The citation network has long been held as a metric for measuring the impact of scholarly literature, but with readers today far likelier to tweet than cite, new practices have developed to track clout on the web. These methods, called altmetrics, measure the network of references from Twitter and blogs to Mendeley and Zotero. These methods are still developing. Total-Impact, one technology that has developed around the ideas of altmetrics, warns that it shouldn’t be used “as indication of comprehensive impact...take it all with a grain of salt.”

Because Total-Impact means to track not only traditional scholarly articles, but also other types of files, code, and ideas, structuring the criteria has been difficult.

Why not make your own? Codeacademy, e-learning niche oft covered in EdLab and marketing genius behind Codeyear, recently debuted a DIY feature that allows for peer-to-peer code schooling. Users can supplement Codeacademy’s scanty offerings with tutorials of their own. Codeacademy seems to be accepting applications and presenting approvals based on information supplied by hopeful creators:

No word yet on how the completed courses will be evaluated, though creators must submit their lessons for review before they are unleashed on the public. The easiest route may be to accept all or most applications and let the crowd evaluate. Crowd is something Codeacademy has in scads. Nearly 400,000 people have signed up for Codeyear so far (It’s yet unknown how many of these folks are letting the weekly emails sit around their inboxes collecting guilt.) In a good example of leveraging crowd power, Codeacademy also recently debuted a Q&A feature that connects confused wannabe coders with a community of fellow students.

Jantz, R. (2012). Innovation in academic libraries: An analysis of university librarians' perspectives. Library & Information Science Research, 34(1), 1-78.

Librarians talk the talk of innovation, but do we really walk the walk? The author of this study found it has more to do with institutional policies than external pressures. All the librarians surveyed agreed that innovation was important in an environment quickly shifting away from traditional services and strategies. The author found that creation of a dual-core strategy was paramount for innovation. Dual-core refers to resources devoted to research and idea initiation in addition to efforts already in place to deliver service and content.

The Research Works Act Elsevier boycott, covered here by Joanna and on Shelfless by Julia, has continued to grow steadily and now lists 3,073 names. Prominent in the wake of this disenchantment is the peer review site Faculty of 1000. They have announced plans to create an open access program that flips the traditional publishing model. F1000 Research will focus on post-publication review, after an editorial “sanity check” the article will be immediately published and reviewed after publication for sound method. The thought is that this model of publication more accurately mirrors the pace and function of digital information.

Librareo is a collaboration between the publisher Gale Cengage and Library Journal aimed at creating a community of library students. The site has been around for a couple of months, but the launch was relatively soft and it doesn’t seem to be attracting many users at this point.

Pros:
The low participation is not for lack of content. Free registration scores library students access to community features, a suite of Gale databases full of useful articles and e-books, and a year subscription to either Library Journal or School Library Journal. Stephen Abram of Stephen’s Lighthouse is also featured in the forums and the level of interaction and engagement seems very robust. The marketing seems to be expanding through targeted ads on library blogs and the Library Journal website.

Dethloff, N. (2012). Replacing recalls with interlibrary loan: The University of Houston’s QuickLoan service. Journal of Access Services, 9(1), 18-27.

As part of an institution-wide drive towards better customer service, The University of Houston chose to eliminate material recalls in favor of instant interlibrary loans. The system they created was dubbed “Quickloan” and was branded through the ILLiad login page to prevent confusion when users were directed out of the OPAC. The library conducted two small usability studies, which revealed that most users of the system were still confused by Quickloan’s function and its relation to recall. Despite confusion and some animosity, usage is steadily increasing.

The Association of Research Libraries today released a new best practices guide to fair use in academic libraries. Their aim is to establish community consensus and an understanding of the practices in use in the modern academic library to assist librarians in conforming to expectations and establish precedent for legal issues that may arise. The document addresses issues that have developed with recent technology, such as online “exhibits” of held materials under copyright. This sort of hosting, while not technically covered under prior interpretations of the law, is so rampant on the internet that it’s become a widely accepted library practice. (With perfect attribution, of course!)

The new guidelines also make leeway for the ominous video cassette problem in academic libraries. It has generally been frowned upon to create digital copies for any reason save the hyper restrictive preservation option, but it’s become clear in recent years that the VHS format is reaching its point of obsolescence.

Porter, B. (2011). Millennial Undergraduate Research Strategies in Web and Library Information Retrieval Systems. Journal of Web Librarianship, 5, 267-285.

Many articles on the topic of Millennial search strategies quickly devolve into talk about reforming these methods through information literacy training. While it is true that the search strategy of born-digital users is shallower than that of a p-book trained researcher and single search bars dominate the future landscape of many databases, Millennials are working with a deeper pool and reaching out to these users requires an understanding of the environment in which these behaviors developed. The author studied the library and non-library digital search strategies of undergraduate users at SUNY Oswego. She found that many younger users prefer a horizontal search strategy to one that is strictly hierarchical. Users flit from resource to resource, piecing together an idea of their quarry instead of spending up-front time researching the best resources and how to obtain them.

Earlier this month, when Brilliance Audio pulled its audiobooks from Overdrive lending, it seemed like it could have been a fluke. Today Penguin announced that it is also withdrawing audiobooks from the service. Penguin is relatively clear that this is backdraft from their recent decision to withhold new release e-book titles from library lending. Publishers seem to be rethinking established audiobook policies in light of new reservations around library e-book lending.

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