Category: Research Libraries

Associate University Librarians at Cornell University

Cornell University is recruiting two Associate University Librarians.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

All qualified candidates are invited to apply, however particular emphasis will be placed on the candidates' abilities to supervise personnel and support strategic initiatives in two broad areas: (1) special collections and (2) information technology and digital research.

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"Measuring Open Access Policy Compliance: Results of a Survey"

Shannon Kipphut-Smith et al. have published "Measuring Open Access Policy Compliance: Results of a Survey" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION In the last decade, a significant number of institutions have adopted open access (OA) policies. Many of those working with OA policies are tasked with measuring policy compliance. This article reports on a survey of Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) members designed to better understand the methods currently used for measuring and communicating OA policy success. METHODS This electronic survey was distributed to the COAPI member listserv, inviting both institutions who have passed an implemented policies and those who are still developing policies to participate. RESULTS The results to a number of questions related to topics such as policy workflows, quantitative and qualitative measurement activities and related tools, and challenges showed a wide range of responses, which are shared here. DISCUSSION It is clear that a number of COAPI members struggle with identifying what should be measured and what tools and methods are appropriate. The survey illustrates how each institution measures compliance differently, making it difficult to benchmark against peer institutions. CONCLUSION As a result of this survey, we recommend that institutions working with OA policies be as transparent as possible about their data sources and methods when calculating deposit rates and other quantitative measures. It is hoped that this transparency will result in the development of a set of qualitative and quantitative best practices for assessing OA policies that standardizes assessment terminology and articulates why institutions may want to measure policies.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Surveying the State of Data Curation: a Review of Policy and Practice in UK HEIs"

Amy Pham has self-archived "Surveying the State of Data Curation: a Review of Policy and Practice in UK HEIs."

Here's an excerpt:

Through a three-part methodology, the dissertation research aimed to provide a clear picture of the current state of data curation in UK HEIs, including adherence to best practices and the existence of provisions for data curation efforts. A survey questionnaire was disseminated as the primary method of data collection, and additional information was gathered through a literature review and an analysis of online resources and institutional policies. Data curation practices were found to be mostly inconsistent with best practices and were largely focused on facilitating access to research data. However, there is an awareness of the underdeveloped areas of data curation, especially preservation, and efforts are being made to improve these areas. Institutional policies were found to be mostly documents that defined roles and responsibilities and provided little guidance for follow-through. The role of researchers was repeatedly emphasized in both policy and practice and was essential in understanding the current state of data curation.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Learning to Love Data (Week): Creating Data Services Awareness on Campus"

Katie Wissel and Lisa DeLuca have published "Learning to Love Data (Week): Creating Data Services Awareness on Campus" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

In May 2017, The Economist ran a cover story titled "The world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data." Given the continued growth in the sourcing, curating, and storing of data for academic research, it seems the academy would agree. In response to this growing need at Seton Hall, a midsized research university, the Seton Hall University (SHU) Libraries conducted an assessment of the current and emerging data requirements of the researchers and students on campus.

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Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian at Harvard University

Harvard University is recruiting a Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

In his or her capacity as the Roy E. Larsen Librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the incumbent has an additional reporting relationship to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and is responsible for the leadership and administration of the major libraries and numerous departmental and specialized libraries within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), including but not limited to a centrally administered unit within the FAS that is referred to as the Harvard College Library (HCL). HCL includes Widener, Lamont, Cabot, Houghton, and many departmental and specialty libraries.

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"’Publication Favela’ or Bibliodiversity? Open Access Publishing Viewed from a European Perspective"

Pierre Mounier has published "'Publication Favela' or Bibliodiversity? Open Access Publishing Viewed from a European Perspective" in Learned Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

As a future infrastructure to support open scholarly communication across Europe, OPERAS aims to coordinate a range of publishers and service providers to offer researchers and societies a fully functional web of services to cover the entire research lifecycle.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation"

Jon W. Dunn et al. have self-archived "HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation."

Here's an excerpt:

The overarching goal of the HydraDAM2 project, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access Research and Development program, was to extend the existing HydraDAM digital asset management system, developed with prior NEH support, to be able to serve as a digital preservation repository for time-based media collections implementable at a wide range of institutions using multiple digital storage strategies. The new open source digital preservation repository system developed as part of the project by partners Indiana University (IU) and WGBH, known as Phydo, is based on the Fedora 4.x digital repository system and Samvera (formerly Hydra) repository application development framework and is intended to support storage and long-term preservation management of audio and video files and their accompanying metadata. This white paper describes the work of the HydraDAM2 project to develop the Phydo system, along with future plans.

