DigitalKoans

Julian Fisher, Managing Director of the Scholarly Exchange, has announced that Dr. John Hoey has joined the Scholarly Exchange Board.

Here’s an excerpt from the SPARC-OAForum announcement:

Dr. Hoey is the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal and long an advocate of open access publishing. A specialist in community medicine and internal medicine, he is Professor of Medicine (adjunct) at Queen’s University and a Special Advisor to the Principal on Public Health.

Scholarly Exchange, Inc. has eliminated a major obstacle in starting open access journals by providing a free and fully supported e-publishing platform. Combining Open Journal Systems public-domain software with complete hosting and support, this service offers scholars unrivaled freedom and flexibility to produce academic journals at a price that fosters the open access model. It also develops tools and methods to promote and support open access journals.

Roderick A. MacLeod has posted a useful summary of some of the key documents and findings of the PerX (Pilot Engineering Repositories Xsearch) project on JISC-REPOSITORIES. He notes: "These documents may help to dispel possible myths concerning the ease of service provision, ease of reharvesting metadata, surfacing digital repository content in third part services, etc."

Here’s a excerpt from the project’s About page that describes it:

PerX is a two-year (June 2005-May 2007) JISC Digital Repositories Programme project, to develop a pilot service which provides subject resource discovery across a series of repositories of interest to the engineering learning and research community. This pilot will then be used as a test-bed to explore the practical issues that would be encountered when considering the possibility of a full scale subject resource discovery service.

(Prior posting about PerX.)

What was new and interesting during the week of 3/26/07? (Brief quotes follow article/Web page titles.)

• "100 Million OCLC Numbers"
  

  OCLC # 100,000,000 was created today [3/29/07] in WorldCat.

• "The Cablevision Decision"
  

  Judge Chin delved deeply into the technical aspects of RS-DVRs with a zeal and level of detail whose value is not self-evident. Indeed, at the end, when one gets to the legal analysis, there is a letdown in the court’s explanation of the central legal issues in the case.

• "Copyright and Innovation Can Coexist"
  

  The FAIR USE Act doesn’t fix all of copyright’s wrongs, but, if passed, it would be a huge step in the right direction.

• "The Cost of Digitization"
  

  One of the shockers for my [Jill Hurst-Wahl's] students has been the cost of a digitization program. First, they didn’t realize everything that needed to be done in a digitization program (which affects the cost). Second, they wrongly assumed that the digitization itself would cost the most (which it doesn’t).

• "Donald King on Fee-Based OA Journals"
  

  Donald King’s "The cost of journal publishing: a literature review and commentary," also from the April 2007 issue of Learned Publishing, is something most librarians should read.

• "Free Software Foundation Releases GPL v3 Draft"
  

  The Free Software Foundation has release the third discussion draft of GPL v3. . . .The current draft will be available for discussion for 60 days. After that there will be one more public "last call" draft before the foundation’s board of directors votes to approve the final text of GPL v3.

• "How Digital Libraries Will Change Academe"
  

  In the inaugural installation of The Chronicle’s new weekly podcast series, Mr. Kahle offers a progress report on his project and outlines his vision for the future of digital libraries.

• "IDG To Restrict New Magazine Launches to Internet-Only; Readers Can Vote on Whether to Go Print"
  

  With all the talk of consumer and entertainment publications becoming strictly internet endeavors, it would seem like a foregone conclusion for tech trades. And for IDG, publisher of InfoWorld, PC World and some 300 other tech pubs, it is.

• "Metadata, Identifiers and a Challenge Ahead. . . ."
  

  A new release of ONIX is expected later this year which, among other things, will improve its handling of digital publications. An entirely new standard now under development, the International Standard Party Identifier (ISPI), will in time establish a unique identifier for authors, composers, performers and others in the creative supply chain.

• "Moving to a ‘Single Business’ Systems Environment"
  

  The National Library of Australia has made an interesting report available, National Library of Australia IT Architecture Project Report, March 2007.

• "No More Print?"
  

  The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is considering discontinuing the print version of its journal Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBC).

• "‘One True Version’—Some Accounts and Thoughts"
  

  Is this, then, the central quality of the wikibook? Crowdwriting—or many-to-many publishing, as Gilbane puts it—is inherently selfish. It’s not in the individual author’s best interest to make their shard integrate well with others—in fact, the opposite may be true. Altruism exists, but it’s balanced with self-promotion, of one kind or another.

• "Proposed: Federal Digital Data Respository"
  

  The March 22nd issue of Nature is reporting that an interdepartmental government group, the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (IWGDD) has recommended that the government set up a freely accessible repository for the massive quantities of data that are generated by research sponsored by many government agencies.

• "Students Largely Ignore RIAA Instant Settlement Offers"
  

  According to the RIAA, some 116 students have used their new web site to settle copyright infringement claims, but that means that another 284, or 71 percent of students contacted through the program aren’t taking the easy way out.

• "Testimony Given by the Librarian of Congress"
  

  On March 20, the Librarian of Congress—Dr. James H. Billington—gave testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. Here are some highlights. . .

