New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2012), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 29 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2012.23929caa.002

New & Noteworthy

Article Type: New & Noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 29, Issue 3

Crowd sourcing for innovative ideas: JISC elevator

JISC elevator is a platform for crowd sourcing ideas that will use technology to improve education and research in UK higher and further education institutions. The purpose of JISC elevator is to allow JISC to fund innovative projects that will be valuable to higher and further education.

Once an idea has been submitted to the site, people working and studying in UK higher and further education (with an.ac.uk e-mail) will be able to vote if they like the idea. When an idea receives the target number of votes then we will decide whether or not to fund the idea. This crowd sourcing mechanism will allow us to respond to the demands and needs of those working and studying in higher and further education.

The combination of crowd sourcing and small agile projects allows ideas to be focused tightly on solving a particular problem that is experienced by many people at a range of higher and further education institutions. It also enables experimentation with new ideas and technology that appeal to a large group of people while keeping costs and risks low.

Crowdfunding is an increasingly common model being explored by government, philanthropic, charitable and commercial organisations. Platforms such as Bloom and Kickstarter are good examples of how crowdfunding can be a successful and useful approach. JISC is keen to experiment with this approach to enable it to provide a more reactive and end-user led model of funding to complement tried and tested approaches to exploring new technologies.

A pilot of the JISC elevator began in February 2012, with ideas being solicited until the end of March. For the pilot a total of £30,000 has been made available to fund ideas submitted to the site. There is up to £10,000 available for each project so at least three projects are expected to be funded.

Any ideas that receive the target number of votes by the end of March will be considered for funding by JISC. All projects considered for funding will receive full feedback on the evaluation process. Successful projects will be notified in April and will be expected to complete by the end of July 2012.

JISC elevator has a broad scope. The site is open to ideas in any area that falls under the JISC remit. The JISC remit can be loosely described as the use of technology to improve research, education and associated processes in higher and further education. Although the site is open to a broad range of ideas, there are some areas that JISC are particularly interested in at the moment; for example:

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  Innovating with ebooks. Using ebooks in innovative ways to support research and education.

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  Gamification. Using the principles of gaming to improve the processes that enable or support research and education.

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  Innovative human-computer interaction hardware. Use of human-computer interaction hardware such as the Kinect in innovative ways to support research and education.

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  Exploring the physical and virtual. Understanding the interaction and navigation between the virtual and physical environments that students and researchers engage in. This includes the internet of things, which has a clear relationship to libraries, and the almost ubiquitous presence of RFID, etc.

If you have any questions about JISC elevator, or are interested in getting involved, e-mail Andrew McGregor (a.mcgregor@jisc.ac.uk).

JISC elevator: http://elevator.jisc.ac.uk/

Libraries lead effort to train future scientists in managing, curating their data

In partnership with librarians at the University of Minnesota, the University of Oregon and Cornell University, Purdue University Libraries received nearly $250,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to develop training programs for the next generation of scientists to enable them to find, organize, use and share data efficiently and effectively.

The program is intended for graduate students in engineering and science disciplines who are working their way toward careers as research scientists, said Jake Carlson, a Purdue associate professor of library science who is leading the collaboration. “Technology has made it easier to share research data beyond the lab in which it was originally created”, Carlson said:

The problem right now is that in many cases data are not being administered in ways that enable them to be easily discovered, understood or repurposed for use by other researchers.

This training will be vital to scientists as they look to secure research funding. For example, in 2007 the National Science Foundation issued a report on the need to build public collections of research data and since 2011 has required scientists to include data management plans in their grant applications.

The data information literacy effort will be carried out over a two-year period by five project teams. Two of the teams, consisting of a data librarian, a subject librarian and a disciplinary faculty researcher, are based at Purdue, with one team each at the other institutions.

The teams are constructed to represent a variety of subject areas, from electrical and computer engineering to landscape architecture, so commonalities and differences in data curation needs across disciplines can be explored. Each team will conduct an assessment of data needs of their discipline, including interviewing and observing researchers. The teams will then develop and implement targeted instruction and assess the impact of that instruction in developing the data information literacy skills of graduate students.

