New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2010), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2010.23927aab.001

New & Noteworthy

Article Type: New & Noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 27, Issue 1.

Academic Research Libraries Partner in Kuali Open Library Environment

The Kuali Foundation Inc. announced in November 2009 that a group of leading academic research libraries is partnering in the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) (pronounced Oh-LAY) project to develop software created specifically for the complex business management and workflow operations of academic and research libraries.

More than 300 libraries, educational institutions, professional organizations, and businesses participated in some phase of planning for the OLE project, which was supported by a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Duke University. Based on that broad insight, OLE will create a next-generation library system that breaks away from print-based workflows and reflects the changing nature of library materials and new approaches to scholarly work. The project is designed to work well with other enterprise systems and to be easily modified to suit the needs of different institutions.

Consistent with the values of the Kuali Foundation, the resulting software will be made freely available to libraries around the world, which will then also contribute their expertise and enhancements through community processes that work for the library community. The project will build on the far-reaching expertise of its current and future partners.

Integrated library systems, composed of relational databases and the application software to support them, are used to track materials within library collections, from ordering and paying for them to loaning them to library patrons. Because large academic research libraries are responsible for managing and providing access to millions of items, the need to be more proactive in software development is especially acute in light of the workflow needed to manage and curate a varied digital collection that includes leased electronic journal content and owned special collections.

Kuali OLE partners include Indiana University (lead); Florida Consortium (University of Florida representing Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, Rollins College, University of Central Florida, University of Miami, University of South Florida, the Florida Center for Library Automation); Lehigh University; Triangle Research Libraries Network, represented by Duke University and North Carolina State University; University of Chicago; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; and the University of Pennsylvania.

For more information on Kuali OLE visit: http://kuali.org/ole

OLE Project Final Report is available at: http://oleproject.org/final-report-on-ole-project/

UC's Open Access Digital Publishing Service Launches New Site

eScholarship launched a redesigned website, October 19, with an array of digital publishing services for the University of California scholarly community and a research platform for scholars worldwide. Previously known as UC's eScholarship Repository, the new eScholarship offers a robust scholarly publishing platform that enables departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.

“Our relaunch of eScholarship reflects the enormous value we see in recasting the institutional repository as an open access publisher,” says Catherine Mitchell, Director of the Publishing Group at the California Digital Library. “There is significant need across the University of California campuses for a sustainable infrastructure to support the publication and dissemination of research. In our efforts to respond to this need, we have watched our institutional repository evolve into a dynamic platform for the original publication of scholarly work.”

UC-affiliated scholars, editors, and research unit administrators can publish the following original works in eScholarship:

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  journals;

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  books;

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  working papers;

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  conference proceedings; and

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  seminar/paper series.

eScholarship also continues to provide deposit and dissemination services for previously published articles or “postprints.”

The relaunch of eScholarship brings new opportunities for digital publishing to the University of California and offers substantially improved services for previously supported publication types. Books published in eScholarship are eligible for a combined digital/print publication service, courtesy of UC Publishing Services (UCPubS), a joint program of UC Press and the California Digital Library. In addition, eScholarship offers conference lifecycle support, including mechanisms for proposal submission, program display, and the ultimate publication of proceedings.

Much of the site redesign has been focused on improving the quality of access to eScholarship publications. The site is optimized for Google searches; PDFs can be viewed in their entirety without download; and research can be shared easily through third-party social networking sites and RSS feeds.

Likewise, the ability to locate relevant scholarship within the new site is improved as a result of the implementation of:

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  a highly developed similar items finder;

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  visual snippets of keywords within documents (KWIC Pics);

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  accessible from the search results page;

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  facets for narrowing search results by UC campus, discipline, and peer review status; and

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  keyword search capability within documents.

The new services and tools all add up to an enhanced experience for authors, editors, and publishing program directors – and for the researchers who seek out their work.

Among its many services, eScholarship supports the original publication of more than 20 peer-reviewed journals, including:

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  California Agriculture (UC Davis);

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  Journal of Transnational American Studies (UC Santa Barbara);

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  Nutrition Bytes (UCLA);

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  Places (UC Berkeley);

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  San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science (UC Davis); and

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  Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (UC Irvine).

eScholarship also provides access to publications from nearly 250 research units and publishing programs across UC, including:

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  Center for Conservation Biology (UC Riverside);

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  Center for the Study of Democracy (UC Irvine);

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  Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (UCSF);

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  Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities (UC Berkeley);

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  International and Area Studies Publications (UC Berkeley);

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  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;

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  Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UC San Diego); and

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  Santa Cruz Center for International Economics (UC Santa Cruz).

Initiated in 2002 as a collaborative development effort between the Berkeley Electronic Press and the California Digital Library, eScholarship now houses over 30,000 publications with more than nine million downloads to date. The rate of usage of these materials has grown dramatically in the past seven years, now often exceeding 170,000 full-text downloads per month. eScholarship is a project of the Publishing Group of the California Digital Library and a showcase for the group's open-source search and display technology development utilizing XTF. eScholarship's publication submission system through their Digital Commons and EdiKit technologies was originally developed and is still maintained by the Berkeley Electronic Press.

eScholarship website: www.escholarship.org/

CHAIN Is Formed: Coalition of Humanities and Arts Infrastructures and Networks

Following a meeting in October 2009, organizations including networks, infrastructure projects, and planning initiatives working with digital technologies in the Arts and Humanities agreed to form the Coalition of Humanities and Arts Infrastructures and Networks – CHAIN. CHAIN will act as a forum for areas of shared interest to its participants, including:

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  advocacy for an improved digital research infrastructure for the humanities;

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  development of sustainable business models;

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  promotion of technical interoperability of resources, tools, and services;

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  promotion of good practice and relevant technical standards;

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  development of a shared service infrastructure;

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  coordinating approaches to legal and ethical issues;

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  interactions with other relevant computing infrastructure initiatives; and

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  widening the geographical scope of our coalition.

CHAIN will promote an open culture where experiences, including successes and failures, can be shared and discussed, in order to support and promote the use of digital technologies in research in the humanities.

Participants in CHAIN include:

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  arts-humanities.net (www.arts-humanities.net/);

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  ADHO – Association of Digital Humanities Organisation (www.digitalhumanities.org/);

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  CLARIN (www.clarin.eu/);

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  centerNet (www.digitalhumanities.org/centernet/);

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  DARIAH (www.dariah.eu/);

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  NoC – Network of Expert Centres in Great Britain and Ireland (www.arts-humanities.net/noc/);

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  Project Bamboo (http://projectbamboo.org/); and

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  TextGrid (www.textgrid.de/).

CHAIN is available at: http://digitalhumanities.org/centernet/pageid12

LOCKSS, IBI, and Deutsche Nationalbibliothek to Collaborate on Project LuKII

The Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin's Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft (IBI) has announced that the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Society) has funded the Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft, the Computer and Media Service (CMS) at Humboldt-Universität, and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB) to carry out Project LuKII. The project has three goals:

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  (1)  to establish a cost-effective LOCKSS (lots of copies keep stuff safe) network in Germany including infrastructure to provide ongoing technical support and management for LOCKSS and its variants network in Germany;

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  (2)  to conceptualize and implement interoperability between LOCKSS and KOPAL in order to combine cost-effective bitstream preservation with well-developed usability preservation tools; and

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  (3)  to test the interoperability prototype by archiving data from German institutional repositories.

The LOCKSS Program, founded in 1998 at Stanford University Library, will be a collaborating partner. “In the online environment,” writes Vicky Reich, LOCKSS Program Director, “community implementation and control of economically sustainable and technically robust digital preservation infrastructure is essential for long term continued access to scholarly and national heritage materials. The LOCKSS Program, Stanford University is honored to be participating in this collaborative effort to help keep German digital assets safe.”

The DNB is the national depository for all print and electronic materials published in Germany. It has a mandate both to archive and to guarantee long-term access. In cooperation with its partners it has implemented and continues to support a long-term archive for digital objects (KOPAL). It also hosts nestor, the network of expertise for digital preservation in Germany and is involved in a host of other digital preservation projects. The IBI is a member of the international iSchool/iCaucus group and offers bachelors, masters, and doctoral programs in library and information science. The CMS is a member of both nestor and DINI, the Deutschen Initiative für Netzwerkinformation.

More information visit: www.ibi.hu-berlin.de/forschung/digibib/forschung/projekte/LuKII

PEER Project Final Report Now Available

PEER is a pioneering collaboration between publishers, repositories and the research community, which aims to investigate the effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors' final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so-called Green Open Access) on user access, author visibility, journal viability and the broader European research environment. The project will run until 2011, during which time over 50,000 European stage-2 (accepted) manuscripts from over 240 journals will become available for archiving. This report is the result of an ongoing cooperation between stakeholder groups comprising publishers and the library/repository community to establish best practice in deposit procedures that are least disruptive of existing publication workflows, while minimizing additional effort in repository ingest activities.

The PEER Project partners are the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers, the European Science Foundation, Göttingen State and University Library, the Max Planck Society, INRIA, SURF Foundation and University of Bielefeld. STM publishers participating in PEER include the BMJ Publishing Group, Cambridge University Press, EDP Sciences, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Portland Press, Sage Publications, Springer, Taylor & Francis Group and Wiley-Blackwell.

The PEER repositories include the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften eV (MPG); HAL, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA); Göttingen State and University Library (UGOE); BiPrints, Universität Bielefeld (UNIBI); Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania; and the University Library of Debrecen, Hungary, with long-term preservation service by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of The Netherlands).

While the earlier Draft report on the provision of usage data and manuscript deposit procedures for publishers and repository managers set out a preliminary deposit workflow, this final report reflects a collaborative effort between publishers and the library and repository stakeholder communities to achieve a feasible workflow for depositing stage-2 outputs and for the provision of log files from repositories to enable the research envisaged in the PEER project.

An innovative workflow has been devised to describe and standardize the deposit from publishers to repositories that demonstrates, in a core group of interoperable European repositories, the capability of accepting material deposited from third party publishers and authors beyond the project duration.

PEER is supported by the EC eContentplus programme.

To read or download the final report, visit: www.peerproject.eu/reports/

White Paper on Open-Source and Integrated Library Systems Stirs Controversy

At the end of October 2009, Stephen Abram, VP of Innovation for SirsiDynix, published a white paper entitled “Integrated Library Systems Platforms on Open Source” which prompted a flurry of discussion in the blogosphere and the twitterverse. Stephen's stated reason for writing the paper comes from a posting in his blog: “SirsiDynix customers and prospects, as well as our library colleagues and peers, have asked us for our reaction to open-source technology development as it grows and changes in the market. In response, I wrote a position paper that provides our perspective of open-source technology as it exists today as an option for library automation.”

Searches on the paper title or Stephen Abram and open source will retrieve many of the reactions; however, the posting by Mark Leggott in his LoomWare blog is a reasoned and extensive response to many of the points made by in the paper.

Library Journal also gives an overview of the paper and reactions, for this visit: www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6704622.html?nid2673&sourcetitle&rid1500091542

The White Paper is available at: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/Open%20Source%20Position%20Paper%2020091014%20FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf

Stephen's Lighthouse blog entry is available at: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/10/index.html

The LoomWare blog post is available at: http://loomware.typepad.com/loomware/2009/11/a-response-to-stephen-abram-and-sirsidynix.html

Auto-Graphics and Index Data Announce Strategic Technology Partnership

Auto-Graphics Inc., a provider of library automation solutions for over 36 years, and Index Data LLC, a software development company specializing in information retrieval, announced in November 2009 a strategic partnership to provide state-of-the-art, standards-based integrated search and discovery software to the library industry. The partnership will further solidify a relationship that began in 2001 and will allow the companies to more fully integrate Index Data's Pazpar2 search engine and its accompanying technologies into Auto-Graphics' AGent library automation platform to provide an enhanced search and discovery experience.

