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The April, and second, issue of Oxford University Press’ quarterly librarian newsletter
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News and Features from OUP for the Academic Library and Information Community
April 2010
Sarah Thomas, Director of Bodleian Libraries, on spreading knowledge and changes ahead
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For hundreds of years OUP has been disseminating new ideas with the technology of the day, be it print,
CDrom or online.We would like to share with librarians
and information professionals several initiatives we are taking part in including Research4Life, which provides free access to journals in developing countries, and the launch of the prestigious Oxford Textbook of Medicine online, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, in low- and middle-income countries. These projects are making a real difference to people’s lives, giving doctors and researchers access to information to stop disease, fight drought, and better manage their environment.
Each issue will have a commentary piece and this time OUP USA President, Tim Barton, gives his view on the controversial Google Settlement for Books, which aims to bring books back to life and open them up to new readers.
We interview Sarah Thomas, Director of the Bodleian Libraries, the first woman and first non-British librarian to take on the role, to find out how knowledge dissemination is changing the face of the library and turning it into a “home for the intellectual community”.
Illuminea’s first issue was all about innovation across Oxford University Press. As we enter a new decade, we are now looking at our strong commitment to disseminate knowledge, a key part of our mission, while we embrace changes in the way content is delivered.
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Editor: Catarina WalshEditorial Team: Damian Bird, Alison Bowker, Claire Dowbekin, Richard Gedye, Amanda Hirko, Patricia Hudson, Colin Meddings, Lizzie Shannon-Little (Editorial Assistant), Sarah Ultsch, and Aviva Weinstein.
We value your feedback and would like to know what you think of Illuminea. If you have any suggestions for future issues, or would like to contribute, please email [email protected].
Front cover image: Ben Cawthra
3 Online Access to a Medicine “Classic”
OUP and the Wellcome Trust are working together to provide online access to the Oxford Textbook of Medicine in low- and-middle income countries
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“Bringing books back to life”
Tim Barton, President of OUP USA on the Google settlement
6&7News
8“The library of the future is everywhere” Interview with Sarah Thomas, Director of the Bodleian Libraries
9Oxford Dictionaries Online
Disseminating a “fast moving language” online
10Closing the knowledge gap
Freeing and boosting research in developing countries
11Conferences
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Contacts
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Going onlineThe launch of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine online in April marks the digitization of one of OUP’s flagship titles. It’s a book which has been known and respected for more than 35 years, and is a fixture in libraries, wards, and doctors’ offices around the world.
In print, this fifth edition of OTM is a three-volume heavyweight with over 5,500 pages. It has taken around five years and 750 of the world’s foremost clinicians and medical scientists to put it together. One of the biggest benefits of moving online will be the ability to update the evidence base on a regular basis, so physicians can be confident they’re looking at up-to-date information.
With much of the content updated annually online, the updating process will refresh the book entirely in time for the sixth edition. This iterative approach is designed to form a model for providing up-to-date clinical information to users, while also facilitating traditional new printed editions as long as these are required.
Online access in low- and middle-income countriesThe Oxford Textbook of Medicine has always had a very international focus, with contributors from around the world, and in-depth coverage of the types of medical conditions often found in countries with a less-developed medical infrastructure.
It is therefore especially apt that the Wellcome Trust has chosen to sponsor online access to the Oxford Textbook of Medicine in low- and middle-income countries. This will enable users at more than 3,500 institutions to access OTM at either no cost or a greatly reduced cost. Doctors, students, and researchers will be able to access the best in medical science and practice, which they would otherwise find it hard to afford.
Two missions, one aimThe initiative to bring online access to the Oxford Textbook of Medicine to low- and middle-income countries dovetails the OUP and Wellcome Trust missions perfectly.
The Trust aims to ‘fund research to improve human and animal health’ and is the UK’s largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research, while OUP ‘furthers [Oxford] University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.’
Mark Walport, Wellcome Trust Director, said of the project:“The Oxford Textbook of Medicine plays a considerable part in consolidating the practice of evidence-based medicine around the world, and the Wellcome Trust is pleased to be a part of the initiative to ensure that high-quality research is widely disseminated. This will support these countries in building research capacity and promoting evidence-based medicine, ensuring that research knowledge is translated into practice.”
