Category: Libraries

"Keeping Up With. . . General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)"

ACRL has released "Keeping Up With. . . General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)" by Margaret Heller.

Here's an excerpt:

Anyone who holds data must make sure their practices and tools work with GDPR. . . .Librarians have been deleting data about people for a long time. It is standard practice to delete the borrowing records for patrons when the book was returned or a fine paid. . . . But since then, the trails people leave through libraries have become easier to track as more and more reading happens online. A lot of the systems we use haven't offered the ability to delete search logs or other information about individuals, but as of right now are starting to roll out those tools to be compliant with GDPR. Some of the tools are blunt instruments: for example, Ex Libris offers the option to delete patrons from Primo entirely, but this doesn't really address issues like search logs [2].

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"Developing a Bioinformatics Program and Supporting Infrastructure in a Biomedical Library "

Nathan Hosburgh has published "Developing a Bioinformatics Program and Supporting Infrastructure in a Biomedical Library " in the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Background: Over the last couple decades, the field of bioinformatics has helped spur medical discoveries that offer a better understanding of the genetic basis of disease, which in turn improve public health and save lives. Concomitantly, support requirements for molecular biology researchers have grown in scope and complexity, incorporating specialized resources, technologies, and techniques

.

Case Presentation: To address this specific need among National Institutes of Health (NIH) intramural researchers, the NIH Library hired an expert bioinformatics trainer and consultant with a PhD in biochemistry to implement a bioinformatics support program. This study traces the program from its inception in 2009 to its present form. Discussion involves the particular skills of program staff, development of content, collection of resources, associated technology, assessment, and the impact of the program on the NIH community.

Conclusion: Based on quantitative and qualitative data, the bioinformatics support program has been heavily used and appreciated by researchers. Continued success will depend on filling key staff positions, building on the existing program infrastructure, and keeping abreast of developments within the field to remain relevant and in touch with the medical research community utilizing bioinformatics services.

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"Extending Access to Information through Offline Internet"

Arizona State University Library, Bibliothèques Sans Frontières / Libraries Without Borders, IFLA, and others have released the Tempe Principles.

https://lib.asu.edu/librarychannel/Extending-access-information-through-offline-internet

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"No, Fair! Evolving Perspectives on Excessive Use in Research"

Angela Rathmel has published "No, Fair! Evolving Perspectives on Excessive Use in Research" in ACRLog.

Here's an excerpt:

Publishers take an even heavier hand when responding to excessive use breaches. Blocking the user's IP access, or sometimes an entire campus IP range, presumes malicious intent (which it almost never is). This response also exaggerates the stakes involved and misunderstands what is necessary to perform digital research. Strict reinterpretation of print use restrictions in the online environment denies advances in research technology, from basic citation management software to APIs used for text and data mining. It also ignores the very structure of the linked-data world we live in.

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"Digital Music Libraries: Librarian Perspectives and the Challenges Ahead"

Meghan Goodchild has published "Digital Music Libraries: Librarian Perspectives and the Challenges Ahead" in CAML Review.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper reports the results of a survey targeting current members of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (CAML) that investigated the extent to which the current designs and structures of digital music libraries meet the needs of librarians in collecting, preserving, organizing, and disseminating diverse types of music documents. The challenges and barriers experienced in hosting digital collections are discussed. The gap between the current and ideal functionalities, as well as the future possibilities, are explored.

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"Placements & Salaries 2017: Librarians Everywhere"

Suzie Allard has published "Placements & Salaries 2017: Librarians Everywhere" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Overall, 2016 graduates have been successful in finding jobs, with 83% of those employed reporting that they have full-time positions. That is up slightly from last year and matches the level of the 2014 survey. Most of these are permanent rather than temporary positions. About 67% of these full-time professionals work in a library setting, markedly lower than last year.

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"Digital Public Library of America to Pilot eBook Lending in Fall"

DPLA has released "Digital Public Library of America to Pilot eBook Lending in Fall."

Here's an excerpt:

Planned for this fall, DPLA will be lending ebooks in what it hopes is a streamlined, non-proprietary and vendorless platform.

While ebook lending has grown fast among US public libraries, the process is not always seamless. Book discovery, borrowing, and consumption must happen within the provide'’s app or website. DPLA wants to create a process that isn’t as specific, and one that works with a broader range of content producers for better access to ebooks.

