What are libraries for and are they worth it?

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Frank Norman

Back in August Elsevier published a report that looked at what value a University library delivers to its parent institution, particularly in terms of its research.  It
looked at eight institutions around the world and found that in six of
them the investment in libraries was more than repaid in grant
funding.  Two institutions showed a significant positive correlation
between an increase in library investment over time and an increase in
grant funding to the university.
Carol Tenopir, the leader of the research project, said  “the
collections and services of all university libraries help faculty write
better grant proposals and articles and help them do better research.”
Further details are in the press release or you can read the whole report.I like the sound of this story – affirming that libraries are valuable appendages that every decent research institution should have. I find myself scratching my head a bit though,  wondering exactly how the link between libraries and grant income has been proved and whether 8 institutions is really a large enough study from which to draw definite conclusions. The conclusions also seem a bit too convenient – libraries are good for universities, therefore they must spend lot of money on journal subscriptions from publishers like … Elsevier.
Academic do value libraries.The Scientist, a month later, reported
that US scientists were worried about how cuts to US University library
services would affect their research, noting that many libraries were
having to make big cuts in journal and database subscriptions. One
researcher said “with a diminished library, you have a diminished university. It’s that simple.”
Back in the UK, JISC have published a report on the cost of peer review (see report in the Times Higher). Called The Value of UK HEIs’ Contribution to the Publishing Process,
it demonstrates the financial contribution that UK academia makes to
the publishing process through their support for peer review.  UK
academics spend up to 3 million hours a year acting as peer reviewers,
and it values their time at £165 million. The report calculates the
value of editors and editorial boards as up to another £30 million a
year. A number of those quoted in the Times Higher piece make
the link to the increasing cost of journal subscriptions, and question
whether these are justified. Graham Taylor, from the Publishers’
Association, is no pushover though. He is quoted as saying that “The only way for universities to save money is to make people redundant“. I wonder if he has read How to win friends and influence people?

Another report in the Times Higher suggests that librarians “must change the behaviour of academics to stop them craving books as libraries shift their focus to digital resource”.  I
think this may be more of an issue in social sciences and humanities,
though in the past I have struggled to get agreement for cancelling
print resources in favour of online. Some scientists even told me that while they never used the physical library they felt reassured toknow that we held print copies of key journals on the shelves.We now have very few print journals on our shelves and, in common with many similar libraries, are clearing out much of our print journal collection from the main library so we can create more space for study.

The quote above came from a debate about the future of university libraries, hosted by Times Higher Education at the British Library and related to the BL’s Growing Knowledge exhibition. Debating
the motion “Is the physical library a redundant resource for
21st-century academics?” it was suggested that the library as a
physical archive of material was no longer a sustainable model and its
function had to change.  I think that is pretty obvious and undisputed, at least in
biomedical science.  My own Library has been moving in this direction for 15 years  We are going through our third wave of major relocation and disposal and our  primary role is not to be a place for storing print but to provide study space and services. 
One academic in the debate identified Libraries’ service as the key aspect: “Real libraries have librarians. Librarians beat a virtual help desk hands down every time” she said, adding that libraries were also social places where she had been known “not only to eat, but also to have sex and get drunk“.   I have to admit I am a bit behind there; those are not services we routinely offer.

