Presentations from APSR Workshop about Author Identity Management in Scholarly Communication Systems

The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories has released presentations from its Identifying Researchers workshop. Both PDF and MP3 files are available.

Here's an excerpt from the workshop's web page:

The issue of managing researcher and author identities is a significant one that has an impact on a range of situations including, but not limited to, scholarly communications. This is an issue not only for researchers who nowadays interact with multiple identity and security systems but also for scholarly communications where the need to accurately identify authors and describe their scholarly resources is increasing in importance.

SPAR (A Distributed Archiving and Preservation System)

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France is engaged in the SPAR (A Distributed Archiving and Preservation System) project.

Here's an excerpt from the project's English home page:

After more than a year of study, BnF launched the SPAR project, true digital stack. Its design is based on international standards authoritative in the subject of the sustainability of digital information. In particular, SPAR respects the OAIS standard (ISO-14721:2003), reference model for an open archival information system. . . .

The SPAR project is much more than a simple stack of secure data.

  • It makes multiple copies of the digital objects and provides continuous monitoring on the status of the hardware as well as the media containing the recorded files in order to anticipate new copies before a definitive loss.
  • Through a precise and complete recognition of the formats of the ingested objects, it also guarantees the continuity of access by making the necessary transformations in case of the technological obsolescence of the access software. Hence, for example, when the JPEG image format will become obsolete, SPAR will be able to transform all the appropriate images in a new and more permanent format. . . .

SPAR is a system serving a community. It must guarantee that the documents given back haven't been modified. To this goal, SPAR marks each object with a digital signature. Moreover, to guarantee the access rights of the disseminated digital objects, SPAR uses a rights management system which calculates the usage licenses of the digital objects and applies the necessary restrictions depending on the user . . .

Read more about it at Bringing Seven Centuries into the Future: Bibliothèque Nationale de France: SPAR Analysis.

BagIt: New LC/CDL Format for Transferring Digital Content between Cultural Institutions

The Library of Congress and the California Digital Library have established a new format called BagIt for transferring large data collections between cultural institutions.

Read more about it at "The BagIt File Package Format (V0.94)" and "Library Develops Format for Transferring Digital Content."

RIN Publishes To Share or not to Share: Publication and Quality Assurance of Research Data Outputs

The Research Information Network has published To Share or not to Share: Publication and Quality Assurance of Research Data Outputs. The report has a separate Annex file.

This report presents the findings from a study of whether or not researchers do in fact make their research data available to others, and the issues they encounter when doing so. The study is set in a context where the amount of digital data being created and gathered by researchers is increasing rapidly; and there is a growing recognition by researchers, their employers and their funders of the potential value in making new data available for sharing, and in curating them for re-use in the long term.

JISC Becomes SCOAP3 Partner

JISC has become a SCOAP3 partner, pledging to redirect funds from member UK institutions now used for high-energy physics journals to the project.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

With JISC, SCOAP3 now counts partners from 14 countries in Europe and Oceania, as well as an international organisation and a number of institutes in the United States. In total, these partners have pledged 37.4% of the SCOAP3 budget envelope, corresponding to 3.7 million Euros (5.8 million $).

Foresite Project OAI-ORE Resource Maps Software

The Foresite Project has released the foresite-toolkit.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement (footnotes removed):

The Foresite project is pleased to announce the initial code of two software libraries for constructing, parsing, manipulating and serialising OAI-ORE Resource Maps. These libraries are being written in Java and Python, and can be used generically to provide advanced functionality to OAI-ORE aware applications, and are compliant with the latest release (0.9) of the specification. The software is open source, released under a BSD licence, and is available from a Google Code repository . . . .

Foresite is a JISC funded project which aims to produce a demonstrator and test of the OAI-ORE standard by creating Resource Maps of journals and their contents held in JSTOR, and delivering them as ATOM documents via the SWORD interface to DSpace. DSpace will ingest these resource maps, and convert them into repository items which reference content which continues to reside in JSTOR. The Python library is being used to generate the resource maps from JSTOR and the Java library is being used to provide all the ingest, transformation and dissemination support required in DSpace.

Coverage of the Demise of Microsoft's Mass Digitization Project

Microsoft's decision to end its Live Search Books program, which provided important funding for the Open Content Alliance, has been widely covered by newspapers, blogs, and other information sources.

