Month: November 2008

NetLibrary UK Library Survey Shows Strong Interest in Increasing E-Book Holdings

A survey of 300 UK libraries by NetLibrary indicates that three-fourths of academic libraries and half of public libraries plan to increase e-book holdings next year.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A massive 85% of public Libraries responding to the survey indicated that they were most interested in developing fiction eBook collections despite recent research that suggests eBooks are most often used for reference purposes. Possibly this trend is being fuelled by the growth in take up and availability of eBook reading devices among public library users such as Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader. . . .

Of the academic libraries who responded to the survey, half indicated that their use of eBooks was to support their core reading lists in various subject areas—the main ones being Business/Management (13%), Medicine/Health (9%) Education (6%) and Engineering (5%).

Digital Video: Future of the Book: Can the Endangered Monograph Survive?

The Columbia University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Program has released "Future of the Book: Can the Endangered Monograph Survive?," a digital video of the meeting of the same name. (Thanks to Adrian K. Ho of Digital & Scholarly: News about Research and Scholarship in the Digital Age.)

Here's the abstract:

Panelists Helen Tartar, Editorial Director at Fordham University Press; Sanford Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press and past President of the Association of American University Presses; and Ree DeDonato, Director of Humanities and History and Acting Director of Union Theological Seminary's Burke Library of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session.

Report from the Enhancing Repositories for the Next Generation of Academics IMLS Grant Project

The University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries' IMLS-funded Enhancing Repositories for the Next Generation of Academics grant project has released "The Next Generation of Academics: A Report on a Study Conducted at the University of Rochester."

Here's the abstract:

This document reports on the user research portion of "Enhancing Repositories for the Next Generation of Academics" (IMLS Grant No. LG-06-06-0051). We conducted user research from December 2006 through March 2008 to support development of a suite of authoring tools to be integrated into an institutional repository. Our understanding of the work practices of graduate students enabled us to design the authoring tools to meet their needs for individual and collaborative writing and to make it easy for them to move completed documents from the authoring system into the repository.

Sandy Thatcher, Director of the Penn State University Press, to Retire

Sandy Thatcher, prolific author and vocal advocate for university presses, will retire from his position as Director of the Penn State University Press. The Press has posted an ad for his position, and Tony Sanfilippo has written a tribute posting on the Are You Loving Publishing Today? blog. Sanfilippo's posting says: "Sandy won't be leaving until sometime next year, and he’s likely to continue to freelance as an acquisitions editor after that."

JISC-PoWR Releases Preservation of Web Resources Handbook

JISC-PoWR has released the Preservation of Web Resources Handbook.

Here's an excerpt:

The Handbook is structured in two parts. The first part deals with web resources and makes practical suggestions for their management, capture, selection, appraisal and preservation. It includes observations on web content management systems, and a list of available tools for performing web capture. It concludes with a discussion of Web 2.0 issues, and a range of related case studies. The second part is more focussed on web resources within an Institution. It offers advice about institutional drivers and policies for web archiving, along with suggestions for effecting a change within an organisation; one such approach is the adoption of Information Lifecycle Management. There are separate Appendices covering Legal guidance (written by Jordan Hatcher) and records management.

The Handbook also contains a bibliography and a glossary of terms. The Handbook is aimed at an audience of information managers, asset managers, webmasters, IT specialists, system administrators, records managers, and archivists.

Draft Creative Commons Licences—Briefing Paper Available

Naomi Korn and Professor Charles Oppenheim have written a draft Creative Commons Licences—Briefing Paper for inclusion in the upcoming Strategic Content Alliance IPR Toolkit, a collection of documents about intellectual property rights (JISC funds the SCA). The document explains Creative Commons Licenses, and it examines their pros and cons.

The document, as well as other IPR Toolkit drafts, are now available.

End of an Era: PC Magazine Drops Print

Ziff Davis will cease publishing PC Magazine in print form and focus instead on the PC Mag Digital Network and PCMAG.com. Print subscribers will receive PC Magazine Digital Edition.

PC Magazine is a pioneering mass market computer magazine, which began publication in 1982. See the retrospective "25 Years of PC Magazine," starting with "25 Years of PC Magazine: Year One 1982."

Read more about it at "PC Magazine Goes 100% Digital," "TechSpin: Goodbye to PC Mag," and "Ziff Davis To Close Print PCMag, Focus On Online; Still Looking For Options For Gaming Division."

Tennessee's Higher Education Filtering Law to Cost State Institutions Over $9.5 Million to Start

The Tennessee Fiscal Review Committee estimates that SB 3974, a recently passed state law aimed at stopping copyright infringement in higher education institutions, will initially cost state institutions over $9.5 million, with ongoing annual costs topping $1.6 million in FY 08-09 and $1.9 million in succeeding years.

Read more about it at "RIAA Gets Tennessee Law to Force Universities to Filter Networks for Copyrighted Content"; "RIAA Wins, Campuses Lose as Tennessee Governor Signs Campus Network Filtering Law"; and "Tennessee Anti-P2P Law to Cost Colleges over $13 Million."

Copyright Clearance Center Launches Ozmo, a Commercial License Service, as Beta

The Copyright Clearance Center has launched Ozmo, a web-based commercial license service that supports the Creative Commons CC+ protocol, in beta mode.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Ozmo puts artists and writers in control. They select their license terms and set the price for the use of their content. Then, CCC puts its three decades of licensing expertise to work. CCC handles the entire licensing process and all payments go through Amazon’s Flexible Payment Service when a license is purchased. With Ozmo, buyers know instantly that they have the right to use the content and sellers know how their content is being used.

There are no set-up fees with Ozmo and content creators can license as much content as they want. Payment is collected from the buyer when the rights are purchased. Ozmo even helps sellers track and manage sales and buying trends. Ozmo supports the Creative Commons CC+ protocol for bridging the gap between commercial and non-commercial licensing. Content creators can apply the Creative Commons link for non-commercial use, and the Ozmo link for commercial use. . . .

How Ozmo works

To get started, users need only create a free Ozmo profile. Then, the content creator selects his or her license terms and pricing, and registers the work with Ozmo. Sellers can add an image, banner or bio that will be displayed with their work. Profile information can even be pulled over directly from Facebook. Using Ozmo is easy because it works with content where ever it resides online. Content creators never have to re-enter their work; Ozmo simply links back to the original host location.

Buyers, such as design firms, publishers, bloggers and other journalists, who want to tap in to the fresh content available through Ozmo, can do so by searching the Ozmo website or clicking on the Ozmo link wherever they find it online. CCC handles the billing, the buyer receives the license by email and the content creator gets paid. It’s that simple.

Read more about it at "Ozmo Launches with CC+ Protocol Support."

First Digital Curation Centre SCARP Case Study Released on Brain Image Preservation

The first Digital Curation Centre SCARP (Sharing Curation and Re-use Preservation) case study has been released: Curating Brain Images in a Psychiatric Research Group: Infrastructure and Preservation Issues.

Here's the description:

Curating neuroimaging research data for sharing and re-use involves practical challenges for those concerned in its use and preservation. These are exemplified in a case study of the Neuroimaging Group in the University of Edinburgh’s Division of Psychiatry. The study is one of the SCARP series encompassing two aims; firstly to discover more about disciplinary approaches and attitudes to digital curation through 'immersion' in selected cases, in this case drawing on ethnographic field study. Secondly SCARP aims to apply known good practice, and where possible to identify new lessons from practice in the selected discipline areas; in this case using action research to assess risks to the long term reusability of datasets, and identify challenges and opportunities for change.

CHNM and Emory University Libraries Establish Zotero Software Development Partnership

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the Emory University Libraries have announced the formation of a Zotero software development partnership.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

A team of librarians, information technologists and faculty members led by Connie Moon Sehat, Emory Libraries' new director of digital scholarship initiatives, will extend research capabilities of the software in collaboration with Zotero's main development team. Sehat is a former co-director of Zotero and CHNM.

For Dan Cohen, who is associate professor of history at George Mason University and director of CHNM, a relationship with Emory exemplifies the powerful opportunities for institutional cooperation offered by digital media. "The Center for History and New Media and the Zotero Project are lucky to now have the resources and experience of Emory on their side," says Cohen, "and the continued insight and direction of Connie Sehat. We look forward to what will undoubtedly be a tremendously productive collaboration." Cohen oversees Zotero with Sean Takats, assistant professor of history at George Mason and CHNM's acting director of research projects.

This relationship marks a significant step forward for the future of the Zotero project. "Partnering on the development of open source software with CHNM, an established center of excellence in the digital humanities, allows the Emory Libraries to create value for the research community while sharing the risks in developing innovative software," says Rick Luce, Emory University vice provost and director of libraries.

Already a powerful research tool, Zotero allows users to gather, organize and analyze sources such as citations, full texts, web pages, images and other objects. It meshes the functionality of older reference manager applications with modern software and web applications, such as del.icio.us and YouTube, to amass large amounts of data in easy ways.

Over the next two years, Zotero will allow researchers—and their data—to interact with one another in Web 2.0 communities, help scholars archive information with the Internet Archive and offer text-mining capabilities. Zotero also will expand educational offerings to provide more support for its growing national and international communities of users, many located in university settings. Working in conjunction with the Zotero team at CHNM, Emory's Zotero team will take advantage of local research environments and library expertise to contribute to Zotero's anticipated growth.

Manuscript Collections on the Web, SPEC Kit 307

The Association of Research Libraries has published Manuscript Collections on the Web, SPEC Kit 307.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This SPEC survey investigated how many manuscript collections are held in ARL member libraries; what percentage of these collections are represented on the Web; what types of information about the collections are available in finding aids and on the Web; what formats are used for finding aids on the Web; how many library staff are working on manuscript collections; the challenges and benefits of migrating collection information to the Web; and whether and how usage of manuscript collection information is tracked.

Of the 123 ARL member libraries, 72 completed the survey by the March 2008 deadline for a response rate of 59%. All of the survey respondents indicated that they are managing to post at least some information about their manuscript collections on the Web. Most of the comments indicated that the respondents want to post more information online, but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons, primarily staff and time constraints. Almost all respondents are creating MARC records for their collections; fewer are creating EAD finding aids. A select few represent all of their manuscript collections on the Web in some way, either as MARC records, brief blurbs in HTML, or EAD finding aids.

The survey results also show that librarians and archivists squeeze arrangement and description duties in between a multitude of other responsibilities. They are not the only staff in these institutions who perform these tasks, but they do spend larger percentages of their time than anyone else on actually adding information to the Web.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents in the form of manuscript collection Web sites, finding aid Web sites, Web sites of collaborative online resources, arrangement and description guidelines, and Web processing procedures.

The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec307web.pdf.

Digital New Zealand's Coming Home Memory Maker: Users Remix Media to Create Digital Videos

Digital New Zealand has released its Coming Home Memory Maker, which allows users to remix historic digital media.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Memory Maker is an interactive online video remix tool, that lets people mix historical film footage, digitised photographs and objects, and music/audio clips into a 60 second video that can then be saved, shared, and embedded on other sites.

A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries & the Google Library Project Settlement

ARL and ALA have released A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries & the Google Library Project Settlement.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The guide is designed to help the library community better understand the terms and conditions of the recent settlement agreement between Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers concerning Google’s scanning of copyrighted works. Band notes that the settlement is extremely complex and presents significant challenges and opportunities to libraries. The guide outlines and simplifies the settlement’s provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries.

Archivists' Toolkit Version 1.5 Released

The Archivists' Toolkit version 1.5 has been released.

See "New Features for AT Release 1.5" for details.

Here's an excerpt from the home page that describes the software:

The Archivists' Toolkit™, or the AT, is the first open source archival data management system to provide broad, integrated support for the management of archives. It is intended for a wide range of archival repositories. The main goals of the AT are to support archival processing and production of access instruments, promote data standardization, promote efficiency, and lower training costs.

Currently, the application supports accessioning and describing archival materials; establishing names and subjects associated with archival materials, including the names of donors; managing locations for the materials; and exporting EAD finding aids, MARCXML records, and METS, MODS and Dublin Core records. Future functionality will be built to support repository user/resource use information, appraisal for archival materials, expressing and managing rights information, and interoperability with user authentication systems.

David Millman Named Director of Digital Library Technology Services at New York University

David Millman, Senior Director, Systems Integration, Information Technology at Columbia University, has been named Director of Digital Library Technology Services at New York University. He will report jointly to Carol A. Mandel, Dean of the Libraries, and David Ackerman, Executive Director of .edu Services, Information Technology Services.

Digital Library Software: Greenstone Version 2.81 Released

Version 2.81 of the Greenstone digital library software has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the home page that describes Greenstone:

Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

See the Greenstone Fact Sheet for a more detailed description of the system.