Categories » LIS Staff Interest

Middlebury and other colleges in the “Oberlin Group” have been institutional members of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) for many years. First, a bit of background: PLOS was established in 2000 to provide high-quality peer-reviewed open-access (i.e. it doesn’t cost the reader anything – no subscription fees) online journals in the biological sciences. While most journals in the “hard” sciences rely on subscriptions from readers and publication fees from authors, PLOS relies solely on publication fees from authors.

For a modest annual fee, our membership with PLOS has enabled our faculty to publish articles in PLOS journals for a discounted publication fee. Recently, the Oberlin Group was informed that PLOS is discontinuing the institutional member program – and its discounted publication fees. Please note this does NOT mean that PLOS will cease publication of its journals. PLOS Biology (the first PLOS journal), and the other PLOS journals will continue to be published, online, accessible to anyone, anywhere. If you have questions, please email eaccess-admin@middlebury.edu

Commencement Address
Watch author Jonathan Safran Foer’s commencement thought-provoking address. Then, congratulate Media Services and LIS staff responsible for capturing and streaming this event! And finally, read one of Safran Foer’s books from our library collection.

Google Reader Replacement
Attention, people saddened by the July 1 demise of Google Reader: I found a replacement that I (Carrie) like! The Old Reader. It’s in beta, but hopefully if enough people use it, it’ll last at least as long as Google Reader. I tried NetVibes but found it wasn’t syncing frequently enough. I tried Feedly but found that within categories, I wasn’t able to sort feeds manually (they sort alphabetically and it seems that can’t be changed). Here’s one blog  (among MANY) that describes these readers: LifeHacker: Five Best Google Reader Alternatives.

Open Access
The fox offering to guard the hen-house?
Jennifer Howard. “Publishers Propose Public-Private Partnership to Support Access to Research.”The Chronicle of Higher Education. Wired Campus, June 4, 2013.

Reunion weekend is coming up, and alumni are asking how to log in to JSTOR.

To access JSTOR for Middlebury alumni visit http://go.middlebury.edu/jstoralum (go/jstoralum). Once you’re there, you’ll be instructed to log in with your alumni username and password.

(Note: The alumni username/password is different from the midd username/password used for students’ middlebury.edu email accounts. If the alum hasn’t yet created an alumni pasword, look for the link: “Not yet registered for the community? Click here to register now!” ). Then, enjoy!

JSTOR is a full-text archive of over 1000 scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. All Middlebury alumni can access our JSTOR archived journals, dating up to five years ago.