NSF has issued a press release addressing the discussions at last week's National Science Board meeting regarding upcoming requirements for data management plans. See

News | NSF - U.S. National Science Foundation

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

One of the questions that I hear regularly, and is really difficult to answer, has to do with the prospects for the Semantic Web. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has recently issued a report that complies a substantial number of well-informed views on this issue. The report, and ancillary materials, can be found at:

For what it's worth, my reading is that respondents are fairly evenly split, with a few more doubters than believers in terms of the impact on the majority of internet users in the next ten years. Although, of course, there's more to the Semantic Web vision than that, and impact can be both direct and indirect.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Recordings of two lectures by CNI's Executive Director Clifford Lynch are now available:

Video of Clifford Lynch's talk, Scholarship, Cultural Memory and Libraries in the 21st Century, presented in April 2010 at The Catholic University of America as the Twentieth Annual Elizabeth W. Stone Lecture, can be viewed at: http://live.cua.edu/ACADEMICS/SLIS/StoneLecture.cfm

In June 2009, Clifford spoke at the International Society for Knowledge Organization's Content Architecture Conference. The recording of his keynote address, e-Research and New Challenges in Knowledge Structuring is accessible from: http://www.iskouk.org/conf2009/proceedings.htm

ScienceInsider (from Science Magazine) has a very interesting report from last week's National Science Board meeting discussing pending changes in NSF policy about data management plans. See

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

From our colleague George Djorgoviski at Caltech, an very interesting announcement for a conference focused on cyberinfrastructure and data management strategies in Astronomy and broader implications for scientific practice and communication.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

AstroInformatics 2010 - Pasadena, CA, June 16 - 19, 2010 - Second Circular

The next session of CNI Conversations will take place on Thursday, May 27, 2010, 1-2pm EST and is open to individuals at member institutions. If you are interested in participating in CNI Conversations, please contact Jackie Eudell at jackie@cni.org.

CNI Conversations was last held on April 15; the archived audio recording of that discussion is now available at http://conversations.cni.org/ (to subscribe to the audio feed add http://conversations.cni.org/ feed to iTunes, or any podcatcher). The April session included a recap of the CNI Spring 2010 Membership Meeting by CNI Executive Director Clifford Lynch and Associate Director Joan Lippincott. Cliff also discussed the recent announcement by the Library of Congress to archive the Twitter database, an event on sustainable digital preservation held in Washington, DC on April 1st, and the e-journals summits convened by the National Academies, among other topics. Questions included the state of e-books with the advent of the iPad.

About CNI Conversations CNI Conversations provides an opportunity for individuals from member institutions and organizations to take part in discussions on current topics with CNI Director Clifford Lynch and others; currently the events take place in audio-conference format. Real-time participation in CNI Conversations requires pre-registration, which is open only to those at member institutions and organizations; if you are interested in participating in CNI Conversations, please contact Jackie Eudell at jackie@cni.org . We plan to continue to make audio or other records of these exchanges generally available after the event.

For questions or comments related to CNI Conversations, please contact CNI Associate Executive Director Joan Lippincott at Joan@cni.org.

A video recording of the CNI 2010 Spring Membership Meeting closing plenary session is now available for streaming or downloading. Liz Lyon's presentation Codes, Clouds and Constellations: Open Science in the Data Decade can be accessed from:

YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBqaEShIexQ

or Vimeo, at http://www.vimeo.com/11242487

More video from the spring 2010 meeting will be announced shortly. All CNI-produced videos are available from the CNI channels at http://www.youtube.com/cnivideo and at http://vimeo.com/channels/cni . Subscribe to either channel feed to receive automatic updates when new material is available.

Presentation materials from the CNI Spring 2010 Membership Meeting are now available at:

Included are slides from plenary speaker Liz Lyon of UKOLN, as well as links to information on open access policies from opening plenary panelists. Also available are slides and papers from many project briefing sessions.

An archive of tweets related to the meeting is available at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/cni10s . Video recordings of some sessions will be available soon - look for announcements in the coming days. Podcast interviews with selected presenters and attendees, produced by EDUCAUSE, will also be online soon. Links to all audio/visual materials related to CNI's spring 2010 meeting will be available from the CNI Web site.

