The ALCTS Task Force on Non-English Access (TFNEA) was charged in October 2005 to review past and current activities in providing access to materials in non-English languages, and make recommendations for future actions by ALCTS. The TFNEA report to the ALCTS Board will include information on substantial activities by ALCTS groups (including MARBI, CC:DA and the Committee on Cataloging: Asian and African Material (CC:AAM)), the Library of Congress, RLG and OCLC, and other groups within and outside of ALA. Additionally, the task force has conducted surveys of ILS and authority control vendors on their current capabilities for Unicode and other non-English support, and will include summaries in the final report. The report will look at issues for non-English access in general, and at the specific challenges of access to vernacular scripts. The expected completion date for the final report is prior to ALA annual.
ArchiveGrid (www.archivegrid.org) is a new Web site from Research Libraries Group (RLG) that permits researchers to search thousands of archives online. It brings together many different sources of primary materials. This product is based on a former subscription-only product, RLG Archival Resources, and has been completely revamped and expanded after extensive real-world testing. Historians, scholars, and genealogists provided input into the new service. ArchiveGrid is freely accessible through May 31.
Amy M. McColl, Assistant Head of Technical Services at Swarthmore College Library in Swarthmore, PA will serve as the new PVLR Chair beginning July 2006.
The Blackwell's Scholarship Award for 2006 was awarded to John Willinsky for his monograph,
The Access Principle: the Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship, published in 2006 by MIT Press. The Blackwell's Scholarship Award honors the author of the year's outstanding monograph or article in the field of acquisitions, collection development, or related areas of library resources development.
Willinsky is the Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Public Knowledge Project, a research initiative that works with scholarly societies and professional organizations to develop online systems to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research. He has published widely in the areas of literacy, educational technology, and socio-cultural aspects of language and literature. Willinsky is also the author of Empire of Words: the Reign of the OED published in 1994 by Princeton University Press.
The Access Principle makes a clear and compelling case for open access as a public good. Willinsky argues that the production of scholarly work comes with the responsibility of circulating scholarship, and this responsibility includes investigating new models of publishing.
Blackwell's donates a $2,000 scholarship to a student concentrating in acquisitions or collection development at a U.S. or Canadian library school chosen by the winning author. This year's scholarship will go to a student in the First Nations concentration at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.
Henriette Avram, who is credited with the development and implementation of MARC format, died on April 22 at the age of 86. MARC, or machine-readable cataloging, format was adopted as a national standard in 1971, and later adopted internationally in 1973. Ms. Avram retired from the Library of Congress in 1992 after twenty-six years of service. She served as LC’s first director for processing systems, networks, and automation planning in 1980, and later served as assistant librarian for processing service in 1983, and associate librarian for collection services in 1989. Her numerous honors include: