I N   B R I E F

January/February 2014
Table of Contents

NISO Altmetrics Project: Standardizing New Alternative Assessment Metrics

Contributed by:
Todd Carpenter
Executive Director
National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
http://www.niso.org/contact/

As long as there have been authors, there have been people interested in quantifying the impact or performance of the work those authors have created. There are a variety of metrics that were used as proxies of impact long before our modern scholarly communication's ecosystem developed. These measures included things like individual sales, a publication's circulation, the reaction of luminaries, and the support of institutions through researcher promotion and tenure decisions. Scholarly impact began focusing intently on bibliometrics and citation study in the late 1950s with Eugene Garfield's work and the subsequent launch of the Journal Impact Factor (IF), now owned by Thomson Reuters. The challenges with the Impact Factor are well documented and include self-citation, time delay in producing data, and the fact that it is a publication-level metric, not a metric of the author or the article.

As content distribution for scholarship has moved toward online distribution and a greater focus on the individual article, a variety of new metrics have developed and become commonplace in our community. Download counts, through COUNTER statistics, became one important metric, but again, these are primarily journal metrics, not individual item metrics. Additionally, download counting is subject to the same potential challenges as the IF, such as gaming and a focus on popularity over substance.

Most traditional metrics focus on journals and their content, but they leave out a wide variety of non-traditional content such as datasets, software, visualization tools, or performance recordings, which are as, or even more, important than the journal article in some disciplines.

Many new forms of scholarly communication are gaining traction and researchers frequently turn to new forums for scholarship discussion. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Mendeley, Figshare, various repositories, and many other start-ups are rapidly becoming places where researchers share their work and discuss the work of others in their fields. These forums are generating a great deal of ancillary data about use and impact. However, as many service providers have grown to serve this assessment need, there is a great deal of inconsistency about the data gathered and how it compares across these different services. Scott Chamberlain, in his Information Standards Quarterly article, 'Consuming Article-Level Metrics: Observations and Lessons', identified the challenges of comparing metrics from a variety of service providers, since their source data isn't always equivalent.

Into this environment, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has launched an initiative to determine the need for, priorities of, scope, and definition of standards and best practices related to new forms of scholarly assessment, often called Altmetrics. With the generous funding of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NISO began a two-phase initiative in 2013. The first phase is a series of in-person and virtual conversations to brainstorm and prioritize altmetrics issues that could be addressed with standards or best practices. In the second phase, working groups will be established to develop the identified standards or recommended practices.

The first of three in-person meetings was held in San Francisco, CA in October 2013; a second was held in Washington, DC in December 2013; and a third is planned for Philadelphia on January 23, 2014, prior to the American Library Association Midwinter meeting. The meetings follow a common agenda of lightning talks on existing projects, brainstorming activities, and small group break-outs to discuss the proposed ideas. In the first meeting, break-outs focused on definitions, quality and data science, and business and use cases. In the second meeting, groups addressed definitions, stakeholder values, existing research on assessment, quality versus quantity, granularity of measurement, assessment and discovery, tools and community engagement, future proofing solutions, and identity management.

Written notes, summaries of the breakout discussions, and video recordings of each meeting are available from the project webpage at: http://www.niso.org/topics/tl/altmetrics_initiative/.

The ideas generated from the three meetings will be reported out in a white paper that NISO will distribute in the spring of 2014. Following that, a community prioritization effort will take place, where all interested parties can provide feedback and "vote" for which projects should be given the highest priority and which are most achievable. The NISO Business Information Topic Committees will vet the ideas prioritized by the community review process during the summer of 2014. The three to six project ideas that receive the greatest support will then be advanced as new work items, contingent on NISO Voting Member approval. Some projects may be advanced as joint initiatives in partnership with other organizations.

