Month: January 2011

Turning the Page: The Future of eBooks

PricewaterhouseCoopers has released Turning the Page: The Future of eBooks.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This new study examines trends and developments in the eBooks and eReaders market in the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany, and discusses major challenges and key questions for the publishing industry worldwide. It also identifies market opportunities and developments for eBooks and eReaders, and makes recommendations for publishers, traditional retailers, online retailers, and intermediaries.

| Digital Scholarship |

Digital Services Librarian at Utah State University

The Utah State University Libraries are recruiting a Digital Services Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

This 12-month, tenure-track, entry level faculty position with rank of Assistant Librarian reports to the Associate Dean for Technical Services and is responsible for a broad range of services and duties related to the libraries' websites and digital content and services. In addition to providing leadership managing the content and design of the libraries' websites, this person will guide the library in implementing new technologies to enhance our patrons' experiences, especially USU's distance students, and will play an active role in library outreach activities. The successful candidate will participate in the development of a library plan for digital preservation and data curation.

| Digital Scholarship |

Prototype WorldCat Local User interface for HathiTrust Digital Library

OCLC and the HathiTrust have created a prototype WorldCat Local user interface for HathiTrust Digital Library.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The WorldCat Local prototype (http://hathitrust.worldcat.org) for the HathiTrust Digital Library was designed and implemented by both organizations in close cooperation as a means to further develop a shared digital library infrastructure. The WorldCat Local interface for the HathiTrust Digital Library is based on the WorldCat database, and will run along with the current HathiTrust catalog during the prototype testing period.

As a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, the HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the massive digitized collections of partner institutions. HathiTrust offers libraries a means to archive and provide access to their digital content, whether scanned volumes, special collections, or born-digital materials. The representation of these resources in digital form offers expanded opportunities for innovative use in research, teaching and learning.

OCLC and HathiTrust have been working together to increase online visibility and accessibility of the digital collections by creating WorldCat records describing the content and linking to the collections via WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local. The creation of the unique public interface through WorldCat Local is the next step to offer enhanced access to this vital collection.

"HathiTrust benefits greatly from this partnership in that the collaborative development has enabled the creation of a new means of discovering HathiTrust holdings while simultaneously integrating these holdings into the larger world of library holdings made discoverable by OCLC," said John Wilkin, Executive Director of the HathiTrust.

HathiTrust Digital Library records are discoverable through the separate WorldCat Local interface, as well as through WorldCat.org.

"OCLC and the HathiTrust have been working together closely in this shared development project to facilitate access to these valuable digital materials," said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "This collaboration leverages OCLC's extensive work in the area of resource discovery with the HathiTrust's considerable expertise and infrastructure with respect to the preservation of scholarly resources."

| Digital Scholarship |

Head Integrated Library Information Systems at New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is recruiting a Head Integrated Library Information Systems.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Director of Software Development and Support, the Integrated Library Systems (ILS) Administrator:

  • Coordinates and implements all ILS system revisions and updates
  • Installs and tests all new software releases, customizations and new products
  • Handles all extractions, cleaning, manipulation and provisioning of metadata to a variety of internal and external clients
  • Develops and maintains procedures that contribute and adhere to system standards
  • Serves as the primary liaison to the vendor for problem resolution and enhancement requests
  • Manages the ticket queue for open requests and issues
  • Performs related duties as required

| Digital Scholarship |

Unchartered Waters—The State of Open Data in Europe

CSC has released Unchartered Waters—The State of Open Data in Europe

Here's an excerpt:

This study analyses the current state of the open data policy ecosystem and open government data offerings in nine European Member States. Since none of the countries studied currently offers a national open data portal, this study compares the statistics offices’ online data offerings. The analysis shows that they fulfill a number of open data principles but that there is still a lot of room for improvement. This study underlines that the development of data catalogues and portals should not be seen as means to an end.

| Digital Scholarship |

Digital Collections Librarian at University of Virginia Law Library

The University of Virginia Law Library is recruiting a Digital Collections Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (posting number: 0606957):

The University of Virginia Law Library invites applications for a newly created Digital Collections Librarian. The librarian will manage all aspects of digital content and delivery, supervise graduate students in their production of e-text, evaluate new technologies related to digital content and represent the law library in the development of the University repository. There will be opportunity to work with colleagues on technical aspects of research projects.

| Digital Scholarship |

Wikipedia, Past and Present

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released Wikipedia, Past and Present.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information has increased from 25% in February 2007 to 42% in May 2010. This translates to 53% of adult internet users.