This integration will take advantage of the strengths of each system and seamlessly combine those strengths into one OPAC to provide greater speed and accuracy when searching across multiple catalogs and databases. For instance, Index Data's Pazpar2 search can make use of Auto-Graphics' detailed Z39.50 mappings to enhance database searching. In addition, while the solution can take full advantage of Auto-Graphics' thousands of existing definitions, Index Data's Connector Framework enables the rapid development of new mappings for third-party databases, adding new flexibility. Auto-Graphics' search engine can integrate Pazpar2 to search all of these resources and display the results into the advanced AGent Iluminar interface, built using the free open-source Adobe Flex framework, to provide an unparalleled search experience.

Auto-Graphics website: www4.auto-graphics.com/

Index Data website: www.indexdata.com/

Summon Service goes Mobile

In November 2009, Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest, launched a mobile application that enables searching of the breadth of a library's collection from a smart phone. Now, users of any library with the Summon web-scale discovery service can search and retrieve digital content, such as full-text articles, and locate physical materials all from a single search box on their iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Palm or Windows Mobile.

Consistent with Summon service's commitment to simplicity for users, the app is automatic: users simply point their phone's browser at their library's live Summon site and the app downloads instantly. From there, they key a term in the Summon search box and retrieve relevant results that span the gamut from print to digital.

The Summon service is backed by a all-new technology architecture and a mega-index of content – about half a billion records from more than 6,000 publishers. Grand Valley State University has tested the content for its ability to effectively represent the breadth of academic libraries. Their findings reveal that the Summon service captures 99 percent of their top 100 downloaded titles from EBSCO's Academic Search Premier, 100 percent of their top 50 JSTOR titles and 100 percent of their top 50 titles from OCLC databases.

The Summon web-scale discovery service is hosted by Serials Solutions. For more information visit: www.serialssolutions.com/summon

Mobile Version of EBSCOhost Platform Puts Database Content in the Hands of Users

EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) is bringing its EBSCOhost databases to users – even if users are on their smartphones. In November 2009 EBSCO released EBSCOhost Mobile allowing researchers to access their EBSCOhost databases via smartphones and other handheld devices. All databases and services currently available on the EBSCOhost platform will be available via EBSCOhost Mobile. The EBSCOhost interface is the most-used research platform currently available in more than 100,000 libraries around the world. Since the interface is the basis for EBSCO Discovery Service, EBSCOhost Mobile is poised to dramatically impact mobile searching.

EBSCOhost Mobile provides a convenient way for customers using mobile devices to find quality content. The main EBSCOhost Mobile screen offers a number of options including choosing which EBSCOhost database(s) to search plus setting search options, accessing field codes and specifying preferences. Many of the existing EBSCOhost features such as search modes, limiting to full text, date ranges, peer-reviewed content or by publication are available. Users will also be able to search images from their mobile devices. The result list is scrollable and available data include citations, Image Quick View and access to full-text articles. The result list also features a relevancy indicator and users are able to email results.

Clicking into a result replicates the EBSCOhost user experience providing researchers with information including author information/affiliation, links to the source, document type, subject terms, NAICS/Industry codes along with the abstract, ISSN, Accession Number, persistent links, images, links to full text, etc.

In addition to providing access to smartphone users, EBSCOhost Mobile will also work on desktops helping libraries with low bandwidths since it uses only a fraction of the bytes compared to a traditional EBSCOhost search. EBSCOhost Mobile will also open up access to research databases to researchers in remote locations who are only able to access via satellite links. The interface has been designed with a lower resolution, simplifying the interface by removing folders and some other more advanced features for increased speed and user convenience.

EBSCOhost Mobile is available at: www.ebscohost.com/thisTopic.php?marketID1&topicID1336

ELympics – Ex Libris Launches Open-Platform Competition

The Ex Libris^® Group has announced the launch of ELympics, the Ex Libris open-platform competition. The Company will award prizes totaling $12,000 to the creators of the best code extensions to Ex Libris solutions during the competition period – November 9, 2009 to March 31, 2010. All members of the Ex Libris customer community are invited to submit their contributions via the CodeShare area (previously known as the Developer Zone) of the EL Commons collaborative website. The winners will be announced in May 2010.

The international panel of judges for the competition consists of Marshall Breeding, director for innovative technologies and research at Vanderbilt University (in the USA) and founding editor of the Library Technology Guides website; Sebastian Hammer, an open-source software developer who is the president and cofounder of IndexData, a company that specializes in information retrieval technologies; Dr Andrew MacFarlane, senior lecturer in the Department of Information Science at City University (in London); and Yohanan Spruch, chief technology officer at Ex Libris.

“We are looking forward to seeing the innovative code extensions that our customer developers create during the competition,” commented Tamar Sadeh, director of marketing at Ex Libris and the coordinator of the open-platform program. “EL Commons, with its CodeShare area, is an extremely fertile environment for the library developers in our customer community, and the ELympics competition will stimulate original ideas to enhance Ex Libris solutions.”

Commenting on the recent upgrade of the entire EL Commons platform, Ms Sadeh added: “EL Commons now provides even greater functionality and is more intuitive. With the rebranding of the Developer Zone as CodeShare, we are emphasizing its core role in facilitating the sharing of ideas and code extensions by members of the Ex Libris community. The benefits of the open-platform program accrue not only to active developers; all of our customers gain from the contributions of their peers.”

For details of the Ex Libris ELympics competition, see: www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/ELympics

Cataloger's Desktop 3.0 Launched; Major Modernization of Subscription Service

The Library of Congress has launched Cataloger's Desktop 3.0, a major modernization of its popular web-based subscription service of important cataloging and metadata resources.

Desktop, available from the Cataloging Distribution Service, provides catalogers access to more than 280 electronic manuals, cataloging and classification standards, procedures and resources. The new 3.0 version adds operational enhancements, greatly expanding its search and information-discovery features. Beacher Wiggins, director of the Library's Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate, said “Cataloger's Desktop 3.0 is a good example of the Library's continuing commitment to catalogers everywhere.”

Subscribers to Desktop have automatically received the new version, and catalogers soon will have an opportunity to see Desktop 3.0 demonstrated at the Library of Congress exhibit booth at the American Library Association midwinter meeting in Boston in January 2010.

Barbara Tillett, chief of the Library's Policy and Standards Division, said “To help users make the most of the new product enhancements, the Library of Congress staff has been busy creating an array of helpful documentation.” A battery of learning aids and practical tips will be accessible shortly online, to help subscribers optimize their use of Cataloger's Desktop 3.0. The aids include a series of webinars in both English and Spanish, free online training files, PowerPoint presentations and at-a-glance, how-to handouts.

Desktop 3.0 incorporates cutting-edge searching and navigation techniques, including fuzzy matching; finding/excluding similar resources; dynamic drill-downs; contextual analysis; search relevancy; remembering search histories; query federation; faceted search drill-downs; and a search engine that adapts to a user's search behavior. Bruce Johnson, Cataloger's Desktop product manager, said “Desktop 3.0 takes advantage of state-of-the-art search and navigation techniques which help users find exactly what they need faster and easier than ever before.”

InfoSolutions, the Kentucky web-product developer that has supported Cataloger's Desktop for the past six years, worked with the Library staff on the modernization.

Desktop is updated quarterly by the Library's Policy and Standards Division and is available to users 24/7 through the Cataloging Distribution Service.

For further information on Cataloger's Desktop, visit: www.loc.gov/cds/desktop

Adobe and Barnes and Noble Agree to Collaborate on eBook Standards

Adobe Systems Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE:BKS) announced in October 2009 they would join forces to standardize the open EPUB and PDF eBook formats and collaborate on a content protection standard based on Adobe and Barnes & Noble technology. The collaboration makes Barnes & Noble the most portable and compatible eBookstore, and provides customers of nook, the new Barnes & Noble eBook reader and other compatible devices, as well as users of Barnes & Noble eReader software for iPhone, PCs, BlackBerry and other smartphones the ability to access digital content from thousands of content providers that is protected with Adobe technology. In addition, customers with devices that use the Adobe Reader Mobile software development kit (SDK) will soon be able to purchase and read content from BN.com, the world's largest eBookstore.

Barnes & Noble is adopting Adobe Content Server, a server software solution that copy protects eBooks downloaded to nook, mobile phone applications and other dedicated eBook reading devices that have integrated the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK. Additionally, Adobe is integrating Barnes & Noble's eReader social content protection technology into Adobe Content Server, Adobe Reader Mobile SDK and, eventually, into Adobe Digital Editions.

“Adobe's end-to-end eBook platform enables consumers to access an array of PDF and EPUB content on PCs, mobile and dedicated reading devices. Publishers benefit from the reduced cost and improved efficiencies that Adobe's comprehensive eBook solution offers, while meeting the needs for eBook customers and protecting copyrights,” said Paul Weiskopf, senior vice president of corporate development at Adobe. “Thousands of online booksellers, publishers and libraries have adopted Adobe's content protection technology, and we're excited to be working with Barnes & Noble to expand eBook distribution.”

Barnes & Noble will support PDF and EPUB, a reflow-centric, XML-based open standard with broad support from the publishing industry and the Association of American Publishers. With this enhanced version of Adobe Content Server, publishers and booksellers will be able to protect EPUB and PDF eBooks through either social password or identity-based authentication options, allowing their readers access to interoperable eBook content across diverse platforms.

Adobe Reader Mobile SDK with social content protection capabilities is expected to be available globally in early 2010. Adobe Digital Editions and Adobe Content Server with social content protection capabilities are expected to be available globally in late 2010.

Barnes and Noble's Nook: www.nook.com

Adobe Content Server: www.adobe.com/products/contentserver/

DeepDyve Offers Online Rental Service for Research

In October 2009, DeepDyve unveiled the world's largest online rental service for STM research. From a growing database spanning thousands of journals, DeepDyve now gives consumers and professionals access to more than 30 million articles for as little as $0.99 per article.

In the USA alone, there are more than 50 million sophisticated consumers and professionals, so-called “knowledge workers,” who use the web for research for their education, health and careers. Often the best research information is available only on a subscription basis from scientific publications and scholarly societies that traditionally serve large academic and corporate institutions with specialized websites and tools.

As a result, most knowledge workers face significant challenges when trying to access this authoritative content. According to a recent report from the Publishing Research Consortium, these primary obstacles include:

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  the difficulty of simply finding the right information from among the millions of search engine results;

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  the expense of paying $30 or more for each premium article based solely on a short preview or abstract; and

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  the inconvenience of visiting multiple publisher sites, each with a different and often complicated e-commerce experience.

DeepDyve's key benefits address these needs directly by offering:

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  Wide selection. DeepDyve has aggregated more than 30 million articles from thousands of journals, all in one place.

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  Affordability. Users can rent the full text of an article for as little as $0.99, or join a monthly plan and enjoy greater discounts and increased flexibility.

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  Ease of use. With DeepDyve, users can click, rent and read without any hassles. DeepDyve also offers many tools and personalized recommendations to foster ongoing discovery and convenience.

DeepDyve also offers an array of features and benefits to enrich the searching and reading experience, including:

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  Free search and preview. Researchers can be certain of an article's relevance before renting.

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  Personalized suggestions. DeepDyve will automatically display suggested articles based on a user's profile.

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  Bookmarks. Favorite articles are saved and displayed on a user's MyDeepDyve home page for easy access.

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  Email and RSS alerts. Users can receive regular updates of new articles and search results delivered directly to their email inbox or RSS reader.

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  More like this. DeepDyve offers links to related content with every search result and article page.

More about DeepDyve's online rental service for research: www.DeepDyve.com

Axiope Announces the Launch of eCAT

Axiope, developers of online applications for lab scientists, is pleased to announce the launch of eCAT, an innovative, easy to use and affordable online electronic lab notebook developed by scientists for scientists. eCAT lets lab scientists record experiments and manage data over the web. Everyone in the team – a lab or groups of labs – can share the diverse collections of data that scientists generate, such as images and spreadsheets, reagents, results and ideas. eCAT is also used to manage scientific inventory, whether it is freezer samples, animals or supplies.

More than 100 individuals, labs and institutions in North America, Europe and Asia participated in beta testing from September 2008 to June 2009, including the FDA, several NIH institutes, UK government regulatory bodies, research hospitals and universities. Via a pre-release initiative, eCAT has already been adopted in the USA, Europe, the Middle East and Asia by labs like the Skinner lab at Washington State University, the Swarbrick lab at the Garvan Institute in Sydney, Australia and research consortia like modENCODE.

Designed by scientists for lab scientists, eCAT is priced to be affordable in non-commercial settings. eCAT is Mac, PC and Linux compatible, and runs in Firefox, Safari, IE and Chrome.

To learn more about eCAT and watch the online videos: www.axiope.com

Dublin Core (DC) 2009 Conference Proceedings Available Online

The DC 2009 conference, held in Seoul, Korea, 12-16 October 2009, featured high-quality tutorials, keynotes, conference papers and workshop sessions. The event was attended by around 100 participants from 18 countries and territories who engaged in lively discussions around the theme of Semantic Interoperability of Linked Data. The conference proceedings are available in the DCMI Conference Paper Repository and many of the presentations are linked from the program page on the conference website: www.dc2009.kr/sub/cfsuprog01.php

URL: http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/ojs/pubs/issue/view/33

DC 2009 Conference website: www.dc2009.kr

Project Planning and Management for the Digitization of Original Cultural Materials

In November 2009 the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative released a new planning document, Digitization Activities – Project Planning and Management Outline.

The aim of this document is to define activities relating to the digitization of original cultural materials, and to outline general steps for planning and management of this process. The activities described in this document address library/archival issues, imaging and conversion work, and IT infrastructure issues in particular, and were identified using project management outlines from several organizations with significant experience working with cultural materials. This document defines “digitization” as a complete process, and covers all project components from content selection through delivery of digitized objects into a repository environment.

Full-text PDF at: www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages/documents/Planning.html

Information Economy Report 2009

The Information Economy Report 2009: Trends and Outlook in Turbulent Times is the fourth in a series published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The report is one of the few publications to monitor global trends in information and communication technologies (ICTs) as they affect developing countries. It serves as a valuable reference for policymakers in those nations. It gives special attention to the impact of the global financial crisis on ICTs.

The Information Economy Report 2009 (IER 2009) offers a fresh assessment of the diffusion of key ICT applications between 2003 and 2008. While fixed telephone subscriptions are now in slight decline, mobile and internet use continues to expand rapidly in most countries and regions. At the same time, there is a widening gap between high-income and low-income countries in broadband connectivity. Broadband penetration is now eight times higher in developed than in developing countries. The report explores policy options for countries seeking to improve broadband connectivity.

The IER 2009 includes a chapter on the use of ICTs in the business sector. A third chapter is devoted to the impact of the financial crisis on ICT trade. A statistical annex to the report provides data on ICT infrastructure, ICT use and ICT trade for up to 200 economies. A PDF version of the IER 2009 and its statistical annex are downloadable from the UNCTAD website (www.unctad.org/ier).

Download full-text PDF: www.unctad.org/en/docs/ier2009en.pdf

Social Isolation and New Technology: New Findings from Pew Internet Project

People who use modern information and communication technologies have larger and more diverse social networks, according to new national survey findings that for the first time explore how people use the internet and mobile phones to interact with key family and friends. These new findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project challenge fears that use of new technologies has contributed to a long-term increase in social isolation in the USA.

The survey was conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, led by Keith N. Hampton, PhD, Assistant Professor of Communication and the Pew Internet Project.

“There is a tendency by critics to blame technology first when social change occurs,” argued Prof. Hampton. “This is the first research that actually explores the connection between technology use and social isolation and we find the opposite. It turns out that those who use the internet and mobile phones have notable social advantages. People use the technology to stay in touch and share information in ways that keep them socially active and connected to their communities.”

Here are some of the other key findings in the Pew Internet report:

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  Some have worried that internet use limits people's participation in their local communities, but the Pew Internet report finds that most internet activities have little or a positive relationship to local activity. For instance, internet users are as likely as anyone else to visit with their neighbors in person. Cell phone users, those who use the internet frequently at work, and bloggers are more likely to belong to a local voluntary association, such as a youth group or a charitable organization. However, we find some evidence that use of social networking services (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) substitutes for some neighborhood involvement.

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  Challenging the assumption that internet use encourages social contact across vast distances, this study shows that many internet technologies are used as much for local contact as they are for distant communication.

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  Internet use does not pull people away from public places. Rather, use is associated with frequent visits to places such as parks, cafes and restaurants, the kinds of locales where research shows that people are likely to encounter a wider array of people and diverse points of view. Indeed, internet access has become a common component of people's experiences within many public spaces. For instance, of those Americans who have been in a library within the past month, 38 percent logged on to the internet while they were there, 18 percent have done so in a café or coffee shop.

“All the evidence points in one direction,” said Prof. Hampton. “People's social worlds are enhanced by new communication technologies. It is a mistake to believe that internet use and mobile phones plunge people into a spiral of isolation.”

Full report available at: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/18–Social-Isolation-and-New-Technology.aspx

Public Libraries and the Use of Web Technologies: Closer Look Report from LRS

The Library Research Service (LRS), a unit of the Colorado State Library and the Colorado Department of Education that is operated in partnership with the Library and Information Science (LIS) Program of the University of Denver, has announced the release of its most recent Closer Look Report, “US Public Libraries and the Use of Web Technologies.”

The use of interactive web technologies on public library websites in the USA has been a topic of much discussion in recent years, and a shift in certain types of user services is underway. Terms like “Web 2.0” and even “Library 2.0” have become common in library literature and at conferences as those on the early edges of this shift share their successes and failures with the broader library community. The Library Research Service was interested in adding to this conversation and, in late 2007, designed the study US Public Libraries and the Use of Web Technologies.

In spring 2008, LRS staff visited the websites of nearly 600 public libraries in the USA, searching for the existence of certain web technologies, including technologies defined as “Web 2.0.” The websites that were examined were drawn from a stratified sample of public libraries in the USA, with approximately equal numbers of libraries included from each of five different population ranges. Additionally, staff visited the websites of all public libraries in Colorado. Two main sets of results were derived from the study:

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  (1)  how many public libraries in the USA (and Colorado) were implementing certain technologies on their websites; and

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  (2)  what were the characteristics of the libraries that could be identified as “early adopters” of web technologies.

A third set of conclusions – does the early adoption of such technologies increase the libraries success in traditional service areas – awaits the release of more current, available national public library data.

For the most part, public libraries in the USA have been relatively slow to adopt the more interactive Web 2.0 technologies. In fact, as a whole, public libraries have been rather slow in adopting even the most basic web technologies. Just over four in five (82 percent) public libraries in the country had a web presence, and just over half (56 percent) offered online account access to their patrons. Not many were reaching out to their patrons by utilizing some of the newer technologies available. Less than a third of public libraries in the USA offered any of the following that LRS staff could locate: a blog, e-mail reference or chat reference. Hardly any had moved onto popular social networking sites that were often mentioned in library conferences and literature. As might be expected, the smallest libraries in the nation were those that were least likely to have any of these web technologies – not even three-fourths (73 percent) of libraries serving fewer than 10,000 had a web presence found by LRS staff, and fewer than half of them offered access to their online catalogs. Very few provided any web technology whatsoever beyond the most basic. Larger libraries, while much more likely to have adopted the technologies, were still far from universal in their adoption of anything beyond the most basic.

Libraries that were in the top 20 percent of their population group in terms of number of technologies adopted were labeled “early adopters” for the purposes of this study. Based on 2005 national data, which was the most recent data available at the time of the study, these early adopting libraries were more successful, by traditional measures, than their peers. Libraries that were early adopters were much better funded and staffed than other libraries, and in fact surpassed their peers by large margins on nearly every statistical measure. These libraries had more visits, circulation, reference transactions and programming use, as well as more audio and visual materials. The one notable statistic where early adopting libraries did not outpace other public libraries was in the number of books held. Since the national data was from 2005 – before most of this technology was implemented – it can be suggested that successful public libraries in the USA had decided to put their resources into more advanced web technologies. Determining whether these ventures onto the web were successful should be the focus of follow-up studies.

A follow-up study is being designed. In spring 2010, LRS staff will again take the pulse of US public libraries in relation to web technologies.

For more about these studies, please visit: www.lrs.org/public/webtech/