Month: July 2009

"Open Access Archiving and Article Citations within Health Services and Policy Research"

Devon Greyson et al. have self-archived "Open Access Archiving and Article Citations within Health Services and Policy Research" in E-LIS.

Here's an excerpt:

Promoting uptake of research findings is an objective common to those who fund, produce and publish health services and policy research. Open access (OA) is one method being employed to maximize impact. OA articles are online, free to access and use. This paper contributes to growing body of research exploring the “OA advantage” by employing an article-level analysis comparing citation rates for articles drawn from the same, purposively selected journals. We used a two-stage analytic approach designed to test whether OA is associated with (1) likelihood that an article is cited at all and (2) total number citations that an article receives, conditional on being cited at least once. Adjusting for potential confounders: number of authors, time since publication, journal, and article subject, we found that OA archived articles were 60% more likely to be cited at least once, and, once cited, were cited 29% more than non-OA articles.

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Library Developer at George Mason University

The George Mason University Libraries are recruiting a Digital Library Developer.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (Recruit number 3525):

The George Mason University Libraries seeks a Digital Library Developer to join our innovation-driven Digital Programs and Systems division as we build new ways to deliver library content and services.

Duties include: Anticipating and investigating trends in digital library technology so we can respond quickly to new opportunities; provide primary support for new initiatives in resource discovery, digital preservation, knowledge management and scholarly communication. This position reports to the Associate University Librarian for Digital Programs and Systems.

"Antitrust and the Google Books Settlement: The Problem of Simultaneity"

Eric M. Fraser of the University of Chicago Law School has self-archived "Antitrust and the Google Books Settlement: The Problem of Simultaneity" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

Google Books represents the latest attempt at the centuries-old goal to build a universal library. In 2004, Google started scanning books from libraries around the world. Although it made copyright licensing agreements with some publishers, it did not obtain permission from each rights-holder before scanning, indexing, and displaying portions of books from the stacks of libraries. Unsurprisingly, authors and publishers sued for copyright violations. Google settled the class action lawsuit in a sweeping agreement that has raised suspicion from librarians, users, and the government. In this paper, I analyze the antitrust and competition issues in the settlement agreement. I find that the simultaneous aspects of agreements and pricing pose serious antitrust problems. The settlement effectively gives Google simultaneous agreements with virtually all the rights-holders to in-copyright American books. It also requires that Google set prices for books simultaneously. In a competitive market, both agreements and pricing would occur independently. Under current law, however, no potential competitor can make agreements with the rights-holders to orphan works. The simultaneity, therefore, concentrates pricing power, leading to cartel pricing (a problem under § 1 of the Sherman Act) and monopolization (a § 2 problem).

Digital Library Jobs: Department Head, Digital Library Services at Georgia State University Library

The Georgia State University Library is recruiting a Department Head, Digital Library Services.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Georgia State University Library seeks an enthusiastic, collegial, service-oriented and dynamic head of Digital Library Services who will provide leadership and management for information technologies, digital initiatives, and web services. The Digital Library Services Department Head, reporting to the Associate University Librarian for Learning and Technology Initiatives, leads a department consisting of two library faculty and four staff members with an increase in staff anticipated in the near future, and serves on the library administrative team that provides overall direction for the library in fulfilling the research, teaching, and service mission of the University. The department head sets direction for the Library's information technology environment and services through strategic planning, resource allocation and management, assessment, and policy development. Encourages creativity in digital and information technology initiatives that respond to and anticipate user needs and ensures that the library's technology programs, services, and infrastructure are responsive to the academic needs of the Georgia State community. Oversees the management and operations of the Digital Library Services department; plans, organizes, prioritizes, and reports on the work of the department; prepares or reviews annual budget and identifies resource requirements for short-term and long-term projects to ensure adequate IT support is available; provides leadership in development of digital and information technology initiatives and web-based services; leads in the development of a content digitization, storage, and access strategy; leads cross-functional projects to ensure goals and projects are completed according to scope, timeline and budget; creates and articulates an evolving technology strategy, with ongoing input from key stakeholders at all levels of the organization and throughout the University; maintains current awareness of digital library technologies; and contributes and actively participates in local, national, and international meetings and organizations to stay abreast of library IT developments and trends and to promote Georgia State University Libraries.

Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today

Ithaka has released Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today.

