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Showing posts from 2016

Open Content from a Small Museum: DAC Open Access Images

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Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669). The Three Trees, 1643. Etching, drypoint, and engraving on laid paper. Only state. Plate: 212 x 280 mm. Sheet: 223 x 284 mm. DAC accession number 1951.D1.1. Gift of George W. Davison (B.A. Wesleyan 1892), 1951. Open Access Image from the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University (photo: R. Lee) Guest post by Rob Lancefield , Manager of Museum Information Services, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University Does a museum have to be large to offer open content? The Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University holds some 25,000 works on paper and has three museum staff (2.5 FTE). The collection serves teaching, study, research, exhibition, and other educational purposes. In 2012, we launched the DAC Open Access Images policy .

Illustrating the special importance of books to the Arts and Humanities

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The importance of books is clear for the Arts and Humanities in the UK as indicated by approximately ¼ of all submissions to the REF in book form and in addition book chapters remain an important factor in submission. These heatmap visualisations for the Academic Book of the Future quickly illustrates the stark differences in forms of scholarly communication across UK HE.

Reshaping the REF balloon - the Stern Review

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Source:  https://flic.kr/p/8hHczB Trying to make a change to the REF whilst not breaking it is akin to squeezing a balloon. Press or reshape too much and it bursts, but solving a problem by squeezing in one area produces bulges elsewhere. And so we come to the Stern Review - an independent review of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) - that was published this week. [ link ]

Open GLAM: The Rewards (and Some Risks) of Digital Sharing for the Public Good

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Figure 1:  img_japanese04, Bridgestone Museum of Art, 17.146 px/in, 2016. Fujishima Takeji, 1867-1943, Black Fan, 1908-1909, Oil on canvas, 63.7 x 42.4 cm, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo. This digital surrogate is © Bridgestone Museum of Art. Open GLAM: The Rewards (and Some Risks) of Digital Sharing for the Public Good by Simon Tanner The research-led exhibition experiment Display at Your Own Risk provides an exciting opportunity to ask some fundamental questions regarding the behavioral gaps between ‘what we say’ and ‘what we do’ in regard to museum practice and with art/images. Sometimes this is driven, as the exhibition organizers point out, by the gap between institutional policies and public understanding. By selecting 100 digital surrogate images of public domain works for this exhibition and printing them to the underlying artwork’s original dimensions this exhibition poses some interesting questions.

Burning eBooks - B&N "nukes the NOOK"

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Barnes & Noble is shutting down its Nook app store , (effective from March 15, 2016) through which it sold ebooks for its e-reader, the Nook. Unless Nook owners in the UK take action immediately then their ebooks (& films) could be lost to them. It is yet another example of how you don’t own your ebooks with DRM - you’re merely licensing the right to read them for a time. This announcement is a bit like a commercially driven virtual Fahrenheit 451 "fireman" is going to disable your eBooks in a fast digital fire.

Open Access to research publications - independent advice and evidence

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February is a month of discovery. Not just of gravitational waves but for increased evidence for Open Access, for the costs of publishing monographs and for academic journal markets. This blog focuses on the highlights of Professor Adam Tickell’s  OA report to Jo Johnson (Minister of State for Universities and Science) that has been published today, with the Minister’s response . It also mentions the Costs of Publishing Monographs report from Ithaka and the Academic journal markets report from SCONUL, RLUK, ARMA and Jisc.