The results of this first-ever effort at articulating and addressing data information literacy skills will help future scientists and engineers contribute to, and take full advantage of, the potentials that cyberinfrastructure and information technologies are making available.

“In many disciplines, the standards and practices needed for managing and sharing data are still developing or are not well understood, and, therefore, are not applied,” Carlson said:

This collaboration between librarians and faculty will identify the educational needs of future scientists in organizing, describing, disseminating and preserving their data and teach them these skills in ways that can be applied in their day-to-day research activities.

Data information literacy project home: http://wiki.lib.purdue.edu/display/ste

Music Discovery Requirements document final draft in progress

A group comprised of members of Music Library Association’s (MLA) Emerging Technologies committee and others is creating a “Music Discovery Requirements” document which outlines the specialized needs of music materials for discovery interfaces of all kinds, including OPACs, next-gen tools, web-scale, etc.

The document explores discovery needs specific to and especially important for music materials, particularly scores and recordings. Music materials pose unique needs that must be considered for successful discovery. For example, most books are published only once; for musical works, however, multiple versions (for example, score, parts, and recordings of different performances) are the norm. These different versions also often have different titles (different languages or grammatical formulations), making title transcribed from items much less useful for finding and identifying musical works. Music materials also possess unique attributes not found in books, such as instruments/voices used to perform the music. Some of the unique needs posed by music materials can be solved simply by ensuring that needed fields are appropriately displayed and indexed in discovery interfaces. Other problems are more difficult to solve. This document discusses the issues outlined in the table of contents and when possible gives concrete recommendations for display and indexing. Three appendixes compile technical details of the specific indexing recommendations in spreadsheets.

This document employs technical language, and the target audience is those creating or guiding the creation of discovery interfaces that will include music materials. Developers of future recording and encoding standards will also benefit from reading this document and creating solutions to facilitate better discovery interfaces. Given that most libraries will be dealing with large bodies of legacy data recorded according to AACR2 and encoded in MARC, particular attention is paid to MARC data and to AACR2, as well as issues related to RDA. The document identifies areas where deficient data creates particular problems for discovery. The document also includes indexing recommendations for non-MARC metadata standards. As data recording and encoding changes, specific recommendations in this document will need revision. Theoretical principles may evolve but should need fewer revisions.

An initial draft of this document was shared via MLA-L (a distribution list for music librarians and those interested in music librarianship) in fall 2011. The group revised the document based on the comments received and posted a second draft in February 2012, gathering comments through March. The final revision is expected to be released in April 2012. View the second draft at: http://musicdiscoveryrequirements.blogspot.com/2012/02/draft-2.html

At the Music Library Association’s Annual Meeting (February 16, 2012 in Dallas, TX), Nara Newcomer gave a brief presentation about the Music Discovery Requirements document, providing an introduction to the background for the group’s work, as well as the organization, focus, and content of the document. The slides and speaker’s notes from the presentation are available at: http://musicdiscoveryrequirements.blogspot.com/2012/02/presentation-on-music-discovery.html

British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery and HighWire Press launch New Portal

With the launch of Bone & Joint (boneandjoint.org.uk), an integrated portal site from the British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgeryl (BESBJS), HighWire’s innovative open platform has proven to be instrumental in creating a preeminent resource for the orthopedic community.

The new online “knowledge hub” seamlessly integrates a variety of resources from a user-centric point of view. Bone & Joint offers orthopedic specialists tools, services and content, including the highly respected and newly redesigned Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery (British Volume), JBJS (Br), to help them excel in their research and clinical practices, by making readily available the information they need in one central place.

“This is the second major portal project developed leveraging the HighWire Open Platform through a collaborative partnership with our publishers utilizing the Drupal integration modules,” said HighWire’s Managing Director, Tom Rump:

With the recent launch of Bone & Joint along with BMJ.com last autumn, plus dozens of mini-portal sites delivered through HighWire, it’s clear that our publishers’ innovation needs are being met.

The new portal site is at the forefront of orthopedic education, incorporating relevant and trusted research, with leading publications such as the JBJS (Br), together with expert commentary and opinion and new educational resources.

