Articles by Marydee Ojala
Information gathered from ChatGPT and other generative AI chatbots have been infiltrating the scholarly literature, according to several accounts appearing in the popular press, which is worrisome not only for scholars and librarians but also for the wider world. Distrust of scientific research has enormous implications. How bad is the problem? Marydee Ojala investigates.
Posted 2 April 2024
Taxonomy Boot Camp is once again presenting its Bite-sized series, which provides information on new technologies and insights on taxonomy tools in a webinar format.
Posted 5 March 2024
Cyberattacks on major libraries, including the British Library and the Toronto (Canada) Public Library, have had a crippling effect on their ability to provide even routine services. We look at what happened, the repercussions, the cost involved to recover and how to prevent such calamities going forward.
Posted 6 February 2024
Sage Policy Profiles, which is free to use, demonstrates the influence of research on global policymaking through a discovery process. Results can be viewed and exported in several visual formats and shared.
Posted 2 January 2024
For the first time ever, the same person received both of these prestigious awards by the UK electronic information Group (UKeiG)
Posted 5 December 2023
People entered and behaved normally, reading and checking out books, not noticing the absence of library staff.
Posted 19 November 2023
Beth Rudden delivered an inspiring keynote talk about moving responsible AI forward in our communities at Internet Librarian Connect (ILC), the virtual conference held 16-19 October, 2023. She concentrated on describing the AI revolution, giving a practical guide to AI experimentation, and stressing the need for librarians to be courageous stewards.
Posted 7 November 2023
Programs that reach out to artists and to minority youth interested in starting successful businesses can help individuals transcend dismal economic conditions
Posted 1 August 2023
This half day Zoom event focusses on Airtable, recruitment, product & semantic taxonomies and more
Posted 6 June 2023
Librarians' skill sets align perfectly with the job requirements for prompt engineering
Posted 6 June 2023
Librarians around the world rejoiced that a fellow librarian, Tracie D. Hall, was recognised as one of the world's most influential people by Time magazine.
Posted 2 May 2023
Publishers Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House filed the lawsuit against Internet Archive (IA) in 2020, claiming IA had illegally scanned and uploaded 127 of their books for readers to download for free, negatively impacting their sales and the authors' royalties. On 25 March 2023, U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl ruled in favor of the publishing houses on strict copyright grounds, stating that IA was making "derivative" works when they created electronic copies of printed books. The Internet Archive said it will appeal the ruling.
Posted 4 April 2023
At the 2019 Academic Publishing in Europe (APE) conference, Judy Verses, then Executive Vice President, Research, Wiley Inc., announced that Wiley had signed a partnership agreement with Projekt DEAL. At this year's APE conference, Irina Sens, Deputy Director, Head of Library Operations, German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), reported on "After the DEAL," an assessment of progress and a suggestion of possible ways forward.
Posted 7 February 2023
At the 2022 ISIC (Information Seeking in Context) biennial conference, held in Berlin, information researchers from around the world gathered to share their research about information seeking behaviours. If that all sounds very academic and scholarly, it mainly was. But that doesn't mean practicing librarians couldn't come away with a few nuggets they could use.
Posted 1 November 2022
The ebooks, many of which were already incorporated into course syllabi worldwide, disappeared from ProQuest at the end of August, which marked the beginning of the school year for many institutions of higher learning.
Posted 4 October 2022
OCLC expands web visibility subscription options to improve impact and exposure for more libraries worldwide.
Posted 6 September 2022
At the National Library of Finland, re-envisioning its core roles led to interesting challenges for library management. Liisa Savolainen, Deputy Director, asked "To be or not to be? A library or an IT house or both?" when speaking in Dublin during an IFLA Satellite event sponsored by the Knowledge Management section and the Digital Humanities SIG. Spoiler alert: The answer is "both".
Posted 2 August 2022
On 13 June 2022, OCLC filed suit against Clarivate PLC and its subsidiaries, Clarivate Analytics (US) LLP, Ex Libris, and ProQuest in the United States District Court, Southern District of Ohio.
Posted 5 July 2022
he acquisition, said CCC, reflects its ongoing commitment to promoting interoperability, addressing market friction and collaborating with stakeholders. It also further solidifies its transformation from focusing on copyright compliance and content to becoming involved with the entire lifecycle of content creation, research management, and information analysis as part of organisation's workflow.
Posted 7 June 2022
Publishers are invited to support the initiative and nominate content to be summarized and promoted.
Posted 7 June 2022
21 journals to be renamed as Springer Nature and Clarivate work together to enable titles to become gender neutral.
Posted 3 May 2022
After the release of Secretary General Gerald Leitner from his duties in April, followed quickly by resignations of the President-elect, Antonia Arahova, and the Treasurer, Perry Moree, new IFLA elections are scheduled.
Posted 3 May 2022
While we wait for the opportunity to host an in-person Internet Librarian International conference, we decided to go ahead with another Bite-sized one. On 11 May 2022, we'll have a half day virtual event, featuring librarians from the United States, Germany, and Mexico covering library technology, preserving videos, and information literacy topics.
Posted 3 May 2022
CABI launched searchRxiv (pronounced ‘search archive'), its new open access platform. The website is designed to let researchers report, store and share their searches, thus helping with the review and re-use of existing searches to make research quicker and easier.
Posted 5 January 2022
Artificial Intelligence (AI) pervades our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not. AI technologies power our digital personal assistants, show us traffic flows on our roads, monitor our health and diagnose diseases, guide our product selections when we shop online, and give financial advice. Libraries also benefit from AI technologies and AI applications are increasing.
Posted 5 January 2022
ResearchGate and Rockefeller University Press (RUP) completed the first phase of their content syndication pilot partnership, in line with other agreements between publishers and ResearchGate.
Posted 7 December 2021
Despite the increasing awareness of the perils of predatory journals and librarians' warnings about their dangers, the number of journals is rising not falling as the academic community had hoped.
Posted 5 October 2021
Dialog Solutions announced it was adding the ClinicalTrials.gov database to its platform. Since ClinicalTrials.gov is a free database on the web, what is the advantage to searching it on Dialog?
Posted 5 October 2021
Our wonderful Internet Librarian International community, confronted with the pandemic-dictated cancellation of our conference two years in a row, took full advantage of the virtual world to attend Bite-sized ILI on 22 September 2021. A half-day event, Bite-sized ILI featured three sessions and five speakers. Over 80 people registered, from 20 countries, emphasizing the truly international nature of ILI.
Posted 5 October 2021
The debate over controlled digital lending continues, with presentations from the World Library & Information Congress, statements from IFLA and new products from Ex Libris and EBSCO.
Posted 7 September 2021
Axel Springer signed an agreement to acquire POLITICO, Nexstar acquired digital media platform The Hill, and Forbes merged with the special interest acquisition company Magnum Opus Acquisition Ltd.
Posted 7 September 2021
The New Yale Book of Quotations was published 31 August 2021 by Yale University Press, after over 15 years of preparation.
Posted 1 September 2021
Dataminr, a real-time information discovery platform, acquired WatchKeeper, a data geo-visualisation platform for corporate enterprises.
Posted 3 August 2021
The United Nations' Dag Hammarskjöld Library hosted a world-class, virtual Open Science Conference over 3 half-days, 21-23 July 2021. Designed to include speakers from around the globe, its tag line was "From Tackling the Pandemic to Addressing Climate Change". The host for the event, Thanos Giannakopolous, Chief Librarian at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, kept the conference on an even keel, despite a few technical hiccups.
Posted 3 August 2021
Clarivate announced it will acquire ProQuest from the privately-held, family-owned, Cambridge Information Group and the minority owner Atairos. Both these library titans are deeply embedded in libraries worldwide so this industry consolidation has significant implications not only for investors but also for the entire information industry, broadly defined.
Posted 1 June 2021
The European Union have proposed new rules and actions regarding Artificial Intelligence, in line with its desire to make "Europe fit for the Digital Age". Although most commentary regarding the proposed AI regulations have centred on "Big Tech", the library community is also affected. Library organisations, particularly IFLA, have been interested in issues surrounding new technologies such as AI for several years.
