There's a very helpful new study out from Carole Palmer and her collaborators at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign School of Information looking at success factors in institutional repository development, where they are viewing institutional repositories in the broad sense, not simply as facilities designed primarily for the author deposit of journal articles. The work was funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and I'm grateful to Don Waters at Mellon for bringing it to my attention. Carole's report can be found at:

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The Companion to Digital Literary Studies is a major collection of essays dealing with texts and the humanities in the digital world; it was released earlier this year as a printed book. Now the chapters are freely available on the net at ; see the announcement below for more details.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

We are delighted to announce that the Companion to Digital Literary Studies (2008) is now freely available online at at .

Neil Beagrie has shared a pointer to the newly-released interim report on the feasibility study that the UK has commissioned for a research data service. This includes a good deal of material surveying the current state of the art in the UK and beyond, and has obvious relevance as we think about programs like DataNet in the United States. I've taken the liberty of reproducing Neil's posting to the Digital Preservation list in full below. The report is at:

http://www.ukrds.ac.uk/UKRDS%20SC%2010%20July%2008%20Item%205%20(2).doc

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has sponsored the publication of a book titled "Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content and Open Knowledge" which is now available via MIT Press in hardcopy and also for free download under a Creative Commons license. You can find information about the book at

which includes a link to download the whole book in electronic form; you can also find the table of contents and the option for individual chapter downloads at

Subject: EDUCAUSE Live! Webcast Wednesday 9/17 on Free Speech in Cyberspace

Next Wednesday, September 17, from 1-2pm U.S. Eastern Time, I'll be hosting Robert M. O'Neil, former President of the University of Virginia and Founding Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. Bob's talk is called, "Constitution Day 2008: Free Speech in Cyberspace". No charge, but registration required at .

Summary: This webcast provides a brief overview of several novel and emerging dimensions of free expression in digital communications: how the Supreme Court has dealt with Internet speech under the First Amendment, problems posed by the content of web pages on university servers, the emerging challenge of "invasive" sites like Juicycampus.com, the largely fruitless quest for legal relief by victims of cyberattacks (including the challenge of "unmasking" anonymous critics), and the status of "sexually explicit" material on college and university servers.

All EDUCAUSE Live! events are archived.

NISO Collaborative Library Resource Sharing Forum Will Address Standards, Developments, and New Models for Cooperating

NISO will host a two-day forum on "Collaborative Library Resource Sharing: Standards, Developments, and New Models for Cooperating" on October 6-7, 2008, in the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center in Atlanta. Participants will explore areas where collaborative effort and standards can help improve library efficiency through resource sharing. This includes the areas of interlibrary loan, physical resource management, collaborative storage and preservation, and related open source developments. New developments in each of these areas will help to improve efficiency in library resource sharing and hopefully improve user outcomes and satisfaction.

Confirmed speakers and topics include:

Matt Goldner (OCLC), Opening Keynote Margaret Ellingson (Emory University), Current Resource Sharing Environment Cecelia Boone (MINITEX), Union Lists in Support of Resource Sharing Valerie Horton (Colorado Library Consortium), Physical Delivery Rob Walsh (Envisionware) and Paula Kelsall (Library & Archives Canada), Resource Sharing Standards Update Ted Koppel (Auto-Graphics), Gail Wanner (SirsiDynix), and Rob Walsh (Envisionware), Vendor Roundtable Gail Wanner (SirsiDynix), Rethinking Resource Sharing Evan Simpson (Brandeis University), Open Content Alliance – A New Approach to ILL ** Adam Wathen (Kansas State University Libraries), Improving Library Workflow Efficiencies

The journal Nature has just come out with its latest issue, which includes a special section on "Big Data" -- the flood of scientific data and its implications for science and for scholarly communication. It includes several superb articles, and a brief commentary that I've written on data curation issues. Readers interested in cyberinfrastructure, e-science or data curation and management will find much of value here. The special section is available for public access at present (the site says it will be open for two weeks), and can be found at:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/bigdata/index.html

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The Fall 2008 CNI Task Force Meeting will be held on December 8-9 (Monday and Tuesday) at the Renaissance Washington D.C. Hotel; registration materials were sent recently to designated Task Force representatives. Please note that the meeting and hotel registration deadline is Wednesday, October 29. For more information, see the meeting website at http://www.cni.org/tfms/2008b.fall/index.html.

We are now accepting proposals for project briefings, one hour breakout sessions which focus on a specific institutional project related to networked information or a discussion of a hot topic. Proposals may be submitted via a web form available at http://www.cni.org/tfms/2008b.fall/proposal.html , or via an e-mail message to Joan Lippincott at joan@cni.org. The deadline for proposal submission is Friday, October 10.

We look forward to seeing you in DC!