Access is provided through the WHO HINARI Access to Research initiative, which facilitates access to a wide range of medical resources from many different publishers.
OUP and the Wellcome Trust are working together to provide online access to the Oxford Textbook of Medicine in low- and middle-income countries.
Alison Bowker Head of Marketing: Law and Medicine
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Oxford Textbook of Medicine facts and figures• The printed book contains three volumes, over 5,500
pages and 2,500 full-colour illustrations and tables, all of which are reproduced online
• 750 contributors from more than 30 countries• Over 3,500 institutions in 108 countries are able to
access the online version through HINARI
Oxford Medicine OnlineThe online edition of OTM is one part of a major project to move Oxford’s medical publishing online. To find out more contact [email protected].
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In doing so, we immediately found ourselves confronted with myriad, complex issues. Should we engage
in destructive scanning, which destroys the original but yields better results less expensively, or non-destructive scanning, which is more expensive and less effective but spares the book? How should we best clear and clarify the rights, since older contracts understandably do not mention electronic rights? What should we do about the copyrighted materials from other sources that many of the books contain, such as photographs, tables, graphs, and poetry? What level and type of functionality and metadata is appropriate for such a product?
As Oxford and other publishers were grappling with these questions, so too was Google. Since 2004 Google has been scanning the works found in some of the world’s best and largest scholarly libraries, including the Bodleian. Google’s stated plan was to allow full views of public domain works and (in the case of works from U.S. libraries) “snippet” views of in-copyright works, which it claimed constituted “fair use”; and it gave the participating libraries one “digital copy” of every scanned book. In the eyes of many authors, agents, and publishers, Google’s scanning project was illegal. They complained vociferously, eventually launching two lawsuits in the U.S., one a class-action.
In October 2008 a complex settlement was proposed after two years of behind-the-scenes negotiations including libraries
as well as the parties to those lawsuits—principally the Association of American Publishers, the Author’s Guild, and Google. What became clear after months spent considering that original draft was that, though imperfect, the settlement was a remarkable achievement.
Currently, the vast majority of scholarship published in book form over the last 80 years is effectively out of reach to students, who generally limit their research to what can be discovered online. University libraries provide access to a fair number of the books published in the last ten years or so via services purchased from publishers and aggregators, and also many of these works are available as e-books. But the millions of titles published from 1923 (the date before which titles are in the public domain in the U.S.) until the last decade are effectively out of reach.
The “Google Book Settlement” would provide a means whereby those lost books of the last century can be brought back to life, and made searchable, discoverable, and citable. That aim aligns seamlessly with
As one of the world’s most prolific scholarly publishers, Oxford University Press views as a core expression of its mission the reactivation of publications long sidelined by the restrictions of a print-only existence. Six years ago we published a complete archive of our journals, enabling access to four million pages spanning a century and a half of scholarship, and last year we began a project to extend that archive to include tens of thousands of our out-of-print books.
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Tim Barton President of Oxford University Press, Inc. (OUP-USA)
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the aims of a university press. It is good for readers, authors, and publishers—and, yes, for Google. Due to changes made to the original settlement to accommodate concerns of non-U.S. rightsholders, the world’s largest digital library would, at least initially, exclude books published outside the U.S., the UK, Canada and Australia —a change which, in my view, diminishes the settlement. And the works in the settlement database may be accessed only within the U.S. But, even still, if the settlement succeeds, readers will gain access to an unprecedented amount of previously lost material, publishers will get to disseminate their work—and earn a return from their past investments—and authors will find new readers (and royalties). And for those not inclined to pay to access copyright material, Google will, per its original plan, serve up “snippets” from titles in the settlement, or more, if rightsholders allow. The settlement will permit anyone in a public or university library in the U.S. to have free and full access to the titles via computer terminals at these libraries. The settlement also reinforces
respect for copyright. In the same way that Apple’s iTunes created an alternative to copyright theft via peer-to-peer software, the settlement establishes a framework in which intellectual property rights will be acknowledged, rather than ignored.
The settlement promises revenue streams for Google, for sure, although it’s possible that one can exaggerate the money to be made from older backlist titles, and the split of the revenues between the parties are helpfully enshrined in the document. The pricing mechanisms and principles should ensure a reasonable approach, with the establishment of an independent Books Rights Registry, via which author, publisher and library representatives will set prices for the database of older titles.