The new Bone & Joint portal features:

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  Faceted search functionality, embedded with links to the semantic web and with the ability to search by specialty and/or media type.

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  Personalization options keyed to the reader’s orthopedic subspecialty – with channels featuring topic-specific commentary, relevant articles published across all Bone & Joint publications, events calendar, educational resources and research links.

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  Training support with exam corner, CME, journal clubs and specialty-based summaries.

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  Online media tools and a multimedia library with both video and audio formats.

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  Author profiling feature aimed to build global visibility.

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  Semantically driven recommendation services.

JBJS (Br) is the flagship journal of the British Editorial Society of Bone & Joint Surgery, an innovative publisher whose mission is to advance and improve education in orthopaedic surgery. In order to best serve the orthopaedic community, the society has also recently launched Bone & Joint Research (BJR) – an open access research journal in musculoskeletal sciences, and Bone & Joint360 – a bi-monthly digest of, and commentary on, critical new developments in orthopaedics.

HighWire Press is at the forefront of strategic scholarly publishing providing digital content development and hosting solutions to the scholarly publishing community. A division of the Stanford University Libraries, HighWire partners with influential societies, university presses, and other independent publishers, sharing ideas and innovations in publishing, and producing definitive online versions of high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, books, reference works, and other scholarly content. The underlying infrastructure of HighWire’s electronic publishing platform is web-services-oriented, flexible, and permeable, allowing publishers to easily layer new software and services to their sites that will meet the ever-changing needs of today’s online and mobile readers.

More information: http://highwire.stanford.edu

CLIR and NITLE partner to form Anvil Academic Digital Publisher

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) announce the formation of Anvil Academic, a digital publisher for the humanities. Anvil will focus on publishing new forms of scholarship that cannot be adequately conveyed in the traditional monograph:

Increasingly, research in the humanities is dependent on large data sets and involves sophisticated algorithms and visualizations in the execution of that research and in the construction of the products of scholarship. Anvil will capture the environment in which this research is conducted: a linked ecology of scholarly expression, data, and tools of analysis that will over time become itself a place for new knowledge discovery – said CLIR President Chuck Henry.

Works published through Anvil will be available through creative commons licenses on the web and as apps on portable devices. The title production system will be developed jointly by NITLE and CLIR for use by other institutions, each of which would have the opportunity to publish under its own imprint. It is expected that Anvil will publish its first title in late 2012.

All of Anvil’s scholarly works will conform to the standards and protocols articulated by the Digital Public Library of America; Anvil will also work closely with the technical requirements of Europeana and Open Access Publishing in the European Network (OAPEN) guidelines:

We will be developing not only new technological paradigms, but new paradigms for defining and evaluating credible scholarly discourse, and we will be thoroughly documenting, in as open a fashion as possible, our process, our progress, our thinking, and our vision – said Henry.

“An important part of the Anvil experiment will be developing and testing new revenue models”, said NITLE Executive Director Joey King:

Our current models, which rely heavily on institutional subsidies, author subventions, and revenue from sales of printed books, are not proving to be sustainable. With Anvil, we intend to explore alternative paths to sustainability as rigorously as we explore new publishing models.

The program received startup funding from the Brown Foundation, Inc., in Houston, Texas. Stanford University, the University of Virginia, Washington University in St Louis, Bryn Mawr College, Amherst College, Middlebury College, and Southwestern University will also provide funds and staffing. Anvil Academic Publishing will work closely with innovative programs developed by the University of Michigan, especially MPublishing, and draw on Johns Hopkins University’s exemplary experience with digital humanities project development.

NITLE and CLIR will enlist additional publishers, scholarly societies, librarians, administrators, and faculty from member schools to participate in planning and developing Anvil-forged college and university publishing enterprises. Publishers or collaborators who are interested in collaborating in this effort should contact Anvil Editor-in-Chief Fred Moody (fmoody@nitle.org).

Anvil Academic Publishing: www.clir.org/initiatives-partnerships/anvil-academic-publishing

Readium open source initiative launched to accelerate adoption of EPUB 3

The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) has announced the Readium Project, a new open source initiative to develop a comprehensive reference implementation of the IDPF EPUB^® 3 standard. This vision will be achieved by building on WebKit, the widely adopted open source HTML5 rendering engine.

EPUB, an XML and Web Standards based format developed by the IDPF, has become a key global standard in the rapidly developing digital publishing industry, enabling digital books and publications to be portable across devices and reading systems. EPUB 3, a major revision of the standard, was approved in October 2011 and is available at: http://idpf.org/epub/30. The new version aligns EPUB with HTML5 and adds support for video, audio, interactivity, vertical writing and other global language capabilities, improved accessibility, MathML, and styling and layout enhancements. WebKit is an open source rendering engine for HTML5 and related Web Standards. WebKit is utilized as the underlying engine in many web browsers and applications, including Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Apple iBooks, Adobe AIR^®, Nokia MeeGo^®, HP webOS, and others.

Project Readium is focusing on developing a complete reference implementation of EPUB 3 utilizing the WebKit engine. Packaged as a test application for content developers, the Readium codebase will also serve as a steppingstone for commercial reading systems. A proof-of-concept prototype is available now as a Google Chrome browser extension for Windows and Mac OS/X, and the project aims to deliver a feature-complete implementation including an Android^® configuration by mid-2012.

“Project Readium will significantly accelerate EPUB 3 adoption and increase implementation consistency”, said Bill McCoy, Executive Director of the IDPF. “A universal digital publishing format for the open web benefits the entire industry and ultimately consumers, who want the freedom to read on their choice of applications and devices”.

Project Readium sponsors and other industry stakeholders welcomed this IDPF-sponsored activity. A quote sheet with quotes from the following is available at: http://idpf.org/readium-support: ACCESS, Adobe, Anobii, Apex CoVantage, Assoc. American Publishers (AAP), Barnes & Noble, Bluefire Productions, BISG, Copia, DAISY, EAST, EDItEUR, Evident Point, Google, Incube Tech, Kobo/Rakuten, Monotype, O’Reilly, Rakuten, Safari Books Online, Samsung, Sony, VitalSource, Voyager Japan.

For more information about the project, including how to participate and links to downloads and source code: http://readium.org

Ingram’s Vital Source Launches E-Textbook Building Block for Blackboard Learn™

Ingram’s Vital Source is now providing access to its leading e-textbook platform through Blackboard Learn™, one of the most used learning management systems. The Blackboard Building Block™ for VitalSource gives institutions a comprehensive tool to implement digital textbooks for students in mobile, online and offline environments.

The new Blackboard Building Block for the VitalSource platform developed collaboratively with both educators and publishers, gives higher education institutions and their students an efficient and cost-effective way to acquire content from the world’s leading publishers through the Blackboard Learn platform. Through the Building Block, students and educators have immediate, one click access to VitalSource’s comprehensive content library with more than 80,000 titles, and the functionality of the platform, including integrated notes, highlights, annotations and sharing capability through a single sign-on environment.

Using the Building Block, educators can preview and customize content used in courses. Through the functionality of the application, they can also link to required assignments and relevant activities within digital course materials and easily share that information with students. The Building Block supports the Bookshelf^® platform for viewing content in any modern browser, as well as downloading to clients on the Macintosh and Windows operating systems, Apple’s iPad™, iPhone^®, iPod Touch^® devices, and Android smart phones and tablets.

“Improving the educational experience is at the core of our business”, said Ted Hopper, Vice President of Business Development for Blackboard. “Providing institutions with on-the-go access to interactive and media-rich content and comprehensive digital functionality can only enhance how educators teach and students learn”.

Ingram’s Vital Source continues to grow its set of tools to give educational institutions, publishers, and other places of learning, options to connect their infrastructure to commercial as well as custom electronic and printed content in the platform. The Building Block is available to all institutions on Blackboard Learn 9.1.

A member of Blackboard Partnerships™ Program, Vital Source also participates in the Blackboard Developers Network™, an innovative community of educational and technical experts with a passion for using technology to enhance teaching and learning.