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"Administration’s FY 2018 Budget Request Includes $23 Million to Start Wind-Down of IMLS Operations"

IMLS has released "Administration's FY 2018 Budget Request Includes $23 Million to Start Wind-Down of IMLS Operations."

Here's an excerpt:

Today, President Donald J. Trump released his FY 2018 budget request to Congress, which includes $23 million for administrative expenses to begin conducting a closeout of operations of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) starting in Fiscal Year 2018. IMLS is one of several independent agencies designated for elimination in the FY 2018 budget request. The budget request expands upon the initial Administration budget request released in March, proposing the elimination of IMLS. The request released today includes no funding for IMLS grant programs.

See also: "IMLS Frequently Asked Questions on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 President’s Budget Request."

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US Library Survey 2016

Ithaka S+R has released the US Library Survey 2016.

Here's an excerpt:

Library directors are pursuing strategic directions with a decreasing sense of support from their institutions. There is evidence across the survey that library directors feel increasingly less valued by, involved with, and aligned strategically with their supervisors and other senior academic leadership. Compared with the previous survey cycle in 2013, fewer library directors perceive that they are a part of their institution’s senior academic leadership and that they share the same vision for the library with their direct supervisor. Only about 20% of respondents agreed that the budget allocations they receive from their institution demonstrates recognition of the value of the library.

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"The Rise of Reading Analytics and the Emerging Calculus of Reader Privacy in the Digital World"

Clifford Lynch has published "The Rise of Reading Analytics and the Emerging Calculus of Reader Privacy in the Digital World" in First Monday.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper studies emerging technologies for tracking reading behaviors (“reading analytics”) and their implications for reader privacy, attempting to place them in a historical context. It discusses what data is being collected, to whom it is available, and how it might be used by various interested parties (including authors). I explore means of tracking what’s being read, who is doing the reading, and how readers discover what they read. The paper includes two case studies: mass-market e-books (both directly acquired by readers and mediated by libraries) and scholarly journals (usually mediated by academic libraries); in the latter case I also provide examples of the implications of various authentication, authorization and access management practices on reader privacy. While legal issues are touched upon, the focus is generally pragmatic, emphasizing technology and marketplace practices.

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"Placements & Salaries 2016: Explore All the Data"

Suzie Allard has published "Placements & Salaries 2016: Explore All the Data" in Library Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Dig through these tables to discover the details about where 2015 LIS grads are landing jobs, at what salaries, and in what kinds of roles, or see the full feature for all the analysis.

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Open Library Foundation Launched

The Open Library Foundation has been launched.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Open Library Foundation has been established to promote open source projects for libraries and to foster and support contribution, distribution, and sustainability of the benefits of these projects. . . . .

The foundation was inspired by the creation of the FOLIO project. FOLIO was announced in June and is now building a diverse community of libraries, vendors and software developers. The goal of FOLIO is to create an open source Library Services Platform that can power innovative approaches to current practice, and encourage new and expanded library services that more fully support scholarly inquiry and knowledge production. The Foundation's inaugural projects also include two existing open source communities, the Open Library Environment (OLE) and the Global Open Knowledgebase (GOKb). . . .

The Open Library Foundation will make sure the code created from open source projects remains available and act as a "safe haven" for the projects' output-separated from the needs and goals of any contributor, user or affiliated party. The Open Library Foundation also will ensure that the code is freely available under an Apache v2 license.

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"Leading by Example? ALA Division Publications, Open Access, and Sustainability"

Nathan Hall et al. have published "Leading by Example? ALA Division Publications, Open Access, and Sustainability" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This investigation explores scholarly communication business models in American Library Association (ALA) division peer-reviewed academic journals. . . . Through an analysis of documented procedures, policies, and finances of five ALA division journals, we compare business and access models. We conclude that some ALA divisions prioritize the costs associated with changing business models, including hard-to-estimate costs such as the labor of volunteers. For other divisions, the financial aspects are less important than maintaining core values, such as those defined in ALA's Core Values in Librarianship.

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"Deconstructing the Durham Statement: The Persistence of Print Prestige During the Age of Open Access"

Sarah Reis has self-archived "Deconstructing the Durham Statement: The Persistence of Print Prestige During the Age of Open Access."

