Category: Research Libraries

"Librarians’ Perspectives on the Factors Influencing Research Data Management Programs"

College & Research Libraries has released an e-print of "Librarians' Perspectives on the Factors Influencing Research Data Management Programs."

Here's an excerpt:

This qualitative research study examines librarians' research data management (RDM) experiences, specifically the factors that influence their ability to support researchers' needs. Findings from interviews with 36 academic library professionals in the United States identify 5 factors of influence: 1) technical resources, 2) human resources, 3) researchers' perceptions about the library, 4) leadership support, and 5) communication, coordination, and collaboration. Findings show different aspects of these factors facilitate or constrain RDM activity. The implications of these factors on librarians' continued work in RDM are considered.

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Moving Open Access Implementation Forward: A Handbook for Open Access Good Practice Based on Experiences of UK Higher Education Institutions

Jisc has released Moving Open Access Implementation Forward: A Handbook for Open Access Good Practice Based on Experiences of UK Higher Education Institutions .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Following the completion of the Open Access Good Practice (OAGP) initiative, we have produced a new handbook based on the experiences of the nine pathfinder projects. It is aimed at staff involved in supporting open access implementation at institutions in the UK.OAGP Handbook Cover

The handbook summarises the lessons learned by the projects and points towards key tools and resources.

See also: OA Good Practice Initiative: Final Project Report.

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"Campus Shootings and Library Security Covered in Research Library Issues"

ARL has released "Campus Shootings and Library Security Covered in Research Library Issues."

Here's an excerpt:

How can research libraries handle and recover from "active shooter" incidents? The latest issue of Research Library Issues (RLI) features two articles that describe campus shootings and library response.

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Across the Great Divide: Findings and Possibilities for Action from the 2016 Summit Meeting of Academic Libraries and University Presses with Administrative Relationships (P2L)

ARL has released Across the Great Divide: Findings and Possibilities for Action from the 2016 Summit Meeting of Academic Libraries and University Presses with Administrative Relationships (P2L).

Here's an excerpt:

P2L explored how these separate components of the scholarly communications ecosystem (e.g., libraries and publishers) might move beyond relationships often established for administrative convenience and think together, leveraging the skills and strengths of their distinctive enterprises to move toward a unified system of publication, dissemination, access, and preservation that better serves both the host institution and the wider world of scholarship. P2L was an important first step toward a shared action agenda for university presses and academic libraries that supports and updates traditional approaches to scholarly publishing, broader scholarly communication through established and emerging channels and practices, and digital scholarship services for faculty and students. This shared action agenda also must seek to adapt to the new challenges of the digital environment in commitments such as the preservation of the scholarly record.

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"Assessing Safe Spaces for Digital Scholarship in the Library"

Rachel Wexelbaum has published "Assessing Safe Spaces for Digital Scholarship in the Library " in LIBRES.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic libraries, and the students and faculty that they serve, have different definitions of safe space. The attempts of both parties to construct a safe space for digital scholarship in the library can clash based on these divergent perspectives. While the number of academic libraries providing some form of digital scholarship support is increasing, the library definition of safe space, as well as the working culture of the library, has the potential to render libraries unsafe spaces for innovation and digital scholarship.

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"Evaluating the Consortia Purchase: Journal Usage in a Multi-Institution Setting"

Elsa K. Anderson, Stephen Maher, and Bill Maltarich have published "Evaluating the Consortia Purchase: Journal Usage in a Multi-Institution Setting" in Collaborative Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

When two or more institutions share a license, how do they measure use and value? For over a decade, the Levy Library at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Sid and Ruth Lapidus Library at the New York University School of Medicine, and New York University Libraries at New York University have shared several publisher packages and journal title subscriptions. In this paper, we present our analysis of usage data to assess the value of some of these consortial arrangements in their totality and to each library. Based on this analysis, we were able to adjust how each institution contributes to consortial arrangements. The paper will discuss challenges in analyzing consortial arrangements based on usage data and offer suggestions for how consortia-based acquisitions can be an effective allocation of library funds and strengthen support for the library in its institution.

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"DPLA and Library of Congress Announce New Collaboration"

The Digital Public Library of America has released "DPLA and Library of Congress Announce New Collaboration."

