labels: English
Working group on the future of bibliographic control : some observations
For our library the catalogue is the ulitmate backbone of many services. Only as an example, our portal pages are rendered straight from our catalogue. It is therefore of interest to note the new working group from the LOC that has the task to say something wisely about the future of our bibliographic ontrol, especially catalogues.
Does the catalogue remain a derivative of our old card systems, or can they come up with new revolutionary insights? Do we need a new record for each representation of a work, or is a single record with a set of ISBNs or ISSNs for hardcovers/paperbacks or electronic versions sufficient?
There are many questions one can ask about bibliographic control, perhaps it is better to discuss bibliographic liberation (I am agreeing with Bill Drew here) . The National Library in Netherlands has taken some bold steps in this respect. In their new datamodel they have adopted DC, rather than the much richer ISBD rules (Unfortunately their website and reports on these developments are in Dutch).
I looked through the minutes of the working group's first meeting. What struck me most was the combination of people that LoC put together. I liked the diversity of that group. Also the fact that there were people from outside the library scene was an encouriging sign. Although the majority are still properly trained MLS graduates. But still they have looked for new opinions.
A few quotes, and remarks, that I thought are worth to share.
Clifford Lynch is on of those examples from outside the library scene, more or less, "is a computer scientist, not a librarian". He noted:
Daniel Clancy is engineering director of Google Book Search, is also on the team. Not so much a quote, but what really interests me is in how far is Google is willing to change as a result of his involvement in this workgroup. In such a way that libraries can improve their services a lot. The Google Library team is doing good work, that is allright. But thinking along the lines of Clifford Lynch, with the current mass digitisation I want an easy solution to link from copies in our legacy collections to the fulltext scanned by Google that are possibly available in Google Booksearch (and its competitors). These older copies don't have an ISBN, so it has to be done on titles and author names. The linking should be done preferably through our link resolver, or just directly with standard openURL. So Dan, where LoC has asked for your input, please bring back some inspiration from libraries to Google as well. I know you are listening to Blyberg for instance, but we need more than ISBNs to charge ahead (and it looks like John is still waiting for a solution).
Lorcan Dempsey is also in this working group. He has shown so many times already in his blog that he has some very deep and provocative thoughts on the improvements we can make with library catalogues. Just keep track of his blog, and you know why I am fan. (Please go ahead and improve on his wikipedia lemma, that is what he likes).
I am really interested in the papers dustributed by Janet Swan Hill. Couldn't find them om E-Lis or DList, Scirus or Google Scholar though. So please Janet, deposit them somewhere where we can get hold them.
Brian Schottlaender, the university librarian at the University of California, San Diego, "noted the importance of maintaining a sensitivity to the politics of cataloging" . This is one of those remarks that make me wonder. The politics of cataloging? What did I miss so far? It is a very special profession indeed. But politically sensitive?
Gray Price could not attend (and send a replacement), but he is in this group as well. I think Gary really is the users advocate. Gary of course, is known for Resourceshelf and Docuticker. And is nowadays also on the board of Ask. And oh yes, Gary has some pretty strong opinions on the efficiency of all those separate book scanning programmes.
Interesting set of people, on a very interesting subject. See if they can enlighten us. The renaisance of the catalogue?
Technorati tags: cataloging catalogues catalogs bibliographic control future
Does the catalogue remain a derivative of our old card systems, or can they come up with new revolutionary insights? Do we need a new record for each representation of a work, or is a single record with a set of ISBNs or ISSNs for hardcovers/paperbacks or electronic versions sufficient?
There are many questions one can ask about bibliographic control, perhaps it is better to discuss bibliographic liberation (I am agreeing with Bill Drew here) . The National Library in Netherlands has taken some bold steps in this respect. In their new datamodel they have adopted DC, rather than the much richer ISBD rules (Unfortunately their website and reports on these developments are in Dutch).
I looked through the minutes of the working group's first meeting. What struck me most was the combination of people that LoC put together. I liked the diversity of that group. Also the fact that there were people from outside the library scene was an encouriging sign. Although the majority are still properly trained MLS graduates. But still they have looked for new opinions.
A few quotes, and remarks, that I thought are worth to share.
Clifford Lynch is on of those examples from outside the library scene, more or less, "is a computer scientist, not a librarian". He noted:
He is interested in how descriptive practices translate into access practices, particularly in the current environment where increasingly we must describe physical objects that have digital counterparts.I want to add the increasing number of occasions where we only have digital versions, and the paper no longer exist. And the number of digital objects is about to explode and we are running into the problems of information overload for our collection specialists and catalogers.
Daniel Clancy is engineering director of Google Book Search, is also on the team. Not so much a quote, but what really interests me is in how far is Google is willing to change as a result of his involvement in this workgroup. In such a way that libraries can improve their services a lot. The Google Library team is doing good work, that is allright. But thinking along the lines of Clifford Lynch, with the current mass digitisation I want an easy solution to link from copies in our legacy collections to the fulltext scanned by Google that are possibly available in Google Booksearch (and its competitors). These older copies don't have an ISBN, so it has to be done on titles and author names. The linking should be done preferably through our link resolver, or just directly with standard openURL. So Dan, where LoC has asked for your input, please bring back some inspiration from libraries to Google as well. I know you are listening to Blyberg for instance, but we need more than ISBNs to charge ahead (and it looks like John is still waiting for a solution).
Lorcan Dempsey is also in this working group. He has shown so many times already in his blog that he has some very deep and provocative thoughts on the improvements we can make with library catalogues. Just keep track of his blog, and you know why I am fan. (Please go ahead and improve on his wikipedia lemma, that is what he likes).
I am really interested in the papers dustributed by Janet Swan Hill. Couldn't find them om E-Lis or DList, Scirus or Google Scholar though. So please Janet, deposit them somewhere where we can get hold them.
Brian Schottlaender, the university librarian at the University of California, San Diego, "noted the importance of maintaining a sensitivity to the politics of cataloging" . This is one of those remarks that make me wonder. The politics of cataloging? What did I miss so far? It is a very special profession indeed. But politically sensitive?
Gray Price could not attend (and send a replacement), but he is in this group as well. I think Gary really is the users advocate. Gary of course, is known for Resourceshelf and Docuticker. And is nowadays also on the board of Ask. And oh yes, Gary has some pretty strong opinions on the efficiency of all those separate book scanning programmes.
Interesting set of people, on a very interesting subject. See if they can enlighten us. The renaisance of the catalogue?
Technorati tags: cataloging catalogues catalogs bibliographic control future
Labels: English
13 december 2006
Searching for Science
This afternoon I did the first version of a web search class concentrating on the scientific, or scholarly, part of the Web. We dubbed the course 'searching for science'. Perhaps not the best name. "Searching for free scholarly information on the open Web", however is such a mouth full.
The programme was a triffle overloaded. The advanced search engine techniques and the explanation of the deep web took a bit more time than I had anticipated. The rest of the programme went swell, albeit, they were not really interested in the tagging, wiki's or blogs let alone the latest Digg clone for scholars. They just wanted plain vanilla Web Search.
Today was actually a tryout. Based on my experience, I will improve the course material shown in the wiki. Add the excercises as well. The wiki will certainly grow a lot. I'll keep you posted on that.
Technorati tags: Course material; web Searching; Deep Web
The programme was a triffle overloaded. The advanced search engine techniques and the explanation of the deep web took a bit more time than I had anticipated. The rest of the programme went swell, albeit, they were not really interested in the tagging, wiki's or blogs let alone the latest Digg clone for scholars. They just wanted plain vanilla Web Search.
Today was actually a tryout. Based on my experience, I will improve the course material shown in the wiki. Add the excercises as well. The wiki will certainly grow a lot. I'll keep you posted on that.
Technorati tags: Course material; web Searching; Deep Web
Labels: English
12 december 2006
BIOSIS archives
Interesting news from Thomson Scientific (can't trace the exact release data though). Biosis has made their backfiles available. For us, as a life science university an important addition for resource discovery in this field. Biological abstract is one of our most intensively used databases, so the archives need to be seriously considered. We only have to wait for the moment that they will be offered on Ovid as well. For a reasonble price that is ;)
Technorati tags: BIOSIS; BIOSIS archives;
Technorati tags: BIOSIS; BIOSIS archives;
Labels: English
OA journal resources : an overview
Wageningen UR library offers a comprehensive set of electronic journals. However, most of these journals are subscription based and do cost a "small" fortune. The open access movement tries to free access to scholarly material. One example of the OA movement is the creation of new free accessible journals. Some collections of OA journals are listed here. The other sollution to gain OA is self-archiving by researchers of their publications in repositories, which will be covered in another post. A primer on OA is provided by Peter Suber, who reports daily on important OA news.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) http://www.doaj.org/
A collection of 2491 free full text, peer reviewed Open Access Journals. Currently 741 journals searchable at the article level on the usual bibliographic metadata.
Open J-Gate http://www.openjgate.org/
A larger collection of open access journals. Covers 3804 journals of which the peer reviewd section can be searched separately. Searching takes places on bibliographic metadata only.
