CNI again this year will serve as a cooperating organization for Open Repositories 2013, the premiere conference for digital repositories. The event will be held in Charlottetown Prince Edward Island, July 8-12.

The full schedule of events is now online, including information about keynote speakers:

Consult the meeting website for more details: http://or2013.net/

I have had the opportunity to contribute a chapter titled "The Public Library in 2020" to a book edited by Joe Janes of the University of Washington Information School. The book collects a number of visions or speculations about how libraries will change in the next few years; working with Joe on this was a delight. My chapter is available at

“The Public Library in 2020”

Author: Clifford A. Lynch View Online

Two comments.

First, this should be seen as only one possible future for public libraries; and perhaps a rather conservative one. For example, it doesn't discuss Makerspaces, which may be a very important development for our society broadly, and one that may well have an interesting developing relationship with public libraries.

I wanted to share this meeting announcement, which is in many ways a follow-on to the meeting that OCLC research hosted earlier this year focusing specifically on issues MOOCs raise for libraries.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

The date and location for the next International Data Curation Conference has now been set. CNI is delighted to be co-sponsoring this meeting again. Hope to see many of you there.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

IDCC14 - Save the Date "Commodity, catalyst or change-agent? Data-driven transformations in research, education, business & society" We are delighted to announce that the 9th International Digital Curation Conference will be held from Monday 24th February to Thursday 27 February 2014 at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF (University of California San Francisco). http://www.acc-missionbayconferencecenter.com/

Using the Amazon Cloud to Host Digital Scholarship Projects, a project briefing from CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Stewart Varner and Jay Varner of Emory University, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/mZFmNu6hnWI Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/67572648

As scholars are increasingly attracted to the possibilities of creating online resources, the question of hosting becomes more pressing. There are clear advantages to keeping projects in one place, but often institution-based solutions are too restrictive for experimental projects, and private web hosting companies offer some advantages but can be similarly inflexible. To answer this challenge, Emory’s Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC) uses Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to develop, host and back-up web-based digital projects that are small in scale and experimental in nature. This presentation reports on some of the issues, challenges, and results of implementing the Amazon system. More information is available at http://www.cni.org/topics/scholarly-communication/using-the-amazon-cloud-to-host-digital-scholarship-projects/

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting:

2013 ICPL offers cutting-edge perspectives on Internet culture September 18–20, 2013, on the Cornell University campus

Accessibility, privacy, and intellectual property issues will be featured at this year's Cornell University Institute for Internet Culture, Policy, and Law.

The oldest information technology, law, and policy conference in the country, ICPL has broadened its reach to address rapidly evolving legal, policy, and social concerns related to Internet culture. After seventeen years, it remains the "go-to" conference for faculty, administrators, librarians and information technology professionals.

This year's speakers include: Lisa Sotto, Hunton & Williams, on information privacy and security on the global stage Pamela Harris, John Cabot University in Rome, on Internet free speech from a cross-cultural perspective Dan Goldstein, Counsel to the National Federation of the Blind, on accessibility and legal issues Prue Adler, Senior Counsel for the Association of Research Libraries, on accessibility Elisabetta Morani, John Cabot University in Rome, on international libraries of the future Alan Fishel, Internet2 attorney for Net+ Services, on cloud services considerations Pat McClary, Cornell University Associate Counsel, on contracting for cloud computing Steve McDonald, General Counsel for the Rhode Island School of Design, on the latest intellectual property issues, including the Georgia State case wrap-up Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communication at the Modern Language Association, on accessibility and privacy issues ICPL is an intimate intellectual environment. There are no concurrent or breakout sessions; everyone—speakers, facilitators, organizers, and participants—stays together for all sessions and activities. Organizers limit the number of participants to 50, allowing for meaningful, in-depth exploration of topics and the dynamic exchange of ideas and perspectives.

Taking Scholarly Note-taking to the Web, a project briefing from CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Michael Buckland of UC Berkeley and Ryan Shaw of UNC Chapel Hill, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/DupIOtAAN3I Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/67136305

Scholarly editions of historically significant texts are important in the humanities, but expert editorial work is difficult and funding is scarce. Current Web technology can be used to improve the return on investment by making editors' work available more quickly, more fully, and more widely. This video includes a report on the successes, as well as on current efforts to exploit linked data to improve descriptive control over research notes and to enable the creation of “structured” notes incorporating temporal, geospatial, or prosopographical information. More information about this presentation is available at http://www.cni.org/topics/scholarly-communication/taking-scholarly-note-taking-to-the-web/

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting:

Dear cni-announce subscribers: I'm sending this on behalf of the organizers of the Data Information Literacy Symposium. This will be of interest to many institutions that are playing a role in educating future researchers about big data issues, a very timely topic. Note that the number of attendees is very limited and if you're interested, I encourage you to register soon. - Joan Lippincott, CNI

Please join us for the Data Information Literacy Symposium at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, on September 23rd, and 24th 2013.

Program: This symposium will explore roles for practicing librarians in teaching competencies in data management and curation to graduate students. With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, librarians from Purdue University, Cornell University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Oregon have investigated this topic through developing and implementing “data information literacy” (DIL) instruction programs for graduate students in a range of science and engineering disciplines.

A new article by Clifford Lynch appears in the latest American Libraries digital supplement, Digital Content: What's Next? In “Ebooks in 2013: Promises Broken, Promises Kept, and Faustian Bargains,” CNI executive director Clifford Lynch provides an overall assessment of the library ebook situation.

The publication is available in its entirety at http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/7d9e3366

-- Diane Goldenberg-Hart Communications Coordinator | CNI 202-296-5098 | diane@cni.org www.cni.org | twitter.com/cni_org

The James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University Library in Raleigh, NC will be the site of the October 6-8, 2013 Designing Libraries for the 21st Century Conference. The libraries of NC State University and University of Calgary, which hosted the first Designing Libraries conference last year, are the sponsors along with CNI. A pre-conference on October 6 will focus on technology design.

We are developing a rich program, highlighting the new facility, technologies, and services at the Hunt Library and providing perspectives from a wide array of speakers from other institutions. The program will include talks on realizing the vision, discovering what our students and faculty need, the design team and the customer, and the architect's perspective, among other topics.

To see a crowdsourced collection of photos of the new library, you can browse http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/myhuntlibrary

I will post information on registration (for a fee) and local arrangements when they are available. In the meantime, please save the date! This promises to be an exceptional program.

RDF: Resource Description Failures & Linked Data Letdowns, a project briefing from CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Robert Sanderson of Los Alamos National Laboratory, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/75vEplp9uiA Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/66394817

As with any choice of technology, there are benefits and downsides to modeling data using Resource Description Framework (RDF), appropriate situations for linked data and use cases that would be fulfilled more effectively by other frameworks. This presentation focuses on the pitfalls to avoid and the challenges of using graphs that are swept under the rug by some RDF advocates, and contrast them with the benefits in order to facilitate informed decision. More information is available at http://www.cni.org/pbs/rdf-resource-description-failures-and-linked-data-letdowns/.

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting:

Hypothes.is: Annotating the World’s Knowledge, a project briefing from CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Peter Brantley, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/4gaJQoplBMo Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/66245049

Hypothes.is, a not-for-profit start-up, is building a reference implementation for open annotation that will be a distributed, open-source platform for the collaborative evaluation of information based on a new draft standard for annotating digital documents. It is currently being developed by the Open Annotation Collaboration, a consortium that includes the Internet Archive, NISO (National Information Standards Organization), O’Reilly Books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and a number of academic institutions. This presentation includes discussion of the system under development, as well as a demonstration of some of its new tools, presented by Hypothes.is scholarly communications director Peter Brantley. More information is at http://www.cni.org/topics/scholarly-communication/hypothes-is-annotating-the-worlds-knowledge/

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting:

Not Your Grandfather's Web Any More, a project briefing from CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by David S.H. Rosenthal of LOCKSS and Kris Carpenter Negulescu of the Internet Archive, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/uIqU2Cr2Kjs Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/66175352

What are the practical and theoretical archiving problems posed by the newer parts of the Web, like social media, scientific workflows and Web services? How can the challenges of these latest developments be met, if at all? This presentation reports on the results of a workshop held at the Library of Congress under the auspices of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, where practitioners of Web archiving reviewed these questions. More information about this talk, including presentation slides, is available at http://www.cni.org/topics/digital-preservation/not-your-grandfathers-web-any-more/.

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting:

The UC Berkeley School of Information is putting on a very interesting conference on emerging issues in data science on May 30-31. The array of speakers is really extraordinary. See

DataEDGE Conference 2013 | DataEDGE Conference

UC Berkeley’s DataEDGE conference brings together industry and academic leaders to discuss challenges and opportunities of big data.

Note that there are substantial registration discounts for attendees from non-profit institutions.

Full disclosure: I am an Adjunct Professor at the School of Information.

IT@Cornell: Is It What We Imagined?, a project briefing from CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Cornell University's director of library IT, Dean Krafft, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/LxWmAFnBvio Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/65313583

In the fall of 2010, Cornell University began implementing a "reimagined" model for delivering information technology (IT) services on campus, based on a set of recommendations developed with significant input from Bain & Co., a global consulting firm. This presentation includes discussion of the process of creating a much more integrated and collaborative IT organization, and how the university is starting to reap some major benefits from doing things very differently. More information about this talk is at http://www.cni.org/topics/user-services/itcornell-is-it-what-we-imagined/

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting:

Not Another Cross-Search Tool: The Digital Commons Network, a presentation by Jean-Gabriel Bankier of bepress (Berkeley Electronic Press), is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/NfdSiKQmeRQ Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/64515940

The Digital Commons Network (DCN) is a database of open access scholarship from hundreds of universities and colleges that provides access to peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work. The constantly growing body of publications represents various disciplines and subject areas, and the database features a novel search interface: a multi-colored wheel, where each major discipline is represented by a color, that expands and contracts depending upon the selected subject area.

More information about this talk, which was originally presented at CNI's spring 2013 member meeting, is available at http://www.cni.org/topics/information-access-retrieval/not-another-cross-search-tool-the-digital-commons-network/

The National Academies Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy (STEP) has just issued a report titled "Copyright in the Digital Era: Building Evidence for Policy". I've not yet read the full report, but based on the summary one area that it highlights is the continuing lack of empirical data to help inform policymaking in this area. (I cannot resist noting that I served on a related study some years ago that produced a report titled "the Digital Dilemma"; that committee, too, was struck by the glaring lack of real evidence to support copyright related policy development; this is a very long-standing problem. It would be wonderful to see some real progress here, and I hope that this new report will help to focus thinking about collecting such data. )

Information on the report (which is available for free downloading) can be found at:

the report itself is here

Publication and Research Roles for Libraries Using Spectral Imaging Data, a project briefing session presented at CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Todd Grappone and Stephen Davison of UCLA, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/BCm-mfVfG3Q Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/64458361

This presentation includes discussion of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Library’s role in the David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project and partnership with the Early Manuscript Electronic Library (EMEL) to support spectral imaging of palimpsests at the St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. More information is available at cni.org/topics/digital-libraries/publication-and-research-roles-for-libraries-using-spectral-imaging-data/

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting: -Discovery Turned Inside Out: Using schema.org & Google Site Search with Library Digital Collections http://youtu.be/httOEe_DLwo

Discovery Turned Inside Out: Using schema.org and Google Site Search with Library Digital Collections, a project briefing session presented at CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Will Sexton and Sean Aery of Duke University, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/httOEe_DLwo Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/65144172

Duke University Libraries has begun embedding structured metadata within the source code of the Web pages that display the Libraries' digital collections, a practice that follows the recommendations of the schema.org initiative, an effort by commercial search engine developers to use structured data to enrich the user's experience. Duke's objectives in adopting schema.org relate both to the ways that an exterior service like Google might represent the institution's materials, and how the organization will offer services to researchers. Usage analysis suggests that systems outside of Duke's library, largely consisting of the commercial search tools, drive traffic to University collections, and the institution wants to increase its own systems' interoperability with them. Duke is also piloting a local instance of Google, via its Site Search API, with the potential to enhance and replace the discovery services offered to users. The library sees embedded structured data as a way to extend the impact of the time and resources spent on discovery tools for the content that it manages.

More information about this presentation, including presentation slides, is at cni.org/topics/information-access-retrieval/discovery-turned-inside-out-using-schema-org-and-google-site-search-with-library-digital-collections-2/

The Library Building as Research Platform, a project briefing session presented at CNI's spring 2013 member meeting by Kristin Antelman and Maurice York of NCSU Libraries, is now available on CNI's video channels:

YouTube: http://youtu.be/SZnMh-u1JME Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/64715382

This presentation introduces the technology vision behind the James B. Hunt Jr. Library, a new, 200,000 square foot building that opened in January 2013 at North Carolina State University (NCSU). The Hunt Library was designed to meet the challenge of re-envisioning library spaces as a platform for research. The library’s goal is to engage researchers across disciplines by deploying broadly applicable technologies such as large-scale visualization, high resolution and 3D imagery, and interactive computing. These core technologies are expressed in physical spaces such as Immersion Theater, Game Lab, Media Production Studios, Teaching & Visualization Lab, and Creativity Studio. Through an inherent ability to reconfigure, re-purpose, and interchange components and infrastructure, the building’s technology itself is designed to be an object of research, a sandbox for emerging technologies and a showcase for cutting edge applications. New segments of the faculty are engaging in deeper ways than ever before, including the launch of several research projects based around Hunt. More information about this presentation is available at http://www.cni.org/topics/learning-spaces/the-library-building-as-research-platform/

Previously released video from CNI's spring 2013 meeting: -From the Version of Record to a Version of the Record (Herbert Van de Sompel) http://youtu.be/fhrGS-QbNVA