The Authority File

Nature.com recently became the first journal to roll out Seamless Access, a new federated authentication system designed to connect researchers with the version of record rather than pirated copies of journal articles. Librarians, however, have expressed privacy concerns about the federated access model. Laird Barrett, Digital Product Manager at Springer Nature, addresses those concerns and more i...

In academic publishing, nothing exists without controversy. When Seamless Access came out last year, both praise and apprehension spread. Because Seamless Access has the ability to collect information on a user, librarians voiced privacy concerns. Heather Flanagan, Program Director at SeamlessAccess.org, remains adamant, “Seamless Access is about the identity discovery process. That’s really all i...

Laird Barrett, Digital Product Manager at Springer Nature, understands the need for collaboration to ease authentication services. Barrett explains, “researchers are bouncing in between publishers’ sites to get content, so if you just make that authentication experience easier on one publisher’s site, that doesn’t really solve the problem for researchers.” In this episode, Barrett discusses Spring...

A one-step, streamlined access service born out of the RA21 initiative last June, Seamless Access uses federated identity as its authentication process to allow researchers to access content from different publishers at any place or time—not just when they’re using their institution’s IP address. Simple, right? Still technically a beta service, Seamless Access has needed to revise its model to ple...

The definition of field research is “to collect qualitative data.” Though a rather scientific description, David Danelo, Director of Field Research for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, argues that at the heart of all field research is a story. While writing his latest book, The Field Researcher’s Handbook: A Guide to the Art and Science of Professional Fieldwork, Danelo wanted to emphasize h...

An art inherently tied to sensory details, field research can’t be replicated through the screen. Even in today’s digital age, David Danelo, Director of Field Research for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, believes “that kinesthetic experience of understanding a problem set in the field is central to advancing knowledge in any body of work.” In this episode, Danelo explains that field researc...

As a former Marine Corps infantry officer, David Danelo knows that a researcher’s unique background and life experiences shape their perspective and can bias them even before they get out in the field. Not being aware of biases and how they could impact perspective is a major liability for a researcher. Danelo, Director of Field Research for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, believes self-awa...

For David Danelo, the road to defining his job title was a long one. A Naval Academy graduate and US Marine Corps infantry officer, he knew after serving that he wanted to be paid to travel and write—a good place to start, but how to find a steady foothold within the freelance journalism world? The answer, he discovered, was in front of him all along: field research. In this episode, Danelo, the D...

Are ‘.org’ websites still more trustworthy than ‘.com’ ones? If a source has been tampered with, is it still a primary source? How do we teach students what is trustworthy or not if it’s something we’re just supposed to know? In this week’s episode, Ellen Carillo, assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, discusses authority online, or lack thereof, the differences between primary and...

Social media has made sharing everything from cat videos to manifestos easier than ever. To paraphrase Spiderman, “But with great ease comes great responsibility…” The responsibility to properly evaluate myriad sources. Ellen Carillo, assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, unpacks what it means to read digital media laterally, in short, by reading across the web from site to site, r...

Oh, how the internet has changed… Once, homely, Comic Sans-ridden websites occupied the top-search returns in Google and blurry, camcorder-recorded videos glued users to YouTube. Now, nearly everyone has the means to create professional-looking media or websites, thanks to the ubiquity and fairly affordable pricing of high quality products like smartphones and website builders. In this episode, El...

Income, religion, region, and party—all of these divide America. But another divide is the one between those who are digitally literate and those who aren’t. Ellen Carillo, associate professor at the University of Connecticut, works to shrink that divide, with her new book the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy. While it’s designed to serve as a textbook—with hands-on activities, writing prompts, and s...

Building a diverse contributor pool requires intentionality and—as Bryan Keene of the J. Paul Getty Museum discovered—a number of different perspectives to point out limitations, blind spots, and oversights. In this episode, Keene explains how he ensured Toward a Global Middle Ages is as inclusive as possible. Peer reviewers played crucial roles in suggesting diverse scholars and works, as did Kee...

Academics have long championed the term “globalization” for expanding Eurocentric perspectives to include a broader, better represented world. However, Bryan Keene of the J. Paul Getty Museum reveals how globalization, despite its inclusive intentions, can homogenize instead of diversify, often ignoring the painful effects of colonization, and flattening or even dismissing diversity among countrie...

Is it possible to pull apart the Eurocentric perspective long cast upon the Middle Ages to not only include, but focus on other parts of the globe? Bryan Keene of the J. Paul Getty Museum certainly thinks so. In this episode, Keene discusses how contributors used illustrated manuscripts as a tether to dive into the medieval period in his monumental edited volume Toward a Global Middle Ages. Using...

Global approaches to the Middle Ages have long been part of historical and literary studies, but only over the last ten years or so has a global approach emerged within the field of art history. In this episode, Bryan C. Keene, associate curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, discusses the timeline of assembling his monumental edited volume Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through...

During the Charleston Conference’s Vendor Showcase Bill caught up with Caroline Muglia of the University of Southern California to talk about her presentation, “ Developing a Framework for Measuring Reuse of Digital Library Collections: Discovery, Assessment, and Sharing .” In their conversation Caroline covers what she means by reuse, how user privacy is written into how she and the team with whi...

During the Charleston Conference’s Vendor Showcase Bill caught up with Oya Rieger of ITHAKA S+R and Antje Mays of the University of Kentucky Libraries to discuss their talk “ Legacy Missions in Times of Change: Defining and Shaping Collections in the 21st Century .” They talk about what a “legacy mission” is and why legacy is important. They also talk about how collections are changing and what th...

In this episode Suzanne Mangrum details her ambitions and her process for promoting Open Educational Resource (OER) adoption at Middle Tennessee State University. Recorded live during the vendor showcase at the Charleston Conference.

This episode was recorded live on the show floor of the Charleston Conference. Mark Derks jumps right into a conversation with Mary Ellen Sloane of Middle Tennessee State University about a workshop she runs for graduate students on data management and visualization.

Electronic publishing has opened up new ways for libraries to lend books, new apps, new loan periods, more copies—as well as different cost structures. In this episode, Lindsey Levinsohn talks about OverDrive’s app, the evolving collection, and a variety of lending models.

In some ways, the internet has disintermediated libraries from their patrons, and disrupted traditional avenues of book distribution, but at the same time it has opened up new possibilities for electronic distribution. This has opened up a whole class of metrics, and a wealth of information about their readers that was previously hidden from publishers. In this episode, Lindsey Levinsohn talks thr...

Academic libraries are leveraging new technologies to reach students and faculty where they are—whether that’s through apps to bring them ebooks or research management software to streamline the grant application process. As the content and service mix at libraries changes, new privacy issues and value propositions arise. Lindsay Levinsohn of OverDrive Professional shares her thoughts on demonstra...

The library collection is not what it once was. Administrators are asking questions about devoting large amounts of space to housing books, and librarians are adapting their spaces to meet changing user needs. Stacks are being replaced by meeting spaces, learning commons, and computer labs. But in this environment, libraries also need to provide the materials—physical and electronic—to meet the ed...

Libraries are collecting different data now than they were say, ten years ago. That changes has come in part because of advances in technology and in part because of the way librarians perceptions of their data have changed. Kristen Tepfer of SAGE publishing talks about some of the ways the data she provides to her clients have changed and why it is, while Dr. Carol Tenopir talks through collectin...