LiVre! http://livre.cnen.gov.br/Default2I.asp
LiVre! is the a journal portal developed by CNEN - Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear(Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission), through its CIN - Centro de Informações Nucleares (Nuclear Information Center), aiming to ease the identification and the access to free journals available on the Internet. The portal covers more than 2500 scientific journals, magazines, bulletins and newsletters but you can easily limit the selections to peer reviewed scientific journals.
Highwire Press http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/search
Highwire Press hosts a repository of high impact, peer-reviewed content, with 1008 journals and 3,904,956 full text articles from over 130 scholarly publishers. Since many important journals make their content availble free online HighWire containes 1,491,300 free articles. What is really important is that Highwire hosts some of the most important (cited) journals.
The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB
(Electronic Journals Library) http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7〈=en
Covers some 4500 OA journals. The collection is therefore one of the most comprehensive free journal collections. Just select only the "green" journals and you can browse or search through this impressive collections.
Jan Szczepanski's lists of OA-journals http://www.his.se/templates/vanligwebbsida1.aspx?id=20709
Jan Szczepanski, a librarian at Göteborg University, has collected links and information on Open Access journals for years. His lists contain over 4500 current OA-journals and 757 historic. You will find more information on the OA Librarian blog
Walt Crawford's overview of early E-zines http://citesandinsights.info/civ6i12.pdf
In Cites & Insight 6(12) Walt Crawford provides an overview of early OA Journals "They weren’t generally called Open Access journals in 1995: If that term existed before 2001 or 2002, it certainly wasn’t the standard name for free online scholarship. But there were examples of free online scholarship, some dating back to 1987."
Additional information
Archivalia http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2963132/ (in German)
Technorati tags: OA journals; Open+access
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) http://www.doaj.org/
A collection of 2491 free full text, peer reviewed Open Access Journals. Currently 741 journals searchable at the article level on the usual bibliographic metadata.
Open J-Gate http://www.openjgate.org/
A larger collection of open access journals. Covers 3804 journals of which the peer reviewd section can be searched separately. Searching takes places on bibliographic metadata only.
LiVre! http://livre.cnen.gov.br/Default2I.asp
LiVre! is the a journal portal developed by CNEN - Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear(Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission), through its CIN - Centro de Informações Nucleares (Nuclear Information Center), aiming to ease the identification and the access to free journals available on the Internet. The portal covers more than 2500 scientific journals, magazines, bulletins and newsletters but you can easily limit the selections to peer reviewed scientific journals.
Highwire Press http://highwire.stanford.edu/cgi/search
Highwire Press hosts a repository of high impact, peer-reviewed content, with 1008 journals and 3,904,956 full text articles from over 130 scholarly publishers. Since many important journals make their content availble free online HighWire containes 1,491,300 free articles. What is really important is that Highwire hosts some of the most important (cited) journals.
The Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB
(Electronic Journals Library) http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7〈=en
Covers some 4500 OA journals. The collection is therefore one of the most comprehensive free journal collections. Just select only the "green" journals and you can browse or search through this impressive collections.
Jan Szczepanski's lists of OA-journals http://www.his.se/templates/vanligwebbsida1.aspx?id=20709
Jan Szczepanski, a librarian at Göteborg University, has collected links and information on Open Access journals for years. His lists contain over 4500 current OA-journals and 757 historic. You will find more information on the OA Librarian blog
Walt Crawford's overview of early E-zines http://citesandinsights.info/civ6i12.pdf
In Cites & Insight 6(12) Walt Crawford provides an overview of early OA Journals "They weren’t generally called Open Access journals in 1995: If that term existed before 2001 or 2002, it certainly wasn’t the standard name for free online scholarship. But there were examples of free online scholarship, some dating back to 1987."
Additional information
Archivalia http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/2963132/ (in German)
Technorati tags: OA journals; Open+access
Labels: English
Data sources for performing citation analysis: An overview
Another preprint
Citation data yet again. Interesting viewpoint in this analysis, is the inclusion of subject specialised databases such as PsychInfo and Chemical Abstracts.
Hattip: Recherchenblog
Technorati tags: citation analysis; WoS; Google Scholar; Scopus
Purpose: To provide an overview of new citation-enhanced databases and to identify issues to be considered when they are used as data source for performing citation analysis.
Design/methodology/approach: Reports the limitations of Thomson Scientific’s citation indexes and reviews the characteristics of the citation-enhanced databases Chemical Abstracts, Google Scholar and Scopus.
Findings: Suggests that citation-enhanced databases need to be examined carefully, with regard to both their potentialities and their limitations for citation analysis.
Citation data yet again. Interesting viewpoint in this analysis, is the inclusion of subject specialised databases such as PsychInfo and Chemical Abstracts.
Hattip: Recherchenblog
Technorati tags: citation analysis; WoS; Google Scholar; Scopus
Labels: English
06 december 2006
Citation counts in WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar
The following article was deposited in E-Lis just the other day: Citation Analysis: A Comparison of Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science, by Kiduk Yang and Lokman I. Meho from Indiana University.
On scanning their paper, they use the citation counts of two important LIS researchers to draw some conclusions. The citation counts reported in WoS can be boosted by using additional information from Scopus or GS. Who will be amazed by this finding?
We need some benchmarks though.
At this moment it is only ISI/Thomson Scientific who delivers those kind of benchmarks. Citation data is nice to have, but benchmarks are a necessity to make them comparable.
Technorati tags: citation analysis; wos; Google Scholar; Scopus;
On scanning their paper, they use the citation counts of two important LIS researchers to draw some conclusions. The citation counts reported in WoS can be boosted by using additional information from Scopus or GS. Who will be amazed by this finding?
We need some benchmarks though.
At this moment it is only ISI/Thomson Scientific who delivers those kind of benchmarks. Citation data is nice to have, but benchmarks are a necessity to make them comparable.
Technorati tags: citation analysis; wos; Google Scholar; Scopus;
Labels: English
Windows book search is live
Today I received a mail from a collegae with link with to the BBC story that Windows (Live) Book Search will go live tomorrow. How fortunate I was. It was up and running already this afternoon. On the Liveside blog the news was confirmed, albeit a bit unclear on the exact time of the launch. It is up an runing however.
The searches I tried all delivered really old stuff, but that happens when you're testing whether Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica had been scanned within this project. Not the book itself thought. But another eight books that mention Newton's Principia in full are retrieved. It is also a consequence of MSN's principle to scan only books without of copyright. Perhaps a bit too strict, but a wealth of 18th and 19th century will become available through projects as these. Okay, some early tentieh century books, but nothing more. Over at Google Book Search you'll find a lot more when searching for Newton's masterpiece. More modern stuff that you can't access because it is still under some sort of copyright.
It will be interesting to see te comparisons like these between Goole Book Search and Live Book Search appearing in the blogosphere over the next few weeks.
Technorati tags: book search; Live book search; Google book search
The searches I tried all delivered really old stuff, but that happens when you're testing whether Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica had been scanned within this project. Not the book itself thought. But another eight books that mention Newton's Principia in full are retrieved. It is also a consequence of MSN's principle to scan only books without of copyright. Perhaps a bit too strict, but a wealth of 18th and 19th century will become available through projects as these. Okay, some early tentieh century books, but nothing more. Over at Google Book Search you'll find a lot more when searching for Newton's masterpiece. More modern stuff that you can't access because it is still under some sort of copyright.
It will be interesting to see te comparisons like these between Goole Book Search and Live Book Search appearing in the blogosphere over the next few weeks.
Technorati tags: book search; Live book search; Google book search
Labels: English
03 december 2006
For my wonderful marketing collegae's : Scoble is here
Scobble is around, in The Netherlands, in Amsterdam to be exactly, and is interested in meeting with some fellow bloggers. So stop your blogs and hurry over to Amsterdam. I am quite happy to sit and wait. Read your reports, with interest, in the blogs.
Enjoy.
Technorati tags: Scoble
Enjoy.
Technorati tags: Scoble
Labels: English
Pleasantly surprised by my local library
Last Friday I was surprised by the inroads that Library 2.0 has made in the catalogue of my public library already. They are using the Bicat system, so this possibly is the case in many other public libraries around as well.
The first thing when I checked out the availability of Music CDs by Keane, I was surprised by the fact that the newest CD which they had ordered, but wasn't available yet, was already shown in the Libray Catalogue. Have a look at this catalogue record.
It is all in Dutch of course, but the picture shows you an item that has been ordered rather than it is available in the library.
Subsequently I checked for CDs by Jamie Cullum, which I couldn't find by browsing. So I had to check the catalogue again. They had placed his CDs in the category of Jazz, rather than pop. But at the same time I noted that the suggestions that were made. People who borrowed this also borrowed ..... Look at the following record:
Chet Baker or Trijntje Oosterhuis....
Really neat. These are two examples of catalogue improvements I suggested last March in a worshop for our staff to apply to our catalogue as well. But we haven't been able to implement these functionalities (yet), and thereby not everybody on our team was convinced of the service to our users to publish ordered items in our catalogues. For me it worked last Friday though. I made a reservation for the Keane CD.
So Please slam me for my dreadful taste in music, but this cataligues has some really cool features.
Technorati tags: library2.0; catalogue; Wageningen
BTW, cleaning the cache helped to get the posting menu back in Blogger.
