Month: February 2009

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) Web Site Launch

The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project has launched its Web site.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

PEER is a pioneering collaboration between publishers, repositories and the research community, which aims to investigate the effects of the large-scale deposit (so called Green Open Access) on user access, author visibility, journal viability and the broader European research environment.

The project will run until 2011, during which time over 50,000 European stage two (accepted) manuscripts from up to 300 journals will become available for archiving.

The PEER website will serve the three key stakeholder groups of publishers, repository/library community and researchers (both as authors and readers), and will also provide information accessible to the general public.

Content will include news updates, as well as reports on various aspects of the project as PEER progresses.

E-Book Duopoly?: Chairman of the Board of Association of American Publishers on the Google Book Search Settlement

Richard Sarnoff, Chairman of the Board of Association of American Publishers, discussed the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy last week.

Timothy B. Lee reports on his comments in "Publisher Speculates about Amazon/Google E-Book 'Duopoly'."

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Library Services Librarian for Technical Services at UMass Boston

The University of Massachusetts Boston Joseph P. Healey Library is recruiting a Digital Library Services Librarian for Technical Services.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Digital Library Services Librarian for Technical Services assumes overall responsibility for digital library services metadata development, cataloging, and quality control policy development and maintenance in coordination with Fenway Library Online (FLO) standards and expectations. The incumbent trains, supervises, and develops all primary technical services functions in a network environment with FLO in accordance with new developing modes to acquire, access, and store information resources. This position is part of the Digital Library Services (DLS) management team which coordinates departmental policies, procedures and workflows, including technical services and how DLS functions related to other library operations and services, particularly Reference Outreach and Instruction. The incumbent supports access to Healey Library’s print and digital collections, including e-journals, e-books, blogs, pod-casts, 3-D images, virtual environments, and other web content as selected by faculty, librarians, and other stakeholders. S/he also assists in the development and maintenance of the library’s web portal. The incumbent works in coordination with the Acquisitions Coordinator and the Electronic Resources Librarian to ensure efficient and effective delivery of electronic resources to the campus community, using emerging information technologies and standards-based methods. S/he works independently with Library colleagues and community partners to develop and provide access to information and materials that support research and public needs and meet the outreach goals of the Library. S/he participates in preparing grant submissions for additional projects and maintains statistics and produces monthly reports

Digital Library Jobs: Librarian III at Houston Public Library

Houston Public Library is recruiting a Librarian III.

Here's an excerpt from the ad :

The Houston Public Library seeks an energetic, knowledgeable, self motivated, customer service driven individual to create descriptive metadata for digital images as well as texts in accordance with established standards and make accessible online. Participate in the development of policy and procedures for digitization projects and coordinate them with other departments and cultural institutions. Assist digitalization staff to manage digital content, and determine controlled vocabularies, and perform original cataloging. Monitor and maintain URL links in the Innovative Interfaces, Inc. bibliographic databases for subscribed online databases, and electronic books, eAudiobooks, and journals. Supervise one paraprofessional as well as any temporary digital collections staff. Work with manager to establish local cataloging rules and schema for digital collection.

SPARC Releases Digital Repository Videos

SPARC has released a series of videos about digital repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The video series was taped at the November 2008 SPARC repositories meeting, and underscores the central role of repositories across library services. Particular emphasis is placed on the added value they contribute to the institution and on the importance of funding repository development even in lean economic times. The clips feature three full-length plenary addresses plus seven short interviews with leading-edge repository implementers, including:

  • Ernie Ingles, Vice Provost and Chief Librarian at University of Alberta
  • Michelle Kimpton, Executive Director of the DSpace Foundation
  • Bonnie Klein, Information Collection/Copyright Specialist at the US Defense Technical Information Center
  • Catherine Mitchell, Director of the eScholarship Publishing Group at California Digital Library (CDL)
  • Sarah Shreeves, IDEALS Coordinator at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • David Shulenburger, Vice President for Academic Affairs of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC)
  • John Wilbanks, Vice President for Science at Creative Commons
  • Bob Witeck, CEO of Witeck-Combs Communications Inc.

Welsh Repository Network Launched

The Welsh Repository Network has been launched.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Welsh Repository Network (WRN), a network of twelve institutional repositories within each of the higher education institutions (HEI) within Wales, was launched at the National Library of Wales on Thursday 19th February, 2009. The launch celebrated the success of the WRN Project; a project funded by the JISC in association with the Wales Higher Education Library Forum (WHELF), to provide each HEI in Wales with the resources and support needed to establish and operate effective, individual institutional repositories. Each HEI was provided with funding to purchase repository hardware or to purchase a hosted repository system, along with support and assistance via the Welsh arm of the Repositories Support Project (RSP) based at Aberystwyth University.

