What: Your 21st Century Library (open house & interactive exhibits/activities)
When: Saturday, April 13 from 9am-1pm
Where: Ellis Library, main level
Event Description: Technology has changed the way we interact with ancient texts. Stop by Ellis Library to participate in interactive exhibits showcasing what a 21st century library has to offer. View rare books from the special collections vault and test out high-tech equipment from the digital media lab. Explore Ellis Library’s beautiful 100+ year old building. Enjoy refreshments and crafting tables for kids.
At Renewal of Teaching this month, Grace Atkins presented on Open Pedagogy with two other faculty members. Her co-panelist Dr. Steven Keller made a point of praising the Libraries’ reserves programs. Over the course of Fall 2018, his students checked out his personal copies of chemistry textbooks a total of 69 times. The third panelist Dr. Jenna Wintemberg from the School of Health Professions also discussed how she uses electronic reserves to keep her courses affordable for students. Over 50 instructors, as well as the director of the Teaching for Learning Center and the Provost were in attendance.
Thank you, Burt Fields, for quickly pulling course reserves stats when Dr. Keller requested them shortly before the panel!!
Volunteers are needed to help with a library open house taking place in Ellis Library on April 13 from 9am-1pm. The library’s open house will be called “Your 21st Century Library” and will feature interactive, kid-friendly exhibits from Special Collections and the Digital Media Commons. Volunteers are needed to help with the exhibits and greet attendees. Mark the date on your calendar and ask your supervisor for permission to participate.
This spring open house is part of a campus-wide open house called Show Me Mizzou Day, which is designed to engage Missouri citizens. Show Me Mizzou Day is still in the planning stages. The libraries’ Marketing Team will share more details at the libraries’ SAG meeting on February 5.
This information was sent out from Chancellor Cartwright to deans and department chairs:
We are so proud to be Missouri’s flagship university, and we want the citizens of our state to be just as proud of the work done here on campus every day. With that in mind, and as part of our ongoing commitment to educate and engage Missourians, we are hosting MU’s first Show Me Mizzou Day this spring.
From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, we will welcome thousands of Missouri citizens to campus for a day filled with fun and exciting activities, presentations, tours and demonstrations. In the afternoon, participants will have the chance to attend the Mizzou Football spring game and watch Mizzou Baseball host Louisiana State University.
This all-campus open house is designed for people of all ages. Our institution has so much to be proud of — let’s take this opportunity to showcase our beloved campus to Missourians.
Yes, it’s that time of the semester again. You’re studying, you’re researching, you’re writing, you’re living on coffee and no sleep…but look, a fluffy puff of pure love and joy! These calm, cheerful, trained therapy dogs are here to give you a break and put a smile on your face 🙂
Come to Ellis Library on the 1st floor by the North Doors / checkout desk. There will be therapy dogs Dec. 9-12 during these hours:
Finals are a stressful time, and your libraries are here to help! We have our Ask a Librarian research support services and our study spaces are open 24/7 until Dec. 14! We also have stress relief activities at 4 different locations! Check it out:
Ellis Library
Therapy Dogs, Dec. 9-12 by the North Doors on floor 1
Sunday 1-5pm
Monday 7-9pm
Tuesday 7-9pm
Wednesday 7-9pm
Zen coloring pages station by the North Doors on floor 1
Engineering Library
Games and coloring pages
Health Sciences Library
Relaxation Station with aromatherapy and a chair massager
Coloring pages, puzzles, origami and DIY snowflakes
On Tuesday 12/11, we will be giving out Hot Chocolate from 4-6pm
Did you attend the MU Extension Summit? The University Libraries gave a presentation on resources available for MU Extension. In case you missed it, the slides and handout are below. As always, if you have any questions, ask a librarian!
Join us for an Open Access Week screening of the documentary film Paywall: The Business of Scholarship.
Tuesday, October 23
Ellis Library room 114A
2 to 3:15 pm
Paywall: The Business of Scholarship is a documentary film on scientific publishing business and on the need for open science. It reports on the huge profit margins of the big publishing companies, like Elsevier, Springer and Wiley and the challenges for open science to change the situation. Scientists, science administration, librarians, editors of scientific journals, open access-activists, representatives of scientific publishing houses and the founder of Academia.edu give their opinions on the matter. This film focuses on the need for Open Access in research and science. There will be a 15 minute post-screening discussion for anyone who would like to stay after the viewing.
What is Open Access? Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. Encouraging the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, the Open Access movement is gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers put their weight behind it.
For more University Libraries’ Open Access Week events, check out this post.
