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I N B R I E F

May/June 2015
Table of Contents

A Community Effort to Develop Best Practices in Digital Library Assessment

Contributed by
Jody DeRidder
Head of Digital Services
University of Alabama Libraries
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
jody [at] jodyderidder.com

Joyce Chapman
Assessment Coordinator
Duke University Libraries
Durham, North Carolina, USA
joyce.chapman [at] duke.edu

Research and cultural heritage institutions are increasingly focused on providing online access to digital special collections and archives. Assessment is a necessity: in the face of limited resources and tremendous demand for online access to digital library materials, we need to strategically focus our efforts and better understand and measure the value, impact, and associated costs of digital library materials.

However, methods for assessment of digital libraries are not yet standardized. As a result, many librarians and archivists are at a loss as to how to begin to assess costs, benefits, and usability. Currently, the majority of research findings in the field cannot be effectively generalized from one software system and institution to another. In an effort to address this crucial gap, the Digital Library Federation (DLF)¹ Assessment Interest Group² is seeking to engage the community in the development of best practices and guidelines.

Basing our efforts on an agreed-upon framework³, working groups are currently centered on citations, analytics, cost assessment, and user studies. Additionally, the community is open to forming more working groups on other topics of interest. The initial goal of the working groups is to have viable progress to report at the next DLF Forum in October, 2015⁴; however, the primary purpose is to develop best practices and guidelines that can be used by all to assess digital libraries in each area. Thus far, we have developed a beta cost-estimation tool⁵ for digitization projects, a white paper on use of statistics and altmetrics⁶, a topically-divided bibliography⁷ which we are using to identify gaps and common practices, a draft set of guidelines for citations⁸, and we are in the process of drafting guidelines for the use of Google Analytics. DLF has established a wiki site⁹ that will be used to document resources, best practices, and guidelines as they develop.

Colleagues who are interested in participating are urged to contact the authors or join the Digital Library Assessment Google group¹⁰ and express their interests. By spreading news of our efforts and engaging the community, the authors hope to elicit more community involvement and welcome new members and new ideas to help us clarify the necessary steps for effective and efficient assessment of digital libraries. We hope that this work will help to ensure the sustainability, value, and effectiveness of digital libraries in years to come.

References

1. Digital Library Federation (DLF) [website].

2. Joyce Chapman, "Introducing the New DLF Assessment Interest Group," Blog Post on the Digital Library Federation blog, 12 May 2014.

3. "Digital Library Assessment Framework," 2014.

4. Digital Library Federation, "2015 DLF Forum: Vancouver."

5. Joyce Chapman, "Library Digitization Cost Calculator" [website].

6. Stacy Konkiel, Michelle Dalmau, and Dave Scherer, "Determining Assessment Strategies for Digital Libraries and Institutional Repositories Using Usage Statistics and Altmetrics" [white paper]. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1392140

7. Tao Zhang, Elizabeth Joan Kelly, Liz Woolcott, Santi Thompson, and Rachel Trent, "DLF User Studies in Digital Libraries Bibliography" [Google Doc].

8. Elizabeth Kelly, "Draft Guidelines for Citing Library-Hosted Digital Assets" [Google doc].

9. "Digital Library Assessment Framework," [wiki].

10. "Digital Library Assessment," Google Group.

veraPDF Conformance Checker Funded by PREFORMA Project

Contributed by
Becky McGuinness
Community Manager
Open Preservation Foundation
becky [at] openpreservation.org

In April 2015 the PREFORMA Pre Commercial Procurement (PCP) project announced the three suppliers who will be developing open source conformance checkers for PDF/A, TIFF and Matroska / Linear Pulse Code Modulation / FF Video Codec 1 audio visual files¹.

PREFORMA's aim is to address the challenge of implementing standardised file formats for preserving data content in the long term. The project's primary objective is to give memory institutions full control of the process of the conformity tests of files to be ingested into preservation repositories. The selection of suppliers follows the evaluation of designs developed from November 2014 - February 2015.

The Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) and the PDF Association are leading the veraPDF consortium's project with partners Dual Lab, the Digital Preservation Coalition and KEEP Solutions. The Consortium's mission is to develop the definitive, industry-approved, open-source implementation checker for validating all parts of ISO 19005 standards for archival PDF; PDF/A-1, PDF/A-2, and PDF/A-3.

The PREFORMA challenge brief requires a conformance checker that:

verifies whether a file has been produced according to the specifications of a standardised file format,
verifies whether a file matches the acceptance criteria for long-term preservation by the memory institution,
reports in human and machine readable format which properties deviate from the standard specification and acceptance criteria, and
corrects relevant metadata in the preservation file.

The veraPDF consortium will deliver a definitive conformance checker for PDF/A, working with the PDF Association Validation Technical Working Group (TWG) to establish authoritative ground truth corpora covering all requirements of all parts of the PDF/A family of specifications. The conformance checker will include a policy checker for memory institutions to control acceptance criteria for files received into long-term preservation repositories. A policy profile registry will be launched to enable the sharing of policy profiles and best practice between institutions.

Working with the PDF Validation TWG, the veraPDF consortium produces authoritative corpora and definitive software that will be available with library, API and end user interfaces. The project will provide reporting and shell modules to enable integrations into workflows and repository systems and user interfaces for use via API, web, or desktop GUI. All software will be released under permissive open source licenses and we expect to establish a substantial and enthusiastic community supporting and sustaining the product.

VeraPDF's Functional and Technical Specifications from Phase 1 have been published on the OPF website.

Phase 2 began in mid-April, 2015. In the coming months, memory institutions will be invited to workshops and webinars to contribute their policy requirements, receive support in documenting and implementing institutional policy, and share best practice with peer institutions. Software developers will be invited to contribute test files and software, and to perform testing and provide feedback. A set of open source contribution guidelines will be released to encourage participation from developers.

¹ PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a new Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme. The presentations and design documents from each of the three successful suppliers are available on the PREFORMA project Open Source Portal.

Online-Only Media: 21st Century Collection in Crisis?

Contributed by
John Vallier
Head, Distributed Media Services
University of Washington Libraries
Seattle, Washington, USA
vallier [at] uw [dot] edu

It's a known fact. Today's music and movie industry is increasingly favoring online-only, direct-to-consumer distribution. Convenient, true, but how does this growing trend impact the development of our information institutions? No longer can librarians and archivists expect to collect videos and sound recordings on tangible DVDs and CDs where first sale doctrine applies. Instead, at an ever-increasing rate, librarians are discovering that more recordings are only available via such online distribution sites as iTunes or Amazon.com. These distributors require individual purchasers to agree to restrictive end-user license agreements (whether one reads them or not) that explicitly forbid institutional ownership and such core library functions as lending:

"Upon payment for Music Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Music Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use...." (http://amzn.to/1g7AxZX).

"You shall be authorized to use iTunes Products only for personal, noncommercial use.... You may not rent, lease, lend, sell, transfer redistribute, or sublicense the Licensed Application...." (http://apple.co/1IbLlty).

As part of a NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up grant my colleagues and I attempted to negotiate a library-friendly end user license agreement (EULA) exception with representatives from Amazon and Apple. These attempts were rebuffed: both Amazon and Apple explained that it was the recording industry that demanded restrictive language in their EULAs. Subsequent attempts to work with Universal Music Group (UMG) to address a specific, and Grammy Award winning, example of an online-only recording resulted in an unrealistic set of terms and a lack of willingness on UMG's part to negotiate further (read about that failed attempt here http://bit.ly/1k5QpEZ). And more recently, when I succeeded in convincing an artist and record label to allow our library to burn an online-only release to CD and put it in our collection, Apple still called it a violation of their EULA. I attempted to add it to our collection nonetheless, but our licensing librarians deemed it too risky to pursue.

The inability of librarians to purchase, lend, and own online-only media files is beginning to place a growing limitation on our traditional role of providing broad and enduring access to a wide swath of cultural heritage materials. Yes, many distributors will provide access to catalogs of videos and recordings that are popular at the time and meet the needs of many consumers, but our users need access to less popular and more obscure recordings, too. The great libraries have been built not just by collecting the most common and widely used materials, but more specifically, the obscure and less popular materials. Items most crucial for a film scholar's research and a musician's study are often drawn from the "long tail," which is much less likely to be made available – and preserved for perpetuity – by a commercial entity.

With generous funding from IMLS, the University of Washington Libraries and the Music Library Association have spent the past year and a half developing responses and possible solutions to this issue. Called the "National Forum on Online-Only Music," the project has enabled us to hire legal consultants, share our work with Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and the National Recording Preservation Board, as well as envision a range of approaches: from licensing online-only works directly from library-friendly artists to creating a so-called "dark archive" of files that could be released when the content is no longer available. Contribute your own thoughts and solutions to the impasse by contacting us via our project site.

Linked Data for Libraries (LD4L)

Contributed by
Dean Krafft and Simeon Warner
Cornell University Library
Ithaca, NY, USA
(dean.krafft & simeon.warner) [at] cornell.edu

The Linked Data for Libraries (LD4L) project aims to create a model that works both within individual institutions and through a coordinated, extensible network of Linked Open Data (LOD) to capture the intellectual value that librarians and other domain experts add to information resources when they describe, annotate, organize, select, and use those resources, together with the social value evident from patterns of usage. The Cornell University Library, the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and the Stanford University Libraries have all been exploring new approaches to dramatically improve the discovery experience for users seeking scholarly information resources, such as traditional monograph and journal publications, archival materials, research datasets, images, recordings, cultural artifacts, newspapers and magazines, web archives, and much more. All three institutions have been looking at ways to gather context and relationships about these resources that go far beyond traditional metadata approaches.

An initial thrust of the project was to develop a set of use cases illustrating the benefits of LOD in a library context. These were organized into 6 clusters focusing on: 1) bibliographic and curation data; 2) bibliographic and person data; 3) leveraging external data including authorities; 4) leveraging the deeper graph (via queries or patterns); 5) leveraging usage data; and 6) cross-site services.

A second area of work is the development of an LD4L ontology to capture the information needed to address the use cases. The ontology includes bibliographic, person, curation, and usage information, largely drawing from existing ontologies. The BIBFRAME initiative at the Library of Congress addresses the representation of MARC metadata in RDF, while OCLC has worked to extend the schema.org ontology as a bridge between the library community and the Web. Other ontologies being built upon include the W3C Provenance Ontology (PROV-O), the Open Annotation Data Model (OA) to represent collection annotations, and the Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) for ordering. We have prioritized the ability to convert references within library metadata records from "strings" to "things", for example reducing reliance on the lexical form of a name by adopting the use of URI-based identifiers as the primary means of disambiguation. Whenever possible we seek out persistent global identifiers for the entities being represented — identifiers from established international efforts such as ORCID, VIAF, and ISNI for people for example.

A third area is the engineering work needed to capture data from available data sources and to create the LOD that will enable the types of discovery and access envisioned in the proposal. This includes work to make linked data easier for web-developers to use within standard frameworks. The project has contributed to the development of the ActiveTriples gem and demonstrated use within Hydra applications. We are also working to develop a demonstration cross-site discovery interface, leveraging both strings and entities, based on the LOD from our three institutions

Over February 23-24, 2015 we held a lively workshop at Stanford University with almost 50 participants from the USA and Europe. We shared project results to date and demonstrated proof-of-concept implementations of many of the use cases. The LD4L public web site, with links to the public project wiki, workshop details, and the use cases, is available at http://ld4l.org. The project GitHub site, with software and ontology work, is available at https://github.com/ld4l.

An Integrated Framework for Assessing the Vulnerability of Plant Diversity to Climate Change

Contributed by
Matthew Albrecht, Associate Scientist
Adam Smith, Assistant Scientist
Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development
Missouri Botanical Garden
St Louis Missouri, USA
matthew.albrecht [at] mobot.org
adam.smith [at] mobot.org

An integrated framework for assessing the vulnerability of plant diversity to climate change was a project developed by the Missouri Botanical Garden with the goal of advancing plant conservation efforts at botanical gardens and arboreta. The conservation of rare and endangered plant species in ex situ collections (e.g., seed banks) is an essential function of botanical gardens and arboreta that participate in the Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), a national network of 38 botanical gardens and arboreta whose mission is to conserve and restore native plants in the United States. The accelerating rates of recent climate change bring particular urgency to the need for the conservation community to safeguard greater numbers of plant species and greater quantities of genetic material to address the problems uniquely posed by climate change for plant diversity.

In this project, Missouri Botanical Garden scientists developed new techniques to estimate how much species will be exposed to climate change and gained new insight from germination experiments into the adaptive capacity of plants to a changing climate. A significant achievement was the development of a spatially explicit vulnerability ranking system that identifies geographic "hotspots" of threat and opportunity for botanical gardens to prioritize collection of propagules for seed banking or, for species that cannot be stored in a seed bank, acquisition for conservation in botanical garden living collections. The project outcomes will enable botanical garden and arboreta to predict global change impacts on the plant diversity of their regions, identify the most at-risk species, and assist their survival.

This project was made possible by a National Leadership Grant for Museums from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Grant Number: LG-25-10-0035-10). See more information on the climate change research at the Missouri Botanical Garden website.

I N T H E N E W S

Julie Todaro Wins 2016-2017 ALA Presidency

May 8, 2015 — "Julie Todaro, PhD, 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, Fla."

For more information, see the full press release.

Help Your Community Reap the Advantages of Broadband Adoption and Digital Literacy

IMLS announces public request for comment and webinar on broadband barriers

May 7, 2015 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is encouraging library, archives, and museums to share their thoughts on how the federal government can expand and promote broadband adoption and digital inclusion. IMLS is one of 25 federal agencies comprising the President's new interagency Broadband Opportunity Council charged with developing a framework of recommendations to support broadband access and adoption."

"The council has issued a request for comment in the Federal Register for public input to get a better understanding of the challenges facing communities that lack adequate access to broadband. It aims to identify unnecessary regulatory and policy barriers, incentivize investment, and align funding policies to support broadband access and adoption...."

"IMLS encourages libraries and museums to submit their comments by the submission deadline of June 10, 2015. Comments can be submitted by email to BOCrfc2015@ntia.doc.gov or by mail to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Room 4626, Attn: Broadband Opportunity Council, Washington, DC 20230."

For more information, see the full press release.

UNC Faculty Council Adopts Open Access Policy

May 6, 2015 — "Thanks to a unanimous vote at the April 24 meeting of its Faculty Council, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has joined the community of leading universities that endorse open access."

"Open access refers to making scholarly publications available online and without charge for users to read, download, print, or use for other legitimate educational and research purposes...."

"...The policy benefits faculty by enabling their work to reach an expanded readership, including health care workers, journalists, policy makers, K-12 students and teachers, researchers in the private sector, and scholars in the developing world. It is also a boon to research libraries, which continue to struggle with decades of extraordinary inflation in serials prices, even as university budgets shrink."

"UNC faculty who do not already have access to a disciplinary open access repository would be able to preserve and distribute their work through the Carolina Digital Repository (CDR), which the UNC Library operates."

For more information, see the full press release.

President Obama Announces Open eBooks and ConnectED Library Challenge

April 30, 2015 — "Today, at the Anacostia Branch of the District of Columbia Public Library, President Obama announced two new efforts to strengthen student learning by improving access to digital content and to public libraries. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is supporting several library and non-profit partners to develop the Open eBooks initiative and the ConnectED Library Challenge. These efforts leverage the extensive resources of the nation's 16,500 public libraries to help kids develop a love of reading and discovery by making e-books and library services broadly available, particularly to students from low-income families...."

"...The Open eBooks initiative will make over $250 million in popular e-books from major publishers available, for free, to children from low-income families via an app. The Open eBooks app is being developed by the New York Public Library, which is partnering with the Digital Public Library of America and First Book to curate and deliver the e-books to students from low-income families."

"IMLS is investing $5 million to support the development of the e-reader app, as well as tools and services to help the public more easily access e-books and other digital content."

For more information, see the full press release.

ARL Joins New Re:Create Coalition to Promote Balanced Copyright

April 28, 2015 — "ARL joined US technology companies, trade associations, and civil society organizations in the launch of Re:Create, a coalition that promotes balanced copyright policy. A balanced copyright system depends on limitations and exceptions, such as fair use. As technology advances, it is imperative that the copyright law is responsive to these changes, balancing the interests of creators of copyrighted information and products with the interests of users of those products."

"Re:Create promotes and defends the important balance of copyright. ARL's member institutions, as well as the general public, depend on balanced copyright that includes robust limitations and exceptions. A balanced system ensures that copyright does not limit or impede new and valuable technologies and uses."

"Fair use is responsive to the quickly evolving technology and has been called the 'safety valve' of US copyright law. Fair use also accommodates the First Amendment right to freedom of expression, ensuring that copyright does not prevent freedom of speech. As ARL has shown in an infographic (PDF), fair use is a right, vitally important, for everyone and everywhere. This important doctrine is vital to the economy, innovation, new creativity, learning and education."

For more information, see the full press release.

National Endowment for the Humanities announces new 'Humanities in the Public Square' grant opportunity

April 27, 2015 — "The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced a new grant opportunity, called 'Humanities in the Public Square,' that will put humanities scholars in direct dialogue with the public on some of the most pressing issues of today – through public forums, community programs, and the development of educational resources."

"This new grant opportunity is part of the National Endowment for the Humanities' agency-wide initiative The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square, which seeks to demonstrate and enhance the role and significance of the humanities and humanities scholarship in public life."

"The NEH Humanities in the Public Square program will award grants of up to $300,000 to institutions for projects that incorporate:

a public forum, to be held in May 2016, that engages humanities practitioners in discussion with a public audience about a theme of contemporary significance;
public programs, commencing in spring of 2016, that would use creative formats, such as book or film discussion programs, local history projects, scholarly talks or courses for lifelong learners, to engage the public or specific audiences in sustained conversations on a chosen theme;
the creation and dissemination of educational resources that will extend the reach of the content developed for the public forum and public programs through digital resources or curricular materials for use by use by teachers, students and lifelong learners."

"...The application deadline for the initial cycle of Humanities in the Public Square grants is June 24, 2015."

For more information, see the full press release.

New Science Europe Principles on Open Access Publisher Services

April 27, 2015 — "At its General Assembly meeting in Vienna on 15 April, Science Europe's members – comprising 50 major public research organisations in Europe – adopted four new common principles on Open Access Publisher Services. The Principles, which were prepared by Science Europe's Working Group on Open Access to Scientific Publications, complement the existing Science Europe 'Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications' published in April 2013."

"As scholarly publishing makes its transition to an Open Access system, and as service providers change their business models, the outcome of the transition will depend on the added value and quality of the services provided."

"The new principles adopted by Science Europe aim at setting minimum standards for Open Access publishing services provided by scholarly publishers. These general – and at the same time very practical - principles will help ensure scholarly and technical quality and cost-effectiveness of Open Access-related services in all fields, from sciences to social sciences and the humanities."

For more information, see the full press release.

UNESCO Launched Open Access (OA) Curriculum and Self-Directional Learning (SDL) Modules for Researchers, Librarians and Library Schools

April 24, 2015 announcement byby Dr. Anup Kumar Das, Documentation Officer, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India — "In March 2015 UNESCO, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), has launched two sets of Open Access (OA) Curriculum and Self-Directional Learning (SDL) modules for researchers, librarians and library schools. Young and early-career researchers, and librarians affiliated to different academic and research institutions are the main target audience of these two distinct OA Curricula. These curricula are also aimed at capacity building, awareness raising and sensitization of the new global citizens. The OA curricula is produced in two distinct series, namely, (I) Open Access for Researchers, and (II) Open Access for Library Schools. The researchers' curriculum is an elaborative exploration of scholarly communications processes, concepts of openness and open access, intellectual property rights and research evaluation metrics, while the library schools' curriculum has more insights on how library and information professionals would deal with advocating OA scholarly communications and managing OA resources in their institutions. The Researchers' Curriculum consists of five modules whereas library schools' curriculum consists of four modules. OA curriculum was prepared as an outcome of the project titled Development of Curriculum and Self-Directed Learning Tools for Open Access, led by CEMCA in New Delhi during 2013-14. All nine learning modules are freely available online with CC BY-SA license and downloadable from http://unesdoc.unesco.org. Out of the nine modules, eight modules were written by South Asian LIS educators and LIS practitioners, whereas one module was written by a South African LIS practitioner. Professor SB Ghosh of the IFLA RSCAO also served as one of the editors for these Modules."

For more information, see the full announcement.

Recipients of Nation's Highest Museum and Library Honor Announced

April 21, 2015 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services today announced the recipients of the 2015 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. For 21 years, the award has celebrated institutions that present extraordinary and innovative approaches to public service to make a difference for individuals, families, and communities. The award will be presented at an event in Washington, D.C., on May 18."

"The 2015 winners of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service are:

For more information, see the full press release.

Residents Chosen for NDSR 2015 in Washington, DC

April 6, 2015 announcement from Susan Manus, Library of Congress — "We are pleased to announce that the Washington, DC National Digital Stewardship Residency class for 2015 has now been chosen! Five very accomplished people have been selected from a highly competitive field of candidates. The new residents will arrive in Washington, DC this June to begin the program. Updates on the program, including more information on the resident projects, will be published in The Signal during the coming months."

"The NDSR program offers recent master's degree graduates/doctoral candidates in specialized fields – library science, information science, museum studies, archival studies and related technology – the opportunity to gain valuable professional experience in digital preservation. Residents will start the program with an intensive digital stewardship workshop at the Library of Congress, followed by specialized project work at one of five host institutions in the Washington, DC area. The projects will allow them to acquire hands-on knowledge and skills regarding collection, selection, management, long-term preservation and accessibility of digital assets."

The new residents are listed in an April 3, 2015 Library of Congress press release.

LLAMA thought leader webinars now archived

March 30, 2015 — "Does this sound familiar? You look at your calendar and a get a sickening feeling when you suddenly realize that the great webinar you've been looking forward to happened yesterday! Don't worry, LLAMA's got you covered."

"The Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) now offers free archived recordings of many webinars in the LLAMA Thought Leaders Webinar Series. This free and popular series features leaders from all types and sizes of libraries sharing their unique and innovative approaches to leadership."

"Archived recordings and registration information for upcoming webinars are available here."

For more information, see the full press release.

ALA President responds to House proposal to eliminate IMLS

March 25, 2015 — "The budget resolution released this week by the U.S. House Budget Committee proposes to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency that administers federal funding support for more than 123,000 libraries in virtually every community in the nation. American Library Association (ALA) President Courtney Young today released the following statement in response:"

"'We are shocked and appalled that the U.S. House Budget Committee would call for the elimination of federal support for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency that administers federal funding to libraries. Our nation's public libraries receive more than 1.5 billion in-person visitors each year from students, parents, job-seekers and seniors alike. Through grant-making and federal funding, IMLS aids libraries in supporting lifelong learning and equitable access for all. Since its founding, IMLS has provided invaluable leadership and expert oversight to libraries and supported libraries in providing dynamic services to their patrons, such as workforce training, maker spaces, coding classes and entrepreneurship resources."

"'ALA calls on every member of the Budget Committee, and of Congress, to recognize the enormous benefits that IMLS creates for libraries and constituents in their own communities...."

"...In no small measure, federal funds administered by IMLS also have helped leverage other federal investments in the programs of many other agencies...."

"...'The programs that IMLS incentivizes and expertly oversees – with among the very best efficiency records in the federal government – are literal engines of our economy at every level. We hope that Congress and President Barack Obama will support the important role that the Institute of Museum and Library Services plays in educating and supporting communities by rejecting the House Budget resolution.'"

For more information, see the full press release.

NISO Launches New Projects to Develop Standards for Bibliographic Vocabulary Exchange

March 18, 2015 — "The voting members of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) have approved three new projects to develop standards to better support exchange and interoperability of bibliographic data. These projects were identified as high priorities in NISO's Bibliographic Roadmap pre-standards initiative, which was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of that project was to collectively determine the needs and requirements of the new bibliographic framework in a global, networked information environment and to develop community consensus for a roadmap of activities needed in this space. Following the issuance of the Bibliographic Roadmap final report in April 2014, NISO's Content and Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee evaluated the recommendations and prepared a new work item proposal focusing on three of the top prioritized areas: Vocabulary policies on use and reuse, Vocabulary documentation, and Vocabulary preservation requirements...."

"...The approved proposal for the vocabulary projects and the final report from the Bibliographic Roadmap project are available on the NISO website at: http://www.niso.org/topics/tl/BibliographicRoadmap/. Anyone interested in participating on one of the vocabulary working groups should use the online contact form (http://www.niso.org/contact/) and indicate in which of the three projects you are interested."

For more information, see the full press release.