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November/December 2012
Table of Contents

Highlights from the 16th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL)

Contributed by:
Fernando Loizides
Research Fellow
Cyprus University of Technology
fernando.loizides [at] cut.ac.cy

George Buchanan
Reader
City University London
George.Buchanan.1 [at] city.ac.uk

Panayiotis Zaphiris
Associate Professor
Cyprus University of Technology
panayiotis.zaphiris [at] cut.ac.cy

The 16th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) was organised by the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in collaboration with the University of Cyprus and City University London. It took place in Paphos, Cyprus on 23-27 September 2012 and had the theme "Cultural Heritage". TPDL is the successor of the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL). The conference brings together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries. The conference covers a variety of topics including digital humanities, information visualization and interaction, preservation, user experience, information seeking and retrieval, and information applications.

One hundred and fifty delegates from over 30 countries attended the conference to present their work and to educate themselves on the latest advances in digital library research and practice. The conference included talks on Linked Data, Analysing and Enriching Documents, Folksonomy and Ontology, Extraction and Indexing, Mobiles, Content and Metadata Quality, Preservation, Organising Collections, Information Retrieval, Sustainability, and User Behaviour. A Panel session also discussed methodologies and challenges of evaluating digital libraries. Poster and Demo sessions accompanied the welcome reception evening, with applications and developing work being showcased for discussion and feedback. Three workshops were also held bringing together individuals to discuss and present work on Supporting Users' Exploration of Digital Libraries, Networked Knowledge Organisation Systems and Services, and Semantic Digital Archives.

There were three keynote talks during the conference. Mounia Lalmas from Yahoo! Research, Barcelona presented her talk on "User Engagement in the Digital World". In her talk she defined user engagement and data-driven approaches for the development of user models, and she described how looking at effect and cognition is providing additional insights into measuring user engagement. Cathy Marshall from Microsoft Research gave the talk "Whose content is it anyway? Social media, personal data, and the fate of our digital legacy". She reported on how difficult it is for individuals to curate their own digital content, and the challenges of personal digital archiving, and she explored the implications of these challenges for libraries and other institutions. The local keynote was Andreas Lanitis from the Cyprus University of Technology. His talk was entitled "On the Preservation of Cultural Heritage through Digitization, Restoration, Reproduction and Usage". Lanitis' talk focused on the digital preservation of Cypriot Cultural Heritage artefacts – in particular, cultural heritage preservation through digitization, restoration, reproduction and usage of cultural heritage artefacts.

Social activities included a cocktail reception at sunset to welcome the delegates on the first day. The conference hosted a traditional dinner; a variety of 'meze' (assortment of dishes) at Mesogi, a small village at the foot of the hills.

TPDL 2012 sponsors included Microsoft Research, the Coalition for Networked Information, Austrian Airlines, the Cyprus Tourism Organisation and Facet Publishing. The proceedings of the conference can be found at http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-33290-6/page/1. More information on the conference can be found on the TPDL 2012 website (http://www.tpdl2012.org/). The hosting country for TPDL 2013 will be Malta.

Brief Report on the Fourth International M-Libraries Conference Held at Milton Keynes, UK, 24 - 26 September 2012

Contributed by:
Gill Needham
Associate Director
The Open University Library
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Gill.needham [at] open.ac.uk

Delegates from more than 20 countries assembled in Milton Keynes for the Fourth International M-Libraries conference, hosted jointly by the Open University and Athabasca University. They were treated to a pretty packed programme of workshops, keynotes and 40 parallel presentations.

The preconference workshop day entitled 'Mobile Imaginations' was organised by Ben Showers and Mahendra from JISC. The idea was to provide a space for librarians and library technologists to collaboratively brainstorm new ideas in small groups and develop some initial designs for new mobile services, technologies or apps. The day proved exhausting and highly creative with 40 enthusiasts from 9 countries brainstorming ideas and sharing expertise.

The conference's keynote and invited speakers were selected to address the issue of mobile delivery from different perspectives and they didn't disappoint.

Steve Vosloo from UNESCO gave us insights into the use of mobile technology in the developing world to address the Millennial goals. He gave examples of the creative use of mobiles to support literacy and to challenge the traditional model of classroom-based education.

Ellyssa Kroski gave an overview of all the ways in which libraries in the west are using mobiles and exhorted those who have not developed their mobile services to get started, using simple technologies and approaches.

Bob Gann heads up NHS Choices, which provides one of the most heavily used websites in the UK. He described how he and his team have moved from trying to commission innovation to keep up with technology to working with a huge array of creative organisations to provide NHS information in their space and via their platforms. He also gave some moving examples of the power of mobile technology in the health field, like its use to enable people in Africa to check whether the drugs they are sold are actually fake (potentially saving thousands of lives).

Lee Stott from Microsoft gave an industry view of mobile developments and tempted delegates with a preview of the new Surface tablet device.

Char Booth is a librarian with a different take on technology; she gave an entertaining and challenging presentation focusing on linking the digital world with the analogue so that services should be designed from an understanding of what really works for users and what is likely to cause frustration.

Parveen Babbar from the Indira Gandhi National Open University in Delhi astounded delegates with his descriptions of mobile projects at scale, including the procurement of a forty-nine-dollar tablet computer being distributed to schools and colleges across India and 600 mobile content creation projects.

The conference closed with a master class in digital engagement from Thomas Cochrane from New Zealand demonstrating some of the creative techniques he employs with his students, using a range of mobile technologies and applications.

Recordings of the keynote presentations are available from the website http://www.m-libraries.org as are many of the slides from the parallel presentations. A book of the proceedings will be published by Facet next summer.