The settlement raises other interesting challenges: the scholarly world is drowning in information already, so we will need better paths through all this newly rediscovered material. But what an enviable problem to face. And, as an aside, it is one which Oxford’s newest online service, Oxford Bibliographies Online (highlighted in the last edition of Illuminea) is designed to help with.
Google’s core business is not e-book and database retailing, and it may be a reluctant entrant into this arena, having frequently stressed that it is not in the business of creating content. So why is Google willing to make a rumoured $200 million investment in scanning and to tackle the practical issues involved in restoring to life so many books, when most publishers have eschewed that opportunity? Perhaps it is that Google is
playing for advertising trillions rather than publishing billions. Investments that those seeking a return from publishing could not make are more understandable when potential
global-advertising revenue streams are at stake. We should note too that, in extending its business model in this way, Google provides authors, publishers, and readers with another important route to market.
To be clear, the settlement is not perfect, even as it has been revised. The principal remaining issue it raises is that it will enable Google to enjoy exclusive rights to orphan works, i.e. in-copyright titles whose owners cannot be found to grant permission for the titles’ use. Only orphan works legislation could change this and, despite significant advocacy, Congress has failed to pass such legislation. However, Google’s competitors will not want Google alone to enjoy the rights to exploit orphan works, and the spectre of Google having this advantage seems to increase the chances of orphan works legislation being passed.
If the settlement fails, the majority of lost books are unlikely to see the light of day—an enormous set-back for scholarly communication and education. If it fails, one possibility is that the lawsuit could be abandoned. Or it will proceed, at great expense, and, except for those on the extremes of the arguments, neither victory nor defeat is palatable. In both cases, the opportunity to bring back to life those rumoured ten to twenty million titles is lost. Victory for publishers and authors would halt Google’s scanning and use of in-copyright material, but what would become of the scanned files now held by the participating libraries? Victory for Google would leave millions of scanned files at large, and authors and publishers more uncertain about investing time and money in new publishing.
We at Oxford University Press support the settlement and hope that it will be approved, even as we recognize its imperfections. As Voltaire said, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” the perfect is the enemy of the good. Let us not waste an opportunity to create so much good. Let us work together to give students, scholars, and readers access to the written wisdom of previous generations.
Abridged and updated from Tim Barton’s original article, which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in June 2009.
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Oxford Journals is now on Twitter, tweeting about the latest journal-related news for librarians,
researchers, and anyone else who is interested in OUP’s journal collections.
Limited to just 140 characters per tweet, Twitter is a social networking service that allows users to follow friends, businesses, celebrities, news media, and much more, from across the world. Users can follow people or organizations they are interested in, receiving tweets from them on their profile. Users can also retweet other people’s tweets, passing on information they think is valuable or interesting for their own followers to read.
The @OxfordJournals Twitter feed tweets about news coverage from our journals, free articles and journal issues that are available, interesting library-related topics, conferences that Oxford Journals is attending, and much more. If you have news that you would like to hear about from us via Twitter why not follow us and send us a tweet? Or, if you have a question about our services or want to find out how to know more about something without bothering to write an email or make a phone call, try to fit it into 140 characters and tweet us your request.
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/OxfordJournals
As this issue of Illuminea goes to press, a combined Oxford Journals and HighWire Press project team
in Oxford and California is working hard on our largest-ever joint project: re-launching the Oxford Journals websites on “H2O” HighWire’s new content delivery platform.
The rebuild of the HighWire platform uses technology and standards which power the web’s top websites. It will allow OUP to deliver web publishing services more effectively for its customers – authors, researchers, societies, and librarians.
Technology is one part of the partnership between the two organizations. Oxford Journals has been working with HighWire Press since 1999, and we share a vision of the importance of scholarly publishing. “HighWire’s mission is to ensure the continuing success of independent, society-based, and other scientific and scholarly publishers in their efforts to disseminate high-quality content worldwide.” John Sack’s summary of the HighWire mission complements the Press’s own purpose: to further the objectives of the University through dissemination of the highest quality research as widely as possible.
In our twelve year history we have come through challenging times. The competitive intensity of web publishing is increasing, it seems almost daily, with competitors launching new products and services. Our joint ambition is to work together in order to exploit the opportunities which H2O offers, and deliver the next generation of online scholarly publishing.
