"ArchiveGrid is a collection of nearly two million archival material descriptions, including MARC records from WorldCat and finding aids harvested from the web. It's supported by OCLC Research as the basis for our experimentation and testing in text mining, data analysis, and discovery system applications and interfaces. Archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives are represented in ArchiveGrid. ArchiveGrid provides access to detailed archival collection descriptions, making information available about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and other archival materials. It also provides contact information for the institutions where the collections are kept."

Via LLRX - Voice Dream e-reading app: Stellar for text to speech - and promising as a general reader - David H. Rothman reviews the Voice Dream Reader app for iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. At $10 it is more expensive than the average app, but David's deep dive has resulted in a recommendation that there is enough value to justify the cost.

"The UK Survey of Academics 2012, conducted by Ithaka S+R, Jisc, and Research Libraries UK (RLUK), examines the attitudes and behaviours of academics at higher education institutions across the United Kingdom. Our objective is to provide the entire sector, including universities, learned societies, scholarly publishers, and especially academic libraries, with timely findings and analysis that help them plan for the future. The Survey of Academics covers broadly the population of academics across the UK, as well as the opportunity to look at disciplinary and institutional stratifications, offering an unusual depth of analysis. Thematically, the Survey of Academics covers resource discovery and current awareness, library collections and content access, the print to electronic format transition, academic research methods and practices, undergraduate instruction, publishing and research dissemination, the role and value of the academic library, and the role of the learned society."

A Further Investigation into 3D Printing and 3D Scanning at the
Dalhousie University Libraries: a Year Long Case Study, By Michael Groenendyk, April 26th, 2013

News release: "WorldCat, the most comprehensive online database of resources available through libraries around the world, has reached another major milestone with the addition of its 2 billionth holding... WorldCat is a database of bibliographic information created and continuously updated by some 25,000 OCLC member libraries around the world. WorldCat records describe specific works and contain a listing of institutions that own an item, referred to as “holdings.” Institutions use holdings information to create local catalogs, arrange interlibrary loans and conduct reference work...WorldCat spans six millennia of recorded knowledge, from about 4800 B.C. to the present. It encompasses records for books, serials, sound recordings, musical scores, maps, visual materials, mixed materials and computer files."

The Power and Relevance of Libraries. "At the American Library Association's National Library Legislative Day, Pew Internet Director Lee Rainie will discuss 11 key takeaways from the Project's libraries research."

Hollee Schwartz Temple: "When people say everything's online," says Jerry Dupont of the Law Library Microform Consortium, "they're woefully uninformed." Dupont, founder of the LLMC, a nonprofit law library cooperative, estimates that of the 2 million unique volumes contained in America’s law libraries, only about 15 percent are available in digital form. That figure includes access via proprietary, commercial services like Westlaw and LexisNexis. Across the country, law libraries are trying to adapt to the digital revolution and preserve historic and precedential documents. But budget cuts have hit hard at academic law libraries, which historically have hosted some of the most robust legal collections. And the pressures are creating concerns that the public will lose access to essential legal documents."

New York Times, Jennifer Steinhauer: "Just as military contractors, air traffic controllers and federal workers are coping with the grim results of a partisan impasse over the federal deficit, the Library of Congress, whose services range from copyrighting written works — whether famous novels or poems scribbled on napkins — to the collection, preservation and digitalization of millions of books, photographs, maps and other materials, faces deep cuts that threaten its historic mission. Of the $85 billion in federal cuts for the current fiscal year, known as sequestration, half will come from military spending, and half from domestic programs like health care, research, education and the library. The library’s budget for the year has declined to $598.4 million, a 4 percent cut that is likely to slow its digitalization effort and has already caused copyright applications to back up. The worry spreads far beyond Washington because the Library of Congress — founded in 1800, burned and pillaged by the British in 1814 and replaced by Thomas Jefferson’s personal library — is home to an unrivaled history of the nation’s wars, presidencies, culture and place in the world."

Gary Somerset: "The U.S. Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Federal Digital System (FDsys) has achieved the milestone of 500 million document retrievals. FDsys is a one-stop site for authentic, published information on the three branches of the Federal Government. Retrievals are measured by the number of times content is viewed or downloaded from FDsys. GPO launched FDsys in January 2009 and since that time it has expanded to include 800 thousand searchable titles. Examples of content found on FDsys include: the post-President Kennedy’s assassination tape recordings, President Nixon’s Watergate grand jury testimony, the Budget of the U.S. Government, the Congressional Record, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, and congressional bills, hearings, and reports. GPO is continually adding content and working with agencies on new collection opportunities."

Parents, Children, Libraries, and Reading, by Carolyn Miller, Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie and Kristen Purcell. May 1, 2013

David Durant, East Carolina University: "J.Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, is pleased to announce the creation of the Cold War and Internal Security (CWIS) Collection. The CWIS Collection is a print archive containing over 1,000 congressional hearings, reports and committee prints, published between 1934-1976, dealing with congressional investigations of organizations deemed "subversive" or "un-American". For more about the CWIS Collection, please visit our LibGuide. We have also created a CWIS Blog, in order to highlight interesting and important documents from the collection, as well as key topics and the broader historical context for these materials. The first post features baseball star Jackie Robinson's July 1949 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The CWIS Collection is part of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries' Collaborative Federal Depository Program."

Cycling For Libraries - Travel Funding - Help three librarians take part in Cycling For Libraries from Amsterdam to Brussels this June!

Via LLRX.com - Copyrights, Fundamental Rights, and the Constitution - The recent Supreme Court decision, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, addresses fair use and the “first sale” doctrine, upon whose protection libraries, used-book dealers, technology companies, consumer-goods retailers, and museums have long relied. Professor Annmarie Bridy's commentary focuses on the position that intellectual property rights in general and copyrights in particular are important, and when their scope is circumscribed to ensure the existence of a robust public domain, they benefit society. However important IP rights are, though – and reasonable people disagree pretty vigorously about that – they are not fundamental in the Constitutional sense.

The changing world of librarians by Lee Rainie, Apr 24, 2013
at DC/SLA Spring Workshop

"The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. The DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used, through its three main elements:

1. A portal that delivers students, teachers, scholars, and the public to incredible resources, wherever they may be in America. Far more than a search engine, the portal provides innovative ways to search and scan through the united collection of millions of items, including by timeline, map, format, and topic.
   
2. A platform that enables new and transformative uses of our digitized cultural heritage. With an application programming interface (API) and maximally open data, the DPLA can be used by software developers, researchers, and others to create novel environments for learning, tools for discovery, and engaging apps.
   
3. An advocate for a strong public option in the twenty-first century. For most of American history, the ability to access materials for free through public libraries has been a central part of our culture, producing generations of avid readers and a knowledgeable, engaged citizenry. The DPLA will work, along with like-minded organizations and individuals, to ensure that this critical, open intellectual landscape remains vibrant and broad in the face of increasingly restrictive digital options. The DPLA will seek to multiply openly accessible materials to strengthen the public option that libraries represent in their communities."

"The "MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?" event took place 18-19 March at the University of Pennsylvania and was broadcast live online. Hosted by OCLC Research and University of Pennsylvania Libraries, the event featured thoughtful and provocative presentations about how libraries are already getting involved with MOOCs, and engaged attendees in discussions about strategic opportunities and challenges going forward. OCLC Research Senior Program Officer Merrilee Proffitt organized the event and has posted a series of six blog posts on the OCLC Research blog, Hangingtogether, that recap presentation highlights and summarize its outcomes."

"Libraries and library staff continue to respond to the needs of their communities, providing key resources as budgets are reduced, speaking out forcefully against book-banning attempts and advocating for free access to digital content in libraries, with a keen focus placed on ebook formats. Led by the American Library Association (ALA), libraries offer resources often unavailable elsewhere during an economic “recovery” that finds about 12 million Americans unemployed and millions more underemployed. And the library community continues to rally support for school libraries, which seem destined to bear the brunt of federal budget sequestration. These and other library trends of the past year are detailed in the ALA’s 2013 State of America’s Libraries Report, released today during National Library Week, April 14 – 20."

Gideon’s Army Produced and directed by Georgetown Law graduate Dawn Porter: "A 2013 Sundance award winning documentary, Gideon's Army follows the personal stories of three young public defenders in the Deep South challenging the assumptions that drive a criminal justice system strained to the breaking point. As of this spring, it has been 50 years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling Gideon v. Wainwright that established the right to counsel. This film is a window into the reality of the work of public defenders. It asks the question, can these courageous lawyers and their colleagues revolutionize the way America thinks about indigent defense and make “justice for all” a reality? The event is free and open to the public. Georgetown University Law Center - McDonough Hall, Hart Auditorium, Map & Directions. Stay for a discussion of the film and the ideas it presents, led by:* Jo-Ann Wallace, President and CEO, National Legal Aid & Defender Association * Abbe Smith - Director, Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic; Co-Director, E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program; Professor of Law. Screening co-sponsored by: National Equal Justice Library; The Friends of the Georgetown Law Library, Georgetown Law Innocence Project; Georgetown Criminal Law Association, The Georgetown chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild, Outlaw, and Law Docs." [Hannah Miller]

"Welcome to issue 1 of the Review of Think Tank publications on EU affairs, compiled by the Central Library of the General Secretariat of the Council. The review provides abstracts and links to papers published in the previous month by think tanks in Brussels and elsewhere. It will be issued monthly and will be available on paper at the Central Library and online on our Intranet and Internet. It can be disseminated freely - the usual disclaimers apply. Think tank publications in the first section deal with EU institutions and politics, with a focus on the crisis and its impact on European societies, and with perspectives from Brussels, Barcelona, Kiel, London, Davos, Prague and Rome. The UK relationship with the EU also attracted a lot of attention from the think tank community in January. Some see a connection between the UK-EU relationship and the role of Ireland, which recently took over the 6-month Presidency of the EU Council." [Via Helene LeBlanc and kudos to the Central Library!]

Via OCLC: "The "MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge?" event took place 18-19 March at the University of Pennsylvania and was broadcast live online. Hosted by OCLC Research and University of Pennsylvania Libraries, the event featured thoughtful and provocative presentations about how libraries are already getting involved with MOOCs, and engaged attendees in discussions about strategic opportunities and challenges going forward. More than 500 people participated in this event: 125 attended in person and more than 400 attended remotely online." Links to the 11 individual videos and a MOOCs and Libraries video playlist that comprises all of these videos are available at the links below, on the MOOCs and Libraries event page, and on the OCLC Research YouTube Channel.. Look to the OCLC Research blog, HangingTogether, for a short series of postings that recap presentation highlights and summarize outcomes from this event."

Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy [ALA] - Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment.

The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books, Alberto Acerbi; Vasileios Lampos; Philip Garnett; R. Alexander Bentley

James R. Jacobs - Government Information Librarian - Stanford University: "...[we have created] a petition on the White House's "We the People" petition site. If you believe in free permanent public access to authentic government information, we hope you'll sign the petition. And if every one of the @2500 govdoc-l subscribers signs, posts to their Facebook accounts and sends to 10 friends who sign, we'll reach our goal of 100,000 signatures by April 11, 2013! If we get enough signatures, the White House will respond and the FDLP community will move forward by leaps and bounds." See the Petition and the Context.
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Require free online permanent public access to ALL federal government information and publications.
1. Assure that GPO has the funds to continue to maintain and develop the Federal Digital System (FDsys).
2. Raise ALL Congressional, Executive & Judicial branch information, publications & data to the level of federally funded scientific information & publish ALL government information as "Open Access."
3. Mandate the free permanent public access to other Federal information currently maintained in fee-based databases - including the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL), & USA Trade Online.
4. Establish an interagency, govt-wide strategy to manage the entire lifecycle of digital government information w/ FDLP Libraries - publication, access, usability, bulk download, long-term preservation, standards & metadata.

Understanding Why Users Tag: A Survey of Tagging Motivation Literature and Results from an Empirical Study, Markus Strohmaier, Christian Körner, Roman Kern. Journal of Web Semantics, preprint server.

Thomas Johnson, Indexing Linked Bibliographic Data with JSON-LD, BibJSON and Elasticsearch: "Linked Data is a powerful tool for sharing bibliographic metadata. By combining the decentralization of the web with the use of globally defined metadata vocabularies, data from many sources can be treated as a single, aggregated graph. Supporting search across these distributed data sources within the same application, however, requires considerable work in vocabulary alignment and data transformation. Aggregate systems must convert data into a unified model which must (almost inevitably) be generic at the expense of the structure and granularity of the original data. This paper presents a novel solution for representing and indexing bibliographic resources that retains the data integrity and extensibility of Linked Data while supporting fast, customizable indexes in an application-friendly data format. The methodology makes use of JSON-LD to represent RDF graphs in JSON suitable for indexing with Elasticsearch. BibJSON is used as a common index format capable of handling a wide range of library resources. Since all three technologies (RDF/JSON-LD, BibJSON and Elasticsearch) share an emphasis on extensibility, it is possible to create an index of bibliographic data that is both generalized and flexible enough to handle Linked Data from multiple sources."

Self-publishing fans and the tech-obsessed keep getting it wrong: Big authors want to be in print -- and bookstores, by Laura Miller

GPO 2012 Annual Report: "The Government Printing Office (GPO) is transforming itself from a traditional ink- on-paper operation to a digital information platform. While producing the official printed products of the Government remains an important part of our business, we are using technology to move away from a print-centric business model and toward a content-centric focus, which today serves as the foundation for an increasing variety of digital and secure products and services...GPO’s federal Digital System (), our one-stop, no-fee Web site providing public access to the official information products of all three branches of the Government, continues to grow. Today we have more than 800,000 individual titles accessible via FDsys, and we are seeing more than 37 million documents retrieved each month. By the end of the year FDsys surpassed its 400 millionth document retrieval.

CDT: "The Supreme Court issued a decision today that is a major win for everyone who relies on copyright law's "first sale" doctrine -- including the millions of Internet users who have flocked to Craigslist, eBay, and similar online tools to buy, sell, and "freecycle" all kinds of stuff. The case, Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, effectively asked the Court to consider whether copyright owners should fully control all downstream distribution of copyrighted items manufactured overseas. As CDT and technology industry allies explained in our legal brief in the case last summer, giving copyright owners this kind of indefinite stranglehold on foreign-made goods would be disastrous for everything from yard sales to libraries to the thriving online resale markets that are empowering individual Internet users and small businesses. It would mean that, before you could sell or even lend a legally purchased book (or DVD, or toy with a copyrighted logo, or device with built-in software, etc.), you would have to get the copyright holder's permission...In clear and decisive terms, today's decision confirms that, once you lawfully acquire a book or album or toy, you own it and can re-sell, lend, or give it away as you please. You don't have to try to determine where is was printed or manufactured before you put it up on Craigslist or eBay."

Matt Weaver, Board member, Library Renewal, March 2013: "In order to serve our constituents with electronic content, libraries need to be able to understand how our collections are being used. This paper aims to present library-centered usage data to help libraries make decisions with regards to e-content, and to counter media and industry hype. Much has been written about the impact of major publisher changes on library lending, which are noted in the Sidebar. By looking at these events in the context of actual usage data, this report endeavors to demonstrate that a vendor-driven ebook model is neither extensible nor sustainable."

Via LLRX.com - A national digital library endowment: How America’s billionaires could be modern Carnegies for real - David H. Rothman discusses how e-books, collections of electrons, not atoms, come with special advantages. They eliminate physical-shelving costs and are especially useful for blind people and others with special needs. Digital technology can also help multiply the selection of books for residents of small towns as well as large cities with underfunded neighborhood library branches. This technology can likewise drive down the costs of providing best-sellers and help with popularizing authoritative information on key issues such as health and finance.

John Palfrey: "Publishers, ebook vendors, and libraries are engaged in a “tug of war” over the lending of electronic books, according to Library Journal’s recent ebook survey. This clash inhibits most libraries from fulfilling their important institutional missions to provide access to knowledge and preserve our cultural heritage. In the best case, this tug of war will be a temporary struggle. The best outcome is not a winner who holds all the rope and another lying on the ground with rope-burned hands. If there must be a winner of any kind, it ought to be the reading public."

Libraries, Hackspaces and E-waste: how libraries can be the hub of a young maker revolution: " Every discussion of libraries in the age of austerity always includes at least one blowhard who opines, "What do we need libraries for? We've got the Internet now!" Facepalm. The problem is that Mr. Blowhard has confused a library with a book depository. Now, those are useful, too, but a library isn't just (or even necessarily) a place where you go to get books for free. Public libraries have always been places where skilled information professionals assisted the general public with the eternal quest to understand the world. Historically, librarians have sat at the coalface between the entire universe of published material and patrons, choosing books with at least a colorable claim to credibility, carefully cataloging and shelving them, and then assisting patrons in understanding how to synthesize the material contained therein."

"The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) announced [March 5, 2013] the appointment of Dan Cohen as the DPLA’s founding Executive Director. Cohen, currently a tenured professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, brings to the DPLA more than a decade of experience in digital humanities and a deep commitment to the future of libraries, archives, and museums. Cohen will begin his tenure on April 18, 2013."

OATs: Open Access Textbooks: "The OATs Libguide provides access to descriptions and links to known initiatives and organizations that support the development and promotion of Open Access textbooks, and to OA and low-cost e-books and textbook catalogs and databases." [Gerry McKiernan]

Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the United Kingdom and Ireland, An OCLC Research Report

• "The top challenges for archives and special collections in the UK and Ireland are outreach, born-digital materials and space.
  
• Alignment of special collections with institutional missions and priorities is an ongoing challenge.
  
• The special collections sector is undergoing a major culture shift that mandates significant retraining and careful examination of priorities.
  
• Philanthropic support is limited, as are librarians' fundraising skills.
  
• Use of all types of special collections material has increased across the board.
  
• Users expect everything in libraries and archives to be digitized.
  
• One-third of archival collections are not discoverable in online catalogs.
  
• Management of born-digital archival materials remains in its infancy."

Appraising our Digital Investment: Sustainability of Digitized Special Collections in ARL Libraries - A Report from Ithaka S+R and the Association of Research Libraries. Nancy L. Maron, Ithaka S+R, Sarah Pickle, Ithaka S+R. February 2013

BISG Policy Statement POL-1101. Best Practices for Identifying Digital Products. Revised Publication: February 25, 2013

Libraries, e-Lending and the Future of Public Access to Digital Content, Prepared by Civic Agenda, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutes (IFLA)

PLOS ONE Research article - Subjective Impressions Do Not Mirror Online Reading Effort: Concurrent EEG-Eyetracking Evidence from the Reading of Books and Digital Media: Franziska Kretzschmar, Dominique Pleimling, Jana Hosemann, Stephan Füssel, Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Matthias Schlesewsky. Published: February 6, 2013

"Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, was joined by digital and library experts to discuss the findings of the Project’s most recent report, Library Services in the Digital Age. The report is based on the findings of a nationally representative survey that asked Americans what types of services they value in their library and what types of services they would like to see their library start to offer. His slides are shown here, and are available to download as a PDF or Powerpoint."

Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the United Kingdom and Ireland, An OCLC Research Report.

Via First Monday - The new library of Babel? Borges, digitisation and the myth of the universal library by Christopher Rowe

Via First Monday - Content analysis study of librarian blogs: Professional development and other uses by Grace M. Jackson-Brown

"The goal of this new MARC Usage in WorldCat activity is to provide an evidence base for testing assertions about the value of capturing various attributes by demonstrating whether the cataloging community has made the effort to populate specific tags, not just to define them in anticipation of use. OCLC Research seeks to use evidence of usage, as depicted in WorldCat, the largest aggregation of library data in the world, to inform decisions about where we go from here with the data that has been encoded using the MARC standard. Senior Program Officer Roy Tennant is leading this work by utilizing a process similar to "ground truthing" whereby geographic remote sensing data is checked or enhanced by on-the-ground observation and measurement. He and his team are attempting to perform a similar function for library cataloging. The MARC standard has been used for many decades, but how, exactly? Which elements and subfields have actually been utilized, and more importantly, how? Outputs of these efforts will include quarterly web reports on the usage of MARC within WorldCat throughout 2013, reports as requested for WorldCat Quality Control and/or the Library of Congress Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative."

Linda Zellmer, Government Information & Data Services Librarian: "This guide has been developed to give users a basic introduction to Census Data and American FactFinder 2, the U.S. Census Bureau's data access system. American FactFinder has several different search options, a basic keyword search, a Guided Search and an Advanced Search system, as well as several options for mapping data. Each of these systems are described on the pages of this guide. This guide is also available as a PDF document, for those who wish to follow a printed document."

"The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) voting members have approved a new project to develop standardized bibliographic metadata and visual indicators to describe the accessibility of journal articles as well as potentially describe how “open” the item is. Many offerings are available from publishers under the banner of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other descriptions; the terms offered vary between publishers and, in some cases, based on the funding organization of the author. Adding to the potential confusion, a number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are “open” while the rest of the journal’s content are available only by subscription or license. No standardized bibliographic metadata currently provides information on whether a specific article is freely readable and what re-use rights might be available to readers. Visual indicators or icons indicating the openness of an article are inconsistent in both design and use across publishers or even across journals from the same publisher."

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) independent study of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age, January 2013

"Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC's Vice President, Research and Chief Strategist, presented these slides in his keynote on 23 January 2013 at the 21st annual BOBCATSSS Conference in Ankara, Turkey. Lorcan's "The Inside Out library: Scale, Learning, Engagement" slides from this presentation are available for download from the OCLC Research website and for viewing on SlideShare."

Chronicle of Higher Education, Jennifer Howard: "Fair use and electronic course reserves are back in court. A keenly watched copyright case that pitted three academic publishers against Georgia State University has entered the appeals phase, with a flurry of filings and motions this week and more expected soon. One surprise motion came from the U.S. Department of Justice, which requested more time to consider filing an amicus brief either in support of the publishers or in support of neither party...he case in question is Cambridge U. Press et al. v. Mark P. Becker et al. In 2008, Cambridge, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publishers sued Georgia State, asserting it had committed widespread copyright violations when it allowed some of their content to be used, unlicensed, in e-reserves. The Association of American Publishers and the Copyright Clearance Center, which specializes in licensing content to universities, bankrolled the legal action."

News release: "In April, 2010, the Library of Congress and Twitter signed an agreement providing the Library the public tweets from the company’s inception through the date of the agreement, an archive of tweets from 2006 through April, 2010. Additionally, the Library and Twitter agreed that Twitter would provide all public tweets on an ongoing basis under the same terms. The Library’s first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006-10 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date. This month, all those objectives will be completed. To date, the Library has an archive of approximately 170 billion tweets."

"January 30, 2013. (Romereports.com) Texts, letters and manuscripts previously available only to experts with access to the Vatican's Library are now just a click away. The 256 documents are the first to be made available to anyone, simply by logging on to the website of the Vatican Apostolic Library. But the project is much more ambitious."

American Libraries Direct: "The most noteworthy reference titles published in 2012 have been named to the 2013 Outstanding References Sources List, an annual handpicked list from the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of ALA. Sponsored by RUSA’s Collection Development and Evaluation Section (CODES), the Outstanding Reference Sources Committee was established in 1958 to recommend the most outstanding reference publications for small and medium-sized public and academic libraries. The selected titles are valuable reference resources and are highly recommended for inclusion in any library’s collection. The 2013 winners are here."

Phil Morehart, American Libraries: "Kennedy’s involvement with libraries and education runs deep. She worked to improve New York City public school libraries as vice chair of the New York City Fund for Public Schools and served on the board of New Visions for Public Schools and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. She delivered the keynote speech at the 2011 I Love My Librarian Award Ceremony and is honorary chair of National Library Week this year. Kennedy touched on work accomplished in these roles, as well as iterating her belief in the power of libraries to affect personal and civil life. “Librarians are the most committed civil activists that I know,” she said."

"JSTOR, the not-for-profit digital library of thousands of academic journals and other content, announced [January 9, 2013] that the archives of more than 1,200 journals are now available for limited reading by the public. This is part of a major expansion of JSTOR’s experimental program Register & Read, in which people can sign up for a JSTOR account and, every two weeks, read up to three articles online for free. [The January announcement follows a successful 10-month test during which more than 150,000 people registered for reading access to an initial set of 76 journals. “Our goal is for everyone around the world to be able to use the content we have put online and are preserving,” said Laura Brown, JSTOR managing director. “Register & Read provides a virtual way for anyone to walk into the JSTOR library, register at the door, and ‘check out’ a limited number of articles for reading.” Journal archives from nearly 800 scholarly societies, university presses, and academic publishers are now included in Register & Read. These organizations license and entrust their content to JSTOR and share the goal of providing far-reaching access to scholarship."

"Published on 10 December 2012, Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog: Scale, Workflow, Attention, by Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Vice President, Research and Chief Strategist, discusses the position of the catalog and uses it to illustrate more general discovery and workflow directions. There is a renaissance of interest in the catalog and catalog data, yet it comes at a time when the catalog itself is being reconfigured in ways which may result in its disappearance as an individually identifiable component of library service. It is being subsumed within larger library discovery environments and catalog data is flowing into other systems and services."

News release: "The Library of Congress today is adding the Congressional Record, published by the Government Printing Office (GPO), and cost-estimate reports from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to its Congress.gov beta website, a public site for accessing free, fact-based legislative information. The additions will supplement bills, bill summaries, Member profiles and legislative history information already available on the site. Launched in September 2012, Congress.gov features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation. Congress.gov eventually will replace the public THOMAS system and the congressional Legislative Information System (LIS)...All bills from 2001 through the present that have a CBO Cost Estimate will now include a "CBO Cost Estimate" link to the right of the Overview section on the legislative detail page. This will open a pop-up that displays a list of associated CBO Cost Estimates, with a link to the CBO page displaying that report."

Presentation: Teens and Libraries by Lee Rainie, Jan 23, 2013 at Young Adult Library Services Association. "7 takeaways from our research:

1. Teens live in a different information ecosystem
   
2. Teens live in a different learning ecosystem
   
3. Teens’ reading levels match/exceed adult levels
   
4. Teens use libraries and librarians more than others, but don’t necessarily love libraries as much
   
5. Teens have different priorities in library services
   
6. Teens will behave differently in the world to come
   
7. The public and teachers recognize this and want libraries to adjust to it"

Library Services in the Digital Age - Patrons embrace new technologies – and would welcome more. But many still want printed books to hold their central place, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie and Kristen Purcell

Public Libraries in the United States Survey: Fiscal Year 2010. January 2013: "The Public Libraries in the United States Survey report analyzes data supplied annually by over 98% of public libraries across the country. This year’s report features nine performance indicators and examines differences in library service at the locality levels (city, suburb, town, rural and national).FY 2010, there were 8,951 public libraries in the 50 states and the District of Columbia with 17,078 public library branches and bookmobiles. This total translates to approximately 3.0 public libraries and 5.8 outlets for every 100,000 people. Although libraries in cities and suburbs comprise just over a quarter (28.4 percent) of all public libraries, they serve almost three-quarters (72.5 percent) of the population. In FY 2010, there were 487 public libraries in cities, 2,055 in suburban areas, 2,222 in towns, and 4,187 in rural areas."

Via OCLC - SO 16363:2012. Space Data and Information Transfer Systems (see authors link)— Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories outlines actions a repository can take to be considered trustworthy, but research examining whether the repository’s designated community of users associates such actions with trustworthiness has been limited. Drawing from this ISO document and the management and information systems literatures, this paper discusses findings from interviews with 66 archaeologists and quantitative social scientists. We found similarities and differences across the disciplines and among the social scientists. Both disciplinary communities associated trust with a repository’s transparency. However, archaeologists mentioned guarantees of preservation and sustainability more frequently than the social scientists who talked about institutional reputation. Repository processes were also linked to trust, with archaeologists more frequently citing metadata issues and social scientists discussing data selection and cleaning processes. Among the social scientists, novices mentioned the influence colleagues have on trust in repositories almost twice as much as the experts. We discuss the implications our findings have for identifying trustworthy repositories and how they extend the models presented in the management and information systems literatures."

News release: "In terms of speed and the breadth of material now accessible to anyone in the world, this is really revolutionary," says audio curator Greg Budney, describing a major milestone just achieved by the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. All archived analog recordings in the collection, going back to 1929, have now been digitized and can be heard at www.MacaulayLibrary.org. "This is one of the greatest research and conservation resources at the Cornell Lab," said Budney, "and through its digitization we’ve swung the doors open on it in a way that wasn’t possible 10 or 20 years ago." It took archivists a dozen years to complete the monumental task. The collection contains nearly 150,000 digital audio recordings equaling more than 10 terabytes of data with a total run time of 7,513 hours. About 9,000 species are represented. There’s an emphasis on birds but the collection also includes sounds of whales, elephants, frogs, primates, and more. "Our audio collection is the largest and the oldest in the world," explained Macaulay Library director Mike Webster. "Now, it’s also the most accessible. We’re working to improve search functions and create tools people can use to collect recordings and upload them directly to the archive. Our goal is to make the Macaulay Library as useful as possible for the broadest audience possible."

American Association of University Professors: Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians, January 11, 2013

Via LLRX.com: Conclusions from the National Inventory of Legal Materials - Hays Butler and Emily Feltren document the process and successful implementation of dynamic, extensive project conducted over the past three years by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) working with law librarian volunteers around the country to build the first-ever National Inventory of Legal Materials, an inventory of print and electronic legal materials at all levels of government. More than 350 volunteers have added nearly 8,000 legal titles to the inventory so far."

Internet Archives Blog: "Today we updated the Wayback Machine with much more data and some code improvements. Now we cover from late 1996 to December 9, 2012 so you can surf the web as it was up until a month ago. Also, we have gone from having 150,000,000,000 URLs to having 240,000,000,000 URLs, a total of about 5 petabytes of data. (Want a humorous description of a petabyte? start at 28:55) This database is queried over 1,000 times a second by over 500,000 people a day helping make archive.org the 250th most popular website."

Branches of Opportunity, January 2013, Center for an Urban Future - "As more and more New Yorkers turn to digital books, Wikipedia and other online tools for information and entertainment, there is a growing sense that the age of the public library is over. But, in reality, New York City’s public libraries are more essential than ever. Far from becoming obsolete, the city’s three public library systems— Brooklyn, Queens and New York, which encompasses the branches in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island — have experienced a 40 percent spike in the number of people attending programs and a 59 percent increase in circulation over the past decade. During that time, 48 different branches citywide have at least doubled annual attendance at programs, ranging from computer literacy classes to workshops on entrepreneurship, while 18 have more than doubled their circulation. These trends are grounded in the new realities of today’s knowledge economy, where it is difficult to achieve economic success or enjoy a decent quality of life without a range of basic literacy, language and technological skills. A distressingly large segment of the city’s population lacks these basic building blocks, but the public library has stepped in, becoming the second chance human capital institution. No other institution, public or private, does a better job of reaching people who have been left behind in today’s economy, have failed to reach their potential in the city’s public school system or who
simply need help navigating an increasingly complex world."

Digital Licenses Replace Print Prices as Accurate Reflection of Real Journal Costs by Paula Gantz, Association of American Publishers - Scholarly Publishing Division, Volume 11, No. 3, Summer/Fall 2012

Via LLRX.com - Google’s powerful Nexus 10 Android tablet as a library patron’s delight: The hardware and the apps that shine on it - David H. Rothman reviews the Android Nexus 10, which he considers a standout from among the well known group of available e-book readers. David documents key reasons to choose this e-reading machine, including the 10-inch screen, which can easily display 500 or 600 words of text. He also highlights a wide range of essential apps available for researchers, librarians, knowledge managers and of course, book lovers.

Karen Ann Cullotta, New York Times: "As librarians across the nation struggle with the task of redefining their roles and responsibilities in a digital age, many public libraries are seeing an opportunity to fill the void created by the loss of traditional bookstores. They are increasingly adapting their collections and services based on the demands of library patrons, whom they now call customers. Today’s libraries are reinventing themselves as vibrant town squares, showcasing the latest best sellers, lending Kindles loaded with e-books, and offering grass-roots technology training centers. Faced with the need to compete for shrinking municipal finances, libraries are determined to prove they can respond as quickly to the needs of the taxpayers as the police and fire department can."

E-book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines, by Lee Rainie and Maeve Duggan

"At Library.US, you can search across America and quickly find any US library: public, state, academic, Presidential and even law libraries. Browse by name of your local library, by city/state/zip, or by type of library, and let America’s Address give you instant access to the information you need."

Reading Habits in Different Communities, by Carolyn Miller, Kristen Purcell and Lee Rainie. December 20, 2012

Via LLRX.com - The risks if the DPLA won’t create a full-strength national digital library system: Setbacks for K-12, family literacy, local libraries, preservation, digital divide efforts? - David H. Rothman maintains that the Harvard-originated national digital library initiative is an underachiever in K-12 matters and identifies other areas where the DPLA could better serve America's libraries and their users. These areas range from family literacy to the content creation needs of local libraries, preservation and digital divide efforts. Rothman details specific remedies to these challenges consistent with his strong advocacy on behalf of strengthening national digital library systems.

"The Library holds the largest rare-book collection in North America (more than 700,000 volumes), including the largest collection of 15th-century books in the Western Hemisphere. The collection also includes the first extant book printed in North America, “The Bay Psalm Book” (1640). Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in some 470 languages. The oldest written material in the Library is a cuneiform tablet dating from 2040 B.C. The Library’s collection includes more than 50,000 genealogies. Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in some 470 languages. The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 138 million items on approximately 650 miles of bookshelves.The Library’s Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature contains recordings of more than 2,000 poets reading their own work. Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in some 470 languages. Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English. The collections contain materials in some 470 languages."

"The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is very proud to present the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a free online digitized virtual library of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hundreds of manuscripts made up of thousands of fragments - discovered from 1947 and until the early 1960's in the Judean Desert along the western shore of the Dead Sea - are now available to the public online. The high resolution images are extremely detailed and can be accessed through various search options on the site. With the generous lead support of the Leon Levy Foundation and additional generous support of the Arcadia Fund, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google joined forces to develop the most advanced imaging and web technologies to bring to the web hundreds of Dead Sea Scrolls images as well as specially developed supporting resources in a user-friendly platform intended for the public, students and scholars alike."

Embedded Academic Librarianship: A Review of the Literature. Stephanie J. Schulte, Assistant Professor and Education and Reference Services Coordinator, Health Sciences Library, The Ohio State University. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 4 Oct. 2012

Dempsey is OCLC Vice President and Chief Strategist: "This article discusses the position of the catalog and uses it to illustrate more general discovery and workflow directions for libraries. There is a renaissance of interest in the catalog and catalog data. Yet it comes at a time when the catalog itself is being reconfigured in ways which may result in its disappearance as an individually identifiable component of library service. The catalog is being subsumed within larger library discovery environments and catalog data is flowing into other systems and services. This article should be of interest to those who manage or make decisions about discovery services in libraries, or who are interested in how general Internet trends are affecting library services."

The changing world of libraries, Lee Rainie, November 28, 2012. "Nine takeaways for librarians:

1. E-reading is taking off because e-reading gadgets are taking off
   
2. The gadget doesn’t make the reader, but it may change the reader
   
3. E-book readers are reading omnivores (and probably influencers)
   
4. E-book readers are not platform snobs AND they like different platforms for different purposes
   
5. Library users are not always the same as library fans
   
6. E-book borrowing has foothold – and whopping upside
   
7. Library users are book buyers
   
8. Library borrowing patterns are changing
   
9. Collections are changing"

YouTube: "BFS-Auto can achieve high-speed and high-definition book digitization at over 250 pages/min using the original media format. This performance is realized by three key points: high-speed fully-automated page flipping, real-time 3D recognition of the flipped pages, and high-accuracy restoration to a flat document image. This system is toward the practical use in 2013."

Via LLRX.com - Hurricane Sandy and the national digital library issue: Could we have stopped or slowed down global warming? - David H. Rothman's commentary maintains it is imperative that civic matters, including those that resulted in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, not become lost opportunities to find and share information, and to make best use of lessons learned. Accountability, effective communications, access to actionable information, building reliable infrastructures, and providing dynamic access to agile solutions during times of national crisis provide opportunities to leverage the evolving Digital Public Library of America.

Rachel M. Zahorsky, ABA Journal: "More and more billing partners are knocking research costs off invoices before they’re even submitted to clients, legal consultant Rob Mattern of Mattern & Associates recently told me...This trend is apparent at firms that negotiate deals with research providers but historically haven’t passed along discounts they received to their clients, sometimes as a means to collect on other, nonbillable items, Mattern added. Mattern's firm’s 2012 Cost Recovery survey reported an influx of firms with clients who either balked at or outright refused to pay for legal research. While some firms have adopted policies to charge clients only the hard costs billed to them, others are adding legal research charges to the cost of doing business. In fact, 43 percent of law firm respondents said they absorb more of their legal research costs today than in 2010, according to a recent Bloomberg Law survey of 97 law firms, ranging from 50 to more than 400 attorneys. And transactional matters are less likely to recover legal research costs than litigation."

Questions of life and death - An investigation into the value of health library and information services in Australia. October 2012

A range of presentations from the conference, Transformational Power of Internet Librarians: Promise & Prospect have been posted by InfoToday. A sample of the program links follow:

• Über Analytics - Customizing Google Analytics to track multiple library platforms, M Ryan Hess, Web Services Coordinator, DePaul University
  
• Super Searcher Secrets, Mary Ellen Bates
  
• Competitive & Business Info in Social Tools, Scott Brown
  
• Free & Easy to Use Web 2.0 Resources, Cheryl Ann Peltier-Davis
  
• Starting a New Library in the Google Age, Ronald Snijder

Marc Parry: "Colleges share many things on Twitter, but one topic can be risky to broach: the reading habits of library patrons. Harvard librarians learned that lesson when they set up Twitter feeds broadcasting titles of books being checked out from campus libraries. It seemed harmless enough—a typical tweet read, "Reconstructing American Law by Bruce A. Ackerman," with a link to the book's library catalog entry - but the social-media experiment turned out to be more provocative than library staffers imagined. Harvard suspended the practice after privacy concerns were raised. Even though the Twitter stream randomized checkout times and did not disclose patrons' identities, the worry was that someone might somehow use other details to identify the borrowers. The episode points to an emerging tension as libraries embrace digital services. Historically, libraries have been staunch defenders of patrons' privacy. Yet to embrace many aspects of the modern Internet, which has grown more social and personalized, libraries will need to "tap into and encourage increased flows of personal information from their patrons," says the privacy-and-social-media scholar Michael Zimmer."

Northeast Document Conservation Center: "Here are some helpful resources for salvage and recovery options, where to get help, and what to do next, including guidance on drying wet collections and dealing with damage from fire, pests, or mold."

"The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) is pleased to announce publication of the report, The Current State of Open Access Repository Interoperability (2012). The report provides an overview of the current interoperability landscape in terms of the types of services that are now possible because of recent research and development efforts from throughout the Open Access community. The report covers seven areas of focus for current interoperability initiatives, and it provides overviews of nineteen key interoperability initiatives. The intended audience includes institutions and repository managers operating at different points in terms of infrastructure, resources, and institutional support. For institutions new to Open Access and repositories, the report aims to provide guidance for getting started and indicates which interoperability initiatives are necessary to implement in order to achieve specific services. For institutions and repository managers already involved in OA and repositories, the report may provide ideas for additional functionality to add to your repository or further services that are possible to provide to your community."

News release: "The Harvard Library plans to share several collections with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)— becoming the first DPLA content hub. The Harvard Library contains a wealth of special collections, and is dedicated to providing open access to them, where possible, through digitization and online dissemination. Through its collaboration with the DPLA, Harvard will contribute to global access to knowledge by linking to select digitized special collections..."

"The Registering Researchers Task Group aims to create a concise report that summarizes the benefits and trade-offs of emerging approaches to the problem of incomplete national authority files. Background: National name authority files are incomplete. Many researchers—tenured and non-tenured faculty and graduate students—are only partially represented in national name authority files. National name authority files cover poorly authors of journal articles and exclude researchers who do not publish but who create or contribute to data sets and other research activities. Uniquely identifying the academic authors of all publications, including journal articles, and researchers who do not publish, facilitates compiling individuals' scholarly output, especially as their affiliations change over time. The scholarly output is a factor in the reputation and ranking of the scholar's affiliated institution."

Via LLRX.com - DPLA Grant: Possible Synergy Between Libraries, Schools and Newspapers - David H. Rothman, a leading national digital library advocate, continues his series on the evolving framework for the Digital Public Library of America. In this column, he discusses the impact of new program funding from the Knight Foundation. Rothman believes the potential result could be the start of new synergies between libraries, schools, and newspapers - leading to more interest in civic participation, better monitoring of government at all levels, and maybe even a revival of many young people’s interest in newspapers.

Christina Ortiz: "After watching the U.S. Presidential debates, it's clear the country could really use a non-combative way to discuss issues and disseminate information. Sites like Procon.org do this for national issues, ranging from legalizing marijuana to illegal immigration, but sometimes the most heated political discussions happen on the local scene. Instead of relying on fact-checking websites, the University of Washington started the Living Voters Guide, a site dedicated educating voters on issues and referendums in Washington state."

"This paper is included on page 53 of the final report for the NSF Workshop, Curating for Quality: Ensuring Data Quality to Enable New Science, that took place 10-11 September 2012. The workshop was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and hosted by UNC School of Information & Library Science. Some takeaways from the Erway/Lavoie paper include:

• Allocation of digital preservation resources needs to be ongoing over time.
  
• Key tradeoffs are involved in allocating resources to digital preservation that should be recognized upfront.
  
• The management of these tradeoffs should be informed by the risks that could potentially impact the preservation process over time.
  
• It is unwise to attempt to replicate a broad range of data curation services, infrastructure and expertise at every institution."

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce a new homepage at http://loc.gov/law/. It is less text heavy, easier to scan, and includes a highlights carousel. Two of the most used products, Congress.gov and the Guide to Law Online, are prominently displayed. The @LawLibCongress Twitter stream is now on the homepage in the right column. The homepage updates compliments the enhancements made in June that widened the page layout and improved search by adding metadata and related facets." [via Emily Carr]

Younger Americans’ Reading and Library Habits by Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell, Mary Madden and Joanna Brenner

Why I'd Still Choose Paper Books Over Digital Books, by Nancy Perkins, October 16, 2012.

MiPAL: Cybersecurity - Compiled by the National Defense University Library [MERLN - the Military Education Research Library Network - is a comprehensive website devoted to international military education outreach. It represents a consortium of military education research libraries that work together to provide access to a variety of unique electronic resources for the use of researchers and scholars.] Via Ian Burke.

DRAFT - Digital Literacy, Libraries, and Public Policy: Report of the American Library Association Digital Literacy Task Force, September 8, 2012

Identifying Threats to Successful Digital Preservation: the SPOT Model for Risk Assessment, Sally Vermaaten, Brian Lavoie and Priscilla Caplan. D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2012. Volume 18, Number 9/10

the Chronicle of Higher Education - Jennifer Howard: "Academic libraries’ indexing of digitized works counts as fair use. So says the federal judge overseeing a major copyright-infringement lawsuit brought last year by the Authors Guild against the HathiTrust digital repository and its university partners. At stake was the uses the libraries could make of millions of scanned books. “I cannot imagine a definition of fair use that would not encompass the transformative uses” made by the defendants, Judge Harold Baer, of the U.S. District Court in New York, wrote in a ruling issued late Wednesday [copy of which is via EFF]."

Alisha Azevedo: "Spending by research libraries appears to be rising, especially for digital materials, according to new data from the Association of Research Libraries. The data are part of the association's Library Investment Index, which ranks the association's member libraries each year based on total library expenditures, salaries and wages of professional staff, spending on library materials, and the number of professional and support staff. The upward trend for the 2011 fiscal year was the first in several years. The economic downturn in 2008 and the tight budgets that followed caused a drop in spending on all of the index's categories, said Martha Kyrillidou, senior director of the association's statistics and service-quality programs, in an e-mail interview. She added that it "remains to be seen if this is a temporary reversal or a true shift to sustain itself more than a year."

"When used appropriately, educational technology is a tool to assist with implementation of the Common Core Standards, help raise graduation rates, and prepare students for life beyond K-12 education. Technology employed in isolation, without direct instruction, or highly qualified guidance, fails to address these concerns. It is the intent of this AASL [American Association of School Libraries] white paper to provide a review of technology-related topics that can contribute to success and might serve to generate interest in further research on filtering practices, Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs), apps, social media, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and related subjects."

ALA Library Fact Sheet Number 22 - "This fact sheet lists the top 100 largest libraries in the United States by volumes held. See below for definitions of "volume" for both public libraries and academic (college and university) libraries."

News releases: The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google today announced a settlement agreement that will provide access to publishers’ in-copyright books and journals digitized by Google for its Google Library Project. The dismissal of the lawsuit will end seven years of litigation. The agreement settles a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Google on October 19, 2005 by five AAP member publishers. As the settlement is between the parties to the litigation, the court is not required to approve its terms. The settlement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright-holders. US publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project. Those deciding not to remove their works will have the option to receive a digital copy for their use."

Periodical Price Survey: "A valuable guide for budgeting decisions, the Periodical Price Survey is published each spring in Library Journal. Authored by Stephen Bosch, the materials budget, procurement, and licensing librarian, University of Arizona Library, Tucson and Kittie Henderson, director of EBSCO's Academic and Law Divisions, EBSCO Information Services, the report provides a detailed look at current pricing trends with helpful projections for the upcoming year. Periodicals Price Survey 2012: Coping with the Terrible Twins, is available via Library Journal."

News release: "The use of 21st century technology to bring significant savings in textbook costs for California college students will be made possible under two measures the Governor signed into law today. The companion bills by Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, SB 1052 and SB 1053, will establish development of open source digital textbooks for 50 lower division courses which college students can electronically access for free, or for a modest cost of $20 per printed textbook. “The current cost of traditional textbooks is so high, some college students are forced to struggle through a required class without the textbook, forced to drop classes or sometimes even drop out of college altogether. There’s absolutely no reason a basic biology, statistics or accounting textbook, for example, should cost $200,” said Steinberg. “The Governor has shown great vision in signing this legislation as a way to help tens of thousands of students and families with the increasing expenses of higher education. Any avenue towards reducing those costs opens more doors for our students, and that in turn continues development of the educated workforce we need to fuel California’s economic engine.”

Burke Turns the Page - Library must balance paper-and-ink traditions with the digital revolution - by Helen S. Schwartz

• "The library is changing its subscriptions from print journals to electronic delivery of those same periodicals wherever possible. Burke’s first digital book collection joins other monographs but is stored online rather than on the shelves.
  Online resources like WorldCat can locate books in libraries all over the world, supplanting the unwieldy and quickly outdated volumes of the National Union Catalog and other national directories.
  
• Even the Archives and Special Collections are being transformed as library staff have begun scanning rare items and making them available online.
  
• And, of course, that card catalog of yore has been succeeded by ALEX — the speedy, flexible online catalog that allows users to customize searches in hundreds of ways and doesn’t fold, spindle or collect a palimpsest of grimy fingerprints."

"Congress.gov makes federal United States legislative information freely available to the public. Launched Sept. 19, 2012, this version of the site is an initial beta release of Congress.gov, created as a successor to THOMAS.gov, the current public site for legislative information. The Congress.gov beta site contains legislation from the 107th Congress (2001) to the present, member of Congress profiles from the 93rd Congress (1973) to the present, and selected member profiles from the 80th through the 92nd Congresses (1947 to 1972). Over the next two years, Congress.gov will be adding information and features, eventually incorporating all of the information currently available on THOMAS.gov. (To compare the scope of legislative information available on THOMAS.gov and the scope of legislative information on the beta site, see Coverage Dates for Legislative Information.)"

Via LLRX.com: Bluebook Technologies - The Bluebook is the standard citation guide for legal materials. There are now three format choices for the Bluebook: paper, online subscription (since 2008), and as of August 10, 2012 - iPad app. Law Librarian, author, research instructor and blogger Mary Whisner's guide discusses and illustrates the features and pricing of each.

Via LLRX.com - The New Digital Public Library of America Board of Directors - David H. Rothman's current commentary highlights the composition of the new board of directors of the nonprofit DPLA, an organization that continues to grow and change, along with clarifying its goals and objectives.

News release: "Judge Denise Cote approved the Justice Department's controversial settlement with three major publishers -- Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster -- in a 45-page decision filed [September 6, 2012]. The settlement requires the publishers to allow e-book retailers to sell their books at any price, even below cost, so long as the retailer does not lose money over a publisher's entire e-book list over a 12-month period. The Justice Department had sued five publishers (the others are Penguin and Macmillan) and Apple this spring alleging that they had colluded to introduce "agency pricing" for e-books in 2010 with the launch of the iPad. The Authors Guild opposed approval of the settlement, believing that the DOJ could address the alleged collusion without requiring three publishers to allow Amazon to resume predatory pricing. Amazon's predatory pricing -- selling bestselling frontlist e-book titles at a loss -- had helped the online retailer gain a 90% share of the e-book market by January 2010."

"A valuable guide for budgeting decisions, the Periodical Price Survey is published each spring in Library Journal. Authored by Stephen Bosch, the materials budget, procurement, and licensing librarian, University of Arizona Library, Tucson and Kittie Henderson, director of EBSCO's Academic and Law Divisions, EBSCO Information Services, the report provides a detailed look at current pricing trends with helpful projections for the upcoming year. Periodicals Price Survey 2012: Coping with the Terrible Twins, is available online via Library Journal."

• Serials Price Projection Report 2013
  
• Five Year Journal Price History 2008 - 2012

News release: "In response to the growing demand to make research free and available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, a diverse coalition today issued new recommendations that could usher in huge advances in the sciences, medicine, and health.The recommendations were developed by leaders of the Open Access movement, which has worked for the past decade to provide the public with unrestricted, free access to scholarly research — much of which is publicly funded. Making the research publicly available to everyone — free of charge and without most copyright and licensing restrictions — will accelerate scientific research efforts and allow authors to reach a larger number of readers."

OCLC news release: "This report urges a collaborative approach for conversion of content on various types of digital media. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, Swatting the Long Tail of Digital Media: A Call for Collaboration, is intended for managers who are making decisions on where to invest their born-digital time and money. It should help them understand that any expectations that local staff will be able to handle everything are probably impractical. We hope it will also help archivists (and others) in the trenches breathe a sigh of relief to think that perhaps they won’t have to deal with an array of obsolete media all on their own."

New on LLRX.com - Friends of Quinn and LD OnLine: Two good Web sites illustrate need for separate national digital library systems - public and academic

StateStats.org created this Support Your Local Library infographic, which may be added to your site.

"This report is geared to those tasked with gaining preliminary control over the digital media in an archives' collections, including those who don’t know where to begin in managing born-digital materials. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, You’ve Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media errs on the side of simplicity and describes what is truly necessary to start managing born-digital content on physical media. It presents a list of the basic steps without expanding on archival theory or the use of particular software tools. It does not assume that policies are in place or that those performing the tasks are familiar with traditional archival practices, nor does it assume that significant IT support is available. Eighteen well-respected advisors weighed in on the guidance, ensuring that it was not just simple, but authoritative."

Print Management at "Mega-scale": a Regional Perspective on Print Book Collections in North America - An OCLC Research Report by: Brian Lavoie, Constance Malpas, JD Shipengrover.

Via GOOD Education - Generation Read: Millennials Buy More Books Than Everybody Else: "Forget the stereotype of the tweeting, texting, YouTube-watching millennial with a short attention span. According to the 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review, if you were born between 1979 and 1989, you spent more money on books in 2011 than older Americans. The survey found that millennials now buy 30 percent of books. In comparison, baby boomers, who have far more disposable income than most millennials, only made 24 percent of book purchases."

Ebook Acquisition and Lending Briefing - Public, Academic and Research Libraries, August 2012: "This paper presents some of the legal, strategic and technical problems that arise from the addition of scholarly and trade ebooks to library collections, together with possible solutions. Some of the most common business models are briefly set out. The latest data on ebook usage is also included."

News release: "OCLC has published bibliographic linked data for the most widely held works in WorldCat. This downloadable file—representing nearly 1.2 million resources—contains approximately 80 million linked data “triples,” the term for the most granular relationship possible between discrete pieces of information...The linked data is provided as RDF serialization, and uses the Schema.org ontology as well as library extensions to Schema.org that OCLC has been working on with members and partners over the last year. It is being made available, under an ODC-BY data license, in a single, 1-gigabyte, compressed (GZip) file, which can be downloaded from here."

"Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, will present the latest Project findings to the Handheld Librarian Online Conference about how many people have mobile devices and how they use these devices—for accessing all kinds of content, using apps, social media, and for specialized searches such as for politics, news, and for health information. He will also discuss broader public attitudes about why people like mobile connectivity and how they feel challenged by it."

via LLRX.com - OverDrive, safeguarding classics, the Jane Austen-'Hunger Games' connection, and a few other priorities for the DPLA to ponder: David H. Rothman's current commentary on the Harvard-hosted Digital Public Library of America highlights successful components of the project and prospective concepts that would support attaining the goal of a national digital library system.

The Problem of Data, Lori Jahnke and Andrew Asher, Spencer D. C. Keralis with an introduction by Charles Henry. August 2012. CLIR Pubublication No. 154. “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data—so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.” IBM, Bringing Big Data to the Enterprise

News release: "OCLC is recommending the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY) for member institutions that would like to release their library catalog data on the Web. This open data license provides the means for users to share WorldCat-derived data in a manner that is consistent with the cooperative’s community norms defined in the “WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities.” Data can be freely shared subject only to attribution and OCLC's request that those making use of WorldCat derived data conform to the community norms."
See also OCLC adds Linked Data to WorldCat.org

Via LLRX.com: Did the British burn all the books? Remembering the war of 1812 and the first Library of Congress

E-Books in Libraries: A Briefing Document Developed in Preparation for a Workshop on E-Lending in Libraries (July 1, 2012). Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2012-15.

Publishers Week news in following Google Book Scanning project postings: "After a round of key filings, two Authors Guild cases challenging Google’s ambitious library book-scanning program are on schedule for early fall trial dates. Final reply briefs were filed July 27 for the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, with that case now fully briefed and all but set for a November trial in Judge Harold Baer’s courtroom. And in the Authors Guild v. Google case, motions for summary judgment were also filed July 27, with a final round of reply briefs due September 17 and oral arguments set for October 9 before Judge Denny Chin. With the summary judgment motions now in, the question before the courts this time around is refreshingly simple compared to the complex 300-plus–page settlement agreement between the authors, publishers, and Google that was rejected by Judge Denny Chin in March of 2011: digitizing millions of books for preservation and indexing is either authorized by Congress under the Copyright Act’s fair use provision, or it’s not. The Authors Guild holds that the unprecedented mass digitization programs exceed Congress’s stated intentions, while lawyers for Google and the HathiTrust (a coalition of research libraries) argue that the public benefits and transformative nature of the scanning projects easily qualify them as fair use."

How Fair Use Can Help Solve the Orphan Works Problem, Jennifer M. Urban - University of California, Berkeley - School of Law, June 18, 2012. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 27, 2012. UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 2089526

"Videos of all Libraries Rebound presentations and discussions are now available on YouTube and on the OCLC Research website. There are 17 videos total. The OCLC Research Library Partnership meeting, Libraries Rebound: Embracing Mission, Maximizing Impact, took place 5-6 June 2012 in Philadelphia, PA. It focused on the implementation of distinctive services that better align the library with the mission of its parent institution. Links to 17 individual videos from the meeting as well as a playlist that comprises all of these videos are available below. The playlist, individual video links and individual links to each presenter's slides are also available on the Libraries Rebound web page. In addition, links to Hangingtogether blog summaries about the meeting are available below."

Via Graham Greenleaf: "AustLII will today launch the Australasian Colonial Legal History Library. This is the first version of the Library, containing over 220,000 searchable documents from before 1900, from the seven Australasian colonies (including New Zealand). It is being developed in conjunction with NZLII. Development of further databases is underway and will expand the Library's contents considerably over the next year. A paper that AustLII presented at the Australian Historical Association Conference to explain the Library, 'Digitising and Searching Australasian Colonial Legal History', is now available for download at SSRN."

"This report provides insight into the characteristics of regionally consolidated print collections, key relationships across these collections, and their implications for system-wide issues such as information access, mass digitization, resource sharing, and preservation of library resources. Written by OCLC Researchers Brian Lavoie, Constance Malpas and JD Shipengrover, Print Management at "Mega-scale": A Regional Perspective on Print Book Collections in North America combines urbanist Richard Florida's mega-regions concept with WorldCat data to construct twelve regionally consolidated print book collections. The analysis of the regional collections is synthesized into a set of stylized facts describing their salient characteristics, as well as key cross-regional relationships among the collections. The stylized facts motivate a number of key implications regarding access, management, preservation, and other topics considered in the context of a network of regionally consolidated print book collections. The report also presents a simple framework to organize the landscape of print book collection consolidation models, as well as to clarify and distinguish basic assumptions regarding print consolidation. Print Management at "Mega-scale" provides a unique perspective on the new geography of library service provision, in which services and collections are increasingly organized "above the institution."

Reforming Copyright Is Possible - And it's the only way to create a national digital library, by Pamela Samuelson

Information “Lost and Found” – new models for library reference service, Rauha Maarno, Editor-in-Chief for the HelMet Web Library, Helsink, Finland

"For the first time in any U.S. trade agreement, the United States is proposing a new provision, consistent with the internationally-recognized “3-step test," that will obligate Parties to seek to achieve an appropriate balance in their copyright systems in providing copyright exceptions and limitations for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. These principles are critical aspects of the U.S. copyright system, and appear in both our law and jurisprudence. The balance sought by the U.S. TPP proposal recognizes and promotes respect for the important interests of individuals, businesses, and institutions who rely on appropriate exceptions and limitations in the TPP region. The United States is proposing this at the current round of TPP talks in San Diego. The proposal has benefited from the input of a wide range of stakeholders, and we look forward to discussing it further and sharing more information as the TPP negotiations progress."

WSJ: "In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them."

Libraries, patrons, and e-books, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell, Mary Madden and Joanna Brenner. Summary of findings:

• 12% of readers of e-books borrowed an e-book from the library in the past year. But a majority of Americans do not know that this service is provided by their local library.
  
• Some 12% of Americans ages 16 and older who read e-books say they have borrowed an e-book from a library in the past year.
  
• Most e-book borrowers say libraries are very important to them and their families and they are heavy readers in all formats, including books they bought and books lent to them. E-book borrowers say they read an average (the mean number) of 29 books in the past year, compared with 23 books for readers who do not borrow e-books from a library. Perhaps more striking, the median (midpoint) figures for books reportedly read are 20 in the past year by e-book borrowers and 12 by non-borrowers.

Larsen, Alli Orr, Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding (February 23, 2012). Virginia Law Review, Forthcoming; William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-206.

Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications - Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, June 2012

"The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB. [Currently there are 1098 Academic peer-reviewed books from 27 publishers.] Metadata will be harvestable in order to maximize dissemination, visibility and impact. Aggregators can integrate the records in their commercial services and libraries can integrate the directory into their online catalogues, helping scholars and students to discover the books. The directory will be open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access and should contain as many books as possible, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards."

"Just to let you all know that here at the Economic and Social Data Service in the UK we have been working with the ESRC on a brochure to encourage data citation amongst our social scientists and journal publishers. In October 2011 we minted over 5000 DOIs for our ESDS Collection with Datacite, using a methodology we developed to deal with version changes to our data. You can view our Webinar that explains how we do this. We have also spoken at various Datacite events. We are currently sending out over 1000 brochures to all the major UK and key European social science publishers and professional societies in the UK. View our brochure and feel free to borrow from it!"

Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories "offers a quick environmental scan of the repository landscape and then focuses on disciplinary repositories—those subject-based, often researcher-initiated loci for research information. Seven of these repositories are profiled, with a focus on their varied business models. The report concludes with a discussion of sustainability, including funding models, factors that contribute to a repository's success, and ways to bring in additional revenue. It is intended to help librarians support researchers in accessing and disseminating research information."

Via LLRX.com: Should libraries start their own, more trustworthy Facebook? - David Rothman proposes that the time may be fast upon us for libraries — perhaps allied with academic institutions, newspapers and other local media — to start their own more trustworthy Facebook. His involvement with the Digital Public Library of America provides a reference point and support for the integral role that this new model of virtual connectivity and knowledge sharing can play moving forward.

Sag, Matthew, Predicting Fair Use (February 25, 2012). Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 73:1 47-91 (2012); TRPC 2011; Loyola University Chicago School of Law Research Paper No. 2012-005. Available at SSRN

ReadersFirst: "Libraries have a responsibility to fight for the public and ensure that users have the same open, easy and free access to e-books that they have come to rely on with physical books. They face two major challenges. The first is that, unlike print books, publishers are not required to sell e-books to libraries -- and many do not. This is a complex and evolving issue. The second, addressed here, is that the products currently offered by e-content distributors, the middlemen from whom libraries buy e-books, create a fragmented, disjointed and cumbersome user experience. To correct this, e-content providers must be willing partners, and offer products that allow users to:

• Search and browse a single comprehensive catalog with all of a library’s offerings at once, including all e-books, physical collections, programs, blogs, and donor opportunities. Currently, content providers often only allow searches within the products they sell, depriving users of the comprehensive library experience.
  
• Place holds, check-out items, view availability, manage fines and receive communications within individual library catalogs or in the venue the library believes will serve them best, without having to visit separate websites (libraries, not distributors, should be enabled to manage all interactions with users).
  
• Seamlessly enjoy a variety of e-content. To do this, libraries must be able to choose content, devices and apps from any provider or from multiple providers, without bundling that limits a library’s ability to serve content they purchase on platforms of their choice.
  
• Download e-books that are compatible with all readers, from the Kindle to the Nook to the iPad and so on."

Connect, Collaborate, and Communicate: A Report from the Value of Academic Libraries Summits, by Karen Brown and Kara J. Malenfant, June 2012. "Five overarching recommendations for the library profession emerged from the discussions, presentations, and facilitated small group work at the summits:

• Increase librarians’ understanding of library value and impact in relation to various dimensions of student learning and success.
  
• Articulate and promote the importance of assessment competencies necessary for documenting and communicating library impact on student learning and success.
  
• Create professional development opportunities for librarians to learn how to initiate and design assessment that demonstrates the library’s contributions to advancing institutional mission and strategic goals.
  
• Expand partnerships for assessment activities with higher education constituent groups and related stakeholders.
  
• Integrate the use of existing ACRL resources with library value initiatives."

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Search project litigation, this posting via The Public Index Blog, Class Certification Granted, by James Grimmelmann [Thursday, May 31, 2012] "Today, Judge Chin issued an opinion granting class certification. The Authors Guild lawsuit will proceed as a class action on behalf of:

Via FindLaw: "Apple has responded to the United States' antitrust complaint arising out of supposed collusion between Apple and book publishers to fix the price of e-books appearing on Apple's iBooks store. The tech company calls the complaint "fundamentally flawed," arguing that Apple's entry into the marketplace actually broke Amazon's de facto monopoly on e-books."

"This report offers a quick environmental scan of the repository landscape and then focuses on disciplinary repositories--those subject-based, often researcher-initiated loci for research information. Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories is intended to help librarians support researchers in accessing and disseminating research information. The report includes profiles of seven repositories with a focus on their varied business models. It concludes with a discussion of sustainability, including funding models, factors that contribute to a repository's success, and ways to bring in additional revenue."

Academic spring campaign aims to make all taxpayer-funded academic research available for free online: "The government has drafted in the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. The initiative, which has the backing of No 10 and should be up and running in two years, will be announced by the universities and science minister, David Willetts, in a speech to the Publishers Association on Wednesday. The move will embolden what has been dubbed the "academic spring" – a growing campaign among academics and research funders for open access in academic publishing. They want to unlock the results of research from behind the lucrative paywalls of journals controlled by publishing companies. Almost 11,000 researchers have signed up to a boycott of journals owned by the huge academic publisher Elsevier. Subscriptions to the thousands of research journals can cost a big university library millions of pounds each year – costs that have started to bite as budgets are squeezed. Harvard University, frustrated by the rising costs of journal subscriptions, recently encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely available through open access journals and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls."

OCLC Research: 2011 Activity Report: "This report provides highlights of OCLC Research activities, focusing on 2011. The purpose is to dive more deeply into our work, to provide a flavor of important themes, and to point to sources of further information. It reviews our internal work and provides an overview of our external shared work agenda. And it presents recent outputs, which take the form of prototype systems or services, as well as published reports, webinars, podcasts, videos and meetings of all types ranging from task group sessions to our three-day symposium, FutureCast. We feel it presents a story of achievement and contribution, representing significant value provided to OCLC, the membership, and the larger community."

Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want - An OCLC Report: "In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on WorldCat.org (OCLC’s freely available end user interface on the Web) and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide. The Online Catalogs report presents findings from these research efforts. The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog’s delivery-related information is just as important to end users. In addition, the report presents findings on:

• The metadata elements that are most important to end users in determining if an item will meet his or her needs
  
• The enhancements end users would like to see made in online library catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials
  
• The enhancements librarians would recommend for online library catalogs to better assist them in their work."

OnlineUniversities.com" 10 Changes to Expect from the Library of the Future: "Libraries have acted as community cornerstones for millennia, and every April marks School Library Month, celebrating how they promote education and awareness in an open, nurturing space. What makes them such lasting institutions, though, isn’t the mere act of preserving books and promoting knowledge. Rather, it’s the almost uncanny ability to consistently adapt to the changing demands of the local populace and emerging technology alike. The library system probably won’t disappear anytime soon, but rather, see itself blossoming into something new and exciting in congruence with today’s myriad informational demands."

Briefing Paper on Embedding Creative Commons Licences into Digital Resources - Naomi Korn, Strategic Content Alliance IPR Consultant, March 2011

"We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called “providers”) to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals. Harvard’s annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles."

Public libraries in the digital age by Mary Madden, Kathryn Zickuhr, Apr 25, 2012 at Chief Officers of State Library Agencies: "They presented findings on the rise of e-reading, including reading-device ownership and the general reading habits/preferences of Americans. Their presentation included libraries research fact sheets:

• Fact sheet: The Rise of E-Reading
  
• Fact sheet on Pew Internet’s research on the role of libraries in users’ lives and in their communities in the digital age
  
• How to participate in our research on e-books and libraries

News release: "The Harvard Library announced it is making more than 12 million catalog records from Harvard’s 73 libraries publicly available. The records contain bibliographic information about books, videos, audio recordings, images, manuscripts, maps, and more. The Harvard Library is making these records available in accordance with its Open Metadata Policy and under a Creative Commons 0 (CC0) public domain license. In addition, the Harvard Library announced its open distribution of metadata from its Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) scholarly article repository under a similar CC0 license...The catalog records are available for bulk download from Harvard, and are available for programmatic access by software applications via API's at the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The records are in the standard MARC21 format."

Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Part 3: Recommendations and Readings, Karen Smith-Yoshimura OCLC Research and Rose Holley National Library of Australia

"The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB. Metadata will be harvestable in order to maximize dissemination, visibility and impact. Aggregators can integrate the records in their commercial services and libraries can integrate the directory into their online catalogues, helping scholars and students to discover the books. The directory will be open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access and should contain as many books as possible, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards."

Federal Depository Library Program: Issues for Congress - R. Eric Petersen, Specialist in American National Government; Jennifer E. Manning, Information Research Specialist; Christina M. Bailey, Information Research Specialist, March 29, 2012

The Law Library of Congress, Translation of National Legislation into English, March 2012 - Global Legal Research Center

State of America's Libraries Report 2012: "As the national economy continues to struggle toward recovery from the Great Recession, 2011 was a year of grim headlines. The federal Library of Congress lost about 9% of its budget and 10% of its workforce. Detroit, a city in fiscal crisis, agonized all year over how many library branches to close. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed a budget that would eliminate 268 currently vacant positions and lay off almost 300 from the library system. (After he was met by hundreds of protesters of all ages, including a group of fist-pumping preschoolers, the mayor backtracked…somewhat.) The Huffington Post took note of it all and started a series in November headlined ― Libraries in Crisis. But there was good news as well. The Troy (Mich.) Public Library was saved from closing permanently after some 58% of voters, who had rejected two similar measures in the past few years, approved a five-year operating millage. In Los Angeles, voters in March approved by 63% a measure to increase dedicated spending for the Los Angeles Public Library system by $50 million over the next few years without raising taxes, allowing reinstated full-time hours for 73 branches...What became clear through it all was that amid the shifting winds of an economic storm, libraries continue to transform lives, adapting to and adopting new and emerging technologies, and experimenting with innovative and transformational ideas to provide services that empower patrons. The public libraries in many major U.S. cities continue to see circulation rise, with Seattle leading the way with a whopping 50% increase in the past six years. The use of social media by libraries of all types increased dramatically, and the American Library Association (ALA), the world‘s largest and most influential library association, continues to provide leadership in the transformation of libraries and library services in a dynamic and increasing global digital information environment."

You belong @ your library as libraries transform lives through technological literacy: "Libraries are transforming lives by providing patrons the tools needed to compete and thrive in a 21st century market place. Libraries continue to provide traditional resources and services, but now patrons will find book shelves neighboring computer labs and wireless environments. Libraries are technology hubs that thousands turn to and depend on for technological literacy resources, including free computer and software workshops, employment databases and free access to digital media."

Via Stephane Cottin, Membre du conseil d'administration at ADIJ Association pour le developpement de l'informatique juridique - France - news on the availability of new databases that provide multiple language access to the French official legal portal Legifrance.gouv.fr - Translations of French legal texts

• Italian
  
• Arabic
  
• German
  
• Spanish
  
• Chinese
  
• A list of French legal texts or websites translated by institutional bodies into foreign languages (30 languages today) is here

  Permanent Link

The rise of e-reading, by Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr, Kristen Purcell, Mary Madden and Joanna Brenner

Restoring Contemplation: How Disconnecting Bolsters the Knowledge Economy, by Jessie L. Mannisto

"The Mind is a Metaphor, is an evolving work of reference, an ever more interactive, more solidly constructed collection of mental metaphorics. This collection of eighteenth-century metaphors of mind serves as the basis for a scholarly study of the metaphors and root-images appealed to by the novelists, poets, dramatists, essayists, philosophers, belle-lettrists, preachers, and pamphleteers of the long eighteenth century. While the database does include metaphors from classical sources, from Shakespeare and Milton, from the King James Bible, and from more recent texts, it does not pretend to any depth or density of coverage in literature other than that of the British eighteenth century. The database was assembled and taxonomized and is maintained by Brad Pasanek."

Computers in Libraries 2012 - access the presentations online using this link.

"NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more."

Internet Archive’s Repository Collects Thousands of Books: "In a wooden warehouse in this industrial suburb [Richmond, CA], the 20th century is being stored in case of digital disaster. Forty-foot shipping containers stacked two by two are stuffed with the most enduring, as well as some of the most forgettable, books of the era. Every week, 20,000 new volumes arrive, many of them donations from libraries and universities thrilled to unload material that has no place in the Internet Age... “We want to collect one copy of every book,” said Brewster Kahle, who has spent $3 million to buy and operate this repository situated just north of San Francisco. “You can never tell what is going to paint the portrait of a culture.” As society embraces all forms of digital entertainment, this latter-day Noah is looking the other way. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made his fortune selling a data-mining company to Amazon.com in 1999, Mr. Kahle founded and runs the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving Web pages — 150 billion so far — and making texts more widely available. But even though he started his archiving in the digital realm, he now wants to save physical texts, too."

Grounding Tomorrow's Digital Library in Traditional Values: "Mr. Wilkin is executive director of HathiTrust, an online digital repository with more than 10 million volumes. Created in 2008 with the help of Google's ambitious book-scanning project, the effort is housed at Michigan but draws on the collections and resources of more than 60 partner institutions. "From the beginning, it was about the collective interest of libraries," he says. "Not about Michigan's collections, but about the ways those collections are meaningful to other libraries."

Via LLRX.com: Help with SharePoint is on the way in The Adventures of SharePoint Reading Bee© Animated Series

The New Jersey Association of School Librarians (NJASL) released findings of a three-year study conducted by the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL) at Rutgers University, which explored the value of quality school libraries to education in New Jersey. “The findings show that New Jersey school libraries and school librarians contribute in rich and diverse ways to the intellectual life of a school, and to the development of students who can function in a complex and increasingly digital information environment,” said Dr. Ross Todd, lead researcher in the study and CISSL Director."

"The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum announced that it has opened and made available for research the first section of the Personal Papers of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. This portion of the collection features never-before-seen historic records from Mrs. Kennedy’s years as First Lady, including material relating to her efforts to restore the state rooms of the White House and her highly acclaimed televised tour of the First Family’s home, which aired on February 14, 1962 – fifty years ago tomorrow."

News release: "OCLC Research has made FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) available for bulk download, along with some minor improvements based on user feedback and routine updates. As with other FAST data, the bulk downloadable versions are available at no charge. FAST is an enumerative, faceted subject heading schema derived from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). OCLC made FAST available as Linked Open Data in December 2011. The bulk downloadable versions of FAST are offered at no charge. Like FAST content available through the FAST Experimental Linked Data Service, the downloadable versions of FAST are made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution (ODC-By) license. FAST may be downloaded in either SKOS/RDF format or MARC XML (Authorities format). Users may download the entire FAST file including all eight facets (Personal Names, Corporate Names, Event, Uniform Titles, Chronological, Topical, Geographic, Form/Genre) or choose to download individual facets (see the download information page for more details)."

"ArchiveGrid connects you with primary source material held in archives around the world. You will find historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. ArchiveGrid also helps researchers contact archives to request information, arrange a visit, and order copies. ArchiveGrid includes archival collection descriptions from WorldCat bibliographic records and from finding aids harvested from ArchiveGrid contributors' websites. If you have questions about your collection descriptions in ArchiveGrid, please get in touch with us. Interested in contributing? Please let us know that as well. This prototype system from OCLC Research is in its early stages of development, and we're interested in your comments and suggestions. We'll be updating the site regularly with more archival descriptions and more features, so check back with us to see what's new."

Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2011, Roger Skalbeck, Georgetown University Law Center, 2 J.L. (1 J. Legal Metrics) 25-52 (2012)

Open Access to Scientific Information, Published 25 January 2012 | POST Notes 397, by Chandrika Nath

"The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announces the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries 2012, a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins University Dean of University Libraries and Museums and President of ARL, said, “This document is a testament to the collective wisdom of academic and research librarians, who have asserted careful and considered approaches to some very difficult situations that we all face every day.”

Via LLRX.com - SharePoint Blogging with Permission - Lorette S.J. Weldon continues to share her guides on how librarians in various sectors can effectively leverage SharePoint within the enterprise, in groups, and with individuals outside the organization. She refers to her 2010 survey, "How is SharePoint used in Libraries?" that found 16 out of 54 participants used SharePoint's site features, such as the blog. Lorette provides insights and associated documentation on this application's limitations, features, and operational structure.

Via LLRX: David H. Rothman's latest commentary on the DPLA states his position clearly: Priority One of a national digital library system should be early childhood education, bolstered by family literacy. Other areas also count, but early childhood education is dearest to him and among those especially likely to give the taxpayers the most for their investment. We could use tablet computers and good old-fashioned tutoring and mentoring from librarians, educators, and volunteers to help the disadvantaged--parents as well as children.

News release: "This report analyzes the results from a social metadata survey that focused on the motivations for creating a website, moderation policies, staffing and site management, technologies used, and criteria for assessing success. Metadata helps users locate resources that meet their specific needs. But metadata also helps us to understand the data we find and helps us to evaluate what we should spend our time on. Traditionally, staff at libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) create metadata for the content they manage. However, social metadata—content contributed by users—is evolving as a way to both augment and recontexutalize the content and metadata created by LAMs...In our first report, Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums, Part 1: Site Reviews, the 21-member RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group reviewed 76 sites relevant to libraries, archives, and museums that supported such social media features as tagging, comments, reviews, images, videos, ratings, recommendations, lists, links to related articles, etc. Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Part 2: Survey Analysis is the second report in a series of three. The analyzed survey results that are presented in this second report were from a survey conducted in October-November 2009. Forty percent of the responses came from outside the United States. More than 70 percent had been offering social media features for two years or less. Engaging new or existing audiences is used as a success criteria more frequently than any other criteria, and the vast majority of respondents considered their sites to be successful. The survey results indicate that engagement is best measured by quality, not quantity."

Susan H. Hildreth, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services: "People depend on libraries now more than ever. Not only do visits and circulation continue to rise, the role of public libraries in providing Internet resources to the public continues to increase as well. Public libraries have also increased their program offerings to meet greater demand and provide more targeted services. In the business world, such demand for an industry's services would mean big profits for that sector. But despite the demonstrated ability of libraries to adjust to meet the growing needs of the public, many libraries across the country face severe budget cuts. There is no doubt that the future success of libraries depends on their ability to change and evolve to meet the changing ways that people access and use information. As director of the Institute of Museums and Library Services, the federal voice for library and museum service in the U.S. -- I see three big goals for libraries: provide engaging learning experiences, become community anchors, and provide access to content even as the devices for accessing that content change rapidly."

The Gov Doc Kids Group and Free Government Information - Tom Adamich, Martha Childers, Katy Davis, John H. Faria and Antoinette W. Satterfield. The IFLA World Library and Information Congress

PIPA, SOPA and the OPEN Act Quick Reference Guide, Corey Williams, American Library Association

"FRASER, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis' digital library of historic economic and banking publications and archival material, has received a facelift. The redesigned website includes new and enhanced site navigation, such as chronological browsing, collections by topic and author, and a more advanced search feature." [Katrina Stierholz]

LSCM’s Past, Present, and Future of Keeping America Informed FY2011 Year in Review: "One LSCM focus this past year has been to increase content in GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) by improving and escalating our efforts to partner and collaborate with Federal depository libraries, Federal executive agencies, the Library of Congress, and the Federal courts. As a result, many new collections have been added to FDsys, including Federal court opinions and digitized historic volumes of the U.S. Statutes at Large. FDsys became GPO’s official system of record in December 2010, and GPO Access is now archive-only and will be officially shut down in 2012. LSCM staff have been instrumental in making the transition from GPO Access to FDsys a success. It’s important to point out that the eCFR is not affected by this change and will continue to be updated and remain publicly accessible."

Print libraries, book collections, book shops - targets of fiscal austerity, the growing impact and power of e-books, social media, pay walls, e-commerce structures, and changing values about print media itself - are increasing disappearing. Regardless of the application of specific determining factors, the results are increased thresholds to open access to "knowledge." There is also a corresponding assault on the lifespan of websites, blogs, databases, metadata and web enabled content such as documents and emails, as users with no notice discover information simply going offline. There is however a cadre of official and unofficial guardians of the written word, photos, databases and other archival materials. This article by Matt Schwartz, with reporting by Eva Talmadge, in Technology Review, provides insight into the work of some individuals with a mission is to salvage the "intellectual" property of millions of web users whose terabytes of words, work and documents are disappearing despite quick, creative and technologically adroit efforts to save what can be called modern internet "history" on a global scale. This article documents some of the challenges in the struggle to manage massive data loss, the folks who are data defenders, and how truly valuable libraries collections are in serious danger. Variable associated with digitizing collections (copyright, cost, shear volume of the task, and global conflict to name just a few), continue to impact this dynamic problem.

Via LLRX.com - Using tablet computers, e-libraries, and family literacy initiatives to encourage young children to read: David H. Rotham continues to articulate and comprehensively document the case that a public national digital library system should serve people of all income levels and all ages, centenarians included. In this article he focuses on how books for young, disadvantaged children are one area where it could make a special difference, and how better-off families would benefit along the way.

How SOPA Affects Students, Educators, and Libraries: "...Libraries represent another educational group that could face fallout from SOPA. The Library Copyright Alliance, a group whose members include the American Library Association and two other major library organizations, has also written a letter to the House of Representatives raising major issues with the bill. Alarmingly, the librarians point to “three pending copyright infringement lawsuits against universities and their libraries relating to their use of digital technology,” reflecting “a growing tension between rights holders and libraries, and some rights holders’ increasingly belligerent enforcement mentality.” That same enforcement mentality, under SOPA, could lead to criminal prosecutions of libraries, even for activities that are a fair use and conducted without the intention of commercial gain."

"The Academic Libraries: 2010 First Look summarizes services, staff, collections, and expenditures of academic libraries in 2- and 4-year, degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the 50 states and the District of Columbia."

"Cambridge University Library holds the largest and most important collection of the scientific works of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). We present here an initial selection of Newton's manuscripts, concentrating on his mathematical work in the 1660s. Over the next few months we will be adding further works until the majority of our Newton Papers are available on this site."

• Overview of Newton Papers held at Cambridge University Library (from Manuscripts Department website)
  
• History of Isaac Newton's Papers (from Newton Project website)

William Pannapacker is an associate professor of English at Hope College, in Holland, Mich: "Contrary to many futuristic projections—even from bibliophiles who, as a group, enjoy melancholy reveries—the recent technological revolution has only deepened the affection that many scholars have for books and libraries, and highlighted the need for the preservation, study, and cherishing of both."

"The University of Pittsburgh is fortunate to own one of the rare, complete sets of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. It is considered to be the single most valuable set of volumes in the collections of the University Library System (ULS). Indeed, only 120 complete sets are known to exist. While Audubon was creating Birds of America, he was also working on a companion publication, namely, his Ornithological Biography. Both of these sets were acquired by William M. Darlington in the mid-nineteenth century and later donated, as part of his extensive library, to the University of Pittsburgh. Recognizing that the Darlington Library includes significant historical materials, such as rare books, maps, atlases, illustrations, and manuscripts, the ULS charted an ambitious course to digitize a large portion of Mr. Darlington’s collection, including the Birds of America. We are pleased to present our complete double elephant folio set of Audubon’s Birds of America, accompanied by his Ornithological Biography, through this Web site. Together these sets constitute an unprecedented online combination."

The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat "characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat.">The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat."

"This webinar featured innovative ways to increase access to special collectons. The report, Rapid Capture: Faster Throughput in Digitization of Special Collections, focused on the actual moment of digitization of non-book materials and on innovative ways to speed things up. But speeding things up in one part of the process often uncovers bottlenecks in other parts. In this webinar, experts from special collections and archives offered up creative ways to speed up other parts of the process to provide greater access to special collections..."

Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success, Research Report Version 1.0. James L. Mullins, Catherine Murray-Rust, Joyce Ogburn, Raym Crow, October Ivins, Allyson Mower, Mark P. Newton, Daureen Nesdill, Julie Speer, and Charles Watkinson. Libraries Research Publications. Paper 136.

A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age (October 31, 2011)

Publisher Names in Bibliographic Data: An Experimental Authority File and a Prototype Application - This is a pre-print version of a paper published in Library Resources and Technical Services, 55,4.

The Song of the Sirens: Google Book's Project and Copyright in a Digital Age, Clarice Castro and Ruy De Queiroz, September 1, 2011

Urban Informatics Research and Insights for Libraries, Cultural Industries and Innovation Systems, by Marcus Foth, September 2011

Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums Part 1: Site Reviews - Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Program Officer OCLC Research; Cyndi Shein, Assistant Archivist Getty Research Institute

The Top 10 Books Lost to Time - Great written works from authors such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen that you'll never have a chance to read, by Megan Gambino, Smithsonian.com, September 20, 2011

Taking Stock and Making Hay: Archival Collections Assessment, by Martha O'Hara Conway, University of Michigan, and Merrilee Proffitt, OCLC Research

News release: "Amazon.com today that Kindle and Kindle app customers can now borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 local libraries in the United States. When a customer borrows a Kindle library book, they'll have all of the unique features they love about Kindle books, including Whispersync, which automatically synchronizes their margin notes, highlights and bookmarks, real page numbers, Facebook and Twitter integration, and more. For more information about borrowing library books for your Kindle or free Kindle apps, go to this link. To start checking out Kindle library books, visit your local library's website... Customers will use their local library's website to search for and select a book to borrow. Once they choose a book, customers can choose to "Send to Kindle" and will be redirected to Amazon.com to login to their Amazon.com account and the book will be delivered to the device they select via Wi-Fi, or can be transferred via USB. Customers can check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any generation Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, as well as in their web browser with Kindle Cloud Reader."

Alex Campbell: "Incoming students at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science this year are getting a new kind of welcome-to-campus perk: Free data storage, for keeps. The service, called LifeTime Library, works on students’ personal computers, allowing them to automatically archive files and folders. The data are preserved on the Web, where students can search for files by name or by date saved. Students can continue to use the online storage locker after they graduate, and the plan is for the program to remain free, said Gary Marchionini, the school’s dean. About 60 incoming students out of a total of 160 have signed up for the first year of the program, he said. The idea is to “help students learn to manage their digital lives,” Mr. Marchionini said. Dealing with large amounts of online data is a big part of what students learn at the School of Information and Library Science, and the LifeTime Library can serve as a teaching tool for students to figure out the best ways to organize reams of their own digital information."

Radical change is certainly producing some alarming symptoms: "According to Nielsen BookScan, the publishing industry standard for book sales data, book sales are pretty healthy, with one significant proviso which I'll come to. Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later – a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, television channels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed – 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last 10 years...For one thing, people are buying more and more books in Amazonia, and more and more of them are on Amazon's ebook platform the Kindle. In May this year, Amazon announced that, for the first time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and (here's the thing that doesn't get quoted so often) sales of print books were still increasing."

Press release: "On September 12, 2011 the Authors' Guild and a number of other entities filed suit against HathiTrust and a number of its university partners. The issues in the suit are the orphan works project as well as the digitization effort that we have been engaged in for almost two decades. Digitization is a reflection of library prudence, rather than the reckless activity as characterized by the Authors' Guild complaint and accompanying statement. From its inception, the primary motive driving our digitization effort has been, and remains, preservation. Preserving the scholarly and cultural record is at the core of the Library's mission. Digitization offers a means of preserving the intellectual content of books whose lives as objects are subject to the vagaries of storage conditions and their own composition; for example, the vast majority of the volumes in our collection are printed on acid paper. Many of these volumes are protected by copyright, but if we wait until they enter the public domain they will be too brittle to circulate or digitize, and of no use to anyone. The Orphan Works Project is an example of library prudence in other ways. Digitized collections offer other obvious benefits. They can be more readily shared with our community, who increasingly expect their research materials to be available in digital form, and they can also provide a trove of data, both humanistic and scientific, that will help scholars and researchers discover and create new knowledge. And in many cases, they can also be made available to anyone in the world with a connection to the Internet. The way in which the HathiTrust partners share this particular collection is guided by a deep and abiding respect for intellectual property and US copyright law, particularly Sections 107 and 108, which help define how libraries may lawfully share their collections. While the law does not specifically address orphan works, we are certain that our scholarly purpose, along with our careful methodology in determining whether these works have a market or an extant copyright holder who can be contacted, make this sharing legal. Sharing, by the way, which is limited to online reading by our faculty and students in the United States, and one-page-at-a-time downloads; not, as the Guild complaint states, worldwide availability and full PDF downloads."

The Association of American Publishers - BookStats Publishing Formats Highlights: "e-books and other non-physical formats - "The consistent, growing popularity of e-books and apps are a major success story in content formats, even in advance of data for 2011, which is currently tracking high e-format sales. Highlights:

• e-books have grown from 0.6% of the total Trade market share in 2008 to 6.4% in 2010. While that represents a small amount in the total market for formats, it translates to 1274.1% in publisher net sales revenue year-over-year with total net revenue for 2010 at $878 Million.
  
• Net unit sales growth for e-books was equally impressive, increasing 1039.6% for the same three-year period. In 2010, e-book net units were 114M.
  
• Beyond the top-level format figures, the explosive growth of e-books is even more visible when considering certain categories. In Adult Fiction, e-books are now 13.6% of the net revenue market share.

Inside Higher Ed: "The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project -- a series of studies conducted at Illinois Wesleyan, DePaul University, and Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois’s Chicago and Springfield campuses -- was a meta-exercise for the librarians in practicing the sort of deep research they champion. Instead of relying on surveys, the libraries enlisted two anthropologists, along with their own staff members, to collect data using open-ended interviews and direct observation, among other methods. The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions. The resulting papers are scheduled to be published by the American Library Association this fall, under the title: “Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know.” One thing the librarians now know is that their students' research habits are worse than they thought."

Extracting, Transforming and Archiving Scientific Data - Daniel Lemire1 and Andre Vellino, National Research Council of Canada, August 23, 2011. Fourth Workshop on Very Large Digital Libraries, 2011

Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance by Maria Popova.

News release: "Many young children are getting a head start on acquiring the skills needed to read, as family members take time out of their day on a regular basis to read aloud with them, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. In 2009, half of children age 1 to 5 were read to seven or more times a week by a family member. A series of tables, Selected Indicators of Child Well-Being (A Child's Day): 2009, uses statistics from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to provide a glimpse into how children younger than 18 spend their day, touching on subjects such as the degree of interaction with parents and extracurricular activities. These statistics are compared with those from earlier years. While reading interactions are more frequent among families above poverty, reading interactions among low-income families have increased over the last 10 years. In 2009, 56 percent of 1- and 2-year-olds above poverty were read to seven or more times a week, compared with 45 percent below the poverty level. However, while parental reading involvement for children above poverty was not different from rates in 1998, it rose from 37 percent for those below poverty."

Future libraries - Change, options and how to get there = Learning from the Future Libraries Programme Phase 1, August 2011

Dr. Kari Kraus, University of Maryland, via NYT: "..if we’re going to save even a fraction of the trillions of bits of data churned out every year, we can’t think of digital preservation in the same way we do paper preservation. We have to stop thinking about how to save data only after it’s no longer needed, as when an author donates her papers to an archive. Instead, we must look for ways to continuously maintain and improve it. In other words, we must stop preserving digital material and start curating it."

Forum Guide to Ensuring Equal Access to Education Websites - Introduction to Electronic Information Accessibility Standards, July 2011

Follow up to House Bill - No Money for GPO's Federal Digital System, Sharply Cuts Other Information Resources - Government Information in Peril, by Bernadine Abbott Hoduski: "The House-passed bill cuts funding for the Superintendent of Documents program from nearly $40 million to less than $34 million, making it very difficult for GPO to support the Federal Depository Library Program; the acquisition, cataloging, and dissemination of government documents; the LC International Exchange Program; and mandated distribution of publications to the three branches of government. Congress is about to break its promise that if libraries and the public give up paper, they will still have permanent no-fee access to electronic government information. The House proposes that GPO fund FDsys by renting GPO’s unused space in its big red brick building to federal agencies. There is no guarantee that even if GPO is able to find renters by October 1 that it will collect enough money to keep FDsys in operation and allow the inclusion of new publications. Members of Congress may think they can turn to LC’s THOMAS database for legislative information, but they probably do not realize that much of THOMAS’s content is provided by GPO."

Bennett,Rick, Edward T. O'Neill, Kerre Kammerer, and JD Shipengrover. 2011. mapFAST: A FAST Geographic Authorities Mashup with Google Maps. Code4Lib Journal, 14, 2011-07-25

Chronicle of Higher Education: A High-Tech Library Keeps Books at Faculty Fingertips—With Robot Help

Library Journal: "On July 22, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2551, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2012 by a vote of 252 - 159. Unless the Senate acts, the bill would reduce GPO's budget for FY12 by 20 percent to $108.1 million. Within the GPO budget is the appropriation for the Office of Superintendent of Documents' Salaries and Expenses, which funds the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). This appropriation would be reduced 16 percent, to $33.5 million, eliminating funding for the Federal Digital System (FDsys)."

News release: "A ground-breaking membership report from OCLC Research suggests that by transforming virtual reference (VR) service encounters into relationship-building opportunities, librarians can better leverage the positive feelings people have for libraries. This is critically important in a crowded online space where the biggest players often don’t have the unique experience and specific strengths offered by librarians. The report — Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference — demonstrates that today’s students, scholars and citizens are not just looking to libraries for answers to specific questions—they want partners and guides in a lifelong information-seeking journey. Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference, from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and additionally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), distills more than five years of VR research into a readable summary featuring memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multiphase research project that included focus group interviews, online surveys, transcript analysis and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the “R” in “VR” needs to emphasize virtual “Relationships” as well as “Reference.”

Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act Drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Law - approved and recommended for enactment, July 18, 2011

Digitizing Hidden Collections in Public Libraries, by Gwen Glazer

News release: "Major project to digitise up to 40 million pages from 1700-1870, from the French Revolution to the end of slavery - The British Library and Google today announced a partnership to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright books from the Library’s collections. Opening up access to one of the greatest collections of books in the world, this demonstrates the Library’s commitment, as stated in its 2020 Vision, to increase access to anyone who wants to do research. Selected by the British Library and digitised by Google, both organisations will work in partnership over the coming years to deliver this content free through Google Books and the British Library’s website. Google will cover all digitisation costs."

Hunting For A Job? Try the Internet: Acknowledging the economy in the past several years has made the job search process even more challenging, Rhonda Keaton and Barbara Fullerton provide strategic suggestions and a guide to a wide range of sources to support and leverage a multi-pronged search effort in response to the competitive job arena.

"The U.S. Government Printing Office published its last official history 50 years ago, marking its centennial anniversary.
100 GPO Years 1861–1961 has proven to be a remarkably valuable resource and deserves to stand alone as an enduring
contribution to the historical record of this great agency. Instead of trying to improve on it, with the approach of our
150th anniversary we decided to recreate the telling of GPO’s story. Keeping America Informed: The U.S. Government
Printing Office: 150 Years of Service to the Nation recasts our history in a fresh light, with new contributions and emphases,
and provides the reader with a greater exposure to GPO’s rich photographic record, with many of the images in this book
published for the first time. Most important of all, Keeping America Informed describes how the agency has transformed itself through the years by continually adapting to the most efficient technologies available to get its work done. In the ink-on-paper era, this meant moving from handset to machine-set type, from slower to high-speed presses, and from hand to automated bookbinding. These changes enabled GPO to keep up with the demands of a growing Nation and helped keep costs down, and they were significant for their time. Yet they pale by comparison with the transformation that accompanied GPO’s incorporation of electronic information technologies, the single most dominant trend at the agency of the past 50 years, and the generator of unprecedented improvements in productivity and hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer savings that continue into the present. Today, GPO is fundamentally different from what it was as recently as a generation ago: smaller, leaner, and equipped with digital production capabilities that are the bedrock of the information systems relied upon daily by Congress, Federal agencies, and the public to ensure open and transparent Government in the digital era."

News release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Library Network has been named Federal Library/Information Center of the Year by the Library of Congress. The award recognizes outstanding, innovative, and sustained achievements during fiscal year 2010 by a federal library or information center. EPA’s library network is an essential information partner with EPA staff and the public to support transparency, decision making, environmental awareness, and protection of people’s health and the environment...In FY2010, EPA libraries worked together to digitize 7,500 agency publications, adding to the growing inventory of more than 45,000 digital documents available to the public at no cost. Serving as a point of contact for public inquiries, EPA libraries collectively addressed nearly 9,000 public reference questions and loaned more than 8,000 documents, saving taxpayers an estimated $266,000."

Building a Collaborative Digital Collection, a Necessary Evolution in Libraries, Michelle M. Wu, Georgetown University Law Center, Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11-47, Law Library Journal, Forthcoming

News release: "Scholars, artists and other individuals around the world will enjoy free access to online images of millions of objects housed in Yale's museums, archives, and libraries thanks to a new "Open Access" policy that the University announced today. Yale is the first Ivy League university to make its collections accessible in this fashion, and already more than 250,000 images are available through a newly developed collective catalog. The goal of the new policy is to make high quality digital images of Yale's vast cultural heritage collections in the public domain openly and freely available. As works in these collections become digitized, the museums and libraries will make those images that are in the public domain freely accessible. In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching and inspiration."

Australia Trove: "Find and get over 238,389,330 (and counting) Australian and online resources: books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more."

A History of the Library as Seen Through Notable Researchers by Thomas G. Lannon, Assistant Curator, Manuscripts & Archives Division, May 2, 2011

U.S. Public Libraries and the Use of Web Technologies, 2010 - April 2011, Zeth Lietzau, Jamie Helgren. This study was funded through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) by the Colorado State Library, Colorado Department of Education.

Walker budget cuts target Wisconsin libraries Materials sharing, Braille service are threatened: "Under Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget, Wisconsin libraries would see their funding requests cut by more than $18.9 million in 2012 alone, threatening a wide variety of services, including those for job-seekers and the blind...Cuts to Wisconsin library budgets come in three areas. State aid to school libraries would be cut by $4.6 million. Funding to the state's 17 public library systems — such as the South Central Library System, which serves Dane and six other counties — would be cut by $13.5 million, essentially ending materials sharing."

News release: "Amazon announced Kindle Library Lending, a new feature launching later this year that will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps. Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone. If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer's annotations and bookmarks will be preserved."

5 Myths About the 'Information Age', by Robert Darnton, professor and university librarian at Harvard University. This essay is based on a talk he gave last month at the Council of Independent Colleges' Symposium on the Future of the Humanities, in Washington - snipped: "Confusion about the nature of the so-called information age has led to a state of collective false consciousness. It's no one's fault but everyone's problem, because in trying to get our bearings in cyberspace, we often get things wrong, and the misconceptions spread so rapidly that they go unchallenged. Taken together, they constitute a font of proverbial nonwisdom. Five stand out:

1. The book is dead." Wrong: More books are produced in print each year than in the previous year.
   
2. We have entered the information age." This announcement is usually intoned solemnly, as if information did not exist in other ages. But every age is an age of information, each in its own way and according to the media available at the time.
   
3. "All information is now available online." The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who has ever done research in archives. Only a tiny fraction of archival material has ever been read, much less digitized. Most judicial decisions and legislation, both state and federal, have never appeared on the Web.
   
4. "Libraries are obsolete." Everywhere in the country librarians report that they have never had so many patrons. At Harvard, our reading rooms are full. The 85 branch libraries of the New York Public Library system are crammed with people.
   
5. "The future is digital." True enough, but misleading. In 10, 20, or 50 years, the information environment will be overwhelmingly digital, but the prevalence of electronic communication does not mean that printed material will cease to be important."

Famous poet's writings as a Federal employee shed new light on his life and work: "The National Archives today announced the identification of nearly 3,000 Walt Whitman documents written during his service as a Federal government employee. This trove of information--conclusively identified as Whitman's papers for the first time by University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) scholar Kenneth Price--sheds light on the legendary poet's post-war thinking, as well as Whitman's published reflections on the state of the nation that soon followed. Price discusses the significance of this discovery in the National Archives Inside the Vaults video short."

Kerith Page McFadden, librarian at CNN for the past 12 years wrote today: "Librarians, information specialists, knowledge managers or whatever title a librarian might have -- their skills are in high demand. And, though you might not know it, they are everywhere...At a time where anyone can Google just about anything, librarians don't just find information, they find the correct information -- and fast. The American Library Association reports reference librarians in the nation's public and academic libraries answered nearly 5.7 million questions each week in 2010." [via the awesome librarian Kit Harahan]

A Guide For the Perplexed Part IV: The Rejection of the Google Books Settlement - "On March 22, 2011, Judge Denny Chin rejected the proposed settlement in copyright infringement litigation over the Google Library Project. Judge Chin found that the settlement was not "fair, reasonable, and adequate" as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Judge Chin issued the decision over a year after the fairness hearing he conducted. His opinion agrees in large measure with the objections to the settlement asserted by the U.S. Department of Justice at the hearing and in its written submissions. This paper by Jonathan Band continues the series in which he discusses the opinion and where it leaves Google Books Search."

via LLRX.com - A Proposal for Creating a National Digital Library System in the Public Mode: David H. Rothman contends that "education at all levels should be the main priority of a public national digital library system even though it should serve many purposes. How can we train Americans for more complicated jobs, in this high-tech, globalized era, if they lack knowledge of the fundamentals? Even the nontechnical would benefit as, for example, better corporate strategists or marketers with a superior understanding of cultures outside the United States, and of history, commerce, and life in general. And if we can elevate the quality of public schools, not just private ones, won't U.S. colleges and universities come out ahead with an enhanced pool of talent?"

Stop the Madness: The Insanity of ROI and the Need for New Qualitative Measures of Academic Library Success, by James G. Neal - Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University.

A Guide For the Perplexed Part IV: The Rejection of the Google Books Settlement, by Jonathan Band

News release: "[March 31, 2011], Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero opened “The Watergate Gallery,” a permanent exhibition at the National Archives Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. This new exhibition, designed to help today’s visitor make sense of the web of personalities, actions and intentions at the heart of the Watergate scandal, chronicles the events beginning in June 1971, with the leak of the Pentagon Papers and the formation of a clandestine White House group known as the Plumbers, and ending with former President Richard Nixon’s public explanations of Watergate after he left office. The Gallery, through documents, White House tape recordings, and oral histories, addresses issues such as abuses of governmental power, secret Presidential taping, and the role of the three branches of government and the media in this constitutional crisis. The exhibition features a timeline of Watergate events with eight interactive screens that draw from the White House tapes and 131 oral history interviews done by the Library with key players like G. Gordon Liddy, Bob Woodward and Charles Colson. The Gallery includes Watergate’s legislative legacy and an interactive resource center of documents, oral histories, excerpts from the White House tapes, and television coverage from the era, allowing visitors to decide how well our system of government worked and what lessons there are for us today."

"The Net, smartphones, and other technologies have added to the way people can engage with so much to local communities and wider communities of interest. Yet, there are many gaps. Lee Rainie. Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project explores those gaps at the Computers in Libraries conference. He points to some findings of his Project that highlight areas where libraries and information services add value to the participants in their communities."

Via LLRX.com - SharePoint, Training Not Required: Lorette Weldon's research has identified that librarians are using SharePoint in the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors. She expertly identifies and illustrates how to leverage the power of this application through an understanding of the site templates that Microsoft bundles in SharePoint "out-of-the-box". These templates are based on social networking abilities and not program coding. Through "plug and play" efforts librarians can find the features in SharePoint that will assist them in managing their multifaceted "collections."

"In terms of presenting large amounts of information quickly and digestibly, an infographic is hard to beat. A good one can give a reader a sense of scale, proportion, and even narrative much more quickly than several paragraphs of explanation and explication. It's the difference between recording your genealogy as a series of "begats" or as a family tree. And today's pictographs are so sophisticated that they can contain essentially an entire cultural history in a JPEG. Take Places & Spaces: Mapping Science, a multidisciplinary physical and online art project, running since 2005, that seeks to create a complete picture of "human activity and scientific progress on a global scale." Curated by a group of librarians, information scientists, and geographers around the world, each exhibit features a handful of maps—an older word for infographic—along a theme. Previous years have exhibited maps designed to index information for policy makers, or for cartographers, or economic decision makers. This year, the theme is the digital library." [By Xarissa Holdaway]

"The Legal Information Institute of India (LII of India) was officially launched in Delhi on 9th March, 2011, followed by the first regional launch in Hyderabad on 11 March. Further regional launches will take place in Bangalaru and Kolkota over the next fortnight. Each launch is hosted by a partner National Law University. The official launch in Delhi was by Dr (Shri) M Veerappa Moily, Union Minister of Law and Justice, Government of India. Other Guests of Honour to speak at the launch included Dr Lachlan Strahan, Australian Deputy High Commissioner, Chief Justice Dipak Misra of the Delhi High Court, the Justice V P Reddi, Chairman of the Law Commission of India, and Prof Ved Prakash, Chairman of the University Grants Commission, as well as representatives of LII of India and of AustLII. The Delhi launch, at the Vigyan Bhavan, was hosted by the National Law University, Delhi (NLUD)...LII of India now has 108 databases (plus 8 virtual databases), with the recent additional of 59 databases of State and Territory legislation. It currently provides free online access to Indian legislation (63 databases), treaties (2 databases), case law (41 databases), law reform (1 database) and legal scholarship (9 databases). Further databases are being added." [Graham Greenleaf AM Professor of Law & Information Systems, University of New South Wales (UNSW)]

Via LLRX.com, Knowledge Discovery Resources 2011 - An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation: This new guide by Marcus P. Zillman focuses on the most current and reliable resources for knowledge discovery available on the Internet. With the constant addition of new and pertinent information to the web, it is very easy to experience information overload. A critical requirement for researchers is finding the best knowledge discovery resources and sites in both the visible and invisible World Wide Web. These carefully selected knowledge and information discovery sources will help you accomplish your research goals.

Egyptians Find Their Power in Access to Information: "Make no mistake: Access to information, in a country with limited resources, served as the first catalyst for the Egyptian revolution that began January 25 and resulted 18 days later in the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak after almost 30 years in office. The internet, along with Facebook and Twitter, was the Open University that facilitated learning about democracy for Egypt’s young people...But on the internet, the release of a single document spread like a ferocious fire in seconds, and millions had access to it. In a nation where only one in 700 citizens read the newspapers, young people with some European-language skills were able to translate and share news about the rest of the world with their fellow Egyptians. Those who did not read a foreign language saw the images, which they received through mobile technologies." by Sohair Wastawy - dean of university libraries at Illinois State University in Normal - who the first chief librarian of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, where she served for six years.

The Triangle Research Libraries Network’s Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Digitization of Modern Manuscript Collections and Archival Record Groups, January 2011 - Laura Clark Brown, Judy Ruttenberg, and Kevin L. Smith, J.D.

Cloud-sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-digitized Library Environment, Constance Malpas, Program Officer OCLC Research, January 2011

Via LLRX.com - Basic Search Set-up in "Out of the Box" SharePoint: IT Librarian and SharePoint expert Lorette Weldon provides guidance on requisite questions for staff and other users to ask for content in Microsoft SharePoint out of the box (OOTB). The research requires you to ask the four "W"'s: What; Who; Where; When. What type of SharePoint item do you wish to obtain? Who contributed and/or created the SharePoint item? Where did the SharePoint item come from (the source)? When was the SharePoint item created and/or modified? This would work for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. WSS is the basic compilation of applications.

WSJ: Looking like a massive computer chip or the disc of the sun rising up from the Mediterranean coast, the hypermodern successor to the ancient library of Alexandria stands out as a beacon of hope, efficiency and enlightenment among the crumbling buildings of Egypt's second-largest city...In less than 10 years of operation, the library has introduced information technology considered cutting edge anywhere on the globe. Its researchers have devised optical character-recognition software for Arabic and digitized key manuscripts for dissemination over the Internet. With some 1.5 million visitors and 700 events last year, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the library is formally known by its Latin name) has become a gathering place for scientists, literary figures and other thinkers from around the world."

PACER, RECAP, and the Movement to Free American Case Law, by Steve Schultze, VoxPopuLII, LII/Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School (February 3, 2011), via freegovinfo.info: "...The ultimate solution to the PACER {Public Access to Court Electronic Records) fee problem unfortunately lies...in bureaucratic details of authorization subcommittees and technical details of network architecture. This is the next front of PACER liberation. We now have friends in Washington, and we understand the process better every day. We also have very smart geeks, and I think that the ultimate finger on the scale may be our ability to explain how the U.S. Courts could run a tremendously more efficient system that would simultaneously generate a diversity of new democratic benefits. We also need smart librarians and archivists making good policy arguments. That is one reason why the Law.gov movement is so exciting to me. It has the potential not only to unify open-law advocates, but to go well beyond the U.S. Federal Case Law fiefdom of PACER."

The Risky Business of Information Sharing: Why You Need to Care About Copyright: Copyright is an essential tool in the spread of new ideas, and the workplace has become ground zero for infringement. Ask employees up and down the corporate hierarchy, and they'll tell you that whisking information electronically to co-workers is integral to their jobs. Their employers will emphatically agree. But unauthorized swaps of information also carry enormous potential risk: Ordinary office exchanges, so natural to the digital world, can easily violate the copyright rights of others and bring costly lawsuits or settlements. Now the same technology that has dramatically defined the Internet age is drawing a new roadmap to compliance, with software tools that simplify adherence to copyright requirements.

"OCLC's newest membership report, Perceptions of Libraries, 2010, a sequel to the 2005 Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, is now available. The new report provides updated information and new insights into information consumers and their online habits, preferences, and perceptions. Particular attention was paid to how the current economic downturn has affected the information-seeking behaviors and how those changes are reflected in the use and perception of libraries."

Classification of the End-of-Term Archive: Extending Collection Development Practices to Web Archives - Findings of the Web Archive Survey of Federal Depository Libraries, December 2010, Revised: January 2011, Kathleen Murray

News release: "The report of the Comité des Sages (high-level reflection group) on Digitisation of Europe's cultural heritage was delivered today to Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, and Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner responsible for Education and Culture. The report urges EU Member States to step up their efforts to put online the collections held in all their libraries, archives and museums. It stresses the benefits of making Europe's culture and knowledge more easily accessible. It also points to the potential economic benefits of digitisation, including through public-private partnerships, for the development of innovative services in sectors like tourism, research and education. The report endorses the Digital Agenda's objective of strengthening Europe's digital library Europeana and suggests solutions for making works covered by copyright available online. The Comité des Sages on Digitisation comprises Maurice Lévy, Elisabeth Niggemann and Jacques de Decker (see IP/10/456). The report's recommendations will feed into the Commission's broader strategy, under the Digital Agenda for Europe, to help cultural institutions make the transition towards the digital age."

News release: "This report presents findings from a year-long study designed and executed by OCLC Research, the HathiTrust, New York University's Elmer Bobst Library, and the Research Collections Access & Preservation (ReCAP) consortium, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitized books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favor of negotiated access to the digitized corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory."

Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books, Published Online 16 December 2010, Jean-Baptiste Michel et al. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1199644.

News release: "Yale Law School Professor Emeritus and Librarian Emeritus Morris L. Cohen, who directed two of the world’s most esteemed academic law libraries, passed away Saturday, December 18, 2010, at his home in New Haven. He was 83. Cohen was one of the towering figures of late 20th century law libraries and among the foremost legal bibliographers in the United States, as well as a beloved teacher and mentor. He was a Professor of Law and director of the law library at Yale Law School from 1981 until his retirement in 1991, when he became Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law. Before joining Yale, he served as director of the law libraries at Harvard from 1971 to 1981, the University of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1971, and SUNY-Buffalo from 1961 to 1963."

LLRX.com - Open Source Tools for Tutorials: Nicole C. Engard continues her series on best practices for libraries to leverage open source tools with a guide on publishing tutorials for using library resources. Rather than creating a printed pathfinder, she suggests creating a video tutorial instead, as the learning experience is often more engaging and has deeper impact when users see something done versus reading about it.

News release: "Public.Resource.Org will begin providing in 2011 a weekly release of the Report of Current Opinions (RECOP). The Report will initially consist of HTML of all slip and final opinions of the appellate and supreme courts of the 50 states and the federal government. The feed will be available for reuse without restriction under the Creative Commons CC-Zero License and will include full star pagination. This data is being obtained through an agreement with Fastcase, one of the leading legal information publishers. Fastcase will be providing us all opinions in a given week by the end of the following week. We will work with our partners in Law.Gov to perform initial post-processing of the raw HTML data, including such tasks as privacy audits, conversion to XHTML, and tagging for style, content, and metadata."

News release: "On Thursday December 9, 2010, the National Archives Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California opened 265 hours of White House Tapes, over 140,000 pages of presidential records and 75 hours of video oral histories. The materials will be available in the Nixon Library research room at 9 a.m. PDT. The Library is located at 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda, CA, 92886. All of the White House tapes and selected documents are available online at: http//www.nixonlibrary.gov. The released White House tapes cover conversations from February and March 1973 and a few from early April 1973. There are no transcripts for these tapes, but the Library has produced a detailed subject log for each conversation. These tapes will all be available at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov and in the Library’s research room. These tapes cover a large number of subjects including the ceasefire in Vietnam, the release of American Prisoners of War, Watergate, U.S. policy in the Middle East, the assassination of two U.S. diplomats in Sudan by the Black September Organization, the state visits of King Hussein of Jordan and Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel, the Wounded Knee incident, and Wage and Price controls. Also in this release are nearly 2500 pages of formerly classified national security records including documents on US policy toward Chile and formerly classified materials from the files of White House aides H. R. “Bob” Haldeman and John Ehrlichman."

The Library: Three Jeremiads, by Robert Darnton, New York Review of Books, December 23, 2010.

"The European Library is a free service that offers access to the resources of the 48 national libraries of Europe in 35 languages. Resources can be both digital (books, posters, maps, sound recordings, videos, etc.) and bibliographical. Quality and reliability are guaranteed by the 48 collaborating national libraries of Europe.The European Library represents Europe in all the colours of its cultural heritage. Being owned by public institutions guarantees its long-term preservation. Furthermore, quality and reliability are guaranteed. All content has been selected and categorised by experts who have done this work over centuries and centuries: Europe’s national librarians."

Report to the Secretary of Defense, Assessing DoD’s Study Information Gap: Optimizing the Electronic Management of DoD-Related Studies. Report FY10-09. Recommendations for a Comprehensive Knowledge Management System for DoD Officials that Facilitate Information Retrieval and Analysis of all DoD-funded and DoD-related studies, April 2010.

Using the Kindle in Library Settings - A Survey, Updated: Recently Montrese Hamilton wrote a summary of responses to her survey of three Special Libraries Association discussion lists about using the Kindle in library settings. The questions were well-received and more replies arrived after her wrap-up was published so she returns with the new comments plus insights gathered from her own Kindle-lending experiment.

"Pew Internet Director Lee Rainie spoke at the annual meeting of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium. His speech is entitled, How libraries can serve Networked Individuals. In it he discusses the latest research of the Project and previews the themes of his forthcoming book, “Networking: The New Social Operating System.” He also describes how the social world of “networked individuals” is different from previous generations and how libraries can plug into the information needs and habits of this new tribe of media users."

Environmental Protection Agency: EPA Needs to Complete a Strategy for Its Library Network to Meet Users' Needs, GAO-10-947, September 30, 2010

From Boston to Beijing, Professionals Feel Overwhelmed, Demoralized: "An international survey of white collar workers reveals that information overload is a remarkably widespread and growing problem among professionals around the world, and one that exacts a heavy toll in terms of productivity and employee morale. The survey of 1,700 white collar workers in five countries – the United States, China, South Africa, United Kingdom and Australia – found professionals in every market struggling to cope and looking to their employers for customized solutions. On average, fifty-nine percent of professionals across the five markets surveyed say that the amount of information they have to process at work has significantly increased since the economic downturn. Given the rising tide of information, it is not surprising that a majority of workers in every market (62%, on average) admit that the quality of their work suffers at times because they can’t sort through the information they need fast enough."

"Thank goodness for librarian Kee Malesky — who, for 20 years, has been saving NPR's hosts and reporters from themselves. Malesky is the organization's longest-serving librarian, and [NPR host Scott] Simon says he suspects that she is actually the source of all human knowledge. In her new book, All Facts Considered; An Essential Library Of Inessential Knowledge, Malesky catalogs some of the facts that she has researched so dutifully over the years."

News release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released The ARL 2030 Scenarios: A User’s Guide for Research Libraries. The package, which contains the “ARL 2030 Scenario Set” and an accompanying user’s guide, is the product of a project to promote visioning and scanning activities among research libraries. ARL’s “Envisioning Research Library Futures: A Scenario Thinking Project” employed a scenario planning process to develop four scenarios for 2030, which answered the question, “How do we transform our organization(s) to create differential value for future users (individuals, institutions, and beyond), given the external dynamics redefining the research environment over the next 20 years?”

News release: "As part of the celebrations on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of its establishment, the Israel Antiquities Authority is launching a unique project – The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library – to document the entire collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A major lead gift from the Leon Levy Foundation, with additional major funding from the Arcadia Foundation and the support of Yad Hanadiv Foundation, will enable the Israel Antiquities Authority to use the most advanced and innovative technologies available to image the entire collection of 900 manuscripts comprising c. 30,000 Dead Sea Scrolls fragments in hi-resolution and multi spectra and make the digitized images freely available and accessible to anyone anywhere in the world on the internet. This is the first time that the collection of Scrolls will be photographed in its entirety since the 1950’s...Click here to download high resolution pictures."

• The Way Forward: Economic conditions are still in flux and the employment outlook defies easy forecasting. Consequently, moving up Maslow's hierarchy toward greater job satisfaction may not include changing employers. To learn more about how information professionals can deepen contentment in-place, Montrese Hamilton contacted well-known career coach Marshall Brown for insight.
• The Way Forward - Part 2: While many of her colleagues packed their bags for the SLA 2010 Annual Conference in New Orleans last June, Montrese Hamilton traded her spot in the Big Easy for login credentials to the virtual conference offerings. Here she discusses the presentation, Negotiating Up.
• The Way Forward - Part 3: Montrese Hamilton discusses tools and techniques available via the Internet that provide value, variety and substance in the areas of free professional development opportunities.

Via Shameema Rahman, Legal Reference Specialist, Library of Congress Public Services Directorate. "The Law Library’s Multinational Collections Database is now the Global Legal Information Catalog (GLIC). GLIC is a research tool for the Library of Congress Collections that interfaces with our library catalog. Why do you need to use it? Say you are looking for the law of a particular country and you had searched the library’s catalog. If you type the jurisdiction and subject as the key terms, your search will only retrieve materials exclusively written on that jurisdiction. However, there are publications on comparative law and publications that include the laws of multiple jurisdictions available at the Law Library. Just using a library catalog search will not retrieve those items. A benefit of GLIC is the list of jurisdictions included. Do you want to know about publications that cover Canadian law? Just click on Canada. Interested in a different jurisdiction? You can then select the jurisdiction of interest. You can also browse by all subjects available. Remember, you can limit your search by subject and/or, author/authors. You can search multiple subjects and multiple jurisdictions at the same time."

LLRX.com: Using the Kindle in Library Settings - A Survey - Special Librarian Montrese Hamilton shares effective ways an electronic document reader may be used to provide customers on-demand access to new content. Beyond instant access to material, e-readers can: reduce the need for Interlibrary loans, help grow the collection without adding shelf space, and eliminate processing required for physical matter.

New York Review of Books: Can We Create a National Digital Library? Robert Darnton - "The following talk was given at the opening of a conference at Harvard on October 1 to discuss the possibility of creating a National Digital Library."

"EPIC and 14 other privacy and consumer protection groups (including the American Library Association) sent a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt about Google's revised privacy policy. Under this new policy, twelve specific Google privacy policies will be replaced by a single policy that will enable greater data sharing within the corporation. EPIC previously raised similar concerns about Google Buzz in a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission. In the complaint, EPIC argued that Google's Gmail-specific privacy policy was more protective of users than their general privacy policy. For more information, see EPIC: In re Google Buzz."

News release: "The Federal Communications Commission today upgraded and modernized the E-rate program to bring fast, affordable Internet access to schools and libraries across the country. These changes will help ensure that America’s students can learn and develop the hightech skills necessary to compete in the 21st Century economy. The National Broadband Plan laid out a series of recommendations to promote broadbandenabled, cutting-edge learning inside and outside the classroom. One of the key recommendations is modernizing the FCC’s E-rate program, established by Congress to bring connectivity to all schools and libraries across America. The program has achieved remarkable success -- 97 percent of American schools and nearly all public libraries now have basic Internet access. But the Plan found that basic broadband connectivity is too slow to keep up with the innovative high-tech tools that are now essential for a world-class education. According to a recent FCC survey, 78 percent of E-rate recipients say they need faster connections to meet the speed and capacity demands of their students, teachers, and library patrons. The FCC’s E-rate Order makes it easier for schools and libraries to get the highest speeds for the lowest prices by increasing their options for broadband providers and streamlining the application process. The Order is another advance in the Commission’s ongoing transformation of the Universal Service Fund, of which the E-rate program is part, to deploy broadband throughout America."

News release: "In the 2010 Kids and Family Reading Report - Turning the Page in the Digital Age - a national survey released today, children age 6 – 17 and their parents share their views on a wide range of topics regarding reading in the 21st Century. The study, conducted by Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education and media company, and Harrison Group, a leading marketing and strategic research consulting firm, found that from age 6 - 17, the time kids spend reading books for fun declines while the time kids spend going online for fun and using a cell phone to text or talk increases. Parents express concern that the use of electronic and digital devices negatively affects the time kids spend reading books (41%), doing physical activities (40%), and engaging with family (33%). The study also found indications that technology could be a positive motivator to get kids reading -- 57 percent of kids (age 9-17) say they are interested in reading an eBook, and a third of children age 9-17 say they would read more books for fun if they had access to eBooks on an electronic device. This includes kids who read 5-7 days per week (34%), 1 to 4 days per week (36%) and even those who read less than one day per week (27%). The findings from the Kids and Family Reading Report indicate that the ebook market will continue to grow. While only 6% of parents surveyed currently own an electronic device used for reading eBooks and other digital publications, 16% plan to purchase one in the next year. And parents are not hesitant to share those devices with their children – approximately 8 in 10 (83%) of these parents say they do or will allow/encourage their child to use their eReading device."

NYT: A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system. Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy. A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing."

The Continued Rise of Blogging: "Social networks and microblogs have in recent years nudged blogging off the social media pedestal. For some consumers, who have more communication tools at their fingertips than they did a few years ago, Facebook and Twitter have supplanted blogging as life-streaming outlets. But blogs continue to be important. eMarketer estimates that this year more than half of internet users will read blogs at least monthly. By 2014, readership will rise to more than 150 million Americans, or 60% of the internet population in the US. One reason for the rise in readership is that blogs have become an accepted part of the online media landscape. “Trends in blog reading are expected to maintain an upward course as blogs continue to gain influence in the mainstream media,” said Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report The Blogosphere: Colliding with Social and Mainstream Media (fee). “But there is a caveat to this forecast: Over time, blogs will continue to become indistinguishable from other media channels."

Via LLRX.com - Open Source Tools for the Day-to-Day: Nicole C. Engard reviews several open source tools she recommends not only for their usability and reliability, but also for the cost to value ratio when compared to mainstream applications outside our ever narrowing budget requirements.

The Online Oral Academic Learning Community - Lorette S.J. Weldon discusses innovative methods to use social networking and oral tradition to support the goals of sharing professional experiences and collaborating on best practices for past, current, and ongoing research.

Follow up to previous postings on National Security Letters, this news release: "The FBI has partially lifted a gag it imposed on American Civil Liberties Union client Nicholas Merrill in 2004 that prevented him from disclosing to anyone that he received a national security letter (NSL) demanding private customer records. Merrill, who received the NSL as the president of an Internet service provider (ISP), can now reveal his identity and speak about his experience for the first time since receiving the NSL. The ACLU and New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the NSL statute and the gag order on behalf of Merrill (then called John Doe) in April 2004, which resulted in numerous court rulings finding the NSL statute unconstitutional. Merrill was the first person ever to challenge an NSL in court...NSLs are secret record demands the FBI issues to obtain access to personal customer records from ISPs, libraries, financial institutions and credit reporting agencies without court approval or even suspicion of wrongdoing. Because the FBI can gag NSL recipients to prohibit them from disclosing anything about the record demands they receive, the FBI's use and potential abuse of the NSL power has been shrouded in excessive secrecy. While the NSL served on Merrill stated that he was prohibited from telling anyone about it, he decided to challenge the demand in court because he believed that the FBI was ordering him to turn over constitutionally protected information about one of his clients. Because of the FBI-imposed gag, Merrill was prohibited from talking about the NSL or revealing his identity and role in the lawsuit until today, even though the FBI abandoned its demand for records from Merrill more than three years ago."

Inside Google Books: "We collect metadata from many providers (more than 150 and counting) that include libraries, WorldCat, national union catalogs and commercial providers. At the moment we have close to a billion unique raw records. We then further analyze these records to reduce the level of duplication within each provider, bringing us down to close to 600 million records. Does this mean that there are 600 million unique books in the world? Hardly. There is still a lot of duplication within a single provider (e.g. libraries holding multiple distinct copies of a book) and among providers -- for example, we have 96 records from 46 providers for “Programming Perl, 3rd Edition”. Twice every week we group all those records into “tome” clusters, taking into account nearly all attributes of each record...Is that a final number of books in the world? Not quite. We still have to exclude non-books such as microforms (8 million), audio recordings (4.5 million), videos (2 million), maps (another 2 million)...and other items for which we receive catalog entries... Counting only things that are printed and bound, we arrive at about 146 million. This is our best answer today. It will change as we get more data and become more adept at interpreting what we already have...After we exclude serials, we can finally count all the books in the world. There are 129,864,880 of them. At least until Sunday."

AP: "The library board in Camden, one of the nation's poorest cities, is preparing to close all three of its libraries by the end of the year, saying its funding has been slashed so drastically that it cannot afford to keep operating. Library officials are hoping enough money surfaces to save the system, but they're preparing for a shutdown and say they're not just threatening it as a ploy. Budget cuts across the country have caused local officials to close library branches, reduce hours and spend less money on books, computers and other materials. But officials at the American Library Association believe Camden's library system would be the first in the U.S. with multiple branches to check out entirely...The city of about 80,000 residents across the Delaware River from Philadelphia consistently ranks as one of the nation's most impoverished. It's a place where most families don't own computers, where just one big bookstore serves the local colleges and where some of the public schools don't even have librarians."

Defining Internet Freedom - eJournal - U.S. Department of State, July 2010

Via Marshall Breeding this news release: "In a move that could have far-reaching implications for competition in the library software and technology services industry, SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC has filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. The suit alleges that OCLC, a purported non-profit with a membership of 72,000 libraries worldwide, is unlawfully monopolizing the markets for cataloging services, interlibrary lending, and bibliographic data, and attempting to monopolize the market for integrated library systems, by anticompetitive and exclusionary practices. OCLC is a nonprofit Ohio corporation formed in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio. OCLC’s stated mission is "furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs." But over the years, OCLC has evolved into a global enterprise that sells numerous commercial products and services to libraries, generating revenues in excess of $200 million annually from 2005 through 2008, tax-free profits averaging over $17 million per year, and amassing a securities portfolio as high as $176 million in 2007. Since 1982 OCLC has used its tax-free profits to acquire 14 for-profit companies.

A Slice of Research Life: Information Support for Research in the United States, July 2010

Law Librarian Survey 2010: More Bang, Less Bucks, Alan Cohen, The American Lawyer, July 15, 2010

Development of a SharePoint Site - Lorette S.J. Weldon continues her series with a discussion on how to interpret and document the requirements of an organization or a specific department in order to develop a successful SharePoint site.

Law Libraries Transformed: Not long ago, the law library was "a place". It housed printed materials and staff and provided work space for research. Lawyers went there to use books and consult librarians to locate and complete assignments. Today, Eleanor Windsor and Ron Friedmann report that the notion of a modern law library is very different, shaped by the skills of specialized researchers and information managers rather than by bookshelves and bound volumes.

"Checking out digital versions of books that are automatically returned after two weeks is as easy as logging onto the Internet Archive’s Open Library site, announced digital librarian and Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. By integrating this new service, more than seventy thousand current books – best sellers and popular titles – are borrowable by patrons of libraries that subscribe to Overdrive.com's Digital Library Reserve. Additionally, many other books that are not commercially available but are still of interest to library patrons, are available to be borrowed from participating libraries using the same digital technology. According to Kahle, "Digital technologies promise increased access to both old and new books. The Internet Archive, through its OpenLibrary.org site, is thrilled to be adding the capacity to lend newer books over the internet, in addition to continuing to provide the public with all access, free downloadable older materials.” He added, "We expect the number of books in the digital lending library to grow annually."

"In an effort to map and chronicle the full range of cuts, closings, and diminished library services nationally, Library Journal, in partnership with Mandy Knapp and Laura Solomon (responsible for SaveOhioLibraries.com), has launched LosingLibraries.org. The dynamic website, which relies on reader contributions, has begun to track - via links to articles, announcements, and press releases — the myriad cuts and changes affecting public libraries around the country. Color-coded tags indicate which kind of cuts have been implemented, including branch closures, staff layoffs, and reduced hours. The map also overlays the changing annual picture since the recession began in 2008."

Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025 (June 2010)

Basic Legal Research on the Internet: This article explores the corner of the Internet landscape that concentrates on legal research. For the most part, these databases and search tools are free, although some might require a library card. Essentially, this is a short list of "go to" sites that most researchers will find useful. Before delving in, author Ken Strutin also examines a few time tested research concepts for the Internet age.

Problems with Creating a Course to Help Colleagues - How many times have you wondered how to do a task or work with software? You feel wonderful once you have found a colleague who could share their "know-how" about how to complete that task more efficiently or how to implement an applications that does not have a manual that makes sense to you. Lorette S.J. Weldon focuses on four factors to consider when you want to share your knowledge on your own: cost; timing; equipment and global presentation.

What is Open Source? - In the past few years, the term open source has been bandied about not just in library-land, but in every industry. When a term is talked about this much, some would say to the point of overuse, people start to think it's a fad. In this and upcoming articles, Nicole C. Engard is here on LLRX to tell you that open source is no fad, and why.

WSJ.com: "Ms. Molloy, a 54-year-old librarian at New Mexico State University here, spends most mornings sifting reports in the Mexican press to create a tally of drug-cartel-related killings in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She is striving to fill a widening information gap about these homicides in Juárez, some 50 miles southeast of Las Cruces, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. There is no official count of the people killed in Mexico's escalating drug wars—whether the victims are drug traffickers, police or civilians. A government estimate puts the total at about 22,000 in all of Mexico since late 2006."

Gallery: Digitizing the past and present at the Library of Congress, Rob Beschizza: "The Library of Congress has nearly 150 million items in its collection, including at least 21 million books, 5 million maps, 12.5 million photos and 100,000 posters. The largest library in the world, it pioneers both preservation of the oldest artifacts and digitization of the most recent--so that all of it remains available to future generations. I recently took a tour of two LoC departments that exemplify this mission: the Preservation Research and Testing Division in Washington, D.C., and the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va. The library's preservation specialists use the latest technology to study and scan ancient books, maps and other historical artifacts."

News release: "Cambridge University Library has announced visionary plans to become a digital library for the world - following a £1.5m lead gift pledged by Dr. Leonard Polonsky. Home to more than seven million books and some of the greatest collections in existence, including those of Newton and Darwin, the Library will begin digitising its priceless treasures to launch its Digital Library for the 21st Century. University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: "Our library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia. We want to make it accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge. This will not only make our collections available to the world; it will also initiate a global conversation about them...The first collections to be digitised will be entitled The Foundations of Faith and The Foundations of Science. The goal for both is that they become 'living libraries' with the capacity to grow and evolve."

Several articles via WSJ.com, New York Times and The Atlantic delve into arguments raised by authors of new books on the subject of the Web's impact on acquiring, retaining and utilizing knowledge.

• WSJ.com: Does the Internet Make You Smarter? Amid the silly videos and spam are the roots of a new reading and writing culture, says Clay Shirky.
  
• WSJ.com: Does the Internet Make You Dumber? The cognitive effects are measurable: We're turning into shallow thinkers, says Nicholas Carr.
  
• New York Times Book Review: "Nicholas Carr argues that we are sabotaging ourselves, trading away the seriousness of sustained attention for the frantic superficiality of the Internet."
  
• Via Wired, an except of Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
  
• The Atlantic: "In Carr's new book The Shallows, he explores in greater depth the cognitive and historic implications [that Internet use is literally altering our brains] comparing the Internet's impact to that of other technological innovations, including the printed book."

News release: "The William Clinton Presidential Library will open records relating to U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s tenure at the White House Domestic Policy Council and the White House Counsel’s Office. The release of papers from the approximately 160,000 pages of material will be made available on the Clinton Library web site in batches as soon as the records are processed. Release dates and times will be posted on the National Archives Twitter site [http://twitter.com/archivesnews] and the National Archives home page.

"The American Library Association (ALA) Washington Office has released the association’s 2009 Legislative Scorecards for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. The Legislative Scorecards outline votes and support of legislation that is important to and has an impact on the library community. The ALA provides the scorecard as a tool to ALA members for gauging their elected official’s support of library related legislation. The 2009 scorecards are available here."

LLRX.com: Are You SharePoint-Ready? Lorette S.J. Weldon explores how "ready" are librarians to use SharePoint 2003, 2007 and 2010? She asks: do you consider yourself an IT Librarian or a non-IT Librarian, an answer that can be part of your job description. She reviews results from a survey presented at Computers in Libraries 2010, with insights into how this application is leveraged in various organizations.

"The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive has completed its third annual analysis of link rot among the original URLs for law- and policy-related materials published to the Web and archived though the Chesapeake Project. The Chesapeake Project was launched in 2007 by the Georgetown University Law Library and the State Law Libraries of Maryland and Virginia as a collaborative digital archive for the preservation of important Web-published legal materials, which often disappear as Web site content is rearranged or deleted over time. More about the Chesapeake Project. In the three years since the archive was launched, the Chesapeake Project law libraries have built a collection comprising more than 5,700 digital items and 2,300 titles, all of which were originally posted to the Web. For this study, the term "link rot" is used to describe a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL and currently preserved in the Chesapeake Project’s digital archive. In some instances, a 404 or "not found" message indicates link rot at a URL; in others, the URL may direct to a site hosted by the original publishing organization or entity, but the specific resource has been removed or relocated from the original or previous URL. All of the Web resources described in this report that have disappeared from their original locations on the Web remain accessible via permanent archive URLs here at legalinfoarchive.org, thanks to the Chesapeake Project's efforts." [Sarah Rhodes, Digital Collections Librarian, Georgetown University Law Library]

Gutenberg 2.0 Harvard's libraries deal with disruptive change, by Jonathan Shaw, Harvard Magazine, May-June 2010

News release: "President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate William J. Boarman as the 26th Public Printer of the United States...The Public Printer serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the venerable United States Government Printing Office (GPO). The GPO’s core mission is Keeping America Informed. The agency provides
expert printing, publishing, and digital media services to the three branches of the government. It is a near billion dollar government agency of 2,300 employees which operates like a business – while a portion of its funding comes from direct Congressional appropriation – GPO produces significant revenue by providing products and services to other Federal agencies and the American public."

H. Res. 1222 supporting the goals and ideals of National Library Week: April 13, 2010 Congressional Record - House H2465

LLRX.com - The Odd Couple: SharePoint and Librarians: Lorette S.J. Weldon examines how SharePoint is used within the library to facilitate the coordination of collaboration, capturing and organizing "corporate" knowledge, and organizing digital content. She also reviews the results from her survey, "SharePoint Usage in the Library" which demonstrated how librarians could program their department's SharePoint site without code.

News release: "When jobs go away, Americans turn to their libraries to find information about future employment or educational opportunities. This library usage trend and others are detailed in the 2010 State of America’s Libraries report, released April 11, 2010 by the American Library Association. The report shows that Americans have turned to their libraries in larger numbers in recent years. Since the recession took hold in December 2007, the local library, a traditional source of free access to books, magazines, CDs, and DVDs, has become a lifeline, offering technology training and workshops on topics that ranged from résumé-writing to job-interview skills. The report shows the value of libraries in helping Americans combat the recession. It includes data from a January 2010 Harris Interactive poll that provides compelling evidence that a decade-long trend of increasing library use is continuing—and even accelerating during economic hard times. This national survey indicates that some 219 million Americans feel the public library improves the quality of life in their community. More than 223 million Americans feel that because it provides free access to materials and resources, the public library plays an important role in giving everyone a chance to succeed."

News release: "The University of Maryland and the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) Foundation have unveiled a new children's reading and library application - ICDL for iPad brings to Apple's iPad access to the world's largest freely available collection of multi-lingual, online children's books with titles in more than 54 languages representing 64 countries. Through the ICDL for iPad app, children, parents, teachers and librarians will be able to access the International Children's Digital Library on the iPad and use the ICDL's award-winning children's search engine developed by researchers at the University of Maryland's renowned Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL)."

News release: "The board of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) modified its definition of a digital magazine in the U.S. and Canada to accommodate new reading devices such as the Apple iPad. The new standards state that a replica digital edition must include a print edition's full editorial content and advertising, but it no longer needs to be presented in a layout identical to the print version. Replica digital editions will continue to be included in a magazine's circulation guarantee, or rate base...ABC confirmed that Wired magazine was the first publication to seek review of its iPad version, which will qualify as a digital replica edition under the bureau's new guidelines. GQ has offered an ABC approved replica app for the iPhone and iPod Touch since December 2009."

News release: "Nearly one-third of Americans age 14 or older – roughly 77 million people – used a public library computer or wireless network to access the Internet in the past year, according to a national report released today. In 2009, as the nation struggled through a recession, people relied on library technology to find work, apply for college, secure government benefits, learn about critical medical treatments, and connect with their communities. The report, Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S. Libraries, is based on the first, large-scale study of who uses public computers and Internet access in public libraries, the ways library patrons use this free technology service, why they use it, and how it affects their lives. It was conducted by the University of Washington Information School and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Low-income adults are more likely to rely on the public library as their sole access to computers and the Internet than any other income group. Overall, 44 percent of people living below the federal poverty line used computers and the Internet at their public libraries."

New York Times: "Electronically produced drafts, correspondence and editorial comments, sweated over by contemporary poets, novelists and nonfiction authors, are ultimately just a series of digits — 0’s and 1’s — written on floppy disks, CDs and hard drives, all of which degrade much faster than old-fashioned acid-free paper. Even if those storage media do survive, the relentless march of technology can mean that the older equipment and software that can make sense of all those 0’s and 1’s simply don’t exist anymore. Imagine having a record but no record player. All of which means that archivists are finding themselves trying to fend off digital extinction at the same time that they are puzzling through questions about what to save, how to save it and how to make that material accessible."

Newswise: "With the digitization process now complete, the 31 volumes of Ulysses S. Grant's collected papers now are available online through the Mississippi State University Libraries. The volumes contain thousands of letters written by and to the 18th U.S. president and former Civil War general and Union Army hero. Also including military documents, other materials and numerous photographs, the collection may be viewed free via the Ulysses S. Grant Association's Web site."

Official Google Blog: "Today we’re announcing an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage [to] digitize up to a million out-of-copyright works. The libraries will select the works to be digitized from their collections, which include a wealth of rare historical books, including scientific works, literature from the period of the founding of Italy and the works of Italy's most famous poets and writers. It marks the first time we’ve ever joined forces with Italian libraries, and the first time we've worked with a ministry of culture."

Survey of Academic Librarians: Use of Associations, Blogs, Listservs, Conferences, & Publications about Libraries

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search: "Now that the fairness hearing on the Google Books Settlement has occurred, it is up to Judge Chin to decide whether the proposed settlement is "fair, reasonable, and adequate." The attached chart attempts to diagram some of the possible paths forward. Notwithstanding the complexity of the chart, it does not reflect all the possible permutations. For example, it does not mention stays pending appeals nor whether litigation would proceed as a class action. Moreover, the chart does not address the substantive reasons why a certain outcome may occur, e.g., the basis for Judge Chin accepting or rejecting the settlement. And it doesn't begin to address the issue of Congressional intervention through legislation. In short, the precise way forward is more difficult to predict than the NCAA tournament. And although the next step in the GBS saga may occur this March, many more NCAA tournaments will come and go before the buzzer sounds on this dispute."

Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities - Dailey, Dharma, Bryne, Amelia, Powell, Alison, Karaganis, Joe and Chung, Jaewon. Social Science Research Council (SSRC), March 2010

Follow up to postings on Google Book Search resources and related litigation, the latest news from The Laboratorium - GBS: Fairness Hearing Report [held February 18, 2010, U.s. District Court, Southern District of New York], with Part I here and Part II here. These report cover the arguments of settlement supporters and opponents; and the arguments made by the Department of Justice and the parties, along with a few brief comments of Law Professor James Grimmelmann.

Salon - The author of a new book talks about the secret lives of America's favorite -- and endangered -- disciplinarians

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, this annotated public interest resource: "The Public Index is a project of the Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School. We are a group of professors, students, and volunteers who believe that the Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement deserve a full, careful, and thoughtful public discussion. The Public Index is a site for people from all points of view to learn from each other about the settlement and join together to make their voices heard in the public debate."

Chronicle of Higher Education: "This is a strong vehicle for academic freedom," says Mr. Willinsky, whose Public Knowledge Project offers free journal-publishing software to academics. In a world where subscriptions to some medical journals can cost more than $10,000 a year, and many colleges in developing countries cannot afford more than a handful of scholarly publications, publishing enabled by this kind of tool is plugging many academics into research and discourse as never before."

LLRX.com - Effective Project Management: the Art of Creating Scope Statements - Carol A. Watson's discussion of how well-defined scope statements are the key to successful project management continues with this article focused on how all written documentation should be clearly and concisely written, avoiding ambiguities at all costs.

LLRX.com: Preserving Born-Digital Legal Materials - Where to Start?: Sarah Rhodes discusses the monumental challenge of preserving our digital heritage. She argues that law libraries specifically have a critically important role to play in this undertaking as access to legal and law-related information is a core underpinning of our democratic society. Our current digital preservation strategies and systems are imperfect but tremendous strides have been made over the past decade to stave off the dreaded digital dark age, and libraries today have a number of viable tools, services, and best practices at our disposal for the preservation of digital content.

Moving Targets: Web Preservation and Reference Management - Richard Davis discusses the role of Web preservation in reference management in an article based on a presentation given at the Innovations in Reference Management workshop January 2010.

Kay Ann Cassell and Kathleen Weibel - Telling the story of women's work is never done: “Writing Women Back into History” is the theme for National Women’s History Month, March 2010, the annual celebration of women in the United States. For years women’s contributions were routinely underestimated or ignored even in the history of our own profession. While this still remains the case for much of history, the second wave of feminism reinvigorated interest in, and work on, “women’s history” at the academic and community levels. Now children learn about Sojourner Truth as well as Betsy Ross and we understand that Abigail Adams contributed to the founding of this country as did her husband, John, our nation’s second president."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, this news, Justice Department Submits Views on Amended Google Book Search Settlement - Department Says Despite Substantial Progress Made, Issues Remain

News release: "After more than a decade of nationwide effort, the Digital Promise Project has achieved an essential goal – the creation of the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies. This year the Department of Education, as provided by their 2010 appropriations legislation, will make available the initial funding required to launch the National Center. In the words of the Center’s authorizing legislation, “The purpose of the Center shall be to support a comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capability of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.” Congress voted overwhelmingly to establish this Center, the first new national research center in many years, as an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Authorized in 2008 by amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965, the National Center will have a governing board of nine members, which will include outstanding representatives from the public and private sectors and from varied professions and disciplines."

Endangered Species - News librarians are a dying breed [Preface - I certainly hope not, having been one and respecting the profession immensely]: "According to data collected by Michelle Quigley, a researcher at the Palm Beach Post, over 250 news librarians (sometimes called news researchers) lost their jobs in the U.S. since 2007. Membership in the Special Libraries Association News Division, an organization for news librarians, has fallen to below 400 from over 1,000 in the 1990s. Entire news libraries have been shuttered and replaced by consultants or outside vendors."

News release: "This report was written as a companion report to "A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process," a report commissioned by OCLC Research and produced by Key Perspectives Ltd, a UK library and scholarly publishing consultancy. Published in December 2009, the Key Perspectives report was written after studying the role of research libraries in higher education research assessment regimes in five countries: the Republic of Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia. This companion report provides a summary of the key findings of the Key Perspectives study, with some context for the recent increase in library involvement in research assessment, as well as recommendations for research libraries.

• Research Assessment and the Role of the Library
  
• A Comparative Review of Research Assessment Regimes in Five Countries and the Role of Libraries in the Research Assessment Process
  
• Survey of Current Practice in Research Assessment Activity

A Perfect Storm Brewing: Budget Cuts Threaten Library Services at Time of Increased Demand, January 2010.

"According to a new report prepared by the American Library Association (ALA), libraries of all types are feeling the pinch of the economic downturn while managing sky-high use. Compiled from a broad range of available sources, The Condition of Libraries: 1999-2009 presents U.S. economic trends (2009), and summarizes trends in public, school and academic libraries across several library measures, including expenditures, staffing and services. The report also highlights trends in services provided to libraries by library cooperatives and consortia."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search - Google & the Future of Books: An Exchange By Paul N. Courant, Laine Farley, Paula Kaufman, John Leslie King, Theodore Koditschek, Anthony Lewis et al.
"To the Editors: In his recent article criticizing the Google settlement [Google and the New Digital Future, NYR, December 17, 2009], Robert Darnton fails to acknowledge the significant role that libraries have had in the creation of Google Book Search as well as the concrete steps they are taking to address the sorts of concerns he raises. Libraries are using Google-digitized volumes to create the "truly public library" that he seeks, and these same libraries are taking responsibility for the preservation of Google-digitized volumes. More than thirty research libraries have made agreements with Google to digitize their collections as part of their long-standing tradition of providing the highest level of access to scholarly materials. These libraries have worked successfully with Google to ensure the integrity of their physical collections and to digitize those collections in accordance with broadly held standards for digital capture."

News release: Amazon.com, Inc. today announced [December 26, 2009] that Kindle has become the most gifted item in Amazon's history. On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. The Kindle Store now includes over 390,000 books and the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read, including New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases."

News release: "Nearly 60,000 books prized by historians, writers and genealogists, many too old and fragile to be safely handled, have been digitally scanned as part of the first-ever mass book-digitization project [which is called Digitizing American Imprints] of the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC), the world’s largest library. Anyone who wants to learn about the early history of the United States, or track the history of their own families, can read and download these books for free...digitized books can be accessed through the Library’s catalog Web site and the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free online digital library."

The Customer Is Always Right - Since founding Amazon in 1994, he has revolutionized retailing. Now he's out to transform how we read. By Daniel Lyons | NEWSWEEK.

Forbes: "If people can read this story a millennium from now, they may have Tadahiro Kuroda to thank. Kuroda, an electrical engineering professor at Keio University in Japan, has invented what he calls a "Digital Rosetta Stone," a wireless memory chip sealed in silicon that he says can store data for 1,000 years. As technology changes, storage goes stale. Can your computer read your old 51/4-inch floppies? Data typically has to be put on new storage systems every 20 years or less for it to be accessible. The digital migration costs time and money. Storing and maintaining a digital master of a very high-resolution movie, for example, costs $12,500 a year; archiving a standard film costs $1,000 a year."

LLRX.com: Understanding the Limitations - and Maximizing the Value- of eBooks: The holiday season is here, and many signs suggest that thousands of people are finding themselves new owners of electronic book ("eBook") readers. Whether it's an Amazon Kindle, a Barnes & Noble Nook, a Sony Reader, or any of the less heavily advertised devices currently on the market, electronic book readers are being trumpeted as a product that has finally hit the mainstream after years on the bleeding-edge. eBook readers, in fact, do have the potential to radically reshape how books are read. Equally important, according to Conrad J. Jacoby, they are already reshaping how books are bought and owned.

Project Management - A Law Librarian Survival Skill: Carol A. Watson discusses how effective project management requires considerable thought and preparation before actually initiating the work of the project. Although many of us are eager to jump into the tasks related to a project, it is important to remember that careful planning will provide the groundwork for a successful project outcome. Carol reminds us, "Remember, it takes time to save time," and she will be writing on this overall topic in forthcoming issues of LLRX.com

A Guide for the Perplexed Part III: The Amended Settlement Agreement - On Friday, November 13, 2009, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers filed an Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA) in the copyright infringement litigation concerning the Google Library Project. The amendments proposed by the parties are designed to address objections made by the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to the original proposed settlement agreement. This paper by Jonathan Band describes the ASA's major changes, with emphasis on those changes relevant to libraries.

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Search settlement,
this letter to DOJ Antitrust Division: "The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the Association of Research Libraries (the Library Associations) write to express our views concerning how the United States should respond to the Amended Settlement Agreement filed by the parties on November 13, 2009. In brief, we believe that active supervision of the settlement by the court and the United States will protect the public interest far more than any additional restructuring of the settlement."

News release: "Newspaper publishers experienced a single-year decline in total revenue of 8.3 percent — from $47.9 billion in 2007 to $43.9 billion in 2008. This followed a more modest decline of 2.7 percent in 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. A major contributor to the overall loss in revenues for the industry was the decline in advertising space revenue for general newspapers, which dropped 10.2 percent — from $30.9 billion in 2007 to $27.8 billion in 2008. Revenue from newspaper subscriptions remained largely unchanged over the period, from $8.3 billion in 2007 to $8.2 billion in 2008. These estimates come from the 2008 Service Annual Survey: Information Sector Services. The survey provides national estimates of annual revenue and expenses for industries primarily engaged in producing, processing and distributing data, which range from motion picture production to libraries."

The Collections Search Center provides easy "one-stop searching" of more than 2 million of the Smithsonian's museum, archives, library and research holdings and collections. The access to more Smithsonian collections via this Search Center is increasing over time. Collections currently available include: 265,900 images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other resources from the Smithsonian's museums, archives & libraries."

Access to Social Websites in The Legal Environment - Fall 2009 - Part 1: Survey of Law Librarians in Selected Firms, County/State Law Libraries and Law Schools.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search (GBS), Google and the New Digital Future, Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard

"The UT Libraries' Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) is committed to the long-term preservation of fragile and vulnerable records of human rights struggles worldwide, the promotion and secure usage of human rights archival materials, and the advancement of human rights research and advocacy around the world. The HRDI website highlights the following types of materials:

1. UT Collections: Primary source, archival materials related to human rights
   
2. Archived Web Resources: Websites, reports, audio, video, photographs on human rights struggles that are produced by individuals or small organizations who lack resources and opportunities for widespread distribution of their work
   
3. Audiovisual documentation (limited access): Fragile, born-digital, audiovisual documentation of human rights violations acquired through partnerships with human rights organizations worldwide (see About the HRDI, access to these materials is currently limited due to the sensitive nature of the information)

Support for the Research Process - An Academic Library Manifesto: This document by Chris Bourg, Ross Coleman, and Ricky Erway can serve as a pathfinder for those professionals seeking to focuses on roles that academic, law and special librarians could undertake in order to better support the research process.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, news from the Authors Guild that 14 minutes before before midnight on November 13, 2009, "the parties filed with the Court an Amended Settlement Agreement and a motion for preliminary approval of the amended settlement. The parties' motion also seeks Court approval of a Supplemental Notice which, if approved, will be sent out in early December 2009." Here is a short FAQ.

"Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS administers a free library program of braille and audio materials circulated to eligible borrowers in the United States by postage-free mail."

As the book changes form, the library must champion its own power base—readers, By Tom Peters: "The future of reading is very much in doubt. In this century, reading could soar to new heights or crash and burn. Some educators and librarians fear that sustained reading for learning, for work, and for pleasure may be slowly dying out as a widespread social practice."

Who's in Big Brother's Database? By James Bamford - A review of The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book Search, this insightful commentary from The American Lawyer - Scanning the Future, by Ben Hallman: "Lawyers familiar with the talks say the book publishing industry had watched in horror as the music business waged a scorched-earth campaign against file-sharing sites like Napster, only to see their profits plunge and antipathy to their tactics grow. They didn't want to follow the same path. In the spring of 2006, executives and lawyers began e-mailing various proposals about how a comprehensive settlement might work, say lawyers familiar with the negotiations. The authors were most interested in getting paid for their out-of-print works. The publishers, meanwhile, wanted to ensure nothing could be done with in-print books without their permission. Google wanted a deal that would incorporate the most troublesome class of books: in-copyright, out-of-print books, for which the rights holders cannot be determined."

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book Settlement, this New York Times Op-Ed today: A Library to Last Forever, by Sergey Brin/Google: "Because books are such an important part of the world’s collective knowledge and cultural heritage, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, first proposed that we digitize all books a decade ago, when we were a fledgling startup. At the time, it was viewed as so ambitious and challenging a project that we were unable to attract anyone to work on it. But five years later, in 2004, Google Books (then called Google Print) was born, allowing users to search hundreds of thousands of books. Today, they number over 10 million and counting. The next year we were sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers over the project. While we have had disagreements, we have a common goal — to unlock the wisdom held in the enormous number of out-of-print books, while fairly compensating the rights holders. As a result, we were able to work together to devise a settlement that accomplishes our shared vision. While this settlement is a win-win for authors, publishers and Google, the real winners are the readers who will now have access to a greatly expanded world of books.

White House Proclamation: "Every American deserves an opportunity to study, understand, and contribute to the arts and humanities. This must begin in our schools, where children may have their first and most important exposure to these disciplines. Working on their own masterpieces and finding inspiration in the work of others, young people are opened to new means of expression that sharpen their creative faculties. An education in music, dance, drama, design, and fine art reinforces skills in fields like math and science, and it can help students reach their full potential. In an ever-changing world, we must prepare our students with the knowledge, creative skills, and an ability to innovate so they can compete and succeed on a global stage."

Follow up to previous postings on what is becoming the saga of the Google Book Settlement, the following articles, legal documents and commentary today:

• New York Times: Google Working to Revise Digital Books Settlement
  
• Author's Guild: "Beating their midnight deadline by about 90 minutes, the Justice Department on Friday filed a brief calling for modifications to the Authors Guild's class-action settlement with Google over Google's scanning of millions of library books without permission. The Justice Department said the parties to the settlement should modify the settlement to address certain copyright, antitrust, and class-action concerns. While it opposes the settlement agreement as it now stands, the Justice Department "strongly supports" the settlement's goals of creating new markets for out-of-print works and committed itself to working constructively with the parties on a revised settlement.."
  
• Google's Book Search Deal: 5 Pros and 5 Cons, JR Raphael, PC World
  
• ars technica - DOJ: Google book settlement needs major rewrite

News release: "With national unemployment topping 9 percent and many Americans seeking online information and new technology skills that can help keep them and their families afloat in hard times, U.S. public libraries are first responders in a time of economic uncertainty. Libraries Connect Communities 3: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2008-2009, a new report released by the American Library Association (ALA), says libraries are serving as crucial technology hubs for people in need of free Web access, computer training, and assistance finding and using E-Government and job resources. The study finds that more than 71 percent of all libraries (and 79 percent of rural libraries) report they are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their communities. Sixty-six percent of public libraries rank job-seeking services, including resume writing and Internet job searches, among the most crucial online services they offer – up from 44 percent two years ago. In a separate survey, 80 percent of New York libraries indicated they helped someone search for a job in late 2008."

eWeek.com: "Google agrees to provide 2 million non-copyrighted book titles for On Demand Books printing and cutting using its high-speed Espresso Book Machine. Google Books titles offered via the Espresso Machine will have a recommended sales price of $8 per copy, though the price is subject to change by retailers. On Demand may have access to sell more works if Google's Book Search deal with authors and publishers passes muster with the New York District Court in October." Wired also has the story.

Statement of Marybeth Peters, The Register of Copyrights before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives 111th Congress 1st Session, September 10, 2009

"reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows...A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs."

The relationship between public libraries and Google: Too much information, by Vivienne Waller. First Monday, Volume 14, Number 9 - 7 September 2009

Via Out of the Jungle, insightful commentary and content from a fee based Chronicle of Higher Education article, Choosing Up Sides to Hate or Love the Google Books Deal: "...And—this is what intrigues me the most—how will Judge Chin decide what role the federal courts can and should play in the creation and oversight of what almost everyone agrees will be a digital library the likes of which we have never seen before? Will he agree with Marybeth Peters, the U.S. Register of Copyrights, who told a late-to-the-game House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday that the settlement "inappropriately creates something similar to a compulsory license for works, unfairly alters the property interests of millions of rights holders of out-of-print works without any Congressional oversight, and has the capacity to create diplomatic stress for the United States" because of other countries' objections? (I wonder what the judge will make of the suggestion that Congress has a role to play here.)"

"CDT filed a "friend of the court" brief in the Southern District of New York [September 4, 2009] requesting that key privacy requirements be included in the Court's approval of the class-action settlement that would dramatically expand Google Book Search. CDT previously released a report in July analyzing the privacy implications of this settlement and is urging the judge to guarantee strong privacy safeguards for the exciting new services Google will be able to offer. The brief asks that the court approve the proposed settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuit between Google and authors and publishers, but to retain oversight in order to monitor implementation of a privacy plan."

• CDT's Amicus Brief in Google Books settlement
  
• CDT's Report on Google Book Service
  
• Related postings on Google Book Search
  
• New York Times: Google Book Project Coolly Received in Europe
  
• WSJ: Google Curtails Europe Book Plan

"Banned Books Week (BBW): Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where the freedom to express oneself and the freedom to choose what opinions and viewpoints to consume are both met. As the Intellectual Freedom Manual (ALA, 7th edition) states:

Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate; and second, that society makes an equal commitment to the right of unrestricted access to information and ideas regardless of the communication medium used, the content of the work, and the viewpoints of both the author and receiver of information. Freedom to express oneself through a chosen mode of communication, including the Internet, becomes virtually meaningless if access to that information is not protected. Intellectual freedom implies a circle, and that circle is broken if either freedom of expression or access to ideas is stifled.

Google Books Privacy Policy, September 3, 2009

bizjounrals: "Amazon.com Inc. this week joined the groups filing objections in court against Google Inc.'s settlement with authors and publishers. Amazon said in its 41-page brief filed in federal court that Google will stifle competition if the settlement is approved."

Law Librarians Survey: No More Sacred Cows - Librarians trim budgets, head count, and much-loved research tools.
The Full Survey:

• The Librarian's Expanding Role
  
• Electronic Resources
  
• Staffing
  
• Finances

Re-Hashing the Hash Tag - Crowd Competition and Community Standards at the #AALL2009 Conference: Roger V. Skalbeck and Meg Kribble describe how the majority of social media activity during the 2009 AALL conference took place on Twitter, and how this technology impacts the profession and the free exchange of information, moving forward.

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book settlement, BBB News reports - Tech giants unite against Google - "Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works."

As reported in the Concorde Monitor (New Hampshire), Justice Souter's longtime neighbor said "Souter told him one of the reasons he decided to move was because his Weare house wasn't structurally sound enough to hold the thousands of books that make up his library."

Law Practice Technology Information Sources and Tools - Ken Strutin identifies core sources to learn about new technologies that apply to legal research and law practice. In addition, he has identified specific tools that will contribute to managing research, communication and information-based tasks.

"Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's outstanding manuscripts. Together with Codex Vaticanus, it is one of the earliest extant Bibles, containing the oldest complete New Testament. This treasured codex is indispensable for understanding the earliest text of the Greek Bible, the transmission of its text, the establishment of the Christian canon, and the history of the book. Over 400 leaves survive and are held across four institutions: the British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monastery and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg. To celebrate the virtual re-unification of all extant leaves of Codex Sinaiticus, on 6-7 July 2009, the British Library is hosting an academic conference on topics relating to Codex Sinaiticus. A number of leading experts have been approached to give presentations on the history, text, conservation, paleography and codicology, among other topics, of Codex Sinaiticus. Selected conference papers will be edited and published as a collection of articles."

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice [on June 24, 2009], demanding the public release of the surveillance guidelines that govern investigations of Americans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI's Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines went into effect in December of 2008 and detail the Bureau's procedures and standards for implementing the Attorney General's Guidelines on approved surveillance strategies...The FBI's general counsel has acknowledged that "the expansion of techniques available [to the Bureau] has raised privacy and civil liberties concerns." Investigations can include the electronic collection of information from online sources and computer databases, as well as the use of grand jury subpoenas to obtain telephone and email subscriber information. Other recent policy changes allow the FBI to engage in free-ranging investigation of Internet sites, libraries, and religious institutions." [Darlene Fichter]

Best Practices for Government Libraries - 2009 - Change: Managing It, Surviving It, and Thriving On It - "The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more." Compiled by Marie Kaddell, LexisNexis.

Vendor Pitfalls in Negotiating Large Multi-Year Contracts - or How to Lose a Million Dollar Contract: A veteran of several decades of vendor negotiations for law firm online and print contracts, law librarian Elaine Billingslea Dockens' thoughtful, detailed and illustrative pathfinder is an asset to all engaged parties whose goal is to obtain a contract that is appropriately balanced, in cost and content, to meet the specific organizational requirements.

TIME: "In a complex settlement agreement, which took three years to hammer out and spans 135 pages excluding attachments, Google will be allowed to show up to 20% of the books' text online at no charge to Web surfers. But the part of the settlement that deals with so-called orphan books — which refers to out-of-print books whose authors and publishers are unknown — is what's ruffling the most feathers in the literary henhouse. The deal gives Google an exclusive license to publish and profit from these orphans, which means it won't face legal action if an author or owner comes forward later. This, critics contend, gives it a competitive edge over any rival that wants to set up a competing digital library. And without competition, opponents fear Google will start charging exorbitant fees to academic libraries and others who want full access to its digital library. "It will make Google virtually invulnerable to competition," says Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system."

The End of Institutional Repositories & the Beginning of Social Academic Research Service: An Enhanced Role For Libraries - Stuart Basefsky advocates broadening the concept of institutional repositories (IRs) to serve as full-fledged electronic libraries and documents how they can then serve the greater purpose of collecting, disseminating, analyzing and exchanging useful digital information for academic purposes.

There are a number of session handouts available in advance of the sessions.

The Decline and Fall of the Dominant Paradigm: Trustworthiness of Case Reports in the Digital Age, by William R. Mills, New York Law School Law Review, volume 53, 2008/2009.

Follow-up to previous postings on Google Book Search, Deal or No Deal: What if the Google Settlement Fails? by Andrew Richard Albanese, Publishers Weekly.

Follow up to previous articles on Google Book Search: "The University of Michigan today announced that it has expanded its historic agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of millions of U-M library books and journals. The amended agreement, which strengthens library preservation efforts and increases the public's access to books, is possible because of Google's pending settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The U-M library is the first in the nation to expand its partnership with Google."

Progressive Librarians Guild Calls for Elsevier to End Corrupt Publishing Practices and for Library Associations to Take Advocacy Role on Behalf of Scientific Integrity

Can Collaboration Solve Copyright Status Questions? The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry - As Roger V. Skalbeck documents, one of the underlying obstacles to reproducing older books is a central place to look for information about what is protected by copyright and what may have passed into the public domain is lacking. Responding to this need, OCLC recently introduced a beta service, the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (CER). It could be a very valuable resource for recording and sharing copyright status information."

News release: "Recommind...search-powered information risk management (IRM) software....released the results of its recent research into the information access and search habits of UK organisations. With businesses capable of searching just 50 percent of the information that their employees need for their daily tasks, the findings indicate that legacy, one-size-fits-all ‘Enterprise Search 1.0’ systems are no longer suitable for modern enterprises that require instant, automated and highly relevant access to all kinds of information – from documents and email to fellow colleagues’ expertise and knowledge to project-specific information. The impact on businesses from this technology failure includes staff spending many hours searching fruitlessly for the information they need to do their daily jobs – with approximately a quarter of those surveyed admitting that employees typically spend more than half a day a week on this task. For a company with 1,000 employees, this equates to upwards of £50,000 worth of lost time a week or £2,600,000 a year."

Follow up to Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Authors Guild: "The court overseeing Authors Guild v. Google extended the time for authors and publishers to opt out of the settlement by four months, to September 4th (Judge Chin's order). The fairness hearing will be on October 7th."

"In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on WorldCat.org—OCLC’s freely available end user interface on the Web—and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide. The report, Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want, presents findings from these research efforts in order to understand:

• The metadata elements that are most important to end users in determining if an item will meet his or her needs
  
• The enhancements end users would like to see made in online library catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials
  
• The enhancements librarians would recommend for online library catalogs to better assist them in their work
  
• The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog’s delivery-related information is just as important to end users.

"The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."

News release: "The value of libraries in communities across the country continued to grow in 2008—and accelerated dramatically as the national economy sank and people looked for cost effective resources in a time of crisis, according to the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual State of America’s Libraries report, released today as part of National Library Week, April 12-18, 2009. U.S. libraries experienced a dramatic increase in library card registration as the public continues to turn to their local library for free services. More than 68 percent of Americans have a library card. This is the greatest number of Americans with library cards since the American Library Association (ALA) started to measure library card usage in 1990, according to a 2008 Web poll conducted by Harris Interactive. The report also says library usage soared as Americans visited their libraries nearly 1.4 billion times and checked out more than 2 billion items in the past year, an increase of more than 10 percent in both checked out items and library visits, compared to data from the last economic downturn in 2001."

Proactive Leadership & The Role of Information: Identifying Strategic Networks of Information - Networking is supposed to be essential to successful leaders. But what is the importance of networking conceptually? People are only one form of this vital leadership resource. Stuart Basefksy explains how would one go about developing expanded networks of information and sources.

News release: "Acting Archivist of the United States Adrienne Thomas announced [April 10, 2009] that 245,763 pages of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Presidential records will be opened for research on Monday, April 13, 2009, at their respective libraries. These records, which were still pending with the George W. Bush Administration as of January 20, 2009, today cleared the review process established by President Barack Obama under Executive Order 13489.

• "On Monday, April 13, 2009, the Ronald Reagan library will open 244,966 pages of records processed in response to hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These records include the Presidential Briefing Papers collection, Office of Speechwriting research material, and approximately 13,000 pages of declassified records on numerous foreign policy topics. To date, more than ten million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Reagan library."
  
• On Monday, April 13, 2009, the George H. W. Bush library will open 797 pages of records that deal with Saudi Arabia. To date, more than six million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Bush library..."

News release: "Organizations representing booksellers, librarians, publishers, and writers today launched the latest phase in their five-year campaign to restore the reader privacy safeguards that were stripped away by the USA Patriot Act. Since 2003, the Department of Justice has used its expanded power under the Patriot Act to issue more than 200 secret search orders under Section 215 and more than 190,000 National Security Letters (NSLs). Despite several efforts to reform the Patriot Act, the FBI can still search any records it believes are "relevant" to a terrorism investigation, including the records of people who are not suspected of criminal conduct."

Burney's Legal Tech Reviews: Verizon Wireless USB760 Modem and the Cradlepoint CTR500 Mobile Broadband Travel Router - For consistent, resilient mobile internet connectivity, Brett Burney recommends these three small, versatile products that are cost effective and reliable.

Follow up to March 19, 2009 - New Attorney General Guidelines on FOIA Released - CJR: "In a bit of Congressional commemoration, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Cornyn, his Texan Republican colleague, have introduced S. 612, new legislation that would require any new b(3) exemptions to specifically reference the Freedom of Information Act, so that these exemptions would be easier to spot. The senators have frequently collaborated on legislation designed to improve FOIA, and this is the third consecutive Sunshine Week in which Cornyn and Leahy have introduced this legislation. In 2007, it passed the Senate unanimously...Because the law only applies to future b(3) exemptions that Congress might write, it does nothing to address those already in the US Code. Like Title 7, Chapter 77, Sec 4608, Subsection G, Paragraph 1, which protects certain information about honeybee handlers, or Title 7, Chapter 80, Section 4908, Subsection c, which does something similar for watermelon producers and handlers submitting information quantifying the size of their business in order to participate in the National Watermelon Promotion Board."

News release: "Starting today, The eBook Store from Sony will provide access to more than a half-million public domain books from Google optimized for current models of the Reader. At Sony’s eBook store (ebookstore.sony.com), a button on the front page leads to the books from Google, which people can transfer to their PRS-505 or PRS-700 Reader at no cost. The process is seamless for Reader owners who have an account at the store. Those new to the store will need to set up an account and download Sony’s free eBook Library software. To start, people can access more than a half-million public domain books from Google, boosting the available titles from the eBook Store to more than 600,000."

New York Times: Times Are Tough, and Libraries Are Thriving

News release: "The American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive report today examining widespread abuses that have occurred under the USA Patriot Act, a law that was rushed through Congress just 45 days after September 11. In the almost eight years since the passage of the controversial national security law, the Patriot Act has led to egregious government misconduct."

Mother Jones: "By slipping a simple, three-sentence provision into the gargantuan spending bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, a congressman from Silicon Valley is trying to nudge Congress into the 21st Century. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) placed a measure in the bill directing Congress and its affiliated organs—including the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office—to make its data available to the public in raw form. This will enable members of the public and watchdog groups to craft websites and databases showcasing government data that are more user-friendly than the government's own."

Post-Conference Workshop on Competitive Intelligence, April 2, 2009 - 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM, Sabrina I. Pacifici, Law Librarian, & Founder/Editor/Publisher, LLRX.com and beSpacific.com

ARRA 101: "Completing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was a long and arduous process for the Obama Administration and the new Congress. Now that President Obama has signed the bill into law, our nation can begin the journey of restoring our economic stability through the programs and initiatives this law will make possible.

Throughout the process of creating this law, the library community demonstrated a steadfast commitment to the American public by working to inform our leaders in Washington about the programs and services libraries across the country are providing to help America get back to work, such as assistance with resume building and online job searching as well as free classes to teach the public 21st century job skills.

With many opportunities available to libraries through the stimulus bill, the library community must continue our efforts to educate our elected officials on the benefits of investing in libraries – focusing now on the state level."

Timothy B. Lee: "Speaking at Princeton on Thursday, Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers, discussed the landmark settlement in the Google Book Search case. Sarnoff speculated that the agreement could effectively give Google and Amazon a "duopoly" in the online book market."

"The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas."

"The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL), a comprehensive civil rights Web site and portal hosted by the University of Georgia, saw an enormous spike in the number of hits during the week of January 19 when the nation celebrated the inauguration of President Barack Obama and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Among CRDL’s many video selections, users could watch a prophetic 1971 clip of civil rights activist Andrew Young predicting the election of an African American president in his lifetime, a 1962 clip of African American students turned away from the public library in Albany, Georgia, and a 1960 clip of African American first-grade girls integrating an elementary school cheered on by African Americans in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded the University of Georgia a National Leadership Grant (NLG) to create the digital library in 2005. The project was selected in part because it provides a portal for many of the nation’s civil rights collections, resulting in much greater public access and the ability to search across many collections as if they were a single collection. It also harvests metadata from the collections, which are physically scattered throughout the country, and has contributed significantly to audio-visual metadata standards." [Institute of Museum and Library Services]

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to present a newly digitized collection to celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The collection covers three eras including nine items in the Lincoln the Lawyer collection, five on Habeas Corpus and the War Powers of the President, and eight covering The Assassination: Trials. Lincoln's effort to restore the Union and his contributions to American political thought and its ideals of freedom often obscure the fact that he had been a successful attorney. Lincoln himself admitted his ambition lay in politics and not in the law, "My forte is as a Statesman, rather than a Prosecutor." Even if the law was Lincoln's "secondary" avocation, it was indelibly linked to him in life... and death." [Donna Scheeder]

Six Questions and a Strategy for Campus-wide Information Competence. At Cornell University Library (CUL) a committee was established in 2005 to address the issue of information literacy at the university. The committee did extensive research on this topic and developed an approach for seeking solutions. Stuart Basefsky presents three exhibits to accomplish this objective.

Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program - Back Issues available from 1996-2008, HTML Version (and PDF from 2001).

Follow up to previous postings on the Google Book search project, from the New York Review of Books, Google & the Future of Books, by Robert Darnton

George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum: "The George W. Bush Library holds millions of pages of official records documenting the two-term administration (2001-2009) of the nation's forty-third president, as well as donated historical materials that document Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and his personal papers as Governor of Texas. In addition to these textual records, the Bush Library has an extensive audiovisual collection containing photographs and videotapes, as well as an extensive artifact collection containing presidential and gubernatorial domestic and foreign gifts."

• Executive Orders Signed by George W. President Bush
  
• Public Papers of President George W. Bush
  
• Browse the George W. Bush White House Web Site

WSJ - Folks Are Flocking to the Library, a Cozy Place to Look for a Job Books, Computers and Wi-Fi Are Free, But Staffs Are Stressed by Crowds, Cutbacks: "A few years ago, public libraries were being written off as goners. The Internet had made them irrelevant, the argument went. But libraries across the country are reporting jumps in attendance of as much as 65% over the past year, as newly unemployed people flock to branches to fill out résumés and scan ads for job listings."

News release: "For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature, according to a new study by the National Endowment for the Arts. Reading on the Rise documents a definitive increase in rates and numbers of American adults who read literature, with the biggest increases among young adults, ages 18-24. This new growth reverses two decades of downward trends cited previously in NEA reports such as Reading at Risk and To Read or Not To Read."

Presidential Libraries: The Federal System and Related Legislation, Updated November 26, 2008.

News release: The staff of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service has released its most recent Monitoring Report on Universal Service. This report reflects information on the telephone industry filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) through June 2008. This report, with a few exceptions, reflects data filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by the telephone industry for the year 2007 and prior years..Schools and Libraries Support – Schools and libraries support disbursements in 2007 increased to $1.8 billion from $1.7 billion in 2006."

News release: "After the 2008 presidential election, the Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) Advisory Committee and the Committee on Legislation (COL) held meetings with the ALA Washington Office to discuss the key issues and concerns the library community must communicate to the new Administration during this time of transition and throughout Obama’s presidency. Following these meetings, the ALA Washington Office compiled a report, Opening the “Window to a Larger World,” Libraries’ Role in Changing America, which was submitted to the Obama-Biden Transition Team on Wednesday, December 17. The Washington Office is communicating with the Transition Team and hopes to continue this open dialogue over the next four years."

News release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Statistics 2006–2007, the latest in a series of annual publications that describe the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of ARL’s 123 member libraries. Of these member libraries, 113 are university libraries (14 in Canada, 99 in the US); the remaining 10 are public, governmental, and private research libraries (2 in Canada, 8 in the US)."

A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement: Jonathan Band's article outlines the settlement’s provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries. The settlement is extremely complex (over 200 pages long, including attachments), so this paper of necessity simplifies many of its details.

Best Careers, 2009: "U.S. News profiles 30 careers that offer strong outlooks and high job satisfaction. Here's what's new in 2009...as well as a look at 13 cutting-edge careers, viable now and poised for future growth. They stem from megatrends like globalization, digitization, and the wave of environmentalism sweeping the world." See the entry for Librarian.

How to Publish Without Perishing, by James Gleick: "As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer. Likewise, the bicycle is alive and well. It was invented in a world without automobiles, and for speed and range it was quickly surpassed by motorcycles and all kinds of powered scooters. But there is nothing quaint about bicycles. They outsell cars...Go back to an old-fashioned idea: that a book, printed in ink on durable paper, acid-free for longevity, is a thing of beauty. Make it as well as you can. People want to cherish it."

100 Notable Books of 2008 - New York Times: "The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since Dec. 2, 2007, when we published our previous Notables list." Includes Fiction and Poetry, and Nonfiction.

The Fast-Food Information Age: We Are What We Read, Michael Ross - November 10, 2008

Hull D, Pettifer SR, Kell DB 2008 Defrosting the Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools for the Next Generation Web. PLoS Computational Biology 4(10): e1000204 doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000204 [Gerry McKiernan]

Follow up to October 28, 2008 posting, Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Harvard Crimson: "Harvard University Library will not take part in Google’s book scanning project for in-copyright works after finding the terms of its landmark $125 million settlement regarding copyrighted materials unsatisfactory, University officials said yesterday."

E-Discovery Update: Pushing Back Against Hardcopy ESI Productions - Conrad J. Jacoby addresses how critical technology issues related to document authenticity and document-associated metadata have left fewer lawyers willing to accept e-mail messages and other electronic documents in print format. He argues that litigants choosing to produce electronically stored information in hardcopy format should be prepared to provide more complete electronic copies of their production, even when it isn’t initially requested by opposing counsel.

News release: "The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search...Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. The settlement agreement resolves Authors Guild v. Google, a class-action suit filed on September 20, 2005 by the Authors Guild and certain authors, and a suit filed on October 19, 2005 by five major publisher-members of the Association of American Publishers: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.; Pearson Education, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) Inc., both part of Pearson; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; and Simon & Schuster, Inc. part of CBS Corporation. These lawsuits challenged Google’s plan to digitize, search and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner."

Follow up to previous postings on EPA library closures, from the September 24, 2008 Federal Register: "EPA is enhancing access to library services for the public and Agency staff. EPA will open previously closed libraries in its National Library Network, with walk-in access for the public and EPA staff. Other library locations will expand staffing, operating hours, or services. This notice provides information regarding how members of the public can access the libraries and services beginning September 30, 2008."

WSJ (no fee) - Why Libraries Are Back in Style: "In the latest annual National Association of Home Builders consumer survey, 63% of home buyers said they wanted a library or considered one essential, a percentage that has been edging up for the past few years. Many mass-market home builders are including libraries in their house plans, sometimes with retro touches like rolling ladders and circular stairs."

News release: "A new study clearly finds that America’s public libraries are breaking through traditional brick-and-mortar walls to serve more people online and in person. America’s 16,543 public library buildings are leveraging technology to help children succeed in school and support lifelong learning. More than 83 percent now offer online homework resources, including live tutors and collections of reliable Web sources – up 15 percent in one year, according to Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2007-2008...The study, conducted by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University (FSU), shows today’s libraries are partners in learning – providing free access to expensive online resources that would otherwise be out of reach for most families..."

Pew Internet and American Life Project - Podcast Downloading 2008, 8/28/2008, Mary Madden Sydney Jones

The Kindle for Professional Researchers: DC based journalist Cheryl Miller offers seven good reasons to buy this gadget seemingly tailor-made for dedicated readers, but she also provides caveats worth your attention.

The Government Domain: Back to School for Constitution Day 2008 - E-gov expert Peggy Garvin guides researchers, educators and librarians to key online resources available for teaching, training and educational activities associated with the September 17, 2008 celebration of Constitution Day in the United States.

"Gannett News Service compiled 2002 data from the National Center for Education Statistics on more than 9,000 public library systems nationwide. To make a five-year comparison, GNS also obtained 2006 data from each state and the District of Columbia that were not available from NCES.

The federal government requires states to report library information in a number of categories. GNS focused on four key yardsticks: visits, circulation (number of items checked out), operating expenses and number of public computers with Internet access.

"Each year, more than 1 billion people visit libraries to borrow books or videos, log onto the Internet or participate in various community programs." Link to databases and related resources on the right sidebar of this page

• Library spending across the U.S.
• Public library systems with the highest circulation per capita
• Public library systems with the most Internet-capable public computers per capita
• Public library systems with the largest operating expenses per capita

News release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Social Software in Libraries, SPEC Kit 304, which provides an overview of ARL libraries’ implementation of software that people use to connect with one another online...In the last few years, the use of social software has grown enormously. While a growing number of libraries have adopted social software as a way to further interact with library patrons and library staff, many things are unclear about the use of social software in ARL member libraries. This SPEC survey was designed to discover how many libraries and library staff are using social software and for what purposes, how those activities are organized and managed, and the benefits and challenges of using social software, among other questions.

For this study, social software was broadly defined as software that enables people to connect with one another online. The survey asked about 10 types of applications: (1) social-networking sites; (2) media-sharing sites; (3) social-bookmarking or tagging sites; (4) wikis; (5) blogs; (6) sites that use RSS to syndicate and broadcast content; (7) chat or instant messaging services; (8) VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) services; (9) virtual worlds; and (10) widgets."

The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec304web.pdf.

Technology Tools for Information Management - Roger V. Skalbeck and Barbara Fullerton's share a fast paced presentation of 19 practical, low cost and innovative tech tools they respectively use on a regular basis. So if you are looking for ideas to improve your use of Outlook, RSS, Adobe, and enhance your presentations and collaborative goals, this article is a must read.

Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Country Profiles: Turkey and Yemen.

Project will preserve Bush administration Web sites, By Jill R. Aitoro: "More than 100 million Web pages from President Bush's second term will be preserved for historians, researchers and the public, thanks to a joint effort announced on Thursday of government agencies and non-profit libraries. The Library of Congress and Government Printing Office, in partnership with the California Digital Library, University of North Texas Libraries and Internet Archive, will harvest and archive all Web sites that could change under a new presidential administration. The total amount of data in the collection, which will focus on executive and legislative branch sites, is expected to reach 10 to 12 terabytes."

Council on Library and Information Resources, pub 142 - No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century, August, 2008 (74 pages, PDF)

Follow up to previous postings on the EPA library closures, today this news release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER): "The Memorandum of Agreement between the EPA and the American Federation of Government Employees becomes final today....EPA will not, however, re-open its specialized library for research on the properties and effects of new chemicals which held one of the world’s most comprehensive technical collections on pesticides and other compounds. EPA did pledge to reopen a Chemical Library as part of its re-opened Headquarters Library in Washington, D.C. with a “professional librarian with knowledge of chemical information” and access to an unspecified “specialized chemical collection."

Google Still Not Indexing Hidden Web URLs, by Kat Hagedorn
Metadata Harvesting Librarian, Digital Library Production Service, University of Michigan Libraries, Ann Arbor, MI and Joshua Santelli
Applications Programmer, Digital Library Production Service, University of Michigan Libraries, Ann Arbor, MI. D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2008, Volume 14 Number 7/8.

Treasury Economic Update 8.1.08: "Job Growth: Payroll employment fell by 51,000 in July, following a decrease of 51,000 in June. The United States has added about 7.8 million jobs since August 2003. Employment increased in 33 states and the District of Columbia over the year ending in June. (Last updated: August 1, 2008). Unemployment: The unemployment rate was 5.7 percent in July, up from 5.5 percent in June. (Last updated: August 1, 2008)
See also:

• Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary, July 2008
  
• Economy gets people out of the house, into libraries - "Study shows more checkouts in hard times," Newhouse News Service

News release: "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking suggestions from the public on how it can increase its level of openness related to security at nuclear power plants and certain other facilities while still protecting sensitive information. A summary of the feedback will be posted on the NRC’s Web site, provided to the Commission and considered in the development of new openness policies.

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the Commission implemented a new policy of withholding certain information. Some information previously available to the public was withheld and new information, such as certain orders to NRC licensees on security measures, was designated as classified, safeguards information or sensitive unclassified information and withheld from the public.

In 2007, the NRC began redacting and releasing many of the safety documents previously withheld, and the agency is interested in taking additional action regarding security-related inspection and license performance information. Under consideration are several approaches, including adding more detail to an annual report to Congress on security oversight and to the cover letters for security inspection reports, and by making more information available on the NRC Web site."

Related postings on Disappearing Docs. From Gov't Websites

"Taking Care of Business - Librarians have become tougher advocates, savvier negotiators, and key contributors to their firm's growth."

Reference from Coast to Coast: Summer Musings - Jan Bissett and Margi Heinen provide a timely and valuable refresher on a range of well-sourced, reliable, topical websites, guides, print and program materials useful for summer associate legal research training.

New York Times: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?: "Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Pride and Prejudice” for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs...Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends."

News release, July 11, 2008 [thanks to Jennifer Eckel]: "American Federation of Government Employees National Council of EPA Local #238 President Charles Orzehoskie today announced that AFGE Council 238 has reached agreement with EPA to reopen its libraries... Orzehoskie went on to note that this agreement must still go through. "Agency Head Review" pursuant to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, and may not be effective until on or about August 10, 2008...Orzehoskie and Roy point out that the MOA could only get to a reasonable level of detail in committing the Agency to provide EPA libraries with "adequate space and resources". Therefore, AFGE Council 238 has asked Congress to oversee the adequateness of "...space and resources..." proposed by the Agency for each reopened library...EPA received $1,000,000 in the Department of Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2008. These monies were to be spent "...to restore the network of EPA libraries recently closed or consolidated by the Administration...." Orzehoskie stated that it remains unclear to the Council just how EPA has allocated these monies to restore the EPA Library Network, but he is sure that Congress will require an accounting of the monies..."

"This is the companion website for the following book. Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan and Hinrich Schütze, Introduction to Information Retrieval, Cambridge University Press. 2008. This "is the first textbook with a coherent treatment of classical and web information retrieval, including web search and the related areas of text classification and text clustering. Written from a computer science perspective, it gives an up-to-date treatment of all aspects of the design and implementation of systems for gathering, indexing, and searching documents and of methods for evaluating systems, along with an introduction to the use of machine learning methods on text collections. Designed as the primary text for a graduate or advanced undergraduate course in information retrieval, the book will also interest researchers and professionals. A complete set of lecture slides and exercises that accompany the book are available on the web."

Microsoft Live Search Blog: "Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes. This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users."

• International Review of the Red Cross (1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970): "The International Review of the Red Cross has been continuously published by the International Committee of the Red Cross since 1869, and jointly with Cambridge University Press since 2006. It was first published as Bulletin international Sociétés de secours aux militaries blesses and later as Bulletin international des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge. The English edition began in April 1961. The Review is “a forum for debate on international humanitarian law and humanitarian action and policy, during armed conflict and other situations of violence."
• Reports Prepared for the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves

"The Chesapeake Project began as a two-year (2007-2008) pilot digital preservation program established to preserve and ensure permanent access to vital legal information currently available in digital formats on the World Wide Web. The purpose of The Chesapeake Project is to successfully develop and implement a program to stabilize, preserve, and ensure permanent access to critical born-digital legal materials. The goal is to establish the beginnings of a strong regional digital archive collection of U.S. legal materials as well as a sound set of standards, policies, and best practices that have the potential to serve as a model for the future realization of a nationwide digital preservation program. See Legal Information Archive: The Chesapeake Project, First Year Evaluation." [via Sarah J. Rhodes]

Real Job Titles for Library and Information Science Professionals - directory of "job titles...found in job listings in American Libraries, College and Research Libraries News, or have been sent to Michelle Mach by employed "librarians." [via Phil Bradley]

Library of Congress Federal Research Division: "The profiles offer brief, summarized information on a country’s historical background, geography, society, economy, transportation and telecommunications, government and politics, and national security."

• A Little Grafting of Second Life into a Legal Research Class: Rob Hudson discusses how Second Life can be used to enhance legal research instruction. Experiments in full class lectures and other uses of Second Life in higher education offer a mixture of hype and excitement. Published May 9, 2008
• CongressLine: Running for Congress: Paul Jenks recounts how for the past two years he has run marathons and monitored Congress at the same time, describing how the two experiences are very similar. Published May 9, 2008
• LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - A Guide to HIPAA Security and the Law: Heather A. Phillips reviews Stephen S. Wu's book whose focus is coming into compliance with the recent and complex new HIPAA requirements. Published May 7, 2008
• Conrad Jacoby's E-Discovery Update: Attorneys, Experts, and E-Discovery Competence: Conrad J. Jacoby focuses on two recent cases that emphasize the credibility problems counsel can face in the context of e-discovery - and suggest that outside assistance may be the only way for some counsel to demonstrate that these materials are being managed in a competent and trustworthy way. Published May 7, 2008
• FOIA Facts - My Proposal: FOIA Litigation Reporting Requirements: Scott A. Hodes makes the case that there should be a reporting requirement for all FOIA lawsuits requiring agencies to inform a central FOIA Office the outcome of FOIA lawsuits. Published May 7, 2008

"On May 7, Mary Alice Baish of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) gave testimony [Statement on behalf of GPO funding] before the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, Legislative Branch Subcommittee, in support of the fiscal year (FY) 2009 budget request of the U.S. Government Printing Office. She testified on behalf of AALL, the American Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association." [via ALA District Dispatch]

"Our communities have a very strong interest in Federal information policy and a fervent commitment to public access to government information and a robust FDLP for the 21st Century. The mission of the Government Printing Office (GPO) is uniquely important. GPO provides the three branches of the Federal government with expert publishing and printing services and electronic access to government information through GPO Access. In addition, GPO ensures perpetual, no-fee, ready public access to the printed and electronic information published by the Federal government, in partnership with federal depository libraries.

The public’s ability to access e-government information, either at their local depository library, neighborhood library or directly from their desktop, has grown exponentially since the enactment of the GPO Access Enhancement Act in 1993 and the move towards greater e-government by agencies, Congress and the courts. While e-government brings us many opportunities for enhanced public access, many difficult challenges remain unresolved as government moves away from producing its information in print and relies increasingly on “born digital” government information. We believe that GPO has a critical leadership role in helping the Federal government meet these unique challenges."

News release: "The FBI has withdrawn an unconstitutional national security letter (NSL) issued to the Internet Archive after a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As the result of a settlement agreement, the FBI withdrew the NSL and agreed to the unsealing of the case, finally allowing the Archive's founder to speak out for the first time about his battle against the record demand...The NSL was served on the Archive -- a digital library recognized by the state of California -- and its attorneys in November of 2007. The letter asked for personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records pertaining to the user. Kahle, who is also a member of EFF's Board of Directors, decided to fight the NSL because it exceeded the FBI's limited authority to issue such demands to libraries."

• For the newly unsealed documents (still partially redacted)
  
• For more information about this case
  
• Related postings on National Security Letters

The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (HR 5889 and S 2913) "attempts to create a system where new creators can use old works without fear of massive lawsuits, provided that a good faith effort has been made to find out if the work in question is copyrighted." [Link]

• Public Knowledge resource guide to Orphan Works and related posting.
  
• beSpacific postings on orphan works

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online: "For decades available only to scholars at Cambridge University Library, the private papers of Charles Darwin, one of the most influential scientists in history, can now be seen by anyone online and free of charge. This is the largest ever publication of Darwin papers and manuscripts, totalling about 20,000 items in nearly 90,000 electronic images. This vast and varied collection of papers includes the first draft of his theory of evolution, notes from the voyage of the Beagle and Emma Darwin's recipe book." Readers may also browse the papers here.

"This presentation [April 7, 2008] is an overview of recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project about internet use and Web 2.0 activities. It also focuses on the Project's findings about the role of libraries when Americans are trying to solve problems...This presentation covers the highlights from the report issued late last year about library use and the experiences people had at libraries when they went there for problem-solving help."

Inside the Experience: "Opening April 12, interactive technologies will make the Library of Congress and its collections more dynamic and accessible than ever. This Library of Congress Experience will offer “hands-on” interaction with rare cultural treasures in ways that inspire and engage. Artifacts like the Waldseemüller map (the first to include the name “America”), the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible and original volumes from Thomas Jefferson’s Library will be virtually at your fingertips. You’ll be able to flip through their pages, magnify sections of interest and access commentary from the Library’s top experts-all on the same touch screen."

FDLP Desktop: "The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) was directed by the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) to conduct a study on the conditions of regional depository libraries. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the extent to which public access to Federal depository resources may be impaired by current or projected organizational, financial, technological, or other conditions affecting regional libraries. The findings are to be delivered to the JCP by June 1, 2008. The Draft Outline."

News release: "Together with its supporting documentation, the PREMIS Data Dictionary provides a comprehensive, practical resource for implementing preservation metadata in digital archiving systems. Preservation metadata is defined as information that preservation repositories need to know to support digital materials over the long term. This document is a revision of Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final report of the PREMIS Working Group, issued in May 2005. The PREMIS Data Dictionary is a specification that emphasizes metadata that may be implemented in a wide range of repositories, supported by guidelines for creation, management and use, and oriented toward automated workflows. It is technically neutral in that no assumptions are made about preservation technologies, strategies, syntaxes, or metadata storage and management."

• The Personal Information Trainer, by Stuart Basefsky
• Criminal Law Resources: Fingerprint Evidence Challenges, by Ken Strutin
• The Social Networking Titans: Facebook and MySpace, by Deborah Ginsberg and Meg Kribble
• Update to Choosing Law Librarianship: Thoughts for People Contemplating a Career Move, by Mary Whisner
• Living With the Asus Eee PC, by Conrad J. Jacoby
• Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide, by Sabrina I. Pacifici, completely revised and updated.
• Doing Legal Research in Canada - revised and updated, by Ted Tjaden
• The Tao of Law Librarianship: If the Books Go, Will They Still Want Us? by Connie Crosby
• E-Discovery Update: Minimizing E-Mail Archive Data Conversion Issues, by Conrad J. Jacoby
• Reference from Coast to Coast: Making A Federal Case Out of It, by Jan Bissett and Margi Heinen
• FOIA Facts: Increasing the Quality of FOIA Releases, by Scott A. Hodes
• The Government Domain: Rich Resources from the Librarians of the Fed, by Peggy Garvin
• LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - Jerome Neu’s Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults
• Commentary: Waterboarding, Congress and the President, by Beth Wellington

EPA National Library Network News - Update on EPA's Library Network - March 2008

"EPA submitted a National Library Network Report to Congress (PDF, 8 pages) on March 26 as requested in the Explanatory Statement accompanying the FY 2008 consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2764).

In the Report, EPA commits to reestablish physical libraries in EPA Regions 5, 6, and 7, as well as the Headquarters and Chemical libraries by September 30, 2008 to complement existing library services. The report was transmitted to the Honorable Todd Tiahrt, the Honorable Wayne Allard, the Honorable Norman Dicks and the Honorable Dianne Feinstein.

The Report lays out the general approach EPA plans to take for each location to reopen, and establishes operational standards applicable to every library in the EPA Network. More specific planning for each site continues.

EPA will allocate the Congressional appropriation of $1 million using the following priorities:

• Re-establish on-site libraries in Region 5 in Chicago, Region 6 in Dallas, Region 7 in Kansas City, and the consolidated EPA Headquarters Repository and Chemical Library in Washington, DC.
  
• Enable Regional EPA libraries to update their collections, facilities, and equipment to meet Network standards.
  
• Conduct a formal needs assessment for EPA library services to support future development.
  
• Over the next few months, EPA will continue to engage with internal and external stakeholders on developing final plans for each library. The Agency is committed to working with its employees and outside parties on its future digitization plans (based on the third party review), a customer needs assessment, and long term strategic planning efforts.

Follow up to previous postings on the EPA library closures, news today via AP: "The Environmental Protection Agency plans to reopen five closed libraries to the public by this fall, the agency said in a report Thursday. Three of the EPA's 10 regional libraries and two libraries at the agency's Washington headquarters were closed because of limited public use and resources being available online, EPA officials had said. The closings prompted criticism from lawmakers. The EPA said in a report to Congress that it expects the closed agency libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, Mo., as well as at its Washington headquarters to be reopened by Sept. 30 and possibly earlier. Congress added $1 million to the EPA's budget so that the libraries could be reopened. It also required the agency to provide the report on its library plans."

News release: "The Special Libraries Association (SLA) today met with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials to review the agency's report to the U.S. Congress on the future direction of its library network. The report, EPA National Library Network Report to Congress (March 26, 2008), explains the steps EPA intends to take to reopen libraries closed over the last two years, and details how the agency will allocate an additional $1 million dollars for libraries provided in the FY08 EPA budget earmarked for that purpose."

Workshop 8 – Monitoring & Current Awareness: Mining Blogs & RSS for Research, 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Sunday April 6, 2008 - Sabrina I. Pacifici, Law Librarian, Founder/Editor/Publisher, LLRX.com and Author, beSpacific.com.

Environmental Protection: EPA Needs to Ensure That Best Practices and Procedures Are Followed When Making Further Changes to Its Library Network, GAO-08-304, February 29, 2008.

• "Established in 1971, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) library network provides staff and the public with access to environmental information. Its 26 libraries contain a wide range of information and resources and are located at headquarters, regional offices, research centers, and laboratories nationwide. In 2006, EPA issued a plan to reorganize the network beginning in fiscal year 2007. The plan proposed closing libraries and dispersing, disposing of, and digitizing library materials. GAO was asked to assess (1) the status of, and plans for, the network reorganization; (2) EPA's rationale for reorganizing the network; (3) the extent to which EPA has communicated with and solicited the views of EPA staff and external stakeholders in conducting the reorganization; (4) EPA's steps to maintain the quality of library services after the reorganization; and (5) how EPA is funding the network and its reorganization. For this study, GAO reviewed pertinent EPA documents and interviewed EPA officials and staff from each of the libraries.

  Since 2006, EPA has implemented its reorganization plan to close physical access to 4 libraries. In the same period, 6 other libraries in the network decided to change their operations, while 16 have not changed. Some of these libraries have also digitized, dispersed, or disposed of their materials. Since the reorganization, EPA has begun drafting a common set of agencywide library procedures and has hired a program manager for the network. While these procedures are under development, however, EPA has imposed a moratorium on further changes to the network in response to congressional and other expressions of concern. EPA's primary rationale for the library network reorganization was to generate cost savings by creating a more coordinated library network and increasing the electronic delivery of services. However, EPA did not fully follow procedures recommended in a 2004 EPA study of steps that should be taken to prepare for a reorganization. In particular, EPA did not fully evaluate alternative models, and associated costs and benefits, of library services. EPA officials stated that they needed to act quickly to reorganize the library network in response to a proposed fiscal year 2007 funding reduction. EPA did not develop procedures to inform staff and the public on the final configuration of the library network, and EPA libraries varied considerably and were limited in the extent to which they communicated with and solicited views from stakeholders before and during the reorganization effort. In particular, EPA's plan did not include information that the Chemical Library was to close, and EPA did not inform staff or the public until after the fact. EPA's communication procedures were limited or inconsistent because EPA acted quickly to make changes in response to a proposed fiscal year 2007 funding reduction, and because of the decentralized nature of the library network."
  

• Related postings on EPA Library Closures

Follow up to previous postings on EPA library closures, this news release dated February 28, 2008: "A federal arbitrator has found the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guilty of unfair labor practices and acting in bad faith in its national series of library closures, according to a ruling posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). EPA is ordered to bargain with affected public employee unions before making any further changes in its library network. During the past two years, EPA has closed or reduced access to much of its network of libraries which serve both its own specialists and the public. Altogether, access to EPA libraries in 23 states has been completely lost, and several specialized collections have been shuttered, including its headquarters library."

Press release: "New York State schools with certified librarians have higher scores on average on the fourth grade English Language Arts (ELA) test than those who don’t, according to the findings of researchers at Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool).

Preliminary findings of research conducted by Professor Ruth Small and graduate students in the Center for Digital Literacy (CDL) show a statistically significant increase—with an almost 10 point difference—in the ELA test scores among fourth-grade students whose schools had certified librarians over students in schools without certified librarians." [via ALA]

"First Book is a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. We provide an ongoing supply of new books to children participating in community-based mentoring, tutoring, and family literacy programs.

First Book was founded in 1992. The First Book model was developed to leverage the work of local heroes who reach children through existing literacy programs in a variety of settings, such as Head Start centers, libraries, soup kitchens, churches, housing projects, and afterschool initiatives. Working through this vast network of organizations, First Book plays a critical role in transforming the quality of preschool and after-school programs nationwide.

First Book's model is national in scope and local in impact. In our first year, First Book distributed approximately 12,000 books in three communities. Since that time, First Book has distributed more than 50 million books to children in over 3,000 communities around the country."

"Through Government Information Online (GIO) you can ask government information librarians who are experts at finding information from government agencies of all levels (local, state, regional, national international) on almost any subject from aardvarks to zygomycosis. GIO is a free online information service supported by nearly twenty public, state and academic libraries throughout the United States. All participants are designated Federal depository libraries in the U.S. Government Printing Office's Federal Depository Library Program. Many are also official depository libraries for their other types of governments and public agencies."

Google Book Search: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, 1/1/2008, By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology.

Press release: "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) today called for the papers of the Founding Fathers Project [Pew Charitable Trusts: "The Project was established more than a half century ago to publish the complete, annotated writings of the country’s founding fathers—including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin—and to make these historical treasures available to the public."] to be made available to all Americans through the Internet, at a hearing to examine the program. Established more than 50 years ago to catalogue, annotate and public the writings of some of the country’s Founders, the program has been criticized because of slow progress and high costs."

Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization, A White Paper by Oya Y. Rieger, February, 2008. 52 pp. Published by the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Press release: "The President's budget request for fiscal year 2009 seeks $271,246,000 for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The request, which was released by the White House today, represents an increase of $26,023,000 or 10.6 percent, over the FY 2008 enacted level for the Institute’s programs and administration."

"The University of Michigan's University Library has just put the millionth book from its collection on-line. That's one million out of the 7.5 million volumes in the library's current holdings. Digitized materials are made available publicly via the Mirlyn library catalog and MBooks. MBooks provides full text of works that are in the public domain, creating new ways for users to search and access U-M Library content. Materials that are currently in copyright are available for searching on-line, allowing users to assess the contents of a book before deciding whether to purchase it or borrow it from the library."

Press release: "The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced that three universities - [text of the guidelines linked as follows] Hofstra, Syracuse and Marquette — have reached agreement with the AAP on new copyright guidelines affirming that educational content delivered to students in digital formats should be treated under the same copyright principles that apply to printed materials. The guidelines, which were developed separately by the three universities, govern how librarians and faculty members distribute copyrighted content through library electronic course reserves systems, course management systems, faculty and departmental web pages and other digital formats. AAP worked with each of the three universities in cooperative efforts to establish easily understood and common-sense standards that help faculty and staff understand and interpret their rights and responsibilities when using copyrighted content in educational settings. Each of the guidelines reflects the specific needs of the particular university and is consistent with the principles of fair use while providing helpful guidance as to when permission from the copyright holder is required to copy or post materials in digital formats. AAP believes the guidelines, which are similar to those adopted by Cornell University last year, will serve as models for others colleges and universities."

Do you need to read books to be clever? By Denise Winterman, BBC News Magazine: "...books are hyped as life changing and a way out of crime, poverty and deprivation by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who launched the National Year of Reading on Wednesday. Quite simply, they have the potential to open up new worlds for the reader...book sales in the UK are huge and on the rise. Last year we bought an estimated 338 million books, at a cost of £2,478m. This was 13% higher by both volume and value than five years ago, according to the Book Marketing Limited's latest Books and the Consumer survey."

Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, January 9, 2008.

"The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit journal articles that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central. The Policy requires that these articles be accessible to the public on PubMed Central to help advance science and improve human health."

The Law:

Press release: "A new report, commissioned by the UKL JISC [Joint Information Systems Committee] and the British Library, counters the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – young people born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most adept at using the web. The report by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web. The report Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future [11 January 2008] also shows that research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors. 'These findings add to our growing understanding of subjects that should concern all who work in further and higher education – the changing needs of our students and researchers and how libraries can meet their needs.'

The study calls for libraries to respond urgently to the changing needs of researchers and other users and to understand the new means of searching and navigating information. Learning what researchers want and need is crucial if libraries are not to become obsolete, the report warns."

Follow up to postings on EPA library closures, this press release from January 10, 2008: EPA To Set Up Human Resources Shared Service Centers: "The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to establish shared service centers in three locations, beginning in June 2008, to process personnel and benefits actions for the agency's 17,000 employees. The centers, to be located in current EPA facilities in Cincinnati, Ohio, Las Vegas, Nev., and Research Triangle Park, N.C., also will process vacancy announcements throughout the agency. The move will improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service of agency human resources operations. It is expected to take 12-24 months to complete. Staff affected by the creation of the shared service centers will continue their employment at one of the centers or elsewhere in the agency. The centers will enhance the timeliness and quality of customer service and standardize work processes."

Press release: "The Library of Congress and the Foundation Center, in a joint partnership, have recently compiled a new Web-based fundraising guide to help the preservation community save the nation’s millions of at-risk artifacts for future generations. The guide, titled Foundation Grants for Preservation in Libraries, Archives and Museums, is available for free download at the Library of Congress."

Follow up to December 27, 2007 posting Mandate for Public Access to NIH-Funded Research Now Law, see this press release: "The Association of American Publishers [January 3, 2008] criticized a controversial new NIH research publication policy that was enacted as part of the omnibus appropriations package for 2008, and reaffirmed that journal publishers who have opposed the policy will continue to pursue their concerns with Congress regarding the policy’s negative impact on science publishing and the protection of related intellectual property rights. Publishers will also urge NIH to conduct a rulemaking proceeding, with opportunity for public comment, before implementing the new policy."

Perceptions 2007: An International Survey of Library Automation
by Marshall Breeding. January 9, 2008: "Introduction - The year 2007 saw considerable upheaval in the library automation industry. To get some sense of the aftermath of the recent rounds of mergers, acquisitions, product consolidations, and to gauge interest in open source automation systems, I created and executed a survey that aims to measure the prevailing perceptions in libraries."

Press release: "The Library of Congress and Microsoft Corp. have signed a cooperative agreement that will change the way Library visitors experience history. The joint technology initiative will electronically deliver the Library’s immense collection of historical artifacts to patrons visiting its Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C., and will allow unparalleled and immersive interactive experiences that will bring the institution’s vast historical collections and exhibits to life–on-site and online–through the upcoming myloc.gov Web site."

The buslib-l archives are now available from 1998 to present at http://list1.ucc.nau.edu [Tina Adams (BusLib Moderator)]

"The European Library launched a new version of its website on the 4th of December; the changes involve significant lay-out improvements and reflect a constant care for understanding user needs. It also introduces the latest partners’ collections and the first The European Library web-exhibition."

Internet2 and Libraries - Serving Your Communities at the Speed of Light, by James Werle and Louis Fox.

The Secret Library of Hope, by Rebecca Solnit, The Nation: "Hope is an orientation, a way of scanning the wall for cracks--or building ladders--rather than staring at its obdurate expanse. It's a world view, but one informed by experience and the knowledge that people have power; that the power people possess matters; that change has been made by populist movements and dedicated individuals in the past; and that it will be again. Dissent in this country has become largely a culture of diagnosis rather than prescription, of describing what is wrong with them, rather than what is possible for us. But even in English, a robust minority tradition can be found. There are a handful of books that I think of as "the secret library of hope." None of them deny the awful things going on, but they approach them as if the future is still open to intervention rather than an inevitability. In describing how the world actually gets changed, they give us the tools to change it again..."

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Information Searches That Solve Problems, 12/30/2007

Follow up to previous postings on EPA Library Closures, news from Library Journal: "Reversing a policy bitterly opposed by library advocates, many Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees, and the watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Congress in its omnibus appropriations bill sent to President George W. Bush has earmarked $3 million to restore service at the EPA’s technical and research libraries."

Press release: "...in a statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the American Library Association (ALA) addressed the critical yet unacknowledged role public libraries play in delivering E-government services to the American people. Increasingly, government agencies refer individuals to their local public libraries for assistance and access to the Internet for citizen-government interactions. Yet public libraries are not considered members of the E-government team. ALA's statement (PDF), for the Committee's hearing on E-government, highlighted the stress these E-government services are placing on public libraries' infrastructure and suggested taking steps toward creating a partnership between public libraries and the government in order to improve E-government delivery to citizens."

Acceptance Speech, Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature 2007, December 7, 2007: "...We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc."

The Looming Infrastructure Plateau? Space, Funding, Connection Speed, and the Ability of Public Libraries to meet the Demand for Free Internet Access [First Monday], December 2007.

Library of Congress: The period for public comment on the report is open until December 15, 2007. Comments can be submitted via the Web site at http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/contact/. Electronic submission of comments is encouraged.

News.com: "The Universal Digital Library, a book-scanning project backed by several major libraries across the globe, has completed the digitization of 1.5 million books and on Tuesday made them free and publically available. The online library offers full text downloads of works that are in the public domain, or for which the copyright holder has been given permission to make available. Having the backing of prominent institutions such as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, however, the collection goes far beyond the widely available classics, though those are there, too..." According to the director of intellectual property for the Universal Digital Library, Michael Shamos, "But once books are digitized and stored on servers around the world, it becomes impossible for any one government to destroy all the copies of a book. Once it's there it remains immortal."

LC press release: "The Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and OCLC have signed a memorandum of understanding to extend and enhance the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), a project that virtually combines multiple name authority files into a single name authority service. Building on a previous proof-of-concept research project by the Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (the German national library) and OCLC, the new agreement adds the Bibliothèque nationale de France (the French national library) as a principal partner in VIAF and will lead to the inclusion of content from name authority files maintained by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The French name authority records will be added to the existing VIAF files built from authority data from the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and the Library of Congress. VIAF’s matching routines were developed by OCLC research."

Press release: "The New York Public Library has acquired the papers of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the late American historian, social critic, and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, announced Paul LeClerc, President of The New York Public Library. "Arthur Schlesinger was a pivotally important American in the last century. He was both a brilliant historian and also a witness to, and participant in, most of the significant events of his era," said Dr. LeClerc...The Arthur Schlesinger papers consist of almost 300 linear feet of correspondence, journals, manuscripts of his writings, research files, phone logs, sound recordings, videos, date books, and clippings and will be housed in the Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division. The correspondence in Schlesinger's papers includes letters from nearly every significant figure in American politics, as well as many prominent scholars, thinkers, writers, and artists. Examples of prominent correspondents include Kofi Annan, Brooke Astor, Truman Capote, Bill Clinton, Marlene Dietrich, Allen Ginsberg, Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javitz, Edward Kennedy, Edward Koch, Norman Mailer, Walter Mondale, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ralph Nader, I.M. Pei, John D. Rockefeller IV, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Caspar Weinberger."

Reinventing the Law Library - Year is 2020, NE2007: Law Libraries Without Borders II: 4th Northeast Regional Law Libraries Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Claire M. Germain, Professor of Law & Edward Cornell Law Librarian, Cornell University Law School, October 19, 2007.

AP: "The papers of two of Arkansas' most prominent political leaders former Govs. Clinton and Huckabee remain locked in storage four years after both promised to donate them to two separate archival projects."

Documents Center, University Library, University of Michigan, Guide to Elections 2008. Choose this web guide as your basis for any aspect of election related research. It is comprehensive, current, and presents a wide spectrum of state and federal resources, as well as annotated links to free and fee-based publications, subscription services, and online guides maintainted by government, newspapers, campaigns, advocacy groups, lobbying groups, and academics.

National Endowment for the Arts Report: To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence: "This report is a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns of children, teenagers, and adults in the United States. To Read or Not To Read assembled data on reading trends from more than 40 sources, including federal agencies, universities, foundations, and associations. The compendium expands the investigation of the NEA's landmark 2004 report, Reading at Risk, and reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for American society. November 2007. (100 pages, PDF)

Engaging Privacy and Information Technology in a Digital Age, James Waldo, Herbert S. Lin, and Lynette I. Millett, Editors, Committee on Privacy in the Information Age, National Research Council.

"Health Policy Picks is a monthly selection of recent publications, such as technical reports, conference proceedings, and other material produced by organizations and government agencies that conduct health care policy analysis and research. Health Policy Picks is a partnership between KaiserEDU.org and the New York Academy of Medicine Library's Grey Literature Collection...This month's Health Policy Picks presents recently released publications on Medicare, Medicaid, the Uninsured, and Health Systems."

The Future of Reading, by Steven Levy, Newsweek, November 17, 2007: "...the Kindle...has the dimensions of a paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a book's binding. It weighs but 10.3 ounces, and unlike a laptop computer it does not run hot or make intrusive beeps....with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle's six-inch screen posts readable pages... (The Kindle gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a charge, and recharges in two hours.)...E-book devices like the Kindle allow you to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book can instantly be a large-type edition. The handheld device can also hold several shelves' worth of books: 200 of them onboard, hundreds more on a memory card and a limitless amount in virtual library stacks maintained by Amazon. Also, the Kindle [costs $399] allows you to search within the book for a phrase or name...Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle's real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.)"

"The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) issued its first library statistics report on state library agencies, on state library agencies in the 50 states and the District of Columbia for state fiscal year (FY) 2006. The State Library Agency Report for FY 2006 [released November 2007] includes a wide array of information on topics such as libraries’ Internet access, services, collections, staff, and revenue, and is used by state and federal policymakers, researchers, and others."

A Tribute to Carl Linnaeus - November 13 and 14, 2007: "Scientists around the world are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. He is best known for instituting a two-name method for identifying plants and animals, called binomial nomenclature. Considered the “father” of modern taxonomy, Linnaeus named approximately 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants. Today, many museums, including this one, continue to research the relationships between species, and rely on Linnaeus’ classic works. For two days in November we will celebrate this 300th anniversary with an exhibition of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae and symposium."

US Courts press release: "Free public access to federal court records is available at 16 libraries in 14 states [the list is included with this release] under a joint pilot project of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and the Government Printing Office. The project offers free access, at the participating 16 federal depository libraries, to the federal judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. PACER allows users to obtain case file documents, listings of all case parties, judgments, and other information from district, bankruptcy and appellate courts online, with the data immediately available for printing or downloading."

Press release - "In a statement issued on Thursday, November 8, 2007, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein said: I welcome the Inspector General’s recommendations included in the ‘Audit of the Process of Safeguarding and Accounting for Presidential Library Artifacts’. This audit which was completed on October 26, 2007, examined the management of Presidential artifacts at six Presidential Libraries: The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the John F. Kennedy Library, the Gerald R. Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, the George Bush Library, and the William J. Clinton Library."

2007 Global Faculty e-Book Survey Sponsored by ebrary

National Center for Education Statistics, Public Libraries in the United States: Fiscal Year 2005: "This report includes national and state summary data on public libraries in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, with an introduction, selected findings, and several tables. The report, based on data from the Public Libraries Survey for fiscal year 2005, includes information on population of legal service area, service outlets, library collections and services, full-time equivalent staff, and operating revenue and expenditures. The report includes several key findings: Nationwide, visits to public libraries totaled 1.4 billion, or 4.7 library visits per capita. The average number of Internet terminals available for public use per stationary outlet was 11.2."

Press release: "According to the latest Harris Poll, the number of adults who are online at home, in the office, at school, library or other locations continues to grow at a steady rate. In the past year, the number of online users has reached an estimated 178 million, a ten percent increase."

The New Yorker: Digitization and its discontents, by Anthony Grafton, November 5, 2007

UNESCO launches new Literacy Portal: "In today’s world, one in five adults is still not literate (two-thirds of them women) while 72 million children are out-of-school. Since its foundation in 1946, UNESCO has been at the forefront of global literacy efforts and is dedicated to keep literacy high on national, regional and international agendas. However, with some 774 million adults lacking minimum literacy skills, literacy for all remains an elusive target. UNESCO’s literacy programmes aim to create a literate world and promote literacy for all."

OCLC press release and related links: "The practice of using a social network to establish and enhance relationships based on some common ground—shared interests, related skills, or a common geographic location—is as old as human societies, but social networking has flourished due to the ease of connecting on the Web. This OCLC membership report explores this web of social participation and cooperation on the Internet and how it may impact the library’s role, including: The use of social networking, social media, commercial and library services on the Web; How and what users and librarians share on the Web and their attitudes toward related privacy issues; Opinions on privacy online; Libraries’ current and future roles in social networking."

"A new Web page designed to keep libraries informed of weekly depository shipments has been released and is available at http://www.fdlp.gov/distribution/index.html."

A mission to remember: Volunteers for the Library of Congress are racing against time to collect oral histories of America's remaining World War II veterans. By Deborah Horan, Chicago Tribune staff reporter, October 14, 2007: "Since 2000, volunteers working with the library's American Folklife Center have collected more than 50,000 taped interviews as part of the Veterans History Project...Between 1,000 and 1,500 World War II veterans are dying every day, according to estimates at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Of the estimated 17 million U.S. veterans still living, about 2.9 million served in World War II. Unless volunteers hurry to interview others who fought in World War II, participants in the project worry that servicemen...will slip away without leaving their memories for posterity."

"This Wise Guide portal was designed to introduce you to the many fascinating, educational and useful resources available from the nation's library and one of the most popular Web sites of the federal government. The "Wise Guide" will be refreshed monthly, much like a magazine, offering links to the best of the Library's online materials. Each of these "articles" is based on items contained in a collection, database, reading room or other area of the Library's online offerings. You will see that we are "more than a library," and our holdings range from prints, photographs, films, audio recordings, maps, manuscripts, music and digital materials to (of course) books. We are also a place that sponsors concerts, lectures, dance performances, film screenings, and poetry readings. We hope the Guide's monthly "articles" will encourage you to explore the millions of items we make available at www.loc.gov."

Nixon's Library Now a Part of NARA - California Facility Will Hold All Documents and Tapes From a Half-Century Career in Politics, by James Worsham, NARA, Prologue, Fall 2007, Vol. 39, No. 3.

GPO: "Library Services and Content Management (LSCM) and volunteers from the Federal depository community worked to consolidate and update the Instructions to Depository Libraries and the Federal Depository Library Manual, including its supplements, into one online publication. All the chapters were reviewed by key stakeholders, including the Depository Library Council and the professional library associations. Each chapter was also posted for public comment. LSCM staff reviewed comments, integrated them as appropriate, and served as final editors. The resulting publication is the Final Draft Version - Federal Depository Library Handbook."

European Parliament: Resolution i2010: towards a European digital library, September 27, 2007

Rising Journal Costs Limit Scholarly Access, Emory University:
"Are publishers getting rich publishing your research? A Bear-Stearns evaluation of Reed-Elsevier (one of the world's largest publishers of scholarly journals) recently rated the company, which earns profits of almost 40% annually, "a stockholder's dream." Should private publishers be getting rich selling information generated by research that is funded by academic institutions and the public? What's happening and how does it affect scholars? This article looks at one university’s experience."

Cyberinfrastructure, Data, and Libraries, Part 1 - A Cyberinfrastructure Primer for Librarians, by Anna Gold, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, D-Lib Magazine, September/October 2007, Volume 13 Number 9/10.

"GPO is pleased to announce the renewal of its partnership with the Troy H. Middleton Library of Louisiana State University through 2010.
Originally signed in 2001, this partnership provides for Federal
depository library access to the List of Federal Agency Internet Sites Web site. Based on the U.S. Government
Manual, the List directs users to the Web sites of active Federal
agencies, and can be searched in several ways. Users can view a
hierarchical or an alphabetical list of all agencies. The agencies are
also listed by broad category, such as boards/commissions, legislative, and quasi-official. The entire list is searchable by agency keyword as well."

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce the release of its newly designed web site. The web site includes information on a range of legal issues and research topics as well as our services and logistics of using the Reading Room. In addition to established products such as the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), Guide to Law Online and the Global Legal Monitor, new Law Library products are available as well." [Emily Carr, Law Library of Congress]

Highlights include:

"Fair Use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws are responsible for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States, according to the findings of an unprecedented economic study released today. According to the study commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and conducted in accordance with a World Intellectual Property Organization methodology, companies benefiting from limitations on copyright-holders’ exclusive rights, such as “fair use” – generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006, represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP. The exhaustive report, released today at a briefing on Capitol Hill, quantifies for the first time ever the critical contributions of fair use to the U.S. economy. The timing proves particularly important as the debates over copyright law in the digital age move increasingly to center stage on Capitol Hill."

ALA: "Ever-growing patron demand for computer and Internet services in U.S. public libraries has stretched existing Internet bandwidth, computer availability, and building infrastructure to capacity, according to a new study “Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007,” conducted by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University (FSU). The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and ALA, found that more than 73 percent of libraries report they are the only source of free public access to computers and the Internet in their communities. Surveyed libraries said that the top three Internet services most critical to their community are online educational resources and databases for K-12 students (67.7 percent); services for job seekers (44 percent); and computer and Internet skills training (29.8 percent)."

Reading Books in the Digital Age subsequent to Amazon, Google and the long tail by Terje Hillesund, Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway. First Monday, volume 12, number 9 (September 2007),

"Between 1971 and 1973, President Richard Nixon secretly recorded 3,700 hours of his phone calls and meetings. These recordings were made in the Oval Office (commonly designated by the abbreviation "OVAL"), his hideaway office in the Executive Office Building ("EOB"), the Cabinet Room ("CAB"), Camp David ("CDHW"), and on various White House telephones ("WHT"). Currently, approximately 2,100 hours of these tapes have been declassified, released, and are available to the public. However, neither the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) nor the Nixon Presidential Library has made official transcriptions. Instead, they have left this monumental task--a task that NARA once estimated took 100 hours of staff time to transcribe 1 hour of tape--to researchers. The purpose of this website is to make these transcripts available, side-by-side multiple audio formats, to members of the public who are not able to travel to the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland, or to the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, to listen to and transcribe the conversations for themselves."

Foreign Law Research: "FLARE is a collaboration between the major libraries collecting law in the United Kingdom: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Bodleian Law Library, Squire Law Library, British Library, and School of Oriental and African Studies. It is working to improve the coverage and accessibility of foreign legal materials at the national level and to raise expertise in their use."

"LibWorm Beta is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries. LibWorm collects updates from about 1400 RSS feeds (and growing). The contents of these feeds are then available for searching, and search results can themselves be output as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his/her favourite aggregator or in LibWorm's built-in aggregator...Each feed searched by LibWorm has been assigned a category, so when you browse by Feed Category, you're seeing all the content from the feeds that have been assigned to that category. Subjects are pre-built searches, usually of greater complexity than the user interface currently supports, for common subjects of interest to libraryfolk." This site is free.

"Lawyers Without Borders (LWOB), an organization that coordinates volunteer lawyers with nonprofit groups, rule of law initiatives, and other human rights work, is seeking donations of law books for courts and lawyers in Albania and Liberia.

The law library of the Supreme Court of Albania in the capital of Tirana, which is accessed by judges, practitioners, and law students, is seeking English-language major treatises, hornbooks, and other publications focusing on American law and legal institutions.

Donations to Albania should be sent to Paramount Stamping and Welding, 1200 West 58th Street, Cleveland, OH 44102, with a marking that reads, Attention: Peter Kole–LAW BOOKS. Another donor has underwritten the costs of shipping to Albania from that address.

LWOB also is seeking donations for the University of Liberia Louis Arthur Grimes Law School, as well as for judges, students, and lawyers in Liberia. In particular, complete sets of the AmJur series are requested. These include any edition of AmJur, AmJur Forms, and AmJur Trials.

These donations should be sent to Mr. Ray Fallon, Fallon Moving and Storage, 800 Marshall Phelps Road, Building 3, Unit A, Windsor, CT 06095, with a marking that reads, Attention: Lawyers Without Borders, Book Donation Project Liberia."

Press release: "NASA and Internet Archive of San Francisco are partnering to scan, archive and manage the agency's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video. The imagery will be available through the Internet and free to the public, historians, scholars, students, and researchers. Currently, NASA has more than 20 major imagery collections online. With this partnership, those collections will be made available through a single, searchable "one-stop-shop" archive of NASA imagery."

The Associated Press Poll conducted by Ipsos Public Affaird Project, Interview dates August 6-8, 2007:

Press release: "Since its launch earlier this year, the WorldCat Registry continues to help libraries manage and share essential data that define their organizations, such as institution type, location, URLs for electronic services, circulation statistics and population served. National libraries in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa recently agreed to load their files into the WorldCat Registry, enhancing and extending the global reach of this Web-based directory. OCLC just loaded 1,200 records from the National Library of South Africa and is preparing to load more than 8,000 records from the National Library of Australia."

Knowledge Networks pays $300,000 to settle internal copyright complaint - "Firm's marketing group distributed press packets to employees containing newspaper and magazine articles under copyright."

"The European Library is a non-commercial organisation. It provides the services of a physical library and the opportunity to benefit from a virtual environment in 20 languages. This website allows to search through the resources of 30 of the 47 national libraries involved in The European Library. Resources can be both digital or bibliographical (books, posters, maps, sound recordings, videos, etc.). Currently The European Library gives access to 150 million entries across Europe. The amount of referenced digital collections is constantly increasing. Quality and reliability are guaranteed by the 47 collaborating national libraries of Europe." [via Gerry Mckiernan]

The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce the following new resource: Webcast: A Panel Discussion - "Torture, Detainees, & the U.S. Military" [via Emily Carr/Law Library of Congress]
TITLE: A Panel Discussion: "Torture, Detainees, and the U.S. Military"
SPEAKERS: Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, United States Army; Brigadier General James C. Walker, United States Marine Corps; Ms. Jacki Northam, National Public Radio Correspondent; Professor Gary Solis, Law Library Scholar in Residence; Mr. Lee A. Casey, Baker Hostetler
EVENT DATE: July 11, 2007
RUNNING TIME: 1:31:03
DESCRIPTION: On July 11, 2007, The Law Library of Congress hosted its first program in its new multimedia room. Law Library Scholar in Residence, Gary Solis, moderated the panel discussion touching upon several current topics of national interest and concern: Guantanamo; "high value" detainees; military commissions; fair trials; and allegations of torture by agents of the U.S., including military personnel. With their extensive personal involvement in combatant operations, expertise in legal issues relating to prisoner torture and mistreatment, and their association with legislative concerns, the panelists provided tremendous insight to these timely subjects. The discussion was followed by a questions and answer session with the audience."

The Guardian: "Thousands of rare books and manuscripts in Iraq's national library and archive, one of the country's most important cultural institutions, are in peril after the occupation of the building by Iraqi security forces, the library's director said yesterday."

Electronic 2007 Law Librarian Survey from ALM Research - Survey Says Librarians Like Their Jobs but Are Displeased With Vendors - "Electronic research was supposed to replace books and lower costs, but it's done neither -- and librarians aren't happy about it."

THE CHARTS

"I would like to announce the launch of the Texas Digital Library's (TDL) blog, The Scholar's Space, featuring a team of four contributors (including me), with more to come over the next few months. The Scholar's Space joins scholarly communications blogs sponsored by friends at other colleges and universities, and national and international organizations. We'll be providing commentary on newsworthy items related to TDL participants' local and global interests in academic processes and systems of research -- from providing access to data and information, to online collaboration and new approaches to reporting out results and public archiving of papers and data." [Georgia Harper, Scholarly Communications Advisor, University of Texas at Austin Libraries]

Press release: "A new collection of handy tools designed especially for libraries, archives, museums, historic sites, and historic preservation and arts organizations has been released by the Heritage Emergency National Task Force. The tools are the result of the Task Force’s “Lessons Applied” initiative to develop practical applications for the lessons from Hurricane Katrina, such as helping cultural institutions apply for disaster aid and developing relationships with emergency responders...The new tools are available as free downloads." See Lessons Applied: Katrina and Cultural Heritage.

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing, Protecting Children on the Internet, July 24, 2007.

Press release: "...on July 14...the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Apostolic Library) in Rome [closed] for at least three years of extensive renovation. For the Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University, however, the world might just open up a little wider. The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, located in Pius XII Memorial library, holds microfilm copies of approximately 37,000 of the Vatican Library's 70,000 manuscript codices. Holding major portions of the Vatican's Greek, Latin and Western European vernacular collections as well as materials in Arabic, Ethiopic and Hebrew, it is one of the largest and most comprehensive libraries in the world for medieval and Renaissance manuscript studies."

Press release: "The College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland is pleased to announce the launching of the Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government (CIPEG). CIPEG is a multidisciplinary research and educational center that focuses on the intersections between public policy and law, ethics, and trust as they affect the uses of information in society by individuals, organizations, and governments. Originally established in 1998 as the Center for Information Policy (CIP), CIPEG is jointly sponsored by the College of Information Studies and the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland. The Center principals are Director Dr. Paul T. Jaeger, Associate Director for Educational Programs Stephen Hannestad, and Assistant Directors Dr. Ken Fleischmann and Dr. Jennifer Golbeck. The Center also has more than twenty members from within the University community. CIPEG draws on the expertise of its members in areas such as archival science, computer and information science, education, international relations, knowledge management, public policy, and science and technology studies. Research at CIPEG spans six key areas - Information Policy, Electronic Government, Information Ethics, Social Networks, Emergency Response and Recovery, and Equal Access to Information. Center faculty and staff have researched and published extensively in these areas. Research at CIPEG is grant-based, with Center principals having received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Department of Defense, the Information Security Oversight Office, the American Library Association, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. [beSpacific author Sabrina I. Pacifici is an adjunct professor with CIPEG]

Follow up to postings on EPA library closures, this June 29, 2007 posting from the ALA District Dispatch blog: "After considerable pressure by librarians, researchers and the public, Congress has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restore its library network. In the fiscal year (FY) 2008 Interior Appropriations bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee orders EPA to reopen the closed libraries. Last year, EPA closed its Headquarters Library in Washington, DC, to visitors and walk-in patrons. EPA also closed several regional libraries, the toxics and pesticides library and the Ft. Meade Environmental Science Center Library."

Press Release, June 28, 2007: Nixon Library to Become Part of the National Archives Presidential Library System and to Release Formerly Withheld Nixon Special Political Documents and Tapes
"The legal transfer on July 11, 2007, of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace from the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation to the National Archives. The new Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum joins the existing 11 presidential libraries within the federal system, from President Hoover through President Clinton. The Nixon Library will open at 8 AM (PDT) for remarks by Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and others, followed by the opening of the research room and media tours. Newly-released tapes and documents will be available in Yorba Linda, CA. Newly-released tapes will also be available in College Park, MD.

Follow up to previous postings on Connecticut librarians and FBI NSL gag order, via Wired Blog, Librarians Describe Life Under An FBI Gag Order: "Two Connecticut librarians on Sunday [at the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC] described what it was like to be slapped with an FBI national security letter and accompanying gag order."

"How trustworthy are state-level primary legal resources on the Web? The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is pleased to announce the publication of the State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources that answers this very important and timely question. The comprehensive report examines the results of a state survey that investigated whether government-hosted legal resources on the Web are official and capable of being considered authentic."

SLA Annual Meeting 2007: Programming for SLA Legal Division, Saturday, June 2, 2007 - Thursday, June 7, 2007. Selected presentations and handouts are available here.

Government Information Division, 2007 Annual Conference Recaps Denver, Colorado, June 3-6, 2007: "The Government Information Division will be recapping all its sponsored and co-sponsored events. In addition, DGI will offer recaps of other events that impact government information. This page will be updated as new recaps are made available."

Press release: "Program to Put Digitized Newspapers Online Makes Eight Awards - "Approximately 310,000 digitized newspaper pages, dating from 1900 to 1910, are now accessible through the Chronicling America Web site...New features in Chronicling America include: 80,000 pages have been added (including 11 new titles); The page display has been revised. Adobe Flash Player is no longer needed for viewing; Persistent links are now displayed for every title record and page view; The persistent link enables a user to always return to the same place on the site, and it can be used for citations and hyperlinking to specific newspaper pages or newspaper title information; and Searches can be saved."

Talking Books for the Blind, GAO-07-871R, June 12, 2007.

"The number of libraries participating in the Google Book Search Library Project just got a whole lot bigger with today's addition of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). The CIC is a national consortium of 12 research universities, including University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Google will work with the CIC to digitize select collections across all its libraries, up to 10 million volumes."
Project Related Documents:

"The Federal Trade Commission has informed GPO that they will cease the print publication of FTC Decisions. These will be available in
electronic format only beginning with Volume 129. Access to the Decisions is available at: http://www.ftc.gov/os/decisions/index.shtm or via http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS81899. The last volume distributed in print to the FDL's was Volume 128 (FT 1.11:128, item no. 0534) and distributed on Shipping List 2004-0019-S dated 01/12/2004."

American Library Association: "As part of its effort to support libraries and librarians seeking to improve their protection of library users’ privacy, ALA is making available new tools to help libraries conduct audits of its privacy policies and procedures. Developed by ALA during its own 2003 privacy audit, each tool is a document template that can be adopted and changed to serve the needs of the individual institution."

Press release: "As the world pauses to remember the 62nd anniversary of the Allies' victory in Europe during World War II (May 8, 1945), the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is joining with Southern Methodist University (SMU) Central University Libraries to provide the public with a digital collection of more than 300 U.S. Government publications distributed during the course of the war...SMU Central University Libraries, which are part of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), have digitized hundreds of historical World War II publications that are available to the public. With just a few keystrokes, Americans can access World War II reports and documents such as: Choosing Women for War - Industry Jobs, America's Biggest War Plant and Air Raid Shelters in Buildings. These documents and many others are accessible here."

Follow up to previous postings on EPA library closures, this May 2, 2007 press release: "Despite promises to consult with Congress before proceeding with dismantlement of its library system, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered its libraries to “disperse or dispose of their…contents,” according to agency directives released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The move to eliminate physical collections comes as EPA’s own enforcement branch warns about the risks of hampering environmental prosecutions."

OCLC's WorldCat Local: A Promising Development for Library Patrons, by Barbara Quint,Posted On April 23, 2007: "...Local libraries adopting WorldCat Local will have a locally branded interface presented to their patrons through the library’s Web site. Options will make it possible to integrate the services with circulation records, resource sharing, and licensed full-text collections. Cooperative efforts are already underway with three major integrated library system/OPAC vendors—Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix, and Ex Libris Voyager. When fully interoperable, it should allow WorldCat Local to support users’ requests for items from library collections, including interlibrary loan and accessing online resources. In time, OCLC hopes to add connections to social networking services."

"The Report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and Out-of-Print Works, Selected Implementation Issues is an advisory report on copyright issues to the European Commission, presented on 19 April by the EU's High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries - which includes, inter alia, stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google."

Press release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) European Office today announced a broad coalition aimed at fixing a poorly drafted intellectual property enforcement proposal that could make criminals of thousands of people in the European Union. The Second Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) -- set for vote in the European Parliament early next week -- makes "aiding, abetting, or inciting" intellectual property infringement on a "commercial scale" a criminal offence. However, IPRED2 defines criminal offences so vaguely that creators of legitimate websites, Internet service providers, and even librarians could be investigated by the police and face criminal records as well as fines of hundreds of thousands of euros. The coalition battling against IPRED2 includes the Brussels-based European Consumers Organisation (BEUC), the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA), the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII). The group sent an open letter to the European Parliament today, urging members to support amendments that would protect consumers, innovators, and researchers."

"Following 9/11, the U.S. government adopted some controversial new tactics intended to prevent future terrorist attacks, including warrantless eavesdropping on Americans' phone calls, secret demands for records under the Patriot Act, and FBI sting operations against people thought to be potential terrorists. The Bush Administration contends these tactics have helped to save American lives, but critics say they have severely damaged our individual liberties. Three stories illustrate the issues of security and liberty: In a Public Library / At the National Security Agency / An FBI sting operation. SECURITY VERSUS LIBERTY explores this urgent national debate by talking with leading critics and advocates of the new policies, and telling the stories of people whose lives have been directly affected. If the war against terror is truly the long struggle our leaders say it will be, then so too will be the struggle to set the right balance between security and liberty. This program provides valuable information that will help Americans come to grips with the difficult choices we face."

On April 16, 2007 Barbara Fullerton, Manager, Librarian Relations, 10-K Wizard, Sabrina Pacifici, Editor & Publisher, LLRX.com and beSpacific.com and Aaron Schmidt, Director, North Plains Public Library, presented their always popular round-robin Gadgets presentation at Computers in Libraries 2007.

ALA press release: "New data on U.S. libraries shows almost two billion served - Predicted demise due to Internet fails to materialize: Ten years after some experts predicted the demise of the nation's system of libraries as a result of the Internet explosion, the most current national data on library use shows that the exact opposite has happened. Data released today by the American Library Association (ALA) indicates that the number of visits to public libraries in the United States increased 61 percent between 1994 and 2004. According to the 2007 State of America's Libraries report, there were nearly two billion visits to U.S. libraries in fiscal year 2004. The study was released today by the ALA as the nation begins its observance of National Library Week, April 15-21. In the case of academic libraries, the number of visits exceeded more than one billion for the first time in 2004, up more than 14 percent in just the previous two years."

"The Tarlton Law Library has compiled an Actual Innocence awareness database which contains citations (and links, where possible) to current articles, scholarship, legislation and other materials in the dynamic world of wrongful convictions. The materials are classified into what are considered the primary causes of wrongful conviction: forensics/DNA; eyewitness identification; false confessions; jailhouse informants; police and/or prosecutorial misconduct; and ineffective representation. There is also a “general” category for those items which defy further categorization. The website will be updated as new resources become available. Please direct any questions or comments about this service to Melissa Bernstein."

The AALL Document Delivery Caucus maintains a list of law library document delivery suppliers.

Press release: "How trustworthy are state-level primary legal resources on the Web? The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is pleased to announce the publication of the State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources that answers this very important and timely question. The comprehensive report examines the results of a state survey that investigated whether government-hosted legal resources on the Web are official and capable of being considered authentic."

State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources Report (254 pages, PDF)

Eight Million Pages of New Material for Researchers on Nazi and Japanese War Crimes, Washington, D.C.: "The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), the group tasked with locating, declassifying, and making publicly available U.S. records of Nazi and Japanese war crimes, will conclude its work on March 31, 2007. The IWG was formed under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act of 2000. Its membership consists of representatives of seven Executive Branch agencies and three Presidentially appointed public members: Thomas H. Baer, Richard Ben-Veniste, and Elizabeth Holtzman. The IWG was extended twice, most recently in March 2005, to complete the largest ever congressionally mandated single-subject declassification effort. The group’s Final Report to Congress will be issued in mid-April. It will describe the history of the legislation that brought about the declassification effort; agencies’ implementation of the act; the declassification results; and recommendations for future declassification policies...The seven-year, roughly $30 million declassification effort resulted in the opening of more than 8 million pages of U.S. records—not all of them directly linked to war crimes. Notably, the records include the entirety of the operational files of the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor agency of the CIA), and more than 163,000 pages of CIA materials of a type never before opened to the public."

"The Copyright Renewal Database makes searchable the copyright renewal records received by the US Copyright Office between 1950 and 1993 for books published in the US between 1923 and 1963. Note that the database includes ONLY US Class A (book) renewals. The period from 1923-1963 is of special interest for US copyrights, as works published after January 1, 1964 had their copyrights automatically renewed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and works published before 1923 have generally fallen into the public domain. Between those dates, a renewal registration was required to prevent the expiration of copyright, however determining whether a work's registration has been renewed is a challenge. Renewals received by the Copyright Office after 1977 are searchable in an online database, but renewals received between 1950 and 1977 were announced and distributed only in a semi-annual print publication. The Copyright Office does not have a machine-searchable source for this renewal information, and the only public access is through the card catalog in their DC offices."

From First Monday this month, What open access research can do for Wikipedia, by John Willinsky: "This study examines the degree to which Wikipedia entries cite or reference research and scholarship, and whether that research and scholarship is generally available to readers. Working on the assumption that where Wikipedia provides links to research and scholarship that readers can readily consult, it increases the authority, reliability, and educational quality of this popular encyclopedia, this study examines Wikipedia’s use of open access research and scholarship, that is, peer-reviewed journal articles that have been made freely available online."

Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, March 28, 2007

ACLU v Gonzales [originally ACLU v. Reno, then ACLU v. Ashcroft], Final Adjudication on the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, March 22, 2007 (84 pages, PDF)

"The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress today announced that Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers is debuting online with more than 226,000 pages of public domain newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia, and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910. The text of the newspapers is fully searchable, and search terms can be limited to a particular state, a specific newspaper, by year or years of publication and even by months."

New site on the Library's leadership in preserving digital assets: "The Library of Congress has taken a collaborative approach to the collection and preservation of digital information in order to remain relevant and useful to Congress and its constituents in the digital age. No single institution can do the job of collecting, preserving and making available all the information in digital form that that students, teachers, researchers and lifelong learners have come to expect will be available at the touch of a mouse. In December 2000, Congress asked the Library to lead a collaborative project, called the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), in recognition of the importance of preserving digital content for future generations. Congress passed special legislation (Public Law 106-554) appropriating $100 million to the Library of Congress to lead this effort. The goal of the program is to develop a national strategy to collect, archive and preserve the growing amounts of digital content, especially materials that are created only in digital formats, for current and future generations."