The first thing when I checked out the availability of Music CDs by Keane, I was surprised by the fact that the newest CD which they had ordered, but wasn't available yet, was already shown in the Libray Catalogue. Have a look at this catalogue record.
It is all in Dutch of course, but the picture shows you an item that has been ordered rather than it is available in the library.
Subsequently I checked for CDs by Jamie Cullum, which I couldn't find by browsing. So I had to check the catalogue again. They had placed his CDs in the category of Jazz, rather than pop. But at the same time I noted that the suggestions that were made. People who borrowed this also borrowed ..... Look at the following record:
Chet Baker or Trijntje Oosterhuis....
Really neat. These are two examples of catalogue improvements I suggested last March in a worshop for our staff to apply to our catalogue as well. But we haven't been able to implement these functionalities (yet), and thereby not everybody on our team was convinced of the service to our users to publish ordered items in our catalogues. For me it worked last Friday though. I made a reservation for the Keane CD.
So Please slam me for my dreadful taste in music, but this cataligues has some really cool features.
Technorati tags: library2.0; catalogue; Wageningen
BTW, cleaning the cache helped to get the posting menu back in Blogger.
Labels: Bibliotheek 2.0, catalogus, English, wageningen
Blogger Toolbar has gone
Don't know what's happening out there. But I am badly missing my Blogger Toolbar in Blogger Beta, to post some interesting pictures with a new post. Anybody else noted this as well? Or even better who has a solution?
Technorati tags: Blogger Toolbar
Technorati tags: Blogger Toolbar
Labels: English
30 november 2006
MEtrics from Scholarly Usage of Resources (Mesur)
It is not often that I pass press releases on this blog. There are three arguments in favour to make an exception this time:
Here it is in verbatim:
- It deals with bibliometrics (perhaps webometrics is more in place in this instance)
- It deals with OA and OAI, at least that's what I expect.
- The subject under investigation will have a tremendous effect on LIS as we know it.
Here it is in verbatim:
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds two-year LANL project for the development of metrics derived from scholarly usage data.
Los Alamos, New Mexico, November 6th 2006 - The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded funding to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in support of the two-year MESUR project that will investigate metrics derived from the network-based usage of scholarly information. The Digital Library Research & Prototyping Team of the LANL Research Library will carry out the project. Johan Bollen is the Principal Investigator, Herbert Van de Sompel serves as an architectural consultant, and Aric Hagberg of the LANL Mathematical Modeling and Analysis group serves as modeling consultant. Marko A. Rodriguez, PhD student at the University of California Santa Cruz and LANL Graduate Research Assistant, supports the project's research and development.
The project's major objective is enriching the toolkit used for the assessment of the impact of scholarly communication items, and hence of scholars, with metrics that derive from usage data. The project will start with the creation of a semantic model of scholarly communication, and an associated large-scale semantic store that relates a range of scholarly bibliographic, citation and usage data obtained from a variety of sources. Next, an investigation into the definition and validation of usage-based metrics will be conducted on the basis of this comprehensive collection. Finally, the defined metrics will be cross-validated, resulting in the formulation of guidelines and recommendations for future applications of metrics derived from scholarly usage data. Projects results will be made public on the project's web site <http://www.mesur.org/>.
The MESUR project currently has an open position for a software developer; a job description is available at <http://www.mesur.org/Jobs.html>.
--
Herbert Van de Sompel
Digital Library Research & Prototyping
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library http://public.lanl.gov/herbertv/ tel. +1 505 667 1267
Technorati tags: mesur; Open Access; Webometrics
Labels: English
28 november 2006
Dutch university repositories curated by the National Library of the Netherlands
Today it was anounced that electronic documents deposited in the repostiories of Dutch universities, connected through Darenet, will be currated by the National Library of the Netherlands. This announcement (in Dutch) is a new compelling argument for the libraries who operate the individual repositories to convince researchers to deposit more of their work in these repositories.
With the leading position of the National Library in the field of sustainabily archiving or curating electronic material we have one of the best opportunities to keep these copies accessible for future generations. If that is nog going to convince them....
Technorati tags: Repositories; Archiving; Curating
With the leading position of the National Library in the field of sustainabily archiving or curating electronic material we have one of the best opportunities to keep these copies accessible for future generations. If that is nog going to convince them....
Technorati tags: Repositories; Archiving; Curating
Labels: English
Title changes, what a mess publishers can make
It is well known to librarians, especially cataloguing librarians, that journals happily change their titles at quite regular intervals. Sometimes they change theirs issn's as well, sometimes not. Just by accident I ran into some problems with the links from Scopus to our SFX server for the journal Vegetatio (issn 0042-3106), and old Junk, and later Kluwer imprint.
When I looked up an article published in Vegetatio in 1986 in Scopus there was not a fulltext link available and the SFX server didn't provide a link to the fulltext either. However, when I looked up and article that cited the Vegetatio article, I got a view at publisher link in the listed reference, but this link led me to the journal Plant Ecology at Springer. The article appeared to exist as a Plant Ecology article. How is it possible?
Talking with our journals librarian, it appears that Springer has indeed the stupid habit of linking all the older discontinued journal titles through a URL based on the latest name and issn of the journals. This is really ridiculous. It amazes me that no real big outcries of abhorrence from the library community have been made at such bad cataloguing practice by Springer. We invest hours of work, blood sweat and tears to catalogue all the journal changes and issn changes as correctly as possible. Starting new records as needed, linking the records from discontinued records to the continued ones and vice versa. But a respected academic publisher brushes all the skilled, precise and labour intensive work aside, and gives all discontinued titles an incorrect link and issn. Additional problem is that the Knowledge base of Ex-Libris is not aware of this ridiculous Springer habit either, so all links for the older journals have to be maintained manually.
But what really daunted on me is that the citations can go wrong as well. When you look at the following example, you see a presentation of an article in the journal Vegetatio as though it is published in Plant Ecology, 1986, Vol. 65 Issue 1. This is a real farce. Only on printing the PDF you see in the small letters the correct Vegetatio information. However the presentation at SpringerLink makes you believe that it is a Plant Ecology article. It could well have been cited as an Plant Ecology article. When you do a cited reference search for the title Plant Ecology limited to the period 1948-1996 you find all kind of references. Probably a lot of books, but the cited references of Watkinson AR in Plant Ecology in 1986 or 1987 could well have been to his Vegetatio article that was published around that time.
It is really too bizarre.
Springer please clean up this mess.
Technorati tags: Springer; Title changes; Cataloguing
When I looked up an article published in Vegetatio in 1986 in Scopus there was not a fulltext link available and the SFX server didn't provide a link to the fulltext either. However, when I looked up and article that cited the Vegetatio article, I got a view at publisher link in the listed reference, but this link led me to the journal Plant Ecology at Springer. The article appeared to exist as a Plant Ecology article. How is it possible?
Talking with our journals librarian, it appears that Springer has indeed the stupid habit of linking all the older discontinued journal titles through a URL based on the latest name and issn of the journals. This is really ridiculous. It amazes me that no real big outcries of abhorrence from the library community have been made at such bad cataloguing practice by Springer. We invest hours of work, blood sweat and tears to catalogue all the journal changes and issn changes as correctly as possible. Starting new records as needed, linking the records from discontinued records to the continued ones and vice versa. But a respected academic publisher brushes all the skilled, precise and labour intensive work aside, and gives all discontinued titles an incorrect link and issn. Additional problem is that the Knowledge base of Ex-Libris is not aware of this ridiculous Springer habit either, so all links for the older journals have to be maintained manually.
But what really daunted on me is that the citations can go wrong as well. When you look at the following example, you see a presentation of an article in the journal Vegetatio as though it is published in Plant Ecology, 1986, Vol. 65 Issue 1. This is a real farce. Only on printing the PDF you see in the small letters the correct Vegetatio information. However the presentation at SpringerLink makes you believe that it is a Plant Ecology article. It could well have been cited as an Plant Ecology article. When you do a cited reference search for the title Plant Ecology limited to the period 1948-1996 you find all kind of references. Probably a lot of books, but the cited references of Watkinson AR in Plant Ecology in 1986 or 1987 could well have been to his Vegetatio article that was published around that time.
It is really too bizarre.
Springer please clean up this mess.
Technorati tags: Springer; Title changes; Cataloguing
Labels: English
27 november 2006
How do you search the biblioblogosphere?
Just a wee little ago we saw the first search engine based on the new Google custom search technology for the library blogs, or biblioblogosphere as I like to call it. Liszen was the first, boasting an impressive 500 biblioblogs under the hood. Liszen is created and maintained by Garrett Hungerford LIS student at Wayne State University. Interestingly the blogs listed on the liswiki were the starting point for the sources of this customized search enigine. The list of currently indexed biblioblogs can be found at wiki.
All biblioblogs? Certainly not all. But still too many for some us. So Biomedbiblog created a search customized search engine for the (global) medical biblioblogs. The original source for the included medical biblioblogs was also liswiki.
Meanwhile others thought that 500 blioblogs was not near the complete biblioblogosphere whatsoever, and they created Libworm. Boasting an impressive 12oo blogs. Libworm appears not to be based on Google custom search and that is a promising sign. Die hard blogger David Rothman is involved in the project as well. The medical alternative of Libworm is Medworm. Interesting that the starting list of Libworm is an entirely different wiki, the Blogging libraries wiki.