Here's a selection of articles and posts: "Books Scanning to be Publicly Funded," "'It Ain’t Over Till It's Over': Impact of the Microsoft Shutdown," "Microsoft Abandons Live Search Books/Academic Scan Plan," "Microsoft Burns Book Search—Lacks 'High Consumer Intent,'" "Microsoft Shuts Down Two of Its Google 'Wannabe’s': Live Search Books and Live Search Academic," "Microsoft Will Shut Down Book Search Program," "Microsoft's Book-Search Project Has a Surprise Ending," "Post-Microsoft, Libraries Mull Digitization," "Publishers Surprised by Microsoft Move," "Why Killing Live Book Search Is Good for the Future of Books," and "Without Microsoft, British Library Keeps on Digitizing."

Digital Library Federation Releases ILS Discovery Interfaces Recommendation

The Digital Library Federation has released DLF ILS Discovery Interface Task Group (ILS-DI) Technical Recommendation: An API for Effective Interoperation between Integrated Library Systems and External Discovery Applications.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This document recommends standard interfaces for integrating the data and services of the Integrated Library System (ILS) with new applications supporting user discovery. Such standard interfaces will allow libraries to deploy new discovery services to meet ever-growing user expectations in the Web 2.0 era, take full advantage of advanced ILS data management and services, and encourage a strong, innovative community and marketplace in next-generation library management and discovery applications.

A group of eight professionals from major North American research libraries prepared the recommendation during late 2007 and early 2008. Members of the group surveyed the library community about their needs, made presentations, and held open discussions face to face and online with librarians, developers, and vendors. The group made multiple recommendation drafts and other background information publicly available on the task group's Wiki, and invited comments and suggestions from interested parties.

In March, the DLF convened a meeting that brought together Task Group members and representatives of library system vendors and developers, and produced the "Berkeley Accord", an agreement about the most essential and feasible interfaces to include in an initial set of interfaces. This set of interfaces, called the "Basic Discovery Interfaces", is described in detail in the new ILS-DI recommendation. The recommendation also describes and recommends a variety of other functions to support higher levels of interoperability.

Version 72, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography

Version 72 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship. This selective bibliography presents over 3,250 articles, books, and other digital and printed sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.

This version adds hundreds of links to freely available journal articles from publishers as well as to e-prints of published articles housed in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. All article references were checked for the availability of such free content.

These links have also been added to a revised version of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2007 Annual Edition. Annual editions of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography are PDF files designed for printing.

The bibliography has the following sections (revised sections are in italics):

1 Economic Issues
2 Electronic Books and Texts
2.1 Case Studies and History
2.2 General Works
2.3 Library Issues
3 Electronic Serials
3.1 Case Studies and History
3.2 Critiques
3.3 Electronic Distribution of Printed Journals
3.4 General Works
3.5 Library Issues
3.6 Research
4 General Works
5 Legal Issues
5.1 Intellectual Property Rights
5.2 License Agreements
6 Library Issues
6.1 Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
6.2 Digital Libraries
6.3 General Works
6.4 Information Integrity and Preservation
7 New Publishing Models
8 Publisher Issues
8.1 Digital Rights Management
9 Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
Appendix A. Related Bibliographies
Appendix B. About the Author
Appendix C. SEPB Use Statistics

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resources includes the following sections:

Cataloging, Identifiers, Linking, and Metadata
Digital Libraries
Electronic Books and Texts
Electronic Serials
General Electronic Publishing
Images
Legal
Preservation
Publishers
Repositories, E-Prints, and OAI
SGML and Related Standards

An article about the bibliography ("Evolution of an Electronic Book: The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography") has been published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Digital Research Tools (DiRT) Wiki Established

A team of librarians has established the Digital Research Tools (DiRT) Wiki.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

DiRT lists dozens of useful tools for discovering, organizing, analyzing, visualizing, sharing and disseminating information, such as tools for compiling bibliographies, taking notes, analyzing texts, and visualizing data. We also offer software reviews that not only describe the tool’s features, strengths, and weaknesses, but also provide usage tips, links to training resources, and suggestions for how it might be implemented by researchers. So that DiRT is accessible to non-techies and techies alike, we try to avoid jargon and categorize tools by their functions. Although the acronym DiRT might suggest that it’s a gossip site for academic software, dishing on bugs and dirty secrets about the software development process, we prefer a gardening metaphor, as we hope to help cultivate research projects by providing clear, concise information about tools that can help researchers do their more work more effectively or creatively.