Ellis Library’s Digital Media Lab is now available for student use by appointment.The Digital Media Lab in Room 153 provides a recording booth with various software, a 3D scanner (Structure Sensor), art tablets and virtual reality goggles. The Digital Media Commons also has the film studio in 3E21. Students can request an appointment through the Digital Media Commons website at library.missouri.edu/dmc. The Digital Media Lab is open between the hours of 10 am and 3 pm, Monday through Friday. Feel free to stop by or make an appointment to see all we have to offer.
In addition to “producing grammatical descriptions and dictionaries for four varieties of the Luyia language cluster in western Kenya,” Michael Marlo is an Associate Professor of English and Linguistics and a member of the editorial board of the Language Science Press‘s Contemporary African Linguistics series. Language Science Press is an open access publisher of peer-reviewed linguistics books, including textbooks, and neither readers nor authors pay fees under the Knowledge Unlatched model, which instead relies on financial pledges from institutions and libraries to fund open access projects.
Michael’s editorship originally grew out of a desire to find a financially reasonable publishing outlet for the proceedings of the Annual Conference on African Linguistics. When researching potential publishers for book projects related to his National Science Foundation project, Structure and Tone in Luyia, he had also made note of their African Language Grammars and Dictionaries series.
“One of the major obstacles to the development of the field of linguistics is access to research results,” Michael says. For example, access to the digital version of the most prestigious publisher’s grammar series costs $10,000 plus annual fees for updates. A single book costs $200. Despite the prestige, Michael doesn’t intend to pursue publication through a press with such a prohibitive pricing model because that would limit his audience to those few whose libraries can afford access. He says, “While I recognize that there are still problems of access with publications that are primarily available as PDF downloads online, due to the fact that not everyone has internet access, having my work available for anyone to download is a major improvement in access over most other publishing options, which are either too expensive for readers or require a large subvention from the author, or both.”
Anne Barker
Last summer, Michael learned that Language Science Press was pursuing the institutional support funding model and asked Anne Barker, his subject librarian, if Mizzou Libraries could contribute. He was “thrilled” to learn that some funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities were able to be put toward the initiative. Michael says, “I believe [this model] has the chance to revolutionize publishing in my field, and possibly by extension many other fields in academia.”
Anne confirms, “Librarians have long been concerned that the commercialization of scholarly communication restricts access for individuals and strains library budgets. Changing the traditional publication funding model to provide for more open access is complex and challenging, but the Knowledge Unlatched model is promising. Mizzou Libraries is glad to be able to join this endeavor.”
Michael encourages students to use MOBIUS and Interlibrary Loan to access books outside of our collection. He also encourages students to find their subject areas in the stacks and look around. “There’s a lot of great stuff in there that you won’t easily find just by searching online databases!”
Cycle of Success is the idea that libraries, faculty, and students are linked; for one to truly succeed, we must all succeed. The path to success is formed by the connections between University of Missouri Libraries and faculty members, between faculty members and students, and between students and the libraries that serve them. More than just success, this is also a connection of mutual respect, support, and commitment to forward-thinking research.
If you would like tosubmityour own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.
Predatory publishing doesn’t just take advantage of authors by misrepresenting review, editorial, and fee structures. It also hinders access to the work itself, hurting the overall enterprise of research. The epidemic of predatory journals reached serious enough heights in 2016 that the Federal Trade Commission charged OMICS, one such publisher of hundreds of predatory journals, for its deceptive practices.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” says Janice Dysart, Science Librarian and creator of the Where to Publish Your Research guide. “Be wary of these email solicitations from publishers trying to get you to submit articles to their journals.” She recommends using the Think Check Submit checklist to determine whether a publisher is legitimate.
Anyone can fall victim to predatory journal publishers. Jung Ha-Brookshire, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, College of Human Environmental Sciences, and Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Textile and Apparel Management, relates her experience after a graduate student recommended a journal a few years ago. She says, “I didn’t think twice about it. We submitted our paper and got accepted without any revisions. Then they were asking us to send money somewhere in Pakistan.” She still didn’t realize what was happening because she hadn’t even heard of “predatory journals.”
That all changed about a year later when she learned of a list of predatory journals from her colleagues. “We found out that our journal was on that list,” she says. They tried to withdraw their work from the publication but couldn’t. Because the journal wasn’t legitimate, the article could only be found via the specific URL and not by searching, so they pulled the publication information from their CVs. Jung says, “We had to take that manuscript as a loss because we couldn’t even take that paper to other publishers since, technically, it is already published.”
After that experience, Jung now checks with her subject librarian, Noël Kopriva, every time she encounters a journal she hasn’t heard of, “no matter how good the website looks.” Jung advises, “Be careful with choosing the right journals. Do not get fooled by address, location, a beautiful website, and a wonderful set of editorial board names. Check with your librarian first when in doubt!”