EMTACL12 - Emerging Technologies in Academic Libraries 2012

Contributed by:
Lukas Koster
Library Systems Coordinator
Library of the University of Amsterdam
The Netherlands
l.koster [at] uva.nl

The EMTACL12 conference took place in Trondheim, Norway, October 1-3, 2012. EMTACL stands for "emerging technologies in academic libraries". The programme consisted of 8 plenary keynote presentations by invited speakers, and a number of presentations in two parallel tracks. Themes: library innovation and future, support for researchers, support for teaching and technology. All presentations are available via the "Programme" link on http://emtacl.com.

Library innovation and future
A number of keynote speakers urged libraries to change and leave obsolete practices behind. Karen Coyle: "The mission of the library is not to gather physical things into an inventory, but to organize human knowledge that has been very inconveniently packaged". Rurik Greenall advised libraries to take better care of and enhance their own dynamic data. Rudolf Mumenthaler spoke about "Innovation management in and for libraries" which provoked discussion: can innovation be promoted by management, or does it need to grow of itself in freedom, by allowing staff to play the Google way?

Support for researchers
Some speakers focused on the entire research workflow infrastructure, others on supporting publishing in particular.

Herbert Van de Sompel talked about the changing nature of the scholarly record: from "fixity" and "boundary" to dynamic and interdependent on the web. Online publications and related information, like research project information, references and data, change over time, so it becomes increasingly difficult to recreate a scholarly record. New developments can help. Jens Vigen celebrated 50 years of Open Access at CERN and predicted that current library subscription budgets will switch to open access funding soon. Trude Eikebrokk, Tor Arne Dahl and Siri Kessel presented a publishing platform that enables EPUB as publication format in Open Access journals. Presentation and promotion of scholarly publications is the focus of the Chalmers University Publication Profiles Platform, and of the 'controlled aggregation' website of the Groningen University Medical Library.

Against the landscape of disconnected tools used in the different stages of research projects, Sharon Favaro (Seton Hall University) described a project aimed at identifying better ways to integrate library tools for supporting the lifecycle of research. Sally Chambers (DARIAH) presented an overview of organisations, projects and infrastructures available for supporting research in the digital humanities.

Bridging the gap between research infrastructure and publications is one of the features of the Erasmus University Rotterdam RePub framework.

Tamara Pianos presented a mobile app for access to EconBiz to support business and economics researchers. The possibilities of social media to promote international collaboration were demonstrated by Hua Sun and Mark Puterbaugh. The History Engine at the University of Richmond (Canada) was presented as a means for supporting research in teaching.

Support for teaching
Different ways of presentation and distribution of recorded lectures were discussed by Martin Gaustad of NTNU Technical University, the hosting organisation of the conference. Olivia Walsby described the various roles of librarians in supporting teaching in a number of projects at Manchester University. Andrew Whitworth presented the triadic model, a new theoretical model for a better, more holistic view of the information/digital literacy relationship.

MUBIL is a project aimed at augmenting and enriching rare old books in a digital 3D architecture, for use in teaching.

Technology
'Linked Data' was viewed from a number of perspectives. OCLC's Richard Wallis presented the WorldCat schema.org markup as an example of publishing existing bibliographic metadata as linked data. Creating new views from existing heterogeneous data sources using linked data is the topic of the Norwegian Black Metal project presented by Kim Tallerås. Jane and Adrian Stevenson of MIMAS (UK) discussed the pros and cons of dedicated APIs versus the Linked Data concept. Shun Nagaya and Keizo Itabashi demonstrated covo.js, a JavaScript library for using subject headings and thesauri on the web.

Lukas Koster (University of Amsterdam) showed the discrepancies between the in theory unlimited possibilities of harvesting and indexing with discovery tools, and the actual implementations. The possible value of QR codes (2D barcodes that look like a bunch of black and white squares) in libraries was discussed by Krista Godfrey.

In his closing keynote Brian Kelly of UKOLN made it clear that it is very hard to foresee the future, with Star Trek, monorails and paper planes as evidence.

Report on the Semantic Digital Archives Workshop held September 27, 2012

Contributed by:
Annett Mitschick
Researcher
Dresden University of Technology
annett.mitschick [at] tu-dresden.de

Livia Predoiu
Researcher
University of Magdeburg, Germany
predoiu [at] ovgu.de

Fernando Loizides
Researcher
Cyprus University of Technology
fernando.loizides [at] cut.ac.cy

Andreas Nürnberger
Professor
University of Magdeburg, Germany
andreas.nuernberger [at] ovgu.de

The 2nd International Workshop on Semantic Digital Archives (SDA) was successfully held this year on September 27^th in Paphos, Cyprus. Like the 1^st edition of the SDA Workshop in 2011, it was held in conjunction with the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2012). The purpose of the SDA workshop series is to bring together researchers and practitioners from a wide area of disciplines that aim at enhancing Digital Preservation and Archival Information Infrastructures by means of Semantic Technologies. The main areas that the workshop series focuses on include semantic information management and retrieval in digital archives (and libraries, as there is a tight connection between archives and libraries), data and process preservation, information integration, visualization and exploration of digital content, user interfaces, user studies, sustainability, migration strategies, and knowledge evolution. The SDA workshop series aims to be a platform for presenting and discussing novel work, stimulate discussions on Semantic Digital Archives and Infrastructures in general and cultivate collaborations.

This year we were able to accept 8 full papers that present novel and original research approaches around Semantic Digital Archives. The papers had undergone an extensive peer reviewing process that was supported by our program committee, which consisted of 20 renowned researchers around Semantic Technologies, Digital Archives and Digital Libraries.

During this year's workshop, eight presentations were held presenting the novel and original research approaches discussed in the full papers that were accepted. The workshop started with an invited opening talk held by Andreas Rauber. In his keynote talk entitled "Digital Preservation in Data-Driven Science", Andreas Rauber highlighted the importance of re-producible experimentation methods and presented an interesting approach for "documenting and preserving processes, and means to assess their authenticity upon re-execution". The presentations continued to report on a semantic-aware and socially-driven preservation model to extract and consolidate social web content. Classification of content was a recurring theme as one of the presentations highlighted an automatic classification method for scientific records, arguing that authors of these records are often not aware of classification systems in order to classify the records manually themselves. Manual annotations can, however, assist with the classification and preservation of digital records as another presentation brought out. The complexity of the structure of statistical and real world data was reported on and ways to recommend appropriate data to users were proposed, as well as automatic ontological classification systems.

The workshop concluded with a summary of the presentations and an open discussion about the presented research work, as well as possible future directions. A clear consensus was established that in order to enrich the Semantic Digital Archive field, a wide range of disciplines is required to complement existing research. The conversation also included challenges that the field encompasses, such as the already reported reproducibility of results and the access to real world representative data. New directions and collaborations were also discussed such as the potential of including the human computer interaction element in the evaluation of future work.

Altogether the workshop was very interesting and successful event with a lot of new insights around Semantic Digital Archives. The interested reader that was not able to visit the workshop can find more information about the workshop including slides of the presentations at its homepage http://sda2012.dke-research.de/. Furthermore, online proceedings are available as CEUR proceedings

NISO Adds Virtual Conferences to 2013 Education Program and Includes Webinar Registration in LSA Membership

Contributed by:
Cynthia Hodgson
Technical Editor / Consultant
National Information Standards Organization
chodgson [at] niso.org

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Education Committee has planned a robust educational program for 2013 that includes three virtual conferences in addition to the monthly webinars, an in-person forum, and six joint webinars with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). Focused on standards, best practices, and technologies in the library, publishing, and scholarly information communities, the programs are an excellent and cost-effective method for current awareness and learning about standards and cutting-edge technology. NISO educational programs are routinely praised for their outstanding selection of speakers representing a diversity of viewpoints across the scholarly information community.

Package deals (buy 4, get 3 or buy 7, get all 13) are available for the NISO webinars. NISO will continue for 2013 its new member benefit to Library Standards Alliance (LSA) members of one free connection to all thirteen NISO-only webinars.

Virtual conferences—six-hour forums held over the Internet—are a new addition to NISO's educational programs. Topics for the three events are: Future Perfect: How Libraries Are Implementing Emerging Technologies (February), EPUB3: What Libraries Need to Know (April), and Web-Scale Discovery Services: Transforming Access to Library Resources (November).

A two-day in-person forum on Revolution or Evolution: The Impact of Electronic Content will be held in Philadelphia in October. A live stream option will also be available for distance viewing. Both in-person and live stream registrants will have access to a recorded version of the event.

NISO webinars, held every month except July, will cover a range of topics from Behaving Like a Startup to Metadata for Preservation, Universal Accessibility, Open Access Content, Streaming Media Collections, Copyright Decisions, Altmetrics, Mobile Technology, and Library Linked Data. Two-part webinars on consecutive Wednesdays will be held in March and September on Evolving Trends in Collection Development and Research Data Curation, respectively.

NISO and DCMI continue their successful joint webinars in 2013 and are adding an additional event for a total of six. With a focus on linked data, the planned topics are: Update on the Bibliographic Framework Initiative, Deployment of RDA, Semantic Mashups, Linked Data in Developing Countries, Metadata for Public Sector Administration, and Cooperative Authority Control.

All NISO and NISO/DCMI webinar registrations are for a single connection at an institution, but can be viewed by multiple people, for example, in a training or conference room. All webinar and virtual conference participants also receive access to the recorded version of the webinar for one year after the event. This allows even more people at an organization to take advantage of the training and is especially useful when the webinar date and/or time are not convenient, such as for people in non-US time zones. NISO members receive discounts to all events. NASIG members may register at the member rate for NISO-only webinars and DCMI members may register at the member rate for joint NISO/DCMI webinars. More information about all the 2013 events is available on the NISO website at: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/. For information about joining NISO to obtain the free LSA member webinar registration and member discounts for all events, visit: http://www.niso.org/about/join/.

A wide range of opportunities is available from NISO to help you to stay current in the technology and standards in library, publishing, and scholarly communications. Registration is now open for all events.

I N T H E N E W S

ORCID and CrossRef Collaborate to Accurately Attribute Authorship of Scholarly Content

November 11, 2012 — "Two not-for profit organizations, ORCID and CrossRef, have collaborated to solve the problem of ambiguous author names in scholarly content. ORCID began assigning unique identifiers to researchers in October. As part of the ORCID Registry, individuals can search the metadata from CrossRef, the largest organization assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to scholarly content, and add their works to their personal ORCID records."

"Connecting researchers with their research has been hampered by lack of data standards, and in particular a standard for identifying individuals. ORCID provides researchers a Registry to create a unique personal identifier, and has been working with the research community to embed these identifiers in research workflows."

"One key component of the ORCID interface is the ability to import metadata on research works to populate an individual's ORCID record. As an affiliate member of CrossRef, ORCID provides its users the ability to search and import bibliographic metadata from CrossRef...."

"...In addition to importing past works, ORCID is working with CrossRef and the publishing community to ensure that ORCID identifiers collected during the manuscript submission process are incorporated into article metadata and included with the information submitted to CrossRef...."

"...In order to access the CrossRef bibliographic metadata, ORCID has become an affiliate of CrossRef. Likewise CrossRef is a founding member of ORCID. CrossRef has modified its metadata schema so that publishers can include ORCID iDs with their bibliographic metadata deposits. The CrossRef system will allow querying for ORCIDs from its records early in 2013."

For more information please see the full press release.

NPG expands Creative Commons Attribution license options

November 7, 2012 — "Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today introduces the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license on its 19 NPG-owned academic journals. From December 2012, the CC BY license will be available to authors choosing open access publication options in these journals, in addition to the two non-commercial Creative Commons (CC) licenses currently on offer. This follows NPG's introduction of a CC BY license option on Scientific Reports in July 2012."

"Effective 1 April 2013, Wellcome Trust and RCUK funders will require a CC BY license when they pay open access article processing charges (APCs). NPG intends to offer CC BY options on further open access and 'hybrid' journals over the next few months, in keeping with its commitment to author choice and meeting the needs of funders and the research community...."

"...The CC BY license allows for articles to be distributed and amended, including for commercial opportunities. Papers can be developed upon, as long as attribution is given to the original work and its authors."

For more information please see the full press release.

Semantic Search: Magnet for the Needle in the Search Haystack

November 5, 2012 announcement from Gail Hodge, CENDI Technical Projects Coordinator — "CENDI and NKOS are holding a free workshop on Semantic Search at the US Department of Transportation, Media Center on December 6, 2012 from 8:30am to 4:30pm."

"Keynote speaker, Dean Allemang, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Data Scientist at Open Data Registry, will discuss the semantic web landscape. Dr. Denise Bedford, Kent State University, will address the definition of semantic search. Information managers and technologists from various user communities will discuss the needs of end users. Other speakers will address linked data applications in libraries, museums and archives; the impact of semantic search on visualization tools; and the development of specific tools to support semantic search. Students working in this area will provide a look at the future of semantic search through a series of lightning talks."

"Registration is required. Space is limited."

Registration and more information are available from the CENDI web site at http://www.cendi.gov. For more information about NKOS, visit http://nkos.slis.kent.edu/.

USGS and Google Partner on Emergency Alerts

November 2, 2012 — "Emergency notifications for earthquakes, severe weather and other public safety matters are now available through Google Public Alerts. The system provides access to information during crises through the online tools you use every day."

"The Google Crisis Response team wants to make it easy for people to find critical information during emergencies and is doing so by partnering with authoritative sources to include public alert data into Google products."

"Earthquake data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have been incorporated into the system, as well as weather data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service."

For more information please see the full press release.

Europeana 1914-18: Public urged to contribute to unique online WW1 archive

October 31, 2012 — "As Remembrance Day approaches people urged to share WW1 letters, photos, diaries or recordings. The public is being asked if they have a box hidden deep in the attic or under the bed that holds a great grandfather's diaries from 1914-1918? His army medals? Or a photo with a special story behind it? If so, it could be part of a unique European WW1 project, shared worldwide to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the war."

"Oxford University, the British Library and JISC have joined forces with Europeana – Europe's digital museum, library and archive – to gather and tell personal stories from 1914-1918 that will contribute to building an important online European archive of family memorabilia from WW1."

"Each individual story – that otherwise might never be told outside of the family – is essential to creating a unique European archive and perspective of WW1. Through this archive, stories from countries across Europe will be shared online, accessed by others worldwide and saved for future generations."

"The online nature of the project means that anyone can share their stories and memorabilia through the Europeana 1914-1918 website, which gives advice on how to can scan, photograph and upload material at home. [See] europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributor (http://e2.ma/click/zvehc/v8prwb/7das2)."

For more information please see the full press release.

imeji - Publish Your Scientific Media Data - Max Planck Digital Library introduces new software

October 24, 2012 — "imeji creates citable research assets from scientific media data like photographs, microscope images or graphics. The Max Planck Digital Library has recently released a first version of this software for research institutions or other interested parties. As imeji is an open source project, it is free of charge and can be reused by everybody."

"The publication and reusability of scientific media data are the focus of this application. imeji enables an easy-to-use upload of images, the description of data with freely definable parameters and the interlinking of data. Information can be handled with a non-restrictive metadata schema definition, as simple as desired or as complex as needed. Large collections can be organized in different albums to focus special items of interest or to ensure the citability for publications. Albums can be shared among users to enable collaboration for creating and enriching sets of images."

"The development is distributed among the imeji-community, an open software developer partnership, which ensures the sustainability of the imeji software and enables further stable development...."

For more information please see the full press release.

ARL Statistics 2010-2011 Published by ARL

October 24, 2012 — "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Statistics 2010-2011, the latest in a series of annual publications that describe the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of ARL's 126 member libraries in 2011. Of these, 115 are university libraries (16 in Canada and 99 in the US); the remaining 11 are public, governmental, and nonprofit research libraries (2 in Canada, 9 in the US)."

"ARL libraries are a relatively small subset of libraries in North America, but they account for a large portion of academic library resources in terms of assets, budgets, and the number of users they serve. The total library expenditures of all 126 member libraries in 2010-2011 was slightly more than $4.6 billion; of that total, roughly $3.2 billion was spent by the 115 university libraries and more than $1.3 million by the 11 nonuniversity libraries."

"ARL has collected and published annual statistics for its member libraries since 1961-62, expanding upon the work of James Gerould, who collected this information first at the University of Minnesota and later at Princeton University. The data he collected, covering the years 1907-08 through 1961-62, are now called the Gerould Statistics. The complete data series from 1908 through the present represents the oldest, most comprehensive, continuing library statistical series in North America."

For information on ordering the online or print editions, please see the full press release. (There is a charge for both online and print editions.)

ALA joins coalition to protect library lending rights

October 23, 2012 — "Today, a diverse coalition of retailers, libraries, educators, Internet companies and associations joined together to launch the Owners' Rights Initiative (ORI) to protect ownership rights in the United States. ORI is committed to ensuring the right to resell genuine goods, regardless of where they were manufactured. The organization believes that this right is critical to commerce and will engage in advocacy, education and outreach on this important issue."

"'The sudden erosion of ownership rights is becoming an alarming trend in the United States due to recent federal court decisions. Our position is simple: if you bought it, you own it, and you can resell it, rent it, lend it or donate it, and we believe the American people fundamentally agree. ORI will serve as a powerful voice to advocate for ownership rights while educating consumers, businesses and policymakers about this critical cause,' said ORI Executive Director Andrew Shore."

"For more than 100 years in the United States, if you bought something, you owned it and could resell it. Once the copyright owner makes the first sale, the right of ownership, and therefore the right to distribute, is transferred to the purchaser - a common law right referred to as the 'first sale doctrine.' Today, this fundamental ownership right is at issue in the Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley case, which will be argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 29, 2012."

For more information please see the full press release.

Nature Arabic Edition inaugural issue published

October 17, 2012 — "Nature Publishing Group is pleased to announce the first issue of Nature Arabic Edition. The new publication's website is live at arabicedition.nature.com and the October print issue is in the hands of over 10,000 readers worldwide. Print issues are freely available to qualified subscribers, and the website is freely available to all. Nature Arabic Edition is sponsored by King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia."

"Nature Arabic Edition provides top quality science news and comment from Nature as well as summaries of all the research papers from the world's premier multidisciplinary journal. Founded in 1869, Nature is the world's most cited science journal and regularly wins awards for its news and comment."

For more information please see the full press release.

Call for Applications: FY 2013 Museums for America and National Leadership Grants for Museums

New guidelines for nation's largest museum grant programs

New deadline is January 15, 2013

October 16, 2012 — "IMLS is accepting applications for its Museums for America (MFA) and National Leadership Grants for Museums (NLG-M) programs. We encourage museums of all sizes and of all types, from art, history, science, and children's museums to zoos, botanic gardens, and aquaria, to review the new guidelines, participate in our webinars, and submit applications."

"The two grant programs together are the largest source of federal funding specifically for museums in the United States."

"We invite any interested museums to participate in one of five free pre-application webinars to learn more about the grant programs and application process, ask questions, and listen to the questions and comments of other participants. Directions for participating are on the IMLS program pages for MFA and NLG-M."

"Five Informational Webinars (Each session covers both grant programs.) [Editor's note. Two of the listed webinars will have taken place before this issue of D-Lib is published.]:

Thursday, October 25, 2012, from 2 - 3 pm Eastern Time
Thursday, November 8, 2012, from 2 - 3 pm Eastern Time
Tuesday, November 20, 2012, from 2 - 3 pm Eastern Time
Wednesday, December 5, 2012, from 2 - 3 pm Eastern Time
Wednesday, December 19, 2012, from 2 - 3 pm Eastern Time

For more information please see the full press release.

ORCID Launches Registry

October 16, 2012 — "ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is excited to announce the launch of its Registry (http://orcid.org), where researchers can distinguish themselves by creating a unique personal identifier."

"'ORCID addresses a problem shared by individuals and organizations across the research community: reliably connecting research with researchers,' said Laure Haak, Executive Director of the non-profit ORCID organization. 'But ORCID is more than a Registry, it is a community effort to embed these identifiers in research workflows.'"

"Understanding the 'who' and 'what' of research has been hampered by lack of data standards, and in particular a standard for identifying individuals. Universities and other research organizations, as well as membership organizations like the American Physical Society (APS) are working to integrate ORCID identifiers into their systems. 'For scholars, ORCID provides a persistent identifier that unambiguously distinguishes you as the author or creator of your published works in systems that adopt ORCID. Through integration in workflows such as manuscript and grant submission as well as researcher profiles, ORCID promises to help scholars and institutions manage academic information and, ultimately, to provide both with more control over their own record of scholarship,' said Amy Brand, Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments and Information at Harvard University. Currently, Boston University, New York University Langone Medical Center, Cornell University, and the California Institute of Technology, and the research information system vendors Avedas, Symplectic, and Thomson Reuters are actively working on integration with the ORCID registry."

"Other researcher identifier systems are currently in use serving specific populations or types of research work. ORCID does not compete with these systems, but rather provides a switchboard for crosslinking. Elsevier is providing a way for researchers to link their Scopus Author IDs to ORCID and synchronize their publication information between the two systems. Thomson Reuters' ResearcherID� will link to ORCID and allow researchers to synchronize their publication information. Several research information system providers are also planning to integrate ORCID identifiers, including figshare, KNODE, Faculty of 1000, and ImpactStory. Through its affiliate ORCID EU, ORCID is working with DataCite to link ORCID identifiers with research datasets."

For more information please see the full press release.

Nomination for International Awards Indicates Library of Congress Leadership in Digital Preservation

October 15, 2012 announcement from Sue Manus, Library of Congress — "The shortlist for the 2012 Digital Preservation Awards has been announced, and three projects with Library of Congress involvement have made the list. These prestigious awards are sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition in the United Kingdom, a partnership organization that advocates for and supports digital preservation activity. The shortlist was announced during the 10th anniversary celebration of the DPC on October 8th in London."

"With these awards, the DPC is acknowledging the importance of encouraging digital preservation activity worldwide. As DPC Chairman Richard Ovenden notes, 'The need for digital preservation is growing in just the same way as the digital domain: in total size, in sheer complexity and in economic importance.'"

"In the past, there has been one Digital Preservation Award winner each time, recognized for outstanding all-around contribution to the field of digital preservation. This year, the DPC has created several different categories of awards. The following Library of Congress projects are on the shortlist in these two categories:"

"Outstanding contribution to teaching and communication in digital preservation in the last two years

The Signal. The Signal is a Library of Congress blog from the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program that serves as a one-stop resource for information covering all aspects of digital preservation. Started in May, 2011 the blog has featured over 380 posts on every aspect of digital preservation; from Library and partner project news, profiles of people in the field, relevant tools, training, and a range of other information pertaining to library technology."

"Outstanding contribution to digital preservation in the last decade

The International Internet Preservation Consortium. The Library of Congress is a founding partner of the IIPC, a membership organization which is dedicated to improving the tools, standards and best practices of web archiving while promoting international collaboration and the broad access and use of web archives for research and cultural heritage.

The PREMIS Metadata Working Group for the PREMIS standard. The PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata is the international standard for metadata to support the preservation of digital objects and ensure their long-term usability. Developed by an international team of experts, PREMIS is implemented in digital preservation projects around the world, and support for PREMIS is incorporated into a number of commercial and open-source digital preservation tools and systems. The Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office is the Managing Agency for the PREMIS standard, in conjunction with the PREMIS Editorial Committee."

"The DPC will also give an award in a third category, 'Outstanding contribution to research and innovation in digital preservation in the last two years'."

"The final award winners are scheduled to be announced in London on December 3rd."

Successful bids for FE innovation funding set to enhance UK learning and teaching

October 11, 2012 — "32 projects are to receive funding to develop new learning resources, practical approaches and open up opportunities for post-16 learning across the UK."

"The successful projects are funded by JISC and managed by JISC Advance. These will run throughout 2012-13 and will focus on four key areas:

Innovative uses of technology
Improving the learner experience
Improving efficiencies
Making better use of existing resources"

"The 32 bids represent all countries of the UK and aspects of the UK further education (FE) and skills sector including work-based learning, adult and community learning, colleges and specialist providers. They also involve 90 partners drawn from across the sector and numerous local links and partnerships."

For more information please see the full press release.

Researchers rejoice: Cornell, HathiTrust prevail in copyright suit, set precedent for digital laws

October 11, 2012 — "A Federal District Court has dismissed a copyright infringement suit brought by the Author's Guild, which would have prevented the digitizing of books at major universities across the country."

"The Oct. 10 ruling also has major implications for future digital copyright laws, and will allow the defendants – HathiTrust, a partnership of major research institutions, and five universities including Cornell – to continue a partnership with Google to scan volumes of books from Cornell collections."

"Over 400,000 Cornell volumes have already been deposited to HathiTrust's repository of over 10 million volumes managed by the University of Michigan. Anyone can search the database for a keyword in order to see the pages and number of times the word occurs, but the database does not provide full texts for copyrighted material."

"The Author's Guild alleged that the initial scanning constituted 'one of the largest copyright infringements in history.' The Guild also objected to Orphan Works, a proposed plan, later dropped, to allow limited access to digital versions of books whose copyright owners could not be located."

For more information please see the full press release.

ALA receives IMLS grant to advance library-led community engagement

October 9, 2012 — "The American Library Association (ALA) announced today that it received a 2012 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Grant of $250,837 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). ALA will partner with The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation on the first phase of a multi-phase initiative, The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities, which will develop a sustainable national plan to transform the role of libraries in their communities by advancing community engagement and innovation...."

"...During the grant period, ALA and the Harwood Institute will develop librarians as conveners and facilitators for their communities and create a pilot set of resource components designed to build the practice of community engagement in library service throughout the field. The goal of this first project phase is to create core communication materials for dissemination to the field, collaboratively create innovative strategies for community engagement, improve participating ALA leader and member access to strategies and resources for community engagement and help participants feel better prepared to take on the role of community facilitator. More than 350 librarians will take part in a range of professional development activities planned during the grant period. The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities is one of ALA President Maureen Sullivan's key initiatives."

"The ALA Public Programs Office (PPO) will manage the project. PPO supports cultural and community programming as an essential part of library service in all types and sizes of libraries...."

For more information please see the full press release.

Science.gov, Now with Multimedia, New Search Features, Spanish Translations

Spanish Version Debuted

October 9, 2012 — "Science.gov, the gateway to U.S. federal science hosted by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), now includes multimedia content and additional features, including an updated interface with enhanced navigation, to help users find the science information they need. For the first time, R&D video from the DOE ScienceCinema is available as well as from MedlinePLUS, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Images from the Library of Congress have been added to the image search which is now integrated under a new multimedia tab on the results page. Search enhancements include visual representations of topical information in an easy-to-use touch and dial format."

"In addition, a Spanish version of the site has been launched. Ciencia.Science.gov, http://ciencia.science.gov, provides the same breadth and depth in scientific search as does Science.gov, covering over 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information. This includes free access to research and development results from 17 organizations within 13 federal science agencies, and more than 55 scientific databases and 2,100 selected scientific websites. Integrating Microsoft's Translator, Spanish-language queries to Science.gov initiate searches of U.S. databases and websites with results appearing in Spanish."

"Science.gov includes key DOE research and development (R&D) databases of full-text documents, citations, patents, e-prints, accomplishments, multimedia, data, software and more, all covered in the DOE Science Accelerator. OSTI conceived and helped launched Science.gov in December 2002 to get DOE R&D results out to the scientific community and beyond - and to get the community's results into DOE. Traffic to the site has grown enormously over the past 10 years; while there were some 750,000 Science.gov page requests in its first year, these grew to more than 34,000,000 in the 2012 fiscal year that ended September 30."

For more information please see the full press release.

Digital Preservation Awards 2012 - shortlist announced

October 8, 2012 — "The shortlist for the Digital Preservation Awards was announced at a reception in the House of Lords on Monday 8th October."

"The shortlist is as follows:

" For an outstanding contribution to teaching and communication in digital preservation in the last 2 years:

The Digital Preservation Training Programme, University of London Computing Centre
The Signal, Library of Congress
Keeping Research Data Safe Project, Charles Beagrie Ltd and partners
Digital Archaeology Exhibition, Story Worldwide Ltd"

" For an outstanding contribution to research and innovation in digital preservation in the last 2 years:

Data Management Planning Toolkit, The Digital Curation Centre and partners
PLANETS Preservation and Long-term Access through Networked Services, The Open Planets Foundation and partners
TOTEM Trustworthy Online Technical Environment Metadata Registry, University of Portsmouth and partners
The KEEP Emulation Framework, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) and partners"

" For the most outstanding contribution to digital preservation in the last decade:

The International Internet Preservation Consortium
The National Archives for the PRONOM and DROID services
The Archaeology Data Service at the University of York
The PREMIS Preservation Metadata Working Group for the PREMIS Standard"

(Editor's note: Voting by DPC members will have ended by the time this issue of D-Lib is released. The winners will be announced in an upcoming issue of D-Lib.)

New funded shared service will help universities manage their e-resources

October 8, 2012 — "Knowledge Base+ is a new shared service from JISC Collections that aims to help UK libraries manage their e-resources more efficiently."

"KB+ is being established to start addressing the challenges facing libraries due to the inadequate data and metadata about publications, packages, subscriptions, entitlements and licences that is available throughout the e-resource supply chain. The result is that libraries are spending too much time correcting and maintaining basic e-resource information and not enough time is left to undertake the sort of decision making that they would like to be conducting to improve services for users...."

"...Nicholas Lewis, Library Director at UEA, comments: 'We anticipate that KB+ will have a marked impact on the way in which we manage our electronic collections, not just within the university, but also in our day-to-day liaison with publishers, vendors and agents. To this end, we are reviewing our workflows to take full advantage of KB+ from day one and look forward to seeing how it develops to more fully to meet the community's needs in the months ahead.'"

For more information please see the full press release.

Big Data grant winner includes Rajasekar

October 8, 2012 — "University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Arcot Rajasekar will lead one of eight research teams that have won a Big Data grant - a new federal funding initiative that aims to improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize and glean discoveries from huge volumes of data."

"The National Science Foundation (NSF), with support from the National Institutes of Health, awarded the eight research teams about $15 million six months after the White House announced the Big Data Research and Development Initiative. The eight projects will develop scientific techniques for big data management, new approaches to analyze data and e-science collaborative environments with possible future applications in a variety of fields, including physics, economics and medicine."

"Rajasekar, a professor in the School of Information and Library Science and chief scientist at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), is principal investigator for a three-year project, 'DataBridge - A Sociometric System for Long-Tail Science Data Collections.' The $1.5 million project funded by the NSF will use sociometric networks similar to Linked In or Facebook but on a larger scale to enable scientists to find data and like-minded research."

For more information please see the full press release.

Carnegie Mellon Awarded Grant To Preserve Executable Content

October 4, 2012 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded a two-year, $497,756 grant to Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists and library personnel led by University Libraries' Dean Gloriana St. Clair, to develop Olive, the first archiving system for the preservation for executable content. Co-PIs with St. Clair are Jerome McDonough of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Anita de Waard of Reed Elsevier, Inc."

"The Olive concept grew out of a collaboration between the research teams of Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya) from Carnegie Mellon and Vasanth (Vas) Bala of IBM Research. Together they explored applying virtual machine (VM) technology invented by IBM in the late 1960s to current problems of software configuration and distribution in cloud computing. That research led to the realization that a global archive of curated VM images that could be shared, searched, extended, and executed via the Internet would be a powerful catalyst for collaboration across space and time. Realizing this vision is the goal of the Olive project."

"Dynamic, interactive, executable content is the core output of the computer science community. New types of educational electronic content such as learning games and interactive data visualizations are transforming teaching research and scholarly publishing. Preserving this content, and the generations of earlier executable content upon which it was built, is essential to optimal progress in computer science. For centuries, academic libraries have been the trusted keeper of scholarly and research output in all disciplines. But the means to archive the dynamic, working content of computer science have not yet been successfully achieved."

For more information please see the full press release.

Brown University Library Opens The Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab

October 3, 2012 — "This October, the Brown University Library celebrates the opening of The Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab in the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library. The Lab is made possible thanks to the generosity of Mr. Patrick Ma, P'14, who is based in Hong Kong, China, Brown Trustee Cathy Halstead, and an anonymous donor."

"The Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab features a large scale visualization video wall comprised of twelve 55 inch high resolution LED screens, creating a 7 x 16 foot display with a combined resolution of over 24 megapixels, offering high quality viewing and analytical space not publicly available elsewhere on campus. The Lab is also outfitted with a wide range of software for scholars across the disciplines, a surround sound audio system, video-conferencing capabilities, specialized lighting, and several individual touch screen monitors that can be used independently or linked to the video wall for collaborative display and interaction."

"Patrick Rashleigh, the Library's newly appointed Data Visualization Coordinator, will oversee the operation of the Lab, provide instruction and outreach to faculty, students, and interdisciplinary campus groups and support individual and course-based visualization projects. Rashleigh previously served as the Faculty Technology Liaison for the Humanities in the Research and Instruction group at Wheaton College; and Senior New Media Coordinator for the Attorney General of Ontario."

For more information please see the full press release.

NISO and UKSG Announce Five More Publishers Endorse KBART

October 3, 2012 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the UKSG are pleased to announce that BioOne, JSTOR, LOCKSS, the Royal Society of Chemistry and SpringerLink (hosted by Metapress) are the most recent organizations to publicly endorse the Phase I recommendations of the KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) Working Group, a joint NISO/UKSG initiative that is exploring data problems within the OpenURL supply chain. KBART's Phase I Recommended Practice ( NISO RP-9-2010), published in January 2010, contains practical recommendations for the timely exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers."

"All content providers, from major databases to small publishers, are encouraged to publicly endorse the KBART Recommended Practice by submitting a sample file to the KBART working group. Once the file's format and content has been reviewed and approved, and the provider has made it publicly available (in line with the recommendations), the provider will be added to a public list of endorsing providers. Knowledge base developers can endorse the KBART Recommended Practice by confirming that their systems can process KBART formatted files. In addition, a contacts registry is available on the KBART Information Hub at http://www.uksg.org/kbart or http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart where content providers and knowledge base developers can register their organization's information for downloading holdings metadata."

For more information please see the full press release.

Naturejobs expands services by introducing free mobile app and revamped website

October 1, 2012 — "Naturejobs, the international jobs board from Nature Publishing Group, is further expanding its services for jobseekers with a new mobile app that can be downloaded free of charge to iPhone and Android devices. Naturejobs.com also re-launched in May, providing a new look and improved functionality including the ability for users to upload a CV to their profile. Jobseekers have already uploaded over 10,000 CVs to the site."

"The Naturejobs mobile app allows users to search and view thousands of science jobs in more than 100 countries. Job searches are simple and fast-loading and those jobs that are suitable can be emailed. It is available free to download at Apple's App Store or Google Play and is also linked to from http://www.nature.com/mobile/naturejobs."

For more information please see the full press release.

Digital Agenda: EU-funded research to make the "cloud" greener

September 26, 2012 — "A special 3D microchip, being designed by an EU-funded research project, looks set to drastically cut the electricity and the installation costs of servers in cloud computing data centres, cementing Europe's place as the home of green computing."

"Cloud data centres – thousands of computer servers in one location – can be the size of football fields and consume the same amount of electricity as 40,000 homes. The data centres are essential because they enable the cloud computing revolution: consumer services like Facebook, Gmail, Spotify and mobile apps, and business services like customer databases."

"The Eurocloud project has adapted low-power microprocessor technologies, typically used in mobile phones, to work on a much larger scale. Preliminary measurements show that using these technologies reduces power needs by 90%, compared to conventional servers."

For more information please see the full press release.

JISC funds the White Rose Consortium of academic libraries and the Sheffield iSchool to develop Research Data Management (RDM) learning materials for LIS professionals

September 24, 2012 announcement from Andrew Cox, University of Sheffield — "JISC have funded the White Rose Consortium of the libraries of the universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York and the Sheffield iSchool to develop learning materials about Research Data Management tailored for the needs of LIS professionals."

"The project, RDMRose, will develop learning materials to be made available as Open Educational Resources for individual professionals to study as CPD and for other LIS educators to reuse, as well as for use in courses at Sheffield. Learning materials should begin to be available from January 2013."

"RDM refers to 'the organisation of data, from its entry to the research cycle through to the dissemination and archiving of valuable results' (see Whyte, A., Tedds, J. (2011). 'Making the Case for Research Data Management'. DCC Briefing Papers. Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Available online: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers). The need for universities to put in place support for Research Data Management has been driven by the data deluge and research funders' mandates. LIS services around the world are currently trying to understand how they can best support researchers to follow good RDM practices. What is involved will vary between institutions, but a number of roles are emerging, such as in influencing policy, teaching students and researchers about best practice and offering advisory services."

For more information please see the full blog posting.

Grant Awards Announcement: 21st Century Museum Professionals

September 20, 2012 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) today announced nine 21st Century Museum Professionals grants totaling $1,968,346. The recipients are matching their grants with a total of $2,277,018 in non-federal funds. IMLS received 68 applications requesting $11,630,873."

"'These grants help museum professionals acquire, improve, and maintain their knowledge and skills," said IMLS Director Susan Hildreth. "The projects we're funding have impact and public value well beyond the nine grantees and their service areas.'"

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

For more information please see the full press release.

DigitalCommons@Fairfield initiative logs 1,000th item

September 14, 2012 — "In the less than six months since the launch of DigitalCommons@Fairfield initiative by Fairfield University's DiMenna- Nyselius Library, more than 1,000 scholarly items have been catalogued and are now available in this open access institutional repository. To date, thousands of researchers from the University and around the world have downloaded materials. Essentially an online library of research papers, conferences and scholarly videos, the project highlights the scholarship of Fairfield faculty...."

"...'DigitalCommons is part of an effort by Fairfield University librarians to increase the visibility of faculty members' scholarship, maximize its research impact, and contribute to worldwide accessibility,' said Joan Overfield, University Librarian. Its platform is optimized for visibility through Google, Google Scholar and other search engines...."

"...You can explore DigitalCommons by going to http://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu."

For more information please see the full press release.

Europeana's huge cultural dataset opens for re-use

September 12, 2012 — "Opportunities for apps developers, designers and other digital innovators will be boosted today as the digital portal Europeana opens up its dataset of over 20 million cultural objects for free re-use."

"The massive dataset is the descriptive information about Europe's digitised treasures. For the first time, the metadata is released under the Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication, meaning that anyone can use the data for any purpose – creative, educational, commercial – with no restrictions. This release, which is by far the largest one-time dedication of cultural data to the public domain using CC0 offers a new boost to the digital economy, providing electronic entrepreneurs with opportunities to create innovative apps and games for tablets and smartphones and to create new web services and portals."

For more information please see the full press release.

IMLS Awards Grant to Engage Libraries in US Ignite

September 12, 2012 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services announced today that the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant in the amount of $99,168 for 'Inclusive Gigabit Libraries: Learn, Discuss, and Brainstorm.' With this IMLS support, GSLIS will hold a series of four continuing education forums to enhance understanding of how libraries can adopt and use next-generation Internet networks to address social inclusion through the organization US Ignite...."

"Professor Jon Gant, director of the proposed Center for Digital Inclusion at GSLIS and the principal investigator on the grant, said, 'The project aims to help libraries develop applications and services that will meet the needs of the public, particularly underserved populations. Case studies will examine efforts to leverage ultra-high-speed Internet service to deliver socially inclusive library experiences that meet critical human development needs. The forums will give library leaders an opportunity to shape the next generation of the Internet.'"

"The forums will provide an opportunity to discuss current practices and needs in libraries and to brainstorm new applications or service models that take advantage of ultra-high-speed connectivity, ultimately resulting in better and more robust service to library patrons."

For more information please see the full press release.