Education level continues to be the strongest predictor of Wikipedia use. The collaborative encyclopedia is most popular among internet users with at least a college degree, 69% of whom use the site. Broadband use remains another predictor, as 59% of those with home broadband use the service, compared with 26% of those who connect to the internet through dial-up. Additionally, Wikipedia is generally more popular among those with annual household incomes of at least $50,000, as well as with young adults: 62% of internet users under the age of 30 using the service, compared with only 33% of internet users age 65 and older.

In the scope of general online activities, using Wikipedia is more popular than sending instant messages (done by 47% of internet users) or rating a product, service, or person (32%), but is less popular than using social network sites (61%) or watching videos on sites like YouTube (66%).

| Digital Scholarship |

Digital Librarian at Department of Transportation

The Department of Transportation is recruiting a Digital Librarian. Salary: $74,872-$115,742.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

This position is located in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Library (NTL), Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA). As the Digital Collections Technology Librarian, you will be responsible for leading the development and enhancement of digital repository services, information organization, digital curation, and tools/software that facilitate discovery and use of NTL resources including leadership of the NTL Technical Services Team.

The NTL Technical Services Team is responsible for web application design and maintenance cataloging, collection maintenance, and web site maintenance. Among other duties, the team maintains and enhances the functionality and provision of (a) the NTL Integrated Search System, including the NTL Digital Repository, (b) the Transportation Research Thesaurus (TRT), the NTL web site, and (c) other applications, most of which are homegrown, open source, and off-the-shelf software.

| Digital Scholarship |

Digital Libraries: Europeana Strategic Plan 2011-2015

The Europeana project has released the Europeana Strategic Plan 2011-2015.

Here's an excerpt:

Launched as a proof of concept in 2008, with 2 million objects from 27 EU countries, Europeana spent 2009 and 2010 creating an operational service and ingesting a critical mass of data from some 1500 providers across Europe. Together with content partners and aided by Europe’s leading research universities, we now have a strong and vibrant network of museums, archives and libraries.

We are achieving our objective as an aggregator, and aim to give access to all of Europe’s digitised cultural heritage by 2025. However, to remain successful in the future we need now to move from a centralised role to a more distributed model. Europeana will take its place in a wider European information space, collaborating with other aggregators of content. From the users’ perspective, Europeana’s content will be readily accessible in the places they frequent online—social networks, educational sites and cultural spaces. Our ambition is to provide new forms of access to culture, to inspire creativity and stimulate social and economic growth. To achieve this, Europeana and its stakeholders grapple with major challenges. Primary among these are the intellectual property barriers to digitisation. Europeana will become outmoded if it is not renewed through access to 20th and 21st century material. To ensure such access, more concerted efforts are needed at a European level to deal with orphan works and rights harmonisation. Secondly, it is vital that the digitisation of Europe’s cultural and intellectual record is accelerated. Thirdly, long-term funding needs to be secured for both Europeana and the ecosystem of content providers and aggregators that supplies its lifeblood.

