Digital Library Center Blog | UF

The UF Digital Collections (UFDC) now have fully functioning online metadata editing!

It’s only been a few weeks since the UFDC self-submittal tool for  faculty to use to load materials to the Institutional Repository and for UFDC partners to use to load materials to their collections went live and now we’ve already added  full online metadata editing.  Mark Sullivan, the programmer who created the internal metadata editor originally as a desktop tool and who has now made the online tool with the same and even enhanced functionality over the desktop tool, released the online metadata editing earlier this week. We’ve been keeping the release quiet for a few days to check for bugs and problems internally before sharing the good news with everyone.We haven’t found any bugs and we’ve found a whole lot to love, so we’re pleased to be able to share the news of the online metadata editing tool with everyone!

See the screenshots below to see how it works (annotations coming soon), or UF faculty, UF researchers, and UFDC partners can sign up for  myUFDC accounts to begin loading and editing.

Online Metadata Editing (some of the preview views run across in my Firefox for the screenshots, but it looks great in use)

International Publishers and Librarians Agree to Enhance The Debate on Open Access

Geneva/The Hague 20 May 2009 - For immediate release

A joint statement released today by the International Publishers Association, the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers, and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) calls for a more rational, evidence based debate on open access. It encourages experimentation and piloting of new concepts and ideas, whilst acknowledging that the differences in the different academic disciplines and publishing traditions may lead to differentiated approaches and business models in support of authors.

The joint statement is intended to move the oftentimes heated and polarised debate about open access as a model for scholarly communication towards a more measured and nuanced discourse.

Says IPA President Herman P. Spruijt “The debate about open access is important and publishers welcome it. Publishing is never at a standstill and we should not fear change. Now that more experience has been gained with open access publishing and now that data is available on its success, the open access debate should be able to move away from emotional accusations and oversimplification. Our discussions with IFLA on this topic are always spirited, but have become more insightful and less polarised as we moved towards facts, evidence and differentiated arguments. There is a lesson here to be learned for the public debate on this issue.”

Says IFLA Working Group co-chairman Ingrid Parent: “IFLA is pleased to announce the joint declaration on open access with IPA. This statement shows that both our associations share the important objective of providing the broadest possible access to information. IFLA and IPA believe publishers and librarians have a lot to gain by supporting innovation, experimentation and pilot projects in developing open access to scholarly publications.”

Notes for Editors:
The full text of the statement is available here.

More about IPA:
The International Publishers Association (IPA) is an international industry federation representing all aspects of book and journal publishing. Established in 1896, IPA’s mission is to promote and protect publishing and to raise awareness for publishing as a force for economic, cultural and political development. Around the world IPA actively fights against censorship and promotes copyright, literacy and freedom to publish.

More about IFLA:
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. IFLA promotes the principles of freedom of access to information, ideas and works of imagination and freedom of expression. The delivery of high quality and equitable library and information services helps guarantee that access and improve the social, educational, cultural, democratic and economic well-being of those communities and organizations libraries serve. IFLA has 1600 Members in approximately 150 countries around the world.

It’s always wonderful to know that researchers are using the UF Digital Collections (UFDC) in their research, and it’s particularly nice to see how the UFDC can become part of and can facilitate research. Most recently, an image from UFDC appeared in Stowe: in Her Own Time, edited by Susan Belasco, which was recently published by the University of Iowa Press. The image from UFDC is from the September 1869 issue of Fun Magazine and it provides an illustration for page 183 of Stowe: in Her Own Time, in the section “Rose Terry Cooke, [Stowe and the Lady Byron Controversy, 1869-1870].

UFDC regularly receives inquiries requesting permissions to use images in research and popular publications. If you’re one of the authors or researchers already using UFDC, please let us know!

The Pennsylvania State University Libraries seeks a Digital Collections Curator to play a key role in the further development of our electronic content stewardship and publishing programs. These programs will be developed through a strategic and dynamic partnership between the Penn State Libraries and Information Technology Services (ITS). The Digital Collections Curator will lead the Libraries’ efforts to develop and plan user focused services that enable the effective creation, sharing, discovery, and use of digital content in support of research, teaching and learning. The Digital Collections Curator collaborates extensively with colleagues throughout the Libraries and ITS to achieve his or her objectives. The Curator will report to the Assistant Dean for Scholarly Communications who also oversees Digitization and Preservation, Scholarly Communications Services, and the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing. This is a tenure track appointment.