Posted in Collections, Future of Libraries, Journal publishing | 3 Comments

Books, Poetry and Prizes

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Frank Norman

Scientific poetry competitions are catching on.  First there was a genomics
poetry competition, organised by the Genomics Forum and the Scottish Poetry
Library.  You’ve missed the deadline for entries; winners are due to be
announced in November. More recently the California Institute of Regenerative
Medicine organised a stem cell poetry competition in celebration of Stem Cell
Awareness Day.  They got into some hot water with one of the winning entries and
have withdrawn it as it offended some religious sensitivities.  The Scientist’s
blog Naturally Selected has no such qualms and has republished
the poem in question. Commenters there praised the poem. 
Meanwhile, book competitions are hotting up. The shortlist
for the Royal Society prize for science books  was published back in August
and the competition comes to a head on 21 Oct. The Daily
Telegraph published a guide to the shortlisted titles, tipping Nick Lane’s
book on evolution: Life ascending.  Nature have reviewed
all six books on the shortlist, as have the Guardian.
The
Independent gives a vote for Nick Lane too, suggesting his book will
tie with Marcus Chown’s book We need to talk about Kelvin. It also
reports that funding for the prize is in doubt and this may be the last year
that it is organised.
Last week the Wellcome
Trust published their shortlist for works of fiction and non-fiction on the
theme of health, illness or medicine. This is the second year of the
competition. It would be nice if they could somehow combine with the Royal
Society prize.
Across the pond, the National Academies awarded
one of their communication prizes to Richard Holmes for his book “The Age of
Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of
Science.  This must be good as it also won the Royal Society prize last
year, but personally I found the book a bit like its title – very interesting
but rather wordy and too long.

Posted in Books, Writing | 10 Comments

Cooking up the future

Posted on October 16, 2010 by Frank Norman

I have always enjoyed cooking, but my skills are limited. I can identify ingredients that I like and that I think will work well together, particularly favouring unexpected combinations. I can prepare these ingredients appropriately, but then I will put them into the pot, apply suitable heat and hope. With luck they will blend together to produce a dish with good flavour and texture, but it is always a bit of an experiment. This week I was quite pleased with the flavour of my salmon+prawn+coconut cream+diced potatoes bake, though the texture didn’t come out as I had imagined.
I think that the new British Library exhibition Growing Knowledge is a bit like my cooking method. They have identified some good ingredients (researcher behaviour, cultural change, technology) and prepared them well (getting Aleks Krotoski on board as researcher in residence, plus partners like JISC, Microsoft, HP and the Ciber Research Group). The opening of the exhibition on 14 October signals the beginning of the cooking process – a nine-month long display and conversation. That is quite a slow-cooking conversation and I did wonder whether the temperature is high enough. I hope they do get a good deal of researcher engagement over the next nine months. The exhibition is an interesting assembly of technologies but I think the BL’s ambition is to do more than to just display new toys tools.
At the reception to mark the exhibition’s opening Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the BL, reminded us how much research behaviour has changed even in the 12 years since the current BL building opened. The web has moved beyond text to become truly multimedia, and information delivery now follows the Martini model (any time, any place). Mentioning the BL’s recent 2020 vision document, she pointed out that even the best-laid plans are always wrong and she cited the way that BL users now sit and work just about anywhere in the building not just the reading room desks to show how unpredictable things can be. It is important to have a vision to start from though. She stated that the British Library is not content to become a museum of the book, and the Growing Knowledge exhibition is one way for them to think about and debate what the future of this leading research library will be.
Aleks Krotoski also looked back at the recent past, when she was a user of the BL reading rooms in the days before laptops were permitted in them. Back then she said she used the web mainly for information about her favourite band, Pulp, but now the web allows her to access nearly everything she needs for her work. Her own research interest concerns what this change means for the research process, and this is the question that the exhibition is intended to probe. How has our relationship with knowledge changed? What do researchers assume when they use technology? Echoing Lynne Brindley, Aleks stated that the exhibition provides a vision of the future, not necessarily the vision of the future, and it asks whether the researcher of the future has a place within a bricks and mortar library. See Aleks’ blog for more words of wisdom from her.
The final brief speech, and formal opening, was made by Andrew Miller, the chair of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science & Technology. He said he has had a busy week, not least through being the first male guest blogger on the UK Resource Centre blog. He praised the way that libraries have changed, mentioning how public libraries are changing to try and inspire young people, and he cast an envious eye over some of the technology on show in the exhibition. He noted the high level of anxiety over what the government’s imminent Comprehensive Spending Review would have in store, but he emphasised the need for Libraries, Universities and Research Institutes to link together to support innovative research. As I type that I am not altogether sure what it means in practice, but I like the sound of it and I was pleased to see Andrew Miller, an influential MP, at an event like this so it seems mean to quibble.
The exhibition’s press release spoke about it examining

the way that people interact with never-seen-before tools, thought-provoking content and futuristic design

and providing

clues to how research is changing and what researchers want to experience from the library of the future.

