Chronicle ProfHacker piece on scholarly collaborative writing platforms

Wish List for a Powerful Collaborative Writing Platform
By Konrad Lawson

In my last posting, I imagined what it might look like to fork the academy, that is, to create a space within the world of academic writing and publishing where we could directly reuse, adapt, and expand each other’s work. I also discussed some of the most significant obstacles that stand in the way, both at the disciplinary level and the kinds of personal concerns I have seen raised from friends and colleagues I have discussed the idea with.

Another good article from Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice

Here is another article from the same issue of Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice.

“Using Social Media to Promote International Collaboration” by Hua Sun and Mark Douglas Puterbaugh

This paper explores the use of social media or Web 2.0 services for an international collaborative project. Participants in this collaboration used free and inexpensive social media tools to communicate and work together. This case study presents a model for using inexpensive social media tools to forge new partnerships among academic libraries. Academic libraries can now tap the expertise of fellow librarians in other countries and explore new cultures to improve and extend their services without the huge financial cost once attributed to international collaboration.

LibraryH3lp chat service can be use collaboratively between institutions

Building grassroots collaboratives with LibraryH3lp

Because LibraryH3lp was initially created to serve an after-hours cooperative chat and IM service for students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State University, the capability to collaborate has been built into LibraryH3lp from the very beginning. And because one of our core values is flexibility, collaboration comes in many flavors.

All options below are available even though you and your partnering institution maintain completely separate LibraryH3lp subscriptions. In this way, you can leverage your existing partnerships — or forge new partnerships — to extend your virtual reference service wherever possible while maintaining your own local service.

Read on…

An interview with Bethany Nowviskie of the University of Virginia

The Chronicle of Higher Education published this article today.

Devising New Roles for Scholars Who Can Code

THE INNOVATOR: Bethany Nowviskie, U. of Virginia
THE BIG IDEA: Collaborative, technology-enabled projects can enliven the digital humanities.

“It was pretty easy to see we were on the brink of a massive transformation of our collective archive, and I wanted to be a part of that,” Ms. Nowviskie recalls. For her, the most exciting thing about graduate school was the chance to create “concrete manifestations of the learning we were doing,” and to do that in a collaborative environment where people wanted to build tools as well as study texts. She calls this “translational” work—bridging the gaps between scholars, technology experts, and so-called alternative-academic workers whose jobs don’t follow traditional university trajectories—and it drives much of what Ms. Nowviskie does.

Now director of digital research and scholarship at the University of Virginia Library, Ms. Nowviskie has become a driving force in digital humanities. At the library-based Scholars Lab, she brings together teams of researchers and programmers to work on collaborative, tech-enabled scholarly projects.

Report from Virginia Tech on collaboration between faculty, students, information professionals, and technologists

Hubs and centers as transitional change strategy for library collaboration
Speer, Julie; Mathews, Brian; Walters, Tyler

Libraries of science and technology universities worldwide are adapting to a changing environment where cyberinfrastructure, eResearch, and new technology-intensive approaches to teaching and learning are transforming the very nature of universities. While many have adopted new technologies and the resources and expertise to manage them, this is only an initial step. Libraries are experimenting with organizational models that will transform their work capacity and expertise. The goal of these libraries is being an entity that feeds and produces collaborative synergies between faculty, students, information professionals, and technologists.

Collaborate with your IT Department

CSL In Session is an online learning series from the Colorado State Library, and this looks like a particularly good session.

Making I.T. Happen! A Toolkit for Building Collaborative Relationships with your IT Department

With Jon Soloman
When 05/15/2013 | 12:30p – 1:30p, Mountain Time

IT folks carry the stigma of being particularly non-collaborative, but the stereotype of the loner programmer barricaded in a cubicle is not necessarily accurate. The growing number of collaborative projects between library public services and IT departments make it necessary to examine relationships and create excellent communications for resulting success. This program will discuss proven management and collaborative techniques for building relationships, through self-assessment and teambuilding techniques, and will offer a glimpse into how strong relationships between IT and public services libraries can lead to award-winning and innovative projects.

Social Learning and Collaboration

Danica Radovanovic recently wrote a blog post for Australian Science–Work, Play & Learn! Using libraries for Social Learning, Impact and Collaboration

The digital information and knowledge paradigm in the 21st century requires skills such as digital literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, skills in communication, and collaboration for overcoming present social and digital inequalities. Those skills go beyond pure technological affordances and they could easily be obtained through collaborative learning practices and social interaction between individuals from different backgrounds and areas of expertise.

Libraries, as environments for social learning and collaboration, present facilitators of education and knowledge. With accelerating dissemination of information in a digital age, libraries emphasise their activities on providing an information commons. In other words, an informal interactive learning place that encourages its visitors to communicate, contribute, participate, and engage with the library. This new dynamic leads towards a collaborative, social construction, and sharing of information and knowledge.

Conference – Big Talk From Small Libraries #BTSL

The Big Talk from Small Libraries online conference is sponsored by the Nebraska Library Commission and the Association for Rural & Small Libraries.  While I don’t see anything about collaboration in the schedule, it still looks like a very interesting conference.  I think it is free to register.  Below is a blurb about the conference.

We’ve been listening! A comment we’ve heard pretty often is that so many presentations at conferences seem to be by and for librarians from larger libraries. Well, Big Talk From Small Libraries will change that. This free one-day online conference is aimed at librarians from small libraries; the smaller the better. Each of our speakers will be from a small library or directly works with small libraries.

Topics will range from technology (new tech and old tech) to programming to new roles for the library. Come for the programs on what you’re dealing with now, or maybe try something new.

Everyone is welcome to register and attend, regardless of how big or small their library is, but if your library serves a few thousand people, or a few hundred, this is the day for you.

Elsevier in talks to buy Mendeley

From Techcrunch this morning.

The world of ed-tech is ramping up another notch, and getting a lot more open in the process: educational publishing giant Elsevier is in advanced talks to buy Mendeley, a London/New York-based provider of a platform for academics to share research and collaborate with each other via a social network. TechCrunch understands from sources close to the companies that the deal is underway and should close this quarter, possibly by the end of February — all things being equal — and will be in the region of $100 million.

Plum Analytics and figshare Collaborate

Plum Analytics and figshare are collaborating to ensure that researchers get credit for their research.

Philadelphia — December 3, 2012 –In ever-growing efforts to provide a full picture of research and researchers, Plum Analytics and figshare are working together to provide metrics about the use of datasets. figshare has pioneered the sharing of research beyond the traditional publishing model by providing an easy mechanism for researchers to share datasets. These datasets include artifacts such as spreadsheets, figures, photos, papers, etc. figshare makes it easy for researchers to get credit for this research by publishing it in a discoverable way outside of journals. figshare keeps metrics such as views and shares for every dataset artifact so researchers and others can see which datasets are most used.