March 2023 – Page 6 – DigitalKoans

"With New Model Language, Library E-book Bills Are Back"

The revised language, developed with support from nascent library advocacy group Library Futures, takes a "regulate " rather than "mandate " approach. In other words, unlike Maryland’s law, which would have required publishers to offer license agreements to libraries "on reasonable terms " for digital books that were available to consumers, the new legislative language instead focuses regulating the terms of agreements. Key to the revised bill’s effectiveness is language that would render unenforceable any license term that "precludes, limits, or restricts" libraries from performing their traditional, core mission.

bit.ly/3y42wfh

Digital Projects Librarian, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) at University of Calgary

Reporting to the Director, Lab NEXT, the Digital Projects Librarian has a focus on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) services. The successful candidate will provide reference and research services in these areas as well as participate in and shape all phases of the planning and development of digital library projects in this area, including the development of business cases and project plans, organizing and implementing workflows, coordinating project activities, communication planning and delivery, training, outreach, quality control, and assessment.

bit.ly/3IJyORk

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"Guest Post – Advancing Accessibility in Scholarly Publishing: Fostering Empathy"

This three-part series aims to discuss the topic of advancing accessibility within scholarly communication with the focus on digital accessibility. The contributors, members of the SSP Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Committee, draw attention to the challenges related to addressing accessibility in publishing and communication workflows. They provide examples of exclusion resulting from lack of accessibility of digital content, list key points for getting buy-in from key stakeholders to implement and grow accessibility programs, and offer recommendations for inclusive practices.

bit.ly/3SGHflc

Audiovisual Preservation & Digitization Lead at Ohio State University

Working under the supervision of the Digitization Program Manager, the Audiovisual Preservation & Digitization Specialist will establish a preservation program for the long-term care of the Libraries’ audiovisual collections by developing and implementing policies and procedures and communicating them to key stakeholders. The Specialist will conduct assessments, evaluate resource needs, and establish best practices for housing and treatment of historic AV collections. Lead in the pursuit of AV preservation grant writing opportunities. Coordinate with a variety of stakeholders within the Libraries Special and General Collections, Metadata Initiatives, Archival Technical Services, and IT, to promote preservation of, and access to, the collections. Gather data and report on the status, progress, and outcomes of the program. Serve as the authoritative source of information and guidance for the use of AV materials. Supervise a 1.0 FTE Audiovisual Preservation and Digitization Specialist.

bit.ly/3ZcJ2B0

"Geospatial Open Data Usage and Metadata Quality"

The Open Government Data portals (OGD), thanks to the presence of thousands of geo-referenced datasets, containing spatial information are of extreme interest for any analysis or process relating to the territory. For this to happen, users must be enabled to access these datasets and reuse them. An element often considered as hindering the full dissemination of OGD data is the quality of their metadata. Starting from an experimental investigation conducted on over 160,000 geospatial datasets belonging to six national and international OGD portals, this work has as its first objective to provide an overview of the usage of these portals measured in terms of datasets views and downloads. Furthermore, to assess the possible influence of the quality of the metadata on the use of geospatial datasets, an assessment of the metadata for each dataset was carried out, and the correlation between these two variables was measured. The results obtained showed a significant underutilization of geospatial datasets and a generally poor quality of their metadata. In addition, a weak correlation was found between the use and quality of the metadata, not such as to assert with certainty that the latter is a determining factor of the former.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10010030

Research Data Management Librarian at University of Virginia

The Research Data Management Librarians will develop and provide educational opportunities to support researchers at all proficiency levels, assessing needs, coordinating learning opportunities, and actively marketing content. This includes developing hands-on workshops on topics around data management (including data management planning and implementation, and data repository usage). The incumbents will also contribute to online instructional content by writing tutorials and providing access to all workshop materials.

