Presidential Task Force for Equitable Access to Electronic Content - March 28, 2011

Presidential Task Force for Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) establishes blog and forum

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Library Association (ALA) Presidential Task Force for Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) has established a blog and forum to invite commentary on the work of the Task Force and to discuss more generally libraries’ role in providing free and confidential access to e-content for the public.

The Task Force has divided its work into five categories:

• Accessibility – issues, trends, education on providing accessible content to people with disabilities
• Public Relations – building more support and awareness that libraries play an essential role in the e-content world
• Model Projects – case studies of libraries trying different models for providing accessible content
• Environmental Scan – the need to better understand the existing market and future trends that libraries should be aware of
• Licensing – exploring new and emerging business models for obtaining content from authors, publishers, and vendors

“I hope that ALA members will take advantage of this opportunity to make their voices heard about these issues that are of importance to libraries in the U.S. and throughout the world,” ALA President Roberta Stevens said.

The Task Force welcomes all to initiate discussion, ask questions, and provide feedback in the web site forums where each issue is highlighted.

Google Book Settlement at the Crossroads: What Now, What Next?

GBS at the Crossroads: What Now, What Next?
Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library - March 26, 2011

http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2011/03/26/gbs-at-the-crossroads-what-now-what-next/

Nature Publishing Index: Global Top 50 (BETA)

Nature Publishing Top 50 - March 24, 2011

http://www.natureasia.com/en/publishing-index/global/

These rankings are based on the number of papers that were published in 2010 from the institutions listed below. These rankings only include primary research papers that were published as "Articles & Letters" in Nature and/or Nature monthly research journals.

UCSD, UCSF, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UCD are on the list.

See Footnote #2:

For some organizations such as CNRS, the Max Planck Institutes and the Chinese Academy Sciences that include numerous research entities we have aggregated results. On the other hand, we have, for example, chosen not to group the 10 universities of the University of California System and have presented each of them as distinct research entities. But, if they were grouped, the System would rank number one with an aggregate corrected count of well over 100 papers.

Google Boook settlement denied - March 22, 2011

Judge Chin has denied the settlement agreement in the Google Book Search case. From the opinion:

"In the end, I conclude that the ASA is not fair, adequate, and reasonable. As the United States and other objectors have noted, may of the concerns raised in the objections would be ameliorated if the ASA were converted from an "opt-out" settlement to an "opt-in" settlement. I urge the parties to consider revising the ASA accordingly. The motion for final approval of the ASA is denied, without prejudice to renewal in the event the parties negotiate a revised settlement agreement."

The complete opinion may be found here:

The Authors Guild et al. vs. Google Inc. (05 CIV 8136) - March 22, 2011
United States District Court - Southern District of New York
http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/cases.php

The UC libraries have issued a statement on the March 22, 2011 federal court decision regarding the proposed Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement. The statement is available on UC’s Reshaping Scholarly Communication website: http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/google/settlement_decision.html

HathiTrust’s response is available at http://www.hathitrust.org/hathitrust_asa_response

Bookshelf Porn - Porn for book lovers.

Bookshelf Porn

Porn for book lovers. A photo blog collection of all the best bookshelf photos from around the world for people who *heart* bookshelves.

http://bookshelfporn.com/

Report from the SOAP Symposium - 13 January 2011, Berlin

Report from the SOAP Symposium

The SOAP project (Study of Open Access Publishing), presented its final results on January 13^th, 2011 in Berlin to an audience of publishers, librarians and funding agencies, including the European Commission.

The project, which runs from March 2009 to February 2011 describes and analyses the open access (OA) publishing landscape and provides facts and evidence allowing libraries, publishers and funding agencies to assess drivers and barriers, risks and opportunities in the transition to OA publishing.

The event showcased the main findings of the project regarding:

• the OA publishing landscape (http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSoap/soap-symposiumtalki);
• the beliefs and attitudes of researchers in respect of OA publishing (http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSoap/soap-symposiumtalkii);
• and the drivers and the barriers for the submission of articles to OA journals (http://www.slideshare.net/ProjectSoap/soap-symposiumtalkiii).

The key findings of the project are:

• The number of OA articles published in “full” or “hybrid” OA journals was around 120’000 in 2009, some 8-10% of the estimated yearly global scientific output (see also http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0506). Journals offering a “hybrid” OA option had a take-up of around 2%.
• OA journals in several disciplines (including Life Sciences, Medicine, and Earth Sciences) are of outstanding quality, and have Impact Factors in the top 1-2% of their disciplines.
• Out of some 40’000 published scholars who answered a large-scale online survey, approximately 90% are convinced that OA journals are or would be beneficial for their field. The main reasons given for this view are: benefit for the scientific community as a whole; financial issues; public good; and benefit to the individual scientist. The vast majority disagrees with the idea that OA journals are either of low quality or undermine the process of peer review.
• A separate survey of scientists who published in OA journals reveals that their drivers for this choice were the free availability of the content to readers and the quality of the journal, as well as the speed of publication and, in some cases, the fact that no fee had to be paid directly by the author.
• The main barriers encountered by 5’000 scientists who would like to publish in OA journals but did not manage to do so are funding (for 39% of them) and the lack of journals of sufficient quality in their field (for 30%)

Google Art Project - digital images and art

Google Art Project: http://www.googleartproject.com/

Google is tackling the brave new world of digital images and art.

What is the ‘Art Project’?

A unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.

• Explore museums with Street View technology: virtually move around the museum’s galleries, selecting works of art that interest you, navigate though interactive floor plans and learn more about the museum and you explore.
• Artwork View: discover featured artworks at high resolution and use the custom viewer to zoom into paintings. Expanding the info panel allows you to read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.
• Create your own collection: the ‘Create an Artwork Collection’ feature allows you to save specific views of any of the 1000+ artworks and build your own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family.

Why is there a difference between the museums in terms of the number of galleries, artworks and related information?

Google approached the museum partners without any curatorial direction, and each museum was able to chose the number of galleries, artwork and information they wanted to include, based on reasons specific to them. All content in the information panel pertaining to individual artworks was also provided by the museums.

Why are some areas or specific paintings in the museum Street View imagery blurred?

Some of the paintings and features captured with Street View were required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.

Are the images on the Art Project site copyright protected?

Yes. The high resolution imagery of artworks featured on the art project site are owned by the museums, and these images are protected by copyright laws around the world. The Street View imagery is owned by Google. All of the imagery on this site is provided for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the art project site, in the manner permitted by Google’s Terms of Service.