"Mardi Gras" Float

SUNO was one of the institutions of higher education hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, with the campus suffering an estimated $350 million in damages. The university reopened on February 17, but rather than operating in its own building, the library is housed in FEMA-provided trailers with FEMA-provided PC’s. Photos of the devastation encountered by the initial recovery expeditions, along with current information about the university, may be viewed at the SUNO site.

Under the “Adopt a Gulf Coast Library program” of the American Library Association, the Tufts libraries have also been planning other means of aiding SUNO, such as by contributing replaced computer equipment and selected gifts books. Tisch Library extends thanks to the students, faculty, staff, and visitors who have thus far contributed to its fundraising effort. Checks may be made out to:
Southern University at New Orleans - Library
and sent to:
SUNO Library
6801 Press Drive
New Orleans, LA 70126.

Open Access: One of the most significant initiatives aimed at addressing the crisis in scholarly communication is the open access movement. In 2002, the Budapest Open Access Initiative defined open access as the "world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature, with completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds." There are currently two major strategies to fulfill the goals of the open access movement: depositing of material in an institutional or discipline-based repository and open access journals.

Repositories: Repositories can contain both non-refereed preprints and refereed postprints (see section on permissions below). Many disciplines have eprint archives, physics being the oldest and PubMed Central the most well-known. Academic institutions have also started to build their own institutional repositories where faculty can deposit online copies of their publications and data. Tufts Digital Collections and Archives (DCA) maintains the Tufts Digital Repository (TDR), which is a digital repository that stores, manages and delivers content to users around the world. For information on depositing a preprint, publication, or data into the Tufts Digital Repository and publication in the Tufts Digital Library, contact the DCA at archives@tufts.edu.
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The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) maintains a website with information on repositories around the world.

Permissions: Authors own the copyright to their works until they sign copyright over to a publisher. This is why authors may archive their preprints, but must ask permission for the deposit of published articles in a repository. In order to avoid this scenario, Tufts University strongly recommends that authors retain copyright rights as part of their publication agreement. Without such rights, authors may not be able to distribute copies of their own papers in their classes, post their own papers to a course site, or deposit them in a repository. A copy of the Tufts-approved “Amendment to Publication Agreement” is available (within Faculty Resources) from the Fair Use Policy link on the Tisch homepage.

Open-Access Journals: Scholars around the world have started open-access publishing initiatives that provide free access to their content. Open-access journals are usually peer-reviewed and always digital. Questions remain as to how to finance open-access journals since the traditional activities of peer review, editing, and dissemination remain. Most open-access journals are currently financed in a variety of ways, including processing fees that are paid for by the author or funding agency; subsidies from hosting universities or professional societies; and institutional memberships, usually paid for by libraries, which then minimize author fees.

The Tufts libraries support two open access journal initiatives -- BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science. As a result of the libraries’ support of BioMed Central, Tufts faculty may publish in any BioMed journal at no cost. The publishing fees are subtracted from the membership dues paid for by the libraries. The libraries’ participating membership in the PLoS gives Tufts faculty a 20% discount on publication charges.

There are mixed opinions about the ramifications of open access publishing. While applauding the free accessibility to information, some pundits worry that open access publishing will simply shift the cost centers from subscriptions to memberships or author fees. Some faculty groups, such as the Columbia University Senate, have endorsed open access resolutions; and there is currently legislation pending in the United States Senate that would require that all publicly funded scientific research be deposited in PubMed Central. Currently, NIH highly recommends that all publications resulting from NIH funding be deposited there. The Open Access News is the best way to stay informed about the open-access movement. Other good sources of information include the Cornell Scholarly Communication website and the Association of Research Libraries website.

Music Library Update

In applying for this presentation, the two librarians summed up how grants funded by the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment have effectively promoted such partnerships, noting that for eight years the endowment has funded proposals for projects that develop the technology skills of librarians and faculty in order to integrate technology into teaching and research. Their proposal pointed out that “winning grants are collaborations between library staff and teaching faculty,” that “Berger grants often provide seed money for projects that receive future funding from larger organizations,” and that their poster would “present an overview of each of the winning projects and highlight the most recently concluded project, the Research Paper Navigator, a site designed to assist undergraduates with writing and library research.”

Anyone wishing to look over the projects that have been funded thus far, including the two receiving awards just this March, and to learn more about the purpose and nature of these grants will find full information provided at the Berger Grant link from the Tisch home page.

Alumni Access to Databases

Students are highly appreciative of all the electronic information readily available through the library’s licensed databases. Therefore, it often comes as a shock to learn that their access to the full range of Tufts databases ends at graduation.

Database providers have understandably been reluctant to open their products to potentially large-scale general use. Now, however, Tufts alumni can access the two key databases named above through the Tufts Alumni Online Community. Upon registration, alumni are given a password that allows them access to these databases and to all other alumni services. This initiative, funded by the Friends of the Libraries and the TUAA, has put Tufts University in the forefront of its peers in providing services to alums.

Faculty wishing to encourage students to continue exploring their subject and career interests through relevant journal literature past graduation may well choose to mention this benefit.

Transportable Database Access

Consider, for example, the sources listed at the General Information Sources site. From the Books and Publishing Resources category, one has access to all the books contained in Project Gutenberg, Bartleby, and Bibliomania. Within Biographical Resources, the American National Biography Online with its sketches of “over 17,000 notable Americans from colonial times to the present” is just one source available to consult. The Dictionaries/Encyclopedias … section contains the entire reference collections Oxford Reference Online and xreferplus, not to mention the Britannica Online, the Oxford English Dictionary -- and more. A wide assortment of news sources is contained within News and Current Events, and both light and substantive periodical reading is available via the General Periodicals Indexes link. The Virtual Reference Shelf and Open Directory Project provide entries to numerous topics, and various popular resources can be accessed throughout the site.

Once free of tight academic schedules, scholars might also welcome the chance to review the primary sources and websites listed in the Subject Research Guides for their disciplines, just to be fully cognizant of the amount of material available. Suggestions for adding to these resources may be sent to the appropriate bibliographers. Scholars may also wish to keep abreast of books ordered for their fields at the New Acquisitions link and to look for announcements of newly acquired databases at the News, Events & Exhibits link from the Tisch homepage. The news listings will also inform viewers of any developments in library services that could interest them once they return to campus.

Contributors to this issue:

Anthony Kodzis

Laura Walters

Michael Rogan

Laurie Sabol

Julie-Ann Bryson: "Mardi Gras" float photograph

Rendering of Music Building: by Perkins & Will

Logo images from respective website pages

Other graphic images (3): © 2005 www.clipart.com

Editor: Margaret Gooch