Manager, Library Systems Applications at University of Kansas

The University of Kansas Libraries are recruiting a Manager, Library Systems Applications.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (position number: 00007883):

The University of Kansas Libraries invites applications for a newly created position, Manager of Library Systems reporting to and located within KU Libraries. The candidate will work as part of a growing team of library technology professionals who manage foundational library and scholarly systems and accompanying application services within KU Libraries. This position reports to the Assistant Dean for Collections and Scholar Services.

KU Libraries' management and scholarly applications are built on both vendor and open source products that include Voyager, ILLiad, Luna Insight, DSpace, Open Journal Systems, XTF (the Extensible Text Framework), EZProxy, the CNRI Handles Server, and various applications developed in-house. These systems are core to the mission of KU Libraries and provide services to support teaching, learning and research at the university. Application support is translated into a variety of services that our faculty, staff, and students depend on every day: the library catalog, interlibrary loan and document delivery services, KU ScholarWorks as our open access institutional repository, digital publishing and data services, and access to rich visual resources, online collections, and physical materials.

Application administration responsibilities include oversight for all aspects of application administration including systems planning, application upgrades, configuration, maintenance, integration, quality assurance and testing, and support for library staff that provide service delivery. In some cases, this position will work closely with the other application managers, the Libraries' Web Services manager, and systems administrators in KU Libraries or campus IT to manage technology services effectively for KU Libraries. This position is core to library and to technology planning and will need strong analytical and communications skills to obtain and review data that can be analyzed and reported to planners as written reports and recommendations.

Library Copyright Alliance and Others Release "Concerns with April 2010 ACTA Text"

The Library Copyright Alliance and other organizations have released "Concerns with April 2010 ACTA Text."

Here's an excerpt:

The proposed statutory damages language in Article 2.2.2 differs from section 504(c) [of the U.S. Copyright Act] in several critical respects. First, section 504(c)(2) directs the court to reduce statutory damages in cases of innocent infringement. If the court finds that the infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that its acts constituted infringement, the court can reduce the award to $200. And the court can remit statutory damages altogether if a library, archives, or educational institution believed that its copying was a fair use. In contrast, Article 2.2.2 make no provision whatsoever for innocent infringement. By mandating statutory damages without relief for innocent infringement, ACTA could subject U.S. entities to significantly greater damages overseas than in the U.S., thereby discouraging international expansion.

Web Program Director at University of Chicago

The University of Chicago Library is recruiting a Web Program Director.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Web Program Director provides leadership and management of the design, development, and maintenance of the University of Chicago Library’s web presence. The position is responsible for modeling innovative solutions that meet the needs of users in an academic research environment. Using an in-depth understanding of library resources, services, and bibliographic tools, the Web Program Director ensures the Library’s web sites provide a wide variety of users access to the complex array of information, services, and resources available through the Library.

The Library’s web pages have traditionally been written and produced by staff working in many different areas of Library operations using a combination of systems to create, maintain, and present different types of information. Working in this decentralized environment, the Web Program Director will provide leadership and coordination to develop a comprehensive web site strategy that is responsive to the needs of the user community, supports the Library’s vision and goals, and ensures integration with the University’s web sites and programs. The Web Program Director maintains oversight of the web authoring distributed throughout the Library working closely with staff to organize workflow and structure for how web pages are created and maintained. The position will redevelop the process of web page management to ensure accessible user interfaces, effective information design, accurate and targeted content, and responsive technologies while allowing sufficient flexibility to accommodate the diverse needs and activities of Library departments. Working with the Communications Director and Public Services staff, the position will establish cohesive web site guidelines and policies that reflect the user needs and strategic goals of a research library.

This new position will provide ongoing analysis and review of web-based library services to identify new technologies and approaches to improving the experience of the library researcher. Working with the Assessment Director, the Web Program Director will lead formal assessments of web-based services. Partnering with staff in the Integrated Library Systems (ILS) department and the Electronic Resources Manager, this position will play a leading role in integrating discovery tools into our web presence.

The position reports to the Co-director of the Digital Library Development Center (DLDC), a department that provides leadership, focus, strategic direction, and expertise for the Library's digital library program and initiatives. The Web Program Director is responsible for supervising the Web Administrator and will project-manage other DLDC and Library staff as required by particular initiatives. The position chairs advisory committee(s) that inform the development of the Library’s web presence and will serve as a Library representative on the Accessibility Group.

