Year: 2009

Catalyzing Collaboration: Seven New York City Libraries

OCLC Research has released Catalyzing Collaboration: Seven New York City Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This report provides a record of the collaboration discussions between seven institutions and includes the resulting interactions, methodology, content and recommendations.

The discussions were facilitated by OCLC Research Program Officers Günter Waibel and Dennis Massie. Participants in this effort agreed that the record of these interactions might be useful to other libraries that are striving to collaborate. Participating libraries, all RLG Partnership institutions, included Brooklyn Museum Library, Columbia University Libraries, Frick Art Reference Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J. Watson Library, Museum of Modern Art Library, New York Public Library and New York University Libraries.

Digitization Project Coordinator at University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries are recruiting a Digitization Project Coordinator.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries is currently engaged in three major digitization projects these include the Daily Pennsylvanian (1885 to the present), AMAR (Ancient Mesopotamian Archaeological Reports) and KDOD (Kirtas Digitize on Demand ) project. Of the three the Daily Pennsylvanian is the largest and most complex of the three. Each of these projects is based in the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image which is organizationally part of the Library's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In the case of the AMAR project, the Digital Project Coordinator (DPC) will manage the scanning of 500 archaeological reports for which SCETI is under contract with Stony Brook University and represents holdings in multiple institutions including the University of Pennsylvania's Museum Library, the University of Chicago and the Oriental Institute (Chicago). Reporting to the Director, Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, the DPC will be responsible for the daily oversight, management and operations of the three projects. Utilizing a small team of scanning technicians and related library staff, the DPC will manage workflow and assure that content is digitized according to project specifications and in a timely fashion. The DPC will also be responsible for preparing monthly reports and working with coordinating libraries or institutions. This is one year full time position with the possibility of extension. The DPC will work in close collaboration with the SCETI Project Coordinator and Scanning Supervisor.

Paul Ginsparg Gets $882,610 Grant for arXiv Enhancement

Paul Ginsparg, professor of physics and information science at Cornell University, has been awarded a $882,610 grant by the NSF for the Tools for Open Access Cyberinfrastructure project, which will enhance the popular arXiv repository. The grant was funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Here's an excerpt from the grant award :

This project proposes to investigate and implement a variety of tools for enhancing the very widely used and popular Arxiv.org infrastructure, based on information filters for assisted service discovery and selection, text-mining, information genealogy, automated classification and identification of composite resources, data-mining, usage analyses, matching and ranking heuristics, support for next-generation document formats, and semantic markup.

Read more about it at "Stimulus Grant to Enhance arXiv E-Preprints for Scientists."

JISC National E-Books Observatory Project: Key Findings and Recommendations

JISC has released JISC National E-Books Observatory Project: Key Findings and Recommendations. Final Report, November 2009.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The results of the two year project exploring the behaviours of e-book users and the impact of course text e-books on print sales are now available. The final report summarises the key findings of the project and the recommendations for future action. . . .

The final report summarises the findings and data captured through deep log analysis, focus groups, user surveys and print sales analysis. I recommend that if you wish to see more detail that you read the relevant reports and look at the original data that is also available. Please see the reports page for further information and for the individual reports.

Armbruster and Romary Compare Four Repository Types

Chris Armbruster and Laurent Romary have self-archived "Comparing Repository Types: Challenges and Barriers for Subject-Based Repositories, Research Repositories, National Repository Systems and Institutional Repositories in Serving Scholarly Communication" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

Four types of publication repository may be distinguished, namely the subject-based repository, research repository, national repository system and institutional repository.

Two important shifts in the role of repositories may be noted. With regard to content, a well-defined and high quality corpus is essential. This implies that repository services are likely to be most successful when constructed with the user and reader uppermost in mind. With regard to service, high value to specific scholarly communities is essential. This implies that repositories are likely to be most useful to scholars when they offer dedicated services supporting the production of new knowledge.

