Tomorrow, October 17, there is a live webcast of a conference about the status and future of the IMLS National Digital Platform (NDP) program from 9am-4pm (EDT); I will be part of the final panel. You can find information about this at

This announcement also includes a pointer to an excellent recently released report "NDP at Three" which was prepared in conjunction with the meeting and webcast.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The submission deadline for CNI's fall 2017 membership meeting is fast approaching! The meeting will be held on December 11-12 in Washington, DC.

Proposals for project briefings are due no later than next Wednesday, October 11. A limited number of proposals are accepted. For details, and to submit a proposal: https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2017/project-briefing-proposals-f17

Meeting and hotel registration deadline is Friday, November 10: https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2017/registration-accommodations-f17

Follow this meeting on Twitter: #cni17f

For some time a discussion of what are being called "actionable" Data Management Plans (DMPs) has been taking place within the Research Data Management community at venues like the International Data Curation Conference and the Research Data Alliance (RDA).

Very recently, our colleagues at the California Digital Library( CDL) received a 2-year National Science Foundation grant to develop support for this vision. This work is very important strategically, if it can be successfully implemented and widely adopted, as it holds the promise to greatly streamline funder requirements and compliance checking, as well as to help the research enterprise broadly to automate an important part of the research data management process.

As this project moves ahead, I look forward to sharing progress at CNI meetings. Note that CDL is eager to collaborate with others working in this area.

A little more detail from CDL is pasted below, plus additional pointers.

I wanted to share the call for papers that has now been issued by the 2018 International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC), which will take place in Barcelona on 19-22 January. CNI is once again collaborating on this conference, which is organized by the UK Digital Curation Center.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Beyond FAIR - from principles to practice to global join up The need to manage and share digital outputs and data has been clearly articulated and gained international traction over the past decade or more. Effective data handling skills and curation services are essential to support and embed these practices. Much progress has been made towards implementation with services being provided by research institutions, funders, domain groups, commercial providers and others. As the landscape matures, attention is turning to coordination and interoperability, with investments being made in the NIH Commons initiative, the European Open Science Cloud and African Open Science Platform. This evolution poses many difficult questions: Who is responsible for what? What do principles like FAIR mean in reality and how should they be assessed? How do you join up or ensure interoperability across existing and emerging infrastructure and services? Where does the investment come from and how do we make this sustainable? The focus of IDCC in 2018 is sharing practical lessons on the efforts made so far to curate data and pursue a digital data commons. Papers should address one of three overarching themes: ∙ Data ∙ Skills and services ∙ Value We want to hear from different communities on data processing pipelines - what works and where do tools fail you? How realistic is it to use other people's data? And what challenges emerge from the current policies and drivers for openness? Lessons from those supporting and curating data and digital collections are also called for: what programmes have you been running to share skills and build capacity? To what extent are you tailoring provision to different domains? How are the services on offer maturing and evolving? In terms of impact and sustainability, we want to know what value is being generated for society by sharing and reusing data? What models are emerging to demonstrate the impact of services. And how are services being sustained? THE DATA The realities of working with data ∙ Fitting a square peg into a round hole - data wrangling experiences from the coalface ∙ Using other people's data and the benefits and challenges this brings ∙ Implementing FAIR data - how it applies (or not) in different contexts ∙ Data publishing and getting credit ∙ The importance of metadata ∙ I can't preserve that! Digital curation lessons learned the hard way ∙ Big Data: hype or hope? Sensitive data and legal challenges ∙ Ethical and societal challenges in a climate of openness ∙ Fairness, transparency, privacy: can personal data be FAIR? ∙ Secure data services ∙ Regulatory change and its impact on digital curation ∙ Legal interoperability in international research ∙ Inspiring trust: needs of the 21st century data governance system ∙ Increasing personalization/user modeling and navigating the tension between usability and privacy THE SKILLS & SERVICES Skills and competence building ∙ Data champion and advocacy programmes ∙ Emerging models to build capacity and skills e.g. library/researcher partnerships, train-the-trainer models, peer-exchange, summer school programmes, learning-by-doing ∙ Professionalising data science and stewardship roles: accreditation and recognition ∙ Disciplinary tailoring and research community connections ∙ What are the challenges and opportunities in developing cross-domain expertise? ∙ Recognising and rewarding good practice Services ∙ Service discoverability in a distributed environment ∙ Domain-specific vs generic services - what is the scope for either, what lessons can we draw from existing experience? ∙ Many niche providers vs few, monolithic providers - what works best for researchers and research? ∙ The role of national data services ∙ Building links between people, data and services ∙ New innovations and offerings in response to community uptake and needs ∙ Interoperability and services as part of the global data commons THE VALUE Data, society and impact ∙ Measuring and demonstrating impact ∙ Data science: connecting data to solve grand challenges ∙ How to generate significant economic, social and scientific value from (big) data? ∙ How machine learning can transform research and change data curation practices ∙ Cultural heritage collections, time-based media arts and digital humanities ∙ How data can amplify or reduce existing inequalities - or create new ones Sustainability and coordinated service planning ∙ Successful project delivery, now what? How to keep momentum and transition to service ∙ Making the business case for open science and research data management ∙ Who should pay? Business models for sustainable investments ∙ International collaboration and interoperable services ∙ Tracking impact and meeting user needs Submissions can take a number of forms, including research papers, practice papers, posters and workshops. Papers are all considered for fee-free open-access publication in the International Journal of Digital Curation. For more details on the submission process, criteria and submission deadlines, please visit the conference website http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc2018 .

Many of you have commented to me how much you've benefited from the LSC webinars on learning spaces. Here is the announcement of the series through January. Note that I will be a panelist on the January 22 webinar. Joan Lippincott, CNI

The 2017 - 2018 LSC Webinar Series begins October 16 and continues through January 22, 2017.

After I posted the like to the IEEE workshop on reproducibility a couple of days ago, our colleague Natalie Meyers was kind enough to point me at another recent report that I was unaware of, this one on Mathematical and Physical Sciences (also funded by NSF). You can find the report at

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

On November 5-6 2016 I was able to participate in an National Science Foundation funded Workshop on Reproducibility convened by the IEEE and, somewhat unusually for meetings on reproducibility of research, focused on discipline like engineering and physical sciences, rather than biological or social sciences. The report of the workshop is now available at

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

I wanted to share this exciting and important announcement with the CNI community.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

September 7, 2017

Proposals are now being accepted for project briefings to be presented at CNI's Fall 2017 CNI Membership Meeting on December 11-12 in Washington, DC, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.

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; the submission process is open to all, including non-members. A limited number of project briefings are accepted.

A link to the online submission form is available here: https://www.cni.org/mm/fall-2017/project-briefing-proposals-f17

Submissions are due no later than Wednesday, October 11.

The University of Miami has put together a wide-ranging and compelling program for their symposium. Registration information below. ---Joan Lippincott, CNI

Next month (September 14-16), the University of Miami Libraries, School of Communication, Center for Computational Science, and College of Arts and Sciences will host the second annual Digital Humanities + Data Journalism Symposium (DH+DJ). This year we have an incredible line-up of speakers, including Deb Verhoeven, Alberto Cairo, Mona Chalabi, Thomas Padilla, Safiya Noble, and more.

As we get closer to the date of the conference, we want to highlight its potential for interdisciplinary conversations across traditional boundaries. Creating that potential with our speaker program has always been an important goal for us as the organizers. This year, we are also excited at the range of affiliations among our attendees, who are coming from private and public universities and university libraries, The World Bank, Bloomberg News, the Pew Research Center, Univision, and the Wall Street Journal. They include graduate students, writers, editors, designers, computer scientists, researchers, analysts, and developers.

There is a lot of interest in this topic, and this conference is likely to reach capacity soon. Early registration rate ends on Aug. 25. This year, I'll participate in one of the sessions on digital scholarship centers. -Joan Lippincott, CNI

Registration is now open for #BUDSC17, Bucknell University's fourth annual Digital Scholarship Conference, October 6th-8th. This year's conference, "Looking Forward, Looking Back: The Evolution of Digital Scholarship," will feature speakers with a range of interests and specializations, including faculty, educational technologists, librarians, and students.

We are happy to announce a keynote speaker for the conference: A.D Carson. His work focuses on race, literature, history, and rhetorical performances. His doctoral dissertation is a 34-song album titled Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics Of Rhymes & Revolutions.

This New Media Consortium's (NMC) recently issued report is a must-read for those involved in any aspect of digital literacy. I was pleased to contribute a brief essay to this report and also serve on the NMC Board. The report is freely available for download at http://www.nmc.org/news/nmc-releases-second-horizon-project-strategic-brief-on-digital-literacy/ --Joan Lippincott

From the press release: "The New Media Consortium (NMC) has released Digital Literacy in Higher Education, Part II: An NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief, a follow-up to its 2016 strategic brief on digital literacy. Commissioned by Adobe, this independent research builds upon the established baseline definitions of digital literacy from the 2016 brief, examining digital literacy through a global and discipline-specific lens to reveal new contexts that are shaping the way learners create, discover, and critically assess digital content….While the first NMC strategic brief simplified definitions and made the complex topic accessible, this subsequent project was launched because the constantly evolving nature of digital literacy is reflected in a diversity of frameworks with varied outcomes both globally and across disciplines. The NMC’s research examines the current landscape of digital literacy frameworks to illuminate its multiple dimensions — technical, psychological, and interpersonal — around which students’ ability to produce new content generates a sense of empowerment. Further, within the context of certain disciplines, learner commitment based on these levels of engagement is more readily established when paired with authentic digital experiences based on skills considered vital for workplace success."

Reminder: register for Designing Libraries soon, before the maximum number of participants is reached!

--Joan Lippincott, CNI

“Designing Libraries” returns to the NCSU Libraries Annual conference considers the future of library spaces and services

Dear cni-announce subscribers,

Registration for the CNI/ARL/Brown University Library Digital Scholarship Planning Workshop is now closed because we have reached the limit on the number of registrants.

In the next few weeks, the planners will examine whether there is a way that we can accommodate additional registrants, and there may also be some cancellations. We are maintaining a waiting list, so if you are interested in attending, please add your name to the waiting list. See https://library.brown.edu/create/dspw17/

Thank you. Joan

Posting on behalf of Educopia Institute. This compilation is a very useful resource for libraries developing publishing programs. Please contribute your information! --Joan Lippincott, CNI

Dear Colleagues,

Does your library publish journals, monographs, conference proceedings, or technical reports? Do you provide hosting and support services for digital humanities projects, data, or ETDs?

CNI is very pleased to co-sponsor this compelling event along with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), focusing on libraries as an essential strategic asset in the university research enterprise. Program and registration details are below.

—————————————— ARL and CNI Fall Forum to Explore Libraries and the Research Enterprise October 5, 2017, Washington, DC

Register now for the 2017 Fall Forum co-sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). The forum will feature the library as an essential strategic asset in the university research enterprise. The focus will be on how research libraries’ staffing, budget, resource allocation, and organization are (or are not) reflective of current institutional research agendas. What kind of transformational change is needed to close the gaps, and how soon can we get there?

The daylong forum, to be held Thursday, October 5, in Washington, DC, will include interactive programming on motivation and self-determination theory to underscore the vital role of staff agency in these transformations. Empowering librarians, archivists, and other professionals in the research library workforce; investing in their learning; and facilitating robust communities of practice are essential organizational strategies for libraries that aspire to assume a central role in university research advancement.

The 13th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) will be held in Barcelona Spain on February 19-22, 2018. The call for papers will be out shortly. The conference website is at:

I'm delighted that once again CNI will be collaborating on this conference.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Information Scientist Herbert Van de Sompel to Receive Paul Evan Peters Award

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), the Association of Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE are pleased to announce that Herbert Van de Sompel, research scientist at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been named the 2017 recipient of the Paul Evan Peters Award. The award recognizes notable, lasting achievements in the creation and innovative use of network-based information resources and services that advance scholarship and intellectual productivity.

Nominated by over a dozen highly respected members of the information science community, Van de Sompel is widely recognized as having created robust, scalable infrastructures that have had a profound and lasting impact on scholarly communication. Adept at applying theory to practice, nominating colleagues noted that the application of some of his groundbreaking work has become an integral part of the core technology infrastructure for thousands of libraries worldwide, helping to connect information across the Internet, and constantly working to further his dream of “a scholarly communication system that fully embraces the Web.”

“For the last two decades Herbert, working with a range of collaborators, has made a sustained series of key contributions that have helped shape the current networked infrastructure to support scholarship,” noted CNI executive director Clifford Lynch. “While many people accomplish one really important thing in their careers, I am struck by the breadth and scope of his contributions.” Lynch added, “I’ve had the privilege of working with Herbert on several of these initiatives over the years, and I was honored in 2000 to be invited to serve as a special external member of the PhD committee at the University of Ghent, where he received his doctorate.”

Dear cni-announce subscribers:

Registration is open for the Digital Scholarship Planning Workshop, to be held at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island on November 8-10, 2017 and sponsored by the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and Brown University Library.

In this participatory workshop, attendees will explore models and best practices related to institutional planning and support for digital scholarship. The collaborative, interactive workshop is designed both for those in the beginning of a planning process and for those from institutions seeking to take their services and expertise to the next level. Topics will be addressed through a combination of speakers and hands-on activities and will include:

Anticipating and assessing needs Staffing Governance and funding Initiatives in teaching & learning and research Student involvement Space and place Institutionalizing digital scholarship Library administrators, individuals with direct responsibility for developing a digital scholarship program, librarians who will have a role in digital scholarship, and partners from the faculy, academic administration, and information technology units should find this workshop useful. Institutional teams are encouraged to attend; single attendees from institutions are welcome. The registration fee is $300. We expect that the 100 places for participants will fill quickly.

I thought that some CNI-announce readers would be interested in this workshop.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Call for workshop papers: Computational Archival Science: digital records in the age of big data.