I wanted to share the announcement below from Roger Schonfeld at Ithaka. Many CNI-announce readers are already probably familiar with the large scale surveys that Ithaka has done on faculty and librarian views and behaviors with regard to digital information resources and electronic publishing; Roger and his colleagues have presented summaries of the findings at CNI task force meetings. They have now deposited the raw data with ICPSR so that others can explore it in detail, as well as publishing more extended analysis of their own.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

I wanted to share this set of pointers from our friends at RLG Programs at OCLC to materials from a symposium that they sponsored on June 4, 2008 in Philadelphia dealing with the contributions that digitized text corpora can make to advancing humanities scholarship. I was fortunate to be able to attend this symposium, and some of the speakers were really extraordinary, with some very fresh and insightful perspectives.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

I'm pleased to announce the release of a report by Program Officers Merrilee Proffitt and Jennifer Schaffner. "The Impact of Digitizing Special Collections on Teaching and Scholarship: Reflections on a Symposium about Digitization and the Humanities" (.pdf: 70K/10 pp.) is available on the RLG Programs Web site. It consists of an overview and interpretation of perspectives provided at the RLG Programs symposium that was held in Philadelphia at the Chemical Heritage Foundation on June 4, 2008. Outputs from the symposium are also available online, including overviews, presentations and recorded sessions (.mp3 files).

Dear cni-announce subscribers:

This is a great opportunity to hear about the latest studies from the Ithaka research group.

Subject: Free EDUCAUSE Live! Webcast Friday August 22, 1-2pm U.S. Eastern Time

Mellon Funds Design of Next-Generation Library System

A $475,700 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Duke University Libraries will lead to the design of a next-generation, open-source library system that is flexible, customizable and nimble enough to meet the changing and complex needs of 21st-century libraries and library users. The goal of the Open Library Environment (OLE) Project is to develop a design document for library automation technology that fits modern library workflows, is built on Service Oriented Architecture, and offers an alternative to commercial Integrated Library System products.

Leaders of the OLE Project, representing libraries in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, will involve the library community in the design process through workshops, meetings, webcasts and online discussions. Through those activities, they will develop a plan for a library technology system that breaks away from an emphasis on print-based workflows, reflects the changing nature of library materials and new approaches to scholarly work, meshes well with other enterprise systems, and can be modified easily to suit the needs of different institutions. The project website at http://oleproject.org gives detailed information about the project and includes FAQs, recommended reading, and a comment section.

“The information environment is changing rapidly, but the technology of library management systems has not kept pace,” said Lynne O’Brien, principal investigator on the project and Director of Academic Technology and Instructional Services for the Duke University Libraries. “This project is a wonderful opportunity to design a system that supports library innovation and better meets the needs of today’s researchers.” O’Brien is joined on the OLE Project team by colleagues from Duke as well individuals from the University of Kansas, Lehigh University, the University of Pennsylvania, the National Library of Australia, Library and Archives Canada, Vanderbilt University, the Orbis Cascade Alliance, Rutgers University, the University of Florida, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Maryland and Whittier College. Because the OLE Project is a collaborative, community-based venture, there will be many opportunities for individuals from other libraries to participate in the project through regional and virtual meetings, discussion of plans and documents, comments via the project website and listserv and discussions at professional meetings. In addition to its development of a design document, the OLE Project is intended to create a community of interest that could be tapped to build the planned system in a follow-on project.

NISO Webinar on ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL)

NISO will be offering a webinar on September 10, 2008 from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (eastern time) on ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL).

Description: ONIX for Publications Licenses is a family of standard XML messaging protocols for exchanging licensing information that builds on the work of the Digital Libraries Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) and NISO's License Expression Working Group (LEWG).

NISO's License Expression Working Group (LEWG), begun in 2005, initially focused on understanding the differences and mapping the data elements between the ERMI and the ONIX approaches to licensing information. Since then, much progress has been made and these two areas have become more clearly and distinctly defined. The ONIX-PL standard, developed to meet the needs of librarians and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, is now nearing its pilot phase and we are poised to begin awareness raising campaigns. As a result, in mid-2008 NISO restructured the LEWG, replacing it with a new Working Group to focus specifically on development of the ONIX license messaging specification, and a second, short-term sub-committee of the Business Information Topic Committee that is tasked with conducting a survey of the current and emerging place of "ERMI", thus defined within the broader ERM landscape, to better determine how vendors are implementing the ERMI data dictionary and related documents and how libraries are making use of these systems and services.

This year, I have had the opportunity to serve on a task force established jointly by the US National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources which looked at issues involving the use of cyberinfrastructure to advance teaching and learning, complementing much of the earlier discussion of cyberinfrastructure which has focused on research. This group was chaired by Professor Chris Borgman at UCLA, and included a very diverse set of participants.

The report, which is titled Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge, is now available at

Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge | NSF - U.S. National Science Foundation

I think that the report contains a great deal to think about, and covers a very broad range of issues; I'd urge you to at least have a look at the executive summary.

Dear cni-announce subscribers:

This is a follow-up message to the earlier announcement of the ARL/CNI Fall Forum.

At the fall Forum co-sponsored by ARL and CNI, Reinventing Science Librarianship: Models for the Future, we are planning to have a poster session following the opening segment of the program (October 16, 5-7 pm during a reception). We are soliciting posters for this event and encourage you to participate in highlighting projects from your institution. The scope is broad and includes areas such as data services, planning efforts to address the challenges of e-science, projects to support specific scientific communities, staff education programs, or new organizational models for science librarianship.

While it would be a “plus” to have knowledgeable individuals on hand to respond to questions about the posters, we would expect that the posters could provide sufficient information to “stand alone” (with relevant contact information for further details) and there is no requirement to staff the session.

Dear cni-announce subscribers:

Registration is now open for the ARL/CNI Forum on Reinventing Science Librarianship. We expect this conference to fill up quickly, so if you're interested, please register soon.

--Joan Lippincott

For immediate release: August 12, 2008

Cni-announce readers are invited by the organizers of Project Bamboo to participate in an exciting project that is focusing on enhancement of arts and humanities research through shared technology services. --Joan Lippincott

"Help shape Project Bamboo" Posted at http://projectbamboo.uchicago.edu/news/help-shape-project-bamboo

The Bamboo Planning Project (Project Bamboo for short) launched four months ago to begin to tackle the question: "how can we enhance arts and humanities research through shared technology services?" Five structured workshops with community input between each workshop make up the program for the project and by September 2009, our goal is to have a roadmap, plan, and proposal to launch a community-based cyberinfrastructure initiative for humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences. We are happy to report that with the completion of Workshop One, over 350 people representing approximately 90 institutions and organizations joined us to share their thoughts and reflect upon current and future scholarly practices in the arts and humanities. As we are now moving into the community input stage between Workshop One and Workshop Two, we're extending another invitation to those interested in this topic to help us analyze the data and shape Project Bamboo as it moves forward.

cni-announce subscribers may be interested in an EDUCAUSE Live webcast on Friday, August 1 from 102 PM Eastern.

Kate Wittenberg, who was director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) from 1999-2008 will discuss the pioneering Gutenberg-e project.

The Gutenberg-e project was created as a bold experiment to explore whether peer-reviewed, born-digital monographs would alter the way historical scholarship is presented, whether scholars would receive the same professional credit for these publications as they would from work published in print, and whether the project would enable the publication of monographs that would otherwise be turned down for financial reasons by university presses. The project has a history that includes both exciting breakthroughs and significant challenges. A number of the authors have created completely new models of collaboration in the scholarly communication process as well as new models of historical scholarship and narrative. We have come to understand that e-books require a significant level of investment in both editorial and technical staff time in order to create publications that reach their full potential as works of digital scholarship. We have also learned that integrating and sustaining this work within a collaborative publishing, library, and technology organization presents significant challenges and great opportunities. Wittenberg will discuss the project¹s findings and cover both the breakthroughs and obstacles encountered during the course of the project¹s development.

As always, no charge, but registration required at .

NISO Webinar on OpenURL Implementation: Link Resolution That Users Will Love

NISO will be offering a webinar on August 21, 2008 from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (eastern time) entitled "OpenURL Implementation: Link Resolution That Users Will Love." This follow-up to to introductory webinar on "Demystifying Standards" will take a look at implementing the NISO standard for link resolvers, OpenURL (ANSI/NISO Z39.88), from an end user perspective. You do not need to have attended the previous webinar to participate, however the slides and Q&A from that webinar are available online (http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/webinars/alcts08/ ) for those who wish to review them.

Description: OpenURL link resolving addresses a core issue: how we can help our users find and get the content that they want and have access to. But without successfully implementing OpenURLs, we are at risk of having content that can't be found or used, and patrons who do not know about the information they have access to. In this webinar, learn about some of the real ways that you can make certain that your link resolvers work effectively, about the practical steps that you can take to implement OpenURLs, and learn about some of the projects underway focused on improving OpenURLs so that your users can benefit.

Speakers include:

Registration (for a fee) is now open for the next Webcast that I will present under the auspices of ACRL.

--Joan Lippincott

Next Generation Information Commons www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlproftools/nextgeninfocommons.cfm August 14, 2008; 11 a.m. Pacific | 12:00 p.m. Mountain | 1:00 p.m. Central | 2:00 p.m. Eastern; 1.5 hours)

Some information commons are now more than ten years old and are in need of refreshing in terms of conception, configuration, technologies, and services. Others are so popular that additions are planned, either adjacent to the existing commons, on other floors, or in other buildings on campus. Through the use of principles and practical examples, participants will learn about trends in information and learning commons. A wide variety of photos will be used to illustrate the presentation. Registration now open!