I N   B R I E F

July/August 2012
Table of Contents

Harnessing the Cognitive Surplus of the Nation by Crowdsourcing

Contributed by:
Bonita Wilson
Corporation for National Research InitiativesOrganization
Reston, Virginia USA
bwilson [at] cnri.reston.va.us

The life and work of Jean Arnot (1903-1995) is commemorated each year in Australia on the anniversary of her birthday. Jean was a forward thinking librarian who not only excelled in her profession but also campaigned for 30 years to get equal pay for women. This was achieved in 1961 in Australia. An annual essay writing competition for female librarians on the future of librarianship started on Jean's 90^th birthday. The winner of the competition is awarded the Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship by the New South Wales Governor at New South Wales Parliament.

This year, Rose Holley, National Archives of Australia, won the competition for 'an outstanding essay on the future of librarianship'. The judges said her 'essay was energetic and passionate, and argued cogently for [her] position, which obviously has significant import for the Library profession'.

Holley accepted the award from Her Excellency Marie Bashir at Parliament in May.

Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, Governor of New South Wales,
and Rose Holley, Librarian, Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship 2012 awardee.

Ms. Holley wrote about her research and practical experience in crowd sourcing and social engagement over the last four years. She built on a previous crowdsourcing article she had written for D-Lib Magazine in 2010. Her winning essay is called 'Harnessing the cognitive surplus of the nation: new opportunities for libraries in a time of change'.

The essay focuses on the idea of cognitive surplus and how and why libraries urgently need to tap into this opportunity. 'Cognitive surplus' is a phrase coined by the author and academic Clay Shirky (whose mother is a librarian). It means the free time that people have in which they could be creative or use their brain. Many people spend their 'cognitive surplus' time by watching hours of television, gaming, surfing the internet or reading. However, due to the increased availability of the internet in households, the rise of social media technology, and the desire of people to be creative rather than consumptive, there is now a major change in use of cognitive surplus time. People want to produce and share just as much if not more than consume. Due to new forms of online collaboration and participation, people are seeking out and becoming very productive in online social endeavours. Clay Shirky hypothesizes in his books that there is huge potential for creative human endeavour if the billions of hours that people watch TV are channelled into useful causes instead.

Holley writes that libraries can and should harness this cognitive surplus to save themselves at a time where the very existence and value of libraries is not only being questioned but is at great risk. She provides four powerful examples of libraries harnessing cognitive surplus:

2008. The National Library of Australia set an international example of how to harness the cognitive surplus of the nation with the Australian Newspapers service. The community is able to improve the computer generated text in digitised historic newspapers by a 'text correction' facility, thereby improving the search results in the service. 40,000 people have corrected 52 million lines of text.

2010. The National Library of Finland was the second library to implement community newspaper text correction in their Digitalkoot crowdsourcing project. So far 50,000 people have corrected the text to 99% accuracy.

2011. The New York Public Library released 'What's on the menu?' a crowdsourcing project where the community transcribe text from digitised menus held in the library's collection. So far 800,000 dishes have been transcribed from 12,000 menus, making them full-text searchable.

2012. The Bodleian Library released the fourth large scale library crowdsourcing project this year. 'What's the score?' is a project where the community can help describe the vast music score collection at Oxford.

Holley believes that if the library profession leverages its expertise with technology and collaboratively harnesses the cognitive surplus of the community, libraries will be able to develop, expand, and open their collections. They will be able to enhance and preserve the social history of the nation while meeting the ever-changing needs of the library society. By engaging the community, libraries can develop projects of equal scale, quality and output of commercial endeavours.

The survival of libraries is under threat and Holley posits that gaining the help of the community with their ideas, knowledge, skills, time and money is the answer. To remain relevant and valued in society libraries must look at their collections and communities in new, imaginative and open ways. They have the technology to do whatever they want. They must change the library culture and thinking to embrace new opportunities such as crowdsourcing on a mass scale. Holley continues, the value and relevance of libraries is two-fold. It lies in both its collections and in the community that creates, uses, and values these collections. She urges librarians: "Let us demonstrate this and our place in it. Let us hold onto our original values of open access to all, and do whatever it takes to remain core, valued and relevant in society. I would encourage you to read the full essay, pass it onto your colleagues, think about this idea deeply and work out how you can harness cognitive surplus to help your profession and organisation in the immediate future."

Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA) receives implementation funding from the Mellon Foundation

Contributed by:
Dot Porter
Associate Director for Digital Library Content & Services
Indiana University Bloomington
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
dot.porter [at] gmail.com

We are very pleased to announce that, following a one-year planning grant, the Mellon Foundation has awarded the Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance a three-year implementation grant.

The Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA) serves to organize a federation of digital projects in the field of medieval studies and to develop recommendations for the social and technical infrastructure to support this federation. Medieval studies is ripe for such an initiative, having a long tradition of digital projects dating back to the 1940s. Moreover, the interest in digital issues amongst medievalists is not limited to a select few, as each year witnesses a growth in the number of digital medieval studies projects and an increase in the number of papers and sessions with a digital focus at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies. Although there is some structured support for medieval scholars who develop digital projects (e.g., the Digital Medievalist Community of Practice and the Medieval Academy of America's Digital Initiatives Advisory Board), until now there has been no attempt to create either social or technological infrastructures that can be shared amongst the broad community of medievalists. The MESA project intends to remedy this, taking advantage of existing communities and initiatives both within medieval studies and in other disciplines that have already made strides in project interoperability and infrastructure development.

MESA serves two related purposes: to develop a federation of digital medieval resources, and to provide recommendations for technological and scholarly standards for electronic scholarship in all areas of medieval studies. MESA is a federation both in the sense of a community – of scholars, librarians, and students developing and using digital resources – and as a website that federates disparate collections and projects. The website will provide a search across various types of resources spanning the disciplines, geographical areas, and temporal spans that make up the Middle Ages, in the broadest sense.

MESA joins with Nineteenth Century Scholarship Online, 18thConnect, and the Renaissance English Knowledgebase (REKn) project as a node of the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC). ARC is a developing organization, centered at Texas A&M University and directed by Dr. Laura Mandell, which serves to provide support for the constituent nodes. This support includes coordination, sustainability, and scalability by providing shared infrastructure – including development of the COLLEX platform and maintenance of a shared catalog including metadata from objects represented in all the nodes.

During the second half of 2012, we will be loading the first group of 12 resources into the MESA website. The site will launch with those resources in late 2012. At the same time we will be developing our procedures and policies for including other resources in the site. We have already started compiling a list of projects and collections that we would like to include in MESA in the second phase of the project (after the initial launch). If you have a project that you would like to see included in MESA, please contact us.

MESA Co-Directors are Dot Porter, Indiana University Bloomington and Timothy Stinson, North Carolina State University. For more information see the Press Release from NCSU and the MESA federation blog.

Content from European National and Research Libraries Now Available through New Portal for Researchers

Contributed by:
Susan Reilly
LIBER Project Officer
susan.reilly [at] KB.nl

The European Library recently launched its new portal at the LIBER Annual Conference in Tartu.

The portal (shown below), designed to meet the specific needs of researchers in the digital humanities and social sciences, puts a critical mass of bibliographic records, digital objects and full-text materials at the fingertips of digital humanities and social sciences researchers. It also gives them a suite of new research tools with which to analyse this content.

Material will come from leading national, research and university libraries across Europe.

Major improvements include:

• Expanded digital collections, with full searchable text.
• Improved access to and quality of metadata, including the opportunity to inspect the raw metadata record of individual objects and eventual access to large datasets for research purposes.
• Significant collections of objects, focused around academic disciplines and CERIF subject headings. This makes research possible across a corpus of objects, which are linked by a common theme or timeframe.
• Pan-European collection development in cooperation with the national, research and university libraries of Europe. This is an extension of our current virtual exhibitions (www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/), which display content from a range of sources across Europe.
• Timelines showing the occurrence of a particular search term through the centuries.
• APIs so that the content of the database can be analysed and displayed in contexts outside of our own website.
• Direct export of records to popular reference management services such as Mendeley and Zotero.

