Month: October 2018

"What’s Next with WIPO’s Ill-Advised Broadcast Treaty?"

The Creative Commons has released "What's Next with WIPO's Ill-Advised Broadcast Treaty?" by Timothy Vollmer.

Here's an excerpt:

Six years ago we wrote a blog post titled WIPO's Broadcasting Treaty: Still Harmful, Still Unnecessary. At the time, the proposed treaty—which would grant to broadcasters a separate, exclusive copyright-like right in the signals that they transmit, separate from any copyrights in the content of the transmissions—had already been on WIPO’s docket for several years. It’s still on the table today, and now some countries are calling for actions to finalise the agreement.

The current text contains many of the same damaging provisions, such as long term of protection (possibly 50 years) and little to no support for limitations and exceptions to the right which could provide needed protections for activities such as news reporting, quotation, education, personal use, and archiving.

But the dealbreaker for CC is the fact that the treaty would essentially invalidate the permissions that users of Creative Commons grant when they share their creativity under open licenses, and instead gift new and unwarranted rights to broadcasting organizations that have added little or no value to the underlying work being transmitted. This is because the rights provided to broadcasters in the treaty would apply separately from copyright, thus permitting them to restrict how the content is shared even if the creator of the video or audio content has already released it under a Creative Commons license, or if it's already in the public domain.

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Developer for Digital Arts and Humanities at Bard College

Bard College is recruiting a Developer for Digital Arts and Humanities.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Bard College's Center for Experimental Humanities (http://eh.bard.edu) seeks a creative and versatile software developer to design, build, and support the next generation of applications for projects in the digital arts and humanities. This developer will be an integral part of a dynamic interdisciplinary center and work closely with faculty across campus as well as academic technology services to experiment with new approaches and tools toward content creation and presentation.

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"Measuring Open Access Policy Compliance: Results of a Survey"

Shannon Kipphut-Smith et al. have published "Measuring Open Access Policy Compliance: Results of a Survey" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION In the last decade, a significant number of institutions have adopted open access (OA) policies. Many of those working with OA policies are tasked with measuring policy compliance. This article reports on a survey of Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) members designed to better understand the methods currently used for measuring and communicating OA policy success. METHODS This electronic survey was distributed to the COAPI member listserv, inviting both institutions who have passed an implemented policies and those who are still developing policies to participate. RESULTS The results to a number of questions related to topics such as policy workflows, quantitative and qualitative measurement activities and related tools, and challenges showed a wide range of responses, which are shared here. DISCUSSION It is clear that a number of COAPI members struggle with identifying what should be measured and what tools and methods are appropriate. The survey illustrates how each institution measures compliance differently, making it difficult to benchmark against peer institutions. CONCLUSION As a result of this survey, we recommend that institutions working with OA policies be as transparent as possible about their data sources and methods when calculating deposit rates and other quantitative measures. It is hoped that this transparency will result in the development of a set of qualitative and quantitative best practices for assessing OA policies that standardizes assessment terminology and articulates why institutions may want to measure policies.

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Scholarly Communications Officer and Program Lead at University of California, Davis

The University of California, Davis is recruiting a Scholarly Communications Officer and Program Lead.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Scholarly Communications Program leads library and campus action on the wide range of issues related to the rapidly changing system of creating, evaluating, disseminating, and preserving the outputs of research and scholarship. Working with a wide range of collaborators from across the library, campus, University of California system, and (inter)national scholarly communications community, the program works to facilitate the transformation of scholarly publishing to provide barrier-free access to high-quality, authoritative information resources. Program partners outside of UC Davis include UC units, such as the UC Office of Scholarly Communications, and outside organizations. Additional program deliverables include applied research studies and educational initiatives, such as for-credit courses, symposia, and workshops, related to transformative scholarly communications and re­imagined use of scholarly works.

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"Surveying the State of Data Curation: a Review of Policy and Practice in UK HEIs"

Amy Pham has self-archived "Surveying the State of Data Curation: a Review of Policy and Practice in UK HEIs."

Here's an excerpt:

Through a three-part methodology, the dissertation research aimed to provide a clear picture of the current state of data curation in UK HEIs, including adherence to best practices and the existence of provisions for data curation efforts. A survey questionnaire was disseminated as the primary method of data collection, and additional information was gathered through a literature review and an analysis of online resources and institutional policies. Data curation practices were found to be mostly inconsistent with best practices and were largely focused on facilitating access to research data. However, there is an awareness of the underdeveloped areas of data curation, especially preservation, and efforts are being made to improve these areas. Institutional policies were found to be mostly documents that defined roles and responsibilities and provided little guidance for follow-through. The role of researchers was repeatedly emphasized in both policy and practice and was essential in understanding the current state of data curation.

