#grad work

Helped my friend build a cabin

Gutted some fish

Cross country skied

Made a shawl and a toque

Made (at lot of) sushi

Winslow E. H. (2008). Writing for publication: you can do it!. Journal for healthcare quality: official publication of the National Association for Healthcare Quality, 30(4), 12–16. 

For those who do not have an access, writing tips for academic publishing:

Open Access, or “OA”, is one of the several concepts that librarians and libraries support. In short, Open Access is the idea that peer reviewed scholarly research literature and articles should be free and easy to access to the public.*

There are, of course, quite a few differing opinions on this topic, due to its complexity and history.  As a result, I will only mention a minuscule fraction of the issues surrounding this, and provide some helpful links for further reading.

One issue that comes up often with the mention of OA and related topics is that of copyright laws. These laws vary from place to place, with some countries having a tighter grasp than others. (Pryor-Darnell, Andersen, & Rowling 2019).

Trying to appease copyright holders as well as following the tenets of Open Access is a complex balancing act, one that can often lead to restriction of access or even breaking the law. Libraries are meant, at their core, to be a resource of free and open access to information with the resources and knowledge to curate and assist those who seek access to it. Restrictive and complex copyright laws can (and have) resulted in certain responses.

Librarians in Australia, around a year ago, came into conflict with an antiquated copyright law known as the Australian Copyright Act 1968. (Pryor-Darnell, et. al. 2019).

Their response involved a movement called Cooking for Copyright. The movement involved FAIR (Freedom of Access to Information and Resources), a campaign by Australian Library and Information Association, posting handwritten recipes to their website, circumventing the current copyright law, and posting a photo to social media with the #cookingforcopyright hashtag.

Two weeks later, several hundred people participated in the movement, and as a result of the publicity that followed, Australian Parilament passed the Copyright Amendment (Disability Access and Other Measures) Bill 2017. (Pryor-Darnell, et. al. 2019).

This is just one example of many actions that librarians have taken in support of open access, and goes to show the lengths that must be taken to do so.

Open Access is a right, something that must be protected by libraries and librarians alike, not just for their sake, but for patrons too, as well as for the freedom of information. *This does not mean a user may make unauthorized copies of said articles, merely that access is able for anyone

References:

Pryor-Darnell, T. A., Andersen, N., & Rowling, S. (2019). Professional Ethics, Copyright Legislation and the Case for Collective Copyright Disobedience in Libraries. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 68(2), 146-163. doi:10.1080/24750158.2019.1608496

Resources for Open Access:

Directory of Open Access Journals https://doaj.org/

An independent database with over 12,000 open access articles covering several subjects such as technology, social science, humanities, etc.

Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/

A volunteer-led digital library of over 60,000 free ebooks, created to digitize and archive cultural works. It is considered to be the oldest digital library, and has been around since 1971.

PubMed Central https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

     Hello!      My name is Frank Davis, and this blog is meant to serve as a sort of...record, or introduction, to my studies in Library and Information Science. For my first post, I’d like to discuss a few misconceptions about the field, at least from perspective and experience. (As I’m still a student, this is somewhat limited, but still relevant.)

     The biggest issue I’ve found since I’ve begun my study of Information Science is that many people simply do not know what exactly it is. Many people assume that libraries are merely storehouses for books, but that’s simply not the case. Additionally many are under the assumption that the Dewey Decimal System is the be all end all in terms of categorization and record keeping of library materials (which, by the way, are not just books).

     These are all falsehoods.

     The public, it seems, is woefully unaware about what exactly Information Science entails, so I’m going to throw some light on this: Information Science is about the categorization, stewardship, dissemination, and analysis of any type of information that is necessary to one’s needs. (Patron’s, Information Professional’s, or if you’d prefer, Librarian’s, etc).

     The complexities of this sort of career are not easily described through the Romantic Ideal of a librarian reading books on their own or saying “sshhh!” to loud patrons.Libraries are pillars of community service, more than just a building but a storehouse of information all for the sake of serving a community for its needs, whether it is a meeting place for organizations or clubs, or a place to go for help with tutoring so on and so forth.

     The services the library provides branch into multiple fields, including business knowledge, literary expertise, technological expertise, etc etc. The Library and Information Science field is not limited to just literature, a common misconception, but within the very fabric of information and it’s uses and the needs of those who access information. 

So...obviously a lot has been going on since I last posted. To start off briefly, the instructor that was going to teach my course is no longer going to be teaching at PSU. I was asked to teach the class. YAY! Right?