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EBSCO creates COVID-19 resources site

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To help support librarians who are working quickly to provide a rich online experience for their patrons and students during the COVID-19 pandemic, EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and its partners are making several resources freely available as well as offering expanded access. EBSCO is also making its COVID-19 related clinical content freely available.

Visit EBSCO’s web site for more information. Excerpt below.

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To learn more about these resources and share them with your audiences, you can check out EBSCO’s blog post and visit the new EBSCO COVID-19 Resources site which provides access to a growing list of available resources.

EBSCO and its partners are making resources freely available and expanding access to e-content to help library staff support their institutions as they focus on online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As we all grapple with the impact of COVID-19, the move to online research and learning and the desire for recreational activities have put libraries around the world in a unique position to serve. Libraries have cultivated a rich online experience for years and the pandemic has forced colleges and universities and K-12 schools to move residential, or in-person learners, to online learners. It has also sparked interest in online resources as public library patrons are now working remotely and supporting their children who are also “working (and learning) from home.”

EBSCO has worked with its content partners to help expand access to resources during the length of this crisis and has opened up some of its own content during the pandemic as well. These resources are designed to help librarians and library staff support distance learning and remote work and manage stress; they include expanded access offers, open resources and a webinar series. Librarians can use the new EBSCO COVID-19 Resources site to view the offerings and sign up for webinars.

The offers available range from unlimited e-book user access (UU) from a growing list of more than 300 publishers and an easy way to request UU access from Harvard Business Review. EBSCO has also made a version of its Open Educational Resource and DRM-free EBSCO eBooks™ resource, Faculty Select™, available to libraries working to help their faculty create rich course materials. 

Visit EBSCO’s web site for more information.

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This Week in Literature and Arts [March 23–March 29]

Monster kids, join me in birthday wishes to character actor Kenneth Tobey, born in Oakland, CA, March 23, 1917. Tobey appeared in loads of films and TV shows alongside everyone from John Wayne and Gregory Peck to Pee-wee Herman, and was equally at home on stage.

Fans of 1950s science fiction/horror fare remember Tobey from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and, especially, The Thing from Another World, the first of the alien-invader films.

Tobey (l.) ready to give the thing a hotfoot!

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March 24, 1930: Steve McQueen is born in Beech Grove, Indiana. Forever the King of Cool.

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OA Book of the Week: Journey into Social Activism (Joshua D. Atkinson)

In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR highlights popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

Journey into Social Activism

Academic study of social activism and social movements has become increasingly prevalent over the years; this is due in large part to the fact that activists have captured public imagination and gained substantial influence in political discourse. For instance, Occupy Wall Street activists, Tea Party activists, and activists affiliated with the Arab Spring have transformed political debates and have become the focus of mainstream news media coverage about a variety of different political topics.

Journey into Social Activism: Qualitative Approaches (Fordham University Press) explicates the philosophical foundations of the study of activism and illustrates four different research sites in which activism can be observed and studied: organizations, networks, events, and alternative media. The book will introduce students and scholars to important qualitative approaches to the study of social activism within these four research sites, which is based entirely on successful research projects that have been conducted and published in recent years. Ultimately, this book will prove integral to any students and scholars who wish to use qualitative methods for their research endeavors concerning social activism in contemporary society.

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Joshua D. Atkinson is an Associate Professor in the School of Media & Communication at Bowling Green State University.

Read the book for free on ORL’s web site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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Knowledge Unlatched renews two successful Open Access collections, ensuring sustainability of open research worldwide

Berlin, March 26, 2020 — Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the international initiative for Open Access (OA), is pleased to announce renewals of two successful Open Access collections from 2017, both of which were launched as pilot projects for three-year funding models: Language Science Press (LSP) Books and KU Select 2017 HSS Journals.

The two collections garnered significant support from libraries around the world, ensuring that 90 books in the field of linguistics (LSP) and 16 HSS journals were able to be unlatched for the three-year period of 2018–2020 and made freely available to researchers everywhere. Now that the three years are coming to an end, KU has established a viable renewal process to ensure that the publication of LSP books and relevant HSS journals continues for at least another three years.

In order to guarantee a sustainable OA model, KU is renewing both collections into a second round for the years 2021-2023 and inviting libraries worldwide to once again take part in these ground-breaking crowdfunding models. The funds libraries contribute in 2020 will support the unlatching of 90 new books (30 per year) in linguistics, and five HSS journals for at least three more years. The funds will also ensure that there are no author-processing charges (APCs) for scholars for either collection.

LSP is the leading academic-led OA initiative in linguistics and much of its success is due to the very active community of linguists, totalling over 1,000 members from over 50 countries. This community has played an active role in promoting the LSP initiative, resulting in the support from 105 institutions worldwide in the first round. “LSP has shown how community-based publishing can provide an excellent alternative to traditional models. With a focus on excellence, transparency and participation, we have been able to publish quality books free of charge to both authors and readers, ” said Sebastian Nordhoff, LSP’s Managing Director. “Further, our approach has resulted in costs per book which are about 50% of the commercial competition, showing a way out of the ever-increasing library budget issues.”

