The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

The advance of computing from the ground to the Cloud

From the Information Today, Inc. website

A trend toward the abstraction of computing platforms that has been developing in the broader IT arena over the last few years is just beginning to make inroads into the library technology scene. Cloud computing offers libraries many interesting possibilities that may help reduce technology costs and increase capacity, reliability, and performance for some types of automation activities. Cloud computing has made strong inroads into other commercial sectors and is now beginning to find more traction in the library technology sector.


The Horizon Report, 2010 (Note: PDF)

From the New Media Consortium website

“The Horizon Report”, an annual guide to tech trends, has recently been released and is predicting a new technology king: open content. After failing to make last year’s “Technologies to Watch” list, the open-content movement now joins mobile computing as the two trends most likely to enter mainstream learning in the next year.
Also two to three years on the horizon is simple augmented reality, the idea of blending virtual data with what you see in the real world. The educational potential of this technology emerges, for example, when students visit a historic site. An augmented-reality application could overlay details about how the place looked at different eras in history, the report says.
Looking out to around 2015, the authors see gesture-based computing becoming mainstream in classrooms. The idea is that computers can recognise and interpret physical gestures, something you already see in devices like the Nintendo Wii. Medical students today learn how to use tools with simulations that involve gesture-based interfaces. The authors envision other fields like the visual arts also taking advantage of this technology.
Also on deck for the more distant future: visual data analysis.


Library on the Go: A Focus Group Study of the Mobile Web and the Academic Library (Note: PDF)

From the American Library Association website

This study explores student use of the mobile Web in general and expectations for an academic library’s mobile Web site in particular through focus groups with students at Kent State University. Participants expressed more interest in using their mobile Web device to interact with library resources and services than anticipated. Results showed an interest in using research databases, the library catalogue, and reference services on the mobile Web, as well as contacting and being contacted by the library using text messaging.


library/mobile: Tips on Designing and Developing Mobile Web Sites

From the code{4}lib Journal website

Mobile applications can support learning by making library resources more ubiquitous, by bringing new users to the library through increased accessibility to the resources libraries offer, and by creating a new way to enhance connections between patrons and libraries. This increased use of mobile phones provides an untapped resource for delivering library resources to patrons. The mobile Web is the next step for libraries in providing universal access to resources and information. This article will share Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries’ experience creating a mobile Web presence and will provide key design and development strategies for building mobile Web sites.


National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy. Achievement in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions and Numeracy (Note: PDF)

From the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs website

On 18th December 2009, Ministers with responsibility for schooling released the full set of results from 2009’s national literacy and numeracy tests (NAPLAN) that were conducted across Australia in May 2009. The NAPLAN involves all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 being assessed using common tests nationwide. Student performance can also be shown on a single scale that continues from Year 3 to Year 9, which will enable parents to see their child’s progress over time.
The report includes results for Indigenous students, students with a language background other than English and students living in metropolitan, country and remote areas. The comparative performance of girls and boys is also reported as well as a breakdown of student results by parental occupation and parental education. The NAPLAN Summary Report, released on 11 September 2009, had provided the overall results.


Report and Recommendations from the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable

From the Association of American Universities website

An expert panel of librarians, library scientists, publishers, and university academic leaders have called on federal agencies that fund research to develop and implement policies that ensure free public access to the results of the research they fund “as soon as possible after those results have been published in a peer-reviewed journal”.
To implement its core recommendation for public access, the Roundtable recommended the following:

• Agencies should work in full and open consultation with all stakeholders, as well as with OSTP, to develop their public access policies
• Agencies should establish specific embargo periods between publication and public access
• Policies should be guided by the need to foster interoperability. Every effort should be made to have the Version of Record as the version to which free access is provided
• Government agencies should extend the reach of their public access policies through voluntary collaborations with non-governmental stakeholders
• Policies should foster innovation in the research and educational use of scholarly publications
• Government public access policies should address the need to resolve the challenges of long-term digital preservation
• OSTP should establish a public access advisory committee to facilitate communication among government and non-government stakeholders
  

Conversations about the Commons

So, Flickr has stated that The Commons on Flickr is not bringing on any new members in 2010.

Since launching with the Library of Congress over two years ago, Flickr has been inundated with requests from photography-collecting organisations to join up; I know we considered ourselves lucky to be the 16th organisation on board.

The decision not to take on more partners has prompted people to ask: why the rampant interest in Flickr Commons, and not in Wikimedia Commons?

Mia Ridge wrote the question up first on her Open Objects blog, recording a little flurry of tweets on the topic. [Interestingly, these tweets showed one of the common, ongoing confusions about The Commons and Creative Commons licences; photographs added to The Commons on Flickr are not loaded up with a CC licence but with a ‘No known copyright restrictions’ statement; you can’t CC-licence material that’s out of copyright.]

