Month: January 2009

Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research Version 1.4.0

The Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research version 1.4.0 has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the home page:

Developed in partnership with humanities scholars, SEASR enhances the use of digital materials by helping scholars uncover hidden information and connections. SEASR supports the study of assets from small patterns drawn from a single text or chunk of text to broader entity categories and relations across a million words or a million books. SEASR will support numerical, categorical, text, and audio-based analysis and will continue to evolve to include processing of images and other multimedia data formats.

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Collections Specialist at Texas A&M

The Texas A&M University Libraries are recruiting a Digital Collections Specialist.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Associate Dean for Digital Initiatives and in collaboration with other Digital Initiatives staff, this position will: support the faculty and staff in their efforts to preserve and make accessible the collections of the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives; promote the effective use of digital services and the repository; help to develop repository policies, procedures, workflows, and metadata standards; enhance awareness of the changing landscape of scholarly communication; help to evaluate and maintain quality control of the processes, collections and services provided; participate in local efforts to educate the university community on digital library issues; participate in state and national digital library initiatives and committees; and, participate in grant proposal writing/managing.

Serious Virtual Words: A Scoping Study

The JISC e-Learning Programme has released Serious Virtual Words: A Scoping Study.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The aim of the report then is two-fold: to provide a context for learning practitioners and policy makers, aiding with their understanding of virtual worlds and how they can be selected and used in tertiary education; and to highlight how learners, through greater empowerment, may play a different and enriched role in the process of forming collaborative learning experiences and engaging in activities which may support their own learning and meta-reflection.

New URLs for Digital Scholarship FeedBurner Feeds

Google is moving all FeedBurner feeds, and Digital Scholarship's feeds have been moved as of today.

The new feed URLs are:

You can also use the native WordPress feeds. See "Digital Scholarship Publications Overview."

William Kilbride Named Executive Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition

William Kilbride has been named Executive Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

William has many years of experience in the digital preservation community. He is currently Research Manager for Glasgow Museums, where he has been involved in digital preservation and access aspects of Glasgow's museum collections, and in supporting the curation of digital images, sound recordings and digital art within the city's museums.

Previously he was Assistant Director of the Archaeology Data Service where he was involved in many digital preservation activities. He has contributed to workshops, guides and advice papers relating to digital preservation.

In the past William has worked with the DPC on the steering committee for the UK Needs Assessment, was a tutor on the Digital Preservation Training Programme and was a judge for the 2007 Digital Preservation Award.

Digital Library Jobs: Texas Digital Library Systems Administrator

The Texas Digital Library is recruiting a Texas Digital Library Systems Administrator.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Perform system administration using standard UNIX tools and utilities. Provide system support of applications and services running UNIX servers. Install, configure and maintain open source and proprietary applications. Configure and maintain network storage solutions and upgrades to operating systems as directed and in accordance with established IT policies and procedures. Respond to emergency situations involving system problems, downtime and security breaches. Perform basic scripting/programming to solve problems, optimize performance and automate tasks. Participate in best practice formulation and evaluating, implementing and managing as appropriate. Communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

EDUCAUSE Review Special Section: The Case of the Textbook: Open or Closed?

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review has a special section on "The Case of the Textbook: Open or Closed?."

Here are the articles:

Folger Shakespeare Library Provides Free Access to 20,000+ Images

The Folger Shakespeare Library is now providing free access to over 20,000 images.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The digital image collection includes books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and 218 of the Folger’s pre-1640 quarto editions of the works of William Shakespeare. Users can now examine these collection items in detail while accessing the Folger’s rare materials from desktops anywhere in the world. . . .

The Folger’s digital image collection provides resources for users to view multiple images side by side, save their search results, create permanent links to images, and perform other tasks through a free software program, Luna Insight.

The Folger is also collaborating with the University of Oxford to digitize 75 quarto editions of Shakespeare’s plays and create the Shakespeare Quartos Archive, which will provide free online access to interactive, high-resolution images of the plays. The Shakespeare Quartos Archive is funded by a new Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant awarded jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joint Information Systems Committee. In addition, Picturing Shakespeare will make 100,000 images from the Folger collection—including prints, unique drawings, and photography relating to Shakespeare—available to teachers, scholars, and the general public in 2010 through an initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Both projects join a fast-growing body of podcasts, videos, and other online content produced by the library.

Podcast Interview with John Wilbanks of the Science Commons Project

Gerry Bayne of EDUCAUSE has released "CNI Podcast: The Science Commons Project—An Interview with John Wilbanks."

Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

Science Commons, a project of Creative Commons, has three interlocking initiatives designed to accelerate the research cycle. These include making scientific research “re-useful”, enabling “one-click” access to research materials, and integrating fragmented information sources. Together, these initiatives form the building blocks of a new collaborative infrastructure to make scientific discovery easier by design. Wilbanks discusses the copyright and technical challenges of contemplating a true knowledge browser.

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Projects Librarian at Auburn

Auburn University's Ralph Brown Draughon Library is recruiting a Digital Projects Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Auburn University invites applications for a twelve-month, tenure track position as Digital Projects Librarian within the Auburn University Libraries. This position is based in the Libraries’ Systems Department and reports to the director of library technology.

Under the leadership of the director of library technology, and working in consultation with other Library departments in accordance with the Libraries’ Strategic Plan, the Digital Projects Librarian will take the lead in coordinating the design, creation, and maintenance of the collections comprising the Auburn University Digital Library as well as other digital initiatives. The Digital Projects Librarian will work across Library departments to assess and develop appropriate standards, policies, and procedures for the Libraries’ digital projects and to ensure continued development and maintenance of the Libraries’ digital initiatives, which include projects with the Auburn University Special Collections & Archives Department, joint projects with other Auburn University departments and a library-sponsored digitization program. The Digital Projects Librarian will also represent the Libraries on projects with other institutions in Alabama and the southeast.

Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Record Task Group Report

BIBCO has released the Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Record Task Group Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Record Task Group was formed shortly after the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Library Association. The group's charge was to develop a monographic cataloging policy that would provide for a single electronic MARC bibliographic record to represent an online resource that is available from one or more providers. . . . The proposal is intended to encompass records for monographic titles which are simultaneously issued in print and online, digital reproductions of print resources, and born-digital resources.

"Institutional Repository on a Shoestring"

George Wrenn, Carolyn J. Mueller, and Jeremy Shellhase have published "Institutional Repository on a Shoestring" in the new D-Lib Magazine issue.

Here's an excerpt:

Humboldt State University (HSU), with 7,800 students (fall 2008), is one of the smaller campuses in the 23-member California State University (CSU) system. Our institutional repository, Humboldt Digital Scholar (HDS), originated as a pilot project during the Library's August 2004 planning meeting and became a permanent Library service in April 2006. The repository functions "on a shoestring," unfunded and reliant on contributions of time from librarians and library staff for its ongoing maintenance and development.

In this article, the authors, three members of the HDS Steering Committee, describe the process of setting up and managing a digital repository: hardware and software selection; customizations; gaining campus support; developing collections; accepting submissions; and planning for the future, including participation in a system-wide effort to create a shared repository for the CSU.

Digital Collection/Repository Software: OCLC Releases CONTENTdm 5

OCLC has released CONTENTdm 5. In addition to being used as a digital asset management system, CONTENTdm is being increasingly being used to support institutional repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC has released CONTENTdm 5, a new version of the popular CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management software that fully supports Unicode, the industry standard used to recognize text in most of the world's non-Western languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek and Hebrew, among others. . . .

For end users, CONTENTdm 5 provides a new experience with powerful search improvements, including the integration of Find—the search engine behind OCLC's WorldCat.org. Offering capabilities beyond full Unicode searching, CONTENTdm 5 also features faceted browsing to help refine search results, as well as relevancy ranking similar to what end users experience when searching WorldCat.org and other popular search engines. These improvements ensure a library achieves its ultimate goal for its digital collection—to help end users find, get and use the digital items they need.

For libraries, the new CONTENTdm includes a totally redesigned Project Client, offering more streamlined collection-building workflows that will reduce the time needed to create a digital collection, reducing project costs and maximizing results.

Other CONTENTdm 5 enhancements include a new reports module designed to better track and assess collection usage; nine integrated thesauri, which will improve efficiency by providing controlled vocabularies; and increased capacity that supports more collections, items and metadata fields as well as larger volumes for batch processing.

CONTENTdm 5 offers improvements for handling EAD (Encoded Archival Description) files, including how finding aids are imported, displayed and searched.

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Library Architect at Penn State

Pennsylvania State University is recruiting a Digital Library Architect.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Division of Information Technology Services (ITS) at The Pennsylvania State University is seeking a Digital Library Architect to provide vision for and direct the development of the technical architecture for enterprise-level Content Stewardship services.

The Content Stewardship program will meet extant/emerging digital content and asset management needs in areas such as digital library collections, scholarly communications, electronic record archiving, and e-science/e-research. Building on existing services and infrastructure, this program will put in place a cohesive and extensible suite of access, discovery, preservation, curation, security, repository, archival and storage services. Initial applications for the Content Stewardship program include an electronic records repository, policy- and object-based storage infrastructure, and reassessment of the institutional ETD system.

Reporting to the ITS Senior Director of Digital Library Technologies, The Digital Library Architect will work across all functional areas of ITS and the University Libraries (UL), and with a Digital Collections Curator, soon to be brought on board to focus on digital collection and repository services management.

E-Print about Southern Cross University Library's Full Service Repository Model

Kerrie L. Burn and Katie Wilson have made available "Build It and They Will Come?: Assessing the Impact of 'Academic-Friendly' Practices on Institutional Repository Growth at Southern Cross University."

Here's the abstract:

Despite a proliferation of institutional repositories being established in recent years, and the significant financial and staffing resources invested in them, many have not fulfilled their initial promise. While most repository managers have been committed to providing open access to the research output of their institutions, many repositories have limited content and most academics have not yet been persuaded to engage with them in a sustained way. It has been hypothesised that better results might be obtained if population strategies were more aligned with the needs and current work practices of academics rather than the primary focus of the repository being as a showcase for the institution.

In 2008 Southern Cross University Library’s ePublications@SCU project team sought to take a more "academic-friendly" approach to repository development with the view that this would ultimately lead to improved deposit rates. Attempts were made to reduce any perceived complexities of the system that may be barriers to academic participation. Some of the strategies employed by Library staff included: producing promotional material that highlighted the personal and professional benefits for academics of the repository, creating Personal Researcher Pages for each academic in order to showcase their scholarly profiles, and taking responsibility for copyright checking and uploading of all papers into the repository.

ARL Releases "Establish a Universal, Open Library or Digital Data Commons"

The Association of Research Libraries has released "Establish a Universal, Open Library or Digital Data Commons."

Here's an excerpt:

Deepening our understanding of our Nation and its culture and history, advancing scientific discovery, tackling environmental, economic issues and more, all depend on scientists, researchers, students, scholars, and members of the public accessing our Nation's cultural, historical and scientific assets. A large-scale initiative to digitize and preserve the public domain collections of library, governmental, and cultural memory organizations will support research, teaching and learning at all levels, will help stem the current economic crisis by equipping and employing workers in every state with 21st Century skills, and it will lay a foundation for innovation and national competitiveness in the decades ahead. The goal is to establish a universal, open library or a digital data commons.

Pew Internet & American Life Project Releases "Adults and Social Network Websites"

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released "Adults and Social Network Websites."

Here's an excerpt:

The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years—from 8% in 2005 to 35% now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking survey.

While media coverage and policy attention focus heavily on how children and young adults use social network sites, adults still make up the bulk of the users of these websites. Adults make up a larger portion of the US population than teens, which is why the 35% number represents a larger number of users than the 65% of online teens who also use online social networks.

Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with 75% of adults 18-24 using these networks, compared to just 7% of adults 65 and older. At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young.

Digital Library Jobs: Repository Software Programmer at CARL

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries is recruiting a Repository Software Programmer.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Alliance Digital Repository (ADR) [http://adr.coalliance.org] is a consortial digital repository service currently in production release with continued development activities at the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. The repository actively develops and maintains a set of services built on open source software and tools to support ingest, search and discovery; digital object delivery and presentation; and preservation of digital content (i.e. digital images, text, audio files, video, and other content). . . .

The ADR Software Programmer works to support consortial digital repository initiatives by designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining tools and applications for use in support of the Fedora-based repository [http://www.fedora-commons.org/].

Tasks include, but are not limited to, designing, coding and testing software; assisting in defining technical requirements for tools to support delivery of image, text, and other media file formats; evaluating and integrating open source solutions; and defining and implementing interface strategies with other software systems in use at locally and at member institutions. Position also maintains relevant documentation, attends project meetings as needed, and may represent the Alliance at technically-oriented conferences and meetings.