The WRN launch celebrated the fact that the principality of Wales now has 100% coverage with respect to universities and repositories. This will allow the universities in Wales to not only preserve and protect their research, but also make available cutting edge research to the world, enabling more open dissemination of the ground breaking and world leading research undertaken across Wales through the Open Access movement.

A further deliverable of the project is the production of a suite of twelve case studies, documenting the hardware purchases of each institution (available from http://hdl.handle.net/2160/1881). As the HEIs in Wales are diverse in size and type, ranging from large research-led institutions to smaller liberal arts or specialist institutions, a variety of hardware and software solutions were required to fit with their existing infrastructures. It was hoped that creating these case studies would assist other universities to allow them to compare their profile with a case study of an institution with a similar background and infrastructure plan, and to gauge their hardware needs for repository support accordingly.

Preliminary Results Show Elsevier's Adjusted Operating Profit Increased to 568 Million Pounds in 2008

Reed Elsevier has released "Reed Elsevier Preliminary Results 2008." For the Elsevier division alone, revenue increased to 1,700 million pounds from 1,507 million pounds in 2007 and adjusted operating profit increased to 568 million pounds from 477 million pounds in 2007. Notes indicated that performance factors included "Record subscription renewals, growing online sales, successful publishing; weak pharma." The Elsevier division accounted for 39% of Reed Elsevier's 2008 adjusted operating profit. (Thanks to The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics.)

According to the Wall Street Journal, at yesterday's exchange rate one U.K. pound equalled 1.4426 U.S. dollars.

Leslie Carr on Repositories and Cloud Computing

In "The Cloud, the Researcher and the Repository," Leslie Carr discusses repositories and cloud computing, especially the problem of large file deposit.

Here's an excerpt from:

The solution that Tim [Brody] has come up with is to allow the researcher's desktop environment to directly use EPrints as a file system—you can 'mount' the repository as a network drive on your Windows/Mac/Linux desktop using services like WebDAV or FTP. As far as the user is concerned, they can just drag and drop a whole bunch of files from their documents folders, home directories or DVD-ROMs onto the repository disk, and EPrints will automatically deposit them into a new entry or entries. Of course, you can also do the reverse—copy documents from the repository back onto your desktop, open them directly in applications, or attach them to an email.

ARL Report: Ad Hoc Task Force to Review the Proposed OCLC Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records

The Association of Research Libraries has released Ad Hoc Task Force to Review the Proposed OCLC Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records: Final Report to the ARL Board.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC's release of the policy elicited serious concern from the ARL community, as well as the broader library community. As a result, ARL established an ad hoc task force to review the policy and identify issues of particular interest to research libraries. The task force report includes a brief overview of the policy and the task force's understanding of the policy's intent. This is followed by an explication of specific issues and the task force's findings regarding both the policy itself and the implementation process. The report concludes with recommendations for OCLC and the library community.

Walt Crawford on the Google Books Search Settlement

The latest issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large is dedicated to an in-depth (30-page) look at the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement.

Here's an excerpt:

The agreement could be a lot worse. The outcome could also be a lot better. I'm sure Google would agree with both statements, as it finds itself in businesses where it has neither expertise nor much chance of advertising-level profits. At the same time, the copyright maximalists didn't quite win this round. We'll almost certainly get somewhat better access to several million OP books—and will have to hope (and work to see) that the price (monetary and otherwise) isn't too high.

Digital Library Jobs: Director, Copyright and Publishing Resource Center at Minnesota

The University of Minnesota is recruiting a Director, Copyright and Publishing Resource Center.

The University of Minnesota seeks leadership for its newly established Copyright and Publishing Resource Center (CPRC). Based in the University Libraries http://www.lib.umn.edu/, the Center plays a critical educational and advisory role within the University community and engages nationally in the evolving legal and policy arenas relevant to intellectual property, copyright, and publishing. In the context of emergent technologies and new methods/genre of scholarship, the Director develops programs and supports the University in policy development in areas relevant to the creation, use, and sharing of recorded knowledge. The Director reports to the Associate University Librarian for Academic Programs.

The Center is an outcome of the University's recent copyright policy development and recognizes the increasing complexity of issues of ownership and use of copyrighted resources in a digital age. The University's copyright policy affirms the rights of faculty and student ownership of academic works and encourages broad access to these works to facilitate the advancement of knowledge within the academy. Further, e-education efforts will require new models for shared or University ownership of learning resources. The University's land grant mission, global research agenda, and robust digital infrastructure create a context where an informed community vis-à-vis copyright and publishing is essential.

The University Libraries provide campus leadership and community education about the use and creation of information resources and play a vital role in the development of technologies to facilitate the processes of teaching, learning, and research. The Libraries' established program in copyright education will be expanded in the Center, and the Center will draw upon the Libraries' network of discipline liaisons and technology infrastructure to reach a broad audience. The Center operates in collaboration with other campus offices, including the Office of General Counsel.

