Search results

The purpose of this paper is to review the global history of library consortia from ancient times until the present and propose further development of consortia to address journal costs and research distribution.

The global history of consortia is reviewed, with a concentration on the early years of the American Library Association.

Consortia have proved their value in making libraries more efficient and in advancing research through combined efforts in developing indexes and catalogues.

The paper encourages libraries to build on their history of cooperation and extend it by linking their repositories, using their own strengths to battle excessive subscription fees, and become publishers in their own right.

Consortia are encouraged to work together to build a global repository, to stand firm against predatory pricing and to take the lead in the dissemination of scholarship.

This paper proposes that libraries join in broad regional consortia to oppose unjustifiable prices imposed by the major publishers and that libraries, with their institutions, work regionally and internationally to take control of the distribution of research.

The expansion of copyright and the shrinking of the public domain did not begin with the Internet, but the Internet has exacerbated the problem. The threat posed by digital technology has led industries to obtain increasingly absolute protection over their “property.” In this paper I will argue that developing a vibrant public domain is essential for resisting the overextension of copyrights and patents. Developing the public domain as a counterpoint to copyright and patent law is vital to an energized public sphere and by extension a democratic system.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a personal viewpoint on the development of document supply in the context of the recent European Union (EU) decisions on open science.

The paper provides some elements to the usual questions of service development, about business, customers, added value, environment and objectives.

The EU goal for open science is 100 per cent available research results in 2020. To meet the challenge, document supply must change, include more and other content, serve different targets groups, apply innovative technology and provide knowledge. If not, document supply will become a marginalized library service.

Basically, open science is not library-friendly, and it does not offer a solution for the actual problems of document supply. But it may provide an opportunity for document supply to become a modern service able to deal with new forms of unequal access and digital divide.

Over the past two decades, in developed countries a trend towards the liberalization and restructuring of the gas market has been observed. Today, restructuring is an ongoing process. In this study, a restructured natural gas market has been considered in which several regional distribution companies have ownership of the network and are competing against each other to gain more benefits. The main purpose of this study is to achieve efficiency and economic rationality in such a market through horizontal cooperation.

A restructured natural gas distribution network is modeled as a cooperative game to estimate the potential cost savings for various collaboration scenarios. In addition, the cost savings’ allocation among collaborating companies is evaluated using the cooperative game theory.

The results reveal validity and efficiency of the solution of the proposed model and capabilities of the cooperative game theory for reduction in gas distribution costs and improvement in the service level.

This study is limited to natural gas in one region of Yazd City in Iran. Moreover, one segment of the natural gas network (i.e. distribution network) is modeled. Moreover, long-term cooperation between companies relies on fair distribution of cooperation benefits to the participants.

For the purpose of comparison and to get an insight into properties of the cost savings game, the real case study of one region of Yazd city in Iran is implemented.

This study contributes to the competitive models in the restructured gas market, particularly, in gas distribution network. The main contribution is to provide potential benefits for the participants via the horizontal cooperation.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a multinational survey on copyright literacy of specialists from libraries and other cultural institutions.

This paper is based on a multinational survey of copyright literacy competencies of Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals and those who work in the cultural heritage sector (archives and museums), conducted in 13 countries, namely Bulgaria (BG), Croatia (CR), Finland (FI), France (FR), Hungary (HU), Lithuania (LT), Mexico (MX), Norway (NO), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Turkey (TR), UK and USA in the period July 2013-March 2015. An online survey instrument was developed in order to collect data from professionals regarding their familiarity with, knowledge and awareness of, and opinions on copyright-related issues.

Findings of this study highlight gaps in existing knowledge of copyright, and information about the level of copyright literacy of LIS and cultural sector professionals. Also attitudes toward copyright learning content in academic education and continuing professional development training programs are investigated.

This study aimed to address a gap in the literature by encompassing specialists from the cultural institutions in an international comparative context. The paper offers guidance for further understanding of copyright in a wider framework of digital and information literacy; and for the implementation of copyright policy, and the establishment of copyright advisor positions in cultural institutions. The recommendations support a revision of academic and continuing education programs learning curriculum and methods.

Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) allow students or their advisors to restrict access to theses/dissertations (TDs) by applying embargoes. This study aims to identify why Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) allow embargoes.

One hundred HEIs were randomly selected, representing seven geographic regions. The authors imported policies/guidelines for embargoing TDs into MAXQDA software and coded the qualitative data.

Among the 100 studied HEIs, 43 HEIs (43%) have policies/guidelines on the web for embargoing TDs, most of which are from North America. For the majority of HEIs, embargoes are a voluntary option for students/advisors. Content analysis of the 32 embargo policies showed that embargo reasons (18 key reasons) can be categorized into six broad themes (commercialization, publication, ethical issues, funding contracts/agreements, security and safety, and miscellaneous).

In this study, only those policies are reviewed that are available, discoverable and accessible on HEIs' websites.

Highlighting the detrimental effect of not managing stipulations towards embargoes clearly, the findings could be useful for national/institutional policymakers and administrators of research departments, academic libraries, institutional repositories and graduate offices.

This is the first study to investigate rationales for TDs embargo practices. It creates awareness of how embargoes are managed and reflected in policy. Ultimately, it recommends further interrogation on how embargoes influence the principle of openness to scholarship.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-09-2022-0497.

This chapter provides an overview of the space reimagining that has occurred in a mid-size library that serves both the life and social sciences at a large research university. Projects are introduced that have transformed physical and virtual spaces from preprogrammed areas and services designed to serve librarian-defined needs to an open and flexible architecture that better incorporates and facilitates the projects, ideas, and interest-driven learning initiated by users. As we move from “library as place” to “library as platform” (Bennett, 2003; Weinberger, 2012), the library becomes a central location for users to connect with and learn from one another, create and remix, display and discuss their work, and capture and preserve community knowledge.

The authors examine various initiatives in the library to demonstrate the role of library space. Each initiative is framed as a case study to illustrate how librarians have responded to user needs and the impact that these changes have had on management in libraries.

The change in focus to “library as platform” requires flexible and flat library management, additional staff roles, and changing paradigms of library space and skills.

This chapter adds to the body of case studies examining what the library of the future could look like in practice as well as theory.

Institutional, economic, social and technological advancements enable openness to cope with wicked public management issues. Although open innovation (OI) is becoming a new normality for public sector entities, scholarly knowledge on this topic is not fully systematized. The article fills this gap, providing a thick and integrative account of OI to inspire public management decisions.

Following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, a domain-based literature review has been accomplished. Consistently with the study purpose, a hybrid methodology has been designed. Bibliographic coupling permitted us to discover the research streams populating the scientific debate. The core arguments addressed within and across the streams were reported through an interpretive approach.

Starting from an intellectual core of 94 contributions, 5 research streams were spotted. OI in the public sector unfolds through an evolutionary path. Public sector entities conventionally acted as “senior partners” of privately-owned companies, providing funding (yellow cluster) and data (purple cluster) to nurture OI. An advanced perspective envisages OI as a public management model purposefully enacted by public sector entities to co-create value with relevant stakeholders (red cluster). Fitting architectures (green cluster) and mechanisms (blue cluster) should be arranged to release the potential of OI in the public sector.

The role of public sector entities in enacting OI should be revised embracing a value co-creation perspective. Tailored organizational interventions and management decisions are required to make OI a reliable and dependable public value generation model.

The article originally systematizes the scholarly knowledge about OI, presenting it as a new normality for public value generation.

The purpose of this article is to examine the changing role and image of libraries and librarians, along with the overall information culture prevalent in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that were undergoing socio‐political changes. The core question investigated in this article is whether libraries as social and cultural institutions have a role to play in enabling individuals to acquire the types of skills and competencies that extend far beyond the realm of the library walls to encompass practices that translate into various spheres of individuals' lives, including their participation in political, economic and civic life.

Interviews were conducted in 1999 with 49 library policymakers in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic (and selected follow‐up interviews were conducted in 2002), to shed light on the role of libraries in social and political reconfigurations of their nations.

The library is a ubiquitous component of the information environment of any society and plays a critical role in connecting information resources and services with users. Yet, despite their ubiquity and centrality in the production, management and dissemination of information in society, libraries have been largely neglected in many CEE countries. Libraries can play a critical role in political reconfiguration of their nation by building the types of skills and competencies that will empower individuals and thereby contribute to shaping an information culture that imeets the needs of the time.

The paper contributes to one's understanding of the political dimensions of the provision of information resources.

The ELectronic Society for Social Scientists (ELSSS) envisages a new concept of scholarly and scientific journal: conceived and managed by academics themselves; aimed at providing direct competition to high‐priced commercial publications; based on a business model whereby subscription revenues cover the non‐trivial cost of peer‐review; designed to maximise research productivity; intended as a platform for scientific and scholarly debate. The ELSSS model conceives the peer‐reviewed published article not at the final stage of the scholarly communication chain, but as an intermediate step, to be followed by Web‐based interaction among self‐selected networks of interested researchers. The paper suggests that the very concepts of “lending” and “document” need redefining in the case of the forthcoming generation academic‐led journals.