Continue reading “Knowledge Unlatched renews two successful Open Access collections, ensuring sustainability of open research worldwide”

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This Week in Literature and Arts [March 16–March 22]

March 16, 1850: Following years of obscurity, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 45, becomes an early American literary celebrity with the publication of The Scarlet Letter by Ticknor & Fields. Hawthorne already had published Young Goodman Brown and other of his now noted works in magazines to little ado.

His use of romance chafing against severe New England Puritanism (he was born in Salem, MA) combined with psychological themes came to maturity in The Scarlet Letter, and readers ate it up.

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March 18, 1927: George Plimpton is born in New York City. Because of the Thurston Howell-esque way he had of speaking, George seemed standoffish, but he was very warm and friendly. Funny and a good listener. He was a solid writer, and while he found fame as a journalist, if you’ve never read his comedic baseball novel The Curious Case of Sidd Finch track it down (especially now with the MLB season on hold). Fun stuff.

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OA Book of the Week: The Big Data Agenda (Annika Richterich)

In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR highlights popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

The Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies (University of Westminster Press) highlights that the capacity for gathering, analyzing, and utilizing vast amounts of digital (user) data raises significant ethical issues. Annika Richterich provides a systematic contemporary overview of the field of critical data studies that reflects on practices of digital data collection and analysis. The book assesses in detail one big data research area: biomedical studies, focused on epidemiological surveillance. Specific case studies explore how big data have been used in academic work.

Richterich concludes that the use of big data in research urgently needs to be considered from the vantage point of ethics and social justice. Drawing upon discourse ethics and critical data studies, Richterich argues that entanglements between big data research and technology/ internet corporations have emerged. In consequence, more opportunities for discussing and negotiating emerging research practices and their implications for societal values are needed.

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Annika Richterich is an assistant professor in Digital Culture at Maastricht University (Netherlands). Her research focuses on practices of collaboration, learning, and innovation in hacking communities.

Read the book for free on ORL’s web site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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This Week in Literature and Arts [March 8–March 15]

March 8, 1935: Scribner’s releases Thomas Wolfe’s second novel, Of Time and the River. The book was a much-abbreviated version of The October Fair, a multivolume work whittled down by Wolfe and editor Max Perkins after being deemed too long for financial success.

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March 9, 1918: MWA Grand Master Mickey Spillane is born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn (but raised in Jersey). His Mike Hammer mysteries are a time capsule—heavy on the booze, smokes, curvy blondes, and .45 automatics—and no doubt PC negative by today’s oversensitive standards, but when you’re in the mood they really hit the spot!

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RBmedia acquires graphic audio, leading producer of dramatized audiobooks

GraphicAudio acquisition supports the company’s expansion into full cast dramatizations with sound effects, music, and more

Landover, MD, March, 2020—RBmedia, a global leader in spoken audio content and digital media distribution technology, today announced the acquisition of GraphicAudio, a leading producer of dramatized audio content featuring a full cast of actors, sound effects, and cinematic music.

The demand for spoken audio is growing rapidly, fueled by innovation in areas such as audio originals, podcasts and dramatizations.  According to the Audio Publishers Association, U.S. audiobook sales increased 24.5% in 2018 and have grown by double digits annually for the last seven years.  Dramatizations provide an immersive experience which appeals to all ages—especially the younger demographic.

GraphicAudio is home to the largest catalog of full cast dramatizations in the industry, with over 1,300 titles across 150 series focused chiefly on action/adventure, comics, science fiction/fantasy, and westerns. The company has produced titles in partnership with brands such as Marvel, DC Comics, Dynamite, Vault Comics and authors such as Brandon Sanderson, Peter V. Brett, Michael J. Sullivan, R. A. Salvatore, William W. Johnstone, and Brent Weeks.

“GraphicAudio’s unique ability to deliver high-quality, fully immersive audio experiences and original scripted works is unparalleled,” said Tom MacIsaac, Chief Executive Officer for RBmedia. “Since RBmedia is the largest producer of audiobooks in the world, the combination of the two organizations will enable us to expand the application of this innovative audio storytelling approach and bring it to many partners and consumers globally.”

GraphicAudio joins the ever-expanding group of RBmedia spoken audio brands including Audiobooks.com, Recorded Books, Tantor Media, HighBridge, W.F. Howes, Wavesound, Christian Audio, Gildan Media and Kalorama Audio.