Pioneer infrastructure

The foundation stones of this new resource are being laid through The European Library's role as coordinator of the EU-funded Europeana Libraries project . The project involves partnerships with three major library associations – LIBER, CERL and CENL. This represents a pioneering step towards the establishment of an infrastructure that can incorporate the combined resources of Europe's research libraries.

In future, it is expected that the aggregation model established by Europeana Libraries will make it possible for hundreds of research libraries to join this new network.

According to Susan Reilly, LIBER Project Officer, 'In terms of collaboration, the Europeana Libraries project has been an important step for European research libraries. The development of the new portal for researchers is a major positive result of this collaboration. It will be fundamental in exposing the vast and valuable content held within European libraries in a meaningful way to researchers worldwide.'

Massive amount of content

The European Library already holds a significant mass of content which is of direct relevance to digital humanities researchers. This includes 24 million pages of full-text content, and some 75 million bibliographic records in its centralised repository, which have been aggregated from the collections of 48 national libraries across the Council of Europe.

By the end of 2012, this total will rise to some 200 million bibliographic records and 7 million digital objects, across over 500 collections. This represents an increase in content, and also a greater number of contributing institutions.

Major advantages

The most obvious advantage of such a repository is that a wealth of scholarly material will now be available online – eliminating the need for scholars to undertake a costly physical journey to the holding institution. The online access will be free of charge, with most items being digitised under the project either in the public domain or licensed for non-commercial uses such as teaching, learning and research.

I N   T H E   N E W S

July/August 2012

A quick survey on digital libraries

July 4, 2012 announcement from Matthew Brack, Digitisation Support Officer, Wellcome Library — "...I am doing some research on behalf of the Wellcome Trust and King's College London to find out about the current state of digital collections offered by research libraries, and their provision for the future."

"This study has been designed so that anyone can take part, no matter what their experience and I would be very grateful for your input. I've tried to keep this survey short and I'm confident that it can be completed in about five minutes!"

"If you're interested in the issues raised here, please do pass on the link. The survey closes August 31, 2012."

The survey is located at http://survey.euro.confirmit.com/wix/p992862460.aspx.

EU award for Europeana cultural hackers shows potential of open data

July 2, 2012 — "Europeana will today showcase award-winning apps that demonstrate the social and commercial possibilities of open cultural data and its potential to touch everyday lives, at the European Commission's Digital Agenda Assembly (http://e2.ma/click/jndmb/n6erwb/fovpx)."

"The creativity of Europe's technological talent is highlighted in apps that:

• bring items from some of Europe's finest cultural collections to your local coffee shop, library or school;
• let you record personalised audio guides to your favourite objects on Europeana and share them online via your mobile phone; and
• display your search results visually on a digital pinboard."

"The applications were developed as part of a series of competitive hackathons in Poland, Latvia and Belgium. Hack4Europe! 2012, run by Europeana with local partners, was launched by EU Vice-President and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda for Europe Neelie Kroes on May 9 in Brussels."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Science.gov Mobile makes a second Top Ten list

Posted July 2, 2012 — "The Science.gov Mobile application has made another Top Ten list. In mid-June the application was named to InformationWeek's Ten Handy Mobile Apps From Uncle Sam and then one week later to the Top Ten in Best Federal Apps by Government Computer News (GCN). The Science.gov Mobile application is the only interagency app to make both lists."

For more information, please see the list of OSTI press releases.

Task Force Open Access Agreements and Licenses started

June 27, 2012 — "The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is pleased to announce the formation of the Open Access Agreements and Licenses Task Force. The Task Force, which brings together members from the open access and content licensing communities, aims to review and assess the growing number of open access agreements being implemented between publishers and research institutions."

