Libfocus Link-out for March 2024

Welcome to the March edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

Images featured in this month's link-out articles

What is data literacy and why are librarians the best people to support it?
Joanne Fitzpatrick from Lancaster University seeks to demystify the world of data and argues that this is definitely something librarians can engage in.

How Wikipedia can help to disseminate research: an innovative NIHR project.
This article by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) in the US explains how Wikipedia can be a highly effective dissemination tool, helping to make research findings widely accessible.

The World of AI: How libraries are integrating and navigating this powerful technology.
Emily Udell speaks to five technology experts, educators, and librarians who are pioneering the use of generative AI at their institutions.

UCD Digital Library's Ethical Cataloguing Guidelines.
UCD Digital Library launch their Ethical Cataloguing Guidelines, compiled by metadata librarian, Órna Roche, detailing their commitment to describing material accurately, respectfully, and in a way that will not cause distress or offense.

Why We Need Public Libraries Now More than Ever.
A great long read on why we need Public Libraries more than ever now.

Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet.
An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge.

World Book Day finds children are put off reading for pleasure.
In this Guardian article, journalist Ella Creamer highlights the literacy crisis identified by the National Literacy Trust in the UK. She examines how barriers to reading are contributing to low literacy levels in school children.

Irish novelist Sydney Morgan - blog post by Magdalene College Libraries.
Written to mark International Women’s Day 2024, this blog post showcases a letter written by the Irish novelist Lady Sydney Morgan in 1883. A prolific writer, her letter gives an insight into the author's lively social life, her literary and charitable works and into her irreverence.

What do we know about DOIs.
While DOI's are synonymous with linking to a specific document, what do we actually know about the current state of DOI's? Martin Eve digs deeper into the wider landscape and resolution rates.

GAI Product Tracker.
Generative AI in higher education -- a useful tool to keep track of emerging technology via Ithaka S+R.

The Latest “Crisis” — Is the Research Literature Overrun with ChatGPT- and LLM-generated Articles?
David Crotty of  'The Scholarly Kitchen' digs into recent incidents of AI-pollution in published scholarly journal literature. Elsevier has been under the spotlight for publishing a paper that contains a ChatGPT-written portion of its introduction. The first sentence of the paper’s Introduction reads, “Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:…” To date, the article remains unchanged, and unretracted.

Curiosity and information-seeking behaviour: a review of psychological research and a comparison with the information science literature.
Thomas D. Wilson reviews the psychological literature on curiosity and its relationship to information-seeking behaviour, and compares this with the information science literature on the same subject.