Month: March 2009

Digital Library Jobs: Library Technology Development Specialist at Villanova

The Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University is recruiting a Library Technology Development Specialist.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Responsible for designing, developing, testing and deploying new technology methods, tools and resources to extend and enhance digitally-mediated or digitally-delivered library services, including but not limited to Web interfaces, digital reference and research assistance, digitization and digital library development, institutional repository services, "portalization" and personalization of library resources, the integration of handheld devices into the library service environment, Web content management, collaboration software, staff Intranet services, online knowledge base development, and related areas. Contributes code, conducts quality assurance on code contributed by other developers, and helps facilitate the evolutions of the VuFind open source resource discovery software. Participates in the implementation and enhancement of an open source library management (enterprise) system. Contributes to the development of instructional support applications for library digital resources. Participates in ongoing environmental scanning for emerging applications and technology opportunities in an academic library context. Contributes to tactical and strategic technology planning for library environment. Collaborates with Instructional Design librarian and Center for Instructional Technology to integrate new library technologies into library educational services. Collaborates with Library Assessment Team to measure success of new technology projects.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (3/4/09)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "Establishing a Central Open Access Fund"; "How the Media Frames 'Open Access'"; "Legal Scholarship, Electronic Publishing, and Open Access: Transformation or Steadfast Stagnation?"; MetaTools—Investigating Metadata Generation Tools: Final Report; "Open Access Publishing in High-Energy Physics"; "Practical Digital Asset Management and the University Library"; "A Principal Component Analysis of 39 Scientific Impact Measures"; "Two Scenarios for How Scholarly Publishers Could Change Their Business Model to Open Access"; "Re-Introduction of the Bill to Kill the NIH Policy"; "Scholarly Communication Initiatives at Georgetown University: Lessons Learned," and "The State of the Nation: A Snapshot of Australian Institutional Repositories."

DCC Overview of the Science Commons

The Digital Curation Centre has released an overview of the Science Commons as part of its Legal Watch Papers series.

Here's an excerpt:

Science Commons is a branch of Creative Commons that aims to make the Web work for science the way that it currently works for culture. It is a non-profit organisation aimed at accelerating the research cycle which they define as "the continuous production and reuse of knowledge that is at the heart of the scientific method." Science Commons describes itself as having three interlocking initiatives: making scientific research 'reuseful'; enabling 'one-click' access to research materials; and integrating fragmented information sources

Profile of John Sack, Director of the HighWire Press

The Society for Scholarly Publishing has published a profile of John Sack, Director of the HighWire Press.

Here's an excerpt:

[Sack:] Some of the next "wave" of innovation in scholarly publishing will come from the rate at which other sorts of non-journal content (such as books) is going online. . . . Standards—or perhaps “best practices”—will emerge for finding, linking, and integrating book content with journal content (and we may even see the functional distinction between books and journals being to merge), integrating audio and video, integrating new mobile devices (Kindle, iPhone), etc.

An earlier profile of Amy Brand, Program Manager of the Harvard Office of Scholarly Communication, may also be of interest.

New from Amazon: Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch

Amazon has released the Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today introduced "Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch," a new application available for free from Apple's App Store that lets customers enjoy over 240,000 books, including 104 of 112 New York Times Bestsellers, on the iPhone and iPod touch using Apple's Multi-Touch user interface. Amazon's new Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes a customer's bookmark across their original Kindle, Kindle 2, iPhone and iPod touch, so customers always have their reading with them and never lose their place. Kindle customers can read a few pages on their iPhone or iPod touch and pick up right where they left off on their Kindle or Kindle 2. . . .

The Kindle application for iPhone and iPod touch lets customers bring their Kindle books with them wherever they go and takes full advantage of Apple's Multi-Touch user interface. With the new Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch application, customers can:

  • Shop for hundreds of thousands of books on their Kindle or online at http://www.amazon.com/kindlestore, and wirelessly transfer the books to their iPhone or iPod touch
  • Access their entire library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers
  • Adjust the text size of books
  • Add bookmarks and view notes and highlights

Kindle for iPhone and iPod touch is available for free from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/.

Thomson Reuters Scientific's 2008 Revenues Were $604 Million

Thomson Reuters Scientific had revenues of $604 million, which represented a 8% increase "before currency," partially fueled by the ISI Web of Knowledge/Web of Science's double-digit growth.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Full-year operating profit grew 4% to $171 million with the related margin decreasing 70 basis points to 28.3%, primarily due to incremental investments in Asia.

Free at Your Campus: The ACRL Scholarly Communications 101 Road Show

If your institution meets its criteria, ACRL is offering to bring its Scholarly Communications 101 Road Show to your campus at no cost.