Posted 1 June 2021
Internet librarians spend much of their working life in the present. However, two presentations at the 2021 NISOPlus conference brought home the importance of both looking back and looking forward. The speakers, one a Ghanaian librarian advocating for Indigenous Knowledge and the other a researcher from Japan investigating a future society enhanced with avatars, stimulated so many thoughts in my mind about the role of libraries, librarians, and our digital future.
Posted 4 May 2021
FiscalNote's strategic acquisition of Oxford Analytica should enhance FiscalNote's software, data and content offerings with Oxford Analytica's geopolitical intelligence and analysis.
Posted 1 March 2021
A Brainteaser for those intrigued by fictional characters and their imaginary bookcases.
Posted 15 February 2021
Sci-Hub has been a thorn in the side of commercial publishers almost since its founding in 2011. Recent legal actions in India may succeed in curbing its activities, something that similar lawsuits in the U.S. have failed to accomplish.
Posted 2 February 2021
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doubled down on its commitment to Open Access when, on 5 January 2021, it announced the acquisition of Hindawi Limited, one of the world's fastest growing OA scientific research publishers, for a total purchase price of $298 million. This is not a total surprise, as the companies have been publishing partners since 2016 and the OA movement has been growing in momentum. Wiley has a track record of recent acquisitions in the technology space, including zyBooks, Knewton Alta, and Atypon.
Posted 2 February 2021
Need to take a bite out of your taxonomy efforts? Taxonomy Bootcamp London, a sister conference to Internet Librarian International, is hosting a Bite-sized version on 2 March 2021.
Posted 22 January 2021
Advances in machine-generated content are changing scholarly publishing and Springer Nature is in the forefront of adopting its usage. What does this mean for researchers, scholarly publishing and librarians?
Posted 5 January 2021
Google Trends presents excellent opportunities for Internet Librarians to examine differences in terminology and popularity of search topics over time.
Posted 5 January 2021
ProQuest's investment in virtual conference venue Underline Science is a harbinger of making conference papers and presentations more findable for librarians and the scholarly community.
Posted 1 December 2020
Moody's acquisition of Acquire Media provides indications about the future of news aggregators but raises questions about library access to Moody's full range of analytics products.
Posted 3 November 2020
The newly released draft Recommendation on Open Science by UNESCO is an important milestone towards establishing a global policy for openness in scientific research and dissemination of results.
Posted 3 November 2020
The Portsmouth City Library wants its Harry Potter first edition back, along with the £42,500 recent sales price
Posted 20 October 2020
European Union magistrate Maciej Szpunar issued an advisory opinion stating that the digital cultural library run by Preussischer Kulturbesitz (the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) does not violate copyright laws.
Posted 14 September 2020
The purchase of SlideShare from LinkedIn by Scribd raises questions about slide and document sharing.
Posted 1 September 2020
In South Africa, copyright law has become both contentious and political. The Copyright Amendment Bill (B13-2017) was introduced in the National Assembly on 1 May 2017. The intent was to modernize the Copyright Act, which has been in force since 1978. Not only was this written before the internet became such a powerful force, it was during Apartheid. Clearly, it needs to be brought up to date. How, exactly to do that is at the heart of the contentiousness of the current process.
Posted 1 September 2020
The extension to the Württemberg State Library in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, received the Architecture 2020 Concrete Award.
Posted 22 August 2020
Kelly LeBlanc, a knowledge management and taxonomy specialist at FireOak Strategies, looked at GDPR compliance now that the legislation has been in place for awhile.
Posted 12 August 2020
LYRASIS, a non-profit organization of libraries, archives, museums, and research institutions, based in the United States, published the 2020 Open Content Survey Report, which focuses on open content activities within the United States (U.S.) surrounding Open Access (OA) Scholarship, Open Data, and Open Educational Resources (OERs).
Posted 7 August 2020
Winners of the 2020 Altmetric Research Award are Dr Fabio Castro Gouveia, a scientometrics and altmetrics specialist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil, and Dr Elaine Rabello, a researcher with dual appointments at the Institute of Social Medicine, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Wageningen University, Netherlands.
Posted 28 July 2020
The newly-launched Platform for Responsible Editorial Policies (PREP) facilitates the transparent review and research into peer-review procedures at 401 journals.
