I N   B R I E F

July/August 2015
Table of Contents

Yale Center for British Art's Reformation to Restoration Project: Applying IIIF Mirador Technology to Support Digital Scholarly Collaboration and Research

Contributed by
Emmanuelle Delmas-Glass
Collections Data Manager
Yale Center for British Art
Emmanuelle.delmas-glass [at] yale.edu

Cultural heritage institutions have been digitizing their collections for many years and while publishing digital assets and metadata online has had a positive impact to make them relevant in our connected world, digital collaboration between scholars has remained a difficult proposition. One of the main obstacles to efficient and scalable image-based research has been the lack of interoperability between image silos, and it is not a stretch to think that this might have hindered the progress of scholarship.

Recognizing this obstacle, the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) provides uniform access to a network of distributed image repositories. The development of the technology and the various image viewing and serving software is community based, and the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) is leading the way in terms of evolving both to support the requirements of scholarly research for museums.

IIIF Core Founding Members, June 2015.

The YCBA is currently undertaking an in-depth cataloguing project on the twenty-nine easel paintings that date from around 1560 to 1630 and comprise the earliest part of the Center's collection. An important aspect of this research is the question of authorship, which is complicated by the fact that very few artists at this time signed their work and problematized further by the distinct lack of supporting documentary records from the period. In order to overcome these difficulties the project team use a combination of traditional art-historical methods and connoisseurship with the very latest in analytical techniques from conservation science. The project investigators Jessica David, Associate Conservator of Paintings, and Edward Town, Postdoctoral Research Associate, rely heavily on the collation, organization and comparison of visual material from a variety of different collections, both public and private. In doing so, they have brought together a large number of photographs in normal light, in X-ray and infrared, as well as photomicrographs, and cross-sections of paint samples. The Mirador image viewer software has the potential to provide a sophisticated working environment where these conservation images can be brought together.

Prototype of a Mirador workspace showing a sample of images used by the Reformation to Restoration project,
including X-ray photography, photomicrographs, and cross-section.

With these images at their disposal, the project team will be well placed to reconsider longstanding attributions, and on occasion, to propose new attributions based upon careful consideration and comparison to other works by the same artist.

The YCBA is in the unique position to be able to leverage its digital resources to the fullest due to its generous implementation of Yale University's Open Access Policy. Under these terms, the YCBA makes high resolution images of works in the public domain freely available without further application, authorization, or fees due to the museum or to Yale, including for commercial purposes.

IIIF and the image viewer Mirador have proven to be efficient tools to enable a more flexible research space. For example, images from multiple repositories can be arranged and manipulated in a workspace that can be saved and shared via email. Once images are brought into the digital workspace, researchers can highlight specific areas by drawing directly on the images and annotating them. The annotation functionality is an efficient way for researchers to bring forth their arguments and document their reasoning while consulting the image-based evidences that they have brought together. Being able to record their evolving reasoning in the digital space is important for scholars, because it is a crucial element of how scholarship is tested out. Annotations could also be used to reference bibliographic citations.

While there are many annotation systems, the value added by IIIF is that it is supported by two data models that adopt the principles of Linked Open Data and the Architecture of the World Wide Web: Shared Canvas and Open Annotations.

The Yale Center for British Art is committed to using technology to make its collections as accessible as possible, and we publish our collections data to the Web in both a human and machine readable format. In order to expose the highest quality research data possible, we organize our dataset with a Linked Data ontology called the CIDOC-Conceptual Reference Model, which has been specifically designed to semantically integrate datasets from multiple institutions. The YCBA is planning on working with the IIIF community to map the RDF statements generated within the Mirador workspace, such as annotation activities, to our main collection's CIDOC-CRM RDF dataset.

Yale Center for British Art's SPARQL endpoint.

The YCBA is thrilled to be a core founding member of the newly created IIIF Consortium. We consider IIIF to be a great complement to our panoply of digital tools to support collaborative scholarship.

SoLoGlo: A Service to Collect, Archive, and Link Social, Local, and Global News

Contributed by
Peter Broadwell and Martin Klein, Digital Library Program Developers
Todd Grappone and Sharon Farb, Associate University Librarians
UCLA Library
Los Angeles, California, USA
martinklein [at] library.ucla.edu

Preserving the history of contemporary news events increasingly requires digital archiving of not only newspapers but also web resources, social media, television programs, and personal records related to an event. To address these needs, the UCLA Digital Library Program is developing SoLoGlo, a software service that offers functions for collecting and preserving social media content, proactively archiving embedded web resources, performing rapid analysis and data mining tasks, and linking related content between otherwise disjoint news collections.

The ongoing development of SoLoGlo makes all possible use of existing software frameworks, packages and archival standards, encouraging a collaborative, incremental approach to tool creation and collection development. SoLoGlo's first signal contribution to the collection of multi-perspective histories is its ability to archive proactively web resources and media that Twitter users have referenced or embedded in their messages.

Web-based news coverage is highly ephemeral, subject to rapid modification or deletion soon after publishing. Proactive archiving of these materials, particularly when they are directly referenced in social media, thus can be of great help to users of next-generation digital news collections.

This archiving provides the most value if it happens in near real-time; in the case of Twitter, this should occur as soon as a referencing tweet is captured. SoLoGlo again uses existing web archiving infrastructure to accomplish this task, utilizing two of the most popular and widely used proactive web archiving solutions available: the Internet Archive and archive.is. Both services allow for the on-demand archiving of web resources simply by submitting their URIs to the service.

IMAP launches the Archiving the Arts Web Resource

Contributed by
Kenneth Schlesinger
President, IMAP
Bronx, New York, USA

Artists working with video, audio, and digital materials face unique challenges. Conventional archival practices for electronic media don't always take into account the need for artists to maintain material for their ongoing practice – in other words, a true "working archive." It can also be difficult for an archival institution to come up with strategies for the care of unique works that may not always adhere to "best practices."

Archiving the Arts (AtA) is an ongoing project of Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP). The goal: provide media artists, and the caretakers of artists' collections, with resources to help ensure the survival of these unique works. IMAP has launched AtA to provide real-world case studies of these ideas in practice. Initial studies include portable video pioneers the Videofreex, the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive, Beryl Korot's Dachau 1974, the Goldsen Archive of New Media, Bay Area Video Coalition, and Video Data Bank. Archiving the Arts also contains an up-to-date links section for best archival practices in audiovisual art. In conjunction with the web resource, IMAP has produced events highlighting case studies such as the acclaimed Archiving the Arts Symposium in June 2015. Video documentation courtesy of the Burchfield Penney Art Center is available at https://vimeo.com/132643391.

Archiving the Arts is intended for people who understand the technology of creating video, audio, film, and digital artworks, but want to better understand how to preserve them. AtA serves artists who have created a body of media art, and want to learn more about preserving it, while keeping it useful for their current practice. AtA also serves audiovisual archivists, working with media created by artists, who want to better understand the specific needs of artist-created media.

Jeff Martin served as project director for Archiving the Arts with Andrew Ingall as producer. Carolyn Farber conducted interviews and The Glyph Media Group, Inc. provided web design. Carolyn Tennant served as co-convener for the AtA Symposium at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP) serves the caretakers of media collections by providing information resources to help preserve our cultural heritage. IMAP offers innovative solutions through information sharing, continuing education and networking opportunities. IMAP receives generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, individual donors, and funds from the Media Arts Assistance Fund, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts, Electronic Media and Film, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; administered by Wave Farm.

SAFE-PLN: An International Preservation and Access Solution

Contributed by
Anthony Leroy
Digitization & Digital Preservation Engineer
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Brussels, Belgium

Patrick Hochstenbach
Digital Architect
Ghent University Library
Ghent, Belgium

info [at] safepln.org

Collaboration for an efficient preservation solution
Five university libraries have signed a collaboration agreement on deploying a preservation solution for their open access collections of dissertations, publications and research data. Current partners are: Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada), Universität Bielefeld (Germany), Université catholique de Louvain, Universiteit Gent and Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium).

