Bookstore Founder Sylvia Beach's Digital Archive

In Paris, during the 1920s and 30s, Sylvia Beach's bookstore was the center of English (and French) literary life.  When she died, Princeton University collected all her personal items from her apartment above the store and added them to their special collections library.   Princeton has just announced that some of this material (and presumably more to come) is now available digitally.

Visitors can search the website for a library member, such as Hemingway, to see which books he borrowed and the dates he withdrew them and returned them. Clicking “cards” reveals images of the handwritten notes kept by the store’s clerks who recorded his loans. Hemingway was a library member, on and off, from 1921 to 1938 and borrowed more than 90 books, including P.T. Barnum’s Barnum’s Own Story, which he kept for a few weeks in the fall of 1927, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which he kept for just eight days in September 1929. He borrowed Bull Fighting by Tom Jones in 1926. One also can view his purchases — he bought a copy of his novel A Farewell to Arms at the store — and the addresses where he lived in Paris. 

Fans of an author can use the website to “read the books they read and see who else read those books,” said Joshua Kotin, an associate professor of English at Princeton and the project’s director. “We hope this will be a resource for scholars and nonscholars.”

Hat tip Gary Price

UK Public Libraries to get Free Access to Academic Journal Content

Announced today (press release) by the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS-UK) is a pilot program that will make thousands of academic and scholarly content available to public library patrons.   The publishers making their content available for free include: ALPSP, Bloomsbury Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Dove Press, Elsevier, Emerald, IoP Publishing, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Portland Press, SAGE Publications, Science Reviews 2000 Ltd., Springer, Taylor & Francis, Versita, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer Health.

This pilot program which is expect to run for two years follows a technical trial period which was completed earlier this year.  The initiative itself is the result of consultation between libraries, publishers and agencies that was instigated by the Finch report of 2012.  In that report, the parties were encouraged to provide access to peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, free of charge, for ‘walk-in’ users at library premises.  The purpose of this access would be to (according to the report findings) enhance the ‘walk-in’ access already available at university libraries, and would enable anyone to have free access to a wealth of journal articles and conference proceedings at their local public library.

With UK public libraries under increased funding pressure over the past five years, it is assumed that providing patrons with this breadth of content and access will encourage more patrons to visit public libraries.

Presentation: New Culture of Learning

Presentation on the New Culture of Learning by Judy O'Connell of Charles Sturt University, Sydney.

 

Her introduction:

Web 2.0 allows students and educators to create and interact both synchronously and asynchronously, formally or informally, at school, at home, in distance education programs, in the workplace, on all manner of devices. This shift has required an open mind about future possibilities, while also documenting innovative or exemplar practices and their relationship to curriculum. Now Web 3.0 heralds a further development in online information behaviours and knowledge discovery techniques. Are we keeping up-to-date with the relevant network and social media changes that are affecting the online learning environment that we wish to embrace? Can you spot the wolf in sheep’s clothing? This was a short presentation and discussion starter. Dowload the supporting document via the QRcode on the title screen. 

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 49) Library World Overview, OCLC

A catch-up on what's going on in library land that I didn't intend to be an OCLC catalog of achievement yet that's what seems to have happened.  Most everyone else (vendors, content suppliers, etc.) seem to have been quiet over the past 6mths.  Especially interesting however is the LJ overview of the market which is their annual review from March.  If you haven't kept up to date on what's going on specifically with vendors in the library world give this a read.


Highlights:

• NEXT SPACE: OCLC WorldShare: Sharing at Webscale (LINK)
• More Libraries Join Worldshare Platform (LINK)
• OCLC Improves Worldshare Metadata Program (LINK)
• WorldShare Interlibrary Loan (LINK)
• From March 2012 a Library Journal review of the library automation business (LJ):

Other News:

• GoodReads and OCLC to work together (LINK)
• OCLC Continues to Add Publisher Content (LINK)

Presentations and Research:

• A joint OHIOLINK/OCLC project to determine how library resources can be used more effectively (LINK)
• Libraries in 2020 – Pew Report (LINK)
• Richard Walis Presentation on Linked Data to OCLC Members Committee Meeting (LINK)
• The OCLC Global Council meeting was webcast live.
• From Charleston Conference: The Digital Public Library of America (LINK)

Highlights:

NEXT SPACE: OCLC WorldShare: Sharing at Webscale (LINK)

Libraries are built on a foundation of sharing. They are the places where communities bring together important, unique and valuable resources for the benefit of all. OCLC WorldShare extends those values to allow all members to benefit from the shared data, services and applications contributed by each individual institution.

OCLC WorldShare is more than a new set of services and applications. It is the philosophy and strategy that will guide the cooperative in its efforts to help member libraries operate, innovate, connect, collaborate and succeed at Webscale. WorldCat data provides the foundation for WorldShare services. And WorldCat discovery and delivery applications help connect information seekers to library resources.
While the philosophy is broad, it also includes two very real, very specific sets of resources that can help libraries make the move to Webscale today: the OCLC WorldShare Platform and OCLC WorldShare Management Services.

More Libraries Join Worldshare Platform  (LINK)

OCLC WorldShare Management Services enable libraries to share infrastructure costs and resources, as well as collaborate in ways that free them from the restrictions of local hardware and software. Libraries using WorldShare Management Services find that they are able to reduce the time needed for traditional tasks and free staff time for higher-priority services.

"We selected WorldShare Management Services because we really wanted to get away from managing servers and back-office infrastructure and focus more of our time on working with student- and faculty-specific projects," said Stanley J. Wilder, University Librarian, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, one of the newest members of the WorldShare Management Services community. "Plus, we wanted the ability to manage all of our various library services under one platform—using true multi-tenancy architecture that also would allow UNCC to benefit from cloud-based collaboration among our library peers."

UNC Charlotte is North Carolina’s urban research university. It is the fourth largest campus among the 17 institutions of The University of North Carolina system and the largest institution of higher education in the Charlotte region.
Among the new subscribers to OCLC WorldShare Management Services:
•    College of the Siskiyous (Weed, California)
•    De Anza College (Cupertino, California)
•    Glendale Community College (Glendale, California)
•    Indiana Institute of Technology (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
•    Iona College (New Rochelle, New York)
•    Lake Tahoe Community College (South Lake Tahoe, California)
•    Mt. San Antonio College (Walnut, California)
•    Nashotah House (Nashotah, Wisconsin)
•    North Central University (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
•    Northwestern Oklahoma State University (Alva, Oklahoma)
•    Saint Leo University (St. Leo, Florida)
•    San Bernardino Valley College (San Bernardino, California)
•    The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, California)
•    Tyndale University College & Seminary (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
•    The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
•    Westminster College (New Wilmington, Pennsylvania)

OCLC WorldShare Management Services were released for general availability in the United States 16 months ago. Today, a total of 148 libraries have signed agreements to use the new services and 52 sites are already live.

WorldShare Metadata collection management automatically delivers WorldCat MARC records for electronic materials and ensures the metadata and access URLs for these collections are continually updated, providing library users better access to these materials, and library staff more time for other priorities.

OCLC Improves Worldshare Metadata Program (LINK)

OCLC worked with libraries in North America to beta test the new functionality as part of OCLC WorldShare Metadata services. Pilots of the new functionality are planned in different regions around the world.

"The WorldShare Metadata collection management service is a step forward because we can now use the records in the WorldCat database to provide access to our electronic collections in a way that incorporates access changes quickly and easily," said Sarah Haight Sanabria, Electronic Resources Cataloger, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University, who participated in the beta test.

Libraries use the collection management functionality to define and configure e-book and other electronic collections in the WorldCat knowledge base. They then automatically receive initial and updated, customized WorldCat MARC records for all e-titles from one source. With the combination of WorldCat knowledge base holdings, WorldCat holdings and WorldCat MARC records, library users gain access to the same set of titles and content in WorldCat Local, WorldCat.org, the local library catalog or other discovery interfaces.

OCLC WorldShare Metadata collection management services are available to all libraries with an OCLC cataloging subscription and work with other components of OCLC WorldShare Management Services as well as other library systems.