Posted 7 July 2020
Google's latest annual spam report said its preventative spam efforts resulted in over 99% of search results being spam-free and that it found 25 billion pages discovered every day are spammy.
Posted 7 July 2020
ProQuest's platform enhancements that make subscription and open access content readily searchable on the open web reveals a volume and variety of source material of benefit to students, teachers and the general public.
Posted 7 July 2020
IFLA, the International Federation of Libraries and Institutions, compiled a guide to the policies and procedures of libraries around the world as they move towards reopening libraries.
Posted 7 July 2020
The revised Business Research Competencies is now available.
Posted 3 July 2020
The Boccaccio Project Will Feature New Works by 10 Pairs of Composers and Performers to be Premiered Online During 10 Days in June
Posted 13 June 2020
The Knowledge Academy have identified the most commonly misspelt words in Google searches. They've also found an uptick in people using Alexa or Siri to find the spellings they don't know.
Posted 8 June 2020
In order to adapt the current strategy and organisational scheme to the priorities and realities of the Qwant search engine, a new leadership team is now in place.
Posted 4 June 2020
The UK government decided to eliminate VAT on digital publications earlier than originally planned.
Posted 4 June 2020
The pandemic has focussed librarians' attention on copyright. WIPO has some new initiatives that affect the situation.
Posted 1 June 2020
Two days of discussions about academic publishing covered China's role in OA, Plan S, value propositions, book publishing and much more. The event was not without controversy!
Posted 6 March 2019
The theme of the 20th International Conference on Grey Literature was 'Research Data Fuels and Sustains Grey Literature'.
Posted 7 February 2019
A wide range of topics were covered at INFORUM in Prague, including library strategy and advocacy, tech developments, preservation, archiving and digitisation.
Posted 12 June 2018
The 2018 Academic Publishing Europe conference (APE) considered Open Science, Open Access, blockchain for publishing, AI - and more.
Posted 7 February 2018
The Association of Independent Information Professionals 2017 conference focused on the theme of Resilience, Reinvention, Renewal: Pivoting for Success.
Posted 2 June 2017
The Academic Publishing Europe conference considered the ethics of publishing, covering everything from Peer Review to Piracy. Marydee Ojala reports.
Posted 9 March 2017
A silver tree at a conference was used by delegates to capture their favourite search tips.
Posted 2 November 2016
The word innovation is losing its power. If everything is innovative, nothing is innovative. True innovation, however, exists and will have an impact on how librarians do their jobs and how people perceive information.
Posted 12 August 2016
The 2016 Association of Independent Information Professionals conference explored how partnering impacts the unique characteristics of information businesses.
Posted 3 May 2016
Marydee Ojala joins other 'battle scarred veterans' of scholarly publishing at the 2016 Academic Publishing Europe (APE) conference in Germany.
Posted 8 February 2016
Marydee Ojala joined hundreds of others 'fishing for treasure in the information lake' in Prague.
Posted 19 June 2015
From privacy and surveillance to hyper-connectivity, Marydee Ojala encourages librarians everywhere to respond to IFLA's "tremendously important" report.
Posted 6 September 2013
The advantages of etextbooks seem obvious, yet student acceptance is still low. Marydee Ojala explores the latest etextbook trends and initiatives.
Posted 18 February 2013
Digitisation breathes new life into collections, making them accessible beyond their physical location. Four real world examples highlight how digitisation opens up collections.
Posted 2 November 2012
In order to demonstrate value librarians must be willing to employ ROI methodologies and back up their claims with data says Marydee Ojala.
Posted 11 October 2012
The BBC is using dynamic semantic publishing technologies to bring the Olympics to the world.
Posted 31 July 2012
The annual conference of the American Library Association (ALA) welcomed delegates from over 80 countries. Marydee Ojala reports from Anaheim.
Posted 23 July 2012
Positive predictions, future opportunities and lively debates at the Academic Publishing in Europe conference.
Posted 10 February 2012
At the the debut of a new information community conference in Berlin the conversations covered linked data, social media and research in corporate environments.
Posted 27 May 2011