DigitalKoans

LITA has formed the Next Generation Catalog Interest Group. There is also an associated mailing list.

Here is an excerpt from the LITA-L announcement:

NGCIG gives LITA a discussion space devoted to developments in the library catalog, its nature and scope, and its interfaces. It provides a forum for presentations and sharing of innovation in catalogs and discussion of future directions. Collaborations with other LITA interest groups, such as in the areas of emerging technologies and open source software, will provide opportunities for programming.

The Research Information Network (RIN) and the The Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL) have published a new report titled Researchers’ Use of Academic Libraries and Their Services.

Here’s an excerpt from the report’s Web page:

This study was designed to provide an up-to-date and forward-looking view of how researchers interact with academic libraries in the UK. Harnessing empirical data and qualitative insights from over 2250 researchers and 300 librarians, the RIN and CURL hope that the results will be useful in informing the debate about the future development of academic libraries and the services they provide to researchers.

This is an important moment in the relationship between researchers and research libraries in the UK. The foundations of the relationship are beginning to be tested by shifts in the way that researchers work. The rise of e-research, interdisciplinary work, cross-institution collaborations, and the expectation of massive increases in the quantity of research output in digital form all pose new challenges. These challenges are about how libraries should serve the needs of researchers as users of information sources of many different kinds, but also about how to deal with the information outputs that researchers are creating.

Currently, the majority of researchers think that their institutions’ libraries are doing an effective job in providing the information they need to do their work, but it is time to consider the future roles and responsibilities of all those involved in the research cycle—researchers, research institutions and national bodies, as well as libraries—in meeting the challenges that are coming.

Version 67 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. This selective bibliography presents over 2,960 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.

The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2006 Annual Edition is also available from Digital Scholarship. Annual editions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography are PDF files designed for printing.

For a discussion of the numerous changes in my digital publications since my resignation from the University of Houston Libraries, see "Summary of Bailey’s Digital Publications Changes."

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are in italics):

1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History
2.2 General Works
2.3 Library Issues
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals
3.4 General Works
3.5 Library Issues
3.6 Research
4 General Works
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights
5.2 License Agreements
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
6.2 Digital Libraries
6.3 General Works
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation
7 New Publishing Models
8 Publisher Issues
8.1 Digital Rights Management
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources includes the following sections:

Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
Digital Libraries
Electronic Books and Texts
Electronic Serials
General Electronic Publishing
Images
Legal
Preservation
Publishers
Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
SGML and Related Standards

Led by the University of Glasgow Library, the new JISC-funded OpenLOCKSS project will preserve selected UK open access publications.

Here’s an excerpt from the project proposal:

Although LOCKSS has initially concentrated on negotiations with society and commercial publishers, there has always been an interest in smaller open-access journals, as evidenced by the LOCKSS Humanities Project1, where twelve major US libraries have collaborated to contact more than fifty predominantly North American open access journal titles, enabling them to be preserved within the LOCKSS system. . . .

At present, much open access content is under threat, and is difficult to preserve for posterity under standard arrangements, at least until the British Library, and the other UK national libraries, are able to take a more proactive and comprehensive stance in preserving websites comprising UK output. Many open access journals are small operations, often dependent on one or two enthusiastic editors, often based in university departments and/or small societies, concerned with producing the next issue, and often with very little interest in or knowledge of preservation considerations. Their long term survival beyond the first few issues can often be in doubt, but their content, where appropriate quality controls have been applied, is worthy of preservation.

LOCKSS is an ideal low-cost mechanism for ensuring preservation, provided that appropriate contacts can be made and plug-in developments completed, and sufficient libraries agree to host content, on the Humanities Project model. . . .

Earlier in 2006, a survey was carried out by the LOCKSS Pilot Project, to discover preferences for commercial/society publishers to approach with a view to participating in LOCKSS, and Content Complete Ltd have been undertaking this work, as well as negotiating with the NESLi2 publishers on their LOCKSS participation. . . .

We propose to consider initially the titles with at least six votes (it may not be appropriate to approach all these titles, for example we shall check that all are currently publishing and confirm that they appear to be of appropriate quality), followed by those with five or four votes. We propose that agreements for LOCKSS participation are concluded with at least twelve titles, with fifteen as a likely upper limit.

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "Academic Authors, Scholarly Publishing, and Open Access in Australia"; "The Academic Open Access E-Journal: Platform and Portal"; "Author’s Version vs. Publisher’s Version: an Analysis of the Copy-Editing Function"; "The Cost of Journal Publishing: A Literature Review and Commentary"; "EThOS: A New Start for Doctoral Theses in the UK"; "An Innovation-Oriented Publication System"; Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons; and "Paying for Green Open Access."

For weekly updates about news articles, Weblog postings, and other resources related to digital culture (e.g., copyright, digital privacy, digital rights management, and Net neutrality), digital libraries, and scholarly electronic publishing, see the latest DigitalKoans Flashback posting.

Researching the copyright status of post-1922 works in the US can be difficult, and this has been a barrier to digitization efforts. The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources have released a new copyright research tool that promises to make this process easier called the Copyright Renewal Database.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

An online database that enables people to search copyright-renewal records for books published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 has been launched by Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR).

SULAIR developed the Copyright Renewal Database, dubbed the "Copyright Determinator," with a grant from the Hewlett Foundation. The effort built on Project Gutenberg’s transcriptions of the Catalog of Copyright Entries, which was published by the U.S. Copyright Office. . . .

Determining the copyright status of books has become a pressing issue as libraries and businesses develop plans to digitize materials and make works in the public domain widely available. In order to appropriately select books for digitization, these organizations need to determine efficiently and with some certainty the copyright status of each work in a large collection. The Determinator supports this process, bringing all 1923-1963 book-renewal records together in a single database and, more significantly, making searchable renewal records that had previously been distributed only in print.

U.S. works published from 1923 to 1963 are the only group of works for which renewal is now a concern. Renewals have expired for works published before 1923, and they are generally in the public domain. The 1976 Copyright Act made renewal automatic for works published after Jan. 1, 1964. Determining the renewal status of works published between 1923 and 1963 has been a challenge; the Copyright Office received renewals as early as 1950, but only records received by that office after 1977 are available in electronic form. Renewals received between 1950 and 1977 were announced and distributed only in a semi-annual print publication. For the Determinator databases, Stanford has converted the print records to machine-readable form and combined them with the electronic renewal records from the Copyright Office.

Stuart Lewis of the University of Wales Aberystwyth has created a Google Map mashup called Repository 66 that shows worldwide open access digital repositories using data from ROAR and OpenDOAR. (Route 66 was a famous highway in the US.)

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has launched a prototype of the European Digital Library (Europeana).

Here’s an excerpt from "France Launches Francophone Digital Library":

Europeana—as the cyber library is named—currently offers access to some 12,000 public domain full-text documents but is set to have by 2010 over 6 million books, movies, photographs and other documents from across the European Union countries. . . .

"We want to make it so that Europe is not entirely abandoned to an American search engine," said Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the head of BNF, according to French press reports.

The "The European Digital Library in 16 Questions" provides further information about the project.

A press release about the launch is also available (in French).

EMI, which ranks third in worldwide music sales, has announced that it will make it’s entire digital music catalog available without DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection via Apple’s ITunes.

Users will pay a modest premium for DRM-free tracks: $1.29 for new tracks and $.30 to free existing tracks from DRM.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

EMI Music today announced that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI’s existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI’s retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality. EMI is releasing the premium downloads in response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI’s new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.

Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, said, "Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music e