"The Task Force aims to have preliminary recommendations available for October 2012. More information about the Task Force is available on the COAR website: http://www.coar-repositories.org/working-groups/repository-content/licenses-task-force."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Launch of the Europeana Newspapers project

June 26, 2012 — "A group of 17 European partner institutions have joined forces in the "Europeana Newspapers" project to, over the next 3 years, provide more than 18 million newspaper pages to the online service Europeana http://www.europeana.eu/. Europeana is a single access point to millions of digitised books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records sourced from throughout Europe."

"The Europeana Newspapers project is funded under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Program 2007-2013 of the European Commission with the aim of aggregation and refinement of newspaper content through The European Library."

"Each library participating in the project will distribute digitised newspapers and full-text via Europeana. The project aims to make the newspaper content directly accessible for users through a special interface within the content browser. This will be integrated into the Europeana portal and will allow queries of phrases or single words within the newspapers' texts. This goes far beyond the standard libraries catalogue search functions which usually allow the searching by date or title only."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Scientific Reports offers authors Creative Commons Attribution license

June 26, 2012 — "Scientific Reports is introducing the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license as an option for authors. The CC-BY license will be available to authors submitting articles on or after 1 July 2012, in addition to the two non-commercial Creative Commons licenses currently on offer. Scientific Reports published its 457th article on June 14, its first birthday, making it Nature Publishing Group's fastest growing journal. All content is open access and is freely accessible to all, immediately on publication."

"'There has been much debate about commercial reuse of open access articles' says Jason Wilde, Business Development Director, NPG. 'We believe in offering our authors choice. And we now know some authors will want to choose CCBY, not least as a result of new funder mandates. Unlike Nature Communications and our other titles, Scientific Reports does not have established revenues from commercial reprints or licensing, making it an economically viable proposition'..."

"...Scientific Reports is committed to publishing technically sound research articles quickly and efficiently. From June 2011 to April 2012, the average time from submission to publication of the final article, including peer review, is 99 days. By comparison, over the same time period, the average time from submission to publication in PLoS One is 155 days. In BioMed Central's BMC series journals the average time from submission to the publication of an accepted article in its provisional form is 168 days."

For more information, please see the full press release.

IMLS Announces Grant to Identify Library E-Book Strategies

June 22, 2012 — "Today the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced a $99,957 grant to OCLC for 'The Big Shift: Advancing Public Library Participation in Our Digital Future.' The purpose of the grant is to more fully understand the challenges that U.S. public libraries face in providing e-book content to borrowers...."

"...The rapid increase in e-book ownership in the past year alone has created an even greater demand for e-content at U.S. public libraries. In fact the number of public libraries that offer e-books has doubled in the past five years—to 76 percent from 38 percent, according to a new American Library Association report. Thirty-nine percent of libraries also offer e-readers for check-out to their patrons...."

"...The purpose of the IMLS award is to ensure that all Americans continue to have access to commercially produced content through their local public libraries even as formats change."

For more information, please see the full press release.

U.S. libraries strive to provide innovative technology services despite budget cuts

June 21, 2012 — "Strategic vision and careful management have helped U.S. public libraries weather the storm of the Great Recession, supporting their role as a lifeline to the technology resources and training essential to full participation in the nation's economy. However, a new report underscores the competing concerns that face America's libraries: cumulative budget cuts that threaten access to libraries and services, increasing demand for technology training and the chronic presence of the digital divide."

"More Americans than ever turn to their libraries for access to essential technology services, with 62 percent of libraries reporting that they are the only provider of free computer and Internet access in their community. More than 60 percent of libraries report increased public use of computers and Wi-Fi over the past year."

"These findings are among the highlights of the 2012 Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study, produced by the American Library Association (ALA) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation...."

"...Conducted by the ALA and the Information Policy & Access Center at the University of Maryland, this year's study builds on the largest study of Internet connectivity in public libraries that began in 1994. These findings serves as an annual 'state of the library' report on the technology resources and funding that enables free public access to these resources. The study can be found online at http://www.ala.org/plinternetfunding."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Library Announces New Services at ALA Conference

June 20, 2012 — "Starting in July, the Library's Cataloging in Publication (CIP) Program will expand its scope to include electronic books. This moves into production a pilot project begun in October 2011, whereby the Library has provided pre-publication CIP metadata for titles that are published simultaneously in print and electronic format to four participating publishers (RAND Corporation, the University Press of Mississippi, Wiley – including Wiley imprint Jossey-Bass – and the World Bank). After the launch in July, the Cataloging in Publication Program will invite additional publishers to participate. This new initiative enables the Library of Congress to provide quality metadata for use by the international library community for the growing number of electronic books that are published simultaneously with the print book."

"Since July 1971, the Library's CIP program has served the nation's libraries by cataloging, in advance of publication, books widely acquired by the nation's libraries. Instead of individual libraries cataloging the same work repeatedly, the work is cataloged once, and thousands of libraries benefit. As CIP moves into the world of e-books, libraries throughout the United States will benefit from being able to use high-quality records that have been created according to the highest cataloging standards."

"The Library's Preservation Directorate has announced the release of version 7.0 of the Advanced Bindery Library Exchange (ABLE) software, a web-based software product that automates preparation for monographs and serials for commercial binding. The ABLE software was originally developed jointly by a group of binding vendors."

For more information, please see the full press release.

NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Recommended Practices for Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs

Interested participants from all library types, publishers, and service agencies are encouraged to contact NISO

June 20, 2012 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) voting members have approved a new project to develop recommended practices for the Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs. Many libraries have embraced DDA (also referred to as patron-driven acquisition) to present many more titles to their patrons for potential use and purchase than would ever be feasible under the traditional purchase model. If implemented correctly, DDA can make it possible to purchase only what is needed, allowing libraries to spend the same amount of money as they previously spent on monographs, but with a higher rate of use. However, this model requires libraries to develop and implement new procedures for adding titles to a 'consideration pool"\', for keeping unowned titles available for purchase for some future period, often years after publication, for providing discovery methods of titles in the pool, establishing rules on when a title gets purchased or only temporarily leased, and how potential titles are discovered, and for handling of multiple formats of a title."

"Individuals interested in participating in this working group should contact Nettie Lagace, Associate Director for Programs (nlagace@niso.org). An interest group list for this project will be available for those who would like to receive updates on the Working Group's progress and provide feedback to the group on its work. To subscribe, send an e-mail to dda-info-subscribe@list.niso.org."

For more information, please see the full press release.

IMLS Announces Grant to Support Libraries' Roles in National Broadband Adoption Efforts

June 14, 2012 — "Today the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced a $250,000 award to WebJunction to work with state libraries in Illinois, Mississippi, and West Virginia; federal policy makers; and the national nonprofit Connect2Compete to help national digital literacy efforts effectively work with libraries to plan for and deliver digital literacy training. The grant will identify model approaches for partnerships with libraries to meet public demand for training...."

"...During the past year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced major commitments from the private sector, foundations, and individuals to work with Connect2Compete, a national nonprofit organization with an ambitious goal to 'harness digital opportunity for all Americans.'"

"FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski joined Hildreth in today's announcement saying, 'I applaud Director Hildreth and IMLS for taking steps to help Connect2Compete bridge the digital literacy and broadband adoption gap in the United States. The new grant announced today will help libraries test innovative ideas to support digital literacy programs where the data show a real return on investment. For millions of Americans, libraries are the only places they can get help to go online. For millions more, libraries are an important complement to at-home connectivity, and they remain a trusted resource in communities.'"

For more information, please see the full press release.

Grant Awards Announcement: FY 12 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program

June 14, 2012 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced 32 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian (LB21) grants totaling $10,356,498. Recipients are matching these awards with $6,650,021in non-federal funds. IMLS received 106 LB21 applications this year, requesting a total of $37,815,498."

"'The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program continues to support the professional development and education of librarians,' said IMLS Director Susan Hildreth. 'This is especially important now as libraries continue to change to better meet the needs of their users. The list of projects funded by this program just this year demonstrates the myriad ways in which they do that. From Geographic Information Systems and early childhood literacy, to preservation of the cultural record and data analysis, to e-government and information literacy of college students, this year's grant recipients are ensuring that the skills of their staffs keep up with advances in technology.'"

"Click here to view the list of funded projects."

For more information, please see the full press release.

IMLS Announces Grant to Support Libraries' Roles in National Broadband Adoption Efforts

June 14, 2012 — "Today the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced a $250,000 award to WebJunction to work with state libraries in Illinois, Mississippi, and West Virginia; federal policy makers; and the national nonprofit Connect2Compete to help national digital literacy efforts effectively work with libraries to plan for and deliver digital literacy training. The grant will identify model approaches for partnerships with libraries to meet public demand for training."

"'The fact that one third of Americans lack broadband at home is a rallying call to action that has engaged policy makers, researchers, public officials, nonprofits, and the private sector,' said IMLS Director Susan Hildreth. 'We know that one of the significant barriers to broadband adoption is digital literacy, and we know that U.S. libraries are the nation's de facto digital literacy corps. The National Broadband Plan recognized the role of libraries as "critical to building the digital proficiency skills of their communities."'"

"During the past year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced major commitments from the private sector, foundations, and individuals to work with Connect2Compete, a national nonprofit organization with an ambitious goal to "harness digital opportunity for all Americans.""

For more information, please see the full press release.

NISO Begins Process of National Standardization of the 3M Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP)

June 7, 2012 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) voting members have approved a new project to formalize the 3M Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP) as an American National Standard. Introduced in 1993, the SIP protocol provides a mechanism for Integrated Library Systems (ILS) applications and self-service devices to communicate seamlessly to perform self-service transactions. This protocol quickly became a de facto standard around the world, and remains the primary protocol to integrate ILS and self-service devices. Since the protocol's inception, 3M has continued to produce updated versions of it-most recently version 3.0 in late 2011. A NISO Working Group will now shepherd SIP 3.0 through the standardization process of becoming an American National Standard...."

"...Anyone interested in participating in the working group to review SIP 3.0 and prepare it for balloting as a NISO standard should contact NISO at nisohq@niso.org. More information about the project, including the project proposal can be found on the NISO website in the SIP Workroom: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sip."

For more information, please see the full press release.

2010-11 American Library Association Annual Report underscores successes, concerns for libraries

June 5, 2012 — "The recently released 2010-11 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Report highlights the key initiatives of former ALA President Roberta Stevens, including 'Frontline Fundraising,' 'Our Authors, Our Advocates' and the 'Why I Need My Library' video contest. The report also underscores how libraries are providing essential resources for job-seekers, support for critical e-government services and programs to promote financial literacy."

"Among the report's highlights is a 2011 survey that shows how U.S. public libraries continue to expand as technology centers for communities, providing essential resources for job-seekers and support for critical e-government services. In addition, as the demand for e-books increases, libraries are the go-to source for free downloads. However, budget cuts have forced libraries nationwide to reduce operating hours and access to services, just when resources are most needed."

"Other highlights include successful efforts to secure legislation that strengthens libraries. ALA's Office of Government Relations worked with Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) to help secure a change to Federal Emergency Management Agency policy that will allow libraries to be eligible for temporary relocation during major disasters and emergencies under the FEMA Public Assistance Program. Prior to the policy change, libraries were specifically excluded from the list of eligible public facilities"

For more information, please see the full press release.

NISO Publishes Updated Recommended Practice on SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding

Revision expands use of SERU beyond e-journals

June 4, 2012 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a new edition of the recommended practice SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (NISO RP-7-2012). The SERU Recommended Practice offers a mechanism that can be used as an alternative to a license agreement by expressing commonly shared understandings between content providers and libraries. These understandings include such things as the definition of authorized users, expectations for privacy and confidentiality, and online performance and service provisions. The 2012 updated version of SERU recognizes both the importance of making SERU more flexible for those who want to expand its use beyond e-journals, while acknowledging the fact that consensus for other types of e-resource transactions are not as well-established as they are for e-journals...."

"...The SERU Recommended Practice, the SERU Registry, and additional helpful resources are available from the SERU workroom webpage on the NISO website: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/seru/."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Call for Nominations: 2013 National Medal for Museum and Library Service

June 1, 2012 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is accepting nominations for the 2013 National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation's highest honor for exemplary service by these institutions. Museums and libraries that would like to be considered for the National Medal should complete the nomination form by October 15, 2012."

"The National Medal honors museums and libraries that make extraordinary civic, educational, economic, environmental, and social contributions. Public or private nonprofit museums, including art, history, science and technology, children's, and natural history museums; historic houses, nature centers, zoos, and botanical gardens; and all types of nonprofit libraries, including public, school, academic, research, and archival, are eligible to receive this honor. The winners are honored at a National Medal award ceremony held in Washington, D.C."

"For more information and to access the nomination form, please go to http://www.imls.gov/applicants/detail.aspx?GrantId=13. A complete application will include a five-page, single-spaced narrative; financial statements for the past two fiscal years; and up to three letters of support. These nominating materials are reviewed by members of the National Museum and Library Services Board, a presidentially appointed policy advisory board of IMLS. Based on their recommendations, the IMLS Director selects the final winners."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Texas and Illinois Libraries Honored For Exemplary Service to Blind and Disabled Readers

May 31, 2012 — "The National Library Service (NLS) for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), part of the Library of Congress, will present awards to libraries in Texas and Illinois for outstanding service to blind and disabled readers."

"NLS began distributing digital talking-book machines (DTBMs) to replace cassette machines in 2009. Texas was one of eight libraries that helped NLS test digital books and playback equipment before production was implemented for the entire network. In 2011, the program's staff made BARD support and training a top priority."

"NLS created the Network Library Award to recognize outstanding accomplishments of libraries serving blind and disabled individuals across the country and in U.S. territories. A committee of librarians and consumer organization representatives chose finalists from among the nominated libraries based on mission support (defined by the American Library Association Revised Standards and Guidelines for Service), creativity and innovation in providing service, and record of reader satisfaction. The four NLS network regional conference chairs recommended the final selections to the NLS director."

"NLS administers the braille and digital talking-book program, a free library service available to U.S. residents and American citizens living abroad whose low vision, blindness, or disability makes reading a regular printed page difficult. Through its national network of regional libraries, NLS mails books and magazines in digital audio and braille formats, as well as digital audio equipment, directly to enrollees at no cost. Selected materials are also available online for download, and music instructional materials are available in large print, braille, and recorded formats."

For more information, please see the full press release.

National Archives Awards $2.9 Million in Grants for Documentary Editing and Archival Projects

May 24, 2012 — "Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero today awarded 31 grants totaling $2.9 million for historical records projects in 18 states and the District of Columbia. The National Archives grants program is carried out through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)...."

"...The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) supports projects to facilitate the use of historical records held by archives and other repositories and to assure their long-term preservation. The Archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero, is the Chairman of the Commission. Kathleen Williams is its Executive Director. The NHPRC is the sole federal funding agency whose only focus is the documentary heritage of the United States. Established in 1934, it has awarded grants for preserving, publishing, and providing access to vital historical documents."

For more information, please see the full press release.

New ALA report explores challenges of equitable access to digital content

May 23, 2012 — "The American Library Association (ALA) today released a new report examining critical issues underlying equitable access to digital content through our nation's libraries. In the report, titled E-content: The Digital Dialogue, authors explore an unprecedented and splintered landscape in which several major publishers refuse to sell e-books to libraries; proprietary platforms fragment our cultural record; and reader privacy is endangered...."

"...The report, published as a supplement to American Libraries magazine, explores various licensing models and the state of librarian-publisher relations. Additionally, the report provides an update on the ALA-wide effort to promote access to digital content (co-chaired by Robert Wolven, associate university librarian at Columbia University, and Sari Feldman, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library). The effort includes meeting with publishers, distributors and other important stakeholders; championing public advocacy, and writing position papers that advance practical business models without compromising library values...."

