Month: September 2010

Library Application Administrator (Systems Specialist) at University of Kansas

The University of Kansas Libraries are recruiting a Library Application Administrator (Systems Specialist).

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

This position reports to the Manager, Library Applications and works as part of a team of library technology professionals who manage foundational library and scholarly systems and accompanying application services within KU Libraries.

KU Libraries' management and scholarly applications are built on both vendor and open source products that include Voyager, ILLiad, Luna Insight, DSpace, Open Journal Systems, XTF (the Extensible Text Framework), EZProxy, the CNRI Handles Server, web servers, and various applications developed in-house. These systems are core to the mission of KU Libraries and provide services to support teaching, learning and research at the university. Application support underpins a variety of services that our faculty, staff, and students depend on every day: the library catalog, interlibrary loan and document delivery services, KU ScholarWorks as our open access institutional repository, digital publishing and data services, and access to rich visual resources, online collections, and physical materials.

Application administration responsibilities include oversight for all aspects of application administration including systems planning, application upgrades, configuration, maintenance, integration, quality assurance and testing, and support for library staff responsible for service delivery. Teamwork is required. In some cases, this position will work closely with the other technology specialists in KU Libraries or campus IT staff to manage technology services effectively for KU Libraries.

Self-Archiving Study: PEER Annual Report—Year 2

The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project has released PEER Annual Report—Year 2.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Reporting on the past 12 months of activity in this ground breaking collaboration between publishers, repositories and the research community investigating the effects of Green Open Access, the PEER Annual Report highlights the complexity of the infrastructure required for PEER and the substantial progress achieved towards the project’s objectives.

To simulate the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts accepted for journal publication, 12 participating publishers are providing content and associated metadata from 241 participating journals. Half of the manuscripts are being submitted directly to PEER, while for the other half, authors are invited by publishers to self-deposit into the project.

All submitted content is being received by the PEER Depot, a central repository created specifically for the project by INRIA, which undertakes filtering for EU research content, metadata matching and transformations, and embargo management prior to distribution to participating repositories.

By the end of year 2 (August 2010), almost 25,000 unique publisher provided manuscripts had been processed by the PEER Depot, resulting in 10,000 EU manuscripts after processing (some still under embargo), with embargo expired manuscripts distributed to participating repositories.

The three areas of usage, economic and behavioural research commissioned by PEER are well underway, with the Baseline Behavioural Report already publicly available from the PEER website.

New Shared Support Membership Option from BioMed Central

BioMed Central now offers a Shared Support Membership option.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Today, BioMed Central officially announced the launch of Shared Support Membership — a new and innovative Membership package for institutions that want to provide financial support for their researchers open access publications, but at the same time manage their expenditure.

Whilst many institutes encourage their researchers to publish in open access journals, with limited publication budgets, it is often a complicated process to apportion the right amount of funds to cover Article Processing Charges (APC’s). To alleviate some of the financial burdens, Shared Support combines the best of BioMed Central’s other Membership types (Prepay and Supporter) and splits the costs of publishing with BioMed Central down the middle — the institute pays 50% and the submitting author pays the remaining 50%.

This new Membership type therefore offers a more balanced, easier way to handle the cost associated with open access publication. It also allows both parties to benefit from significant discounts of between 5-15% depending on how much funding the institute decides to pre-pay into their Membership account.

There is no joining fee for Shared Support Membership. Members can also immediately benefit from the supply of automated repository feeds using SWORD, which ensure that any articles published in BioMed Central journals will be automatically deposited into their institutional repositories.

ARL and Ithaka S+R Get $464,286 IMLS Grant for Digitized Special Collections Research

ARL and Ithaka S+R have received a $464,286 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grants Program “to study how libraries, archives, and museums are sustaining digitized special collections.”

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Our examination of digital resources through our case studies work showed us that project leaders need practical tools to help them ensure their project's long-term sustainability," says Laura Brown, Managing Director, Ithaka S+R. "This collaborative study will respond to that need by providing actionable recommendations, best practices, and planning tools to help project leaders in higher education, public libraries, museums, historical societies, and other organizations plan for sustaining their own special collections digitization projects."

Project activities under this cooperative agreement will include a survey of digitized special collections and focused interviews with leaders and project staff in selected cultural heritage organizations who manage those collections. The study’s final report of lessons learned, recommendations, and case studies will be freely shared through the partners’ websites, through a webcast, and conference presentations.

