Jurn blogged by the COG 2009 blog.
Talking of blogs, you’ll note that the JURN blog now has a list of “similar blogs” over in the sidebar.
In the COG
23 Thursday Jul 2009
Posted in JURN blogged
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Museums and personal research
22 Wednesday Jul 2009
Posted in Academic search
Lynn Dierking, talking in the context of a July 2009 podcast discussion on museum visitor research and how visitors might interface with online tools and personal online research…
“the social media world is still very underused and unexplored by many museums — in fact there’s a tremendous fear of them, and we’ve been visiting some institutions that are afraid they’re going to be critiqued by the public…”
“there’s also a tendency to think ‘we need interactive [exhibits]’, but pretty much across the board, even talking to youth about it — they will talk about the fact that they sit at a computer all the time, or that they can do that at home…”
Although it seems that most don’t do that at home. John Falk, in the same podcast…
“what little data there is suggests that … despite the desire to drive people back to the web and other sources after a visit, it’s still pretty abysmal — less than ten per cent of the public are following up experiences [after visiting a museum] by going back to the web.”
Fear is an interesting addition (one I’d not really considered before) to sloth and funding issues, in terms of the factors preventing the humanities from finding additional/popular audiences online — and thus generating much-needed public support and understanding — during a time of crisis.
The role of open access and repositories in the arts
21 Tuesday Jul 2009
Posted in Academic search, Open Access publishing
Sarah Gentlemen at RIN has a report on the July 2009 “The role of open access and repositories in the arts : a forum for discussion” meeting (presentations are now online).
“some people felt often the arts community don’t actually like using technology, so this is a big challenge to overcome”
Apart from a few Luddite painters and lute-pluckers, I suspect what they really don’t like is the level of keyboard-use and reading involved with normal use of the Web. “I don’t like technology” becomes a face-saving shorthand for “I have problems with reading”. But even otherwise-able creatives in the visual arts and music are often not avid readers of dense texts such as the ones in repositories, certainly. And arts managers, especially, have almost always landed in that position because they’re “people people” who prefer talking (and talking and talking and talking while saying very little of substance, while you try in vain to get a word in edgeways) to serious reading.
“The idea that users won’t actually use your repository website directly, but that they access the content via a search engine (like Google) is not yet fully appreciated or understood by institutions.”
Spot on. Although that’s no reason for allowing arts repository pages to remain so visually dull and unappealing.
Students’ Use of Research Content in Teaching and Learning
21 Tuesday Jul 2009
Posted in Academic search, Official and think-tank reports
Students’ Use of Research Content in Teaching and Learning : a report for the Joint Information Systems Council (JISC) 2009. (PDF link). None of the findings will be unexpected to anyone who works with undergraduates, but it’s useful to have common knowledge crystallised into a report like this.
“Although Google, Google Books and Google Scholar are heavily used, the library catalogue is still the preferred first choice for most students .. A lot of students use Google but are bewildered by the amount of responses and will rarely look beyond the first couple of pages of search terms … An increasing number of students are using the limited preview facility in Google Books to either read books not in their library or to save themselves the trouble of actually going to the library”
Does e-Journal Investment Lead To Greater Academic Productivity?
21 Tuesday Jul 2009
Posted in Economics of Open Access, Spotted in the news
“Does e-Journal Investment Lead To Greater Academic Productivity?” is a question asked in an article in the July-August 2009 edition of Library and Information Update (p.45)…
This U.K. magazine is not freely available online, but some of the points are usefully summarised over at the OUL Library blog, including, among others…
* Oct-Nov is the busiest season for downloads (a surprise)
* Access in increasingly via third parties (e.g. Google Scholar)
* Historians are the biggest users of Google as access route (?!)
