Archives for October 2019

Open Access Social Science Research

Post by Scott Hertzberg, Reference Librarian

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) contains more than 888,000 open access, law, economics and other social science papers posted by more than 425,000 scholars (SSRN, Retrieved October 1, 2019). The majority of the articles are “pre-print” articles that have been accepted for eventual publication by established peer-reviewed journals. A very small number of the papers are not peer-reviewed, but to be safe Castleton faculty and librarians should instruct students to check that a specific SSRN paper indicates it has passed a peer review.

The Rochester-based non-profit company that started SSRN in 1994 sold the website to Elsevier in May of 2016 (Van Noordan, 2016). Elsevier has so far abided by a pledge made after the acquisition to continue to keep the papers open access (PIKE, 2016). An article in Information Today suggests that the publisher will continue to do so, and that their real interest is the data produced by SSRN users (Van Noordan, 2016). A Nature article on the acquisition quotes an analyst who called it a “well thought out” strategy to “create deeper relationships with researchers and become more and more essential to researchers even as librarians become less so” (PIKE, 2016). Regardless of ownership, SSRN is a major open access network for scholarly communication in the social sciences.

For more information on Open Access and Open Educational Resources, see the library’s guide:

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Bibliography

Crozier, H. (2018). Promoting Open Access and Open Educational Resources to Faculty. Serials Librarian, 74(1–4), 145–150. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0361526X.2018.1428470.

Pike, G. H. (2016). Elsevier Buys SSRN: What It Means for Scholarly Publication. Information Today, 33(6), 1–29. Retrieved from http://www.infotoday.com/it/jul16/Pike–Elsevier-Buys-SSRN–What-It-Means-for-Scholarly-Publication.shtml.

Salem, J. (2017). Open Pathways to Student Success: Academic Library Partnerships for Open Educational Resource and Affordable Course Content Creation and Adoption. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(1), 34–38. Retrieved from https://www-sciencedirect-com.castleton.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0099133316301409.

Sheret, L., & Harper, L. (2018, July 20). “The Benefits of Open Educational Resources (OERs) for Faculty and Students. Retrieved from https://mds.marshall.edu/lib_faculty/62/.

Thompson, S., Cross, W., Rigling, L., & Vickery, J. (2017). Data-informed open education advocacy: A new approach to saving students money and backaches. Journal of Access Services, 14(3). Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15367967.2017.1333911.

Van Noordan. (2016). Social-sciences preprint server snapped up by publishing giant Elsevier : Nature News & Comment. Nature. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/news/social-sciences-preprint-server-snapped-up-by-publishing-giant-elsevier-1.19932

Xia, J. (2019). A Preliminary Study of Alternative Open Access Journal Indexes | SpringerLink. Publishing Research Quarterly, 35(2), 274–284.

Yeates, S. (2017). After Beall’s “List of predatory publishers”: problems with the list and paths forward. Information Research, 22(4), 1–6. Retrieved from http://www.informationr.net/ir/22-4/rails/rails1611.html.

Vermont Reads March: Book One

Have you read this year’s Vermont Reads book yet?

March: Book One is the true story of U.S. Congressman John Lewis’s youth and early involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, told in graphic formVermont Reads is a program of the Vermont Humanities Council.

Join Vermonters in reading the book, then join library staff for either

Book Discussion

Wednesday, November 13
4:00 pm
Library Media Viewing Room

OR

Wednesday, November 20
6:30 pm
Castleton Free Library
(opposite the end of Seminary St. on Main Street)

The CU library has multiple copies to loan. Ask at the Circulation desk.
(It’s only 121 pages long!)

More about the book:

“It is the first of a trilogy written by civil rights icon John Lewis, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and award-winning graphic artist Nate Powell.

Lewis was chairman of the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was considered one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement. He has served in the US Congress since 1987 and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2011.

Book One tells of Lewis’s childhood in rural Alabama, his desire as a young man to be a preacher, his life-changing interactions with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the nonviolent sit-ins he joined at lunch counters in Nashville as a means of undermining segregation.

The narrative continues in subsequent books to tell of the 1963 March on Washington (Book Two) and the march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965 (Book Three). All three volumes illustrate the story of Lewis’s commitment to nonviolent protest in the pursuit of social justice.”

Vermont Humanities Council website

The library also has Book Two and Book Three in the trilogy. Click for more info about those books, the call number and to see if the book is checked out.

For more resources, see a discussion guide from the Anti-Defamation League:

Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month, after Vermont celebrated our first official Indigenous Peoples’ Day on October 14, so we are continuing our recognition of our land’s native heritage and the indigenous communities that have survived into the 21st century.

In May of 2019 Governor Phil Scott signed a bill officially replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and issued the proclamation below. (Click on the image for the PDF).  It states, “Vermont recognizes it was founded and built upon lands first inhabited by Indigenous Peoples of this region – the Abenaki, their ancestors and allies – and acknowledges and honors these members of the community.” The federal government still recognizes Columbus Day.

To learn about why states are making this transition, here’s a piece from National Public Radio:  Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day?

The library had a book display up in October on relevant topics. Click to see the list of books featured.

For advice on what to read to learn more about Native Americans, here are some bibliographies:

Essential Reading list from First Nations Development Institute

Native American Children’s Literature Recommended Reading List from First Nations Development Institute

You can learn more about the people indigenous to any particular land with a new app and website called Native-Land.ca. Here’s what the whole U.S. looks like with indigenous groups sketched in, below. Click on the image to go to the website and browse, or search by address, to see what tribes were native to any given region.