Responsibilities will include:

• Lead development of an inclusive, user-focused agenda for digital scholarly content stewardship.
• Investigate, recommend, and develop plans for user-focused and repository- based services to effectively manage the sustainable creation, collection and distribution of high-value digital scholarly content.
• Manage a broad set of existing digital collections and repository content, including: reformatted materials (images, books, newspapers, manuscripts, etc), publication related content (journals, conference proceedings, monographs, hybrid formats, post & pre-prints, working papers, etc), as well as the potential and emerging needs for data collections in a wide array of disciplines.
• Research and develop in-depth knowledge of new and emerging technologies, relevant national standards, and best practices, in order to assess and promote their integration into local operations as appropriate.
• Serve on standing working groups and committees related to web functionality and digital content creation and management.
• Communicate effectively with internal stakeholders in the areas of collections & public services, technical services, information technologies, and scholarly communications.
• Promote and report on Penn State’s activities through conference and workshop presentations, written publications
• Represent Penn State in relevant professional contexts and engage with national and consortial peers to identify and/or carry out mutually beneficial partnerships.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in library and/or information science, or advanced degree in relevant academic field.
• Should have 3 years work related to the creation, management, and provision of electronic data resources in a higher education environment.
• Should demonstrate strong organizational and/or process management abilities.
• Should demonstrate familiarity with developing trends in higher education information management, including, but not limited to: Cyberinfrastructure development, data curation and preservation, electronic publishing, digital scholarship and non-traditional scholarly communications
• Ability to lead and work collaboratively in an evolving and decentralized environment.
• Commitment to user focused design, development, and service provision.
• Communication skills that will support work with both technology experts and novices.
• Facility with common standards and practices in contemporary digital library management. Experience with XSLT, Perl or other scripting languages, and/or experience with major repository platforms is desirable.

Environment:

As an outcome of joint strategic planning, the Penn State Libraries and Information Technology Services (ITS) are collaborating in the development of this Content Stewardship program to meet extant and emerging digital content and asset management needs in areas such as digital library collections, scholarly communications, electronic record archiving, and e-science/e-research. Building on existing services and infrastructure, this program will put in place a cohesive and extensible suite of data access, management, and preservation services that will support the creation and distribution of digital scholarship. Additionally, the Penn State Press and the Libraries jointly operate the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing to explore and incubate publishing services that support the Penn State community.

Penn State, a land-grant institution, is a member of the CIC (Big 10) academic consortium. The Penn State University Libraries currently rank 8th in North America among private and public research universities, based on Association for Research Libraries Investment Index. The Libraries hold membership in ARL, OCLC, CRL and the Digital Library Federation. Collections exceed 6.5 million volumes, including more than 68,000 current serial subscriptions.

The University Libraries are located at University Park and 23 other campuses throughout Pennsylvania, with approximately 6,000 faculty and 42,000 students at University Park, and more than 82,000 students system wide. The University Park campus is set in the State College metropolitan area, a university town located in the heart of central Pennsylvania. State College offers a vibrant community with outstanding recreational facilities, a low crime rate, and excellent public schools. The campus is within a half-day drive to Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City and Pittsburgh. For more information, please visit http://www.libraries.psu.edu and http://www.cbicc.org/

Application Instructions:

Send a letter of application, resume, and the names and contact information of three references to Search Committee, The Pennsylvania State University, Box DCC-PSUA, 511 Paterno Library, University Park, PA 16802, via email to lhrsearches@psulias.psu.edu, or fax to 814-863-5592. Review of applications will begin March 2, 2009 and continue until the position is filled.

Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce.

The Research Library Leadership Fellows (RLLF) Program is an executive leadership program jointly designed and sponsored by ARL member libraries. The pilot program was sponsored by the University of California at Los Angeles; Columbia University; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Texas at Austin; and University of Washington. The second offering was sponsored by six ARL member libraries: University of California, Berkeley and the California Digital Library; Harvard University; University of Minnesota; North Carolina State University; Pennsylvania State University; and the University of Toronto. The 2009-2010 program is being jointly sponsored and designed by Brigham Young University, University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Houston, University of Michigan, University of Utah, and University of Western Ontario. The program offers an opportunity for development of future senior-level leaders in large research libraries.

