Oportunidades y desafíos actuales de la investigación en Bibliotecología y Ciencia de la Información. El caso del Departamento de Bibliotecología de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina

Este trabajo aporta algunas reflexiones sobre las oportunidades y desafíos actuales de la investigación en Bibliotecología y Ciencia de la Información en el ámbito de las universidades nacionales argentinas. A modo de ejemplo se estudia el caso de la actividad investigadora del Departamento de Bibliotecología de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, a partir de la información recabada del curriculum vitae de su actual planta de docentes investigadores. Los resultados muestran que a pesar de las dificultades que plantea la investigación en esta disciplina en el país, es posible transformar los desafíos en oportunidades fortaleciendo la actividad investigadora, tanto desde la perspectiva cuantitativa como cualitativa de la formación, la participación en proyectos de investigación, y la comunicación y difusión de los resultados científicos

Digitizing the Historical Periodical Collection at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Library in East Jerusalem

The Arab Press in Palestine developed at the turn of the twentieth century and proliferated for several decades despite restrictions imposed under the Ottoman Empire and during the British Mandate Period (1917-1948). Hardcopies of the early newspapers and periodicals are rare and access to them at a few Palestinian municipal or private libraries is limited. The Al-Aqsa Mosque Library holds one of the largest collections of Palestinian historical newspapers and periodicals. The collection provides a unique and rich source of information about the history of Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. Access to the collection is limited and brittle paper copies have been rapidly deteriorating. This paper provides an overview of the digitization project aimed at preserving the historical periodical collection located at the AlAqsa Mosque Library

Classical Guitar Music in Printed Collections: A New Index and a Model for Indexing Instrumental Music in Score Collections

Classical Guitar Music in Printed Collections is a new, open-access, online index to the contents of published score collections for classical guitar. Its interlinked, alphabetized lists allow one to find a composition by title or composer, to discover what score collections include that piece, to see what other works are included in each collection identified, and to locate a copy in a library collection. Accuracy of identification is guaranteed by incipit images of each work. The article discusses how this index differs from existing bibliographies of the classical guitar literature, its structure and design, and technical details of its publication.

Shared Print Analysis Tool at the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries has launched the Alliance Shared Print Trust and is in the process of developing a shared print analysis tool. The system allows libraries to compare themselves with other libraries that have added their MARC records so that they can easily and quickly determine what records are unique or held in common with other libraries. The comparison system is built on open source tools and has been embedded in the Gold Rush framework. The author provides a brief overview of other shared print analysis tools.

EAST by Northeast

The Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) is a shared print initiative involving 48 libraries across the Northeast. Initiated in 2012 with a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, EAST addresses directly the growing need for academic libraries to ensure that monographs and journals of scholarly value are not inadvertently discarded as they undertake weeding and deselection programs to free up space for other library services. EAST is currently completing a large-scale analysis of collections across 40 of the participating libraries. This analysis will provide insight into both uniqueness and overlap across the libraries’ holdings and will result in agreements by the libraries to retain circulating monographs in their local collections for an agreed upon time period and to make those materials available to researchers and scholars from other EAST libraries. In parallel to this collection analysis, EAST is implementing validation sampling across the libraries to better understand volume availability and condition and the role they may plan in retention decisions. The project team has developed an innovative sampling methodology and tools to support the study. As the largest shared print initiative to date, this project will secure a substantial portion of the scholarly record that is held in the Northeast and positions EAST as an important component of the growing network of shared print initiatives nationally.

JRNL: Journal Retention and Needs Listing — A Software Tool for Managing Print Journal Archives

The Journal Retention and Needs Listing (JRNL) program: 1) allows libraries to expose lists of print journals for which they have made retention commitments; 2) express needs (or gaps) in their holdings; and 3) communicate offers to fill the gaps in other participating libraries’ holdings. Multiple library consortia and their member libraries use JRNL to facilitate communication between library staff to identify holding commitments, fill gaps, and guide deselection decisions. JRNL is commonly developed and governed by the participating consortia. Currently, those consortia are the Florida Academic Repository (FLARE), the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL)/Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), and the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST).

Oportunidades y desafíos actuales de la investigación en Bibliotecología y Ciencia de la Información. El caso del Departamento de Bibliotecología de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina

Este trabajo aporta algunas reflexiones sobre las oportunidades y desafíos actuales de la investigación en Bibliotecología y Ciencia de la Información en el ámbito de las universidades nacionales argentinas. A modo de ejemplo se estudia el caso de la actividad investigadora del Departamento de Bibliotecología de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, a partir de la información recabada del curriculum vitae de su actual planta de docentes investigadores. Los resultados muestran que a pesar de las dificultades que plantea la investigación en esta disciplina en el país, es posible transformar los desafíos en oportunidades fortaleciendo la actividad investigadora, tanto desde la perspectiva cuantitativa como cualitativa de la formación, la participación en proyectos de investigación, y la comunicación y difusión de los resultados científicos