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I N B R I E F

May/June 2011

A New Step Toward Digital Library Foundations

Contributed by:
Leonardo Candela and Donatella Castelli
Italian National Research Council
Pisa, Italy
{leonardo.candela, donatella.castelli}@isti.cnr.it

DL.org (www.dlorg.eu), a European Coordination Action on "Digital Library Interoperability, Best Practices and Modelling Foundations", has recently finalised a new version of the "Digital Library Reference Model". This has been produced by using the DELOS Digital Library Reference Model (produced in February 2008) as a firm starting point and drawing on global expertise harnessed through six working groups made up of more than 50 international experts who are active in the Digital Library domain.

The Digital Library Reference Model is a volume comprising four different yet complementary parts, each forming a self-contained artefact, i.e., 'The Digital Library Manifesto', 'The Digital Library Reference Model in a Nutshell', 'The Digital Library Reference Model Concepts and Relations', and 'The Digital Library Reference Model Conformance Checklist'. Abridged versions of the Manifesto, In a Nutshell and the Checklist are available in print and online.

The Digital Library Manifesto declares the intentions, motives, overall plans and views on a long term initiative leading to the production of a foundational theory for Digital Libraries. It identifies the main notions characterising the whole Digital Library domain. It introduces the three types of relevant 'systems', i.e., Digital Library, Digital Library System, and Digital Library Management System. It describes the main concepts characterising these systems, i.e., organisation, content, user, functionality, quality, policy and architecture. The Digital Library Manifesto also introduces the main roles that actors may play within digital libraries, i.e., end-user, manager and software developer. Finally, it describes the reference frameworks needed to clarify the DL universe at different levels of abstraction, i.e., the Digital Library Reference Model and the Digital Library Reference Architecture.

The Digital Library Reference Model in a Nutshell briefly introduces the overall picture underlying a comprehensive model conceived to capture the essence of Digital Libraries in terms of the main domains characterising them, the principal concepts existing in each domain and the main relationships connecting such concepts.

The Digital Library Reference Model Concepts and Relations presents in detail the main concepts, axioms and relationships characterising the Digital Library domain independently from specific standards, technologies, implementations, or other concrete details. For each of the 200+ concepts and 50+ relations included in the model, the document provides a detailed characterisation comprising a definition, the set of connections with other concepts, the rationale explaining its existence and a set of examples of concrete instances of the specific entity.

Finally, the Digital Library Reference Model Conformance Checklist, one of the main novelties included in the new volume, provides a set of statements to enable assessors to determine whether or not the digital library they are analysing is compliant with the Digital Library Reference Model.

Clearly, the digital library is a dynamic research domain, and the diversity of needs among different digital libraries continues to introduce new concepts that have to be incorporated into the model. Hence, at any point in time these documents should be considered dynamic versions of documents that will continue to evolve.

In order to contact the keepers of this set of artefacts, please send an email to referencemodel@dlorg.eu. The full document is available from http://referencemodel.dlorg.eu.

The Digital Library Reference Model, April 2011, is co-authored by Candela, L.; Athanasopoulos, G.; Castelli, D.; El Raheb, K.; Innocenti, P.; Ioannidis, Y.; Katifori, A.; Nika, A.; Vullo, G.; Ross, S. and submitted to the European Commission as Deliverable D3.2b.

Scholarly Reading and the Value of Library Resources: A Research Study in the U.K.

Contributed by:

Rachel Volentine
Research Coordinator
University of Tennessee

Carol Tenopir
Principal Investigator
Director of the Center of Information and Communication Studies
University of Tennessee

The Center of Information and Communication Studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, is currently working on a one-year project entitled "Scholarly Reading and the Value of Library Resources" with funding by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and collaboration with six universities in the United Kingdom. JISC partners with U.K colleges and universities to encourage the use of digital technologies in higher learning to support easy and widespread access to information, and its partnership with the University of Tennessee will help establish a better understanding of the reading patterns of academic faculty.

The aim of the project is to examine the value academic and research professionals place on reading scholarly information sources, such as books, articles, and other publications. 1782 academic staff members have responded to the project's web-based survey as of April 15, 2011. The survey includes questions on the reading behavior of the academic faculty, including where they obtained the last material they read, what role electronic sources play in their scholarship, and how often they use social media tools (Blogs, podcasts, Twitter, etc.). The study measures how scholarly materials benefit the teaching, research, and goals of the academic staff. Preliminary findings show 79% of respondents used a journal article for their last piece of substantial information, and 64% of respondents obtained the last article they read from the library (n=1033); however, the library was not the main resource for book readings and other scholarly material (government documents, trade magazines, etc.) (n=797).

The survey will run until the end of May 2011. Preliminary findings will be presented at the SCONUL conference in Cardiff, Wales, at the beginning of June. The rise of technology and digitalization has drastically changed the academic landscape over the past years, and the analysis will look at the role academic libraries continue to play and the benefits their collections bring to academics. In the fall of 2011 the data will be analyzed and compared with similar surveys underway in the U.S. This comparison of U.K. data with other studies will provide a unique international perspective of the role of scholarly literature for academic faculty.

In addition to the JISC study in the U.K., the Center for Information and Communication Studies is in the second year of "Values, Outcomes, and Return on Investment of Academic Libraries" (Lib-Value), a three-year project funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to develop and test measures of the value of academic libraries in academic research, teaching, and student services. These current projects, along with studies over three decades by the Center for Information and Communication Studies researchers, will enable a comprehensive and global look at the value of scholarly reading and academic libraries in an increasingly digital world.

RePosit: positing a new kind of repository deposit

Contributed by:
Jodie Double
Digital Content and Repositories Manager
University of Leeds
Leeds, United Kingdom

The RePosit Project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), seeks to increase uptake of web-based repository deposit tools embedded in a researcher-facing publications management system.

RePosit is a collaboration between 5 UK Higher Education Institutions, all in various stages of implementing a publication management system as the primary deposit interface to the institutional repository. Institutions involved in the RePosit project are: University of Leeds (Chair), Keele University, Queen Mary University of London, University of Exeter and University of Plymouth, with Symplectic Ltd. as a commercial partner. The RePosit Project blog, holds the archive of current and past activities from July 2010 to date.

Project work includes gathering feedback from users and administrators to evaluate the tool's effectiveness; developing general strategies for increasing uptake of embedded deposit tools; compiling a community commentary on the issues surrounding research management system integration; running advocacy programmes at partner institutions to encourage engagement by researchers; and producing open access training materials to help institutions enlighten their users and administrators regarding how embedded deposit tools are related to the work of the library and the repository.

The intention is to use the reduction in deposit barriers offered by the tool to enhance open access content, creating more full-text objects available under stable URIs. This will be used to demonstrate that repositories can play a part in a researcher's daily activities, and that a deposit mandate is viable for the partner institutions. Success is measurable by an increase in the number of open access items greater than the expected increase without use of the deposit tool and the advocacy throughout this project. Other outputs will take the form of documentation made freely available on the web that the project hopes the community adopts and shares.

The Repositories Support Project (RSP), will be hosting an event in Nottingham on 19 July 2011, where the RePosit team will be presenting project findings to date. This event is a follow up event to the hugely successful Welsh Repository Network event, held in 2010.

Get involved! Join the RePosit Google Group.

Think Tank on Digital Library Interoperability

Contributed by:
Leonardo Candela and Donatella Castelli
Italian National Research Council
Pisa, Italy
{leonardo.candela, donatella.castelli}@isti.cnr.it

DL.org (www.dlorg.eu), a European Coordination Action on "Digital Library Interoperability, Best Practices and Modelling Foundations", has recently completed an important two-year research activity that investigated interoperability in Digital Libraries.

Interoperability is one of the challenges faced when building modern Information Systems and Digital Libraries that have to be built as "collections" of independently developed constituents (systems on their own) and that should cooperate and rely on each other to accomplish larger tasks. The DL.org project has addressed the interoperability challenge by bringing together over 50 international experts active in the Digital Library domain through thematic groups investigating the problem from diverse yet complementary perspectives.

This activity led to the creation of the "Digital Library Technology and Methodology Cookbook", an innovative artefact presenting a portfolio of best practices and pattern solutions to common issues faced when developing interoperable Digital Library systems.

Despite the critical role assigned to interoperability in modern systems, there has been little theoretical guidance on how to address it. What's more, there is no universally accepted definition of interoperability. A central part of the "Interoperability Cookbook" is a blueprint that can be used to systematically characterise diverse facets inextricably bound up with the interoperability challenge coupled with existing and emerging solutions underpinning practical approaches.

The proposed interoperability blueprint clarifies the constituents of any interoperability scenario, i.e., there are at least two entities, Provider and Consumer, that have to cooperate; the cooperation consists of a Consumer willing to exploit a certain Resource — owned by the Provider — to perform a certain Task. To make the scenario feasible the two entities should be able to exchange "meaningful" information that cannot occur without a communication channel and a protocol regulating the channel functioning. Finally, the operation of each entity, either Provider or Consumer, depends on Organisational (characteristics of business goals and processes), Semantic (characteristics of the meaning of the exchanged resource as well as of the rest of information) and Technical (characteristics of the technology supporting the operation of the entity as well as of the communication channel and the information exchanged) aspects that have to be reconciled across the respective boundaries. Thus, the framework enables the Digital Library field to move beyond some of the misconceptions about interoperability. In other words, interoperability is not merely a technical issue, nor is it just a content issue.

In the second part of the "Interoperability Cookbook", a set of approaches and solutions to interoperability problems related to content, user, functionality, policy, quality, architecture, and cross-domain aspects are collected and extensively discussed. The text is organised to provide the reader with useful information including: an overall description of each approach; a description of the requirements requested by the approach and the results resulting from its exploitation; and, most importantly, a description of implementation guidelines and an evaluation of the quality of the proposed approach that includes an estimation of its implementation cost and effectiveness. Overall, this document describes more than 50 interoperability solutions.

Interoperability is clearly a "hot topic", and new solutions and approaches continue to be designed and developed. Hence, at any point in time the Cookbook should be considered a dynamic artefact that is expected to expand and evolve thanks to the support of the Digital Library community at large.

In order to contact the keepers of this artefact and to contribute to it, please send an email to cookbook@dlorg.eu. The full document is available from http://cookbook.dlorg.eu.

The Digital Library Technology and Methodological Cookbook, April 2011, is co-authored by Athanasopoulos, G.; Candela, L.; Castelli, D.; El Raheb, K.; Innocenti, P.; Ioannidis, Y.; Katifori, A.; Nika, A.; Ross, S.; Tani, A.; Thanos, C.; Toli, E.; Vullo, G. and submitted to the European Commission as Deliverable D3.4.

New "Virtual Research Environment" Recently Launched

Contributed by:
Judith Wusteman
School of Information & Library Studies
University College Dublin (UCD)
Dublin, Ireland
Judith.Wusteman@ucd.ie

A new Virtual Research Environment (VRE) called Ojax++ was recently launched to the global e-research community to allow scholars get the most from popular web-based applications.

Funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), under the direction of Dr. Judith Wusteman at the UCD School of Information and Library Studies, Ojax++ enables researchers to use popular online tools, such as GoogleDocs, Delicious, blogging tools and Twitter, as well more research-specific Web 2.0 tools. Ojax++ then aggregates the data from these applications so that, regardless of which web applications they use to conduct their research, researchers can organise their work and collaborate on that work in one place, using Ojax++.

The new generation of research emerging from universities and industry, often referred to as e-research, is epitomised by its collaborative, multi-disciplinary nature, the increasingly huge volumes of data it processes and generates, and the advanced infrastructure that enables the sharing of vast amounts of computer power and storage. E-research requires a new generation of tools and technologies to support it, and Ojax++ is one response to this need.

The tool has been made freely available to the e-research community. Further details can be found at the OJAX++ project website at www.ucd.ie/ojax.

I N T H E N E W S

May/June 2011

Grant Awards Announcement: Sparks! Ignition Grants

May 3, 2011 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today 14 awards totaling $336,281 matched with $360,444 of non-federal funds for Sparks! Ignition Grants. IMLS received 106 applications requesting $2,468,234 in funds."

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

"For more information about this funding opportunity including program guidelines and contacts, please visit http://www.imls.gov/applicants/grants/SparksIgnition.shtm."

MLS Issues RFP for Cooperator to Host the 2012 and 2013 WebWise Conferences

Deadline: June 27, 2011

May 2, 2011 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) invites proposals to develop and host the 2012, and prospectively 2013, WebWise Conferences on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World in cooperation with IMLS."

"The cooperative agreement will last for two years; funds for the 2013 conference will be released only upon successful completion of the 2012 conference, availability of federal funds, and approval of the IMLS Director."

"The WebWise conference brings together technology experts and representatives of museums, libraries, archives, systems science, education, and other fields to explore the many opportunities to serve their communities through the innovative application of new technologies and to encourage broad geographic participation and input. To achieve this goal, IMLS seeks to offer the 2012 conference in the Western US (Oregon, Washington, California, or Nevada). The 2013 conference is prospectively planned to take place in Washington, DC."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Sullivan wins 2012-13 ALA presidency

April 29, 2011 — "Maureen Sullivan, an organization development consultant, has been elected to the 2012-13 presidency of the American Library Association (ALA)...."

"...As ALA president, Sullivan will be the chief elected officer for the oldest and largest library organization in the world. The ALA has a membership of more than 62,000 librarians, library trustees and library supporters. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information...."

"...Sullivan will become president-elect in June 2011, and will assume the ALA presidency in June 2012, following the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, Calif. 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.

Statement on the FY 11 Budget from Susan H. Hildreth, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services

April 26, 2011 — "In allocating the FY 11 appropriation, we have carefully reviewed our strategic priorities and our activities that have the greatest impact. IMLS supports a diverse portfolio of programs to meet the IMLS mission and bring high-quality library and museum services to the broadest possible public. In making these allocations IMLS balanced interests in supporting 'what works' and also investing in 'what's new' through innovation and research. In this way IMLS provides the leadership to help libraries and museums evolve their services to meet the public's ever-changing needs for information and lifelong learning. In addition to making careful reductions to IMLS programs, we are also reducing our administrative budget and will be rigorously examining our operations for cost-efficiency measures."

"View FY 11 budget allocation table (PDF, 64KB)"

Text Creation Partnership Makes 18th-Century Texts Freely Available to the Public

April 25, 2011 — "We are pleased to announce the opening to the public of 2,231 searchable keyed-text editions of books from Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). ECCO is an important research database that includes every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. ECCO contains more than 32 million pages of text and over 205,000 individual volumes, all fully searchable. ECCO is published by Gale, part of Cengage Learning."

"We produced the 2,231 keyed texts in collaboration with Gale, which provided page images for keying and is permitting the release of the keyed texts in support of the Library's commitment to the creation of open access cultural heritage archives. Gale has been a generous partner, according to Maria Bonn, Associate University Librarian for Publishing. 'Gale's support for the TCP's ECCO project will enhance the research experience for 18th century scholars and students around the world.'..."

"...This announcement marks another milestone in our partnership between the University of Michigan and Oxford University, which since 1999 has collaborated with scholars, commercial publishers, and university libraries to produce scholar-ready (that is, TEI-compliant, SGML/XML enhanced) text editions of works from digital image collections, including ECCO, Early English Books Online (EEBO) from ProQuest, and Evans Early American Imprint from Readex...."

"...More than 125 libraries participate in the TCP, as does the Joint Information Systems (JISC), which represents many British libraries and educational institutions."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Call for Proposals to Host the Open Repositories Annual Conference (2012 and 2013)

April 20, 2011 announcement from John Howard, University College Dublin — "The Open Repositories Steering Committee seeks proposals from candidate host organisations in Europe for the 2012 OR conference, and in North America for the 2013 conference."

"The Committee is accepting proposals to host OR2012 through June 15th, 2011. Proposals for the OR2013 conference will be accepted until March 31, 2012."

"Candidate institutions must have the ability to host a four-day conference of approximately 400-500 attendees (OR2010 drew approximately 450 attendees). This includes appropriate conference facilities, lodging, and transportation. The candidate institutions and their local arrangements committee must have the means to support the costs of producing the conference through attendee registration and independent fundraising. In 2009, the OR conference expenses totaled approximately $185,000 USD (this cost does not include 2009's banquet held at the Georgia Aquarium, nor does it include hotel room costs for attendees and their other personal costs, i.e. transportation and meals)...."

"...Organisations interested in proposing to organise a future OR conference should contact John Howard: john.b.howard@ucd.ie."

CrossRef and International DOI Foundation Collaborate on Linked-Data-Friendly DOIs

April 20, 2011 — "CrossRef and the International DOI Foundation (IDF) have announced that all 46 million CrossRef Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are now enabled for use in linked data applications, effective immediately."

"The term 'linked data' describes a set of best practices for exposing data in machine-readable form using the standard HTTP web protocol. These best practices support the development of tools to link and make use of data from multiple web sources without the need to deal with many different proprietary and incompatible application programming interfaces (APIs)...."

"How It Works
The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), the IDF, and CrossRef have enabled the DOI web proxy (which is located at http://dx.doi.org) to support content negotiation for DOIs. In the early days of the web, human beings were following most URLs, and it made sense that the DOI web proxy only resolved CrossRef DOIs to human-readable web pages. Now, however, a program is just as likely to follow a URL as a person is. The program may have to scrape the HTML landing page that was designed for humans for data that it needs. This aproach is suboptimal and error-prone. The solution for this problem until now has been that CrossRef and other RAs have provided a variety of APIs that allow programs to query for DOIs and receive machine-readable content in return. Some examples of these APIs include OpenURL and piped queries."

"The problem with these APIs is that they require programmers to familiarize themselves with sometimes extensive API documentation that varies from one data provider to the next. This approach is not scalable when dealing with many sources of information. Content negotiation helps because it is a standard part of the HTTP protocol that underlies the web. A program can now resolve a DOI through the standard web proxy and specify that the data should be returned in a machine-readable format, and the programmer can use the same methods they use for querying for data on any linked-data-enabled site."

"Current users will notice no difference in the behavior of the DOI resolver system unless they explicitly start using content negotiation, thus ensuring backwards compatibility."

"An important feature of the implementation is that either the RA responsible for the DOI or the organization to whom the content identified by the DOI belongs can respond to any content negotiation request. Initially, programs requesting machine-readable data from CrossRef DOIs using content negotiation will receive the metadata that the CrossRef member publisher has registered at CrossRef. As publishers start to implement content negotiation on their own sites, they may want to return richer and more complete representations of their content, at which point CrossRef can direct content-negotiated requests directly to the publishers' sites."

For further detail and examples please visit http://www.crossref.org/CrossTech/2011/04/content_negotiation_for_crossr.html.

IU, University of Illinois launch HathiTrust Research Center for computational access to archives

April 18, 2011 — "The world's great libraries and archives use specially designed rooms, cases and vaults to protect and organize books and records so they may continue to be studied and understood for years to come. As an ever-increasing amount of our cultural record is created and stored digitally, we face the new challenge of how to ensure our digital cultural archives are easily accessible – both to contemporary researchers and those working long in the future."

"A new collaborative research center launched jointly by Indiana University and the University of Illinois, along with the HathiTrust Digital Repository, will help to meet this challenge by developing cutting-edge software tools and cyberinfrastructure to enable advanced computational access to the growing digital record of human knowledge."

"The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) will enable open access for nonprofit and educational users to published works in the public domain (as well as limited access to works under copyright) stored within HathiTrust, an extensive collaborative digital library of more than 8 million volumes and 2 billion pages of archived material maintained by major research institutions and libraries worldwide."

"Leveraging data storage infrastructure at Indiana University and computational resources at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the HTRC will provision a secure computational and data environment for scholars to perform research using the HathiTrust Digital Repository. The center will break new ground in the areas of text mining and non-consumptive research, allowing scholars to fully utilize content of the HathiTrust Library while preventing intellectual property misuse within the confines of current U.S. copyright law...."

For more information, please see the full press release.

ALA calls on Congress to restore support to libraries in FY2012 budget

April 18, 2011 — "H.R. 1473, the budget bill that will fund the government through September 2011, includes across-the-board cuts that may deeply affect libraries of all kinds."

"The bill, which cleared Congress Thursday night [April 14], includes a $28 million cut to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), appropriating the agency at $237.8 million for FY2011. IMLS has 30 days to determine how they will administer these cuts...."

"...As the FY2012 budget debate proceeds, the ALA calls on Congress to restore support for libraries, which serve the American public now more than ever with job hunting and career development. In our schools, libraries provide students with the 21st century skills they need to succeed in the Digital Age."

For more information, please see the full press release.

State Support for Library Services Declining

April 18, 2011 — "Many State Library Administrative Agencies (SLAAs) are reporting steep and sudden declines in state revenues for library services, according to a report released today by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The majority of states reported reductions, with six states reporting losses of greater than 15 percent in one year. Overall, 51 SLAAs collected $34 million less in state revenue in FY 2009 than they did in FY 2008. During the same period, SLAAs lost 227 full-time employees, a one-year decrease of 6.7 percent."

"SLAAs play an important role in planning and evaluating library services in the states. While the range of services each SLAA provides differs state by state, all are tasked with administering the IMLS Grants to States program, which helps libraries embrace technology, serve underserved populations, and develop new service models."

"'State Library Administrative Agencies are part of the educational and economic fabric of the nation,' said Susan Hildreth, director of IMLS. 'SLAAs assess needs for library services in the state and support a wide range of programs that support the nation's libraries as they help people get work, pursue their education, and strengthen the civic life of communities everywhere. It is important for us to track and report about the health of these essential state agencies.'"

For more information, please see the full press release.

Webcasts of 2011 WebWise Conference Now Available

April 15, 2011 — "Webcasts of the 2011 WebWise Conference on "Libraries, Museums, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in Research, Education, and Practice", held March 9-11, 2011 in Baltimore, Maryland are now available online. Libraries and museums are partners in the national effort to improve STEM learning in the US. They support both formal and informal learning with projects that range from fostering group investigation and creation techniques for youth to tackling the challenges of preserving research data, all made ever more complex and promising in the digital world."

"The captioned webcasts provide an opportunity for the nation to see how libraries and museums are exploring new opportunities for improving STEM learning in the US. The videos feature keynote speakers showcasing innovative approaches to a variety of topics including digital collections, media literacy, online services, audio and visual technologies, living specimens, visitor experiences and much more...."

"...The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and in particular their Digital Media and Learning program provided support for this year's conference. Click here to learn more about WebWise, IMLS digital resources and how we bring together representatives of museums, libraries, archives, systems science, education, and other fields to explore the many opportunities made possible by digital technologies."

For more information, please see the full press release.

Confused by copyright? In the dark about IPR?

April 11, 2011 announcement from Sarah Fahmy, Strategic Content Alliance, The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) — "A new elearning module from the JISC-led Strategic Content Alliance is to help update people dealing with intellectual property rights in universities, colleges, museums, libraries and other public bodies."

"The module will help them understand the implications and roles of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and licensing - all crucial to their institution's role as a provider, aggregator and/or publisher of digital content."

"After completing the module, they will be better able to create, exploit and manage digital content with confidence, and most importantly, using a risk managed approach."

"The module has been developed for the Strategic Content Alliance by IPR consultants Naomi Korn and Emma Beer, and by Robert Stillwell and Dr. Neil Witt in the department for technology enhanced learning at Plymouth University."

The module can be accessed at this web site.

Job-seekers, entrepreneurs continue to turn to their local library for help: State of America's Libraries Report 2011

April 11, 2011 — "The Great Recession may have come to an end, but hard-pressed Americans continue to turn to their local libraries for help in finding a job or launching their own business."

"This and other library trends of the past year are detailed in the State of America's Libraries, 2011, released during National Library Week, April 10-16, 2011, by the American Library Association."

"Even as budget-cutters take aim at libraries and their services, more than two-thirds of the 1,000-plus adults contacted in a survey in January said that the library's assistance in starting a business or finding a job was important to them, according to the poll, conducted for the American Library Association (ALA) by Harris Interactive."

"...The study concludes that the library created more than $30 million worth of economic value to the city in fiscal 2010 and that it had a particularly strong impact on business development and employment. It also showed that homes located within a quarter-mile of a branch library were worth an average of $9,630 more than homes outside that radius, an indication that the presence of a library is associated with larger real estate tax revenues."

"Nevertheless, media reports of cuts and cutbacks to library budgets and services abounded in 2010 and early this year. U.S. mayors reported in November that hours, staff or services at local libraries was the No. 2 budget area that been cut, second only to maintenance and services at parks and gardens. And another study indicated that 19 states reported cuts in funding for public libraries from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2011 and that more than half said the cuts were greater than 10 percent. That study also found that state cuts often were compounded by cuts at the local level...."

"The full text of The State of America's Libraries, 2011, is available at http://tinyurl.com/alasalr2011."

Falvey Library announces VuDL: Open Source Digital Library Administration, Alpha Launch

April 11, 2011 announcement from David Lacy, Villanova University — "The Technology Development team at Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library announces the official alpha launch of their open source digital library management software, VuDL (http://vudl.org). With VuDL, you can store, manipulate, display and make discoverable your digital collections."

"Most digital library software packages are targeted at either small/specific collections or very large/very complicated collections. The former may not have the functionality to describe your objects properly; the latter, too many options and therefore needless complexity. VuDL is designed to be somewhere in the middle: flexible enough to describe different ranges of objects, while small enough to diminish technical overhead."

"The simple-to-use Digital Library Administration application is powered by all open source technologies, and provides a METS metadata editor, service image generation tools, XML database repository, and a built-in OAI server."

"The core of VuDL's application is powered by Orbeon Forms, a powerful XML/XForms processor, eXist (a native XML database) and the server's file system combine to support the data and image repository. VuDL's public interface is powered by VuFind (http://vufind.org), an Open Source online public access catalog (OPAC) hosted and managed by Villanova University. VuFind is currently in use in academic and research libraries in 12 countries, including the National Library of Australia and the London School of Economics."

"Villanova is actively seeking development partners! VuDL is offered for free through the GPL open source license. For more information and to download the software, visit http://www.vudl.org."

New York University Press, Media Commons to Test Online Peer Review in Project Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

April 11, 2011 — "NYU Press (NYUP) has been awarded a grant of $50,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop and test a method of conducting open, public online peer-to-peer (P2P) review of scholarly monographs and journal articles. NYUP, which is part of the NYU Division of Libraries, will collaborate on the project with MediaCommons (http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org), a digital scholarly network affiliated with both NYU Libraries and the Institute for the Future of the Book."

"The outcome of the yearlong, Mellon-funded project will be a published white paper that will 1) assess the value and shortcomings of P2P review for the evaluation of scholarship, 2) serve as a roadmap for scholars and publishers, articulating criteria and protocols for conducting P2P review that are both rigorous and flexible enough to apply across disciplines; 3) identify the technical functionalities necessary to support these protocols; and 4) assess tools and platforms currently available for online peer review, and consider whether their functionalities will support our proposed protocols. The white paper will be made available for open peer review as part of its publication process."

For more information, please see the full press release.

The Urban Libraries Council and the Association of Science-Technology Centers Selected for Teen Learning Labs Project

Project Commits $4 million

April 8, 2011 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation are pleased to announce that they will support a partnership between the Urban Libraries Council and the Association of Science-Technology Centers to manage the Learning Labs Project. Together they will commit $4 million to support knowledge sharing activities for museums and libraries nationwide, a framework for measuring outcomes, and grants to create up to 30 new Learning Labs."

"The Learning Labs project was first announced in September 2010, in answer to President Obama's 'Educate to Innovate' campaign, which called on public and private sector partners to work together to improve America's students' participation and performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The MacArthur Foundation and IMLS pledged to work together to create up to 30 new Learning Labs in libraries and museums for teens using the inspiration of the YOUmedia model at the Harold Washington Library Center of the Chicago Public Library, as well as the innovative experimentation spaces found in museums and science centers across the country. This exciting Learning Labs project builds on current research on how teens learn through new media and on the national work being conducted on 21st century skills and the needs of the new workforce in America."

For more information, please see the full press release.

California Digital Library Announces Release of XTF Version 3.0

April 5, 2011 — "The California Digital Library (CDL) is pleased to announce the release of version 3.0 of XTF, an open source, highly flexible software application that supports the search, browse and display of heterogeneous digital content. XTF provides efficient and practical methods for creating customized end-user interfaces for distinct digital content collections and is used by institutions worldwide."

"XTF is a combination of Java and XSLT 2.0 that indexes, queries, and displays digital objects and is based on open source software (e.g. Lucene and Saxon). XTF can be downloaded from the XTF website or from the XTF Project page on SourceForge, where the source code can also be found."

For more information, please see the full press release.

IMLS April 2011 Project Profile: Research Explores How School Librarians Use Digital Content for STEM Learning

April 4, 2011 — "Studies suggest that interactive resources like models, videos, images, data sets and manipulatives, many of which are freely available to school libraries as open content through the web, are important for learning science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts. Florida State University, School of Library & Information Studies is using an IMLS grant to explore how school librarians can make it easier for students and their teachers to use digital content to support STEM learning. The project investigates how librarians are currently using open content STEM resources and develops a tool that allows librarians to easily create catalog records for digital materials."

For more information, please see the full project profile.

University of Oxford, OCLC Research collaborate to study digital 'residents' and 'visitors' in transition between high school and university

March 31, 2011 — "University of Oxford and OCLC Research are collaborating in a six-month JISC-funded study, which is part of a larger three-year longitudinal project, to investigate the theory of digital residents and visitors with students in the transitional educational stage, the time between late-stage secondary or high school and the first year of university."

"Titled "Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?" the pilot phase of this collaborative international project began in January and will continue through the middle of 2011. Project directors are Mr. David White, Co-Manager (Development), Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL), part of the University of Oxford, and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Senior Research Scientist at OCLC. Dr. Donna Lanclos, Library Ethnographer at the J. Murrey Atkins Library, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, will conduct data collection and analysis efforts in the United States...."

"...Digital residents spend a portion of their lives online, using the Web to develop an identity and maintain relationships. They tend to use the Web in many aspects of their lives, including as a venue for conducting their social life. In contrast, digital visitors use the Web as a tool for achieving specific goals as needs arise. They do not develop an online identity nor participate in online culture in the same way, or to the same extent, that digital residents do."

For more information, please see the full press release.

SPARC launches new e-forum for subject repository development and success

March 30, 2011 — "SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has announced it will host a new discussion forum dedicated to the unique needs of the subject-based digital repository community. As repositories continue to grow as an engine for driving Open Access worldwide, new challenges and opportunities emerge and the demand for more focused conversations grows."

"The SPARC Subject Repositories Forum ("SPARC-SR") will enable subject repository managers, both inside and outside libraries, to share procedures and best practices, discuss possible joint projects, and support each other in providing access to an important realm of scholarly literature. The email discussion list will aim to build on the momentum of recent meetings – including SPARC's digital repositories meeting as well as those focused on subject repositories – and will be the first formal electronic platform for subject repository advocates to collaborate."

For more information, please see the full press release.

College & Research Libraries to go open access

March 17, 2011 — "The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announces that its scholarly research journal, College & Research Libraries (C&RL), will become an open access publication beginning with the May 2011 issue. This change in access policy lifts the online version of the publication's current six-month embargo on new content and makes the complete contents of the journal from 1997 to the present freely available through the publication website at http://crl.acrl.org."

"...The ACRL Board of Directors approved the new policy at the 2011 ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Diego. In its resolution, the Board cited the association's support for open scholarship and access to scholarly work as the driving force behind the change. The board also stressed that through the move, ACRL continues to play a leading role in advocating for new models of scholarly communication in all of the disciplines...."

"...Open access to current C&RL content will begin with the May 2011 issue. Additional details about the new open access policy are available in an FAQ on the ACRL website at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/oafaq.cfm."

For more information, please see the full press release.