LibCognizance: New Trends in LIS

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Thursday, February 23, 2023

Future of Libraries in the age of Google and other Search Engines

The future of libraries in the age of Google and other search engines

This topic has been widely discussed and debated in the field of library and information science. While it is true that search engines such as Google have transformed the way we access and find information, libraries remain essential institutions that play a vital role in promoting access to knowledge and supporting research and learning.

One of the key strengths of libraries is that they provide access to a wide range of resources beyond what can be found on the open web. This includes specialized databases, scholarly journals, rare books and archives, and other materials that may not be freely available online. Additionally, libraries offer expertise and guidance in helping patrons navigate and evaluate the vast amount of information available online.

As technology continues to evolve, libraries are also adapting and embracing new tools and services that enhance the user experience and facilitate access to information. For example, many libraries are offering digital lending services that allow patrons to borrow e-books, audio books, and other digital materials remotely. Others are exploring new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality to create immersive learning experiences.

Ultimately, the future of libraries in the age of Google and other search engines will depend on their ability to innovate and adapt to changing user needs and technological advancements. As long as they continue to provide high-quality resources, services, and expertise, libraries will remain essential institutions for promoting access to knowledge and supporting lifelong learning. While search engines may be convenient and easy to use, they are not always reliable sources of information. Many search results can be inaccurate, biased, or misleading. Libraries can help to address this by providing access to high-quality resources and by offering guidance on how to evaluate the credibility of information.

Libraries are also important in addressing issues related to digital equity and access. Not everyone has access to high-speed internet or the latest technology, and libraries can help to bridge this digital divide by offering free access to computers, WiFi, and other digital resources.

Finally, it is worth noting that libraries and search engines are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they can work together to complement each other's strengths. For example, libraries can leverage search engines and other online tools to provide greater access to their collections and services, while search engines can help to drive traffic to library websites and resources.

Best free CMS (Content management system) / Website builders for Building Library Websites

LibCognizance LIS Blogs , New Trends in LIS

Best free CMS

(Content management system) /

Website builders for Building Library Websites

NFT BOOKS: Crypto-future of reading

LibCognizance Blockchain based books , Book as a digital asset on blockchain

As we enter the age of distributed computing, when blockchains and cryptocurrencies are buzzing in every industry, NFTs appear to be the new trend in blockchain technology. Their popularity has surged in the past year, and NFTs are gradually gaining ground in a variety of creative industries. Thanks to NFT Books, the publishers who deal with the sale of eBooks and eTextbooks are now ready to benefit from blockchain technology.

Open science tools for scholarly literature search

LibCognizance Data , E-Resources

This post is intended to help the scientific research community and the library professionals involved in making every effort for enabling the research community in accessing more and more research results that are behind the paywall or beyond the paywall.

Automatic Text Summarization: use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

LibCognizance Abstractive text summarization , AI

A huge amount of information is generated every day from many sources like news, social media, RSS feeds, and others. It is difficult for one to read and digest all content at the same pace, so this needs to be effectively summarized to be useful. The Automatic Text Summarization has become essential that reduces the large text of a document to a summary but conveying the gist of the whole document.

Experience the joys of the physical library right in your web browser with Open Library Explorer

LibCognizance Digital Library , New Trends in LIS

We all have seen the whole year of 2020 hit severely by the Covid-19 pandemic. All schools, colleges, universities, and libraries were closed. People were bound to stay inside their homes and study with the limited resources they have. This need brought a paradigm shift in the ways of access to the resources. Library communities across the world have taken many initiatives of making maximum resources available online to a large number of users during this pandemic. Open Library Explorer is one of these.

Open Library Explorer

The beta version of Open Library Explorer has just launched in December 2020 to receive your feedback. It is a digital interface that gives readers the feeling as if they are navigating a physical library. Readers can seamlessly navigate to the sea of books anywhere online with a better experience.

Key features:

Open Library Explorer presents you with the clickable shelves arranged category-wise like a computer and information science, religion, social sciences, philosophy, and psychology, etc.
The settings on the page allow you to choose between DDC or LC classification schemes.
In settings, we can also select the layout of books on the shelf like 3D, 3D Spines, 3D Flat that we want to see.
Readers have many options to select from the smart filter on the page to personalize their library.
Smart filters give the choice of converting your entire library to transform into a Children's library.

Open Library

Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive with a vision of making universal access to all knowledge with the contribution of librarians, authors, government officials, technologists, and book readers. Open Library is a non-profit, open-source, digital public library that lends millions of ebooks to its patrons. It is an open project that is open-source, open-data, and open for people who want to give their time and effort to building the site. The goal of the Open Library project is “one page for every book ever published anywhere in the world”. Even though it is a lofty goal, the team has gathered more than 20 million records from a variety of large catalog records and with a single contribution. All are welcome to contribute either a new entry or corrections to the existing catalog, just like in Wikipedia.

There are many roles in an Open library project you can contribute as a volunteer:

As a technical writer, storyteller, editor, video maker, marketer, researcher, and idea person, you can contribute to the Open Library project by making its resources discoverable and more accessible to readers.
As a software engineer, you can help fix bugs and build new features and programs that reach millions of book lovers.
As a translator, to make the knowledge available and accessible in other languages across the globe.
As a beta tester, you can test features and give feedback.
As a designer and user researcher.

As a librarian, how can you contribute to an open library project?

Librarians can help to improve and edit the library catalog. Data errors like misspelled authors’ names, missing book covers, and duplicated entries are identified and fixed. Librarians can work together and communicate using a Slack chat channel hosted by Open Library. Open Library’s engineering team has created many resources for librarians to empower them in fixing common data problems at scale.

References:

Text and Data Mining: copyright issues

LibCognizance copyright , Data

As information professionals, we always focus on providing accurate and timely information to the users in the best possible ways and finding the different techniques to analyze and extract information from unstructured and structured data from various sources. Researchers are always in thirst for data and the latest information on which they can build upon their future research and support their findings. Researchers are able to work upon more and more research content through TDM because through this process large amounts of information can be analyzed electronically. Text and Data Mining has now become an important tool in scientific research and many other domains. From Social sciences, arts, and literature, and to the other Scientific fields, the role of TDM has become essential to extract the structured and unstructured data and analyze it to reach a certain knowledge pattern. Knowledge discovery through Text and Data Mining (TDM) can definitely lead to some revolutionary findings in many fields.

Text and Data Mining (TDM) is a computational process of generating information by extracting and analyzing structured and unstructured data.

Definition:

Article 2(2) of the DSM (Digital Single Market) Directive defines text and data mining (‘TDM’) as:

“any automated analytical technique aimed at analyzing text and data in digital form in order to generate information which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends, and correlations”1.

“Text and data mining (TDM) is the process of deriving information from machine-read material. It works by copying large quantities of material, extracting the data, and recombining it to identify patterns.” (UK Government)

Difference between Text Mining and Data Mining:

Text Mining is the computational process of extracting and analyzing unstructured data to reach a certain pattern of information.

Data Mining is the computational process of extracting and analyzing structured data to reach a certain pattern of information.

https://libguides.cam.ac.uk/tdm/definitions

Four Stages of TDM Process in JISC model

1. Research relevant documents are identified to be processed.

2. These documents are converted into a machine-readable format to extract structured data. machine-readable format of relevant documents is called Normalized documents.

3. Useful information is extracted from the documents called "derived datasets".
4. The extracted information is mined to discover new knowledge.

Copyrights and legal issues involved in TDM activity?

Text and data mining activities include copying the work, extraction of data, and analysis of data to generate useful information. Copying of any work without the permission of the author or whoever is the owner of the work is a violation of copyrights. In this case, the exception to copyright exists which allows the copying of work for non-commercial research. TDM activity is allowed only for that work that is subscribed by the researchers and they have lawful access to that work.

According to DSM directives, there are two exceptions to the restrictions on copying for TDM.

1. According to Article 3 TDM is permitted on copyrighted works where the user has lawful access to the protected work. Lawful access means the rights to read the works which are described as “access to content based on an open access policy or through contractual arrangements between rights holders and research organizations or cultural heritage institutions, such as subscriptions, or through other lawful means.”²Research organizations and cultural heritage institutions involving universities have the primary goal of conducting scientific research and carrying out educational activities are permitted for copying and extraction of data from the copyrighted works if they have “lawful access” to the protected work. In addition to permitting mining activities Art. 3(2) allows the secure storage and retention of copies of mined works and other subject-matters “for the purposes of scientific research, including for the verification of research results”.

2. Article 4 permits reproductions of, and extractions from, “lawfully accessible works” for TDM for any purpose. Art. 4 applies only on the condition that right holders have not expressly reserved their rights “in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means in the case of content made publicly available online”

According to Prof. Matthew Sag in his article that “copying expressive works for non-expressive purposes should not be counted as infringement and must be recognized as fair use.”³

TDM is a good example of non-expressive use of copyrighted works, as the purpose of TDM is not to read those articles but to reach certain patterns of information, trends, and correlations through the automated analysis of the data in those articles. Those contracts and terms of authors and publishers which restrict the researchers’ activity of text and data mining on their protected works without any reason are unenforceable.

References:

India’s first Preprints Repository to improve research quality in the country

LibCognizance agriRxiv , Agrixiv

India’s first Preprints Repository to improve research quality in the country

Researchers in any field, accessing research publications face two main problems. One, it takes around one year in the whole process of submitting, reviewing, accepting, and publishing research work in an online journal to be accessible. Another one is most of the papers remain behind the paywall as they are published in journals that are accessible only after having a subscription. So, many researchers in different countries, and of different universities and colleges who don't have subscriptions to these journals are unaware of the research findings in their fields. The need to make the current research results, immediately and freely accessible to the research community for building the ground for further research, has given rise to Preprints servers. A growing number of disciplines are building online repositories of preprints that are openly accessible to all readers. India also launched its preprints service in 2017 in agricultural sciences and now launched the country's first community Preprints service IndiaRxiv.

One Nation, One Subscription journal-access plan of India

LibCognizance Free access to journals , Gold Open access

One Nation, One Subscription journal-access plan of India

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1. The plan will make scholarly literature accessible for free to everyone in the country

2. The proposal The government will negotiate with the world’s leading scientific publishers to set up a nationwide “One nation one subscription” journal-access plan to make the scholarly literature available to everyone for free which is currently limited to the scholars of individual institutions subscribing to it.
3. The proposal The proposal is being developed by the Office of the Principle Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). After being approved by the Cabinet, it is likely to happen before the year’s end.
4. Success of plan will depend upon  The willingness of publishers to negotiate nationwide subscription.  If the government could make it cheaper to give access to the paywalled literature to all citizens.
5. The idea of plan emerged from  The discussions about whether the country should join a global open access initiative “Plan S”.  According to Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan, the principal scientific adviser to the Government of India, the government is not going to join Plan S.
6. What is Plan S ?  Making full and immediate Open Access a reality.  Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing launched in 2018, with the aim of making full and immediate access to the research publications a reality by January 2020, It is supported by an international consortium "cOAlition S”.
7. “With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.” (https://www.coalition-s.org/about/) The main Principle of Plan S
8. Plan S supports Gold route  Gold route of Open Access in which the articles are freely and permanently accessible to everyone, immediately after publication. These articles are published under creative commons license and also available to reuse as long as the authors are given proper acknowledgment as the copyrights to their work are retained by authors. These articles can be published in two types of journals.  Fully open access journal, in which articles are freely available online to everyone to read, usually after the author have paid Article Processing Charges.  Hybrid journals, which are subscription-based journals and have the option for Gold open access also if an author wish to publish in this category.  DOAJ (Directory of open access journal) is an online directory of fully open access journals (https://doaj.org/)
9. One Nation one Subscription favours Green route Green route of Open Access is all about the self-archiving permission provided by the publishers to their authors so that they can submit either the preprint or the postprint version of their articles (but before publication in a journal) in institutional repository making it freely accessible to everyone. The copyrights are retained by the publisher and the articles are freely accessible when the embargo period is over ( though the embargo period will not apply in all cases.) However, there is a limited restriction on the reuse of work.
10. Researchers’ rights  Here also the researchers has to wait for the embargo period is over ranging from few months to years to publish in repositories.  “Rights-retention” policies that ensure researchers keep the right to share their work in repositories without breaching copyright agreements. A growing number of institutions like Harvard University and funding agencies behind Plan S have introduced similar policies to keep the researchers rights safe.
11. Researchers’ rights  But according to Rahul Siddharthan, a computational biologist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India, and a member of the advisory group, “Existing repositories in India aren’t very popular, so there’s a risk researchers won’t get behind green open access unless policies are enforced”.
12. Ongoing debate on proposal  One group of members in the advisory group wants that government should pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) in reputed Open access journals for the researchers who are unable to bear these charges to publish. “Paying to publish is not good for countries like India, where resources for research are scarce,” says Madhan Muthu, a librarian at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, who is part of the advisory group.
13.  Rahul Siddharthan, a computational biologist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India, and a member of the advisory group, also supports establishing a central government fund to pay APCs for reputable open-access journals.  On the other side some members are against the use of public funding for paying APCs. According to Muthu and Arul Scaria, an intellectual-property researcher at the National Law University in New Delhi and an advisory group member, “public funding should not be spent on publishing fees, in addition to subscription costs”.
14.  Some members suggest that India should be the part of global initiative to reform publishing system, but they are not against the proposal of national subscription if at reasonable rates.  According to Dominique Babini, an open-access advocate with the Latin American Council of Social Sciences in Buenos Aires, “Funding agencies should invest more in local and regional open-access journals that do not require authors to pay to publish, which make up about 70% of those listed in the international Directory of Open Access Journals”
15. References  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02708-4  https://librarycognizance.blogspot.com/2019/05/gold-and- green-open-access-copyrights.html  https://librarycognizance.blogspot.com/2019/09/open-access- leading-to-goal-of.html  https://www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-develops-rights- retention- strategy/#:~:text=The%20Rights%20Retention%20Strategy%20i s,with%20a%20CC%20BY%20license

