New & noteworthy

Citation

(2009), "New & noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 26 No. 1/2. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2009.23926aab.001

New & noteworthy

Article Type: New & noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 26, Issue 1/2.

HathiTrust Releases Experimental Full-Text Search Feature

HathiTrust is experimenting with large-scale full text searching as part of an effort to create a mechanism to search across the entire repository. As an initial public beta of full text search functionality, they are offering a simple mechanism to search across all of the fully viewable works (both those in the public domain and those for which they have permissions) and a sprinkling of search-only works (i.e. in-copyright works where they may not show the text of the work). The size of the content indexed is approximately 500,000 volumes, and the majority of the works are fully viewable. Although this is a fully functioning and reliable search mechanism for these works, they are providing it as a public beta in order to learn more about these large search indexes in a public setting.

More information on the process to explore issues in this area is available in the HathiTrust.org large-scale search report.

HathiTrust Experimental Search: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls

Report: www.hathitrust.org/large_scale_search

Visit www.hathitrust.org/ to learn more about the HathiTrust Shared Digital Repository.

American Library Association and Association of Research Libraries Release Guide to Libraries on the Google Library Project Settlement

In November 2008 the ALA and the ARL released “A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement”, by Jonathan Band, JD. The guide is designed to help the library community better understand the terms and conditions of the recent settlement agreement between Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers concerning Google's scanning of copyrighted works. Band notes that the settlement is extremely complex and presents significant challenges and opportunities to libraries. The guide outlines and simplifies the settlement's provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries.

Jonathan Band helps shape the laws governing intellectual property and the internet through a combination of legislative and appellate advocacy. He has represented clients with respect to the drafting of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; database protection legislation; the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act; and other statutes relating to copyrights, privacy, spam, cybersecurity and indecency. He complements this legislative advocacy by filing amicus briefs in significant cases related to these provisions.

Guide (pdf): www.arl.org/bm~doc/google-settlement-13nov08.pdf

Jonathan Band web site on Technology Law and Policy: www.policybandwidth.com/

Espresso Book Machine in Production at University of Michigan

With the installation of a state-of-the-art book-printing machine at one of its libraries, the University of Michigan stands at the new frontier of twenty-first-century publishing, offering printed and bound reprints of out-of-copyright books from its digitized collection of nearly 2 million books, as well as thousands of books from the Open Content Alliance and other digital sources.

U-M claims to be the first university library to install the book-printing machine. The Espresso Book Machine, from On Demand Books of New York, produces perfect-bound, high-quality paperback books on demand. A Time Magazine “Best Invention of 2007”, the Espresso Book Machine has been called “the ATM of books”. It was purchased with donations to U-M libraries.

After 1 October 2008, the Espresso Book Machine was be operating most mornings during the week, with a selection of titles available for sale. The book machine, located in the Shapiro Library lobby on U-M's Central Campus, prints out-of-copyright books from the University's digitized collections. At a cost of about $10 per book, the service is available to researchers, students and the public.

The printing process begins with a reader selecting a digitized book from U-M's pre-1923 collection or from another online source, such as the Open Content Alliance. Most books printed prior to the early 1920s can be reprinted without seeking the permission from whomever holds the copyright. Then the file is downloaded to the Espresso Book Machine, where it is formatted, printed and perfect bound with a four-color cover. A finished printed book takes 5-7 min, depending on the number of pages.

On its Web site, On Demand Books likens the potential impact of the book machine in the twenty-first century to that of the Gutenberg press in the fifteenth-century. Mass production and dissemination of books was a major factor in the rise of critical, independent thinking, leading to a renaissance in the arts and sciences.

In the next several years, On Demand Books expects to install Espresso Book Machines in libraries and bookshops around the world. All the machines will be connected by a network, allowing libraries to share and reprint volumes from their collections.

On Demand Books web site: www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm

Boston Public Library (BPL) and Open Library Team Up to Implement Scan on Demand

BPL and Open Library have teamed to announce a new program to allow BPL users and patrons to “scan-on-demand”. BPL patrons just search for a public domain book on OpenLibrary.org and, if it is at the BPL and has not been scanned yet, there will be a “Scan This Book” button on the left-hand side of the screen.

Patrons can then click the button and follow the steps to confirm, a librarian will go and get the book from the stacks, bring it to the scanning center to be digitized. Within three to five days, the patron receives an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text (using OCR technology) and more.

More information and developer documentation is available on the Open Library web site: http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/scan-on-demand

BPL Scan-on-Demand: http://openlibrary.org/bpl

OCLC Launches WorldCat Mobile Pilot

OCLC has launched a pilot program to make collections from libraries visible through mobile devices. The WorldCat Mobile pilot allows users to search for and find books and other materials available in libraries near them through a Web application they can access from a PDA or smartphone. The pilot is based on WorldCat.org.

Advanced global positioning capabilities found in many smartphones and PDAs make it possible for users to find local library materials no matter where they happen to be. Users can even get a Google Maps view of the library location along with detailed driving instructions if the mobile device supports the application.

The pilot will gather data to inform and help shape future mobile access to WorldCat.org. The pilot is now available in the USA and Canada and is expected to last six months.

The WorldCat Mobile pilot allows users to:

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  Search for library materials by entering search terms such as title, keywords or author.

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  Find a WorldCat library nearby by entering a ZIP, postal code or location in the Libraries Locator.

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  Call a library by highlighting and clicking the phone number in a library listing to place a call.

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  Map a route to find the fastest way to a WorldCat library using the mapping software already on a mobile device.

To participate in the WorldCat Mobile pilot, go to www.worldcat.org/mobile to find more information about the pilot and links for downloading WorldCat Mobile to the device of your choice. Using a supported mobile device, download the application at www.worldcat.org/m

A brief demonstration of how to use WorldCat mobile can be found at: www.boopsie.com/home/worldcat.wmv

The WorldCat Mobile pilot complements the recently released experimental WorldCat iPhone Web app, built with the WorldCat Search API. The pilot also uses some data from the WorldCat Registry, a comprehensive directory for libraries and consortia and the services they provide.

OCLC worked with mobile-technology provider Boopsie to develop this pilot, and joined a growing list of search “channels” that allow users to quickly access popular Web applications including Google, Wikipedia and Facebook; look up retail locations such as Starbucks and FedEx; and check news, weather and traffic reports on mobile devices.

Based in Laguna Beach, California, the Boopsie Mobile Find Platform was built to leverage the latest capabilities of mobile phones. The company's patent-pending technology uses a Smart Prefix text entry system to quickly find exactly what users are seeking. For content publishers, Boopsie provides a brand-friendly environment that creates mobile ready versions of their Web offerings in real time. For more information, visit: www.boopsie.com/

ebrary Launches QuickView for Document Viewing in a Browser

A Reader is no longer required to view documents in ebrary® on Windows or Linux operating systems. ebrary, a leading provider of e-content software and services announced in November the availability of ebrary QuickView™, which enables end-users to instantly view documents in many of the leading web browsers and even works on the iPhone. No software downloads or installations are needed.

Currently offered in conjunction with ebrary's new Java-based Reader™, ebrary QuickView is ideal for quickly accessing and exploring documents in the ebrary system such as e-books, maps, journals, reports and other authoritative information. For a richer and more productive research experience, an end-user can also choose to use ebrary's Java-based Reader. For example, an end-user can use QuickView to quickly browse through a document online, then use ebrary's Java-based Reader for added functionality such as printing, copying and pasting, highlighting, note taking and ebrary InfoTools™.

“In the course of our development of ebrary, our customers and partners have requested that we offer an additional viewing experience for our users”, said Christopher Warnock, CEO of ebrary. “We have been asked to provide an experience that enables simpler access to our documents in locked-down environments such as public kiosks as well as behind firewalls. Additionally, we have received many requests to support web-enabled devices such as the iPhone, Kindle, and other dedicated e-book products. We achieve many of these goals today with QuickView, and will accomplish more in the near future”.

ebrary QuickView currently offers the following key features:

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  Instant viewing and page flipping in a web browser.

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  Relevancy ranking at the chapter level with links to specific sections.

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  Navigate to search terms or specified pages.

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  Search within documents for key words.

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  View and navigate to highlights and notes created using an ebrary Reader.

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  Multiple view magnifications.

ebrary offers several viewing options including its new Java-based Reader with QuickView and ActiveX Reader. ebrary currently offers a growing selection of more than 170,000 e-books and other titles from more than 300 leading publishers and aggregators.

www.ebrary.com/

Innovative Developing Encore xQuery API

In October 2008, Innovative Interfaces announced the development of Encore xQuery, a Web Service API that offers search and retrieval access to the Encore database. Planned for release in early 2009, Encore xQuery will provide locally developed library applications with flexible access to data from a wide range of record types.

Encore xQuery is the newest offering within the Encore suite of products. Developed using service-oriented architecture design principles, Encore is supported by the Encore Framework on which building-block applications are layered. Current applications include the Encore Discovery client, Encore Harvester and now Encore xQuery. These offerings can be mixed and matched to best suit the particular needs of any library.

III Encore: www.encoreforlibraries.com

YourLibrarySite Now Offers SOPAC Integration

The library website development team at YourLibrarySite.com (a website development initiative offered by CraftySpace, LLC) is currently integrating Social OPAC functionality with the Palos Verdes Library District's website (PVLD.org). YourLibrarySite is using John Blyberg's SOPAC2 Drupal module to integrate PVLD's ILS with their website. This integration empowers library patrons to review, tag and rate bibliographic records without leaving PVLD's website, and to view the content created by other patrons.

An innovative further step allows libraries to optionally share their patron input with other libraries, thereby creating a richer environment for all involved. This sharing also allows newly created SOPAC communities to “prime the pump” by displaying patron-created content from already established SOPAC communities.

For a detailed explanation of SOPAC, see www.blyberg.net/2008/08/16/sopac-20-what-to-expect/ and www.thesocialopac.net/

YourLibrarySite provides website packages and web development services to Public, Academic and Special libraries. YourLibrarySite uses the Drupal open source CMS platform and is an established participant in the Drupal open source community.

YourLibrarySite web site: http://yourlibrarysite.com

OCLC and SwissBIB to Implement a Meta-Catalogue of Swiss University Libraries

In December 2008 OCLC agreed on terms with SwissBib to implement, a “Library 2.0” meta-catalogue of Swiss university libraries and the Swiss National Library. This metadata hub will provide the platform for collating and publishing the combined collections of the involved libraries. The project will also utilize the latest in search technology to build a superior end user environment for those researching Swiss academic library collections. The implementation project was scheduled to run from November 2008 to February 2010.

To realize the objective, the SwissBib selection committee has opted for a combined solution from OCLC. CBS software provides the back-end bibliographic component required to process and treat approximately 17 million records. The records from the library catalogues will be loaded in the CBS system, converted, matched and enriched before being transferred to a publishing platform where OCLC TouchPoint will provide the discovery functionality coupled with the FAST search and index engine.

The selection committee sought a simple but sophisticated discovery solution to front the catalogue and provide fast, easy and comprehensive access to scientific information in Switzerland, as it is anticipated in the longer term that the project will culminate in the replacement of the majority of OPACs currently in use by Swiss university libraries. Further, the solution also offers the potential should this become a requirement, to raise the visibility of Swiss university libraries to a global audience on the web, through its synchronization capability with WorldCat.

SwissBib will be implemented in partnership with the library network of Western Switzerland (RERO), the library network of German-speaking Switzerland (IDS), the Swiss National Library, the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries and the ETH-Bibliothek under the auspices of the University Library of Basel. SwissBib is one of a number of projects within an over-arching program of innovation and cooperation by Swiss universities, known as E-lib-ch. It is funded by the Swiss University Conference.

More information about the project is provided on the project's wiki: www.swissbib.org

More information on OCLC TouchPoint: www.oclc.org/touchpoint/about/default.htm

Serials Solutions Announces The Summon

A new service from Serials Solutions will create Google-like searching of the full breadth of content found in library collections – from books and videos to e-resources at the article level – The Summon™. This service is a hosted service and it is also built with an open API so that it can be integrated with existing library Web sites or campus systems. The Summon service is in beta with academic libraries throughout North America and will be available for purchase later in 2009.

The Summon service goes beyond federated search and leap-frogs next-generation OPACs by searching the library records as well as a full-complement of electronic content – at the article level – all together. It is the result of Serials Solutions” unique combination of assets and expertise, enabled by the participation of some of the industry's leading content providers. The lead participants are Gale and ProQuest – including the CSA and Chadwyck Healey brands. Additional participants are Springer, Taylor & Francis, Sage Publications and an extensive and growing list of the world's most prestigious publishers.

The Summon™ service is being developed in close cooperation with library beta partners. Cyndy Pawlek and David Seaman of Dartmouth College Library comment that the Summon unified discovery service “holds great promise in getting us to our goal of having a simple, speedy, customizable interface that unifies the breadth of our scholarly material – whether that material is owned, subscribed to, freely available or able to be borrowed”. Anne Prestamo, Associate Dean for Collection and Technology Services, Oklahoma State University Libraries, adds “We see the ground-breaking scale of the Summon™ initiative as a unique opportunity to streamline the discovery-to-delivery process for our users. As a result, it allows us to maximize the return on our substantial investment in full-text content and authoritative databases”.

To learn more about the Summon™ unified discovery service, visit www.serialssolutions.com/summon

OCLC and Partners Develop New Web Search Based on Expertise from Librarians

Researchers and developers from OCLC, the world's largest library cooperative, and the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington today announced their participation in a new international effort to explore the creation of a more credible Web search experience based on input from librarians around the globe. Called the “Reference Extract”, the planning phase of this project is funded through a $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

“Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most powerful”, said Dr Mike Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Information School of the University of Washington and a lead on the project. “The best search engines are great for basic search, but sometimes the Web site results lack credibility in terms of trust, accuracy and reliability. So, who can help? Librarians. If a librarian recommends a Web site, you can be pretty sure that it's credible. RefEx will take hundreds of thousands of librarian recommendations and use them in a full-scale search engine”.

Reference Extract is envisioned as a Web search experience similar to those provided by the world's most popular search engines. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extract will be built for maximum credibility of search results by relying on the expertise of librarians. Users will enter a search term and receive results weighted toward sites most often used by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress (LC), the University of Washington, the State Library of Maryland, and over 2,000 other libraries worldwide.

As part of the planning process, participants are reaching out to partners in libraries, technology organizations and research institutions. “The only way this will work is by making a project of an entire community”, said Dr R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and Associate Professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies. “Web searchers get to tap into the incredible skill and knowledge of the library community, while librarians will be able to serve users on a whole new scale. This work follows on previous credibility work supported by the MacArthur Foundation, most notably the Credibility Commons (http://credibilitycommons.org/)”.

“We look forward to working with Syracuse University and the University of Washington in developing this credibility focused search capability, which holds the promise of providing powerful new access to information based on professionally delivered library reference services”, said Jay Jordan, OCLC President and CEO. “We are grateful for support from the MacArthur Foundation in this planning phase, and we are hopeful that this effort will lay the necessary groundwork for implementing a large-scale, general user service”.

The Reference Extract project will hold a series of meetings and consultations over the coming months. The team is eager to build a business plan and technology architecture to benefit users and the library community alike. Those interested in providing input on the project and learning more can visit the project Web site.

The Reference Extract project: http://digref.org

Sun Microsystems Launches Social Networks

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced in October 2008 the launch of two social networking portals especially designed to connect and empower the global education community. The new EduConnection.org community serves Sun's education sector customers, while Open Source University Meetup (OSUM, pronounced “awesome”) caters to students interested in open source programming tools and platforms.

Educonnection.org offers a platform for schools to exchange information and best practices that will help them to mitigate the challenges of purchasing and implementing new technology in an era of increasing budgetary pressure. It also provides an opportunity for Sun to directly energize, engage and support the education community.

Open source technologies are a cost-effective solution for many educational institutions today: 51 percent of schools in a recent EDUCAUSE survey already use them. As a leading contributor of open source technologies, Sun has expertise in building developer communities to foster technology innovations. EduConnection.org builds on that developer community foundation and focuses on solving technology issues.

Sun's OSUM is an open social network created for students interested in learning, sharing and using open source developer tools and platforms. The portal harnesses the true power of open source by helping students collaborate and use open source developer tools like MySQL, NetBeans, Java, GlassFish, OpenSPARC, OpenSolaris and more. Students can also use OSUM to connect in person through on-campus meetups and events coordinated by the network of more than 500 Sun Campus Ambassadors. Within the first two months of the launch, there are already 10,000 members in the OSUM community.

EduConnection Community: www.educonnection.org/ecommunity/educonnection/landing.page

Open Source University Meetup (OSUM): http://osum.sun.com

IBM Develops Social Networking Tool “Pass It Along”

In November 2008 IBM made available a new social networking tool called Pass It Along to help organizations take a more user-friendly, collaborative approach to knowledge sharing. The new technology expands the notion of social networking for employees and learners – and includes advanced features such as learning paths, visual mapping and expertise profiling.

Nearly 22 million workers are set to retire this year in the USA alone, posing a significant challenge for businesses as they look to retain industry expertise and skills. As a result, organizations of all sizes are now looking for new ways to help their workforce more easily share and gain knowledge for competitive advantage. IBM is helping to address this issue with Pass It Along technology that integrates knowledge management, social networking and Web 2.0 concepts to simplify the way information is shared and consumed by users. The new technology enables users to access, share and rate essential information; categorize information from the Web or an intranet according to interest; and complete learning paths and create learning networks to help facilitate ongoing knowledge sharing.

As part of the underlying technology, IBM has implemented a unique information access model that allows contributors to decide how broadly their information is shared and who else can collaborate on contributions. For example, businesses can use the technology for a wide variety of internal and external needs including the orientation of new hires, training a sales force or collaborating with clients, vendors and business partners.

IBM developerWorks has launched a beta version of Pass It Along to provide developers with a peer-to-peer knowledge exchange network. In this test bed, over 1,300 developers have begun using Pass It Along, creating over 120 topics, with popular topics including XML and Linux. The beta offers the opportunity to gain real user feedback and allows developers to create and organize information dynamically based on what they value.

A no-cost, demo version of Pass It Along is available as a service at: www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/passitalong

More information: www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-piabeta/?S_TACT=106AH21W&S_CMP=HP

Complete press release: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26137.wss

New Reports from Pew on Adults and Social Networks; Future of the Internet

Experts and analysts assess the future of the internet: A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves. They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

Here are the key findings in a new report based on the survey of experts by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020:

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  The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.

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  The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance or forgiveness.

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  Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.

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  Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing “arms race”, with the “crackers” who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.

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  The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

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  “Next-generation” engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

Responding to an invitation to participate in an online survey, 578 leading internet activists, builders and commentators submitted their ideas about the impacts networked technologies may have on world societies by 2020, with an additional 618 stakeholders also participating, for a total of about 1,196 participants sharing their views.

The report entitled “Future of the Internet III” is built around respondents” responses to scenarios stretching to the year 2020, and hundreds of their written elaborations address such topics as: the methods by which people will access information in the future; the fact that technology is expanding the potential for hate, bigotry and terrorism; the changes that will occur in human relationships due to hyper-connected communication; the future of work and employer–employee relationships; the evolution of the tools for and use of augmented reality and virtual reality; the strength of respondents' concerns that the global corporations and governments currently in control of most resources might impede or even halt the open development of the internet; and the challenges to come as issues tied to security, privacy, digital identities, tracking and massive databases collide.

Many respondents are at the pinnacle of internet leadership. Some respondents are “working in the trenches” of building the web; most of the people in this latter category came to the survey by invitation to those on the email list of the Pew Internet Project. The survey was an “opt in”, self-selecting effort. That process does not yield a random, representative sample.

Full results of the survey, including engaging quotes from hundreds of respondents and brief biographies on many of these people, can be found at: www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/predictions/2008_survey.pdf

Adults and social network web sites: The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years – from 8 percent in 2005 to 35 percent now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's December 2008 tracking survey.

While media coverage and policy attention focus heavily on how children and young adults use social network sites, adults still make up the bulk of the users of these websites. Adults make up a larger portion of the US population than teens, which is why the 35 percent number represents a larger number of users than the 65 percent of online teens who also use online social networks.

Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with 75 percent of adults 18-24 using these networks, compared to just 7 percent of adults 65 and older. At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young.

Overall, personal use of social networks seems to be more prevalent than professional use of networks, both in the orientation of the networks that adults choose to use as well as the reasons they give for using the applications. Most adults, like teens, are using online social networks to connect with people they already know.

When users do use social networks for professional and personal reasons, they will often maintain multiple profiles, generally on different sites.

Most, but not all adult social network users are privacy conscious; 60 percent of adult social network users restrict access to their profiles so that only their friends can see it, and 58 percent of adult social network users restrict access to certain content within their profile.

Full text of the report available at: www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Adults-and-Social-Network-Websites.aspx

“Taken Out of Context” – danah boyd on American Teens and Social Networks

danah boyd, a leading researcher on online social networks, has made available her dissertation Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics. From the abstract:

“As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices – gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens” engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices – self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society”.

“My analysis centers on how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways. Four properties – persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability – and three dynamics – invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private – are examined and woven throughout the discussion”.

“While teenagers primarily leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the properties of these sites configured their practices and teens were forced to contend with the resultant dynamics. Often, in doing so, they reworked the technology for their purposes. As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens” engagement also reconfigures the technology itself”.

Full text of the dissertation available at: www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf

Living and Learning with New Media: Findings from the Digital Youth Project

Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies barely existed. Today's youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play and self-expression.

Findings of three years of research on kids' informal learning with digital media are now available at the Digitial Youth Project website. The two page summary incorporates a short, accessible version of the findings. The White Paper is a 30-page document prepared for the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Series. The book is an online version of a forthcoming book with MIT Press and incorporates the insights from 800 youth and young adults and over 5,000 h of online observations.

The study was motivated by two primary research questions: How are new media being integrated into youth practices and agendas? How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning and authoritative knowledge?

Living and Learning with New Media: http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report

LC Releases Progress Report on Flickr Pilot

In January 2008, the LC embarked on something that took the online community by storm. In conjunction with Flickr, they loaded a few thousand images from the LC's vast collections and asked the user community to get involved. They were essentially conducting an experiment to see how crowdsourcing might enhance the quality of the information they were able to provide about their collections, while also finding innovative ways to get those collections out to people who might have an avid interest in them.

In December 2008, the Library has released its report on the Flickr pilot. Only nine months into the LC's pilot project placing Library photos on the Web site Flickr, the photos have drawn more than 10 million views, 7,166 comments and more than 67,000 tags, according to a new report from the project team overseeing the lively project. The report recommends that the LC continue to participate in The Commons and explore other Web 2.0 communities.

The report details how the Flickr project has increased awareness of collections in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division and sparked creative interaction with them. It has also given Library staff experience in social tagging and Web 2.0 community input and cast the Library in a leadership role for other cultural and government communities exploring Web 2.0 possibilities.

An area within Flickr called The Commons was introduced with the Library's project launch and a growing number of libraries, museums and archives have since launched their own accounts within the Commons framework. Currently 16 additional institutions from the USA, Australia, UK, Canada, France, Portugal and the Netherlands are sharing selections from their photo archives and inviting the public to contribute information.

Experimentation has continued. Since March, 50 photos from the Bain News Service collection have been added each Friday, keeping interest fresh. Today the account offers over 4,900 photos, including 15 panoramas related to World War I, added in remembrance of Veteran's Day in a coordinated posting with other Commons members.

The pilot spurred many positive yet unexpected outcomes – especially Flickr members” willingness to devote great effort to photo-related detective work and their level of engagement with historical images. Further, Flickr members have often drawn on personal histories to connect with the pictures, including memories of farming practices, grandparents' lives, women's roles in World War II, and the changing landscape of local neighborhoods.

Notes in the Library's own catalog records now lead users to the information added to Library photos on the Flickr Commons site. When Flickr commenters provide corrected place and proper names, more precise dates, and event names, Prints and Photographs Division staff verify the information and have used it to update more than 500 records for the Library's catalog (with many more in the queue), citing the Flickr Commons Project as the source of the new information. For example, a photo once simply captioned “Reid Funeral” is now more fully described with the note: “Photo shows the crowd gathered outside of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during New York City funeral of Whitelaw Reid, American Ambassador to Great Britain. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2008)”.

Flickr Pilot Project Report (pdf): www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_report_final.pdf

LC/Flickr Commons: www.flickr.com/commons

United Nations Launches E-Learning Initiative

A new UN e-Learning initiative, launched in Berlin in December 2008, will offer developing countries opportunities to draw upon a rich array of training and capacity-building resources. Sixteen UN agencies, meeting at a forum organized by UNEP during the 14th International Conference on Technology Supported Learning and Training in Berlin, agreed to establish UNeLearn – a UN-wide network on technology supported learning to share information and expertise, and to collaborate on the sustained deployment of e-Learning.

The UNeLearn network will provide targeted training and outreach to help UN country teams implement common programs of work in over 160 developing countries. The initiative, inspired by the UN “Delivering as One” concept, aims to maximize coherence and effectiveness among UN projects at the country-level as parts of efforts to implement the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

As a first step towards the implementation of the project, a comprehensive stock-taking exercise is planned to commence, early in 2009, to identify and integrate quality-assured training resources from across the UN system. The UN Staff College will host a number of online communities of practice that will bring together capacity development and training expertise in sectoral areas, such as agriculture, development, education, environment, food security, health and human rights. By agreeing to pool and share their collective training resources and shift towards technology supported learning, the initiative will help UN agencies eliminate duplicative activities, reduce costs and reach a wider client base.

The “Delivering as One” initiative builds on the existing reform agenda set by UN member states, which asks the UN development system to accelerate its efforts to increase coherence and effectiveness of its operations in countries. The UN family – with its many and diverse agencies – must act in a more coordinated way at country level. The objective is to ensure faster and more effective development operations and accelerate progress to achieve the MDGs – in short, a UN development system that delivers more and better for the poorest and most disadvantaged.

United Nations System Staff College: www.unssc.org/web/

Blackboard Launches an Updated Learning Platform

Blackboard Inc., a leading provider of educational technology, announced in January 2009 a significant update for its flagship software – the latest step in a multi-year, multi-release effort to deliver a next generation teaching and learning platform to more effectively engage learners from K-12 to higher education and professional education. Release 9.0 of Blackboard Learn (formerly the Blackboard Academic Suite) was designed in partnership with – and in support of – educators around the globe who share the common challenge of engaging increasingly diverse populations of learners in and out of the classroom. The release introduces a range of powerful capabilities to meet this challenge, from social learning tools to Web 2.0 innovations, as well as integrated components that enable institutions achieve more meaningful assessment of individuals, groups, programs and schools.

The release also significantly increases the openness and flexibility of the Blackboard(R) platform, enabling institutions to leverage its built-in capabilities or to use it as an open foundation for the complementary technologies they need to support their own approach to teaching and learning.

Included in Release 9's openness enhancements are integrations that allow open source and homegrown systems – including the Sakai and Moodle course management systems – to be accessed within the Blackboard platform with a single login. The integrations for Sakai and Moodle, developed in partnership with Syracuse University and Iowa State University, respectively, have been released as open source and join more than 150 free or open source Blackboard Building Blocks(TM) now available to the Blackboard community.

The release is highlighted by new Web 2.0 and social learning capabilities including blogs, journals and enhanced group tools; notification dashboards highlighting time sensitive information and alerts; and a completely redesigned, customizable Web 2.0 user interface. The release is Blackboard's most accessible ever, and includes new features for easy keyboard navigation and standards based design for ease of use with assistive technologies such as screen readers. The release also includes Blackboard's popular, exclusive Web services:

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  plagiarism prevention with SafeAssign, providing teachers with an opportunity to educate students about the importance of academic integrity and attribution; and

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  integration with the Facebook(R) platform, enabling access to course information, updates, rosters and alerts – and social learning opportunities – within the Facebook interface.

Blackboard web site: www.blackboard.com

YawnBuster Makes Presentations More Interactive

Harbinger Group, the Pane, India-based global provider of software products and services has launched YawnBuster. The central idea of YawnBuster is to make presentations more lively and interactive. YawnBuster adds life to PowerPoint slides with Group Activities such as audience polls, games, group exercises and competitions. YawnBuster software helps presenters easily add group activities to their PowerPoint presentations.

YawnBuster brings together PowerPoint and Flash, two most popular tools used in presentations and web development. With YawnBuster, a PowerPoint user can quickly and easily introduce Flash based group activities in the presentation, with no need for programming. What enables this is a patent-pending technology developed indigenously by Harbinger.

There are several high-impact Group Activities included with YawnBuster. Each of these activities has a different impact on the group. Some act as ice-breakers, yet others as energizers, and few others as contests, or as session closers. The game-like format of these activities allows the audience to express their thoughts as well as collaborate with other like-minded participants in the audience. Key takeaways can be listed down based on the important points in each section of the presentation and mailed to all participants in an easy-to-read format.

Yawnbuster web site: www.yawnbuster.com/

Recipients of Third Annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (MATC) Announced

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in December 2008 awarded $650,000 in prizes to ten not-for-profit institutions in the third annual MATC.The Mellon Awards honor not-for-profit organizations for leadership in the collaborative development of open source software tools with application to scholarship in the arts and humanities, as well as cultural-heritage not-for-profit activities. The awards were presented at the Fall Task Force meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information by Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google, a man often called the “Father of the Internet”.

After a worldwide, public nomination process, the ten recipients were selected by the MATC Award Committee, which included Cerf, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee (Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the World Wide Web), Mitchell Baker (CEO, Mozilla Corporation), John Seely Brown (former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corp.), John Gage (at the time, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; now, Partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers), and Tim O'Reilly (Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media). The awardees, prizes, and projects for which they were recognized are as follows:

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  $100,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA: www.mit.edu) for the development and release of the Kerberos network authentication protocol (www.mit.edu/Kerberos/).

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  $100,000 to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Champaign, IL: www.illinois.edu) for leadership and development work on Project Archon, a set of archiving tools (www.archon.org).

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  $50,000 to the Appalachian College Association (Berea, KY: www.acaweb.org) for leadership of the LAMP consortium (www.acaweb.org/content.aspx?sid2&pid197).

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  $50,000 to Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA: www.cmu.edu) for the development and release of the Panda 3D and Alice three-dimensional authoring tools (www.panda3d.org).

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  $50,000 to Ecotrust (Portland, OR: www.ecotrust.org) for the development and release of Open OceanMap, a tool permitting scientists and others to collaborate on marine conservation activities (www.ohloh.net/projects/10111).

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  $50,000 to the Foothill College (Los Altos Hills, CA: www.foothill.edu) for the development and release of the Mneme testing engine for the Sakai learning management system (http://etudesproject.org/mneme/; www.sakaiproject.org).

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  $50,000 to George Mason University (Fairfax, VA: www.gmu.edu) for the development and release of the Omeka cultural heritage collections Web presentation system (http://omeka.org/).

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  $50,000 to King's College London (London, UK: www.kcl.ac.uk) for the development and release of the Pliny scholarly annotation tool (http://pliny.cch.kcl.ac.uk/).

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  $50,000 to the University of Waikato (Waikato, NZ: www.waikato.ac.nz) for the development and release of Project Greenstone, a set of tools for the creation of digital libraries (www.greenstone.org).

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  $50,000 to the University of Washington (Seattle, WA: www.washington.edu) for the development and release of WebAnywhere, a project to increase access and mobility for persons with visual impairments (www.webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/).

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  $50,000 to Villanova University (Villanova, PA: www.villanova.edu) for the development and release of Project VUFind, resource portal software for academic libraries (www.vufind.org).

More information about the MATC awards is available at: http://matc.mellon.org

CLOCKSS: Momentum Grows for Preservation Strategy of Digital Content

University of Alberta joins as governing library member: Support for the community-governed archive cooperative, Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (CLOCKSS), continues to grow with the announcement of the addition of the University of Alberta as its newest governing library member. The University of Alberta Libraries is a member of the ARL and has the second largest academic and research collection in Canada.

The CLOCKSS initiative was created in response to the growing concern that digital content purchased by libraries may not always be available due to retirement of an electronic journal or catastrophic events. CLOCKSS addresses this problem by creating a secure, multi-site archive of web-published content that can be tapped into as necessary to provide ongoing access to researchers worldwide for free. “We are proud to welcome the University of Alberta as our first Canadian partner”, says Gordon Tibbitts, CEO of bepress and Co-Chair of the CLOCKSS Board of Directors. “Adding another global partner to the network further solidifies CLOCKSS leadership in providing a cost-sensitive and effective long-term archiving solution that services the entire scholarly community”.

Based at Stanford University, the not-for-profit organization is a partnership of libraries and publishers. As a governing library, the University of Alberta Libraries will operate one of the computer “CLOCKSS boxes” housed at (ultimately) 15 sites around the globe containing content contributed by publishers. This content is stored and preserved, ensuring that it is available for future use. “The University of Alberta Libraries consider CLOCKSS essential for ensuring access to the knowledge we create today far into the future”, stated Ernie Ingles, Chief Librarian and Vice Provost at the University of Alberta, “We feel that membership in this organization is a contribution to future generations”.

CLOCKSS uses LOCKSS low cost archiving software to operate its archive, making participation in the collective affordable for libraries of all sizes. LOCKSS is an ACM award winning digital preservation technology preserves all formats and genres of web-published content including the look and feel of the original. LOCKSS is evolving open source software, which means there is less chance that the format of the stored content will become outdated and useless. When digital content becomes unavailable, for instance if a publisher chooses to retire a journal, then that “trigger event” allows content stored in the archive to be released to designated delivery platforms or hosts, ensuring unrestricted access to research literature that might otherwise have been lost. Prior to a trigger event the content is “dark” or hidden and is not available to anyone. Content that has been made available through CLOCKSS can be freely accessed on the CLOCKSS website at: www.clockss.org/clockss/Triggered_Content

Springer helps launch CLOCKSS archive: Springer Science + Business Media, publisher of one of the world's most comprehensive online collections of scientific, technological and medical journals, books and reference works, announced in December 2008 partnership with the community-governed archive cooperative CLOCKSS to preserve Springer content in the CLOCKSS global archive. Springer publishes over 1,700 journals and more than 5,500 new books a year, as well as the largest STM eBook collection worldwide. Springer is a founding member of CLOCKSS.

The CLOCKSS archive allows research libraries and scholarly publishers, who launched CLOCKSS as a pilot program, to preserve and store its electronic content. Once ingested, the econtent is kept safe and secure in a dark archive until it is triggered and the CLOCKSS Board determines that the content should be copied from the archive and made freely available to all, regardless of prior subscription. Due to the success of the pilot program, the founding members unanimously agreed to incorporate and invite others to participate in CLOCKSS.

Participating CLOCKSS libraries and publishers govern the archive themselves via three tiers of governance – an executive board, a board of directors, and an advisory council. Research libraries working alongside publishers like Springer are able to help shape policy and practice in their communities.

“In a great show of confidence, Springer has joined the CLOCKSS initiatives, putting its complete trust in an archive they helped build”, says Gordon Tibbitts, Co-Chair of CLOCKSS. “Springer is helping to shoulder the responsibility, alongside its publishing peers and research library customers, of keeping their scholarly assets safe and protected for future generations of scholars”.

In addition to storing Springer's journal content with CLOCKSS, the publisher has submitted a proposal to the CLOCKSS Board outlining a pilot project to test the feasibility and legal issues surrounding preservation of eBook content. Because eBook contracts differ from journal contracts, Springer can only deposit eBook files when its authors' rights are protected.

CLOCKSS is a joint venture between the world's leading scholarly publishers and research libraries. Its mission is to build a sustainable, geographically distributed dark archive with which to ensure the long-term survival of web-based scholarly publications for the benefit of the greater global research community. Governing Libraries include the Australian National University, Indiana University, New York Public Library, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Rice University, Stanford University, the University of Alberta, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Hong Kong and the University of Virginia. Governing Publishers include the American Medical Association, the American Physiological Society, bepress, Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, Springer, Taylor & Francis and Wiley-Blackwell.

CLOCKSS: www.clockss.org/

JHOVE2 Project Underway

The open source JHOVE characterization tool has proven to be an important component of many digital repository and preservation workflows. However, its widespread use over the past four years has revealed a number of limitations imposed by idiosyncrasies of design and implementation. The California Digital Library, Portico, and Stanford University have received funding from the LC, under its National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program initiative, to collaborate on a two-year project to develop a next-generation JHOVE2 architecture for format-aware characterization.

Among the enhancements planned for JHOVE2 are:

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  support for four specific aspects of characterization: signature-based identification, feature extraction, validation and rules-based assessment;

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  a more sophisticated data model supporting complex multi-file objects and arbitrarily-nested container objects;

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  streamlined APIs to facilitate the integration of JHOVE2 technology in systems, services and workflows;

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  increased performance;

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  standardized error handling;

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  a generic plug-in mechanism supporting stateful multi-module processing; and

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  availability under the BSD open source license.

To help focus project activities the project team has recruited a distinguished advisory board to represent the interests of the larger stakeholder community. The board includes participants from the following international memory institutions, projects and vendors: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Ex Libris, Fedora Commons, Florida Center for Library Automation, Harvard University/GDFR, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MIT/DSpace, National Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, National Library of Australia, National Library of New Zealand and the Planets project.

The project partners are currently engaged in a public needs assessment and requirements gathering phase. A provisional set of use cases and functional requirements has already been reviewed by the JHOVE2 advisory board. The JHOVE2 team welcomes input from the preservation community, and would appreciate feedback on the functional requirements and any interesting test data that have emerged from experience with the current JHOVE tool. Feedback on project goals and deliverables can be submitted through the JHOVE2 public mailing lists.

The functional requirements, along with other project information and instructions for subscribing to the mailing lists, are available on the JHOVE2 project home page.

JHOVE2: http://confluence.ucop.edu/display/JHOVE2Info/Home

JSTOR and Ithaka Merge

JSTOR, a shared digital library, and Ithaka, the organizational home to Portico – a digital preservation service, announced in January 2009 the merger of their organizations. This move unites two pioneering entities that are focused on helping the scholarly community take advantage of rapidly advancing information technologies. The new combined enterprise will be called Ithaka and will be dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing system-wide costs through collective action.

This is a natural step for these organizations. JSTOR and Ithaka already work closely together, sharing a common history, values and fundamental purpose. During 2008, the Ithaka-incubated resource Aluka was integrated into JSTOR as an initial step, further strengthening ties between the organizations. JSTOR will now join Portico and NITLE, a suite of services supporting the use of technology in liberal arts education, as a coordinated set of offerings made available under the Ithaka organizational name. As one organization, Ithaka will explore how to use its combined knowledge and experience to help its constituents in new ways.

In addition to JSTOR, Portico and NITLE, Ithaka's existing research and strategic services groups will remain important parts of the enterprise. The board will be composed of Ithaka and JSTOR Trustees, with Henry Bienen, President of Northwestern University, serving as Chairman and Paul Brest, President of the Hewlett Foundation as Vice Chairman.

Ithaka web site: www.ithaka.org/

JSTOR web site: www.jstor.org

OAPEN Project Gains Funding from the European Commission

The European Commission has reached agreement with the OAPEN consortium to fund the OAPEN project with €900,000 from the eContentplus Programme. The project started in September 2008 with a kick off meeting in Göttingen. A Scientific Board has been established and an External Stakeholders Group is currently being formed.

OAPEN – Open Access Publishing in European Networks – is a 30-month target project to develop and implement an open access (OA) publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). The project, which is the first of its kind, aims to achieve a sustainable European approach to improve the quantity, visibility and usability of high-quality OA content and foster the creation of new content by developing future-oriented publishing solutions, including an online library dedicated to HSS, and new business models.

OAPEN consists of seven scholarly publishers and two Universities in six European countries (see partner list below) and is coordinated by Amsterdam University Press. The partners will work closely with stakeholders, such as authors, research councils, university libraries, policy makers and scholarly publishers. The OAPEN consortium welcomes other publishers in the HSS to join OAPEN's network, make use of OA publications models and to expand the available OA content.

OAPEN will use the latest solutions in OA digital publishing, whilst maintaining traditional publishing services. It will provide editorial selection, peer-review, copy-editing and formatting, along with worldwide marketing and distribution of print-on-demand titles. Authors will retain their copyright and benefit by attracting more readers and gaining greater peer recognition.

OAPEN: www.oapen.org/

News from DRIVER: Networking Digital Repositories

Digital Repository Federation (DRF) (Japan) and DRIVER sign memorandum of understanding: As part of the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008 held in Baltimore Maryland from 17-18 November 2008, DRF (Japan) and DRIVER have agreed to work closely together on promoting federated repository infrastructures, signing a Memorandum of Understanding to take this collaboration forward.

DRIVER – Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research – is a joint initiative of European stakeholders, co-financed by the European Commission, setting up a technical infrastructure for digital repositories and facilitating the building of an umbrella organization for digital repositories. DRIVER relies on research libraries for the sustainable operation of repositories and provision of high quality content through digital repositories.

DRF is a federation consisting of 86 universities and research institutes which aims to promote OA and Institutional Repository development in Japan. Under the auspices of the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, DRF is a collaborative program for institutional repositories, based on one of the research and development projects of the national framework of Cyber Science Infrastructure.

DRF and DRIVER share the vision that the OA movement in Europe and in Japan contribute to better scholarly communication in the world; and that each should contribute actively and cooperatively to a global, interoperable, trusted and long-term data and service infrastructure based on OA digital repositories.

Collaboration between DRF (Japan) and DRIVER is framed by their joint support for an OA model for repositories in research and higher education institutions. They present a common strategy to enable research libraries – pressed to improve scholarly communication by establishing digital repositories – to expose institutional research outputs to the world. Networks of individual repositories and overarching information services for aggregation, retrieval, sharing and re-use are being built on the basis of institutional, national and regional location or by subject areas.

Norbert Lossau, Scientific Technical Co-ordinator of DRIVER, said “The collaboration between the organizational structures of both DRIVER and DRF forms the nucleus of federated repository development of a global, interoperable, trusted and long-term repository infrastructure. We are very pleased to formalize our relationship by signing this Memorandum of Understanding”.

Masaaki Hemmi, the Director of DRF, said “No doubt the coalition of DRF and DRIVER will lead to the best and widest dissemination of joint enterprises between researchers, who turn out scholarly fruits, and librarians, who manage digital repositories in every corner of the world”.

DRIVER guidelines 2.0: The newest release of DRIVER Guidelines was made available for download in November 2008. The “DRIVER Guideline 2.0: Guidelines for Content Providers – Exposing textual resources with OAI-PMH” will provide orientation for managers of new repositories to define their local data-management policies, for managers of existing repositories to take steps towards improved services and for developers of repository platforms to add supportive functionalities in future versions. The DRIVER Guidelines basically focus on five issues: collections, metadata, implementation of OAI-PMH, best practices and vocabularies and semantics.

DRIVER Guidelines 2.0 available at: www.driver-support.eu/managers.html

DRIVER mentor service launched: The distribution of repositories across Europe varies greatly. While some countries have well-developed and supported repository communities, others have little or no formal means of communication or support for repository managers.

Developing an OA repository can raise many questions. The staff of existing repositories have found that it is very useful to be able to talk through issues with their peers and exchange ideas, experiences and solutions. The DRIVER Mentor Service introduces developers and managers of repositories to each other with the aim of sharing experience and best practice within the repository community. DRIVER hopes that everybody will be able to benefit from the service – both mentors and mentees! – with the aim of creating a helpful and collaborative community of professionals across Europe.

DRIVER Mentor Service webpage and tutorial: www.driver-support.eu/mentor.html

IBM Announces New Family of Content Collection and Archiving Offerings

In October 2008 IBM announced a new family of products for archiving email, classifying content and searching multiple information sources – independent of where and how the content was created, processed and archived. IBM content collection and archiving products are designed to help clients take back control and unlock the business value of their content, while enforcing regulatory compliance and operational policies and reducing total cost of ownership.

IBM content collection and archiving offerings will help clients move beyond e-mail archiving to provide organizations with comprehensive management capabilities for virtually all their business content, including file systems, Lotus Quickr, Microsoft SharePoint, instant messages and other information. These products offer more advanced functionality to meet new legal eDiscovery and records management requirements as well as de-duplication and integration with records retention services, helping to reduce storage and electronic discovery costs.

IBM's content collection and archiving products are based on a modular, extensible architecture and are designed to collect content from nearly any source, including email or file attachments, enhance the content by applying modular tasks, and mange the content in an enterprise content management (ECM) repository to be controlled – consistently and cost-effectively. It is based on a secure and scalable IBM ECM platform, and is pre-built to take advantage of IBM ECM capabilities such as advanced classification, records management, and eDiscovery search and analytics to fully optimize the lifecycle of compliant information management.

IBM's content collection and archiving family consists of:

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  IBM content collector for email: an automated, flexible and scalable offering that is designed to expand e-mail information usage for compliance, ECM, business process management and business intelligence applications.

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  IBM content collector for file systems: an enterprise offering for controlling documents on a network file share drives, enabling file system control, archiving and eDiscovery collection.

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  IBM content collector preload edition: a hardware and software offering that will enable clients to quickly install and automate an e-mail management solution, helping users to improve e-mail system performance and to easily and quickly retrieve email to satisfy compliance audit reviews and legal discovery requirements.

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  IBM content collector enterprise bundle: a single content collection and archiving bundle that collects, enhances and manages casually created content types that drive the most potential cost and risk – e-mail (Domino or exchange), file systems (Windows NTFS) and SharePoint – delivered together with advanced contextual classification capabilities.

For more information on IBM's content collection and archiving offerings, visit: www-01.ibm.com/software/data/content-management/archiving.html

Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Releases Schemas Supporting Release 3 of COUNTER

In November 2008 the NISO SUSHI Standing Advisory Committee announced the approval and final release of the schemas (and related files) providing full support of Release 3 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Journals and Databases. Notable in this latest release of the COUNTER Code of Practice is the requirement that content providers implement SUSHI as a means of delivering their reports. With the schemas now finalized, content providers can be confident about setting their development agendas for implementing SUSHI.

The SUSHI standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93 - 2007) defines an automated request and response model for the harvesting of electronic resource usage data, utilizing a web services framework. Designed as a generalized protocol extensible to a variety of usage reports, it also contains an extension designed specifically to work with COUNTER usage reports. COUNTER reports have become a mainstay of collection analysis for many libraries; SUSHI serves to automate the time consuming and error prone process of manually running, retrieving and loading these reports.

NISO's SUSHI Standard Advisory Committee, formed last summer to maintain the standard, has used community feedback to identify additional needs for implementation and to examine the standard for areas that may need updating or improving. In addition to addressing the needs of the schemas, the Committee's charge also includes the goal of making SUSHI easier for implementers to understand and work with. As part of that effort, the schemas have been annotated with descriptions and examples for key elements, and the website now includes clear graphical representations of the schemas. In addition, the FAQs on the site are being updated and include sections specifically for librarians and for developers. Further documentation on the site includes material covered in NISO's SUSHI webinar on October 2, a list of clients (ERM and Usage Consolidation services) supporting SUSHI, and a list of SUSHI compliant content providers, and other supporting information.

Also on the site is a link to the draft, “How to Start Building a SUSHI Service”. This work in progress by Thomas Barker, Software Engineer, IT and Digital Development at the University of Pennsylvania Library, is a valuable tool for those interested in getting started with building a client.

COUNTER is designed to help librarians and publishers in the recording and exchange of usage statistics for electronic resources. By following COUNTER's code of practice, vendors can provide libraries with data using standardized formats and data elements. The SUSHI protocol is a Simple Object Access Protocol request/response web services “wrapper” for the XML version of COUNTER reports.

In the protocol, a transaction begins when a client service running as part of an application developed by a library or running as part of a usage data consolidation service or ILS/ERM identifies itself, identifies the customer whose statistics are being requested, and specifies the desired report to the SUSHI server service running at a data provider. In response, the server provides the report in XML format, along with the requestor and customer information or an appropriate error message. The SUSHI developers envision a system in which the client system is programmed to retrieve reports automatically for all the COUNTER-compliant vendors with which the library does business.

SUSHI web site: www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi

Revised Jangle Spec Released

Jangle, an open specification to apply the Atom Publishing Protocol to library services and resources, released in November 2008 a draft version of a 1.0 release spec. The goal of Jangle is to provide a very simple and easily understandable RESTful interface to library data that can be accessed with common commodity Atom clients.

The draft spec has been released to get feedback on the usefulness and clarity of the specification and to solicit ideas for how to improve Jangle for use in actual production environments. Opinions, positive or negative; criticisms, and comments are welcomed.

For a more in-depth introduction to Jangle, there is an article in the latest issue of the Code4Lib Journal, “Unveiling Jangle: Untangling Library Resources and Exposing them through the Atom Publishing Protocol” available at: http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/109

To join the Jangle development process, feel free to join their Google Group at: http://groups.google.com/group/jangle-discuss or contribute to the development at: http://code.google.com/p/jangle/

Draft of Jangle 1.0 Release: http://jangle.org/drupal/1_0rev1spec

Hindawi Adds Support for the ePUB Digital Format

Hindawi announced in January 2009 the addition of the ePUB digital format as one of the available formats on its online platform for all of its journal and book publications. ePUB is a modern, industry standard format developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, of which Hindawi is a member, as an XML format for reflowable digital books and publications. ePUB is widely supported on computer systems as well as on digital reading devices such as the Sony digital book reader. A number of sample articles that have been released can be found at: www.hindawi.com/epub.html

“ePUB allows us to produce and make available a single digital file that combines the benefits of the high fidelity typography typically found in PDFs along with the benefits of XML structured content, high resolution images, scalable vector graphics, and font embedding”, said Fatma Sultan, Hindawi's Production Manager. “It has gained strong support from a number of book publishers. However, it has not been used before for highly technical materials such as those published in our STM journals and books. We are pleased to be on the forefront of the format adoption wave in these areas”.

Hindawi currently publishes all of its journal articles in PDF and HTML with full MathML support. The integration of ePUB production within Hindawi's current XML workflow makes the ePUB production seamless. All articles published since the beginning of 2008 shall be reprocessed in order to generate ePUB files. Going forward, all articles and books will be released in ePUB in addition to the other current formats.

For more information on the ePUB format visit the International Digital Publishing Forum web site: www.idpf.org/

Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) Launches Ozmo to Help Artists License Content

CCC, the world's largest provider of copyright licensing solutions, announced in November the beta launch of Ozmo™, a web-based service that makes it easy for independent content creators to license the use of their work for commercial purposes and for content users to tap into the wealth of user-generated content found online.

Ozmo puts artists and writers in control. They select their license terms and set the price for the use of their content. Then, CCC puts its three decades of licensing expertise to work. CCC handles the entire licensing process and all payments go through Amazon's Flexible Payment Service when a license is purchased. With Ozmo, buyers know instantly that they have the right to use the content and sellers know how their content is being used.

There are no set-up fees with Ozmo and content creators can license as much content as they want. Payment is collected from the buyer when the rights are purchased. Ozmo even helps sellers track and manage sales and buying trends. Ozmo supports the Creative Commons CC+ protocol for bridging the gap between commercial and non-commercial licensing. Content creators can apply the Creative Commons link for non-commercial use, and the Ozmo link for commercial use.

Ozmo was created by the rights licensing experts at CCC. A not-for-profit company founded in 1978, CCC is the world's largest provider of rights licensing services. In just the last year, CCC distributed more than $135 million in royalties to rightsholders. CCC created Ozmo in response to a market need for a comprehensive solution to license user-generated content for commercial use.

“Since the advent of online photo-sharing sites, photographers have needed a simple and effective way to license their content”, said Gene Mopsik, Executive Director of the American Society of Media Photographers. “Ozmo is designed to meet the unique requirements of licensing independent, or user-generated, content. It is easy to use, yet fully functional and comprehensive. CCC is opening the door to the marketplace for the aspiring photographer online”.

To get started, users need only create a free Ozmo profile. Then, the content creator selects his or her license terms and pricing, and registers the work with Ozmo. Sellers can add an image, banner or bio that will be displayed with their work. Profile information can even be pulled over directly from Facebook. Using Ozmo is easy because it works with content where ever it resides online. Content creators never have to re-enter their work; Ozmo simply links back to the original host location.

Buyers, such as design firms, publishers, bloggers and other journalists, who want to tap in to the fresh content available through Ozmo, can do so by searching the Ozmo website or clicking on the Ozmo link wherever they find it online. CCC handles the billing, the buyer receives the license by email and the content creator gets paid. It is that simple.

“We realize that licensing may not be the first thing most people think about when they create or post original content on the Web”, said Bill Burger, Vice President of Marketing at CCC. “With Ozmo, content creators get paid for their work and also get the satisfaction of knowing how their work is being used. And advertising and marketing firms get easy access to the immense supply of online creative content with the peace of mind that they are using it with permission”.

CCC's licensing services, combined with its web-based applications and tools, allow tens of millions of people in corporations, universities, law firms and government agencies to use and share published information with ease. Since its founding as a not-for-profit company in 1978, CCC has created and expanded the markets and systems that facilitate content reuse and the distribution of royalties to rights holders around the world.

Ozmo: www.ozmo.com

CCC: www.copyright.com

Alliance Library System Announces Partnership with Altarama

Alliance Library System (ALS), a regional library consortium in East Peoria, Illinois, the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University, TAP Information Services in Missouri, Cullom-Davis Library at Bradley University, and South Central Regional Library Council in New York announced a partnership with Altarama to offer the first collaborative multi type library text-based reference service via cell phone. Altarama will provide technology and training for project participants and will assist evaluators with non-standard data access and extraction.

ALS seeks library partners to participate in this exciting and cutting edge one-year pilot project. Participating libraries will be asked to answer questions for a minimum of 2 h per week and to promote the service in their communities. Training and promotional materials will be provided that libraries can customize for their community. More information on the project and how to participate will be announced in the next two weeks. If you are interested in participating, please email Lori Bell at lbell@alliancelibrarysystem.com to receive information about upcoming online planning meetings.

The School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University will be partnering with (ALS) on the project, with many of the School's graduate students answering patron questions using the Altarama interface.

Altarama is a privately-held company whose librarians and technologists are focused exclusively on the reference function in libraries. The text messaging platform to be used in this project comes from a family of reference management products used by libraries around the world.

Altarama web site: www.altarama.com.au

ALS web site: www.alliancelibrarysystem.com

Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies: ISTTF Issues Final Report

Many youth in the USA have fully integrated the internet into their daily lives.

For them, the internet is a positive and powerful space for socializing, learning and engaging in public life. Along with the positive aspects of internet use come risks to safety, including the dangers of sexual solicitation, online harassment, and bullying and exposure to problematic and illegal content.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) is a group of 29 leading internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics and technology companies that joined together for a year-long investigation of tools and technologies to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth. It was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking, comprising 50 state Attorneys General, asked this task force to determine the extent to which today's technologies could help to address these online safety risks, with a primary focus on social network sites in the USA.

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University has released the final report of the ISTTF. To view the final report, including the executive summary, as well as reaction statements from members of the Task Force, visit: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/isttf

Microsoft “Morro” Will Provide Protection from Malware

To address the growing need for a PC security solution tailored to the demands of emerging markets, smaller PC form factors and rapid increases in the incidence of malware, Microsoft Corp. plans to offer a new consumer security offering focused on core anti-malware protection. Code-named “Morro”, this streamlined solution will be available in the second half of 2009 and will provide comprehensive protection from malware including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. This new solution, to be offered at no charge to consumers, will be architected for a smaller footprint that will use fewer computing resources, making it ideal for low-bandwidth scenarios or less powerful PCs. As part of Microsoft's move to focus on this simplified offering, the company also announced today that it will discontinue retail sales of its Windows Live OneCare subscription service effective 30 June 2009.

Built on Microsoft's malware protection engine, “Morro” will take advantage of the same core anti-malware technology that fuels the company's current line of security products. The new solution will deliver the same core protection against malware as that offered through Microsoft's enterprise solutions, but will not include many of the additional non-security features found in many consumer security suites. Windows Live OneCare includes a number of non-security features, such as printer sharing and automated PC tune-up. By shifting to focus on the core anti-malware features that most consumers still don't keep up to date, “Morro” will be able to provide the essential protections that consumers need without overusing system resources, and will help more consumers have better protection against online threats.

“Morro” will be available as a stand-alone download and offer malware protection for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. When used in conjunction with the ongoing security and privacy enhancements of Windows and Internet Explorer, this new solution will offer consumers a robust, no-cost security solution to help protect against the majority of online threats.

More information is available on the Windows Live OneCare Team Blog at: http://windowsonecare.spaces.live.com