• "Why the RIAA Doesn’t Want Defendants Exonerated"
  

  Faced with the prospect of having to pay attorneys’ fees in cases it has no interest in pursuing, the RIAA appears to be trying a new tactic. In the case of Warner Bros. v. Tallie Stubbs, the record labels have said that they "now covenant not to pursue claims against Defendant" for copyright infringement and that the defendant’s counterclaim should be dismissed.

The Getty Research Institute is conducting an International Digital Preservation Systems Survey. It should yield interesting results, so help out by filling it out. March 30th is the last day.

Here’s a brief description from Karim Boughida and Sally Hubbard at the Getty:

This survey is intended to provide an overview of digital preservation system (DPS) implementation. DPS is defined here as an assembly of computer hardware, software and policies equivalent to a TDR (trusted digital repository) "whose mission is to provide reliable, long-term access to managed digital resources to its designated community, now, and in the future"[1].

The survey was produced by the Getty Research Institute departments of Digital Resource Management and Library Information Systems, and will be distributed primarily among members of the Digital Library Federation (DLF). Results will be shared at the DLF Spring Forum, April 23-25, 2007 (Pasadena, California, USA), and with all respondents who provide contact information. . . .

[1] RLG. 2002. Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities. Mountain View, Calif.: RLG, Inc. http://www.rlg.org/en/pdfs/repositories.pdf.

EBSCOhost databases will include licensed blog content from Newstex.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO), the world’s premier database aggregator, and Newstex, the Content On Demand™ company, today announced an alliance to deliver Newstex Content On Demand™ and Newstex Blogs On Demand™ via nearly 100 EBSCO databases to customers worldwide. As part of the distribution agreement, full-text blog content from premier Weblogs with historical archives in a wide variety of categories including art, career, economics, environment, finance, food, health, law, marketing, medical, technology, and many more will be made available in online aggregated databases for the first time.

Unlike existing Web-based blog aggregation services, Newstex actually licenses influential blog content directly from independent bloggers and then takes in each carefully selected blog feed in text format and uses its proprietary NewsRouter technology to scan it in real-time. The resulting blog feeds, news feeds, and historical archives are delivered to EBSCO for distribution to customers in applicable databases.

ARROW and the University of Southern Queensland have established the Persistent Identifier Linking Infrastructure (PLIN) Project.

As outlined in the project’s Executive Summary, its goals are to:

• Support adoption and use of persistent identifiers and shared persistent identifier management services by the project stakeholders.
• Plan for a sustainable, shared identifier management infrastructure that enables persistence of identifiers and associated services over archival lengths of time.

The project’s anticipated outcomes are:

1. Best practice and policy guides for the use of persistent identifiers in Australian e-learning, e-research, and e-science communities.
2. Use cases describing community requirements for identifiers and business process analysis relating to these use cases.
3. E-Framework representations of persistent identifier management services that support the business requirements for identifiers.
4. A "pilot" shared persistent identifier management infrastructure usable by the project stakeholders over the lifetime of the project. The pilot infrastructure will include services for creating, accessing and managing persistent digital identifiers over their lifetime. The pilot infrastructure will interoperate with other DEST funded systemic infrastructure. The development phase of the pilot will use an agile development methodology that will allow the inclusion of "value-added" services for managing resources using persistent identifiers to be included in the development program if resources permit.
5. Software tools to help applications use the shared persistent identifier infrastructure more easily.
6. Report on options and proposals for sustaining, supporting (including outreach) and governing shared persistent identifier management infrastructure

The PLIN Projet will base its work on the CNRI Handle System. The below excerpt from the Handle System home page describes its primary features:

The Handle System® is a general purpose distributed information system that provides efficient, extensible, and secure identifier and resolution services for use on networks such as the Internet. It includes an open set of protocols, a namespace, and a reference implementation of the protocols. The protocols enable a distributed computer system to store identifiers, known as handles, of arbitrary resources and resolve those handles into the information necessary to locate, access, contact, authenticate, or otherwise make use of the resources. This information can be changed as needed to reflect the current state of the identified resource without changing its identifier, thus allowing the name of the item to persist over changes of location and other related state information.

The Library of Congress has rolled out a new version of its Digital Preservation Web site.

Here’s a excerpt from Digital Preservation News: March 2007:

As you may have already noticed, the Web site for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) has been completely redesigned, with new content sections and more user-friendly text. The goal of the redesign was to make the subject of digital preservation in general and NDIIPP in particular more accessible to a wider audience.

What was new and interesting during the week of 3/19/07? (Brief quotes follow article/Web page titles.)

• "2.0 Too Faddish for Libraries?"
  

  In the comments, one of our readers warned libraries of adopting the equivalent of CB radio and falling victim to fads.

• "ACRL Summit Report on Changing Role of Academic Libraries Now Available"
  

  ACRL has published an essay on the changing role of academic libraries that resulted from an invitational summit held on November 2 and 3, 2006, in Chicago.

• "American Archivists’ Council Won’t Nuke Its Archives"
  

  Superstar archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "After receiving universally negative reactions, the Society of American Archivists’ Council has recanted its decision to purge the archives of its listserv (at least for now)."