Here's an excerpt:

In a multi-phase programme that began in late 2007, Ithaka studied the factors influencing the sustainability of not-for-profit digital resources. In a report issued in 2008, Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources, we examined factors that leaders of online initiatives face when developing sustainability plans for their content-based projects. The report presented overall guidelines for leaders to consider, as well as detailed descriptions of the success drivers and challenges for a range of different revenue models. In two workshops held in London and New York in the spring of 2008, Ithaka staff met with project leaders, programme officers at foundations and library administrators to discuss the report's findings. A strong consensus emerged that the framework and guidelines would be even more useful if tested against real-world examples illustrating the range of theoretical business models the report described. While Sustainability and Revenue Models presented the theory, readers wanted to see how the models were working in practice. How did project leaders define their mission and revenue goals? What steps did they take to develop revenue-generating and cost-management strategies? How did these align with the organisations' missions? To what extent were certain models successful, and how did project leaders define that success? Where were they running into problems?

Based on the community's interest in seeing concrete examples, we embarked on an exploration of the sustainability models of 12 selected digital resources. Our goal is to help illuminate the ways in which the general principles outlined in the first report play out in the real world, as well as to highlight lessons for leaders of other digital projects and other stakeholders in the community. Of course, there is no formula that will guarantee a project's sustainability, but as these case studies demonstrate, there are certain steps that leaders can take to maximise the value a project creates and to leverage that value to better position a resource for success.

DuraCloud to Test Cloud Technologies for Digital Preservation

DuraCloud will test cloud technologies for digital preservation purposes.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

How long is long enough for our collective national digital heritage to be available and accessible? The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and DuraSpace have announced that they will launch a one-year pilot program to test the use of cloud technologies to enable perpetual access to digital content. The pilot will focus on a new cloud-based service, DuraCloud, developed and hosted by the DuraSpace organization. Among the NDIIPP partners participating in the DuraCloud pilot program are the New York Public Library and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Cloud technologies use remote computers to provide local services through the Internet. Duracloud will let an institution provide data storage and access without having to maintain its own dedicated technical infrastructure.

For NDIIPP partners, it is not enough to preserve digital materials without also having strategies in place to make that content accessible. NDIIPP is concerned with many types of digital content, including geospatial, audiovisual, images and text. The NDIIPP partners will focus on deploying access-oriented services that make it easier to share important cultural, historical and scientific materials with the world. To ensure perpetual access, valuable digital materials must be stored in a durable manner. DuraCloud will provide both storage and access services, including content replication and monitoring services that span multiple cloud-storage providers.

Martha Anderson, director of NDIIPP Program Management said "Broad online public access to significant scientific and cultural collections depends on providing the communities who are responsible for curating these materials with affordable access to preservation services. The NDIIPP DuraCloud pilot project with the DuraSpace organization is an opportunity to demonstrate affordable preservation and access solutions for communities of users who need this kind of help."

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 4

The Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Version 4 is now available from Digital Scholarship.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles, conference papers, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (7/15/09)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available. It 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: "ARCHER—e-Research Tools for Research Data Management," "The Case for Regulating Google and the Proposed Book Rights Registry," "Characteristics of Open Access Scholarly Publishing: A Multidisciplinary Study," "Metadata Quality in Digital Repositories: A Survey of the Current State of the Art," "Motivations for Web-Based Scholarly Publishing: Do Scientists Recognize Open Availability as an Advantage?," "Name Authority Control in Institutional Repositories," "The National E-Books Observatory Project: Examining Student Behaviors and Usage," "Open Access for Digitization Projects," "Repository Metadata: Approaches and Challenges," and "Where There’s a Will There’s a Way?: Survey of Academic Librarian Attitudes about Open Access."

What to Do If a Digital Scholarship Website or Application Goes Down

Yesterday, the DigitalKoans weblog at the Digital Scholarship .org mirror was brought down by the host service without prior warning. It is now back up; however, given that this issue may not be fully resolved, this may be a good time to review what to do when a Digital Scholarship mirror site or application goes down.

Digital Scholarship has two websites: http://digital-scholarship.org/ and http://digital-scholarship.com/. The sites are mirrored with two significant exceptions: only the .org site generates the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog RSS feed and the .com DigitalKoans does not include comments. Also, most DigitalKoans RSS feed subscribers use the FeedBurner .org feed rather than the .com feed.

So, what should you do if a mirror site, say the .org site, were to go down? For website access, simply switch to the .com site. For DigitalKoans, use the .com DigitalKoans website. If the down time exceeds one day, subscribe to the .com DigitalKoans feed if you don’t want to check the website daily for important service announcements.

