Community Updates

This spring the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) selected teams from 75 institutions, including 9 ARL member libraries, to participate in the first year of a new assessment program, Assessment in Action: Academic Libraries and Student Success (AiA). This is a three-year program funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and carried out by ACRL in partnership with the Association for Institutional Research and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

image © JanetandPhilCNI executive director Clifford Lynch discusses one possible future for American public libraries in a chapter of a new book edited by Joe Janes, Library in 2020: Today’s Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library. In his chapter, “The Public Library in 2020,” Lynch speculates about how public libraries will change over the next several years.

Also of interest is the recent interview of the book's editor, Joe Janes, by Andrew Richard Albanese for Publishers Weekly, “ALA 2013: The Library of 2020 Will Be…”

image © Right to Research CoalitionSPARC’s student initiative, the Right to Research Coalition, has released a video interview of Jack Andraka, a high school sophomore who won the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair with a breakthrough diagnostic for pancreatic cancer. Interviewed by Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Andraka discusses how open access articles and NIH’s PubMed Central played a key role in enabling his discovery.

John P. Wilkin
image © U MichiganJohn P. Wilkin, associate university librarian for publishing and technology at University of Michigan and executive director of HathiTrust, has been named university librarian and dean of libraries for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (UIUC), effective August 16, 2013. His appointment is subject to approval by the university's board of trustees at its July 24 meeting. Wilkin will succeed Paula Kaufman, who has served as university librarian since 1999 and dean of libraries since 2007 and is stepping down on August 15. For more details, see the June 10 UIUC news article, “University of Michigan Associate Librarian to Lead U of I Libraries.”

image © CornellPrivacy and accessibility issues will be featured at this year's Cornell University Institute for Internet Culture, Policy, and Law (ICPL), to be held September 18–20, 2013, at Cornell. The oldest IT, law, and policy conference in the US, ICPL has broadened its reach to address rapidly evolving legal, policy, and social concerns related to Internet culture. The number of participants is limited to 50, allowing for in-depth exploration of topics. Faculty; higher ed administrators; academic librarians; and IT, legal, policy, and student life professionals debate, learn, and share ideas, experiences, and expertise at the three-day institute. 

This spring SPARC published a community resource, Article-Level Metrics: A SPARC Primer (PDF), by Greg Tananbaum. Article-level metrics (ALMs) are rapidly emerging as important tools to quantify how individual articles are being discussed, shared, and used. This SPARC primer provides an overview of what ALMs are, why they matter, how they complement established utilities and metrics, and how they might be considered for use in the tenure and promotion process.  

image © American Library AssociationCNI executive director Clifford Lynch provides an overall assessment of the e-book situation in the latest American Libraries digital supplement, “Digital Content: What's Next?” In his article, “Ebooks in 2013: Promises Broken, Promises Kept, and Faustian Bargains,” Lynch discusses the promises of e-book technology, many of which are not coming to fruition, largely due to restrictions imposed by rights holders.

John P. Culshaw, photo by Tom Jorgensen, © University of IowaJohn P. Culshaw, senior associate dean of libraries at the University of Colorado Boulder and 2011–2012 ARL Research Library Leadership Fellow, has been named university librarian for the University of Iowa, effective August 1, 2013. His appointment is subject to approval by the Board of Regents, State of Iowa. Culshaw will succeed Nancy Baker, who has served as university librarian since 2000 and is retiring on July 5. Between July 5 and August 1, Paul Soderdahl, associate university librarian for information technology, will act as interim university librarian. For more information, see the June 3 Iowa Now article, “Culshaw Named University Librarian.”

Clifford Lynch, image © Cecilia PrestonThe Library of Congress blog The Signal: Digital Preservation featured CNI executive director Clifford Lynch in its Digital Preservation Pioneer series on May 29. The profile's author, Mike Ashenfelder, writes, “Clifford Lynch is widely regarded as an oracle in the culture of networked information. Lynch monitors the global information ecosystem for cultural trends and technological developments. He ponders their variables, interdependencies and influencing factors. He confers with colleagues and draws conclusions. Then he reports his observations through lectures, conference presentations and writings. People who know about Lynch pay close attention to what he has to say.” Read the complete profile, “Digital Preservation Pioneer: Clifford Lynch,” on the Library of Congress website. 

Peter Suber, image © SPARCThe Harvard Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University have appointed SPARC senior researcher Peter Suber as director of the Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC), which spearheads campus-wide initiatives to open, share, and preserve scholarship. Suber's appointment is effective July 1, 2013. He will continue his current activities with SPARC as well as his roles as director of the Harvard Open Access Project, as a Berkman Center faculty fellow, and as research professor of philosophy at Earlham College.