I should submit my blog to these two search engines as well, too date my turf is not yet included. Just another little observation, it was only the librarian in black who combined the announcements of these search engines.
Meanwhile when you might be perhaps interested in only the Dutch biblioblogosphere Dymphie has created a special search engine for exactly that purpose. Thanks Dymphie. We really can use a tool like that. And yes, of course I do want the code!
Update: And Catorze has a blog search engine for the Spanish biblioblogosphere (hattip: Bibliometria)
Technorati tags: biblioblogosphere; Search engines
All biblioblogs? Certainly not all. But still too many for some us. So Biomedbiblog created a search customized search engine for the (global) medical biblioblogs. The original source for the included medical biblioblogs was also liswiki.
Meanwhile others thought that 500 blioblogs was not near the complete biblioblogosphere whatsoever, and they created Libworm. Boasting an impressive 12oo blogs. Libworm appears not to be based on Google custom search and that is a promising sign. Die hard blogger David Rothman is involved in the project as well. The medical alternative of Libworm is Medworm. Interesting that the starting list of Libworm is an entirely different wiki, the Blogging libraries wiki.
I should submit my blog to these two search engines as well, too date my turf is not yet included. Just another little observation, it was only the librarian in black who combined the announcements of these search engines.
Meanwhile when you might be perhaps interested in only the Dutch biblioblogosphere Dymphie has created a special search engine for exactly that purpose. Thanks Dymphie. We really can use a tool like that. And yes, of course I do want the code!
Update: And Catorze has a blog search engine for the Spanish biblioblogosphere (hattip: Bibliometria)
Technorati tags: biblioblogosphere; Search engines
Labels: English
26 november 2006
Now I Ask myself, how is this possible?
Last week the Dutch version of Ask was officially launched. The Dutch version has been around for some time already, but I prefer to use the American version. Eric Sieverts showed me some search results however that begged for some more serious attention.
The subject is [oorsprong border collies Engeland schapendrijven]
nl.ask "complete Internet" 20 results
nl.ask "language Dutch" 18 results
us ask 6 results
us ask "advanced search" "any language" 6 results
us ask "advanced search" "language Dutch" 18 results
In the last search, on the results page the option "Dutch pages" is selected above the search results. Whereas in the Dutch version you have the option of "Dutch language" or "Dutch pages".
Looking at the results though, for Dutch language queries you better use the Dutch version, or make sure you check the Dutch language option in the USA version. But even then you don't get all the results.
But what I miss in the Dutch version is the good old Teoma funcionality of parametric search results to refine, or widen your search.
Technorati tags: Ask; Search engines;
The subject is [oorsprong border collies Engeland schapendrijven]
nl.ask "complete Internet" 20 results
nl.ask "language Dutch" 18 results
us ask 6 results
us ask "advanced search" "any language" 6 results
us ask "advanced search" "language Dutch" 18 results
In the last search, on the results page the option "Dutch pages" is selected above the search results. Whereas in the Dutch version you have the option of "Dutch language" or "Dutch pages".
Looking at the results though, for Dutch language queries you better use the Dutch version, or make sure you check the Dutch language option in the USA version. But even then you don't get all the results.
But what I miss in the Dutch version is the good old Teoma funcionality of parametric search results to refine, or widen your search.
Technorati tags: Ask; Search engines;
Labels: English
Japanese diner after Keris 2006
Diner after Keris 2006
Originally uploaded by WoW!ter. Photo credits: Soon KIM
As promised to my Korean friends I would post the photo on Flickr and blog about the exquisite Japase diner we enjoyed after the symposium and elaborate discussions on research perfomance measurements in Korea.
Technorati tags: keris2006
Labels: English
24 november 2006
My presentation at KERIS 2006
That a position at a library included a lot of travelling I had never imagined. Today I had the honour to give a presentation about research evaluation from the library point of viewin Seoul, Korea. They didn't want me to put too much emphasis on the METIS/Way construction (the tool at hand for keeping track research productivity), no they were more interested in our methodology of citation analysis.
Here are the powerpoint slides on my slideshare (for my Korean friends, these differ slightly from the slides printed in the conference proceedings)
It is difficult to figure out how the presentation was received. The Koreans are too polite to ask any impertinent questions. Or questions whatsoever. However, the paralel session had less than half the people attending my presentation, so apparently the subject was of interest to quite a number of people.
Afterwards I had a planned discussion on this subject with people from Keris and the Minisstery of Education, and they had for more than 2 hours questions and discussions. Time ran out much too quickly.
We ended up in a Japanese restaurant eating plenty of raw fish. No herrings though.
A real pity though, at the end of the day I had lost my raincoat....
And oh yes, I ran out of all my businesscards. Collected more than a handfull on the other hand.
Technorati tags:bibliometrics; keris2006 Korea
Here are the powerpoint slides on my slideshare (for my Korean friends, these differ slightly from the slides printed in the conference proceedings)
It is difficult to figure out how the presentation was received. The Koreans are too polite to ask any impertinent questions. Or questions whatsoever. However, the paralel session had less than half the people attending my presentation, so apparently the subject was of interest to quite a number of people.
Afterwards I had a planned discussion on this subject with people from Keris and the Minisstery of Education, and they had for more than 2 hours questions and discussions. Time ran out much too quickly.
We ended up in a Japanese restaurant eating plenty of raw fish. No herrings though.
A real pity though, at the end of the day I had lost my raincoat....
And oh yes, I ran out of all my businesscards. Collected more than a handfull on the other hand.
Technorati tags:bibliometrics; keris2006 Korea
Labels: English
23 november 2006
Cites & Insights is not a blog
Somewhere last week the December issue of Cites & Insights was published. Walt Crawford starts with the explanation of his daily chores to maintain such a prolific authorship. Most interesting was his Net Media Perspective “C&I is not a blog” where he writes on and highlights some interesting library blogposts on blogging. What it is and what it is not. His New rules for worthwhile blogging are worth to be repeated here in full:
1. Post what matters to you. That is likely to change over time.
2. Post when you have something to say
3. Take as many words to say it as it needs
4. Think a couple of seconds about what you’re about to release to humanity in general but don’t obsess over it
5. Don’t worry about huge readership, a niche or anything else. Do what you’re doing and the right readers will find you.
Somehow a comment to the blog definition by Scoble would not have misstood in this perspective on blogs and blogging. The whole perspective on blogging runs for about 8 pages, and is to my mind interesting stuff when you are (biblio)blogging or thinking about starting a (biblio)blog. Perhaps Sybilla will find some new inspiration here, although her blog is zooming again.
Most of the remainder of C&I 6(14) deals with OA. Particularly comments and quotes from the four most important OA blogs (Open access news, DigitalKoans, OA Librarian and Caveat Lector).
1. Post what matters to you. That is likely to change over time.
2. Post when you have something to say
3. Take as many words to say it as it needs
4. Think a couple of seconds about what you’re about to release to humanity in general but don’t obsess over it
5. Don’t worry about huge readership, a niche or anything else. Do what you’re doing and the right readers will find you.
Somehow a comment to the blog definition by Scoble would not have misstood in this perspective on blogs and blogging. The whole perspective on blogging runs for about 8 pages, and is to my mind interesting stuff when you are (biblio)blogging or thinking about starting a (biblio)blog. Perhaps Sybilla will find some new inspiration here, although her blog is zooming again.
Most of the remainder of C&I 6(14) deals with OA. Particularly comments and quotes from the four most important OA blogs (Open access news, DigitalKoans, OA Librarian and Caveat Lector).
Labels: English
Library 2.0 in the KB
Two weeks back we had the national library congress in the Netherlands. Interestingly, this congress has also been dubbed the Online Conference Netherlands (OCN) perhaps with a little envy to the Online Conference in London, which is a wee bit bigger. What I blogged about the conference I blogged in Dutch. But what follows here, is a pointer an interesting presentation on developments taking place at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. During the conference presentation I was impressed of the new services they were pondering on at our National Library. The groundwork was layed down with a presentation of a complete new data architecture for all electronic information held by the KB, and what followed was the integration of various kind of services, sharing and remixing information all on the basis of "new" open standards. In my blog I noted this duo presentation by Paul Doorenbosch and Theo Veen as the most worthwhile presentation of the whole conference. Perhaps not the best presentation of the conference since Theo lost himself sometimes into too much detail and all kinds of nifty technicalities. Take into consideration the time constraint didn’t help the speakers either, but where I could follow him, I got the impression, yes those are good ideas. Make use of all the meticulously recorded metadata in libraries, and remix, share with all kinds of services. And above all: at the users command.
Somewhat later, when I reordered my stack of articles once printed, but not yet read, I found out that I had downloaded an article by Theo van Veen from Ariadne a short while ago. Serving Services in Web 2.0 is exactly the article that formed the basis of Theo's presentation. Actually reading it, I even recognize some of his way of presenting in his writing. It is perhaps an illustration of my lack of understanding of some of the technical jargon and the liberal use of those exotic acronyms as SOAP, COinS or WSDL to name just a few as well. His conclusion after 10 pages "It has been shown that integration of services is easy and simple" Well, that leaves some more explaining to be desired before I'll buy this conclusion. But he has certainly sketched some exciting ways to follow through with.
