Randy J. Olsen Wins Inaugural Howard Goldstein Award to Advance Scholarly Communication

Randy J. Olsen, University Librarian for the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, has won the first BioOne/SPARC Howard Goldstein Award to Advance Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Randy J. Olsen has held leadership positions in the Utah Library Association, the American Library Association, Research Libraries Group, Greater Western Libraries Association, Mountain Plains Library Association, and Utah Academic Library Council. He currently chairs the Library and Scholarly Communications Advisory Council at Brigham Young University and currently serves as a member of the Steering committee for SPARC. . . .

A pragmatist, Olsen initiated a series of concrete steps that have since provided sustainable models for a growing number of important campus publications. These solutions have likewise served as a direction for others to follow. It was Olsen's idea, for example, to hire Jeff Billiston as the Scholarly Communications Librarian to identify and provide publication services and programs. In 2006, Olsen encouraged Billiston to develop an institutional repository that now hosts the legacy issues for 12 publications, with several more to come. In 2007, Olsen became aware of several campus journals in danger of extinction as print-only publications. Careful review of each journal's situation resulted in a variety of solutions that range from a library-sponsored investment in the development of Open Journal Systems software for peer-review and content management, to customized varieties of Open Access publication.

It was Olsen's suggestion that four faculty members attend the Association of Research Library's Institute on Scholarly Communication in 2007. Knowledge about publishing options gained at this event enabled one of BioOne's newest journals, the Western North American Naturalist, to identify a solution to its critical need to modernize. Now in its second year in the BioOne.2 collection, WNAN has increased its distribution and begun to earn important revenue to help sustain its program.

Challenged once again by Olsen, WNAN's publisher the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at BYU concluded that because their companion, Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist, is not their main revenue-producing publication, the best way to enhance its distribution was to add it to BioOne's Open Access collection. The two publications are now seamlessly available to users and their editorial staff is better able to manage both products. According to WNAM's grateful editor Mark Belk, Olsen has thus helped his publications meet their mission to communicate science broadly. Olsen's efforts to engage University leaders in this conversation have helped Belk strengthen his argument for the support necessary to ensure production for the good of the entire research community.

Library IT Jobs: Head, Library Systems Support Department at University of Delaware

The University of Delaware Library is recruiting a Head, Library Systems Support Department.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Reporting to the Assistant Director for Library Computing Systems, the successful candidate will be involved in challenging information technology activities in a rapidly evolving environment. As one of 9.5 FTE in the Library Computing Systems Division, will oversee the maintenance and support of the ALEPH 500 integrated library system and the maintenance and support of end-user computing systems. Will work closely with the Coordinator, Library Data and Server Support, in the provision and support of electronic library resources. Responsibilities include supervision of 3 professional and 2 support staff. The Department has responsibility for maintenance and support of over 400 PC's installed in Library, support of DELCAT and WorldCat Local, and maintenance and development of Library website (http://www.udel.edu/library). Collection development responsibilities with faculty liaison in a subject area may be assigned.

Letters Fly over Anticipated Appointment of PRO-IP Act’s “Copyright Czar”

Copyright reform groups, such as Public Knowledge, and information industry groups, such as the Copyright Alliance, are staking out their positions with letters to the White House regarding the anticipated appointment of the Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement, a position which was mandated by the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act. Copyright reformers have been unhappy about the recent appointment of former RIAA lawyers to key Justice Department posts.

Read more about it at "Copyright Debate Heats Up over Obama Appointments."

Digital Library Jobs: Digitization Librarian at Conjuring Arts Research Center (Entry Level)

The Conjuring Arts Research Center is recruiting an entry-level Digitization Librarian (MLS students can apply).

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

Responsibilities will include scanning materials of all ages, using the Atiz BookDrive Pro (http://pro.atiz.com ) and BookDrive Capture, to be entered into Ask Alexander (http://askalexander.org ), an all-encompassing magic database that is fully text searchable. The Digitization Librarian will also serve as the direct supervisor of the library's Digitization Interns and work with ABBYY Fine Reader and Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Digital Library Jobs: Metadata Specialist, Visual Materials Cataloguer at Wellesley College

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College is recruiting a Metadata Specialist, Visual Materials Cataloguer.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College is seeking a Metadata Specialist to verify and create metadata for 2,500 newly digitized objects in the Davis Museum's encyclopedic art collection. Objects include paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings and photographs. The digital collections will be available on the museum's website to the local museum and campus community and to the broader public via the Internet. The Metadata Specialist will be responsible for the verification and updating of existing cataloguing as well as for the creation of subject and concept authority information. S/he should be familiar with visual materials cataloging and metadata standards, and the use of a wide range of authority files including but not limited to the Getty's Union List of Artist Names and Art & Architecture Thesaurus.

Google Labs Releases Google News Timeline and Similar Images

Google Labs has released Google News Timeline and Similar Images.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Image Search is a tool you can use to find just about any kind of image, but it can sometimes be difficult to find the right image if you can't describe it in words. The new Similar Images feature was developed with just this in mind. Using it you can now find images that look like an existing result simply by clicking on a link. Using visual similarity, you don't have to refine the text of your search, instead, you can just click on the link of an image you like. For example, if you search for [jaguar], you can use the "Similar images" link to quickly narrow your search.

