Open Password – Wednesday July 7, 2021
#944
Libraries, guides to the future – Libraries, projects and examples – Elisabeth Simon – Erda Lapp – Silke Sewing – Renate Zimmermann – Willi Bredemeier – David R. Lankes – Expect More – Information Professionals – Hans-Christoph Hobohm – Information Professionals – Target groups – Scientists Libraries – Public Libraries – Scientific Community – Future of Information Science – ZB MED – Open Password – Libraries and Information Science – Electronic Revolution – Open Access – Citizen Science – Good Practice – Helga Schwarz – German Library Institute – Lighthouses – Hans-Jakob Tebarth – Frank Seeliger – Special Libraries – University Libraries – Oliver Renn – ETH Zurich – TH Wildau – Leibniz Center for Psychological Information and Documentation – Bianca Weber – Michael Bosnjak – Erich Weichselgärtner – Tom Rosmann – UB Ruhr-Universität Bochum – Arkadiusz Danszcyk – Research data management – Scientific infrastructure for non-textual Materials – Open Educational Resources – Mayor of Cologne – Mayor of Berlin-Marzahn – Meiningen – Libraries in the pandemic – Lockdown – Home office – Students after the pandemic – Purchasing decisions – Influencers – Twenties – Teens – Fact account – Social media – YouTube – Instagram – Blogger – Roland Heintze – Crisis Communication – NFD14DataScience – ZB MED – Joint Science Conference – Research Data Infrastructure – Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems – ZB MED – Reimund Neugebauer – Sonja Schimmler – PMG Press Monitor – X-CAGO – Digital Archive Solutions – Data Conversion – Ingo Kästner – Koos Hussem
Cover story
In the spirit of the new publication “Libraries”: Libraries should not only
be guides to the future. It’s you.
II.
Purchasing decisions The growing power of influencers among twenties Every second person in their 20s listens to YouTubers & Instagrammers when shopping
III.
NFDI4DataScience: Advancing the data science and artificial intelligence community
IV.
PMG Press Monitor: With the takeover of software developer X-CAGO, another step towards becoming a central data hub for publishers
Accompanying the new publication “Libraries”
Libraries should not just
be guides to the future. It’s you.
By Elisabeth Simon, Simon Publishing House for Library Knowledge
Elisabeth Simon at her stand at the Leipzig Book Fair
Libraries. Guide to the future. Projects and examples. Published by Erda Lapp, Silke Sewing, Renate Zimmermann and Willi Bredemeier, Simon Verlag für Bibliothekswissen, Berlin 2021. Libraries should not just be “signposts to the future”, they are. This shouldn’t just be proven through many projects and examples, we prove it. That is the intention of this book, which was edited by Erda Lapp, Silke Sewing, Renate Zimmermann and Willi Bredemeier and is published by my publisher. We have maintained the confidence expressed in the title “Libraries – a guide to the future” in recent months, even though the acquisition of contributions and coordination with the authors took place during the Corona pandemic. Yes, libraries also suffered major damage from the virus. More on that below.
Libraries as a guide for whom, for what and how? Here we primarily draw on three sources. Firstly, there is David R. Lankes and his book “Expect More – Demanding Better Libraries for Today’s Complex World”. This was excellently translated for German-speaking countries by two editors of this book, Erda Lapp and Willi Bredemeier, under the title “Expect more! Demand better libraries for a more complex world” published and edited by Hans-Christoph Hobohm. As information professionals, whether publishers, editors or translators, we knew beforehand what makes libraries indispensable. But we had not yet found the arguments for libraries compiled as well as in this book.
The target group of librarians is the scientific community, for example at the university where the scientific library is located, or the citizens of a city or municipality where the public library is located. The “Demand more!” should not be seen as a criticism of the libraries, but rather as an incentive to become better and better in a continuous innovation process and to respond even better to the needs of “their” scientists and citizens. To do this, libraries, as centers of knowledge and collaboration, must enter into a symbiosis with the scientific community and individual scientists as well as various initiatives from citizens and individual citizens. It goes without saying that the scientific community includes everyone who is active in science, from professors to students, and at least the public libraries also want to introduce the less educated to sophisticated content.
In his book, Lankes uses many examples to demonstrate that excellent libraries are not only desirable, but also exist in many places. However, it is largely limited to American libraries. The book “Expect More!” was also a success in German-speaking countries. However, the question was repeatedly asked where the examples of good practice and exemplary activities from Germany, Austria and Switzerland were. “To make up for this” was a strong incentive for publishing this book.
