To: ARL Directors
From: Duane Webster
Re: April 2007 E-News for ARL Directors
Note: We continue to experiment with a new format for E-News: the e-mail now contains a summary version of the full E-News, which is available in its entirety on the ARL Web site in HTML and PDF form. Your feedback on this format will be appreciated.
These news notes are organized by the strategic directions identified in the ARL Strategic Plan: Scholarly Communication; Public Policies Affecting Research Libraries; and the Library Roles in Research, Teaching, and Learning. In addition, there is an initial section for Governance and Membership Activities and complementary sections on Diversity, Professional Workforce, and Leadership Development; Library Statistics and Assessment; and Other Items of Interest to ARL Directors. E-News for ARL Directors is a collaboration of ARL program staff, compiled and edited by Duane Webster (duane@arl.org) and Kaylyn Groves (kaylyn@arl.org).
You are encouraged to route the E-News to your staff and others in your institution.
1. ARL Membership Meeting to Convene in St. Louis, May 23-25, 2007
2. Two Opportunities for Librarians to Learn about Author Rights Outreach
4. Information Access Alliance Web Resources Updated
5. Humanists Look to Future of Electronic Publications
6. LJ Serial Pricing Study Includes Analysis of Open Access
7. MIRACLE Project Releases New Study of Institutional Repositories
8. OUP Updates Study of Publisher Pricing Trends
9. Two US Government Reports Call for Public Access to Agency-Funded Research
10. SHERPA Receives SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications
11. Support the DOAJ Membership Program
12. University Counsels Urged to Support “Know Your Copy Rights”TM Initiative
13. ARL and CLIR Submit Statement in Support of NEH
14. ARL, ALA, CLIR, and NHA Support LC FY 2008 Funding Request
15. US Senate Conducts Hearing on Campus Emergency Notification Systems
16. New Congressional Focus on P2P File Sharing
17. Crit Stuart, RTL Program Director, Arrives at ARL
19. Research Library Leadership Fellows Meet at North Carolina State University
20. ARL Diversity Initiatives to Host Reception during ALA Annual in DC, June 22, 2007
21. ARL Diversity Initiatives Create Group for ARL Librarians in Facebook
22. ARL Statistical Surveys Update
23. LibQUAL+® Events at ALA Annual in DC, June 24–26, 2007
ARL President Sherrie Schmidt, University Librarian, Arizona State University, will convene the 150th ARL Membership Meeting in St. Louis at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel, May 23–25, 2007. The program theme is “Libraries and the Research Process: Exploring How to Demonstrate Returns on Investment.” The ARL Business Meeting will be held Thursday, May 24, 8:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m. On May 1, the ARL office mailed all member representatives a folder containing materials for the meeting. An overview and schedule are available on the ARL Web site at http://www.arl.org/events/currentmm/.
On May 17 and June 16, ACRL and ARL, through the Institute on Scholarly Communication, along with SPARC, are sponsoring a special joint webcast on author rights. Julia Blixrud, Assistant Director for Public Programs of SPARC, and Trisha Davis, Rights Management Coordinator of Ohio State University Libraries, will discuss ways authors can amend publisher copyright transfer agreements to keep key rights to journal articles. This webcast will provide librarians with the basic information needed to educate faculty on campus before they transfer ownership of their intellectual output and help them understand the consequences and options. Increase your visibility on campus, your influence on the higher education and research environment, and become a respected local authority on this important scholarly communication issue.
Registration will open on May 21 for the June 16 broadcast. Further information is available at http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlproftools/authorrights.htm
On July 18, the third class of the ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication will meet in Washington, DC, to work on developing customized plans for their campus outreach programs. Three new institute faculty in training will be joining the group: institute alumni Theresa Fishel (Macalester College), Kevin Smith (Duke University), and Joy Kirchner (University of British Columbia) will leave the institute prepared to lead future institute events.
Two popular tools created for the Institute on Scholarly Communication are now publicly available for use under a Creative Commons share-alike license. The outreach environmental scan instrument and Lee Van Orsdel’s Opportunity Assessment Instrument can be obtained from the new Web page of Freely Available Institute Resources (FAIR) at http://www.arl.org/sc/institute/instres.shtml.