Daily Tweets 2010-09-30

"The Google Book Settlement as Copyright Reform"

Pamela Samuelson has self-archived "The Google Book Settlement as Copyright Reform" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

This Article explains why certain features of U.S. law, particularly copyright law, may have contributed to Google’s willingness to undertake the GBS project in the first place and later to its motivation to settle the Authors Guild lawsuit. It then demonstrates that the proposed settlement would indeed achieve a measure of copyright reform that Congress would find difficult to accomplish. Some of this reform may be in the public interest. It also considers whether the quasi-legislative nature of the GBS settlement is merely an interesting side effect of the agreement or an additional reason in favor or against approval of this settlement.

JISC e-Content Programme Grants Announced

The JISC has announced the availability of up to £840,000 in 2011 e-Content Programme grant funds.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Funding of up to £840,000 is available within two strands:

Strand A–Enriching via Collaboration
Using collaboration to cluster, repackage and re-present existing digital content.
Total funding available £400,000. Up to 5 projects will be funded. Maximum funding for any one project is £100,000

Strand B–Developing Community Content
To develop new content and communities for educational and social purposes.
Total funding available £440,000. Up to 6 projects will be funded. Maximum funding for any one project is £100,000,

The deadline for receipt of proposals in response to this call is 12:00 noon UK time on Friday 10 December 2010. Projects should start by 1 March 2011 and may run for up to 7 months. All projects must be complete by 30 September 2011.

Read more about it at "Grant Funding 11/10: JISC e-Content Programme."

Daily Tweets 2010-09-29

Visiting Metadata & Illinois Harvest Portal Librarian at University of Illinois

The University of Illinois Library is recruiting a Visiting Metadata & Illinois Harvest Portal Librarian (one-year term).

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library seeks an innovative individual to provide expertise and guidance in metadata schemas and standards and to assist in their implementation within the Library. The Metadata Librarian is responsible for helping to plan and manage metadata production, harvesting, and presentation for digitization projects such as the Illinois Harvest Project. The Metadata Librarian is a visiting faculty position reporting to the Digital Content Access (DCA) Lead and Head of Content Access Management (CAM).

Responsibilities include:

  • Lead, manage, and coordinate activities relating to metadata harvesting and production for description, access and preservation of digitized material from the UIUC Libraries. Work with other Library personnel involved in digitization, metadata harvesting and production including providing training and technical assistance to other department and library staff.
  • Work with the Digital Content Access Lead and Head of Content Access Management and faculty and staff in Digital Content Creation (DCC) and Content Access Management (CAM) who are involved in planning and implementation of metadata provision for digital resources, including the selection of metadata schema, data elements, thesauri, and development of crosswalks.
  • Formulate, document, and implement the Library's policies, procedures, and best practices for use of descriptive metadata schemas (such as MARC, MODS, Dublin Core, and other applicable schemas), preservation metadata schemas (such as PREMIS), content standards (such as AACR2 and CCO), controlled vocabularies (such as LCSH, TGN, AAT and other applicable vocabularies) and transmission standards such as METS.
  • Participate in the development of the Library’s digital content access strategy, for example the long-term planning for the Illinois Harvest Portal and strategies for collection level splash pages.
  • Participate in metadata remediation, transformation, and creation using appropriate schemas to support the Illinois Harvest Portal and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library's growing digital collections.
  • Create collection level records for the Library's digital collections.
  • Assist in metadata harvesting using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

"Building Research Cyberinfrastructure at Small/Medium Research Institutions"

Anne Agee, Theresa Rowe, Melissa Woo, and David Woods have published "Building Research Cyberinfrastructure at Small/Medium Research Institutions" in EDUCAUSE Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

To build a respectable cyberinfrastructure, the IT organizations at small/medium research institutions need to use creativity in discovering the needs of their researchers, setting priorities for support, developing support strategies, funding and implementing cyberinfrastructure, and building partnerships to enhance research support. This article presents the viewpoints of four small-to-medium-sized research universities who have struggled with the issue of providing appropriate cyberinfrastructure support for their research enterprises. All four universities have strategic goals for raising the level of research activity and increasing extramural funding for research.

Technology Systems Librarian/Administrator at Orange County Public Law Library

The Orange County Public Law Library is recruiting a Technology Systems Librarian/Administrator. Salary: $64,688-74,880.

Here's an excerpt from the ad

  • Oversee all Information Technology activities for Library, including budgeting, program and project planning, system security, and maintenance of all hardware, software, and peripheral equipment
  • Serve as web master for library
  • Provide technical support to staff and patrons in use of all systems & applications

Report on Digital Preservation Practice and Plans amongst LIBER Members with Recommendations for Practical Action

EuropeanaTravel has released Report on Digital Preservation Practice and Plans amongst LIBER Members with Recommendations for Practical Action.