Created to encourage engagement and debate, researchers will be able to physically interact with tools such as Sony’s 360-degree Autostereoscopic Display, a Microsoft Surface Table and HP/Haworth interactive pods as well as view all the content and tools online.

The 360-degree display was probably the most talked-about and spectacular item in the exhibition. It is the first time that it has been seen in Europe, and it has been lent by Sony for only four weeks. You can walk around it to inspect the 3D image, or wave your hands about to make the image rotate. Images included people, objects and molecular models. It is impressive but, it must be said, rather small. I look forward to seeing larger versions.
sony360.jpg
The Microsoft table was also rather nice – a bit like a gigantic iPad laid flat, though I understand that it is not actually a touch-sensitive screen but it relies on a camera to detect where your fingers are on the screen. I can think of several people who would love one of these.
mstable.jpg
The rest of the exhibition was a showcase for various kinds of workstation: one with a touch-screen, one with a 3-screen setup; all with interesting web-based software applications and attractive furniture from Haworth. Many of the applications are linked from the exhibition’s web page listing of research tools I liked the map rectification tool, Jane Austen’s manuscripts(left)_board.html and the polynomial texture mapping tool. There was also a link to something rather interesting called “Nature Network” (it’ll never catch on).
You have until July 2011 to visit the exhibition, but get along there quickly if you want to see that impressive 360-degree display device. I hope the BL can get some lively conversation and researcher engagement going, and that it all reaches a temperature high enough to produce something useful (and edible) at the end.