In 2007-2008, Reed Elsevier Inc. Made Contributions to Eight House Judiciary Committee Members

According to data from OpenSecrets.org, Reed Elsevier Inc. made contributions to eight House Judiciary Committee members during 2007-2008.

  1. John Conyers, Jr., (D) Michigan, 14th, Chair: $4,000
  2. Howard Berman, (D) California, 28th: $3,000
  3. Howard Coble, (R) North Carolina, 6th: $4,000
  4. Darrell Issa, (R) California, 49th: $1,000
  5. Sheila Jackson Lee, (D) Texas, 18th: $1,000
  6. Jerrold Nadler, (D) New York, 8th: $1,000
  7. Lamar Smith, (R) Texas, 21st: $2,000
  8. Robert Wexler, (D) Florida, 19th: $2,000

It also made 2007-2008 contributions to two Senate Judiciary Committee members:

  1. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania: $2,000
  2. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama: $1,000

ARL Issues "ARL Statement to Scholarly Publishers on the Global Economic Crisis"

The Association of Research Libraries has released "ARL Statement to Scholarly Publishers on the Global Economic Crisis."

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The ARL statement includes a set of recommendations that are based on the belief that scholarly publishers who are committed to enhancing the effectiveness of the scholarly communication system are prepared to act to minimize negative impacts on the system resulting from economic conditions. Among other strategies, the statements calls for publishers and vendors to adopt flexible approaches to pricing and avoid reducing content or access as libraries seek to renegotiate expenditures. ARL encourages publishers to consult widely with research libraries in developing responses to the current economic environment. Small, not-for-profit publishers are of particular concern, and ARL member libraries welcome conversations regarding new publishing models that can reduce the cost and vulnerability of established publications of high value.

One of the recommendations is:

Libraries serving research organizations are increasingly receptive to models that provide open access to content published by their affiliated authors in addition to traditional subscription access to titles. This kind of model can form a bridge from subscription models to models incorporating author-side payments

Public Knowledge Releases Open Archives Harvester 2.3.0

The Public Knowledge Project has released Open Archives Harvester, an open source OAI-PMH harvester.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This is a major rewrite of numerous parts of the Harvester code, including metadata storage and indexing. It increases indexing flexibility to support plugin-based indexing, including Lucene/SOLR support. It also adds OAI Data Provider support, including the potential to convert between metadata formats (currently from various formats into Dublin Core).

European Commission Allocates 25 Million Euros for Digital Libraries

The European Commission CIP-ICT Policy Support Programme has allocated 25 million euros for digital libraries in 2009.

Here's an excerpt from "European Commission CIP-ICT Policy Support Programme: Digital Libraries Information Day, Luxembourg, 17th February 2009."

A budget of 25 million euros is allocated to digital libraries in the 2009 call. The main goals of this call are contributing to Europeana (the European digital library) and maximizing the impact of European research results. The specific objectives are:

  • Developing services to improve the usability of Europeana
  • Aggregating content for Europeana
  • Digitising content for Europeana
  • Open access to scientific information
  • Use of heritage content for education

Indiana University Releases Variations Digital Music Library System as Open Source Software

Indiana University has released Variations, a Java-based client-server software used to create digital music library systems, as open source software.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Variations enables institutions such as college and university libraries and music schools to digitize audio and score materials from their own collections, provide those materials to their students and faculty in an interactive online environment, and respect intellectual property rights.

A key feature of the system for faculty and students is the ability to create bookmarks and playlists for use in studying or in preparing classroom presentations, allowing easy access later on to specific audio time points or segments. A key feature for libraries is a flexible access control and authentication system, which allows libraries to set up access rules based on their own local institutional policies.

This software is the culmination of nearly fifteen years of development and use of digital music library systems at Indiana University. Creation of the current Variations software platform was originally funded by the National Science Foundation. In 2005, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Indiana University a National Leadership Grant to extend this highly successful system to the nationwide library community. Beyond IU, the software is currently being used at the Ohio State University, University of Maryland, New England Conservatory of Music, and the Philadelphia area Tri-College Consortium (Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr).

This open source release of Variations complements IU's earlier release of the open source Variations Audio Timeliner, which lets users identify relationships in passages of music, annotate their findings, and play back the results with simple point-and-click navigation. This tool is also included as a feature of the complete Variations system. . . .

The Indiana University Digital Library Program and Cook Music Library created Variations in collaboration with faculty and students in IU's Jacobs School of Music. The IU Digital Library Program is a collaborative effort of the Indiana University Libraries and the Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Information Technology.

ALA Issues Call to Action about Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

ALA has issued a call to action about the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (H.R. 801). The alert includes a link to a Web form that will allow you to e-mail a House Judiciary Committee Member from your district about the bill (will not work if your Representative does not serve on the Judiciary Committee).

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Services and Cataloging Librarian at Providence College

The Phillips Memorial Library at Providence College is recruiting a Digital Services and Cataloging Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (position 0000616):

Leads the Digital Services and Cataloging (DSC) initiatives.

The DSC unit has primary responsibility for digital services and knowledge management: 1) leadership in the library's digital initiatives, especially its institutional repository; 2) management of PC's materials cataloging in all formats. The DSC unit also collaborates closely with other areas of Collection Services and electronic resources.

UK's Intute Repository Search Project Releases Two Search Engines for Testing

Supported by JISC funding, the Intute Repository Search project is developing increasingly sophisticated search capabilities for document discovery in UK repositories, and it has released two search engines for testing (conceptual search and text mining based search).

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Search services harvest the metadata and full-text out-put from institutional repositories, making the aggregated content searchable and browsable via a single interface. Intute Repository Search currently searches over 95 UK institutional repositories that are taken from the Directory of Open Access Repositories, OpenDOAR.

The development path of this project involves simple metadata search, full-text indexing of documents, text-mining of full-text documents, automatic subject classification, term-based document classification, query expansion, clustering of results and browsing/visualisation of the search results. User group requirements have been integrated into the project's development iterations to ensure that the project adequately reflects what researchers want from a service such as Intute Repository Search.

Two complementary advanced search and browse services have been developed for user testing. One is Autonomy IDOL (www.autonomy.com/content/Products/products-idol-server/index.en.html) and the other is using components developed by NaCTeM (www.nactem.ac.uk).

Autonomy IDOL relates to the conceptual feature of the service. This allows users to search for documents most closely matched to their query, read the overview and abstract of those documents and also have the opportunity to view documents relating to the query's search results. The result is a richer contextual search facility for users who want to view documents that are ranked according to their relation to the query.

NaCTeM has developed the text mining component. This allows users to take advantage of the TerMine service (www.nactem.ac.uk/software/termine/) among others, to automatically discover term associations within texts that are harvested from UK HE institutional repositories. By extracting information that would have otherwise been difficult or impossible to identify in a large number of documents, users can view documents that are linked with each other via salient concepts in a way that may lead to the answer of existing research questions or the creation of new ones. This then allows for a more meaningful and personalised search facility for users who are looking for specific patterns and connections between terms, within the collective resource of Intute Repository Search.

Metadata Tool under Development: Update on Duke's Project Trident

Will Sexton has posted an update about Duke University Libraries' Project Trident, which is developing a metadata tool for use with its digital repository.

Here's an excerpt:

Our specifications essentially treat the Editor as a client of the Repository, and the Repository not as an implementation, but as an API with RESTful bindings. . . .

We took this approach to promote the modularity of the Editor tool. Other organizations or institutions may choose to implement the RESTful API “on top of” their local repository implementation, and adopt the Trident Editor for their own needs. We intend to implement our Repository module using Fedora, but the Editor module should be reusable with a variety of repository platforms.

Digital Library Jobs: Director of Bibliographic and Digital Services at University of Richmond

The University of Richmond Libraries are recruiting a Director of Bibliographic and Digital Services.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Director of Bibliographic and Digital Services (BDS) provides strategically focused leadership, coordination, administration, and policy management for all technical and digital services, including acquisitions, serials, cataloging, special collections, electronic resource management, and the University's growing digital library program, which includes the planning for, creation of, and preservation of sustainable digital library collections and services. Develops and implements innovative programs to facilitate change and promote an environment of continuous improvement through library-wide strategic planning, policy making, and development and evaluation of services. Identifies staff training needs to further the goal of providing efficient, effective, and high quality services. Supervises Head, Digital Initiatives; Head, Cataloging and Metadata Services; Head, Acquisitions; Electronic Resources Librarian; and the Head, Collections Development and Special Collections Librarian.

University Council at Boston University Endorses Open Access Initiative

The University Council of Boston University has endorsed an open access initiative that will establish an institutional repository.

Here's an excerpt from "University Council Approves Open Access Plan":

Boston University took a giant step towards greater access to academic scholarship and research on February 11, when the University Council voted to support an open access system that would make scholarly work of the faculty and staff available online to anyone, for free, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship is not used for profit.

"We believe this is the first time that a university as a whole has taken a stand on behalf of the university as opposed to a single school or college," says Wendy Mariner, the chair of the Faculty Council and a professor at the School of Law, at the School of Public Health, and at the School of Medicine. "We are looking forward to new forms of publication in the 21st century that will transform the ways that knowledge and information are shared."

"The resolution passed by our University Council is a very important statement on the importance of open access to the results of scholarship and research created within the University," says BU President Robert A. Brown. "The digital archive called for in the resolution will become a great repository for the creativity of our faculty and students."