Here are the major .com URLs:

You can get full access details about the Digital Scholarship mirror servers and feeds at:

Unless further technical issues emerge, I anticipate that DigitalKoans will become active again on Wednesday, and that I will release a new Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog and version 4 of the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography on that day.

“Adding eScience Assets to the Data Web”

Herbert Van de Sompel, Carl Lagoze, Michael L. Nelson, Simeon Warner, Robert Sanderson, and Pete Johnston have self-archived "Adding eScience Assets to the Data Web" on arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

Aggregations of Web resources are increasingly important in scholarship as it adopts new methods that are data-centric, collaborative, and networked-based. The same notion of aggregations of resources is common to the mashed-up, socially networked information environment of Web 2.0. We present a mechanism to identify and describe aggregations of Web resources that has resulted from the Open Archives Initiative – Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) project. The OAI-ORE specifications are based on the principles of the Architecture of the World Wide Web, the Semantic Web, and the Linked Data effort. Therefore, their incorporation into the cyberinfrastructure that supports eScholarship will ensure the integration of the products of scholarly research into the Data Web.

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Resources and Imaging Services Programmer/Analyst at University of Dublin

The Digital Resources and Imaging Services unit at the University of Dublin's Trinity College Library is recruiting a Digital Resources and Imaging Services Programmer/Analyst (one-year contract).

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Technical Infrastructure Programmer / Implementation Manager will be a key member of the libraries digitisation team, and will provide support and leadership with the planning, development and implementation of the Trinity College Digital Library Collections technical infrastructure. This position will provide programming and technical expertise to the development of an open source Fedora-based digital repository designed to provide new electronic access to the rare and unique Trinity College Library Special Collections and Library Research Resources while ensuring the long term preservation of these unique and valuable digital resources and assets.

Digital Library Jobs: Systems Programmer II at Clemson University

The Clemson University Libraries are recruiting a Systems Programmer II.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Systems Programmer II will interact with a wide variety of individuals in the library and the university, working in Linux and Windows environments, providing software analysis, metadata transformation and support for digital library applications. This position will interact with counterparts at peer institutions developing and using similar systems.

Digital Preservation: Presentations from 2009 NDIIPP Partners Meeting

Presentations from the 2009 NDIIPP Partners Meeting are now available.

Here's a quick selection:

“Scholarly Publishing in the New Era of Scarcity 2010-2025”

Michael Jensen, Director of Strategic Web Communications at National Academies Press, has made a digital video of his presentation "Scholarly Publishing in the New Era of Scarcity 2010-2025" available on YouTube (part 1 and part 2).

Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

[Jensen] posits "an inconvenient truth" for scholarly publishers, and advocates that they restructure their business model toward a new environmentally friendly and economically efficient digital-primary, open-access (OA) model, including seeking support and partnership from their home universities and institutions, due to the urgency of environmental and economic collapse foreseen in the next ten years. Speech given at the Association of American University Presses Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, June 20, 2009.

The Association for Computing Machinery and Open Access

In "Open, Closed, or Cloven Access?," Moshe Y. Vardi, editor of Communications of the ACM, discusses the Association for Computing Machinery’s position on open access.

Here's an excerpt:

As for ACM's stand on the open-access issue, I'd describe it as "cloven," somewhere between open and closed. (In topology, a cloven set is one that is both open and closed.) ACM does charge a price for its publications, but this price is very reasonable. (If you do not believe me, ask your librarian.) ACM's modest publication revenues first go to cover ACM's publication costs that go beyond print costs to include the cost of online distribution and preservation, and then to support the rest of ACM activities. To me, this is a very important point. The "profits" do not go to some corporate owners; they are used to support the activities of the association, and the association is us, the readers, authors, reviewers, and editors of ACM publications. Furthermore, ACM operates as a democratic association. If you believe that ACM should change its publishing business model, then you should lobby for this position. . . .

Just remember, "free" is not a sound business model.

Mass Digitisation: The IMPACT Project

Fifteen institutions from Europe and the UK have launched the IMPACT project.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Feeding into the EU's i2010 vision to significantly improve access to Europe's cultural heritage, the British Library and the University of Salford have teamed up with a group of 15 institutions from across the continent as part of the four-year IMPACT project—IMProving Access to Text—to remove the barriers that stand in the way of the mass digitisation of the European cultural heritage.

