NEWS FROM THE FIELD

C&RL News, March 2009
Vol. 70, No. 3

by David Free

University of California Libraries and Springer sign open access agreement
The University of California (UC) Libraries and Springer Science and Business Media have signed an agreement to support open access publishing by UC authors. The arrangement is part of the journals license negotiated by the California Digital Library on behalf of the ten UC campuses. Under the terms of the agreement, articles by UC-affiliated authors accepted for publication in a Springer journal beginning in 2009 will be published using Springer Open Choice with full and immediate open access. There will be no separate per-article charges, since costs have been factored into the overall license.

“UC faculty have told us that they want open access publishing options in order to increase the impact of their published work and eliminate barriers to educational and research use,” said Ivy Anderson, director of collections for the California Digital Library. “Just as importantly, they want these options in the journals in which they routinely publish, without disrupting their normal research activity. The agreement with Springer supports the transformation that our faculty seeks, while continuing the libraries’ crucial role in facilitating access to research information. Springer is a leader among commercial publishers in open access experimentation, making it a natural partner for UC in this endeavor.”

Articles will be released under a license compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial license. In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library’s eScholarship Repository.

Metadata tools report from DLF Aquifer
The Digital Library Federation (DLF) recently announced the publication of “Future Directions in Metadata Remediation for Metadata Aggregators,” a report that identifies and evaluates tools that can be used to normalize and enhance metadata. Commissioned by DLF Aquifer, the report was written by Greta de Groat, electronic media cataloger in the Metadata Development Unit of the Stanford University Libraries, and was supported by a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. The report is available as a free download, from the DLF Web site (www.diglib.org), and print-on-demand copies are available for sale through Amazon.com.

“The value of our online culture is enhanced by our ability to link together perspectives on knowledge from across the world,” said DLF Executive Director Peter Brantley. “The generosity of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation enables DLF Aquifer to assist the development of critical tools enabling people to find and join together the information resources of libraries, museums, and archives.”

DLF, founded in 1995, is a partnership organization of research libraries and related organizations that are pioneering the use of electronic-information technologies to extend their collections and services. Through its strategic and allied members, DLF provides leadership for libraries by identifying standards and “best practices” for digital collections and network access; coordinating research and development in the libraries’ use of technology; and incubating projects and services that libraries need but cannot develop individually.

Library of Congress digitizes 25,000th book
The Library of Congress (LC) recently digitized The Heroic Life of Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator as the 25,000th book in its “Digitizing American Imprints” program, which scans and provides access to aging and brittle books through the Internet Archive. The program is sponsored by a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. LC is combining its efforts with other libraries as part of the open content movement. The movement, which includes more than 100 libraries, universities and cultural institutions, aims to digitize and make freely available public-domain books in a wide variety of subject areas.

Books scanned in this pilot project come primarily from LC’s local history and genealogy sections of the general collections. For many of these titles, only a few copies exist anywhere in the world. Now, the works can be accessed freely online or downloaded for closer inspection or printing. Readers can search the text for individual words, making the digital copy an even more valuable research tool than the original.

“The public can now access a growing digital collection of wonderful and fascinating works from the Library’s vast general collections. Among these works are many American history books that are becoming too fragile to handle physically, as well as a large collection of genealogical materials that are among our most-often-requested items,” said Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for library services.

LC plans to make building digital collections an integral part of its overall collection-development program. All scanning operations are housed in the LC’s John Adams Building on Capitol Hill. Internet Archive staff work two shifts each day on ten “Scribe” scanning stations. The operation can digitize up to 1,000 volumes each week. Shortly after scanning is complete, the books are available online at www.archive.org. LC is actively working with the Internet Archive on the development of a full-featured, open-source page turner. A beta version, called the Flip Book, is currently available on the Internet Archive site.

Talis and LibLime open data
Talis and LibLime have formed a partnership to make available more than 5 million bibliographic records to the library community on biblios.net, LibLime’s free browser-based cataloging service with a data store. The database contains more than 30 million records and uses a similar model to Wikipedia. Catalogers can use and contribute to the database without restrictions because records in biblios.net are freely licensed under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License.

Talis is providing data from the Talis Union Catalogue, an open, shared core of records from the Talis Base service, to biblios.net, including more than 5 million bibliographic records, cataloged by public and academic libraries in the U.K. over the last 30 years. The Talis Union Catalogue provides access to records for rare, old and out-of-print items, which will complement the existing biblios.net database.

“Talis has made two important contributions to pave the way for freely-licensed, community-maintained sources of library metadata,” explained LibLime CEO Joshua Ferraro. “We’re excited about the value that the Open Data Commons license, as well as the Talis data set bring to biblios.net. We’re looking forward to future partnership opportunities with Talis.”

To find out more information about Open Data Commons, visit www.opendatacommons.
org and learn more about biblios.net at biblios.net/pddl.

ProQuest Midwinter news
ProQuest announced several new products and services at the ALA Midwinter Meeting held in late January in Denver. The company is teaming with the Paley Center for Media to create an online video archive of the Paley Center’s seminars. Available fall 2009, Paley Center Live Events will include more than 300 hours of video, along with full transcription, of the leading names in media discussing hot topics in media studies. ProQuest will also add more than 300 videos from Medcom, Inc., a producer and distributor of multimedia healthcare education, to ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Source. This new content provides visual support for nurse training, and helps fulfill the critical need for current and comprehensive information on health and wellness.

Beginning in early 2009, ProQuest and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) will offer digital access to two centuries of American periodicals. American Periodicals from CRL will contain full text and full-color scans of 3 million pages of journal content from the 19th and early 20th centuries, all of which can be cross-searched with American Periodicals Series Online, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, and other ProQuest historical collections.

ProQuest will additionally add The Baltimore Sun (1837–1985) to the Historical Newspapers database and expand its international and national scope with the launch of Middle East Newsstand, a collection of more than 30 current Middle Eastern newspapers.

Full details are available on the ProQuest Web site at www.proquest.com.

Pittsburg preserves historic mining maps
A public/private pledge of $200,000 will help catalog and preserve a University of Pittsburgh University Library System (ULS) collection of local mining maps that date back to the 1850s. The collaborative effort, called the CONSOL Energy Mine Map Preservation Project, is designed to increase access to these valuable documents, which could impact mining safety, operations, land reclamation, development, and research. The commitment represents a partnership in funding among CONSOL Energy Inc., the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA-DEP), and the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Surface Mining (OSM).

“That PA-DEP, OSM, and CONSOL Energy have joined forces to support this endeavor is clear recognition of just how important the project is,” said Rush Miller, Hillman university librarian and director of ULS. “Our mining maps cover an enormous region in Southwestern Pennsylvania—heavily urban areas as well as rural communities. Together, we will work in collaborative ways to ensure that our collection is accessible to all.”

In 2004, CONSOL Energy donated a vast collection of mining maps, records, survey books, photographs, and published materials to ULS. The bulk of the CONSOL Energy Mining Archives dates from the 1890s through the first half of the 20th century. There are more than 8,000 individual map sheets, the earliest one from 1854, as well as coal mine artifacts and other historical items.

Preservationists and archivists are working on the initial phase of the CONSOL Energy Mine Map Preservation Project. Some of the maps, which can measure 30 feet by 5 feet, have been rolled up for more than a century. They must first be placed into a humidity dome so the paper fibers can absorb moisture, thus prevent cracking.

Once the map is able to be unrolled, the conservators then work to remove coal dust and other grime from the map’s surface. After the maps are properly conserved, they are transferred to OSM for digitization. ULS archivists will create information about each map that will be entered into a database—the Pennsylvania Historical Underground Mine Maps Inventory System.

Complete details about the project are available online at www.pitt.edu/~aeb59/index.html.

EBSCO highlights Publishing Opportunities
A new addition to the EBSCOhost family of databases, Publishing Opportunities Database, provides a listing of opportunities for professors, post-doctorates, and other students interested in presenting and publishing their research papers. The database contains information on calls for papers from conferences along with regular and special issue journals.

Publishing Opportunities Database records contain information about the publication or conference, the scope and topics on which manuscripts are sought, applicable deadlines for abstracts, manuscripts and final papers, manuscript formatting requirements, submission guidelines, publication frequency, and contact details. The database is updated twice each month and covers multidisciplinary subject areas.

Additional information about the database is available on the EBSCO Web site at www.ebscohost.com.

SOLINET and PALINET form Lyrasis
In early February, voting representatives of SOLINET and PALINET approved the merger of the two organizations and the creation of a new organization—Lyrasis. The organizations hope that combined resources, shared expertise, and improved operating efficiencies will result in rapid implementation of new programs, greater consortial savings opportunities, extended networking and collaboration among members, innovative technology solutions, and an expanded education curriculum covering the latest topics with industry experts from both networks. The merger is effective April 1, 2009. Complete details on the merger process and new organization are available at www.mergerupdate.org.

GPO launches FDsys
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has launched Federal Digital System (FDsys), a new online repository of government documents. FDsys allows GPO to receive information from federal agencies in all three branches of government and create a repository for permanent, public access. More than 154,000 documents are currently accessible, with additional documents being added daily. FDsys will replace GPOAccess in mid-2009, and releases with additional functionality will occur throughout the next several years.

Among the information in FDsys is the Office of the Federal Register’s (OFR) new publication, Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents.

This publication contains information released by the White House Press Office regarding orders, statements, and remarks made by President Obama. This daily online publication replaces the printed Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents.

FDsys is available at fdsys.gpo.gov.