Posted in Copyright and IP | Comments Off on Cooking up the future

E-books – unconference session at SOLO10

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Frank Norman

I led a session looking at ebooks for researchers at SOLO10 earlier this month. I gave a brief overview and then opened up the discussion to the floor. About 10 people attended the session – it seems ebooks are not a favourite topic among science online types!
My thoughts
In a scientific research library books are very much the poor relation. I spend no more than 2% of my consumables budget each year on purchasing books; journals assume a much higher priority and eatt up most of my budget. Libraries which support students and healthcare, or which have a different subject focus, may have different experiences but in biomedical sciences researchers have relatively little interest in books. Or so we think.
However, Elsevier say that 25% of the citations in Scopus are to books, and that the most cited work in the database is a book (Maniatis’ Molecular Cloning). Now, many of those book citations are probably to book series that could also be categorized as journals, so 25% is maybe an overstatement. Methods books are another special case and many have already migrated to database form (think Current Protocols, Springer Protocols, Nature Protocols). Many reference books too are migrating to databases (e.g. Encyclopedia of Life Sciences). But there is still a large swathe of books – monographic works – that are perhaps of use to researchers and stubbornly in book form.
Over 20 years ago we saw bibliographic databases go digital and become tools that anyone could use easily. This transformed their pattern of use and made them tools that people use several times a day, rather than a few times a year. Then 15 years ago we saw the first really usable ejournals and within a few years the way people used journals was transformed. Books are taking longer to find their digital feet but I predict that once they do we will see similar changes in patterns of use, amongst scientific researchers. Defing what it means to “find their digital feet” is not straightforward though.
JISC ran a large-scale project looking at ebook usage – the e-book observatory This was a massive project, with over 50,000 responses, but it focused on students and their lecturers, making a small collection of only 36 textbooks available for them to use. The project gathered useful information about usage behaviours – browsing, dipping, skimming seem to be very common. Though they did have responses from research staff too this by no means represents a realistic research resource and doesn’t tell us much about the needs of researchers.
Highwire Press is a company based within Stanford University Library. They were pioneers in developing ejournals for researchers. Highwire produced a report earlier this year looking at ebooks, and what librarians thought their users wanted. It didn’t reveal anything startling but they are planning to follow up with more research.
My own view, based on no research at all, is that a useful ebook service for researchers should comprise: a large collection of ebooks, totally searchable in full text and easily addressable at the chapter level. It needs to be large in volume and broad in subject scope, then you can have a good chance of finding an answer to any question. The search should not be a simplistic search, but something that helps you to identify the best place to really find that answer.
We also need models of purchase or licensing that allow an ebook to be used from a PC with an online connection and/or to be downloaded onto any suitable portable device for use. It should be possible to print sections conveniently if desired. Digital Rights Management should not interfere with reasonable use patterns. And of course this needs to be at an affordable price. We also need the model of provision to allow libraries to lend out ebooks, or portions of ebooks, to their users. Note that CrossRef now allocate DOIs to book chapters and this may increase interest in and the accessibility of individual parts of books.
Google Books is an interesting project and may be a hazy glimpse into the future, though they need to improve some aspects of their indexing and metadata. Of course we also have to hope that the Google Books Settlement will one day reach a form that can be agreed by all parties.
Someone commented to me earlier at SOLO10 that ebooks are an unborn innovation, meaning that they are a solution in search of a problem. I don’t believe that. I can see real benefits to ebooks (increased searchability, increased portability, increased accessibility) but they have been a long time coming. A recent news item about the University of Texas at Austin’s Engineering library – with 425,000 ebooks – suggests that ebooks are beginning to make an impact.
It took quite a while for ejournal articles to be anything other than just online versions of paper articles, and most online articles are indeed still just that. As ebooks mature we will see authors being more adventurous in creating digital works with links and updates and interactivity. We may see new publishing outfits and new publishing models emerge. We may even see the disintegration of the idea of a book as a useful representation of knowledge. I was interested recently to see a similar comment from Hugh McGuire on his blog .
Discussion
A representative from Cold Spring Harbor Press (publishers of that Maniatis book) kicked off the discussion, pointing out that I had rather glossed over the financial aspects of ebooks. He said that the last edition of Maniatis in 2001 had sold 55,000 copies. They have been working for several years on a new edition of the book and he estimated it had cost them up to US$600,000, which will need to be recouped in sales. I confessed that I didn’t have any easy answers. However, Maniatis is one book that any institute engaged in molecular biology will absolutely need access to, so I think they know they will not lose out with that one.
Someone commented that ebooks are currently overpriced, and that lower prices would lead to higher sales. I wondered whether the growth of sales of chapters might help there – you could buy a small part of a book that was of interest for a much lower price than the whole book.
The roles of Amazon and Apple in selling ebooks was mentioned, along with their incompatibility – seen as a bad thing. A publisher noted that publishers will work with whoever they have to in order to sell books and make a profit.
Some scepticism was expressed about the value of publishers. One of the publishers present stated that their role is to help readers discover authors of interest; promotional work is a key function of publishers. As a librarian, the branding of certain publishers and series is likely to influence my purchasing decisions too, as a mark of quality.
Another person mentioned they had recently been involved in a multi-author work that was selling for GBP £150. He noted that the authors were not paid for their input, and he felt it had been a waste of his time as few people would ever purchase the book at that price.
This brought home to me that I need to understand how the market for writing and publishing scholarly books really works. Stevan Harnad talks about research articles as the “give-away literature” and stresses that Open Access only works because the prime interest of authors of articles is to get maximum readership. I wonder how far this may also be true of some books.
One person suggested that people like to borrow books because a) they are expensive and b) they are bulky. Perhaps the advent of ebooks will remove the need to borrow.
Another person was keen on the idea that he could ask his University library to download books or chapters that he wanted onto his ebook reader, and then delete them again when he had finished. A librarian from a USA university confirmed that this was already happening.
Finally, I mentioned updates to ebooks. Some have the idea that an electronic version of a book can be always up-to-date as an electronic format makes it easy to amend. This rather overlooks the intellectual effort required. I suspect that most authors really do not want to have to produce regular updates to a book once it is published, and certainly not for free. I did wonder whether a move to semantic publishing might make this more feasible, but that is not currently a realistic proposition.
I’m sure there was more discussion, but that’s as far as my notes and memory extend.
I hope ebooks will soon become a part of our science online world. See you at SOLO11!

