New & Noteworthy

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(2013), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 30 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-05-2013-0032

New & Noteworthy

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New & Noteworthy

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Library Hi Tech News, Volume 30, Issue 5

EdX Expands xConsortium to Asia and Adds 15 New Global Institutions

EdX, the not-for-profit online learning initiative composed of the leading global institutions of the xConsortium, has announced another doubling of its university membership with the addition of its first Asian institutions and further expansion in the Ivy League. The xConsortium is gaining 15 prestigious higher education institutions, bringing its total to 27, including Tsinghua University and Peking University in China, The University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University of Science & Technology in Hong Kong, Kyoto University in Japan, and Seoul National University in South Korea, and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The expansion reflects edX’s rapidly growing global student body and supports its vision of transforming education by bringing the power of learning to all regardless of location or social status.

EdX also welcomes nine universities from North America, Europe and Australia. In the USA, in addition to Cornell, the Consortium has added Berklee College of Music, Boston University, Davidson College, and University of Washington. From Europe, edX welcomes Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, Belgium’s Université catholique de Louvain, and Germany’s Technical University of Munich. The University of Queensland in Australia becomes the second Australian university to join the xConsortium.

“As we continue to grow the xConsortium and offer courses from institutions as diverse as our global community of students, we are moving forward with our mission to reimagine education,” said Anant Agarwal, President of edX. “These schools, with their unique faculties and student bodies, will help us conduct collaborative research on best practices which improve education online and on campus.”

While MOOCs, or massive open online courses (MOOCs), have typically focused on offering free online courses, edX’s vision is much larger. EdX is building an open source educational platform and a network of the world’s top universities to improve education both online and on campus while conducting research on how students learn. To date, edX has more than 900,000 individuals on its platform. The addition of these new higher education institutions will add a rich variety of new courses to edX’s offerings:

Asia – The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (HKUx); Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong (HKUSTx); Kyoto University, Japan (KyotoUx); Peking University, Beijing, China (PekingX); Seoul National University, South Korea (SNUx); and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (TsinghuaX).

Australia – The University of Queensland in Australia (UQx).

Europe – Karolinska Institutet, Sweden (KIx); Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (LouvainX); and Technische Universität München, Germany (TUMx).

USA – Berklee College of Music, Boston (BerkleeX); Boston University, Boston (BUx); Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. (CornellX); Davidson College, Davidson, N.C. (DavidsonX); and University of Washington, Seattle (UWashingtonX).

In addition to adding these institutions, edX recently launched more than 20 new courses ranging from HarvardX’s Science & Cooking to UTAustinX’s The Ideas of the twentieth century to DelftX’s Solar Energy to GeorgetownX’s Introduction to Bioethics to BerkeleyX’s Introduction to Statistics: Inference to MITx’s Mechanics ReView to WellesleyX’s Introduction to Human Evolution. These and other online and blended courses offered by xConsortium institutions are designed to take advantage of the unique features and benefits of online learning environments, including active learning, game-like experiences, instant feedback and cutting-edge virtual laboratories.

The new member institutions will join founding universities MIT and Harvard, as well as the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas System, Wellesley College, Georgetown University, McGill University, Australian National University, University of Toronto, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Delft University of Technology and Rice University in the xConsortium. The new X University Consortium members will offer courses on edX beginning in late 2013 or 2014. All of the courses will be hosted on edX’s open source platform.

More information at: http://www.edx.org/about-us

MOOCs and Libraries Event Summarized in Hangingtogether.org Blog Posts

The “MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?” event took place 18-19 March at the University of Pennsylvania and was broadcast live online. Hosted by OCLC Research and University of Pennsylvania Libraries, the event featured thoughtful and provocative presentations about how libraries are already getting involved with MOOCs, and engaged attendees in discussions about strategic opportunities and challenges going forward.

