LoomWare

Special Section of the Guardian

JISC and the Guardian on Academic Libraries

special insert for the Guardian newspaper and worth a read - the evolution of academic libraries in the new digital age.

Is Your Daily Life Enslaved by the Electronic World?

Unfortunately I Would Have to Say, Yes

I got this one from my good friend Michael Dudley, as we recently discussed our mutual tendencies to get way too busy and, at least in my case, tethered to the infernal laptop/blackberry combo. I struggle with this one constantly and found this short piece from MediaCulture particularly interesting, especially from the point of view of privacy and mini-celebrity. It also made me think more and more about my recent decision to delete my Facebook account - alas, when I find the time :-( This seems more and more like a good idea because: 1) I don't check it regularly 2) I like my friends, but I can keep in touch in person and other more satisfying ways 3) I increasingly find the ways Facebook can be abused hard to accept 4) it will probably be dead in a year or so anyway, so why invest so much in a fling? Anyway, you get the idea...

XML Schemas and Bioinformatics

Making Sense of the Bioinformatics XMl Landscape

As UPEI develops support for bioscience data in our VRE project, we have delved into the rather daunting world of bioscience XML schemas and related tools. This article is a good intro (although a bit out of date) and a useful start if you are looking to build data repositories in this area.

RDF API for Drupal 6.x

Drupal to Be/Support Semantic Datastores?

It's still not entirely clear to me how this new Drupal module will position Drupal in the emerging Semantic Web landscape, but from what I can gather it would allow Drupal to act as an RDF-smart semantic datastore as well as to integrate with external repositories, such as Fedora. I also understand that Drupal will take the Semantic Web functionality to a new level. Good stuff all and another reason to keep your eye on Drupal and Fedora. Arto's subsequent posting on this issue is well worth reading and highlights a number of reasons why UPEI is working with Drupal and Fedora - the future is semantic!

Textbook publishers sue GSU for copyright infringement | ajc.com

Textbook publishers sue GSU for copyright infringement

The recent lawsuit between GSU and Oxford/Cambridge/SAGE is an interesting one and a "must follow" for libraries with Reserve systems. While this one will be based in the U.S. copyright framework, it should present some generic issues of interest to all. The key issue from my perspective is the evolution of print reserve collections to eReserves, with the creation of the coursepack "wrench" thrown in the middle of it all. My understanding of it all would be that if a professor wishes the convenience of a single printed coursepack for their students they pay the appropriate fees to do so - in essence they are paying to create a new derivative work. Some publishers will charge, others will not - Access Copyright will also be happy to act on their behalf in the Canadian context. If the professor is happy to present the disparate items in a non-coursepack context, such as a list in a reserve system, or in a CMS, then the need to pay fees or seek permission does not exist, in my opinion.

For me it all comes down to the Fair Dealing (or Fair Use in the U.S.) concept and the right of libraries to act on behalf of their patrons. If a student could make copies of a series of journal articles and book chapters without seeking permission (for their own private use), as they can do, then libraries can act for them in a Reserve or eReserve system. End of story. The courepack is a recent phenomenon that has introduced a wrench in the works because it provides an opportunity for publishers to define a "new work" and thereby insist on fees. I think it is a lost leader, as I always come down to the right of the individual student to make appropriate copies of material for their own private study and my role as a Library to act on their behalf. Publishers threatening lawsuits over the use of Reserve/eReserve systems is nothing more than an backdoor attempt to undermine the fundamental "fair use" rights of the individual, so I hope GSU does not back down.

See also AAP story.

Red Island Repository Institute

UPEI is hosting a new workshop - register now for The Red Island Repository Institute on Prince Edward Island - August 11-15, 2008

Register by May 16 and reserve your spot at the Fedora-focused Repository Institute on Prince Edward Island, one of Canada’s premiere travel destinations known for its sandy beaches, golfing, seafood and iconic red dirt roads. The 1-week hands-on workshop will be led by well-known Fedora “natives” Sandy Payette, Fedora Commons Executive Director; Richard Green, Manager, RIDIR, REMAP and RepoMMan Projects, e-SIG, Academic Services, University of Hull, and; Matt Zumwalt, MediaShelf.

The Institute is hands-on and is targeted at individuals from institutions planning or running a repository program and is intended for users with a wide range of experience, from managers to programmers. Attendees will be provided all the information and tools needed to implement and maintain a flexible repository program using Fedora. Since the Institute is a combination of lecture and hands-on experience, we encourage all participants to bring their own laptops. This will allow participants to return to their place of work with a fully-functional Fedora installation for further development and testing. Those participants who are not able to bring a laptop will be provided with one to use for the duration of the Institute.

Register by May 16 for the reduced early-bird fee of $1,500 - after that the fee is $1,800. Registration includes meals (except dinners for Tuesday to Thursday), special events and all materials. A preliminary workshop agenda and registration form are now available at http://vre.upei.ca/riri/.

If you have questions about the Red Island Repository Institute, please contact Mark Leggott at riri@upei.ca.

NSDL Releases New Tools in the NCore Suite

Moving Digital Library Systems Up a Notch

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) NCore team has released an open source generic version of the NSDL Search, and the NDR Interactions MediaWiki extensions and WordPressMU plugins that power the NSDL Expert Voices blogosphere and NSDL Wiki. From the news release:

There are three packages to the NCore project on SourceForge. These are: 1) contentCache - the Nutch-based web crawler that stores page content for indexing and "best passages." 2) searchService (beta) - the applications that build and maintain the search index, along with the REST service used to access the index. 3) searchTools - common classes used by the other packages, and some utility applications for harvesting and parsing OAI.

Fedora 2.2.2 Release

Maintenance Release for Fedora 2 Sites

Fedora Commons has released a key maintenance update for Fedora 2.2.1 and is a recommended update for sites running 2.

Scraped from HatCheck

Tape Project Releases Document

The TAPE project has issued a publication on audiovisual research collections by Dietrich Schüller of the Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences. From the news release:

In the 20th century, thousands of recordings were made during academic field work, and numerous interviews and documentaries were produced in research projects. Some of this material is now held by archives, but often it is kept in academic departments –or even by individual researchers – as little known ‘hidden collections’: minimally documented, haphazardly stored under suboptimal conditions, and at serious risk of being lost altogether. These materials reflect cultural and linguistic diversity, especially as much of what they document has by now disappeared. They are primary sources for oral history studies, and provide insight into the concerns and methodology of researchers at the time. Therefore they should be kept accessible for future research projects.

The report looks at collections of this type and discusses the particular requirements for access and re-use, focusing on the potential of digitization for creating distributed content-based archives.

The document is available as a PDF file.

Podcast with Talis

I recorded a podcast with Richard Wallis from Talis recently and it is available on their Panlibus site. The discussion strays to various place, but as you can imagine there is a focus on open source, open content and building staff capacity. Thanks Richard!