New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2013), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 30 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2013.23930gaa.002

New & Noteworthy

Article Type: New & Noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 30, Issue 7

Younger Americans’ library habits and expectations: new research from Pew

Belying the stereotype that younger Americans completely eschew print for digital, those ages 16-29 have wide-ranging media and technology behaviors that straddle the traditional paper-based world of books and digital access to information.

One major surprise in a new report from the Pew Research Center is that even in an age of increasing digital resources, those in this under-30 cohort are more likely than older Americans to use and appreciate libraries as physical spaces – places to study for class, go online, or just hang out.

The report paints a textured portrait of younger Americans’ sometimes surprising relationships with libraries’ physical and digital resources:

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  Online. Almost all those in the 16-29 age group are online, and they are more likely than older patrons to use libraries’ computer and internet connections, access library web sites, and use a library’s research databases.

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  On paper. However, younger Americans are also more likely than older adults to have read a printed book in the past year: 75 per cent of younger Americans have done so, compared with 64 per cent of older adults.

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  On-site. Younger adults are also more likely than their elders to use libraries as quiet study spaces. Moreover, they are just as likely as older adults to have visited libraries, borrowed printed books, and browsed the stacks of books.

This mix of interests is further reflected in younger users’ desires for new library services. Americans ages 16-29 are particularly interested in adding technology-driven features such as apps for accessing library materials and for navigating library spaces, and “Redbox”-style kiosks around town for convenient access to library materials around town.

Still, Americans under age 30 are strong supporters of traditional library services. Large majorities of them say it is “very important” for libraries to have librarians and books for borrowing, and relatively few think that libraries should automate most library services or move most services online. And younger Americans, like older adults, think that print books should have a central place at libraries; only 23 per cent strongly support moving some stacks of books out of public areas to create room for things such as technology centers, meeting rooms, and cultural events.

“Younger Americans’ reading habits and library use are still anchored by the printed page,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, research analyst at the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and a co-author of the new report about younger Americans’ relationships with libraries. “Some of this stems from the demands of school or work, yet some likely lies in their current personal preferences. And this group’s priorities and expectations for libraries likewise reflect a mix of traditional and technological services.”

These insights emerge in a new analysis of a survey of Americans ages 16 and older when they are asked about their library use and their hopes for the library of the future, which includes a new analysis of three specific age groups: 16-17 year-olds, 18-24 year-olds, and 25-29 year-olds. The findings are based on a survey of 2,252 Americans ages 16 and above between October 15 and November 10, 2012 by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The surveys were administered on half on landline phones and half on cell phones and were conducted in English and Spanish. The margin of error for the full survey is ±2.3 per cent points.

Other major findings from the report include:

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  85 per cent of 16-17 year-olds read at least one print book in the past year, making them significantly more likely to have read a book in this format than any other age group.

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  Younger patrons are significantly more likely than their elders to use libraries as places to sit and read, study, or watch or listen to media; 60 per cent of younger patrons say they go to the library do this, compared with 45 per cent of library visitors ages 30 and older.

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  67 per cent of younger Americans ages 16-29 say they would be interested in a digital media lab where patrons could create and upload new digital content; some 27 per cent say they would be “very likely” to use such a resource. (One example of this type of space that has a particular focus on younger patrons is the YOUmedia teen learning spaces (youmedia.org), which are funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.).

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  44 per cent of library visitors under age 30 have used a library’s computers, internet, or a public WI-FI network, compared with just 27 per cent of those ages 30 and older.

Younger Americans’ priorities for libraries reflect this mix of habits, including various types of brick-and-mortar services as well as digital technologies. Asked about what it is “very important” libraries should offer, for instance, librarians were at the top of the list:

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  80 per cent of Americans under age 30 say it is “very important” for libraries to have librarians to help people find information they need.

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  76 per cent say it is “very important” for libraries to offer research resources such as free databases.

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  75 per cent say free access to computers and the internet is “very important” for libraries to have.

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  75 per cent say it is “very important” for libraries to offer books for people to borrow.

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  72 per cent say quiet study spaces are “very important”.