Along these lines, challenges and barriers to repository development may be identified in three key dimensions: a) identification and deposit of content; b) access and use of services; and c) preservation of content and sustainability of service. An indicative comparison of challenges and barriers in some major world regions such as Europe, North America and East Asia plus Australia is offered in conclusion.

Cornell's DigitalCommons@ILR Nears 2 Million Downloads

Cornell's DigitalCommons@ILR repository, which serves the ILR School (also known as the School of Industrial and Labor Relations), has had nearly two million downloads and contains close to 10,000 documents.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Featuring the scholarship of ILR faculty and researchers, DigitalCommons@ILR also contains workplace-related collections selected by Catherwood staff. Collection items include collective bargaining agreements, records of Congressional commissions and archives of labor and globalization-related web sites. . . .

The most downloaded items in the repository include works by ILR faculty, archived issues of the ILR Review and reports from the Congressional Research Service.

Presentations from the DSpace User Group Meeting 2009

Presentations and other materials from the DSpace User Group Meeting 2009 are now available.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Over 90 participants from 20 different countries attended the fall DSUG 2009 meeting. In addition to the European community, DSpace users from the United States, Brazil, New Zealand and Singapore were in attendance. Copies of the presentations and video recordings are now available for most of the sessions.

CMAJ to Cease Being an Open Access Journal in January 2010

CMAJ, which has been an open access journal since 1995, will cease being so in January 2010, when some content will be restricted to subscribers.

Here's an excerpt from the "No Longer Free for All":

The harsh economic reality is that CMAJ, like many others in the publishing industry, has experienced a considerable decline in advertising revenue over the past two years. This loss necessitated an extensive examination of other business models to adequately address today’s economic challenges.

University of Guelph's School of Environmental Sciences Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Guelph's School of Environmental Sciences has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the policy:

Researchers in the School of Environmental Sciences commit to making the best possible effort to publish in venues providing unrestricted public access to their works. They will endeavour to secure the right to self-archive their published materials, and will deposit these works in the Atrium.

The School of Environmental Sciences grants the University of Guelph Library the non-exclusive right to make their scholarly publications accessible through self-archiving in the Atrium institutional repository subject to copyright restrictions. . . .

This policy applies to all appropriate scholarly and professional work produced as a member of the School of Environmental Sciences produced as of the date of the adoption of this policy. Retrospective deposit is encouraged. Co-authored works should be included with the permission of the other author(s). . . .

Works should be deposited in the Atrium as soon as is possible, recognizing that some publishers may impose an embargo period.

This policy is effective as of 11/05/2009 and will be assessed a year after implementation.

Head, Resource Sharing and Repository Services at University of Maryland Baltimore

The Health Sciences & Human Services Library at the University of Maryland Baltimore is recruiting a Head, Resource Sharing and Repository Services

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

This faculty librarian plans, directs and leads the resource sharing services units: borrowing, lending, and document delivery in the Resources Division. He/she participates in establishing, implementing and monitoring goals, tasks, policies, procedures and services relating to the library's resources and their delivery, oversees the department's staff of library technicians, coordinates the department's statistics/reports management and participates in strategic planning for the division. The Head, Resource Sharing and Repository Services reports directly to the Associate Director for Resources.

She/he serves as project manager for the institutional repository services to be offered to the campus by the library. The repository will promote the university's mission by applying state of the art technology to organize and present the intellectual work of the campus's scholarly community.

A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement

The American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The guide describes the major changes in the amended settlement agreement (ASA), submitted to the Court by Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers on November 13, 2009, with emphasis on those changes relevant to libraries.

While many of the amendments will have little direct impact on libraries, the ASA significantly reduces the scope of the settlement because it excludes most books published outside of the United States. In addition, the ASA provides the Book Rights Registry the authority to increase the number of free public access terminals in public libraries that had initially been set at one per library building, among other changes.

Looking ahead, the Court has accepted the parties’ recommended schedule and set January 28, 2010, as the deadline for class members to opt out of the ASA or to file objections, and February 4, 2010, as the deadline for the Department of Justice to file its comments. The Court will hold the fairness hearing on February 18, 2010.

