Month: June 2011

NEH Awards $300,000 to the Shelley-Godwin Archive

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant of $300,000 to the Shelley-Godwin Archive.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant of $300,000 to the Shelley-Godwin Archive, a digital resource comprising works of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Humanities scholars, curators, and information scientists from The New York Public Library (NYPL), the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, and the British Library will collaborate on the archive's creation. They will be led by Elizabeth C. Denlinger, Curator of the Pforzheimer Collection of the NYPL. Neil Fraistat, director of MITH, a renowned scholar in both the digital humanities and Shelley studies, will act as co-Principal Investigator.

The Shelley-Godwin Archive will draw primarily from the two foremost collections of these materials, those of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at NYPL, which together hold an estimated 90 percent of all known relevant manuscripts worldwide. With the Archive’s creation, manuscripts and early editions of these writers will be made freely available to the public through an innovative framework constituting a new model of best practice for research libraries. First among these is the manuscript of Mary Shelley's iconic novel of 1818, Frankenstein; and second will be the working notebooks of P.B. Shelley, which are scattered amongst the five partner institutions from California to England. MITH will create the project’s infrastructure with the assistance of the New York Public Library’s digital humanities group, NYPL Labs.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Systems Librarian at Whittier College’s Wardman Library

Whittier College's Wardman Library is recruiting a Systems Librarian. Degree: ALA accredited MLS or equivalent.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Systems Librarian at Whittier College's Wardman Library will manage the Library's integrated library system (III-Millennium) to ensure the efficient and effective operation of the ILS and the corresponding WebPAC. The position is also responsible for leading, planning, and implementing library digital services and information technologies; serving on a variety of internal and external committees; assisting with maintaining the library website and other library systems, and providing staff technology training. The Systems Librarian also works at the reference desk and serves as liaison to one or more academic departments, providing subject-specific instruction, creating instructional materials and developing collections.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

"Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher Behavior through University and Funder Mandates"

Stevan Harnad has self-archived "Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher Behavior through University and Funder Mandates" in the ECS EPrints Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

The primary target of the worldwide Open Access initiative is the 2.5 million articles published every year in the planet's 25,000 peer-reviewed research journals across all scholarly and scientific fields. Without exception, every one of these articles is an author give-away, written, not for royalty income, but solely to be used, applied and built upon by other researchers. The optimal and inevitable solution for this give-away research is that it should be made freely accessible to all its would-be users online and not only to those whose institutions can afford subscription access to the journal in which it happens to be published. Yet this optimal and inevitable solution, already fully within the reach of the global research community for at least two decades now, has been taking a remarkably long time to be grasped. The problem is not particularly an instance of "eDemocracy" one way or the other; it is an instance of inaction because of widespread misconceptions (reminiscent of Zeno's Paradox). The solution is for the world's research institutions and funders to (1) extend their existing "publish or perish" mandates so as to (2) require their employees and fundees to maximize the usage and impact of the research they are employed and funded to conduct and publish by (3) depositing their final drafts in their Open Access (OA) Institutional Repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication in order to (4) make their findings freely accessible to all their potential users webwide. OA metrics can then be used to measure and reward research progress and impact; and multiple layers of links, tags, commentary and discussion can be built upon and integrated with the primary research.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Current News: Twitter Updates for 6/6/11

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Data Management Planning Consultant at Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries (2 Positions)

Johns Hopkins University's Sheridan Libraries are recruiting two Data Management Planning Consultant positions. Degree: Masters of Science, Engineering or Library Science. Salary: $50,590-$69,493.

Here's an excerpt from the ad 1 and ad 2:

The primary duties and responsibilities of the job:

Manage inquiries from Principal Investigators for data management planning support. • Provide consultative support to PIs including evaluation of data planning needs, assessing short and long term options and benefits, catering planning to specific granting agency requirements, and editing data management plans. • Track specific scientific domain areas building knowledge and expertise in data types, formats, and needs within domain. • Identify data standards, metadata standards, best practices for data management, etc. to continuously build expertise and improve provision of service. • Maintain knowledge on a broad range of data repositories including their submission, Intellectual Property, and use arrangements, and provide guidance on repository selection for deposit. • Proactively collaborate and coordinate with team to plan for data management. • Collaborate with others in the library to effectively communicate services to faculty, researchers, and departments. • Responsible for managing short and long-term communications and relationships with PIs. • Liaise with Executive Director and Chief IT Architect of Data Conservancy.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Splashes and Ripples: Synthesizing the Evidence on the Impacts of Digital Resources