DiRT is brand new, so we’re still in the process of creating content and figuring how best to present it; consider it to be in alpha release and expect to see it evolve. (We plan to announce DiRT more broadly in a few months, but we’re giving sneak previews right now in the hope that comments from members of the digital humanities community can help us to improve it.) Currently the DiRT editorial team includes me, my ever-innovative and enthusiastic colleague Debra Kolah, and three whip-smart librarians from Sam Houston State University with expertise in Web 2.0 technologies (as well as English, history, business, and ranching!): Tyler Manolovitz, Erin Dorris Cassidy, and Abe Korah. We’ve committed to provide at least 5 new tool reviews per month, but we can do even more if more people join us (hint, hint). We invite folks to recommend research tools or software categories, write reviews, sign on to be co-editors, and/or offer feedback on the wiki.

Encyclopaedia Britannica to Accept Online Contributions from Scholars and Readers

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has announced that it will allow online contributions from scholars and readers. All contributions will be vetted before becoming public.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Britannica Online site will become the hub of a new online community that will welcome and engage thousands of scholars and experts with whom we already have relationships. . . .

To elicit their participation in our new online community of scholars, we will provide our contributors with a reward system and a rich online home that will enable them to promote themselves, their work, and their services; allow them to showcase and publish their various works-in-progress in front of the Britannica audience; and help them find and interact with colleagues around the world. In this way our online community of scholars not only will be able to interact with our editors and content in a more effective manner; they will also be able to share directly with Britannica’s visitors content that they may have created outside Encyclopaedia Britannica and will allow those visitors to suggest changes and additions to that content. . . .

Readers and users will also be invited into an online community where they can work and publish at Britannica’s site under their own names. Interested users will be able to prepare articles, essays, and multimedia presentations on subjects in which they’re interested. Britannica will help them with research and publishing tools and by allowing them to easily use text and non-text material from Encyclopaedia Britannica in their work. We will publish the final products on our site for the benefit of all readers, with all due attribution and credit to the people who created them. The authors will have the option of collaborating with others on their work, but each author will retain control of his or her own work. . . .

Two things we believe distinguish this effort from other projects of online collaboration are (1) the active involvement of the expert contributors with whom we already have relationships; and (2) the fact that all contributions to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s core content will continue to be checked and vetted by our expert editorial staff before they’re published.

Read more about it at "Encyclopaedia Britannica Goes—Gasp!—Wiki."

Back-Door Copyright Regulation: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States have been conducting low-profile meetings about a new trade agreement that would significantly effect copyright laws in the participating countries if passed. It is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and a discussion paper was leaked in May. It may include provisions such as ISP disclosure of suspected infringers without a warrant.

Read more about it at "An ACTA Call to Arms: No More Secret Government," "The Art of the End Around," "Secret ACTA Treaty May Include ISP Filtering," "The Real ACTA Threat (It's Not iPod-Scanning Border Guards)," and "Speculation Persists on ACTA as First Official Meeting Concludes."

Digital Preservation of E-Journals in 2008: Urgent Action Revisited Released

Portico and Ithaka have released Digital Preservation of E-Journals in 2008: Urgent Action Revisited.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In September 2005, library directors from 17 universities and colleges met to discuss the current state of electronic journal preservation and endorsed a statement calling for “Urgent Action” to preserve scholarly e-journals. Over two years later in January 2008, in the Portico and Ithaka invited 1,371 library directors of four-year colleges and universities in the United States to respond to a survey examining current perspectives on preservation of e-journals. A strong response has yielded interesting findings that we now share with the community in the hope they will spark useful discussion among library directors, funders, and administrators regarding strategic library priorities.

The survey finds that a large majority of library directors across the spectrum strongly agree or agree that the potential loss of e-journals is unacceptable, and a significant majority believe their own institution has a responsibility to take action to prevent an intolerable loss of the scholarly record. Most larger libraries responding now support one or more e-journal preservation initiatives; however, the majority of respondents from smaller libraries have yet to support any preservation effort and secure permanent access to e-journals for their institutions. The survey shows that this majority is significantly uncertain about their options for e-journal preservation and how urgent is the need to act.

Study Questions Accuracy of Media Companies' BitTorrent Infringement Detection Techniques

A technical report ("Challenges and Directions for Monitoring P2P File Sharing Networks—or—Why My Printer Received a DMCA Takedown Notice") by two researchers at the University of Washington's Department of Computer Science and Engineering calls into question the accuracy of media companies' BitTorrent infringement detection methods.