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About GraphicAudio

GraphicAudio® is a leader in immersive dramatized audio and the developer of the “A Movie in Your Mind®” audiobook entertainment format.  The company has produced titles with comic brands such as Marvel, DC Comics, Dynamite and Vault Comics and award-winning authors such as Brandon Sanderson, Peter V. Brett, William W. Johnstone, Charlaine Harris and Brent Weeks. For more information visit www.graphicaudio.net.

About RBmedia

RBmedia is a global leader in spoken audio content and digital media distribution technology that reaches millions of consumers—at home, in the car, and wherever they take their mobile devices. RBmedia produces exclusive titles and delivers the finest digital content through its platforms—including audiobooks, streaming video, educational courses, entertainment titles, and much more. Headquartered in Landover, Maryland, the company is the largest producer of audiobooks in the world with a catalog of more than 45,000 exclusive titles through its content brands: Recorded Books, Tantor Media, HighBridge, Kalorama Audio, ChristianAudio, Gildan Media, GraphicAudio, W. F. Howes in the United Kingdom, and Wavesound in Australia.   RBmedia is owned by KKR, a leading global investment firm. Find out more at www.rbmediaglobal.com.

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OA Book of the Week: Exhibiting Atrocity (Amy Sodaro)

In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR highlights popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

In Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence (Rutgers Univ. Press) Amy Sodaro uses, through a global comparative approach, in-depth case studies of five exemplary memorial museums that commemorate a range of violent pasts and allow for a chronological and global examination of the form: the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC; the House of Terror in Budapest; the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda; the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile; and the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York. Together, these case studies illustrate the historical emergence and global spread of the memorial museum and show how this new cultural form of commemoration is intended to be used in contemporary societies around the world emerging from widely divergent forms of political violence.

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Amy Sodaro is an associate professor of sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, The City University of New York. She is co-editor of Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Culture.

Read the book for free on ORL’s web site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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Annual Review of Cancer Biology uses Subscribe to Open to publish 2020 volume open access

Pilot OA program generates widespread support from institutional subscribers

Palo Alto, CALIF. (March 9, 2020) — Nonprofit publisher Annual Reviews is pleased to announce that the 2020 volume of the Annual Review of Cancer Biology has been converted from gated to open access, with all articles published under a CC BY license. The back volumes, dating from 2017, are also freely available. The Annual Review of Cancer Biology is one of five journals included in a 2020 pilot program for Subscribe to Open. The status of the four other journals will be announced as they publish.

Subscribe to Open is a solution for sustainable open access publishing that provides an alternative to article processing charges (APCs), the mechanism used by most open access journals. It uses existing library relationships and subscription purchases to convert gated journals to open access. Institutions simply continue to subscribe—there are no additional processes—and as long as subscription revenues are maintained, the year’s volume is published open access and the back volumes made freely available.

The Co-Editors of the Annual Review of Cancer Biology, Tyler Jacks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and Charles L. Sawyers, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA each responded to the news:  

Dr. Jacks said, “I know I speak for the entire editorial committee as well as all of our authors in saying how important this conversion to open access is. The reviews published in the Annual Review of Cancer Biology help to guide the field for investigators throughout the world and across disciplines. Having the journal be openly available to cancer researchers wherever they may be is a truly significant advance.”

Dr. Sawyers said, “I couldn’t be more pleased with this decision to move to open access. The Annual Review of Cancer Biology describes the most exciting and compelling developments in cancer. With open access, this work is now freely accessible to an even broader set of stakeholders, including policy makers who can use the insights to help shape future decisions about resource allocation and access to novel technologies and medicines.”

Continue reading “Annual Review of Cancer Biology uses Subscribe to Open to publish 2020 volume open access”

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This Week in Literature and Arts [March 2–March 8]

March 2, 1933: As the Great Depression drags on, 50,000 New Yorkers crowd Radio City and the neighboring Roxy Theater on 49th St. from morning til night to be the first to see King Kong before it opens nationwide April 7. The film earns $100,000 in its first six days.

Appropriately, on the anniversary of Kong’s release, let us also remember the birthday of special effects trailblazer Willis O’Brien, who brought the big guy to life, born March 2, 1886 in Oakland CA. One of the many odd jobs he held as a youth—everything from sports illustrator and draftsman to a short stint as a boxer—was guiding paleontologists in south Oregon’s Crater Lake planting the dinosaur bug.

O’Brien posing one of his creations, and standing with Kong producer Merian C. Cooper before the full size model.

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March 2, 1904: Theodore Geisel is born in Springfield, Mass. Attending Dartmouth in the 1920s, Geisel became top editor of the university’s humor publication, Jack-O-Lantern, but was busted drinking gin in his room. With Prohibition ruling the land, Geisel lost his editing gig but continued contributing to the publication by signing his work using his middle name, Seuss.

The doctor is in!