JISC has released Splashes and Ripples: Synthesizing the Evidence on the Impacts of Digital Resources.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is an effort to begin to synthesize the evidence available under the JISC digitisation and eContent programmes to better understand the patterns of usage of digitised collections in research and teaching, in the UK and beyond. JISC has invested heavily in eContent and digitisation, funding dozens of projects of varying size since 2004. However, until recently, the value of these efforts has been mostly either taken as given, or asserted via anecdote. By drawing on evidence of the various impacts of twelve digitised resources, we can begin to build a base of evidence that moves beyond anecdotal evidence to a more empirically-based understanding on a variety of impacts that have been measured by qualitative and quantitative methods.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Digital Collections Coordinator at Missouri State Library

The Missouri State Library is recruiting a Digital Collections Coordinator. MLS or an equivalent degree. Salary: $3,051-$3,225/month.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Digital Collections Coordinator (DCC) manages the CONTENTdm database of the Missouri Digital Heritage Initiative, and assists with content recruitment for the project. The DCC works with cultural heritage institutions to format and upload digital collections, trains users on the CONTENTdm image management software, helps develop the MDH website, and design the search interface and custom queries. The DCC works with State Library and State Archives staff, user groups, and stakeholders to update standards and best practices for digital scanning, metadata creation, and web delivery of Missouri's digital collections.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Open Access Deposit Issues: "Seeking Custody"

Peter Suber has published "Seeking Custody" in the latest issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

If we want to make a digital file OA, and we already have an OA repository, then we face just two hurdles. We need a copy of the file and we need permission. We can call these the custody and copyright conditions. "Custody" here doesn't mean ownership of the rights, just possession of a copy. If we have possession and permission, then we don't need ownership.

The OA movement has given far more attention to the copyright or permission problem than to the custody or possession problem. This may have the effect of sweeping a difficult problem under the rug. We often have permission when we lack custody, and often find that solving the permission problem is easier than solving the custody problem. Here are some examples of what could be called permission success and custody failure.

(1) You've published an article in a TA journal which allows green OA or self-archiving. But the journal only allows deposit of the final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript, not the published version. You're fine with that and eager to make the manuscript OA. But you can't put your hands on the version you're allowed to deposit. You think it's on your hard drive somewhere, or in your email archive. But you're not sure. You haven't had time to look, or you've looked and found six versions. You don't have time to figure out which one, if any, is the deposit-eligible, peer-reviewed manuscript, or you've taken the time and you're still unsure. Or you have the version you submitted to the journal, and all the correspondence with the editor, but you don't have time to reconstruct the version approved by peer review. Or you might have deleted the relevant version in a fit of spring cleaning, as a superseded version not worth saving, or you might have failed to copy it over from your last computer when you upgraded. With enough detective work you could find out, but you don't know how much time it would take and you're pretty sure it would take more than you have.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Institutional Repository Bibliography |

Current News: Twitter Updates for 6/5/11

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Librarian, Digital Projects at University of British Columbia Library (3 Positions)

The University of British Columbia Library is recruiting three Librarian, Digital Projects positions. Degree: MLS.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

We are seeking three innovative, experienced and professional librarians to contribute fully to the Library's digital initiatives program. These newly created positions will act as project managers for digitization projects by assisting with the development and management of the Library's locally created digital collections.

These positions will report to the Digital Initiatives Coordinator and consult broadly with library staff in the planning of digitization projects while also assuming responsibility for the coordination and management of contracts, staff, services and additional projects as required.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Maria Pallante Named Register of Copyrights

Maria Pallante has been named Register of Copyrights.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Maria A. Pallante as the 12th Register of Copyrights and director of the United States Copyright Office, effective today. Pallante served as the Acting Register for the past five months, following the retirement of Marybeth Peters on December 31, 2010. . . .