Here's an excerpt:

As part of Work package 1 concerned with planning digitisation, a survey was designed to collect information about digital preservation practice and plans amongst all LIBER member libraries to inform future activity of LIBER’s Working Group on Preservation and Digital Curation. The survey focused on the digital preservation of digitised material.

The major findings are as follows:

  • Some LIBER members have already been engaged in digitisation activities. The number of institutions with digitisation activities and the volume of digitised material are expected to grow further in the future.
  • There is a mismatch between the perceived high value of digitised material and the frequent lack of a written policy/ procedure addressing the digital preservation of these collections. A number of the institutions without an according written policy stated they were working on developing and establishing one.
  • Storage and development of tools are areas where considerable investments are made by the majority of institutions surveyed. Those are also the fields where many of the institutions face difficulties.
  • Investments in staff assigned to digital preservation task are still inadequate at several institutions.
  • Some digital preservation practices and basic integrity measurements are more widespread than others. More than half of the institutions which responded already have an archive dedicated to digitised collections in place, use preservation metadata standards and format restrictions to support preservation, have processes of bitstream preservation implemented and provide staff training in the area of digital preservation. One can identify a clear tendency that emulation strategy is less commonly used than migration and other migration supporting practices.
  • Difficulties in establishing digital archives with a functioning preservation system, the frequent lack of institutional strategies concerning digitisation and digital preservation and funding problems seem to be amongst the most serious problems faced by LIBER members.

Daily Tweets 2010-09-28

Daily Tweets 2010-09-27

"Why Linked Data is Not Enough for Scientists"

Sean Bechhofer et al. have self-archived "Why Linked Data is Not Enough for Scientists" in the ECS EPrints Repository

Here's an excerpt:

Scientific data stands to represent a significant portion of the linked open data cloud and science itself stands to benefit from the data fusion capability that this will afford. However, simply publishing linked data into the cloud does not necessarily meet the requirements of reuse. Publishing has requirements of provenance, quality, credit, attribution, methods in order to provide the reproducibility that allows validation of results. In this paper we make the case for a scientific data publication model on top of linked data and introduce the notion of Research Objects as first class citizens for sharing and publishing.

"OpenAccess Statistics: Alternative Impact Measures for Open Access Documents?"

Ulrich Herb has self-archived "OpenAccess Statistics: Alternative Impact Measures for Open Access Documents? An Examination How to Generate Interoperable Usage Information from Distributed Open Access Services" in E-LIS.

Here's an excerpt:

Publishing and bibliometric indicators are of utmost relevance for scientists and research institutions as the impact or importance of a publication (or even of a scientist or an institution) is mostly regarded to be equivalent to a citation-based indicator, e.g. in form of the Journal Impact Factor or the Hirsch-Index. Both on an individual and an institutional level performance measurement depends strongly on these impact scores. This contribution shows that most common methods to assess the impact of scientific publications often discriminate Open Access publications — and by that reduce the attractiveness of Open Access for scientists. Assuming that the motivation to use Open Access publishing services (e.g. a journal or a repository) would increase if these services would convey some sort of reputation or impact to the scientists, alternative models of impact are discussed. Prevailing research results indicate that alternative metrics based on usage information of electronic documents are suitable to complement or to relativize citation-based indicators. Furthermore an insight into the project OpenAccess-Statistics OA-S is given. OA-S implemented an infrastructure to collect document-related usage information from distributed Open Access Repositories in an aggregator service in order to generate interoperable document access information according to three standards (COUNTER, LogEc and IFABC). The service also guarantees the deduplication of users and identical documents on different servers. In a second phase it is not only planned to implement added services like recommender features, but also to evaluate alternative impact metrics based on usage patterns of electronic documents.

Library Systems Specialist at Binghamton University

The Binghamton University Libraries are recruiting a Library Systems Specialist (Lead Programmer/Analyst).

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Library Technology Department supports the various systems related needs in the Library. The incumbent provides excellent service and support to Library staff and users as well as communicating effectively with all Library departments and with Computing Services. The position reports to the Assistant Director for Library Technology. 

Responsibilities include:

  • Install, upgrade, maintain, and provide technical support for all aspects of staff desktop and laptop computers, public computers (Microsoft Windows 7 and XP, Mac OS X), printers, and peripherals.
  • Troubleshoot, resolve, and support Library-specific and other software applications; e-mail, Microsoft Office Suite, Aleph client, Ariel, electronic reserves, Adobe Creative Suite, and scanning software.
  • The successful candidate is responsible for overall customer satisfaction as the primary contact for help desk support during normal business hours.
  • Resolve staff and patron's technical problems in a timely and professional manner.
  • Provide training to staff on all aspects of Library applications, work-flow and general technology trends.
  • Maintain/increase personal knowledge and skills through continuing education and professional development.

Internet Archive Announces That University of Toronto Has Digitized 250,000 Books

Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive has announced that the University of Toronto has digitized 250,000 books.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

When I talked with Carole Moore, the fantastic librarian from University of Toronto, about 6 years ago, she had a vision of scanning 250,000 books from their libraries. Well, a few days ago she succeeded. (http://www.archive.org/details/university_of_toronto)

It has been a winding road to here, with financial help from Yahoo and Microsoft, from the Canadian government and from the University of Toronto—but she got there in grand style. . . .

250,000 books for free to the world from one of the great libraries in the world.

Daily Tweets 2010-09-26

Emerging Technologies Librarian at Central Oregon Community College

The Central Oregon Community College Library is recruiting an Emerging Technologies Librarian. Salary: $46,817-$55,734.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (posting number: 0600244):

Reporting to the College Librarian, this position will be a member of the leadership team of the library and will work closely with the Associate College Librarian for Information and Access, the Associate College Librarian for Collections and Acquisitions, and the two resident OSU-Cascades librarians. The Emerging Technologies Librarian will manage current systems, including a shared ILS with OSU. This Librarian will also research, recommend, and implement emerging library information technologies. This position requires the ability to work collaboratively with all departments in the library, faculty and students, OSU Valley Library, the Orbis Cascade Alliance, and its members and partners. The Emerging Technologies Librarian will work closely with the campus IT department in maintaining, troubleshooting, recommending and implementing technology vital to the library's mission.

First Sale Doctrine: "Digital Exhaustion"

Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz have self-archived "Digital Exhaustion" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

As digital networks emerge as the dominant means of distributing copyrighted works, the first sale doctrine is increasingly marginalized. The limitations first sale places on the exclusive right of distribution are of little importance when the alienation and use of copies entails their reproduction. This fact of the modern copyright marketplace has led to calls for statutory clarification of digital first sale rights.

Acknowledging the obstacles to legislative intervention, this Article argues that courts are equipped today to limit copyright exclusivity in order to enable copy owners to make traditionally lawful uses of their copies, including resale through secondary markets. We argue that first sale is not simply an isolated limitation on the distribution right. Instead, it is a component of a broader principle of copyright exhaustion that emerges from early case law preceding the Supreme Court’s foundational decision in Bobbs-Merrill v. Strauss. This context reveals a common law of copyright exhaustion that embraces a set of user privileges that includes not only alienation, but renewal, repair, adaptation, and preservation. Despite congressional recognition of exhaustion in sections 109 and 117 of the Copyright Act, this Article concludes that courts have ample room to apply and continue to develop common law rules that preserve the many benefits of the first sale doctrine in the digital marketplace.

Library Automation Manager at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

The Polk Library at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh is recruiting a Library Automation Manager.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Library Automation Manager (LAM) is responsible for managing the information technology resources of Polk Library to maximize their positive impact on teaching, learning and research for the students, faculty and staff of the University. This position will be responsible for the overall installation, operation and maintenance of all automated library systems and services. Working closely with the Emerging Technologies Librarian and other staff, the LAM will provide vision and leadership in the investigation and implementation of new and emerging technologies. The LAM will represent the Library on university and UWS-wide committees and groups. This position reports to the Head of Technical Services.

Zotero Everywhere Initiative Announced

Zotero has announced its Zotero Everywhere initiative.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

We're delighted to announce Zotero Everywhere, a major new initiative generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Zotero Everywhere is aimed at dramatically increasing the accessibility of Zotero to the widest possible range of users today and in the future. Zotero Everywhere will have two main components: a standalone desktop version of Zotero with full integration into a variety of web browsers and a radically expanded application programming interface (API) to provide web and mobile access to Zotero libraries. . . .

Today we are announcing support for Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Internet Explorer, which account for 98% of the web's usage share. Plugins for these browsers will soon allow users to add anything they find on the web to their Zotero libraries with a single click, regardless of the their browser preferences. Rather than use the Zotero pane in Firefox, users will have the new option of accessing their libraries via a standalone desktop version of Zotero, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Zotero's web API offers any application developer the ability to access individual and group libraries via a simple, human-readable programming interface. Until now, this API has been “read-only”—users could view their libraries but they could not change them via the web or via the API. Today we're announcing the opening of Zotero's write API to the public over the coming months.

Daily Tweets 2010-09-23