28 Nov 2014

A Bibliometric Study of Articles Published in Twelve Humanities Journals

Guest post by Daniel Price. Daniel lives in Israel, has an MA in Library and Information Science from Bar Ilan University, and works as a librarian at Shalem College in Jerusalem.

The majority of bibliometric research has focused on the parameters of scientific and social scientific papers while the humanities have been somewhat neglected.

In a paper that can be accessed at here, I did a study of original research papers published in three journals in each of three subjects in the humanities: ethics, history and theoretical linguistics. I looked at the correlation between the number of authors, the length of the title and the paper, the number of references quoted, and how all these impact the article's impact factor.

Based on a paper written by two Iranian scholars from Tehran, I also sought to verify if there is a connection between the type of title of the papers and the number of times they are cited. The results are compared and contrasted to those found in previous research, and the extensive bibliography has plenty of suggestions for further reading.
Posted on Friday, November 28, 2014 | Categories:

25 Nov 2014

Six useful librarian webinars in December

I just realised that 2014’s coming to an end already and thought it would be a reassuring gesture on my part to provide you with yet another - final - collection of cherry-picked librarian webinars. The below choicex6 considers the following topics:

Tools for Naming and Framing Public Issues
Wednesday, 3rd December, 9pm – 10pm GMT
True progress happens when communities come together to talk in a productive, civil and interesting way. Help lead these discussions by “naming and framing” controversial issues in a different light. This webinar will provide a roadmap to facilitating civil dialogue and leading change.

This session will help attendees:
• Learn the steps and processes for leading a “naming and framing” effort
• Apply tools to develop issue maps that help people weigh options for moving forward together.

Presenters will include Kranich; Chris McCauley, executive director of the David Mathews Center; Cristin Foster, program director of the David Mathews Center; Robert Turner, assistant program director of the David Mathews Center; Carolyn Caywood, retired librarian from the Virginia Beach Public Library and fellow at the Hampton Roads Center for Civic Engagement; and Patty Dineen, contributing editor of the National Issues Forums Institute.

Session 1: "Beyond Deadlock: A Better Way to Talk about Difficult Issues" took place Oct. 14. Watch the archived recording. This session explored how to help people work together to talk about public issues and make choices, and how to uncover the deeper concerns of communities.
Session 3: A third session (date TBD) will give participants a chance to share their progress, successes and challenges in a webinar or conference call.

Monday, 8th December, 4.30pm – 6pm GMT
Attend this webinar to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.

Presenters will share their processes for adding links to collections and other content to Wikipedia. Presentations will include both lessons learned and successes.  

Tune in to learn from your colleagues, get answers to your questions, share your own ideas, and become inspired! 

Speakers include  Mary Elings, UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library; Andra Darlington, Getty; Daniel Reboussin, University of Florida; Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, University of Miami; Liz McCarthy, Oxford University, Bodleian Library; and Merrilee Proffitt, OCLC Research.
Provided by OCLC

Thursday, 11th December, 7pm – 8pm GMT
There's a huge demand for full-text, credible research that's easy to find, unbiased and not hiding behind a paywall. In-depth information on issues like product research, health issues, hobbies, career advice and personal finance is within library users' reach. But do you know how to help them find it? In the next American Libraries Live we'll discuss how discovery services can work for you and your library.
Provided by the American Library Association

Friday, 12th December, 4pm – 5pm GMT
Natalie Burclaff & Catherine Johnson from the University of Baltimore will join us for this week's Gale Geek on developing a social media strategy. Call in to learn how you can rekindle the social media flames in your library awareness and usage campaigns.
Provided by Gale Cengage

Wednesday, 17th December, 7pm – 8pm GMT
This webinar will help librarians who are thinking about hosting a Preservation Week event plan for choosing a topic and finding a speaker, and will offer guidance on resources to answer preservation questions that may come up after the event.

This webinar features a live Question and Answer session. Participants should come to the webinar having watched the previously recorded "How to Host a Preservation Week Event" presentation. The "How to Host a Preservation Week" webinar was presented through ALCTS in February of 2014.

Questions can be submitted ahead of time through this web form, or raised during the live session. Please have your questions in by December 10th, 2014. 
Provided by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services

Friday, 19th December, 16pm – 17pm GMT
Library leadership can come from the bottom, middle, and top. 