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Associate Director, Library Technology and Digital Strategies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County is recruiting a Associate Director, Library Technology and Digital Strategies.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County seeks an experienced manager to become a key member of the Library Executive Team and to provide future vision, oversight, leadership and strategic direction for the library's information technology infrastructure including the exploration, integration and implementation of new and emerging technologies.

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"Learning to Love Data (Week): Creating Data Services Awareness on Campus"

Katie Wissel and Lisa DeLuca have published "Learning to Love Data (Week): Creating Data Services Awareness on Campus" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

In May 2017, The Economist ran a cover story titled "The world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data." Given the continued growth in the sourcing, curating, and storing of data for academic research, it seems the academy would agree. In response to this growing need at Seton Hall, a midsized research university, the Seton Hall University (SHU) Libraries conducted an assessment of the current and emerging data requirements of the researchers and students on campus.

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Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian at Harvard University

Harvard University is recruiting a Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

In his or her capacity as the Roy E. Larsen Librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the incumbent has an additional reporting relationship to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and is responsible for the leadership and administration of the major libraries and numerous departmental and specialized libraries within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), including but not limited to a centrally administered unit within the FAS that is referred to as the Harvard College Library (HCL). HCL includes Widener, Lamont, Cabot, Houghton, and many departmental and specialty libraries.

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ARL: "Press and Library Directors Summit Report and Slides Available"

ARL has released "Press and Library Directors Summit Report and Slides Available."

Here's an excerpt:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) hosted the second meeting of press and library directors with reporting relationships (P2L2) in San Francisco, California, on June 20, 2018. The P2L2 Summit focused on shared practices, projects, shared opportunities and challenges, open access sustainability, and the provosts’ value of the P2L relationship.

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Systems Administrator at George Washington University

George Washington University is recruiting a Systems Administrator.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Systems Administrator takes an innovative, service-centric approach to the management of GWLAI's virtual server environment. S/he will be responsible for managing the Linux servers, primarily Ubuntu based in the Washington Research Library Consortiums (WRLC) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment. The Systems Administrator will perform server deployments, application installation and configuration, and system monitoring in support of GWLAI web presences, software development and digital collection environments.

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$750,000 Grant: "Dumbarton Oaks and JSTOR to Launch Plant Humanities Initiative"

JSTOR has released "Dumbarton Oaks and JSTOR to Launch Plant Humanities Initiative."

Here's an excerpt:

Dumbarton Oaks, a research institute of Harvard University, and JSTOR, the digital library for research and teaching that is part of the non-profit ITHAKA, are launching, with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Plant Humanities Initiative: a digital tool with related research and scholarly programming to advance the field of Plant Humanities. To this end, the Foundation has awarded JSTOR a grant of $750,000 for developing a digital tool, with a parallel grant of $700,000 to Dumbarton Oaks for the research and programming over three years.

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Digital Preservation Librarian at Louisiana State University

Louisiana State University is recruiting a Digital Preservation Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Digital Preservation Librarian will be forward-thinking, capable of conveying technical issues to diverse constituencies, enjoy working in a collaborative team environment, and be experienced with varied digital preservation services/systems. S/he provides expertise and coordinates efforts to develop and maintain a digital preservation program safeguarding LSU Libraries' digital assets, both born digital and converted. S/he will interface with departments including Library IT, the digitization lab, digital scholarship lab, special collections, university archives and oral history to establish and maintain policies, procedures and documentation related to digital preservation.

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"How Can Bibliometric and Altmetric Suppliers Improve? Messages from the End-User Community"

Elizabeth Gadd and Ian Rowlands have published "How Can Bibliometric and Altmetric Suppliers Improve? Messages from the End-User Community" in Insights.

Here's an excerpt:

This article reports on a 2018 survey of bibliometric and altmetric practitioners—'Three things you want your metrics supplier to know'—that was undertaken to better understand the practitioners' usage of existing tools and services and to invite them to suggest ways in which they would like to see these improve. In total, 149 suggestions were made by 42 respondents, mainly UK librarians. Responses could be categorized into four main themes: A) Improve and share your data; B) Be more responsible; C) Improve your tools; D) Improve your indicators. The findings of the survey are discussed and sample comments shared. Based on these findings, and expanding on the four themes, the article makes a number of practical recommendations to metrics suppliers for ways in which their services could better serve the need of the community for robust and responsible bibliometric and altmetric evaluation.

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