In this strategic plan we outline our approach to these challenges and to creating value for the stakeholders and users. Over the next five years, Europeana will focus on four strategic tracks:

  • aggregate content to build the open trusted source of European heritage
  • facilitate knowledge transfer, innovation and advocacy in the cultural heritage sector
  • distribute their heritage to users wherever they are, whenever they want it
  • engage users in new ways of participating in their cultural heritage

| Digital Scholarship |

Daily Tweets 2011-01-18

Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography, Version 2

Version 2 of the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship as an XHTML website with live links to many included works. This selective bibliography includes over 500 articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation. All included works are in English. It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Table of Contents

1 General Works about Digital Curation and Preservation
2 Digital Preservation Copyright Issues
3 Digital Preservation of Formats and Materials
3.1 General Works
3.2 Digital Data
3.3 Digital Media
3.4 E-journals
3.5 Other Digital Formats and Materials
3.6 World-Wide Web
4 Digital Preservation Metadata
5 Digital Preservation Models and Policies
6 Digital Preservation National and International Efforts
7 Digital Preservation Projects and Institutional Implementations
8 Digital Preservation Research
9 Digital Preservation Services
9.1 JSTOR
9.2 LOCKSS
9.3 Portico
10 Digital Preservation Strategies
11 Digital Repository Digital Preservation Issues
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author

The following recent Digital Scholarship publications may also be of interest:

See also: Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications.

| Digital Scholarship |

Head, Digital Scholarship and Production Services at Duke University

The Duke University Libraries are recruiting a Head, Digital Scholarship and Production Services.

Here's an excerpt from the ad

The Head of Digital Scholarship and Production Services provides leadership, vision, and strategic direction for the Duke University Libraries' services to support digital scholarship and the Libraries' production of digital content primarily from their distinctive holdings, both of which involve work by staff in multiple departments. She/he cultivates a forward-looking, collaborative environment and sets high user-centered service standards; works closely with faculty and students as well as other library staff; and directs the staff and administers the budget of the Digital Scholarship and Production Services Department.

Responsibilities

  • Working with colleagues throughout the Libraries, develops a cohesive program and suite of services that support scholars engaged in creating, using, and disseminating scholarly materials in a wide range of digital media
  • Provides services that include the creation of digital content, project planning, project management, and the provision of tools for collecting, organizing, preserving, analyzing, and authoring digital information and generating new intellectual products. These services will draw on expertise throughout the Libraries in areas such as digitization standards, costs, and methods; rights management; usability issues; workflow and process management; quality control; and budget management.
  • Collaborates with other campus stakeholders, such as the university's signature institutes, to develop digital scholarship programs at Duke and to enhance the Libraries' participation in and contributions to those programs.
  • Develops capacity among library staff to support work in digital scholarship by providing instruction, training, demonstrations, and workshops.
  • Works with the Libraries' subject specialists, IT staff, Preservation Department, and other staff to meet collection development, data storage, preservation, stewardship, and access challenges related to digital content creation and knowledge management.
  • Facilitates connections and partnerships of faculty and students with librarians and technologists in supporting digital scholarship and developing new research projects.
  • Promotes and evaluates the use of existing digital content and scholarly tools at Duke and provides demonstrations of digital scholarship resources and tools to interested faculty, students, staff, librarians, and library supporters.
  • Leads the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the Libraries' program for digital content creation and the development of library policies regarding digitization.
  • Manages Digital Scholarship and Production Services staff, operating budget, and grant project budgets.
  • Advocates for digital scholarship and content creation technology support needs with Library ITS and with Duke OIT.
  • Engages with collaborative national and international digital scholarship initiatives that benefit Duke and the larger research community.
  • Actively pursues external funding for digital scholarship and content creation initiatives, including grants and corporate partnerships; serves as principal investigator for grants as appropriate and contributes to building capacity for other staff members to assume that role.
  • Manages workflows and projects to produce digital content, coordinating the work done in various departments, ensuring adequate communication among staff involved in the projects, and keeping projects on schedule.
  • Serves on and advises the Collections and User Services Council regarding priorities of the digital scholarship and production program.
  • Working with staff in other departments as appropriate, plans, implements, and monitors external contracts providing digitization, metadata creation, or other services related to the digital scholarship and production.
  • Monitors national trends regarding digital library initiatives, shares information with other staff as appropriate, and applies it to planning and program development at Duke.

| Digital Scholarship |

Research Communications Strategy: 3rd Report to JISC—December 2010

The Research Communications Strategy project has released Research Communications Strategy: 3rd Report to JISC—December 2010.