Posted in E-books | Tagged | 5 Comments

Impact – a view from 1924

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Frank Norman

I sometimes have to hunt through old Annual Reports of the Medical Research Council to look for snippets of history about people or research and it is often striking how the broad themes addressed are still with us today.
Take this, for example, from the 1923-24 MRC Annual Report (p.19)
.bq The Council would here point again, as they have on previous occasions, to the dangers of estimating scientific progress, over short as opposed to long periods, in terms of practical results. These dangers beset all bodies having the disposal of funds for research purposes. The tempting direct attack upon an urgent problem of disease may, or may not, be long, wasteful, and fruitless. The apparently academic and unpractical work of today may give the key to a score of old problems and lead at once to new and unexpected powers. Faith must be put unreservedly in the scientific workers themselves. The best and earliest success can only come from their free and disinterested work, in pursuit of clues that may lie here or there. …recent history shows that sterility is soon reached when scientific work is tied to particular practical issues and ceases to be a free search for knowledge as such.
Amen to that!
This issue is fundamental, and has been for over 85 years.

Posted in History, Research Councils, Research management | 4 Comments

My Science Online London 2010 impressions

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Frank Norman

I attended the Science Online London 2010 conference (SOLo10) last week. There is a round-up
of post-conference reports elsewhere on Nature Network.  This word cloud by Simon Cockell gives an idea of the key themes.  My personal highlights are below, though this only a
partial picture based mainly on the sessions I chose to attend.

Credit: SJ Cockell
Open Access.  Sir Martin Rees, president of the Royal
Society gave the introductory keynote talk. He stated that Learned Societies are
moving towards Open Access and he just regretted that it couldn’t be done
immediately. He noted that big deals with commercial publishers had delivered
better access, but it was still very incomplete access. He used the term
“rip-off” in association with commercial publishers, and stated “We don’t want
more new journals!”, which was music to my ears.  He also noted that scholarly
monograph publishing (low print runs; high prices) was a broken model that
didn’t achieve its purpose of information dissemination. This theme was echoed
in my ebooks session the following day (write-up and link to follow).
Scientific Journalism / Science Blogging. An interesting
panel discussion suggested that science writing was not in crisis, though some
individual journalists may be. Ed Yong suggested that the web is an ideal
playground for science writers, but they have to take advantage of it, not just
write the same way they always have for print. Alice Bell suggested journalism
should move upstream, and write about how scientists work rather than just about
the results. This may not square with the need to satisfy newsdesks by making
science stories into news, but perhaps (my thought) the equation of science and news is not
a helpful one for science in any case. Another discussion panel on science
blogging didn’t really catch fire.  I had hoped for a high level view of the
state and future directions of science blogging a la Zivkovic. In another session, Evan Harris
gave some tips about using online tools to organise campaigns.  These seem to be proving useful already. Formats and media. I felt that the spirit of Marshall McLuhan was
hovering around the discussion over the two days. With 250 attendees
who habitually inhabit an online space there were a large number of twitterers
present at the conference, and others following it from a distance, so Twitter was buzzing. More than 6000
tweets with the hashtag #solo10 were issued. In some conference sessions a twitterwall was
displayed, but it was found by some to be a distraction, (sometimes a welcome
distraction it has to be said).  Martyn Robbins commented en passant
that PDF was an insult to science – “it’s like inventing the phone and using it
to transmit Morse Code”, and this metaphor was much-repeated and extended. Overly
text-heavy Powerpoint presentations also came in for much criticism. In
the spirit of reductio ad absurdum, I heard of one Twitter message that was an 8-page PDF containing a single Tweet!  The reply was contained in a
Powerpoint file. They’re a funny lot, these online types.
Research Data.  BiomedCentral described their work in
promoting good practice in publishing data. They publish journals about
datamining, e.g. BioDataMining and
recently published a statement
on open data, supporting the Panton Principles. The British Library like to
think of themselves as the steward for dataset preservation (hmm…), and are
involved in projects like DataCite, to
make datasets citeable, and Dryad, to
tie data with published articles more effectively.  They are also starting to
support dataset
resource discovery through the British Library catalogue. Simon Hodson from
JISC gave a canter through some of the enormous number of projects that JISC’s
Managing Research
Data programme is funding.
Recommendation tools. CiteuLike and Mendeley showed some of
the work they are doing to develop better algorithms for recommending things
(and people) you might be interested in.  Personal collections and
recommendations are usually a good source of ‘something interesting’, said Kevin
Emamy, giving the example of Neil Gaiman’s
bookshelves. Jason Hoyt warned that even though search engines and
recommendation tools give the appearance of being machines, they are algorithms
obeying rules created by people and are not therefore value-neutral. The recent
announcement of Google
Instant brings this point home. Jason suggested that we should more often
question the neutrality and editorial intent of Google, PubMed etc.  Librarians
will always tell you not to trust a single source, but to also use Scopus, Web
of Science or other tools, but no-one listens to us!
ORCID. Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier is an
initiative that started nearly a year ago and has just formally become a legal
entity. Geoff Bilder of CrossRef explained the principles governing the
design of ORCID:

