New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2011), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 28 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2011.23928bab.001

New & Noteworthy

Article Type: New & Noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 28, Issue 2

Calibre open source e-book library management application

Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has many useful features divided into the following main categories.

Library management

Calibre manages your e-book collection for you. It is designed around the concept of the logical book, i.e. a single entry in your library that may correspond to actual e-book files in several formats. Calibre can sort the books in your library by: title, author, date added, date published, size, rating, series, etc. In addition, it supports extra searchable metadata, such as tags and comments (book description, notes, reviews, etc.) calibre supports searching any and all of the fields mentioned above, and allows for constructing advanced search queries. Calibre users can export arbitrary subsets of their collections to a hard disk arranged in a fully customizable folder structure. Calibre will even go out onto the internet to find book metadata based on existing title/author or ISBN information. It can download various types of metadata and covers for your books, automatically. The metadata system is written using plugins so that different types of metadata sources can be supported in the future.

E-book conversion

Calibre supports all the major e-book formats, and can convert from a large number of input formats (CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT) to a large number of output formats (EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, SNB, TCR, TXT). The conversion engine has lots of powerful features. It can rescale all font sizes, ensuring the output e-book is readable no matter what font sizes the input document uses. It can automatically detect/create book structure, like chapters and table of contents. It can insert the book metadata into a “Book Jacket” at the start of the book.

Syncing to e-book reader devices

Calibre has a modular device driver design that makes adding support for different e-reader devices easy. At the moment, it has support for a large number of devices, including the SONY PRS line, Barnes & Noble Nook line, Cybook Gen 3/Opus, Amazon Kindle line, Entourage Edge, SpringDesign Alex, Kobo Reader, various Android phones, the iPhone/iPad, and many others. Syncing supports updating metadata on the device from metadata in the library and creation of collections on the device based on the tags defined in the library. If a book has more than one format available, calibre automatically chooses the best format when uploading to the device. If none of the formats is suitable, calibre will automatically convert the e-book to a format suitable for the device before sending it.

Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form

Calibre can automatically fetch news from web sites or RSS feeds, format the news into an e-book and upload to a connected device. The e-books include the full versions of the articles, not just the summaries. Examples of supported news sites include: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Time, Newsweek, The Guardian, ESPN and many, many more. Calibre has over 300 news sources and the news system is plugin based, allowing users to easily create and contribute new sources to calibre. As a result the collection of news sources keeps on growing!

Comprehensive e-book viewer

Calibre has a built-in e-book viewer that can display all the major e-book formats. It has full support for table of contents, bookmarks, CSS, a reference mode, printing, searching, copying, customizing the rendering via a user style sheet, embedded fonts, etc.

Content server for online access to your book collection

Calibre has a built-in web server that allows you to access your e-book collection using a simple browser from any computer anywhere in the world. It can also email your books and downloaded news to you automatically. It has support for mobile devices, so you can browse your collection and download books from your smartphone, Kindle, etc.

Calibre is open source, which means any one can download and hack on it. Instructions for setting up a development environment are in the user manual (http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/).

Calibre: http://calibre-ebook.com/

Generations and their gadgets: report from pew internet project

According to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life project, more than 90 per cent of Americans now own a cell phone, computer, MP3 player, game console, e-book reader or tablet computer. Many devices have become popular across generations, with a majority now owning cell phones, laptops and desktop computers. Younger adults are leading the way in increased mobility, preferring laptops to desktops and using their cell phones for a variety of functions, including internet, e-mail, music, games, and video:

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  Cell phones are by far the most popular device among American adults. Some 85 per cent of adults own cell phones, and 90 per cent of all adults – including 62 per cent of those age 75 and older – live in a household with at least one working cell phone.

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  Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, and millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop: 70 per cent own a laptop, compared with 57 per cent who own a desktop.

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  Almost half of all adults own an iPod or other mp3 player, but these are still most popular with millennials – 74 per cent of adults ages 18-34 own an mp3 player, compared with only 56 per cent of the next oldest generation, Gen X (ages 35-46).

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  Game consoles are uniformly popular with all adults ages 18-46, 63 per cent of whom own these devices.

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  Overall, 5 per cent of adults own an e-book reader, and 4 per cent own an iPad or other tablet computer.

Additionally, about one in 11 (9 per cent) adults do not own any of the devices we asked about, including 43 per cent of adults age 75 and older.

The youngest generation does not lead in all the gadgets we asked about. Gen X is also very similar to millennials in ownership of certain devices, such as game consoles, and members of Gen X are also more likely than millennials to own a desktop computer.

This report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the internet. The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between August 9 and September 13, 2010, among a sample of 3,001 adults, age 18 and older. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish, on landlines and cell phones. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95 per cent confidence that the error attributable to sampling is ±2.5 per cent points. For results based internet users (n=2,065), the margin of sampling error is ±2.9 per cent points.

Read the full report at: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Generations-and-gadgets.aspx

Cloud-sourcing research collections: report from OCLC research

A new report, “Cloud-sourcing research collections: managing print in the mass-digitized library environment,” presents findings from a year-long study designed and executed by OCLC Research, the HathiTrust, New York University’s Elmer Bobst Library, and the Research Collections Access and Preservation consortium, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitized books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favor of negotiated access to the digitized corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory.

Some of the findings from the project that are detailed in the report include:

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  There is sufficient material in the mass-digitized library collection managed by the HathiTrust to duplicate a sizeable (and growing) portion of virtually any academic library in the USA, and there is adequate duplication between the shared digital repository and large-scale print storage facilities to enable a great number of academic libraries to reconsider their local print management operations.

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  The combination of a relatively small number of potential shared print providers, including the US Library of Congress, was sufficient to achieve more than 70 per cent coverage of the digitized book collection, suggesting that shared service may not require a very large network of providers.

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  Substantial library space savings and cost avoidance could be achieved if academic institutions outsourced management of redundant low-use inventory to shared service providers.

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  Academic library directors can have a positive and profound impact on the future of academic print collections by adopting and implementing a deliberate strategy to build and sustain regional print service centers that can reduce the total cost of library preservation and access.

Read the report at: www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2011/2011-01.pdf

More about the project: www.oclc.org/research/activities/sharedcollections/

Mellon Foundation Awards Grant for Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST)

Researchers can now be assured that the scholarly record will be preserved for future generations through a coordinated system of trusted print archives held at libraries throughout the western USA.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the University of California Libraries a three-year grant to support implementation of the WEST, a distributed shared print repository program for retrospective journal archives. A total of 20 libraries and library consortia participated in the planning phase, including libraries from the University of California system, Stanford University, Arizona State University, the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, other members of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, the Greater Western Library Alliance and the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium. More than 60 additional academic libraries have expressed an intention to join the project as it moves into implementation.

Under the WEST program, participating libraries will consolidate print journal backfiles at major library storage facilities and at selected campus locations. Planning partners developed an operating and business model including:

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  selection priorities based on risk-management principles;

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  standards for validation, holdings disclosure, access and retention; and

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  a governance model and sustainable financial plan to share costs.

During the initial three-year project (Phase 1), selected WEST “Archive Builders” will actively process approximately 150,000 volumes from 8,000 journal runs (current and previous titles), to allow recovery of the space occupied by potentially millions of corresponding volumes now held in duplicate by partner libraries. WEST partner libraries agree to maintain WEST collections for a period of 25 years (through 2035) and to review the agreement to continue to build the archives every five years.

An executive committee composed of representatives from member institutions will oversee the operation and development of WEST. The California Digital Library (CDL) at the University of California will serve as administrative host for the WEST program. Primary project staff includes Lizanne Payne (WEST Project Manager) and Emily Stambaugh (CDL shared print manager and assistant WEST project manager).

The outcome of the WEST project will be a robust framework developed and adopted by a variety of partners in the region to support a long term, distributed print repository. The program will make the archives and retention commitments visible at the national/international level.

More information: www.cdlib.org/services/collections/sharedprint/westinitiatives.html

Archivematica Open Archival Information System

Archivematica version 0.7 was released on February 18, 2011. Archivematica provides an integrated suite of free and open-source tools that allows users to process digital objects from ingest to access in compliance with the ISO-OAIS functional model and other digital preservation standards and best practices. All of the Archivematica code and documentation is released under GPL and Creative Commons open-source licenses.

Using the latest in virtualization technology, each release of the Archivematica system packages a customized Xubuntu environment as a virtual appliance, making it possible to run on top of any consumer-grade hardware and operating system, or even directly from a USB key. This means the entire suite of digital preservation tools is now available from one simple installation. Archivematica can also be installed directly on dedicated hardware via its own Ubuntu repository. Its client/server processing architecture allows it to be deployed in multi-node, distributed processing configurations to support large-scale, resource-intensive production environments.

Archivematica maintains the original format of all ingested files to support migration and emulation strategies. However, the primary preservation strategy is to normalize files to preservation and access formats upon ingest. Archivematica groups file formats into media type preservation plan (e.g. text, audio, video, raster image, vector image, etc.). Archivematica’s preservation formats must all be open standards. Additionally, the choice of formats is based on community best practices, availability of free and open-source normalization tools, and an analysis of the significant characteristics for each media type. The choice of access formats is based largely on the ubiquity of web-based viewers for the file format.

By the time of the 0.8-β release (anticipated release date: December 2011), Archivematica media-type preservation plans will be moved to a structured, online format policy registry that brings together format identification information with significant characteristic analysis, risk assessments and normalization tool information to arrive at default preservation format and access format policies for Archivematica. The goal is to make this registry interoperable with PRONOM, the Planets Core Registry and/or the forthcoming Universal Digital Format Registry. Archivematica installations will use the registry to update their local, default policies and notify users if there has been a change in the risk status or migration options for these formats, allowing them to trigger a migration process using the available normalization tools. Users are free to determine their own preservation policies, whether based on alternate institutional policies or developed through the use of a formal preservation policy tool like Plato. The system is configured to make it easy to add new normalization tools and customize the media-type preservation plans.

The goal of the Archivematica project is to give archivists and librarians with limited technical and financial capacity the tools, methodology and confidence to begin preserving digital information today. The project has conducted a thorough OAIS use case and process analysis to synthesize the specific, concrete steps that must be carried out to comply with the OAIS functional model from Ingest to Access. Wherever possible, these steps are assigned to software tools within the Archivematica system. If it is not possible to automate these steps in the current system iteration, they are incorporated and documented into a manual procedure to be carried out by the end-user. This ensures that the entire set of preservation requirements is being carried out, even in the early, pre 1.0 system releases. In short, the system is conceptualized as an integrated whole of technology, people and procedures, not just a set of software tools.

All of the software, documentation and development infrastructure are available free of charge and released under GPL and Creative Commons licenses to give users the freedom to study, adapt and re-distribute these resources as best suits them. Rather than spend precious funding on proprietary software licenses that restrict these freedoms, the Archivematica project encourages memory institutions tackling the challenges of digital preservation to pool their financial and technical resources in projects like Archivematica to maximize their long-term investments for the benefit of their colleagues, users and professional community as a whole.

Archivematica: http://archivematica.org/

Site update for Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI)

Early in 2011, the FADGI released an update and redesign of the web site. In addition to improved navigation throughout, it is now easier to access the major document outlining best practices, the “Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials.” There are currently 15 US federal agencies actively involved in this initiative; the most recent to join was the National Park Service.

FADGI is divided into two working groups, “Still Image” and “Audio Visual,” with documentation, presentations, and publications relevant to each. In addition, there is a comprehensive glossary of over 200 digitization-related terms available on the site.

Since the site’s launching in 2007, there have been several sub-groups formed to focus on key areas such as metadata issues, archival color, recorded sound and moving image. The site will be updated on a regular basis to reflect new documents and activity.

FADGI home: www.digitizationguidelines.gov/

“Technical Guidelines”: www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/digitize-technical.html

Comprehensive glossary: www.digitizationguidelines.gov/glossary.php

Agreement signed for digitization out of print french books of the twentieth century

Frédéric Mitterrand, Ministry for Culture and Communication, René Ricol, Commissioner-General of investment attached to the Prime Minister, Bruno Racine, President of the National Library of France, Antoine Gallimard, President of the French Publishers Association (Syndicat national de l’Edition), and Jean-Claude Bologne, President of the French Society of Literary Authors (Société des Gens de Lettres) have signed a framework agreement reflecting the will to give new life, through digitization, to copyrighted out of print books of the twentieth century. The aim is to digitize and make available for sale online, a corpus of 500,000 books within five years.

This agreement, fruit of the past year’s reflection and cooperation, enables the project to be taken one step further with the launching of a detailed feasibility study within the coming months. It stresses in particular the fact that books digitized through the “Investments for the future” program will be operated under a collective management arrangement guaranteeing publishers and authors, equally, a fair remuneration in line with intellectual property rights. As a result, copyright law will be modified.

Digitization will rely on the legal deposit collections stored at the National Library of France, which will be entitled to possess a digital copy for its own use. The web site Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr/) will display the complete enriched bibliographical records, provide access to excerpts, and redirect users towards online retailers in order to buy a digital copy.

The state financial support will be provided within the framework of the program “Development of the digital economy.” This €4.5 billion program is one of the main components of the €35 billion mobilized by the government for “Investments for the future.” This includes €750 million earmarked for the development of new ways of promoting and digitizing cultural, educational or scientific content.

Full press release at: http://investissement-avenir.gouvernement.fr/content/actualites.html

University of Pittsburgh Library System offers free e-journal publishing service

The University of Pittsburgh’s University Library System (ULS) is now offering free e-journal publishing services to help academic journals make their content available to a global audience while eliminating the cost of print production.

The E-journal Publishing Program – part of ULS’s D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, which partners with the University of Pittsburgh Press:

[…] is in keeping with the ULS’s commitment to free and immediate access to scholarly information and its mission to support researchers in the production and sharing of knowledge in a rapidly changing publishing industry (Rush G. Miller, Hillman University Librarian and director of the ULS). The ULS trains a journal’s editorial staff in the use of Open Journal Systems (OJS) software, which channels the flow of scholarly content from initial author submissions through peer review and final online publication and indexing. OJS provides the tools necessary for the layout, design, copy editing, proofreading, and archiving of journal articles. The platform provides a vast set of reading tools to extend the use of scholarly content through RSS feeds and postings to Facebook and Twitter. E-journal articles can be discovered via blogs, databases, search engines, library collections, and other means.

“For more than a decade, the ULS has been at the forefront of applying emerging digital technologies to the publishing and distribution of scholarly content,” said Miller:

In addition to publishing e-journals, we provide platforms to mount on the internet conference proceedings, pre- and post-prints of journal articles, and audio and video and other born-digital content, as well as the University’s theses and dissertations and materials from our collections. The ULS currently publishes the following e-journals: Bolivian Studies Journal; Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture; Ethnology: An International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology; Études Ricœuriennes/Ricœur Studies; International Journal of Telerehabilitation; Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy; and Revista Iberoamericana.

Coming in the next few months are Timely Interventions: A Translational Journal of Public Policy and Debate; University of Pittsburgh Law Review; Journal of Law and Commerce; Pittsburgh Tax Review; Journal of Technology, Law and Policy; Pittsburgh Journal of Environmental and Public Health Law; Motivational Interviewing: Training, Research, Implementation Practice; and Pitt Political Review.

More information about the e-journal publishing program: www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals/

New NCIP implementer registry available

National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has announced the availability of the NCIP Implementer Registry, a web site that allows vendors to share information about their implementations of the NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (ANSI/NISO Z39.83, Parts 1 and 2). NCIP addresses the need for interoperability among disparate circulation, interlibrary loan, and related applications by standardizing the exchange of messages between and among computer-based applications.

At this time, the following vendors have indicated their use of NCIP by signing up for the registry: Auto-graphics, Ex Libris, Innovative Interfaces, Inc., and Rapid Radio. The registry is linked from the NCIP web site and from the NCIP maintenance agency site.

The registry allows vendors to enter information about their implementations of version 1 of the standard, now deprecated but still widely used, and version 2 of the standard, the current version of the standard adopted in 2008. Vendors may participate in the standard’s implementation as an initiator of messages, a responder to messages, or both.

By making this information publicly available, libraries will be able to see which vendors currently support NCIP, which version(s) of the standard are supported, and which messages in the standard are supported. In 2010 the NCIP Standing Committee defined two sets of core messages for accomplishing essential tasks: the Resource Sharing and the Self-Service. All required messages must be enabled for a vendor to claim support for a core message set. Depending on the role the vendor is playing in the transaction, the vendor must either support the messages as an initiator or responder.

NCIP Standing Committee member Susan Campbell (Research and Development Consultant, College Center for Library Automation), who, with Mary Jackson (Product Manager, Resource Sharing, Auto-graphics) developed the Drupal-based registry for the committee, noted:

The new registry builds on years of work on NCIP. It is a key next step to help libraries better understand which vendors provide NCIP, which NCIP messages are supported, and how those might in turn support what the library needs in order to more efficiently provide resource sharing or self-service services to their users. I am pleased to make this registry available and look forward to seeing its growth.

Rob Walsh, President of EnvisionWare, the Maintenance Agency for NCIP, as well as co-chair for NISO’s Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee, which provides oversight to the NCIP Standing Committee, added:

This is a wonderful step forward for NCIP. The registry is just one of the tools that the Standing Committee has been working on to support NCIP implementers and users. By making this information more broadly available, the community will be able to make better informed decisions to help meet their customers’ and patrons’ needs. The NCIP Standing Committee is working to develop additional user tools. For more information, visit the NCIP web site at: www.niso.org/workrooms/ncip or the NCIP maintenance agency home at: www.ncip.info.

CrossRef reaches 1,000 member milestone

CrossRef, the not-for-profit association of scholarly publishers that provides collaborative business and infrastructure services, has signed its 1000th voting member, St Plum-Blossom Press of Melbourne, Australia. Voting members represent over 3,200 publishers and societies that participate in CrossRef’s digital object identifier (DOI) reference linking system.

“CrossRef’s membership is increasingly diverse,” notes CrossRef Executive Director Edward Pentz.

Well over half of our participating publishers are not-for-profit. Most of our membership growth comes from small publishers all over the globe. In fact, our members now come from more than 50 countries. They employ all business models, from subscription access, to open access, to hybrid models. CrossRef is working to expand its network of sponsoring organizations around the world as a way of improving services to smaller international publishers. A recent agreement with the Organization of Open Access Publishers, and long-standing arrangements with respected organizations in the developing world and in Asia allow publishers served by these organizations to take advantage of CrossRef services at a lower cost and with local support. CrossRef is working to expand such relationships in other regions to provide better service.

Participation in CrossRef requires that publishers agree to assign CrossRef DOIs, which are persistent links, to their current journal content. Members also agree to incorporate outbound links in the references of their journal content to content from other members. CrossRef provides both the business and technological infrastructure to make reference linking possible among scholarly publishers, to the benefit of the researcher.

Many members go far beyond the minimum requirement of linking current journals by assigning CrossRef DOIs to and creating reference links from other types of content, such as book titles and chapters, conference proceedings, and components like tables, images, and supplementary data.

CrossRef’s services extend beyond reference linking, the service created by the organization in 1999. CrossRef also provides content discovery through an OpenURL interface to allow libraries to look up CrossRef DOIs and bibliographic metadata at no charge. It aids discovery and analysis of scholarly content by licensing bibliographic metadata to secondary publishers and providers of research tools through CrossRef Metadata Services. CrossRef also provides cited-by linking, showing readers what subsequently published content has cited a particular document.

CrossRef’s newest service, CrossCheck, allows publishers to screen submissions for duplication against other scholarly and web content. The plagiarism screening tool, powered by iThenticate, has prevented numerous members from inadvertently publishing plagiarized content. CrossRef will soon launch the CrossMark service, which will help researchers identify the provenance of scholarly literature on the web and to easily determine if documents have been updated since published.