Pallante has had wide-ranging experience in copyright transactions, policy and litigation, in both the government and private sectors. In addition to Acting Register, she has held several key positions within the Copyright Office: Associate Register for Policy and International Affairs (2008-2010), Deputy General Counsel (2007-2008), and Policy Advisor (1996-1997). She spent much of her career in New York, working there from 1999-2007 as intellectual property counsel and director of the licensing group for the worldwide Guggenheim Museums, where she advised on programmatic and business initiatives related to publishing, product development and branding. She has led two national author organizations, working as Executive Director of the National Writers Union (1993-1995) and as Assistant Director of the Authors Guild (1991-1993), and was associate counsel at the Washington-based law firm and literary agency, Lichtman, Trister, Singer and Ross.

Pallante is a 1990 graduate of the George Washington University Law School. She earned her bachelor’s degree in history from Misericordia University, where she was also awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters. She completed a clerkship in administrative law under the Hon. G. Marvin Bober, appellate division, U.S. Department of Labor. During her career, Pallante has been a frequent speaker on copyright law at events in the United States and abroad, and has testified before Congress several times, including on the Copyright Reform Act (1993); Orphan Works (2006) and Online Enforcement of Rogue Websites (2011). She was a member of the Librarian’s 1993 Advisory Committee on Copyright Registration and Deposit and is currently serving on the Department of Education's Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Post-Secondary Education for Students with Disabilities.

Read more about it at "Public Knowledge Statement on Maria Pallante's Appointment as Register of Copyrights."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

CLIR/DLF Awarded Grant for Digital Public Library of America Prototype

The Council on Library and Information Resources and the Digital Library Federation have been awarded a Mellon grant to develop a Digital Public Library of America Prototype.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded CLIR/DLF a $46,000 planning grant to develop a prototype for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The prototype will be submitted to the DPLA “beta sprint,” which seeks “ideas, models, prototypes, technical tools, [or] user interfaces . . . that demonstrate how the DPLA might index and provide access to a wide range of broadly distributed content.”

Rachel Frick, director of the DLF program, will manage the project and serve as co-principal investigator with Carole Palmer, professor and director of the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Palmer will lead UIUC staff in developing the prototype, which will demonstrate how the IMLS Digital Collections and Content Registry (DCC) and its research and development activities can serve the DPLA as a critical mass of base content, as well as an aggregation model. A functional prototype will be produced in combination with a set of static wireframes and demonstrations, showing how DCC’s advances in content, metadata, user experience, and infrastructure can be leveraged for the DPLA.

Palmer and Frick will work closely with Geneva Henry, executive director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at Rice University, who will produce a report that reviews current literature pertaining to the technical aspects of large-scale collection aggregations and federations. The report will review and compare the system architectures, content types, and scale of content of the DCC, Europeana, the National Science Digital Library, and other aggregations to shed light on how and why large-scale aggregation projects succeed or fail. The report will also identify potential content providers for the DPLA, and will estimate the time, effort, and other costs required to ingest these resources into the prototype.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

Current News: Twitter Updates for 6/2/11

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Associate Director for Digital Library Programmes and Information Technologies at Bodleian Libraries

The Bodleian Libraries are recruiting an Associate Director for Digital Library Programmes and Information Technologies. Salary: £72,000-£80,000.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Bodleian Libraries seek an Associate Director for Digital Library Programmes and Information Technologies, to join its senior executive and to lead the work of the Digital Library Systems and Services and IT staff, a group of 44 who are responsible for the technical planning and implementation of a broad spectrum of innovative projects and infrastructure development.

The Associate Director will provide strategic vision and direction for the Bodleian Digital Systems and Services and will represent Oxford in national and international discussions and planning activities relating to digital library development, data curation, and the application of information technologies to further the mission of the Bodleian Libraries in support of teaching and research.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Columbia University Libraries Adopt Open Access Policy

The Columbia University Libraries have adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Columbia University Libraries is joining a growing movement among universities and research institutions to make scholarly research free and available to the public online. The Libraries is among the first departments at the university to adopt an open access resolution, which calls for faculty and other researchers to post their journal articles in online repositories such as Columbia's Academic Commons. In January, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory became the first program at Columbia to adopt an open access resolution.

The resolution for the Libraries, which goes into effect on June 1, 2011, will require librarians and other professional staff members to deposit their published scholarly works into Academic Commons or another repository that makes the work publicly available. By posting articles in an open-access repository, authors are able to make their works freely accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection and discoverable via Google Scholar and other search tools, thus promoting a wider dissemination of research and information.

