If you lead, you will face a crisis. Of all the demands made on leaders, crisis leadership is probably the most challenging, and it is the one they are least prepared to handle properly due to lack of experience and skills. While thinking ahead about how to respond in a crisis can help, it really comes down to whether each leader’s personal e…[Read more]

This paper explores the commodification of archival information through the exploitation of library labor related to the ongoing management, preservation, description, and digitization of unique and rare materials. Through this discussion, the author highlights the cultural, social, and economic factors that play a central role in creating an…[Read more]

An introduction to accessing academic publications for staff working in public libraries.

Although there were many handwritten, often informal catalogues of Sir Robert Cotton’s manuscripts and books during his lifetime and in the years afterwards, the desire for an official printed catalogue which could be circulated in the public realm did not really bear fruit until the late 1600s. And when two versions finally did appear — the…[Read more]

The Exhibition Library reimagines the medium of art exhibition as well as that of art catalogue. Catalogues carry exhibitions through time and space, figuring as tropes for imagining arrangements and the course of works and settings they describe. However, they rarely give us a clue about what really happened, since they are often made before the…[Read more]

This presentation presents a case study in philosophy and science policy surrounding Plan S and argues that we need new ways of evaluating such approaches to research.

This essay is partly a response + riposte to Johanna Drucker’s Jan. 2014 essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing,” and partly a plea for the University, and the Humanities, along with their publishing “arms,” to be refashioned, not as sites of cultural Authority from which Knowledge…[Read more]

Relative to many of the ongoing discussions and debates around the changing (and often precarious) landscapes of scholarly publishing, and especially around Open Access publishing, we at punctum books have put together a sort of “primer” (which also serves as our own, expanded vision statement) on what we see as the perils of the commodification…[Read more]

The 2018 International Research Conference at UC Davis focuses on:

Changing political environment and its impact on international research
Increasing importance of networks and consortia in advancing international research
Role of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research in solving global challenges
Educating the next…[Read more]

This article provides an overview of design thinking as a component of, and contributor to, great library user experiences. When design thinking is used to shape the environment in which users connect with library spaces and personnel, the result is a better library experience—by design.

Good Night, Sleep Tight is an interactive virtual reality performance created by theatre and digital arts company ZU-UK. It was previewed at Gerry’s Kitchen in July 2017. Combining VR and binaural technologies, participants are put to bed and transported to a dreamscape composed of childhood imagery and aerial cityscapes. This artistic position r…[Read more]

Evaluation can be seen as an opportunity for transvaluation, or what Nietzsche called the revaluation of values. However, evaluation is often treated instead as the enforcement of standards – standardization rather than transformation. When evaluation as transvaluation and evaluation as standardization are both used to evaluate the same s…[Read more]

The Music Library at the University of Washington is fortunate to count among its holdings a substantial collection of rare musical scores. A highlight of our special collections is the William Crawford III Music Collection. Given to the UW in 2014, the Crawford Collection includes over 700 rare, early-edition vocal scores, spanning six centuries…[Read more]

As librarians, we recognize that the ways in which our students access information are changing, rapidly and dramatically. The students we work with today face an information landscape that is often very different from what we remember from our student years. So much of what our music students need is seemingly readily available online through…[Read more]

Critlib, or critical librarianship, is the discussion and application of social justice issues in the library field. Generally, the application of critlib has been focused on information literacy and pedagogy, as well as cataloging, but one important aspect of the discussion that is often overlooked is that of library management. Just like…[Read more]

Proposal for Book ‘Em: Libraries, Librarians, and Information in Mystery Fiction, 1970-2018

This study of UCL Press sought to identify the extent to which data available to Open Access (OA) monograph presses can be combined with low-cost analysis tools to provide insight into development and strategy. An additional goal was identifying practical steps that monograph publishers can take to ensure that they make the most of the data they…[Read more]

Many academic libraries conduct extensive user studies when redesigning their websites, considering characteristics such as design features, information architecture, and link and information placement. One of the less studied aspects impacting library website usability is choice of language. This article presents the results of a usability study…[Read more]

DocPerform is a multi- and interdisciplinary research project based at City, University of London. Led by members of the Department of Library & Information Science, it comprises scholars and practitioners from the fields of performing arts and library & information science. The project concerns conceptual, methodological and technological…[Read more]

The spread of open digital forms of scholarly communication, combined with increasing institutional pressure to track research “impact,” has encouraged scholars and administrators in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) to turn their attention to metrics that promise to help in the assessment of research outputs. As a result of the lim…[Read more]