UCLA Litbrarian

These literature resources will soon be available in the Young Research Library Reference Reading Room:

The Encyclopedia of American Literature, Revised Edition. New York: Facts on File, 2008.

The Facts on File Companion to World Poetry, 1900 to the Present, by R. Victoria Arana. New York: Facts on File, 2008.

The Facts on File Companion to the 20th Century World Novel, edited by Michael Sollars. New York: Facts on File, 2007.

There was an editorial in the LA Times recently, commenting on the Harvard faculty’s decision to make their scholarship freely available online.  Unfortunately, this editor made the mistake of assuming that open access is somehow antithetical to peer-review.  This is a key argument put forth by the publishing industry.  However, there is nothing about open access that precludes or prevents rigorous peer review.

Yesterday, Harvard faculty voted unanimously to allow the university to make the fruits of their scholarship freely available online.  This move is likely to shake current assumptions about scholarly publishing.  Keep an eye on the UCLA Library website and the UCLA Managing Your Intellectual Property blog for more on the implications of this move for University of California scholars. For more detailed coverage of the Harvard open access policy, here are a few links:

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/news/article/3943/harvard-faculty-adopts-open-access-requirement

From Inside Higher Ed:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/02/13/openaccess

From Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080213-harvards-faculty-of-arts-and-sciences-goes-open-access.html

This item will be of interest to those of you who, though supportive of the efforts to digitize books in the public domain, still like to hold the physical piece in your hands.  I just learned of “an experimental non-commercial project to archive and re-publish public domain works.”  Publicdomainreprints.org is a non-profit operation started by Yakov Shafranovich.  At this site, you can search for and locate out-of-print texts in the public domain that have been digitally archived (e.g., in the Internet Archive or Google Books) and then request that a print copy be made.  Once the request is completed, you get an email telling you that it is ready and then at that point, you can decide whether or not to purchase it.

In September 2007, the Literatures in English Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) published its “Research Competency Guidelines for Literatures in English: Outcomes for Undergraduate English or American Literature Majors.”  You can find it in the September 2007 issue of College and Research Libraries News, which is available in the Young Research Library Current Periodicals stacks, call number Z671.C682.

The guidelines are meant to facilitate collaboration between faculty and librarians to the end of producing undergraduate English majors with research skills relevant to their field of study.  The outcomes include:

“I. Understand the structure of information within the field of literary research,”
II. Identify and use key literary research tools to locate relevant information,”
III. Plan effective search strategies and modify search strategies as needed,”
IV. Recognize and make appropriate use of library services in the research process,”
V. Understand that some information sources are more authoritative than others and demonstrate critical thinking in the research process,”
VI. Understand the technical and ethical issues involved in writing research essays,” and
VII. Locate information about the literary profession itself.”

(Excerpted from: ACRL Literatures in English Section Planning Committee. “Research Competency Guidelines for Literatures in English. ” College and Research Libraries News September 2007: 526-529.)