Andrew Waller has self-archived his "One Year (Almost) with the Open Access Authors Fund" presentation in E-LIS.
Here's the abstract:
This presentation described the origin of and policies and procedures relating to the Open Access Authors Fund at the University of Calgary. The activities of the Fund in its first year were presented and discussed. Other Open Access activities at the University of Calgary were also briefly discussed.
The Association of Research Libraries Board of Directors has passed a resolution asking members to not sign publisher/vendor agreements that include nondisclosure or confidentiality clauses.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Board of Directors voted in support of a resolution introduced by its Scholarly Communication Steering Committee to strongly encourage ARL member libraries to refrain from signing agreements with publishers or vendors, either individually or through consortia, that include nondisclosure or confidentiality clauses. In addition, the Board encourages ARL members to share upon request from other libraries information contained in these agreements (save for trade secrets or proprietary technical details) for licensing content, licensing software or other tools, and for digitization contracts with third-party vendors. . . .
The resolution was prepared in response to the concerns of membership that, as the amount of licensed content has increased, especially through packages of publications, nondisclosure or confidentiality clauses have had a negative impact on effective negotiations. The Scholarly Communication Steering Committee took the position that an open market will result in better licensing terms. In their discussions, the committee also noted the value of encouraging research projects and other efforts to gather information about the current market and licensing terms, such as an initiative being undertaken by Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara, Paul Courant, University of Michigan, and Preston McAfee, Cal Tech, to acquire information on bundled site-license contracts.
Google and the University of Michigan have signed an expanded digitization agreement that incorporates the terms of the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
Specifically, the agreement:
Expands the scope of Google and University of Michigan's partnership:
The University of Michigan continues its tradition of leadership in library digitization by being the first library to expand its partnership with Google under the terms of Google's settlement agreement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The principles underlying the new agreement are to ensure access to our collection, to provide a solid foundation for future research and study, and to provide the greatest public good for patrons of libraries around the US.Broadens public access to University of Michigan's collections:
Once the settlement is approved by the court, readers and students throughout the US will enjoy the benefits of University of Michigan's collections, including free previews, the ability to buy access to University of Michigan's books online, and institutional subscriptions.Supports shared services with other libraries:
The agreement empowers University of Michigan to broaden public access to its collection by using digital files of books that Google scans to strengthen and support initiatives like HathiTrust.Provides greater digital access to University of Michigan's collections for students and faculty:
University of Michigan will get a digital copy of every book held in their collection, whether it's scanned from Michigan or at another library.Broadens access to public domain books from University of Michigan's collection:
The University of Michigan will be able to share digital copies of public domain works Google has digitized from its collection with fellow academic institutions, libraries, and other organizations for non-commercial purposes. These provisions enable Michigan to share its digital library collection with students, scholars, and other library users around the world.Subsidizes University of Michigan's Institutional Subscription:
If approved by the court, Google's agreement with authors and publishers allows it to make millions of digitized books available to colleges and universities via a subscription. Under our new agreement, Google will subsidize the cost of Michigan's subscription based on the number of books scanned from Michigan. In practice, this means that Google will subsidize the entire cost of Michigan's institutional subscription–so that Michigan's students and staff will be able to access and read almost every book Google has digitized from 29 libraries around the world, for free.Expands access for students, faculty, and patrons with disabilities:
Google will make public domain works digitized from Michigan's print library collection accessible to users with print disabilities in the same ways as in-copyright books covered under the settlement agreement.Safeguards the public's access to knowledge:
Michigan's agreement includes collective terms Google has committed to that can be enjoyed by any of Google's other partner libraries. Michigan is the first university to sign on to these terms, which give libraries new ways to help safeguard the public's access to these books.Establishes a mechanism to review prices:
Our agreement gives Michigan and other participating libraries the power to review the pricing of Institutional Subscriptions to make sure that they are priced for "broad penetration," as required by the settlement agreement. That means that the reviewer will evaluate whether subscriptions are affordable enough to allow universities, libraries, and other institutions across the country to take advantage of them.If they determine that prices are too high, University of Michigan and other participating libraries who sign these collective terms can challenge the prices through arbitration, and Google will be required to work with the Registry to adjust the pricing accordingly.
Ensures access to millions of books for generations to come:
Google has committed to make the books it has scanned publicly available for free search, consumer purchase, institutional subscriptions, and other services established by the settlement agreement. Our agreement ensures that libraries and their patrons can continue to use digital copies of the millions of books Google has scanned well into the future, even if Google goes away.
Also see the press release.
The University of Tennessee has launched its institutional repository using Digital Commons.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
"Trace, the Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange, will promote the visibility and permanence of the UT community's research, scholarship and creative activity," said Barbara Dewey, dean of the UT Libraries.
"Trace will provide global access to UT's scholarly and creative output. The collective excellence of our faculty and students will be highlighted with every click on the website," Dewey said.
Trace content may include technical reports, grant proposals, digital media, campus publications, conference proceedings, extension service publications, and internal archives, as well as scholarly work published in peer-reviewed journals and books when copyright permits. Works deposited receive the same stewardship as other resources in the university's growing digital library. The UT Office of Research, the Science Alliance, and the Office of the Provost are cooperating with UT Libraries to sponsor the repository. The Berkeley Electronic Press Digital Commons platform will host the service for the first three years.
College & Research Libraries has made a preprint of "Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication: A Case Study of Engaging Liaison Librarians for Outreach to Faculty" available.
Here's an excerpt:
This narrative, single-case study examines how liaison librarians at the University of Minnesota (UMN) came to include advocating for reform of the scholarly communication system among their core responsibilities. While other libraries may hire a coordinator or rely on a committee to undertake outreach programs, UMN has defined baseline expertise in scholarly communication for all librarians who serve as liaisons to disciplinary faculty members. By “mainstreaming” scholarly communication duties, UMN is declaring these issues central to the profession.1 This intrinsic study uses evidence gathered from open-ended interviews with three participants, supplemented by documentation. It explores the context of these changes, systems thinking, and new mental models.
The Association of Research Libraries has released Safeguarding Collections at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Describing Roles & Measuring Contemporary Preservation Activities in ARL Libraries.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The report is organized into three thematic sections:
Reshaping the preservation functions in research libraries—Libraries must reconceptualize preservation as a core function that extends beyond activities within a preservation department. As preservation is advanced through a range of investments and partnerships, libraries are in the midst of reshaping priorities and reallocating resources to align with new services and conceptions of collections.
The networked digital environment—ARL members need to expand their activities and deepen their practices related to preserving digital content though Web archiving, deployment of digital repositories, and efforts to preserve e-journals and other born digital content (whether purchased, licensed, or digitized by the library).
Library collaborative strategies—Community-level activities are crucial, both to address the challenges presented by digital formats, but also to make traditional preservation activities more effective.
The Association of Research Libraries is gathering profile descriptions of its member libraries in order to “to identify similarities and differences among libraries and to identify elements that will be measured for the purposes of an alternative to the expenditure-focused Library Investment Index.” The Library Investment Index is used to create a well-known ranking table of U.S. and Canadian research libraries (see page 90 of the ARL Statistics 2006–2007 as an example.)
Read more about it at "ARL Library Profiles Being Collected."
The University of Washington Libraries will close the Chemistry Library, the Fisheries-Oceanography Library, and the Physics-Astronomy Library this summer, merging them into a research commons in the Allen Library.
Read more about it at "Libraries Lost to Budget Cuts."
The California Digital Library has released University of California systemwide 2008 use statistics for selected databases, e-books, and journals.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
One of the observations from reading the 2008 usage reports is that there are wide variations in some reported statistics. Some of the changes may reflect actual usage trends and some may result from anomalies in the data. Below are some possible reasons for the usage changes:
- New content or backfiles have been added
- New features or links implemented on the interface associated with full-text access
- Data mining activities
- More external entry points for the full-text content, e.g., Google Scholar
- Greater use of Google Scholar and other search engines instead of A&I databases, resulting in usage declines for those databases
- Research interest changes on the campuses
In addition, some publishers are now providing and end-users have begun using software that allows users to easily download multiple full-text articles simultaneously. For example, since September 2008, Elsevier has partnered with Quosa, a document download software company, to allow users to download up to 20 PDF versions of full-text research with only a few clicks. CDL will be monitoring the effect these new tools may have on UC usage reports.
The University of Calgary's Academic Council of Libraries and Cultural Resources has adopted an open access mandate. (Thanks to Open Access News.)
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The Academic Council of Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary has adopted a mandate to deposit their scholarly output in Dspace, the University’s open access scholarly repository. The repository has been in place since March 2003 and currently provides access to a broad range of scholarly output, including a growing collection of full text university theses.
Members of the Council, comprised of archivists, curators, and librarians, have long supported open access through promotions on campus such as Open Access Day, membership in SPARC and Canadian Association of Research Libraries, support for online open access journals published through the University of Calgary Press, and an active program of introducing the repository to faculty and graduate students. Libraries and Cultural Resources also funds the $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund to assist researchers to publish in open access journals.
The text of the mandate is:
"As an active member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary endorses the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing and the Berlin Declaration.
LCR academic staff members believe that the output of our scholarly activities should be as widely disseminated and openly available as possible. Our scholarly output includes but is not limited to journal articles, books and book chapters, presentations if substantial, conference papers and proceedings, and datasets.
Effective April 17, 2009, LCR academic staff commit to
- Deposit their scholarly output in the University of Calgary’s open access scholarly repository
- Promote Open Access on campus and assist scholars in making their research openly available
- Where possible, publish their research in an open-access journal"
The University of Calgary has become a beta development partner for Serials Solutions' Summon unified discovery service.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest, has added University of Calgary as a beta development partner for the Summon™ unified discovery service. A variety of new content providers, including BMJ, an international peer-reviewed medical journal and subsidiary of the British Medical Association have also signed onto the Summon™ service. BMJ joins nearly 100 content providers along with key partners ProQuest and Gale–aggregators representing more than 4,700 publishers.
The Summon™ service is a pioneer in creating Google-like searching of the full breadth of content found in library collections. In the case of University of Calgary, library archives and museum collections will be integrated too, enabling users to find books and videos, e-resources at the article level, as well as manuscripts and artifacts, all from a simple, obvious starting point.
"We are a unique cultural institution supporting research, a museum, a university press, along with archives and special collections," said Tom Hickerson, Vice Provost and University Librarian, Libraries and Cultural Resources, at University of Calgary. "We've been actively searching for ways to provide integrated access to the diversity of our resources, enhancing discovery of an entirely new spectrum of information. I'm optimistic that the Summon service is the mechanism that can do that."
The goal of the Summon™ service is to not only bring the user back to the library as the starting place for research, but to also provide a channel for greater return on the library's content investment. The role of the beta partners is to ensure the service is tracking against those goals, providing feedback from the field. University of Calgary librarians, archivists and curators will initially test and use the Summon™ service. Then, they will move it to an open beta in May, getting feedback from faculty and student users. Other partners who are already testing include Dartmouth College, Oklahoma State University, University of Sydney, University of Liverpool and Western Michigan University
The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries have filed comments with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York regarding the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
Representing over 139,000 libraries and 350,000 librarians, the associations filed the brief as members of the plaintiff class because they are both authors and publishers of books. The associations asserted that although the settlement has the potential to provide public access to millions of books, many of the features of the settlement, including the absence of competition for the new services, could compromise fundamental library values including equity of access to information, patron privacy, and intellectual freedom. The court can mitigate these possible negative effects by regulating the conduct of Google and the Book Rights Registry the settlement establishes.
"While this settlement agreement could provide unprecedented access to a digital library of millions of books, we are concerned that the cost of an institutional subscription may skyrocket, as academic journal subscriptions have over the past two decades," Erika Linke, President of ACRL, said. . . .