Publishing a humanities article costs three times as much as a science article
20 Monday Jul 2009
This seems to be an important bit of research. The U.S. Chronicle of Higher Education reports on new NHA research which finds that…
“It costs more than three times as much to publish an article in a humanities or social-science journal as it does to publish one in a science, technical, or medical, or STM, journal [ reports ] an in-depth study of eight flagship journals in the humanities and social sciences.” […] “It cost an average of $9,994 in 2007 to publish an article in one of the eight journals analyzed” […] first-copy costs — “collecting, reviewing, editing, and developing content” — added up to about 47 per cent of the total outlay among the eight journals studied
The National Humanities Alliance report The Future of Scholarly Journals Publishing Among Social Science and Humanities Associations (not yet online) was written during 2007-2009, and examined U.S. data from 2005 to 2007. The Chronicle journalist highlights three possible reasons for the difference…
* articles are significantly longer than in the sciences
* acceptance rates are far lower than in the sciences, at a pitiful 11%
* such journals include a wider variety of content than in the sciences…
“peer-reviewed research made up about 62 percent of what the eight journals published in 2007. The remaining 38 percent consisted of “other scholarly content,” including book reviews.” […] Such material does not come cheap, though; it must still be commissioned, edited, and put into production. It cost an [annual] average of $313,612 per journal in 2007, the study found.
On the “articles are longer” argument, I’m not sure that a simple word-count is a valid measure. Science articles are full of complex tables, formulae, diagrams, and it must take quite some time for a reviewer to mull these over. Similarly, I’m thinking that the acceptance rate may be so low because only the “top eight” most prestigious journals were surveyed — lesser journals may well have a far higher acceptance rate?
The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age
20 Monday Jul 2009
Just published by MIT, and available free online, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.
HUP on Scribd
20 Monday Jul 2009
Posted in Spotted in the news
Harvard University Press has uploaded 1000 books to Scribd. However, it seems that large chunks have been lopped out of the books…
Very similar to Google Books, and I suspect they may even be the same edited files.
Digital arts use in the UK
20 Monday Jul 2009
A new April 2009 report from Arts Council England, “examining current public attitudes to and experience of arts content online”. It’s just been published on their website. Arts Council reports often need to be taken with a pinch of salt but, surveying just 132 people in the U.K., it found that…
“Creating and participating in the arts digitally is considered a very niche activity by all segments, appealing only to the most ardent ‘leading edge’ enthusiasts. There is little expressed desire for these kinds of opportunities among participants, suggesting that the much discussed ‘co-creating’ and ‘remixing’ generation is still only a small minority.”
[people] “find the extent and variety of art that is available in the digital space overwhelming and intimidating. […] only those who are currently engaged with the arts are likely to explore [future digital] opportunities.”
Related on the JURN blog: Validating interactive new media as a research output and The audience for quality intellectual content is constantly shrinking.
Why is this important? If the public, the funders, and even our fellow academics all make a collective mehh, whatever! in the face of rich interactive arts-related intellectual production, then the resultant mood risks adding to the ongoing undermining of the humanities — since it effectively shuts us off from one possible method to refresh and reinvigorate the humanities. A method that might have served to generate public support for spending scarce public cash on arts-related intellectual production.
A financially viable model for arts criticism and coverage?
18 Saturday Jul 2009
Posted in Spotted in the news
The U.S. National Summit on Arts Journalism is calling for entrepreneurial ideas on how to revive arts journalism, as dedicated newspaper art critics go the way of the dodo. The conference will be held in Los Angeles, sponsored by USC Annenberg School for Communication and the National Arts Journalism Program, and it will be webcast worldwide on 2nd October 09.
“There are many ideas currently buzzing for attention. Our intention here is to try to identify some of the most promising and give them wider circulation. […] We’re looking for sustainable new models […] These can be established projects or startups, but must already be launched or on a clear trajectory to launching. Size of the project is not necessarily a factor, but impact is.”
Projects can be submitted online and will be public, and they’re not looking for blogs or other media made viable only by unpaid work. Five will be picked to receive $2,000 expenses to attend the conference, and (potentially) one of the three cash prizes ($7,500 / $5,000 / $2,500). Sadly, only projects in Canada or the USA are eligible for entry.