  • It should be designed to support the creation of a clear and unambiguous
    record of scholarly communication.
  • It should transcend discipline, geographic/national and institutional,
    boundaries.
  • It should be designed to identify “contributors”, not just “authors”.
  • It should support reliable attribution in both formally and informally
    published literature.
  • It should be “open” whilst complying with the privacy requirements of the
    individual as well as of various legal jurisdictions
  • It should be persistent. This is both a “technological” imperative and a
    “social” imperative.
  • It should be controlled by the contributor

Their priority is to provide identifiers for active authors.  They will seek
later to establish relationships between ORCID IDs and other identifiers. (It
struck me that “ORCID ID” is a bit like “ISBN number” and “PIN number” – i.e.
tautologous).
Datamining. One interesting unconference session reviewed
some datamining services and proposed a new approach to literature reviews. SWAN is a program that
aims to “organize and annotate scientific knowledge about Alzheimer disease”. It
shows statements in research papers, whether evidence tyo support those
statements is presented, and how the statemenets are related to other statements
(are they consistent or inconsistent). Cohere is another project that does
something a bit similar.
Dario Taraborelli is working with Mendeley to try and crowdsource literature
annotation – making use of the 500,000 Mendeley users. It is a great idea, but I
felt there were some missing steps in the feasibility.
Visualisation / I’m a scientist. I couldn’t go to every
session so I missed two that subsequently got a lot of positive feedback. David
McCandless gave a talk on the beauty of data visualisation, as applied to
science (see his TED
talk for an idea of what he does).  The I’m a scientist team gave a run down of
how their project ran this summer.  By all accounts it was very successful,
getting school students and scientists talking online.
A great event.  Everyone seemed very happy overall
(despite some niggles here and there) and I am sure that planning SOLO 2011 must
already be under way.  Hopefully it will be even beter than 2010.

Posted in Bibliographic management, Blogology, Journal publishing, Research data, Social networking | Tagged | 5 Comments

A gossip magazine for scientists?

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Frank Norman

The Irish Times reports
that James Watson would like to start a gossip magazine for scientists. He is
quoted as saying that “a magazine with true gossip would open up the possibility
of real criticism in an overly polite and restrained scientific environment. …
science is not best when it is polite”. 
I’m not sure I quite understand what he is proposing – gossip about
scientists’ lives, or their work? or about policy-makers? Or does he just mean a
less formal environment where scientific topics can be discussed?  Has he ever
heard of blogs, I wonder?
I’d have thought that blogs plus magazines like The Scientist and
Research
Fortnight filled this niche quite well.

Posted in Journal publishing | 6 Comments

I pad, you pad, (s)he pads – we all pad

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Frank Norman

An iPad tsunami is upon us, judging by the number of articles about how the iPad is becoming the device of choice for reading, or raving about it in one way or another. iPad seems the wrong term judging by some of these articles. The way it is dominating and obliterating all other competitors suggests it should be called the iStomp. Anyhow, the technical press can make it seem that everyone is ipadding.
I confess, I have succumbed and bought myself one. It certainly is a nice piece of equipment that makes reading easy on the eye – I like the easy way you can make the screen image bigger and smaller – be it text, images, or whatever. The touchscreen interface is generally very good – it is a relief to be free from keyboard and mouse. I haven’t yet tried using it for substantial amounts of typing.
I do find it a bit heavy in the hand: trying to hold it in one hand while reading is just a little uncomfortable after a while; it is much heavier than a typical paperback or magazine. It’s more portable physically than a laptop yes, but that doesn’t mean you can carry it everywhere. I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking it everywhere with me where I might want to take something to read. Carrying a cheap paperback around casually or leaving it propped up in a bar or cafe temporarily is fine but I can’t see myself doing that with a piece of kit worth several hundred pounds.
ipadnimri.jpg
My iPad
Much reaction to the iPad is very positive – see these recent posts from a librarian, a writer, an academic, a scientist and a clinician. I liked what the academic said (though not sure what it means exactly): “It connects you to your physical and intellectual surroundings, rather than alienating you”. This finds an echo in the experience of the clinician, who said the iPad was “useful for communicating with patients. patients commented it was the first time they understood their disease”. Stanford medical school is giving away iPads to medical students: they are “distributing iPads to the incoming class of 91 first-year medical school and master’s of medicine students during orientation in August as part of a trial program to integrate the mobile device into academics”. Lucky beggars! Stanford says that the core goal of the iPad initiative is to improve the student learning experience. The University of Muenster is trying something similar on a smaller scale.
The iPad is not just a device for reading or consuming content, but that is one of its big attractions. Back in April Martin Robbins highlighted the potential of the iPad for scientific communication:

“The iPad may be one of the nicest ways of reading scientific literature around, at least for some people …A research paper could become more than something you just write a few notes on and file away, it could become a living thing, a platform for exploring the findings presented.”

Martin Fenner has also been captivated by the capabilities of the iPad for scientific reading. In his review of the iPad app Flipboard he said:

“It can be used out of the box for journals that tweet their table of contents or at least the most interesting papers… also a great tool to follow science blogs… would also work very well to cover the blogging and tweeting of scientific conferences.”

I particularly liked Flipboard for the way it makes content browsable. My biggest complaint about e-journals and e-newspapers is the poor browsing features.
The popular package Papers is already available in an iPad version and Mendeley soon will be. The BMJ hopes to be available on the iPad by the summer and I keep seeing announcements from journals with iPad plans or now reviews of books in iPad versions (the latter says “Could this be a new era where information really does get to the bedside? The short answer is yes”).
Most of the discussion about the benefits of iPads and e-book readers is anecdotal, but we are starting to see some research, and it is not positive. Jakob Nielsen, the guru of web usability, compared a printed book, an iPad and a Kindle 2. He found that It takes longer to read books on a Kindle 2 or an iPad versus a printed book. His sample size was quite small so it would be interesting to see if anyone can replicate these findings. An interesting Taiwanese study compared an (unspecified) e-reader with printed books, again in a student population, and found that “reading an E-book caused significantly higher eye fatigue than reading a C-book. This is mainly due to the low contrast and resolution of the display for an E-book”. A Hong Kong study again looked at students’ use of ebooks from a variety of viewpoints. Again they noted problems with the readability of the screens. On the other hand, a study of US students looked at the Kindle and found that “the portability of the device and its convenience of use anywhere and any time is pivotal for enhancing the students’ reading experience and outweighs the limitations of the device’s usability”.
Of course, it is not just about readability – ebooks can be used in different ways and may link with electronic workflows better than printed books. Institutional attitudes to ebooks may also be important. A recent UK survey suggests that ebook adoption is slowly taking off in UK University libraries though Andy Powell in his blog post about the survey suggests

“My suspicion is that we are at a point in the hype curve around e-books that has tended to push librarians (most of the respondents to this survey were librarians) into thinking, ‘we ought to be doing something here and we probably should expect a sharp rise in uptake’ even though general demand from the user community (i.e. students and teaching staff) remains quite low to date.”