Shared OpenURL Data Infrastructure Investigation: Final Report

JISC has released the Shared OpenURL Data Infrastructure Investigation: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The project team set out to gain a good understanding of the technical, legal, and administrative challenges and opportunities related to sharing and using OpenURL link server data and to assess the relative and complementary value of data from the OpenURL router and from OpenURL resolvers within institutions by gathering and inspecting those data. We also sought to explore potential uses of these data through consultation and through manipulating the sample data available. Our conclusions are organised by four themes: (1) the level of interest and viability of services based on aggregated OpenURL data; (2) libraries' willingness to share data; (3) the availability of OpenURL resolver usage data; and (4) the value of the OpenURL Router as a source of data on which useful services may be built.

Harold B. Lee Library and Instructional Psychology and Technology Department at BYU Adopt Open Access Policies

David Wiley, Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University, reports in the Iterating toward Openness blog that faculty in the Harold B. Lee Library and the Instructional Psychology and Technology Department at BYU adopted open access policies in November.

Here's the Instructional Psychology and Technology Department policy from the post, which was based on the library policy:

The faculty of the Instructional Psychology and Technology Department adopts the following policy:

Each Instructional Psychology and Technology Department faculty member grants to Brigham Young University permission to make scholarly articles to which he or she has made substantial intellectual contributions publicly available as part of the Harold B. Lee Library's ScholarsArchive system, or its successor, and to exercise any associated copyright in those articles. This includes the right to deposit, use, reproduce, perform, publicly display, distribute, and publish the scholarly articles in the university's institutional repository or any other method or medium of delivery, whether now known or hereafter developed. Accordingly, the permission granted to the University by each faculty member is a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to exercise the above-mentioned rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, provided that the articles are not sold for profit and are properly attributed to both the author(s) and the journal of first publication, if applicable.

This license is not meant to interfere in any way with the rights of the IP&T faculty author as the copyright holder of the work. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the IP&T Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy which have existing licensing commitments or copyright assignments which are inconsistent with the intent of this policy.

The term "scholarly articles" includes articles prepared for presentation or publication, whether in electronic or print media. Other scholarly works in connection with the faculty member's academic or professional activities may be included at the discretion of the faculty member.

The IP&T Department Chair or the Chair's designate shall waive application of the policy to a particular article upon written request by a Faculty member explaining the need. The IP&T Chair, in consultation with the faculty, will be responsible for interpreting this policy, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the faculty. This policy will be formally reviewed two years after implementation, by September 30, 2011.

As of the date of publication, each faculty member will make available an electronic copy of his or her final version of the article at no charge to a designated representative of the University Librarian's Office in appropriate formats (such as PDF) specified by the University Librarian's Office.

Web Services Librarian at University of Arkansas at Fort Smith

The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Library is recruiting a Web Services Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Primary responsibilities of the Web Services Librarian will be to provide vision and direction for all aspects of the library's website; to work collaboratively with library staff in order to provide and maintain quality online services and resources; to create new and/or update the existing web pages; and to provide leadership in developing new web-based applications. Other duties will include exploring how new technologies can be implemented and used to the best advantage on the website; delivering instruction to students and faculty on the use of website and database content; serving as a liaison to a selected discipline; and performing other related duties as required and/or assigned. Candidate chosen must be available to work some evening and weekend hours.

Closing the Digital Curation Gap Project

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded $249,623 to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science for the Closing the Digital Curation Gap project.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Scientists, researchers, and scholars across the world generate vast amounts of digital data, but the scientific record and the documentary heritage created in digital form are at risk—from technology obsolescence, from the fragility of digital media, and from the lack of baseline practices for managing and preserving digital data. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) School of Information and Library Science, working with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and partners in the United Kingdom (U.K.), are collaborating on the Closing the Digital Curation Gap (CDCG) project to establish baseline practices for the storage, maintenance, and preservation of digital data to help ensure their enhancement and continuing long-term use. Because digital curation, or the management and preservation of digital data over the full life cycle, is of strategic importance to the library and archives fields, IMLS is funding the project through a cooperative agreement with UNC-CH. U.K. partners include the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which supports innovation in digital technologies in U.K. colleges and universities, and its funded entities, the Strategic Content Alliance (SCA) and the Digital Curation Centre (DCC).

