NYSHEI News

Patrick Callahan, Director of the Library at Purchase College, has joined the NYSHEI Governing Board representing the SUNY 4-year colleges.

Mr. Callahan became Purchase College Library Director in 1999.  Prior to that, he worked for almost twenty years in technical services, including as Assistant Dean for Collections and Technical Services at St. John’s University (Queens, NY), Assistant Dean for Technical Services at Ball State University (Muncie, IN), Head of Cataloging at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and as a cataloger at the Center for Research Libraries (Chicago, IL).

Mr. Callahan has twice served as president of the Westchester Academic Library Directors Organization (WALDO) and has served on its Executive Board for over twelve years.   He has served as chair of the SUNY Council of Library Directors and as president of the New York Technical Services Librarians. Mr. Callahan served on numerous American Library Association committees including as chair of the ALCTS Committee to Study Serials Cataloging and chair of the ALCTS Catalog Form and Function Committee.

He holds a MLS from Indiana University, a MA in American History from Ball State, and a BA from the College of William and Mary.  Mr. Callahan will fill the NYSHEI Board seat being vacated by Constantia Constantinou of SUNY Maritime College who will be on sabbatical.

Four NYSHEI member libraries have been selected to participate in the Value, Outcomes, and Return on Investment study (“Lib-Value”), conducted under sponsorship of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

• Baruch College (CUNY)
• Brooklyn College (CUNY)
• SUNY University at Buffalo
• SUNY Buffalo State College

Participation in this national study is being coordinated through NYSHEI, in partnership with Nylink, and Bruce Kingma of Syracuse University.

The Lib-Value study is headed by Principal Investigator Carol Tenopir and New York state coordinator Bruce Kingma.  Lib-Value is the third phase of two previous studies which considered the return on investment (ROI) of academic library electronic collections in terms of grants income (Luther 2008; Tenopir et al. 2010).  Lib-Value extends this line of research by looking not only at ROI, but also more broadly at the library’s value, particularly as evident in three functional areas: research, teaching and learning, and professional and social outcomes.

“The results of this study should greatly enhance the advocacy efforts of NYSHEI,” said Executive Director Jason Kramer.  “As we work to gain new funds for academic and research libraries, and defend against the worst effects of a continuing budget crisis, empirical evidence of the value of information services to research, scholarly, and the state economy will be a boon.  It will help clarify the issues for state policy makers.”

NYSHEI congratulates the four institutions for their selection and applauds their willingness to participate.

Delivering timely, open, online access to the results of federally funded research in the United States will significantly increase the return on the public’s investment in science, according to a new study by John Houghton at the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University. The study, “The Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded Research Outputs,” co-authored by Bruce Rasmussen and Peter Sheehan, was released today by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).

Public funding of scientific, technical, and medical research assumes that economic and social returns to taxpayers will exceed the amount of the research investment. A proposal currently before the U.S. Congress – the Federal Research Public Access Act, H.R. 5037 and S. 1373 (FRPAA) – seeks to ensure and maximize the public’s return by delivering open online access to the results of research funded through 11 federal agencies no later than six months after publication in a journal. The Victoria University study outlines one approach to measuring the potential impact of this policy on returns on public investment in research and development (R&D).

The new study examines the effect of key variables that influence the potential return on investment from this research.  These variables concern both access to research – including content embargoes – and the efficiency with which research is applied in practice.  The study also defines the additional data and model developments necessary for an accurate estimate of the policy’s likely impact.

Depending on the assumed cost of data repositories, the study’s preliminary models suggest that FRPAA’s enactment could lead to a return on the public’s investment of between four and 24 times the costs. Two thirds of this return would accrue within the United States, with the remainder spilling over to other countries.  In the U.S., the study suggests that the benefits of public access might total between three and 16 times the cost of the public’s investment.  ¬¬

The study closely examines the model’s sensitivity to critical assumptions and concludes that the benefits of public access would exceed the costs over a wide range of values.  As the study’s authors note, “[I]t is difficult to imagine any plausible values for the input data and model parameters that would lead to a fundamentally different answer.”

