jan06a.indd N e w s f r o m t h e F i e l d Stephanie Orphan SOLINET and partners to evaluate needs of hurricane-aff ected libraries In partnership with libraries, state agencies, and libraries throughout the region, SOLI­ NET will perform a two­month evaluation of the libraries impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and, in February 2006, present a set of recommendations for long­term recovery. Partners in the effort include state libraries and archives in Alabama, Louisiana, Missis­ sippi, and Texas; Amigos Library Services; the Louisiana Library Network; and other state­based consortia serving impacted li­ braries. SOLINET will be coordinating evalu­ ation efforts on behalf of other cultural orga­ nizations to share information and identify opportunities for joint recovery activity. HBCU Library Alliance launches redesigned Web site The HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Library Alliance has redesigned its Web site. The comprehensive site en­ compasses all of the libraries in the HBCU community and connects HBCU and other librarians with the orientation, goals, and programs of the HBCU Library Alliance. Fea­ tures of the redesigned site included links to the Web sites of all HBCU libraries; informa­ tion about the Leadership Program; informa­ tion on the Digital Project, a joint venture with Cornell University Library, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to lay the foundation for a future collaborative HBCU digital library; and the HBCU Library Alliance blog. Visit the new site at www. hbculibraries.org. EBSCO named one of EContent magazine’s “Companies that Matter Most” EBSCO Information Services has been rec­ ognized in the fifth annual EContent 100, EContent magazine’s list of the companies that matter most in the digital content in­ dustry. The company has appeared in the EContent 100 annually since the inaugural list was published in 2001. EBSCO provides services for the access and management of electronic journals, databases and packages, as well as traditional print subscriptions. EBSCO was listed in the “fee­based info ser­ vices” category, along with such companies as Factiva, ProQuest Information and Learn­ ing, RLG, Springer Science+Business Media, Swets Information Services, and the Thom­ son Corporation. Thomson Scientifi c off ers citation index of repository content Thomson Scientific has launched Web Cita­ tion Index, a multidisciplinary citation in­ dex of scholarly content from institutional and subject­based repositories. The index provides users with citation­based access to preprints, technical reports, dissertations proceedings, and other grey literature. Web Citation Index adds cited reference search­ ing to Web­based documents, allowing re­ searchers to navigate forward, backward, and through the literature to discover related research. Web Citation Index was developed through a collaborative program between Thomson Scientific, NEC Laboratories Amer­ ica, and seven major institutions. Thomson Scientific content editors select only those Web repositories deemed scholarly to en­ sure that the index delivers only high­qual­ ity, relevant content. Colorado State assists LSU during Katrina recovery Colorado State University (CSU) has begun sharing its article delivery service, RapidILL, with Louisiana State University (LSU) in Ba­ ton Rouge to help it meet increased demand following Hurricane Katrina. LSU opened its doors to students and faculty from Tulane University, the University of New Orleans, and Xavier University after the institutions were shut down due to damage caused by the storm. This has made it challenging for the library to supply materials needed to meet the research and academic requirements of its new students and faculty. Through CSU’s RapidILL, member university libraries users can receive articles from the holdings of re­ search libraries around the country, directly on their computer. LSU was brought into the Academic and Research Library Pod at C&RL News January 2006 6 http:hbculibraries.org “borrower only” status, giving the institution access to materials free of charge from 19 member institutions. The RapidILL article delivery system was developed at CSU in re­ sponse to campus document delivery needs following a 1997 fl ood. Amnesty International USA Archive to be housed at Columbia Columbia University’s Center for Hu­ man Rights Documentation and Research (CHRDR) has been selected as the deposi­ tory institution for the Amnesty Interna­ tional USA (AIUSA) Archive. The archive is a comprehensive collection of documents representing 40 years of the organization’s research, reporting, and activism in support of human rights. It includes mission reports, case file, oral histories, photographs, videos, DVDs, banners, and other materials. CHRDR archives will be administered by Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The AIUSA archives are currently being transferred from Norlin Library at the Univer­ sity of Colorado­Boulder, where they have been maintained since 1994 as part of a com­ prehensive human rights collection, Human Rights Initiative, which is being discontinued. Columbia was selected for its academic focus on international human rights, as well as its libraries strong programs in preservation, digital library development, and electronic publishing. Papers of Ella T. Grasso, Connecticut’s first woman governor, open to public at Mt. Holyoke The Ella T. Grasso papers, housed at the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Spe­ cial Collections, have been processed and are now open to the public. Grasso, an alumnnus of Mt. Holyoke, was the fi rst woman governor of Connecticut and the first woman governor elected in her own right (1974). She was reelected in 1978 but resigned from office in 1980 due to illness. Grasso also served in the U.S. House of Rep­ resentatives from 1970 to 1974; the bulk of the documents in the collection date from those years. The collection provides primary sources on veteran affairs, the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon’s impeachment, family planning and birth control, and edu­ cation legislation. ACRL e-Learning opportunities are just a click away ACRL’s WebCT­based e­Learning semi­ nars were developed to provide academic and research librarians with affordable, flexible professional development op­ portunities. Take advantage of these unique offer­ ings. Registration for the three seminars described below opens this month. All Users Are Local: Bringing the Library Next Door to the Campus Worldwide (January 30-February 18) Find out how to design a plan for library support of distance education at your institution. By the end of the seminar, participants will be able to complete an institutional self­assessment on cur­ rent involvement and future plans for distance education. Registration opens January 3. Current Copyright Issues Facing Ac a d e m i c L i b ra r i a n s ( Fe b r u a r y 6-28) Explore the major copyright issues fac­ ing academic librarians today, including topics such as electronic reserves, inter­ library loan, using media in courseware, and campus copyright policies.Registra­ tion open January 9. A s s e s s i n g S t u d e n t L e a r n i n g Outcomes (February 13-March 4) Gain the skills you need to create as­ sessment tools to measure student information literacy. After completing the course, academic librarians will be prepared to work with faculty to design, implement, and evaluate tools for assessing student learning outcomes. Registration opens January 16. For more infor mation, including a complete list of ACRL e­Learning op­ portunities, registration fees, and links to online registration forms, visit www. acrl/org/e­learning. ACRL and ALA members receive a registration discount. January 2006 7 C&RL News Springer partners with the Association for Educational Communications and Technology The Association for Educational Communi­ cations and Technology (AECT) and Spring­ er have announced a new partnership to publish two journals in the field of educa­ tion. As of 2006, Springer has taken on the role of publisher and exclusive distributor of Educational Technology Research and De­ velopment and Tech Trends. The number of issues of Educational Technology Research and Development will increase from four to six per year. Info lit colloquium creates Alexandria Proclamation As a follow up to the first International In­ formation Literacy Meeting of Experts held in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 2003, a High Level Colloquium on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning was held at the Bib­ liotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt on November 6­9, 2005. Building on the 2003 report, “The Prague Declaration: To­ wards an Information Literate Society,” 30 participants from 17 countries representing 6 major geographic regions were invited to assess the progress and opportunities for implementation of the report’s recommen­ dations. One result of the meeting was “The Alex­ andria Proclamation on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning.” The document is available on the IFLA Web site at www.ifl a. org/III/wsis/BeaconInfSoc.html. The full report on the Alexandria colloquium, with a set of detailed recommendations, will be available in February. Swets completes SUSHI testing Working as part of the Standardized Us­ age Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI), Swets Information Services has successfully completed integration tests of its Electronic Resource Management statistics with Inno­ vative Interfaces and Ex Libris. The statis­ tics transferred in these tests were all com­ pliant with the internationally recognized COUNTER format. SUSHI is an initiative created by the National Information Stan­ dards Organization that aims to solve the challenge of how librarians can track usage of online content. Its goal is to provide a protocol that will enable libraries to retrieve and analyze statistics from multiple content providers in a standard data container. Penn State Libraries reach out to rugby teams As part of Penn State Rugby’s Academic Sup­ port Program, rugby players at the univer­ sity were each recently connected with his or her own resource librarian. The support program seeks to access and make the best use of resources on campus for the women’s and men’s rugby teams, which works well with the libraries goal to “enhance the user’s experience with the Libraries by becoming a more user­centered and responsive orga­ nization.” Innovative launches new OPAC platform Innovative Interfaces is launching a new online public access platform, WebPAC Pro, which is being offered as an option to all Millennium customers free of charge as part of the 2006 Millennium release. WebPAC Pro offers improved information retrieval using RightResult search technology and enhanced display functionality, which in­ cludes more opportunities for customization of content and features. Highlights include campus integration functionality and ad­ vanced RSS tools. Docutek ERes integrates with Copyright Clearance Center Docutek ERes, the electronic reserves sys­ tem of SirsiDynix, now features a seamless integration with Copyright Clearance Cen­ ter’s rights licensing database. The new release allows users to quickly search, ob­ tain, and modify permission when post­ Correction In the December 2005 issues of C&RL News, Rob Withers was inadvertently listed as sole author of the article “Some­ thing wiki this way comes” (p. 775).The article was also coauthored by Kris Buell, help desk coordinator, and Rob Casson, computing and information services specialist, of Miami University. The editors regret the error. C&RL News January 2006 8 ing materials on reserve without leaving Docutek ERes. Readex and Dartmouth partner to digitize congressional holdings Readex, a publisher of online historical col­ lections, is partnering with Dartmouth Col­ lege Library to digitize directly from its hold­ ings of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set and American State Papers, rather than from mi­ croform editions. The digital editions are part of the Readex Archive of Americana, a Web­ based family of historical collections con­ taining books, broadsides, newspapers, and government publications. They feature ex­ tensive indexing and bibliographic records. The Dartmouth holdings are being scanned with multiple APT Bookscan 1200 machines from Kirtas Technologies to ensure accurate full­color, high­resolution images. January 2006 9 C&RL News ACRL/ARL to hold first Institute for Scholarly Communication: July 12–14, 2006 ACRL and the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) are jointly sponsoring the Institute for Scholarly Communication as an immersive learning experience to prepare participants as local experts within their libraries and equip them with tools for developing campus outreach strategies.The institute will be held July 12–14, 2006, at the University of California­Los Angeles. Participants in this 2.5 day immersion program will become fluent with scholarly communication issues and trends so that they are positioned to educate others on their library staff, engage in campus com­ munications programs and other advocacy efforts, and work collaboratively with other participants to begin developing an out­ reach plan for their campus. Participants will work with experts in the field to understand how to better engage faculty at their institution around the crisis in the system of scholarly communication. They will also learn about the emergence of new models for scholarly communication as well as strategies for creating systemic change.These will include: • Faculty activism (e.g., editorial board control, author rights, copyright manage­ ment, and self­archiving) • New publishing models • Digital repositories • Legislative and policy advocacy The goal is to help participants prepare a program plan that is customized for their institution.To achieve this goal participants will prepare an environmental scan before the institute, engage in a series of active learning experiences during the event, and write an outreach program plan for imple­ mentation at their home institutions. Who should apply? Institute planners are committed to cre­ ating an experience that allows people with varied expertise to explore scholarly communication issues together. The goal is to have the cohort represent a wide range of professional backgrounds, types and sizes of institutions, and roles within the institutions. Examples of institutional roles include: • Librarians who work directly with faculty members on campus • Library administrators • College and university faculty and administrators • Those responsible for Digital Reposi­ tories • Librarians with collection develop­ ment responsibilities Application and registration Potential participants are asked to submit applications to ensure they have an appro­ priate level of commitment and to guaran­ tee diverse perspectives within the group. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2006. All applications will be reviewed by the ARL/ACRL Institute for Scholarly Com­ munication Working Group, and applicants will be notified no later than April 1, 2006. Potential participants are encouraged to apply in teams, but to ensure broad access to the experience, no more than three individuals from the same institu­ tion will be invited to participate in the same event. Registration will be limited to 100 participants. To apply, visit www.ala.org /acrl/events