Denmark's Electronic Research Library has released The Future of Research and the Research Library.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report sets up a number of challenges and scenarios for the future of the research library. The libraries must take some strategic future choices. Should the library maintain its traditional role or should it become a knowledge center for research and learning?

For a long time Denmark's Electronic Research Library, DEFF, has wished to make a study of the future library service of researchers and scientists. By engaging The Lime Guild this job was done throughout 2009. The Lime Guild has done several analyses, which have had the purpose to predict future scenarios for the research libraries in relation to the development within the research system and to the future demands of the researchers.

An essential part of conducting this study was to do interviews with interested parties and the main stakeholders in DEFF. This group of people includes both vice-chancellors and deans at universities, library directors of development and also representatives from DEFF's steering committee and liaison group. Also key international experts have contributed generously to the study.

David H. Carlson, Dean of Library Affairs at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, has been elected Chair of the SPARC Steering Committee. Carlson has been a committee member since 2008.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Carlson brings to the Chair position a rich and deep perspective informed by working with a variety of libraries and institutions in his career, including a teaching college, large research-intensive university, and a library consortium. He has served extensively with the board of directors at the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), and currently serves on the boards of directors for the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and BioOne.

Carlson has been an active participant in industry-level scholarly communication activities, especially those related to library-vendor relations. He led the library community in successfully securing a reversal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) decision to stop supplying new Science content to JSTOR. He has spearheaded Open Access activities at SIUC, and was responsible for launching the campus's open-access repository. Carlson has also been active supporter of national public access policies and has been a vocal advocate of the NIH Public Access Policy as well as the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA).

"David Carlson is a committed advocate who sees things through to their conclusion," said Heather Joseph, SPARC's Executive Director. "His experience with institutions of all types, and his commitment to deepening the impact of research through expanding access will help SPARC make important new strides in the coming years. The committee and I look forward to having David's leadership to help us address the challenges and opportunities before us."

"The matters facing SPARC are vital to not just libraries but the academy," said Carlson. "Indeed, as technology provides greater access to tools and platforms that permit creative contributions, the issues are becoming increasingly important to society as a whole. It is a critical time to show the detrimental effects of restrictive laws and regulations, and to advance requirements for public access to research sponsored by government agencies." He added, "I look forward to working as Chair of SPARC to pursue key avenues toward change at this crucial juncture."

SPARC's voting membership, which includes representatives from over 150 academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada, also elected the following individuals to serve on the SPARC Steering Committee for three-year terms beginning January 1:

• Maggie Farrell, University of Wyoming (non-ARL director)
• Rick Luce, Emory University (ARL director)
• Lorraine Harricombe, University of Kansas (ARL director)

Steering Committee members whose terms concluded in December include outgoing Chair (2005 through 2009) Ray English (Oberlin College), Larry Alford (Temple University), Sherrie Bergman (Bowdoin College), Diane Graves (Trinity University), and Randy Olsen (Brigham Young University).

The full SPARC Steering Committee represents ARL and non-ARL libraries in the U.S. and Canada as well as SPARC Europe, SPARC Japan, CARL, and AASHL. The full list is available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/about.

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville School of Information Sciences has been awarded an IMLS grant to study the value of academic libraries. It will collaborate with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release :

Carol Tenopir, a professor in the School of Information Sciences, is the lead investigator on the project; Paula Kaufman, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a co-principal investigator; and Martha Kyrillidou, Senior Director for Statistics and Service Quality Programs, is leading the project from ARL.

The three-year grant, entitled "Value, Outcomes, and Return on Investment of Academic Libraries (Lib-Value)," will work to enrich, expand, test, and implement methodologies measuring the return on investment (ROI) in academic libraries.

"There is an increasing need for academic librarians to demonstrate the return on investment and value of the library to the various stakeholders of the institution and to guide library management in the redirection of library funds to important products and services for the future," Tenopir said. Academic libraries actively participate in the many changes in scholarship, such as the move to e-science, collaborative and participatory scholarship, and focus on new materials such as data, multimedia, and born-digital assets. To remain relevant and central to the academic mission in the future, academic librarians need to be able to demonstrate the value that the academic library provides to the campus community using proven methods of measurement that will allow librarians to determine where their efforts should be concentrated and how funding should be allocated.

The results of the study will provide evidence and a set of tested methodologies and tools to help academic librarians demonstrate how the library provides value to its constituents and ROI to its funders, and to measure which products and services are of most value to enhancing the university’s mission. This project will greatly expand upon earlier studies to consider multiple measures of value that the academic library brings to teaching/learning, research, and social/professional/public engagement functions of the academic institution.

To ensure that the process will be rigorous, realistic, and highly visible in the academic library and university community, an experienced team of academic librarians and outstanding researchers bring their leadership, built on many years of experience, to the project. Two well-known researchers in the library field will serve as consultants: Bruce Kingma, an economist at Syracuse University, and Donald W. King, a statistician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill. Additional project participants include: Gayle Baker, Ken Wise, Rachel Fleming-May, Regina Mays, Crystal Sherline, and Andrea Baer at the University of Tennessee; Tina Chrzastowski at the University of Illinois; and Henry Gross, Gary Roebuck, and David Green at ARL.

The National Library of the Netherlands has released its Strategic Plan 2010-2013.

In the "Strategic priority 1" section (page 6), the document states that the library intends to ultimately "digitise all Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals from 1470." By 2013, it states that: “10% of all Dutch books, newspapers and periodicals have been digitised (60 million pages by the KB, 13 million by third parties).” (Thanks to ResourceShelf.)

Here's an excerpt:

One of the large, labour-intensive challenges is to digitise all the books, periodicals and newspapers that have appeared in the Netherlands. A component of this undertaking is the digitisation of the special pre-1800 collections for which a number of Dutch university libraries and the KB have together drawn up a project plan. In addition, the KB has collected since 1995 born digital publications (publications which are only published in digital form, such as websites, digital periodicals, e-books, etc.). The KB will intensify this undertaking. The KB aims to be able to offer customers all publications with as few restrictions as possible. Naturally the KB does this in close consultation with publishers and right holder organisations.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services have joined the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Columbia University has joined several leading institutions of higher learning in a commitment to a Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. Other signatories to the compact are Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley.

The compact commits signatories to the timely establishment of mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication fees for open access journal articles authored by researchers without alternative funding. The effort around the compact arose as a result of discussions within the university community about providing sustainable, efficient, and effective business models for journal publishing. "The growth of this new strategy for support for high quality scholarly communication in the expanding number of open access journals requires our participation and support," said Jim Neal, Columbia's Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian.

In today's scholarly publishing environment, financial strain is motivating libraries to seek means other than traditional subscription journals for providing access to intellectual content. OA journals offer such an alternative, while providing the same services common to scholarly journals such as management of the peer-review process, filtering, production, and distribution.

Following from the compact commitment, Columbia University Libraries/Information Services is establishing a fund to help support Columbia faculty, staff, and students who wish to publish in OA journals. The Libraries are currently formulating policy and eligibility requirements for the fund, which will be administered by the Scholarly Communication Program, based at the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS). CDRS currently offers free and for-cost publishing services for Columbia-based scholarly journals, and specializes in support for open access publications.

The University of Northern Colorado Libraries faculty have unanimously adopted an open access resolution.

Here's an excerpt:

We, the faculty of University Libraries of the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) resolve the following:

1. To disseminate our scholarship as broadly as possible. We endeavor to make our scholarly work openly accessible in conformance with open access principles. Whenever possible, we make our scholarship available in digital format, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
2. To deposit our scholarly work in our institutional repository, Digital UNC at the earliest possible opportunity.
3. To seek publishers whose policies allow us to make our research freely available online. When a publisher’s policies do not allow us to make our research freely available online, we resolve to engage in good faith negotiations with the publisher to allow deposit of peer-reviewed, pre- or post-print versions of our scholarly work in Digital UNC. This resolution, however, gives us the latitude and individual discretion to publish where we deem necessary, given our career goals, intended audience, and other reasonable factors.

The resolution applies to the scholarly works authored and co-authored while faculty are employed at UNC Libraries, beginning with works published or submitted for publication after December 2, 2009. The works encompassed by this resolution include journal articles and conference proceedings. We encourage the deposit of other scholarly work, including but not limited to book chapters and conference presentations.

This open access resolution will be reviewed by faculty of the University Libraries after one year.

David Prosser has been named the Executive Director of RLUK (Research Libraries UK).

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

RLUK is very pleased to announce that David Prosser has been appointed Executive Director. David joins us from SPARC Europe, where his leadership and advocacy skills have played a critical role in the success of the European Open Access movement.

The Chair of RLUK, Dr Mark Brown of the University of Southampton said: "We are delighted that David will be joining us as our new Executive Director. David brings ten years' experience of shaping strategic thinking for an active membership organisation, and encouraging partnerships and collaborations which can bring together librarians, publishers, and funders. We look forward to David playing a key role in delivering our exciting new strategy."

David Prosser said: "It is a great honour to join RLUK as the new Executive Director. These are exciting times for research libraries in terms of new delivery of content, use of physical space and the ways in which researchers and students use our collections. They are also potentially difficult times as public spending tightens and decisions need to be made on priorities for the future. Now, more than ever, the UK community needs to speak with a strong voice to ensure that the case for research libraries is heard. We also need to look for innovative collaborative solutions for budgetary issues. I look forward to working with the Board, members, and RLUK staff to address these issues and help fulfill the RLUK vision of ensuring that the UK should have the best research library support in the world."

OCLC Research has released Catalyzing Collaboration: Seven New York City Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This report provides a record of the collaboration discussions between seven institutions and includes the resulting interactions, methodology, content and recommendations.

The discussions were facilitated by OCLC Research Program Officers Günter Waibel and Dennis Massie. Participants in this effort agreed that the record of these interactions might be useful to other libraries that are striving to collaborate. Participating libraries, all RLG Partnership institutions, included Brooklyn Museum Library, Columbia University Libraries, Frick Art Reference Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J. Watson Library, Museum of Modern Art Library, New York Public Library and New York University Libraries.

The Utah State University Press will merge with the Merrill-Cazier Library, and it will "adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component."

Here's an excerpt from the press release

Joining a growing national trend, Utah State University Press will merge with the administrative structure of Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University. The transition has begun, with the arrangement officially taking effect at the start of fiscal year 2010-11. . . .

"Many university presses are moving toward open access, often under the administration of the library,” Clement [Richard Clement, Dean of USU Libraries] said. “The most conspicuous example in the recent past is the University of Michigan Press which moved into the library and is now focusing on OA and other forms of digital publication. We propose to move the USU Press along the same path." . . .

While the decision to move USU Press to Merrill-Cazier Library was not completely budget-driven, it will result in significant savings, Clement said. With a larger staff in place, the library will assume a number of support activities for the press, including accounting, IT support, graphic design and public relations. . . .

USU Press will adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component and will move toward increased digital delivery of books. The library’s position will be enhanced as well, as academic libraries nationally take on a stronger role in the evolution of scholarly publishing.

Read more about it at "Survival—Through Open Access" and "USU Press merging with Merrill-Cazier Library."

Stanford University will implement an electronic dissertation program this month.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Speaking at the Oct. 22 Faculty Senate meeting, University Librarian Michael Keller said the digital world offers a "much greater palette of expression" to graduate students, because they will be able to include more graphics, color and character sets in their dissertations than in paper copies.

"[There will be] more opportunities to link to online resources and to have those links live," Keller said during a joint presentation on the program with University Registrar Thomas Black.

The program is the result of a yearlong collaboration between Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources and the Registrar's Office.

Under the program, digital dissertations will be stored in the Stanford Digital Repository, which provides preservation services for scholarly resources, helping to ensure their integrity, authenticity and usability over time.

Keller said the documents will be available to the Stanford community through Socrates, the university's online library catalog, and "available to the world" through Google, which will serve as a third-party distributor. He said the library will print one copy of each work and store it in the Stanford University Archives.