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Documenting Pitt: Historical Publications and Images of the University of Pittsburgh
Contributed by: The University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh has launched a new Web site "Documenting Pitt: Historical Publications and Images of the University of Pittsburgh" (http://digital.library.pitt.edu/d/documentingpitt). Funded by the Office of Provost, the ULS Digital Research Library has digitized more than 70,000 pages of textual materials from the University Archives, providing a wealth of information about the history of the University. With easy and quick online access to this archival material, ULS librarians and archivists can better respond to requests from University personnel and alumni for information about aspects of the history of the University and its students and faculty. The Web site is publicly accessible, enabling alumni and others interested in Pitt history to search the collections. Popular searches over student names and faculty are expected to draw the most frequent requests. The Web site contains nine categories of textual items published by or about the University of Pittsburgh. The university archivist, with input from others, selected these categories of items because of how often requests are made by university offices, students, alumni and general researchers for this material. The Owl yearbooks unquestionably comprise the single most important category of material on the Web site. Visitors to the site can search or browse over seven decades worth of yearbooks published between 1907 and 1980. Other digitized publications include course catalogs (1862-1927), commencement programs (1870-1985), Chancellor reports (1893-1938), Courant (1888-1910), Pennsylvania Western (1882-1887), and athletic media guides for football and basketball (1950-2005). The text collections also consist of an assorted group of publications, such as the History of the University of Pittsburgh by William J. Holland (1901), History of the Western University of Pennsylvania by Samuel B. McCormick (1908), Through One Hundred and Fifty Years: The University of Pittsburgh by Agnes L. Starrett (1937), and Pitt: The Story of the University of Pittsburgh by Robert C. Alberts (1986), as well as the charter of the University and descriptions of the classrooms in the Cathedral of Learning. The Documenting Pitt Web site also includes additional University-related photographic images from the University Archives and other regional collections. These images were already digitized as part of the Historic Pittsburgh Image Collection Web site (http://images.library.pitt.edu/pghphotos), but are now also accessible via the new Documenting Pitt site. For more information, please contact: Ed Galloway at 412-244-7524. A Survey to Answer the Question: Why Are We Still Using Hardcopy?
Contributed by: At the Information Online 2007 conference in Sydney, Australia, I am presenting a paper entitled "Why are we still using hardcopy?" The paper will be based on the results of a survey that I am conducting now, and I invite you to take part. The survey link is <http://www.kaconsult.com/library>, and the deadline for responding is 31 October 2006. When electronic products first became available, some publishers indicated that we would not need to use hardcopy anymore. Nevertheless, we continue to use hardcopy versions of documents, in conjunction with the electronic versions. From my survey, I will try to determine how we are using electronic products currently, and whether we are using the electronic products to their fullest potential. if not, why not? Are hardcopy products being used differently in various library settings, or are they being used consistently throughout all libraries. What about use of the electronic versions. Is it consistent from library to library? Finally, are there differences in usage of hardcopy and electronic versions that are related to global location? Your participation in the online survey to shed light on some of these issues will be most appreciated. In the NewsExcerpts from Recent Press Releases and AnnouncementsOpen Archives Initiative Announces Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE)October 13, 2006 - "Ithaca, NY and Los Alamos, NM - The Open Archives Initiative (OAI), with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, announces a new effort as part of its mission to develop and promote interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) will develop specifications that allow distributed repositories to exchange information about their constituent digital objects. These specifications will include approaches for representing digital objects and repository services that facilitate access and ingest of these representations. The specifications will enable a new generation of cross-repository services that leverage the intrinsic value of digital objects beyond the borders of hosting repositories." "The goals of ORE are inspired by advances in scholarly communication and the growth of scholarly material that is available in scholarly repositories including institutional repositories, discipline-oriented repositories, dataset warehouses, and online journal repositories. This growth is significant by itself. However, its real importance lies in the potential for these distributed repositories and their contained objects to act as the foundation of a new digitally-based scholarly communication framework. Such a framework would permit fluid reuse, refactoring, and aggregation of scholarly digital objects and their constituent parts – including text, images, data, and software. This framework would include new forms of citation, allow the creation of virtual collections of objects regardless of their location, and facilitate new workflows that add value to scholarly objects by distributed registration, certification, peer review, and preservation services. Although scholarly communication is the motivating application, we imagine that the specifications developed by ORE may extend to other domains." "ORE is funded by Mellon for two years beginning October 2006. It is coordinated by Carl Lagoze of Cornell University Information Science and Herbert Van de Sompel of the Los Alamos Research Library." For more information, please see the full announcement at <http://www.openarchives.org/ore/documents/ORE-Announcement.html>. The University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science announces receipt of an award for training students in digital librarianshipOctober 13, 2006 announcement from Mark Anderson, University of Iowa - "The University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science is proud to announce the award of a training grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). With Professor Padmini Srinivasan as principal investigator, the School has been awarded the prestigious Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant to train students in digital librarianship. The Co-PIs on the project are Jim Elmborg, Associate Professor at SLIS, and Paul Soderdahl, Director of Library Information Systems for the University Libraries." "The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grants are designed to help offset a current shortage of school library media specialists, library school faculty, and librarians working in underserved communities, as well a looming shortage of library directors and other senior librarians, many of whom are expected to retire in the next 20 years." "The three-year grant of $918,589 will be used by the School to recruit and train two cohorts of 10 students each in the area of digital librarianship. Guided by seasoned mentors, students will participate in digital library projects and services at partner units: the UI Libraries, the WiderNet Project, the International Writing program and Academic Technologies. The project was created in response to the national need for trained digital librarians as articulated by the IMLS initiative for the 21st Century Librarian." For more information about the IMLS program, please see <http://www.imls.gov/>. Institute of Museum and Library Services and National Endowment for the Humanities Partner to Spur InnovationSeptember 28, 2006 - "Dr. Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and Dr. Bruce Cole, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, announced today that they will dedicate $1.5 million to Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership. Through this new partnership, IMLS and NEH are joining together to help teachers, scholars, museums and libraries take advantage of developing technology. These new digital tools will aid in the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge about our past and our culture. The announcement was made at the ninth meeting of the National Museum and Library Services Board." "The NEH and IMLS partnership creates a new funding opportunity – Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership. These grants will bring together museum, library, archives, and IT professionals with humanities scholars to spur innovative projects. In addition, IMLS and NEH will work together to encourage libraries, museums and cultural institutions to take part in NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants." " IMLS and NEH staff will jointly develop and distribute the grant guidelines for the new Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership. The release of the guidelines is scheduled for early 2007. Applicants will use Grants.gov to apply electronically to the grant program." For more information, please see the full press release at <http://www.imls.gov/news/2006/092806b.shtm>. University of Hong Kong hosts global symposium on eBooksSeptember 25, 2006 - "The University of Hong Kong Libraries hosted a symposium on "eBook Challenges and Developments 2006: A Global Perspective," September 21 and 22, in recognition of the 1 millionth eBook cataloged by the library." "The symposium provided librarians and other information professionals the opportunity to share their experiences with eBooks and other digital content." "'The University of Hong Kong is among the world's leaders in adopting eBooks and adapting to electronic formats that allow library users increased access to the world's information,' said Rich Rosy, Vice President, OCLC Content Management. 'The addition of the 1 millionth eBook demonstrates the University's commitment to electronic formats, and serves as an example of how best to extend the library's investment in monographs and meet the needs of today's library users.'" For more information, please see the full news release at <http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/200638.htm>. EBSCO Releases SUSHI 1.0 ServerSeptember 22, 2006 - "EBSCO is pleased to announce the release of its updated SUSHI server, now in production within EBSCOhost® Electronic Journals Service (EJS). A partner in the development of this NISO standard, EBSCO is one of the first to offer technology compliant with NISO Z39.93, the designator for SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) released September 21 as a Draft Standard for Trial Use." "EBSCO's SUSHI server facilitates automated data retrieval from EJS in compliance with the new NISO standard. SUSHI builds on the work of Project COUNTER by allowing completely automated request and delivery of COUNTER compliant usage reports. With SUSHI, usage reports are automatically retrieved on a monthly schedule for all the COUNTER-compliant vendors with which a library does business." For more information, please contact Tiffany Summerville, EBSCO <tsummerville@ebsco.com>. Yale and Tufts Complete Collaborative Preservation ProjectSeptember 22, 2006 - "The Manuscripts and Archives department at the Yale University Library, and Digital Collections and Archives at Tufts University are pleased to announce the completion of the "Fedora and the Preservation of University Records Project". Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the project combined electronic records preservation research and theory with digital library practice to investigate three areas of research: requirements for trustworthy recordkeeping systems and preservation activities, ingesting records into a preservation system, and maintaining records in a preservation system. While the Tufts-Yale Project is aimed at university archivists and focuses primarily on university records, the findings are not university-specific and are easily applicable to the management and preservation of electronic records in most industries." "The project is releasing twelve reports and an ingest prototype tool. The reports fall into four groups: introduction, ingest, maintain, and findings. All reports and the ingest prototype tool are available through the project website at: <http://dca.tufts.edu/features/nhprc/index.html>." "The co-principal investigators for the project were Kevin L. Glick, Yale University, and Eliot Wilczek, Tufts University." For more information, please contact Amanda Patrick <amanda.patrick@yale.edu>. SPARC Teams with Public Knowledge ProjectCanadian Initiative Provides Open Source Digital Publishing Platforms for Libraries; Improves Access to Scholarly Publications September 21, 2006 - "SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) today announced a partnership with the Public Knowledge Project (http://pkp.sfu.ca/), an open source publishing initiative funded by the Canadian government and based in the Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia (UBC), and the Simon Fraser University Library." "Since 2001, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) has offered free, open source software for the management and publishing of journals and conference proceedings. PKP software reduces publishing costs, improves management, enhances indexing, and increases access to knowledge." "PKP software includes three proven solutions. Open Journal Systems (OJS) provides a journal management system that supports every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions to online publication and indexing. Open Conference Systems (OCS) supports the management of conference paper review process as well as the scheduling and release of materials, from abstracts to full papers, with online posting and indexing. PKP Harvester (PKPH) harvests the metadata of OAI-PMH compliant sites, including OJS journals and OCS conferences." For more information, please see the full press release at <http://www.arl.org/sparc/announce/06-0921.html>. ACRL to offer workshops on assessment, instruction and research models at MidwinterSeptember 14, 2006 - "The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is offering three professional development workshops in conjunction with the 2007 American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Seattle, January 19, 2007." "Registration is now open; registration materials are online at <http://www.acrl.org> (click "Events & Conferences"). December 8, 2006, is the advance registration deadline. The workshops include:
For more information, please see <http://www.acrl.org>. Copyright 2006 © Corporation for National Research InitiativesTop |
Contents doi:10.1045/october2006-inbrief |