autumn is the season for renewal

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

feel that nip in the air?  the mornings are cool, and the sun rises a bit later and sets a bit earlier.  that can only mean one thing: it’s subscription renewal season!  this is the time of year that library acquisitions departments are busiest.  we burrow into lists of journal subscriptions to look at usage statistics from the past year and projected prices for the upcoming year, to make predictions about what we think we will use and can afford in the next calendar year.

usually by now our main subscription vendor has sent a renewal invoice with prices of what it thinks the subscriptions will cost over the next year.  based on this renewal invoice we look at the total amount of money the subscriptions will cost, gasp out loud, and talk amongst ourselves.  we cross through titles on the renewal invoice (cancellations), add new titles (additions), change access methods (cancel print, retain online, please!) and return to the vendor a spreadsheet of all the changes.  the vendor then sends us a new invoice and we confirm it.  since the vendor is estimating the prices of the subscriptions, over the next calendar year we will receive invoices for added charges, or extra money we owe because a subscription costs more than the vendor predicted.  hopefully when we made our budget request for the upcoming year we were able to get a ten percent increase over last year’s budget to account for inflating prices of our current subscriptions.

in addition to paying our main subscription vendor, we deal with individual publishers and consortia to negotiate prices for the upcoming subscription year for special journal packages.  this is exciting because we control our fiscal fate in a way that we don’t when we deal with our subscription vendor; by using a subscription vendor they do the dealing for us, which is convenient but hands-off from our perspective.  by seeking out individual publishers and consortia for certain journal packages we do our own negotiations, which is very hands-on but also uncertain.  it depends on one’s negotiating power to determine what prices you pay for publisher packages.

all of these wheelings and dealings go on behind the scenes, which is where acquisitions usually happens.  i bet you didn’t know how busy we were this time of year!  send us some chocolate or buy us a cup of coffee; we’re tired!

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Brian Dettmer’s book art

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

no talking now.  just go.  look.  stunning, beautiful pieces of and about books.

brian dettmer’s book art — he calls them “book dissections”

(thanks, boingboing. pointing me to this link totally made my day.) 

from his artist statement: “Old books, records, tapes, maps, and other media frequently fall into a realm that too much of today’s art occupies. Their intended role has decreased or deceased and they often exist simply as symbols of the ideas they represent rather than true conveyers of content. They are reduced to status symbols or decorative devices; often displayed as trophies of intellect or hoarded and stored like nostalgic memories.”

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web sites and blogs updated

Posted on September 13, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

have fun reading.

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social software and organization

Posted on September 10, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

you probably know by reading this blog that i am a bit of an organization nut. i like things organized my way. at work my idea of ‘organized’ is to have nothing on my desk. visit me in my office sometime to see this in full effect. people often ask if i’ve just started working at the library, since my desk is so empty. it’s a personal preference, really; i just don’t like visual distractions when i’m working. but maybe you like a bunch of stuff on your desk, with all your current projects within arm’s reach. your stacks of papers and folders are arranged so that you know, without even looking, where to reach for something. both methods of organization are correct, aren’t they? they’re just different ways of accomplishing the same task. in the end, we’ve both organized ourselves.

i’ve been thinking about this difference in organizational styles recently, in relation to the library catalog.  part of my job is as cataloger, and that means i’m organizing information about books for your use.  but who’s to say that they way i organize that information is the way you want it organized?  i imagine that the kinds of information i find important about a book might not be so important to you.  and you probably think i’m missing some piece of information about the book.  would you appreciate having some say in what kind of subject headings i attach to books?  the popularity of current social bookmarking tools (e.g., del.icio.us, connotea, furl) leads me to believe that you do want some say in how your information is stored.  i wonder how this can be harnessed for use in an academic library catalog environment?

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new NIH policy for data repository

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

the NIH has released a policy on a data repository for human genetic data that they will establish (read the policy at Federal Register).  the policy is briefly discussed today in the chronicle of higher ed, and comments on the publishing policies for the data entered into the repository, security issues for those that have donated genetic materials, and data ownership issues.

i’m interested to know how the data are going to be organized when they are deposited.  what will the metadata schema look like, so that the elements entered will be able to operate between data sets?  will the repository be intended for this kind of data sharing or will it be more of a data dump?  the initial policy doesn’t address that specifically, so may be forthcoming in other documentation.  will stay tuned…

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“a couple” versus “a couple of”

Posted on August 28, 2007 by Marie Kennedy

“a couple apples,” or “a couple of apples,” which is the correct one? after some sniffing around i find that both are acceptable.

a thread at linguist-list has a useful discussion on this very topic.

the free dictionary has this usage note:

Although the phrase a couple of has been well established in English since before the Renaissance, modern critics have sometimes maintained that a couple of is too inexact to be appropriate in formal writing. But the inexactitude of a couple of may serve a useful purpose, suggesting that the writer is indifferent to the precise number of items involved. Thus the sentence She lives only a couple of miles away implies not only that the distance is short but that its exact measure is unimportant. This usage should be considered unobjectionable on all levels of style.·The of in the phrase a couple of is often dropped in speech, but this omission is usually considered a mistake, especially in formal contexts. Three-fourths of the Usage Panel finds the sentence I read a couple books over vacation to be unacceptable; however, another 20% of the Panel finds the sentence to be acceptable in informal speech and writing.

to summarize, carry on with using whichever you were using.

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