links for 2009-01-22
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"[…]This new world will be a radical shift for libraries. Library buildings won't go away; we will still have a lot of materials that are worth caring for. Buildings will move more fully into their current dual nature, that of warehouse and gathering place, while our services and our content will live in the cloud, away from any physical place. The idea that one must go to a physical place in order to get services will slowly erode. The information that we seek to share and the services that we seek to provide will have to be fluid enough to be available in many forms.
Embrace the revolution
How do we prepare for this new mobile world? The three most important things libraries can do to prepare for the mobile shift of the next ten years:
Realize that the move to digital text and delivery isn't going to go away. Embrace it. Be ready to digitize your unique collections, and ensure that they are available by every method and mode you can find.[…]"
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"[…]Book Citation Metrics
[…]ISI’s Web of Science allows authors to find out how many citations their individual articles have received. This could be the most useful feature of a book citation index.
ISI’s Journal Citation Report aggregates all the citations to articles from a particular journal over a particular timeframe, and creates an Impact Factor. Would such a metric make sense in the book world, where the majority of titles are one-off publications?
The last point is seen a major benefit by book publishers who would like to create a citation reporting mechanism for book content which would give book content the visibility, credibility and impact that journal content has. Such a facility would act as a significant incentive for potential book chapter contributors, editors, and other authors who currently prioritize publication in journals and serials because of the availability of measurable citation statistics in those content types[…]"