DigitalKoans

Ithaka has released University Publishing in a Digital Age by Laura Brown, Rebecca Griffiths, and Matthew Rascoff (preface by Kevin Guthrie).

Here's an excerpt from the "Introduction":

This paper has four purposes: First, we hope to make the case that universities should become more actively involved in publishing scholarship. It may not be obvious to many administrators that they should be in this “business” at all. . . . We will argue, however, that universities give up too much by withdrawing from publishing. They give up the opportunity to enhance institutional reputation and prestige. They reduce their ability to influence what gets published—and, therefore, not only what gets read but also who gets hired or promoted. They give up an opportunity to enhance the quality of what is published through the rich dialogue that is enabled by bringing editors into the fabric of relationships among scholars. And, as is often decried by open access advocates, universities sometimes must pay excessively high prices to gain access to published scholarship. . . .

Our second purpose is to galvanize action and investment to support revitalization of university publishing. . . . In some cases, that may mean making major structural and strategic changes to an existing press. In other cases it may mean forming new collaborations between different entities on campus or even across institutions, or disaggregating and recombining publishing related activities across multiple campus entities. It will no doubt require new infusions of capital, but this investment can create economies of scale that could help, in the end, to lower the costs and extend the reach of scholarly publishing. . . .

Third, we wish to explore some of the challenges and opportunities specific to university presses, as we believe that they can remain a vibrant part of the scholarly system if they are able to adapt quickly to the new electronic environment. . . . We concentrated primarily on exploring how the presses see themselves, how they are seen by others in the university community, and what unique strengths presses have to offer, with an eye towards identifying opportunities for them to translate their skills and assets to the future needs of the academy. We have also sought to understand the factors that have impeded their transition to electronic media, especially in monograph programs, in an effort to identify realistic measures going forward.

Fourth, and finally, we aim to start a conversation and gauge interest in a possible collective investment in a technological platform to support innovation in university-based, mission-driven publishing. . . . Our discussions with administrators, publishers, faculty, and librarians revealed real enthusiasm for the concept of a service that could aggregate published university content online, create a dynamic, efficient space for the tools of scholarship developed within universities, and spread the costs of investment among multiple institutions. We would now like to expand this conversation to the wider community, to test and refine the idea, and determine whether it may merit further exploration and possible investment.

The study was sponsored by JSTOR and Ithaka and was led by Laura Brown, former president of Oxford University Press USA, in collaboration with Ithaka’s Strategic Services group. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Peter Givler of the American Association of University Presses in distributing the survey to university press directors and encouraging their participation.

You can find further information about the report in the Inside Higher Ed article "Ideas to Shake Up Publishing."

CNET News.Com reports that Senator Harry Reid has withdrawn his original Amendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Act, which met with opposition from EDUCAUSE and others, that would, among other provisions, have forced higher education institutions to prove to the Department of Education that they had "developed a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property."

Instead, Reid successfully added an amendment that requires higher education institutions to inform students "that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on the institution’s information technology systems, including engaging in unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing, may subject the students to civil and criminal penalties."

Ars Technica and EFF Deep Links have additional coverage of this development.

After a year-and-a-half of development effort, the Institute for the Future of the Book has released the open-source CommentPress 1.0 theme for WordPress, which allows paragraph-level comments that are displayed side-by-side with the associated paragraph.

Here’s an excerpt from the announcement:

This little tool is the happy byproduct of a year and a half spent hacking WordPress to see whether a popular net-native publishing form, the blog, which, most would agree, is very good at covering the present moment in pithy, conversational bursts but lousy at handling larger, slow-developing works requiring more than chronological organization—whether this form might be refashioned to enable social interaction around long-form texts. Out of this emerged a series of publishing experiments loosely grouped under the heading "networked books." . . .

In the course of our tinkering, we achieved one small but important innovation. Placing the comments next to rather than below the text turned out to be a powerful subversion of the discussion hierarchy of blogs, transforming the page into a visual representation of dialog, and re-imagining the book itself as a conversation. Several readers remarked that it was no longer solely the author speaking, but the book as a whole (author and reader, in concert). . . .

We can imagine a number of possibilities:

— scholarly contexts: working papers, conferences, annotation projects, journals, collaborative glosses
— educational: virtual classroom discussion around readings, study groups
— journalism/public advocacy/networked democracy: social assessment and public dissection of government or corporate documents, cutting through opaque language and spin (like our version of the Iraq Study Group Report, or a copy of the federal budget, or a Walmart press release)
— creative writing: workshopping story drafts, collaborative storytelling
— recreational: social reading, book clubs

Tyler Walters, currently Associate Director for Technology and Resource Services at the Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center, has been named the new Vice Provost and University Librarian by Rice University. He will begin work on October 15, 2007.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Walters has 19 years of experience in university libraries and archives. His many professional activities help him keep up with the technological changes that are impacting libraries. He is a principal investigator for one of the eight original National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) partnerships known as the MetaArchive Cooperative, which is building a distributed digital preservation network and an organizational model that is adaptable by many other consortia. He is a founding board member and treasurer of the Educopia Institute, which strives to sustain educational cyberinfrastructure advancement through projects and partnerships. He's also a member of the Library of Congress' Sustainability for Digital Preservation Strategic Working Group, which is part of the NDIIPP. . . .

As vice provost and university librarian, Walters will be responsible for working with faculty, students and staff in providing the overall leadership, strategy, policymaking and fundraising for Fondren Library and its related departments, including Woodson Research Center, Digital Library Initiative, Digital Media Center, Fondren Library Information Technology and Friends of Fondren Library. The library, which houses more than 2.3 million print volumes and subscribes to 36,800 current journals, employs approximately 120 staff members. . . .

An avid reader since his childhood in Pasadena, Calif., Walters said he honed his "voracious reading skills" while pursuing a Master of Arts in archival management at North Carolina State University's history department and a Master of Arts in library and information science at the University of Arizona. He also has a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in history from Northern Illinois University.

Before joining the Georgia Tech Library staff in 2002, Walters served as director of the William R. Haselton Library and Knowledge Center at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology in Atlanta. For six years prior to that he served in a number of positions at Iowa State University Library, including head of the special collections department and university archivist. He worked at Northwestern University Library as assistant university archivist, and he assisted with archival and reference services at the North Carolina Division of Archives and History.

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: "Actualized Preservation Threats: Practical Lessons from Chronicling America"; "Does Open Access Really Make Sense? A Closer Look at Chemistry, Economics, and Mathematics"; "Is Physics the New Biomedicine?"; "Libraries for the Blind as Accessible Content Publishers: Copyright and Related Issues"; "Open Access to Open Publish"; "Select for Success: Key Principles in Assessing Repository Models"; "Size Isn't Everything: Sustainable Repositories as Evidenced by Sustainable Deposit Profiles"; Using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, and "What Open Source Webpublishing Software Has the Scientific Community for E-Journals?"

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.

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has announced the appointment of Michael Keller, Stanford’s University Librarian, as CLIR Senior Presidential Fellow. Keller is also Director of Academic Information Resources, founder and publisher of HighWire Press, and publisher of the Stanford University Press.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

During the two-year appointment, which begins August 1, Mr. Keller will undertake a series of studies and reports for CLIR publication. His research will include examining the recommendations of recent cyberinfrastructure reports and exploring how our communities can respond to the complex environment these reports envision, including the role and function of institutional repositories, digital archives, and digital libraries. He will also compose white papers that elucidate new and emerging research methodologies, new models of scholarly publishing, the role of supercomputer
centers in the evolving concept of cyberinfrastructure, and topics specific to rethinking aspects of libraries and academic life. During his tenure as fellow, he will continue to work from Stanford.

Peter Banks, founder of Banks Publishing and publisher for the American Diabetes Association from 1986 to 2006, died on July 21st. He was 52.

Here’s an excerpt from Ann Okerson’s liblicense-l announcement:

Long-time publisher at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and more recently a publishing consultant, he was one who cared deeply about the future of scholarly publishing and wrote thoughtfully and clearly, on this list as well in many other venues, about the issues that concern many of us. He was a key advocate for information and support, and he worked unstintingly with many organizations, individuals, and publishers, to create resources and pathways to usable, high-quality information for patients, their family/friends, and caregivers.

Further information about Mr. Banks can be found on the About Us page at Banks Publishing.

Raymond F. von Dran, dean emeritus of Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, died on July 23. He was 60 years old.

Here's an excerpt from the School of Information Studies announcement:

Von Dran served as dean of the iSchool from 1995-2007. In March 2006, he announced his retirement as dean, which was to take effect this summer. Following a year of administrative leave, during which time he planned on traveling the world with his wife, Gisela, recently retired assistant professor and director emerita of the school's master's degree program in library and information science, he planned to return to the iSchool as a professor. On June 28, 2007, it was announced that Elizabeth Liddy G'77, Ph.D. '88, Trustee Professor of Information Studies, would serve as interim dean of the iSchool, effective July 15. . . .

During von Dran's tenure, the number of faculty and students in the iSchool nearly tripled and the school's sponsored research increased five-fold. All seven of the school's research centers were launched under his leadership, and several academic degree programs were instituted. The school's success under von Dran's leadership was recognized by U.S. News & World Report, which ranked its M.S. program in information management and the Ph.D. program in information science and technology second in the nation, and the library and information science program third. Von Dran was also instrumental in increasing the school's endowment, recently helping to secure the largest gift in its 110-year history.

A founding member of the I-Schools Groupa national consortium of academic institutions focused on the relationship between information and peoplevon Dran has helped define a growing academic and research field in national and international circles. Through his work, he brought acclaim to the iSchool, which often serves as a model for other information schools to follow. In 1980, von Dran wrote "The National Union Catalog Experience: Implications for Network Planning," published by the Library of Congress, as well as numerous articles and papers on such topics as information science education, competencies for the information age, the economics of information, managing information resources and authority control structure in libraries. He chaired the American Society for Information Science and Technology's Education Committee, which created the organization's first educational standards. He advised a score of universities on information technology systems and new information curricula. . . .

Prior to joining SU, von Dran served as dean of the information schools at The Catholic University of America and the University of North Texas. He received a Ph.D. in information science and master's degrees in library science and European history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and bachelor's degrees in foreign languages and history from Seton Hall University.

He is survived by his wife, Gisela, and daughter, Beth.