Google Scholar’s feature CASA for off campus users

LibCognizance Campus Activated Subscriber Access , CASA

Google Scholar’s feature CASA for off-campus users

The scientific community has come together to find new ways and solutions to the problems being imposed by the pandemic in sharing and accessing knowledge across the globe. The communities have collaborated and worked across the borders to adopt new strategies to disseminate and provide access to information.

CASA is one of the examples, Google and HighWire co-developed CASA (Campus Activated Subscriber Access) to provide access to subscribed content from home when the user's device is not connected to the institution's network.

CASA makes note of a user’s institutional affiliation when they access content from an authorized on-campus location, and then enables continued access to their library’s journal and book holdings from home or when using a device not connected to the institution’s network. - Google Scholar¹

Google Scholar's CASA is free. Users can access all the journals hosted by HighWire and indexed in Google Scholar. It is an automatically enabled authentication enhancement. Google automatically creates an affiliation between the user and their institution when the user visits Google Scholar on campus and connects to the institution’s network. Once the Google scholar records that the user has access privilege to the institution’s subscribed content then it grants them immediate access to the articles and journals when the user is off-campus. The affiliation lasts for one month,br.. Users need to renew it again by visiting and connecting to the campus network and accessing the Google scholar through an institution IP, at least once in a month.

The user needs not to login in Google account. Affiliation is created simply by going on to Google scholar while on their Institution’s network. However, one advantage of logging in Google account while on an institution's network and accessing Google scholar is that their CASA token will persist amongst all of their devices (desktop, laptop, mobile, etc) where they are logged in to that account.

All the libraries that participate in Google scholar will automatically have this feature (CASA) enabled. Instructions for activation can be found here for connecting Google scholar to the libraries' resources and for participating in Google scholar.

References:

TRUST to build Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs)

LibCognizance Archives , Digital Library

Digital repositories are information systems to collect, store, manage, preserve, and provide access to the content to the users.

TRUST to build Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs)

Digital repositories are information systems to collect, store, manage, preserve, and provide access to the content to the users. The content is either deposited by the content creator owner or third party. The collection is managed and curated by using standard metadata tools. The repository offers a minimum set of basic services eg. store, search, and access to the content.

