Global Currents

The International and Area Studies Library invited the public to tour the new library space and participate in a celebratory library opening reception on Tuesday, March 6, 2012. The IAS Library is composed of almost two million volumes in more than 40 different languages. Area and thematic collections include: Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Slavic and east Europe, Global Studies and European Union Studies. The new library space will foster global competency knowledge and supplement opportunities for student and scholar collaboration. It will also allow for coordination among different area specialists via one specific service and access point.

At 4 p.m., attendees gathered for a speech by Dr. Deborah Jakubs, the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University. Jakubs discussed challenges area studies libraries are facing in today’s economy and then went on to discuss strategies international and area studies libraries are using. Some of these strategies include joint digital libraries, grey literature preservation, joint buying, deepening local collections and decreasing collection development in areas well covered elsewhere among others. Jakubs also examined the demand for knowledge on global issues in today’s climate and noted that students’ education is becoming globalized. Jakubs then encouraged international and area studies libraries to understand demand and interests levels when deciding on areas to collect in and the need for libraries to study the prevalence of different types of library materials around the globe, citing the question of how often e-books are used in the Middle East.

Jakubs closed her speech asking the audience a series of questions and then opened the floor up for the audience to ask her questions. A discussion between the audience and Jakubs ensued, citing global awareness, digitization, issues facing libraries around the world, Mexico’s consideration to produce only digital documents, the extent of English language library materials overlap, the levels of trust that cause it, how to avoid this with foreign language materials and policy regarding donations to libraries. After the speech, the audience was invited up to the IAS Library for a reception.

Join us for one hour, hands-on workshops that will help you improve your research and information management skills.
Upcoming sessions include:

• Personal Information Management: Strategies and Tools:
• Think Like a Newshound: Navigating the Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe
• Twitter for Professional Development
• Your Research Rights: Ownership Awareness to Maximize the Impact
• ICPSR: Health, Economic, Social & Political Data for Secondary Analysis
• Using the Library After Graduation

And much more! For more details and registration: http://illinois.edu/calendar/list/4068

Dr. Myron Gutmann from the NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate will be speaking at 10:30 am Thursday, March 15, in Room 126 LIS, as part of the Illinois Research Data Initiative. Dr. Gutmann's talk is entitled ”Data Access for Research and Teaching in the Twenty-First Century.

Abstract
The scientific community is facing new opportunities and new requirements in the ways that data are managed and made available for future research. The biggest change that we see is the dramatic increase in the volume of data produced by observations, experiments, and simulations, which has turned what was already a steady stream of data into a flood. That rising tide of data is being shared by research networks that span the globe, calling for new infrastructure and new architectures that will allow researchers to make use of data from around the world and engage in new long-distance collaborations. These new collaborations now mostly involve researchers, but the availability of new forms of data and the creation of new mechanisms for sharing those data make it possible to expand access in a meaningful way to students and citizen scientists. At the same time, policy makers are moving forward rapidly to require that data from publicly-financed research projects be shared with other researchers, while they simultaneously concern themselves with protecting the privacy and confidentiality of human research subjects. This presentation will discuss these changes in the data preservation and sharing environment, especially as they relate to data for the social, behavioral and economic sciences, and suggest ways that all the potential stakeholders in the process -- funding agencies, universities, data archives, libraries, researchers, teachers, and students can work together in the future to get the most out of our data investments.

Bio
Myron P. Gutmann is assistant director of the National Science Foundation, where he leads NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate. He is also professor of history and information and research professor in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Gutmann has broad interests in interdisciplinary historical research, especially health, population, economy, and the environment. Since 1995 he has led a multi-site research program about population, agriculture, and environmental change in the U.S. Great Plains, which has produced important research results that show how demographic and agricultural change both respond to environmental conditions and shape environmental outcomes such as greenhouse gas production. As director of Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, he was a leader in the archiving and dissemination of electronic research materials related to society, population, and health, with a special interest in the protection of respondent confidentiality.

More on the Illinois Research Data Initiative can be found at go.illinois.edu/data