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I N B R I E F
May/June 2014
Table of Contents
The Linked Content Coalition (LCC) Project
Contributed by:
Norman Paskin
International DOI Foundation
n.paskin [at] doi.org
The Linked Content Coalition (LCC) is a non-for-profit consortium of international standards bodies whose aim is to facilitate and expand the legitimate use of content in the digital network through the effective use of interoperable identifiers and metadata. It builds on the output of the Linked Content Coalition (LCC) project, initiated by the European Publishers Council in April 2012 to improve access and licensing of digital content for any media and use. The LCC output will be used initially in The Copyright Hub, and the Rights Data Integration Project, each of which shares this aim.
The LCC project built on existing standards, collaborating through a cross-media coalition of experts across all content types to publish the LCC Framework and specifications: LCC Rights Reference Model (RRM) and Common Rights Format (CRF) XML Schema, and two "best practise" guides: LCC Principles of Identification and LCC Principles of Messaging which are being made available under free use licensing arrangements.
The next stage of the LCC will concentrate on implementation, with a new form of governance for the LCC as a standards consortium. A new organisation, LCC Ltd, has been formed as a not-for-profit global consortium of standards bodies and registries to take forward the work of the LCC Project. The new body was set up by six organisations across a range of standards development:
Membership will be expanded to welcome any organizations which create and manage data standards associated with content of one or more types, particularly for identifiers, metadata and messaging. A recent ISO meeting in Washington confirmed commitments to join from several of the ISO TC/46 SC9 "content identifiers" agencies (ISNI, ISBN, ISRC, ISWC) and several other ISO identifier agencies are expected to follow. In addition, the LCC Principles of Identification were recently updated and are being used by the ISO TC46/SC9 group on identifier interoperability.
LCC's recent manifesto supports interoperability between the computer systems of any participants in the digital network, including creators, rightsholders, publishers, aggregators, rights and content exchanges, retailers, consumers, cultural institutions and their agents and associations. Membership of the LCC indicates support for LCC principles in general, but member organizations are not required to make a commitment to support or implement any particular LCC standard or specifications. LCC projects do not compete with the activities of its members, but deal with matters of common interest across existing standards bodies.
The LCC facilitates and supports the legitimate use of copyright, public domain and "orphan" works, under any business model, including "free use" where enabled by law or rightsholder choice. These can include interoperability between existing standards; the development of specific all-media standards or tools; and collective input to, and collaboration with, related activities in other domains.
The LCC has set out ten targets for the rights data network which describe those developments in identifier and metadata interoperability which it believes will best ensure that the digital network operates in future as effectively as possible. LCC projects will generally relate to the furtherance of one or more of these ten targets, and LCC will support initiatives by other organizations which do the same.
All documents, schemas and specifications referenced in this report are available from the Linked Content Coalition website, specifically the LCC Framework and the Timeline of Documents sections.
Pundit
Contributed by:
Lieke Ploeger
Community Manager
The Open Knowledge Foundation
lieke.ploeger [at] okfn.org
The rise of the Digital Humanities brings with it increased opportunities for capturing, sharing and discovering the valuable knowledge that researchers create through activities like annotation, augmentation and contextualization. While annotations used to be confined to the margins of text books, leaving the valuable insights within these notes unconnected and unpublished, the Pundit tool now enables scholars to collect, annotate, and contextualize web resources and create collaborative structured knowledge.
Pundit is a web-based tool for creating annotations in Linked Open Data. Researchers can add annotations in a digital text, link sections of text to each other or to other resources on the net (such as DBPedia, Freebase and Geonames) or create fine granular cross-references and citations. This is done via a so-called RDF-triple, which is a statement linking two pieces of information together (saying for example "quote A" is a comment on "quote B"), and adds valuable semantic links to the web of data.
The annotations are collected in notebooks and can be shared with others, enabling scholars to publish, share and collaborate around their annotations: a great example of how open digital cultural objects can facilitate new ways of research. People can create and query notebooks based on annotations made in Pundit through the related web service Ask.
Since the start of its development, the Pundit tool has won several prizes (including the 2013 Lodlam challenge), was adopted in various environments and successfully added semantic information to thousand of web pages using gazillions of Linked Open Data objects. Developers and designers are working on the next version of the tool throughout 2014, which will make it possible to annotate faster, more easily and with fewer distractions.
The Pundit tool has been developed by the Italian software company Net7 as part of the DM2E Project, which is focused on building tools and communities that enable humanities researchers to work with manuscripts in the Linked Open Web. The tool is fully open source: the code and documentation is hosted on Github. More information on Pundit is available from the thepund.it : an introductory video is also available here. The DM2E wiki provides further tutorial documentation on Pundit in English, German, Italian and Norwegian.
DM2E will be organising several Pundit-related events throughout the year where you can learn more about the tool and discuss your ideas for improvements: check http://www.dm2e.eu for the latest news!
DataCite, re3data.org and Databib Announce Collaboration
Contributed by:
Michael Witt
Associate Professor of Library Science and Head, Distributed Data Curation Center
Purdue University
West Lafayette, USA
mwitt [at] purdue.edu
At the 3rd Plenary Meeting of the Research Data Alliance in Dublin, Ireland, DataCite announced a collaboration to bring together and manage two registries of research data repositories, Databib and re3data.org, under its auspices by the end of next year. The merger will reduce duplication of effort and better serve the research community with a single, sustainable registry that incorporates the best features of both projects.
Databib is a tool for helping researchers identify and locate online repositories of research data. Its development has been led by Michael Witt at Purdue University with initial funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Databib's international, multidisciplinary editorial board has been identifying, cataloging, and curating a searchable index of research data repositories since April 2012. A similar project, re3data.org, has been led by Frank Scholze at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with partners at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. re3data.org features a rich, granular metadata schema for describing data repositories and a user-friendly set of icons that classify and represent salient features such as data deposit and access policies.
Formed as a non-profit organization in 2009, DataCite's mission is to establish easier access to research data on the Internet, increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scholarly record, and support data archiving that will permit results to be verified and re-purposed for future study. It has since registered over 3 million datasets with Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) and has established members in 18 countries.
The framework for the collaboration is based on five principles of agreement between the two registries:
- Openness: the metadata and the interfaces of the joint registry will be openly accessible. Metadata records will be made accessible under terms of the Creative Commons CC0 protocol;
- Optimal quality assurance: a two-stage workflow, with a first review of submissions by an international editorial board plus a second one for consistency, will guarantee the quality and currency of records;
- Development of innovative functionalities: there will be cooperative development of new functionality for the joint registry and further integration with a global ecosystem of infrastructures that meet the needs of data-driven research and open science;
- Shared leadership: the joint registry will be lead by two representatives (one from each project) as equal partners;
- Sustainability: both projects will work together on a sustainable governance structure and a permanent infrastructure for the joint registry.
The joint registry will be operated under the name "re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories" with its editorial board retaining the name of Databib. The two registries have exchanged metadata records in advance of fully merging their platforms and processes. The merged registry will become an imprint of DataCite and be included in its suite of services before the end of next year.
OAWAL: Open Access Workflows for Academic Librarians
Contributed by:
Jill Emery
Collection Development Librarian
Portland State University
jemery [at] pdx.edu
Graham Stone
Information Resources Manager
University of Huddersfield
g.stone [at] hud.ac.uk
OAWAL, Open Access Workflows for Academic Librarians, is a web site constructed to be a base from which librarians can build upon to create workflows that would apply to Open Access management at their given institution. There are six draft sections comprising of: advocacy, workflows for OA content, standards, the library as publisher, creative commons, and discovery of open access content. The intention of the authors is to crowdsource the basic elements needed to develop workflows and staffing at any given institution. The sections are edited on a regular basis given feedback either directly through the OAWAL web pages, through email, or through in-person meetings. Furthermore, the website is designed to incorporate best practice workflows that can be developed and shared via the website.
OAWAL is agnostic regarding a preference for green or gold open access. Therefore, the only restrictions for posting to OAWAL are that open access publishing models must be limited to an explanation of models as opposed to the philosophical arguments or the selection and/or preference of one model over another and that promotion of any specific publisher or provider tool or platform will be removed if posted. To date, these guidelines have been not been tested.
Since the launch of OAWAL in early March 2014, the reaction and feedback received has been positive and supportive. In addition, the response to OAWAL has been international in scope with communication received from Australia, Germany, the United States, South Africa and the UK, including organizations such as Jisc and Sconul. To date, there has been one in-person meeting, at the 2014 Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, in which numerous attendees gave significant input into the development and expansion of the six sections. The OAWAL creators have also received feedback via email, and comments have been made to the blog advising on revisions and potential additions to the content presented there.
As feedback is received, the web site is updated on a monthly basis to incorporate changes. Throughout the rest of 2014 and into the beginning of 2015, it is hoped the feedback and development of the OAWAL website will continue with in-person meetings and through the publication of sections as they develop and mature. The authors would like to take this opportunity to encourage any feedback on any part of OAWAL.
Historical Image Overlays: Manuscripts of Lichfield Cathedral (University of Kentucky)
Contributed by:
Bill Endres
Assistant Professor
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky, USA
bill.endres [at] uky.edu
An effort through the University of Kentucky's College of Arts & Sciences, Manuscripts of Lichfield Cathedral, has made available historical image overlays for the eighth-century St Chad Gospels. These overlays include photographs spanning 125 years.
One of the goals for this project is to explore ways to present photographs in a digital collection that generates knowledge not only for scholarship but also for preservation. A challenge for preservation is understanding how a manuscript is aging. Inks, pigments, and vellum age slowly and subtly. Cracks gradually appear and expand without notice. When a change is observed, the prior condition of a page is near impossible to recall—unless exacting visual information is available.
The historical image overlays address this issue by providing a means to compare visual information over time. These comparisons are possible through the standard Web viewer for the website, one developed to present multispectral images from its 2010 imaging efforts. The overlay viewer allows any of the images for a page to be overlaid for comparison, the opacity of the top image adjusted through a slide-bar.
Currently, Manuscripts of Lichfield Cathedral includes overlaid historical images from six photographic efforts for nine pages of the St Chad Gospels:
- 1887 - photographs taken for F. H. A. Scrivener's Codex S. Ceddea Latinus
- 1911 - photographs taken under unknown circumstances
- 1929 - photostat images taken by the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
- 1962 - photographs taken by the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England
- 2003 - photographs taken by the British Library, in a collaborative effort with Lichfield Cathedral, England, and Llandeilo Fawr, Wales
- 2010 - my efforts, University of Kentucky
While these photographic efforts were sporadic, they provide visual information to identify intervals when a change in the St Chad Gospels occurred.
Also, Manuscripts of Lichfield Cathedral presents preliminary findings from research on the historical images, including an animated gif to show an area where aging has occurred. The animation shows an area where chips of pigments have broken free, one chip measuring approximately .38 millimeters (See: Some Preliminary Results from Overlaying Historical Images).
In the fall of 2014, the website will provide further images from another photographic effort. In 1956, the Bildarchiv der Abtei Maria Laach produced lantern slides (glass slides) for the major decorated pages of the St Chad Gospels. These slides provide significant visual information for assessing the effects of the St Chad Gospels' 1962 rebinding, when its pages were flattened to remove cockling. Taken six years prior to the flattening, when the 1956 images are compared to the Courtauld's 1962 images (taken immediately after the flattening), these comparisons will reveal rare information about the effects of flattening on pigments.
The aging of the St Chad Gospels is of particular interest to Lichfield Cathedral. Up to six times a year, the St Chad Gospels appears or serves liturgical functions—to my knowledge, it is the oldest manuscript still in active use. While these functions are tightly restricted and extreme caution is taken, the Cathedral desires as much information as possible to assess decisions about these uses.
Special thanks to the Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and the Chapter of Lichfield Cathedral for permissions to make these images available for viewing on the web. Also, special thanks to Noah Adler, Director of Research Computation and Application Development for the College of Arts & Sciences, and Mark Kornbluh, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, for his and the College's continued support.
Knowledge Unlatched Project
Contributed by:
Dr. Lucy Montgomery
Deputy Director
Knowledge Unlatched
London, United Kingdom
lucy [at] knowledgeunlatched.org
Open Access monograph project Knowledge Unlatched (KU) has begun the process of making its Pilot Collection available for anyone in the world to read or download for free on a Creative Commons license.
PDFs of 22 books can already be downloaded via the OAPEN digital Library. The collection is also being loaded onto the HathiTrust and British Library systems. A further 6 titles in the collection will become available as soon as they are published.
Unlatched books can be accessed from the Knowledge Unlatched website: http://collections.knowledgeunlatched.org/collection-availability-1/.
Duke University Library has provided assistance in creating MARCXML records for the collection. Kenyon College and Denison University Libraries in Ohio have provided records in MARC21 format. These files are available for download at: https://collections.knowledgeunlatched.org/downloads/.
KU was established in 2012 with the goal of helping libraries to secure long-term savings for their own institutions while increasing access to high quality books for the whole world by working together to share the costs of OA for books.
The KU Pilot Collection is the first step in making this vision a reality. Nearly 300 libraries from 24 countries are sharing the costs of making 28 front-list HSS research titles from 13 publishers available on Creative Commons licenses.
Libraries paid less than $43 to 'unlatch' each book in the collection, compared to an average cover price of $95.
For more information about the initiative visit: http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org.
I N T H E N E W S
E-Verify: Employment Eligibility Verification Webinar for Public Librarians
May 7, 2014 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will offer the third in a series of free webinars for public librarians about immigration and U.S. citizenship topics."
"The webinar, E-Verify: Employment Eligibility Verification Resources for Employers, Workers and Job Seekers, will explore E-Verify, the federal government's no-cost web-based service that enables employers to verify new hires' employment eligibility. The presentation will also include an overview of Form I-9, the Employee Rights Toolkit, Self Check, and other USCIS resources. Familiarity with these resources can be vital for public librarians to assist library customers with employment eligibility verification information.
It is not necessary to have participated in previous USCIS-IMLS webinars to participate in this session."
"Details:
E-Verify: Employment Eligibility Verification Resources for Employers, Workers and Job Seekers
Monday, June 2, from 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. EST."
For more information please see the full press release.
NISO and OAI Publish American National Standard on ResourceSync Framework Specification
May 7, 2014 — "The National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) announce the
publication of the ResourceSync Framework Specification (ANSI/NISO
Z39.99-2014)-a new American National Standard for the web detailing various
capabilities that a server can implement to allow third-party systems to
remain synchronized with its evolving resources. The ResourceSync joint
project, funded with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Jisc,
was initiated to develop a new open standard on the real-time
synchronization of web resources."
"'Increasingly, large-scale digital collections are available from multiple
hosting locations, are cached at multiple servers, and leveraged by several
services,' explains Herbert Van de Sompel, Scientist, Los Alamos National
Laboratory, OAI Executive, and Co-chair of the ResourceSync Working Group.
'Since Web resources are continually changing, this proliferation of content
yields the challenging problem of keeping services that leverage a server's
evolving content synchronized in a timely and accurate manner. Our two-year
collaborative effort resulted in a specification that can be used to meet
this challenge for a wide variety of use cases. This was possible by
devising a modular specification and by grounding it in protocols that are
already widely adopted.'"
For more information please see the full press release.
New Memorandum strengthens global collaboration in digital preservation
May 6, 2014 — "The Open Planets Foundation (OPF) and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) are delighted to announce a new memorandum of understanding that strengthens their ongoing collaboration to tackle digital preservation challenges."
"Signed by OPF Executive Director, Ed Fay, and DPC Executive Director, William Kilbride, at the DPC offices in Glasgow, the MoU commits both organisations to share knowledge and expertise, deliver joint events, and to support the development of tools and best practices."
For more information please see the full press release.
Open Humanities Awards: second round open until 30 May 2014
April 30, 2014 announcement from Lieke Ploeger, Community Manager, The Open Knowledge Foundation — "We are excited to announce the second round of the Open Humanities
Awards, running from 30 April until 30 May 2014. There are £20,000 worth of prizes on offer in two dedicated tracks:"
- Open track: for projects that either use open content, open data or open source tools to further humanities teaching and research
- DM2E track: for projects that build upon the research, tools and data of the DM2E project
"Why are we running these Awards?
Humanities research is based on the interpretation and analysis of a wide
variety of cultural artefacts including texts, images and audiovisual
material. Much of this material is now freely and openly available on the
internet enabling people to discover, connect and contextualise cultural
artefacts in ways previously very difficult."
"We want to make the most of this new opportunity by encouraging budding
developers and humanities researchers to collaborate and start new projects
that use this open content and data paving the way for a vibrant cultural
and research commons to emerge."
For more information please see the awards web site.
ALA accelerates efforts on copyright and surveillance
April 28, 2014 — "Adam Eisgrau, a veteran intellectual property and privacy policy lobbyist, today joins the American Library Association's copyright and cybersecurity advocacy efforts to increase visibility for library issues on a national level."
"As Congress takes renewed interest in copyright law, cybersecurity measures and surveillance reform, Eisgrau will use his extensive background on copyright and privacy issues to increase the association's presence in Washington and educate lawmakers on the issues libraries face in championing the information rights and needs of the public. Additionally, Eisgrau will assist the American Library Association in implementing strategic policy initiatives that engage decision makers and establish policy priorities, such as protecting reader privacy and supporting the fair use doctrine."
"Eisgrau – a veteran Washington technology lobbyist, trade group organizer and strategic communications specialist – began his lobbying career in 1995 as Senator Dianne Feinstein's first counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. During his tenure as ALA's first full-time intellectual property lobbyist from 1995-1999, Eisgrau was an active participant in debate over the first legislation to update copyright law for the digital age and a seminal 1996 UN copyright treaty. He also was instrumental in organizing and representing the Digital Future Coalition, an alliance of over 40 public and private sector companies and organizations."
For more information please see the full press release.
Institute of Museum and Library Services Announces Recipients of 2014 National Medal for Museum and Library Service
April 24, 2014 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services today announced the recipients of the 2014 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. The National Medal is the nation's highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to the community. In its 20th anniversary year, the medals program celebrates excellent institutions that have made a significant impact on individuals, families, and communities across the nation."
"These ten honorees exemplify the nation's great diversity of libraries and museums and include a natural history museum, a children's museum, a natural sciences museum, an aquarium, a botanic garden, public library systems, and a book center, hailing from ten states."
" The 2014 winners of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service are:
- Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn, N.Y.
- Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Ill.
- The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Ind.
- Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, Las Vegas, Nev.
- Mid-Continent Public Library, Independence, Mo.
- Mystic Aquarium, Mystic, Conn.
- North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh, N.C.
- Octavia Fellin Public Library, Gallup, N.M.
- Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Norman, Okla.
- Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, Mass."
For more information please see the full press release.
ETD Lifecycle Management Tools Now Available
April 24, 2014 announcement from Yan Han, University of Arizona Libraries — "The ETD Lifecycle Management project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), is pleased to launch a public review of the project's Lifecycle Management Tools. The Lifecycle Management Tools are a documented suite of both new and existing open-source tools for better managing electronic theses & dissertations (ETDs). Sign up to receive the ETD Lifecycle Management Tools manual here: http://metaarchive.org/imls/index.php/Request_Tools."
"During the public review, Educopia is offering free one-on-one technical support and implementation consultations as needed through September 2014...."
"...Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and led by the University of North Texas, in partnership with the Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations (NDLTD) and Educopia Institute, the ETD Lifecycle Management project is promoting best practices and improving the capacity of academic libraries to preserve ETDs for future researchers. The project has also released the Guidance Documents for Lifecycle Management of ETDs, available from Educopia Publishing (http://www.educopia.org/publishing/gdlmetd) and the NDLTD website (http://www.ndltd.org/resources/manage-etds)."
IFLA selects Columbus for 2016 World Library and Information Congress
April 24, 2014 — "The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has selected Columbus, Ohio, USA, as the site for its 2016 World Library and Information Congress."
"The international flagship professional and trade event for the library and information services sector will be held August 11-18, 2016 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. More than 4,000 attendees from 120 countries are expected to attend."
"Headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, IFLA is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession."
For more information please see the full press release.
April 23, 2014 announcement from Fabien Gouyon, INESC, Porto, Portugal — "The Board of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval
(ISMIR) is accepting proposals for hosting the 2016 ISMIR Conference.
Interested institutions are invited to submit a proposal based on the
guidelines provided on http://www.ismir.net/ISMIR-Call4Hosting.pdf
(Proposals for year 2016 are also welcome.)"
"The deadline for bidding is July 1st 2014."
"Before going through the work of making a formal proposal according to
the Society guidelines, interested institutions are strongly
encouraged to send a notice of intent to bid to the ISMIR Board (via
secretary [at] ismir.net)."
For more information please see http://www.ismir.net/.
Getty
Research Institute adds 77,000 images to Open Content
April 22, 2014 announcement from Getty — "As part of the Getty's growing Open Content program, the Getty
Research Institute has made an additional 77,000 images from their Photo
Archive freely available for use. This new addition includes more than
72,000 photographs from scholar Max Hutzel's Foto Arte Minore Archive,
which documents the art and architecture of Italy, and almost 5,000
study photographs from the Tapestry Collection, one of the few
comprehensive visual resources for 15th through 18th century tapestries."
You can read more about this major addition to Open Content here.
The National Endowment for the Humanities Awards the New-York Historical Society $434,400
April 16, 2014 — "The New-York Historical Society today announced it received two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The first grant will support a three-year research fellowship and the second will fund the cataloging and conservation of 6,000 items in the American Historical Manuscript Collection (AHMC) over two years at the New-York Historical Society's Patricia D. Klingenstein Library."
"A grant of $143,400 will support the National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, providing one scholar per year with unfettered access to collection resources and an intellectual community to develop new research that illuminates complex issues of the past. The fellow will have the opportunity to leverage the New-York Historical Society's incomparable collections of documents, artifacts, and works of art documenting American history from the perspective of New York."
"A $300,000 grant will fund a two-year project that will allow the New-York Historical Society to catalog and conserve 6,000 manuscripts from the American Historical Manuscript Collection. The cataloging of these collections will offer researchers throughout New York and around the world unprecedented access to these documents as well as views into the history of New York and the United States from the 17th through 20th centuries. Areas of focus within the AHMC include politics and government; military history; slavery and abolition; women's history; identity studies; economic, business, and trade history; exploration and westward expansion; and real estate and the built environment."
For more information please see the full press release.
Thomson Reuters Collaborates with Cornell University's Emerging Markets Institute to Advance Access to Academic Research
April 15, 2014 — "The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced a collaboration with the Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management to power a unique academic research portal through the Web of Science™, the premier scientific search and discovery platform and industry authority in science, social science, and arts & humanities citation indexes...."
"...The portal provides access to 50 academic journals with articles covering 43 emerging economies across the past five years. The portal web page also contains timely blogs about recent publications and trends in academic publishing about emerging markets...."
"...This collaboration highlights Thomson Reuters continued commitment to spotlight regionally relevant scholarly literature and identify influential authors and research within rapidly developing research centers. The organization recently integrated the SciELO Citation Index, which includes approximately 700 titles and more than 4 million cited references from Open Access journals from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa, Spain and Venezuela, into the Web of Science."
For more information please see the full press release.
CLIR Names 2014 Mellon Dissertation Fellows
April 9, 2014 — "Seventeen graduate students have been selected to receive awards this year under the Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources, which CLIR administers."
"The fellowships are intended to help graduate students in the humanities and related social science fields pursue research wherever relevant sources are available; gain skill and creativity in using primary source materials in libraries, archives, museums, and related repositories; and provide suggestions to CLIR about how such source materials can be made more accessible and useful."
"The fellowships carry stipends of up to $25,000 each to support dissertation research for periods of up to 12 months."
For a list of the recipients and more information please see the full press release.
NISO Publishes Revised Recommendations for Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART)
Revision adds recommendations on metadata for consortia, open access materials, e-books, and conference proceedings
April 7, 2014 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a revision to the Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2014). The original recommended practice, issued in 2010, provided all parties in the information supply chain with straightforward guidance about metadata formatting – focused mainly on journal resources – to ensure the exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers. Building on the initial recommendations, the revision includes the more granular, complex issues that cause problems in metadata supply, including consortia-specific metadata and metadata transfer for open access publications, e-books, and conference proceedings."
"'The value of the KBART format is that it can be used for both human-readable and machine-readable purposes and can be a low cost approach to effective knowledge base metadata transfer for publishers,' states Magaly Bascones, Data Manager at Jisc Collections and Co-chair of the KBART Working Group. 'Since the first Recommended Practice was issued, over 75 publishers and content providers have endorsed KBART and demonstrated their commitment to good quality metadata provision. With implementation of the KBART recommendations, users can be assured that the providers' metadata is trusted and has the required level of granularity without the burdensome task of title-by-title checking. All of the existing endorsements will go through an updating procedure to ensure conformance with the revised Recommended Practice.'..."
"...The KBART Recommended Practice and the KBART Information Hub with its supporting materials are available on the NISO website at: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart."
For more information please see the full press release.
House budget proposal dismisses role of IMLS
April 1, 2014 — "In a new budget released today from Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House Budget Committee Chairman denounces the critical role that the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) plays in supporting civic engagement, literacy and lifelong learning in more than 123,000 libraries nationwide. Rep. Ryan recommends that the federal government not have a role in libraries and that Congress shift the federal agency's responsibilities to the private sector in his 2015 fiscal year budget resolution."
"Today, American Library Association (ALA) President Barbara Stripling released the following statement in response to Rep. Ryan's budget (pdf):
"'We were shocked to learn that Representative Paul Ryan recommended eliminating IMLS, the agency that promotes library services for the American public. We are disappointed by the House Budget Committee's outright dismissal of IMLS, the agency that administers the primary source of federal funding to libraries. Libraries depend on the support they receive from IMLS to help patrons learn new skills, find job opportunities and access reading materials that they otherwise could not afford. More than $180 million has been appropriated to the Institute for Museum and Library Services through September 2014 to help libraries make information and services available to the citizens they serve...."
"...Library funding support from the Institute for Museum and Library Services wields large returns in the form of literate and civically engaged communities. We hope that Congress will support the important role that the Institute for Museum and Library Services plays in supporting educated communities by rejecting the House Budget resolution."
For more information please see the full press release.
Grant Awards Announcement: FY 14 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program
March 31, 2014 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced 23 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian (LB21) grants totaling $7,437,595. Recipients are matching these awards with $3,614,714 in non-federal funds. IMLS received 82 applications for the program this year...."
"...The array of projects funded this year includes grants for many different library constituencies across the country. Projects include plans for improved early learning services for 1,000 New York public libraries, an institute for tribal librarians, a planning project for broadband services and training for rural Florida public libraries, professional development for youth librarians in Pennsylvania to offer STEM education, an effort to recruit MLS school librarians for schools in economically challenged eastern North Carolina, and professional development for 400 librarians to improve library immigrant services in Queens, New York."
"Click here to view the list of funded projects."
For more information please see the full press release.
IMLS, Sloan Foundation Jointly Award SHARE $1 Million to Develop Notification Service
March 28, 2014 — "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has been awarded a joint $1 million grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop and launch the SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) Notification Service. SHARE is a collaborative initiative of ARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to ensure the preservation of, access to, and reuse of research findings and reports."
"SHARE aims to make research assets more discoverable and more accessible, and to enable the research community to build upon these assets in creative ways. SHARE's first project, the Notification Service, will inform stakeholders when research results – including articles and data – are released."
"Funding agencies, university research offices, institutional and disciplinary repositories, and other interested parties have found it difficult to keep abreast of the release of publications, datasets, and other results of scholarly research. Across the disciplines, principal investigators and other scholars do not have a single, structured way to report on these releases in a timely and comprehensive manner. The SHARE Notification Service is a higher education-based initiative to address this problem by strengthening efforts to identify, discover, and track research outputs."
For more information please see the full press release.
IMLS Grant to Support Development of Library Digital Badging System
March 12, 2014 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today a $250,000 award to the Brooklyn Public Library to partner with the software developer BiblioCommons to create and pilot an online badging system for libraries. The project will result in the technical infrastructure needed for participating libraries to offer digital badge-based programs through which library customers can access, manage, and collect a variety of badges."
"A digital badge, like a physical Boy Scout or Girl Scout badge, represents an accomplishment or acquired skill. Digital badges began with games and other online organizations to reward players, recognize achievement, and establish credibility. They are now part of a movement, shaped by Mozilla Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other organizations, to recognize skill development and training achievements gained through self-directed informal learning and through formal professional development activities."
"The Brooklyn Public Library's project is modeled on the Open Badging system developed by Mozilla and implemented in Chicago's Summer of Learning program in 2013. BiblioCommons, a software provider that makes online data, circulation, and cataloging tools available to library subscribers, will provide an online badging system platform to be piloted by Brooklyn Public Library and multiple library partners. Partner libraries, including the Seattle Public Library, Omaha Public Library, and Tulsa City-County Library, will experiment with a variety of programming and badge promotion opportunities in their existing Summer Reading Programs. The project aims to test a digital badging system within a library environment, evaluate the technology, and present a model for other libraries."
For more information please see the full press release.
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