#loon librarian

Pull quote: "The Loon would be inclined to pick up the same tool that serves so well in so many other contexts: planning. What does the library need to know, collectively, in the next year? What skills should it collectively acquire? What problems is it trying to solve? What decisions is it trying to make, and what information would aid those decisions? What alternatives are causing hesitation? Brainstorm, whiteboard, 'who wants what?' “which conferences are best for finding this out?” Done."

Pull quote: "The opinion also pulverizes several of the sillier FUD-based restrictions on e-reserves, such as the one-term-only restriction and the horrendous Classroom Guidelines. On balance, monograph publishers are likely safe from Elsevier’s unhappy position, for now. The Loon thinks this a sincere pity—those conniving bastards sued a university! for teaching! they deserve burial in Dante’s Antenora!—but it is what it is."

Pull quote: "She wishes, however, that RUSQ’s editors and supporters would come clean. Open access has a history of paying a good bit too much heed to rose-tinted glasses. It’s important to get mistakes and failures out there for examination, uncomfortable though that process often is (not least because a few open-access advocates sling blame around with hurricane-force winds, and just as indiscriminately)."

Pull quote: "So Harvard, Michigan, and others offer migration researchers and developers real-world, warts-and-all datasets to test their theories and tools on."

Pull quote: "Those who spit venom at every sign of progress should introspect about the damage they’re doing their own cause."

Pull quote: "So Harvard’s 'no, we can’t' carries a significant subtext: no amount of money, even from one of the richest universities in the world, can satisfy the rapacity of the current system. To the Loon, this has been obvious for years: whatever amount of money a library has, the big-pigs invariably find a way to vacuum it up, so increasing money flow to the library merely increases the big-pigs’ profits without buying much if any additional benefit to libraries or library patrons."

Pull quote: "Peer review can’t possibly do all that is claimed of it; it’s no magic bullet. The sooner that’s widely accepted, the sooner non-obfuscatory discussions can be had about what to do about fraud, error, and plagiarism in research."

Pull quote: "Are they sending out mass emails asking for editors and submissions? Often a sign of a scammer (though, it must be said, a couple of legitimate OA publishers have done this; they shouldn’t, and Hindawi at least has ceased the practice). Is the subject matter of the journal(s) advertised in the email appropriate to the recipient? If not, assume a scammer."