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Knowledge Unlatched presents Open Access Heroes 2020

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the international initiative for Open Access (OA), is pleased to announce that it has grown the impact of OA titles through its collections. In 2019, the number of total interactions (downloads and views) has grown by 50 percent to more than three million and on average 1,900 per title (a total of 1,559 unique titles). In 2018, the average equaled 1,800 per title (1,112 unique titles) and therefore also on a title-level the impact is increasing slightly. These titles have been downloaded and viewed across more than 200 countries.

“KU strives to not only increase the number of titles made Open Access, but by reviewing the impact we can assess whether we are reaching readers online,” says Dr. Sven Fund, KU’s Managing Director. “We are happy to see that with a growing corpus of titles we can keep up the relevancy, driven by a very supportive international community.”

The title with the most interactions in 2019 was Ralph Schroeder’s Social Theory of the Internet(UCL Press), followed by William A. Pelz’s A People’s History of Modern Europe (Pluto Press) and Heike Paul’s The Myths That Made America (transcript). The academic institution with the most user interactions in 2019 was Johns Hopkins University, followed closely by Freie Universität Berlin.

The countries that continue to see the highest usage of OA books include the United States (one million interactions), the United Kingdom (220,000 interactions), Germany (150,000 interactions), France (100,000 interactions) and Canada (85,000 interactions).

The results of this year’s OA usage assessment are based on the data collected from several hosting platforms, including OAPEN, JSTOR, and Project MUSE. With the launch of the Open Research Library in early 2020—which will be indexed by libraries worldwide through several discovery services—KU will be able to share even more usage data moving forward.

An infographic that presents all the usage data in one place can be freely downloaded on KU’s web site in portrait and landscape formats.

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OA Book of the Week: Understanding Global Energy Crisis (Eugene D. Coyle & Richard A. Simmons)

NSR is pleased to announce a new feature on the site: OA Book of the Week. In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR highlights popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

We are facing a global energy crisis caused by world population growth, an escalating increase in demand, and continued dependence on fossil-based fuels for generation. It is widely accepted that increases in greenhouse gas concentration levels, if not reversed, will result in major changes to world climate with consequential effects on our society and economy. This is just the kind of intractable problem that Purdue University’s Global Policy Research Institute seeks to address in the Purdue Studies in Public Policy series by promoting the engagement between policymakers and experts in fields such as engineering and technology. Major steps forward in the development and use of technology are required.

In order to achieve solutions of the required scale and magnitude within a limited timeline, it is essential that engineers be not only technologically-adept but also aware of the wider social and political issues that policy-makers face. Likewise, it is also imperative that policymakers liaise closely with the academic community in order to realize advances. Understanding Global Energy Crisis (Purdue University Press) is designed to bridge the gap between these two groups, with a particular emphasis on educating the socially-conscious engineers and technologists of the future. In this accessibly-written volume, central issues in global energy are discussed through interdisciplinary dialogue between experts from both North America and Europe. 

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Eugene D. Coyle is Dean of the Military Technological College of the Sultanate of Oman. He was previously a faculty member at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland, where he held the (Professorial) Chair of Electrical Engineering Systems and was Head of School. Dr. Coyle’s research contributions span renewable energies, power quality, biomedical engineering, and engineering education.

Richard A. Simmons is a licensed professional engineer (PE) whose career has concentrated in the design and development of automotive technologies, advanced materials, and alternative fuels. Richard holds degrees in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology (BS 1993) and Purdue University (MS 1995), where he has recently returned to pursue his doctorate. 

Read the book for free on ORL’s web site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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Open Educational Resources: The Story of Change and Evolving Perceptions

Although the term may still not be familiar to the wider public—including college students and faculty—Open Educational Resources (OERs) have been an integral part of education worldwide for at least two decades. OERs generally refer to digital educational materials that anyone anywhere can use freely and legally, including the user’s right to copy, share, enhance and/or modify them for the purposes of sharing knowledge and enabling education. These run the gamut and stretch beyond digital textbooks—usually perceived as the most common educational resources—to include everything from course materials, university courses, e-learning platforms, software, and streaming videos to lectures and digital repositories of monographs and journals.

Regardless of how different and varied OERs may seem at first—ranging from single books to multi-functional and comprehensive platforms—what makes a resource an OER is that it is freely available to anyone, notwithstanding a person’s location and affiliation. OER users may well be college and university students, but they may also be independent learners, researchers or lay readers. Of course, ‘open’ does not mean ‘without any restriction’ or ‘without any financial support.’ It simply means ‘free access.’

