NEWS FROM THE FIELD
C&RL News, April 2009
Vol. 70, No. 4
New Choice building finalized
On February 20, Choice took possession of the new Liberty Square office condominium unit in downtown Middletown, Connecticut. The new three-story building has retail space on the ground floor, office rental space on the second floor, and Choice occupying the entire 7,635-square-foot third floor. Designed in accordance with “green building” principles, Liberty Square features a prefabricated exterior wall system that provides excellent insulation, a high-efficiency heating and cooling system, insulating windows, and a recycled steel building frame.
The Choice office unit is equipped with energy efficient lighting and switches, low volatility paint, green window treatments and furniture, and makes use of natural lighting whenever possible. Choice staff moved into the new building on March 23.
Visit the ACRL Flickr site (www.flickr.com/photos/acrl/) to see updated pictures of the new building and Choice office space.
Choice’s new address is 575 Main Street, Suite 300, Middletown, CT 06457.
Choice's new office building in Middletown, Connecticut.
University of Cincinnati showcases North American Indian art
A new digital collection is now freely available to the public at the University of Cincinnati (UC) Libraries Digital Projects Web site. C. Szwedzicki: The North American Indian Works is a collection of 364 images and texts showcasing North American Indian art. Between 1929 and 1952, C. Szwedzicki, a publisher in Nice, France, produced six portfolios of artwork created by 20th-century American Indian artists. The publications were edited by American scholars Oscar Brousse Jacobson, Hartley Burr Alexander, and Kenneth Milton Chapman. Many of the images were published as pochoir prints, which are similar in appearance to silk screen prints. Important documentation of the Battle of the Little Big Horn is provided in the reproduction of the now-lost ledger art of Amos Bad Heart Bull.
Visitors to the site can view thumbnails and large versions of the images, rotate, zoom in and out, magnify particular areas, and print the images. Searchable PDF versions of the text of the six portfolios are available, along with an introductory essay by Janet Catherine Berlo, professor of Art History and Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester.
The essay includes links to images within the collection and can be used as a navigational tool.
The contents of this collection are drawn primarily from materials in the UC Archives and Rare Books Library, but items are also included from the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the Yale Collection of Western Americana. Alice Cornell, associate senior librarian emerita, served as curator and editor of the collection. The collection is available on the UC Web site at digitalprojects.libraries.uc.edu/szwedzicki/index.asp. To view other digital collections, visit digitalprojects.libraries.uc.edu/.
Indiana offers open source digital music library software
Indiana University (IU) recently announced the release of open source software to create a digital music library system. The software, called Variations, provides online access to streaming audio and scanned score images in support of teaching, learning, and research. Variations enables institutions, such as college and university libraries and music schools, to digitize audio and score materials from their own collections, provide those materials to their students and faculty in an interactive online environment, and respect intellectual property rights.
A key feature of the system for faculty and students is the ability to create bookmarks and playlists for use in studying or in preparing classroom presentations, allowing easy access later on to specific audio time points or segments. A key feature for libraries is a flexible access control and authentication system, which allows libraries to set up access rules based on their own local institutional policies.
Variations is the culmination of nearly 15 years of development and use of digital music library systems at IU. Creation of the current Variations software platform was originally funded by the National Science Foundation. In 2005, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded IU a National Leadership Grant to extend this highly successful system to the nationwide library community. Beyond IU, the software is currently being used at the Ohio State University, University of Maryland, New England Conservatory of Music, and the Philadelphia area Tri-College Consortium (Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr).
The IU Digital Library Program created Variations in collaboration with faculty and students in IU’s Jacobs School of Music. The IU Digital Library Program is a collaborative effort of the IU Libraries and the IU Office of the Vice President for Information Technology. For additional information and to download Variations, visit variations.sourceforge.net/.
ProQuest supports Shibboleth
In February 2009, ProQuest announced that all products hosted on the ProQuest platform are now Shibboleth compliant. The Shibboleth System is a standards-based, open source software package for Web single sign-on allowing library sites to make informed authorization decisions for individual access of protected online resources.
ProQuest’s Shibboleth release provides support for the following federations: the United States (InCommon), Canada (The Canadian Access Federation), United Kingdom (The UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research), and Germany (DFN-AAI). Other federations will be supported at a later date.
Shibboleth overcomes the complexity of managing passwords, as well as the challenges associated with authentication technologies (such as IP authentication and Athens), enabling single sign-on and federated administration of access to restricted resources.
The user’s site and the target site exchange information based on attributes (for example, a student in a particular course or a particular faculty member). This approach allows for more active privacy management than relying solely on the unique identity of the user, significantly reducing the workload for information professionals in managing user identities, and providing a more uniform experience for the user.
Johns Hopkins to pilot heritage conversion program
The Johns Hopkins (JHU) Sheridan Libraries have been awarded $792,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch a pilot program for post-doctoral fellows in heritage conservation science. Two heritage conservation fellows will be selected each year in an international competition to address a vetted scientific research agenda during the two-and-a-half-year initiative, based in the libraries’ conservation and preservation department.
The program will provide opportunities for the research fellows to collaborate with faculty and students in the JHU Whiting School of Engineering’s department of materials science, the JHU Museums, and area institutions such as historical societies. Their investigations will emphasize research relevant to materials in libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage organizations.
“The Sheridan Libraries’ conservation program was the first in the country to offer apprenticeships and internships to train conservators at the bench,” said Winston Tabb, Sheridan dean of university libraries and Museums. “It is particularly fitting that at a research intensive university like Hopkins we will now have the opportunity to collaborate with our colleagues at the Whiting School—not only to generate a new body of research, but also to invigorate and sustain the profession.”
The creation of the post-doctoral fellows program was one of the recommendations of a group of 23 internationally recognized conservators and applied research scientists, convened in April 2008, to develop a detailed set of specific proposals to address the research/development activities needed to conserve the nation’s book and paper materials.
An integral part of the conservation fellows’ research agenda will be engaging industry partners.
“Conservators are dependent upon the products industry provides to conduct conservation treatment,” said Sophia Jordan-Mowery, the Joseph Ruzicka and Marie Ruzicka Feldmann director of library conservation and preservation, and principal investigator for the project. “Yet industrial products, their formulations, and their applications are judged by how well they serve the conservator’s needs. Engaging industry in the entire chain of production and application will serve both the market and the cultural heritage organizations.”
An advisory board chaired by Jordan-Mowery and comprising experts from academic, conservation, scientific, and industry sectors, will set the strategic agenda for research and solicit calls for proposals from the scientific community. Board members include William Minter (principal of Bookbinding and Conservation, Inc.), Jonah Erlebacher (associate professor in materials science engineering at JHU), Nels Olson (analytical chemist and former chief of the Preservation Research and Testing Division at the Library of Congress), and David Grattan (manager of conservation research services at the Canadian Conservation Institute).
The board will review fellowship applications and recommend awards beginning this spring for project initiation in the fall of 2009.
Nature offers SUSHI and COUNTER Release 3 reports
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Palgrave Macmillan Journals (PMJ) are now providing upgraded usage statistic reporting for all online publications. NPG and PMJ statistic reports now include the additional reports and services required by the new COUNTER Release 3, including SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative). The enhanced statistics reporting is provided by MPS Insight, a new service for publishers from Macmillan sister company MPS Technologies.
The move to MPS Insight provides site license customers with an improved service, including more timely reports and consolidated consortia statistics. Reports are now also available in XML (eXtensible Markup Language), in addition to the familiar CSV (Comma separated value) formats that can be opened in Microsoft Excel.
XML reports can be automatically harvested into local systems using SUSHI, with time-saving benefits for librarians and library consortium administrators. Reports meet the criteria set by COUNTER Release 3, which publishers must comply with by August 2009 in order to retain their COUNTER-compliant status.
NPG and PMJ customers can now access usage statistic reports for the period January 2006 to January 2009. Older reports have been archived.
For full details of Project COUNTER and of Release 3, please visit www.projectcounter.org.
Colorado and Oregon State join Shelf2Life
The University of Colorado-Boulder (UCB) Libraries and the Oregon State Library (OSL) are participating in BCR’s Shelf2Life program. UCB, the first participant in the program, is bringing its collection of pre-1923 U.S.-published monographs back into the public domain, along with other unique collections that have had limited or no access due to age, condition, or scarcity. UCB’s initial Shelf2Life collection is focusing on western history, followed by collections on railroads and mining. OSL is providing its collections of pre-1923 U.S.-published monographs in the fields of genealogy and family history to the public through a print-on-demand program available through hundreds of online book retailers. Books from both collections will be available as print-on-demand through hundreds of online retailers.
BCR’s Shelf2Life program was created to help libraries and cultural heritage organizations share their collections with new audiences. By making it easy for libraries to digitize and widen access to their collections, the program helps libraries increase the visibility, use, and recognition of their collections. Visit www.bcr.org for complete details on the program.
LibLime launches new support portal
LibLime, a provider of open solutions for libraries, has announced the launch of a customer-centered Web portal to their Support Center software. Support Center boasts request (support ticket) management, account and contact management, contracts management, and knowledge base tools via an easy-to-use customer self-service portal interface.
“The addition of the new customer Web portal will improve accessibility for customers by giving customers an easy interface for reviewing their support requests—by individual or by library. Customers can track the ongoing status of their requests,” says Debra Denault, senior vice president of operations at LibLime. “In addition to improving communication with LibLime support staff, the new Support Center gives customers increased access to product information (such as new feature announcements) and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).” Information about LibLime is available on the Web at liblime.com.
RBMS seeks comment on access statement
The latest version of the ALA/SAA Joint Statement on Access to Research Materials in Archives and Special Collections is now available under the News and Events section of the RBMS home page at www.rbms.info. The statement was originally approved in 1979, and revised in 1994. For more than two decades it has been the guiding document of principles relating to collection access in both libraries and archives. Send comments on the document to RBMS Task Force Cochair Tim Murray (tdm@udel.edu) by April 20, 2009.
Marquette University digitizes Van Vechten
Postcards from Manhattan: The Portrait Photography of Carl Van Vechten is the most recent digital initiative from the Marquette University archives. The online collection currently features more than 700 images of prominent African Americans made by author, critic, and amateur photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964). Van Vechten photographed hundreds of artists, musicians, authors, and cultural leaders, including many leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance. The collection preserves more than 4,000 Van Vechten images and archivists plan eventually to complete digitization of the full collection. The February release of the Van Vechten collection coincided with the centennial of the NAACP’s founding. Postcards from Manhattan and Marquette’s other digital collections are accessible at www.marquette.edu/library/MUDC/.
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