Well-curated data can be made accessible for a variety of audiences. For example, the data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (www.sdss.org) at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico is available to professional astronomers worldwide as well as to schoolchildren, teachers, and citizen scientists through its Galaxy Zoo project. Galaxy Zoo, now in its second version, invites citizen scientists to assist in classifying over a million galaxies (www.galaxyzoo.org). With good preservation techniques, this data will be available into the future to provide documentation of the sky as it currently appears.

Data and information science researchers have already developed many viable applications, models, strategies, and standards for the long term care of digital objects. This project will help bridge a significant gap between the progress of digital curation research and development and the professional practices of archivists, librarians, and museum curators. Project partners will develop guidelines for digital curation practices, especially for staff in small to medium-sized cultural heritage institutions where digital assets are most at risk. Larger institutions will also benefit. To develop baseline practices, a working group will establish and support a network of digital curation practitioners, researchers, and educators through face-to-face meetings, web-based communication, and other communication tools. Project staff will also use surveys, interviews, and case studies to develop a plan for ongoing development of digital curation frameworks, guidance, and best practices. The team will also promote roles that various organizations can play and identify future opportunities for collaboration.

As part of this project, the Digital Curation Manual, which is maintained by the DCC, will be updated and expanded www.dcc.ac.uk/resource/curation-manual/chapters and the Digital Curation Exchange web portal will receive support (http://digitalcurationexchange.org). Through these efforts, the CDCG project will lay the foundation that will inform future training, education, and practice. The project's research, publications, practical tool integration, and outreach and training efforts will be of value to organizations charged with maintaining digital assets over the long term.

Oberlin College Adopts Open Access Policy

Oberlin College has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Oberlin College General Faculty unanimously endorsed on November 18 a resolution to make their scholarly articles openly accessible on the Internet. As a result of the measure, the rich scholarly output of the Oberlin faculty will become available to a much broader national and international audience. The Oberlin resolution is similar to policies passed at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Kansas, and Trinity University.

"Through this resolution the Oberlin College faculty has expressed a principled commitment to disseminating their scholarship as widely as possible,” said Sebastiaan Faber, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Chair of the General Faculty Library Committee. “The current system of journal publishing, which largely relies on subscriptions and licenses, limits access to research information in significant ways, particularly for students and faculty at smaller and less wealthy institutions, as well as for the general public. Access is also seriously limited around the world in countries with fewer resources."

Under the new policy, Oberlin faculty and professional staff will make their peer-reviewed, scholarly articles openly accessible in a digital archive managed by the Oberlin College Library as part of the OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons. Oberlin authors may opt out of the policy for a specific article if they are not in a position to sign journal publishing agreements that are compatible with the policy, or for other reasons. The resolution also creates an institutional license that gives Oberlin College the legal right to make the articles accessible on the Internet through the digital archive. The resolution further encourages, but does not require, authors to submit publications other than peer-reviewed articles in the same manner. . . .

"I'm delighted that Oberlin's faculty and staff have made this important commitment to open access," said Ray English, Azariah Smith Root Director of Libraries. "The movement for open access to scholarly research information is international in scope and growing rapidly as academic institutions, research-funding agencies, and policy makers see the benefits of unfettered access to scholarly research. The library looks forward to putting in place the support structures that are needed to carry out this important initiative."

Adopted at the recommendation of the General Faculty Library Committee, the policy calls for the committee, in consultation with a faculty council, to establish procedures for carrying out the policy and to monitor its implementation. Policy implementation will be coordinated by a scholarly communications officer, a member of the library staff designated by the director of libraries. The text of the faculty resolution is available online at: http://tinyurl.com/ykyfz2j

Preliminary Approval Granted for Amended Google Book Search Settlement

US District Court Judge Denny Chin has granted preliminary approval of the amended Google Book Search Settlement.

Here's the order.

Read more about it at "Judge Gives Preliminary Approval to Google Deal, Sets Feb. 18 for Final Hearing" and "Judge Sets February Hearing for New Google Books Deal."

"Examining Law Journal Publication Agreements for Copyright Transfers and Self-Archiving Rights"

Benjamin J. Keele has self-archived "Examining Law Journal Publication Agreements for Copyright Transfers and Self-Archiving Rights" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

This study examines 78 law journal publication agreements and finds that a minority of journals ask authors to transfer copyright. Most journals also permit author to self-archive articles with some conditions. The study recommends journals make their agreements publicly available and use licenses instead of copyright transfers.

Institutional Repository Manager at University of Essex

The Research and Enterprise Office of the University of Essex is recruiting an Institutional Repository Manager.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (Ref# SS948):

The postholder will be accountable for delivering an institutional repository (IR) for the University’s research outputs, to schedule and on budget, and for managing the IR once implemented. This will involve working closely with other members of the University, both in academic departments/schools and in professional services, to identify a suitable system, to implement it, and to maintain it in the future so as to provide a quality service for those within and outside the University.

Systems Programmer 2 at Yale

The Yale University Library is recruiting a Systems Programmer 2.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (STARS# 8624BR):

Purpose In a dynamic 24x7x365 production data center environment, working independently and collaboratively as a senior member of an interdepartmental team, provides Unix and Windows system administration, storage and backup administration, and application administration for Yale University Library, consortia, and development partner’s servers and web services. Plays a leadership role in the acquisition and deployment of new hardware.

CONTENTdm Version 5.2 Released

OCLC has released CONTENTdm version 5.2.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

With the new release, the CONTENTdm Project Client now supports auto updates, enabling users to get updates as quickly as they are available. It automatically checks for software updates in the background, so work is not interrupted. If updates are available, they are downloaded but not installed until the organization is ready.

To better support text-based collections, PDF print quality can now be specified in the Project Client, enabling users to select a quality level when generating optional print versions of their compound objects. For users with large, full-text collections, several enhancements improve performance and reduce indexing times. Other enhancements include the addition of a new thesaurus, Canadian Subject Headings (CSH), and configuration options to filter hits in Usage Reports.

"Memento: Time Travel for the Web"

Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael L. Nelson, Robert Sanderson, Lyudmila L. Balakireva, Scott Ainsworth, and Harihar Shankar have self-archived "Memento: Time Travel for the Web" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

The Web is ephemeral. Many resources have representations that change over time, and many of those representations are lost forever. A lucky few manage to reappear as archived resources that carry their own URIs. For example, some content management systems maintain version pages that reflect a frozen prior state of their changing resources. Archives recurrently crawl the web to obtain the actual representation of resources, and subsequently make those available via special-purpose archived resources. In both cases, the archival copies have URIs that are protocol-wise disconnected from the URI of the resource of which they represent a prior state. Indeed, the lack of temporal capabilities in the most common Web protocol, HTTP, prevents getting to an archived resource on the basis of the URI of its original. This turns accessing archived resources into a significant discovery challenge for both human and software agents, which typically involves following a multitude of links from the original to the archival resource, or of searching archives for the original URI. This paper proposes the protocol-based Memento solution to address this problem, and describes a proof-of-concept experiment that includes major servers of archival content, including Wikipedia and the Internet Archive. The Memento solution is based on existing HTTP capabilities applied in a novel way to add the temporal dimension. The result is a framework in which archived resources can seamlessly be reached via the URI of their original: protocol-based time travel for the Web.

Read more about it at "Time-Travelling Browsers Navigate the Web's Past" and the Memento project website.