Now we only have to wait for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek to give up that horrendous PICA catalog system.
van Veen, T. (2006). Serving services in Web 2.0. Ariadne(47). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk./issue47/vanveen/intro.html
Technorti tags: library2.0; koninklijke bibliotheek
Somewhat later, when I reordered my stack of articles once printed, but not yet read, I found out that I had downloaded an article by Theo van Veen from Ariadne a short while ago. Serving Services in Web 2.0 is exactly the article that formed the basis of Theo's presentation. Actually reading it, I even recognize some of his way of presenting in his writing. It is perhaps an illustration of my lack of understanding of some of the technical jargon and the liberal use of those exotic acronyms as SOAP, COinS or WSDL to name just a few as well. His conclusion after 10 pages "It has been shown that integration of services is easy and simple" Well, that leaves some more explaining to be desired before I'll buy this conclusion. But he has certainly sketched some exciting ways to follow through with.
Now we only have to wait for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek to give up that horrendous PICA catalog system.
van Veen, T. (2006). Serving services in Web 2.0. Ariadne(47). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk./issue47/vanveen/intro.html
Technorti tags: library2.0; koninklijke bibliotheek
Labels: Bibliotheek 2.0, English, Koninklijke Bibliotheek
A cognitive model for the invisible Web
The Deep Web, the Hidden Web or the Invisible Web has always attracted my attention. In Internet classes I teach I do pay quite a bit of attention to this phenomenon. It is odd to see though, that there is relatively little attention for the Deep Web in the body of scholarly literature. As though everybody is content with their Google results. This year I pointed already to a study by Lewandowski & Mayr (2006) which looked at the original estimates of Bergman (2001). In all likelihood the deep web was less deeper than suggested in 2001. We still remain with the question how deep?
Too date most of the articles cover the invisible web from a rather technical perspective. In a recent article in the Journal of Documentation Ford and Mansourian (2006) take an entirely different approach. They put forward a cognitive model for the invisible web. The model is based on two axes. The horizontal axis indicating the level of uncertainty that the information is "out there", and the vertical axis indicating whether information is successfully retrieved or not. In the upper left had corner, you have the bright zone. The bright zone where web search experiences "lacked any perceived level of failure -and indeed difficulty- entailing the straightforward retrieval of relevant information via search engine without problems". The refracted zone is the upper right hand corner. In this zone the "searcher finds relevant information by means other than a search engine via bookmarked websites and or URLs given by friends or colleagues. This category represents a gradation in the move from total visibility to total invisibility".
The lower part of the graph is reserved for the veiled zone and the dark zone. The veiled zone is the area of "perceived failed searches. The users searched expecting to find information via a search engine but realises that s/he has failed to locate it". The dark zone is where searchers are "very unsure whether or not the information is "out there" or not and retrievable with greater effort or skill on their part."
This model will certainly help in classes to explain the concepts of the invisible web a little bit better. Certainly the examples the authors extracted from their interviews will help to improve teaching. Worth reading.
Literature
Bergman, K. T. (2001). The deep web : surfacing hidden value. The Journal of Electronic Publishing 7(1). http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/bergman.html
Ford, N. and Y. Mansourian (2006). The invisible web: An empirical study of "cognitive invisibility". Journal of Documentation 62(5): 584-596.
Lewandowski, D. and P. Mayr (2006). Exploring the academic invisible web. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00006071/
Technorati tags Deep Web; Invisible Web; Hidden Web
Labels: English
16 november 2006
Citation reports introduced in Web of Science
Somewhere in October I received a mailing from ISI on the enhancements of Web of Science (WoS) that were going to be introduced on November 5th. I checked it out on the 5th, the sixth the seventh, and eighth to no avail and gave up. Until this morning when Rafael Sidi drew my attention to the enhancements of WoS again. On his blog he posted a picture from an ISI folder, but checking it in reality, it appeared that the citation reports finally had become available on WoS. Subsequently I found that Recherchenblog also had noted the citation reports in WoS.
With their citation reports they have attempted to leap frog over Scopus from Elsevier, but I think their attempt failed. Yes, they have two attractive graphs. And yes, they include the h-index in the report as well, but when you look at the actual data, I can only conclude that they have direclty copied the citation report from Scopus. A real pity that they were not able to improve, or enhance these reports from Scopus.
Okay Elsevier's Scopus is not including an automated H-index calculation at this moment, but that is coming. This week I have seen some of these planned enhancements for Scopus.
What was new on WoS side though, was the possibility to correct for self citations. But when I tested this, I got the impression that the corrections were made only for the individual authors. Not for his or her co-authors, which should be excluded as well.
Another enhancement that WoS has made under pressure of the competition from Scopus is author disambiguation. That have not come very far though. So far they disambiguated only their highly cited authors. They have not come around to the the Park or Lee's from Korea.
So WoS still has its niche as far as the history of citation data is concerned, with the current citation report they have caught up with Scopus again in the reporting standards. The author disambiguation should be implemented a lot further will they really catch up.
Technorati tags: wos; Web of Science; Citation reports
With their citation reports they have attempted to leap frog over Scopus from Elsevier, but I think their attempt failed. Yes, they have two attractive graphs. And yes, they include the h-index in the report as well, but when you look at the actual data, I can only conclude that they have direclty copied the citation report from Scopus. A real pity that they were not able to improve, or enhance these reports from Scopus.
Okay Elsevier's Scopus is not including an automated H-index calculation at this moment, but that is coming. This week I have seen some of these planned enhancements for Scopus.
What was new on WoS side though, was the possibility to correct for self citations. But when I tested this, I got the impression that the corrections were made only for the individual authors. Not for his or her co-authors, which should be excluded as well.
Another enhancement that WoS has made under pressure of the competition from Scopus is author disambiguation. That have not come very far though. So far they disambiguated only their highly cited authors. They have not come around to the the Park or Lee's from Korea.
So WoS still has its niche as far as the history of citation data is concerned, with the current citation report they have caught up with Scopus again in the reporting standards. The author disambiguation should be implemented a lot further will they really catch up.
Technorati tags: wos; Web of Science; Citation reports
Labels: English
It is not the Hirsch Index, said Hirsch
Yesterday I had the honour to be present with a presentation by Dr. Hirsch on the h-index. He started his presentation with expressing his dislike on Impact Factors for the evaluation of research performance. This was partly caused by the fact that some of his somewhat controversial articles were not accepted by the big, high impact journals, but only by the second tier of journals (still some quite important titles though). These articles garnered quite a lot of citations though.
What Hirsch shared with us, was that he had developed his h-index in 2003 already. Hi s prinicple interest for the h-index was the purpose of evaluating researchers, whether it was for grants, promotions or tenure. He found it quite a useful measure. Even some of his colleagues at UCSD started using it.
So over spring 2005 he wrote down his method in a potential article, which he send to some of his colleagues. Unfortunately nobody responded. However somewhat later he received inquiries about his ‘h-index’. As a physicist he then took the decision to post the article as a preprint on ArXiv in August 2005. It immediately got attention in news items publisehd by Nature and Science, and soon after that it was published in PNAS.
Quite amazing the article gained already 18 citations, of which most articles stemmed from the field of LIS. Scientometrics virtually spend nearly a complete issue on this subject.
There have been some proposals for improvements on the h-index already, but most of these did not gain Hirsch’s approval since they did not really improve the h-index, or reduced the simplicity of the h-index.
In his presentation he dealt with some more caveats of the h-index and some of the possible improvements. He was pondering on measures of the slope of his figure 1. He was thinking about the second order derivative somewhere around h. The pitfall is the discrete behaviour of his graph 1.
The other point he raised was the improvement on corrections for number of co-authors. That he found more important than the correction for self citations. The h-index is likely to be less sensitive for self citations. Unless one deals with a very prolific author who manages to cite his papers just below his or hers h-index. The latter is quite unlikely though.
We also discussed the state of LIS briefly as well, where paper of a single author could attract in such a brief period so many citations. When I sketched the perspective of the fact that Eugene Garfield was a chemist by training, or van Raan was a physicist as well, it did not really appeal to him to change his research topics. He will continue to pursue his super conductivity research.
So where did the expression Hirsch index come from? Hirsch didn’t know. He dubbed it h-index thinking on high impact, certainly not his own name.
Technorati tags: Hirsch; h-index
What Hirsch shared with us, was that he had developed his h-index in 2003 already. Hi s prinicple interest for the h-index was the purpose of evaluating researchers, whether it was for grants, promotions or tenure. He found it quite a useful measure. Even some of his colleagues at UCSD started using it.
So over spring 2005 he wrote down his method in a potential article, which he send to some of his colleagues. Unfortunately nobody responded. However somewhat later he received inquiries about his ‘h-index’. As a physicist he then took the decision to post the article as a preprint on ArXiv in August 2005. It immediately got attention in news items publisehd by Nature and Science, and soon after that it was published in PNAS.
Quite amazing the article gained already 18 citations, of which most articles stemmed from the field of LIS. Scientometrics virtually spend nearly a complete issue on this subject.
There have been some proposals for improvements on the h-index already, but most of these did not gain Hirsch’s approval since they did not really improve the h-index, or reduced the simplicity of the h-index.
