Proposals are now being accepted for project briefings to be presented at CNI's Spring 2019 Membership Meeting on April 8-9 in St. Louis, MO, at The Ritz-Carlton. Anyone may propose a project briefing, including groups/individuals from non-member institutions and organizations.

Project briefings are 30-minute, 45-minute or one-hour sessions that focus on a discussion of a hot topic, or on a specific institutional/organizational project related to digital information. A limited number of project briefings are accepted.

Proposals may be submitted via online form: https://www.cni.org/mm/spring-2019/project-briefing-proposals-s19 Deadline for submissions is Monday, February 4.

More information about CNI’s spring meeting is at https://www.cni.org/mm/spring-2019 ; follow along on Twitter: #cni19s.

The University of Pittsburgh is going to be hosting the Personal Digital Archiving Conference on May 2-4, 2019.

CNI has been a long-time collaborating organization for this important conference, and is delighted to continue to do so in 2019. There have been some extraordinary presentations at previous meetings (I have been fortunate to be able to attend most of them), and I have every reason to to believe that the 2019 event will continue this tradition.

The call for submissions and some additional information is available at

The European Commission Expert Group on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) Data has recently issued its Final Report and Action Plan, "Turning Fair into Reality". The report actually goes beyond data and considers FAIR digital objects broadly, which could also include software, for example. This is available as a free download at:

Turning FAIR into reality - Publications Office of the EU

To take advantage of the digital revolution, to accelerate research, to engage the power of machine analysis at scale while ensuring transparency, reproducibility and societal utility, data and other digital objects created by and used for research need to be FAIR. Advancing the global Open Science movement and the development of the European Open Science Cloud is the unambiguous objective for this report. This document is both a report and an action plan for turning FAIR into reality. It offers...

Also, the Association of Research Libraries has just published an interesting collection of papers on radical collaboration for research data management. These are packaged as Research Library Issues 296, and can be downloaded (either individually or as a group) at

Clifford Lynch’s opening plenary address from CNI’s recent membership meeting, Responsible Stewardship, Technology Realities, and Renewing Collaborations: CNI's Agenda for the Coming Year, looks at key developments that the Coalition for Networked Information has been tracking over the past year, and highlights some issues of particular interest to the CNI community, including trends in scholarly communication, publishing, and emerging technologies. You’ll find Cliff’s talk on both of CNI’s video channels: YouTube: https://youtu.be/_rgNpfnjUBQ Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/306474784

Look for more announcements soon of other video offerings from the fall 2018 CNI meeting (https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2018 ). To see all videos produced by CNI, visit our video channels on YouTube (www.youtube.com/cnivideo ) and Vimeo (vimeo.com/channels/cni ).

Diane Goldenberg-Hart

Today at the CNI Fall Member meeting in Washington DC I introduced the updated CNI program plan for 2018-2019. This is available online at

Printed copies will be mailed to CNI member representatives shortly. I hope this is a helpful summary of our current initiatives and recent activities.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

How could libraries be more involved in the learning analytics programs of their institution? This was a question explored by Megan Oakleaf, Associate Professor, Director of Instructional Quality, at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and PI of the Library Integration in Institutional Learning Analytics (LIILA) project. An extensive report was recently issued at the conclusion of this study. It is must reading for anyone involved in learning analytics, whether from the library or other units that might partner with the library on activities.

I was very pleased to serve on the Advisory Board of this project.

To give you an idea of the content of the report, I’m including below the abstract and a portion of the Executive Summary.

"The Library Integration in Institutional Learning Analytics (LIILA) project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, convened three meetings with academic library administrators, reference and instruction librarians, systems librarians, library technology administrators, library association leaders, and IT administrators as well as learning analytics, library vendor, and learning standards representatives to increase academic library participation in higher education learning analytics and prepare academic librarians to engage in this important use of data to support student learning and success.”

Meeting Roadmap A Guide to the Fall 2018 Coalition for Networked Information Membership Meeting

The Fall 2018 CNI Membership Meeting, to be held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC on December 10 and 11, offers a wide range of presentations that advance and report on CNI's programs, showcase projects underway at member institutions, and highlight important national and international developments. Here is the "roadmap" to the meeting, which includes both plenary events and an extensive series of breakout sessions focusing on current issues in digital information. As always, we have strived to present sessions that reflect late-breaking developments and also take advantage of our venue in the Washington, DC area to provide opportunities to interact with policy makers and funders.

As usual, the CNI meeting proper is preceded by an optional orientation session for new attendees, both representatives of new member organizations and new representatives or alternate delegates from existing member organizations, at 11:30 AM; guests and presenters are also welcome; there will be coffee and an opportunity to meet some long-time members starting at 11. Light refreshments are available for all at 12:15 PM on Monday, December 10. The opening plenary is at 1:15 PM and will be followed by four rounds of parallel breakout sessions. Tuesday, December 11, includes four additional rounds of parallel breakout sessions, lunch and the closing plenary, concluding around 3:30 PM. We are continuing to offer breakout sessions of different duration at this meeting, including half-hour sessions, allowing us to provide you with more opportunities to learn about new initiatives. Along with plenary and breakout sessions, the meeting includes generous break time for informal networking with colleagues and a reception which will run until 7:30 PM on Monday evening, December 10, after which participants can enjoy a wide range of dining opportunities in Washington.

The CNI meeting program is subject to last minute changes (remember, it ’s December, and weather can sometimes surprise us), particularly in the breakout sessions, and you can find the most current information on our website, cni.org, and on the announcements board near the registration desk at the meeting. Information about wireless access in the meeting room areas will be available in your packets and at the registration table; those staying in the CNI hotel room block at the Omni Shoreham should also have free wireless access in their rooms. In addition, we are running the mobile-friendly web app Sched from the meeting website (https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2018/schedule-f18) to facilitate online access to the meeting schedule. And we’ll still have printed programs available for all, of course.

This afternoon I attended a report release webinar for a US National Academies committee examining the feasibility, prospects, and implications of quantum computing. This is a very complex technical area which has been subject to a considerable amount of (sometimes inaccurate) hype recently; at the same time, it is an area with considerable promise and a vast number of open questions.

The rate of progress here is an area where there have been many predictions that differ wildly. It's very useful to have a rigorously reviewed and through National Academies consensus study to put developments in perspective. And this report is not just about the details of the technology; it looks carefully at potential evolutionary paths and impacts in various sectors.

You can find an announcement about the main findings of the report, along with a link to the report proper, here

New Cryptography Must Be Developed and Deployed Now, Even Though A Quantum Computer That Could Compromise Today's Cryptography Is Likely At Least A Decade Away, Says New Report

During the 2018-2019 program year, CNI is convening several small groups of library and information technology leaders to discuss the most urgent and most promising opportunities for collaboration in various areas of higher education. The first of these meetings was held in September, 2018 and the report from this discussion is now available at

The beginning of the report provides a bit more background on the overall effort.

This conversation was intended as a broad survey of the territory. We will be holding several more such groups to delve into specific areas more deeply.

Many members of the CNI community will be interested to learn about the latest edition of this useful resource. CNI is an LPC strategic partner. -Diane Goldenberg-Hart, CNI

The Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to announce publication of the 2019 Library Publishing Directory ! This year’s Library Publishing Directory highlights the publishing activities of 138 academic and research libraries, and is openly available in PDF and EPUB formats and via the searchable online directory . The Directory illustrates the many ways in which libraries are actively transforming and advancing scholarly communications in partnership with scholars, students, university presses, and others. Each year, the Directory‘s introduction presents a ‘state of the field’ based on that year’s data. We have also published this year’s on our blog: https://librarypublishing.org/library-publishing-landscape-2018/ .

Publication of the 2019 Directory was overseen by the LPC's Directory Committee:

The University of San Diego hosts a wide-ranging symposium on digital initiatives each year. Please consider submitting a proposal - note the deadline of December 14, 2018. —Joan Lippincott, CNI

Call for Proposals: Digital Initiatives Symposium 2019

The Digital Initiatives Symposium at the University of San Diego is accepting proposals for its full day conference on Tuesday, April 30, 2019. Proposals should fall into one of three formats:

Ithaka S+R has just issued a very interesting and thought provoking issue brief by Danielle Cooper and Oya Rieger titled "Scholars ARE Collectors: A proposal for Re-Thinking Research Support". Very much worth reading. See

Scholars ARE Collectors: A Proposal for Re-thinking Research Support - Ithaka S+R

After fifteen years of digging into the research practices of scholars at Ithaka S+R, it is clear that scholars are collectors. We have found that they are creating and amassing increasingly complex personal collections of information over the course of their careers. These collections vary widely depending on the discipline and take many forms.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

CNI is a Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) strategic affiliate; we are pleased to share this call for proposals for LPC’s May forum. —Diane Goldenberg-Hart, CNI

Library Publishing Forum Call for Proposals and Hotel Information Are you involved in library publishing? Interested in the intersection of libraries and scholarly publishing issues? Eager to share your expertise and/or research with the library publishing community? We want to hear from you at the Library Publishing Forum in May 2019, but time is running out.

The Forum proposal submission form closes at 8 AM Eastern time next Monday, December 3 (a slight extension from the original 11/30 deadline). The Program Committee is going to start reviewing proposals immediately afterwards, and there will be no further extensions, so don’t delay!

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has issued a draft white paper for comment that, very roughly speaking, proposes strategies for using Wikidata as a way to disseminate linked open data created by ARL member institutions. They are soliciting comment by November 30, 2019. This should be of considerable interest to many members of the CNI community.

Background on the work, and a pointer to the white paper, can be found at

ARL, Wikimedia, and Linked Open Data: Draft White Paper Open for Comments through November 30 — Association of Research Libraries

In June 2018, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) charged a task force to look at Wikidata. The task force emerged from several years of discussion between ARL and the Wikimedia Foundation on where the two communities can effectively collaborate. The focus on Wikidata and Wikibase came from two points of alignment in particular: interest in linked open data for both library discovery systems and Wikipedia, and advancing a diversity and inclusion agenda in the cultures of both libraries a...

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

In September 2018, the Library of Congress convened this year's edition of their outstanding invitational meeting on storage architectures and technologies to support digital preservation; once again, I was fortunate to be able to attend this event, and learned a great deal.

The presentation and background material from this meeting are now available, and offer a very valuable snapshot of the state of the art in this area.

They can be found at

Early registration is open for the IDCC conference, which will be held at the University of Melbourne on February 4-7, 2019. CNI has been an active supporter and collaborator in this series of conferences since their inception. The full program has recently been announced and can be found at

Links on this page connect to other information about the meeting, and to registration.

i hope to see many members of the CNI community there.

I wanted to share, somewhat belatedly, this call for comments that I think will be of interest to the CNI community.

Clifford Lynch

Director, CNI

CNI is pleased to partner with the Open Repositories 2019 conference; below are details regarding the recently-issued call for proposals. More information is available at https://or2019.blogs.uni-hamburg.de/ .

-Diane Goldenberg-Hart CNI Communications

CALL FOR PROPOSALS OPEN REPOSITORIES 2019 CONFERENCE (also available online at http://or2019.net/cfp )

CNI is pleased to collaborate with North Carolina State University on their Data Science and Visualization Institute for Librarians. Applications will be accepted beginning December 11, 2018; this institute often fills up quickly. —Joan Lippincott, CNI

Joan K. Lippincott, Ph.D. Associate Executive Director Coalition for Networked Information 21 Dupont Circle, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 202-296-5098 joan@cni.org www.cni.org

I wanted to share a link to a very important brief report on a meeting hosted this week by the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities APLU). This follows on the recommendations of the recent joint AAU-APLU Public Access Working Group (see https://www.aau.edu/newsroom/press-releases/university-groups-detail-recommendations-ensuring-public-access-research), which I discussed in a posting last November.

A good overview of this report and of the subsequent planning for the workshop was given by Kacy Redd of APLU at the recent ARL member meeting. You can find the powerpoint presentation at

https://www.arl.org/storage/documents/Redd-ARL-2018-9-26.pdf .

Also of interest is the presentation on the recent National Academies report on Open Science By Design, by Alexa McCray, chair of the committee, at