Join JP Porcaro, ALA Presidential candidate for 2016-17 and founder of the ALA Think Tank, in this fun and engaging webinar on bringing a Make It Happen attitude to our patrons, co-workers, and personal circles.
Provided by Gale Cengage
Posted on Tuesday, November 25, 2014 | Categories:

10 Nov 2014

Developing an Academic Writing Blog

By Helen Fallon, Deputy University Librarian, NUI Maynooth

Introduction
Writing is a really good way of sharing knowledge, experience and research. I find the process of writing helps me clarify thoughts and experiences and often gives me new ideas. It’s also a very good way to make connections with people who share common concerns but who perhaps operate in different contexts; for example writing for AISHE-J offers librarians an opportunity to share their experiences of information literacy and other library-related topics with academics internationally.I’ve been writing since 1991, the year I returned from working at the University of Sierra Leone. Initially, I focused on writing about my experiences overseas only later realising that my everyday work in Ireland could be crafted into interesting articles.

Academic Writing Workshops
In 2007, I ran my first academic writing workshop. A year later I surveyed the participants and found that 40% of them had published or had had articles accepted for publication; the evidence demonstrated the value of the workshop. Now it is an annual event and I have presented similar programmes in the U.K. and Malaysia.

Setting up my Academic Writing Blog
The inspiration to set up an academic writing blog came from one of my workshops. Initially, I saw the blog as a way for librarians to dialogue around writing. However, it transpired there was little communication of that nature, so I decided to focus on developing the blog as a resource for librarians who wished to write for publication.

Structure of Academic Writing Librarian

Posts
Most of the posts are details of publishing and presenting opportunities. This includes calls for papers, book chapters, book reviewers, and conference and seminar presentations. Initially, I posted quite a lot of detail, then I realised that short posts, with a link to the publisher’s more detailed information, work better for the reader and are more time efficient for me. I also post information about awards and bursaries. These are frequently for conference attendance. After publishing a post, I tweet the post and it appears simultaneously on my Facebook page. Sometimes, I post information telling about the publishing success of past workshop participants. Hopefully this will motivate people to keep writing, even when it is challenging.

Resources Section
The section of the blog with the most hits is the Academic Writing Resources page. This page links to articles on academic writing I’ve written and PowerPoint presentations I’ve delivered. I’ve deliberately restricted this to my own work or work I co-authored; the range of articles/resources for academic writing is so vast that it would be too time consuming to try to include much of this. In any case, given the audience, they should have no difficulty finding more resources.

In the resources section, I have also included a bibliography of books, articles and some websites on writing for publication. This is not restricted to librarianship. General titles on academic writing such as Murray’s “Writing for Academic Journals” and Kitchin and Fuller’s “The Academic’s Guide to Publishing” are really useful regardless across the disciplines.

In addition to being useful to those aspiring to write, the bibliography is useful for collection
development. I’ve had positive feedback and suggestions from outside the library world.

Top Tips Sections
Through working with librarians as academic writers for a number of years, I’ve received lots of informal feedback on what works for them in terms of writing. I developed two new sections for the blog in 2013; Top Tips from Published Authors and Top Tips from Journal Editors.The published authors are primarily people who have attended the workshop and gone on to publish. In approximately 250 words, they give tips ranging from time management to dealing with the peer review process. I approached a number of library journal editors and asked them to write a piece of a similar length, from the editor’s perspective. These tips frequently reinforce the journal guidelines and also offer additional insights. The presence of a photograph of the editor can convey a sense of the editor as a real person who can be approached with suggestions. There is a nice variety in the tips from the editors; this gives an insight into why it is so important to write with a particular journal in
mind, rather than writing a piece then trying to place it.

Impact
Currently, Academic Writing Librarian has about 5,000 hits per month. While the blog is international in its scope it has an Irish flavour. In the same way, I’ve noticed that Cory Seeman’s blog A Library Writer’s Blog has a strong US flavour.

Conclusion
Writing a blog has been a really good experience for me. I’ve learned a lot about blogs and
other social media through the process. I don’t post every day and I mostly use the blog as a way of alerting people to publishing/presenting opportunities and providing links to academic writing resources. The blog has never been a substitute for the face-to-face workshops I run. Hopefully it compliments them.

Anyone wishing to post a call for articles, chapters etc. to Academic Writing Librarian should e-mail me at helen.b.fallon[at]nuim.ie. If you want to write a short piece for either “Top Tips from Published Authors” or “Top Tips from Journal Editors” please e-mail me.

References
Kitchin, R. & Fuller, D. (2005). The Academic’s Guide to Publishing. London: Sage. Murray, R. (2013). Writing for Academic Journals. 3rd Press/ McGraw-Hill Education.
Posted on Monday, November 10, 2014 | Categories: ,