In his presentation he dealt with some more caveats of the h-index and some of the possible improvements. He was pondering on measures of the slope of his figure 1. He was thinking about the second order derivative somewhere around h. The pitfall is the discrete behaviour of his graph 1.
The other point he raised was the improvement on corrections for number of co-authors. That he found more important than the correction for self citations. The h-index is likely to be less sensitive for self citations. Unless one deals with a very prolific author who manages to cite his papers just below his or hers h-index. The latter is quite unlikely though.
We also discussed the state of LIS briefly as well, where paper of a single author could attract in such a brief period so many citations. When I sketched the perspective of the fact that Eugene Garfield was a chemist by training, or van Raan was a physicist as well, it did not really appeal to him to change his research topics. He will continue to pursue his super conductivity research.
So where did the expression Hirsch index come from? Hirsch didn’t know. He dubbed it h-index thinking on high impact, certainly not his own name.
Technorati tags: Hirsch; h-index
Labels: English
06 november 2006
To my English readers
The next two days the Dutch national library Congress OCN2006 will take place. From what I have heard some 1700 people will attend. This includes people attending two days. Nevertheless. They have managed to fill a fair part of one of the most well known Congress venues in the Netherlands.
But what is really odd, although the name is Online Conference, there is no Live Internet available. At least not for presentations. For presentations they offer offline Internet. So make sure where you want to go and that will be downloaded in advance so they can mimic your Webbrowsing. Well that pleads for a modern conference.
The conference organizers have no life blogging on their list of priorities, and with the Internet facilities offered, there is apparently no WiFi available. Although I intend to blog some of my conference experiences, it won't be life. It all depends on the state of my personal batteries when I return home.
And for the contents? The international liblog community or the library 2.0 community can sleep savely. That is not on the programme whatsoever. That revolution is passing queitly over here.
Whenever there are real pearls I blog them in English, otherwise the language will be Dutch the coming two days.
Technorati tags: ocn2006
But what is really odd, although the name is Online Conference, there is no Live Internet available. At least not for presentations. For presentations they offer offline Internet. So make sure where you want to go and that will be downloaded in advance so they can mimic your Webbrowsing. Well that pleads for a modern conference.
The conference organizers have no life blogging on their list of priorities, and with the Internet facilities offered, there is apparently no WiFi available. Although I intend to blog some of my conference experiences, it won't be life. It all depends on the state of my personal batteries when I return home.
And for the contents? The international liblog community or the library 2.0 community can sleep savely. That is not on the programme whatsoever. That revolution is passing queitly over here.
Whenever there are real pearls I blog them in English, otherwise the language will be Dutch the coming two days.
Technorati tags: ocn2006
Labels: English
03 november 2006
A new Google Domain
The list of Google domains is long, and growing each and every day. However, today I came across a domain which I hadn't seen before: http://europe.google.com/
This domain is not yet included in lists such as Pronet or Logoogle
Do I have a skoep then?
Technorati tags: google domains; google
This domain is not yet included in lists such as Pronet or Logoogle
Do I have a skoep then?
Technorati tags: google domains; google
Labels: English
01 november 2006
NYT is closing the year already
For David Pogue from the New York Times, November 1st appears to be a good date to close the year already. For ordinary people, like you and me, there are another two months to go before we can enjoy our year end holiday. For good old David, however, it is the appropriate time now and look back already on all the winners and losers in new technology over the last 10 months.
He reviews the year on the basis of updated product reviews that appeared earlier this year. Amongst others Palm Treo, Google Video and YouTube, MacBook Pro, HD-DVD and BlueRay.
I think this is the first End of Year Review I have seen. Now we have to wait a little before we can spot the first forecasts for 2007
Technorati tags: Year in review
He reviews the year on the basis of updated product reviews that appeared earlier this year. Amongst others Palm Treo, Google Video and YouTube, MacBook Pro, HD-DVD and BlueRay.
I think this is the first End of Year Review I have seen. Now we have to wait a little before we can spot the first forecasts for 2007
Technorati tags: Year in review
Labels: English
30 oktober 2006
Scirus is heating up the competition with Scopus
Scirus has signed a deal with CrossRef. There should be a story behind it. I can only guess.
Competition is good. It sets the stage for innovation and real progress. So when I observe a new born competition between Scirus and Scopus I should herald it as "good for us". Okay, fair enough. But I can't quite understand it. These are two fairly recent products from Elsevier's stables. Albeit Scirus is a wee bit older, but certainly not of the same age as EmBase or Geobase. But now these two youngsters are competing with each other already!
They are very different though. Scirus is the free scientific web search engine. Very good at finding, indexing and presenting free available scholarly material on the Web. Scirus is a fulltext search engine. It may come as a surprise but Scirus was a real breakthrough in the scientific information domain. Scirus was already there, long before Google Scholar was born.
Scopus on the other hand has only been around for about two years -it seems longer though. Scopus is an entirely different product from Scirus. Scopus is a broad, allround, scholarly bibliographic database. Build on good metadata standards. An information specialist's dream come true. Spurious information retrieval possibilities, so now and then even complicated techniques are made possible. It is the Rolls Royce of Elsevier's (bibliographic) search engines. It comes therefore at some costs and I thought Scopus would face the competition from products such as Web of Science, Current Contents, Medline, PsychInfo or Chemical Abstracts to name a few. Perhaps in competition with other Elsevier products such as Embase, Engineering Index or Geobase as well.
However, the announcement that Scirus has signed a deal with CrossRef leaves me flabbergasted. Why?
One take of the story I can follow, is the following: Google was the first to be allowed to play around with the CrossRef data. They didn't do their job very well, but it was perhaps the start of Google Scholar. Recently Microsoft Live, got the honour of being the "first official CrossRef Web Services Search Partner". Google was somewhere lost from the picture, but after a first we need a second. Don't we? So there was Elsevier with Scirus. BTW the number of publishers participating in CrossRef has increased in the mean time from 1700 (in the WLA press announcement) to 2200 participating publishers and societies. The deal between Scirus and CrossRef however, enables Scirus to index heaps of metadata form publishers they (Elsevier) have deals with anyway through their Scopus programme. But since Google and Microsoft got their deals with CrossRef, Scirus had to follow apparently.
But take two of the story reads as follows: Scopus has been under construction for the past few years. They have signed deals with some 5000 publishers to receive their metadata. Okay, CrossRef -Elsevier was heavily involced in the creation of CrossRef- has not signed quite that number of publishers yet, but the number is increasing steadily. So in the sense that they only have metadata at their disposal Scirus and Scopus become very similar, i.e. a metadata/bibliographic search engine such as Scopus compared to a fulltext search engine.
Putting the proper price tag on each product, free versus fee, I don't undertand the move. Scirus should remain and marketed as, fulltext, but free scholarly search engine. Whereas Scopus is the formal, metadata but fee-based, bibliographic search engine.
Somehow Elsevier manages to blurr the lines between the two products, so now and then.
So for now, let's enjoy the improved -partial- content of Scirus.
Hattip: ResourceShelf
Technorati tags: scirus; Scopus;
Competition is good. It sets the stage for innovation and real progress. So when I observe a new born competition between Scirus and Scopus I should herald it as "good for us". Okay, fair enough. But I can't quite understand it. These are two fairly recent products from Elsevier's stables. Albeit Scirus is a wee bit older, but certainly not of the same age as EmBase or Geobase. But now these two youngsters are competing with each other already!
They are very different though. Scirus is the free scientific web search engine. Very good at finding, indexing and presenting free available scholarly material on the Web. Scirus is a fulltext search engine. It may come as a surprise but Scirus was a real breakthrough in the scientific information domain. Scirus was already there, long before Google Scholar was born.
Scopus on the other hand has only been around for about two years -it seems longer though. Scopus is an entirely different product from Scirus. Scopus is a broad, allround, scholarly bibliographic database. Build on good metadata standards. An information specialist's dream come true. Spurious information retrieval possibilities, so now and then even complicated techniques are made possible. It is the Rolls Royce of Elsevier's (bibliographic) search engines. It comes therefore at some costs and I thought Scopus would face the competition from products such as Web of Science, Current Contents, Medline, PsychInfo or Chemical Abstracts to name a few. Perhaps in competition with other Elsevier products such as Embase, Engineering Index or Geobase as well.
However, the announcement that Scirus has signed a deal with CrossRef leaves me flabbergasted. Why?
One take of the story I can follow, is the following: Google was the first to be allowed to play around with the CrossRef data. They didn't do their job very well, but it was perhaps the start of Google Scholar. Recently Microsoft Live, got the honour of being the "first official CrossRef Web Services Search Partner". Google was somewhere lost from the picture, but after a first we need a second. Don't we? So there was Elsevier with Scirus. BTW the number of publishers participating in CrossRef has increased in the mean time from 1700 (in the WLA press announcement) to 2200 participating publishers and societies. The deal between Scirus and CrossRef however, enables Scirus to index heaps of metadata form publishers they (Elsevier) have deals with anyway through their Scopus programme. But since Google and Microsoft got their deals with CrossRef, Scirus had to follow apparently.