Their solution, SAFE-PLN, consists in deploying a private data grid of archives based on the award-winning open-source technology LOCKSS developed at Stanford University. [1] Concretely, each SAFE-PLN partner independently manages a preservation node: a LOCKSS box. Each collection of archives is automatically replicated in every box constituting the network, thus ensuring a broad geographical data redundancy. Automatic data integrity monitoring and comparison is performed regularly through the network via secured connections. Bit-rot and other forms of data corruption can thus be quickly detected, reported and corrected. SAFE-PLN is the third fully operational Private LOCKSS Network with a worldwide scope and it is open to new international partners.

Context and rationale
In our digital era, the production of information grows at an unbridled rate: 90% of the existing digital content in the world was produced over the last two years. Access to the information has also become easier and faster than ever. On the other hand, digital information also became much more brittle and vulnerable. A recent 2014 study from the University of British Columbia [2] estimates, that more than 80% of the research data at the origin of publications in zoology dating from the nineties is definitively lost.

Could our era be referred to as the "Digital Dark Age" in the future? Could our current lack of rigor regarding the preservation of digital data lead to a comparable situation, relatively speaking, with the treatment of written resources during the Middle Ages?

The role of University Libraries
The preservation of academic and scientific heritage is the responsibility of university libraries. Digital objects of scientific interest that need to be shared and preserved are typically stored in our institutional repositories (theses, scientific publications and research data). Multiple dangers put those objects at risk over the long-term. It is usually thought that the main risks concern hardware breakdowns, obsolescence or natural disasters. However, in practice, it is observed that data losses find mostly their origin in human errors, external or internal computer attacks, financial or organizational problems.

To mitigate these risks, the commonsense solution consists in making multiple copies. Seven copies constitute a minimum for data preservation on the very long term. To protect them from natural disasters, it is necessary to disseminate these copies throughout the world, in places considered safe from natural hazards.

The management of each individual preservation node should also be left to parties that are autonomous and independent at the financial, administrative and organizational levels. It is also necessary to check the integrity of the data regularly and, if required, to migrate the files to long term sustainability file formats.

No outsourced solution guarantees data preservation according to those criteria. Indeed, for reasons of economic profitability, third parties resort to the mutualization of technical and human resources and adopt the most profitable technology. The only guarantee offered to the customer of such third-party services is the existence of a contract stating that the supplier provides assurance to deploy (economically) "reasonable" efforts to preserve customer data and, possibly, in the event of an unfortunate loss, to grant a compensation.

Preserving digital objects for future generations is our key mission. As university libraries we have decided to fully endorse our responsibility by uniting our efforts to build a common solution for the preservation of our academic collections using open source tools. By opening the SAFE-PLN cooperation, we welcome new international partners. Please feel free to visit our website http://www.safepln.org and join us!

[1] Victoria Reich and David S.H. Rosenthal. "Distributed Digital Preservation: Private LOCKSS Networks as Business, Social, and Technical Frameworks", Library Trends, vol. 57, no. 3, Winter 2009, pp. 461-475.

[2] T. Vines et al. "The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age", Current Biology, Volume 24, Issue 1, 6 January 2014, Pages 94-97, ISSN 0960-9822.

The WiderNet Project: Bridging the Digital Divide

How to provide digital information to those without Internet access? The eGranary "Internet in a box."

Contributed by
Lisa Many
Publicity Relations Specialist
The WiderNet Project
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
lmany [at] widernet.org

Access to education in the developing world is a critical need, but is hampered in large part by a lack of infrastructure, especially Internet access. Though Internet coverage has increased exponentially in developed countries, it has lagged far behind in the developing world. There have been large scale plans by many philanthropic and commercial entities to provide Internet coverage to developing nations, but most of these projects have proven impractical or serve a narrow class or users. It will be many years before poor people in most developing countries will be part of the online community. In the meantime, The WiderNet Project is "building a bridge across the digital divide" in order to attack information poverty and encourage education, research and collaboration.