Continue reading “Open Educational Resources: The Story of Change and Evolving Perceptions”

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OA Book of the Week: American Classics (Judith P. Saunders)

NSR is pleased to announce a new feature on the site: OA Book of the Week. In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR highlights popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives (Academic Studies Press) is a collection of essays that offers an evolutionary psychological analysis of selected works from the American literary tradition. Application of evolutionary theory to writing by Ben Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, F. Scot Fitzgerald, Zora Neal Hurston, and others creates an interdisciplinary framework for examining key textual features: plot, theme, tone, setting, symbol, characterization, point of view; and at the same time provides an accessible introduction to Darwinian literary critical methodology. Pertinent scientific research, together with essential terms and concepts, is explained in context. Connections are made throughout to existing commentary on the targeted texts, illustrating how Darwinian scrutiny can enrich, extend, or reconfigure understandings derived from other critical approaches.

Judith P. Saunders is Professor of English at Marist College in New York State. She is the author of The Poetry of Charles Tomlinson: Border Lines and Reading Edith Wharton through a Darwinian Lens: Evolutionary Biological Issues in Her Fiction.

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Read the book for free on ORL’s site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images Into Public Domain

“Culture connoisseurs, rejoice: The Smithsonian Institution is inviting the world to engage with its vast repository of resources like never before.

For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million high-resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons to peruse and download free of charge. Featuring data and material from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo, the new digital depot encourages the public to not just view its contents, but use, reuse and transform them into just about anything they choose—be it a postcard, a beer koozie or a pair of bootie shorts.

And this gargantuan data dump is just the beginning. Throughout the rest of 2020, the Smithsonian will be rolling out another 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Institution continues to digitize its collection of 155 million items and counting.”

Read the rest of the article on Smithsonian Magazine’s web site.

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This Week in Literature and Arts [February 16–February 23]

“Out of the stirring glory of Kipling’s India they roar…” February 17, 1939: RKO releases director George Stevens’s Gunga Din. Still among the greatest action films. Pure fun. If you’re in Indiana Jones fan but never have seen this flik, track it down. You’ll thank me.

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February 17, 1975: Lennon releases Rock ‘n’ Roll, a cover album of the 1950s songs that lured him into music as a teen, and it’s goodbye, Johnny! Rock ‘n’ Roll was Lennon’s last album release for five years.

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OA Book of the Week: China and the West (Hon-Lun Yang & Michael Saffle)

NSR is pleased to announce a new feature on the site: OA Book of the Week. In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR highlights popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

China and the West: Music, Representation, and Reception (University of Michigan Press) is the first book to explore how Chinese and Western musical materials and traditions— those involving instruments, melodies, rhythms, staged diversions (including operas and musical comedies), concert works, film scores, and digital recordings of several kinds— have gradually moved closer together and become increasingly accepted, as well as exploited, in Asia as well as Europe and North America. Although aimed in large part at a scholarly audience, China and the West should appeal to general readers of many kinds: those interested in politics, cultural history and theory, gender studies, sociology, theater, and media studies as well as musical composition and performance of classical as well as traditional and popular kinds.

Hon-Lun Yang is Professor of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Michael Saffle is Professor of Music in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech.

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Read the book for free on ORL’s site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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This Week in Literature and Arts [February 10–February 16]

Happy 90th birthday to Robert Wagner, born February 10, 1930 in Detroit. Honestly, not that hardcore an actor, but he was always laid back and cool and pleasant to watch—the ladies certainly liked him! And he’s still working! I think his career received a big boost after appearing in the Austin Powers films. Still a good-looking guy!

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Remembering Peter Benchley, who died from pulmonary fibrosis (scarred lungs), February 11, 2006 at age 65. I wrote him fan letters when I was young. He always answered. Good guy.

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OA Book of the Week: Biopunk Dystopias (Lars Schmeink)

NSR is pleased to announce a new feature on the site: OA Book of the Week. In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR will highlight popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

Biopunk Dystopia: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction (Liverpool University Press) contends that we find ourselves at a historical nexus, defined by the rise of biology as the driving force of scientific progress, a strongly grown mainstream attention given to genetic engineering in the wake of the Human Genome Project (1990-2003), the changing sociological view of a liquid modern society, and shifting discourses on the posthuman, including a critical posthumanism that decenters the privileged subject of humanism. Schmeink argues that this historical nexus produces a specific cultural formation in the form of “biopunk”, a subgenre evolved from the cyberpunk of the 1980s. Biopunk makes use of current posthumanist conceptions in order to criticize contemporary reality as already dystopian, warning that a future will only get worse and that society needs to reverse its path, or else destroy all life on this planet.

Lars Schmeink is Professor of Media Studies at the Institut für Kultur- und Medienmanagement of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg and the editor of Collision of Realities: Establishing Research on the Fantastic in Europe ( De Gruyter, 2012).