Full report: http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/06/25/younger-americans-library-services/

DigitalLearn.org: resources and collaboration for digital literacy trainers

After months of thoughtful planning, development and beta testing, DigitalLearn.org has officially launched in July 2013. This online hub for digital literacy offers an active community of practice and an evolving collection of training resources for those who teach and support digital learners. DigitalLearn.org is managed by the Public Library Association (PLA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), and funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It receives ongoing support from the ALA Office of Information Technology and Policy, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies and the input of committee members from a diverse array of organizations.

There are two main branches to DigitalLearn.org. The first leads to self-directed, interactive trainings. These online classes can be used independently by digital learners or can complement in-person classes. The second branch of the site allows those that teach and support digital literacy to share resources and best practices, work collaboratively, to seek input from others in the field, and more. Organizations can even create their own unique online groups to centralize information, calendars, resources and discussions for their staff and volunteers.

Central to the success of DigitalLearn.org is community engagement and participation from digital literacy trainers and supporters. PLA is actively seeking volunteers to join the community of practice, develop online classes, share ideas, and promote the site as well as funders for support of operating expenses and sustainability.

“A 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Project study identified that one in five American adults does not use the Internet, yet more and more aspects of life are going online – from job hunting to filing government forms, to engaging with friends and family,” said Barbara Macikas, PLA executive director. “The benefit of having a central site for both training materials and resource sharing guarantees that when these individuals visit the library and other training centers for help in navigating the digital world, staff is ready to meet the demand.”

Visit the site for additional details: http://digitallearn.org/

Vital Source launches e-textbook Building Block for Blackboard Learn platform

Vital Source Technologies, Inc., Ingram Content Group’s e-textbook solution, has announced the general availability of a comprehensive e-textbook Building Block that integrates its VitalSource Bookshelf^® platform with Blackboard Learn™, Blackboard’s flagship learning management system (LMS).

“Through our work with Vital Source, we are able to deliver practical tools to educators that will help them create a more engaging learning experience,” said Jim Kelly, Vice President of Business Development at Blackboard. “We are also able give students the ability to interact with the newest media-rich content and learning tools.”

The VitalSource^® Building Block for Blackboard Learn is an integrated e-textbook solution that benefits institutions, instructors, and students. In addition to providing single sign-on integration between the two systems, the VitalSource Building Block is the first Blackboard integration for e-textbooks configured to work directly with Blackboard Mobile™ Learn for iPhone^®, iPad^®, Android™ and Kindle Fire^® devices.

Instructors can search, sample and adopt VitalSource Bookshelf platform e-textbooks and make them available directly for students within their Blackboard Learn course environment with a single click. Instructors can quickly construct courses, deep link to rich media and interactive learning activities, and annotate and direct students to exact sections of an e-textbook and required readings. Through rich analytic tools, faculty can easily view individual and aggregate class engagement data, and use it to manage successful learning outcomes.

Through the VitalSource Building Block, students have instant access to feature-rich interactive e-textbooks that allow for deep exploration of online content. The Building Block provides access to the cutting-edge technology the VitalSource Bookshelf platform offers, including integrated notes and note sharing, highlight features, annotations and more. The platform provides complete portability online, offline and across devices so wherever a Vital Source e-textbook is read, a students’ work will always be in sync.

The integrated solution fully supports the needs of the two education business models. Institutions that include textbooks as part of tuition can place e-textbooks directly into Blackboard Learn courses for immediate student access, while supporting add/drop periods at the start of class. Alternatively, a student-purchase option would give instructors the opportunity to make e-textbooks available for students to purchase or rent from within their Blackboard Learn course environment.

The VitalSource Bookshelf platform is the most used e-textbook delivery platform in higher education with more than 3.25 million users across 6,000 campuses around the world. It uses the latest technology to enhance the learning experience through e-textbooks and digital education. Content from more than 350 of the world’s top academic publishers is accessible to VitalSource Bookshelf users anytime, anywhere, and on a variety of operating systems and devices.

For more information about Blackboard Learn: www.blackboard.com/learn

For more information about Vital Source Technologies: www.vitalsource.com

Marrakesh Treaty boosts access to books for visually impaired persons worldwide

International negotiators meeting under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have adopted a landmark new treaty that boosts access to books for the benefit of hundreds of millions of people who are blind, visually impaired and print-disabled.

The treaty, approved after more than a week of intense debate among negotiators gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, is the culmination of years of work on improving access for the blind, visually impaired, and print disabled to published works in formats such as Braille, large print text and audio books.

“This treaty is a victory for the blind, visually impaired and print disabled, but also for the multilateral system. With this treaty, the international community has demonstrated the capacity to tackle specific problems, and to agree a consensus solution. This is a balanced treaty, and represents a very good arbitration of the diverse interests of the various stakeholders,” said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. “It is a historic treaty that will lead to real benefits for the visually impaired.”

Recording legend Stevie Wonder joined negotiators in celebrations Friday, June 28 with a concert at the Palais des Congres in Marrakesh, where the negotiations have been hosted by the Kingdom of Morocco. “There are no winners and no losers, this is a treaty for everyone,” said Morocco’s Minister of Communications and Government Spokesperson Mustapha Khalfi, who banged the gavel to signify the treaty’s adoption.

Bringing together more than 600 negotiators from WIPO’s 186 member states, WIPO convened the Diplomatic Conference to Conclude a Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities on June 18. The conference met from June 17 to 28, 2013.

The treaty, called the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or otherwise Print Disabled, addresses the “book famine” by requiring its contracting parties to adopt national law provisions that permit the reproduction, distribution and making available of published works in accessible formats through limitations and exceptions to the rights of copyright rightholders.

It also provides for the exchange of these accessible format works across borders by organizations that serve the people who are blind, visually impaired, and print disabled. It will harmonize limitations and exceptions so that these organizations can operate across borders. This sharing of works in accessible formats should increase the overall number of works available because it will eliminate duplication and increase efficiency. Instead of five countries producing accessible versions of the same work, the five countries will each be able to produce an accessible version of a different work, which can then be shared with each of the other countries.

Currently, it is left to national governments to define what limitations and exceptions are permitted. In practice, limitations and exceptions contained in national laws vary widely. In many countries copying for private use is free, but only a few countries make exceptions for, say, distance learning. Moreover, the exemptions apply only in the country concerned.

The treaty is also designed to provide assurances to authors and publishers that that system will not expose their published works to misuse or distribution to anyone other than the intended beneficiaries. The treaty reiterates the requirement that the cross-border sharing of works created based on limitations and exceptions must be limited to certain special cases which do not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work and do not unreasonable prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder.

The treaty calls for cooperation among its contracting parties in order to foster cross-border exchanges. The parties are committed to increasing the availability of published works as quickly as possible, and this cooperation will be an important step toward achieving that goal.

On June 28, 2013, 51 member states signed the treaty and 129 signed the final act of the treaty. Signing the treaty at the end of a diplomatic conference does not necessarily bind a country to its provisions. It is however a strong indication of intent by the signatory to join the treaty. The treaty enters into force after it has been ratified by 20 WIPO members that agree to be bound by its provisions.

According to the World Health Organization, there are more than 314 million blind and visually impaired persons in the world, 90 per cent of whom live in developing countries. A WIPO survey in 2006 found that fewer than 60 countries have limitations and exceptions clauses in their copyright laws that make special provision for visually impaired persons, for example, for Braille, large print or digitized audio versions of copyrighted texts.

Furthermore, because copyright law is “territorial,” these exemptions usually do not cover the import or export of works converted into accessible formats, even between countries with similar rules. Organizations in each country must negotiate licenses with the rightholders to exchange special formats across borders, or produce their own materials, a costly undertaking that severely limits access by visually impaired persons to printed works of all kinds.

According to the World Blind Union, of the million or so books published each year in the world, less than 5 per cent are made available in formats accessible to visually impaired persons.

Marrakesh Treaty at wipo.int: www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=241683

Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of Edinburgh collaborate on Hiberlink project

An international team of information scientists has begun a two-year study to investigate how web links in scientific and other academic articles fail to lead to the resources being referenced.

This is the focus of the Hiberlink project in which the team from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Edinburgh will assess the extent of “reference rot” using a vast corpus of online scholarly work. It is funded by a grant of $500,000 (£310,000) from the US-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, coordinated by EDINA, the designated online services center at the University of Edinburgh, which serves the needs of universities and colleges across the UK.