Provosts and Presidents of 27 Major Research Institutions Support Federal Research Public Access Act

In "The Open Letter to the Higher Education Community" issued by the Harvard University Provost, the provosts and presidents of 27 major research institutions have indicated their strong support for the Federal Research Public Access Act.

Here's an excerpt:

The United States Congress will have the opportunity to consider the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). FRPAA would require Federal agencies whose extramural research budgets exceed $100 million to develop policies ensuring open, public access to the research supported by their grants or conducted by their employees. This Bill embodies core ideals shared by higher education, research institutions and their partners everywhere. The Bill builds upon the success of the first U.S. policy for public access to publicly funded research mdash; implemented in 2008 through the National Institutes of Health—and mirrors the intent of campus-based policies for research access that are being adopted by a growing number of public and private institutions across the nation.

We believe that this legislation represents a watershed and provides an opportunity for the entire U.S. higher education and research community to draw upon their traditional partnerships and collaboratively realize the unquestionably good intentions of the Bill’s framers—broadening access to publicly funded research in order to accelerate the advancement of knowledge and maximize the related public good. By ensuring broad and diverse access to taxpayer-funded research the Bill also supports the intuitive and democratic principle that, with reasonable exceptions for issues of national security, the public ought to have access to the results of activities it funds.

The broad dissemination of the results of scholarly inquiry and discourse is essential for higher education to fulfill its long-standing commitment to the advancement and conveyance of knowledge. Indeed, it is mission critical. For the land-grant and publicly funded institutions among us, it addresses the complementary commitment to public service and public access that is included in our charters. In keeping with this mission, we agree with FRPAA’s basic premise that enabling the broadest possible access to new ideas resulting from government-funded research promotes progress, economic growth, and public welfare. Furthermore, we know that, when combined with public policy such as FRPAA proposes, the Internet and digital technology are powerful tools for removing access barriers and enabling new and creative uses of the results of research.

Collectively, our universities engage in billions of dollars of funded research. On average, approximately 50% of our research funding originates with the federal government. That public investment—estimated at over $60.5 billion for the research covered by FRPAA—is complemented by our own institutional investments in research units, laboratories, libraries, and the faculty and staff whose expertise permeates them.

FRPAA has the potential to enable the maximum downstream use of those investments. Many of us are already working on programs and policies to promote greater access to the wealth of research produced by our scholars; we are adopting policies for open access to the research outputs of our institutions; we are building open access digital repositories to collect research, developing advanced publishing channels, and working with our scholarly publishing partners to pursue the broadest possible distribution of scholarship at lowest possible costs. FRPAA will complement these efforts and be a powerful tool in ensuring their success.

Each month the evidence mounts that open access to research through digital distribution increases the use of that research and the visibility of its creators. Widespread public dissemination levels the economic playing field for researchers outside of well-funded universities and research centers and creates more opportunities for innovation. Ease of access and discovery also encourages use by scholars outside traditional disciplinary communities, thus encouraging imaginative and productive scholarly convergence.

Open and public access policies can also match the missions of scholarly societies and publishers who review, edit, and distribute research to serve the advancement of knowledge. Sharing the fruits of research and scholarship inevitably leads to the creation of more research and scholarship, thus highlighting the need for publishing professionals to manage the selection and review of the highest quality research, both publicly and privately funded.

Open and public access to publications in no way negates the need for well-managed and effective peer review or the need for formal publishing. It does, however, challenge us all to think about how best to align the intellectual and economic models for scholarly publishing with the needs of contemporary scholarship and the benefits, including low marginal costs of distribution, of network technology. That challenge is one that many scholarly societies and commercial publishers are already successfully engaging through a variety of business model experiments and partnerships. We believe that FRPAA productively calls for further engagement.

As scholars and university administrators, we are acutely aware that the present system of scholarly communication does not always serve the best interests of our institutions or the general public. Scholarly publishers, academic libraries, university leaders, and scholars themselves must engage in an ongoing dialogue about the means of scholarly production and distribution. This dialogue must acknowledge both our competing interests and our common goals. The passage of FRPAA will be an important step in catalyzing that dialogue, but it is not the last one that we will need to take.

FRPAA is good for education and good for research. It is good for the American public, and it promotes broad, democratic access to knowledge. While it challenges the academy and scholarly publishers to think and act creatively, it need not threaten nor undermine a successful balance of our interests. If passed, we will work with researchers, publishers, and federal agencies to ensure its successful implementation. We endorse FRPAA's aims and urge the academic community, individually and collectively, to voice support for its passage.