The Scholarly Kitchen blog has something to say too, in a blog post entitled It’s the End of the Book As We Know It – and I Feel Fine they say that there are various trends “tearing through the land of the printed book”, and point out how the book business is changing as a result. They suggest that book content will follow the model of music, with electronic consumption meaning much easier availability. I am not convinced we are at that point yet, as e-book readers are nothing like as widespread as mp3 players.
The iPad is going to be a significant device for reading e-content, but there will be other devices soon. I bought my iPad after reading an article suggesting that the competitors had missed the boat and the iPad would be the only game in town for a long time. I’m not so sure of that after reading further reports.
The last word though must go to McSweeny’s though, for their incisive analysis which concludes that ‘the newspaper’ is the best e-reader on the market!
Thanks to Oliver Obst and Eric Rumsey for all their tweets on ebooks which have been very useful in preparing this.

Posted in E-books | 25 Comments

Digitising genetics

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Frank Norman

The Wellcome Trust will spend £3.9 million on a two-year pilot project – Modern Genetics and its Foundations. Drawing on the Wellcome Library’s rich collections, the project will digitise 1400 books on genetics and heredity published between 1850 and 1990, along with important archives including the papers of Francis Crick and his original drawings of the proposed structure of DNA.
Sir Mark Walport, explains the choice of the pilot theme:

“Modern genetics has made a tremendous impact on our understanding of human and animal health in recent years, and so it makes sense that the Library would begin digitising its collections in this important area of medical history. This project marks the first step on a long road which we hope will lead ultimately to free online access to all of our collections.”

The press release also suggests the Trust will digitise its collections of archives and papers from Fred Sanger and Peter Medawar.
Wellcome have also been supporting the work of the wonderful Professor Sir Peter Harper who created the Human Genetics Historical Library held at the University of Cardiff. As of May 2010 this had over 3,000 volumes and Wellcome have provided funding for cataloguing it. They have also funded Peter Harper and Cardiff Univ to carry out a Genetic Archives Project, to preserve and catalogue the archives of some leading British genetics scientists and a principal research organisation.
Those interested in the history of this area of science should also look at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab’s excellent oral history series, which has interviews of many of the early pioneers of molecular biology. This has been created by the indefatigable librarian at CSHL, Mila Pollock.
CSHL has been home to many of the great figures in the field – such as Barbara McClintock and Jim Watson – but more importantly it hosts many conferences, seminars and workshops so Mila has taken advantage of this to get interviews with many fascinating people who have passed through CSHL.
The CSHL Library recently re-opened after renovation and includes the Genentech Center for the History of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology as part of its archives. They have established an archives blog which has some interesting posts already.
It is good to see that some institutions at least value their history and are helping to preserve it for future historians of science.
P.S. Just spotted the latest issue of the Royal Society’s Notes and Records has an article by David Weatherall on “Molecular medicine – the road to the better integration of the medical sciences in the twenty-first century”. This issue is a supplement containing papers from the conference The Royal Society and science in the 20th century. The conference marked the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society and was organised by the new Centre for History of Science.

Posted in History | 1 Comment

One for the word lovers

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Frank Norman

Wordnik is a word-lover’s delight. Its aim is:
.bq to show you as much information as possible, as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known. Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they’ve found what they consider to be “enough” information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don’t want to wait–if you’re interested in a word, we’re interested too!
The Oxford English Dictionary is getting speedier at introducing new words – they have added ‘vuvuzuela’ already along with 2,000 other new words. But there is still some delay, and online access can be costly if you are a small library.
Wordnik has recently added a thesaurus function too.
It has some scientific terms but it would be interesting to hear how well you think it does.

Posted in Language | 9 Comments