• "ARL Statistics and the Increase in Holdings"
  

  Basically, the number of titles for all books before 1980 is only barely greater than the number of titles in the 24 years since 1980.

• "Bill Would Open Up TV ‘White Space’ for Wireless Internet"
  

  A new bill introduced this week by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) would require the Federal Communications Commission to make a decision on the "white space" in the analog TV broadcast spectrum, opening the door for wireless broadband services to operate on those frequencies.

• "Borders Reports Their Strategic Plan"
  

  Is there room for another book retail website? Borders believes there is and has announced that they will reopen the web bookstore.

• "Copyright Board to Reconsider Higher Royalties for Net Music"
  

  The Library of Congress Copyright Royalty Board agreed to reconsider a decision to increase royalties for music played on the Internet after radio broadcasters complained the new prices were too high.

• "FCC to Study Need for More Net Neutrality Regulation"
  

  The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that it will study whether stronger language is necessary in its policy on protecting Net neutrality, but consumer groups and Democratic commissioners criticized the move for not being bold enough.

• "Global Thinker"
  

  Library educator Anita Coleman says her interest in open access "evolved out of something librarians and all researchers have in common: a desire to make a difference." That’s why she created dLIST, the digital Library of Information Science and Technology.

• "In Memoriam: John W Backus, Creator of Fortran"
  

  John W Backus, the creator of the Fortran programming language died at his home in Oregon this past Saturday. Backus was 82.

• "Judge’s Decision Leaves RIAA with Lose-Lose Situation in Elektra v. Santangelo"
  

  The case of Elektra v. Santangelo has been one of the more closely followed cases in the RIAA’s crusade against suspected file sharers, due in no small part to the aggressiveness of Patti Santangelo’s defense. Ray Beckerman is reporting that Judge Colleen McMahon has denied the RIAA’s motion to dismiss the case without prejudice, ruling that the case must either proceed to trial or be dismissed with prejudice.

• "Judge Overturns US Web Porn Law"
  

  A US federal judge has overturned a law designed to protect children from viewing internet pornography, saying it violated the right of free speech.

• "LC’s Billington Urges Congress to Restore Support for Digital Initiatives"
  

  In testimony Tuesday before the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Librarian of Congress James H. Billington described efforts by the Library of Congress (LC) to maintain access to vital "born-digital" material and web-based information, and urged Congress to restore support for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), the subject of a $47 million cut in the past fiscal year.

• "Library Copyright Law Revisions Discussion Transcript Online"
  

  The Library of Congress public roundtable  copyright transcripts are now online at http://www.loc.gov/section108/roundtables.html

• "MIT Drops DRM-Laden Journal Subscription"
  

  Gibbs-Duhem writes with news that MIT has dropped its subscription to the Society of Automotive Engineers’ web-based database of technical papers over the issue of DRM.

• "A Report on Namespaces Used by OAI-PMH Repositories"
  

  I [Peter Murray] had a need for a survey of the metadata namespaces used by OAI-PMH1 repositories, so I wrote up a quick shell script and XSLT style sheet to parse through the list of Registered Data Providers2 at the OpenArchives.org website. The results of this effort are pretty interesting.

• "Technology Review: A Fresh Start for the Internet"
  

  Researchers at Stanford University are on a mission to completely revamp the Internet. Plans for their multipart program, called the Clean Slate Design for the Internet, will be presented to the public this Wednesday at the school’s annual Computer Forum.

• "Toward a Canadian Digital Information Strategy Blog"
  

  Vers une stratégie canadienne sur l’information numérique = Toward a Canadian Digital Information Strategy is the name of a blog created to document activities and statements from participants at a one-day workshop at the Université de Montréal’s École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information (EBSI) on May 9, 02007.

• "Viacom Sued over Colbert Parody on YouTube"
  

  Viacom is misusing U.S. copyright law by forcing YouTube to remove a parody video of The Colbert Report, according to a lawsuit filed against the media conglomerate Thursday.

• "WiMedia UWB Becomes a Standard, Opening Door for 480Mbps Wireless USB"
  

  Of all the new wireless technologies to arrive on the scene in the past year or so, UWB (ultra wideband) has had the most circuitous route to becoming a standard. The International Organization for Standardization and Ecma International have finally signed off on ECMA-368, ECMA-369, and ISO/IEC 26907, which specify a distributed medium access control sublayer and a physical layer for wireless networks and forms the basis for Wireless USB.

• "Working Group on Bibliographic Control Wades into the Murky Future"
  

  The first meeting of the Library of Congress (LC)-organized Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control was held March 8 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA, and, according to LC’s meeting summary, participants agreed that "current bibliographic data do not fully meet the needs" of either end users (information consumers) or managers of library resources.

In the Winter 2006-2007 issue of The Library Connection, the Syracuse University Library indicates that the Syracuse University Press now reports to the SU Library.

Here’s a excerpt from the relevant article:

In September Syracuse University interim vice chancellor and provost Eric F. Spina announced that Syracuse University Press would report to Suzanne Thorin, university librarian and dean of libraries. The new relationship enables SU Press to take advantage of the Library’s infrastructure to contain costs.