The Oxford Digital Reference Shelf programme continues to grow and now includes close to 50 titles,
allowing OUP to offer key reference works in a convenient electronic format specifically designed for A-Z content. Titles in the programme can be purchased individually and, for Oxford Reference Online subscribers, are integrated with that service.
A recent addition to the programme is The Oxford Companion to the Book, a unique and original work on all aspects of the book from ancient times to the present day. Edited by Michael Suarez, Professor and Director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and Henry Woudhuysen, Professor of English at University College London, the Companion has already received positive reviews with the Sunday Telegraph calling it a “magnificent reference work is a tribute to - and celebration of - a revolutionary invention”. OUP Editor Joanna Harris explains it is “a publication that epitomizes the press’s publishing aims as one of the oldest—and largest—university presses in the world”. For more information visit www.oxford-bookcompanion.com.
OUP is also announcing a major new distribution partnership with academic publishers Continuum for the publication of electronic editions of a critical selection of Continuum’s leading scholarly reference titles. The first titles to be released include the Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, Biographical Dictionary of American Economists, Biographical Dictionary of British Economists, and Encyclopedia of History of American Management.
For more information please contact:Outside the Americas: [email protected] Americas: [email protected]
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Incorporating the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, the Berg Fashion Library (BFL) is the most
comprehensive coverage of fashion studies available in the world.
Distributed by OUP, BFL is the first online resource to provide access to interdisciplinary and integrated text, image, and journal content on world dress and fashion.
The BFL offers cross-searchable access to an expanding range of resources on fashion that will continue to grow along with scholarship in the field – through content updates and, for Berg journal customers, the ability to cross-search alongside Berg journal content.
It includes nearly 3,000 images from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s renowned fashion collection, a dictionary of fashion terms from 900 A.D. to the present day, and an index of the top costume collections in the world, outlining a wealth of information such as strengths and number of objects held.
The portal will be relevant to anyone working in, researching, or studying fashion, anthropology, theatre, art history, history, museum studies, and cultural studies. It is distributed worldwide by OUP and is available to library customers on annual subscription.
Libraries buying the forthcoming print title Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion will be able to receive free access to the online resource for a limited period. Please visit www.bergfashionlibrary.com for more information.
Oxford University Press and the BBC are collaborating to distribute the BBC’s College of Journalism
website, http://bbcjournalism.oup.com. The site will include hundreds of videos,
audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules, and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. Much of the material will feature well-known BBC TV presenters and reporters discussing subject areas such as craft skills (e.g. writing or directing video), subject briefings on topics such as climate change and the conflict in the Middle East, and the many ethical issues now facing journalists.
Previously an in-house training website, the BBC recognized the inherent wealth of information conveyed by the site’s material and the value that journalism students and journalists worldwide would gain from access to the site.
“Journalism schools worldwide have expressed strong interest in accessing the BBC’s content,” said Tim Fenton, who has overseen publication of the site for the BBC. “However, we at the College of Journalism recognize we have little experience in delivering these online resources to academic institutions, libraries, and reporters at news organizations around the world, and so we sought a partner with that expertise.”
The BBC College of Journalism site is freely available to UK residents but will be commercialized outside the UK in line with BBC policy for other online services. UK residents fund the BBC via a licence fee. The site will be distributed by OUP outside the UK during and will be available shortly. Further details can be found at www.oup.com/online.
Oxford Journals has made some new journal acquisitions so far this year and these will further reinforce
the subject collections of Oxford Journals.In January, OUP announced its
partnership with the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to publish the society’s most highly-cited journals: Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) and The Journal of Infectious Diseases. In 2009 CID was named one of the “100 Most Influential Journals in Biology and Medicine of the past 100 years” by the Special Libraries Association.
This announcement was quickly followed by news of the acquisition of the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) and The Review of Economic Studies (REStud). QJE and REStud are two of the oldest and most prestigious journals in economics. QJE is the world’s highest-ranked economics journal by impact factor, and REStud is one of the top five economics journals worldwide.
The society-owned journals American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Environmental History, and Neuro-Oncology have also all begun publication with OUP this year. And the launch of both the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice and the Journal of International Dispute Settlement has also taken place.
It is hoped that these latest additions will strengthen OUP’s journals list even further, a list that now holds over 230 titles. Oxford Journals will assume publication of the IDSA journals from 1st January, 2011 and the economics journals will also move across to OUP sometime next year.