For more information: www.vitalsource.com/pages/lms-integration.aspx

Bilbary selects Ingram Coresource to expand its content library

As tablet and e-reader ownership continues to climb and more publishers are making their content available in digital form, new platforms are being created to provide readers with a worldwide library of books that are affordable and easily accessed. Bilbary, an internet-based consumer e-book library and retail book store, has selected Ingram Content Group to provide the titles it offers to its customers.

“Bilbary is designed to provide readers with more access to e-books, enable authors to reach more readers and help publishers enliven demand for their portfolios of titles,” said Tim Coates, founder of Bilbary. “By working with Ingram, we can leverage the reach of more than one thousand publishers and make Bilbary the ideal destination for people who are passionate about reading”.

Scheduled to launch in March 2012, Bilbary is customer, publisher, and library friendly. The 750,000+searchable titles in the Bilbary library will be available for purchase at launch and available for rent later this year. Publishers can set their own prices and lending rules and are paid a percentage for each sale or loan.

Working with Ingram, Bilbary will benefit from additional content from the 1,300+ publishers already using CoreSource^® for digital asset management and distribution. Bilbary will have access to hundreds of thousands of titles through the agreement. Publishers that use CoreSource will gain another channel to reach consumers – over 170 retailers, library distributors and other channels are already connected to the platform.

“Ingram continues to develop relevant digital distribution solutions to get content from publishers to the widest audience of readers”, said Marcus Woodburn, vice president of Digital Products, Ingram Content Group. “Bilbary is an exciting new company, and we are pleased they have selected CoreSource to help grow their business”.

Ingram’s CoreSource is an online solution for the storage, management, and distribution of digital content. CoreSource delivers a secure, searchable content repository and a high-capacity data distribution network, allowing publishers to move digital content easily and swiftly from their organization to any channel partner globally.

Bilbary: www.bilbary.com/

Credo reference introduces Literati by Credo collaborative research platform

Credo reference, recently named Library Journal’s “Best Overall Reference Database”, has announced that their new solution “Literati by Credo” is now available to libraries worldwide.

Literati by Credo is a collaborative research platform that promotes research effectiveness and information literacy by combining Credo’s well-regarded content with innovative library-centric technology. Beyond the platform, Literati by Credo offers customized tools and services, so that libraries can brand and enhance their end-user experience.

“Information Literacy skills are a must-have for today’s world, and libraries are in the best position to teach those skills”, said Mike Sweet, Credo Reference CEO. “With Literati, we are bringing an attractive look and feel, as well as a superior unifying platform to librarians so they can best serve the Google generation”.

The announcement of general availability marks the end of Literati’s beta period in which a select number of institutions utilized and tested the new solution. The beta group included institutions such as Columbia University, Marshall University, South University, Lancashire Libraries and the American University of Paris.

Developed in partnership with the library and teaching faculty, the information literacy tools and services offered as part of Literati by Credo enable the building of appropriate information-seeking challenges into assignments and course learning objectives.

“Literati can help us demonstrate evidence of pursuing our strategic goals”, said Diana Sasso of Duquesne University, another member of the beta group. “The way the topic pages can pull together sources from multiple quality sources into one easy to use page. Students will find this immensely attractive”.

Literati by Credo is “a fantastic resource that can be used by anyone to find information”, remarked Carolyn Waite, of the Lancashire Libraries. “It provides a platform for presenting information in an imaginative and relevant way”.

For more information: http://corp.credoreference.com/literati

ProQuest gives Statistical Abstract of the US a new lease on digital and print life

ProQuest will rescue one of researchers’ most valued reference tools when it takes on publication of the Statistical Abstract of the US beginning with the 2013 edition. The move ensures continuation of this premier guide to an extraordinary array of statistics, which has been published since 1878. The US Census Bureau, responsible for publishing the work, announced in March 2011 that it would cease production of the Statistical Abstract after the 2012 edition, prompting widespread concern among librarians, journalists, and researchers about the disappearance of this essential research tool.

“I’m thrilled that ProQuest will continue aggregating this important content”, said Wright State University librarian Sue Polanka, author of the widely read No Shelf Required blog. Polanka was part of a Reference User Services Association committee who organized a discussion at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference about how to save the Statistical Abstract from extinction. “Even in our increasingly digital world, the Statistical Abstract remains one of the best reference sources for libraries”:

The Statistical Abstract of the United States has a long tradition of gathering what could be a confusing mass of content and presenting it in a way that makes it simple for users to connect with just the right nugget of information – said Rod Gauvin, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ProQuest Information Solutions.

“That is simply too valuable a service for researchers to lose. ProQuest is honored to continue its contribution”.

ProQuest is uniquely suited to the demanding editorial support that will be required to continue the high quality of the Statistical Abstract. The company, which employs 25 statistical editors in its Bethesda office, has acquired, indexed and republished Federal statistics since 1973. The staff is experienced in the accurate compilation of statistics from various sources and their correct annotation, enabling ProQuest to preserve the Statistical Abstract’s dual role as answer book and source guide.

The ProQuest Statistical Abstract will be available in both print and digital formats. The digital version will include monthly updates to tables, deep searching at the line-item level, powerful facets for narrowing search results, image and spreadsheet versions of all current and historical tables, along with links to provider sites. The digital Statistical Abstract will be available as a stand-alone service or as a fully integrated part of ProQuest Statistical Insight, a comprehensive collection of statistical publications, including a million plus tables, covering subjects in economics, business, market research and the social sciences.

The print edition will continue much like its previous incarnations, with roughly the same number of tables as in past editions. The ProQuest statistical editorial team will also include detailed bibliographic documentation, an updated back-of-the-book index, and updated introductory sections. ProQuest will co-publish the book with Bernan Press, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., which will print, market and distribute the book.

“We are delighted to be partnering with ProQuest to keep the ‘Stat Ab’ alive and well for the foreseeable future”, said Jed Lyons, President and CEO of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.:

It is unthinkable that such an enormously important and useful source of critical data should no longer be available. Thanks to ProQuest and Bernan, a print edition will now appear.

ProQuest plans to release the online and print editions of the Statistical Abstract of the US in the fall of 2012. Both are available for pre-sale beginning in April 2012.

To learn more: www.proquest.com

ebrary offers new mobile app for accessing authoritative content from multiple sources

The demand for e-book accessibility, especially on mobile devices, is growing significantly. In ebrary’s 2011 Global Student E-book Survey, available at: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/surveys, 60 percent of respondents indicated that downloading ebooks onto mobile devices is “very important” – a 16 percent increase over results from a similar survey that ebrary sponsored in 2008. In ebrary’s recent Download Survey, librarians marked the iPad^® as more important to providing offline access than desktops and laptops.

To meet researchers’ evolving needs, ebrary^®, a ProQuest business and provider of e-books and research technology, has launched a new app for the iPad^®, iPhone^®, and iPod touch^®. Available on the App Store^SM, the free new app gives researchers an optimized way to experience authoritative content – both online and offline – from multiple sources. With ebrary’s new app, researchers can access content on the ebrary platform, including e-books that their librarians acquire from leading publishers and documents uploaded and integrated by librarians with DASH!™ (Data Sharing, Fast). Additionally, researchers can import their own personal research – outside of the ebrary platform – through the app itself.

To make it easier to use ebrary – with or without the app – ebrary also announced the ability for researchers to sign-in with their Facebook usernames and passwords. “We believe it is our responsibility to keep pace with the progressive ways in which students, professors and other researchers expect to find and use information”, said Kevin Sayar, President and General Manager of ebrary:

Technology will continue to evolve, and information will continue to surge. By shipping this new app and extending it to other sources beyond our e-book aggregation, we hope to help researchers more easily access and use the authoritative information they need to be more knowledgeable and productive. Key features and benefits of ebrary’s new mobile app include:

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  Freely available with any ebrary product for libraries including Academic Complete™, which offers a growing selection of more than 70,000 e-books and enables libraries to upload their own content with DASH!.

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  Online and offline reading.

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  Seamless downloading of full titles.

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  Simple and advanced search.

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  Table of contents with relevancy rankings.

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  Early check-in of ebrary’s e-books.

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  Copy and paste with automatic citation for offline documents.

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  Import and use documents from other sources.

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  Sign-in with Facebook user name and password.

ebrary’s 2011 Global Student E-book Survey: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/surveys

ebrary: www.ebrary.com/

Intota: web-scale management solution from serials solutions

The nature of library collections has undergone a significant shift as they move from print to electronic. However, workflows and systems are still predominantly designed for a print world, forcing libraries to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools. Workarounds create redundancies and inefficiencies which negatively impact the delivery of quality services to patrons.

Serials solutions is developing a new, web-scale management solution to address these challenges head-on. It is a single, centrally provisioned solution that supports the entire resource lifecycle including selection, acquisition, cataloging, discovery, and fulfillment regardless of resource type. It maximizes the advantages of digital media while protecting and exposing print and other formats in your local collection that make your library unique.

Built entirely from scratch, Intota™, the new web-scale management solution, will redefine how libraries manage operations, eventually eliminating the need for integrated library systems (ILS) as we know them today. Intota will utilize the best technology and practices available to provide a solution that manages the entire resource lifecycle regardless of format.

More information: www.serialssolutions.com/en/services/intota/

Innovative Interfaces announces strategic investment from Huntsman Gay Global Capital and JMI Equity

Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (“Innovative”) announced in March 2012 that it has received a strategic investment from Huntsman Gay Global Capital, a leading middle market private equity firm, and JMI Equity, a leading growth equity firm focused on investing in growing software, internet, and business services companies. Innovative Founder and Chairman Gerald M. (Jerry) Kline will continue to be directly involved in the Company’s overall operation as Chairman of the Board and shareholder of the Company. SkyRiver Technology Solutions, a provider of library metadata, also owned by Kline, received investment on the same terms. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Innovative Interfaces, founded in 1978 is a provider of integrated library systems which are software products and services integral to the ongoing operation of a library’s technology infrastructure. Innovative maintains offices around the world to service its diverse customer base of over 4,500 libraries in more than 50 countries. Innovative’s market-leading integrated library system, Millennium, is one of the most comprehensive offerings available in the marketplace.

Both strategic partners saw an opportunity to invest in a financially-strong and entrepreneurial-focused company, one that was poised for continued growth with new product offerings.

“Innovative is a fine company with a well-deserved reputation for building great products and services that solve real-world needs of libraries”, said Rich Lawson, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Huntsman Gay, and new Vice Chairman of Innovative. “We are excited about the prospects of working with Jerry Kline and the Innovative management team to help the Company achieve new success”:

We are confident that our experience partnering with software businesses will help Innovative build on its successful track record by continuing to invest in new and refined solutions for libraries – said Paul Barber, Managing General Partner of JMI Equity and member of the Innovative Board of Directors.

“Huntsman Gay and JMI take a long-term view on investments and bring great vision from outside the library marketplace”, said Kline:

I am pleased that we were able to find people that understand the importance of our established and new library partnerships and appreciate the strong team we have in place here at Innovative. This new investment will provide the resources that will offer greater opportunities for the Company’s future growth.

Innovative Interfaces: www.iii.com/

SkyRiver Technology Solutions: http://theskyriver.com/

Bibliotheca Group acquires AMH specialists Trion AG

Bibliotheca Group announced in February 2012 a significant addition to their product and service line-up with the acquisition of Trion Library Systems, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of automated materials handling (AMH) solutions designed specifically for libraries. Formed in 2011 through the merger of Bibliotheca (Switzerland), Intellident (UK) and ITG (US), the Bibliotheca Group now represents one of the leading global providers of RFID solutions to libraries, within which the addition of Trion technology further solidifies Bibliotheca’s place as the premier provider of solutions designed to improve operational efficiency and the overall customer experience in libraries.

Trion AG, formed in 1999 quickly rose to prominence within Europe and the Middle East as the predominant supplier of AMH systems to libraries, with particular focus on quality and engineering. During the period before the creation of the Bibliotheca Group, Trion AG already had established partnerships with all Group businesses as one of their key suppliers to customers in the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Italy:

The addition of Trion to the Group ensures that Bibliotheca will have unparalleled resources dedicated to offering libraries the most robust, feature rich and cost effective AMH products in the marketplace – states Jim Hopwood, Bibliotheca’s President Europe and CTO.