Here's an excerpt from the Road Show Web site:

Participants will:

  • Understand scholarly communication as a system to manage the results of research and scholarly inquiry and be able to describe system characteristics, including academic libraries and other major stakeholders and stakeholder interests, major types and sources of current stress and evolution, and key indicators of size, complexity, and rates of change
  • Enumerate new modes and models of scholarly communication; business models; research & social interaction models (from blogs, curated websites, etc), and peer review models and examples of the ways in which academic libraries have or can initiate or support those models
  • Be able to select and cite key principles, facts, and messages relevant to current or nascent scholarly communication plans and programs in their institutions, e.g. as preparation for library staff or faculty outreach, to contextualize collection development decisions

Following the Money Trail: MAPLight.org Report on Campaign Contributions and the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

MAPLight.org has released "Report on HR 801, Fair Copyright in Research Works Act: Report Shows Campaign Contributions Given to Sponsors of Fair Copyright in Research Works Act." (Thanks to the Huffington Post and Open Access News.)

Here's an excerpt:

MAPLight.org's research team released data today showing campaign contributions given to members of the House Committee on the Judiciary from publishing interests during the 2008 election cycle (Jan. 2007 through Dec. 2008). MAPLight.org analyzed campaign contribution data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics and determined that the publishing industry gave an average of $5,150 to each of the bill's five bill sponsors and an average of $2,506 to each of the other 34 non-sponsor members of the Committee. Total publishing industry contributions given to the House Committee on the Judiciary were $110,950.

DPE Digital Preservation Video Training Course

DigitalPreservationEurope has released its Digital Preservation Video Training Course, a series of digital videos recorded at the DPE/Planets/CASPAR/nestor Joint Training Event: Starting out: Preserving Digital Objects-Principles and Practice in October 2008.

Here's an excerpt from the course page:

The training introduces participants to a number of key digital preservation principles. Participants will leave with:

  • an awareness and understanding of key digital preservation issues and challenges,
  • an appreciation of the range of roles and responsibilities involved with digital preservation activity,
  • knowledge about the reference model for Open Archival Information System (OAIS),
  • a familiarity with file formats currently considered beneficial for preservation,
  • a developed understanding of the role and use of metadata and representation information,
  • knowledge of the preservation planning process and its benefits to overall digital preservation strategies,
  • an insight into the concepts of trust and trustworthiness in the context of digital preservation,
  • a working knowledge of the issues surrounding audit methodologies and self-certification of digital repositories.

The New Creative Commons License: CC0 1.0 Universal Lets Rights Holders Waive Their Rights

The Creative Commons has released CC0 1.0 Universal, the "no rights reserved" license.

Here's an excerpt from the CC0 FAQ:

Are CC0 and CC's Public Domain Dedication and Certification ("PDDC") the same?

No. PDDC was intended to serve two purposes—to allow copyright holders to "dedicate" a work to the public domain, and to allow people to "certify" a work as being in the public domain. Our experience with PDDC shows that having a single tool performing both of these functions can be confusing.

CC0 is a single purpose tool, designed to take on the dedication function PDDC has been performing, but in a more complete and legally robust way. CC0 is universal in its applicability, intended for use world-wide by anyone anywhere holding copyright or database interests in a work. PDDC is based on U.S. law, and the enforceability of its dedication function outside of the U.S. is not certain.

Read more about it at "CC0: Waiving Copyrights" and "Want to Waive Copyright? Creative Commons Has a Tool for You."

iPRES 2008: Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects

The British Library has released iPRES 2008: Proceedings of The Fifth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects: Joined Up and Working: Tools and Methods for Digital Preservation, The British Library, London. 29–30 September.

Here's an excerpt:

This volume brings together the proceedings of iPRES 2008, the Fifth International Conference on Digital Preservation, held at The British Library on 29-30 September, 2008. From its beginnings five years ago, iPRES has retained its strong international flavour. This year, it brings together over 250 participants from 33 countries and four continents. iPRES has become a major international forum for the exchange of ideas and practice in Digital Preservation. . . .

The iPRES 2008 conference theme and the papers gathered together here represent a major shift in the state-of-the-art. For the first time, this progress enabled the Programme Committee to establish two distinct tracks. The practitioner track is designed for those with an interest in practically preserving digital content within their organisation. The technical track is designed for those with an interest in underpinning concepts and digital preservation technology. Readers will find valuable insights to draw from in both areas.

University of Rochester Releases New Institutional Repository System, IR Plus

The University of Rochester has released version alpha 0.1 of its new open source institutional repository system, IR Plus. A test version of the system is available, and a discussion group has been established on Google.

Here are the documentation links:

"Institutional Repositories: Thinking Beyond the Box"

Library Journal has published "Institutional Repositories: Thinking Beyond the Box" by Andrew Richard Albanese.

Here's an excerpt:

If [Clifford] Lynch is "queasy," it's because he questions whether institutions—in particular, libraries—are biting off more than they can chew and swallow by conflating IRs with an alternative publishing mission. "I think it is short-sighted. I know many of these institutions are feeling great pain from pressure on their acquisition budgets and would like to mitigate that," he says. "But that's a short-term economic thing, and I'm sorry to see it getting mixed up with IRs."

