Kirill Fesenko has been appointed the first head of the Carolina Digital Library (CDL) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In this newly created position, Fesenko will lead the university library's efforts in creating, preserving, and managing research materials in digital form. The CDL, a new department within the library, will have responsibility for developing the university's digital repository. Fesenko previously was director of online publishing for East View Information Services in Minneapolis. He is completing his MLIS at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Robert Schwarzwalder is joining Stanford University Libraries, CA, as associate university librarian for engineering and science beginning in August. He currently is assistant university librarian for library information technology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where, as an added duty, he oversaw the rebuilding plan for the ground floor of Hamilton Library, a space destroyed in a flash flood in October 2004.
Elizabeth Lohr Logan who taught at Florida State University's School of Information and Library Studies (now College of Information) from 1985 until 2001, died on January 31. She won the 1998 Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award from the American Society of Information Science. The "Logan Teaching Lab," dedicated in 2001 at the College of Information, recognizes her significant contributions to the school. After retirement, she taught for two years at Nanyang Technological College in Singapore. She then became director of the Radio Reading Service at WFSU-FM, a Tallahassee public radio station that offers services for the blind and visually impaired.
With Flood Behind It, U. of Hawaii Must Cope with New Challenge: Inflation
After recovering from a costly, devastating flash flood that struck in late 2004, the University of Hawaii (UH) at Manoa Library now faces another, all-too-familiar challenge: the rising cost of scholarly resources. Facing a budget shortfall of as much as $1.5 million for Fiscal Year 2007-08 UH officials said dealing with rampant annual inflation was the key issue. "The cause of the shortfall was a combination of over $700,000 of materials inflation and over $300,000 in deferred book orders from last fiscal year," Robert Schwarzwalder, assistant university librarian for library information technology, told the LJ Academic Newswire. Lingering effects of the flood also played a role in the budget crunch in the form of "personnel overruns" to assist with the flood recovery, positions that were not covered by state or federal reimbursements. "Our actual budget increased from last year, but not enough to cover these added expenses," he said. The library budget is roughly $14 million.
To cope with the shortfall, UH administrators approved $500,000 in additional funding for the library, and the library has instituted a series of belt-tightening moves, including trimming orders for 6000 new books. Schwarzwalder said the library will still add about 10,000 new books, and noted that serials subscriptions, which account for some three quarters of the library's collections budget, would be spared the knife, at least for now. Serials, however, which Schwarzwalder acknowledged account for much of the inflation plaguing the library, will likely be trimmed in the future. "We will be reviewing our subscriptions this spring with the aim of a serials cut for next year," he said.
Unlike a flash flood, which hit the library without warning on October 30, 2004, Schwarzwelder was frank in assessing the long building threat inflation poses for the library. "If the impact of this year's budget has been particularly severe, it is due more to our failure to keep up with collection management than any precipitous external influence," he told the LJ Academic Newswire. "The increases in the costs of books and journals have severely impacted libraries across the nation. We are far from unique in having to cut collections in order to live within our budget." While the library administration is actively lobbying the state legislature for additional support, that is only part of a short term solution, Schwarzwelder suggested, and UH library administrators are eager to find more permanent solutions. "The longer-term issue of materials inflation is a much bigger story," he noted. "We hope to develop effective strategies for dealing with this."
Self-Evident? In a Shot at Public Access Advocates, Publishers Release Brussels Declaration
Not long after a report that disclosed a publishers' meeting with a public relations executive to form a response to calls for public access to government-funded research comes the Brussels Declaration, a statement sponsored the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM). And, perhaps not surprisingly, the document reads a lot like the start of a public relations campaign. In ten bulleted points, STM outlines what it calls "self-evident" values, ranging from the sensible ("one size fits all solutions will not work"), to the obvious ("publishing in all media has associated costs"), to the outright contentious ("open deposit of accepted manuscripts risks destabilizing subscription revenues and undermining peer review").