WorldShare Interlibrary Loan (LINK)

The release of WorldShare Interlibrary Loan represents the first large migration of OCLC member libraries to the OCLC WorldShare Platform, where they will benefit from expanded integration across a growing number of services. The platform will enable library staff and others to develop applications that will help them connect the service with other services in use within their libraries. They may also use the new service it in conjunction with other components of OCLC WorldShare Management Services.

The phased rollout of the service has begun and will continue through December 2013. Open migration for all WorldCat Resource Sharing users will begin in February 2013 and continue until the end of access to WorldCat Resource Sharing on December 31, 2013.

OCLC has invited a small group of libraries with a low volume of borrowing-only interlibrary loan activity to participate in the initial 90-day managed migration currently in progress. Participation in the next managed migration group, scheduled to begin in October 2012, will be open to interested WorldCat Resource Sharing librarians whose normal interlibrary loan activities can be supported by available functionality in the service before its full release in February.

From March 2012 a Library Journal review of the library automation business (LJ):

In 2011, the library automation economy—the total revenues (including international) of all companies with a significant presence in the United States and Canada—was $750 million. This estimate does not necessarily compare directly to 2010’s $630 million, as this year’s estimate includes a higher proportion of revenues from OCLC, EBSCO, and other sources previously unidentified. (Using the same formula, 2010 industry revenues would be estimated at $715 million.)

As OCLC becomes ever more involved as competition in the library automation industry, we have performed a more detailed analysis of what proportion of its revenues derive from products and services comparable to other companies considered in this report. Of OCLC’s FY11 revenue of $205.6 million, we calculate that $57.7 million falls within that scope.

A broader view of the global library automation industry that aggregates revenues of all companies offering library automation products and services across the globe totals $1.76 billion, including those involved with radio-frequency identification (RFID), automated handling equipment, and self-check, or $1.45 billion excluding them. Library automation revenues limited to the United States total around $450 million.

The overall library economy continues to suffer major cutbacks that may never be fully restored, so library automation vendors are facing enormous challenges to find growth opportunities. Libraries may only be able to justify investments for tools that enable them to operate with fewer resources. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments, for example, result in revenue gains through subscription fees commensurate with delivering a more complete package of services, including hosting; libraries see overall savings as they eliminate local servers and their associated costs. Stronger companies can increase their slice by taking on competitors with weaker products, especially those in international regions.

The ongoing trend of open source integrated library systems (ILSs) cannot be discounted. Open source ILS implementations shift revenues from one set of companies to another, often at lower contract values relative to proprietary software. Scenarios vary, so it’s difficult to determine whether these implementations result in true savings in total ownership costs and to what extent costs shift back to the libraries or their consortial or regional support offices.

The above comes from the management summary and there are more detailed reports as follows:
•    Three-Year Sales Trends by Category
•    2011 Personnel Trends
•    2011 Sales by Category
•    Discovery Trends
•    Company Profiles

OTHER NEWS:

GoodReads and OCLC to work together ((LINK)

The new agreement pledges to improve Goodreads members’ experience of finding fresh, new things to read through libraries. It will also provide libraries with a way to reach this key group of dedicated readers through social media. As a WorldCat.org traffic partner since 2007, Goodreads has sent more than 5 million Web referrals to WorldCat.org.

“We are always looking to give the Goodreads community even more ways to connect with their favorite titles and authors,” explains Patrick Brown, Community Manager for Goodreads. “Linking to libraries through WorldCat and OCLC has always been important to Goodreads, and this agreement helps ensure that our more than 12 million members find their local library and that their local library finds them.”

The expanded partnership includes several components:
•    A joint marketing effort to get libraries to join the Goodreads site and create a library “group” page, which will now be listed at the top of the groups page.
•    Engagement reports from Goodreads that show how many libraries have joined and created group pages and how fast membership is growing for individual libraries on Goodreads.
•    An upcoming webinar held specifically for librarians and library staff members, to learn more about Goodreads and how to optimize the library’s presence.
•    Library-specific promotional materials to encourage patron participation in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2012 during the month of November.
•    A discussion session planned for ALA Midwinter 2013 to hear library feedback and solicit ideas for additional visibility and collaboration.

OCLC and Amazon (LINK)

OCLC WorldShare platform has an Amazon app that takes information about orders from the OCLC acquisitions web service and combines it with pricing and availability information from Amazon.  You can then see pricing and availability for titles and choose to purchase them from Amazon via a cart created on the fly.   (see p. 12)

Authority Control for Researchers: Orcid is another attempt at author/contributor authority (LINK)

Wouldn’t it be great if we had authority control for every researcher?  Of course, we do spend lots of time on authority work already but efforts are underway “to solve the author name ambiguity problem in scholarly communication.”  The ORCID project (http://about.orcid.org/) aims to resolve this ambiguity by issuing unique identifiers to authors.  The next stages of this project will focus on three areas:
•    “Allowing researchers to claim their profiles in an open environment that transcends geographic and national boundaries, discipline, and institutional constraints
•    Allowing researchers to delegate control of the ongoing management of their profile to their institution
•    Providing an interoperable platform for federated exchange of profile information with systems supplied by publishers, grant managers, research assessment tools, and other organizations in the scholarly community”
What is ORCID?
ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers.  ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors, and national boundaries and in its cooperation with other identifier systems.  ORCID works with the research community to identify opportunities for integrating ORCID identifiers in key workflows, such as research profile maintenance, manuscript submissions, grant applications, and patent applications. 

ORCID provides two core functions:  (1) a registry to obtain a unique identifier and manage a record of activities, and (2) APIs that support system-to-system communication and authentication.  ORCID makes its code available under an open source license, and will post an annual public data file under a CCO waiver for free download. 

The ORCID Registry is available free of charge to individuals, who may obtain an ORCID, manage their record of activities, and search for others in the Registry.  Organizations may become members to link their records to ORCID identifiers, to update ORCID records, to receive updates from ORCID, and to register their employees and students for ORCID identifiers.

OCLC Continues to Add Publisher Content (LINK)

OCLC has signed new agreements with leading publishers around the world and has added important new content and collections to WorldCat Local, the OCLC discovery and delivery service that offers users integrated access to more than 922 million items.

WorldCat Local offers access to books, journals and databases from a variety of publishers and content providers from around the world; the digital collections of groups like HathiTrust and Google Books; open access materials, such as the OAIster collection; and the collective resources of libraries worldwide through WorldCat.

WorldCat Local is available as a stand-alone discovery and delivery service, and as part of OCLC WorldShare Management Services. Through WorldCat Local, users have access to more than 1,700 databases and collections, and more than 650 million articles.

OCLC recently signed agreements with the following content providers to add important new collections—including some searchable full text—to WorldCat Local, WorldCat.org and OCLC WorldShare Management Services:

June Announcement of earlier publisher additions (Link)

Presentations and Research:

A joint OHIOLINK/OCLC project to determine how library resources can be used more effectively
(LINK) via (Ohio Library Director)

This OCLC report by Julia Gammon (Akron) and Ed O’Neill (OCLC) was conducted to “gain a better understanding of how the resources of OhioLINK libraries are being used and to identify how the limited resources of OhioLINK member libraries can be utilized more effectively.”  The study collected and analyzed circulation data for books (30 million items in the final set used for analysis) in the OhioLINK union catalog using FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) analysis.  It would take me pages to explain what FRBR does, but put most simply, it helps you look at items from a title level (all formats and types of holdings) rather than each type of format of the same content as separate.  Check out page 14 for a better explanation of FRBR.

For those of you looking for new research projects, the full data set for individual institutions is available from the project website at http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/ohiolink/circulation.htm.  Figure 3 in the report shows the spreadsheets for OSU.

Here are a few conclusions that the authors draw
•    “The academic richness and histories of the OhioLINK member institutions are reflected in the uniqueness of their library collections. Unique items are not limited to a few large institutions but are widely distributed across many different types of member institutions. The membership should avoid collection practices that homogenize the state-wide collection through unnecessary duplication.
•    Individual institution members commented with surprise on the low use of their non-English language collections. Further study is needed to discover potential causes and trends of these collections’ usage patterns.
•    The most fascinating result of the study was a test of the “80/20” rule. Librarians have long espoused the belief that 80% of a library’s circulation is driven by approximately 20% of the collection. The analysis of a year’s statewide circulation statistics would indicate that 80% of the circulation is driven by just 6% of the collection.”

Libraries in 2020 – Pew Report (LINK) 
Richard Walis Presentation on Linked Data to OCLC Members Committee Meeting (LINK)
The OCLC Global Council meeting was webcast live. 
From Charleston Conference: The Digital Public Library of America (LINK)

LOC: International Summit of the Book

A 1 1/2 day summit event at the Library of Congress next week which they hope to turn into "an annual global meeting of minds to discuss and promote the book as a crucial format for conveying societies' scholarship and culture" (LOC).

Here is the schedule (apologies for the formatting).

Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012
Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building

2:00-2:20 p.m. Welcome: Hon. John Larson (CT), U.S. House of Representatives and Hon. Jack Reed (RI), U.S. Senate
Introduction: James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress
Announcement of Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program:
David M. Rubenstein, Managing Director, Carlyle Group
Remarks: Robert Forrester, President & CEO, Newman's Own Foundation

2:20-3:00 p.m. Keynote: Ismail Serageldin, Director, Bibliotheca Alexandrina

3:00-3:45 p.m. Perspectives on the History of the Book: A Conversation with Elizabeth Eisenstein
Elizabeth Eisenstein, historian of early printing
Daniel DeSimone, Rosenwald Curator,
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

3:45-5:00 p.m. National Library Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future of the Book
Moderator: Sarah Thomas, Bodley's Librarian, University of Oxford
Commentator: John Van Oudenaren, Director, World Digital Library
Caroline Brazier, Director of Scholarship and Collections, The British Library
Glòria Pérez-Salmerón, Director, National Library of Spain
Ramón Mujica Pinilla, Director, National Library of Peru
Anton Likhomanov, Director General, National Library of Russia
John Kgwale Tsebe, National Librarian of South Africa

5:00-5:45 p.m. The Law Through the Book
Emily E. Kadens, Professor of Law, University of Texas at Austin

5:45-6:30 p.m. The Enduring Legacy of Thomas Jefferson's Collection
Mark Dimunation, Chief, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

Friday, Dec. 7, 2012

Coolidge Auditorium, Thomas Jefferson Building

9:30-10:15 a.m. Welcome: James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress
Reading is Not an Option: A Conversation Between Walter Dean Myers, National Ambassador for
Young People's Literature and John Y. Cole, Director, Center for the Book, Library of Congress

10:15-11:15 a.m. The Role of Cultural Institutions in Fostering the Future of the Book
Moderator and Commentator: Sir Harold Evans, Editor at Large, Reuters; Author, “The American Century”
Jim Leach, Chairman, NEH
Carla D. Hayden, Chief Executive Officer, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
Ira Silverberg, Literature Director, National Endowment for the Arts

11:15-12:00 p.m. Copyright and the Book: A Conversation about Authors, Publishers and the Public Interest
Moderator: Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights & Director, U.S. Copyright Office
Tom Allen, President & CEO, Association of American Publishers
James S. Shapiro, Shakespearean Scholar, Columbia University; Vice President, Authors Guild
Peter Jaszi, Professor of Copyright Law, American University

1:30-3:00 p.m. The Publishing World Yesterday and Today
Moderator: Marie Arana, Author; Literary Critic; Senior Consultant, Library of Congress
Nan Talese, Senior Vice President and Publisher, Doubleday
Geoffrey Kloske, President and Publisher, Riverhead/Penguin Books
Karen Lotz, President and Publisher, Candelwick Press
Niko Pfund, President and Publisher, Oxford University Press

3:00-4:30 p.m. Using Lessons of the Past to Guide the Future
Moderator: Michael Suarez, University of Virginia Professor and Director, Rare Book School
Karen Keninger, Chief, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Thomas Mallon, Novelist, Critic, Director Creative Writing Program, George Washington University
Fenella G. France, Chief, Preservation, Restoration & Test Division, Library of Congress

4:30-5:00 p.m. “Passing the Torch” Ceremony
Hon. John Larson (CT), U.S. House of Representatives
James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress
Robert Forrester, President & CEO, Newman's Own Foundation
Tommy Koh, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore
Elaine Ng, CEO, National Library Board Singapore