Advancing Scholarly Communication through Digital Initiatives at Rice University

Digital Library Initiative

• Two primary initiatives that support open access and scholarly communication– Digital Media Center – Center for Digital Scholarship

Digital Media Center

Digital Media Center—mission is to support scholarly communication by:

• Teaching students how to create content—podcasts, YouTube (Student Oscar Emcee Contest)

• Support Audio/Video content• Multimedia Presentations• Scanning, Printing• Checking out equipment• Courses include: Zotero, Flash, Dreamweaver,

twitter, blogging, social media, etc• http://library.rice.edu/services/dmc

Center for Digital Scholarship Mission and Goals

• Provide research and information support• Bring to the University community access to the

resources needed to further its scholarly activity• Actively foster collaborative relationships with other

organizations in order to broaden the range of resources we bring to the University community.

• Embark on a sustained research initiative that will identify both needs and possibilities for the library of the future

Center for Digital Scholarship• Rice Digital archive –scholarship.rice.edu

– 22,468 unique items are in the Digital Scholarship archive (170,243 files)• ETD Project--Theses and Dissertations—Pilot in Fall 2011• Shepherd School of Music--Shepherd School of Music Project (Preservation

copies of 340 concerts and recitals recorded from 1976-1981 are included—1,974 pieces have been digitized and are available via streaming using Windows or RealPlayer)

• Americas Archive• Rice Image Library• Travelers in the Middle East Archive• Rice Centennial support--special collections, books by/about Rice • Departmental Preprints and Publications

– Electrical Engineering

Support for Open Access Mandates

• Set up FAQ site at Rice to assist faculty in the Open Access mandate process (NIH)

• Center for Digital Scholarship (renamed the DLI in 2007 to this new name)--serves as point of contact for assisting faculty

• Submit publications to NIHMS system for faculty• Contact publishers to clarify author agreements• Library supports open access through sponsoring

publication by Rice authors via open-access publishing sites—e.g. BioMed Central (subsidized almost a dozen articles last year at @$9,000)

Increasing Awareness of the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive

• Past efforts include– “Rice News” articles– Houston Scholarly Communication Forum– Presentations to departments– Open houses and events for students– Letters and direct messages to faculty– Lots of effort, but campus initiatives to deposit

publications lacking (with the exception of the NIH funded publications)

Campus Efforts at Open Access Mandate

• No mandate at Rice (yet)– Worked with a public policy fellow (jointly funded by the

Ken Kennedy Institute for Computer Science, the Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Library) to write a white paper discussing the topic (2006)—timing issues developed

– Worked with a computer science professor—champion of Open Access

– Fondren Library works with the HAM-TMC library on scholarly communication forums—sponsored several campus wide speakers and symposiums on open access topics

– Faculty senate discussions

Webometrics• Discuss Webometrics with administration and faculty (

http://www.webometrics.info)

– Ranking of the activity and visibility of a university’s web site (links, citations, etc.)

– Research papers in IR are discoverable via Google Scholar—use this metric as a selling point to departments and faculty—may help improve campus ranking in Webometrics

Google Scholar Example—searched “Richard Baraniuk”Wavelet-based statistical signal processing using hidden Markov models• [PDF] from rice.edu

Rice Full Text ?…, RD Nowak, RG Baraniuk - Signal Processing, IEEE …, 2002 - ieeexplore.ieee.orgAbstract— Wavelet-based statistical signal processing techniques such as denoising and detection typically model the wavelet coefficients as independent or jointly Gaussian. These models are unrealistic for many real-world signals. In this paper, we develop a new framework for ... Cited by 1142 - Related articles - BL Direct - All 30 versions

Plans for 2011/2012

• New leadership—new Provost, Dean of Natural Science, Dean of Engineering and faculty senate leadership --continue education and outreach initiatives

• Use knowledge from others—SPARC website, CHOICE points, other universities mandates

• Develop a plan—work with faculty, define roles of librarians, work with general counsel’s office

– Continue outreach and education initiatives