New and Noteworthy

Citation

(1999), "New and Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 16 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.1999.23916fab.002

New and Noteworthy

New York Public Library, Princeton and ColumbiaTo Build Shared High-Tech, Off-Site Facility

The three institutions with the largest book collections in the greater New York metropolitan and surrounding area ­ the New York Public Library (13.3 million book-like materials), Princeton University (six million printed volumes), and Columbia University (seven million printed volumes) ­ have agreed to build and share a high-tech automated book storage facility to house millions of their infrequently used volumes.

The high-density facility, expected to be located at Princeton University's James Forrestal Campus, Plainsboro, New Jersey, will consist of 15 build-as-needed modules (approximately 225,000 gross square feet of construction), each capable of storing two million volumes.

Infrequently used collections of books and scholarly journals of all three institutions will be moved to remote storage and will be available within 24 hours of a reader request, thereby alleviating the overcrowding of libraries' shelves and significant storage problems faced by all three partner institutions, according to a joint press release.

The collaboration has the additional advantage, according to the release, of expanding each of the three institutions, as the volumes stored off-site will potentially be accessible to users of all three institutions. It is also expected to accelerate each institution's efforts to create digital libraries.

"This consortium marks a moment of triumph of collaboration and cooperation over competition. This group of marvelous libraries will produce high-quality access to more materials at a lower cost than any of the institutions could do separately," Columbia Provost Jonathan Cole said. "Great libraries in this era of technological revolutions will be determined more on the quality of the collections and the ease with which materials can be accessed and used by faculty, students, and the public than by the sheer number of journals and books they possess."

The initial phase of construction will include a joint processing facility and three modules, each costing $5 million to construct, to be shared by consortium members. Columbia anticipates the move of one million volumes by 2001, the first year of operation, and will add to the stored collection at a rate of 110,000 books and journal collections per year. The Public Library will deposit 1.3 million volumes and estimates to increase deposits to 150,000 volumes per year. In the case of duplicate copies, the consortium may be able to maximize space by reducing the copies saved. Costs of storage maintenance and operations will be divided according to each institution's use of the facility.

Upon operation, as books and journals are requested, a shuttle will depart with selections by 9 p.m. daily and will be delivered to each location by morning, delivering items within 24 hours of request, according to the release.

Books and journals slated for storage are selected by librarians at each institution primarily on the basis of infrequency of use and the availability of materials in an alternate format (such as video, microfilm, and online digital reproduction). The majority of materials will include older issues of journals, outdated monographs in fields such as business and finance, and volumes retained for specialized research. According to Columbia's Deputy University Librarian Carol Mandel, "The objective is that the collection of materials in off-site storage will have an overall circulation rate of less than 5 percent per year." However, "our process of selection includes extensive faculty involvement."

Because proper storage conditions are difficult to maintain when volumes are housed in public stacks, the off-site storage has the added benefit of consistent environmental conditions ­ the careful control of temperature, humidity, and filtering of particulates in the air ­ which in the long term improve the preservation of collections.

As the first institutional collaboration of its kind, the consortium has, according to the release, a greater vision of the future ­ to assume a collaborative position of leadership in the evolving age of information systems. Princeton and Columbia have agreed to move toward digitizing back issues of stored journals, 60 percent of all stored materials. The digital project would allow institution users to instantly search, cross-reference, download, and print out articles contained in the combined collections.

New York Public Library:Herb Scher, (212) 221-7676.Princeton University:Justin Harmon, (609) 258-5732.Columbia University:Lauren Marshall, (212) 854-6595.

Council on Library and Information ResourcesPublishes Report on Digitization of Beinecke's Boswell Papers

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has published Digitization for Scholarly Use: The Boswell Papers Project at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a report by Nicole Bouché, head of the Manuscript Unit at the Beinecke Library. The report provides detailed information about the digitization of manuscripts from the Boswell Collection, which contains the personal papers of James Boswell, the eighteenth-century Scottish lawyer, diarist, and associate of Dr Samuel Johnson.

Since 1950, when the Yale Boswell Editorial Project was launched, 27 volumes of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell have been published. While New Haven has been home to the editorial team responsible for work on the papers, the editors for the volumes are specialists drawn from universities and colleges throughout the USA and the UK who must travel to the Beinecke Library to transcribe and verify texts. In seeking to speed up the rate of publication, the library decided to create digital surrogates of the original manuscripts of a key work, Boswell's tour of Scotland in the company of Dr Johnson, and make the images available to the editors, according to a CLIR release.

The paper describes the debate that led to a digitization strategy, the process of scanning, the production of CDs for the editors, and the rewards to the library and scholar-editors. Digital image quality for the book manuscripts was so good, according to the release, that the volume editor determined he did not need to reinspect originals to verify text, saving many hours of work. Further, the release noted, the ability of scholars to recover mirror images from lost pages and enhance other difficult-to-read text from the digital images has wide potential application for other early manuscripts. However successful the Boswell digitization project, the Beinecke Library concluded that cost, preservation, and access issues argue against investment in large-scale manuscript scanning. Instead, the library has chosen to focus its digitization efforts on a broad-based program to scan its holdings of visual materials that will yield a greater return for the largest number of users.

The report is one of a series that the Council on Library and Information Resources is publishing in order to explore strategies for integrating digital technology into the management of library print and media collections. In this case, the digitization process was designed to serve a group of scholars already at work on a publication series rather than to give broad access to collections through the Internet. It discusses reasons why a special collections library might undertake a digital conversion program, and shares the staff's insights into how digital technology has found its place in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Cost for Digitization for Scholarly Use, including postage and handling, is $15 prepaid.

Council on Library and Information Resources: Publications Orders, 1755 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Ste. 500, Washington, DC 20036-4765; (202) 939-4750, fax (202) 939-4765, info@clir.org.

West GroupAdds NLRB Cases to KeyCite and Westlaw

West Group will add the full, official text of every labor case heard and decided upon by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to KeyCite and Westlaw, according to a recent West Group release.

KeyCite and Westlaw coverage of NLRB cases dates back to volume one, published in 1935, the year this independent federal agency was founded. NLRB decisions will be available online for the first time in their permanent, final version, and the newest decisions will continue to be available in slip form.

These decisions provide the essential foundation for research into critical areas of labor and employment law, particularly the National Labor Relations Act, which is the primary law governing relations between unions and employers in the private sector, according to the release. KeyCite is the only citator to offer full coverage of the official NLRB decisions.

West Group: c/o John Shaughnessy, 610 Opperman Dr., Eagan, MN 55123; (651) 687-4749, john.shaughnessy@westgroup.com, http://www.westgroup.com/.

Access InnovationsAnnounces Buyout of Access Russia

Executives of Access Innovations announced the sale on 15 March of Access Russia, a corporation specializing in scientific and technical information retrieval and document delivery from the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Access Russia was bought by Nathan Birman of Belmont, California, president of the corporation since 1995. Birman joined Access Russia as director of operations in 1993, after a 37-year career at VINITI, the All-Russian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information in Moscow.

Access Russia was established as a division of Access Innovations in 1992 by company president Marjorie M.K. Hlava. The division became a separate corporation in 1994.

According to Birman, "It is our desire to act as part of a client's internal organization. Besides responding quickly and accurately to their specific needs, we also look for what may be available from other sources that would be relevant and valuable." Access Russia clients will continue to benefit from the organization's adherence to Western document copyright policies. "We offer to pay the copyright compliance fees within Russia to the Russian authors and publishers," Birman said.

Access Russia specializes in online research of scientific and technical databases and delivery of hard-to-find journal literature, including gray literature published in Russia and in the republics of the FSU. The team performs research in the legal, environmental, and banking sectors, and also provides translation services. The parent company, Access Innovations, was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1978, and provides data conversion, abstracting and indexing, and Web development services to government and to the corporate, research, publishing, and academic communities.

Access Innovations: PO Box 8640, Albuquerque, NM 87198-8640; (505) 998-0800, fax (505) 998-3372.

Access Russia: (650) 591-0843, fax (650) 591-0927, arussia@arussia.com.

OCLCInstitute Takes Up Global Librarianship

The OCLC Institute guided 41 librarians from 18 countries in a highly interactive critical analysis of the foundations of global cooperative librarianship during a workshop in Dublin, Ohio, on March 18. The program followed the 17th Annual OCLC Research Library Directors Conference, held March 15-16.

Introducing the program, Erik Jul, associate director for the Institute, invited participants to consider cooperative librarianship on the largest scale, "a transcendent practice of knowledge management that enables individual access to a virtual global collection of selected knowledge resources."

In a plenary session, workshop participants identified key success factors ­ conditions that must exist in support of global cooperative librarianship ­ such as shared vision, leadership, effective communications, understanding of cultural diversity, and demonstrable benefits.

Breaking into small groups for facilitated discussions, participants identified barriers and solutions for selected key success factors before reporting their findings and recommendations to the plenary session. Jul encouraged participants to craft their recommended next steps as "specific, realistic, near-term actions that you could actually do."

As one next step, the OCLC Institute will publish a full workshop report for dissemination worldwide.

"This OCLC Institute workshop reaffirmed OCLC's belief that traditional boundaries are virtually meaningless today," said Phyllis Spies, vice-president, OCLC worldwide sales. "Cooperation and interdependence are prerequisites for success because of the global character of the challenges facing libraries today."

The OCLC Institute, a recently created educational division of OCLC, promotes the evolution of libraries through advanced education and knowledge exchange. The OCLC Institute conducts educational and consulting programs worldwide. Recent or planned international venues include Canada, Brazil, Iceland, Jamaica, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK.

Changes OCLC Europe Name

OCLC Europe has changed its name to OCLC Europe, the Middle East & Africa. The change was made to better reflect the library communities that OCLC serves in the region.

"Recent distributor agreements with SABINET Online in South Africa and Edutech Middle East in United Arab Emirates have resulted in many more libraries in these countries using OCLC services," said Janet Mitchell Lees, managing director, OCLC Europe, the Middle East & Africa. "These distributors and the libraries in their regions receive sales and user support from the OCLC office based in Birmingham [UK], and there is a need for the name of the office to reflect this."

The Birmingham office serves nearly 2,000 libraries either directly or through 13 distributors in countries throughout the named regions, according to an OCLC release.

OCLC: 6565 Frantz Rd, Dublin, OH 63017-3395; (614) 761-5002 (USA), +44 121 456 4656 (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), fax (614) 764-6096, nita_dean@oclc.org.

TimeProvides Online Access to Picture Collection

Time Inc. has made available nearly 400,000 images selected from the 22 million in its photo archive, The Picture Collection, for online searching, editing, pricing, and ordering. More images are being added at the rate of 300,000 a year, according to a recent company release.

The Time Inc. Picture Collection contains the works of such renowned photographers as Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl Mydans, We. Eugene Smith, and more than 650 photographers and agencies. The new Website includes images gathered over the last 65 years for such Time Inc. publications as Life, Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly, and Time Life Books.

The collection has recently expanded through the acquisition of London's Mansell Collection, a distinguished archive of photographs and illustrations covering world history through the end of World War II and the entire work of preeminent theatre and dance photographer Martha Swope.

Time: Time & Life Building, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020; (212) 522-8088, fax (212) 487-1086, http://www.thepicturecollection.com.