Liam Wyatt, Vice President of Wikimedia Australia also wrote about this yesterday. Liam’s put significant effort into trying to bring the Wikipedia community and the GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) world together, including attending and presenting at last year’s National Digital Forum.

Liam gave a list of reasons why institutions interested in joining The Commons and those already in there) should consider Wikimedia Commons, including:

• increased disk space
• a project to improve the user interface for uploading content
• Wikimedia Commons’ ‘no ads, no corporations, no commercial motivation’ ethos
• contextualisation
  
• usage checking.

Seb Chan at the Powerhouse Museum has also added to the discussion, reiterating why the Powerhouse joined The Commons (as the second member, this was still a leap of faith) and the differences he sees between Flickr Commons and Wikimedia Commons, including:

• context
• user experience & community
• community management
• a sense of content control
• useful statistics.

Seb notes two things that really resonate with me as the National Library person responsible for our account on The Commons on Flickr. Firstly:

the overall community effect of Flickr and the deep engagement by a small but passionate group of Flickr users, has been the most positive result for us.

And secondly, the vastly important role former Flickr staffer George Oates played as the original passionate force behind creating The Commons. It’s fair to say the experience hasn’t been quite the same since she left, but the growth of a community around The Commons has been a joy to see and a pleasure to be a tiny part of.

Seb also notes that images added by the Powerhouse to Flickr Commons have seeped over to Wikimedia Commons. That’s certainly the experience we’ve had: for example, this image of the Government Tourist Courta thte 1925 New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition was added from Flickr to Wikimedia. But many of the images from the Library’s collection appearing in Wikimedia Commons have been added by Wikipedians directly from our digitised collections.

Our motivation for joining The Commons on Flickr was three-fold.

Firstly, we believe in the idea of putting our digital content where the audience is. We had tried this with some success with a ‘normal’ Flickr account, but it was immensely frustrating that we couldn’t release the images we uploaded for any kind of re-use using the CC licences available on Flickr.

So (secondly), the creation of The Commons with its ‘No known copyright restrictions’ was immensely appealing. It gave us a chance to test what would happen if we released content for any use whatsoever – in a place where people would notice, and with loads of context (both about the individual images, about the Library, and about the overall project) attached.

Finally, and frankly – The Commons was an awesome community of people and organisations that we wanted to be part of. The relationships developed here have spilled over into all sorts of other places, such as Shelley Bernstein’s visit to New Zealand last year (and the workshop she and Seb Chan are running at Webstock next month).

None of this is to say that we’re not interested in playing better with Wikipedia/media. It’s more about finding the time to take this on, to form relationships, and to learn how to work with another community.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Copyright Immunity for Search Engines in the UK?

From the Guardian website

A proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill exempts search engines from copyright infringement claims from third parties - Rupert Murdoch presumably included. Conservative Lord Lucas' amendment, “Protection of search engines from liability for copyright infringement”, would re-write the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.


OCRIS: Online Catalogue and Repository Interoperability Study: Final Report

From the E-prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) website

What is an Institutional Repository (IR) and what should be its role? Library Management Systems (LMSs) and their Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) have traditionally been used by HE institutions to provide information about the publications and other bibliographic output of the organisation. Although this role is well-established, the development of IRs potentially conflicts and overlaps with these functions.
Interoperability between systems is a key mechanism for improving this situation. This is underpinned by accurate metadata, the re-use of data and, where possible, open standards. Fragmentation must be avoided. Interoperability should be built into the workflows of relevant institutional systems, including administrative processes dependent on such metadata; all institutional stakeholders managing information systems should be involved in discussions about how this can be achieved.


Unheard Voices: Institutional Repository End-Users

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

This exploratory study investigates the perceptions and experiences of a group of institutional repository (IR) stakeholders seldom heard from: end-users. We interviewed twenty IR end-users recruited through five IRs to discover how they characterise the IR, how/why they use the IR, their credibility judgements in relation to the IR, and their willingness to return to and/or recommend the IR. Despite our small sample size, we were able to ascertain that IR end-users, although not yet loyal IR devotees, recognise their value and unique nature. Our findings also revealed several areas for improvement, such as lack of visibility and transparency.


The Condition of Libraries: 1999-2009

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

At every turn, news reports and research indicate fairly dramatic changes in U.S. library funding, services and staffing - most occurring in the last 18 months. According to a new report prepared by the American Library Association, libraries of all types are feeling the pinch of the economic downturn while managing sky-high use. Compiled from a broad range of available sources, the report presents U.S. economic trends (2009), and summarises trends in public, school and academic libraries across several library measures, including expenditures, staffing and services. The report also highlights trends in services provided to libraries by library cooperatives and consortia.