OECD: We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables

OECD has released We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables.

Here's an excerpt:

Datasets are a significant part of the scholarly record and are being published more and more frequently, either formally or informally. Many publishers are beginning to link to them from their journals and authors are trying to cite them in their articles. Librarians would like a way to manage them alongside other publications. In short, they need to be integrated into the scholarly information system so that authors, readers and librarians can use, find and manage them as easily as they do working papers, journal articles and books.

In this paper, OECD is proposing some standards for citing and bibliographic management of datasets and data tables. OECD is currently building a new online publishing platform which will host working papers, journals, books, tables and datasets. Due to be launched in mid-2009, this platform will use the standards proposed above. Librarians will be offered MARC 21 records for datasets, alongside records for OECD books and periodicals. Users of the platform will be invited to download citations for datasets and tables in a form compatible with popular bibliographic management systems. All the DOIs for the datasets and tables will be deposited with CrossRef, ready for other publishers to use.

Lightning Source, On Demand Books, and Selected Publishers to Offer Print-on-Demand at Point-of-Sale Locations

Lightning Source will work with selected publishers on a pilot project to offer print-on-demand of books using the On Demand Books' Espresso Book Machine at point-of-sale locations.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Participating publishers in the pilot include John Wiley & Sons, Hachette Book Group, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, Clements Publishing, Cosimo, E-Reads, Bibliolife, Information Age Publishing, Macmillan, University of California Press and W.W. Norton. The pilot, being offered initially to a small group of publishers that currently work with Lightning Source, will enable these publishers to enhance the availability of their titles at point-of-sale EBM locations. Approximately 85,000 titles from these publishers will be available for purchase at EBM locations in the USA in May 2009.

Upon the completion of a successful pilot, publishers that print and distribute books with Lightning Source will have the option to participate in the EBM channel. Complete channel automation is expected in the first half of this year, and rollout of the program to publishers globally is expected to follow shortly thereafter.

NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grants

The National Endowment for the Humanities has issued a call for grant proposals for its Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Program.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program supports projects that provide an essential foundation for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. Thousands of libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations across the country maintain important collections of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture, electronic records, and digital objects. Funding from this program strengthens efforts to extend the life of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible, often through the use of digital technology. Awards are also made to create various reference resources that facilitate use of cultural materials, from works that provide basic information quickly to tools that synthesize and codify knowledge of a subject for in-depth investigation.

Applications may be submitted for projects that include or combine the following activities:

  • arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
  • cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving images, art, and material culture;
  • implementing preservation measures, such as basic rehousing, reformatting, deacidification, or conservation treatment;
  • digitizing collections, or preserving and improving access to born-digital resources;
  • developing databases, virtual collections, or other electronic resources to codify information on a subject field or to provide integrated access to selected humanities materials;
  • creating encyclopedias;
  • preparing linguistic tools, such as historical and etymological dictionaries, corpora, and reference grammars (separate funding is available for endangered language projects in partnership with the National Science Foundation);
  • developing tools for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data, such as atlases and geographical information systems (GIS); and
  • designing digital tools to facilitate use of humanities resources.

OCLC: A Symposium for Publishers and Librarians

OCLC has released presentations and other documents related to its recent event, A Symposium for Publishers and Librarians.

Here's an excerpt from the symposium report:

On March 18th and 19th representatives from libraries, the publisher supply chain and organizations supporting these communities met at OCLC's Conference Center in Dublin, Ohio to discuss metadata needs, practices, lifecycle and economics across the communities and to explore opportunities for change.

“The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books”

James Grimmelmann of the New York Law School has self-archived "The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The settlement tackles the orphan works problem, but through the judicial process. Laundering orphan works legislation through a class action lawsuit is both a brilliant response to legislative inaction and a dangerous use of the judicial power. Many of the public interest safeguards that would have been present in the political arena are attenuated in a seemingly private lawsuit; the lack of such safeguards is evident in the terms of the resulting settlement. The solution is to reinsert these missing public interest protections into the settlement.

Stevan Harnad: “Waking OA’s ‘Slumbering Giant’: The University’s Mandate To Mandate Open Access”

Stevan Harnad has self-archived "Waking OA's 'Slumbering Giant': The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access" in the ECS EPrints Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

Open Access (OA) will not come until universities, the universal research-providers, make it part of their mandate not only to publish their research findings, as now, but also to see to it that the few extra keystrokes it takes to make those published findings OA—by self-archiving them in their institutional repositories, free for all online—are done too. Students and junior faculty—the next generation of researchers and users—are in a position to help convince their universities to go ahead and mandate OA self-archiving, at long last.

Talis Interview with Peter Brantley, Director of the Internet Archive

Richard Wallis has posted a digital audio interview with Peter Brantley, the Internet Archive's new Director, on Panlibus.