Following in the footsteps of the recently redesigned ARL and SPARC Web sites, the Information Access Alliance (IAA) has updated its Web site. The site now features more information about the IAA, a resource guide, and up-to-date FAQs. Visit the site at http://www.informationaccess.org/.
The American Philological Association and the Archeological Institute of America have released the report of a joint Task Force on Electronic Publications. Their report lays out a series of leadership activities the societies can undertake to offer added value in the landscape of digital resources to advance research in the classics.
The report is grounded in existing models but presents creative thinking about the changing practices of scholarly communication and the opportunities for scholarly societies to add value and advance scholarship. The report includes a statement supportive of open access, but mainly focuses on an assemblage of new programs and projects the societies can initiate to advance scholarship in the digital age. Proposals include new discovery tools, digital monographs, a peer review program for non-traditional publications, engagement with mass digitization of disciplinary resources, and providing public access to key texts via digitization from microfiche, among others.
The report is available at http://www.apaclassics.org/Publications/e-publishing.html.
The annual Periodicals Price Survey published by Library Journal (LJ) is now freely available from the LJ Web site and is especially deserving of an all-staff readership in research libraries. As usual, the real interest comes from the broad analysis of the publishing scene that accompanies the latest additions to the pricing time series. The authors Van Orsdel and Born concentrate their commentary on open access, presenting a pithy summary that is just plain fun to read. The article is accessible at http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6431958.html.
The Council on Library and Information Resources has released a new study of institutional repository development in the US, “Census of Institutional Repositories in the United States MIRACLE Project Research Findings.” In accordance with earlier studies, the authors found that repositories are more common in research and doctoral institutions; are predominantly utilizing the D-Space software; usually have well-developed policies; and currently hold modest amounts of content dominated by theses and dissertations, technical reports, and to a lesser extent author postprints and preprints. Preservation planning continues to be quite limited. The study is available at http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub140abst.html.
Loughborough University has released a new analysis of publisher pricing trends from 2000 to 2006. The report by Sonya White and Claire Creaser studies the major commercial publishers and several not-for-profit publishers with substantial journal collections and looks at pricing, price inflation, cost per impact factor, etc. The report was commissioned by Oxford University Press (which appears quite favorably in the comparisons generally) and is available at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/lisu/pages/publications/oup2.html.
Recent reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) highlight growing recognition of the need for public access to taxpayer-funded research. Both the CDC “Professional Judgment for Fiscal Year 2008” and a workshop report from the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information indicate clearly the importance to each agency of having agency-funded research made openly available. See http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/Advisory07-0503.html.
The SHERPA partnership is the recipient of the Second SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications. The award recognizes SHERPA’s advocacy for the adoption of institutional repositories and their development of a suite of tools in support of open access, including OpenDOAR, JULIET, and RoMEO. The SHERPA partnership is a consortium of 26 research-led institutions in the UK and Ireland, all with practical experience of building and populating e-print repositories. See http://www.sparceurope.org/press_release/SHERPA.htm.
Since the launch of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in 2003, the service has grown significantly: as of last month, 2600 journals are listed in the DOAJ, and article-level search service is available for 30% of the journals. The Open Society Institute, the Royal Library of Sweden, SPARC, SPARC Europe, Axiell, and lately EBSCO and CSA have made contributions that have made it possible for Lund University Libraries to make DOAJ the authoritative listing of peer-reviewed scholarly open access journals.
DOAJ is now launching a membership program to create a sustainable financial foundation for the continuing development and operation. The membership program will allow individuals, universities, research centers, libraries, library organizations, library consortia, aggregators, and other organizations to contribute. For further information, see http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=membership.
With encouragement from the National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA), ARL has sent a letter to legal counsel in ARL university institutions urging their support for local Know Your Copy RightsTM initiatives. NACUA is the premier organization in the field of higher education law and a primary source of information on legal developments facing colleges and universities. ARL has consulted with NACUA staff and key NACUA members in the development of the Know Your Copy RightsTM initiative. One recent outcome of that consultation was encouragement to ARL to send such a letter to campus counsel to secure their awareness of and support for the initiative.
ARL’s letter to campus counsel was from attorney and NACUA member Peggy Hoon, a well-regarded copyright specialist known from her work at North Carolina State University and as ARL Visiting Scholar for Campus Copyright and Intellectual Property. The letter urged counsel to work with their libraries and other campus leadership to reframe campus discussion of copyright by providing a positive message focused on uses and users in higher education, a message free of the biases often reflected in materials made available by commercial interests. Examples of the actions counsel were urged to consider taking are:
Work with the Office of the Provost to designate copyright education as a strategic priority.
Develop and implement institutional copyright policies that encourage the responsible exercise of fair use and other exemptions in the copyright law that are available to academic users.
Develop and provide appropriate copyright information, training resources, and tools to the campus community.
Designate and support campus copyright trainers.
The letter called attention to the Know Your Copy RightsTM Web site as a source for campus training material and, as an example, enclosed a copy of the recently issued brochure aimed at faculty and teaching assistants about when and how they can legally use copyrighted works in their teaching, often without requesting permission or paying fees.
Information about the initiative was initially sent to ARL member representatives on February 12 via an e-mail from Duane Webster; sample brochures were mailed to ARL libraries that week. For more information on ARL’s Know Your Copy RightsTM Initiative, see http://www.knowyourcopyrights.org/.
ARL and the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) submitted a letter to the US House and Senate in support of the FY 2008 budget request for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The letter requested an increase of $36 million above the Administration request to $177 million in the FY 2008. The letter noted that, “an increase would, in part, permit additional support for the Preservation and Access Division whose work is critical to preserving our American heritage; for the We the People initiative and for the Digital Humanities Start-up Grants, which thoughtfully extend the scope of NEH to the increasingly important digital environment.” See http://www.arl.org/pp/fedfund/Ntl_Endowmnt_Humanities.shtml.
ARL, ALA, CLIR, and NHA submitted a letter in support of the Library of Congress’s FY 2008 funding request. The letter noted that, “funding for Library Services within the Library of Congress is essential to ensuring continued development of and broad public access to the National Library’s vast collections. Users include librarians, scholars, educators, students, parents, and Americans from all walks of life. Congress’s support for the Library’s preservation and access efforts, collections, public outreach, and scholarly research programs ensures the American public benefits from our Nation’s cultural resources and the Library’s global resources.” The letter is available via http://www.arl.org/pp/fedfund/Library_of_Congress.shtml.
On March 23, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs conducted a hearing on “Security on America’s College Campuses.” Witnesses included David Ward, President, American Council on Education; W. Roger Webb, President, University of Central Oklahoma; Steven J. Healy, President, International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, Director of Public Safety, Princeton University; Russ Federman, Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, Department of Student Health, University of Virginia; and Irwin Redlener, MD, Director, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Associate Dean for Public Health Preparedness, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.
The hearing explored a number of questions including, “Are America’s colleges and universities doing enough to maintain security? What methods and technologies does experience tell us have been most effective in keeping college communities safe? How can campuses be more alert to the needs of emotionally troubled students and the dangers they may pose? Are there federal laws or programs that should be changed to help America’s colleges and universities maintain better security on their campuses?” For more information, see http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=438.
Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Obama (D-IL) introduced S. 1228, the Campus Law Enforcement Emergency Response Act of 2007, on April 26. The bill would amend the Higher Education Act and seeks to improve security at colleges and universities. Provisions in the legislation “would ensure that institutions of higher education meet baseline preparedness and testing requirements for law enforcement emergencies.”
The US Congress has a renewed focus on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing on college and university campuses. Following a March hearing by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, five Representatives from the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Education and Labor wrote to presidents of 19 universities concerning the institutions’ policies on file sharing of copyrighted works. The Representatives asked the institutions to complete a survey, “Survey of University Network and Data Integrity Practices,” relating to education efforts the campuses undertake, enforcement efforts, technological measures employed to combat “misuse” of the institution’s network, and alternative services used by the universities for accessing copyrighted works. For more information, see http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/03/download/.
Crit Stuart arrived at ARL on May 14 as Program Director for Research, Teaching, and Learning (RTL). From a distinguished career at the Georgia Tech Library and Information Center, Crit has emerged as a senior leader in transforming the library into true learning spaces. He was previously Senior Associate Director for Public Services for the Library and Information Center, where he excelled in establishing logical, new, campus-library relationships as well as in facilitating change within the library. Crit will attend the ARL Membership Meeting in St. Louis. He may also be reached at crit@arl.org.
The Spring 2007 CNI Task Force Meeting was held in Phoenix, Arizona, April 16–17. Conference attendees enjoyed a wide-ranging agenda, including a panel discussion on institutional repositories moderated by CNI Executive Director Clifford Lynch, an update on the Open Archives Initiative’s Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) project, and a briefing on trends in information commons by CNI’s Joan Lippincott. Plenary addresses were delivered by Stephen Murray, Columbia Professor of Art History and Archaeology, and by Marc Smith, Research Sociologist with the Community Technologies Group at Microsoft Research. Presentation materials are being added to the meeting Web site and podcast interviews with selected presenters are forthcoming at http://www.cni.org/tfms/2007a.spring.
Planning is underway for the Fall 2007 CNI Task Force Meeting, which will be held in Washington, DC, December 10–11. During the meeting the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will present its 2007 Awards for Technology Collaboration; more information on the awards is available at http://matc.mellon.org/. CNI will co-sponsor the Third International Digital Curation Conference, “Curating Our Digital Scientific Heritage: A Global Collaborative Challenge,” which takes place December 12–13, 2007, in Washington, DC, following the Task Force Meeting. See http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2007.
The 23 Fellows selected to participate in ARL’s Research Library Leadership Fellows (RLLF) program—which aims to develop future senior-level leaders of large research libraries—met for the first time as a group in April. The first institute of the RLLF 2007–08 program was hosted by Susan Nutter and staff at North Carolina State University (NCSU), April 21–26, 2007. The Fellows learned about NCSU and its partners in the Triangle Research Libraries Network. The agenda also included time for conversations with ARL directors; visits with provosts and a former chancellor; and presentations on Bibliotheca Alexandrina by Craig Dykers, Architect, Snøhetta, and on design by Marvin Malecha, Professor and Dean, NCSU College of Design. Other topics covered in this institute were scholarly communication, staffing, and resource discovery.
The Fellows will be attending the ARL Membership Meeting in St. Louis, where ARL directors are encouraged to make their acquaintance. The second RLLF institute will be hosted by Nancy Cline and staff at Harvard University in July.
The RLLF is being sponsored by six ARL member libraries: University of California, Berkeley and the California Digital Library; Harvard University; University of Minnesota; North Carolina State University; Pennsylvania State University; and the University of Toronto. For further information, contact one of the sponsoring directors, Duane Webster duane@arl.org, or Julia Blixrud jblix@arl.org.
The ARL Diversity Initiatives will host its annual reception on Friday, June 22, 2007, 5:30–8:30 p.m., at the ARL office, 21 Dupont Circle NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC. For more information, contact Jerome Offord Jr., Director of ARL Diversity Initiatives jerome@arl.org.
The ARL Diversity Initiatives have joined the social networking scene by creating a group for ARL librarians in Facebook. The group provides an online networking community for ARL librarians and a recruiting opportunity for undergraduates who are heavily involved in social networks. ARL is also promoting the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce via Facebook’s flyer program by posting 175,000 ads that read “$10,000 for Graduate School.” The flyer includes information about the initiative and a photo of the current class of Diversity Scholars. The campaign targets the following historically black colleges and universities: Howard University, Florida A&M University, Morehouse College, Lincoln University of Missouri, North Carolina A&T University, Hampton University, Prairie View A&M University, and University of Maryland Eastern Shore. To see more details and to join the group, visit http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=682700187&k=c2896239d6.
The status of the ARL annual surveys is:
ARL Annual Salary Survey 2006–07: all surveys returned and prepublication tables are available at http://www.arl.org/stats/annualsurveys/salary/sal0607.shtml. Final printed publication is in production.
ARL Statistics, ARL Academic Health Sciences Statistics, ARL Academic Law Statistics, 2005–06: all data collected. Preliminary tables issued on May 8.
ARL Supplementary Statistics and ARL Preservation Statistics, 2005–06: data collection is underway. A meeting of the ARL Survey Coordinators and SPEC Liaisons is scheduled to take place on June 22, 2007, 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Marriott at Metro Center, Montreal Room, Washington, DC. The discussion will focus on upcoming changes to the ARL Statistics and on issues related to the measurement of electronic resources.
For information regarding the annual data-collection activities, contact Martha Kyrillidou, martha@arl.org.
June 24, 2007
8:00 a.m.–12:00 noon
Come listen to A. “Parsu” Parasuraman speak about measuring both in-person and online library service quality. Parsu worked with Valarie Zeithaml and Leonard L. Berry to develop SERVQUAL, which provided the foundation upon which libraries built LibQUAL+®. He is currently Professor & Holder of the James W. McLamore Chair, University of Miami, and Editor of the Journal of Service Research. There is no fee for attending this workshop.
June 25, 2007
9:00 a.m.–12:00 noon
This workshop provides both current and prospective LibQUAL+® participants with information on the project’s development and origins, as well as practical information on the process of implementing the survey at your library. There is no fee for attending this workshop.
June 25, 2007
1:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
LibQUAL+® team members will walk participants through their survey results. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions related to the results, provide feedback on their survey experience, learn from other participants, and discuss how to put LibQUAL+® results into action. This workshop is for any current or past LibQUAL+® participants. There is no fee for attending this workshop.
June 26, 2007
8:30 a.m.–12:00 noon
The administration of a user survey is a significant investment for any library and it raises expectations among users and staff. Many aspects of the LibQUAL+® survey administration process have been streamlined and there is rapid access to data and results. But many libraries indicate that they are not well-prepared to work effectively with and act upon the results, once received. This workshop will enable staff responsible for administering the LibQUAL+® survey to develop work plans that they can apply in their libraries in order to: organize their colleagues and committees to work with LibQUAL+®, perform some simple analyses of the results data, present the results effectively to various stakeholders, utilize data to target areas for improvement, and develop a process of continuous assessment. Workshop Fee: $80 per person.
For more information on these events, see http://www.libqual.org/Events/index.cfm.
The April issue of the ARL Bimonthly Report features a summary of the report by the ACLS Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences, “Our Cultural Commonwealth.” The issue also includes reports on the Uncovering New Chicago Archives Project and the future of preservation in ARL libraries. Available online at http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br251.shtml.
Martha Kyrillidou and Mark Young, comps. and eds. • 2007 • ISBN 978-1-59407-766-1 • 57 pp.
This is the latest compilation of data on the levels of preservation efforts in ARL member libraries throughout North America. To download a PDF of the publication, please visit http://www.arl.org/stats/annualsurveys/pres/.
The ARL Diversity Initiatives created synergy around careers in research libraries during the Third Annual Leadership Institute in Seattle, Washington, in January 2007. To build on that momentum, ARL has created Synergy: News from ARL Diversity Initiatives. In the inaugural issue, four participants reflect on their experiences during the Leadership Institute. Available online at http://www.arl.org/news/synergy/.
Florida: Judith Russell, former Superintendent of Documents at the US Government Printing Office was named Dean of University Libraries, effective May 1, 2007.
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Paula Kaufman returned from her position as Interim Chief Information Officer to University Librarian, effective May 15, 2007.
New Mexico: Martha A. Bedard, Associate Dean for Information and Collection Services at Texas A&M University Libraries, was appointed Dean of University Libraries, effective August 1, 2007.
Ohio: Jan Maxwell, Assistant Dean for Collection Development, was named acting Dean of Libraries at Ohio University, effective mid-May 2007.
South Carolina: Paul Willis, Dean of Libraries, announced his retirement, effective June 30, 2007.
Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR): Amy Friedlander, formerly Senior Program Manager at Shinkuro Inc., was appointed Director of Programs, effective April 30, 2007.
Edward “Ned” Barrett Stanford, University Librarian at the University of Minnesota for 20 years, died on April 13, 2007, in Hayward, California. He was born in Moorhead, Minnesota, March 31, 1910, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932 with a degree in biography and comparative literature. Stanford received his library education from the University of Illinois and earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. In 1946, he was appointed Assistant University Librarian at the University of Minnesota. He was appointed Acting University Librarian in 1951 and, in 1952, was appointed University Librarian. His work in establishing special collections may be his longest lasting legacy to scholarship. In 1971, Stanford resigned to accept an appointment to the University of Minnesota Library School faculty, where he taught until 1977. During his retirement, Stanford contributed his energy and leadership to a number of community services and as a volunteer in the Children’s Literature Research Collections.
DEW 5/16/07 p.m.
Duane Webster
Executive Director
Association of Research Libraries
21 Dupont Circle
Washington, DC 20036
v: (202) 296-2296
fax: (202) 872-0884
cell: (202) 251-4431
e-mail: duane@arl.org