"...'This report reflects both the here and now, and what is to come down the digital road,' said Alan Inouye, director of the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy, and editor of the publication."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Medical Heritage Library Awarded NEH Grant for Digitization of Historical Medical Journals

May 21, 2012 — "The National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world's largest medical library and a component of the National Institutes of Health, is among the Medical Heritage Library (MHL) (www.medicalheritage.org) member libraries participating in a project to digitize an estimated 6,000 volumes from 200 historical American medical journal titles published between 1797 and 1923."

"Funding for the digitization of these journals from the collections of Columbia, Harvard and Yale Universities and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia is made available through a two-year grant awarded March 2012 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to Open Knowledge Commons (OKC) (www.knowledgecommons.org). NLM and other MHL collaborators not directly involved in the digitization will assist the effort by providing journal volumes that the four participants do not hold. The digitized journals will join the more than 33,000 monographs, serials, pamphlets, and films currently available in the MHL. The digitized journals will be made freely available to researchers through the Medical Heritage Library collection in the Internet Archive (http://archive.org/details/medicalheritagelibrary)."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Program for Cooperative Cataloging at Library of Congress Launches RDA Cataloger Training

May 17, 2012 — "The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Secretariat staffed by the Library of Congress has launched a free, comprehensive and authoritative web-based training series for catalogers making the transition to the new Resource Description and Access (RDA) protocol."

"'RDA for NACO Catalogers' on the Library's Cataloger's Learning Workshop website is a self-paced, interactive series of training modules designed for Name Authorities Cooperative Program (NACO) authorities catalogers. The series, now available at http://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/courses/rda_naco/, will also be available through the Library's iTunesU channel."

"The modules, developed by the PCC Secretariat with assistance of PCC members and Library of Congress multimedia staff, includes videos, demonstrations, quizzes and exercises, and live 'real-time' webinars that will be facilitated by PCC RDA catalogers."

For more information, please see the full press release.

PREMIS version 2.2 released

May 16, 2012 announcement from Rebecca S. Guenther, Chair, PREMIS Editorial Committee — "The PREMIS Editorial Committee is pleased to announce the release of PREMIS version 2.2. Changes in this version are a result of requests to amplify rights information and includes the following changes:

"Rights entity
Changes to Data Dictionary and schema:

1. Addition of copyrightDocumentationIdentifier, licenseDocumentationIdentifier and statuteDocumentationIdentifier (with type, value and role) to allow for linking to documentation supporting rights
2. Addition of otherRightsInformation to allow for rights statements that have a different basis than copyright, license or statute, e.g. institutional policy. It has the following subunits: otherRightsDocumentationIdentifier, otherRIghtsBasis, otherRightsApplicableDates and otherRightsNote
3. Addition of applicable dates to copyrightInformation, licenseInformation and statuteInformation
4. Addition of termOfRestriction to allow expressing restrictions, e.g. embargos. The previous version only had termOfGrant."

"Schema only changes include:

• Country code definition added to recommend use of a standard country code for copyrightJurisdiction and statuteJurisdiction
• Addition of the pattern "OPEN" to be used for dates in the list of patterns allowed by EDTF (Extended Date Time Format)"

"The new schema is at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/premis.xsd. Changes in the data dictionary are documented at: http://www.loc.gov/premis/Rights-PREMIS-review-20120404.doc. These changes will be incorporated into the PREMIS Data Dictionary shortly."

Stripling wins 2013-14 ALA presidency

May 4, 2012 — "Barbara K. Stripling, assistant professor of practice at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., has been elected to the 2013-14 presidency of the American Library Association (ALA)."

"As ALA president, Stripling will be the chief elected officer for the oldest and largest library organization in the world. The ALA has a membership of more than 60,000 librarians, library trustees and library supporters. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information."

"Stripling will become president-elect in June 2012, and will assume the ALA presidency in June 2013, following the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. She will serve a one-year term as president and a one-year term as immediate past president."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Copyright © 2012 Corporation for National Research Initiatives