Here's an excerpt:

The Library of Congress today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Digital Public Library of America to become a Content Hub and will ultimately share a significant portion of its rich digital resources with DPLA's database of digital content records.

The first batch of records will include 5,000 items from three major Library of Congress map collections—the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and panoramic maps.

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Two Reports on Disk Image Formats from the Harvard Library Digital Preservation Program

The Harvard Library Digital Preservation Program has released Disk Image Content Model and Metadata Analysis ACTIVITY 1: Comparative Format Matrix Analysis and Disk Image Content Model and Metadata Analysis ACTIVITY 2: Metadata Analysis

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Harvard Library collections include a variety of computer media that will be imaged using forensic disk imaging techniques and preserved in the Library's preservation and access repository—the Digital Repository Service (DRS). As a first step towards providing support for this material in the DRS, the Library contracted AVPreserve in late 2015 to assist with the analysis. The goals of the analysis were:

  • Recommended disk image formats to accept and prefer for the DRS
  • Recommended technical metadata schema(s) to use for disk image file formats
  • DRS content models for these objects
  • Recommendations for enhancing Harvard Library's FITS tool to better support these objects

See also: Disk Image Format Matrix spreadsheet.

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MIT: Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of Libraries: Preliminary Report

MIT has released the Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of Libraries: Preliminary Report.

Here's an excerpt:

Recommendation 6: Through interdisciplinary institutional and external partnerships, the Libraries should generate open, interoperable content platforms that explore new ways of producing, using, sharing, and preserving knowledge and that promote revolutionary new methodologies for the discovery and organization of information, people, ideas, and networks. . . .

Recommendation 7: The Task Force recommends that the Institute convene a new Ad Hoc Task Force on Open Access to review the current MIT Faculty Open Access Policy and its implementation with an eye toward revising and expanding current policies and practices, where appropriate, to further the Institute's mission of disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. . . .

Recommendation 10: The Task Force recommends that MIT establish an Initiative for Research in Information Science and Scholarly Communication, based in the MIT Libraries, to enable bold experimentation and to serve as a hub for best-in-class research on the great challenges in information science and scholarly communication.

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Research Data Services in Europe’s Academic Research Libraries

LIBER has released Research Data Services in Europe's Academic Research Libraries by Carol Tenopir et al.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Almost all of Europe's academic research libraries are working collaboratively, within and outside of their institutions, to help ensure that the scientific data of today is curated properly, so it can be accessed, shared and reused by future generations. . . .

The survey—which reflects answers from a representative sample of research libraries in 22 countries across Europe—also revealed that:

  • Libraries are currently offering more consultative-type RDS services (eg. how to find information on Data Management Plans, metadata standards, or data citation practices) than technological services (eg. own storage solutions);
  • Less than half of libraries say their institutions currently have policies relating to RDS;
  • Two-thirds of library directors express strongly that libraries need to offer RDS to remain relevant.

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"Developments in Research Data Management in Academic Libraries: towards an Understanding of Research Data Service Maturity"

Andrew M. Cox et al. have self-archived "Developments in Research Data Management in Academic Libraries: towards an Understanding of Research Data Service Maturity."

Here's an excerpt:

This paper reports an international study of research data management (RDM) activities, services and capabilities in higher education libraries. It presents the results of a survey covering higher education libraries in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the UK. The results indicate that libraries have provided leadership in RDM, particularly in advocacy and policy development. Service development is still limited, focused especially on advisory and consultancy services (such as data management planning support and data-related training), rather than technical services (such as provision of a data catalogue, and curation of active data). Data curation skills development is underway in libraries, but skills and capabilities are not consistently in place and remain a concern. Other major challenges include resourcing, working with other support services, and achieving 'buy in' from researchers and senior managers.

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"ARL Membership Convenes in Washington, DC, for Fall 2016 Meeting"

ARL has released "ARL Membership Convenes in Washington, DC, for Fall 2016 Meeting. "

Here's an excerpt:

Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member representatives, ARL leadership fellows, staff, and guests gathered in Washington, DC, on Tuesday-Wednesday, September 27-28, 2016, for the 169th Association Meeting. All available presentation slides are linked from the speakers' names or session titles in the following summary of the meeting.

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"New University Presses in the UK: Accessing a Mission"

Andrew Lockett and Lara Speicher have published "New University Presses in the UK: Accessing a Mission" in Learned Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

In the space of just a year, five new university presses were launched in the UK. Although very different in size and stages of development, all but one were launched first and foremost as open access presses, based in or supported by their university's library. Why should there have been such a significant flurry of activity in such a short space of time, and what can the stated objectives and activities of these presses tell us about the current UK scholarly publishing environment? To answer some of those questions, this article looks back to the original mission of the founding university presses, examines the policy and funding environments in which the new presses are operating, looks at overseas developments in recent years for comparison, and concludes with a review of the challenges these young presses face as well as the benefits all university presses, but particularly open access ones, can confer to their institutions.

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"Why Marriage Matters: A North American Perspective on Press/Library Partnerships"

Charles Watkinson has published "Why Marriage Matters: A North American Perspective on Press/Library Partnerships" in Learned Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

Key points

  • Around 30% of campus-based members of the Association of American University Presses now report to libraries, more than double the number 5 years ago.
  • Beyond reporting relationships, physical collocation and joint strategic planning characterize the most integrated press/library partnerships.
  • The main mutual advantages of deep press/library collaboration are economic efficiency, greater relevance to parent institutions, and an increased capacity to engage with the changing needs of authors in the digital age.
  • There is emerging interest in collaboration at scale among libraries and presses that may extend the impact of press/library collaboration beyond single institutions.

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"Library Collections in the Life of the User: Two Directions"

Lorcan Dempsey has published "Library Collections in the Life of the User: Two Directions" in .

Here's an excerpt:

The paper considers how the changing nature of research in digital environments is reshaping the nature of library collections and services in academic and research libraries. It describes two central directions, each a response to the centrality of the user in a network environment. First, the library has an increasing role in managing the research and other outputs of the university (the inside-out collection). Second, the library is facilitating access to a broader range of local, external and collaborative resources organized around user needs (the facilitated collection).

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"SCOAP3 Journals Double Downloads"

SCOAP3 has released "SCOAP3 Journals Double Downloads."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The four largest journals participating in SCOAP3, two published by Elsevier and two by SpringerNature in partnership with the Italian Physical Society (SIF), and the Italian Institute for Advanced Studies (SISSA) have now analysed their logs to understand the impact of SCOAP3.

Elsevier announced that downloads to their two journals, Physics Letters B and Nuclear Physics B have doubled since they became Open Access at the start of SCOAP3 in January 2014. This increase is remarkable as SCOAP3 covers the most recent 3,500 articles in the journals, while most of the historic content of over 77,000 articles, is available to subscribers.

SpringerNature announced that since January 2014 they have observed a doubling of downloads across their two learned-society journals participating in SCOAP3: European Physical Journal C and the Journal of High Energy Physics.

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Vice Provost & University Librarian at Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis is recruiting a Vice Provost & University Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Vice Provost and University Librarian oversees 142 staff members and is responsible for an annual budget of $23 million. The libraries' organization includes 6 Associate University Librarians, 28 subject librarians, and 8 curators/archivists.

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"What Kind of World Is STM Living In?

The League of European Research Universities has released What Kind of World Is STM Living In.

Here's an excerpt:

4 September saw the International Association of STM publishers (STM) issue a response to the EC's proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which flies in the face of LERU's views contained in its own Press Release. Amongst other things, STM is calling for the extension of ancillary copyright to cover academic publishing, implying that they will take legal action if this does not happen. . . . Ancillary copyright in this case would extend copyright protection, not allowing academics and universities freely to link to/use the world of information on the Internet, placing publishers in control of the information environment. LERU rejects this as counter to academic freedom and to the EC's vison for Open Science.

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"Collaborative Academic Library Digital Collections Post-Cambridge University Press, HathiTrust and Google Decisions on Fair Use"

Michelle M. Wu has published "Collaborative Academic Library Digital Collections Post-Cambridge University Press, HathiTrust and Google Decisions on Fair Use" in the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic libraries face numerous stressors as they seek to meet the needs of their users through technological advances while adhering to copyright laws. This paper seeks to explore one specific proposal to balance these interests, the impact of recent decisions on its viability, and the copyright challenges that remain after these decisions

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"More than a House of Cards: Developing a Firm Foundation for Streaming Media and Consumer-Licensed Content in the Library"

William Cross has published "More than a House of Cards: Developing a Firm Foundation for Streaming Media and Consumer-Licensed Content in the Library" in the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship..