Cliff Missen, a Professor of Library Science at UNC Chapel Hill, began the WiderNet project in 2000, with the goal of bringing computing capability and substantial information resources to the five billion people who lack Internet access. The cornerstone of the project is the eGranary Digital Library, a plug-and-play server that provides instant access to 32 million documents including, video, audio, books, journals, and Web sites – all without the need for an Internet connection. And a single eGranary, connected to a wired or wireless local area network (LAN), can serve thousands of patrons at a school, library or hospital.

The eGranary is created through a process of copying web sites (with permission) and putting them on internal networks at partner institutions in developing countries. The eGranary contains resources from more than 2,000 authors and publishers including: the entire Wikipedia site, the Gutenberg Project, TED Talks, the Khan Academy, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Columbia University, Cornell University, and MIT's OpenCourseware and Blossoms.

The library has a built-in proxy and search engine that emulates the Internet experience. It also incorporates interactive Web 2.0 features in its Community Information Platform, built-in software that allows users to create and share their own content through Web site editors, Moodle, WordPress, MySQL, and PHP. Subscribers can set up unlimited Web sites on their server and use the free, built-in software to make Web pages, upload files and share local information with each other.

Since many of the users of the eGranary Digital Library are unfamiliar with using the Internet, WiderNet collaborates with librarians worldwide to locate specific resources. WiderNet also provides on-site installation and training through their Field Associates program, with associates located in many developing countries.

The WiderNet Project has installed eGranaries in schools, clinics, and universities in 48 countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and recently celebrated its 1,000^th installation, in Papua New Guinea. It's also installed in ten prisons in the U.S.

The eGranary Digital Library is designed and developed by WiderNet@UNC, a service project of the UNC School of Information and Library Science. It is distributed by the sister organization, the WiderNet Project, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that focuses on field implementations and training.

New Phase With Chips – The eGranary Pocket Library Initiative

After fifteen years of providing eGranary servers around the world, the WiderNet Project is now working to create specialized chip-size collections, with content tailored to meet local needs. These Pocket Libraries will be used on smartphones, tablets and USB keys in developing countries, where many people are purchasing devices but still can't afford to pay for an Internet connection.

Over the next two years, WiderNet will design specialized collections to fit on thumbnail-sized chips ranging from eight to 64 gigabytes. A recent special project to put Ebola information onto chips for use in east Africa provided "proof of concept" that the idea works.

WiderNet welcomes volunteers from all over the world to donate their time or resources to help reach the five billion people who still lack Internet access. Please see WiderNet for more information.

I N   T H E   N E W S

Call for Expressions of Interest in hosting the annual Open Repositories Conference, 2017

July 6, 2015 announcement by William Nixon and Elin Stangeland, for the Open Repositories Steering Committee — "The Open Repositories Steering Committee seeks Expressions of Interest from candidate host organizations for the 2017 Open Repositories Annual Conference. Proposals from all geographic areas will be given consideration."

"The Open Repositories Steering Committee is accepting Expressions of Interest (EoI) to host the OR2017 conference until August 31st, 2015. Shortlisted sites will be notified by the end of September 2015."

For more information, see the full Call for Expressions of Interest.

Researchers offered 95% accuracy on publisher open access policies

July 2, 2015 — "SHERPA/FACT, the funders and author's compliance tool, has been found to be more than 95% accurate when checking publisher policies against funder mandates for open access – significantly higher than even experienced repository managers."

"A study by the SHERPA/FACT advisory group compared the information provided by SHERPA/FACT with a control made up of members of UKCoRR (United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories), who manually checked the policies."

"Where a discrepancy was identified between the two sets of data, the advisory group made an investigation into which returned the correct result, and found that SHERPA/FACT was correct in almost all of the cases, against 57% of the time for human checking."

"For researchers, this should come as clear evidence that SHERPA/FACT can provide accurate results on journal and funder policy alignment on open access, better enabling them to decide where to publish their research outputs to meet funder requirements."

For more information, see the full press release.

Notice of Funding Opportunity: National Conservation Assessment Program

IMLS Seeks a Cooperator for National Program

June 29, 2015 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is releasing a special Notice of Funding Opportunity to fund a cooperative agreement to develop, test, and implement an affordable and accessible conservation assessment program to help small and midsize museums care for their collections. IMLS anticipates awarding a three-year cooperative agreement to one recipient, providing $50,000-500,000 in the first year and up to $800,000 in subsequent years to support the project. The application due date is September 1, 2015."

"Through this program, IMLS wishes to increase the capacity of museums to understand the conservation needs of their collections and assist them in planning strategically for the long-term care and conservation of these materials."

"The cooperator will be expected to provide or perform a field-wide needs assessment to inform this work, followed by a pilot of programming to test and evaluate the program before full-scale implementation."

For more information, see the full press release.

Digital Public Library of America makes push to serve all 50 states by 2017 with $3.4 million from the Sloan and Knight foundations

June 26, 2015 — "The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is on the way to connecting online collections from coast to coast by 2017 – an effort boosted by a new $3.4 million investment from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and John S. and James L. Knight Foundations. These two new awards, coupled with significant earlier support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities, will allow DPLA to open new Service Hubs that provide a way for all cultural heritage organizations across the country to connect through one national collection."

"The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. DPLA provides public access to more than 10 million items – including the written word plus works of art and culture – from 1,600 institutions..."

"...This series of investments represents a significant milestone in the development and growth of DPLA's Service Hubs. These Service Hubs are state or regional digital collaboratives that host, aggregate or otherwise bring together digital objects from libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions in their state or region. At the library's launch in 2013, DPLA represented a collaborative of 16 major partners, covering nine states. The number has since doubled to more than 20 states, and is on the way to 50 in the next two years. As thousands of digital collections have been brought together through DPLA's platform, fascinating new projects and tools using America's cultural heritage have emerged, including curated exhibitions on historical topics and eras, dynamic visualizations and other cutting-edge apps, community engagement opportunities at an international scale, and much more."

For more information, see the full press release.

NISO Publishes Recommended Practice on Exchanging Serial Content

June 26, 2015 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a new recommended practice, Protocol for Exchanging Serial Content (PESC) (NISO RP-23-2015), which provides guidance on the best way to manage the elements of digital serial content packaging in a manner that aids both the content provider and the content recipient in understanding what has been delivered and received."

"'Many diverse organizations – such as publishers, content aggregators, archives, and indexing services – exchange and work with the heterogeneous digital files that make up serial content,' states Kimberly A. Tryka, Research Data Librarian, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Co-chair of the NISO PESC Working Group. 'Organizations that exchange serial content know that lack of consistency in packaging and describing the items being exchanged leads to frustration and inefficiency. The PESC recommended practice is intended to inform members of the scholarly information community about preferred practices for packaging and exchanging serial content which can enable the creation of better automated processes to receive and manage serial content.'"

"...Protocol for Exchanging Serial Content (PESC) (NISO RP-23-2015) is available for free download from the PESC Working Group webpage on the NISO website at http://www.niso.org/workrooms/pesc/."

For more information, see the full press release.

ALA urges President Obama to select a librarian to head Library of Congress

June 23, 2015 — "Today the American Library Association (ALA) released a letter to President Barack Obama, from ALA president Courtney Young that makes a compelling case for the President to consider appointing a librarian to lead the nation's library."

"The letter comes in the wake of the announcement of Dr. James H. Billington's retirement. Dr. Billington held the position of librarian of Congress for 28 years and will leave his position in January of 2016."

