This might be of interest to you.
regard,
Stephen
Monastersky, R. (2013). Publishing frontiers: The library reboot. Nature,
495(7442), 430–432. doi:10.1038/495430a
Publishing frontiers: The library reboot
As scientific publishing moves to embrace open data, libraries and researchers
are trying to keep up.
* Richard Monastersky
27 March 2013
Sayeed Choudhury demonstrates the visualization wall, part of Johns Hopkins
University's drive to transform how its libraries and researchers deal
with data.
WILL KIRK/JHU HOMEWOOD PHOTOGRAPHY
A few passing students do a double take as Sayeed
Choudhury waves his outstretched right arm. In his crisply pressed dress shirt
and trousers, the engineer looks as if he is practising dance
moves in slow motion. But he is really playing with astronomical data.
Standing in a US$32-million library building opened last
year at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Choudhury faces a
2-metre-by-4-metre 'visualization wall' of television screens.
Pointing with his arm, he selects a picture of the Ring Nebula out of 40 images
from the Hubble Space Telescope. Choudhury spreads his hands in a welcoming
gesture and the nebula's rim of glowing orange gas fills the
frame.
nature.com/scipublishing
This wall is the brainchild of computer scientist Greg
Hager and Choudhury, who directs digital research and curation at the
library. For $30,000, they and their team patched together monitors,
processors and the Microsoft Kinect system that recognizes arm and body
gestures. They placed the wall in the library last October as an
experiment, allowing students and researchers to explore a few of the
university's data sets, from star systems to illustrated medieval
manuscripts.
“As we create more and more digital content, there's a question of how
do you get people to even realize we have it and then interact with it
in new ways,” says Choudhury, who thinks that the wall is starting to
catch on. One chemical engineer wants to use it to visualize and
manipulate molecules, and astronomers hope that it could help to train
students in categorizing galaxies. By providing alternative ways to
explore and share data, says Choudhury, the wall “is a new form of
publishing”.
Around the world, university libraries are racing to reinvent themselves to
keep up with rapid transformations in twenty-first-century
scholarship. They still do a brisk business in purchasing books,
licensing access to academic journals and providing study spaces and
research training for students. And libraries are increasingly helping
teachers to develop courses and adopt new technologies. But for working
scientists, who can now browse scientific literature online without
leaving their desks, much of this activity goes unseen. For many,
libraries seem to be relics that no longer serve their needs...
read
more:http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-frontiers-the-library-reboot-1.12664?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20130402
STEPHEN B. ALAYON
Data Bank Senior Information Assistant
Library and Data Banking Services Section
Training and Information Division
Aquaculture Department (AQD)
Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC)
Tigbauan, Iloilo 5021 Philippines
URL: http://www.seafdec.org.ph
Telephone No.: 63 33 5119170 to 71 local 409
Fax No.: 63 33 5119174
Mobile Phone No.: 63 919 4506688
Email Add: [email protected], [email protected]
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