medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Can I also draw your attention to a relatively new UK quango, the Research
Information Network, which was set up in 2005 for an initial period of
three years to develop policy ideas for the management of information in
academia in the UK. It is backed by the Research Councils (the AHRC
included), the British Library, and the National Libraries of Wales and
Scotland.
See: http://www.rin.ac.uk/
The open access issue falls within its remit, as does all sorts of other
issues relating to the relationship between researchers and their
libraries (re: earlier M-R discussions about the British Library, and
independent scholars).
One area it is actively exploring is the potential of Collaborative
Collection Management, which in plain English means libraries
collaborating in developing their collection policies – so for example
libraries with specialist collections in common working together, to
reduce duplications, and spend their budgets strategically to complement
each others’ holdings. When money and space are both an increasing issue
for many academic libraries these sorts of policies might have real
potential, but they could also mean fewer real research libraries (as
opposed to university teaching libraries), specialist material dispersed
more widely over a number of institutions, and the increasing use of
inter-library loan.
One of the obvious issues here is the very different agendas, attitudes
and needs of those who are concerned with the management of academic
information (the libraries and the discipline of Information Studies) and
the research community who actually use the information (or indeed public
who might want access to it). It seems to me increasingly important that
academic researchers engage with these issues and are part of the
conversations which will be increasingly, and are already, taking place
about future strategies and policy.
I should at this point declare an interest – I am at the moment working as
a research assistant on an RIN funded pilot project in which we are
interviewing medievalists in Welsh Universities on their uses of the long
running periodical series the Early English Text Society. An important
part of the project’s purpose is to develop an understanding of how
researchers use academic libraries and the relationships between
academics’ priorities for library use and libraries’ priorities for
collection management.
One of the things which has struck me most while working on the project is
how rarely scholars actually articulate to each other (particularly on
paper) the processes involved in their research. Of course in our
post-modern post-'critical turn' age the disciplines all reflect on
research methods and theories, but not so much on the practicalities of
research, nor on the creative processes of research. Or at least not often
in a sustained way. But in terms of the management of libraries and
information it is the practicalities that really matter, and the creative
processes surrounding research that are at stake.
Anyway – I would endorse Paul Chandler’s original post – all these issues
of access, library use, and information management are very important in a
complex number of ways, and it’s important that medievalists engage with
them.
best wishes,
Janet Gunning
Dept English, Dept of History and Welsh History
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Hi all -- an article in today's *Guardian* that could be of interest:
>
> http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2011534,00.html
>
> George
>
> --
> George FERZOCO
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On 13 Feb 2007, at 07:27, Peter Binkley wrote:
>
>> A good place to start is Wikipedia's extensive article on Open
>> Access: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access . It covers the
>> topic well and is thoroughly documented.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> Paul Chandler wrote:
>>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
>>> culture
>>> I have a sense that the historical profession, particularly in the
>>> English-speaking world, is not as concerned as are scientists
>>> about "gated" access to scholarly research publications and the
>>> corresponding growth of open access initiatives.
>>> Roy Rosenzweig's "Should Historical Scholarship Be Free?" in the
>>> AHA Perspectives two years ago was very striking to me < http://
>>> www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2005/0504/0504vic1.cfm >,
>>> but as far as I know it has been little discussed, and I feel a
>>> bit ill-informed about all the issues. Perhaps someone more expert
>>> might tell us if we should be thinking more about such matters and
>>> what kind of responses are in our best interests in the long term
>>> (if this is not too unmedieval or irreligious).
>>> Other documents which seem of interest are the Budapest Initiative:
>>> http://www.soros.org/openaccess/index.shtml <http://
>>> www.soros.org/openaccess/index.shtml>
>>> and the Berlin Declaration:
>>> http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
>>> -- Paul Chandler
>>> On 08/02/07, DAVID PETTS < [log in to unmask]
>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion
>>> and culture
>>> As someone who recently directed people to a JSTOR article
>>> that
>>> I thought was freely available, this thread made me go back and
>>> check and I've realised that it is not accessible without an
>>> Athens
>>> password (for which I apologise). However, its worth noting that
>>> JSTOR to provide free access to a large number of useful journals
>>> without the need for an institutional affiliation. You can see
>>> the
>>> list here: http://www.jstor.org/about/individual.html
>>> Best wishes,
>>> David
>>> David Petts
>>> Dept. of Archaeology and History
>>> University of Chester
>>> Chester
>>> Cheshire
>>> UK
>>> --
>>> Paul Chandler, O.Carm. | Institutum Carmelitanum
>>> via Sforza Pallavicini, 10 | 00193 - Roma | Italy
>>> tel: +39-06-68.10.08.70 | fax: +39-06-68.30.72.00
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>> which is here, near St Peter's and Castel S. Angelo: < http://
>>> tinyurl.com/ycddsl> (A marks the spot)
>
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