But take two of the story reads as follows: Scopus has been under construction for the past few years. They have signed deals with some 5000 publishers to receive their metadata. Okay, CrossRef -Elsevier was heavily involced in the creation of CrossRef- has not signed quite that number of publishers yet, but the number is increasing steadily. So in the sense that they only have metadata at their disposal Scirus and Scopus become very similar, i.e. a metadata/bibliographic search engine such as Scopus compared to a fulltext search engine.
Putting the proper price tag on each product, free versus fee, I don't undertand the move. Scirus should remain and marketed as, fulltext, but free scholarly search engine. Whereas Scopus is the formal, metadata but fee-based, bibliographic search engine.
Somehow Elsevier manages to blurr the lines between the two products, so now and then.
So for now, let's enjoy the improved -partial- content of Scirus.
Hattip: ResourceShelf
Technorati tags: scirus; Scopus;
Labels: English
My favourite Google cheatsheet has been updated
Back in May I listed a few Google cheatsheets. My favourite 2 page PDF file has now been updated. With the speed of aquisitions and new product launches by Google is was about time. Te cheatsheet now includes pointers to youtube, codesearch or Google trends. The URL of the cheatsheet has changed. Now it can be found here.
Technorati tags: Google; Cheatsheet
Technorati tags: Google; Cheatsheet
Labels: English
26 oktober 2006
A new scholarly search engine
Using Google custom search to outsmart Google Scholar, that is a smart idea from the people behind openDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories). Try it at yourself. You get really accessible results, not those that require a 50$ fee to get hold of the results which is often the case with Google Scholar. It has also an advantage over OAISTER, that fulltext searching is possible whereas OAISTER only allow bibliographic searching.
Of course it is not yet te ideal solution, we know that the Google bot is very slow at harvesting information from our repository, but a few tests did not dissappoint me on the quality of results. It certainly deserves a lot of attention, and time to test is more comprehesively. Perhaps an idea for Peter for his next pick or pan?
But it is simply a brilliant idea of using Google custom search to make a the best of the academic repositories ftxt searchable at once.
I just like it.
Hattip: Peter Suber
Technorati tags: Google custom search; Google scholar; openDOAR; Scientific Search engines
Of course it is not yet te ideal solution, we know that the Google bot is very slow at harvesting information from our repository, but a few tests did not dissappoint me on the quality of results. It certainly deserves a lot of attention, and time to test is more comprehesively. Perhaps an idea for Peter for his next pick or pan?
But it is simply a brilliant idea of using Google custom search to make a the best of the academic repositories ftxt searchable at once.
I just like it.
Hattip: Peter Suber
Technorati tags: Google custom search; Google scholar; openDOAR; Scientific Search engines
Labels: English
Our users, can we leave somebody behind?
It was a Dutch report on the ILI 2006, that triggered this post. BeatBiepManifesto reported on the session by Stephens and Coers in Dutch. He reported on the session of the Tech trainers (M. Stephens and R. Coers) as follows:
The figure of 70% to focus our attention on is indicated in the slides of Stephens and Coers as well (slide 7-12). The problem I am facing, when pointing to these stark naked figures is that I can't really find out for sure what group they are discussing. In one of the titles of their slides they state that it concerns "Organizations, libraries, colleagues, society" (slide 12). So implicitely I assume that they discuss in their preseantation about a group of library users (society) as well. Those people who are our patrons, our customers, those that can be trained, and should be educated, to use new ways of handeling information. There is another 10 percent of library users that is apperently way ahead of whatever we imagine, or develop. And, rather unfortunately, some 20% of our users for which we can't do anything. Not even keeping things as they are, or adapting to their needs for information. Not, according to Mr. Stephens and Rob Coers. I am not the only who interpreted it this way.
It sounds a bit harsh, but I can image that you accept at some point that not everybody is with you. Ok fair enough. But on the other hand, there is that elite 10%. Should we invest more time in these 10% than the 20% that we have decided to leave behind?
It struck me as a bit odd.
It reminded me on a recap of IM reference in liraries that Crawford (2006) reported:
Can we rhyme the 20% of our users that we are willingly and blatantly leaving behind with the efforts we put into those 2% IM clients. Those that are part of the 10% users who are far ahead in internet skills and adoption of the newest tools from the average users (and librarians alike).
Don't get me wrong. I think the whole movement of Library 2.0 important beacause it appears a bottom up movement. Although some tech trainers seem to highjack the concepts and the directions of the movement as such. But I see some use in Evidence Based Librarianshio as well. To date I have come across too many opions, too ideas and too many untested hypotheses in the LIS world alogether that I have a sincere need for facts. And Abhore speculation. When a figure of 1% to 2% usage for IM reference is reported, than we can hype IM to whatever height. Yes it will increase in the near future, but the hype is not based on facts. And we should really consider if this kind of usage justifies investment in new references systems.
That is the a samll point I want to raise.
Technorati tags: library2.0; evidence based librarianship; IM reference; Library users; Library patrons
"Je werd er vooral enthousiast gemaakt om nieuwe dingen uit te proberen en je daarna te focussen om de 70% die best bereidt is om mee te gaan in de nieuwe ontwikkelingen. Laat de 20% nu maar eens gewoon links liggen. Dit is de groep waarop we ons meestal focussen omdat zij het meest duidelijk maken het allemaal niks te vinden. Omdat ze dat hoe dan ook blijven vinden, is aandacht voor deze groep zonde van de tijd."
"You became enthused to try new things and focus on the 70% that is open to new developments and willing to adopt some of the changes. Leave the other 20% just behind. This is normally the group on which we focus most of our attention because they indicate most clearly that they don't agree with the new developments. Since they don't agree whatever, our attentention or efforts for this group, it is a waste of time anyway."
My translation
The figure of 70% to focus our attention on is indicated in the slides of Stephens and Coers as well (slide 7-12). The problem I am facing, when pointing to these stark naked figures is that I can't really find out for sure what group they are discussing. In one of the titles of their slides they state that it concerns "Organizations, libraries, colleagues, society" (slide 12). So implicitely I assume that they discuss in their preseantation about a group of library users (society) as well. Those people who are our patrons, our customers, those that can be trained, and should be educated, to use new ways of handeling information. There is another 10 percent of library users that is apperently way ahead of whatever we imagine, or develop. And, rather unfortunately, some 20% of our users for which we can't do anything. Not even keeping things as they are, or adapting to their needs for information. Not, according to Mr. Stephens and Rob Coers. I am not the only who interpreted it this way.
It sounds a bit harsh, but I can image that you accept at some point that not everybody is with you. Ok fair enough. But on the other hand, there is that elite 10%. Should we invest more time in these 10% than the 20% that we have decided to leave behind?
It struck me as a bit odd.
It reminded me on a recap of IM reference in liraries that Crawford (2006) reported:
Read the April 17, 2006 Tame the web post “Selfmonitoring questions: A report on IM reference”— and the April 18, 2006 Librarianinblack post “Practical side of IM reference.” In the first, Stephens provides figures for IM reference transactions at one mediumsized public library and as a percentage of total reference transactions. That percentage, as reported by month from April 2005 through March 2006, peaked at 1.62% in December 2005, then settled down in a range from 1.18% to 1.28% in early 2006. The next day, Sarah Houghton provided similar figures for usage at her former library—and the percentage (1 to 2%) was similar. Amanda Etches-Johnson did a talk “IM @ Mac: where we’ve been” about her institution’s experience with IM reference. Except for December (which clearly had much lower than usual overall reference use), IM reference ran right around 1.5% of all reference service. Etches-Johnson notes that IM reference takes about three times as long as face-to-face reference, but that’s another issue.
All three regard IM reference as a success; I’ll take their word for it.
(Crawford, 2006. p.3)
Can we rhyme the 20% of our users that we are willingly and blatantly leaving behind with the efforts we put into those 2% IM clients. Those that are part of the 10% users who are far ahead in internet skills and adoption of the newest tools from the average users (and librarians alike).
Don't get me wrong. I think the whole movement of Library 2.0 important beacause it appears a bottom up movement. Although some tech trainers seem to highjack the concepts and the directions of the movement as such. But I see some use in Evidence Based Librarianshio as well. To date I have come across too many opions, too ideas and too many untested hypotheses in the LIS world alogether that I have a sincere need for facts. And Abhore speculation. When a figure of 1% to 2% usage for IM reference is reported, than we can hype IM to whatever height. Yes it will increase in the near future, but the hype is not based on facts. And we should really consider if this kind of usage justifies investment in new references systems.
That is the a samll point I want to raise.
Technorati tags: library2.0; evidence based librarianship; IM reference; Library users; Library patrons
Labels: English
23 oktober 2006
How cool can a library possibly be?
The people from Read/Write Web are doing a series on top Web 2.0 applications in different nations. Today they featured Sweden. A while back they covered the Netherlands as well, on which I commented here (in Dutch).
But why Am I interested all of a sudden in Sweden?
Well there is this top rated web 2.0 site listed on the Swedish overview, where succesfull start-ups as Skype and Pirate Bay come from, with a library website (under construction) listed at slot no. 10. That should be the library website to watch in the future!
Library websites listed together with Digg clones and Google mash-ups?
That has to be a really cool library website!
Technorati tags: library2.0; Sweden; Cool
But why Am I interested all of a sudden in Sweden?