For more information visit: www.oxfordjournals.org
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In a world where the dissemination of knowledge is increasingly taking place online what does the library of the future look like? The library of the future is a vibrant place. The physical library is still extremely important in terms of providing a home for an intellectual community engaged in the study and creation of knowledge. But, of course, the library is really everywhere. In the virtual world one will be able to disseminate knowledge in new ways; around the globe, across time zones and through geographic boundaries.
How do you think that the digital leaps taking place – like the much-debated Google settlement – will influence the future of libraries? I actually think that what Google has done is an incredible service. It is a very democratic and open form of access. I have always been very emphatic that we need to ensure that compensation for authors’ intellectual efforts should be given. But if you ask most academic authors – and that’s primarily the type of work that people using Oxford’s libraries are interested in – they would rather have more people read their work than a royalty cheque. I think that the Google initiative has already transformed the way people work but it is going to revolutionize our libraries in the future.
Since taking up the position of Bodley’s Librarian in February 2007, what changes have you seen in the role of the librarian and what new skills do librarians need? The information world has become much more complex. The librarian of future will have to navigate this sea of information. The skills
needed are traditional skills of knowing how to organize and access things but they will be applied to a much more complex landscape than we have had in the past.
What changes are afoot at the Bodleian Libraries to ensure you meet the new expectations of readers? The library model that even an undergraduate here at Oxford will have experienced is changing. Because of the breadth of knowledge that we have, people are working more in teams and we’ll be having much more of that activity in the Weston Library (the soon-to-be-refurbished New Bodleian library). There will be opportunities for authors, readers, curators, librarians, scholars, students, and the general public to work in seminars, auditorium, presentation or discussion. We’ll have a well-developed information infrastructure so that people can come and use technology and traditional materials together. It’s opening up the doors of the vault to allow everyone to take a look at what’s in there.
Is there more demand for co-operation between libraries in order to rise to the challenges that such changes pose? There is still much more to be done in this area. Sometimes people back into it as an economy measure: we can’t afford to do this so we’ll link with someone else and use fewer resources than if both of us do it. But actually there is a much more positive experience; multiple perspectives often result in a stronger service than if you tried to do it alone.
How do you keep up-to-date with the changes taking place? To stay in touch with new developments I like to follow a few people’s blogs in the library world who I find very helpful or provocative – Lorcan Dempsey at OCLC and Current Cites put out by Roy Tennant. Networking and using these web 2.0 features allow one to have a much greater reach than in the old days when one just used to scan current periodicals.
How do you see the role of university presses in the future?In the US it is much more common now that the management of university presses is overseen by librarians, and that would suggest that we are part of a common family. We have common interests in dissemination and access to high-quality academic scholarship. We have a lot to share. I think libraries can reach out to university presses and help them, because I think they provide such a valuable service to universities and to scholars that I think we should do everything we can to see them succeed.
Sarah Thomas is entering her fourth year as Bodley’s Librarian and Director of the Bodleian Libraries. Lizzie Shannon-Little, Communications Executive at OUP, caught up with the first woman and first non-Brit to inhabit the role to see what she thought about the developments taking place in the library sector.
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The Bodleian Libraries was the first institution in the UK to introduce a mobile phone app to provide access and dissemination on the go. Launched last year, the app provides direct access to the online library catalogue and uses
the location sensing of the mobile to allow readers to find the nearest book they are searching for.
Pict
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Ben
Caw
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While there are numerous free dictionary sites available online, their quality isn’t necessarily assured and they don’t
provide the extra support and functionality that users need. Launching in May 2010, Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) is a brand-new online modern English dictionary and language reference service that will revolutionize the way information is presented to the user, opening up whole new horizons of meaning and word links.
The site includes more than 350,000 entries and definitions, 600,000 synonyms and antonyms, and a vast, unique, sense-linked sentence bank of over 1.9 million real English-usage examples carefully selected from the Oxford English Corpus. All the content, based on Oxford’s largest modern English dictionaries and thesauruses, is linked intelligently and seamlessly throughout the site to provide users with fast, intuitive access to the definitions and answers they need.
