open access « Librarian X

28Oct/110

Open Access week at GSU Library

We observed Open Access Week at Georgia State for (I think) the first time this year. Our Digital Repository Services Librarian Amy Elliott organized a series of workshops for faculty this week, and we kind of blogged the hell out of it on the library's website.

I contributed a short post this morning about why OA should matter to undergraduates, and plugging the Colonial Academic Alliance Undergraduate Research Journal, a multi-institutional OA journal hosted by the GSU Library.

I'm really pleased that GSU is actively advocating for OA now. It's something I've personally believed in for several years and it's cool to see my institution stepping up. (The recent copyright lawsuit has brought access issues like OA to the attention of more people on campus, which is a positive side effect of a bad situation.)

I'll end by co-signing a statement that my friend Amy Buckland made a month ago on her blog -- I decided this a while back, but it's a good public statement to make during OA Week:

"from now on, i will only review articles for, sit on editorial boards of, and publish in, open access journals."

Right on, Amy -- me too.

Tagged as: gsu, open access No Comments

13Mar/080

On Free Audiobooks

I've mentioned before that I'm starting a tiny crusade to get some good Creative Commons licensed material cataloged at my library of employment. (I also just asked them to catalog Library Student Journal, which is [w00t] publishing my article "Open Source Software in Museums," about which I'm very excited.)

At the end of every semester, students preparing to travel home over break start asking the reference desk about audiobooks to listen to while they drive or fly. This being an academic research library, we tend not to collect many -- we have like ten on CD in the collection, I think.

I'm going to put together a web guide on free downloadable audiobooks to go up in time for the end of the spring semester. For one thing, I'm poking around to compile a list of library systems in the Atlanta area that have them in their collection (which prompted me to finally get a library card). I also listen to a lot of fiction podcasts, and I'm going to add as many as possible to my web guide.

[Note: I'm looking for more good ideas to add to my list. Please drop a comment or e-mail if you have any suggestions for free downloadable audiobooks, ideally in formats suitable for loading onto portable media players.]

I was listening to an episode of Escape Pod this morning in which the editor talks about his plans to do more to promote the podcast, and I thought, "Hey, why don't we have stuff like this in our catalog? It would certainly make it easier for our users to find audio fiction." So I asked our catalog department to add it -- hopefully they will agree that this is a good idea, and since it's already got a Worldcat entry I can see I'm not the first person to think of it.

[Photo credit: dalydose via Flickr]