Here's an excerpt from the paper:

Copyright holders utilize inconclusive methods for identifying infringing BitTorrent users. We were able to generate hundreds of DMCA takedown notices for machines under our control at the University of Washington that were not downloading or sharing any content.

Read more about it at "The Inexact Science Behind DMCA Takedown Notices" and "Study Reveals Reckless Anti-Piracy Antics."

McGill's Centre for Intellectual Property Policy Launches CIPP Wiki

The Centre for Intellectual Property Policy at McGill University has launched the CIPP Wiki.

Here's an excerpt from the home page:

Join colleagues and friends at the CIPP in setting out a re-draft of the [Canadian] Copyright Act. Using this wiki platform, we would ask you to draft possible articles on pressing issues of copyright reform. McGill members of the CIPP wiki team have identified specific areas and articles of reform, but feel free to add others in the general comments section

.

STM, the Federation of European Publishers, and Others Sign Search Guidelines for Orphan Works Memorandum

STM, the Federation of European Publishers, and 23 other organizations have signed a "Memorandum of Understanding on Diligent Search Guidelines for Orphan Works." The text of the document does not appear to be available; however, the press release seems to reference the 2006 "STM Position: The Use of Orphan Works."

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Memorandum is an outcome of extensive discussions of the High Level Expert Group on Digital libraries set up by Commissioner Reding as part of the EU i2010 initiatives. It covers a broad range of copyright sectors, including the text sector, and has incorporated the previous STM work on orphan works (REF).

The memorandum is one of several outcomes agreed by all participants in the Copyright SubGroup of the High Level Expert Group and reflects the leadership of its Chair Tarja Koskinen-Olsson, Honorary President of IFRRO and the input of its members, especially Anne Bergman-Tahon of the Federation of European Publishers.

Evaluation of the JISC UK LOCKSS Pilot Report Released

JISC has released Evaluation of the JISC UK LOCKSS Pilot.

Here's an excerpt from the Executive Summary:

This report provides an evaluation of the UK LOCKSS pilot project as it reaches the end of its pilot phase. LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is an international community-based archiving initiative led by Stanford University in the US with over 170 member libraries worldwide, archiving content from over 200 publishers. It is a community-based archiving service operating on open-source software, giving libraries control over their own archived content with the emphasis on low cost and low maintenance.

In March 2006, JISC in partnership with the Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles (CURL) funded membership of a collective UK LOCKSS Alliance for 24 selected UK HE libraries. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) at the department of HATII within the University of Glasgow received funding to set up the UK LOCKSS Technical Support Service to provide technical advice and general support to pilot members and Content Complete Ltd. (CCL) were funded to negotiate with NESLi2 and other publishers to allow LOCKSS-based archiving. The UK LOCKSS pilot is particularly innovative as the first effort to establish a country wide LOCKSS network. The study found that the UK LOCKSS pilot project had achieved its overall aim of setting up a UK LOCKSS Alliance of 30 HE libraries, but that in relation to the detailed aims and objectives there were a number of issues to be addressed if the project was to become self-sustaining at the end of the pilot phase.

Microsoft Releases Beta of Article Authoring Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007

Microsoft has released a beta version of its Article Authoring Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Here's an excerpt from the product's home page:

Beta 1 of Word add-in to enhance the authoring of scientific and technical articles, including support for the National Library of Medicine XML format This Beta 1 release enables reading and writing of XML-based documents in the format used by the National Library of Medicine for archiving scientific articles.

Digital Library Federation Spring Forum 2008 Presentations

The Digital Library Federation has released presentations from its Spring Forum 2008.

Here's a selection of the presentations:

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Update (6/4/08)

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Especially interesting are: "The American Chemical Society and Open Access"; "Evaluating the Impact of the Institutional Repository, or Positioning Innovation between a Rock and a Hard Place"; "Every Library's Nightmare? Digital Rights Management, Use Restrictions, and Licensed Scholarly Digital Resources"; "Institutional Repositories: Faculty Deposits, Marketing, and the Reform of Scholarly Communication"; "Library Budgets, Open Access, and the Future of Scholarly Communication"; "The Need to Formalize Trust Relationships in Digital Repositories"; "Open Access and the Self-Correction of Knowledge" and "PREMIS With a Fresh Coat of Paint: Highlights from the Revision of the PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata."