C&RL News column

NEWS FROM THE FIELD

C&RL News, October 2007
Vol. 68, No. 9

by David Free

eBooks from ebrary now available through YBP Library Services
YBP Library Services and ebrary recently announced the availability of ebrary titles through YBP’s GOBI online database. The two companies have integrated ebrary’s platform and its growing selection of eBooks with the GOBI system, providing an easy and efficient way for libraries to preview, order, and manage ebrary titles along with their other print and digital holdings.

YBP customers who order ebrary titles through GOBI benefit from all of the unique features of the ebrary platform, including the ability to seamlessly integrate every title with their catalog, other library resources, and information on the Web through ebrary’s unique InfoTools™ software. ebrary also provides research tools, such as personal bookshelves, multiple search and navigation options, and automatic, customizable citations with a URL hyperlink back to the source when text is copied and pasted or printed.

ebrary’s eBooks and other content spans all academic subject areas. More than 260 of the world’s leading publishers contribute to the selection, including McGraw-Hill, Springer, Elsevier, and Taylor & Francis, as well as many university presses, such as Yale University Press, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press.

UF Digital Collections reaches 1 million page milestone
The University of Florida (UF) Libraries now has over 1 million pages in the University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC). See Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, thousands of children’s and picture books, photographs of the football team, handwritten works by important authors like Harriet Beecher Stowe, maps from around the world and across history, and more.

The 1 million pages fall into more than 20 collections, representing more than 44,000 titles in more than 52,000 volumes. Included are maps, newspapers, photographs and books, as well as archival resources, recorded sound, and video. Collection content ranges geographically from UF to the South American Andes, from Africa to the Russian steps.

Topical content spans local and world history, covering the arts, humanities and social sciences, as well as agriculture and the sciences. In addition to content from the University Libraries, content also comes from the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, the Matheson Museum, and partners in several Caribbean countries.

Anyone can access the UFDC anytime at no charge at www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc.

Submit a proposal for the ACRL/LAMA spring virtual institute

Don’t miss the opportunity to play an active part in the 2008 ACRL/LAMA Joint Virtual Institute, “Leading from the Middle: Managing in All Directions.” Submit a proposal now for an interactive Webcast or online poster session. Submissions will be accepted through December 10, 2007.

The ACRL/LAMA Joint Virtual Institute, to be offered April 29–30, 2008, will offer a forum for the exploration of issues and challenges facing middle managers and leaders. Consider how middle managers not only keep up, but also lead the way in their libraries.

The institute will take place in an online conference community, which will provide an environment in which groups of participants, both small and large, can gather electronically to learn, collaborate, and network.  The institute will offer both synchronous and asynchronous sessions, and program sessions will be archived after the institute for viewing on-demand.

Proposals are invited for session formats including:

• Interactive Webcast (Synchronous): An interactive Webcast allows you to give a presentation in real-time, while also showing visuals.

• Online Poster Session (Asynchronous): The online poster session is a PowerPoint presentation that includes your voice recorded along with each slide. 
Submissions will be accepted through December 10, 2007.  Full text of the Call for Participation and the online submission form are available at
www.ala.org/acrl/events (click “Spring Virtual Institute”).  

Questions about the Call for Presentation or Spring Virtual Institute should be directed to Margot Conahan at msutton@ala.org or by phone at (312) 280-2522.


ACRL Council of Liaisons announces new relationships
ACRL’s Council of Liaisons is pleased to announce the establishment of liaison relationships with several academic professional organizations. The ACRL Board of Directors approved the new relationships at the June 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.

The Board approved recommendations for relationships with the following groups:

•American Anthropological Association

•American Association of University Professors

•American Council of Leaned Societies

•American Sociological Association

•Association for Educational Communications and Technology

•Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education

“The council is excited about this suite of targeted and broad-based higher education organizations. The work of the individual liaisons with these organizations is one key way in which ACRL is getting the word out about how libraries and librarians transform teaching, learning and research,” said council chair Frances Maloy.
Formed in 1995, the ACRL Council of Liaisons carries out a program of in-depth liaison activities with targeted professional associations. The council works to bring to the attention of nonlibrary associations how library resources and services can contribute to their mission and goals, brings information and higher education issues of other associations to the attention of the ACRL Board and membership, and develops strategies on issues of significant importance to the profession and implements them among the various liaison groups.

The council is currently accepting applications for member liaisons to the targeted organizations. Please send completed applications to Frances Maloy at frances.maloy@emory.edu and to Elliot Mandel at emandel@ala.org. The deadline for applications is November 16, 2007.

Applications and additional information on the liaison process are available on the Council Web site at www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/councilofliaisons/liaisons.cfm.

The New York Times introduces distance learning content
The New York Times is launching a new online initiative that pairs Times content with faculty course material for both credit-bearing and continuing education courses. Educators can now choose Times articles, archival content, graphics and multimedia content, including videos and Webcasts, gathered around specific subjects, and make them available to students online, along with other course materials.

This online initiative is an expansion of The New York Times Knowledge Network, a program that has provided copies of the paper, accompanied by curriculum guides, to faculty at colleges and universities for several years. With this new component of the Knowledge Network, Times content will be readily available to students online, whether they’re enrolled in an on-campus course or continuing their education through a distance learning program.

The Knowledge Network will also serve as a global networking and professional and academic development resource for faculty, students, and alumni. Users will be able to share work with colleagues, create their own academic or professional ePortfolios (digital repositories of a person’s work), invite peer review, and establish professional contact with people around the globe based on common academic pursuits and research.

Students will register for Knowledge Network courses through their universities. Access will be available through NYTimes.com/knowledge or their university portals. Fees will be determined by the participating universities. Creation of basic ePortfolio accounts is free for all registered students and faculty of U.S. colleges and universities. Visit epsilen.com for more information.
 
Oklahoma State and AquaBrowser present the BOSS
The Oklahoma State University Libraries recently unveiled a new alternative catalog interface called BOSS: Big Orange Search System. The interface is powered by AquaBrowser from Medialab Solutions BV and gives users a more intuitive search experience, providing new ways to search, discover, and refine results. The libraries existing Voyager Online Catalog has been renamed “Classic Catalog,” and will remain available for use.

BOSS incorporates Indexed Content Enrichment (ICE) from Syndetics Solutions, an R.R. Bowker company. ICE provides book cover images, searchable tables of contents, and summaries. For some titles, full-text reviews are also available. Adding this searchable content allows users to retrieve records for items previously “hidden” because keywords did not appear in the title or subject headings associated with a particular item. Table of contents also provide the convenience of browsing the book without having to pull it from the shelf.

Oklahoma State University is the first large academic research library in the United States to implement AquaBrowser and ICE. Additional enhancements will be implemented in the next six months including display of search results’ distribution by class/subclass, MyDiscoveries, and federated searching of abstracting and indexing databases via the BOSS interface.

The name BOSS: Big Orange Search System was selected though a naming contest among library employees. BOSS was selected as the most school-spirited nomination, reflecting the school color.

BOSS is available to the public at boss.library.okstate.edu.

I can’t live without . . .

As a digital services librarian, I am always on the lookout for the latest information on digitization, copyright, metadata, content management systems, social networking tools, preservation, and imaging as well as any and all related standards, grants, resources, software, conferences, ideas, and marketing concepts. Trying to find all that in one place is a little easier with the Digitization 101 blog. I don’t know how she does it, but Jill Hurst-Wahl, a digitization consultant and senior instructor for Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, jam packs her blog with the best of everything I need to stay current.—Lee Dotson, University of Central Florida Libraries

EBSCO Publishing acquires print indexes from SAGE
EBSCO Publishing has acquired ten renowned indexes from SAGE. The deal will bring the leading print indexes in their fields to users electronically through the EBSCOhost platform.

The following indexes are now owned by EBSCO and will be available electronically via EBSCOhost:

• Abstracts in Social Gerontology

• Educational Administration Abstracts

• Human Resources Abstracts

• Peace Research Abstracts Journal (Now called Peace Research Abstracts)

• Sage Family Studies Abstracts (Now called Family Studies Abstracts)

• Sage Public Administration Abstracts (Now called Public Administration Abstracts)

• Sage Race Relations Abstracts (Now called Race Relations Abstracts)

• Sage Urban Studies Abstracts (Now called Urban Studies Abstracts)

• The Shock & Vibration Digest

• Violence & Abuse Abstracts

Each of these specialized subject indexes is currently available in print-only. Online versions, including backfiles and other benefits, such as unlimited use, remote accessibility, multi-database searching, links to full-text, etc. are expected to be available this month.

SirsiDynix Symphony begins beta testing
SirsiDynix recently announced the beginning of beta testing of SirsiDynix Symphony, the company’s new integrated library system. The company also announced the naming convention for the product, with SirsiDynix Symphony 3.2 as the name of its first release.

According to Berit Nelson, SirsiDynix vice president of technical product management, “This is the largest and most diverse group of beta testers ever assembled for a SirsiDynix product, perhaps for any library technology product. Our beta partners come from a range of library types and sizes, as well as consortia, international sites, and sites running on many different platforms.”

“By selecting 3.2 as the name for the first release of SirsiDynix Symphony, we are picking up on an existing approach to naming in an effort to avoid the potential confusion of an entirely new naming scheme,” said Nelson.

The first phase of testing, called the Community Technology Preview, will run for approximately six weeks and will include both SirsiDynix-hosted testing and testing performed by partners on their own test servers. A second phase of beta testing will commence in October 2007. SirsiDynix product management and development staff will use beta customer feedback to make any necessary corrections or small modifications to the product prior to its general release.

SirsiDynix Symphony is the culmination of Project Rome, which SirsiDynix announced in March 2007 as part of the company’s strategy to create a single, holistic library technology platform.

CARL and SPARC offer Canadian authors new rights tool
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has announced the release of the SPARC Canadian Author Addendum, a new tool for authors in Canada to retain key rights to the journal articles they publish.

Traditional publishing agreements often require that authors grant exclusive rights to the publisher. The new SPARC Canadian Author Addendum enables authors to secure a more balanced agreement by retaining select rights, such as the rights to reproduce, reuse, and publicly present the articles they publish for noncommercial purposes. It will help Canadian researchers to comply with granting council public access policies, such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Policy on Access to Research Outputs. The Canadian Addendum reflects Canadian copyright law and is an adaptation of the original U.S. version of the SPARC Author Addendum.

An explanatory brochure complements the addendum. Both the brochure and addendum are available in French and English on the CARL and SPARC Web sites and will be widely distributed. SPARC, in conjunction with ARL and ACRL, has also introduced a free Web cast on Understanding Author Rights. See www.arl.org/sparc/author for details.

For more information on the new rights tool, please see the CARL Web site at www.carl-abrc.ca or the SPARC Web site at www.arl.org/sparc.

NAASO, The Obesity Society, and NPG create publishing partnership
NAASO, The Obesity Society, and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced a new publishing partnership in August 2007. Beginning in January 2008, NPG will publish the society’s leading international title, Obesity.

Richard N. Bergman, chairman of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and holder of the Keck Endowed Chair in Medicine, will become Obesity’s new editor-in-chief and will expand the journal’s scope to include editorials, reviews, and commentary on important breakthroughs in obesity research.

“As editor-in-chief, I hope to increase awareness of this potentially debilitating condition,” said Berman.

Obesity is intended to increase knowledge, foster research, and promote better treatment for people with obesity and their loved ones. The journal publishes important, peer-reviewed original scientific articles, as well as relevant review articles, commentaries, and public health and medical developments.