Thursday, January 9, 2014

Altmetrics chat

Edit: Transcript available at http://bit.ly/1aLDSfB

Altmetrics chat
Thursday, January 9, 2014
#medlibs on Twitter

Greetings, friends, cordial acquaintances, and stalemated enemies!

My colleague, Andrea Horne Denton (@michigandrea) and I will be leading tonight’s chat on the topic of altmetrics. We’re using this blog post as I way to provide a primer on the topic, as well as give some structure to the chat.

What IS altmetrics, anyway?
  • Andrea and I like this definition: “the creation and study of new metrics based on the Social Web for analyzing, and informing scholarship.”, which is found here: http://altmetrics.org/about/

Why should you (and your patrons) care about altmetrics?
  • Altmetrics is being used in well-respected, scholarly journals
  • Affects impact & influence

Resources
  • Our LibGuide (well, I say “our” in the sense that it’s the Library’s; Andrea did all of the work- I’m just the typer-beast who is posting the link) is available here: http://guides.hsl.virginia.edu/hsl-altmetrics
    This puppy is quite extensive, with links to presentations (including webinars and slide shows); tools; what to read; whom to follow; and a section just for librarians (cause we love you SO MUCH!!!) It’d be awesome if you looked it over ahead of the chat and then offered suggestions for how we could make it even better (nothing’s free, people!!)
  • The link to our altmetrics class’s slide deck:
    is not available at this time, for reasons which will be disclosed during the chat (It’s a mystery! Tune in for the answer. Or just, you know, get in touch with me, and I’ll tell you :) ). We WILL share it, though, eventually.
  • Wikipedia entry on altmetrics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altmetrics
  • Special issue of ASIS&T: http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-13/AprMay13_Piwowar.html – Contains lots of articles on the topic, all from different perspectives
  • Altmetrics bibliography: http://digital-scholarship.org/alt/altmetrics.htm

Questions to consider
  • What do altmetrics mean in the wider, scholarly world?
  • How will altmetrics affect researchers, clinicians, patrons, etc?
  • What should my library do (if anything) about altmetrics?

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