As evidenced by the interest and participation in the first two meetings, as well as the feedback that NISO has received since initiating this project, the time is right to begin promulgating standards or best practices related to these new research assessment metrics. While no one system will ever be perfect, the goal of the NISO initiative is to provide a common set of definitions and methodologies for deriving base data from which valid conclusions can be drawn. When it comes to decisions about people's funding, promotion, and tenure, we must ensure that the data used in those decisions is as high quality as possible.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Linked Data Project

Contributed by:
Silvia Southwick, Digital Collections Metadata Librarian, and
Cory Lampert, Head, Digital Collections
University Libraries, Digital Collections Department
University of Nevada Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
silvia.southwick [at] unlv.edu

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Linked Data Project provides a case study of the complex topic of linked open data; from emerging concept in librarianship to practical outcome. The project began with a small academic library study group created in April 2012 and comprised of professionals from various functional areas. The initial goal was to better understand Linked Data concepts and potential benefits to the Libraries. In October 2012 after reviewing literature, attending presentations, and discussing concepts, UNLV Digital Collections designed an exploratory project with several goals:

• Study the feasibility of developing a common process that would allow the transformation of metadata records from digital collections into linked data preserving their original expressivity and richness
• Publish data from our collections in the Linked Open Data Cloud to improve discoverability and connections with other related data sets on the Web

The project was led by two librarians who created several presentations to introduce the topic beyond the study group and communicate the impact of linked data to library colleagues. These sessions helped gain the support of the UNLV Libraries administration, and a graduate assistant was hired in summer 2013 to assist with technical implementation for the period of one academic year. By this point the authors had evaluated several technologies and conducted initial tests, which indicated that OpenRefine (aka Google Refine) would be helpful in cleaning metadata and generating linked data (RDF files).

By the end of Fall 2013 the team achieved several important milestones:

• Adoption of the Europeana Data Model to guide the transformation of digital collections metadata into Linked Open Data
• Use of OpenRefine software to prepare and convert metadata into triples (the transformation required the OpenRefine RDF extension)
• Use of OpenLink Virtuoso Universal Server to store, publish and visualize Linked Data
• Transformation of a sample set of digital collection metadata records into Linked Data

Various lessons were learned during the development of the project. The most critical include:

• While linked data is a highly complex topic, with several technical aspects, it is possible for digital collections librarians to create linked open data today using a few simple, free technology tools.
• The process of preparing metadata for transformation is the project phase that requires the most effort.
• The creation, management, and use/re-use of URIs for unique things (e.g., unique artifacts from local Special Collections) should follow well-defined rules and connect our data with other data sets.

Future plans include developing a user interface capable of displaying our data as well as related data from other data sets; and to make our digital collections linked data publically available through such an interface and through a SPARQL endpoint. The team has already reported on this project via several channels (presentations, publications, workshops) and also plans to conduct cost/benefit analysis of creating linked data in the final project phase.

More information can be found at:
http://www.library.unlv.edu/linked-data
OpenRefine: http://openrefine.org/
Virtuoso: http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/
Europeana Data Model: http://pro.europeana.eu/edm-documentation.

Purposeful Gaming and BHL

Contributed by:
Trish Rose-Sandler
Data Project Coordinator, Center for Biodiversity Informatics
Missouri Botanical Garden
St Louis Missouri, USA
trish-rose.sandler [at] mobot.org

Purposeful gaming and BHL: engaging the public in improving and enhancing access to digital texts is a project whose goal is to significantly improve access to digital texts by evaluating gaming as a tool for crowdsourcing text correction of content from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This project tackles a major challenge for digital libraries: full-text searching of texts is significantly hampered by poor output from Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. Historic literature has proven to be particularly problematic because of its tendency to have varying fonts, typesetting, and layouts that make it difficult to accurately render.

The BHL is an international consortium of the world's leading natural history libraries that have collaborated to digitize the public domain literature documenting the world's biological diversity. Today BHL is the single largest, open-licensed source of biodiversity literature made available both through the Internet Archive and through a customized portal at http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/. BHL is a perfect testbed for investigating alternate solutions to the generation of digital outputs both because it is a significantly large corpus (over 42 million pages of scanned texts) and because most of its content is historic literature (the majority of BHL content was published between 1450s-1900s). OCR is also largely ineffective on hand-written texts such as field notebooks and multi-columned layouts such as those found in horticultural catalogs. Both are growing content types in the BHL. BHL's diversity of digital texts will help demonstrate if particular content types are more suitable to correction via gaming than others. Project outcomes will demonstrate whether or not digital games are a successful tool for analyzing and improving digital outputs from OCR and transcription activities, because large numbers of users can be harnessed quickly and efficiently to focus on the review and correction of particularly problematic words by being presented the task as a game.

