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I N B R I E F
September/October 2011
New Guidelines: CrossRef DOIs to be Displayed as URLS
Contributed by:
Carol Anne Meyer
CrossRef
Lynnfield, Massachusetts
This summer CrossRef, a not-for-profit association of more than 1000 scholarly publishers, revised its recommendations for the way CrossRef Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are displayed online. CrossRef DOIs support the extensive citation linking system among scholarly journal articles, books and book chapters, conference papers, and other types of content.
The new recommendations specifies that any organization that displays CrossRef DOIs on the web use a URL format, for example, http://dx.doi.org/10.5115/acb.2011.44.2.85.
The previous practice of putting "doi:" in front of a DOI, the convention used since CrossRef began ten years ago, has been retired. Using a URL instead will help both humans and machines more easily interpret DOIs and locate the digital objects on the web.
People who want to use a DOI link will no longer need to know what CrossRef is or what a DOI is in order to find the material they are looking for or to create their own persistent links to content. They will also be able to use web conventions like right clicking and selecting "Copy Link". Also, CrossRef DOIs rendered on mobile devices that support web browsing will automatically work as links.
Machines will be able to easily recognize CrossRef DOIs as URL links without the need for any screen scraping or text processing. This capability is consistent with CrossRef's support, announced earlier this year, for linked data through URIs, which was made possible with the collaboration of CNRI and the International DOI Foundation (IDF).
To address concerns that the URL string is longer than the previous format, CrossRef is also recommending that publishers create DOIs that are as short as possible and that they further consider using the IDF's ShortDOI service (http://shortdoi.org/) to shorten existing DOIs.
CrossRef encourages publishers, affiliates (such as secondary database and reference tool providers), and authors to use the new format effective immediately.
More information is available at http://crossref.org/02publishers/doi_display_guidelines.html.
The POCOS Project: Addressing the Challenges of Preserving Complex Visual Digital Objects
Contributed by:
Dr. David Anderson & Dr. Janet Delve
Co-ordinators (POCOS)
University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom
david.anderson@port.ac.uk
janet.delve@port.ac.uk
Dr. Leo Konstantelos
Principal Investigator (POCOS)
HATII, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
leo.konstantelos@glasgow.ac.uk
and
Research Fellow (KEEP)
University of Portsmouth, UK
leo.konstantelos@port.ac.uk
The POCOS project (http://www.pocos.org) addresses the challenges of preserving complex visual digital objects, by delivering a series of three symposia at locations across the United Kingdom. POCOS focus on three interrelated areas of complex object genres and the respective digital preservation issues: Visualisations and Simulations; Software Art; and Gaming Environments and Virtual Worlds. The POCOS Symposia bring together leading researchers and practitioners in these fields and invite them to present their findings, identify key unsolved problems, and map out the future research agenda for the preservation of complex materials and environments.
Recent work undertaken in the Planets (http://www.planets-project.eu) and KEEP (http://www.keep-project.eu/) projects has shown that the problems involved in preserving complex visual materials, while substantial, are by no means intractable. POCOS recognises that, in order to continue to make progress, it is important to engage and energise the wider Digital Preservation community. An important aspect of this involves articulating the state of the art by synthesising the research results so far achieved in a number of independent projects, and clearly signposting areas where work remains to be done.
The POCOS consortium comprises leading researchers, developers and practitioners from academe, commerce, and memory institutions, with outstanding internationally recognised competence within the Digital Preservation Community. The POCOS partners are: The University of Portsmouth Future Proof Computing Group (Coordinator); The British Library; King's Visualisation Lab (KVL) at King's College London; The Humanities Advanced Technology & Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow; and Joguin sas.