The declaration, signed by 35 major publishers and eight trade associations, is the latest development in a once-again simmering battle between public access advocates (including libraries) and publishers. After the report of the publishers' meetings, public access advocates seized on the issue last week by releasing a statement of support from one of its allies, the American Society for Cell Biology, which called for free public access to government-funded research. Officially, the Brussels Declaration was issued to coincide with the European Commission's Communication on Scientific Information and its Conference on Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area, held in Brussels this week.
Notably, the declaration seems to follow advice reportedly given to publishers by PR "pit bull" Eric Dezenhall. For example, it touts the role of publishers in the "irreplaceable" peer-review process, even citing peer-review in assailing public access proposals. "Despite very significant investment and a massive rise in access to scientific information, [the publishing] community continues to be beset by propositions and manifestos on the practice of scholarly publishing," reads an introduction to the Brussels Declaration. "Unfortunately, the measures proposed have largely not been investigated or tested in any evidence-based manner that would pass rigorous peer review." Of course, some of the ten "self-evident" values espoused by publishers in the Berlin Declaration also seem to lack hard evidence, and the declaration even offers some ambiguous statistics, for example suggesting that "even after 12 months, on average electronic articles still have 40-50 percent of their lifetime downloads to come."
Google Loss: Belgian Court Affirms Copiepresse Decision
An appeals court in Brussels has upheld a ruling against Google in Belgium that bars Google from showing "snippets" of newspaper articles it has indexed in Google News. The court, ruling on the suit brought by Copiepresse, an agency that manages copyright for several European newspapers, concluded that Google is "reproducing and publishing works protected by copyright," and that fair use does not apply. On its blog, Google officials said they would once again appeal the ruling. "This judgment is clearly disappointing, and we intend to appeal it because we believe that Google.be [Belgium] and Google News are entirely legal," Google stated. "It is important to remember that both Google Web Search and Google News only ever show a few snippets of text. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the web publisher's site where the information resides."
Google officials said the ruling would not affect the "current content of Google News" because the web sites represented by Copiepresse had already been removed to comply with the earlier ruling. The case in Belgium, meanwhile, continues to reflect a cultural as well as a legal divide. In the United States, newspaper and periodical publishers had long-urged Google to crawl and index their proprietary content, even content locked behind pay walls, which Google now does. The indexing is seen by publishers in the U.S. as a way to boost pay-per-view and archive revenues. Further, if publishers don't want their content to appear in search results, the robots.txt standard enables them to prevent automatic indexing. "It's nearly universally accepted and honored by all reputable search engines," Google officials noted.
New Tricks: 200 Year-old Geological Society of London Launches Digital Archive
The Geological Society of London, celebrating its 200th anniversary this week, announced the forthcoming launch of a major online resource in earth science. In May 2007, it will launch the Lyell Collection, a combined digital archive of the society's own journals, special publications, and key book series, as well as "all current and forward content." The Lyell Collection will feature over 14,000 original research articles and 230,000 full-text pages, including articles from the mid-1800s, all keyword searchable.
Neal Marriot, director of publishing at the Geological Society Publishing House said that the Lyell Collection includes many of the seminal papers in the field. Putting the content online, he added, mitigated the risk that the content would be "lost to a generation that is increasingly relying on the Internet for their research and studies." The Lyell Collection will be hosted on Stanford University's HighWire Press as part of a new partnership agreement between HighWire and the society. The Lyell Collection offer trial access during the summer and the first full subscription year will be 2008. Any library wishing to subscribe in 2007 will receive full access to the articles beginning in September 2007.
Columbia's Neal Wins Atkinson Award
James G. Neal, vice president for information services and university librarian at Columbia University, has been named the 2007 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award. Named in honor of one of the pioneers of library automation, the Atkinson Award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management, and who has made notable improvements in library services or research.
Carlen Ruschoff, award committee chair, praised Neal for his years of contributions to the profession. "He is one of the most well-known and widely respected library leaders in the world today," Ruschoff said. "He has become a recognized authority both nationally and internationally on copyright in relation to libraries and higher education. He has served as advisor to the U.S. Delegation at the WIPO Diplomatic conference. His leadership in shaping the national debate on intellectual property policy and his active role in government testimony has influenced the direction of public policy in this area." Neal will receive a cash award and a citation during the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, DC, at the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Awards.
Library Journal Call for Reviewers! Library Journal is looking for reviewers. Librarians interested in reviewing reference materials, particularly in the fields of science, social science, and the humanities, are encouraged to send a resume and writing samples to Mirela Roncevic at mroncevic@reedbusiness.com.
Best Sellers in Physics, July 2006–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services Editor's note: In this week's edition, 13-digit ISBNs are included, listed in brackets.
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
Smolin, Lee
Houghton Mifflin
2006. ISBN 0618551050 [9780618551057]. $26.00
Out of the Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics
Ed. by Nina Byers
Cambridge University Press
2006. ISBN 0521821975 [9780521821971]. $35.00
Cosmic Century: A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology
Longair, Malcolm S.
Cambridge University Press
2006. ISBN 0521474361 [9780521474368]. $60.00
Curious History of Relativity: How Einstein's Theory of Gravity Was Lost And Found Again
Eisenstaedt, Jean
Trans. by A. Sangalli
Princeton University Press
2006. ISBN 0691118655 [9780691118659]. $29.95
Origins of the Future: Ten Questions for the Next Ten Years
Gribbin, John R.
Yale University Press
2006. ISBN 0300119984 [9780300119985]. $27.50
Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law
Woit, Peter
Basic Books
2006. ISBN 0465092756 [9780465092758]. $26.95
AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War
McNichol, Tom
Jossey-Bass
2006. ISBN 0787982679 [9780787982676]. $24.95
Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities
Tidwell, Mike
Free Press
2006. ISBN 074329470X [9780743294706]. $24.00
Concepts of Simultaneity: From Antiquity to Einstein and Beyond
Jammer, Max
Johns Hopkins University Press
2006. ISBN 0801884225 [9780801884221]. $49.95
Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century
Hargittai, Istvan
Oxford University Press
2006. ISBN 0195178459. [9780195178456]. $34.50
Atlas of Climate Change: Mapping the World's Greatest Challenge
Dow, Kirstin
University of California Press
2006. ISBN 0520250230 [9780520250239]. $19.95
Birth of Stars and Planets
Bally, John
Cambridge University Press
2006. ISBN 0521801052 [9780521801058]. $45.00
Einstein's Jury: The Race to Test Relativity
Crelinsten, Jeffrey
Princeton University Press
2006. ISBN 0691123101 [9780691123103]. $35.00
Behind the Scenes at Galileo's Trial: Including The First English Translation of Melchior Inchofer's Tractatus syllepticus
Blackwell, Richard J.
University of Notre Dame Press
2006. ISBN 0268022011 [9780268022013]. $35.00
Percolation
Bollobas, Bela
Cambridge University Press
2006. ISBN 0521872324 [9780521872324]. $75.00
Chaos and Complexity in Astrophysics
Regev, Oded
Cambridge University Press
2006. ISBN 0521855349 [9780521855341]. $80.00
Einstein, Bohr and the Quantum Dilemma: From Quantum Theory to Quantum Information
Whitaker, Andrew
Cambridge University Press
2006. ISBN 0521671027 [9780521671026]. $55.00
Field Effect in Semiconductor-Electrolyte Interfaces: Application to Investigations of Electronic Properties of Semiconductor Surfaces
Konorov, P. P., et al.
Princeton University Press
2006. ISBN 0691121761 [9780691121765]. $55.00
From Clockwork to Crapshoot: A History of Physics
Newton, Roger G.
Belknap/Harvard
2007. ISBN 0674023374 [9780674023376]. $29.95
My Einstein: Essays by Twenty-Four of the World's Leading Thinkers on the Man, His Work
Ed. by John Brockman
Pantheon
2006. ISBN 0375423451 [9780375423451]. $25.00
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