The Economic Downturn and Libraries: Survey findings

From the ebrary website

The aims of this report are to:

• examine the changes that libraries are making in the context of the economic downturn: where budgets and resources are being focused and why
• determine what practical and positive things are being done
• assist the community as a whole by increasing co-operation and transparency, sharing best (innovative) practice, and identifying priorities
  

Key findings of the survey include the following:

• The current financial year is a tough one for academic libraries, with 34.7% of institutions receiving a total library budget that is at least 5% smaller than the previous year (excluding inflation)
• The outlook in two years’ time is mixed, with 31.4% expecting their total library budget to be smaller than in the current financial year, 40.1% about the same, and 28.4% expecting an increase
• Overall, resource budgets are more vulnerable than personnel, services or infrastructure, with monographs and print journals being the most vulnerable to cutbacks
• When trimming their resources budget, libraries were least likely to cut e-books, followed by electronic-only serials and database subscriptions
• 52.5% of libraries view the acceleration of print to digital as the most effective option for balancing their budgets, with subscription as the most popular method
• Just under half of all libraries see the demonstration of value through usage and outcomes data as the smartest way to manage the cost of resources.
  

A Perfect Storm Brewing: Budget cuts threaten public library services at time of increased demand

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

More than three-quarters of all public libraries reported increased use of their public internet computers over the past year, and 71% reported increased wireless use, according to the survey conducted by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Center for Library and Information Innovation at the University of Maryland in Fall 2009. But just when people need their public libraries the most, funding for this valued resource is decreasing, as governments cut library budgets as a way of addressing state and local deficits. More than half of responding state library agencies (52% or 24 states) reported cuts in state funding for public libraries between FY2009 and FY2010; and 11 of these states reported cuts were greater than 11%, double what was reported last year.


Koninklijke Bibliotheek Strategic Plan, 2010-2013

From the Koninklijke Biblioteek website

The KB will work intensively in the coming four years to realise a digital library that will offer everyone access to all digital and printed publications that appear in the Netherlands. As the National Library of the Netherlands, the KB's task is also to foster the establishment of a new (digital) information infrastructure. Close cooperation between the KB, scientific and public libraries is essential to grant everyone in the Netherlands access to scientific information. In order to realise this vision the KB has established five strategic priorities.
Our strategic priorities, 2010-2013:
1. We offer everyone access to everything published in and about the Netherlands
2.We improve the national information infrastructure
3. We guarantee long-term storage of digital information
4. We maintain, present and strengthen our collections
5. We develop the KB into a challenging organisation and an attractive employer


Research Assessment and the Role of the Library: A companion report to A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process

From the OCLC website

In 2009, OCLC Research commissioned Key Perspectives in the UK to produce A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process. This report, a companion to the Key Perspectives review, provides a summary of the key findings of the study, with some context for the recent increase in library involvement in research assessment, and recommendations for research libraries.
The economic potential of highly valued research is now evident as national economies shift to a dependence on knowledge and knowledge-based skills. Publicly funded universities are being drawn into national economic agendas in ways that are new to them and that challenge many traditional academic values. Research libraries, supporting research with a growing range of new and a shrinking number of traditional services, are also being drawn in, though in widely varying ways.

Consultation on the New Zealand Web Harvest 2010

In October 2008 the National Library conducted its first whole of domain web harvest, collecting 4 terabytes of data from over 100 million URLs.

While the Library was pleased with the final outcome of the harvest, some readers will remember that the harvest didn’t necessarily go that smoothly but that we tried hard to make amends.

This year we’re working hard to improve our communications, and hope to work with site owners, administrators and other stakeholders to lessen the impact of our harvesting activity.

Our proposed timeline for the 2010 web harvest is:

• January – Consultation with stakeholder groups.
• February – Technical planning.
• March – Communications and notifications about the upcoming harvest.
• April – The harvest.

We are beginning by seeking feedback on options we’ve identified to address concerns raised during the 2008 harvest, particularly:

• Notification: The harvest was initiated without prior notification to affected parties.
• Robots policy: The harvester was configured to ignore the robots.txt convention unless the website owner contacted the Library to request that it be honoured.
• Location of the harvester: The harvest was operated by the Internet Archive from the United States, and some website owners are charged more for international traffic.

You can read the full announcement or download the Options Paper on the National Library website.

Feedback should be sent by email to web-harvest-2010 AT natlib.govt.nz by 9am Monday 8 February.

Questions can also be sent to that address. We can answer your question individually and privately, but we're also planning to publish a weekly update of answers to questions we've received on the National Library website & here.

If you're at the NZNOG 2010 conference later this month, Gordon is giving a short presentation about the plans and taking feedback.

We really encourage your comments on the options we've prepared, and it would be great if you could help us spread the word about this consultation.

The outcome of the consultation will be published on this page on the National Library website, and we'll republish the information here.

Gordon Paynter (Programme Manager Digitisation) and Courtney Johnston (Web Manager) are the New Zealand Web Harvest 2010 team. You can contact us via web-harvest-2010 AT natlib.govt.nz