A Concept of Trustworthy Digital Repositories has been evolved to increase the capability of the repositories in long term preservation, access and, build trust among the users about the sustainability and usefulness of these repositories over time. Developing trustworthy digital repositories will require the integration of new methods, policies, standards and technologies in the process of digital preservation.

What is digital preservation?

Digital preservation is the process of managing access to digital material irrespective of technological advances in a long time, making the format and media to access digital content obsolete.

According to a working group within the Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) to draft a definition for digital preservation during the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2007 Midwinter Meeting, “Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and born digital content regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.” (http://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/preserv/defdigpres0408)

It is important to develop the trust between the repositories and the communities that they intended to serve. The users must have trust in the repositories about their reliability and capability of managing the data they hold. Digital preservation is the process of managing access to digital material irrespective of technological advances in a long time, making the format and media to access digital content obsolete.

TRUST Principles

All efforts in the information world revolve around the one aim of making information Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. FAIR Data Principles are a set of guiding principles that provide the framework for scientific data management. (https://librarycognizance.blogspot.com/2018/08/fair-data-principles-for-scientific.html). To keep that data FAIR over time in digital repositories. And to maintain the trustworthiness of digital repositories in communities they serve, TRUST principles came into existence after several months of consultation with RDA (Research Data Alliance and discussion within the digital repositories community.

TRUST principles are a set of guiding principles to ensure trustworthy data management in digital repositories. TRUST principles are endorsed by Open Data Preservation Foundation and are recently published (May 2020) as an article for Scientific Data. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-0486-7)

Open Preservation Foundation(OPF) is an independent, not for a profit membership organization, with a vision of open, sustainable preservation. It is an open-source community of digital preservation practitioners around the world. The organization provides practical digital preservation solutions and facilitates the best practices that support enduring access to digital collections.

According to Martin Wrigley, executive director of the Open Preservation Foundation, “We endorse these principles in our capacity as an advocate for best practice in digital preservation and in recognition of the fact that they are vital to securing a sustainable future for our digital information.”

Trust principles are a set of guiding principles that reminds the digital repositories stakeholders about the importance of developing and maintaining the repositories infrastructure in the way to cater to the needs of data to the community in a long run without any hindrance of technology change. TRUST is to build and maintain the trust of communities in the data repositories that they are reliable and capable of appropriately managing the data they hold.

Transparency

Transparency in the policies of any repository in areas like data deposition, data preservation, and data discovery. Clearly communicating the users about:

(i) policies in terms of the use of data holdings and digital preservation policies.
(ii) features and services that give an indication about the capability of repositories in holding sensitive data.

Responsibility

How responsible a digital repository is demonstrated by how well the data in repositories are managed by following metadata standards compliant with the community norms, which enhance the discoverability and usefulness of data. Responsibility involves:

(i) technical validation, documentation, quality control, authenticity protection, and long term preservation of data.

(ii) privacy and protection of sensitive information.

(iii)managing the intellectual property rights of data producers.

User Focus

Each digital repository should embed the best data practices being followed in its users’ communities. The user community involves the data depositors, users accessing data, funders, journal editors, institutions related to that community. User focus of the repository is demonstrated by:

(i) continuously monitoring and identifying the community changing expectations and needs with time and

(ii) evolving best practices to meet these requirements.

Sustainability

Sustainability involves ensuring:

(i) uninterrupted access to its data holdings for current and future user communities.

(ii) planning for disaster recovery, risk mitigation, and long term preservation of data. (iii) Securing funding to enable ongoing usage and to maintain successful rendering of services.

Technology

Technology involves:

(i) the fitness and maintenance of software, hardware tools to run a data repository.

(ii) proactive decisions and preparations to incorporate new tools and technical services to ensure uninterrupted access to data when technology changes and a mechanism to prevent, detect and respond to security threats

(iii) implementing appropriate standards, technologies, and tools for data management and curation.

TRUST principles give the benefit to both digital repositories and the user communities. A digital repository infrastructure built on these principles develops trust among user communities that they are capable of fulfilling their needs, protecting the data they hold, preserving for the long term, and enabling access to the data in the future also despite technology changes. The repositories based on TRUST principles are called Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs).

References