Author: Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

A Survey of Preservation Activities in Cultural Heritage Institutions: FY2012

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services has released A Survey of Preservation Activities in Cultural Heritage Institutions: FY2012.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This survey is based on the Preservation Statistics survey program coordinated by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) from 1984 through 2008. Following the collection of the 2007-2008 Preservation Statistics data, ARL discontinued surveying its members about their preservation activities; this decision left the preservation community without a way to document, assess, and analyze its collective current practices, staff and budget resources and strategic direction.

The report examines how respondents are organizing and administering traditional and digital preservation programs and chronicles their preventive preservation (disaster planning, environmental monitoring, outreach and education), conservation and reformatting/digitization activities. The report assesses trends in the preservation programs of academic and research libraries in the five-year span between the last ARL Preservation Statistics Survey in 2007 and this 2012 survey based on the responses provided by the 34 ARL members who participated in this pilot survey.

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Biomedical Sciences Research Support Librarian at Yale University’s Cushing/Whitney Medical Library

Yale University's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library is recruiting a Biomedical Sciences Research Support Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Biomedical Sciences Research Support Librarian serves as the primary liaison between the Library and research departments, laboratories, and individual scientists within the Medical Center, and is pivotal to defining and expanding the Library's role in supporting e-Science and biomedical research data management. . . . Through consultation and collaboration, the librarian works to enable these researchers to leverage information and data resources to the fullest. With experience using a wide range of bibliographic databases in the health and life sciences, the librarian develops and provides training in the use of biomedical knowledge management, information and data resources, tools, and strategies. . . The librarian assists researchers manage their data, navigate Yale University's available data management, curation and preservation landscape, and adhere to federal or other grant funding agencies' data management and public access policies and requirements.

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Starting the Conversation: University-wide Research Data Management Policy

OCLC Research has released Starting the Conversation: University-wide Research Data Management Policy.

Here's an excerpt:

Starting the Conversation: University-wide Research Data Management Policy is a call for action that summarizes the benefits of systemic data management planning and identifies the stakeholders and their concerns. It also suggests that the library director proactively initiate a conversation among these stakeholders to get buy-in for a high-level, responsible data planning and management policy that is proactive, rather than reactive.

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Digital Curation News (12/6/2013) #digitalpreservation

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Systems and Applications Manager at Mount Holyoke College Library, Information, and Technology Services

Mount Holyoke College Library, Information, and Technology Services is recruiting a Systems and Applications Manager.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Head of Network, Systems and Application Support, the Systems and Applications Manager is part of a team of seven people who support the college community in using and applying information technologies to meet their educational and business goals and objectives. The position assists in planning, implementing and maintaining server systems, storage, and centralized application services. It involves consulting and support for the entire college community in general and other departments within Library and Information Services in particular.

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"Flexible and Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (FEDORA)"

Sandra Payette and Carl Lagoze have self-archived "Flexible and Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (FEDORA)."

Here's an excerpt:

We describe a digital object and repository architecture for storing and disseminating digital library content. The key features of the architecture are: (1) support for heterogeneous data types; (2) accommodation of new types as they emerge; (3) aggregation of mixed, possibly distributed, data into complex objects; (4) the ability to specify multiple content disseminations of these objects; and (5) the ability to associate rights management schemes with these disseminations. This architecture is being implemented in the context of a broader research project to develop next-generation service modules for a layered digital library architecture.

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Programmer/Analyst 3 at Pennsylvania State University

Pennsylvania State University's Digital Library Technologies is recruiting a Programmer/Analyst 3.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

DLT performs this work in collaboration with the University Libraries and other units of ITS. DLT is looking for an enthusiastic software developer to work on the development team that created ScholarSphere and ArchiveSphere. Our team develops opensource Rails applications and Ruby gems to support repository services for content such as digital library collections, scholarly communications, electronic record archiving, and research data. This is an opportunity to work with an innovative team on building sustainable repository services for a multicampus institution, as an active member of the international Project Hydra community. The Developer will receive support for professional development and skill advancement in the form of training, facilitated code sprints, and conference participation. This position will have the opportunity to connect with established opensource communities, such as the Rails and Hydra communities, and leverage collective strengths; apply best practices around all phases of software development and deployment; and collaborate proactively with team members, sharing knowledge across multiple projects.

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"Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia"

Denise Troll Covey has published "Opening the Dissertation: Overcoming Cultural Calcification and Agoraphobia" in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society.

Here's an excerpt:

This article places the struggle to open access to the dissertation in the context of the crisis in doctoral education and the transition from print to digital literacy. It explores the underlying cultural calcification and agoraphobia that deter engagement with openness. Solving the problems will require overhauling the curriculum and conventions of doctoral education. Opening access to dissertations is an important first step, but insufficient to end the crisis. Only opening other dimensions of the dissertation — the structure, media, notion of authorship, and methods of assessment — can foster the digital literacy needed to save PhD programs from extinction. If higher education institutions invested heavily in remedying obsolete practices, the remedies would reverberate throughout the academy, accelerate advancement in the disciplines, and revolutionize scholarly publishing. The article ends with a discussion of the significant role librarians could play in facilitating needed changes given appropriate institutional commitment.

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Digital Curation News (12/5/2013) #digitalpreservation

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Research Data Services Manager at University of Michigan Library

The University of Michigan Library is recruiting a Research Data Services Manager.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Research Data Services Manager will help build and enhance Research Data Services (RDS), which are responsible for strategic planning, coordination and deployment of research data services directed at facilitating the research lifecycle. This includes creating and implementing data management assistance for the campus, outreach to faculty in collaboration with subject specialists, training, and assessment of RDS programs and services. The Research Data Manager will provide leadership in the selection, creation and maintenance of the library data management solution, and participate in library-wide strategy and planning for data services and policies.

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"Cultures of Access: Differences in Rhetoric around Open Access Repositories in Africa and the United States and Their Implications for the Open Access Movement"

Natalia T. Bowdoin has self-archived "Cultures of Access: Differences in Rhetoric around Open Access Repositories in Africa and the United States and Their Implications for the Open Access Movement."

Here's an excerpt:

For this study I examined the rhetoric used by OA institutional repositories and what this rhetoric may say about different "cultures of OA." I conducted textual analysis of 46 websites of OA repositories in the United States and 14 Sub-Saharan African nations. Analysis of the specific rhetoric used to present the OA repositories reveals differing views on the importance of OA in terms of cultural ideas about information control, access to information, and social capital.

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Associate Dean for IT Services at University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library

The University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library is recruiting a Associate Dean for IT Services.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The successful candidate will have the opportunity to build on a long history of strategic and sustained technological innovations, and to coordinate their operations and assessment. IT Services is a new department of the Marriott Library and consists of a variety of units and services including client and server administration, website development, computer classrooms and labs, desktop support, media collections and services, and application development and system integration. The AD for IT Services will play a key role in continuous evaluation of the impact and value of these services in supporting the University's mission, its evolving academic programs, research interests and user needs. The AD for IT Services must possess significant personnel and project management skills to successfully garner the substantial strengths of the IT Services units to generate creative solutions for our technology future.

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"American ETD Dissemination in the Age of Open Access: ProQuest, NoQuest, or Allowing Student Choice"

Gail P. Clement has published "American ETD Dissemination in the Age of Open Access: ProQuest, NoQuest, or Allowing Student Choice" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

A stark incongruity in the treatment of academic scholarship persists on many U.S. campuses today. Faculty authors are generally free to publish in whatever vehicle suits their needs and goals, while also expected (or mandated) to deposit their works in the open access university repository. By contrast, graduate students typically must send their scholarship to a single commercial publisher for toll-access, while also required to submit their works to the university repository.

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Digital Curation News (12/4/2013) #digitalpreservation

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Information Technology Analyst at Syracuse University Libraries

Syracuse University Libraries are recruiting an Information Technology Analyst.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Under the general direction of Senior IT Analyst/Programmer and in collaboration with library staff, the IT Analyst/Programmer assists in architecting, designing, developing, and implementing customized database driven solutions for the Syracuse University Libraries in an effort to provide intuitive interfaces for users and automate processes. The IT Analyst/Programmer provides assistance with: assessing and extending available open source solutions, customizing current software systems utilized by the Libraries, building other customized stand-alone solutions in support of the Libraries' strategic directions. In addition, the IT Analyst/Programmer will play a role in expanding the Libraries' outreach through thoughtful and effective use of emerging technologies and will need to stay informed of cutting edge technical trends and solutions.

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"PeerJ—A Case Study in Improving Research Collaboration at the Journal Level"

Peter Binfield has published "PeerJ—A Case Study in Improving Research Collaboration at the Journal Level" in the latest issue of Information Services & Use.

Here's an excerpt:

PeerJ Inc. is the Open Access publisher of PeerJ (a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (an un-peer-reviewed or collaboratively reviewed preprint server), both serving the biological, medical and health sciences.

The Editorial Criteria of PeerJ (the journal) are similar to those of PLOS ONE in that all submissions are judged only on their scientic and methodological soundness (not on subjective determinations of impact, or degree of advance). PeerJ's peer-review process is managed by an Editorial Board of 800 and an Advisory Board of 20 (including 5 Nobel Laureates).

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Web Services Librarian at Boston College Libraries

Boston College Libraries are recruiting a Web Services Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

As a member of the Library Systems Department, the Web Services Librarian will collaborate with Public Services managers and staff to ensure the smooth, reliable operation and usability of the libraries' key public-facing web content systems. He/she administers library web content management systems (e.g. LibGuides CMS and Drupal), working closely with web content owners and authors to make certain that library web pages are optimized to conform to indexing, design and stylistic standards. He/she conducts individual consultations, creates documentation, tutorials and other training materials to support staff users of Drupal, LibGuides CMS and other public-facing library web applications as required. He/She maintains CMS asset/shared content databases and ensures their continued accuracy and usability.

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Creative Commons 4.0 Licenses Released

The Creative Commons has released version 4.0 of its licenses.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

We proudly introduce our 4.0 licenses, now available for adoption worldwide. The 4.0 licenses—more than two years in the making—are the most global, legally robust licenses produced by CC to date. We have incorporated dozens of improvements that make sharing and reusing CC-licensed materials easier and more dependable than ever before.

We had ambitious goals in mind when we embarked on the versioning process coming out of the 2011 CC Global Summit in Warsaw. The new licenses achieve all of these goals, and more. The 4.0 licenses are extremely well-suited for use by governments and publishers of public sector information and other data, especially for those in the European Union. This is due to the expansion in license scope, which now covers sui generis database rights that exist there and in a handful of other countries.

Among other exciting new features are improved readability and organization, common-sense attribution, and a new mechanism that allows those who violate the license inadvertently to regain their rights automatically if the violation is corrected in a timely manner.

You can find highlights of the most significant improvements on our website, track the course of the public discussion and evolution of the license drafts on the 4.0 wiki page, and view a recap of the central policy decisions made over the course of the versioning process.

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Digital Curation News (12/3/2013) #digitalpreservation

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Head of Digital Scholarship Strategy at University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries are recruiting a Head of Digital Scholarship Strategy.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Head of Digital Scholarship Strategy is a newly created role tasked with developing content strategies aligned with our priorities to provide access to the latest digital scholarly resources, capture unique UNLV scholarly output, and integrate born-digital scholarly products into our collecting portfolio. This role will work through a library wide collections team that includes faculty from across the Libraries with designated collecting responsibilities such as Library Liaisons, the Director of Special Collections and the Head of Collection Management. The team will clarify collecting scope and responsibilities across all collecting areas and will identify and engage cross-organizational expertise in the collection, infrastructure, description and delivery of digital content.

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"The Political Economy of Federally Sponsored Data"

Bart Ragon has published "The Political Economy of Federally Sponsored Data" in the latest issue of the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Librarian involvement in the Open Access (OA) movement has traditionally focused on access to scholarly publications. Recent actions by the White House have focused attention on access on the data produced from federally sponsored research. Questions have emerged concerning access to the output of federally sponsored research and whether it is a public or private good. Understanding the political battle over access to federally funded research is closely tied to the ownership of the peer review process in higher education and associated revenue streams, and as a result, interest groups seeking to influence government regulation have politicized the issues. As a major funder of research in higher education, policies from the federal government are likely to drive change in research practices at higher education institutions and impact library services. The political economy of federally sponsored research data will shape research enterprises in higher education and inspire a number of new services distributed throughout the research life cycle.

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Scholarly Communications Librarian at Western Washington University Libraries

The Western Washington University Libraries are recruiting a Scholarly Communications Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Western Washington University Libraries seeks an innovative, forward-looking librarian who will build and promote the Institutional Repository (IR), as well as further scholarly communication as a strategic priority for Western Libraries. Reporting to the Director of Scholarly Resources and Collection Services, this position is a 12-month, tenure track faculty appointment. The Scholarly Communications Librarian promotes the availability and capacity of the Institutional Repository (IR) to the university community, faculty, researchers, and students, and ensures compliance with relevant law and policy.

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"Books, E and P"

Walt Crawford has published "Books, E and P" in the latest issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

You might think of this discussion as Part 3 of WORDS: THE EBOOK MARKETPLACE. It is another set of notes and comments on material ranging back as far as May 2010 and related to ebooks, but it's really about books and the media in which they appear.

Note another key distinction from previous discussions in this area: E and P, not E versus P. Sure, some of these items make the digital-triumphalist assumption that print books will die out within the next generation (or next five years!) or become irrelevant collectibles, and there may be a few suggesting that ebooks will disappear or become a niche segment (although that seems unlikely). But my sense—not yet tested, since I'm writing this preface before beginning the essay—is that much of the discussion is now more nuanced and plausible, starting with the real-world fact that old media rarely die and the likelihood that there's room in this world for both print books and ebooks, in very large quantities in both cases, for the foreseeable future.

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Digital Curation News (12/2/2013) #digitalpreservation

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Digital Content Developer/Project Manager at University of Minnesota Libraries

The University of Minnesota Libraries are recruiting a Digital Content Developer/Project Manager.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The University of Minnesota Libraries invites applications for the position of Digital Content Developer/Project Manager for project with the Givens Collection of African American Literature/Performing Arts Archives.

The University of Minnesota Libraries' "African American Theater Project" will work with partner institution Penumbra Theatre Company local and national libraries, museums, and large content providers (OCLC, HathiTrust, Digital Public Library of America), to develop an online search tool that brings together archival content relevant to African American theater and cultural history.

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