Day 4: JISC

Today, we moved from the Kings College campus on the Strand to the spectacular Weston Room at the Maughan Library. Besides being very beautiful in a medieval-y sort of way, it also currently hosts an exhibition on Byron and politics. One highlight is the never-bef0re-seen walking stick/sword of Byron’s. Those things are real, and of course Byron would have one.

Our morning lectures concerned the current state of journals and digital content. Daniel Pollock talked about current challenges for publishers and the needs of scholars when it comes to e-journals. One thing he said that really stood out for me was when he compared the traditional information delivery  model (information from an author is packaged by publishers and delivered as a journal article in print) when compared to information delivery today (information from authors is disseminated by RSS feeds, blogs, twitter, etc etc and may then be packaged into a formal article delivered in print/PDF/html etc). He said publishers need to think of journal articles not as finished, final products, but as bits of data that should be manipulated on the web. This makes the article more valuable, since it can be utilized in databases, with linked open data or semantic web applications. Technology has shown us that we need to think about information packages (like books or articles) as much more flexible and malleable if we can truly utilize all the amazing applications the Internet and technology affords us.

Our next field trip was to JISC Collections. After sandwiches, our hosts at JISC described their role as licensing and contract experts as well as research and content providers. There was a great video presentation on Patron Driven Acquisition models, most of which I was unfamiliar with. They also discussed JUSP, a free program that provides detailed analytics on journal subscriptions for libraries and other institutions. JISC is clearly an invaluable resource and advocate for cultural institutions – who is the equivalent in the US? I haven’t taken a course on digital scholarship before, so I am not sure but I’ve got to look into it.