LibGuides V2 Search Display Like many libraries right now, my institution is working towards upgrading to SpringShare LibGuides V2. Update 15/1/2014 just went live! Like many libraries, we took the opportunity to revamp many aspects of Libguides v2. One of the areas, we spent the most effort on was the front page.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Somehow though, I doubt successful libraries are all alike except in the most general of ways. Still, these are some of the changes or trends in librarianship in the year of 2014 that resonated with me or occupied me. A lot of it probably is highly specific to my current institution and environment so your mileage might vary.

I was recently invited to give a talk at the Swedish Summon User Group meeting and I presented about possible scenarios for the future of web scale discovery. As Web Scale Discovery in libraries goes back to roughly 2009, most academic libraries have by now had 2-3 years of grappling with the concept.

In How academic libraries may change when Open Access becomes the norm  , I argued that as open access takes hold, academic libraries will increasingly focus on Expertise based services like bibliometrics, open access publishing, GIS services, Research data management and more. The question is this, with this change in focus how should academic libraries reflect these changes in priorities on their library website?

https://medium.com/@aarontay/from-confusion-to-expertise-d04bd02d2ec6 Trying something new this time. I have started to post on Medium. Read the post "From Confusion to Expertise" there. Some brief impressions The interface is indeed as clean and well designed as I have heard, allowing writers to knock out simple yet professional looking posts. One of the selling points of Medium, where you can easily submit to "collections" is gone.

Like many academic library bloggers, I occasionally fancy myself as a "trend spotter" and am prone to attempts at predicting the future. The trend I am increasingly convinced that is going to have a great impact on how academic libraries will function is the rise of Open Access.

Regular readers of my blog know that I am interested in discovery, and the role academic libraries should play in promoting discovery for our patrons. If you feel the same, here are a mix of links I came across recently on the topic that might be of interest The Number of papers in Google Scholar is estimated to be about 100 million When talking about discovery one can't avoid discussion of Google Scholar.

At library school, I was taught the concept of nested boolean. In particular, I was taught a particular search strategy which goes like this.

Google Scholar is increasingly becoming a subject that an academic librarian cannot afford to be ignorant about. Various surveys have shown usage of Google Scholar is rising among researchers, particularly beginning and intermediate level researchers.  Our own internal statistics such as link resolver statistics and views of Libguides on Google Scholar, tell a similar story.

I have been recently thinking of the types of expertise academic librarians have and how recent trends in academic librarianship have made things harder.

Every librarian worth his salt knows that despite the rise of web scale discovery services, Google and Google Scholar are often the go-to tools of researchers. In particular, while we prefer to direct our users to the official published version, we know that any free copy will often work in a pinch and Google Scholar in particular is the #1 tool out there to look for free copies floating on the web.