Led by the National Library of the Netherlands, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the IMPACT project aims to share expertise from across Europe and establish international best practice guidelines with a view to speeding up, standardising and enhancing the quality of mass digitisation through establishing a Centre of Competence for text based digitisation. As one of the main participants, the British Library has taken the lead on one of IMPACT's four sub-projects, establishing the operational context of the work carried out by contributors to the project.

Mass digitisation has become one of the most prominent issues in the library world over the last 5 years, with a number of experienced libraries in Europe already scanning millions of pages each year. To help establish some standardisation over the course of the project, the British Library's team will lead work on a set of 'Decision Support Tools' in an effort to focus on practical implementation support, providing guidance on digitisation workflow, the capturing of material and the organisation of metadata based on the real world experiences of project partners. These measures, announced at the first IMPACT conference in April will help ensure new material can be digitised successfully and feed into existing workflows. . . .

With extensive experience working with the digitisation of historic material, the British Library has also been working closely with technical experts at the internationally distinguished Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (PRImA) research group, University of Salford, exploring methods of improving Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for use in the digitisation of less standardised material. OCR technology was absolutely vital for the delivery of the Library's recent newspaper digitisation project of 19th Century UK newspapers (http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs), allowing the text to be fully searchable, but the current technology has it limitations. . . .

Through collaboration IMPACT has already established methods for overcoming issues with geometric correction, border removal and binarisation, and is looking at examples of best practice from around the world, such as the Australian Newspaper Digitisation project's cutting edge application of collaborative user generated corrections, to increase resource discovery success for historic mass digitisation.

Japanese Repositories: The DRF (Digital Repository Federation) Report during 2006-2008

Digital Repository Federation (DRF) in Japan has released The DRF (Digital Repository Federation) Report during 2006-2008.

Here's an excerpt:

Hokkaido University/Chiba University/Kanazawa University have organized Digital Repository Federation (DRF: 25 universities and 58 universities participated in 2006 and 2007, respectively) and worked on cooperation activities with support from CSI (Cyber Science Infrastructure)in order to form an IR community for IR promotion.

Main activities are:

  1. Construction of mailing list for information exchange on IR/Open Access and Wiki.
  2. Workshop for IR/Open Access
  3. International symposium for IR/Open Access
  4. International survey on cooperation model for IR
  5. Discussion on ideal future IR community

Patricia A. Steele Named Dean of the University of Maryland Libraries

Patricia A. Steele has been named Dean of the University of Maryland Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The University of Maryland has named as its new dean of university libraries, Patricia A. Steele—a national leader in the Google Project and other efforts to digitize collections creating wider access to universities' information resources. Steele, described as a visionary and dynamic leader, currently directs the libraries at Indiana University Bloomington. She begins at Maryland on Sept. 1.

"Librarians offer an important voice in this emerging technology environment and Maryland is an especially exciting place to work right now," says Steele. "The University has a dynamic vision for the future and appreciates the role libraries can play in achieving it. We'll be able to collaborate with top researchers on campus, and our enviable proximity to the nation's capital will give great access to the many leadership organizations." . . .

Among Steele's national leadership activities:

  • Member of the top-level academic library team renegotiating with Google in the project to digitize and make freely available on the Web millions of books;
  • As member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a group of academic libraries working to incorporate academic collections in the Google Project, leads the effort to digitize project's first "collection of distinction";
  • Co-founded the HathiTrust, a shared digital library of leading research libraries;
  • Founding board member of CLOCKSS—a joint venture between scholarly publishers and research libraries to preserve Web-based scholarly publications.

"Pat Steele is a major appointment for Maryland that will keep us at the leading edge of information," says University of Maryland president C.D. Mote, Jr. "Her name is magic among librarians because she has led academic libraries through the changing technological landscape. She's at the forefront while simultaneously honoring the essential role that keeps libraries at the center of the research enterprise."

Read more about it at "Dean Patricia Steele to Depart."

Library IT Jobs: Assistant Director for Information Technology at Chadron State College

The Chadron State College Library is recruiting an Assistant Director for Information Technology.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Responsibilities include:

  • Providing technical expertise to all library operations including maintenance of the Library Website, all Innovative functions, electronic course reserves, and representing the Library in negotiations for electronic resources including information and instructional technology.
  • Supervision of Technical Services Librarian, maintenance of Library Computer Lab.
  • Liaison to campus units regarding technical issues and develop Library digitization program.