Jim Rettig, President of ALA, said the proposed settlement "offers no assurances that the privacy of what the public accessed will be protected, which is in stark contrast to the long-standing patron privacy rights libraries champion on behalf of the public."
The NorthEast Research Libraries consortium has released a letter to publishers about the current collection development budget crisis its members face.
Here's an excerpt from the letter:
Financial officers in NERL institutions have been given–and shared with NERL–quite specific targets for budget discipline for the next 2 or more years. For example, in NERL's home institution, Yale University, reductions in our collections budget for FY 2009-2010 will be on the order of 10%, with a likely additional 5% already mandated for 2010-2011. Similar stories are told on many sides, with some of the heaviest impacts on the institutions among us that are the largest and have been the beneficiaries of important university endowments. Average actual dollar cuts across the NERL consortium are in the range of (minus) 4-5%, which we currently estimate as impacting overall buying power against normal increases on the order of (minus) 8-10%. . . .
Our goal with you and other information providers similarly placed is to find ways to achieve net price reductions in both next year and the year after. We hope to do this strategically and in partnership with you, in a way that allows us to stabilize a new working relationship on which to build in the years to follow. With some imagination and creativity, we hope we can strike new pricing models, or perhaps a menu of such models, which will enable institutions to do best by their faculty and students.
I hope and expect that we can do this thoughtfully, collegially, and in a spirit of mutual understanding and respect, realizing that the structural adjustments of these coming two years will impact and reduce permanently our ability to purchase content at pre-2008-09 levels.
Seven Association of Research Libraries member libraries are facing major planned or potential budget cuts. These examples suggest that significant budget cuts may be widespread in ARL libraries.
The Cornell University Library will have to cut around about $944,000 from the fiscal year 2010 materials budget.
"A reduction in the materials budget is in keeping with reductions across the university," said John Saylor, associate university librarian for scholarly resources and special collections. "It's unfortunate but unavoidable. The library is committed to maintaining and building a collection that ensures our lasting position among the top research libraries."
The Emory University Libraries have "already cut $200,000 from the current (2008/2009) collections budget" and more cuts are planned in FY 2010:
Fiscal Year 2010 will bring additional collection cuts as the library struggles to adjust a reduced budget to inflationary pressures which can range from five to ten percent. Chuck Spornick, Head of Collection Management for the General Libraries, estimates that almost $637,000 will need to be trimmed from the 2010 collections budget.
The MIT Libraries are faced with a $1.4 million budget cut this summer:
"As part of the Institute-wide mandate to reduce General Institute Budget expenditures in the 2010 fiscal year, the MIT Libraries are required to reduce their budget by 6%, or $1.4M by July 1, 2009. Further budget reductions are anticipated for FY2011 and FY2012."
The UCLA Libraries are facing a cut of over $400,00 this year alone:
Last Friday I received a memorandum from Executive Vice-Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh detailing this request. I am meeting with campus administration today to further explore the implications for the UCLA Library. In the detail attached to EVC Waugh’s memorandum the library is slated for a $438,623 mid-year reduction for 2008-09 and the five percent reduction for 2009-10 of $1,830,201.
The University of Tennessee Libraries sent a February 16th memo to deans, department heads, and library representatives saying that they were "facing a potential 8% base budget cut. This cut represents reductions totaling $1,343,299 from the library’s operations, personnel, and collections budget."
The University of Washington Libraries have submitted a business plan to the Provost and Executive Vice President that reflects "levels of reduction in central support of 8%, 10%, and 12%." In dollar terms, these reductions are $2,457,962, $3,072,452, and $$3,686,943 respectively.
The Yale University Library is cutting its collection budget for the first time due to budget shortfalls:
This is the first time that the general University collections budget will be cut for economic reasons. Four or five years ago the Library's General Appropriation (GA) was reduced by 5%, but this reduction was not applied to the collections budgets. (On a couple of occasions in the last decade, the YUL general collections were reduced by $500,000 each, as part of a buying-power reconciliation.) This time will be different. As a result of the University's 25% endowment decrease, the following reductions will take effect: (1) the collections GA budgets will be cut by 5%, a decrease of around $300,000; and (2) the collections endowment budgets will see a 6.75% reduction, approximately $900,000. These reductions will take effect as of 1 July 2009 and may be repeated in future year(s).