Library of Congress to Scan 25,000th Book in Digitizing American Imprints Program

The Library of Congress will scan the 25,000th brittle book in its Digitizing American Imprints Program, which is supported by a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Library, which has contracted with the Internet Archive for digitization services, is combining its efforts with other libraries as part of the open content movement. The movement, which includes over 100 libraries, universities and cultural institutions, aims to digitize and make freely available public-domain books in a wide variety of subject areas.

Books scanned in this pilot project come primarily from the Library’s local history and genealogy sections of the General Collections. For many of these titles, only a few copies exist anywhere in the world, and a reader would need to travel to Washington to view the Library’s copy. . . .

All scanning operations are housed in the Library’s John Adams Building on Capitol Hill. Internet Archive staff work two shifts each day on 10 "Scribe" scanning stations. The operation can digitize up to 1,000 volumes each week. Shortly after scanning is complete, the books are available online at www.archive.org. Books can be read online or downloaded for more intensive study. The Library of Congress is actively working with the Internet Archive on the development of a full-featured, open-source page turner. A beta version, called the Flip Book, is currently available on the Internet Archive site.

Updated ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit Released

The Association of College and Research Libraries has released an updated version of its Scholarly Communication Toolkit. It has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The toolkit continues to provide context and background by summarizing key issues to offer quick, basic information on scholarly communication topics. It also links to examples of specific tools, including handouts, presentations and videos for libraries to adapt and use on their own campuses. . . .

“Given the current economic climate, it's natural to ask if scholarly communication activities are a luxury or a distraction,” said Richard Fyffe, librarian of the college for Grinnell College and co-chair of ACRL’s Scholarly Communication Committee. “We define scholarly communications issues as central to the mission of virtually every kind of academic library because they are central to the mission of our institutions. We feel libraries need to maintain a commitment to awareness, understanding, ownership and activism.”

The updated toolkit serves as a resource for scholarly communication discussions inside the library, outreach programs to faculty and administrators and library school students seeking to incorporate these issues into their course work. The ACRL Scholarly Communication Committee, as part of its efforts to keep the toolkit current, encourages librarians to contribute tools and case studies on their local scholarly communication campaigns. Simply post a comment describing your tool and provide a link in the appropriate tab.

PDF Beats Microformats for Long-Term Document Storage

An AIIM report, Content Creation and Delivery—The On-Ramps and Off-Ramps of ECM, indicates that PDF has surpassed microformats for long-term document storage.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Recent AIIM research found that 90% of organizations are using the PDF file format for long-term storage of scanned documents, and 89% are converting Office files to PDF for distribution and archive. Not surprisingly, paper is currently used by 100% of organizations, but when asked to predict the situation in 5 years time, use of paper for long-term storage dropped to 77%, whereas PDF rose to 93%. . . .

Time-honored storage on microfilm or fiche is still used by 43% of organizations, but this is expected to drop to 28% over the next five years. At the other end of the media spectrum, 34% of organizations are archiving digital video, rising to a projected 47% in 5 years. Digital audio archiving will rise from 30% to 37%.

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Information Architect at Yale

Yale's Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure is recruiting a Digital Information Architect.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Yale University has established the Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure a new, permanent initiative, to provide strategic and operational leadership in creating a coherent and integrated campus-wide architecture to support Yale’s digital assets and in developing the University’s digital content infrastructure. The ODAI will guide collaboration among the Schools, libraries, museums and other campus units that are developing strategies and systems for digitization and digital asset management and will coordinate the development of a University-wide digital information management strategy.

As the ODAI Digital Information Architect (DIA), report to the Director of ODAI, and have a key leadership role in the development of Yale University’s campus-wide digital content management strategy, which includes defining the standards, policies and implementation plans. The DIA will be expected to help understand and articulate digital content issues within and outside the University.

LibWorld—Library Blogs Worldwide

Christian Hauschke, Nadine Ullmann, and Sarah Lohre have edited a book about the global blogging efforts of librarians, LibWorld—Library Blogs Worldwide. It is available in print form and as a free PDF download.

Here's the abstract:

On April, 23rd 2007 a series of postings started on Infobib.de, where guest authors from all over the world introduced the library and library related blogs of their own country. This book is a collection of 30 revised LibWorld articles, accompanied by a foreword by Walt Crawford. Included are articles about the blogosphere of: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malawi, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, USA.