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Copyright and Creative Commons presentation Oct. 21

Posted on by Martin Courtois

Copyright law is a mess, but Creative Commons offers a workable alternative to finding material you can use in your work without having to seek permission from the author.

If you only have a minute to learn about Creative Commons, watch this great “Why I Love Creative Commons” video by Molly Kleinman, copyright specialist at University of Michigan.

Even better, come to Molly’s presentation, “The Beauty of Some Rights Reserved: An Introduction to Copyright, Publishing and Creative Commons” 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, in the Hemisphere Room, Hale Library. The session is open to all, no registration required.

Faculty: Use K-REx to increase impact of publications

Posted on by Martin Courtois

krex.k-state.eduK-State faculty will publish somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,100 articles this academic year, but how many of those articles will reach readers who want to see them? If you’re relying only on the publisher’s distribution channels through subscriptions, you’re missing much of your audience.

The K-State Research Exchange (K-REx) is operated by the K-State Libraries and is an archive of the scholarly research and publications of K-State faculty and students. K-REx is an “open access repository” with all work deposited in K-REx freely available on the Web. In addition, K-REx uses protocols that optimize discovery by Google and other search engines.

Continue reading “Faculty: Use K-REx to increase impact of publications” →

Open Access Week Oct. 19-23 (why it matters)

Posted on by Martin Courtois

At universities, research centers, and libraries around the world, a revolution is brewing, and this is the week we shout about it. Open Access Week (Oct. 19-23) is a time to call attention to the need for public access to scientific and technical research.

For decades, research results have been communicated almost exclusively through commercial publishers, commonly in the form of peer-reviewed journal articles. A single journal subscription can cost libraries thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars per year (a subscription to Journal of Comparative Neurology is more than $25,000 per year).  Such high costs have severely limited the number of journals that libraries can afford to receive, which, in turn, limits access to important research, a large portion of which is funded by taxpayer dollars.

Continue reading “Open Access Week Oct. 19-23 (why it matters)” →

Why K-REx is better than a webpage for storing faculty publications

Posted on by Martin Courtois

About 50 K-State faculty have deposited their published journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers in the K-State Research Exchange, but many more faculty have lists of their publications (and sometimes links to their articles) on a personal or departmental website. Isn’t that the same thing? Not even close!

K-REx is built on the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), a set of standards for facilitating sharing of information (metadata) about articles, book chapters, dissertations, and other publications. OAI-PMH makes metadata available to search engines such as Google in a very structured way, which helps to produce higher rankings in search results.  Continue reading “Why K-REx is better than a webpage for storing faculty publications” →

Textbooks in a Web 2.0 world

Posted on by mchaney

Ideas such as collaborative development, information sharing, and social computing have powered Web 2.0 innovations for several years. Among these recent advances are new ways to create and distribute human knowledge. This has begun to dramatically change how books are written, published, and distributed. Although mainstream textbook publishers have resisted change, new paradigms are emerging. One exciting example is BookBoon (BookBoon.com), run by the Danish company Ventus Publishing ApS.

BookBoon.com homepage
BookBoon.com homepage

BookBoon provides a new method for educational-material delivery compatible with the future of ubiquitous information, accessible by everyone. Its revenue stream removes the burden from students and finances textbook distribution with advertising space sold to carefully selected organizations. Rather than digitize existing printed textbooks, BookBoon works with authors to develop new material according to guidelines that more closely resemble how modern students use books. Continue reading “Textbooks in a Web 2.0 world” →