In "Predictions for 2009," Peter Suber discusses the potential impact of the global recession on journal publishing, libraries, and open access (see "The Worldwide Financial Crisis and Recession Will Have Mixed Consequences for OA, but Will Yield More Gains Than Losses" section).
Related post: "University of Florida Libraries Propose to Cut Budget by over $2.6 Million."
The University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries have posted a "2009-2010 Budget Reduction Proposal for the George A. Smathers Libraries, Including the Health Science Center Libraries" that details over $2.6 million in proposed budget cuts.
Read more about it at "2009-2010 Materials Budget Cuts by Circle," "2009-2010 Budget Reduction Proposal for the George A. Smathers Libraries, Including the Health Science Center Libraries," and "Budget Message to President Machen and Provost Glover."
The Association of Research Libraries has released Strategic Directions for the Federal Depository Library Program.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The US Government Printing Office (GPO) is engaged in a strategic planning process regarding future directions for the FDLP. With GPO and the library community, the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer will be discussing the future needs and strategic vision of the FDLP at the upcoming Depository Library Council meeting in Tampa, Florida, beginning on April 20, 2009.
In support of the Depository Library Council’s request for community-wide input to the planning process, ARL has issued a white paper that notes:
the current FDLP strategic planning process should lead to a flexible, sustainable, reconfigured program that reflects the needs and interests of users of government information and participating libraries; embraces the digital networked environment; and importantly, encourages collaborative network-based services while ensuring a smooth and orderly transition to a new program framework. The underlying principles of the program should continue, in particular the long-standing principle of no-fee access to government information. The specifics of such a reconfigured program require more in-depth discussion. But such discussions cannot last another 20 years. The risk of missed opportunities and decreased viability is too high.
Abby Smith has been named the Director of the University of Virginia Library’s Scholarly Communication Institute
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
Karin Wittenborg, University Librarian, and Diane Parr Walker, Deputy University Librarian at the University of Virginia Library and Co-Principal Investigators of the Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI), announced today that Richard E. Lucier will step down as director of SCI, and that Abby Smith, currently senior advisor to SCI, will become Director, effective April 10, 2009. Bethany Nowviskie, currently SCI program associate, will become Associate Director.
Richard Lucier founded the Institute in 2003, together with Deanna Marcum, and under his leadership, SCI has worked to advance scholarly communication through annual summer Institutes and working with and advising Institute participants throughout the year. Lucier has actively advised SCI participants in the development of EthicShare, the Architecture Visual Resources Network (recently launched as SAHARA), and the Online Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. . . .
Abby Smith is a historian and consulting analyst with special interest in the creation, preservation, and use of the cultural record in a variety of media; the impact of digital information technologies on cultural heritage institutions; and the evolving role of information as a public good. Formerly director of programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources, she has been with the Institute since its inception, and served as senior advisor since 2006: "I look forward to leading the Scholarly Communication Institute at this promising juncture in the evolution of the humanities, when scholars are embracing new technologies in imaginative ways to advance research and share it more broadly. Richard has set a clear course for SCI, focused on collaborative actions that serve scholarship broadly and change not just the work we do, but, just as importantly, the way that we work."
In addition to her role as associate director of SCI, Bethany Nowviskie is Director of Digital Research & Scholarship at the University of Virginia Library. She holds a doctoral degree in English from the University of Virginia and has taught courses in literature, bibliography, and new media aesthetics and design. Nowviskie has been active in the digital humanities since 1995.
The Association of Research Libraries has released Special Collections in ARL Libraries: A Discussion Report from the ARL Working Group on Special Collections.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Working Group on Special Collections, formed in 2007, has released a discussion report that identifies key issues in the management and exposure of special collections material in the 21st century. . . .
The report includes overviews of and recommendations in three areas:
- Collecting Carefully, with Regard to Costs, and Ethical and Legal Concerns
- Ensuring Discovery and Access
- The Challenge of Born-Digital Collections
It highlights the need for research library leadership to support actions that will increase the visibility and use of special collections and promote both existing and developing best practices in the stewardship of special collections.
The Carolina Digital Library and Archives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library has sent its Carolina Digital Library and Archives Fall-Winter 08/09 Newsletter out as an e-mail message on the DIGLIB list. It is not possible to directly link to this message; however, you can access the DIGLIB archive, and, after clicking the "I am not a spammer button," find the message "CDLA's Fall-Winter 08/09 Newsletter announcement."
Here's an excerpt:
1. CDLA'S FIRST-YEAR HIGHLIGHTS
Carolina Digital Library and Archives (http://cdla.unc.edu) is the UNC Library's major new department established to improve Web access to the Library's rich collections and to help faculty with new digital projects, services, and tools, with the common goal of advancing scholarship. Among major highlights of our first year are establishment of three new units—the Digital Publishing Group, which includes the award-winning digital publishing program Documenting the American South (DocSouth); the Digital Production Center; and the Research and Development Group–as well as investigation of opportunities in large-scale digitization and implementation of the Scribe program. Most importantly, from our perspective, is that the initial organizational and technological infrastructure was built which now provides increasing digital support to UNC faculty, the Library, and other cultural institutions in North Carolina. We plan to keep friends informed about new digital collections, services, and opportunities through this newsletter, our renovated Web site (coming this spring), and other channels.
The Virginia Tech University Libraries will reduce journal subscriptions by almost $900,000 in the 2009-2010 budget year.
Here's an excerpt from "Library to Cut Nearly $1 Million":
Hitchingham [Dean of University Libraries] said that the university must cancel $500,000 worth of subscriptions to accommodate library budget cuts. They must also cover $400,000 worth of cuts to meet inflationary cost increases.
The University of Arizona Libraries and UA Regents' Professor Richard Wilkinson have collaborated to publish a new quarterly e-journal, the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, or the JAEI, was created by Wilkinson, a UA classics and Near Eastern studies professor, and will be hosted on the UA Libraries' institutional repository site, also known as UAiR.
The digitially-based, peer-reviewed journal explores the relationship between ancient Egypt and its surrounding regions and helps develop an important new trend in Egyptological scholarship by taking an interdisciplinary approach.
The journal publishes full-length articles, which have been subjected to the same peer-reviewed, blind screening process used by traditional scholarly print journals. The JAEI will also include short research notes, reviews of published works, announcements and reports of relevant conferences and symposia.
The journal also examines the relationship between ancient Egypt and its neighbors through different lenses, ranging from history to technology to art and religion. . . .
The journal counts Oxford and Harvard universities among its initial subscribers and subscriptions have already been received from a number of countries. Interest has also been high among scholars wanting to contribute to the journal.
The Association of Research Libraries has renamed ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues from ARL, CNI, and SPARC as Research Library Issues and dropped print distribution.
The first issue of the Research Library Issues, which continues the numbering of the older publication, has been published.
The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries will file an amicus brief authored by Jonathan Band about the Google Book Search Settlement.
Read more about it at "Library Organizations to File Amicus Brief in Google Book Search Settlement."
In an NPR podcast (Librarian Opposes Google's Library Fees), Robert Darnton, Director of the Harvard University Library, says that the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement "raises the danger of a monopoly" and calls for a public debate on the settlement.
The Association of Research Libraries has released Ad Hoc Task Force to Review the Proposed OCLC Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records: Final Report to the ARL Board.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
OCLC's release of the policy elicited serious concern from the ARL community, as well as the broader library community. As a result, ARL established an ad hoc task force to review the policy and identify issues of particular interest to research libraries. The task force report includes a brief overview of the policy and the task force's understanding of the policy's intent. This is followed by an explication of specific issues and the task force's findings regarding both the policy itself and the implementation process. The report concludes with recommendations for OCLC and the library community.
