New & Noteworthy

Citation

Hanson, H. and Stewart-Marshall, Z. (2015), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 32 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-04-2015-0029

New & Noteworthy

Article Type: New & Noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 32, Issue 4

University of North Carolina (UNC) Press receives Mellon grant to support publication of high-quality digital monographs

The University of North Carolina (UNC) Press has been awarded a $998,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York to support the development of capacities at university presses for the publication of high-quality digital monographs. The funding will be used to create a scaled platform where university presses will collaborate to achieve cost efficiencies on a broad range of digital publishing activities, including copyediting, composition, production, operations and marketing services.

The three-year project, which began January 1, 2015, is being led by principal investigator John Sherer, the Spangler Family Director of UNC Press. It is being built upon UNC Press’s existing fulfillment company, Longleaf Services.

“We are very grateful to the Mellon Foundation for their support of this project”, said Sherer. “As publishing has advanced using digital technology, the benefits of operating at scale have never been more apparent. But most university presses lack access to the kind of scale experienced by commercial publishers. This initiative will provide presses with a much-needed option for collaborating and realizing the advantages of these new technologies”.

Donald Waters, Senior Program Officer for Scholarly Communications at the Mellon Foundation, said: “University presses are seeking to retool their operations to take advantage of digital media and digital workflows to bring new works of scholarship to the broadest possible audiences at the lowest possible cost. The services that UNC Press will develop as part of this grant promise to help a broad set of presses achieve this necessary retooling”.

Barbara Kline Pope, President of the Association of American University Presses, remarked, “This is just the kind of collaboration that will allow university presses to continue to thrive as connectors between scholars and readers – and now to realize the kinds of efficiencies necessary to remain competitive in the marketplace”.

Founded in 1922, UNC Press is the oldest university press in the South and one of the oldest in the USA.

UNC Press: http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/

What happens to monographs as open access gains ground? Report to Higher Education Funding Council for England

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) monographs and open access project was set up to consider the place of monographs in the arts, humanities and social science disciplines, and how they fit into the developing world of open access to research. The project, of which a recent report is the main output, has sought to move forward understanding of the opportunities and issues associated with the open access publishing of scholarly monographs so that those interested in exploring options for open access monographs can do so in an informed way. It has done this by grounding the analysis in the wider context of the current status, position and culture of the monograph within most disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The project was led by Geoffrey Crossick, distinguished Professor of Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London and was commissioned by HEFCE in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Evidence to support the project was gathered through a program of consultations, surveys, data-gathering and research activities. The research was supported and shaped by an Expert Reference Group of publishers, academics, librarians, funders, open access experts in the UK and overseas.

The main findings of the Monographs and Open Access report are as follows:

• Monographs are a vitally important and distinctive vehicle for research communication and must be sustained in any moves to open access. The availability of printed books alongside the open access versions will be essential.

• Contrary to many perceptions, it would not be appropriate to talk of a crisis of the monograph; this does not mean that monographs are not facing challenges, but the arguments for open access would appear to be for broader and more positive reasons than solving some supposed crisis.

• Open access offers both short- and long-term advantages for monograph publication and use; many of these are bound up with a transition to digital publishing that has not been at the same speed as that for journals.

• There is no single dominant emerging business model for supporting open access publishing of monographs; a range of approaches will coexist for some time, and it is unlikely that any single model will emerge as dominant. Policies will therefore need to be flexible.

HEFCE will consider this report and discuss its policy implications with other research funders, including AHRC and ESRC, recognizing that any steps toward policies for open access monographs should be preceded by a thorough process of consultation and engagement.

Download the report, Monographs and Open Access: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/indirreports/2015/Monographs,and,open,access/2014_monographs.pdf

Ingram Construct offers publishers simplified custom publishing for e-books

Publishers’ ability to customize content and give readers exactly what they want just got easier with Ingram Construct, a comprehensive, custom publishing solution for print-on-demand and e-books from Ingram Content Group Inc. Ingram Construct gives publishers a simple way to tailor their books to end users’ needs using existing titles, going from creation to production and to distribution in minutes.

“We want to help publishers better connect with customers, and Ingram Construct gives them an easy way to customize any title to best meet customers’ needs”, said Brian Hogue, Vice President of Content Systems, Ingram Content Group. “With Ingram Construct, a publisher can use existing content to create customized print or digital books within minutes. It’s another way Ingram is using our technology and infrastructure to help our clients grow their business and find new streams of revenue”.

Ingram Construct is flexible, scalable and Web-based. Through easy-to-use tools, publishers can remix and reuse existing content, add third-party material from other sources and develop custom covers for new content. Ingram Construct’s features include a dashboard to organize project types, custom cover options, customized digital proofs and analytics. It can be used to create special editions, title bundles, book samplers, teasers and single chapter editions or to fulfill special requests from retailers, institutions, conferences or customers.

“Ingram’s full suite of publishing services, including their CoreSource digital asset management platform, print-on-demand solutions and now their newest custom publishing options through Ingram Construct, give us relevant and easy-to-use tools that help us use our content in new ways, create incremental revenue streams and meet the changing needs of the market and our customers worldwide”, said David Horwitz, Vice President of Sales at SAGE Publications, Inc. “We look forward to taking advantage of all that Ingram Construct has to offer”.

Integrated with Ingram’s digital and physical manufacturing and distribution network, Ingram Construct allows publishers to create customized print or digital books for as low a production run as a single unit. The platform is fully integrated with Ingram’s CoreSource, Vital Source and Lightning Source services, ensuring that custom books can be delivered to customers anywhere.

“Technology has opened the gates of possibility for custom books, and at Ingram, we’re committed to developing new tools to help our clients realize a book’s full potential. Ingram Construct is one of the many ways publishers can take books further”, said Kelly Gallagher, Vice President of Content Acquisition, Ingram Content Group. “From ‘virtual’ boxed sets of titles to class-specific editions, there are limitless opportunities for one book with Ingram Construct”.

More about Ingram Construct: http://www.ingramcontent.com/pages/custom-publishing-services.aspx

Boopsie and Spritz partnering on cutting-edge reading technology for libraries and e-books

Boopsie, Inc. and Spritz have announced an exclusive technology and product partnership that will enable libraries and e-book providers to leverage Spritz’s proprietary advanced reading technology within the public library space. Spritz is already working with leading companies and publishers, including Samsung, the Financial Times, Universal Studios and others to bring a new reading experience across different devices and platforms. Through this new partnership, Boopsie’s mobile platform will soon be offering Spritz’s innovative reading technology to mobile apps distributed by thousands of its library partners worldwide.

Boopsie and Spritz will also work together to add a Spritz feature to e-book readers that use Boopsie’s mobile platform to deliver e-content to students and library patrons. Libraries play an important role in ensuring that their communities have access to information resources, through universally accessible services. As consumption of content on mobile devices continues to increase, libraries are embracing the shift toward digital reading and are looking for innovative technologies that would provide patrons with experiences that are geared toward these new mediums. With Spritz, patrons are able to access their favorite library content via custom mobile apps that are powered by Boopsie to read effortlessly on any device, including ones with a small display size.

“Spritz’s content streaming technology makes reading on a mobile device easy, fun and natural”, says Tony Medrano, CEO of Boopsie. “The science behind Spritz demonstrates dramatic increases in both speed and retention. We are proud to be delivering Spritz’s cutting edge technology to libraries. Spritz will revolutionize the way we read eBooks”.

The time consuming part of reading lies mainly in the actual eye movements from word-to-word and sentence-to-sentence. Spritz solves this problem by streaming words in a visual display unit (“Redicle”), where the words are shown in an optimal recognition point. This minimizes the amount of eye movement, enabling patrons to improve their reading performance and speed, while maintaining similar levels of comprehension.

“We’re excited about partnering with Boopsie to deliver greater mobility and productivity to a large segment of readers”, said Frank Waldman, co-founder and CEO of Spritz. “Our goal at Spritz has always been to offer an easy and efficient way to read content, and Boopsie’s turnkey platform and wide network of partners will help us bring a more enjoyable reading experience to library patrons worldwide”.

Libraries and e-book vendors serving libraries are encouraged to contact Boopsie about partnership opportunities and the integration of Spritz into their products.

More about Boopsie and Spritz: http://www.boopsie.com/boopsie-stars/spritz/Spritz: http://www.spritzinc.com/

The Library Corporation providing SocialFlow service to libraries

The Library Corporation (TLC) has joined forces with SocialFlow to become its exclusive provider to libraries. SocialFlow is the leading social network distribution and optimization platform in the USA, providing a service that analyzes a customer’s real-time conversational data within their social streams and automatically delivers relevant social media content to the right audience at the right time for maximum engagement. SocialFlow can optimize the social media presence of any library regardless of its automation system, and TLC is the only library vendor to offer such a service.

Since 2010, SocialFlow has been optimizing the way many high-profile companies and brands such as NBC, New York Times, BBC News, NPR and Yahoo distribute content across social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Library systems are beginning to experience the advantages of increased user engagement through social media content. The New York Public Library enlisted SocialFlow to build interest and traffic to their blogs via Twitter, and the impact of SocialFlow’s real-time optimization technology has been unmistakable. The Dallas Independent School District will be implementing SocialFlow as part of its newly renewed service contract with TLC, and is eager to optimize the performance of their social media outlets.

More information: http://ww2.tlcdelivers.com/tlc/pdf_files/web/socialflow.pdf

Analytics and privacy: negotiating service and value boundaries

Throughout their everyday interactions with university systems, individuals create, intentionally or unintentionally, numerous streams of digital data. Universities and libraries are increasingly moving to aggregate and utilize these data streams, as they seek to provide the best services and resources possible for their users. These analytics offer the promise of improving educational and service quality by revealing patterns, trends and behaviors that are not readily apparent through observation or self-perception. However, new analytics also challenge long-held principles with regard to privacy, confidentiality, informed consent and other values. An issue-oriented briefing, presented at the December 2014 member meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), examines the role of libraries as producers and consumers of educational analytics and proposes a framework of principles and best practices for the stewardship of these data throughout their lifecycle.

Analytics and Privacy: A Proposed Framework for Negotiating Service and Value Boundaries was presented by Lisa Hinchliffe of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Andrew Asher of Indiana University. Video of the presentation is now available online:

CNI’s YouTube channel: http://youtu.be/yGairucgWEY

CNI on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/115088902

3D printing and more – updates from the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show

Jason Griffey, founder and principal consultant at Evenly Distributed (http://evenlydistributed.net), a technology consulting firm for libraries and education, has posted his video coverage of the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on his blog, Pattern Recognition. The posts offer commentary and visuals on new technologies of interest to libraries and, in particular, Griffey’s recommendations on the latest in 3D printers.

Find Griffey’s posts on CES 2015 at: http://jasongriffey.net/wp/tag/ces2015/

ezPAARSE: open source software to gather and analyze use of electronic resources

ezPAARSE is open source software that can ingest proxy log files and show how users access subscribed electronic resources. It filters, extracts and enriches the consultation events that were spotted and produces a character-separated values (CSV) file following COUNTER codes of practice.

ezPAARSE software is released under a general public license (GPL)-compatible license able to mine, analyze and enrich the logs generated by the reverse proxies (ezProxy, Biblio PAM, Squid, Apache) recording accesses to the publishers’ platforms. It analyzes and processes the URLs contained in these logs and renders them as meaningful journal, database or e-books consultations. It works both as a Web-based application with an online form and an application program interface, allowing both on-demand and automated treatment of these logs.

Its sister project, AnalogIST, hosts a functional ezPAARSE installation and gathers analyses of academic and scientific publishers’ platforms in a collaborative space. Additionally, these analyses could be of possible use to other projects.

The ezPAARSE output can be fed to virtually any major (or minor) data visualization or analysis software (with current expertise built by users around Omniscope Visokio, Business Object […]), or even a simple datasheet software, allowing to build local usage data completing the publisher-provided usage data.

A webinar dedicated to the ezPAARSE/AnalogIST project, conducted by the Couperin consortium, the CNRS (French Center for Scientific Research) and the Université de Lorraine, was held on March 23, 2015. Video of the webinar, including a presentation (in English) about the ezPAARSE project and a live demonstration of the software, is now available at: https://inist.webex.com/inist/lsr.php?RCID=1f4bac2af95040619e9e1202aeabf5ea

Additional information is available at: http://analogist.couperin.org (English version available: http://analogist.couperin.org/start_en).

ezPAARSE project on GitHub: https://github.com/ezpaarse-project/ezpaarse

Open Preservation Foundation to provide sustainable home for JHOVE

The Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) has started the process of taking over stewardship of JHOVE, the widely used open source digital preservation tool.

JHOVE (JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment) provides functions to perform format-specific identification, validation and characterization of digital objects. It was originally developed by Harvard Library and JSTOR in 2003.

OPF will be working with Portico, a member organization, to carry out the transfer. The JHOVE project, comprising source code and documentation, will move to the OPF software portfolio which will provide a sustainable home. OPF will put continuous integration in place with testing and reporting in line with the OPF Software Maturity Model. This will facilitate development and release of patches and new modules. Portico will be contributing code improvements that they currently use internally as part of this process.

“The findings from our member survey show that JHOVE is the most important digital preservation tool to our members”, explains Ed Fay, Executive Director of OPF. “Our adoption of JHOVE is a practical example of our strategic priority to build confidence in currently available tools and approaches”.

OPF will be consulting with its members and the community in the coming months to gather requirements and roadmap future development to ensure that JHOVE is robust and actively maintained.

“We are happy to see JHOVE transition to a community-supported model through the OPF”, says Andrea Goethals, Manager of Digital Preservation and Repository Services at Harvard Library. “We think that this is an important step towards sustaining the core digital preservation tools many of our organisations have come to rely on”.

“Portico is very happy to see JHOVE formally established, with JHOVE2, within a sustainable framework for community source”, says Sheila Morrissey, Senior Researcher at Portico. “We look forward to sharing the enhancements and extensions we have developed with JHOVE’s very extensive community of practice and use”.

“I’m very glad to see that JHOVE, which I supported for years, will continue to be in good hands”, comments Gary McGath, original developer and active maintainer of JHOVE.

JHOVE2, an open source digital preservation tool that carries out format-aware characterization of digital objects, has already been moved to opf-labs in the OPF GitHub portfolio. As with JHOVE, OPF will be stewarding the software in line with its maturity model and coordinating roadmapping and future development activities.

JHOVE at the OPF software portfolio: http://openpreservation.org/technology/products/jhove/

JHOVE2 on GitHub: https://github.com/opf-labs/jhove2

Research Libraries UK report highlights opportunities for unique and distinctive collections

Research Libraries UK (RLUK) has published a report examining the landscape for unique and distinctive collections (UDCs) in the UK and Ireland. RLUK is a consortium of 34 of the major research libraries in the UK and Ireland, whose purpose is to shape the research library agenda and contribute to the wider knowledge economy through innovative projects and services that add value and impact to the process of research and researcher-training. Founded in 1983, RLUK’s mission is to work with its members and partners, nationally and internationally, to shape and to realize the vision of the modern research library.

The past 5-10 years has seen the coming together of fundamental changes within the environment: large-scale digitization, the explosion in Internet access beyond the academy, fundamental changes to UK higher education funding, the emergence of the digital humanities, massively increasing amounts of born digital materials, the paradigm of student as researcher and the emergence of “impact” in the research agenda and the increased focus on institutional fundraising and the contribution that items unique to the institution can make to those efforts. This “perfect storm” has led to a major difference in institutional expectations that such collections have the opportunity to make a clear and compelling case for themselves, especially in a period of unprecedented economic pressure.

The new report, Unique and Distinctive Collections: opportunities for research libraries, looks at issues associated with the promotion, accessibility and curation of UDCs and considers where investment and innovation have the potential to enhance the role that UDCs play in research libraries.

The report represents the culmination of the work RLUK that has carried out to understand how the definition, scope and rationale for what have been traditionally been termed “special collections” are changing, and what the drivers and consequences of these changes are likely to be.

Chris Banks, Chair of RLUK’s UDC Strategic Working Group and Director of Library Services at Imperial College London, said: “Research libraries in the UK hold collections containing the most remarkable material: spanning medieval manuscripts, modern archives, printed books, pamphlets, periodicals and maps. They increasingly also include non-print formats such as audio, film and digital files as well as print collections which are remarkable as a result of their breadth and comprehensiveness. Together, these materials have the potential to contribute to the institutional goals for research, learning and public engagement. The report highlights some key exemplars of excellent and innovative work being undertaken across the UK, something that can be built on through the opportunity to contribute further case studies to the forthcoming UDC Hub as part of a collective approach to maximising the potential of UDCs”.

Key points from the report include:

• UDCs encompass, but are broader than traditional special collections, potentially covering collections in all formats and at all locations.

• A coordinated approach to digitization activity could minimize duplication in the creation of content, achieve economies of scale in terms of process and enhance the discoverability of UDCs.

• Technology not only brings opportunities for expanding the ways of interacting with UDCs: by students, researchers and the wider public (for example, through incorporation into VLEs, through crowd-sourcing activities or as a focus for local community engagement), but also for innovation in research based on UDCs (for example through digital humanities programs).

• The growing use of resources such as datasets for research prompts questions about the UDCs of the future and the status of resources such as electronic theses, datasets and the UDCs of the twenty-first century.

• RLUK’s UDC Hub will offer the potential for UDC managers to share resources and experiences from research libraries of all type and size, to draw on expertise and practice from beyond the research library community (particularly from museums and archives) and to develop a peer-to-peer support network.

• Research libraries vary in their capacity to manage born-digital material. Many of the larger, university-based, libraries have well-developed processes and facilities, but the smaller organisations tend to have much less advanced plans for dealing with born-digital materials.

• Uncatalogued collections and improvable metadata are issues that must be addressed to increase the visibility of UDCs, enable connections between collections and increase access to digitized content.

• Download the RLUK UDC report: http://www.rluk.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/RLUK-UDC-Report.pdf

Digital curation foundations: University of California Curation Center white paper on modeling the curation domain

The University of California Curation Center (UC3), a program of the California Digital Library, has been working on modeling the curation domain to provide a conceptually coherent foundation for evaluating and describing UC3’s technologies, policies and activities. While not finalized, the model is reasonably well-defined in a draft white paper, currently available on UC3’s wiki. From the white paper abstract:

Digital curation is a complex of actors, policies, practices and technologies that enables meaningful consumer engagement with authentic content of interest across space and time. To ensure that it is using its curation resources in the most productive manner, the University of California Curation Center (UC3) has modeled the curation domain to provide a consistent, comprehensive, yet parsimonious conceptual foundation for the planning, implementation and evaluation of its manifold activities. The UC3 Sept model […] draws upon relevant concepts from cognitive psychology, information science and semiotic theory. The model considers curated content with respect to five distinct semiotic dimensions: semantics, syntactics, empirics, pragmatics and dynamics, which refer, respectively, to content’s underlying abstract meaning or affect, symbolic encoding structures, physical representations, behaviors and evolution through time. Correspondingly, there is a hierarchical typology of accumulating content utility: entities, artifacts, articles, commodities, assets and heirlooms, which are, respectively, existential, intentional, purposeful, meaningful, useful and reliable digital objects. Content engagement is modeled in terms of productive, managerial, and consumptive roles and loci of concerns coexisting within a continuum of originating, organizing and pluralizing dimensions, which, respectively, encompass the establishment of, imposition of structure upon and extension of the reach and consequence of curated content. Curation strategies are modeled in terms of six high-level imperatives: predilect, collect, protect, introspect, project and connect. The Sept model components and terminology can be used to make precise yet concise statements regarding curation intentions, activities and results.

Download the full text of the white paper at: http://wiki.ucop.edu/display/Curation/Foundations

LYRASIS to become membership partner for Open Library of Humanities

LYRASIS has announced that it has entered into a partnership to become the exclusive membership and administrative agent for the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) in North America. LYRASIS is a non-profit membership organization, partnering with member libraries, archives and museums to create, access and manage information with an emphasis on digital content. With a strong history of productive partnerships in the open access field, including Knowledge Unlatched, Reveal Digital and SCOAP3, LYRASIS is at the forefront of the rapidly changing scholarly communications landscape.

The Mellon-funded OLH offers a new, cost-effective and equitable business model for journals to achieve gold open access in the humanities sphere. Rather than concentrating the burden of payment on the individual authors or their institution when work is accepted (as do many existing publishers), the OLH is supported by a consortium of libraries who all share the cost. In this way, the consortium can fairly pay for the labor of publishing on a not-for-profit basis while also ensuring that anyone whose work meets the high standards of peer review can be published with no author fee.

Of the new partnership, Dr Martin Paul Eve, one of the founders and academic project directors of the OLH, said: “We are extremely pleased to be working with LYRASIS to reach potential library partners in the USA. We are only at the beginning of a long journey; it takes a great deal of work to build successful, mission-driven publishers. With the ever-growing support that we are receiving from libraries and academics worldwide, though, the desire for a new route is clear. We greatly look forward to working with LYRASIS and its members to build a bright, open access future for the humanities disciplines”.

“OLH is engaged in important work for humanities scholarship”, said Kate Nevins, the Executive Director of LYRASIS. “This program provides an opportunity for libraries to engage in a transformative model that will have a significant impact on scholarly communications. LYRASIS welcomes the opportunity to partner with OLH and gather community support for their mission”.

The OLH provides a platform for open access publishing that is sustainable, archived, non-profit and innovative, and provides reputable content that is respected through rigorous peer review. As the majority of research in the humanities is only funded by institutional time, article processing charges to authors are not viable for these disciplines. The OLH provides an alternative model of library partnership subsidies to fund the program through community support.

OLH: http://www.openlibhums.org/

LYRASIS sign-up page for the OLH library partnership subsidy program: https://lyrasis.openlibhums.org/

Video from Digital Public Library of America’s metadata aggregation webinar now available

Video of the Digital Public Library of America’s (DPLA) recent metadata aggregation webinar, held on January 22, 2015, is now available on the DPLA blog. The webinar featured two DPLA service hubs and DPLA’s metadata coordinator talking about the ins and outs of aggregation in the DPLA context.

Webinar speakers were as follow:

• Lisa Gregory and Stephanie Williams of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center;

• Heather Gilbert and Tyler Mobley of the South Carolina Digital Library; and

• Gretchen Gueguen of DPLA.

Links to download each presenter’s slides are included in the post as well, along with answers to a few questions that were not covered during the webinar.

Download videos and slides from the DPLA metadata aggregation webinar: http://dp.la/info/2015/01/28/metadata-aggregation-webinar-video-and-extended-qa

National Information Standards Organization publishes whitepaper on The Future of Library Resource Discovery

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has published a whitepaper, The Future of Library Resource Discovery, written by independent consultant, speaker and author Marshall Breeding. The whitepaper was commissioned by NISO’s Discovery to Delivery (D2D) Topic Committee as part of its ongoing examination of areas in the discovery landscape that the information community could potentially standardize. Included in the paper is an overview of the current discovery environment; descriptions of how these technologies, methodologies and products may be able to adapt to potential future change; and a look beyond current models of discovery to explore possible alternatives, especially those related to linked data.

“Marshall’s paper thoroughly fulfills D2D’s charge when we determined that further focused exploration and analysis of the future discovery terrain would better direct our work as a NISO Topic Committee”, states Pascal Calarco, Associate University Librarian, Research & Digital Discovery Services, University of Waterloo, and Chair of the NISO D2D Topic Committee. “The D2D Topic Committee focuses on issues regarding the finding and distribution of information by and to users and, among other tasks, identifies where new standards may provide solutions in this area and creates and provides guidance and oversight to working groups under its purview. We are appreciative that the paper, in addition to an extensive background section, includes significant sections on gap analysis, opportunities for future enhancements using various emerging technologies, and discovery beyond library-provided interfaces, which will provide rich material for our decisions on NISO projects in 2015 and beyond”.

“This impressive work will propel the Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee’s and NISO’s work in the area of discovery”, observes Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “NISO is pleased to be able to make Marshall’s expert observations and analyses available to the library and information community through the commission and publication of this white paper. We expect that the community will continue to strive to provide its users with more universal access to diverse types of content, and this document is an important tool to help identify areas which, if engaged in, will provide positive and long-lasting outcomes”.

“I’m gratified that the paper will be an important contribution to NISO’s work”, said Marshall Breeding, author of the whitepaper, who has also served on numerous NISO committees and working groups over many years. “An area of interest for me in this paper’s composition was identifying or exploring factors that may cause barriers to discovery, examining potential methods for progress which may benefit from additional stimulation, and detailing further opportunities to lower thresholds of entry to support additional contributions in the important arena of discovery services. I hope the material in the paper will enable the Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee to further support its important work”.

Download The Future of Library Resource Discovery whitepaper at: http://www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/discovery/

National Information Standards Organization (NISO) identifies emerging trends, strategic directions for future standards work

The Architecture Committee of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has issued a NISO Strategic Directions document that identifies the trends and emerging themes that will direct the future development portfolios of standards and recommended practices. In 2007, NISO created a new governance structure and, as part of this restructuring, implemented the NISO Framework, an overarching model and roadmap for NISO’s standards work. Seven years later, NISO continues to structure the standards portfolio around the core areas of content and collection management, business information and discovery and delivery – with a Topic Committee providing leadership for each area. The Architecture Committee determines overall strategic vision for NISO’s work, oversees the work of the Topic Committees and addresses any overlapping areas. The 2015 Strategic Directions document reflects a review by the Topic Committees of their current and recent portfolios and a discussion of potential future activities where NISO should be involved in the development of new standards and recommended practices.

“The Architecture Committee launched the strategic directions initiative with a community survey to gather opinions on the key challenges facing our constituents over the next three years”, explains Michael Teets, Online Computer Library Center Vice President Strategy, Governance and Architecture, and Vice Chair of the NISO Board of Directors and Chair of the NISO Architecture Committee. “This input was used by the Topic Committees along with their own knowledge and research to determine where NISO can make the most impact in the community through the development of new standards or recommended practices”.

“The strategic planning done by the Architecture Committee and Topic Committees has further validated the NISO Framework developed in 2007”, states Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “This effort has also shown there are many areas where the development and adoption of standards can be very valuable to our community. NISO will continue to pursue projects in these areas, and will encourage participation from libraries, content providers, and system vendors as these projects are advanced”.

The NISO 2015 Strategic Directions document is available on the NISO Web site at: http://www.niso.org/publications/strategic2015/

Bibliotheca acquires Aturis Group, expanding Dutch, Belgian and German operations

Bibliotheca Group has announced the acquisition of Aturis Group, a leading provider of library solutions in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Bibliotheca is now the largest company dedicated to the development, deployment and support of RFID, EM/RFID hybrid and barcode-based library solutions, with offices in 11 countries and distribution partnerships in over 35 others.

With offices in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, Aturis (formed in 2002) has built a strong and diverse customer base, with a focus on outstanding delivery and customer service, together with understanding the complexities of installing everything from staff stations through to full automated material handling systems. This has been achieved through the building of a dedicated team of individuals who are committed to understanding libraries, their needs and how technology can support those needs.

Effective immediately, Aturis Netherlands BV and Aturis Belgium BvbA will be integrated directly into the Bibliotheca Group and will commence trading as local Bibliotheca entities, while Aturis Deutschland GmbH will merge with Bibliotheca Germany. All business units will have access to the full Group product catalogue, and development has already commenced to integrate existing Aturis products into the central Bibliotheca product line.

Thomas Aufermann, Managing Director Bibliotheca Group Central Europe, will lead the new business units and commented: “The opportunity to create functional and technological synergies between the existing teams and enlarge our market scope presents a great opportunity for our customers as well as for our business. We are looking forward to the joint engagement in the German, Dutch and Belgian market”.

Wim Markus, Managing Director of Aturis, who will join the Bibliotheca Central Europe team, added: “We are all incredibly excited by the opportunity to join the global library technology leader, a decision that will allow us to grow the business and offer a greater range of solutions to our customers. Even at the early stages of discussion between our companies, we instinctively knew that this was the right move for our customers and employees alike. We are all eager to begin discussions with our customers to deliver even greater value from their existing investments through the availability of new and exciting solutions”.

Jim Hopwood, Bibliotheca Group Managing Director, added: “The addition of Aturis to the Bibliotheca Group now allows us to substantially improve our offerings and service levels in the Dutch and Belgium markets, whilst further consolidating our market-leading position in Germany. We are delighted to have Wim and his team join the Group, and we look forward to delivering the benefits of this integration to our customers”.

Existing customers of Aturis will see no change to their existing support and maintenance agreements, and all existing products will be supported as normal. All customers will now, however, be able to take advantage of the existing, award-winning, Bibliotheca Group product range and will see additional benefits in the form of increased service hours, additional local field engineers and a global team.

Bibliotheca: http://www.bibliotheca.com/1/

Macmillan Science and Education to merge with Springer Science+Business Media

Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (Holtzbrinck) and BC Partners (BCP) announced in January that they have reached an agreement to merge Springer Science+Business Media (owned by funds advised by BCP) in its entirety with the majority of Holtzbrinck-owned Macmillan Science and Education (MSE), namely, Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan and the global businesses of Macmillan Education.

This is a strategic transaction by Holtzbrinck and BCP aimed at securing the long-term growth of both businesses. It will create a leading global science and education publishing house with the opportunity to better serve its authors, the research community, academic institutions, learned societies and corporate research departments, and to extend its reach within the education and learning markets. Both companies have a highly complementary portfolio in terms of products (journals, books, databases and workflow tools) and end-markets (academic institutions, corporate research departments and individuals). The merged businesses will continue to offer the leading brands on which researchers, teachers and information professionals rely.

Upon completion of the transaction, the new group will be under joint control of Holtzbrinck and funds advised by BCP, with Holtzbrinck retaining a 53 per cent share.

Further details regarding the joint venture’s organizational structure will be disclosed once the businesses are combined. The transaction is subject to approval by various competition authorities, and this is expected during the first half of 2015.

The merger comprises Springer Science+Business Media (owned by funds advised by BCP) with the majority of businesses owned by Holtzbrinck and currently operating as part of MSE, namely:

• Nature Publishing Group and Palgrave Macmillan – leading providers of high-quality journals, magazines, products and services for the research community and the wider general public. These include Nature (one of the most prestigious science publications), Scientific American (with more than 6 million unique users) and Palgrave Macmillan (a prominent humanities and social sciences publisher).

• The global businesses of Macmillan Education – comprising Macmillan Education Language Learning (the third largest global provider of English language publishing), Macmillan Education Schools (a local K12 publisher) and Palgrave, one of Macmillan Education’s higher education businesses, including the distribution rights outside the USA for the Bedford, Freeman and Worth higher education titles. Together they serve customers in 50 markets and supply high-quality content and innovative digital products and services to customers in 120 countries around the world.

The Springer Science+Business Media portfolio includes, among others:

• All of Springer’s scientific, technical and medical books and journals (which includes those published using open access under the BioMed Central, SpringerOpen and Springer Open Choice imprints as well as all German-language science products) and all archives and other quality content provided to academic and research institutions as well as corporate research and development departments via innovative information products and services.

• Adis – a leading global provider of drug information on which healthcare professionals, researchers, decision-makers and drug developers alike rely.

• Apress – a technical publisher providing high-quality, no-fluff content in print and electronic formats to meet the needs of IT professionals, software developers and programmers.

• All businesses in Springer’s professional publishing division, including, among others, Verlag Heinrich Vogel, Fuchsbriefe, Springer Automotive Media, Codes Rousseau, Etrasa and Bohn Stafleu van Loghum.

The following businesses will not be part of the merged company but will remain under 100 per cent ownership of Holtzbrinck:

• Macmillan Publishers, the global consumer books division of Holtzbrinck, including Holtzbrinck Deutsche Buchverlage and J.B. Metzler;

• The Macmillan Education US higher education business (Bedford, Freeman and Worth);

• Holtzbrinck Ventures and Holtzbrinck Digital, Information and Services; and

• Macmillan New Ventures, Digital Science and Digital Education (the Macmillan Science and Education Technology and Software businesses).

• Full press release available at: http://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/press-releases/corporate