CrossRef: www.crossref.org

Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) to be open access in 2011

The NISO is pleased to announce that its ISQ magazine will be moving to open access in 2011. The full issue as well as each of the individual articles will be available in PDF for free download to the public.

“ISQ has undergone a significant transformation over the past three years as it moved from a newsletter to a full-color magazine,” states Cynthia Hodgson, NISO Managing Editor:

With the support of a new ISQ Editorial Board and guest content editors, the contributed content has expanded significantly. Our goal with ISQ is to educate and inform our readers on standards, present practical and replicable implementations of standards-based technologies and best practices, and identify areas where standards could help to solve problems.

“ISQ provides a unique perspective with its overlapping interests to the library, publisher, and information systems and services audience,” explains Todd Carpenter, NISO Managing Director and Publisher of ISQ:

NISO’s Board of Directors strongly believes that providing the information in ISQ via open access will enhance the visibility and reach of the work of our community. We also intend to migrate the archives to open access and convert much of the backfile to electronic format. The print version of ISQ will still be available by subscription or free to NISO members who opt-in to receive it in print. This approach, combined with the open access of the electronic version, will reduce the environmental impact and costs of print publishing while increasing the accessibility of the magazine to everyone in the NISO community and in related standards and technology arenas.

ISQ: www.niso.org/publications/isq/

Digital public library of America planning initiative underway

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University announced in December 2010 that it will host a research and planning initiative for a “Digital Public Library of America.” With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Berkman will convene a large and diverse group of stakeholders in a planning program to define the scope, architecture, costs, and administration for a proposed Digital Public Library of America:

We’re grateful to Berkman for coordinating this historic effort to create a Digital Public Library of America and to fulfill the vision of an open, distributed network of comprehensive online resources that draws on the nation’s living heritage to educate, inform and empower everyone in this and future generations (Doron Weber, Vice President at the Sloan Foundation).

The Berkman Center’s impressive depth of research on the internet makes it an ideal leader for the planning program. We hope to emerge with a concrete workplan and a governance structure that represents the consensus of the country’s libraries, universities, archives and museums for moving forward together with a shared vision.

Planning activities will be guided by a Steering Committee of library and foundation leaders, which promises to announce a full slate of activities in early 2011. The Committee plans to bring together representatives from the educational community, public and research libraries, cultural organizations, state and local government, publishers, authors, and private industry in a series of meetings and workshops to examine strategies for improving public access to comprehensive online resources.

One meeting is already in the works: David Ferriero, Archivist of the USA, has offered to host a plenary meeting that will assemble stakeholders in early summer 2011. Ferriero said:

It is exciting to contemplate a future where the cultural heritage of our country is available at your fingertips. It is, therefore, important to bring together all interested parties to create a vision of that future.

Three major federal cultural institutions – Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution – are already discussing a collaborative effort to build and make accessible a digital collection of materials from their collections.

In addition to the plenary meeting, an intensive slate of workshops will be held, running in five parallel tracks – legal, content, technical, financial, and governance – to build consensus for next steps in each area.

Steering Committee members include: Paul Courant, Harold T. Shapiro Professor of Public Policy and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan; Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library; Charles Henry, President of the Council on Library and Information Resources; Brewster Kahle, Founder of the Internet Archive; Michael A. Keller, Ida M. Green University Librarian, Director of Academic Information Resources at Stanford University; Carl Malamud, President, Public.Resource.Org; Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress; Maura Marx, Berkman Center Fellow and Executive Director, Knowledge Commons; Jerome McGann, John Stewart Bryan University Professor at the University of Virginia; Donald Waters, Program Officer for Scholarly Communications and Information Technology at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and Doron Weber, Vice President, Programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. John Palfrey, Faculty Co-director at the Berkman Center, Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean of Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, will lead the Steering Committee.

Palfrey commented:

There is great promise in the digital future for libraries, but we need to work in coordinated fashion across many institutions to shape it in a way that is in the public interest. We are excited about creating a big tent in which many leaders can work together to create the design for a Digital Public Library of America.

Digital Public Library of America home: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/dpla

Digital Public Library of America planning initiative wiki: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/dpla/