To read the letter to President Obama in its entirety, see the full press release.

National consortium for ORCID set to improve UK research visibility and collaboration

June 23, 2015 — "ORCID – a researcher identifier solution which enables a wide range of improvements to the scholarly communications ecosystem – will now be offered to UK higher education institutions through a national consortium arrangement operated by Jisc, a UK charity which promotes the use of technology within education and research."

"The agreement, negotiated by Jisc Collections, will enable universities to benefit from reduced ORCID membership costs and enhanced technical support. This should accelerate adoption and provide a smoother path to ORCID integration for UK universities. It will ultimately help to transform the management, re-use, and efficiency of the UK research output by improving the integration of research systems and processes, and enhancing data quality...."

"...ORCID is a global, open, not-for-profit, community-driven effort developed closely with and for the research community."

For more information, see the full press release.

Italy Launches National ORCID Implementation

June 19, 2015 — "Italy will be implementing ORCID on a national scale, and has signed a three-year consortium membership agreement with ORCID. Under the auspices of ANVUR and CRUI (the Conference of Italian University Rectors), 70 universities and four research centers will initially participate in the consortium. This large-scale adoption will underpin the IRIDE (Italian Researcher IDentifier for Evaluation) Project, using a platform developed by Cineca. The projects goal is to ensure that at least 80% of Italian researchers have an ORCID iD, with links to their research output back to 2006, by the end of 2016."

"As a result of this agreement, Italian researchers and their institutions will benefit from access to and integration with the ORCID registry, including setting up and maintaining disambiguated records for all researchers and linking these to their publications and other research outputs – leading in turn to a simpler, more reliable evaluation process."

For more information, see the full press release.

American Library Association Statement of Support for "Digital Learning Equity Act of 2015"

June 18, 2015 — "Today Senator Angus King (I-ME) and Senator Shelley Capito (R-WV) took an important step toward closing the digital divide among our nation's K12 students. American Library Association President Courtney Young offers the following statement in support of the 'Digital Learning Equity Act of 2015' introduced today:"

"'Librarians know first-hand that access to broadband and the skills to put it to work are essential for educational opportunity and achievement today. The 'Digital Learning Equity Act of 2015' addresses these issues head on for everyone concerned with ensuring our young people have the necessary skills to go on to college and into the workforce. ALA applauds Senators King and Capito in their effort to promote innovative paths to close the digital divide for our nation's young people.'"

"'The demonstration pilots authorized by the bill challenge educators in K12 schools, in libraries, and those who work with youth in other settings to explore new ways to ensure learning does not stop when the school bell rings. ALA also is encouraged by the research requirement so that the impact of investments made under the Act will be truly measured and the best of the best can be replicated in communities across the country.'"

To read the entire statement of support, see the full press release.

ALA president calls for digital transformation of Copyright Office

June 12, 2015 — "Today, American Library Association (ALA) president Courtney Young responded to the introduction of the Copyright Office for the Digital Economy Act (CODE Act) by Representatives Judy Chu (D-CA) and Tom Marino (R-PA):"

"'For more than 20 years, content creators, rights holders, legislators and public users alike have acknowledged that the U.S. Copyright Office needs to modernize its technological capabilities for the 21st century. Unfortunately, the recently introduced Copyright Office for the Digital Economy Act does little to address significant technology challenges impacting the U.S. Copyright Office.'"

"'The bill's proposal to make the Copyright Office an independent agency does not address the longstanding problems facing the agency, specifically that the Copyright Office's information technology systems are woefully inadequate in serving both rights holders and the public in the digital environment. Much of the Copyright Office's shortcomings were detailed in a Government Accountability Office report published in March 2015. Instead of independent authority, the Copyright Office needs resources – both in the form of funding and technical expertise – to bring it out of the typewriter age.'..."

"...'We urge the U.S. Congress to support the investment necessary to transition the Copyright Office from a paper-based system to a digital system that uses the most effective digital technology, systems and software – to enable commerce, promote access to content, and to inspire the creators and artists of the future who wish to make use of the previous works.'"

For more information, see the full press release.

Open Preservation Foundation launches new membership model and software supporter model

June 9, 2015 — "The Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) has introduced a new membership model to make participation more accessible to all organisations with a commitment to ensuring long term access to digital content. Alongside the new membership model, OPF has also established a software supporter model to ensure the sustainability and future development of open source software tools in its stewardship...."

"...The new membership model opens participation to organisations of all sizes. The membership tiers are based on the annual operating budget of your organisation. Membership is available in two categories: Charter and Affiliate. Charter members steer our strategy and annual planning. They also benefit from exclusive or priority access to our interest groups, training and events, and support in adopting and maintaining our open source software products. Affiliate members have access to the outputs of our activities and may choose to contribute effort in lieu of subscription fees to further digital preservation for the benefit of the community."

"The software supporter model allows organisations to support individual digital preservation software products and ensure their ongoing sustainability and maintenance."

For more information, see the full press release.

OCLC signs agreements with leading publishers worldwide

June 9, 2015 — "OCLC has signed agreements with leading publishers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and other subject areas to add metadata for books, e-books, journals, databases and other materials that will make their content discoverable through WorldCat Discovery Services...."

"...OCLC has agreements in place with more than 180 publishers and information providers to supply metadata to facilitate discovery and access to key resources...."

"...Metadata from some of these publishers will also be made available to users through other OCLC services based on individual agreements. Details about how this metadata may be used in library management workflows will be communicated to OCLC users as the data is available."

For more information, see the full press release.

Johns Hopkins University Press Receives Grant To Develop Muse Open

June 2, 2015 — "Johns Hopkins University Press is delighted to announce the award of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the development of MUSE Open, a distribution channel for open access monographs through Project MUSE, a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community.Johns Hopkins University Press is delighted to announce the award of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the development of MUSE Open, a distribution channel for open access monographs through Project MUSE, a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community...."

"...MUSE Open will leverage a powerful and trusted distribution channel for long-form humanities scholarship in an enriched digital format. Monographs included in the program will be distributed globally and made visible and usable through discoverability and accessibility tools normally reserved for paid content. MUSE Open content will be promoted to researchers, students, and general readers worldwide through existing library channels and through social media, including MUSE Commons. Participating publishers will enjoy the freedom to control the sales, distribution, and marketing of the corresponding printed works."

For more information, see the full press release.

Open Access Books Slowly on the Rise - New study by PCG shows that OA monographs are now offered by 35% of scholarly publishers and catalogued by 57% of academic libraries

May 27, 2015 — "Publishers and libraries are increasingly experimenting with Open Access (OA) books, according to a new survey by industry advisors, Publishers Communication Group (PCG). Books published under the so-called 'author-pays,' Gold Open Access model with no paywall for readers are expected to slowly grow in importance, with funding derived from a variety of sources including library budgets, the study reported."

For more information, see the full press release. The report can be downloaded from the press release.

Todaro wins 2016-2017 ALA presidency

May 12, 2015 — "Julie Todaro, Ph.D., Dean of Library Services at Austin (Texas) Community College, has been elected president-elect of the American Library Association."

"Todaro received 2,899 votes, while her opponents, Joseph Janes, associate professor and chair of the MLIS program at the University of Washington Information School, received 2,877 votes; James LaRue, CEO of LaRue & Associates, Castle Rock, Colo., received 2,222 votes; and JP Porcaro, Librarian for Acquisitions and Technological Discovery at the New Jersey City University Guarini Library, Jersey City, N.J., received 2,121 votes."

"As ALA president, Todaro will be the chief elected officer for the oldest and largest library association in the world. She will serve as president-elect for one year before stepping into her role as president at the close of the 2016 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, FL."

For more information, see the full press release.

Copyright © 2015 Corporation for National Research Initiatives