Here's an excerpt from the post:

In this conversation we look back over the last couple of years at the DLF [Digital Library Federation] and then forward in to his new challenge and opportunity at the Internet Archive.

We go on to discuss his thoughts and plans to make it easy to identify books and information and their locations in a way that is currently not possible with the processes and protocols we use today.

Pamela Samuelson: “Legally Speaking: The Dead Souls of the Google Booksearch Settlement”

Pamela Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley, has posted an eprint of "Legally Speaking: The Dead Souls of the Google Booksearch Settlement" on O'Reilly Radar.

Here's an excerpt:

This column argues that the proposed settlement of this lawsuit is a privately negotiated compulsory license primarily designed to monetize millions of orphan works. It will benefit Google and certain authors and publishers, but it is questionable whether the authors of most books in the corpus (the "dead souls" to which the title refers) would agree that the settling authors and publishers will truly represent their interests when setting terms for access to the Book Search corpus.

(Note: See the Wikipedia entry on Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls.)

John Robertson Overviews Digital Repository Software Developments

John Robertson of JISC CETIS has overviewed developments in major digital repository software in his "Repository Software Update" post.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the past couple of months I've had a chance to hear updates from a number of repository software developers (at a Fedora training day, at DEV8D and on a number of blogs). Albeit slightly delayed by holidays, here's a bit of a snapshot of where ePrints, DSpace, Fedora, Microsoft's repository are at. There's a lot more information about Fedora than the others as I've heard a couple of updates from them. The usual caveat that I may have misunderstood what some of these are or how developed they are should apply. Much of this development is building up to releases at Open Repositories 2009.

Open Grid Forum Digital Repositories Research Group Established

The Open Grid Forum has established a Digital Repositories Research Group.

Here's an excerpt from the home page:

The goal of the Digital Repositories Research Group (DR-RG) is to analyze how digital repositories can be built on top of federated storage infrastructure, focusing on the exploitation of existing data-related standards and the identification of need for new or revised data-related standards.

Digital Library Jobs: Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian at University of Vermont

The University of Vermont Libraries' Center for Digital Initiatives is recruiting a Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (search for posting no. 032645):

The Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian will provide expertise and leadership in the creation and maintenance of metadata for digital content acquired or created by the CDI. The Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian will help to develop, refine, and implement policies, procedures, workflows, and metadata standards for the CDI; manage digitization projects; and participate in the overall management of the CDI.

“The Google Book Search Settlement: A New Orphan-Works Monopoly?”

Randal C. Picker of the University of Chicago Law School has self-archived "The Google Book Search Settlement: A New Orphan-Works Monopoly?" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

The settlement agreement is exceeding complex but I have focused on three issues that raise antitrust and competition policy concerns. First, the agreement calls for Google to act as agent for rights holders in setting the price of online access to consumers. Google is tasked with developing a pricing algorithm that will maximize revenues for each of those works. Direct competition among rights holders would push prices towards some measure of costs and would not be designed to maximize revenues. As I think that level of direct coordination of prices is unlikely to mimic what would result in competition, I have real doubts about whether the consumer access pricing provision would survive a challenge under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

Second, and much more centrally to the settlement agreement, the opt out class action will make it possible for Google to include orphan works in its book search service. Orphan works are works as to which the rightsholder can't be identified or found. That means that a firm like Google can't contract with an orphan holder directly to include his or her work in the service and that would result in large numbers of missing works. The opt out mechanism—which shifts the default from copyright's usual out to the class action's in—brings these works into the settlement. . . .

Third, there is a risk that approval by the court of the settlement could cause antitrust immunities to attach to the arrangements created by the settlement agreement. As it is highly unlikely that the fairness hearing will undertake a meaningful antitrust analysis of those arrangements, if the district court approves the settlement, the court should include a clause—call this a no Noerr clause—in the order approving the settlement providing that no antitrust immunities attach from the court's approval.

International Repositories Infrastructure Wiki

As an outcome of An International Repositories Infrastructure Workshop in March, the International Repositories Infrastructure Wiki has been launched (thanks to Da Blog).

Here's an excerpt from the home page:

This wiki is for those interested in:

  1. developing coordinated action plans for specific areas of repository development
  2. pursuing those plans
  3. coordinating that activity internationally

Open Source Biological Specimen Database System for Museums: Specify 6 Released

Specify 6, an open source biological specimen database system for museums, has been released. (Thanks to Peter Scott’s Library Blog.)

Here's an excerpt from the project home page:

After more than twelve developer years of design and engineering and over two million USD of investment, the Specify Software Team is delighted to release today, April 10, 2009, Specify 6 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux desktops.

Specify is a client-server database platform for museums and herbaria which processes specimen information for computerizing holdings, managing collection management transactions, and for mobilizing species occurrence data to the web. Specify is free and open source software licensed under the GNU GPL2. Downloadable installation packages for all three desktop flavors as well as Specify's Java source code are linked to this site. . . .

Non-profit U.S. research collections are eligible for our helpdesk and data conversion services thanks to our financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Biological Infrastructure. We look forward to working with you to increase the research impact of your institution's investment in biodiversity collection curation and specimen data management.