Another source for this book was the reader “Future of Information Science – Does Information Science have a Future?” published by Willi Bredemeier. This book describes ways out of the crisis in information science (e.g. lack of knowledge and acceptance in politics, business and the general public ), discussed the search for a common frame of reference and put together a showcase of German-speaking information science from online marketing to “smart city” and “smart country”. Part of the book is dedicated to academic libraries, and here too the need for even closer collaboration between libraries and the academic community is emphasized.
Two subsequent events were based on the book “Future of the Information Economy”, one sponsored by the Berlin Working Group for Information, the other sponsored by ZB MED (Cologne), both in close partnership with Open Password. The speakers and discussants cited deepening the interdependencies between libraries and information science as the central prerequisite for overcoming the current challenges.
A third source for this book is our many years of personal experience in and with libraries. We are aware of the glory of academic libraries, without whose achievements Germany would not have been a world leader in knowledge in the 19th century until the First World War. In the late 20th century, as designers we were right in the middle or close to it as observers when the “electronic revolution” not only transformed the economy and society, but also found its way into libraries and we saw the development of libraries through to Open Access and Citizen Science accompanied over the decades.
During this long period of time, we have also found examples that are less easy to represent as good practice. Just take a look at the book by Helga Schwarz, which I also published (“The German Library Institute in the field of tension between mission and interest”, Berlin 2017). This also has to do with the fact that good practice can be achieved not least through cooperation, especially through international cooperation. However, cooperation between libraries used to be neglected because the librarians were primarily concerned with the size and beauty of their collections and so one library was competition with the other. These orientations could no longer be maintained with the “electronic revolution”.
In the meantime, with the help of new technologies, the number of library “beacons” or model cases for good practice has increased significantly and the trend towards better and even better has become unmistakable. When you read the contributions by Tebarth and Seeliger, for example, you can only be amazed at the imaginative and astonishing collaborations that small specialist and university libraries are capable of. However, electronic tools should not be absolute and conventional tools still have their importance, as Oliver Renn showed in his article. All of this encouraged us to describe some of these “lighthouses” in more detail – be it in an overall view of an institution or in an illustration of how libraries have acquired a new area of responsibility – as an incentive to do the same as these lighthouses do.
The conferences “Future of Information Science – Does Information Science have a Future?” in Berlin and “Future of Academic Libraries?!” in Cologne were reported in detail in the magazine Open Password. The book “Libraries. Guide to the future. “Projects and Examples” takes up this thread and begins with a journalistically prepared protocol of the ZB-MED event. Overall overviews of the present and future of academic libraries are given as well as professional discourses on current critical questions and possible library futures.
The following are representations of libraries and related institutions that have come closer to the ideal of a scientific library: the Chemistry-Biology-Pharmacy Information Center at ETH Zurich (Oliver Renn) – the university library at TH Wildau (Frank Seeliger) – the Leibniz Center for Psychological Information and Documentation/ZPID (Bianca Weber, Michael Bosnjak, Erich Weichselgärtner and Tom Rosmann) – the University Library of the Ruhr University Bochum (Erda Lapp) and the Martin Opitz Library (Arkadiusz Danszcyk and Hans-Jakob Tebarth). This shows that good practice is possible everywhere, whether in university libraries or special libraries or public libraries or other institutions in which the fulfillment of library duties is an important task. These can also include very small city libraries.
What follows is an explanation of how selected libraries have taken on new, innovative tasks and what they have achieved, for example in the areas of open access, research data management, the development of a scientific infrastructure for non-textual materials and the provision of open educational resources, to name just these . These examples also encourage us librarians to want to return to the heyday of academic libraries, but with a completely different understanding of services, with deeper knowledge of old and new target groups with whom we want to form communities, and with completely different tools.
The book ends with a “look at public libraries.” These are in fact very different from academic libraries because they address completely different target groups, for example children and seniors. From the librarians’ intellectually stimulating and heart-warming accounts of their establishment in public libraries from Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia to Berlin-Marzahn to Meiningen in Thuringia, it is indirectly clear that public libraries and academic libraries have become more distant from each other in recent decades than this should have been. This book should be an inspiration for public and academic libraries to come together when they have the opportunity, learn from each other and act together.
The event “Future of academic libraries?!” already took place under Corona conditions as a virtual Zoom conference, so the contributions addressed the new challenge. The pandemic is also mentioned in other articles. However, the overall focus of this book is on the continuity of what has been achieved so far. It must be acknowledged that the lockdown has set back many library services enormously, although librarians typically enthusiastically rebuilt basic digital services from home offices under the strict conditions.
