News

“Mrs. Duffee Reading Her Kindle,” © Mike LichtARL will host a Library Assessment Forum at the upcoming American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago, featuring research on the value of e-books in academic libraries conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as part of the LibValue project. The forum will be held on Friday, June 28, 2013, from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. in the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place (Adler 24A-C). The forum is open to all who are interested and no registration is necessary to attend.

image © Bjørn MolstadThe Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) applauds the introduction in the US House of Representatives on May 9, 2013, of H.R. 1892, the Unlocking Technology Act of 2013, by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and Jared Polis (D-CO). The bill guarantees that legitimate uses of digital works and technologies will not run afoul of copyright law, even if they require breaking digital locks. Prompted by the recent uproar over cell phone unlocking, the bill recognizes that issue as a symptom of a much larger problem and would fix that problem permanently.

Dogwood, image © tanakawhoSpeakers’ slides from the ARL Membership Meeting held May 1–3 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, are now on the ARL website. Available slides include:

Center for Research LibrariesThree new members were elected to the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Board of Directors for a three-year term at the CRL Annual Council Meeting on April 19, 2013: Lars Schoultz, the William Rand Kenan Jr. professor of political science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Virginia Steel, University Librarian at University of California, Santa Cruz; and Xuemao Wang, dean and university librarian at University of Cincinnati.

The video of the webcast "LibValue: Comprehensive Approaches to Defining Library Value" presented on May 9, 2013, is now available on ARL's YouTube channel. This webcast provides an overview of methods used to estimate value in academic libraries and describes a study that calculated return on investment at the Syracuse University Library in 2010–2011. The presenter is Bruce Kingma, professor in the School of Information Sciences and Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. Webcast slides (PDF) are also availble for download. 

image © Tom LohdanToday President Obama signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to make government data more accessible to the public. Under the terms of the Executive Order, "Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information," a new Open Data Policy (PDF) released today establishes a framework to help agencies implement the principles of effective information management throughout the data life cycle to promote interoperability and openness. Whether or not particular information can be made public, agencies can apply this framework to all information resources to promote efficiency and produce value.

SPEC surveysARL is seeking proposals for 2014 SPEC survey topics. For 40 years ARL has gathered and disseminated data through the SPEC survey program to assist libraries in the continuous improvement of their management systems. Each year, ARL works with librarians in the US and Canada to develop six surveys of the ARL membership on strategic topics related to research library policies and practices. (Survey authors do not need to work at an ARL member library, but only ARL libraries are surveyed.)

Fragment from Duke's papyrus collection, image © DukeDuke University Libraries is establishing a new unit, Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing (DC3), that will use digital technologies to analyze some of the world's oldest documents and artifacts. Funded by a $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the DC3 will be led by Joshua D. Sosin, associate professor of classical studies and history at Duke, who will also assume a joint appointment within the libraries.

ARL today joined major sponsors Public Library of Science (PLOS), Wellcome Trust, and Google to launch the Accelerating Science Award Program (ASAP), which recognizes the use of scientific research, published through open access, that has led to innovations in any field that benefits society.

Gerald Beasley, image © U AlbertaGerald Beasley, university librarian at Concordia University in Montreal and former ARL RLLF fellow, has been appointed vice-provost and chief librarian at the University of Alberta, effective July 1, 2013, for a five-year term. For details, see the May 1, 2013, news releases from Alberta, "New Chief Librarian Drawn by UAlberta's Leadership Profile," and Concordia, "Concordia University Librarian Heads to UAlberta."