“It’s important that discussions about the risks and benefits of public access to government-funded research focus on empirical evidence and rational argument,” added Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant. “The model Houghton and his colleagues have developed facilitates such a logical approach and provides a framework for assessing objectively the economic effect of various scenarios.”

The report’s findings are based on available evidence. To enable others to explore the modeling, an online model is available from http://www.cfses.com/FRPAA. The full study, “The Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded Research Outputs,” is available on the SPARC Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

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SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. SPARC’s advocacy, educational and publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

NYSHEI is a active partner of SPARC and the Alliance for Taxpayer Access

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on the issue of Public Access to Federally Funded Research on Thursday, July 29 at 2pm EST in the Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2154.

The hearing is being convened by the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and
National Archives (Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO), and is intended to provide an opportunity for members of Congress
to hear the perspective of a broad range of stakeholders on the potential impact of opening up access to the
results of federally funded research.

NYSHEI stands with  SPARC and our fellow coalition members in the Open Access Working Group and Alliance for Taxpayer Access.  Together we have been active in requesting that such a hearing take place. This is a wonderful opportunity for Congress to become more deeply educated on the nuances of public access, and also to position FRPAA to receive heightened attention and consideration for further movement.

The Subcommittee’s interest stems from the growing number of visible expressions of interest in the issue of public access that have surfaced in recent months, in both the Legislative and Executive branches of government. Notably, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy earlier this year hosted a Public Access Policy Forum on mechanisms that would leverage federal investments in scientific research and increase access to information.

Additionally, H.R. 5037, the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which was introduced into the House on April 15 by Rep. Mike Doyle (R-PA) and is supported by a growing bi-partisan host of cosponsors, was referred to the Committee. The bill, and its identical Senate counterpart (introduced by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX)), proposes to require those eleven federal agencies with extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to implement policies that deliver timely, free, online public access to the published results of the research they fund.

According to the notice:

“The hearing will examine the state of public access to federally-funded research in science, technology, and medicine. The hearing will assess and delineate the complex issues surrounding public access policies. The hearing will afford an opportunity for representatives from the areas of publishing, science and research, education and patient care to provide perspective on challenges, potential impact and opportunities regarding increased access.”

This open, public hearing will be held Thursday, July 29, at 2:00 PM in Rayburn House Office Building, room 2154.

“We are pleased that the Committee is creating this opportunity to shine a light on the issue of public access and examine the opportunities and implications it presents in an open, public forum,” said Heather Joseph, spokesperson for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). “This is an issue of deep importance to a wide range of stakeholders – from scientists to students, entrepreneurs to educators, publishers and the public. We welcome this chance for a diverse array of viewpoints on the issue to be heard.”

The growing interest in exploring effective public access policies in the U.S. reflects a larger worldwide trend. Around the globe, national and non-profit funding agencies are recognizing the opportunity to increase the return on their research grants by requiring that findings be made freely accessible on the Internet.

This is your chance to help.  New York now has an innovation wiki.  NYSHEI has long argued that innovation is reliant on access to the “information infrastructure” that is the academic and research libraries.  I encourage you to use this wiki to make sure our partners in industry and across higher education are aware of the critical information resources available at your library.

Governor Paterson’s Task Force on Industry-Higher Education Partnerships was commissioned to explore how the State can better integrate its university-based research and development resources into the economy. That Task Force constantly heard of the need for a centralized information source that provides information about “what’s out there in terms of assets.” To that end, we are launching the New York State Innovation Asset Inventory, an open-forum, wiki-based website which includes brief profiles and contact information of many of the state’s most important investment, research and development and business startup assets. The website is www.KnowledgeNY.org/wiki.

ADDING/EDITING ENTRIES

In order to create a new entry, follow the directions on the home page.

In order to edit your individual asset’s page click on the link that will take you to your asset’s page off of the main page.  On the top of the page, just above your asset’s name, is a tab reading “Edit”.  Clicking on this tab will bring you to a screen from which you can edit your asset’s information as it appears on our site.  You may, but need not, create an account (in the event you do not, your computer’s IP address will be logged along with your edits). Formatting tools are available for you to use at the top of this editing screen.