Open Access News Ceases Publication

Peter Suber has announced that Open Access News has ceased publication. OAN was a prolific (over 18,000 posts) and enormously influential blog that played a major role in launching and energizing the open access movement. Hats off to Peter Suber and Gavin Baker for writing this incredible publication.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Tomorrow (May 1, 2010) Google will turn off FTP updating for Blogger. The old FTP-based Blogger blogs can migrate to a new Google-hosted site where FTP won't be necessary. If a blog migrates, then all the posts in its archive will receive new URLs, all links to the old URLs will be redirected, all posts will carry their old page-rank to their new addresses, and Google will start indexing the new versions of the posts and stop indexing the old. If a blog doesn't migrate, it will die. Its archive may remain online, but it cannot be updated with new posts.

My days of heavy blogging at Open Access News are behind me. In July 2009, I curtailed my blogging to make room for my new work at the Berkman Center, and in January 2010 I cut back even further—essentially to zero—in favor of the Open Access Tracking Project, a more comprehensive and scalable alert service for the now very large and very fast-growing OA movement. OATP was not designed to do what OAN once did. But for several years now, the high volume of daily OA news has made it impossible to keep doing what OAN once did, even with an assistant.

Despite that, my plan was to keep Open Access News alive and contribute sporadically. But now Google has forced my hand.

I've decided not to migrate OAN. At first I worried about the risks to the large OAN archive: more than 18,000 posts in more than 400 files. I use the archive every day in my own research and I know that many of you use it too. It's still the best source for news and links about any OA development in the last eight years, and I didn't want to take the chance that even part of it might not survive the migration or might disappear behind broken links. Blogger has been very good about answering my anxious queries and I'm persuaded that the risks are low. But the fact remains that migration is irreversible.

Library Applications Developer at Brown University

The Brown University Library is recruiting a Library Applications Developer.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (job number: B01156 ):

The Library Applications Developer is responsible for designing new and innovative web-based library services, systems, and tools which anticipate the needs and meet or exceed the expectations of library users. The incumbent implements, continually enhances, and extends commercial software applications to make new and improved services available to users. The incumbent works with library departments to develop tools which increase automation and workflow efficiency, improve data reporting, provide greater cross-system integration and day-to-day support for library operations.

Open Access in France: A State of the Art Report

The Ministry of Higher Education and Research, Couperin, and INIST-CNRS have released Open Access in France: A State of the Art Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The first part of the report provides some background information on the French public research environment, which is essential to understand the national development of Open Access.

The second part gives an historical overview on the development of both the green and golden roads to Open Access. It is not intended to be exhaustive but to highlight the major institutional entities in the French Open Access movement.

The third and fourth parts respectively describe and comment on the current situation of French Open Access journals and Open Access repositories.

The fifth part describes the major mass digitisation programs which are related to Open Access.

Metadata and Digitization Librarian at Illinois Institute of Technology

The Galvin Library at the Illinois Institute of Technology is recruiting a Metadata and Digitization Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (requisition number: 0600741):

The Metadata and Digitization Librarian provides leadership on all issues related to description and discovery of digital collections and assets including establishing metadata policies, procedures, and best practices to facilitate discovery and improve access to these resources.

Establishes policies, procedures, workflow, and best practices for the library in the application of metadata to digital content in order to facilitate increased accessibility by the IIT community. Provides original cataloging of digital materials for inclusion in the integrated library system and other content management systems using current and emerging metadata standards.

Manages IIT's institutional repository (IR), Share, including establishing policies, procedures, and workflow for the submission of materials for inclusion in the IR and application of descriptive and administrative metadata to these materials. . . .

Provides expertise in creating, managing, and preserving local digital collections including providing overall quality control in the application of metadata.

Peer Review in Academic Promotion and Publishing: Its Meaning, Locus, and Future

The Center for Studies in Higher Education has released Peer Review in Academic Promotion and Publishing: Its Meaning, Locus, and Future.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As part of its Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Future of Scholarly Communication Project, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) has hosted two meetings to explore how peer review relates to scholarly communication and academic values. In preparation for an April 2010 workshop, four working papers were developed and circulated. They are presented as drafts here. . . .

The topics of the working papers are: (1) Peer Review in Academic Promotion and Publishing: Norms, Complaints, and Costs, (2) New Models of Peer Review: Repositories, Open Peer Review, and Post Publication Metrics, (3) Open Access: Green OA, Gold OA, and University Resolutions, and (4) Creating New Publishing and Peer Review Models: Scholarly Societies, Presses, Libraries, Commercial Publishers, and Other Stakeholders.

Last Week’s DigitalKoans Tweets 2010-05-02