Well there is this top rated web 2.0 site listed on the Swedish overview, where succesfull start-ups as Skype and Pirate Bay come from, with a library website (under construction) listed at slot no. 10. That should be the library website to watch in the future!
Biblioteket.se is a national project to connect government libraries in Sweden (first Stockholm) and open an online service that let users browse library archives, download books, and leave user reviews on books and papers. The site is not yet operational but there is a clickable version at bibliotek.se.
Library websites listed together with Digg clones and Google mash-ups?
That has to be a really cool library website!
Technorati tags: library2.0; Sweden; Cool
Labels: English
19 oktober 2006
Hirsch and his index are hot at his moment
Some time ago Hirsch published a deceptively simple index to express the quality of the lifetime achievement of researcher in a simple figure. The Hirsch or h-index. The beauty of the h-index is that it includes the number of papers produced and includes the number of frequently cited papers at the same time.
Hirsch, as all good physicists do, published his paper in ArXiv first, and it was subsequently published in PNAS. A news item in Nature helped the popularity of the h-index as a research subject amongst bibliometricians. A first article on the application of the Hirsch index followed quite quickly by Bormann & Daniel (2005) (this quick uptake of the h-index is a beautiful case of the advantage of OA publishing in itself). They found “that on average the h-index for successful applicants for post-doctoral research fellowships was consistently higher than for non-successful applicants”.
Van Raan (2006) from CWTS was the first to compare the H-index with the longer established citation indicators and applied the h-index to research groups rather than individual researchers. His conclusion was: “the h-index and our bibliometric 'crown indicator' both relate in a quite comparable way with peer judgments. But for smaller groups in fields with 'less heavy citation traffic' the crown indicator appears to be a more appropriate measure of research performance”. Since then an avalanche of publications have appeared on the H-index. Egghe & Rousseau (2006) came with a mathematical model for the h-index, and subsequently and apparent improvement of the h-index, which he then coined the g-index, but he forgot the simplicity of the original index (Egghe, 2006).
The sluice gates were opened this issue of Scientometrics 69(1) that included six articles on the h-index. Thoroughly, peer reviewed, good science you would think. Well one of these articles Liang (2006) went a bit against my concepts of good science. He proposed a h-index matrix, and compared with this h-index-matrix the performance of 11 physicists. But when he started to construct the matrix, he started at the wrong end of the scientist’s carreer. They start with the most recent years and work backwards. It is much more interesting however to construct the matrix from the first years of publishing and make them from the beginning years comparable. E. Wetten’s first paper was published in 1976, and attracted immediately 5 citations. A h-index of 1. In 1977 he published 4 more papers that all attracted some citations already, so his index jumped to 5. But constructing this matrix takes a bit more work, since you have to establish the citation profile for each paper individually. It can probably be performed in an automated way when you have the ISI data at your own possession. In WoS this would mean some accurate manual counting and analyzing references. But what amazed me most in this article that in discussion and conclusions the author more or less admits that the matrix should be constructed from the beginning years of publication, but that will be for a later paper. So that was a waste of five pages writing! And for me reading, to come to the suggestion that you should start at the other end. Sloppy refereeing and editing is what I call it.
I suspect that Hirsch original paper will soon gain him yet another impact point on his own index.
So that keeps us busy reading all the stuff.
Literature:
Bornmann, L. & H.-D. Daniel (2005). Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work. Scientometrics 65(3): 391-392. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0281-4.
Egghe, L. (2006). Theory and practise of the g-index. Scientometrics V69(1): 131-152. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0144-7 .
Egghe, L. & R. Rousseau (2006). An informetric model for the Hirsch-index. Scientometrics V69(1): 121-129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0143-8 .
Hirsch, J.E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output PNAS 102(46): 16569-16572. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102 .
Liang, L. (2006). h-index sequence and h-index matrix: Constructions and applications. Scientometrics 69(1): 153-159. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0145-6 .
van Raan, A.F.J. (2006). Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics 67(3): 491-502. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0511206.
Technorati tags: Hirsch-index: Hirsch-index; h-index; Scientometrics
Hirsch, as all good physicists do, published his paper in ArXiv first, and it was subsequently published in PNAS. A news item in Nature helped the popularity of the h-index as a research subject amongst bibliometricians. A first article on the application of the Hirsch index followed quite quickly by Bormann & Daniel (2005) (this quick uptake of the h-index is a beautiful case of the advantage of OA publishing in itself). They found “that on average the h-index for successful applicants for post-doctoral research fellowships was consistently higher than for non-successful applicants”.
Van Raan (2006) from CWTS was the first to compare the H-index with the longer established citation indicators and applied the h-index to research groups rather than individual researchers. His conclusion was: “the h-index and our bibliometric 'crown indicator' both relate in a quite comparable way with peer judgments. But for smaller groups in fields with 'less heavy citation traffic' the crown indicator appears to be a more appropriate measure of research performance”. Since then an avalanche of publications have appeared on the H-index. Egghe & Rousseau (2006) came with a mathematical model for the h-index, and subsequently and apparent improvement of the h-index, which he then coined the g-index, but he forgot the simplicity of the original index (Egghe, 2006).
The sluice gates were opened this issue of Scientometrics 69(1) that included six articles on the h-index. Thoroughly, peer reviewed, good science you would think. Well one of these articles Liang (2006) went a bit against my concepts of good science. He proposed a h-index matrix, and compared with this h-index-matrix the performance of 11 physicists. But when he started to construct the matrix, he started at the wrong end of the scientist’s carreer. They start with the most recent years and work backwards. It is much more interesting however to construct the matrix from the first years of publishing and make them from the beginning years comparable. E. Wetten’s first paper was published in 1976, and attracted immediately 5 citations. A h-index of 1. In 1977 he published 4 more papers that all attracted some citations already, so his index jumped to 5. But constructing this matrix takes a bit more work, since you have to establish the citation profile for each paper individually. It can probably be performed in an automated way when you have the ISI data at your own possession. In WoS this would mean some accurate manual counting and analyzing references. But what amazed me most in this article that in discussion and conclusions the author more or less admits that the matrix should be constructed from the beginning years of publication, but that will be for a later paper. So that was a waste of five pages writing! And for me reading, to come to the suggestion that you should start at the other end. Sloppy refereeing and editing is what I call it.
I suspect that Hirsch original paper will soon gain him yet another impact point on his own index.
So that keeps us busy reading all the stuff.
Literature:
Bornmann, L. & H.-D. Daniel (2005). Does the h-index for ranking of scientists really work. Scientometrics 65(3): 391-392. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0281-4.
Egghe, L. (2006). Theory and practise of the g-index. Scientometrics V69(1): 131-152. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0144-7 .
Egghe, L. & R. Rousseau (2006). An informetric model for the Hirsch-index. Scientometrics V69(1): 121-129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0143-8 .
Hirsch, J.E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output PNAS 102(46): 16569-16572. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102 .
Liang, L. (2006). h-index sequence and h-index matrix: Constructions and applications. Scientometrics 69(1): 153-159. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0145-6 .
van Raan, A.F.J. (2006). Comparison of the Hirsch-index with standard bibliometric indicators and with peer judgment for 147 chemistry research groups. Scientometrics 67(3): 491-502. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0511206.
Technorati tags: Hirsch-index: Hirsch-index; h-index; Scientometrics
Labels: English
17 oktober 2006
LIS in the Netherlands
My grunts, yesterday about the impossibility to combine data from JCR and WoS directly within the Web of Knowledge, gave me in the end of the day, after a lot of hard work, some results though. In the categorie "Information Science & Library Science" there were 454 publications in the period 1995-2005 with "Netherlands" mentioned in the affiliation field. It looks like an increase from 21 publications in 1995 to 54 in 2005.
Most productive was Leiden University, of which CWTS is part, with 72 publications. This was followed by the UVA with 60 publications and Delft with 39 publications. As individual authors Loet Leydesdorff and Henk Moed both lead the rankings with 27 publications, followed by van Raan, van Leeuwen en Tijssen.
Most articles were published in Scientometrics as could be expected with the afformetioned authors. Followed by JASIST and moresurpringly International journal of geographical information science, and Telecommunications Policy.
The latter two journal titles force me to rethink my ideas on how to select the relevant LIS output from the Netherlands. The last two journals are to my mind perhaps concerned with IS but not typical for LIS.
Any further explorations of the Dutch LIS scene will be blogged here, no doubt about that.
Technorati tags: lis; netherlands
Most productive was Leiden University, of which CWTS is part, with 72 publications. This was followed by the UVA with 60 publications and Delft with 39 publications. As individual authors Loet Leydesdorff and Henk Moed both lead the rankings with 27 publications, followed by van Raan, van Leeuwen en Tijssen.
Most articles were published in Scientometrics as could be expected with the afformetioned authors. Followed by JASIST and moresurpringly International journal of geographical information science, and Telecommunications Policy.
The latter two journal titles force me to rethink my ideas on how to select the relevant LIS output from the Netherlands. The last two journals are to my mind perhaps concerned with IS but not typical for LIS.
Any further explorations of the Dutch LIS scene will be blogged here, no doubt about that.
Technorati tags: lis; netherlands
Labels: English