Here's an excerpt:

In the seven years following the promulgation of the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, law journals have largely responded to the call to make articles available in open, electronic formats, but not to the call to stop print publication and publish only in electronic format. Nearly all of the flagship law reviews at ABA-accredited institutions still insist on publishing in print, despite the massive decline in print subscribers and economic and environmental waste. . . . The Durham Statement was drafted by law library directors from top law schools across the country. Law librarians today must assist in facilitating the transition if we ever expect to see a world of electronic-only publication of law journals. This paper argues that the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review must be the first law reviews to transition to electronic-only publication, after which other law journals will follow suit.

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"Rethinking Authentication, Revamping the Business"

Roger C. Schonfeld has published "Rethinking Authentication, Revamping the Business" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

While I have heard these arguments on and off this year, the meeting hosted by CCC [Copyright Clearance Center] made abundantly clear that there is great dissatisfaction with IP-based authentication across the community. Publishers want to move away from it due to their piracy concerns, their desire to improve seamlessness for researchers, and their expectations about the value they can offer through greater personalization. . . . And at least some academic librarians want to move away from it because of the poor user experience, especially with off-site access. Taking aim at IP authentication and proxy servers has become all the rage. But what might supplant them?

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State of America’s Libraries 2016

ALA has released the State of America's Libraries 2016.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Academic, school, and public libraries continue to face an uncertain economy as they shift resources and services to meet the needs of the 21st-century digital world. The American Library Association launched a new public awareness campaign, "Libraries Transform," to help shift the mindset that "libraries are obsolete or nice to have" to "libraries are essential." This and other library trends of the past year, including the Top Ten Most Challenges Books of 2015, are detailed in the American Library Association's 2016 State of America's Libraries report, released during National Library Week, April 10- 16, 2016

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"Library Leadership for the Digital Age"

Ithaka S+R has released "Library Leadership for the Digital Age."

Here's an excerpt:

Users think libraries are—or at least should be—digital. And yet, we in academic libraries are still counting how many of everything we have in our local collections. We brag about how big we are or how specialized we are. We advertise our job openings with language suggesting that our size is an indicator of greatness. But as libraries become digital, the language about size or subject strength seems slightly ridiculous.

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"Movers & Shakers 2016"

Library Journal has released "Movers & Shakers 2016." The first group, advocates, was released yesterday and a new group will be released each day through 3/18.

Here's an excerpt:

Fifteen years old and now over 750 leaders strong, Library Journal's Movers & Shakers (M&S) proudly introduces the Class of 2016-54 individuals profiled in 50 stories, who are changing the face of libraries of all types and sizes.

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"NYPL Shows Academic Libraries What ‘Public Domain’ Means"

Rick Anderson has published "NYPL Shows Academic Libraries What ‘Public Domain’ Means" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

In far too many libraries, public-domain documents and images are treated as if they were under copyright—and, even worse, in many cases the policies in question are written as if the holding libraries were themselves the copyright holders. Sometimes this is because the librarians who control access to those images genuinely don't understand copyright law: they believe that simply digitizing an image results in a copyrightable document (it doesn't), or that owning the physical item gives one legal say over how its intellectual content can be used (also untrue). The result is that in many academic libraries, intellectual content that the public has a right to access, copy, adapt, and generally reuse in any way we wish is being locked down and restricted by—ironically enough—librarians.

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Roy Tennant: "Remembering PACS-L"

Roy Tennant has published "Remembering PACS-L" in The Digital Shift.

Here's an excerpt:

For quite a while this list was where everything new in librarianship was happening. Despite its name, topics well beyond public access computer systems were discussed and debated. It was, in a nutshell, an essential place to hear and be heard. Its like was never to be again, as since then online communication channels have burgeoned and diversified.

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"OCLC Prints Last Library Catalog Cards"

OCLC has released "OCLC Prints Last Library Catalog Cards."

Here's an excerpt:

OCLC printed its last library catalog cards today, officially closing the book on what was once a familiar resource for generations of information seekers who now use computer catalogs and online search engines to access library collections around the world.

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Libraries at the Crossroads

The Pew Research Center has released Libraries at the Crossroads.

Here's an excerpt:

A new survey from Pew Research Center brings this complex situation into stark relief. Many Americans say they want public libraries to:

  • support local education;
  • serve special constituents such as veterans, active-duty military personnel and immigrants;
  • help local businesses, job seekers and those upgrading their work skills;
  • embrace new technologies such as 3-D printers and provide services to help patrons learn about high-tech gadgetry.

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