UC Libraries expand access to orphan works

The following press release was distributed August 24, 2011:
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26172

UC Libraries expand access to orphan works

The University of California Libraries will join with the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin and University of Florida in a groundbreaking initiative to identify and make available digital versions of "orphan works" within the holdings of the HathiTrust Digital Library.

HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. The majority of HathiTrust holdings are in-copyright works, of which an unknown but likely large proportion are so-called "orphans" - works whose owners cannot be identified or located. The University of California will join the effort to identify orphan works and publicize information about them in order to give rights holders an opportunity to claim them and make informed decisions about their availability within HathiTrust. It is likely that many people with these rights wish to make the books fully viewable.

The majority of orphans probably are just that - lacking anyone to claim ownership. If the orphan works are not claimed by rights holders, the digital volumes will be made available in full view to HathiTrust partner library patrons if their libraries hold those works in their print collections.

"This effort promises to expand access to a great number of digitized scholarly works in the UC Libraries' collections that have previously been hidden from view," said Laine Farley, executive director of the California Digital Library. "In addition to the more than 2.5 million public domain volumes already available within HathiTrust, this important project will bring a larger percentage of our digitized works directly to our students and faculty in support of their work." The text of all of the works contained within HathiTrust is fully searchable today, but currently only works in the public domain or works whose copyright holders have given explicit permission can be consulted online in their entirety. The bulk of public domain works are pre-1923 books from the U.S. and government publications.

About the University of California libraries
More than 100 libraries on the 10 University of California campuses support the university's research, learning, patient care and public service missions. Collectively, they make up the largest research/academic library in the world and, with the California Digital Library, have taken the lead to harness technology in support of innovative forms of scholarly communication. To date, the UC Libraries have digitized more than 3.5 million volumes in their collections. For more information, visit http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu.

About HathiTrust
Launched in 2008, HathiTrust has a growing membership, currently comprising more than 50 partner libraries. Over the last three years, the partners have contributed more than 9 million volumes to the digital library, digitized from their library collections through various means, including Google and Internet Archive digitization and in-house initiatives. More than 2.5 million of the contributed volumes are in the public domain and freely available on the Web. For more information, visit http://www.hathitrust.org/about.

Ten-year study shows increased need for academic libraries | American Libraries Magazine

Ten-year study shows increased need for academic libraries | American Libraries Magazine

Contact: Cathleen J. Bourdon
Office for Research & Statistics (ORS)

CHICAGO - 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.

"Trends in Academic Libraries, 1998 to 2008" is available as a PDF download at http://www.ala.org/ala/research/librarystats/academic/index.cfm.

Klout - a measure of online influence

What is Klout?


Klout measures influence online. When you create content or engage, you impact others. Klout analyzes that impact to find your Klout Score, influential topics, and your influencers. Klout is the standard for influence. Top brands such as Disney, Audi, and Turner use Klout Perks to reach and engage influencers. Over 3,000 applications and partners use Klout data to display Klout Scores, prioritize based on Score or topics, and segment users.


What is the Klout Score?
 The Klout Score measures influence on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the most influential. Klout uses data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare in order to measure:

• How many people you influence; (True Reach)
• How much you influence them; and (Amplification)
• How influential they are (Network Score)

http://klout.com/corp/faq

Crosscheck - text matching software for tracking duplication, plagarism

What is CrossCheck?
 
"CrossCheck powered by iThenticate is an initiative started by CrossRef to help its members actively engage in efforts to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. Although there are several plagiarism screening tools already available, they are not well-suited to filtering academic content simply because they haven't had access to the relevant full-text literature to screen against. CrossCheck changes this by creating and continuously growing a database of current and archival scholarly literature.

This database is one of two parts that make up the CrossCheck service. The second part is the iThenticate tool, which compares authored work against the content in the database and highlight matching or similar text for further editorial review."

Referenced in NPR broadcast:

Plagiarism Plague Hinders Chinas Scientific Ambition by Louisa Lim
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague-hinders-chinas-scientific-ambition?sc=emaf
(broadcast August 3, 2011)

Citation tracking service by Google and Microsoft Academic

Computing giants launch free science metrics

New Google and Microsoft services promise to democratize citation data.

Declan Butler 

Nature |  Published online 2 August 2011 | Nature 476, 18 (2011) | doi:10.1038/476018a

 "Mapping the landscape of science is about to get easier than ever before. Google and Microsoft are rolling out free tools that will enable researchers to analyse citation statistics, visualize research networks and track the hottest research fields.

The systems could be attractive for scientists and institutions that are unable — or unwilling — to pay for existing metrics platforms, such as Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge and Elsevier's Scopus database."

Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI)

Universities Join Together to Support Open-Access Policies

August 2, 2011, 6:00 pm

By Jennifer Howard

Wired Campus: Chronical of Higher Education

"The University of Kansas has had a faculty-approved open-access mandate in place since 2009. What it hasn’t had is a group of like-minded institutions to share ideas with about how to support such policies.

Today Kansas and 21 other universities and colleges announced that they’re joining forces to form the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions, or Coapi. The new group will “collaborate and share implementation strategies, and advocate on a national level,” it said in a statement. The group’s members so far include Arizona State, Columbia, Duke, Emory, Harvard, Oregon State, Stanford, and Trinity universities as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oberlin College. “The goal is to provide more practical advice and ideas for refining and expanding policies on our individual campuses but also to leverage those policies into action,” said Lorraine Haricombe, the dean of libraries at Kansas."

"The group will meet at the upcoming Berlin 9 open-access conference, to be held in November in Washington, to talk about which issues to focus on first. It will also discuss establishing itself as a formal membership organization and inviting other institutions to join. The group has the support of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or SPARC, a national group that advocates for open access."