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"Portico Places Archive Replica at the National Library of the Netherlands"

Portico has released "Portico Places Archive Replica at the National Library of the Netherlands."

Here's an excerpt:

Portico and the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek or KB) have partnered to establish an online replica of the Portico archive that will be hosted by the KB. . . .

Portico additionally has a replica of the archive hosted in the U.S, and another in cloud storage. Kate Wittenberg, Managing Director of Portico, said, "We believe that placing a replica of the Portico archive in Europe, hosted by the KB, will provide Portico’s library and publisher supporters around the world with additional assurance of the long-term safeguarding of the content we preserve."

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Chief Librarian and Dean of Libraries at Hunter College, CUNY

Hunter College, CUNY is recruiting a Chief Librarian and Dean of Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Hunter College Libraries sit at the intellectual crossroads of the College, and the Chief Librarian and Dean will be tasked with ensuring that they continue to support the College’s mission of research productivity and innovation, professional preparation, and world-class undergraduate and graduate education. Hunter's five library branches occupy four campuses across New York City and are home to a collection of over 700,000 materials, and resources. The libraries include the Leon and Toby Cooperman Library (68th Street campus), School of Education Library (within Cooperman), Nursing and Health Professions Library (HPL at Brookdale), Schools of Social Work and Public Health Library (at the Silberman campus), and the Judith and Stanley Zabar Art Library.

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"Adaptation: the Continuing Evolution of the New York Public Library’s Digital Design System"

Jennifer L. Anderson and Edwin Guzman have published "Adaptation: the Continuing Evolution of the New York Public Library's Digital Design System" in the Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

A design system is crucial for sustaining both the continuity and the advancement of a website's design. But it's hard to create such a system when content, technology, and staff are constantly changing. This is the situation faced by the Digital team at the New York Public Library. When those are the conditions of the problem, the design system needs to be modular, distributed, and standardized, so that it can withstand constant change and provide a reliable foundation. NYPL's design system has gone through three major iterations, each a step towards the best way to manage design principles across an abundance of heterogeneous content and many contributors who brought different skills to the team and department at different times. Starting from an abstracted framework that provided a template for future systems, then a specific component system for a new project, and finally a system of interoperable components and layouts, NYPL's Digital team continues to grow and adapt its digital design resource.

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"Machine Learning and the Library or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Robot Overlords"

Charlie Harper has published "Machine Learning and the Library or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Robot Overlords" in he Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Machine learning algorithms and technologies are becoming a regular part of daily life – including life in the libraries. Through this article, I hope to:

* To introduce the reader to the basic terminology and concepts of machine learning
* To make the reader consider the potential ethical and privacy issues that libraries will face as machine learning permeates society
* To demonstrate hypothetical possibilities for applying machine learning to circulation and collections data using TensorFlow/Keras and open datasets

For a look at earlier AI activity in libraries, see: “Artificial Intelligence in Libraries in the Late 1980's and Early 1990's.”

"Open Science Support as a Portfolio of Services and Projects: From Awareness to Engagement"

Birgit Schmidt et al. have published "Open Science Support as a Portfolio of Services and Projects: From Awareness to Engagement" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Together with many other universities worldwide, the University of Gõttingen has aimed to unlock the full potential of networked digital scientific communication by strengthening open access as early as the late 1990s. Open science policies at the institutional level consequently followed and have been with us for over a decade. However, for several reasons, their adoption often is still far from complete when it comes to the practices of researchers or research groups. To improve this situation at our university, there is dedicated support at the infrastructural level: the university library collaborates with several campus units in developing and running services, activities and projects in support of open access and open science. This article outlines our main activity areas and aligns them with the overall rationale to reach higher uptake and acceptance of open science practice at the university. The mentioned examples of our activities highlight how we seek to advance open science along the needs and perspectives of diverse audiences and by running it as a multi-stakeholder endeavor. Therefore, our activities involve library colleagues with diverse backgrounds, faculty and early career researchers, research managers, as well as project and infrastructure staff. We conclude with a summary of achievements and challenges to be faced.

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