Here's an excerpt:

Section 1 takes as its starting point the apparent reluctance of individual academics fully to embrace OA, and suggests that the potential offered by OA for various kinds of added value might be an effective tool in advocacy.

Section 2 considers the relation of OA to services such as Mendeley, and wonders whether our established view of OA as a way to distribute traditional research outputs more efficiently might come to seem outmoded in the face of new, non-traditional ideas about how to conduct and disseminate research.

| Digital Scholarship |

Technology Services Head at Boston University

Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library is recruiting a Technology Services Head.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Guide assessment of existing and emerging library and information technologies. Lead project and implementation planning for library technologies. Provide coordination and programmatic guidance for the library technology services group (LTS), a multi-unit team, comprised of members from the University Libraries and Information Services & Technology. The LTS plans, deploys and supports a wide range of digital systems and services, including an integrated library system, WorldCat Local, link resolver, federated search software, institutional repository, search and discovery services, library web development, interlibrary loan system, proxy server, and staff desktop support. Collaborate with administrators, department heads and managers throughout all the University libraries and Information Services and Technology to adapt library services to the changing needs of faculty, researchers, and graduate students of Boston University and work with senior managers on the Library’s other two teams, the Graduate & Research Services and Undergraduate & Distance Services to implement initiatives consistent with the Libraries’ strategic plan.

| Digital Scholarship |

America COMPETES Act Establishes Interagency Public Access Committee

The signing of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 by President Obama establishes a new Interagency Public Access Committee. The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has issued a press release that "applauds the efforts of US legislators in crafting the charter of the Interagency Public Access Committee."

Here's an excerpt from the Act:

SEC. 103. INTERAGENCY PUBLIC ACCESS COMMITTEE.

(a) ESTABLISHMENT.—The Director shall establish a working group under the National Science and Technology Council with

the responsibility to coordinate Federal science agency research and policies related to the dissemination and long-term stewardship of the results of unclassified research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications, supported wholly, or in part, by funding from the Federal science agencies.

(b) RESPONSIBILITIES.—The working group shall—

(1) identify the specific objectives and public interests that need to be addressed by any policies coordinated under (a);

(2) take into account inherent variability among Federal science agencies and scientific disciplines in the nature of research, types of data, and dissemination models;

(3) coordinate the development or designation of standards for research data, the structure of full text and metadata, navigation tools, and other applications to maximize interoperability across Federal science agencies, across science and engineering disciplines, and between research data and scholarly publications, taking into account existing consensus standards, including international standards;

(4) coordinate Federal science agency programs and activities that support research and education on tools and systems required to ensure preservation and stewardship of all forms of digital research data, including scholarly publications;

(5) work with international science and technology counterparts to maximize interoperability between United States based unclassified research databases and international databases and repositories;

(6) solicit input and recommendations from, and collaborate with, non-Federal stakeholders, including the public, universities, nonprofit and for-profit publishers, libraries, federally funded and non federally funded research scientists, and other organizations and institutions with a stake in long term preservation and access to the results of federally funded research;

(7) establish priorities for coordinating the development of any Federal science agency policies related to public access to the results of federally funded research to maximize the benefits of such policies with respect to their potential economic or other impact on the science and engineering enterprise and the stakeholders thereof;

(8) take into consideration the distinction between scholarly publications and digital data;

(9) take into consideration the role that scientific publishers play in the peer review process in ensuring the integrity of the record of scientific research, including the investments and added value that they make; and

(10) examine Federal agency practices and procedures for providing research reports to the agencies charged with locating and preserving unclassified research.

(c) PATENT OR COPYRIGHT LAW.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to undermine any right under the provisions of title 17 or 35, United States Code.

