New & Noteworthy

Citation

Hanson, H. and Stewart-Marshall, Z. (2015), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 32 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-05-2015-0038

New & Noteworthy

Article Type: New & Noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 32, Issue 5

Technology Trends, Challenges in New Media Consortium Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Ed Edition

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) jointly released the NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition in a special session at the 2015 ELI Annual Meeting. The 12th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching and creative inquiry in education. This report is also the first NMC publication made possible in part through crowdfunding efforts.

Six key trends, six significant challenges and six important developments in educational technology are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning. The format of the report provides in-depth insight into how trends and challenges are accelerating and impeding the adoption of educational technology, along with their implications for policy, leadership and practice.

“University administrators and educators across the world use the report as a springboard for discussion around important trends and challenges”, says Larry Johnson, chief executive officer (CEO) of the NMC. “Personalizing learning on a deeper level, along with finding more accurate ways to measure different kinds of learning to provide better insights to educators and students, will be critical over the next five years.”

“With its 2015 edition, the Horizon Report for higher education has taken some important evolutionary steps”, notes ELI Director Malcolm Brown. “The report embeds the six technologies more explicitly in the overall context of higher education, with its expanded section on trends and challenges. The report has always assisted the community in making decisions about technology directions, but now the trends and challenges sections provide additional resources for campus discussions and decision making.”

The NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition identifies the “Increasing Use of Blended Learning” and “Redesigning Learning Spaces” as short-term trends accelerating the adoption of educational technology in higher education over the next one to two years. The “Proliferation of Open Educational Resources” and the “Growing Focus on Measuring Learning” are mid-term trends expected to drive technology use in the next three to five years; meanwhile, “Increasing Cross-Institution Collaboration” and “Advancing Cultures of Change and Innovation” are long-term trends, anticipated to impact institutions for the next five years or more.

A number of challenges are acknowledged as barriers to the mainstream use of technology in higher education. “Blending Formal and Informal Learning” and “Improving Digital Literacy” are perceived as solvable challenges – those which we both understand and know how to solve. “Teaching Complex Thinking” and “Personalizing Learning” are considered difficult challenges, which are defined and well understood but with solutions that are elusive. Described as wicked challenges are “Competing Models of Education” and “Rewarding Teaching”, which are complex to define, much less to address.

Additionally, the report identifies bring your own device (BYOD) and flipped classroom as digital strategies and technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the near-term horizon of one year or less. Makerspaces and wearable technology are seen in the mid-term horizon of two to three years; adaptive learning technologies and the Internet of Things are seen emerging in the far-term horizon of four to five years.

The subject matter in this report was identified through a qualitative research process designed and conducted by the NMC that engaged an international body of experts in higher education, technology, business and other fields around a set of research questions designed to surface significant trends and challenges and to identify emerging technologies with a strong likelihood of adoption in higher education. The NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition details the areas in which these experts were in strong agreement.

The NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition is available online, free of charge and is released under a Creative Commons license to facilitate its widespread use, easy duplication and broad distribution.

Download at: http://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2015-higher-education-edition/

Vireo electronic theses and dissertation submission and management system version 3.0 released

Stephanie Larrison, Co-Chair of the Vireo Users Group (VUG) Steering Committee, has announced that version 3.0 of Vireo, a thesis and dissertation management application, has now been released on GitHub, along with documentation for installation.

Increasing numbers of higher education institutions require graduate students to submit electronic, rather than print, versions of their theses or dissertations. To make the process of submission and management of these electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) more efficient, the Texas Digital Library (TDL) hosts the Vireo ETD Submission and Management System. Vireo addresses all steps of the ETD process, from submission to approval by the graduate office, to publication in one or more institutional repositories.

With Vireo, students submit their digital theses and dissertations via a simple online interface, while graduate offices can manage the ETD approval process behind the scenes. Institutions can also use Vireo to publish the ETDs in their TDL Institutional Repositories and the TDL Statewide ETD Repository, where they are readily available to other researchers.

The TDL, in close collaboration with Texas A&M University, provided initial development of Vireo and released it under an open source license in 2010. The TDL and members of the VUG continue to oversee development of the application.

Vireo provides a simple and intuitive interface through which students can submit their theses and dissertations online. The submission interface features:

• an easy five-step process;

• autofill capability for personal information to reduce typos;

• embargo options for any document; and

• ability to send ETDs to UMI dissertation publishing.

Vireo’s expert interface lets graduate school staff and librarians shepherd theses and dissertations through the entire ETD workflow, from submission to approval to publication in an institutional repository. The workflow management interface provides useful tools for:

• tracking and managing the manuscript review process;

• creating flexible workflows using customizable filters;

• exporting documents and metadata; and

• managing communications with all participants, including students, faculty advisers and staff.

The VUG guides the future development of the Vireo ETD Submission and Management System and provides a forum for mutual support among Vireo users. Vireo was developed initially with grant funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Vireo ETD management: https://tdl.org/etds/

Download vireo from GitHub: https://github.com/TexasDigitalLibrary/Vireo

Learn more about the VUG on its website: http://vireoetd.org/

“Brown dog” project at Maryland’s iSchool develops cloud services for un-curated big data

Institutions of all types – government agencies, research centers, corporations and cultural heritage institutions – are dealing with a deluge of data, leaving a wealth of knowledge trapped in legacy file formats that are no longer accessible. Researchers at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, Maryland’s iSchool, have teamed up with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to combat this problem by providing scalable infrastructure services in the cloud that re-open existing big data collections for appraisal, analysis and reuse.

Led by Richard Marciano at the University of Maryland, professor and director of the newly formed Digital Curation Innovation Center, with Michael Kurtz, visiting professor and associate director and Greg Jansen, research software architect, and by Kenton McHenry at NCSA, with his team of developers and domain scientists, this partnership between two Big 10/Committee on Institutional Cooperation universities, focuses on file format conversion and information extraction services. Named “Brown Dog”, this project is creating key information extraction services that unlock un-curated data and make them useful again. These services open up the intellectual content trapped in legacy data, so that it is available to scientists and cultural institutions, allowing scientists meaningful access to data that can be used to reproduce results and conduct new data-driven research.

The UMD iSchool team is assembling a unique data training and testing facility called the Cyber Infrastructure for Billions of Electronic Records (CI-BER) testbed. The CI-BER testbed currently represents 72 million records and 57 terabytes of data from decades of legacy records across 135 government agencies. The team’s goal is to enable new forms of archival analytics at scale.

“We hope to provide access to big data training sets, accelerate the development of digital curation algorithms and services, and teach students practical digital curation skills”, says Richard Marciano.

This project is supported through a five-year, $10.5 million award from the National Science Foundation through its new Data Infrastructure Building Blocks program. Out of a total of 25 projects $63 million of funding, it is the largest of the implementation awards to date. The University of Maryland portion of the project represents $1.4 million of the funding.

The University of Maryland team is teaming with corporate partners Archive Analytics Solutions and NetApp to develop technology solutions for the project. Archive Analytics is an archival software solutions provider and developer of the standards-based Alloy network appliance for controlled archiving of file-based content, and has been brought into the project as a vendor-partner to help set up a petabyte-class archive and object hosting for the CI-BER testbed collection. The team is calling this new system the “DataCave”.

“Many of us strive to create something that will live on to have the broad impact that the NCSA Mosaic Web browser did,” says Kenton McHenry of the University of Illinois, referring to the world’s first Web browser, also developed at NCSA. “It is our hope that Brown Dog will serve as the beginnings of yet another such indispensable component for the internet of tomorrow.”

For more information, visit: http://browndog.ncsa.illinois.edu/ or http://dcic.umd.edu/

Publishing and preserving data as primary research objects: The RMap project

In April 2014, the Data Conservancy, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and Portico announced their partnership to design and prototype a data curation infrastructure that connects published research and associated data sets for the long-term benefit of researchers worldwide. This two-year project, which is supported by a $602,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will result in the development of a service that will build, store, update and retrieve the connections among publications and data, and preserve those connections over the long-term.

The goal of RMap is to preserve the many-to-many complex relationships among traditional scholarly publications and relatively newer forms of content such as data and software, thereby supporting the continual development of scholarly communication and digital publishing. In recent years, the content that comprises the scholarly record has become more dynamic and less “bounded”. Formerly, even digital artifacts of the scholarly record were more or less discrete objects, such as journal articles or books, usually encapsulated in a single file. Increasingly, the scholarly “article” – the primary unit of scholarly communication – is evolving into a multi-part, distributed object.

The RMap project will build upon and advance the existing infrastructure that has evolved to support these new forms of publications by acting as a clearinghouse or meta-service that compiles information from various data-linking services. Informed by the feedback from a planning workshop that included a diverse set of publishers, professional societies, data infrastructure providers (e.g. CrossRef, ORCiD) and data repositories, the RMap team will:

• use IEEE’s publishing workflow and platform to demonstrate integration of publications, data and software at the time of submission (with an aim of generalizing this approach to other publishing workflows and platforms);

• generate information graphs (RMaps) that comprise publications from IEEE’s professional societies, data from a Data Conservancy data archive and software from an external repository such as GitHub; and

• generate RMaps that demonstrate not only the linkages between the various components of the distributed scholarly objects, but also the provenance connecting the objects (e.g. use of software to process data) in a persistent manner.

As project partners, Data Conservancy, Portico and IEEE bring a diverse set of perspectives from the publishing, scholarly society, preservation and data communities. In consultation with partners in the international research, data repository, journal publishing, bibliographic and funding communities, RMap looks to create an architecture and set of services that is readily integrated into those communities’ workflows and practices. Additionally, RMap will consider integration of content that is not easily or currently described with existing identifiers (e.g. software).

RMap will build on the features of the semantic web and linked data, adopting concepts from the Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange, which specifies graphs that capture the relationships among publications, data and other artifacts of scholarly research and communication, and facilitates the expression of the evolution of those relationships. To simplify integration with publishing and other scholarly workflows, RMap will employ a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) application programming interface (API) and will make use of existing well-known vocabularies (e.g. Dublin Core, Friend of a Friend, Open Provenance Model, Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schema and the Scholarly Contributions and Roles Ontology) in its data model.

At the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Fall Membership Meeting in December 2014, representatives from the project team delivered a briefing discussing the RMap project’s goals, its technical approach, and its potential value for the publishing, library and research communities. Video of the project briefing, “Publishing and Preserving Data as Primary Research Objects: The RMap Project”, is available on CNI’s Vimeo and YouTube channels.

For more information, see the RMap website at: http://rmap-project.info/rmap/

RMap project briefing video on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/cni/122678892

RMap project briefing video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/P3wN2ECO9hI

Springer partners with Copyright Clearance Center on text and data mining service

Springer has partnered with Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) on a new solution enabling corporate life sciences researchers to perform text and data mining (TDM) quickly and easily across publishers. As one of the first publishers to sign onto the service, Springer will offer a significant portion of its full-text article content through the CCC service when launched later this year.

TDM is growing exponentially in value as big data has become an important building block of advanced life sciences research. However, the enormous breadth and volume of research, published in thousands of different scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals, creates enormous complexity for those who wish to mine that content. As each publisher makes its content available through their own unique online services, researchers face a major stumbling block in accessing massive amounts of content from multiple publishers. Without CCC’s solution, scientists have had no single source from which to select and download all of the articles they want to mine in a compliant way.

“We know from our constant, ongoing conversations with customers that text and data mining is critical to their research, but also that the task of going to each publisher individually is time-consuming and complicated”, said Bettina Goerner, Managing Director for Springer’s Corporate Markets and Databases. “We have a vested interest in making research as easy as possible for our customers, and a deep tradition of innovation at Springer, so taking part in CCC’s new venture was an easy decision.”

The new service is focused on making research easier for the end user. Springer will supply CCC with full-text versions of its journal content. CCC will then take Springer’s content, along with that of other participating publishers, normalize the Extensible Markup Language (XML) for consistency across publishers, and make it available to users of the new service. The XML available to users will be based on customer access rights and subscription data provided to CCC by the publishers. Customers can then download the data and upload it to their own in-house systems to use in their research.

“Customers have been looking for a single and compliant source for XML content across multiple publishers,” said Lauren Tulloch, Director, Corporate Products and Services, CCC. “As a trusted partner of the scientific, medical and technical publishing community, CCC is well-positioned to fill this role. We are pleased that Springer is eager to partner with us, and we look forward to launching our service with Springer and other participating publishers this year.”

This partnership with CCC targets the corporate market. For non-commercial research, Springer grants text- and data-mining rights to subscribed content to researchers via their institutions.

Copyright clearance center: http://www.copyright.com

Springer science + Business media: http://www.springer.com

National Information Standards Organization receives Mellon grant to explore patron privacy in library and publisher systems

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has been awarded a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a Consensus Framework to Support Patron Privacy in Digital Library and Information Systems. The grant will support a series of community discussions on how libraries, publishers and information systems providers can build better privacy protection into their operations. The grant will also support creation of a draft framework to support patron privacy and subsequent publicity of the draft prior to its advancement for approval as a NISO Recommended Practice.

“Awareness and interest in online privacy is growing rapidly following a number of significant data breaches that have occurred over the past year”, explains Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “Libraries have long been stalwart advocates for protection of patron privacy, but as the complexity of libraries’ digital services has grown, the challenges of protecting that privacy have multiplied. Patron activity data is no longer held exclusively by the library, nor is it necessarily controlled by providers themselves. Compounding these problems is the tension created by the fact that real benefit can be achieved through the application of usage data as a tool for improving library services. How does one balance the opportunity to improve services or build new functionality that might improve patrons’ experiences against the need to protect privacy?”

“This delicate balance is one that NISO hopes to address through a process of engaging community consensus to develop a framework for addressing patron privacy in digital library systems”, states Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director for Programs. “By bringing together thought leaders and engaged members of the publishing, library, and systems vendor communities, this project will provide a forum for perspectives to be shared and benefits and drawbacks of various approaches to be discussed from multiple angles. Involvement of the publishers and vendors is particularly important as they have been less engaged in privacy discussions and their implications.”

This project will consist of three phases. The first will be a pre-meeting discussion phase, which will consist of four virtual forums to discuss privacy of internal library systems, privacy of publisher systems, privacy of provider systems and legal aspects influencing data sharing and policies. Each of the discussion sessions will be a three-hour web-based session designed to lay the groundwork for a productive in-person meeting at the conclusion of the American Library Association meeting in San Francisco, CA in June 2015. Following the in-person meeting, a Framework document will be completed detailing the privacy principles and recommendations agreed to by the participants, and then circulated for public comment and finalization.

More information available on the NISO website: http://www.niso.org/topics/tl/patron_privacy/

Civica releases Spydus10 library management solution

Civica, a leader in specialist systems and business process services that help organizations to transform the way they work, has announced the release of Spydus10, the company’s Web-based integrated library management, discovery, digital asset management and archives solution.

Unveiled during Civica’s annual Technology Roadshow in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland and Perth in April, Spydus10 heralds an exciting new phase for the market-leading Spydus integrated library management solution. “This is a significant development for Spydus,” said Kevindran Jeyakanthan, Civica Library Solutions’ Head of Product. “Spydus10 incorporates the very latest in Web-based user interface design. Importantly it keeps all of the richness in functionality from Spydus’ 30-year heritage while providing the foundation for digital transformation in the library sector. With the first release of Spydus10 complete, we are now focusing on integrating customer enhancements, and further integration with our Event Management solution and third party content providers.”

Marc Nolan, Managing Director, said, “Civica has been a market leader in library systems for schools, higher education institutions and public authorities for many years and it is important for both the company and our customers that we remain at the cutting-edge of technology. Furthermore, because we are library operators ourselves we understand the myriad pressures that libraries face on a daily basis. Spydus10 as cloud-based solution will help remove the technology burden for libraries so they can focus on maintaining and improving patron services.”

The first library to go live with Spydus10 will be Civica’s fully managed Sports Hub Library in Singapore.

More about the Spydus10 library management system: http://civicalld.com/our-services/spydus

Boopsie partners with Baker & Taylor for mobile digital media platform axis 360

Boopsie, leading mobile platform-as-a-service provider for libraries worldwide, and Baker & Taylor, worldwide distributor of digital and print books and entertainment products, have integrated the Boopsie Mobile App with Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 digital media library. The partnership will drive circulation and usage of Axis 360 and meet patrons’ expectations for easy access to the library’s digital information and entertainment materials.

“We are pleased to be working with the Boopsie team”, said George Coe, President and CEO, Baker & Taylor. “We have made several enhancements to our Axis 360 platform and are rapidly expanding the service’s visibility and usability on mobile devices. Boopsie’s library-branded apps deliver the best user experience in the market and enable patrons to take full advantage of their libraries’ Axis 360 services.”

Boopsie’s white labeled mobile platform enables a library patron to simply search for their library in a major app store, download the library-branded app, then have one tap access to all of the library’s great resources, including Axis 360.

Boopsie’s native mobile apps for libraries operate across all major operating systems, making it the perfect companion to both Axis 360’s iOS and Android apps, as well as their mobile responsive Web site. For millions of app users, a Boopsie library app is an effective way to deliver Baker & Taylor’s content, to patrons who will greatly benefit from the partnership.

The newest integration between Boopsie’s mobile app platform and Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 digital library service enables users to access the Axis 360 menu, view items that are available for loan and immediately proceed to check out and begin enjoying the e-book or e-audiobook.

“Baker & Taylor has a wide range of great digital content and is extremely focused on increasing the ease of mobile access”, says Tony Medrano, CEO, Boopsie. “Our partnership not only enables Baker & Taylor to leverage Boopsie’s mobile expertise, but also enables Boopsie’s mobile platform to grow internationally via Baker & Taylor’s long-standing library relationships.”

More about the boopsie and axis 360 integration: http://www.boopsie.com/increase-your-axis-360-subscription-usage/

ProQuest to acquire Coutts information services and MyiLibrary from Ingram

ProQuest has signed an agreement to acquire Coutts Information Services from Ingram Content Group, adding Coutts’ renowned expertise in collection development, broad catalog of print and digital titles, and platforms MyiLibrary and OASIS to ProQuest’s vast selection of e-books and innovative technology framework. The move paves the way to combine Coutts’ acquisitions strengths with ProQuest’s inventive digital tools to deliver a superior end-to-end workflow across print and electronic. Ingram will play a continuing role in print fulfillment in North America, supporting ProQuest with its extensive print inventory, fast on-demand print capabilities and delivery network.

“ProQuest has been innovating ebook workflows and systems by bringing together the best mix of titles, talent and technology”, said Kurt Sanford, ProQuest CEO. “With Coutts and MyiLibrary joining ProQuest, we’ll accelerate these advancements by creating fully integrated workflows and improved user experiences that span print and digital. We’re delighted that Ingram will be our partner, providing the very best in print fulfillment, and ensuring libraries gain end-to-end efficiencies.”

“Since Ingram acquired Coutts in 2006, we’ve invested in the people, technology and services to support and promote the advancement of academic and professional libraries. ProQuest is the perfect home for the ideas, tools and talent of Coutts to continue growing and innovating to better serve this market,” said John Ingram, Chairman and CEO, Ingram Content Group. “ProQuest is very strong in digital services, and we’re excited to team up with them to create the best, full-service package for the academic library market.”

Founded in 1969, Coutts Information Services has been embraced by academic and professional librarians worldwide for its superior inventory of titles, leading fill rates and expertly managed programs and services, including the market’s longest-running approval program. Libraries will benefit from the addition of Coutts to the ProQuest portfolio:

• It assembles the widest selection of e-books to support research.

• Innovation that makes ProQuest the leader in e-books will extend to MyiLibrary and OASIS customers.

• Coutts’ collection-building expertise, approval support and tools for streamlined ordering will be available to ProQuest customers.

ProQuest’s larger plans include development of a fully integrated book service with simple, efficient workflows for print and electronic. Librarians will gain flexibility to build dynamic collections that meet the unique needs of their community of researchers with support from approval plans, demand driven acquisitions (DDA), subscriptions, as well as electronic ordering and invoicing.

The acquisition will not impact ProQuest’s support of strategic partnerships or e-book initiatives already in place. The company is committed to keeping the Coutts and ProQuest networks as open as possible, supporting the many platforms and partners that give librarians choices in how they acquire and manage content. The debut of ProQuest’s powerful new Ebook Central continues on schedule for mid-2015.

Read more about ProQuest’s addition of Coutts at: http://bit.ly/PQandCoutts

EBSCO partnership with ByWater solutions enables interoperability between Koha and EDS EBSCO Discovery Service

EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and ByWater Solutions have partnered to provide more choices to its customers. ByWater Solutions is a leading US provider of support and implementation services to libraries using Koha, the world’s first free and open source integrated library system (ILS). Working with ByWater, libraries that use the Koha ILS can readily adopt EBSCO Discovery Service™ as their discovery service and front-end of choice.

A truly organic start-up, ByWater was formed by CEO Brendan Gallagher and is co-owned with his childhood friend, Nathan Curulla. ByWater’s mission is to empower libraries by giving them the technological flexibility and freedom they deserve through the use of open source software with comprehensive and honest support. When asked about working with EBSCO, Gallagher stated “We are thrilled to have the chance to partner with EBSCO to bring more unified services to libraries in the USA. EBSCO has always been a strong proponent of Koha and has funded many developments to improve the connection between our two systems. We are very impressed with the foresight they have when it comes to interoperability between companies and library products.”

Ron Burns, Vice President of Global Software Development at EBSCO explained, “We are excited to be working with ByWater Solutions. EBSCO is a strong supporter of open source and partnerships that allow true interoperability between a library’s discovery service and their ILS of choice.”

More about ByWater solutions and Koha: http://bywatersolutions.com/

BiblioCommons to develop unified digital platform for public libraries in England

BiblioCommons Inc. has begun work with the Society of Chief Librarians (SCL) to envision a unified digital platform for all public libraries in England. The goal of the project is to enhance public library services and increase the use of these services by library patrons.

Through extensive interviews and analysis, the project will research the challenges and opportunities facing public libraries in England. At the same time, this project will also create a digital platform that will help advance the mission of public libraries and enhance the well-being of the communities that depend on them.

The platform will be designed to improve how patrons can discover, access and engage with the resources that public libraries provide, including books, media, digital articles, journals, library programs, events and much more. The platform will be designed to bring people into public libraries – both virtually and physically. In drawing public library information and resources under one platform, the SCL seeks to expand patrons’ access to the nationwide programs on offer for public libraries in England. These Universal Offers connect people with valuable skills and information in five key areas the SCL has identified: health, reading, digital, learning and information.

BiblioCommons was honored to have been chosen, through a public tender process, to help SCL with this project. The initial phase of this project, funded by a £30,00 grant from Arts Council England, will research patron and library sector needs and create a vision and roadmap for the unified digital platform. Work on this stage is expected to be complete by the end of March 2015.

“Libraries are powerful and free sources of information and knowledge”, said Ciara Eastell, SCL President. “They can and do change people’s lives, and this project is the next step on an important journey for public libraries in making all that information available at the click of a mouse. We hope this first stage helps secure the investment needed to deliver the project fully.”

This project comes at a crucial time for public libraries in England, as they work to keep up with the digital demands of today’s citizen and consumer and to address the challenges highlighted in the recent Independent Report on Public Libraries, chaired by William Sieghart.

“We are thrilled to be working with SCL and its stakeholders to advance the vision of a unified digital platform”, said Beth Jefferson, co-founder and CEO of BiblioCommons. “Libraries around the world have long supported their communities through branch locations that contain clear information, helpful resources, and edifying cultural works, programs, and events. This strengthens individuals, and builds communities. We look forward to working with stakeholders, libraries, customers, and even non-customers to chart a course that shows how this digital presence can be realized.”

Read the SCL press release: http://www.goscl.com/scl-working-to-create-unified-digital-platform-for-all-libraries/

More about BiblioCommons: http://bibliocommons.com/products

Innovative pledges support to Libhub Initiative

Innovative has announced its sponsorship of the Libhub Initiative, which encourages industry-wide focus on the visibility of library resources on the Web. With enabling technologies such as linked data and shared vocabularies such as schema.org and Bibliographic Framework (BIBFRAME), the Libhub Initiative will exponentially expand data linking among libraries and the greater Web.

The Libhub Initiative was introduced in 2014 to encourage an industry-wide focus on the collective visibility of libraries and their resources on the Web. The Libhub Initiative aims to find common ground for libraries, providers and partners to publish and use data with non-proprietary, Web standards. Libraries can then communicate in a way Web applications understand, and Web users can see through the use of enabling technology like linked data and shared vocabularies such as schema.org and BIBFRAME. The Libhub Initiative uniquely prioritizes the linking of these newly exposed library resources to each other and to other resources across the Web, a critical requirement of increased Web visibility. “Innovative’s support of the Libhub Initiative demonstrates that we see linked data as enormously valuable to libraries that want to increase their impact on the Web and be recognized for what they do”, says Leif Pedersen, SVP of Product Management, R&D and Marketing. “Innovative will continue to promote the adoption of linked data practices. In addition, Innovative is developing early-stage functionality that will allow libraries to reap the promised benefits of linked data technologies and the Web of Data.”

“In the context of making libraries visible to the Web, it is critical to have active sponsorship from the providers of library systems, technologies, and content,” explained Eric Miller, Founder and President of Zepheira and founder of the Libhub Initiative. “Innovative’s sponsorship of the Libhub Initiative makes clear their position of leadership in working together with their libraries and others to discuss Library Visibility on the Web via linked data and other critical technologies.”

Full press release: http://www.iii.com/news-events/pr/innovative-pledges-support-libhub-initiative

More about the libhub initiative: http://www.libhub.org/

NISO launches projects to develop standards for bibliographic vocabulary exchange

The voting members of the NISO have approved three new projects to develop standards to better support exchange and interoperability of bibliographic data. These projects were identified as high priorities in NISO’s Bibliographic Roadmap pre-standards initiative, which was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of that project was to collectively determine the needs and requirements of the new bibliographic framework in a global, networked information environment and to develop community consensus for a roadmap of activities needed in this space. Following the issuance of the Bibliographic Roadmap final report in April 2014, NISO’s Content and Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee evaluated the recommendations and prepared a new work item proposal focusing on three of the top prioritized areas: vocabulary policies on use and reuse, vocabulary documentation and vocabulary preservation requirements.

“Differences in vocabularies and the communities that manage them are often seen to be a hurdle to interoperability”, explains Marti Heyman, Executive Director, Metadata Standards and Services at Cengage Learning and Co-Chair of the CCM Topic Committee. “Different vocabularies also present challenges because quality control, maintenance strategies, and usage policies vary across the sets. Provenance of vocabulary data is critical to understand the management needs of aggregated data as it ages and changes.”

“One barrier to vocabulary exchange and interoperability is the lack of policies relevant to use and re-use of vocabularies by organizations other than the owner or maintainer of the vocabulary,” states Betty Landesman, Head of Technical Services and Content Management at University of Baltimore, Langsdale Library, and Co-Chair of the CCM Topic Committee. “Documentation of vocabularies is also important for their users, and a minimum set of information to be documented should be defined. Many vocabularies are developed under a short-term funded project and the long-term sustainability and preservation of the vocabulary is endangered when the project funding ends. Pathways forward for managing and supporting such orphan“ vocabularies need to be defined.”

“We are looking for a diversity of participants in these projects beyond just libraries”, said Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Program Director. “In addition to libraries involved in the bibliographic framework design and implementation, we are encouraging organizations such as library system vendors, abstracting and indexing (A&I) services, and developers or users of standardized vocabularies and metadata for describing resources to volunteer their experts to help develop these new standards.”

The approved proposal for the vocabulary projects and the final report from the Bibliographic Roadmap project are available on the NISO Web site. Anyone interested in participating on one of the vocabulary working groups should use the online contact form (http://www.niso.org/contact/) and indicate in which of the three projects you are interested.

More information on the vocabulary projects: http://www.niso.org/topics/tl/BibliographicRoadmap/

Librarian Brain book recommender app from in the stacks

The librarian-curated book discovery channel, In the Stacks, is building a Librarian Brain for book recommendations. The San Francisco-based start-up began as a digital library for video book reviews, produced and curated by librarians.

The new app services offer users top five book picks in their favorite genre, generated by a database of librarian book reviews. The user is linked to the book review, and directed to a location nearby to purchase or borrow the book, in person or online. The book app is mobile-first, with versions available for iPhone and Android, with a Web-based version to follow.

The In the Stacks Librarian Brain aggregates publicly available book recommendation data from librarians, for expert human-based curation of book discovery, combined with big data/artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Founder, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) & Chief Digital Librarian Michelle Zaffino also writes novels, and through her experience publishing and marketing her books, found that available resources for searching for books are “Failing with a capital F”, especially books from indie authors. “We’re connecting readers with books they love, and authors with booklovers”, says Zaffino.

In the Stacks is inspired by the finding that 70 per cent of book lovers think librarians are book experts (based on user testing In the Stacks conducted at Stanford Venture Lab). They feel that librarian book recommendations, aggregated in one super database, are a highly credible untapped resource for consumers interested in finding a book.

“Many sites collect reviews from regular readers, but if they offered book recommendations from librarians, they could be great,” Zaffino adds.

Librarians have been expertly creating and tagging content with metadata for decades, have always been database experts, and now, more and more digital librarians are coding. In the Stacks is working on recommendations that mimic the tastes of librarians in a machine learning algorithm, to truly harness the potential power of the Librarian Brain.

In the Stacks will be launching and demonstrating the Librarian Brain book recommendation app at the American Library Association conference in San Francisco on June 25, 2015.

More information: http://www.librarianbrain.com/

Librarian brain on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/librarianbrain

In the stacks video book reviews: http://www.inthestacks.tv/

3M cloud library and collectionHQ partner to manage and improve e-book collections

CollectionHQ, a leading collection performance improvement solution and 3M, a global leader in library innovation, have announced their eagerly anticipated partnership which will offer 3M Cloud Library subscribers the ability to load their circulation data into collectionHQ’s e-book module.

The partnership means that collectionHQ public libraries with 3M Cloud Library collections will now be able to include their 3M e-book circulation data in the e-book tools available within collectionHQ, including comparative circulation across genres, summaries of popular authors and their top-circulating titles, circulation of digital copies relative to print copies and more.

To make the process simple, 3M has written a report specifically for collectionHQ libraries that can be quickly generated and sent via File Transfer Protocol to collectionHQ. collectionHQ will then add the information into the e-book module where it will be utilized in the numerous action plans.

collectionHQ’s General Manager – Vice President, Scott Crawford, commented: “In adding the ability for collectionHQ libraries to analyze their 3M ebook usage data, collectionHQ continues to demonstrate its commitment to being a vendor-neutral analytics platform, providing our customers with solutions that work with any ILS vendor and a growing number of ebook vendor platforms.”

Tom Mercer, Marketing Manager for the 3M Cloud Library, also shared his thoughts on the partnership: “Our customers have asked us for the ability to integrate their data with collectionHQ, and we’re pleased to offer this service. Libraries with 3M Cloud Library will now be able to load their collection usage data for the valuable analysis provided by collectionHQ.”

More about collectionHQ: http://www.collectionhq.com/

More about 3M cloud library: http://3M.com/cloud

OverDrive acquired by Rakuten Inc.

OverDrive, Inc., a leading e-book, audiobook and streaming video platform for libraries and schools, has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Rakuten Inc., one of the world’s largest Internet services companies. Insight Venture Partners has been the majority shareholder of OverDrive since 2010. OverDrive will operate as a subsidiary of Rakuten USA and will work closely with other Rakuten companies.

Rakuten USA, headquartered in Boston, is the US operating division of Rakuten. Rakuten companies provide a variety of consumer and business-focused services including e-reading (Kobo), e-commerce (http://Rakuten.com, formerly buy.com and Ebates), instant messaging (Viber), and others in the USA, Canada and around the world. Since 2012, Rakuten has been ranked among the world’s “Top 20 Most Innovative Companies” in Forbes magazine’s annual list.

As part of the Rakuten family, OverDrive will take advantage of the global reach, scale and technologies throughout Rakuten’s portfolio. Once the transaction closes, OverDrive will operate as a subsidiary of Rakuten USA, and continue to be led by CEO Steve Potash, with its headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. Kobo, headquartered in Toronto, Canada and OverDrive will work together to enhance their abilities to deliver world-class digital content and reading technology services. The acquisition is expected to close in April 2015.

“I am excited for OverDrive to be part of the dynamic group of market leading e-commerce and digital media companies that Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani has assembled,” said OverDrive CEO Steve Potash. “From OverDrive’s world headquarters in northeast Ohio to the 50 countries in which our library and school partners reside, we will continue to connect readers with books and institutions by supporting all users and all popular devices, while promoting open industry standard formats and best practices. We look forward to working closely with the Rakuten companies toward a mutually beneficial future.”

Rakuten has identified digital content as one of its three key pillars of global growth, alongside e-commerce and finance. The acquisition represents a strategically significant addition to Rakuten’s e-book focus, alongside e-reading company Kobo to its overall portfolio of digital content businesses. The acquisition follows a milestone year for Rakuten, which achieved record profits, entered new market segments and acquired several market leading companies, including Ebates and Viber. Rakuten is also an investor in Pinterest and ride sharing service Lyft.

OverDrive: http://www.overdrive.com

Rakuten, Inc.: http://global.rakuten.com/corp/

Kodak Alaris digitizes historic Susan B. Anthony letters at University of Rochester

In July and August of 2014, the University of Rochester (UR) purchased a large collection of correspondence between American activist and women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony and her close friend and colleague, Rachel Foster Avery. An Avery family member had uncovered the collection in his parents’ home and reached out to the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester, NY, to find the best home for the letters. The House referred him to UR, where a large number of letters between the two activists have already been catalogued and preserved. The University planned to digitize the new collection and when Kodak Alaris’ Bruce Holroyd learned of the project, he reached out to offer his assistance.

The timeline for the Anthony-Avery Papers began at UR in 1972 when the River Campus Libraries purchased hundreds of letters from Anthony to Avery at an auction.

An anonymous donor provided funds for UR to buy this original collection which had been in the Avery family’s possession until that time. The 2014 acquisition added about 100 more letters from Anthony to Avery, along with Avery family correspondence and photographs. The total collection now spans from the 1880s – around the time the two women began their friendship – to 1919, near the time of Avery’s death.

The University believes this is now the largest collection of letters written by Susan B. Anthony to any single person. As part of a teaching institution, the library provides access to primary source material in both classroom settings and through digital reproduction, encouraging students to transcribe manuscripts. Working with these resources allows students to develop strong research and analytical thinking skills.

Because the collection had been held by the family for so many years, it had never been available to researchers before. Carefully digitizing the entire collection was essential to ensure widespread access.

After testing a few workflows at the library, Bruce Holroyd, Kodak Alaris’ Worldwide Product and Integration Manager for Photo Capture Products, decided to use the Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System PS50 with the Kodak A3 Size Flatbed Accessory (12 inch × 18 inch). While he considered using even faster and higher resolution options, the flatbed allowed for greater flexibility in handling varying sizes, scanning each fragile item individually and capturing with a color correction bar. Because the letters varied greatly in brightness and whiteness, a precise color correction process needed to be completed in-house by UR photographers. The UR conservator worked directly with Kodak Alaris to agree on handling techniques for the century-old materials.

This workflow enabled scanning of 1,470 images, including approximately 50 photographs, in just over 20 hours. The final outputs were 600 dpi tagged image file format (TIFF) files.

To achieve the UR’s goal of fully reuniting this collection and making it available to students and researchers for the first time, Holroyd did not just scan the recent additions to the collection; he went back and scanned more than 90 per cent of the collection – all the way back to pieces purchased in 1972. The images are now being linked directly to an inventory of the library’s manuscript collection and others can be found in an online exhibit.

“Digitizing this collection means scholars will have access to what has never been publicly shared before”, said Jim Kuhn, Director of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, UR.

Anthony-Avery Papers: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=781

Susan B. Anthony: Celebrating “A heroic life” (online exhibit): http://bit.ly/sbaheroiclife

For more information, read the case study on this project at: http://kodakalaris.com/go/picturesavernews