“Increasingly, scientific papers contain links to web pages containing, for example, project descriptions, demonstrations, and software. But, as we all know, web pages change or disappear,” said Herbert Van de Sompel, the Los Alamos principal investigator on the project. “Currently, there is no archival infrastructure to safeguard such pages and hence revisiting them some time after they were linked from a paper is many times impossible. The result is a broken scholarly record.”

Increasingly, web-based scholarship includes links that point to resources needed or created in research activity, including software, datasets, web sites, presentations, blogs, videos, etc. as well as scientific workflows and ontologies. These referenced resources often evolve over time, unlike traditional scholarly articles. The reference-rot problem occurs whenever the original version of a linked resource is not available anymore.

The problem has two aspects. First, the http://link that references a resource may no longer function. Second, the content at the end of the link may have evolved and may even have become dramatically different from when originally referenced. So when eventually a researcher revisits an online scholarly work and double-checks referenced resources to confirm evidence or establish context, the original online information may have changed or even ceased to exist.

The Hiberlink project builds directly upon a pilot study from Los Alamos, powered by their Memento “Time Travel for the Web” technology that confirmed that as much as 30 per cent of the http://links in a selection of 400,000 arXiv.org papers did not function and that 65 per cent of the remaining links referred to a resource that was not archived, and hence in danger of disappearing without a trace.

Using the text mining and information extracting tools by the Language Technology Group (LTG) at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, the project will examine a vast body of scholarly publications in order to assess which links still work as intended and what web content has been successfully archived and therefore preserved for use by future researchers and students.

The ultimate goal for the Hiberlink project is to identify practical solutions to the reference-rot problem, and to develop approaches that can be integrated easily in the publication process. The project leaders plan to work with academic publishers and other web-based publication venues to ensure more effective preservation of web-based resources so to increase the prospect of continued access for future generations of researchers, students and their teachers.

Links for more information: EDINA: http://edina.ac.uk/

Language Technology Group, Informatics at the University of Edinburgh: www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library: www.lanl.gov/library/

The University of Edinburgh: www.ed.ac.uk/home

Los Alamos National Laboratory: www.lanl.gov/index.php

Time Travel for the scholarly web: http://edina.ac.uk/projects/time-travel_summary.html

Memento: www.mementoweb.org/

Pilot study paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3459

Transfer Code of Practice Version 3.0 for journal transfer released

The UKSG Transfer Working Group has released Version 3.0 of its Code of Practice for public comment. Key updates in Version 3.0 deal with new content types, HTTP redirects, subscriber types, nomenclature, and communication. Public review and comment are invited between now and September 6, 2013.

The Transfer Code of Practice is a set of voluntary guidelines for publishers involved in any journal transfer. It covers thorny issues including ongoing access provision to online content, exchange of subscriber lists, DOI and URL transfer, as well as perpetual access rights to journal content.

Over the last year the Transfer Working Group has revised and improved upon the current version of the Code (Version 2, released in September 2008). The Transfer Working Group is inviting comments on the Code through the Transfer web site (www.uksg.org/transfer), where the Code of Practice, a summary of changes from Version 2 to Version 3, a glossary of terms, and other information can also be found.

After the public review period, the Transfer Working Group will review the comments and decide if any revisions are needed to the Code in light of comments received. Once this is done, the Transfer Code of Practice v3.0 will be formally released, and publishers will be asked to agree to follow the new version. Publishers agreeing to align their procedures with the Code, and to apply them in practice when working with other, similarly aligned publishers, will be considered “Transfer Compliant”.

The Transfer Code of Practice is a response to the expressed needs of the scholarly journal community for consistent guidelines to help publishers ensure that journal content remains easily accessible by librarians and readers when there is a transfer between parties, and to ensure that the transfer process occurs with minimum disruption.

Transfer Code of Practice Version 3.0: www.uksg.org/transfer/Code

NISO launches project to develop recommended practices for Exchanging Serial Content

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) voting members have approved a new project to develop recommended practices for Packaging and Exchanging Serial Content. Many different organizations – libraries, archives, indexing services, content aggregators, publishers, and content creators – need to exchange and work with digital files that make up serial content. Generally, the files are aggregated in some type of “package” that can vary significantly in format and structure and contain anywhere from several files for a single article to over a million files for a full journal title backfile. This new NISO initiative will develop a recommended practice defining the rules to be used to create a package of serial content, allowing both the exchange of content and the automation of processes to receive and manage this content.

“The Library of Congress routinely collects digital materials for our national collection through copyright mandatory deposit,” states Leslie Johnston, Chief of Repository Development at the Library of Congress and one of the project proposers. “In our proof of concept phase for delivery of e-serials, we accepted all publisher-submitted metadata and content file types and, as expected, we saw significant variance in file and directory naming, part identification, file format combinations, and the accompanying manifest (which was often missing). To efficiently receive and process e-serials on an ongoing basis and scale the processes to manage expected future volumes, we need a standardized protocol for how these e-serials will be provided.”

“Standards like the Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012) provide a model for creating an XML structure for an article,” explains Kimberly A. Tryka, Staff Scientist at the National Library of Medicine and a project proposer, “but related items in the article are referenced by linking and not as part of a package. The EPUB 3 specification includes the packaging of digital content, but it is designed for viewing of that content in an e-reader. There are no standard methods that specifically address the need for packaging e-serial content in a way that it can be interchanged and machine-processed for storage, archival, and retrieval purposes. This new NISO initiative will seek to fill that gap.”

“NISO’s Recommended Practices for Online Supplemental Journal Article Materials (NISO RP-15-2013) recommends the use of a standardized packaging format to transfer digital content,” states Nettie Lagace, NISO’s Associate Director for Programs. “This NISO project will define that standard packaging practice and complement the recommendations about supplemental materials.”

Participation in the new NISO initiative is encouraged from libraries, publishers, content aggregators, and repositories. Individuals interested in participating on this working group should contact Nettie Lagace (nlagace@niso.org).

More information about NISO is available on its web site: www.niso.org

Library of Congress Bibliographic Framework Initiative launches BIBFRAME.org

The Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) is an undertaking by the Library of Congress and the community to better accommodate future needs of the library community. A major focus of the initiative will be to determine a transition path for the MARC 21 exchange format to more web based, Linked Data standards. Zepheira and The Library of Congress are working together to develop a Linked Data model, vocabulary and enabling tools/services for supporting this Initiative.

In January 2013, BIBFRAME.org was launched to serve as a central hub for this effort. BIBFRAME.org provides access to:

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  the BIBFRAME Model Primer (PDF): www.loc.gov/bibframe/pdf/marcld-report-11-21-2012.pdf

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  a demonstration area: http://bibframe.org/demos/

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  online tools designed to help you evaluate MARC Bibliographic data in the BIBFRAME model: http://bibframe.org/tools/

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  BIBFRAME vocabulary: http://bibframe.org/vocab/ and supporting documentation: http://bibframe.org/documentation/

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  a link to the BIBFRAME code repository on GitHub: https://github.com/lcnetdev/marc2bibframe

Recently updated (June 17, 2013) on BIBFRAME.org is the BIBFRAME Resource Types Discussion Paper: http://bibframe.org/documentation/resource-types/

In related BIBFRAME news, a podcast of “Bibliographic Framework Initiative: Process And Expectations”, a project briefing from CNI’s spring 2013 member meeting presented by Roberta Shaffer, Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services, is now available. A major focus of the initiative will be to determine a transition path for the MARC 21 exchange format in order to reap the benefits of newer technology while preserving a robust data exchange that has supported resource sharing and cataloging cost savings in recent decades. Shaffer’s presentation describes the BIBFRAME steps taken thus far and the current expectations for this development.

Podcast available at: www.cni.org/topics/information-access-retrieval/bibliographic-framework-initiative-process-and-expectations/

Bibliographic Framework Initiative (official location for information, announcements, and resources): www.loc.gov/bibframe/

DPC releases second edition of “Preservation Metadata” Technology Watch Report

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) has released its latest in the series of topical Technology Watch Reports. The second edition of “Preservation Metadata,” written by Brian Lavoie and Richard Gartner, focuses on new developments in preservation metadata, since the last report, made possible by the emergence of PREMIS as a de facto international standard.

Specialists in the field of electronic information provision for digital preservation at OCLC Research and the Centre for e-Research at Kings College London, Brian and Richard pick up from the first edition of the report, reminding us “it is no exaggeration to assert that preservation metadata, and the PREMIS Data Dictionary in particular, have become part of best practice underpinning responsible long-term stewardship of digital materials.”

The report goes on to outline key implementation topics that have emerged since the publication of the PREMIS Data Dictionary, including community outreach, packaging, tools, PREMIS implementations in digital preservation systems and implementation resources.

Neil Beagrie, Director of Charles Beagrie Ltd and Managing Editor of the DPC Technology Watch Reports praises the new edition, noting that it “is a deservedly popular report first published in 2005 […] extensively updated to reflect developments over the past eight years in preservation metadata practice.”

Adrian Brown, Director of the Parliamentary Archives concurs, calling it “an excellent report, clearly and accessibly written, neutral, thorough, and fulfilling the brief. It is likely to be of interest to the DPC membership, and also to a much wider audience.”

The report will be well received by digital preservation practitioners interested in learning about the key developments in preservation metadata, especially as these developments concern the PREMIS Data Dictionary; and will appeal to anyone seeking to learn more about the general topic of preservation metadata.

The not-for-profit DPC is an advocate and catalyst for digital preservation. The coalition ensures its members can continue to deliver resilient long-term access to digital content and services through knowledge exchange, capacity building, assurance, advocacy and partnership. Its primary objective is raising awareness of the importance of the preservation of digital material and the attendant strategic, cultural and technological issues. The DPC Technology Watch Reports support this objective through an advanced introduction to topics that have a major bearing on its vision to “make our digital memory accessible tomorrow”.

The second edition of “Preservation Metadata” is the latest in the state of the art Technology Watch Reports that give an advanced introduction to ensuring that high-value and vulnerable digital resources can be managed beyond the limits of technological obsolescence.

Read Brian Lavoie and Richard Gartner’s report “Preservation Metadata” by downloading from the DPC web site: http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr13-03

LYRASIS Repository Services now available

LYRASIS Repository Services is now available to all LYRASIS members. After receiving interest from many libraries and cultural heritage organizations and testing the implementation with a member pilot site, LYRASIS is offering its Repository Services, which include hosting, implementation and support.

A new addition to LYRASIS Digital efforts, Repository Services supports member libraries and cultural heritage organizations’ digitization of unique content and making it freely available. Using Islandora open source software, this service meets the commitment LYRASIS has made to offer leading-edge capacity, encompassing a wide variety of digital objects and their metadata, and promoting the growth and development of the digital community.

“Repository Services enables our members to consolidate many systems into one, providing a central hosted location for digital objects to be both housed and managed. Libraries and cultural heritage organizations can have all of their repository content that was once spread across various systems in one hosted management solution. Members that participate in the LYRASIS Digitization Collaborative can include digitized materials from the Internet Archive in their repository. This repository gives users a seamless experience to access valuable content while making the ability to manage the content easier and more cost effective,” states Peter Murray, Director, LYRASIS Digital Technology Services.

LYRASIS partners with member libraries and cultural heritage organizations to create, access and manage information with an emphasis on digital content, while building and sustaining collaboration, enhancing operations and technology, and increasing buying power.

For more information: www.lyrasis.org

Marist College tests Intota™ Assessment, new library collection management service

Marist College has begun using Intota™ Assessment, a library collection analytics service from Serials Solutions^®, a ProQuest business. Marist is the first Intota development partner to deploy Intota Assessment, and will be followed shortly by the other five partner libraries. Vital for today’s academic institutions, Intota Assessment offers libraries the ability to simplify collection maintenance, calculate its return on investment and showcase the value of the library.

Intota Assessment is the first production service of Intota, the Serials Solutions library services platform. Intota is a new software-as-a-service, web-scale collection management solution that supports the entire resource lifecycle for libraries, including selection, acquisition, cataloging, discovery, and fulfillment – regardless of resource type. It embraces the principles of linked data, inherent interoperability with discovery, and lower total cost of ownership.

Intota Assessment provides comprehensive assessment capabilities for both monographs and serials in both electronic and print formats. Uniquely developed for assessment purposes, the service leverages authoritative data from Resources for College Libraries (RCL), Books in Print (BIP), Ulrich’s and Serials Solutions highly-regarded knowledgebase. The combination of these assets gives librarians a holistic understanding of their holdings, including consolidated COUNTER and aggregated usage reports; providing views into data which are not possible with any other solution.

Libraries for the first time ever will be able to deploy “smart weeding” of their collections using such data as RCL, historic circulation data, print/e-book comparisons, and more. Intota Assessment provides libraries a broad spectrum of easy-to-generate reports to identify usage gaps and overlaps. Intota Development Partners will actively use Intota Assessment to address many collection management and usage challenges facing libraries.

“The valuable feedback from our development partners is validating our solution and underscores the market demand for a more holistic solution for collection assessment,” said Mark Tullos, director of product management, ProQuest. “We are confident our thoughtful approach to addressing the associated pain points will enable libraries to clearly demonstrate their value.”

Intota Assessment provides innovative views and metrics of a library’s collection, including a number of reporting and analysis tools designed to improve collection management, making it possible for library staff to focus on delivering higher value services to their patrons.

The six Intota development partners reflect a broad spectrum of visionary institutions and academic research libraries; from public and private, community college and university, to single university and consortia systems. The development partners committed to collaborating with Serials Solutions, actively using and providing feedback on the features to shape the development of Intota, include Ball State University, Johnson County Community College, Marist College, Oklahoma State University, The State University of New York at Geneseo (SUNY Geneseo), and University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY Buffalo).

For more information, visit: www.serialssolutions.com/en/services/intota

EBSCO Information Services partnering with Kuali Foundation, Innovative Interfaces

The Kuali Foundation has welcomed EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) as one of its newest Kuali Commercial Affiliates (KCA) within the Kuali community. EBSCO will provide expertise in seamlessly integrating discovery services with the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) for enhanced access to both print and digital library collections. As a global leader, EBSCO provides online research databases and discovery services – more than 375 learning and reference products – to corporations, universities, libraries and other institutions around the world.

“EBSCO is a welcome addition to our Commercial Affiliates in the Kuali community,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost at Duke University, co-chair of the Kuali OLE Board. “They bring solid expertise in discovery solutions for research libraries and have been excellent partners with OLE to promote interoperability between library enterprise systems and structured data and discovery services. We look forward to working with EBSCO to advance discovery layer implementations for the Kuali OLE community.”

Kuali OLE is the enterprise-scale, cloud capable, community source library management system being developed by staff from the Bloomsbury Library Management System consortia, Duke University, Florida OLE Partners (led by University of Florida and including Florida International University, Florida State University, the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC), New College of Florida, Rollins College, University of Central Florida, University of Miami, and the University of South Florida), Indiana University, Lehigh University, North Carolina State University, University of Chicago, University of Maryland, the University of Pennsylvania and Villanova University. Built on open standards and featuring a robust enterprise workflow engine that enables effective library business process management, Kuali OLE is designed to meet the needs of any research library regardless of size or complexity. OLE Version 0.8 was released in June 2013.

EBSCO is partnering with Kuali OLE to look at flexible integration options for discovery service layers for the Kuali OLE community. EBSCO Chief Information Officer Michael Gorrell says, as with all partnerships, EBSCO’s goal with Kuali is to allow libraries to craft unique discovery experiences.

“The open standards that are the basis for OLE are an intriguing alternative for libraries and the institutions that are implementing OLE represent top universities poised to take academic libraries in new directions. As a discovery service provider, we want to support expanded services to customers and help libraries better define the discovery experience bringing together content and management in a way that serves the needs of librarians and end-users alike.”

For more information on Kuali OLE, visit: www.kuali.org/ole

Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (Innovative) and EBSCO Information Services also have announced an expansion of their strategic partnership designed to improve access to library resources. The expanded partnership will incorporate catalog functionality within the EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) experience including real-time circulation status checking, enabling end-users to place holds via EDS, providing libraries with single sign-on authentication and displaying patron account status within EDS. The partnership also allows Innovative to sell EBSCO A-to-Z™ with LinkSource^®, which will be known as Full Text Finder™.

Innovative Chief Executive Officer, Kim Massana, says the expanded agreement came out of the success of the existing working arrangement. “As we have developed our current Encore/EDS integration, we saw opportunities for a closer working relationship in other areas that will benefit our library customers and their end-users.”

EBSCO Information Services President Tim Collins say the expanded partnership with Innovative is a great example of two library vendors working together to benefit customers. “We know our customers are looking for a variety of solutions for improving access to library collections and that is what we want to provide. The continuing success of our partnership with Innovative is a testament to what two vendors can accomplish when they decide it is in their collective best interests to develop solutions that leverage their strengths and, most importantly, serve the needs of their customers.”

The existing agreement has provided for joint development designed to enable more tightly integrated access between Innovative’s Encore discovery platform and EDS in addition to facilitating access between EDS and Innovative’s Sierra Services platform. Having access to EDS’s unified index expands the quality and amount of content available for Encore users while adding the enhanced features and functionality available from EDS. Encore users are also able to search their EBSCOhost databases via the Encore interface – providing a uniquely powerful article search experience.

The partnership has also led to the development of the newly released Encore with EDS, which brings the most comprehensive collection of full-text articles available into Encore. The robust metadata offered by EDS is culled from thousands of major journal publishers and information providers, providing the deepest possible indexing for the majority of journals and magazines. In addition, users of Encore with EDS benefit from more full-text resources than with any other option.

Innovative Interfaces home: www.iii.com/

EBSCO Information Services home: www.ebsco.com/

OCLC completes major technical upgrade of core WorldCat infrastructure

On June 6, OCLC completed the development work to convert the underlying structure for its WorldCat database to Apache HBase, a distributed platform in use by many global information providers, including Facebook, Adobe and Salesforce.com. This marks the conclusion of a significant technical update to the WorldCat database of more than 300 million library records and more than two billion library holdings that will offer new options for data analysis and faster service to libraries and their users.

The Apache Hadoop software collection is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers. HBase is a top-level Apache Software Foundation project built on Hadoop that provides major data handling improvements for these very large datasets. OCLC WorldShare applications for library management, resource sharing, metadata and discovery rely on access to a variety of large and growing datasets, including the WorldCat database.

“This is a very exciting technology transition and service upgrade,” said Greg Zick, OCLC’s Vice President of Global Engineering. “As we move our OCLC services to the cloud on the WorldShare platform, we need to find ways to optimize performance of our operations on large datasets like local and national catalogs and authority datasets. This upgrade will also help ongoing quality improvement efforts, record matching and merging and will enable new representations and uses of the cooperative’s data.”

The sheer scope of OCLC members’ cooperative data is one driver of this change, as HBase provides better handling of very large datasets. In addition, HBase and Hadoop allow OCLC to represent library information in new ways for use in e-content and linked data systems while providing more consistent, reliable and faster service to libraries and their users.

“Our results have been significant,” said Ron Buckley, Senior OCLC Technology Manager and leader of the Hadoop migration team. “Our hardware storage requirements have been considerably reduced, and our overall footprint simplified to support growth. We have seen large gains in performance for some major data operations where execution time has been slashed from days to hours. This upgrade lets us explore new areas such as detailed analytics and enriched relationships that will increase the value of the cooperative’s data for all libraries.”

Hadoop provides these enhancements, in part, by scaling data services across hundreds or even thousands of computers, each with several processor cores. This efficiently distributes large amounts of work across a set of machines, allowing for greater flexibility, speed and dependability. OCLC is running Hadoop across more than 150 servers in three clusters.

Michael Stack, Software Engineer at Cloudera, Chair of the Apache HBase Project Management Committee and keynote for the HBaseCon event, is enthusiastic about OCLC’s work in this area. “I have had multiple discussions with Ron Buckley and know that after careful study and much preparatory work, OCLC has pulled off a smooth transition,” Mr Stack commented. “This is my favorite HBase deploy. It is about libraries, my favorite institution, and it is about Apache HBase as an enabling technology that allows OCLC to do more. It is a great story.”

This technology has already had an impact on OCLC functionality and services. The recent addition of linked data elements to WorldCat.org relies on the features available in Hadoop. Also, the new WorldShare Metadata Collection Manager service takes advantage of the data handling benefits of its distributed infrastructure.

Read the full announcement: www.oclc.org/news/releases/2013/201329dublin.en.html