Org ID: a recap and a hint of things to come

John Chodacki, August 2, 2018, The ORCID Blog

Over the course of the past two years, a cross-section of the stakeholder community has investigated the need for a "community-led, organizational identifier registry".  According to John Chodacki, Director of the University of California Curation Center, California Digital Library, the time spent has led to the formulation of a Registry Initiative plan. As the blog entry notes, "The initiative’s leadership group has already secured start-up resourcing and is getting ready to announce the launch plan---more details coming soon." 

RA21 Position Statement on Access Brokers

Press Release, August 23, R

This statement from the Resource Access for the 21st Century (RA21) organization provides a lightweight understanding of how such tools as Kopernio from Clarivate or Anywhere Access from Digital Science relate to the on-going activities of RA21. Whereas RA21 represents a long-term effort at minimizing barriers to access for users operating from off-campus locations, these "access broker" tools more immediately resolve the users' issues of reaching legitimately licensed materials. There is concern that these tools may compromise individual users' privacy and enable more extended tracking of behaviors and usage. 

The statement concludes with this quote, "RA21 will reduce the need for Access Broker tools and allow simple access to scholarly resources from anywhere, on any device, at any time, with no pre-configuration or additional software required."

NISO NOTE: RA21 is a joint project of NISO and the International STM Association that is producing a NISO Recommended Practice.

Library Values & Privacy in our National Digital Strategies: Field Guides, Convenings, and Conversations

Michael Zimmer and Bonnie Tijerina, National Leadership Grant for Libraries Award Report, July 2018

This report is the output from a grant awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to The UW-Milwaukee Center for Information Policy Research, in partnership with Data & Society, the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom and the New York Public Library, to “discuss and debate a national roadmap for a digital privacy strategy for libraries”. Common concerns and themes heard from attendees at a series of gatherings were (1) Centralization and Coordination; (2) Communication and Advocacy; (3) Training & Education. Bulleted next steps include (among others) the creation of a repository of privacy-protecting language and model contracts from successful negotiations, ensuring privacy is understood as a core value and advocated for as strongly as intellectual freedom and access to information, and creation of guides or resources to educate and empower specific groups within the library field.

NISO NOTE: The American Library Association and the New York Public Library are NISO members. 

Global tablet sales decline, with only Apple and Huawei Showing Growth

Makena Kelly, The Verge, August 2, 2018

The number of tablets shipped in the second quarter of 2018 continues to show minimal growth. 33 million were shipped worldwide, primarily from Apple and Huawei. According to one spokesperson quoted in the story, "Though consumers and businesses alike have shown interest in the detachable form factor, those operating on tighter budgets have had very few options available to them and hence some have opted for traditional PCs...However, with the launch of the Surface Go, Chrome OS-based, and hopefully a more affordable iPad Pro in the future, the detachable category still has a bright future, provided the performance and software lines up with users’ expectations." The article includes a table showing sales from the top five suppliers of tablet devices, their market share and year-over-year growth. 

International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Publishes Background Paper on Extended Collective Licensing

Karolina Andersdotter, Jean Dryden, Shen Xiaojian, Zhang Ruobing, Liu Yuchu and Hao Jinmin, Sylvie Nérisson, Armin Talke, Benjamin White, Janice Pilch, Kristine Abelsnes and Inga-Lill Nilsson

From the Key Conclusions From the Report, “...countries are actively looking for solutions, in particular as regards the uses of orphan works, education, out of commerce works, or foreign works, among others”. The idea of extended collective licensing (ECL) in this context is that it can serve as a more efficient mechanism for libraries in handling rights management where an original rights holder may not be found or alternatively may not have been able to arrange for a collective management organization to handle collection of fees. This is particular important when a library or cultural heritage institution is considering a mass digitization project. As noted in the report, “An adequate ECL scheme therefore gives users the security to guarantee that they will not be held liable for copyright infringement for not having acquired authorisation from every rights holder in situations where this is necessary.”

Accenture Wins Library of Congress Data Center Contract

Jeff Clabaugh, WTOP, August 1, 2018

Accenture Federal Service will be responsible for migrating "the Library’s current data center to new hosting environments, and enhance the security, reliability and performance of the Library’s data infrastructure." The contractor is one of the ten largest government technology contractors in the Washington DC area; the particular contract is valued at $27.3 million. 

According to the Accenture spokesperson quoted in the news coverage, the work being done “is pivotal in achieving the Library’s strategic goal of deploying state-of-the-industry technology to expand and speed digital access to its vast collection of books and media.” 

NISO NOTE: The Library of Congress is a NISO Voting Member

Annual Reviews announces First Review Journal in the field of Biomedical Data Science

Press Release, TBI Communications, July 2018

Annual Reviews, the nonprofit publisher of scholarly review journals, today announced the publication of the inaugural volume of the Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science, its 50th publication to launch since the company was founded in 1932.

Inaugural Co-Editors Russ B. Altman, winner of the 2018 International Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Outstanding Contribution Award, and Michael Levitt, joint winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the journal’s Editorial Committee have invited recognized leaders to address broad challenges in the discipline. Contributors synthesize and analyze primary research addressing important new technologies for analyzing biomedical data such as deep learning, text mining, network analysis, visualization, privacy policy and technology, sequence analysis, protein-RNA interactions, molecular interaction networks, simulation of cells/tissues, challenges for mass spectrometry, clinical and genomic phenotyping, and cancer therapy resistance.

2018-19 Edition of Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement released

"The Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement identifies formats, or sets of technical characteristics – such as physical books, digital file types, specific editions or specific metadata elements – that encourage preservation and long-term access for creative works. One purpose of the Statement is to provide internal guidance within the Library to help inform acquisitions of collections materials (other than materials received through the Copyright Office). A second purpose is to inform the creative and library communities on best practices for ensuring the preservation of, and long-term access to, the creative output of the nation and the world. The new edition of the statement emphasizes the benefit of electronic delivery of datasets. Datasets are a rapidly expanding content area that bring unique challenges for large-scale file delivery and repository management. The datasets section of the statement now includes a preference for access by public or private online URLs over tangible media such as CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. This more accurately reflects the reality of acquiring and managing digital content in modern workflows."

W3C Workshop on Digital Publication Layout and Presentation (from Manga to Magazines) planned for September 18-19, 2018 in Tokyo, Japan

“This workshop is intended to bring together experts to evaluate the current status and explore future directions of visually-rich long-form digital publications based on Web Technologies (particularly CSS, the formatting language of the Web), encompassing both fixed and dynamic layouts. Such “high-design” publications, with complex or sophisticated layout, may be sequential art (Comics, Manga, Bandes Dessinées, etc.), magazines, picture books, cookbooks, educational materials, etc.” It is intended to “identify mismatches between existing Web technologies and these current practices, helping to inform and guide current standards development work, and potentially to help instigate new work.” The workshop’s webpage includes the meeting’s agenda with links to position papers submitted by the speakers.  A meeting report will be posted after the meeting is complete.