"Toward the Design of an Open Monograph Press"

As part of a thematic issue on open access, The Journal of Electronic Publishing has published a paper by John Willinsky titled "Toward the Design of an Open Monograph Press."

Here's the abstract:

This paper reviews and addresses the critical issues currently confronting monograph publishing as a matter of reduced opportunities for scholars to pursue book-length projects. In response, it proposes an alternative approach to monograph publishing based on a modular design for an online system that would foster, manage, and publish monographs in digital and print forms using open source software developments, drawn from journal publishing, and social networking technologies that might contribute to not only to the sustainability of monograph publishing but to the quality of the resulting books.

ACLS Humanities E-Book XML Conversion Experiment: Report on Workflow, Costs, and User Preferences

The American Council of Learned Societies has released ACLS Humanities E-Book XML Conversion Experiment: Report on Workflow, Costs, and User Preferences.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2008, ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB)—a subscription-based online collection of over 2,200 digital titles in the humanities—undertook an experiment to investigate the possibility of a future mass conversion of e-books preexisting in a scanned, page-image format into XML-encoded files. . . .

HEB had 20 sample page-image titles from its backlist converted to XML, using OCR-derived text files that had been created during the initial scanning process to enable searching. The books were tagged using a simplified version of HEB's standard specifications, to reduce the need for editorial intervention. . . . The cost of creating the XML titles was considerably greater than that associated with scanning (about $400 versus $170 per title).

The XML books were presented in the HEB collection side by side with their page-image counterparts. Despite any conversion-related flaws, our subsequent user survey indicated that readers preferred the XML format by a margin of about two to one, the most relevant factors cited in this regard being readability, accessible text, and additional features and functions not available in the page-image version.

Former Congressman Thomas H. Allen Named President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers

Thomas H. Allen, former Democratic six-term House of Representatives member from Maine, has been named President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"In this age of rapidly changing technology, we must not lose sight of the abiding importance of the written word to our culture, society and our democratic institutions," Mr. Allen said. "AAP advocates on issues of paramount importance ranging from free speech and education to the protection of intellectual property rights and international freedom to publish. I am excited about tackling the challenges of this new position and its responsibilities to the publishing industry and the reading public."

Wolters Kluwer's Subscription and Other Non-Cyclical Revenues 2,441 Million Euros in 2008, Up 3%

Wolters Kluwer's subscription and other non-cyclical revenues were 2,441 million euros in 2008, up 3% from 2007.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

While market contractions were felt in all geographies, the company benefited from a resilient portfolio with a majority of revenue streams derived from subscription and other non-cyclical products, driven by legislative change, medical discoveries, and the increasing productivity needs of the professionals the company serves. Two thirds of revenues are subscription based with improving retention rates. The balance of the portfolio is comprised of transactional products including books, mortgage and corporate lending-based products, advertising and promotional services, and training. It is in these transactional areas that Wolters Kluwer experienced the pressure of the economic slow down.

Amazon Lets Publishers Decide on Whether Their Books Can Be Read Aloud by Kindle on Title-by-Title Basis

Amazon will let publishers determine whether their e-books can be read aloud by the Kindle on a title-by-title basis.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.

Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is.

As reported previously, the Authors Guild was opposed to an unbridled read aloud Kindle capability. Here's an excerpt from "The Engadget Interview: Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild."

[Aiken] Well, the legal objections fall in a couple categories. One is the basic copyright objection which I know has been bandied about a lot online, and that objection comes in two parts. There's the unauthorized reproduction of the work which is one claim under copyright law—for that there has to be fixation of the copy and there's a legal question as to whether or not there's adequate fixation in the Kindle. The second claim is that text-to-speech creates a derivative work, and under most theories of copyright law, there doesn't have to be fixation for there to be a derivative work created.

Amazon's decision has been controversial. For example,here's an excerpt from Lawrence Lessig's "Caving into Bullies (Aka, Here We Go Again)":

We had this battle before. In 2001, Adobe released e-book technology that gave rights holders (including publishers of public domain books) the ability to control whether the Adobe e-book reader read the book aloud. The story got famous when it was shown that one of its public domain works—Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—was marked to forbid the book to be read aloud. . . .

But the bigger trend here is much more troubling: Innovative technology company (Amazon (Kindle 2), Google (Google Books)) releases new innovative way to access or use content; so-called "representatives" of rights owners, Corleone-like, baselessly insist on a cut; innovative technology company settles with baseless demanders, and we're all arguably worse off.

We're worse off with the Kindle because if the right get set by the industry that publishers get to control a right which Congress hasn't given them—the right to control whether I can read my book to my kid, or my Kindle can read a book to me—users and innovators have less freedom. And we may be worse off with Google Books, because (in ways not clear when the settlement was first reported) the consequence of the class action mechanism may well disable users and innovators from doing what fair use plainly entitled Google to do.