To draw on the experiences of the University Library of the Ruhr University Bochum: Most users were satisfied with the online information, advice and training that the library currently provides. Nevertheless, using the library as a place of study is only possible for a fraction of students, preferably for students who are writing a thesis and do not have good work opportunities at home. The comfort of the library as a place for learning is still far from what was possible before the crisis, and the library cannot currently fulfill its role as a maker space and event on campus. Transferring these activities, at least partially, to the digital space is not easy and will take time and resources.
But a lot of the course has been set so that after the pandemic and even if we have to live with the virus in the long term, we can build on what the libraries did before the pandemic and continue to develop what they learned during the pandemic. To do this, libraries have to come up with new formats that make collaboration and interactions possible even under the conditions of the Corona period. Examples of student open access journals – there are such initiatives on art history and the history of the Mediterranean at the Ruhr University Bochum – are a start in the right direction.
A generation is now heading to universities that has experienced a lot of uncertainty and isolation at the end of their schooling due to the pandemic. One of the library’s tasks is to play a healing role here. Librarians can do that. It is in the library’s interest that the students’ experiences during their studies carry them through their future lives.
When designing this book, we wanted to try not to lag behind the innovative spirit of the library lighthouses. We have worked intensively with our authors, to whom we all owe a great debt of gratitude, with the aim, among other things, of making content that was initially aimed at small specialist groups attractive to a broader public. In order to reach as wide a public as possible, we chose three communication channels. The contributions appear in Open Password and are made available in the repositories of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Simon-Verlag. In addition, some of these contributions appear in this book.
May the content with which we tried to reach you through several communication channels be useful to you.
Purchasing decisions
The growing power of influencers among twenty-somethings
Every second person in their 20s listens
to YouTubers & Instagrammers while shopping
(Faktenkontor) Never before have influencers on social media exerted a greater influence on purchasing decisions: within a year, 21 percent of German Internet users aged 16 and over bought a product at least once because it was advertised by a YouTuber. 18 percent said they listened to the advice of Instagrammers when choosing purchases and services. Bloggers and other social media celebrities are also tempting people to spend money more than ever. This is shown by the current Social Media Atlas 2021 from the Hamburg communications consultancy Faktenkontor and the market researcher Toluna, for which 3,500 Internet users were surveyed representatively.
Bloggers & Co also influence consumption. 16 percent of online users found at least one convincing purchase suggestion in blogs within a year. Influencers active on other channels were also decisive for a consumption decision for 17 percent of Internet users.
The influence of influencers is increasing. The influence of YouTubers on purchasing decisions increased by four percentage points compared to the previous year. Instagrammers, bloggers and other social media celebrities each increased by five percentage points.
Instagram makes power shoppers. While YouTubers influence more consumers, influencers on Instagram encourage their followers to make more purchases: Five percent of Internet users aged 16 and over have bought a product or used a service more than five times in twelve months because an Instagrammer advertised it. According to their own statements, only three percent followed a recommendation from YouTubers just as often, who are on a par with bloggers in this respect.
In the longer term, even more opinion power. If you also take purchasing decisions that were made more than a year ago into account, the influence of influencers proves to be even greater: 24 percent of online users aged 16 and over have already followed a YouTuber’s purchase recommendation. One in five said they were convinced by an Instagrammer and other influencers, and 18 percent by bloggers.
Influencers have the strongest influence on twenty-somethings. Social media influencers have the greatest influence on the purchasing decisions of people in their twenties: 52 percent of Internet users between the ages of 20 and 29 have already followed recommendations from YouTubers when making purchases. Instagrammers are close at 50 percent in this age group. Bloggers also achieve their highest ratings with 42 percent, as do other influencers with 44 percent, among users in their 20s. From 30 years old solution from influencers . From the age of 30 onwards, things go downhill: the influence of all types of social media influencers on purchasing decisions decreases as the user ages. Among online users over 50, none of them have yet managed to persuade even one in ten people to purchase a product or use a service.
Companies underestimate influencers. “Anyone who appeals to younger target groups with their products should not underestimate the role of influencers in forming their opinions. Unfortunately, we still see this far too often – even among companies that should actually know better,” says Dr. Roland Heintze, managing partner and social media expert at the Aktuellkontor. “The most important basic rules for marketing and corporate communication are: Firstly, take YouTubers, bloggers etc. just as seriously as representatives of traditional media. Secondly: Don’t hyperventilate when an influencer expresses himself critically. Don’t be arrogant, but deal with it constructively. This is how you develop yourself “Company has a good reputation among its target group.”