A few weeks ago the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley ran a very interesting symposium on the role and future of peer review in publishing and academic tenure and promotion processes and how these interconnected. They have now made the background papers from the meeting available, as described below; the meeting report is not yet available (I'll announce it here when it's ready).

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

We are delighted to announce the publication of four working papers prepared for an April 2010 Meeting:

The the archived audio recording of the April 15 CNI Conversations session is now available at http://conversations.cni.org/ (to subscribe to the audio feed add http://conversations.cni.org/feed to iTunes, or any podcatcher). This session includes a recap of the CNI Spring 2010 Membership Meeting by CNI Executive Director Clifford Lynch and Associate Director Joan Lippincott. Cliff also discusses the recent announcement by the Library of Congress to archive the Twitter database, an event on sustainable digital preservation held in Washington, DC on April 1st, and the e-journals summits convened by the National Academies, among other topics. Questions include the state of e-books with the advent of the iPad.

About CNI Conversations CNI Conversations provides an opportunity for individuals from member institutions and organizations to take part in discussions on current topics with CNI Director Clifford Lynch and others; currently the events take place in audio-conference format. Real-time participation in CNI Conversations requires pre-registration, which is open only to those at member institutions and organizations; if you are interested in participating in CNI Conversations, please contact Jackie Eudell at jackie@cni.org . We plan to continue to make audio or other records of these exchanges generally available after the event.

For questions or comments related to CNI Conversations, please contact CNI Associate Executive Director Joan Lippincott at Joan@cni.org.

CNI is pleased to be co-sponsoring this event once again; both Clifford Lynch and Joan Lippincott will be making presentations at the meeting.

*Registration now open**

JISC/CNI 2010 Managing data in difficult times The Carlton Hotel, Edinburgh July 1-2, 2010

Following the success of previous conferences held in venues such as York and Belfast, JISC and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) are proud to announce the 8th International Meeting that will be held on July 1-2, 2010.

Last week, Ithaka released its 2009 Faculty survey -- the fourth in a series -- that explores the views, attitudes and behaviors of faculty with respect to libraries, information resources, and scholarly communication. There was a standing-room-only presentation at the Spring CNI meeting earlier this week in Baltimore covering the highlights of the survey.

Ithaka is offering a series of webinars that will explore major themes of the survey in depth, an excellent opportunity for interested groups to further explore the findiings.

I've reproduced below both information about the webinars, and then information about the report itself.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Register now for the April 15 session of CNI Conversations; the call will begin at 1:00 pm EST and will run for about an hour. This event is open to all individuals at CNI member institutions, but requires pre-registration. Please contact Jackie Eudell at jackie@cni.org to register for the call.

About CNI Conversations CNI Conversations provides an opportunity for individuals from member institutions and organizations to take part in discussions on current topics with CNI Director Clifford Lynch and others; currently the events take place in audio-conference format. Real-time participation in CNI Conversations requires pre-registration, which is open only to those at member institutions and organizations. Recordings of these events are made available from the archive at http://conversations.cni.org/ (to subscribe to the audio feed add http://conversations.cni.org/ feed to iTunes, or any podcatcher).

For questions or comments related to CNI Conversations, please contact CNI Associate Executive Director Joan Lippincott at Joan@cni.org.

NISO to hold April 14 Webinar on "RFID in Libraries: Standards and Expanding Use"

Existing ANSI and ISO standards outline the radio frequencies and character encoding on an RFID tag but don’t address the specific needs for interoperability in a library environment. A NISO working group issued a Recommended Practice in 2008 on "RFID in U.S. Libraries" as an interim best practice until the ISO standardization effort was completed. That ISO standard is nearing its final stages and is expected to be finalized in late 2010 or early 2011. NISO’s working group will be undertaking a revision of the recommended practice to align it with the international standard.

NISO’s webinar, "RFID in Libraries: Standards and Expanding Use," on April 14, 2010 from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. (Eastern), will look at the latest developments in both of these standardization efforts regarding the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in libraries and share the experience of an actual implementation of RFID. Learn about RFID data models for library applications, what data is specified to be on an RFID tag, and which encoding schemes to use. Hear about experiences in implementing the NISO Recommended Practice and the issues that must be addressed beyond technology when RFID is introduced.

Topics and speakers for the webinar:

A schedule of project briefings to be presented at the Spring 2010 CNI Membership Meeting is now available: http://www.cni.org/tfms/2010a.spring/schedule.html

Links from this page lead to session abstracts; we are continuing to add supplemental information as it becomes available.

Additionally, the meeting Schedule of Events (not including handouts) is available for download from: http://www.cni.org/tfms/2010a.spring/project.html

We will be posting meeting updates from the CNI Twitter account (http://twitter.com/cni_org ) using the hashtag #cni10s and we encourage other twitterers to do the same. Unique identification numbers have been assigned to each breakout session (consult either the online schedule or the Schedule of Events); we hope this system will facilitate information exchange, particularly in the Twitter environment.

A Guide to the Spring 2010 Coalition for Networked Information Membership Meeting

The Spring 2010 CNI Membership Meeting, to be held at the Waterfront Marriott Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland on April 12 and 13, offers a wide range of presentations that advance and report on CNI's programs, showcase projects underway at CNI member institutions, and highlight important national and international developments. Here is the customary "roadmap" to the sessions at the meeting, which includes both plenary events and an extensive series of breakout sessions focusing on current developments in networked information.

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 are also welcome. Refreshments are available for all at 12:15 PM on Monday, April 12. The opening plenary is at 1:15 PM and will be followed by two rounds of parallel breakout sessions. Tuesday, April 13, includes additional rounds of parallel breakout sessions, lunch, and the closing keynote, concluding around 3:30 PM. Along with plenary and breakout sessions, the meeting includes generous break time for informal networking with colleagues and a reception which will run until 7:15 PM on the evening of Monday, April 12, after which participants can enjoy a free evening in Baltimore.

The CNI meeting agenda is subject to last minute changes, particularly in the breakout sessions, and you can find the most current information on our Web site, www.cni.org, and on the announcements board near the registration desk at the meeting. The announcements board will also have information about wireless access in the meeting room areas.

This is a very well-organized workshop with a program spanning topics of interest to many in the CNI constituency.

From 26 – 30 July 2010, Ticer’s international summer school "Digital Libraries à la Carte" will be held at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. You can pick your choice from a completely renewed ‘menu’ of five one-day modules.

· Module 1: Strategic Developments and Library Management

Over the past few years the US Government has carried out several surveys of scientific collections and produced two very interesting reports that give a sense of the extent and diversity, as well as the scientific importance, of these resources. The first report is a survey of Federal Scientific Collections and can be found in the 2008 Archives of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/nstc/docsreports/archives) at:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/galleries/NSTC%20Reports/Revision_1-22_09_CL.pdf

The second report, which is based on an NSF survey, looks at collections that receive Federal Funding; about two thirds of those described in the report are affiliated with higher education collections. This report can be found at

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09044/nsf09044.pdf

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) announces the 2010 Paul Evan Peters Fellowship Applications due by April 23, 2010

The Paul Evan Peters Fellowship was established to honor and perpetuate the memory of CNI's founding executive director. The fellowship is awarded every two years to a student pursuing graduate studies in librarianship, the information sciences, or a closely related field, who demonstrates intellectual and personal qualities consistent with those of Paul Evan Peters, including:

--commitment to use of digital information and advanced technology to enhance scholarship, intellectual productivity and public life;

--interest in the civic responsibilities of information professionals and a commitment to democratic values;

Below is the call for papers for this December's International Digital Curation Conference, which will be held in Chicago. CNI is once again proud to be a co-sponsor for this meeting, which has become a major international venue for the data curation community.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

CALL FOR PAPERS 6th International Digital Curation Conference Participation & Practice: Growing the curation community through the data decade 6 - 8 December 2010, Chicago, USA