The General Data Protection Regulation: What Does It Mean for Libraries Worldwide?

Krista L. Cox, Director of Public Policy Initiatives, Association of Research Libraries and Anne T. Gilliland, Scholarly Communications Officer, University Libraries, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This seven-page brief on the substance of the European Union’s binding legislation explains the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)  and its long-term implications for libraries in the U.S. as well as in Europe. The End Notes may be of particular value in bringing the reader up to speed on the topic.

One key quote is: The GDPR applies even when EU citizens are living or visiting outside of Europe. The law’s goals include full accountability, consistency, and transparency from the organizations that collect and use personal data, and complete understanding and meaningful consent from the subjects whose data is being used...In the wake of such incidents as the Cambridge Analytica revelations, libraries, as privacy champions, should welcome the GDPR’s requirements.

The Washington Post Puts A Price on Data Privacy in its response to GDPR response -- and tests requirements

Lucia Moses, Digiday, May 30

Across the spectrum of publishers, how best to effectively and efficiently accommodate the requirements of GDPR presents challenges. The Washington Post has taken the novel approach of establishing a premium subscription option ($90 annual) for those in the European Commission; the option allows access “in exchange for no ads -- and the privilege of not having their data tracked”.  The question becomes whether the option is acceptable to the marketplace or even legal in the context of the legislation.

Setting the Table: Responsible Use of Student Data in Higher Education

Martin Kurzweil and Mitchell Stevens, May/June 2018, EDUCAUSE Review

Digital information systems infuse the modern institutional gathering and handling of student data as such data shapes the educational experience of students. What is necessary at this point is a discussion of how best to craft institutional policies regarding the ethical use of student data. This article notes four principles of responsible use.  Those four principles include shared understanding, transparency, informed improvement, and open futures.

An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing: Version 0.5 (Draft for Comment)

Jason Boczar, Charlotte Roh, Melanie Schlosser, Nina Collins, Rebel Cummings-Sauls

This document (not intended to become or remain static in the short-term) was born of concerns by those working in the context of publishing under the auspices of an academic library that their publishing practices demonstrate library ethical values. The document addresses five topics (publishing practice, accessibility, diversity, privacy and analytics, academic and intellectual freedom), with each section including an introduction, a sense of scope, a review of existing resources, recommendations and in some instances an indication of additional resources that should be developed.

FAIR Principles for Library, Archive and Museum Collections: A proposal for standards for re-usable collections

Lukas Koster, Saskia Woutersen-Windhouwer (both of the University of Amsterdam Library), May 4, 2018, Code4Lib Journal

This article proposes a set of relatively minor modifications to the FAIR Principles for scholarly output to enable the use of those Principles by the LAM (Library, Archive, Museum) community. Note that the acronym, FAIR, stands for findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. The authors here focus on application of those Principles at the collection level as would be necessary for those working in the LAM community.

Introducing a New Standard for the Citation of Research Data

Jennifer McLennan, May 8, 2018, Force11 Web Blog

Working with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the California Digital Library (CDL), The Identifiers Expert Group of the Force11 Data Citation Implementation Pilot (DCIP) have established interoperability of compact identifiers and developed a global approach for the formal citation of research data in the life sciences.

The paper in which their solution is outlined, Uniform resolution of compact identifiers for biomedical data. Sci. Data. 5:180029 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2018.29 (2018) is available here.

W3C Issues Improved Accessibility Guidance for Websites and Applications

“WCAG 2.1 provides recommendations for making web content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, visual disabilities. The guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Following these guidelines also makes your web content more usable to all users in a variety of situations.”  Publication as a W3C Recommendation finalizes the development process and indicates that the W3C considers the updated guidelines ready for implementation on web content.  The Working Group has taken care to maintain backwards compatibility of WCAG 2.1 with WCAG 2.0. All the criteria from WCAG 2.0 are included in WCAG 2.1, so web sites that conform to WCAG 2.1 will also conform to WCAG 2.0.   In addition, the W3C has recently redesigned the web pages for the Web Accessibility Initiative, available at https://www.w3.org/WAI/.

ISO/IEC 23000-18:2018 Information technology -- Multimedia application formats (MPEG-A) -- Part 18: Media linking application format

“This document specifies a data structure called "bridget". A bridget is a link between a "source" content and a "destination" content. The bridget contains information on the source content and on the destination content, on the link between the two and on how the information contained in the bridget is to be presented to users consuming the source content in order to enable them to make considerate decisions about whether to consume the destination content.” (Technical Committee: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29)
 

JATS4Reuse Clinical Trials Version 1.0 Published

"This recommendation aims to provide clear guidance on tagging Clinical Trial information using JATS XML for machine readability and reuse. This recommendation only applies to clinical trials the paper is reporting on. Any other clinical trial references that are present should remain as URL links in the text and should not be converted to references/citations or a <related-object>."