The Social Media Atlas has been recording the use of social media in Germany annually since 2011 based on a representative survey and serves as a basis for companies to strategically plan their social media activities.
NFDI4DataScience
Advancing the science and artificial intelligence community
(ZB MED) The Joint Science Conference (GWK) decided to support the application of the NFDI for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (NFDI4DataScience) initiative. The goal of NFDI4DataScience is to build a community-driven research data infrastructure for data science and artificial intelligence. The consortium is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems. ZB MED – Information Center for Life Sciences is a partner and co-applicant in the consortium.
NFDI4DataScience focuses on data and artifacts that have become established within the scientific community. This includes publications, data, models and code. Transparency, reproducibility and fairness are important challenges.
Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer Society, says: “The National Research Data Infrastructure enables the use of valuable data from science and research for the entire German science system. This will sustainably strengthen the innovative strength of Germany as a research location and our position in international competition.”
Dr. Sonja Schimmler, spokesperson for the consortium, says: “With NFDI4DataScience we want to advance the data science and artificial intelligence community in science, an interdisciplinary field with roots in computer science. Our aim is to leverage existing solutions and work closely with the other NFDI consortia and beyond.”
NFDI4DataScience will support all steps of the interdisciplinary research data lifecycle, including the collection/creation, processing, analysis, publication, archiving and reuse of data science and artificial intelligence resources. In recent years, a paradigm shift has taken place: calculation methods increasingly work with data-driven and often deep learning-based approaches. This leads to the increasing establishment and visibility of data science as a discipline that is driven by technical progress in the field of computer science and at the same time is of great relevance to many other scientific disciplines. Transparency, reproducibility and fairness have become key challenges for data science and artificial intelligence due to the complexity of modern data science methods, which often rely on a combination of code, models and data for training.
NFDI4DataScience is coordinated by Fraunhofer FOKUS, the consortium includes 15 partners: German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) – Fraunhofer FOKUS – Fraunhofer FIT – FIZ Karlsruhe – GESIS Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences – Hamburger Informatik Technologie-Center eV (HITeC) – Leibniz University Hanover – Dagstuhl Castle, Leibniz Center for Informatics – RWTH Aachen – TIB Leibniz Information Center for Technology and Natural Sciences – TU Berlin – TU Dresden – University of Leipzig – -ZB MED – Information Center for Life Sciences – ZBW Leibniz Information Center for Economics
PMG Press Monitor
With the acquisition of software developer X-CAGO,
another step towards becoming a central data hub
for publishers
(PMG) PMG Presse-Monitor acquires the software company X-CAGO. The originally Dutch company is internationally known for converting and unifying a wide variety of content formats as well as for its established digital archive solution, which many leading publishers also use as a content distribution platform.
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Format-independent content distribution possible thanks to a central data standard
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“We are now combining the extensive specialist knowledge of the X-CAGO and PMG teams in converting and providing high-quality digital publishing content,” says Ingo Kästner, Managing Director of PMG, explaining the takeover. “In this way, we are creating a higher, central data standard in the publishing industry that can be connected to all future formats. We can offer publishers a fast and inexpensive data conversion and archive solution of the highest quality and the legally secure use of the data Guarantee content. The new data standard enables format-independent content distribution in the original layout and opens up new marketing channels for publishers.”
With the acquisition, PMG is expanding its offering of content and rights marketing for publishers and positioning itself more broadly as a service provider for content management for media companies and monitoring companies.
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Central data conversion brings publishers further growth from secondary marketing
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“Converting print and online content into consistent, high-quality digital formats suitable for further digital products is far from easy, but an absolute necessity for publishers,” explains Koos Hussem, CEO and founder of X-CAGO . “Publishers serve a variety of internal and external channels with their content. This makes data conversion complex, time-consuming and error-prone, which quickly has a negative impact on the quality of the content and the economic success of content marketing, both in B2C and B2B. Area.”
By combining their capabilities, X-CAGO and PMG will enable media companies and publishers to access proven technologies and structures and unlock new growth from the expanded marketing of their content. They benefit twice from the new offer: publishers can enjoy fast, cost-effective and high-quality conversion of their content for widespread digital secondary use. In addition, they do not have to build and maintain expensive infrastructure themselves.
Koos Hussem and Ingo Kästner will be jointly responsible for the management of X-CAGO BV in the future.
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