|
Welcome
Summer is upon us!
Spring 2013 was busy and productive, with the Spring Membership Meeting in Chicago; and, a very successful Joint Meeting of the Resource Sharing/Document Delivery (RSDD) and Collection Development (CD) Committees in Austin, Texas. These were followed by the Big Data Summit and Great Plains Network Annual Meeting, held in Kansas City in late May.
So… what does the summer hold? The GWLA HQ will be moving to new facilities in June, followed by the American Library Association Annual Conference.
Then–VACATIONS! We’ll be hitting the beach, camping in the mountains, and relaxing at the lakeside cottage. Can you guess which GWLA staff member is going on which vacation?
Read on, and enjoy the summer!
All best,
Joni M. Blake, Ph.D.
Executive Director
In this issue:
Western Waters Digital Library
There are lots of exciting things going on at the Western Waters Digital Library. A number of significant new collections have been added, and the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Marriott Library is working on maps to showcase institutional partners and highlight selected places covered by the Western Waters Digital Library. A preview of the maps is available online. Data is still being added to the maps, but there is a great deal to currently explore.
Western Waters Digital Library has developed a visual concept to guide an upcoming visual redesign of the site, with work starting on the project currently planned for late summer.
New collections include:
- University of Houston Digital Library, with their collection of 1915 Galveston Hurricane photographs.
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s institutional repository OpenSIUC, with water-related collections from the Fisheries and Illinois Aquaculture Center, the Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education, and more.
- Southern Methodist University Digital Collections provides the Edward C. Fritz papers collection detailing the debate over the Trinity River Project in the 1970s.
- Weber State University provides their unique scrapbooks from the Utah Construction Company documenting the construction of the Hoover Dam.
- In addition, we are now harvesting water-related items from Utah State University’s Digital Commons, which includes Watershed Sciences faculty publications and theses and dissertations, and Utah Water Research Laboratory papers and reports.
A Western Waters search widget is available for incorporation into web pages or templates. The widget is available here, at the bottom of the page. If a different size is needed, contact Anna Neatrour (anna.neatrour@utah.edu). In addition, an updated LibGuide is available.
To keep up on developments, follow Western Waters on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/WesternWatersDigitalLibrary).
University of Southern California (USC) Libraries Collaborate to Create Flash Plays
The USC Libraries are collaborating with USC School of Dramatic Arts professor Oliver Mayer to showcase the essential role of libraries in discovery and the creative arts through an upcoming series of flash plays.
The original plays—short, one-act pieces written by Dramatic Arts students, faculty, and alumni—will appear spontaneously across campus beginning this spring and continuing throughout the fall 2013 semester.
“Through immediate, meaningful pieces of dramatic art, this project will underscore the libraries’ contribution to writing, performance, and all modes of creativity on campus,” said Catherine Quinlan, Dean of the USC Libraries. “One of the most rewarding kinds of discovery that our libraries make possible is discovery through creativity, and I know these plays will highlight that process in unexpected and entertaining ways for our community.”
The flash plays join several other library initiatives that unite disciplines and encourage inventive use of the libraries in artistic endeavors. The USC Libraries Wonderland Award, now in its 9th year, recently awarded five prizes to its second largest set of entrants ever. In the Doheny Library lobby, an exhibition of a giant origami fractal inspired and informed by library collections and built by 300 USC community members, continues through commencement.
“As I’ve worked with Dean Quinlan and engaged more and more with the libraries, it’s become obvious that our libraries are ideal partners for a project like this,” said Oliver Mayer, professor of dramatic arts. “Our surprising, mini performances will occur in public areas on campus. Sometimes they’ll include a celebrity actor, or a special guest writer who will compose the plays. The idea is to have fun while spreading the word about the incredible resources that the USC Libraries bring to our artists and scholars. And this is only the beginning.”
Jonathan Munoz-Proulx, a graduate of the USC School of Dramatic Arts, will direct the first flash play in the series. The performance, at a specific time and location to be announced through Twitter (@USCLibraries) and other social media, will take place near Doheny Memorial Library during the week of April 22.
View original article.
Introducing Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene
The new journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene began accepting submissions on May 15, 2013. The journal is a non-profit venture with support of collaborators BioOne, Dartmouth, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington.
What exactly is the Anthropocene? Take 90 seconds to watch this amazing video for an introduction.
Author guidelines, subject domain scopes, frequently asked questions, and more are available on the Elementa website.
Big Data Summit Held in Kansas City
On May 29 and 30, The University of Kansas Libraries in collaboration with two partners, the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and the Great Plains Network (GPN) hosted a Big Data Management Summit. The summit was held with the support of an IMLS National Leadership Grant. The grant seeks to discover and plan shared opportunities for the institutional members both GWLA and GPN, through a partnership to leverage their collective resources, skills, and services to meet the challenges of computationally enhanced research.
The Summit featured a keynote address by Bill Michener of DataONE, and a panel discussion by representatives of GWLA and GPN members regarding initiatives at their institutions. An Advisory Council was also convened to develop a common vision and plan for success.
Leading up to the Summit, an extensive environmental scan was performed to identify crucial areas to be considered and addressed in the second and third phases of the grant. Based on the findings of the scan those areas include:
- Emerging national policies and practices with the accompanying need to develop policy and practice at the institutional level;
- The complexity of research data and the equally complex challenges we seek to address;
- The heterogeneous approach to institutional and disciplinary repositories and associated approaches to data archiving and/or lifecycle management;
- Researchers’ attitudes toward stewardship and data sharing;
- The need to examine new roles for our institutions and to build new communities of service and practice.
The full Environmental Scan results are available online. Also, see the group in action in our Facebook photo album!
GWLA-Relais D2D Update
As Relais puts the finishing touches on a production system, here is a summary of what is happening behind the scenes:
- The production system is ready except for issues with connections to one or two institutions. Our Relais implementation coordinator is in contact with those institutions.
- Relais is working with Atlas Systems to ensure that the necessary ILLiad add-ons are fully functional in our system. Part of that process is complete. Once we have confirmation that all is well, the GWLA office will coordinate the purchase of the add-ons for the consortium as a whole.
- Training will begin once the production system is complete and the ILLiad add-ons are deployed. Training will consist of a series of webinars presented by Relais. It is possible that Relais, in conjunction with the GWLA office may recruit an institution or two to help provide “live” screen shots of the system in action. Stay tuned!
- The training sessions will be recorded so that staff who cannot attend a webinar may view them at a later time.
- Testing will begin after the training is underway. Relais will provide a testing “script” for each institution to work through. This will ensure that all components at each site are functioning properly.
With the anticipation of training and testing mode beginning soon, we should still easily make our projected go-live of August 1!
Joint RSDD/CD Meeting a Success
The Resource Sharing and Document Delivery, and Collection Development Committees held their joint meeting May 6-8, 2013. The meeting was held in Austin at the Perry-Castañeda Library on the campus of the University of Texas.
After a welcome by Fred Heath, Vice Provost and Director, UT libraries, the keynote address was given by Georgia Harper, Scholarly Communications Advisor, UT Libraries. Her talk was entitled: U.S. Copyright Law: How it Helps & Hinders the Work of Libraries in the Digital Age.
Harper’s talk focused on where libraries get the rights to do what we do. She stated that we provide a constellation of services, and rely on a variety of sources of authority to do so. These sources of authority are different for digital materials from the sources we rely on for analog works. She provided an overview of what happens to the services that we provide given this legal backdrop, focussing in particular on what happens to an originally analog service, ILL, in the digital world of ebooks.
Harper emphasized that we need to prepare ourselves for a role in the libraries have to play in conversation that is beginning to take place with the announcement that Congress will undertake a complete overhaul of the Copyright Act. The pace of change has been phenomenal in the 37 years since the Act was last comprehensively revised in 1976.
The presentation included an exploration recent judgements (Georgia State, Hathi Trust; Kirtsaeng, and others) which have set the tone for the conversations which will take place. Some have been clear vindications of current practices, while others have been ambiguous. A lively discussion followed and set a clear tone for the remainder of the meeting.
A photo album from the Joint Meeting is available on Facebook.
|