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Weekly News Digest
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January 14, 2020 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Kudos Debuts the Research Showcase Discovery Platform
Kudos introduced Research Showcase, a platform designed to “drive discovery of ‘research in progress’, providing stakeholders—from funders, taxpayers and donors, to research participants and beneficiaries—with earlier insight into emerging research from leading researchers, groups and institutions around the world.” Kudos Pro researchers who have already created a public profile can opt to include that page in the Research Showcase.Kudos notes, “Making information about projects available in this structured way, from much earlier in the project lifecycle, is key to maximizing the impact potential of research by ensuring it is found and understood by broader audiences, particularly those outside of academia.” For more information, read the blog post.
NYPL Shares Its Most-Checked-Out Books
Laurel Wamsley reports for NPR that The New York Public Library (NYPL) has calculated its 10 most-checked-out books to celebrate its 125th birthday. The top spot goes to The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, which has been checked out 485,583 times since it was published in 1962. Wamsley notes, “It shares qualities with many of the other most-borrowed titles: The beautifully illustrated book has been around a long time, it’s well-known and well-loved, and it’s available in numerous languages.” The only “recent” book on the list is the first Harry Potter novel.The top 10 books are: - The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats: 485,583 checkouts
- The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss: 469,650 checkouts
- 1984 by George Orwell: 441,770 checkouts
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak: 436,016 checkouts
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: 422,912 checkouts
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White: 337,948 checkouts
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: 316,404 checkouts
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: 284,524 checkouts
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling: 231,022 checkouts
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle: 189,550 checkouts
For more information, read the article.
OCLC Introduces EZproxy Analytics Service
OCLC launched EZproxy Analytics, “a turnkey analytics service that enables libraries using EZproxy hosted access and authentication services to transform data into actionable insights, drive more informed decisions, and demonstrate significant impact.” The service automatically manages data storage, extraction, and other steps of the analytics process, along with reporting and visualization. This helps libraries better communicate their e-resources’ ROI. They can also use EZproxy Analytics to find unauthorized e-resource usage and see if user credentials have been compromised so staffers can address security breaches.For more information, read the press release.
OCLC Uses Mellon Foundation Grant to Explore Linked Data
OCLC received a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that will allow the organization to create “a shared ‘Entity Management Infrastructure’ that will support linked data management initiatives underway in the library and scholarly communications community. When complete, this infrastructure will be jointly curated by the community and OCLC, and will ultimately make scholarly materials more connected and discoverable on the web.”The grant supports half of this project, which will run from January 2020 to December 2021. OCLC will provide the funding for the second half. As part of the project, OCLC will “publish authoritative and easily accessible entity descriptions for works and persons as part of a persistent, centralized infrastructure. The infrastructure will aggregate links to other representations of those works and persons in external vocabularies and authority files. OCLC will also provide APIs to support libraries implementing metadata workflows for linked data.” For more information, read the press release.
ARL Issues Comments on NIH's Data Management and Sharing Policy Draft
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) issued a response to the DRAFT National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy for Data Management and Sharing and supplemental DRAFT guidance. ARL executive director Mary Lee Kennedy writes, “NIH has a long history of promoting public access to the research it funds, including policies for sharing scientific data generated from large awards, genomic data, and data from clinical trials.”In addition, Kennedy notes that ARL “welcomes the opportunity to comment on these new draft policies, expanding the guidance on data sharing to all extramural awards, contracts, intramural research projects, and other funding agreements. ARL offers these comments in consultation with member representatives, experts in the data librarian community, and through consultation with a wider group of institutional stakeholders. …” For more information, read the comments.
Adam Matthew's New Collection Tackles Human Sexuality
Adam Matthew published a new primary source collection, Sex & Sexuality, which is the result of a collaboration with the Kinsey Institute. It offers “unprecedented digital access to the Kinsey’s most important research collections, covering the work of prominent sex researchers such as Dr Harry Benjamin and Dr John Money, as well as the work of the Institute itself during the tenures of its first three Directors: Dr Alfred Kinsey, Dr Paul H. Gebhard and Dr June Reinisch.”Materials include “excerpts from, and correspondence informing, Dr June Reinisch’s syndicated advice column, The Kinsey Report (1984-1993), which published in newspapers across America, offering an insight into public perspectives on sex and relationships, and research files by sexologist Dr Harry Benjamin providing key insights into his pioneering work on gender dysphoria and transsexualism from 1913 through to the 1990s.” For more information, read the news item.
PLOS Backs Early Peer Review With New Article Type
PLOS (Public Library of Science) is planning a new preregistration article type for PLOS ONE called Registered Reports. It will “enable researchers to document and receive expert peer review feedback on their study design and proposed methods, before beginning their investigation. PLOS ONE will peer review and publish the authors’ initial study proposal as well as the complete research article resulting in two stages of independent publications.”PLOS provides a list of the following reasons it is establishing Registered Reports: - Registered Reports combat publication bias.
- The review of the research protocol improves the robustness of a study and facilitates reproducibility.
- Authors receive greater clarity, earlier in the research process, which can speed up publication of the full paper.
For more information, read the news item.
DPLA and BiblioLabs Increase Ebook Access
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) joined forces with BiblioLabs (which runs BiblioBoard) to give “libraries the ability to license a growing collection of more than 16,000 ebooks, including independent author collections and titles from a number of major publishers, using a simultaneous multi-use model that allows an unlimited number of patrons to borrow books at the same time. BiblioLabs has been a pioneer in statewide ebook projects, using innovative and sustainable lending models to help libraries scale ebook programs in new and exciting ways. The partnership will give state libraries the unprecedented ability to provide ebook collections to every resident in the state.”For more information, read the announcement.
'You're Probably More Susceptible to Misinformation Than You Think' by Darren Lilleker
Darren Lilleker writes the following for The Conversation:Online misinformation works, or so it would seem. One of the more interesting statistics from the 2019 UK general election was that 88% of advertisements posted on social media by the Conservative Party pushed figures that had already been deemed misleading by the UK’s leading fact-checking organisation, Full Fact. And, of course, the Conservatives won the election by a comfortable margin. … [T]o what degree do people actually believe what they read online, and what influence does misinformation really have? Ask people directly and most will tell you they don’t trust the news they see on social media. And a landmark study in 2019 found 43% of social media users admitted to sharing inaccurate content themselves. So people are certainly aware in principle that misinformation is common online. But ask people where they learned about the ‘facts’ that support their political opinions, and the answer will often be social media. A more complex analysis of the situation suggests that for many people the source of political information is simply less important than how it fits with their existing views. For more information, read the article.
NEH Funds Nearly 200 Humanities Projects Across the U.S.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is providing $30.9 million in grants to support 188 humanities projects in 45 states and Washington, D.C. They include a grant for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in New Mexico, which will build a new campus with a new exhibition building, and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming, to protect an extensive collection of artifacts related to the American West. And an additional $48 million will go to “55 state, territorial, and jurisdictional humanities councils, which serve local communities through a range of state-focused humanities discussion and educational outreach programs.”“These new NEH grants will expand access to the country’s wealth of historical, literary, and artistic resources by helping archivists and curators care for important heritage collections, and using new media to inspire examination of significant texts and ideas,” says Jon Parrish Peede, NEH’s chairman. For more information about what the grants will help accomplish, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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