Thus far, POCOS has successfully organised the first symposium on Visualisations & Simulations. Webcasts from the event are available here: http://www.pocos.org/index.php/publications/webcasts
The next symposium on Software Art will take place in Glasgow on 11 - 12 October 2011, followed by the third symposium on Gaming Environments in Cardiff, due January 2012. For more information about the upcoming POCOS events and how to register, visit the project's website at: http://www.pocos.org/index.php/pocos-symposia
Keep informed on POCOS developments! Subscribe to the POCOS News Feed: http://www.pocos.org/index.php/news?format=feed&type=rss
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HathiTrust Research Center Receives Grant to Investigate Non-consumptive Research
Contributed by:
Dr. Beth A. Plale
Director, Data To Insight Center
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
plale@cs.indiana.edu
The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) received a $600,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to fund the first investigation of non-consumptive research for a major mass digitized collection of content. Non-consumptive research involves computational analysis of one or more books without the researcher having the ability to reassemble the collection. Rather than reading the material, researchers use specialized algorithms to analyze text as a massive data set, and the Sloan grant will help ensure the work can be conducted in a secure environment.
The funding will enable HTRC to pursue a research track around non-consumptive research uses of the HathiTrust digital corpus. At the end of the project the group expects to have cyberinfrastructure in place that successfully demonstrates that non-consumptive research can be carried out safely under the conditions of unintended malicious user algorithms.
In some cases, HTRC would own the algorithms used by researchers, so HTRC needs to examine the security requirements for users, the algorithms and the data, all within the context of using the suite of algorithms available in the Software Environment for the Advancement of Scholarly Research (SEASR). In other cases, the researcher would own and submit their own algorithms for use and the Sloan Foundation funding will be used to create a "data capsule framework" prototype that would allow the scholar the freedom to experiment with new algorithms on a huge body of information, but with technological "trust but verify" mechanisms in place to confirm compliance with non-consumptive research policy.
Without taking into account the actual content of materials, researchers using their own complex algorithms might analyze such massive data sets for anything as simple as repetition of words to complex linguistic structures or the evolution of word usage over a range of time, space or even demographic class.
The HathiTrust repository contains over 9.5 million digitized volumes, and about 2.5 million of those — roughly 27 percent — are in the public domain and currently available for non-consumptive research.
The model for implementing non-consumptive research is founded on a principle of trust but verify, where the researcher should generally be trusted to do the right thing and be given the freedoms to carry out creative research, but with mechanisms in place to ensure good behavior and adherence to rules.
Leveraging cyberinfrastructure at Indiana University, including FutureGrid, and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the HTRC will provide a secure computational and data environment. This collaborative cyberinfrastructure test-bed will serve as a proving ground for the research agenda around non-consumptive uses of the collection.
In defining new methods of non-consumptive research of the HathiTrust digital corpus, the HathiTrust Research Center and the IU Data to Insight Center are enabling research faculty and the HathiTrust partner libraries to engage in groundbreaking new research across the corpus while maintaining the security and integrity of the collection and the researcher's fair-use access to its content.
The Principal Investigator of the project and chair of HTRC Executive Management Committee is Professor Beth Plale. Other principal investigators include Atul Prakash, University of Michigan's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Robert McDonald, Associate Dean for Library Technologies, Indiana University. For more information, the web site for HTRC can be found at http://www.hathitrust-research.org/ and HathiTrust is at http://www.hathitrust.org/. The Data To Insight Center is at http://pti.iu.edu/d2i.
The Widget Design Authoring Toolkit (WIDGaT)
Contributed by:
Dr. Voula Gkatzidou
WIDGaT Project Manager
Accessibility Research Centre (ARC), Teesside University
Middlesbrough, Tees Valley, United Kingdom
s.gkatzidou@tees.ac.uk
The Widget Design Authoring Toolkit (WIDGaT) (http://arc.tees.ac.uk/widgat) project aims to explore, design, develop and evaluate an authoring toolkit to support the education sector in the self-design and development of open source, W3C standard widgets. It will enable the creation of widgets that contribute towards the realisation of Adaptable Personal Learning Environments and address particularly (but not exclusively) the needs and preferences of disabled students.
The project aims to support the design, development and sharing of widgets by those directly involved in the teaching and support of disabled students. The project builds on our established Community of Practice in order to specify, design, develop and trial the WIDGaT authoring toolkit that will enable teachers or students to develop and share bespoke widgets.
This innovative project will be led by the Accessibility Research Centre (ARC) within Teesside University's School of Computing. Funding was secured through the JISC Learning and Teaching Innovation Programme, and WIDGaT is one of only six projects from 83 proposals that was successful in the funding application process. It follows on from a similar successful research project last year (WIDE) (http://arc.tees.ac.uk/wide), when ARC was awarded a £30,000 grant to develop a series of high-quality widgets. The WIDGaT project will develop and enhance the previous research.
The £50,000 grant will provide bursaries for two researchers and enable the involvement of design and technical experts, teachers and educational developers.
For more information on the project contact Voula Gkatzidou at s.gkatzidou@tees.ac.uk.
Call for Bids to host iPRES
Contributed by:
Andreas Rauber
Chair of the iPRES Steering Group
rauber@ifs.tuwien.ac.at
iPRES has evolved into the main international conference on the preservation
of digital objects. Having been held annually since 2004 in locations around
the world, (and with iPRES2011 coming up in Singapore in November, iPRES2012 to take place in Toronto and iPRES2013 to be held in Lisbon) iPRES is now
inviting bids from potential conference hosts to run iPRES 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Potential hosts are invited to submit a proposal for hosting any of those three editions of iPRES.; however, with iPRES being committed to cover the
digital preservation community as widely as possible, we will aim at giving
preference to the following regions for the annual editions, as follows, if all
other qualitative aspects of two competing bids are equal:
- 2014: preferably Asia/Oceania
- 2015: preferably the Americas
- 2016: preferably Europe and/or Africa
Potential hosts are invited to indicate, whether they would prefer to see their bid limited to a specific year, or whether they would, in
principle, be willing to host iPRES in any or two of the three years for which the call is currently open.
Bids should follow the guidelines outlined in the "Guidelines for preparing
bids to host iPRES".
The deadline for submitting bids is 12:00 P.M. GMT, October 16, 2011, by email to rauber@ifs.tuwien.ac.at, indicating "iPRES hosting bid" in the subject line.
For questions, please contact the chair of the iPRES Steering Group at
rauber@ifs.tuwien.ac.at.
For comments and suggestions on the iPRES series, please contact
ipres-info@ipres-conference.org.
I N T H E N E W S
September/October 2011
Digital Science supports open data project FigShare
September 8, 2011 — "Digital Science, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., welcomes Mark Hahnel to the Research Tools team as Product Development Manager for FigShare, a service that enables researchers to publish and share their data. In this new role, Mark will continue development of FigShare as an independent project, supported by Digital Science."
"Mark began work on FigShare while he was a PhD student at Imperial College, frustrated with the duplication and waste in research due to inadequate data openness and visibility. FigShare allows researchers to publish their data in a citable, searchable and sharable manner. The data can come in the form of individual figures, datasets or video files and users are encouraged to share their negative data and unpublished results too. All data is persistently stored online under the most liberal Creative Commons licence, waiving copyright where possible. This allows scientists to access and share the information from anywhere in the world with minimal friction...."
"...Digital Science's relationship with FigShare represents the first of its kind in the company's history: a community-based, open science project that will retain its autonomy whilst receiving support from the division."
For more information, please see the full press release.
You Provide the Search Term, Green Energy Portal Provides the Concepts
New Semantic Search Technology plus Auto-complete Gets You a More Direct Line to Rich Scientific Content
September 7, 2011 — "When you type 'solar power' into a search box, are you looking for information on solar farms, solar radiation, or solar electric power plants? The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Green Energy portal can now map your keyword query to scientific concepts. This semantic technique, called 'keyword to concept mapping,' is applied to your search behind the scenes and helps hone your search for more efficient knowledge access and discovery."
"At DOE Green Energy, you will now receive results that allow you to explore more narrow concepts, related concepts, or even broader concepts. DOE Green Energy affords you the use of the familiar and simple search box — yet still provides the benefits of an advanced search technology to help get to the information you need."
"...DOE Green Energy results come from valuable sources of DOE research and development (R&D) information. These sources include DOE databases of technical reports and patents, filtered for green energy related subjects such as solar, hydro, geothermal, and wind energy, energy storage, tidal and wave power, direct energy conversion, nuclear fuel cycle, biomass and synthetic fuels, and much more."
"...The DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), within the Office of Science, provides these green energy results from R&D conducted throughout the Department and by DOE-funded awards at universities. The content consists of over 34,500 technical reports and approximately 1,300 patents from R&D projects representing an investment of several billion dollars. The DOE Green Energy site organizes this green energy R&D and makes it freely accessible to researchers, scientists, educators, students and the public."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Day of Digital Archives, Oct. 6th, 2011
September 6, 2011 announcement from Gretchen Gueguen, University of Virginia Library — "The Day of Digital Archives is an initiative to raise awareness of digital archives among both users and managers. On this day, archivists, digital humanists, programmers, or anyone else creating, using, or managing digital archives are asked to devote some of their social media output (i.e. tweets, blog posts, youtube videos, etc.) to describing their work with digital archives. By collectively documenting what we do, we will be answering questions like: What are digital archives? Who uses them? How are they created and managed? Why are they important? This year's Day of Digital Archives will be held on October 6th and entries will be gathered at the Day of Digital Archives blog."
"What is meant by 'digital archives' well, primarily archives, repositories, content management systems and other initiatives that collect or manage born-digital material. These initiatives don't have to primarily collect born-digital materials...in fact they are more likely to only have some born-digital content as part of their mandate. Or, maybe they don't really have a 'mandate' at all...maybe someone will contribute their thoughts about managing their own personal digital content or social media presence. The thread ties the participants together is that they collect, manage, preserve, develop, use, think about or otherwise love born-digital content."
"Do you create, manage, or use digital archives? Would you like to participate? Well then, drop me a line at gretchen[.]gueguen[@]gmail[.]com with your contact info and I'll keep you up to date!"
Millsap, Stripling seek 2013-14 ALA presidency
September 2, 2011 — "Gina J. Millsap and Barbara K. Stripling are the candidates for the 2013-14 presidency of the American Library Association (ALA)."
"Millsap is the Chief Executive Officer of the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library in Topeka, Kan. She is nationally known for presenting on cutting edge issues, including 21st century librarianship, process improvement, the use of market segmentation to grow and develop library services and the changes necessary for libraries to thrive in the 21st century...."
"...Stripling currently serves as the director of School Library Services for the New York City Department of Education; however, in January 2012 she will assume the position of assistant professor of practice at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y...."
"The American Library Association is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 61,000 members. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information."
For more information about each of the above candidates, please see the full press release.
Open bibliographic principles
September 1, 2011 announcement from Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society — "On behalf of the Open Bibliographic Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation, I would like to bring your attention to the Principles on Open Bibliographic data at http://openbiblio.net/principles/"
"The group continues to offer the opportunity, for both individuals and groups, to sign up to the principles."
Terms and conditions for orcid.org posted: unless otherwise noted, all content carries Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
August 26, 2011 — "Earlier this week we posted the Terms and Conditions for posting content to the ORCID (Open Research & Contributor ID) website and for reusing this content. Unless otherwise noted, content created and posted by ORCID on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which means that you may use and build upon the content, as long as you credit ORCID for the original creation. When you post content to this website, you also will be asked whether you are making the content available for broader use by third parties who visit the ORCID website. The default option for contributed content is a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. The ORCID service mark and logo are proprietary to ORCID, and no permission is granted to use the ORCID mark and logo. In addition, ORCID has posted third-party trademarks and service marks on its website, and nothing herein is intended to grant any rights to use such marks."
For more information, please see the ORCHID web site.
UpNext! IMLS Launches New Blog
What Works and Lessons Learned in Library and Museum Service
August 25, 2011 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS),
today announced the launch of a new blog, UpNext!"
"The primary goal of the blog is to be a relevant and engaging online
community where readers and contributors have a collaborative, open, and
transparent environment to share their views and expertise. IMLS wants
the blog to be a place where libraries, museums and their partners can
share ideas, questions, and experiences."
"Focusing on what works and lessons learned in library and museum
service, the blog will feature a wide variety of topics and discussions
for readers to explore as well as the opportunity to get to know more
about IMLS projects, initiatives and staff and to engage with thought
leaders both in and outside the museum and library communities."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Universities Band Together to Join 'Orphan Works' Project
August 24, 2011 — "Leaders at Duke, Cornell, Emory and Johns Hopkins universities jointly announced Wednesday that they would begin making the full text of thousands of 'orphan works' in their library collections digitally accessible to students, faculty and researchers at their own institutions."
"Orphan works are out-of-print books that are still subject to copyright but whose copyright holders cannot be identified or located."
"With the announcement, the four institutions formally join the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Florida in a collaborative Orphan Works Project, which aims to identify orphan works that have been scanned and archived in the HathiTrust Digital Library. HathiTrust is a partnership of more than 60 major research institutions working to share, archive and preserve their combined collections of digitized books and journals."
"...Only books that are identified as orphans through a careful process and also held in print format by the individual institutions will be accessible through the HathiTrust website, and they will only be accessible to members of their respective communities. Just as most academic libraries only allow authorized patrons to check out books from their print collections, so will online access be restricted to users who can authenticate with their university ID and password. However, if a university library is open to the public, as Duke's is, visitors will have access through library computers."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Ten-year study shows increased need for academic libraries
August 23, 2011 — "The need for libraries on college and university campuses has increased, according to a new study released by the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research and Statistics."
"In Trends in Academic Libraries, 1998 to 2008, researcher Denise M. Davis analyzes data from the Academic Library Survey administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), identifying changes in the number of academic libraries, circulation and reserve collections, interlibrary loan transactions and documents received from commercial services, public serve hours, volumes held and added, library staffing, library expenditures, electronic services and information literacy activities."
"...The report provides an informative look at how the academic libraries continue to provide valuable resources to their community through technology and increased service hours despite a loss of non-librarian staff."
"NCES, in collaboration with the academic library community, conducts a biennial survey that captures information about libraries in all degree-granting colleges and universities. Data analyzed in this report are drawn from the NCES Academic Libraries series public use data for 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008."
For more information, please see the full press release.
IMLS Director Susan Hildreth Statement on Appointment of Claudia French, New IMLS Deputy Director for Museum Programs, and Agency Reorganization
August 12, 2011 — "This is an important time in the development of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. During my term at IMLS we will be implementing the reauthorization of the Museum and Library Services Act, developing a new five year strategic plan with emphasis on performance, and responding to and planning for reduced budgets."
"In order to assure that we are able to achieve the many tasks ahead, I have reorganized our leadership team to draw on the core strengths of our current staff, to add capacity where I believe it is required and to align with the priorities of the Museum and Library Services Act."
"I am pleased to announce the appointment of Claudia French as IMLS
Deputy Director for Museum Services. Ms. French has most recently served
as Director of the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.
Marsha Semmel, who has been both Deputy Director for Museum Services and
Director of Strategic Partnerships will continue to serve in her
critical role as Director of Strategic Partnerships."
"Claudia French brings strengths in museum development and administration
as well as deep experience in the foundation and non-profit worlds. For
the last five years, she has successfully reinvigorated the exhibitions,
programs and visibility of the California Museum for History, Women and
the Arts. Originally organized as a state history museum located in
Sacramento, under her leadership and with the vision of First Lady Maria
Shriver, the museum has been transformed into a state-of-the-art venue
hosting nationally and internationally known exhibitions."
For more information, please see the full press release.
New Vocabulary Data Added to LC Authorities and Vocabularies Service
August 10, 2011 announcement from Sally McCallum, Library of Congress — "The Library of Congress is pleased to make available additional vocabularies from its Authorities and Vocabularies web service (ID.LOC.GOV), which provides access to Library of Congress standards and vocabularies as Linked Data. The new dataset is the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LC/NAF)."
"In addition, the service has been enhanced to provide separate access to the following datasets which have been a part of the LCSH dataset access:
- Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms
- Library of Congress Children's Headings"
"The LC/NAF data are published in RDF using the MADS/RDF and SKOS/RDF vocabularies, as are the other datasets. Individual concepts are accessible at the ID.LOC.GOV web service via a web browser interface or programmatically via content-negotiation. The vocabulary data are available for bulk download in MADS and SKOS RDF."
Please explore it for yourself at http://id.loc.gov.
NISO Recommended Practice on Test Modes for SUSHI Servers Issued for Trial Use
August 1, 2011 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of the recommended practice Providing a Test Mode for SUSHI Servers (NISO RP-13-201x) for a trial use period ending January 31, 2012. The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol is a NISO standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2007) that automates the retrieval of COUNTER usage statistics by libraries. The process of developing a SUSHI client requires testing against the SUSHI servers where usage data is expected to be harvested. The new Recommended Practice describes how content providers should provide access to their SUSHI Servers in a test mode so that clients can be set up easier and faster, which is of benefit to both libraries and content providers."
"The draft Recommended Practice and an online comment form are available at: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/server/. All content providers who provide COUNTER usage statistics are encouraged to implement the recommendations during the trial and provide their feedback."
For more information, please see the full press release.
OCLC Board of Trustees to engage members in process to select next president and CEO
August 1, 2011 — "The OCLC Board of Trustees will engage OCLC members in the process to select a successor to Jay Jordan, who plans to retire as OCLC President and CEO at the end of June 2012."
"Larry Alford, Chair, OCLC Board of Trustees, and Chief Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries, announced today the composition of an Executive Search Committee from the OCLC Board that will lead the process to select a new leader of the cooperative. Committee members are:
- Chair, Sandy Yee, Dean of the Wayne State University Libraries and Library and Information Science Program
- Ed Barry, President Emeritus, Oxford University Press
- Maggie Farrell, Dean of Libraries, University of Wyoming
- Bernadette Gray-Little, Chancellor, University of Kansas
- Kathleen Imhoff, Library Consultant
- David Lauer, Former President and COO, Bank One, NA
- James Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University
- Elisabeth Niggemann, Director General, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek"
"...The committee will soon form a Community Advisory Group that will involve the OCLC membership, OCLC staff and the library community at large in the process to select the next president."
For more information, please see the full press release.
UK Research Libraries Busier Than Ever
August 1, 2011 — "New figures from RLUK (Research Libraries UK Consortium) university members have challenged the tired stereotype of academic libraries as being quiet, dusty, and increasingly empty. Figures for 2009/10 (the latest for which full data are available) show that there were over 35 million visits to RLUK's 23 UK university member libraries. This represented an increase of 10% on the previous year and is the highest total since records began, with some institutions recording increases of over 20% in a single year."
"The library retains its place as a keystone in any 21st Century university's strategy for success in research and teaching. With expanding opening hours, innovative and flexible reconfiguring of space, and increased access to a variety of resources in a wide range of media, the library is an essential part of campus life."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Grant Awards Announcement: Museums for America
July 29, 2011 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today 160 awards totaling $18,777,552 matched with $32,007,711
of non-federal funds for Museums for America Program Grants. IMLS
received 481 applications requesting $53,655,280 in funds."
"'Congratulations to the Museums for America grantees. We are pleased to
support museums through investments in high-priority, high value
activities that benefit communities throughout the US,' said Susan
Hildreth, IMLS Director. 'These museums, small and large, will help to
educate and inspire the public for years to come.'"
"Click here to view the list of funded projects."
RLUK (Research Libraries UK Consortium) Develops Journal Subscription Analysis Tool
July 28, 2011 — "As budgets become tighter and journal subscription prices increase, it is imperative that libraries look to new metrics to assess value for money. This is especially true in the case of 'big deals' – large aggregations of journals from publishers sold as a single package. Some of these packages now cost RLUK members over £1million per year and account for an ever increasing proportion of library budgets. Such deals have proved attractive as they allow libraries to expand the range of titles they provide to users for a relatively small additional fee. But to date RLUK members have lacked a simple way to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these packages."
"At a recent Workshop for members, RLUK unveiled a powerful model that allows members to carefully analyse the value-for-money of publisher packages and to determine whether there would be cost savings to be made from moving back to title-by-title purchasing. The model allows each member to combine pricing information with the usage their community makes of the relevant journals. The library can then alter the combination of title-by-title subscriptions and document delivery options and compare the costs of these combinations to the cost of the big deals."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Library User Experience, SPEC Kit 322, Published by ARL
July 26, 2011 — "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Library User Experience, SPEC Kit 322, which explores recent and planned user experience activities at ARL member libraries and the impact these efforts have on helping the libraries transform to meet evolving user needs. The survey elicited examples of successful user experience activities to serve as benchmarks for libraries looking to create or expand efforts in this area. It also explored whether libraries have created positions or entire departments focused on user engagement and the user experience."
"This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents that describe user experience planning and organization, specific projects, how volunteers are recruited, the role of advisory boards, and job requirements for user experience coordinators, among others."
"The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec-322-web.pdf."
For more information, please see the full press release.
DuraSpace to Bring Cloud-Based Platform 'Direct-to-Researchers'
Grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will fund expansion of popular cloud
storage service
July 26, 2011 — "The not-for-profit DuraSpace organization announced that it will develop a hosted, cloud-based data storage and management service aimed at meeting the specific needs of working scientists and researchers. The new service, an expansion of DuraSpace's popular DuraCloud data management and archiving service, is being funded through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation."
"...Development will begin by soliciting input directly from scientists, university administrators, and other stakeholders in a workshop scheduled for the fall. Results of the workshop will help inform the first set of requirements for building a platform specific to the needs of researchers. The new service is expected to launch sometime in 2013."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Film archives showcase their collections: The European Film Gateway is online
July 26, 2011 — "After nearly three years of preparation and development, the European Film Gateway – EFG – http://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu is now online. The Internet portal to the digital collections of European film archives and cin�math�ques offers free access to currently about 400,000 digital videos, photos, film posters and text materials. By September, the number of digital items will increase to 600,000 from 16 film archives."
"...Users of the portal can search for people, for example Marlene Dietrich, but also by film title or keywords. They get an overview of related digital objects from the film archives which can be viewed directly in the portal. The portal always links back to the website of the relevant archives, and therefore also works as a search engine for selected digital holdings of European film archives."
"EFG is a component of Europeana, the platform for the cultural heritage of Europe. EFG gathers the indexing and access information, so-called "metadata", and provides it to Europeana in a structured form. By doing so, the European Film Gateway and Europeana bring together the collections of European film archives with holdings of libraries, archives and museums in Europe, and put them in a transnational and multicultural context."
For more information, please see the full press release.
NYU Libraries and Partners Developing Next-Generation Archives Management System with Grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
July 22, 2011 — "New York University has been awarded a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation to lead a partnership in developing the software that integrates
Archon and the Archivists' Toolkit (AT) into an open-source, next-generation
archives management system. The integrated product – known by the working title
ArchivesSpace – will incorporate the best features and functions of Archon and the
AT."
"The project is a collaboration among the libraries of NYU, the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Archon was developed, and the University of
California, San Diego, which developed AT in partnership with NYU."
"ArchivesSpace will capitalize on the functional strengths of AT and Archon, both
of which were released in 2006, to create a more powerful, flexible, and
resilient archives collection management and access system. By design,
ArchivesSpace will be less costly to maintain and will appeal to an even broader
segment of the archives community than either of the two existing tools."
"...ArchivesSpace will be open source, but user institutions will be asked to join a
membership support structure. Members will be encouraged to participate in the
governance of ArchivesSpace and in the prioritization of enhancements and fixes,
and will have access to helpdesk resources."
For more information, please see the full press release.
IMLS awards grant to continue ALA Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship Program
July 21, 2011 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant to the American Library Association's Office for Diversity for their project, "Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship Program: Building Change." The Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship Program seeks to recruit and prepare ethnically diverse doctoral candidates for careers in library and information science education."
"Diversifying library and information science education is critical to the preparation of future librarians, the advancement of research within the field and the sustained relevance of the profession and its practice to an increasingly diverse nation. In 2006, with funding from IMLS and in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh, the American Library Association launched the Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship Program and oversaw the recruitment of twelve doctoral candidates. Under the new project, ALA will continue its efforts and recruit doctoral candidates from ethnically diverse backgrounds and work with over twenty participating academic programs to support Fellows' education and the conferral of their degrees."
"...The Office for Diversity will utilize the first year of the program to promote LIS doctoral study as a viable option for individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and build the potential applicant pool for the program. Applications for Spectrum Doctoral Fellowships are expected to be made available in the Fall of 2012 for students planning to begin doctoral study in Fall of 2013."
"For more information on the Spectrum Scholarship Program, including the Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship Program, please visit http://www.ala.org/spectrum."
The full press release can be found here.
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