OCLC Research Senior Program Officer Merrilee Proffitt organized the event and has posted a series of six blog posts on the OCLC Research blog, Hangingtogether, that recap presentation highlights and summarize its outcomes. These blog posts include:

MOOCs and libraries: introduction.

MOOCs and libraries: copyright, licensing, open access.

MOOCs and libraries: production and pedagogy.

MOOCs and libraries: new opportunities for librarians.

MOOCs and libraries: who are the masses? A view of the audience.

MOOCs and libraries: next steps?

In addition, a MOOCs and Libraries video play list that comprises 11 videos of the event sessions is available on the MOOCs and Libraries event page and on the OCLC Research YouTube Channel. Links to the presenters’ slides, the next steps document (.pdf: 124K/1 pp.), the MOOCs online poll responses (.pdf: 67K/2 pp.), and the #mooclib archived tweets (.pdf: 639K/32 pp.) from this event are also available on the MOOCs and libraries event page.

MOOCs and libraries blog posts: http://hangingtogether.org/?cat=58

MOOCs and libraries event page: http://www.oclc.org/research/events/2013/03-18.html

SIPX announces customers and partners for innovative digital copyright service

SIPX, Inc. has announced a broad range of higher-education school customers and publisher partners for the company’s innovative, end-to-end, digital copyright service:

“Today is an exciting milestone for SIPX,” said Bob Weinschenk, SIPX Chief Executive Officer.

In the past nine months, we have spun-out from Stanford, completed our financing, ramped our operations and engaged with a world-class group of customers and partners eager to meet end-user demand for a modern and efficient digital copyright management system.

SIPX provides a new cloud-based technology, created to offer a wide variety of content options, manage copyrights and deliver digital documents for the higher-education marketplace. Developed from Stanford University research, the SIPX service is fully operational and in use today.

SIPX blends seamlessly into a school’s learning management system (LMS) and online education environments such as MOOCs. The SIPX service helps instructors enrich their educational materials by delivering all types of course materials, including for-pay, open and royalty-free content. With the SIPX solution, students can view, print and download this content, faster, more easily and legally. SIPX recognizes and appropriately applies contextual pricing or pre-existing rights to students, while highlighting how schools and libraries purchase and maintain subscriptions for their communities. The SIPX service analytics also help schools and publishers improve their understanding of what content students are connecting with and how to leverage that content most effectively.

By offering a transparent, efficient, end-to-end system, SIPX benefits all parties in the ecosystem for higher-education reading materials.

Schools and consortia that have signed up with SIPX include California State University Northridge, Golden Gate University, Occidental College, Stanford University, State University of New York (SUNY) Empire State College, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), the State wide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) and a wide array of SCELC schools.

Rick Burke, Executive Director of SCELC, said:

We’ve seen strong interest from large and small SCELC schools in deploying the SIPX service. SIPX drew a lot of attention at our recent SCELC Vendor Day, not only for its copyright management technologies, but also for its potential to put the library’s resources front and center for the user. We look forward to continuing our partnership with SIPX to bring this innovative approach to more libraries.

In addition to its school customers, SIPX announced partnerships with more than 25 publishing, platform and service partners, many of which have joined the SIPX Publisher Advisory Board. Advisory Board members include Wolters Kluwer Health’s Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Journals, Nature Publishing Group, Perseus Books Group, Brill, Association for Computing Machinery, Business Expert Press, University of California Press, University of North Carolina Press, Pennsylvania State University Press, Brookings Institution, SPIE, and Stanford University Press. Additional publisher partners being announced today are Rowman and Littlefield, Rosetta Books, IGI-Global, Hindawi, Casemate/Oxbow, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), National Information Standards Organization (NISO), ABCClio/Praeger Publishers, Berghahn Books, and Inderscience. Platform and service partners include HighWire Press, Metapress, GeoScienceWorld and Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).

“As a trade publisher, the Perseus Books Group is always looking to reach the academic market through innovative, digital services, and SIPX certainly fits the bill. We’re thrilled to be partnering with SIPX and connecting with a broader audience,” said Bill Smith, Director of Domestic Rights and Digital Partner Development, Perseus Books Group.

SIPX continues to work with CCC to ensure a seamless integration of the two services. Tracey Armstrong, President and Chief Executive Officer of CCC, said “We are happy to support SIPX as the company brings a broad, integrated, networked solution for copyright management to the world of post-secondary education.”

For more information: http://www.sipx.com – or follow SIPX on Twitter (http://@SIPXCopyright).

13 partners from across Europe collaborate to improve digital curation

Seven European countries are launching 4C (the collaboration to clarify the costs of curation) to help public and private European organisations invest more effectively in digital curation and preservation, sustaining the long-term value of all types of digital information.

Curation ensures digital objects remain understandable, accessible, useable and safe over time. 4C will provide practical guidance to help organisations estimate the cost of digital curation work and demonstrate the long- and short-term benefits.

Alex Thirifays, National Archives of Denmark, explains:

As well as bringing together a fragmented research landscape, the project will create an online “curation costs exchange” which will help users to model their costs and in this way predict more accurately the sorts of costs and benefits that are likely to result from the positive decision to preserve. This will be useful for managers in major archives and data centres and we hope it will support preservation planning functions. These tools will be particularly useful for policy-makers concerned about long-term access to data. In addition we will publish a roadmap for future work in modelling costs which will help to clarify the areas which need more support.

Neil Grindley, Project Co-ordinator from JISC in the UK, explains:

It can be difficult to make a convincing case for investment in digital curation for two reasons. Firstly the costs of curation are currently hard to predict and secondly the short-term benefits are hard to define because curation implicitly addresses long-term challenges.

4C will address both concerns and provide practical guidance that will help practitioners persuade executives to invest in new services.

4C is described as “open and social” and rather than waiting for perfect and polished results, they will be blogging and sharing findings as they go. 4C hope that this will encourage debate and increase the likelihood that their findings and guidance are useful.

Sabine Schrimpf of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Germany, says:

We are looking to engage with many different kinds of organisations and to set up partnerships and have discussions with everyone who would like to get involved in the development of these tools. We’ll be inviting people to workshops and focus groups during the next two years, and we’ll be organising a conference to share our results at the end of the process.

The partners involved are: Danish National Archives (Denmark), DANS – Data Archiving and Network Service (The Netherlands), Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (Germany), Digital Curation Centre (UK), Digital Preservation Coalition (UK), Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (UK), Institute for Information Systems and Computing Research (Portugal), Jisc (UK), Keep Solutions (Portugal), National Library of (Estonia), Royal Library of Denmark (Denmark), Secure Business (Austria), UK Data Archive (UK).

4C: collaboration to clarify the costs of curation: http://4cproject.net/

Smartphone adoption, mobile access rise: teens and technology 2013 report from Pew

Smartphone adoption among American teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are “cell-mostly” internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone and not using some other device such as a desktop or laptop computer.

These are among the new findings from a nationally representative Pew Research Center survey of 802 youth ages 12-17 and their parents that explored technology use. Key findings include:

78 per cent of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47 per cent) of them own smartphones. That translates into 37 per cent of all teens who have smartphones, up from just 23 per cent in 2011.

23 per cent of teens have a tablet computer, a level comparable to the general adult population.

95 per cent of teens use the internet.

93 per cent of teens have a computer or have access to one at home. Seven in ten (71 per cent) teens with home computer access say the laptop or desktop they use most often is one they share with other family members.

“The nature of teens’ internet use has transformed dramatically – from stationary connections tied to shared desktops in the home to always-on connections that move with them throughout the day,” said Mary Madden, Senior Researcher for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and co-author of the report. “In many ways, teens represent the leading edge of mobile connectivity, and the patterns of their technology use often signal future changes in the adult population.”