General users can get straightforward advice on writing good English, while another dedicated module offers specialist language reference resources for professional writers and editors. And, by popular demand, crossword and anagram solvers are also included. The ‘My Oxford Dictionary’ personalization feature allows users to create their own accounts, save entries and searches, and set preferences.
To ensure the same quality of content that users expect from Oxford dictionaries, the new online service is backed up by Oxford’s global team of experienced lexicographers, working closely with skilled data developers and web designers. Catherine Soanes is a senior lexicographer who is proud to be part of the team that is bringing ODO to the public.
‘We’re very aware that most online dictionaries are not providing a good user experience, – in fact, 70% of users surveyed by Oxford University Press in July 2009 reported that they found free online dictionaries difficult to use, slow, or out of date. When Oxford assessed current sites, we found that many are concerned more with quantity of content or directing users to commercial sites rather than quality and accuracy of language research’, says Soanes.
‘With these facts in mind, we set out to make sure that ODO presents the best experience possible for users around the world. For instance, content will be fresh and new – English is a fast-moving language and there will be regular updates of new words and senses, drawn from our ongoing language monitoring programme, to keep abreast of all the changes in meaning that are constantly taking place.’ Drongo, skite, and galah: exploring Australian English
What is also highly innovative is that ODO offers fast intuitive searching tailored to users’ needs. For those who just need a quick definition, spelling, or synonym, then the quick search takes you to the right place at a click. However, the full richness of the site is revealed when you start to explore the browse and filter options, enabling you to refine your results and view sets of entries linked by subject, meaning, language level, etc. – for instance you could view all the words from the Physics subject area that are verbs, or all the words in Australian English that mean ‘a disliked person’ (drongo, skite, and galah, to name but a few).
Using specially-versioned content, grounded in Oxford’s ongoing research and editorial expertise, OUP aims to make Oxford Dictionaries Online a useful tool is for everyone who uses written or spoken English in their work or studies: language-lovers and word-puzzle enthusiasts; higher-level non-native speakers of English; writers, copyeditors, and linguists; and academics, students, and teachers in any field.
Oxford Dictionaries Online is a new resource for readers, writers, editors, language lovers, world-puzzles enthusiasts
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Oxford University Press is committed, along with other publishers, to
providing access to many of our journals through initiatives such as Research4Life.
Research4Life is the collective name of three public-private partnerships which seek to help achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific and social science research. Beginning in 2002, the three programmes: Health Access to Research Initiative (HINARI); Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA); and Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), have given researchers at 4,500 institutions in 108 developing countries free- or low-cost access to over 7,000 journals provided by the world’s leading academic and professional publishers.
These initiatives are essential for institutions ‘to meet the demands of the academic staff and with the dwindling of funds for journal subscriptions’, as quoted on the Research4Life website by
a library user at the Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital in Nigeria.
Another library user and faculty member explains ‘My access to OARE when I did my PhD programme did not only enable me as a person achieve my target but also to improve the quality of life among the Ogiek people in Mauche and Newsiit where diarrhoea and coughs, among other preventable ailments, have been ravaging lives of children and many adults in a vicious disease circle.’ (Wilkista Nyaora Moturi, Head of Environment Studies Department, Egerton University, Kenya).
Fighting droughts and studying birds in AfricaAccess to research in agricultural and environmental sciences has helped to face challenges in arid regions of Eastern Africa. Through access to the AGORA collection of journals, scientists in Kenya are researching drought tolerant crops – chickpea and sorghum – which could unlock the farming potential in 50% of arid and semi-arid land in the country.
The dissemination of region-
specific scholarly publications is one of the aims of INASP. In 1998 they initiated the African Journals Online (AJOL) project which, in 2005, became a not-for-profit company in its own right and has grown to host 370 peer-reviewed African published journals from 27 countries, with 100,000 global website visitors each month in 2009. This means that library users are able to access articles about subjects that are vital to understanding their environment which tend not get covered so much in mainstream journals. An example of one such publication is Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology which publishes results of studies of the behaviour, biology, breeding, ecology, migrations and movements of birds in sub-Saharan Africa and its islands.
What is clear from measuring the impact of these programs and from the testimonials of library users themselves is that by providing free or significantly reduced cost access to journals in developing countries, we can ensure that important research is available to all to benefit from.
In many academic libraries, access to scholarly content is taken for granted as a means of completing a university degree, building on current research, and keeping up-to-date with news in a particular field. However, for library users in less developed regions, access to key information can be a vital lifeline, helping researchers to save and improve lives and manage their environment.
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• HINARI - the Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative is led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and supports medical professionals in 108 countries by providing access to over 3,750 biomedical and health journals.
• AGORA - Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture is a program set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN to bolster scholarship in the fields of agriculture and life sciences. Along with publishers it brings 1,132 journals to 108 countries.
• OARE - Access to Research in the Environment programme, overseen by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Yale University, brings free access to over 150 journals to over 100 countries.
• INASP - the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications collaborates with publishers in the developed world to facilitate access to research within developing and countries.
• eIFL.net - the eIFL Foundation supports the wide availability of electronic resources for library users in developing countries by helping to negotiate the creation of library consortia across multiple countries.
For more information on the activities of the organizations listed above, please visit the links displayed on our developing countries initiatives website, where you can also find contacts for setting up access for your library: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/developing_countries.html
OUP’s participation in initiatives to provide access to Journals
Jennifer Hilton Library Marketing Manager
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Here is a list of the major conferences we will be attending between April and June 2010. You can either catch us at our information stand or contact us in advance to arrange a private appointment.
To schedule a meeting or to request any other information, please email the relevant contact.
Europe
UKSG 33rd Annual Conference & Exhibition 12-14 April, Edinburgh, Scotland Matthew Howells, Oxford [email protected] Brothwell, Online [email protected]
JISC Annual Conference 12-13 April, London, UK Ged Welford, Online Resources [email protected]
INFORUM 2010 25-27 May, Prague, Czech Republic Wolfgang Steinmetz, Oxford [email protected] Teusan, Online [email protected]
CRIMEA Ukraine5-13 June, Crimea, Ukraine Adina Teusan, Online [email protected]
British & Irish Association of Law Librarians Conference 10-12 June, Brighton, UK Tracy James, Oxford [email protected] Bowler, Law [email protected]
JISC RSC East MIdlands Annual Fair 22 June, Leicester, UK Annabel Coles, Online [email protected]
Middle East
Info 2010 3-5 May, Tel Aviv, Israel Matthew Howells, Oxford [email protected] Grant, Online Resources [email protected]
ANKOS 10th Annual Meeting 6-9, May, Istanbul, Turkey Wolfgang Steinmetz, Oxford [email protected] Grant, Online Resources [email protected]
North America
Texas Library Association 14-17 April, San Antonio, TX, USAJenifer Maloney, Oxford [email protected] Everest, Print and Online [email protected]
NC Serials Conference15 April, Chapel Hill, NC, USAFrancesca Martin, Oxford [email protected]
SCELC Vendor Day12 May, Los Angeles, CA, USAFrancesca Martin, Oxford [email protected] Farinella, Online Academic and [email protected]
New England ACRL Conference14 May, Worcester, MA, USAJenifer Maloney, Oxford [email protected] George, Academic and Reference Library [email protected]
Medical Library Association 21-26 May, Washington, D.C., USAChloe Hennin, Oxford [email protected]
NASIG3-6 June, Palm Springs, CA, USAFrancesca Martin, Oxford [email protected]
Canadian Health Libraries Association7-10 June, Kingston, Ontario, CanadaChloe Hennin, Oxford [email protected]
Special Libraries Association13-16 June, New Orleans, LA, USAChloe Hennin, Oxford [email protected] Kieffe, Online [email protected]
American Theological Library Association Annual Conference16 June, Louisville, KY, USAMargaret Love, Online [email protected] Wallden, Academic and Reference Library [email protected]
American Library Association24-30 June, Washington, D.C., USAFrancesca Martin, Oxford [email protected] Kieffe, Online [email protected] George, Academic and Reference Library [email protected]
Asia
KESLI 1st Forum 19-21 April, Kangwon-doWon Jung, Oxford Journals [email protected]
CALIS Annual 201010-15 May, Zhuhai, ChinaMichael Zhou, Oxford [email protected]
EBSCO Open Day 1 June, SeoulWon Jung, Oxford Journals [email protected]
Japan Association of National University Libraries18 June, Sapporo Japan Kazunori Oike, Oxford [email protected]
KNULA Workshop Date & Place TBAWon Jung, Oxford Journals [email protected]
Illuminea Issue 2
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