The positions will be members of the University Library’s Research Data Services & Social, Natural, Engineering Sciences team providing data management, data discovery, data wrangling, and statistical consulting services to support the full data lifecycle.

bit.ly/3YggODY

Congressional Research Service: Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law

The question of whether or not copyright protection may be afforded to AI outputs—such as images created by DALL-E or texts created by ChatGPT—is likely to hinge partly on the concept of "authorship." The Copyright Act generally affords copyright protection to "original works of authorship." Although the Copyright Act does not define who (or what) may be an "author," the U.S Copyright Office recognizes copyright only in works "created by a human being." Courts have likewise refused to afford copyright protection to non-human authors—for example, a monkey who took a series of photos. A recent lawsuit has challenged the human-authorship requirement in the context of works purportedly "authored" by AI. In June 2022, Stephen Thaler sued the Copyright Office for denying an application to register a visual artwork that he claims was authored by an AI program called the Creativity Machine.

https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB10922.html

Digital Library Manager at London School of Economics and Political Science

The post-holder is responsible for initiating and implementing digital service developments, actively seeking opportunities for collaborative partnerships with researchers and external organisations and creatively delivering new ways to make digital collections available. This work involves close liaison with Library collections specialists, researchers, colleagues in service divisions in the School and external suppliers. The post-holder will particularly work closely with the Collections Management team who are responsible for delivering on-site digitisation and digital preservation. As well as managing the operational digital library service, the postholder will manage development projects, often supported by external funding.

bit.ly/3J2RMnI

"The Importance of Copyright and Shared Norms for Credit in Open Educational Resources"

Open Educational Resources (OER) are reducing barriers to education while allowing creators the opportunity to share their work with the world and continue owning copyright of their work. To support new authors and adaptors in the OER space, we provide an overview of common considerations that creators and adaptors of OER should make with respect to issues related to copyright in the context of OER. Further, and importantly, a challenge in the OER space is ensuring that original creators receive appropriate credit for their work, while also respecting the credit of those who have adapted work. Thus, in addition to providing important considerations when it comes to the creation of open access works, we propose shared norms for ensuring appropriate attribution and credit for creators and adaptors of OER.

https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.1069388

Librarian for Applied Metadata Research at Yale University

The Librarian for Applied Metadata Research plays a central role in collaborating with catalogers and metadata and technology experts across the Yale University Library and other university departments in order to implement new metadata services and programs and enhance existing ones. The incumbent will share a vision for sustainable metadata technologies and policies that support enhanced discoverability of Yale’s rich and extensive collections, incorporating international standards and best practices for metadata and linked open data services. This position will bring expertise to recommend creative uses of emerging technology solutions for seamless discovery of library metadata and cultural heritage resources, taking advantage of research findings and computational solutions (for example, analytical data visualization, machine learning, and artificial intelligence).

bit.ly/3xZs8cZ

"Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow: Five Altmetric Sources Observed over a Decade Show Evolving Trends, by Research Age, Attention Source Maturity and Open Access Status"

Twitter attention both starts and ends quickly. Mendeley readers accumulate quickly, and continue to grow over the following years. News and blog attention is quick to start, although news attention persists over a longer timeframe. Citations in policy documents are slow to start, and are observed to be growing over a decade after publication. Over time, growth in Twitter activity is confirmed, alongside an apparent decline in blogging attention. Mendeley usage is observed to grow, but shows signs of recent decline. Policy attention is identified as the slowest form of impact studied by altmetrics, and one that strongly favours the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Open Access Altmetrics Advantage is seen to emerge and evolve over time, with each attention source showing different trends.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04653-1

Assistant Director of Research Data Stewardship at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Assistant Director of Research Data Stewardship is a leadership position in the Research Data Management Office (RDMO), overseeing a team of data archivists, data curators, and subject experts responsible for implementing campus-wide programs and initiatives to support research data management and sharing activities. Reporting to the Director of Research Data Management, the Assistant Director of Research Stewardship works in concert with the Assistant Director of Research Architecture and stakeholders across campus to establish a unified, campus-wide ecosystem of research data management and sharing support infrastructure and services to ensure compliance with funding agency policies and to promote the goals of those policies.

https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/251190

"China and Open Access"

In December 2022, the International Association of STM Publishers and the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) released a report: Open Access Publishing in China. The report is openly available in both English and Chinese. This interview with Mark Robertson, consultant to the STM Association on the project, highlights the findings of the report and their implications for the scholarly publishing industry as well as providing background on the STM/CAST collaboration.

bit.ly/3kHUuW5