Mobile access to the internet is common among American teens, and the cell phone has become an especially important access point for certain groups:

74 per cent teens ages 12-17 say they access the internet on cell phones, tablets and other mobile devices at least occasionally.

25 per cent of teens are “cell-mostly” internet users – far more than the 15 per cent of adults who are cell-mostly. Among teen smartphone owners, half are cell-mostly.

Older girls are especially likely to be cell-mostly internet users; 34 per cent of teen girls ages 14-17 say that they mostly go online using their cell phone, compared with 24 per cent of teen boys ages 14-17. This is notable since boys and girls are equally likely to be smartphone owners.

Among older teen girls who are smartphone owners, 55 per cent say they use the internet mostly from their phone.

“The shift to mobile internet use changes the ways teens access information and creates new challenges for parents who wish to monitor their children’s internet use,” said Amanda Lenhart, Senior Researcher and Director of Teens and Technology Initiatives for the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project:

Given bandwidth constraints and the fact that many web sites are not yet optimized for mobile devices, teens who access content primarily on their cell phone may have to work harder to get important information. On the other hand, for parents who may wish to restrict access to their children’s exposure to certain kinds of content online, mobile devices can make it more difficult for parents to use the passive monitoring strategies they tell us they prefer, instead requiring more technical solutions.

The vast majority of those ages 12-17 are internet users. Still, the teens who live in lower-income and lower-education households are still somewhat less likely to use the internet in any capacity – mobile or wired. However, those who fall into lower socioeconomic groups are just as likely and in some cases more likely than those living in higher income and more highly-educated households to use their cell phone as a primary point of access:

89 per cent of teens living in households earning less than $30,000 per year use the internet, compared with 99 per cent of teens living in households earning $75,000 or more per year.

30 per cent of teens living in households earning less than $30,000 per year are cell-mostly internet users, compared with just 14 per cent of those in households earning $50,000-74,999 per year and 24 per cent of those living in households earning $75,000 or more per year.

The findings of the study are detailed in a new report called, “Teens and Technology 2013.” The report is the second in a series of reports issued by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. The data are based on a nationally representative phone survey of 802 parents and their 802 teens ages 12-17, conducted between July 26 and September 30, 2012. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish and on landline and cell phones. The margin of error for the full sample is ±4.5 percentage points.

View the report online: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teens-and-Tech/Summary-of-Findings.aspx

Trends show tablet devices gaining ground on smartphones in web site traffic

From a recent post on Adobe.com’s Digital Marketing blog:

After analyzing more than 100 billion visits to 1000+ web sites world-wide, Adobe Digital Index has discovered that global web sites are now getting more traffic from tablets than smartphones, 8% and 7% of monthly page views, respectively. Pretty impressive for a device category that was introduced less than three years ago!

Findings of particular interest:

Tablets drive more traffic because internet users prefer them for more in depth visits.

Smartphones remain much more common, but the tablet form factor makes it ideal for browsing.

Internet users in the UK are most likely to surf via tablet. While smartphone traffic in the UK is similar to that seen in US and Canada, tablet traffic is much higher, especially when compared to the rest of the world. Internet users in the UK are much more likely than their French and German counterparts to browse via both tablets and smartphones. In Japan and China, however, smartphones remain the mobile browsing device of choice.

All countries saw tablet traffic double in the past year. Despite the variance by region, tablet traffic growth has been consistent through 2012. All countries saw their share of traffic from tablets double over the course of last year and that trend is expected to continue through 2013.

Consumers all over the world are trying out their tablets for the first time and it only takes one bad web site experience for them to decide to go elsewhere. A smartphone optimized site is not the same as a tablet optimized site.

Read the full blog post at: http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/digital-index/tablets-trump-smartphones-in-global-website-traffic/

Credo student information literacy survey results now available

Credo, the industry leader for information skills solutions, has announced that the results of an information literacy survey of over 1,500 students from more than 400 institutions worldwide are now freely available. Anyone may register for a free copy, along with a paper authored by Dr Allen McKiel, Dean of Library Services at Western Oregon University at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Survey_Results. Additionally, Credo unveiled the results at the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) conference in Indianapolis IN, during a breakfast discussion on 11 April 2013.

“The students’ answers were quite revealing,” said Mike Sweet, Credo’s CEO:

All of the questions were submitted by librarians and many addressed themes that other information skills studies have attempted to address. By layering librarian-suggested questions with pedagogical theories related to assessment, we were able to see exactly where students fall short in the application of information skills. We hope that these results empower librarians to help students in this key area of need.

“Information literacy skills are essential for successfully articulating college assignments and even more critical to effective civic and workforce participation,” commented Dr McKiel:

The survey provides a window into student values, perceptions and uses of information resources, which includes how they find out about resources, and where they go for help. The survey results are particularly relevant to the provision of instruction to improve student understanding of and skill in accessing and using information resources.

Among other key findings, the survey found:

74 per cent of students gave “reliability” of sources the highest importance, but 24 per cent did not value a peer-reviewed journal over a memoir as an authoritative source.

Just over 80 per cent of students feel prepared to conduct research, but only 16 per cent feel very prepared to do research.

Though many students are aware of the wealth of resources available through the library, 69 per cent of students use open web source regularly or almost always while conducting research.

Read the full survey results (pdf): http://cdn.credoreference.com/images/PDFs/ATG_v25-2_McKiel_PrePrint.pdf

New

American Libraries

supplement examines future of ebook lending

Leading library practitioners and experts discuss promises and “Faustian bargains” of ebooks in the new American Libraries digital supplement Digital Content: What’s Next?

The future-focused digital supplement examines how libraries are evolving in response to the digital revolution, including exploiting opportunities in self-publishing, while confronting challenges in licensing constraints. The digital supplement also details progress made by the ALA’s Digital Content Working Group to advocate for equitable access to ebooks produced by the world’s largest book publishers.

“In early 2012, urgent questions revolved around why the Big Six publishers wouldn’t do business with libraries or, for those publishers who did, why the terms were so unfavorable,” said ALA President Maureen Sullivan:

We focused on these issues last year and into 2013. While we’ve made some headway, more remains for us to do. ALA also will increase its focus on the many opportunities and challenges beyond the Big Six.

“It is time for the library to step up as the nurturer of content creation,” says James LaRue, Director of Colorado’s Douglas County Libraries system. In Wanna Write a Good One? LaRue discusses how libraries can – and should – become local community publishers and how community members themselves could be involved in deciding which ebooks are made available by libraries.

In Ebooks in 2013: Promises Broken, Promises Kept, and Faustian Bargains, Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, provides an overall assessment of the library ebook situation, concluding that “the reality has been appalling.” Lynch focuses on the library’s roles in society to preserve the cultural heritage, provide accommodation for people with disabilities, and protect individual privacy – and how the ebook status quo gravely threatens libraries’ ability to fulfill these roles.

In another piece The Unpackaged Book, Peter Brantley, Director of Scholarly Communication at Hypothesis, examines the implications of ebooks that are no longer the intact products of today’s trade ebooks. How will libraries acquire and provide access to ebooks that are effectively living web sites? The fundamental model of libraries, publishers, distributors, and books will need further reengineering.

The significance of the present change is extraordinary, comparable to the historical times of Andrew Carnegie or Johannes Gutenberg. To manage and lead through this period of possibilities, libraries must be more collaborative, which is the theme in “Librarians Working Together” by Sullivan, Keith Michael Fiels, ALA Executive Director, and Alan S. Inouye, Director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy and the supplement’s editor.

“Significant aspects of the decision-making that library managers control have moved into the hands of the executives of publishing houses, distributor companies, and other organizations outside of the library community,” the group writes. “The library community needs to develop fundamentally different ways of operating”.

The digital supplement also includes ALA, Future of Libraries, Digital Content, and Ebooks, by Barbara Stripling, ALA president-elect; Marijke Visser, Assistant Director in ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy; Sari Feldman, Executive Director at Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Public Library; and Robert Wolven, Associate University Librarian at Columbia University; Working Directly with Publishers: Lessons Learned, by Rochelle Logan, Associate Director at Douglas County Libraries; and “Nondisclosure Clauses,” by Mary Minow, Follett Chair at Dominican University and Angeline Nalepa, Librarian at South Suburban College (Ill.).

The supplement Digital Content: What’s Next? is the third supplement to American Libraries magazine on ebooks and digital content. For more information about the ALA’s efforts on digital content and libraries, visit the American Libraries E-content blog: http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/e-content

Read the full report: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/7d9e3366

ProQuest completes acquisition of ebook library

ProQuest, an information company central to global research, has completed its acquisition of Ebook Library (EBL), significantly expanding its e-book delivery and aggregation capabilities with libraries worldwide. The acquisition supports ProQuest’s overall goal of enhancing the research experience through seamless discovery of content across multiple formats, including books, journals, dissertations, newspapers, and video.

Kari Paulson, President of EBL, and EBL’s current staff have joined ProQuest with Ms. Paulson in the role of Vice President and General Manager of the combined ebrary and EBL e-book business unit. She will lead the planning efforts to combine the strongest features of ebrary and EBL into one optimized e-book platform that has the most flexible selection of business models, the most comprehensive range of content, and the most effective tools available to support both researchers and librarians. The company will be actively soliciting customer feedback throughout the integration in order to provide libraries with an even better e-book solution.

ProQuest does not anticipate disruption for EBL or ebrary customers over the estimated 18 month integration timeframe. Customers and partners should continue to work with their current EBL and/or ProQuest representatives.

To learn more visit ProQuest: http://www.proquest.com

Skip Prichard named OCLC president and CEO

Skip Prichard, an experienced Senior Executive in the information services market, has been named the next OCLC President and CEO.

Mr Prichard has led multi-national organizations that serve libraries across the full spectrum of library services and content needs. Most recently, he was President and CEO of Ingram Content Group Inc., which provides a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Prior to his service at Ingram, he was President and CEO of ProQuest Information and Learning, a respected global publisher and information provider serving library, education, government and corporate markets with offices around the world.

Mr Prichard will succeed Jay Jordan, who will retire June 30 after 15 years as OCLC President and CEO. Mr Prichard will serve as OCLC President-elect, effective June 3, and will officially become President and CEO on July 1.

“Skip Prichard is a proven leader with an outstanding record of accomplishment,” said Sandy Yee, Chair, OCLC Board of Trustees, and Dean, Wayne State University Libraries and School of Library and Information Science:

He has guided leading library services organizations through eras of significant change, from print to electronic and from local to global. His experience and commitment to libraries will help us continue our work to move library services and cooperation forward – in the cloud, on mobile devices and through the collaborative work of libraries and partners around the world.

“OCLC has a long tradition of strong leadership and vision, and I consider myself fortunate to have the opportunity to lead the cooperative into what promises to be an exciting and challenging future,” said Mr Prichard:

OCLC and member libraries are using the newest technologies available to move library services to the cloud where they continue to collaboratively build resources and infrastructure to share. I look forward to working with the talented OCLC staff and membership to ensure that we build on that momentum, and provide the resources necessary for libraries and librarians around the world to meet and exceed the increasing expectations of their users.

Mr Prichard joined Ingram in 2007 as Chief Operating Officer. He was named President and CEO of Ingram Content Group in January 2008, and served through June 2012. Ingram Content Group is a $1.5 billion global group of companies with more than 3,000 employees that provide physical and digital books, music and media to over 35,000 retailers, libraries, schools and distribution partners around the world. Ingram Content Group includes Ingram Book Group, Lightning Source, VitalSource, Ingram Periodicals, Spring Arbor, Ingram Publisher Services, Ingram Transportation, Ingram Library Services, Tennessee Book Company and Coutts Information Services.

From October 2005 to April 2007, he was President and CEO of ProQuest information and learning (PQIL), an organization with 1,200 employees in the Americas, Europe and Asia. He also held posts at PQIL as General Manager and Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing from April 2003 to October 2005. Prior to that, Mr Prichard held a number of executive positions with LexisNexis, where as Vice President he provided business information and risk management solutions to global corporations, libraries and other organizations.

Mr Prichard received his Bachelor of Science degree from Towson State University and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Baltimore School of Law.

OCLC home: http://oclc.org/

Zotero 4.0 launches

From the Zotero blog:

We’re delighted to announce the immediate availability of Zotero 4.0, which offers loads of new functionality. Many of these features were requested and designed via our support forums and developer list, and we’re excited to put them into the hands of our users! Here are a few highlights.

Automatic Journal Abbreviations – Zotero now comes with built-in journal abbreviations that match publications to their standard shortened forms.

Colored Tags – Zotero 4.0 lets you to assign colors to up to six of your favorite tags to highlight important “to read” articles or other items that you would like to find quickly at a glance.

On-Demand File Syncing – The latest version of Zotero can be configured to download files only on demand to save bandwidth and disk space on devices where you don’t require your full Zotero library synchronized. A new attachment indicator UI lets you know at a glance whether a file has been synced and is available.

Automatic Style Updating – Zotero now performs a daily check for revised citation styles and automatically downloads them as needed.

Detailed Download Display – Zotero’siconic one-click import just got better: Zotero now immediately shows which collection is receiving your newly saved items and indicates whether any attachments have been grabbed.

Beyond these highlights, Zotero 4.0 includes many under-the-hood improvements that set the stage for major advancements in the very near future. As always, if you have any questions about Zotero, a dedicated group of users and developers are happy to help you in our support forums!

More details at the Zotero blog: http://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-4-0-launches/

First release of VuFind 2.0 now available

VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is, by replacing the traditional OPAC, to enable library users to search and browse through all of the library’s resources to include: Catalog Records, Digital Library Items, Institutional Repositories, and Other Library Collections and Resources. VuFind is completely modular, so a library can implement just the basic system or all of the components. Since VuFind is open source, a library can modify or add modules to best fit its needs.

The first release candidate of version 2.0 of the VuFind Open Source discovery software has been released. This release provides a preview of the functionality and architecture that will be seen in the full 2.0 release, due later in summer 2013.

The new release includes several significant enhancements:

Significant security improvements, including more secure password storage and protection against spammer abuse.

A “MultiBackend” driver which allows VuFind to interact with multiple integrated library systems at once.

A new and flexible search system with more modular, reusable code.

2.0 versions of all new features introduced in the 1.4 release, including support for hierarchical records and the Clickatell SMS service.

Additionally, several bug fixes and minor improvements have been incorporated.

More information about the new release or VuFind in general: http://vufind.org/

Koha version 3.10.4 released

In March, the Koha release team, in association with the multitude of Koha libraries, librarians, support companies, developers and users, announced the release of the latest stable release of the 3.10×branch, 3.10.4. The last Koha release was 3.6.11, which was released on December 27, 2012.

This maintenance release contains code from 15 people from 12 different organisations, making it once again a great example of international and inter company collaboration, and making the official and community-supported Koha live up to its promise of no single vendor lock in.

Koha is the first free and open source software library automation package (ILS). Development is sponsored by libraries of varying types and sizes, volunteers, and support companies from around the world. The web site for the Koha project is: http://koha-community.org/

Koha 3.10.4 can be downloaded from: http://download.koha-community.org/

Installation instructions can be found at: http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Installation_Documentation