(d) APPLICATION WITH EXISTING LAW.—Nothing defined in section

(b) shall be construed to affect existing law with respect to Federal science agencies’ policies related to public access.

(e) REPORT TO CONGRESS.—Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director shall transmit a report to Congress describing—

(1) the specific objectives and public interest identified under (b)(1);

(2) any priorities established under subsection (b)(7);

(3) the impact the policies described under (a) have had on the science and engineering enterprise and the stakeholders, including the financial impact on research budgets;

(4) the status of any Federal science agency policies related to public access to the results of federally funded research; and

(5) how any policies developed or being developed by Federal science agencies, as described in subsection (a), incorporate input from the non-Federal stakeholders described in subsection (b)(6).

(f) FEDERAL SCIENCE AGENCY DEFINED.—For the purposes of this section, the term ‘‘Federal science agency’’ means any Federal agency with an annual extramural research expenditure of over $100,000,000.

| Digital Scholarship |

Daily Tweets 2011-01-17

Virginia Tech Names Tyler Walters as Dean of University Libraries

Virginia Tech has named Tyler Walters as its Dean of University Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Tyler Walters, associate dean for technology and resource services at the Library and Information Center at Georgia Tech, has been named dean of University Libraries at Virginia Tech. . . .

"Tyler Walters brings an outstanding vision to the university and will be an engaging and effective advocate for the libraries within the university and larger community," said Virginia Tech Senior Vice President and Provost Mark McNamee. "His view of librarians as authoritative guides and stewards of the intellectual record, coupled with his commitment to position the libraries as a strong partner in all of the academic endeavors of the university, fit exceptionally well with the needs articulated by faculty and staff when we initiated the search." . . .

Walters began his career in 1987 as an assistant in the photographic archives unit of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in Raleigh, N.C. From 1988 to 1992, he served as the assistant university archivist at the Northwestern University Library. In 1992, he went to the Iowa State University Library as assistant professor in the special collections department. He was promoted to associate professor and served as head of the special collections department from 1996 to 1998.

In 1998, he was appointed director of the William R. Haselton Library and Knowledge Center at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology in Atlanta, now a unit of Georgia Tech. In 2002, he began as the associate director of digital and technical services at Georgia Tech, later as associate director for technology and resource services, and most recently as associate dean. . . .

Walters has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He has raised $3.3 million in grants and gifts while at Georgia Tech.

Walters has co-founded new inter-institutional organizations such as the MetaArchive Cooperative (digital preservation services) and the GALILEO Knowledge Repository (Georgia’s statewide repository service).

| Digital Scholarship |

Web Development Librarian at East Carolina University

East Carolina University's J.Y. Joyner Library is recruiting a Web Development Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Responsibilities: Reporting to the Assistant Director for Library Technology and Digital Initiatives, the Web Development Librarian will:

  • Provide vision and leadership in designing, developing and supporting the main library web site and integrating it with the larger library web presence which includes discovery tools, digital collections, and electronic resources
  • Lead, supervise, and direct the Web Development Team
  • Maintain and refine existing web services offered by the department
  • Develop and implement web applications and tools, particularly for mobile environments
  • Ensure that web services and applications are tailored for targeted user groups, including distance education students, on-site patrons, faculty members, and library staff
  • Evaluate local web resources through a variety of assessment methods
  • Actively explore current web technologies, recommending and implementing best practices for an academic library environment
  • Participate as a member of the library's technology team Dean's Council

| Digital Scholarship |

The New Renaissance

The European Commission's Comité des Sages has released The New Renaissance.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The report, called "The New Renaissance," key conclusions and recommendations are:

  • The Europeana portal should become the central reference point for Europe's online cultural heritage. Member States must ensure that all material digitised with public funding is available on the site, and bring all their public domain masterpieces into Europeana by 2016. Cultural
  • Works that are covered by copyright, but are no longer distributed commercially, need to be brought online. It is primarily the role of rights-holders to digitise these works and exploit them. But, if rights holders do not do so, cultural institutions must have a window of opportunity to digitise material and make it available to the public, for which right holders should be remunerated.
  • EU rules for orphan works (whose rights holders cannot be identified) need to be adopted as soon as possible. The Report defines eight fundamental conditions for any solution.
  • Member States need to considerably increase their funding for digitisation in order to generate jobs and growth in the future. The funds needed to build 100 km of roads would pay for the digitisation of 16% of all available books in EU libraries, or the digitisation of every piece of audio content in EU Member States' cultural institutions.
  • Public-private partnerships for digitisation must be encouraged. They must be transparent, non-exclusive and equitable for all partners, and must result in cross-border access to the digitised material for all. Preferential use of the digitised material granted to the private partner should not exceed seven years.
  • To guarantee the preservation of collections in their digital format, a second copy of this cultural material should be archived at Europeana. In addition, a system should be developed so that any cultural material that currently needs to be deposited in several countries would only be deposited once.

| Digital Scholarship |

Head of Library Systems at University of Richmond

The University of Richmond Libraries are recruiting a Head of Library Systems.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (position number: 501284):

The Head of Library Systems oversees the staff and application support functions of the library's enterprise systems. The Head of Library Systems envisions, plans and implements collaborative strategies for current and future library enterprise applications with all sectors of the Library and Information Services to achieve ambitious organizational goals within budgets and timescales; fosters and sustains operational and strategic relationships with peer institutions, consortia, and information system vendors; assigns, coordinates, directs, and supervises the staff in the department responsible for several enterprise systems; ensures established data standards and IT best practices are followed to ensure interoperability and efficient operations, and to minimize risk; supports numerous relationships within the libraries, the university, with peer institutions and with vendors to determine functional and technical requirements.

| Digital Scholarship |

Cloud-Sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-Digitized Library Environment

OCLC has released Cloud-Sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-Digitized Library Environment.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitized books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favor of negotiated access to the digitized corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory.

Some of the findings from the project that are detailed in the report include:

  • There is sufficient material in the mass-digitized library collection managed by the HathiTrust to duplicate a sizeable (and growing) portion of virtually any academic library in the United States, and there is adequate duplication between the shared digital repository and large-scale print storage facilities to enable a great number of academic libraries to reconsider their local print management operations.
  • The combination of a relatively small number of potential shared print providers, including the US Library of Congress, was sufficient to achieve more than 70% coverage of the digitized book collection, suggesting that shared service may not require a very large network of providers.
  • Substantial library space savings and cost avoidance could be achieved if academic institutions outsourced management of redundant low-use inventory to shared service providers.
  • Academic library directors can have a positive and profound impact on the future of academic print collections by adopting and implementing a deliberate strategy to build and sustain regional print service centers that can reduce the total cost of library preservation and access.

| Digital Scholarship |

Digital Scholarship 2010 Use Statistics

Digital Scholarship received over 9.2 million file requests ("hits") in 2010. There were over 3.3 million page views (i.e., HTML pages, PDF files, text files, or Word files). There were over 1.4 million visitors. Visitors came from 208 countries.

The top 10 countries by number of visitors were:

  1. United States
  2. France
  3. United Kingdom
  4. Germany
  5. China
  6. Canada
  7. Russian Federation
  8. Japan
  9. Australia
  10. Brazil

The top ten identified universities using Digital Scholarship by number of page views were:

  1. University of Sydney
  2. Harvard University
  3. Universitaet zu Koeln
  4. University of Waterloo
  5. Nanyang Technological University
  6. University of Washington
  7. Library and Archives Canada
  8. Universitaet Hamburg
  9. University of Toronto
  10. University of Michigan

The Digital Scholarship publications with the heaviest use were DigitalKoans (over 5.7 million hits and over 2.4 million page views) and the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (over 1.2 million hits and over 489,000 page views).

The analysis was done using WebLog Expert.