This project was made possible in part by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (grant #LG-05-13-0352-13). It runs from December 1, 2013 through November 30, 2015 and will be conducted by the Missouri Botanical Garden's Center for Biodiversity Informatics (CBI) in partnership with Harvard University, Cornell University, and the New York Botanical Garden. For more details and to follow the progress of the project, see http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Purposeful+Gaming.

LinkedUp Vidi Competition: Linking Web Data for Education

Contributed by:
Eelco Herder, L3S Research Center (Germany)
Marieke Guy, Open Knowledge Foundation (UK)
Stefan Dietze, L3S Research Center (Germany), and
Mathieu d'Aquin, KMI, Open University (UK)
herder [at] l3s.de

For the Vidi Competition, the LinkedUp project is looking for innovative and robust prototypes and tools that use open data and linked data for education. The submission deadline is 14 February 2014, Valentine's Day.

'Linked Data' is a set of well-defined principles for sharing of large datasets on the Web. The huge success and widespread adoption of the Linked Data approach has led to the availability of vast amounts of public data such as DBpedia, WordNet RDF or the data.gov.uk initiative.

We are looking for Web applications, apps, analysis toolkits, documented APIs or other tools that connect, exploit or analyse open or linked data and that address real educational needs. Your tool still may contain some bugs, as long as it has a stable set of features and you have some proof that it can be deployed on a realistic scale.

Apart from an open track, the Vidi competition also has two challenging focused tracks.

• Simplificator calls for applications easing access to complex information by summarizing them in a simpler form.
• Pathfinder requires applications easing access to recommendation and guidance when choosing appropriate curriculum of courses and related resources.

The attractive prize money is not the only reason for entering the competition: it is also a great opportunity to work with a large, documented repository of linked datasets and to profit from our dedicated support. You can showcase your ideas, solutions and talent to a wide community of researchers and practitioners, and increase your network. If you need even more incentives for entering, then take a look at how happy our Veni prize winners were at the competition award ceremony at OKCon in September 2013.

To give you a headstart, we have collected and catalogued a variety of data related to education. The LinkedUp Data Catalogue contains linked data from – amongst others – universities, open educational repositories and government data in relation to education.

Anyone can submit, from researchers and students to developers and businesses. So start designing! For more information and contact details, visit http://linkedup-challenge.org/.

Report on the 19th edition of ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN

Contributed by:
Alasdair MacKinnon
Editor with the OEB News Team
ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN
Berlin, Germany
info [at] online-educa.com

The 19th edition of ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN took place from 4 - 6 December 2013 at the Hotel InterContinental in Berlin. Bringing together 2,195 delegates from 91 different countries, 318 speakers and 81 exhibitors, ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN had as its theme "Learning Moves", which explored the wide variety of surprising ways in which changes in learning are also changing us.

The Opening Plenary on the 5th brought together three very different speakers to examine the ideas and trends behind this theme from their own viewpoints. After a welcome message from European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, in which the "Opening up Education" initiative was introduced, Prof. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Dr Jeff Borden and Gianpiero Petriglieri talked on three crucial strands in modern e-learning: big data, neuroscientific research and leadership.

It was to Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that the attention turned at the evening's debate – a conference format introduced by OEB and hugely popular ever since. The motion, "This house believes MOOCs are doomed", inspired lively and uncompromising speeches from the four panelists. The battle between proponents of and objectors to the MOOC movement drew frank opinions from audience members too, who took to the floor at the end to comment on the future of MOOCs themselves. The motion was ultimately defeated. See the entire debate here.

In addition to the plenaries and debate, over a hundred parallel sessions addressed many other aspects of the multi-faceted theme of ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2013. It was in these sessions, and in the thronging exhibition area, that the true variety of the conference was demonstrated: with speakers from all over the world coming to showcase, for example, their experiences with the use of virtual worlds, their latest research on student engagement, or their own innovations in the field of e-learning.

This made the 2013 the conference one of the most diverse and fascinating ever held – truly the place for people to get together and create the future of online learning. For more information on the outcomes of the conference, read the post-conference report available here.

ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN will be back for its 20^th anniversary edition from 3 - 5 December 2014. Save the date!

I N   T H E   N E W S

ACM Launches New E-Books Series Covering Entire Spectrum of Computer Science Topics

Editor-In-Chief Özsu Leads Distinguished Editorial Board for Books Series Featuring High-Quality, Contemporary Computing Research

January 9, 2014 — "ACM has initiated a new publishing venture aimed at filling the need for outstanding computer science books. This new series, called ACM Books, complements ACM's current journals and conference publishing activities. It is targeted at the growing computing community, including authors, researchers, practitioners, educators, and students. In particular, the series provides authors with a new outlet for their scholarly work, giving them the ability to produce a deeper dive into their research than is possible through short form conference or journal articles. ACM Books, to start publication this year, will cover the entire range of topics that comprise the computer science field, including its history and social impact."

"Books in the series will be 'born digital' inside the ACM Digital Library (DL), its primary content delivery platform, and will be available for download on tablets, mobile phones, and other mobile devices. They will also be accessible in print-on-demand format from the most heavily used e-book retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and from ACM partner Morgan & Claypool, an independent publisher of scientific and technical works...."

"...Editor-in-Chief of ACM Books M. Tamer Özsu heads an international Editorial Board of computing luminaries from a wide range of institutions of higher learning. Each editor represents a major subject area in computer science and software engineering, and is responsible for inviting and evaluating manuscript proposals submitted to the series. Authors interested in submitting proposals will find publishing process, policy, and promotion details at http://books.acm.org/authors."

For more information please see the ACM web site.

NISO Releases Draft Open Access and Metadata Indicators Recommended Practice for Comments

January 6, 2014 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is seeking comments on the draft recommended practice Open Access Metadata and Indicators (NISO RP-22-201x). Launched in January 2013, the NISO Open Access Metadata and Indicators Working Group was chartered to develop protocols and mechanisms for transmitting the access status of scholarly works, specifically to indicate whether a specific work is openly accessible (i.e., free-to-read by any user who can get to the work over the internet) and what re-use rights might be available. This draft recommended practice proposes the adoption of two core pieces of metadata and associated tags: <free_to_read> and <license_ref>. The first tag would indicate that the work is freely accessible during the specified timeframe (if applicable). The second tag would contain a reference to a URI that carries the license terms specifying how a work may be used...."

"...The draft recommended practice is open for public comment through February 4, 2014. To download the draft or submit online comments, visit the Open Access Metadata and Indicators webpage at: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/oami/."

For more information please see the full press release.

Leading a Strategic Assessment Program in a Research Library: ARL to Offer Seminar for New Assessment Professionals

December 20, 2013 — "[The Association of Research Libraries] is introducing a new educational opportunity for academic and research librarians: 'Leading a Strategic Assessment Program in a Research Library: An ARL Seminar for Recently Appointed Assessment Professionals.' This two-day, in-person seminar is designed for librarians and coordinators who are new to the roles and responsibilities of assessment. Assessment professionals from non-ARL libraries are welcome to register. The seminar will be supplemented with pre- and post-workshop webcasts and independent learning activities, plus connection with a network of experienced colleagues who will provide ongoing support. The seminar will be held at the ARL offices in Washington, DC, on March 20-21, 2014. Webcasts will be held in March and May."

"This multimodal workshop experience will introduce participants to the practice-based framework of organizational performance assessment in libraries. As an orientation to the roles and responsibilities of assessment librarians/coordinators, coverage will include the context and rationale for library assessment and an overview of methodologies, tools, and techniques for library-wide assessment approaches. (The training will not provide in-depth instruction in a single tool, nor will it focus on a single functional or service area of the library.) The seminar will concentrate on making library assessment strategic, diverse, and effective in demonstrating library impact and value, and on the importance of aligning with the university mission and initiatives."

For more information please see the full press release.

In Memory of Digital Preservation Pioneer: Steve Puglia

December 18, 2013 posting by Mike Ashenfelder, Library of Congress — "Steven Puglia, manager of Digital Conversion Services at the Library of Congress, died peacefully on December 10, 2013 after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. Puglia had a profound effect on his colleagues here in Washington and worldwide, and there is a great outpouring of grief and appreciation in the wake of his passing."

"The testimony embedded in this tribute demonstrates that Steve's passing left the cultural heritage, conservation and preservation communities stunned, somber and affectionate. Their words attest to his character, his influence and the significance of his work. He was a rare combination of subject-matter expert and gifted, masterful teacher, who captivated and inspired audiences."

"'Generous' is a word colleagues consistently use to describe Puglia — generous with his time, energy, advice and expertise. He was a pleasure to be around, the kind of colleague you want in the trenches with you — compassionate, kind and brilliant, with a wry sense of humor...."

"...Colleagues declare that Puglia was a key figure in setting standards and guidelines. They report that he led the digital-preservation profession forward and he made critical contributions to the cultural heritage community. They praise his foresight and his broad comprehension of technology, archives, library science, digital imaging and digital preservation, all tempered by his practicality. And they all agree that the impact of his work will resonate for a long time."

The above is just a brief excerpt from a long article, please see the full posting for more information about Puglia's career and contributions.

Library Management of Disciplinary Repositories, SPEC Kit 338, Published by ARL

December 17, 2013 — "ARL has released Library Management of Disciplinary Repositories, SPEC Kit 338, which examines the ways in which research libraries are involved in the administration of disciplinary repositories. This SPEC Kit explores the disciplinary scope of the repository, collection policies, funding models, assessment practices, and staffing, among other information."

"The SPEC Kit presents case studies of 12 disciplinary repositories that are managed entirely or in part by a library and includes examples of web pages for each repository that describe the repository content, features, policies, organizational structure, and how to submit resources."

The Library Management of Disciplinary Repositories, SPEC Kit 338, is available for purchase in electronic and print formats. For more information please see the full press release.

ALA receives grant to advance library-led community engagement

Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports Libraries Transforming Communities initiative

December 17, 2013 — "The American Library Association (ALA) announced today that it has received a grant of $1.5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund a two-year project, Libraries Transforming Communities."

"The Libraries Transforming Communities project addresses a critical need of the field by developing and distributing new tools, resources and support for librarians to engage with their communities in new ways; strengthens librarians as community leaders and change agents; and strengthens ALA's capacity as a lead library support entity. The two-year project includes in-person training and coaching of librarians and ALA staff and member leaders to support the transformation of library services and the expanding role of libraries as community conveners. ALA will also offer conference-based and distance-learning opportunities. Free digital resources will be accessible through the project website http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/libraries-transforming-communities."

"During the grant period, ALA will work with the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation to provide training opportunities and learning resources. Libraries interested in the in-person training and coaching will be recruited through an open application process. To receive an alert when the application period for Libraries Transforming Communities opens, interested libraries should sign up for the ALA Public Programs Office's PPO Grants electronic discussion list at http://www.ala.org/offices/ppo/about/ppolist."

For more information please see the full press release.

Emerald teams with the Gates Foundation's Global Libraries initiative to promote research

December 11, 2013 — "Emerald Group Publishing set up an informal arrangement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries initiative, which aims to provide public access to information through computers in public libraries. Under this arrangement, Emerald publishes the findings of the Global Libraries initiative on Impact Planning and Assessment and makes them freely accessible nine months post official publication. Global Libraries initiative are now hosting easy to read summaries of the eleven articles published in a special issue of Emerald's journal Performance Measurement and Metrics (Volume 13, Issue 1). The summaries, dedicated to Impact Planning and Assessment, can also be used as a teaching resource and have been published for the benefit of information professionals and practitioners around the world."

"Five of the summaries and a glossary of Impact Planning and Assessment acronyms are now available on the WebJunction website and will also be hosted on a selection of authors' websites featured in the special issue of Performance Measurement and Metrics."

"See the WebJunction website at
http://webjunction.org/documents/webjunction/impact-planning-assessment-worldwide.html."

For more information please see the full press release.

CALL for bids to host the TPDL Conference in 2015 and 2016

December 10, 2013 announcement by Christos Papatheodorou, Chair of the TPDL Executive Committee — "The Steering Committee of the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) invites persons and organizations to submit a bid for hosting the conference in 2015 and 2016."

"The International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) has been the leading scientific forum on digital libraries since 1997. Until 2011 the conference was named European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL). Information about the previous ECDL/TPDL conferences can be found at http://www.tpdl.eu/past-events-and-conferences, while in 2014 a joint event will be co-organized by the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) and the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) in London, UK, September, 8-12, 2014."

"Guidelines on submitting a bid can be found at: http://www.tpdl.eu/bid."

"Bids must be submitted by Friday, April 25th 2014 by email to the Executive Board of the Steering Committee Christos Papatheodorou (papatheodor@ionio.gr), Stefan Gradman (stefan.gradmann@kuleuven.be) and Trond Aalberg (trondaal@idi.ntnu.no). Interested parties can contact the Executive Board of the Steering Committee to receive further details."

European Commission President Barroso in 'call for action' on innovation

December 5, 2013 — "The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, today (Thursday) announced a 'call for action' for EU countries to promote innovation. He also confirmed that the European Commission will provide more support for open resources in education. Speaking at the opening session of ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2013, Europe's leading conference on technology-assisted learning, President Barroso said that the European Commission's new initiative 'Opening Up Education' is 'a call for action for member states of the EU and their educational institutions to revisit their strategies and educational models to become promoters of innovation.'"

"He said that: 'The European Commission is, on its side, taking a number of initiatives to support member states' educational institutions, like ensuring that educational materials furthered through the Erasmus-plus programme become publicly accessible through open licenses.'"

"He described the Commission's initiative on 'Opening Up Education' as 'an important milestone to raise attention and support for reforms in education which tap the potential of technology and open education resources.'"

For more information please see a copy of the full press release.

Digital Preservation Pioneer: Gary Marchionini

December 3, 2013 posting by Mike Ashenfelder, Library of Congress — "In 1971, Gary Marchionini had an epiphany about educational technology when he found himself competing with teletype machines for his students' attention. Marchionini was teaching mathematics at a suburban Detroit junior high school the year that the school acquired four new teletype machines. The machines were networked to a computer, so a user could type something into a teletype and the teletype would transmit it to the computer for processing."

"The school teletypes accessed 'drill and practice' programs. The paper-based teletype would print a math problem, a student would type in the answer, wait patiently for the response over the slow, primitive network and eventually the teletype would print out, 'Good' (if it was correct). 'The thing was noisy,' said Marchionini. 'But the kids still wanted to leave my math classroom to go do this in the closet. There was something about this clickety clackety paper-based terminal that attracted them."

"'Eventually I realized that there were two things going on. One was personalization; each kid was getting his own special attention. The other thing was interactivity; it was back and forth, back and forth with the kids. It was engaging. That's what sparked my interest in computer interaction as a line of research.'..."

"...Today Marchionini is dean of the UNC School of Information and Library Science and he heads its Interaction Design Laboratory. The results of Marchionini's research over the years have influenced our daily human/computer interaction in ways that we'll never know. Interfaces will continue to evolve and get refined but it is important to remember the work of people like Marchionini who did the early research and testing, labored on the prototypes and laid the foundation of effective human-computer interface design, making it possible for modern users to interact effortlessly with their devices. Professors may not get the glory and attention that their work deserves but that's not the point of being a teacher. Teachers teach. They pass their knowledge along to their students and often inspire them to create the Next Big Thing."

The above is just a brief excerpt from a long article, please see the full posting for more information about Marchioni's career and contributions.

Europeana celebrates 5 years and 30 million objects

November 26, 2013 — "This November, Europeana – Europe's digital library, archive and museum - celebrates two significant milestones – its fifth birthday and the arrival of its 30 millionth cultural object, two years ahead of the 2017 target. "

"Today Europeana brings together the online collections of 2,300 galleries, libraries, museums and archives from across Europe, through both its website and an API. This means that anyone anywhere from members of the public to those working in the creative industries can explore Europe's cultural heritage and build their own services, apps or games with it...."

"...Over the past five years, Europeana has become a driving force in the world of digital cultural heritage. The Europeana model was adopted by the Digital Public Library of America, and the organisation has become a global leader in areas such as open access. In 2012, Europeana created a watershed moment in open access when it released its entire dataset, 20 million items at the time, under a CC0 dedication, making all of its metadata freely available for use by all and reinforcing the importance of public domain for creativity."

For more information please see the full press release.

NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) Standing Committee to Replace Former Maintenance Agency

Comments and suggestions welcome for continuous maintenance of the standard

ARL Statistics 2011-2012 Published

November 25, 2013 — "ARL (Association of Research Libraries) has released the ARL Statistics 2011-2012, the latest in a series of annual publications that describe the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of ARL's 125 member libraries. Of these, 115 are university libraries (16 in Canada and 99 in the US); the remaining 10 are public, governmental, and nonprofit research libraries (1 in Canada, 9 in the US)."

"The questions and definitions in the 2011-2012 ARL Statistics survey were revised and modernized after an extensive review process led by the Task Force on Reviewing the ARL Statistics, the ARL Annual Salary Survey, and the ARL Supplementary Statistics. As a result of this revision process, the 'titles' variable now captures a count of all items across all formats, libraries now report e-books as a subset of volumes held, the expenditures section was revised to focus on whether expenditures are one-time vs. ongoing, fringe benefits expenditures are collected in separate questions, and a new section entitled 'Use of Electronic Resources' was added. The revised ARL Statistics survey also reflects the revised instructions from the US Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) regarding doctor's degrees and doctor's degree fields. Last, the subset of the main data that pertain to Special Collections expenditures and staffing was collected on a separate survey form in response to the growing interest in sharing information about Special Collections in a more systematic fashion."

ARL Statistics 2011-2012 is available for purchase in electronic or print formats. For more information please see the full press release.

ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2011-2012 Published

November 25, 2013 — "ARL (Association of Research Libraries) has released ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2011-2012, which presents data describing collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 61 health sciences libraries at ARL member institutions in the US and Canada."

The ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2011-2012 is available for purchase in electronic or print formats. For more information please see the full press release.

ARL Academic Law Library Statistics 2011-2012 Published

November 25, 2013 — "ARL (Association of Research Libraries) has released ARL Academic Law Library Statistics 2011-2012, which presents data describing collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 74 law libraries at ARL member institutions in the US and Canada."

The ARL Academic Law Library Statistics 2011-2012 is available for purchase in electronic or print formats.For more information please see the full press release.

November 19, 2013 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the replacement of the maintenance agency for the two-part American National Standard on the NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP), ANSI/NISO Z39.83, with a Standing Committee for ongoing maintenance of the standard. NCIP addresses the need for interoperability among disparate circulation, interlibrary loan, consortial borrowing, and self-service applications by standardizing the exchange of messages between and among computer-based applications. The NCIP protocol is widely supported in integrated library systems (ILS) and resource sharing software."

"'Maintenance agencies were typically established for certain types of information system standards where the community requires implementation support and the tracking and resolution of problem reports,' explains Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director for Programs. 'In 2009, NISO moved the NCIP standard to continuous maintenance, which allows for regular submittal and review of proposed changes and more frequent updating of the standard. The NCIP Implementers Group was changed at that time to a Standing Committee to oversee the continuous maintenance process. In 2013, EnvisionWare, who had been the Maintenance Agency for the standard decided to step down from that role and the NCIP Standing Committee has agreed to take over its responsibilities.'"

For more information please see the full press release.

Libraries applaud dismissal of Google Book search case

November 14, 2013 — "After eight years of litigation, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York today upheld the fair use doctrine when the court dismissed Authors Guild v. Google, a case that questioned the legality of Google's searchable book database."

"The Library Copyright Alliance – which is comprised of the American Library Association, the Association of College & Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries – welcomes Judge Denny Chin's decision to protect the search database that allows the public to search more than 20 million books. In his dismissal of the case, Judge Chin enumerated the public benefits of Google Book Search by calling the project transformative and a fair use under the copyright law."

For more information please see the full press release.

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