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News from the Field

C&RL News, March 2006
Vol. 67, No. 3

by Stephanie Orphan

ALA Council approves dues increase proposal
At the Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio, ALA Council voted to place a proposal to increase personal membership dues on the ALA spring ballot. The ALA Executive Board approved the recommendation from the Budget Analysis and Review Committee (BARC) in October.

The proposal calls for an increase of $10 per year over a three-year period for ALA regular members. Members paying $35 or $45 would see an increase of approximately $10 over three years. The salary threshold for a lower dues rate also would be increased from $20,000 to $25,000. If approved by members, the changes would go into effect in September 2006. The increase would be used to support the association’s new strategic plan, “ALA Ahead to 2010.” There has not been an ALA dues increase in 11 years, and the ALA budget has been flat for 5 years.

EBSCO and WebFeat partner for federated searching
EBSCO and WebFeat have partnered to allow the federated search engine WebFeat Express to be sold as an add-on product to EBSCO’s online title listing service,
EBSCO A-to-Z. WebFeat Express is a streamlined version of the original WebFeat federated search engine, which allows clients to handle search configuration with minimal effort. Once configured, the federated search engine integrates within the A-to-Z service and changes to the library’s electronic collection are reflected in real time and may be indicated and maintained through a single interface.

University of New Hampshire produces jazz CD for Katrina relief
The Traditional Jazz Library at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) has made available for sale a jazz CD entitled Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?, a recording focused on music related to New Orleans, its music, and its songwriters. The UNH Library has underwritten all production costs so that all proceeds directly support hurricane relief through two charities: Music Cares, Hurricane Relief 2005 and ALA’s Katrina Relief Fund.

Music on the CD is drawn from the library’s extensive recorded archives of the university’s Traditional Jazz Series concerts, which are in their 27th year. Fifteen tracks comprise nearly 70 minutes of music and span the years 1980 to 2005. The CD is available by mail at $20 per copy, which includes shipping and handling. It can be purchased in person at the Dimond Library for $18. Ordering information is available at www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltj.

UNC-Chapel Hill Library and library school join Open Content Alliance
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Library and School of Information and Library Science have joined the Open Content Alliance, a group of organizations from around the world that are constructing a permanent archive of digitized text and multimedia materials on the Web. The school is the first from a university to join the alliance, and the library is the first library to contribute manuscript materials. Collections included in the archive are freely available for access and reuse, provided that users respect the rights of content owners and contributors.

LOCKSS initiative to preserve scholarly content is launched
A group of publishers, librarians, and learned societies have launched an initiative employing the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) technology to support a “large dark archive” that serves as a repository for published scholarly content. The initiative, Controlled LOCKSS (CLOCKSS), aims to provide assurance to the research community that a disaster that would prevent the delivery of content would not obstruct access to journal content. CLOCKSS content would only become available after a “trigger” event, such as material no longer being available from the publisher. In such a situation, a joint advisory board representing societies, publishers, and libraries will determine if the content is orphaned and whether it should be made publicly available. More information on CLOCKSS is available at www.lockss.org/clockss.

SOLINET provides disaster preparedness training
In order to promote disaster preparedness throughout the Southeast and to assist libraries and archives in developing and implementing realistic plans to mitigate damage and facilitate recovery, SOLINET is offering a series of disaster preparedness classes across the region. Support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access makes it possible to offer the classes at $25 each. Classes will be held in March, April, and May in each of the ten states comprising the SOLINET region. Classes will be offered on disaster preparedness and hurricane preparedness and are open to all. More information is on the SOLINET Web site at www.solinet.com.

Univ. of Illinois offers advanced degree in digital librarianship
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is now offering a Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) in digital libraries and is accepting applications. The program aims to give students a thorough and technically focused background in digital libraries that will enable them to serve as designers, decision makers, and creators of digital collections. CAS is a program of advanced coursework intended for those who hold a master’s degree in library and information science or a related field. Five one-year, nonrenewable fellowships will be available to CAS and master’s degree students wishing to focus on digital libraries in the 2006–07 academic year.

NetLibrary offers preselected subject collections
NetLibrary has introduced groups of NetLibrary eBook titles, called “subject sets,” developed by NetLibrary collection development librarians to support heavily used subject areas and popular degree programs. The subject sets cover specific subjects for public, academic, school, and community college libraries. Sixty-two subject sets covering 18 general topic areas have been created, featuring titles from publishers such as MIT Press, Oxford University Press, and Taylor and Francis. Pricing includes ongoing fees and delivery of OCLC MARC records for every title in a set at no extra charge. A list of subject sets is available at www.oclc.org/ebooks/subjectsets/.

Alexander Street Press releases African American Song database
Alexander Street Press has debuted a new music database, African American Song, an online resource that documents African American history as expressed through song. When completed, African American Song will contain at least 50,000 audio tracks, 5,000 of which are rare or previously unpublished. In all, there will be more than 2,300 performers included in the collection representing blues, jazz, ragtime, gospel, and other forms of African American musical expression. The database’s first release of 12,000 tracks features recordings from Document Records, the world’s largest collection of rare and vintage blues, jazz, spiritual, gospel, boogie-woogie, and country recordings. Alexander Street Press has previously launched Classical Music Library and Smithsonian Global Sounds for Libraries.

UW-Milwaukee identifies Joyce galley
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) recently identified a James Joyce galley proof annotated in the author’s hand. The eight-page galley proof is part of the third galley proof for “Continuation of a Work in Progress,” a work published by Joyce in volume 13 of transition magazine during the summer of 1928. “Work in Progress” went on to be published as Finnegans Wake in 1939. The galley proof is one of many important documents in the Little Review Records in the archives at UWM Libraries. The Little Review was an international arts and literature serial and celebrated “little magazine” of the early 20th century. The galley proof was misidentified until recently, due to an earlier publishing error, in which Margaret Anderson, editor and founder of the Little Review, incorrectly cited it as a Ulysses galley. More information on the Little Review Records and UWM’s archives is available at www.uwm.edu/Libraries/arch/.

ARTstor introduces XML gateway
ARTstor has developed an XML gateway to the ARTstor Digital Library designed to facilitate content metasearching. The gateway is based on the SRU protocol for querying databases and returning search results. ARTstor has piloted the XML gateway with Ex Libris’ Metalib, WebFeat Prism, Serials Solutions’ Central Search, and CSA Illumina. The interface provides a stable, standardized method for querying the ARTstor Digital Library and retrieving search results that can be easily used by the metasearch providers.