Applications for the RLLF Program are due by March 6. Not only is this an amazing opportunity, but it’s one that includes a visit to the University of Florida Libraries, which is also wonderful and I’m excited to know that the Libraries have the opportunity to host the RLL Fellows. As one of the sponsors for the 2009-2010 RLLF Program, the University of Florida Libraries is hosting a meeting (”Strategic Issues Institute II”) in February 2010!

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a posting on Bolivia’s plans to open three universities teaching indigenous languages, including Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani.

MJ Hardman from the University of Florida has been researching Aymara, Jaqaru, and Kawki for decades. Her extensive research and teaching materials will help support this and other efforts to protect endangered languages, and many of her earlier materials are even in the process of being digitized for the Jaqi Collection within the University of Florida Digital Collections. It’s always wonderful to hear about how newly digitized materials have been or will be used!

With the new Florida College System developing where a handful of current community colleges will soon begin offering four year degrees, maybe changes for colleges and universities in the state of Florida. Florida needs the Florida College System to serve the public, but even in positive budget years major change is a great deal of work. Far too many factors are at play to know exactly what elements will have the greatest impact or what that impact will be on how the Florida College System will shape the future of Florida’s higher ed. Knowing the past, though, can offer insight into complicated situations and books like Robert B. Gentry’s A College Tells Its Story, an oral history of Florida Community College at Jacksonville could help light the way.

Comics studies and comics collections continue to grow, and now there’s more great news. Ohio State University’s Cartoon Research Library is acquiring the International Museum of Cartoon Art’s collection. Currently, OSU’s gallery space is small (or so this article says–I haven’t been lucky enough to see it yet, but it’s on my list of places to go as soon as I can) so OSU’s Cartoon Research Library is planning a larger gallery space to display more of their already excellent, and now growing, collection. This is great news for comics studies as a whole–it means more resources will be available in a centralized and organized place–and it means that the International Museum of Cartoon Art’s materials will again be available and in a place with lots of human, institutional, and printed friends. This is also great news for OSU and the International Museum of Cartoon Art because it will allow them to more easily continue their work in comic studies together.

In order to simplify our internal systems through a complete overhaul, we won’t be loading any items for the next week. A week from now, users will notice subtle, yet significant changes in terms of the overall design and in terms of speed. Most of the changes appear small, but they’re all part of the optimization process which will greatly enhance the infrastructure supporting the Digital Collections, stripping out additional code, enhancing system memory usage, and speeding and cleaning the whole process for human users and robots for search engine indexing.

While we’re completing this process, we won’t be loading any items, but as soon as we’re done, the many new items we’re processing will start to load and there are a lot. We’re already sitting at 1,797,881 so we will hit the 2 million mark rather soon. Don’t be dismayed while we’re holding for the next week. In the meantime, check out the many wonderful materials we have online, like the image above, which comes from the digital Archive of the Rossica Society, a world-wide society devoted to all aspects of Russian philately, from the pre-stamp days of Imperial Russia to current post-Soviet philately.

I just saw this announcement and it’s great news, so I’m sharing! Open Access has done so much and has so much to, so more support is always wonderful.

Open Access Directory: A wiki to organize information about the open access movement

Boston, April 30, 2008. Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project in order to collect OA-related lists for one-stop reference and searching.

The wiki will start operating with about half a dozen lists –for example, conferences devoted to open access, discussion forums devoted to open access, and journal “declarations of independence”– and add more over time.

The goal is to harness the knowledge and energy of the open access community itself to enlarge and correct the lists. A list on a wiki, revised continuously by its users, can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about open access.

The URL for the Open Access Directory is http://oad.simmons.edu

To contact us, email Athanasia Pontika, the Assistant Editor (OAD.contact@gmail.com), or the Editorial Board (OAD.editors@gmail.com).

The wiki is represented by an editorial board consisting of prominent figures in the open access movement. The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Simmons College hosts and provides technical support to the OAD. http://www.simmons.edu/gslis/