Here's an excerpt:

This article will introduce traditional library practice for licensing multimedia content and discuss the way that consumer-licensing and streaming services disrupt that practice. Sections II and III describe the statutory copyright regime designed by Congress to facilitate the socially-valuable work done by libraries and the impact of the move from ownership to licensed content. Collecting multimedia materials has always presented special legal challenges for libraries, particularly as licensed content has replaced the traditional practice of purchasing and circulation based on the first sale doctrine. These issues have grown even more complex as streaming services like Netflix and Amazon and video game downloads through services like Steam have come to dominate the landscape. Section IV will describe the way that consumer-licensed materials, which not only remove the ownership that undergirds library practice, but also the ability to negotiate for library use, imperil the congressionally-designed balance. Section V will present a path forward for libraries to develop robust, cutting-edge collections that reflect a sophisticated understanding of the contractual and copyright issues at play.

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"Publishers Appeal GSU Copyright Case"

Andrew Albanese has published "Publishers Appeal GSU Copyright Case" in Publishers Weekly.

Here's an excerpt:

Following their second district court loss in eight years of litigation, the publisher plaintiffs in Cambridge University Press vs. Patton (known commonly as the GSU e-reserves case) have again appealed the case.

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"Write up! A Study of Copyright Information on Library-Published Journals"

Melanie Schlosser has published "Write up! A Study of Copyright Information on Library-Published Journals" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Libraries have a mission to educate users about copyright, and library publishing staff are often involved in that work. This article investigates a concrete point of intersection between the two areas—copyright statements on library-published journals. METHODS Journals published by members of the Library Publishing Coalition were examined for open access status, type and placement of copyright information, copyright ownership, and open licensing. RESULTS Journals in the sample were overwhelmingly (93%) open access. 80% presented copyright information of some kind, but only 30% of those included it at both the journal and the article level. Open licensing was present in 38% of the journals, and the most common ownership scenario was the author retaining copyright while granting a nonexclusive license to the journal or publisher. 9% of the sample journals included two or more conflicting rights statements. DISCUSSION 76% of the journals did not consistently provide accurate, easily-accessible rights information, and numerous problems were found with the use of open licensing, including conflicting licenses, incomplete licenses, and licenses not appearing at the article level. CONCLUSION Recommendations include presenting full copyright and licensing information at both the journal and the article level, careful use of open licenses, and publicly-available author agreements. External Data or Supplements:

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"Dr. Carla Hayden to Serve as the Next Librarian of Congress"

ALA has released "Dr. Carla Hayden to Serve as the Next Librarian of Congress."

Here's an excerpt:

Today the Senate approved the nomination of Dr. Carla Hayden to serve as the nation's 14th Librarian of Congress. Dr. Hayden, American Library Association (ALA) past president and director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, is the first female and the first African American to lead the Library of Congress. She also is the first professional librarian to be confirmed in more than 60 years.

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"ACRL Issues Policy Statement on Open Access to Scholarship by Academic Librarians"

Kara Malenfant has published "ACRL Issues Policy Statement on Open Access to Scholarship by Academic Librarians" in ACRL Insider.

Here's an excerpt:

In support of broad and timely dissemination of library and information science scholarship, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) encourages academic librarians to publish in open access journals. When academic librarians choose to publish in subscription-based journals, ACRL recommends a standard practice of depositing the final accepted manuscript in a repository to make that version openly accessible.

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"Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries"

Shea-Tinn Yeh et al. have published "Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

The Library Technology Department at the University of Denver was tasked with implementing an Islandora open-source framework for its Special Collections Department because the current host was being retired. Although Islandora's front-end is tailored for librarians, its back-end is complex, and built upon many subsystems. A failure in any of the subsystems guarantees a domino effect and a chain reaction which can obfuscate the root cause of the issue. Though product documentation and support communication channels exist, many of the problems we faced were unique to our specific hardware and software configuration. The development team had to learn fast, and be innovative, agile, and systematic in order to work with such a complicated system. This article describes the tactics used in this repository development effort, as well as the library's stakeholder relationship management.

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