"The Libraries at Columbia have championed open access to research,” James G. Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, said. "It is appropriate that its professional staff should model this policy and place their works in repositories for wide access and use."

The resolution covers only scholarly journal articles and is not retroactive. There is an opt-out feature built into the resolution, with respect to publishing an article in a journal that insists on exclusivity.  The resolution will also cover Health Sciences Library professional staff.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Analyst Programmer Intermediate at Georgia State University Library

The Georgia State University Library is recruiting an Analyst Programmer Intermediate. Degree: Bachelor's degree (computer science or a related field preferred). Salary: $46,000-$52,900.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (vacancy number: 0601741):

Reporting to the Web Services Librarian, the Analyst Programmer develops, maintains, and troubleshoots web based applications in support of University Library's goals. Responsibilities include scripting and programming for applications developed in-house, customization and enhancement of open-source and vendor applications, working with vendor or open-source Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and management of in-house databases. In addition, the Analyst Programmer develops end-user interfaces and dynamic forms for web applications using a variety of scripting languages and frameworks including PHP, JavaScript, CSS, XML/XSL, and RSS. This position works with project stakeholders as needed to further develop or enhance application designs or features. This position also works collaboratively with library Systems personnel to implement and configure web servers in support of web development activities, authentication technologies and server security.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

"Transforming Our Bibliographic Framework: A Statement from the Library of Congress (May 13, 2011)"

The Library of Congress has issued "Transforming Our Bibliographic Framework: A Statement from the Library of Congress (May 13, 2011)."

Here's an excerpt:

The Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services, Deanna Marcum, is leading an initiative at the Library to analyze the present and future environment, identify the components of the framework to support our users, and plan for the evolution from our present framework to the future—not just for the Library of Congress, but for all institutions that depend on bibliographic data shared by the Library and its partners. The Library of Congress has invested considerable resources in the development of broadly implemented encoding standards such as MARC 21, as well as cataloging standards and vocabularies such as the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd Edition (AACR2), RDA, and the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Spontaneous comments from participants in the US RDA Test show that a broad cross-section of the community feels budgetary pressures but nevertheless considers it necessary to replace MARC 21 in order to reap the full benefit of new and emerging content standards. The Library now seeks to evaluate how its resources for the creation and exchange of metadata are currently being used and how they should be directed in an era of diminishing budgets and heightened expectations in the broader library community. . . .

The Library of Congress's process will be fully collaborative. We will consult our partners and customers in the metadata community, standards experts in and out of libraries, and designers and builders of systems that make use of library metadata. We intend to host meetings during conferences of the American Library Association, specialized library associations, and international organizations, as well as special “town hall” meetings open to the metadata community, to gather input from all interested parties. We plan to establish an electronic discussion group for constant communication during the effort of reshaping our bibliographic framework, and we expect to host a series of invitational meetings of experts and stakeholders in 2012 and 2013.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Current News: Twitter Updates for 6/1/11

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Alliance Digital Repository Services Director

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries is recruiting an Alliance Digital Repository Services Director. Degree: MLS.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The ADR Services Director oversees the administration, development and implementation of consortial digital repository services at the Alliance. This position plays a key role in the continuing development and operation of a shared Fedora Commons/Islandora installation which provides the foundation for Alliance members’ and affiliates’ institutional digital repository initiatives. This position directs budget and resource allocations, including oversight of hardware and infrastructure procurement, software development, recruitment and management of personnel, contractor and vendor relations, collaborative communications, and member support services. This position coordinates the investigation, adoption, and adherence to established and emerging digital repository, digital preservation, and data curation standards, best practices, and trends, including content and metadata development, distributed data storage and disaster recovery, and rights, usage, and general policy compliance by participating institutions.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Digital Book Publishing in the AAUP: Community Survey Report: Spring 2011

The Association of American University Presses has released Digital Book Publishing in the AAUP Community: Survey Report: Spring 2011.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Unsurprisingly, the 2011 results shows that every press is pursuing at least two digital publishing strategies, and almost all are expanding into many more. However, resource constraints continue to slow the development of healthy experimental models or delay the implementation of necessary digitization and workflow projects. Confirming the findings and recommendations of the recent AAUP report "Sustaining Scholarly Publishing," this digital pulse-taking indicates that finding new models to support scholarly publishing and strengthening the digital backbone of AAUP members are the top priorities in digital book publishing for the community.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |