Monday, March 31, 2008

RLG Partner Copyright Investigation Summary Report

RLG Partner Copyright Investigation Summary Report
is now available. This report summarizes interviews conducted between August and September 2007 with staff from eight partner institutions. Interviewees shared information about how and why institutions investigate and collect copyright evidence, both for mass digitization
projects and for items in special collections. This report is one of the deliverables of the Contribute to the Development of a Registry of Copyright Evidence Project
<http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/infrastructures/newservice/copyright.htm> that is part of our Create New Structures and Service Areas
<http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/infrastructures/newservice/default.htm> work agenda program.


Participating partner institutions and staff include:

Cornell University
Peter Hirtle

Emory University
Lisa Macklin

New York Public Library
Tom Lisanti

Rutgers University
Grace Agnew

Stanford University
Mimi Calter

University of California, Los Angeles
Angela Riggio

University of Michigan
Judy Aronheim

University of Texas at Austin
Dennis Dillon

RLG Programs is grateful to these partner institutions and staff for participating in this project and sharing their knowledge and perspectives to form the basis for this report.

You may link directly to the report here:
www.oclc.org/programs/publications/2008-01.pdf

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Minor earthquake shakes Newport Beach area


By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 27, 2008
A magnitude 3.1 earthquake was recorded near Newport Beach Thursday evening, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The temblor struck at 9:28 p.m. at an underground depth of 4.7 miles.

The earthquake's force was recorded as far as the Los Angeles Civic Center 36 miles away.

There were no reports of injuries.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Paper on Building Digital Libraries for Scientific Data

A 2006 paper presented at the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, "Building Digital Libraries for Scientific Data: An exploratory study of data practices in habitat ecology" appears to address many of the issues that were discussed at
the meeting in Philadelphia in January. Attitudes of scientists toward sharing data, presentability, cleanup and publishing are all addressed in this piece which is available at:

SUGGESTED CITATION:
C L. Borgman, Jillian C. Wallis, and Noel Enyedy, "Building Digital Libraries for Scientific Data: An Exploratory Study of Data Practices in Habitat Ecology" (September 1, 2006). UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Publications. Paper ecdl06.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/gseis/pubs/ecdl06


Tuesday, March 18, 2008

ARL study of new model publications

Invitation to participate in ARL Study of Emerging New Model Publications
About the study
ARL is conducting a study of new kinds of scholarly works, generally described as new-model publications. A field study will begin April 1 that will engage librarian volunteers in interviewing faculty members at their institutions to learn about new model publications that are currently in use by scholars and researchers. ARL has contracted with Ithaka to manage the field study and to write a final report based on an analysis of the collected works. The field study will be open to participation by individual librarians and to libraries that wish to engage all of their liaison librarians. Participating librarians are asked to commit to conducting a minimum of one faculty member interview between April 1, 2008 and June 1, 2008. The database of collected works will be made available as a publicly accessible web resource with the release of the study’s final report, but during the field study phase only participants will have access to the information gathered.
Who can participate
Participation in the study is open to institutions and individuals. Libraries can partner in the field study by committing to participation by all of their liaison librarians. Individual librarians can volunteer to join the field study team. Three institutions are already partnering in the field study activities and are assisting in the development of training and support mechanisms for the field study team members. The University of British Columbia, Cornell University, and the University of Washington are playing this role.

Participation is also open to individual librarians willing to make the commitment to interview at least one faculty member at their institution. Participation is not limited to librarians at ARL member libraries. While a special invitation to participate is extended to alumni of the Institute on Scholarly Communication, any interested librarian can participate as an interviewer. Institute alumni should feel free to extend an invitation to participate to colleagues.

Why participate
Many librarians are initiating conversations with faculty members from their user communities to build understanding of their scholarly communication practices. Data collection for the field study provides a reason to initiate a conversation and a structure for a positive discussion of change in scholarly communication. The field study conversation can focus just on the study question or can be part of a more extended conversation covering additional topics of local concern. The time commitment is quite brief; field study participants can choose to speak to several faculty members or only one. The exploratory conversation can occur in a half hour or less while the other time commitments are for learning about the interview guide and entering any information gathered into a database of new model publications. The database will include only basic data from the interview or information that can be collected by inspecting the web publication.
How to register
To register as an individual field study team member complete the registration form at https://www.formspring.com/forms/?248527-DZgG1MAKU9.

Libraries wishing to partner in the field study should contact Karla Hahn karla@arl.org.
What is involved

To participate as a field study librarian, individuals will

· View an instructional webcast and otherwise familiarize themselves with the study interview guide.

· Interview at least one faculty member to identify new model publications in her/his research specialty.

· Enter basic information on new model publications identified by faculty members into the study’s database.

------

Karla Hahn, Director

Office of Scholarly Communications

Association of Research Libraries

21 Dupont Circle

Washington, D.C. 20036

voice: 202-296-2296

fax: 202-872-0884

email: karla@arl.org

Monday, March 17, 2008

SCOAP3 webcast held at UC Berkeley (Feb.29, 2008)

The webcast of the recent SCOAP3 focal meeting hosted at Berkeley -- including Ivy Anderson's excellent overview of the UC SCOAP3 review process -- is now available online in three venues. For those of you who could not attend, here are the links.

Berkeley webcast:
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=23003

iTunesU Library System Playlist:
https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/BrowsePrivately/berkeley.edu.78024696.01412145225

youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F932157403977087

Background on SOAP3

At the IATUL Conference, being held in Stockholm this week, Rudiger Voss, CERN, outlined in his keynote speech a practical approach for a transition of High Energy Physics scientific publishing to Open Access.

This approach is centred on the conversion of existing high-quality journals to Open Access by re-directing subscriptions through a sponsoring consortium of High Energy Physics funding agencies and libraries worldwide.

Those of you who are not present at the conference this week and wish to access additional details on this initiative, named SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), can consult a detailed document which is available at http://cern.ch/oa/Scoap3WPReport.pdf.

Currently the emerging consortium are building alliances around the world to create a sustainable framework for financing high-quality open access particle physics journals. We have all reasons to believe that the publishers will be ready to take the titles that will be selected to be converted to OA out of the current subscription packages reducing the prices accordingly. Libraries, or consortia of libraries, interested in exploring the possibility of redirecting their current subscription costs towards covering peer-review costs for their academics within an Open Access schema are therefore invited to contact Jens.Vigen@cern.ch for further discussion.

A successful transition to Open Access can only take place with a strong involvement from the libraries around the world serving our global research community.

With kind regards,

Jens Vigen - CERN Library, Head - Jens.Vigen@cern.ch
Salvatore Mele - CERN Open Access Section, Head - Salvatore.Mele@cern.ch

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Monkey Mail

Monk-E-Mail

From CareerBuilder.com you can choose a chimpanzee avatar, their headgear, glasses, stuff and locations. You can enter your own text to speech. Worth exploring.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Top Ten Facebook Apps for Librarians | JSTOR Facebook App

Top Ten Facebook Apps for Librarians | JSTOR Facebook App

Ellyssa Kroski, a Reference Librarian at Columbia University Butler library, recently posted a Three-Part series on the “Top Ten Facebook Apps for Librarians” on her iLibrarian blog

TheTopTenLibApps include:

*** JSTOR Search - Enables to the user to search the JSTOR full-text scholarly journal archive in the humanities, social science, and other fields. NOTE: Users may need to sign in from their library website before attempting to use the Facebook JSTOR Search

_AppAvailableAt_ [ http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2412474777&b ]

---------------------------------------------

LibGuides Librarian - Allows one to display Springshare LibGuides subject guides within your Facebook profile as well as to search your local OPAC.
-----------------------------------------------
Librarian -This virtual librarian service provides links to books, scholarly sources, open access reference resources, and a community-based ‘Ask A Librarian” service.

_AppAvailableAt_:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=4ba85acd652971a6a8633d919bb9a05a
------------------------------------------------
UIUC Library Search - An App that allows the user to search the OPAC of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign or request live assistance from a librarian. The App also permit the user to search the library’s journal article databases (but not retrieve full-text items
unless university-affiliated)
Other OPAC Apps: University of Michigan library catalog, , Ryerson University Library catalog, Hennepin County Library catalog.

_AppAvailableAt_
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=ad4ccedf62d21a09bf140d1533102b20&pwstdfy=fa0565221a24b781f7ef3d42d04a9c30
------------------------------------------------------
The Three-Part Series is Available At
[1] http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/top-ten-facebook-apps-for-librarians-part-one/
[2] http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/top-ten-facebook-apps-for-librarians-part-two/
[3] http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/top-ten-facebook-apps-for-librarians-part-three/

If you have other unlisted favorite Facebook library-related apps, let Ellyssa know [ http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/about/ ]

Google Books Now in Melvyl Test Version

The CDL (California Digital Library) is excited to announce that records for Google mass digitized books are now visible in a test copy of the Melvyl Catalog:
http://melvyl-test.cdlib.org:8164/F

This was accomplished by means of Google Book Search API (application programming interface), a "hook" which extends the ability for UC students, faculty and staff to find the mass digitized content in a search tool they are very familiar with - the Melvyl Catalog. With this API, the UC community will be able to find not only what UC has digitized, but they will also have access to content digitized by any other Google partner.

Please see the attached press release and UC Talking Points for further information about this project, as well as the Google Book Search Blog:
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/preview-books-anywhere-with-new-google.html

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The best solutions to 10 of the world's biggest challenges, Copenhagen, May, 2008

Copenhagen Consensus 2008

The best solutions to 10 of the world's biggest challenges, Copenhagen, May, 2008

More than 55 international economists, including 4 Nobel Laureates, will assess more than 50 solutions and assemble a list of priorities for everyone involved in solving the world's biggest challenges.

The aim of CC08 is to take stock of the world's biggest problems and the most promising solutions and provide informed input into the policy making process surrounding efforts to deal with these problems. CC08 will revisit issues from CC04, as well as take up new issues in the light of improved knowledge of the state of the world since 2004. CC08 will provide an in-depth assessment of the costs and benefits of solutions to some of the biggest challenges the world is facing today.

Copenhagen Consensus Center

The Ten Challenges

ARL White Paper on NIH Open Access mandate

With NIH Compliance Date Approaching, SPARC, ARL Issue White Paper

On April 7, 2008, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be required to deposit their articles in the PubMed Central online archive, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after publication in a journal. To encourage and ensure compliance, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and Science Commons have released Complying with the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy: Copyright Considerations and Options http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/nih/copyright.html. The free paper is designed to help "provosts, research administrators, and campus counsel understand their institution's copyright-related obligations and options under the new Congressionally mandated policy."

The analysis was prepared by Michael Carroll, attorney, copyright expert, and faculty member at Villanova University law school. Carroll has long been involved with copyright issues as a member of the Creative Commons board and an advisor to Science Commons. In 2004 he worked with SPARC to develop the SPARC Author Addendum http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/ designed to help authors properly reserve rights to deposit their works in open online archives. Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC, said the paper is a "great tool to help administrators jumpstart the local planning process."

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

IU libraries publish faculty e-journal

Indiana University Library Publishes First Faculty E-Journal
In what librarians are calling "a turning point in scholarly publishing" the Indiana University (IU) library this week published the university’s first "faculty-generated" open access electronic journal, the Museum Anthropology Review. The journal, edited by Jason Baird Jackson, associate professor in IU’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, was chartered last February as part of a pilot project within the library’s larger scholarly communication initiative, IUScholarWorks, designed to offer faculty "a low-cost solution to the administrative and publishing functions."
In an editorial on the journal’s web site, Jackson detailed—and praised—the library’s contributions. "Almost as soon as we began publishing last February, we started partnering with remarkable, visionary librarians," Jackson wrote...

Karla Malenfant (American Library Association)