up2date

New Online Archive of 120 Historical Films

Thanks to LJ's infoDOCKET :

From a British Council Announcement:

Over 120 films providing fascinating snapshots of the UK’s cultural, sporting, industrial and political heritage have been launched online to the public thanks to funding from Google and the British Council.

The films [...date...] back to late 1939 – and give an insight not only into a bygone age, but also serve to capture how cultural relations has changed. For several decades, the Council was an enthusiastic commissioner and distributor of documentaries, designed to showcase Britain to the outside world and promote democratic values at a time when fascism was spreading across Europe. The films were largely shown at embassies, consulates and to students and schoolchildren around the world.

[Clip]

...The films are now available to the public to stream and download for the first time at http://film.britishcouncil.org/british-council-film-collection.

[Clip]

... Briony Hanson, the British Council’s Director of Film, said: “... With our self image very much in the spotlight again this summer as the world watches the Olympics and the Jubilee, these films encourage us to ask timely questions about what it means to be British.”

Direct to Film Collection

Direct to a Collection of Stills from Some of the Films (via Flickr)

Read the Complete Announcement (Includes a List of Highlights)

New issue : LIBER Quarterly (Vol 21 No 3/4)

(Thanks to LJ infoDOCKET). The articles I thought appeared most intriguing :

An Overview of Research Infrastructures in Europe – and Recommendations to LIBER
Norbert Lossau

Getting to Know Library Users’ Needs — Experimental Ways to User-centred Library Innovation
Karen Harbo, Thomas Vibjerg Hansen

 

"Ithaka S+R Chemistry Project Now Available"

After all of my posts on the History Project, here's the release of the Ithaka chemistry project (from INFOdocket).

"From the ITHAKA Web Site:

Ithaka S+R is pleased to release the Interim Report on our Chemistry Project, part of the Research Support Services for Scholars program. This follows the release of the Interim Report on our History Project last month.

We hope to engage the community – librarians, research support professionals, scholars, researchers, and funders alike –  in discussions on both projects. Please share your thoughts and experiences with us. We welcome reactions and feedback via the comments section on our project blog."

"Transforming Collections" -- free e-forum

Thanks to  the Collections = Collections blog for alerting me to the free ALCTS Transforming Collections forum. The basics :

February 22-23, 2012
9am-5pm CST

"Join us to talk about all the ways our collections are changing and discuss topics such as handling new formats, preservation methods, repository services, planning for the future, best practices for moving forward, and budgeting for changing times. Come share your success stories about how you are meeting the research, teaching, and recreational needs of your users of today and tomorrow."

Royal Society Journal Archive now free

Fabulous! From INFOdocket :

"From a Royal Society Announcement:

The Royal Society has today announced that its world-famous historical journal archive – which includes the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal – has been made permanently free to access online.

Around 60,000 historical scientific papers are accessible via a fully searchable online archive, with papers published more than 70 years ago now becoming freely available.

The Royal Society is the world’s oldest scientific publisher, with the first edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society appearing in 1665.  ...

Treasures in the archive include Isaac Newton’s first published scientific paper, geological work by a young Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Franklin’s celebrated account of his electrical kite experiment.  And nestling amongst these illustrious papers, readers willing to delve a little deeper into the archive may find some undiscovered gems from the dawn of the scientific revolution – including accounts of monstrous calves, grisly tales of students being struck by lightning, and early experiments on to how to cool drinks “without the Help of Snow, Ice, Haile, Wind or Niter, and That at Any Time of the Year.”

[Clip]

The move is being made as part of the Royal Society’s ongoing commitment to open access in scientific publishing.  Opening of the archive is being timed to coincide with Open Access Week, and also comes soon after the Royal Society announced its first ever fully open access journal, Open Biology.

Direct to Searchable Archive"

CRL joins BorrowDirect

From INFOdocket :

From the Announcement:

The Center for Research Libraries has joined Borrow Direct...

Users will have 24-hour availability to CRL collections, increasing access for CRL member institutions in the consortium.

Read the Complete Announcement

HathiTrust sued

From Actualitté -- I'm sure there will be news in the English-language press at some point.

"Cinq universités américaines et leur fonds numérique commun HathiTrust viennent d'être attaqués en justice par trois ligues d'auteurs et huit individus. HathiTrust n'aurait pas le droit de diffuser des livres numérisés sans leur autorisation par Google.

L'Authors Guild américaine, l'Australian Society of Authors et l'Union des écrivaines et écrivains québécois (UNEQ), reprochent à HathiTrust, utilisé par plus de 50 universités dans le monde, dont certaines en Europe, d'avoir considéré à tort certaines œuvres comme orphelines, de ne pas sécuriser ses serveurs, et d'enfreindre le droit d'auteur en réutilisant les scans de Google sans leur demander leur autorisation.

..."

Opportunity to review for Library Journal

From A Library Writers Blog :

"Reviewing for LJ is a demanding and time-consuming activity, but one that can yield a good deal of professional satisfaction. If you're interested in becoming a book reviewer for LJ, please read our *guidelines* first. To apply, fill out a questionnaire and email it, along with a résumé and two sample reviews in LJ style, to Anna Katterjohn at akatterjohn@mediasourceinc.com.

..."

opportunities to be an editor for Public Services Quarterly

From the Library Writer's blog :

*** Column Editor for “Best of the Literature” – this person will write columns and/or recruit others and edit columns that provide an annotated bibliography of 5-8 recent publications on a topic of interest to public services librarians.

*** Column Editor for “Internet Resources” - this person will write and/or recruit others and edit columns that review web resources that would be useful to public services librarians. 

*** Members of the Editorial Board – we need two to four people to serve as peer reviewers for manuscripts submitted to the journal. 

If you are interested in any of these opportunities, please send [Beth Blakesley, beth.blakesley@wsu.edu] a note expressing interest and providing information about your experience or qualifications.

See http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/WPSQ for more details about the journal.  If you don’t have access to the journal and would like to see samples of the columns, just let [Beth Blakesley] know.

OCLC Research Highlights

From INFODocket :

"Direct to OCLC Research Highlights  No. 1

Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President, OCLC Research and Chief Strategist, Writes:

This is the first installment of The OCLC Research Quarterly Highlights, a periodic bulletin about OCLC Research. It will provide highlights of the previous quarter’s research work, including reports from the Innovation Lab, the OCLC Research Library Partnership, and the occasional look at emerging items. The emphasis will be on collecting and summarizing items of significance for your attention, with links to more complete discussions elsewhere on the OCLC Research Web site.

[Clip]

..."

HathiTrust Enhances Full Text Search & Collection Builder Tool

From INFODocket (although N.B., one still cannot search the entire run of a journal (sigh) :

Four new features are now live for users when conducting research using HathiTrust full text search database and collection builder tool.

The Full-text Search index now includes bibliographic data, which is being used to:

• Improve results ranking

• Allow users to refine results using bibliographic facets

...

In Collection Builder, the display of collections has been improved, and you can now:

• Search collections by title and description

• Filter collections by featured status, most recently updated, those created by the user, and number of items in the collection

Direct to HathiTrust

NEH Announces Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants, New Institutes & more

From INFODocket :

From the National Endowment for the Humanities

1. 32 New Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant Awards 

2. 5 New Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities

3. DFG/NEH Bi-Lateral Digital Humanities Grantees
From Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft  (Germany) and NEH

U of C working toward higher-speed Internet service to campus and community

From the UofC news :

"...The group has launched Gig.U: The University Community Next Generation Innovation Project.

...

Using the high-speed networks “would be like going from a two-lane highway to one with 1,000 lanes,” said Lev Gornick, Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Information Technology Services at Case Western Reserve University, during the briefing.

Gig.U universities and their surrounding communities have the most favorable conditions for a market-based, ultra high-speed broadband strategy, including dense populations and high demand from institutions and residential customers. These communities have long served as partners and test beds for advances in market segments, ranging from health care and education to technology and energy..."

"WorldCat Local Adds Publishers"

From the ResourceShelf :

WorldCat Local Adds Publishers

July 18, 2011 13:44

From No Shelf Required:

OCLC has signed agreements with leading publishers and other content providers from around the world to add more databases and collections to WorldCat Local, the OCLC discovery service that offers users integrated access to more than 800 million items in libraries worldwide.

Libraries using WorldCat Local can offer users access to 1,400 databases and collections, and more than 500 million articles.

Full story >>

University of Florida Libraries Join the HathiTrust

Thanks to INFODocket :

From a UFL Blog Post by Barbara Hood:

The University of Florida (UF) George A. Smathers Libraries joined the HathiTrust Digital Library, 

...

The UF Libraries join with the libraries at the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin in an initiative to identify orphan works and attempt to locate the “parents.” The libraries will create a mechanism to publicize bibliographic information about the orphans to give their parents the opportunity to claim them and make informed decisions about the status of their work in the HathiTrust....

Read the Complete Blog Post

(Digital and Archive) of "George Boole"

Just in case you need something to spice up an instruction session. From INFODocket :

A Logical Idea: Digital Archive Containing Newly Discovered Papers and Books of George Boole Announced

...

From Cork Student News:

UCC’s [University College Cork, Ireland] Boole Library is to receive an EMC Heritage Grant to go towards the creation of a publicly available digital archive of newly discovered papers and printed books of the mathematician George Boole....

The digital archives will be integrated into the ongoing Boole Papers digitisation project, which involves the digitisation of over 4,000 digital items, including a collection of letters, which is expected to be completed this month.

...The Boole archives to be published digitally by UCC will be available to the public.

Additional Info in this UCC Announcement

...

Cornell to preserve 8 million university web pages

From INFOdocket :

From The Cornell Daily Sun:

Internet Archive will begin preserving Cornell’s online content starting this month...

Internet Archive will create an archive of Cornell’s entire web space — approximately eight million documents — by capturing HTML coding, images, PDFs and links to external pages...

Cornell workers are beginning to use Internet Archive’s “Archive-It” function to make test scans, or “crawls,” of Cornell’s Internet domain, Krafft said. A complete crawl of the Cornell domain will occur two to three times a year, with the first one scheduled to take place within the next month, he said.

...

OCLC announces Research Library Partnership (e.g., successor to RLG)

From INFOdocket :

Coming Soon: The OCLC Research Library Partnership Launches on July 1, 2011  

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Gary D. Price

 From an OCLC Research “Hanging Together” Blog Post:

This new — or perhaps more appropriately, evolved [OCLC Research Library Partnership] will launch on 1 July 2011.

The OCLC Research Library Partnership builds on and extends the work of the current RLG Partnership. Like its predecessor, the new OCLC Research Library Partnership will include college and university libraries, municipal research libraries, national libraries and archives, privately funded research collections, plus special institutions and large-scale cultural repositories of various kinds. ...

OCLC Research Library Partners will be part of a leading-edge, peer-based, transnational collaborative. ...Partners’ efforts will be backed by the full capacities of OCLC Research, and Partners will collectively influence and direct a substantial portion of the OCLC Research effort.

...Distinctive strategic areas of focus for the Partnership will include: enhancing and extending rich information discovery; supporting the abilities of research libraries to mobilize unique collections; facilitating (both technically and operationally) the wide use of shared print repositories; creating a knowledge access environment that integrates all forms of research content within efficient organization and discovery processes; and exploring global approaches to research information management.

Official Intro and FAQ

• Introducing the OCLC Research Library Partnership (PDF: 2 pages)
• OCLC Research Library Partnership Frequently Asked Questions (.PDF: 3 pages)
• OCLC Research Library Partnership Agreement Form (PDF: 2 pages)

Cornell University Library to make journal prices public

From Inside HigherEd :

... A statement posted on the library website explains: "Occasionally in licenses governing electronic resources, publishers will request that the Cornell University Library (CUL) treat the subscription price as confidential information and not disclose it to third parties. In the past, some libraries have tolerated these clauses in the belief that they might result in a lower cost. This, however, is a position that CUL can no longer accept. It has become apparent to the library community that the anticompetitive conduct engaged in by some publishing firms is in part a result of the inclusion of nondisclosure agreements in contracts."

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

From the Chronicle's Wired Campus, which is following this initiative fairly closely. I remain slightly skeptical, but it would be great if the goals could be realized.

"Talking About a Digital Public Library of America

By Jennifer Howard

In October 2010, Robert Darnton... talked to Wired Campus about the possibility of building what was then being described as a National Digital Library. Since then, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, with money from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has stepped into the role of coordinating plans for what’s now being designated a Digital Public Library of America.

The planning has a public component as well: The Berkman Center has set up a wiki to which anyone can contribute. ...

The wiki lays out major topics related to the proposed DPLA project: content and scope (which includes a handy roundup of digitizing projects in the United States and abroad), governance and business models, legal and technical issues....

You can also join a public e-mail list dedicated to the discussion and run by the Berkman Center. ...Expect to see some well-informed discussion there and more formal announcements this spring about what happens next at the organizational level."