The full integration of hardware and software made possible by having both development teams under one roof will enable us to fully keep pace with the quickly changing creative possibilities made possible through technological advances. In addition the Trion range of products is a perfect complement to the sorting systems that we currently co-develop with Gilgen and Design Industries, AMH manufacturers based in Switzerland and the USA, respectively. This is consistent with Bibliotheca’s commitment to offering customers a variety of options from which they can choose. From basic systems designed to deliver the most mission critical benefits at low cost to the most sophisticated solutions with graphical interactive user interfaces, we have products that are just right for differing objectives and different budgets.

Shai Robkin, Bibliotheca’s US President and Head of Distribution is particularly excited by the company’s expanding product portfolio:

We understand that libraries worldwide are under serious budgetary constraints. The acquisition of Trion means that libraries, whether serviced directly by Bibliotheca or by one of our official partners, will be able to implement the greatest labour saving technology at the lowest possible investment. And full ownership of the technology allows us to manufacture and assemble our systems in the most cost effective locations as well as those closest to our markets.

Sven Carlson, founder and CEO of Trion, will lead the Bibliotheca partners team, helping the company’s independent distributors meet the specific needs of their local markets:

I am incredibly excited by the opportunity to join the global library technology leader in a position that will allows me bring Bibliotheca’s innovative products to libraries in whatever corner of the world they may be.

Bibliotheca: www.bibliotheca.com/

MediaSurfer: library self-check kiosk for lending tablet computers

MediaSurfer, an innovative new technology created by Tech Logic Corporation, is a stand-alone machine that makes it easy for libraries to automatically lend iPads and other media devices to library patrons, allowing them to borrow the latest mobile technology and embrace digital learning. Whether they choose to focus in a quiet corner of the library, slip down the street to sip coffee while surfing, or escape to the comfort of their own home, MediaSurfer lets library patrons experience the complete freedom of digital mobility.

MediaSurfer lets libraries respond to the ever-growing demand for digital media access. A free-standing self-check kiosk that securely dispenses handheld tablets, manages tablet content and automatically charges each tablet, MediaSurfer gives patrons an easy way to access the library’s digital collection using state-of-the-art handheld technology. With a simple swipe of a library and credit card, patrons can use the intuitive touch screen to check out an iPad or other device to use for a designated period of time.

MediaSurfer is a stand-alone kiosk that employs intuitive touch-screens to walk patrons through the check-out process quickly and easily. While designed to blend harmoniously into any environment, it features a sleek, futuristic design (with illuminated logo) that quietly captivates.

In order to check out a tablet, a patron must swipe their library card and credit card. During the check-out process, they agree to the fees imposed by the institution for returning items late, or not at all. When someone returns a tablet, the returned tablets are automatically “wiped clean” of any digital media previously downloaded onto them. MediaSurfer automatically recharges the tablets before they are returned to the queue for distribution, so they are ready to go when a patron checks them out.

Libraries supply the tablets to Tech Logic in advance of the MediaSurfer unit being shipped, so that they can be registered and inventoried, individually outfitted in protective plastic casing and securely inserted inside the unit. Once received, libraries are responsible for maintaining the tablets.

For more information: www.getmediasurfer.com/

NMC and EDUCAUSE Release Horizon Report 2012 Higher Education Edition

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative have released the NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition. This popular resource identifies trends in technology that have particular relevance for teaching and learning. Key trends and challenges that will affect current practice over the next five years frame these discussions. The report includes links to additional resources that provide detail and examples of the trends.

The NMC Horizon Report>2012 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE Program. This ninth edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.

The 2012 Horizon Project Higher Education Advisory Board initially voted on the top 12 emerging technologies – the result of which is documented in the NMC Horizon Project Short List>2012 Higher Education Edition. This Short List helped the advisory board narrow down the 12 technologies to six for the full publication.

This year’s NMC Horizon Report identifies mobile apps and tablet computing as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the first horizon of one year or less. Game-based learning and learning analytics are seen in the second horizon of two to three years; gesture-based computing and the internet of things are seen emerging in the third horizon of four to five years.

Report available at: www.nmc.org/news/and-eli-release-horizon-report-2012-hied-edition