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Read the book for free on ORL’s site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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Book of the Week: Double Blind: The Icelandic Manuscript Murders (Sara Winokur)

In an effort to draw attention to quality self-published literature and in agreement with BlueInk Review, NSR highlights reviews published on BIR’s site each week, including a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction. This week’s pick:

Sara Winokur employs her geneticist experience in this gripping novel featuring Brynja Pálsdóttir, genetic criminologist for a company that works with the police in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The story begins when 7-year-old Lúkas disappears while at a carnival with his twin sister, Brynja. It then jumps to 2017. Still haunted by her brother’s disappearance 20 years ago, Brynja is working with police to solve crimes with cutting-edge DNA research. When she receives a letter with a mysterious poem hinting that Lukas is alive and referring to an historic Icelandic manuscript about to be displayed for the country’s independence celebration, a chain of events is launched.

Brynja’s fiancé is the country’s prime minister. With his help, she’s permitted to inspect the manuscript for possible clues hidden in the text. Shockingly, though, the messenger who brings the manuscript to her office collapses after eating some pastries that have been delivered there and later dies of poisoning in the hospital. As similar deaths ensue, Brynja becomes a prime suspect.

Read full review here.

Sara Winokur is a PhD molecular geneticist and author.  She has worked on DNA analysis of human genetic diseases and was part of the team that discovered the genes associated with Dwarfism, Muscular Dystrophy, and Huntington’s Disease.

Dozens of her articles have been published in scientific journals. Her research has appeared in Human Molecular Genetics, Nature Genetics, and Cell Stem Cell. She is a well-respected figure in the scientific community.

BlueInk Review was founded by Patti Thorn, former books editor of the Rocky Mountain News, and Patricia Moosbrugger, literary agent and subsidiary rights specialist. It offers serious, unbiased reviews of self-published books. Reviews are penned largely by writers drawn from major mainstream publications, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, and editors of respected traditional publishing houses. Select reviews appear in Booklist magazine.

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This Week in Literature and Arts [February 3–February 9]

February 3, 1874: Gertrude Stein, poet, novelist, patron of the arts, den mother of the Lost Generation, self-proclaimed genius (and, reportedly, huge pain in the ass!), is born in Alleghany, PA.

After Picasso finished this portrait, Stein groused that she didn’t look like the figure in the painting. The artist replied, “You will.” And she did!

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Happy birthday to Alice Cooper, born Vincent Damon Furnier in Detroit, MI, February 4, 1948. Alice Cooper originally was his band’s name, but Vincent adopted it for his own once the group parted in the early 1970s.

Cooper is still out there playing live gigs (with mascara and a snake draped around his neck) as well as lots of golf (how’s that for conflicting images!). He was golfing buddies with Glen Campbell. Hard to picture the two of them together on the links. I wonder if Cooper wore the makeup?

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Continue reading “This Week in Literature and Arts [February 3–February 9]”

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OA Book of the Week: Social Theory after the Internet (Ralph Schroeder)

NSR is pleased to announce a new feature on the site: OA Book of the Week. In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR will highlight popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

Image result for Social Theory after the Internet Media, Technology, and Globalization"Social Theory after the Internet: Media, Technology, and Globalization (UCL Press) puts forward a theory of how the Internet has transformed politics and culture. Ralph Schroeder, professor at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, examines four countries, the United States, Sweden, India and China, and provides a comparative-historical analysis of the uses of information and communication technologies. Written in an accessible, jargon-free language, the book offers a theoretical account from a multidisciplinary perspective on digital media and supports its arguments using the most topical and up-to-date examples.

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Read the book for free on ORL’s site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

 

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This Week in Literature and Arts [January 27–February 2]

January 27, 1970: John Lennon writes “Instant Karma” in less than an hour in the morning and records it in the evening with the help of George Harrison playing acoustic guitar, Klaus Voorman on bass, and Alan White drumming. It was released February 6.

Play Loud! John said so!

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January 27, 1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born in Salzburg, Austria.

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Continue reading “This Week in Literature and Arts [January 27–February 2]”

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Knowledge Unlatched announces the results of 2019 pledging round, plans to make 410 books and 13 journals Open Access in 2020

Press release from Knowledge Unlatched:

Berlin, January 30, 2020 —  Knowledge Unlatched (KU), the central platform for Open Access (OA) financing models, is pleased to announce the results of the 2019 pledging round, which ended in December 2019 and saw hundreds of libraries worldwide pledge support for OA models and initiatives offered by KU and its partners.

In 2019, KU continued to expand its KU Select offerings in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) as well as in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). It also introduced new partnerships and business models with some of the world’s most renowned academic publishers. As a result, KU will be able to unlatch 274 books from its KU Select 2019 HSS collection, 38 books from its KU Select STEM collection, and about 98 books from its various partner offerings, including, among others, Routledge African Studies 2020-2022, Routledge Gender Studies 2020-2022, HAU Books 2019-2021, IntechOpen Engineering 2020-2022, IntechOpen Physics 2020-2022, KU Romance Studies 2019-2021, Luminos, as well as German language-only packages transcript OPEN Library Politikwissenschaft, wbv Open Library 2020 and Peter Lang IT-Recht.

Apart from unlatching scholarly books, KU will also unlatch 13 journals, resulting from the successful Berghahn Open Anthro Subscribe-to-Open pilot, as well as several OA scholarly videos, owing to its partnership with Latest Thinking.

KU will make the title lists for each collection as well as unlatching status transparent and update this information regularly so that librarians have a clear understanding of which titles are unlatched or will be unlatched in the future. The unlatching of KU Select 2019, both HSS and STEM collections, will start soon and, owing to KU’s partnership with OCLC, the first set of MARC records will also be made available via the KU website.

“As we continue to grow and test new waters with Open Access, we remain grateful to the library community for their loyalty and willingness to explore new possibilities with us,” says Dr. Sven Fund, Managing Director of KU. “We are also pleased to see new libraries pledge their support for the first time and look forward to building these new relationships as well as nurturing existing ones with the academic community.”

In addition to promoting its current and new partner programs in 2020, KU also has plans to revise the KU Select books model based on feedback from partner libraries and will share the new information at the start of May. Further, KU plans to make its financial results for 2019 public in the spring of 2020.

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About Knowledge Unlatched Knowledge Unlatched offers free access to scholarly content for every reader across the world. Its crowdfunding Open Access models provide libraries worldwide with a central place to support the publishing of Open Access content from leading publishers in a wide range of HSS and STEM disciplines.

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OA Book of the Week: A People’s History of Modern Europe (William A. Pelz)

NSR is pleased to announce a new feature on the site: OA Book of the Week. In an effort to draw attention to quality Open Access scholarly content available on the newly launched Open Research Library (ORL), a central hosting platform for peer-reviewed Open Access books, NSR will highlight popular titles in ORL’s comprehensive and growing collection each week, including a wide variety of academic fields and disciplines.

This week’s pick:

From the monarchical terror of the Middle Ages to the mangled Europe of the Twenty-first Century, A People’s History of Modern Europe tracks the history of the continent through the deeds of those whom mainstream history tries to forget. Europe provided the perfect conditions for a great number of political revolutions from below. The German peasant wars of Thomas Müntzer, the bourgeoisie revolutions of the eighteenth century through to the rise of the industrial worker in England and the turbulent journey of the Russian Soviets, the role of the European working class throughout the Cold War, students in 1968 and through to the present day, where we continue to fight to forge an alternative to the barbaric economic system. With sections focusing on the role of women, this history sweeps away the tired platitudes of the privileged which our current understanding is based upon, and provides an opportunity to see our history differently.

William A. Pelz is director of the Institute of Working Class History in Chicago and professor of history at Elgin Community College. His recent works include Wilhelm Liebknecht and German Social Democracy, The Eugene V. Debs Reader, and Against Capitalism: The European Left on the March.

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Read the book for free on ORL’s site.

Initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs, Open Research Library is a hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

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Open Research Library launches, aiming to bring together Open Access content in one platform

Berlin, January 29, 2020 —Open Access (OA) content on one seamless and easy-to-use platform: that is the goal of the Open Research Library (ORL), which has officially launched today at www.openresearchlibrary.org.

A number of leading players in the library and OA community have joined forces to support the ORL for the benefit of researchers, scientists and academic institutions worldwide, including Knowledge Unlatched, Biblioboard, EBSCO Discovery ServiceTM, ProQuest with the Ex Libris Primo® and Summon® library discovery services, and OCLC with their creation of MARC records and indexing in WorldCat and WorldCat Discovery.

A powerful hosting platform that makes scientific book publications, and other high-quality academic OA content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world, ORL provides free access to a comprehensive collection of thousands of scholarly monographs, anthologies, journals, videos, posters and other formats. It caters to the core principle of OA—unobstructed access to academic materials with full interoperability of content data and metadata.

“Our goal is to develop a truly digital offering. Instead of rebuilding what is already there, we want to maximize the virtues of OA,” says Nina Weisweiler, ORL’s product manager. “Working with powerful digital distribution services enables us to make scholarly content automatically available to researchers without any delays after publication.”

“ORL started out as a project to demonstrate that different types of companies and initiatives can successfully cooperate to create a very tangible benefit to the research community,” says Mitchell Davis, CEO at BiblioBoard. “We are thrilled to support this project with our proven technology.”

As it has done with other OA initiatives, particularly KU Select, Knowledge Unlatched will garner financial support for ORL through its crowdfunding mechanism, encouraging libraries worldwide to support the growing cost of a complex infrastructure. This will allow ORL to achieve its full potential. However, use of the platform remains independent from supporting it financially, and researchers and libraries may access all content on the platform freely and without restriction at any time.

In the coming weeks, ORL will offer webinars to libraries and publishers interested in learning more about the options for integration and sharing feedback. More details will soon be available on ORL’s website.

Libraries interested in further information may contact ORL representatives at info@openresearchlibrary.org.

About Open Research Library

The Open Research Library is a hosting platform initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched and BiblioLabs. It makes freely accessible scientific book publications, as well as other high-quality academic Open Access content, available to anyone for free use anywhere in the world.

Contact:

Nina Weisweiler, Discovery & Account Manager

nina@openresearchlibary.org

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This Week in Literature and Arts [December January 20–January 26]

Monster kids, join me in birthday greetings to Colin Clive, born January 20, 1900 to English parents in France (his father was an army officer). A terrible leg injury dashed his own plans for a military career and sent him toward the stage. Alas, it also drove him to heavy drinking and smoking leading to tuberculosis that killed him at only 37.

Karloff gets all the kudos, but Bride of/Frankenstein would be lesser films without him. He has, arguably, the heaviest role, especially in the first Frankie. He keeps that movie humming!

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January 20, 1964: The game-changer of all game-changers.

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“…That’s what makes it our’n, bein’ born on it,…and workin’ on it,…and dying’ on it!”

Continue reading “This Week in Literature and Arts [December January 20–January 26]”
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The ground-breaking subscribe-to-open pilot – Berghahn Open Anthro – will flip 13 anthropology journals to open access in 2020

Brooklyn, NY, January 23, 2020

Hailed as the largest concerted disciplinary journals flip to open access since SCOAP3, Berghahn Books will take the step of publishing thirteen core anthropology journals as open access starting with their 2020 volumes under the subscribe-to-open model (S2O).

The availability of multiple models is paramount to maintaining a diverse, dynamic, and enterprising publishing ecosystem. Based on librarian curation, existing resources, and proven processes for supporting journals, a subscribe-to-open model is now emerging that makes financing sustainable open access more attainable, especially for smaller journals in the social sciences and humanities.

Managing Director, Vivian Berghahn, said, “We have been emboldened to take this significant step, thanks not only to the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from the library community, who regard this approach as a progressive model worthy of support, but by the anthropology researcher community itself, who have mobilized as a discipline to endorse the pilot as a means for realizing a more equitable and globally inclusive solution for open access publishing.”

Participating libraries include open access pioneers who have shown their support for the pilot by subscribing to the entire collection, with other libraries affirming their backing when renewing subscriptions at the select title level. In adopting the model, many librarians are continuing to underwrite the journals their faculty has always endorsed, with other librarians drawn to a model that allows all readers and authors to benefit from open access alongside those in their own institution.

Libraria’s Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Department of Social Anthropology, Spanish National Research Council, commented:

“At Libraria, we have been working hard to build open access environments that are equitable, sustainable, and inclusive. The Berghahn

 Open Anthro pilot is an audacious and innovative project that leads the way in showing what a responsible partnership between researchers, libraries, and publishers can accomplish. It marks a milestone in anthropology’s ongoing commitment to make its research available to indigenous communities and the public.”

Curtis Brundy of Iowa State University Library adds: “The Berghahn Open Anthro pilot is one of the most exciting initiatives underway at this critical moment for open access. It is exciting because it originated from anthropologists who want to see their discipline’s literature open. And it is exciting because Berghahn Books listened and responded with a cooperative model that will not only make its 13 anthropology journals open, but can serve as a model and inspiration to move all of the field’s journals to open. This pilot and collaboration will advance openness and deserves wide support.”

S2O was initiated by Annual Reviews. The BOA adaptation was conceived and implemented in partnership with Libraria.

Berghahn Books is also working closely with Knowledge Unlatched in introducing the model to libraries across the spectrum.

Full details on the Berghahn Open Anthro initiative, including the list of participating libraries, can be found here.

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About Berghahn Books

Founded in 1994, Berghahn Books is an independent publisher of scholarly books and journals in the humanities and social sciences. A peer-review, mission-driven press, Berghahn is committed to the highest academic standards and seeks to enable innovative contributions to the scholarship in its fields of specialty. www.berghahnbooks.com

Contact: Vivian Berghahn, Managing Director: vivian.berghahn@berghahnbooks.com

About Libraria

Established in 2015, Libraria is a collective of researchers based in the social sciences who, drawing on the expertise of librarians, publishers, and other stakeholders, seek to bring about a more open, diverse, community-controlled scholarly communication system. Libraria has since evolved into a consulting and advocacy network that aims to convene informed conversations and catalyze demonstration projects. www.libraria.cc

Contact:  Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Spanish National Research Council: alberto.corsin-jimenez@cchs.csic.es

About Knowledge Unlatched

KU offers every reader worldwide free access to scholarly content. The online platform enables libraries worldwide to centralize their support for Open Access models from leading publishers and new initiatives in favor of Open Access.

Contact: Philipp Hess, Publicity & Communications: philipp@knowledgeunlatched.org