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 | Oxford University's Bodleian Library Receives Largest Gift in Its History
Oxford University's Bodleian Library announced this week it has received a £5 million gift ($10 million), the largest single cash donation ever made to a university library in the UK. Oxford officials said the donation, from stalwart local bookseller Julian Blackwell, will be used toward the redevelopment of a new 10,000 square foot hall for the Bodleian, to be named in Blackwell's honor, and will support public access to some of the library's priceless holdings. The donation was announced on March 8 during the Bodleian Founder's Lunch, an annual event honoring the Library's founder, Sir Thomas Bodley.
Sarah Thomas, Bodleian librarian said Blackwell's gift will support the renovation of the building, a critical step in enabling the public's access to what has been previously closed space. "The library will feature on its ground floor exhibition galleries, other display space, and a hall for presentations and readings," Thomas told the LJ Academic Newswire. "We will feature rotating displays of important documents and items from our collections, including our engrossments of the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare's first folio, the Codex Mendoza, the manuscript of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and other such items from the Bodleian collections. We will also have space to devote to thematic collections such as the one we now have up on Milton in a smaller gallery in the Old Bodleian Library."
Thomas, the first American to lead the Bodleian, said thousands of visitors come to the library's current exhibitions, but that the space is simply too cramped. The renovation, expected to start in 2010 and be completed in 2012, will greet patrons in an elegant atrium, with a café, and will lead off into rooms with permanent public exhibitions. It will also include a state-of-the-art storage facility, the building of which has been controversial. In late fall, 2007, the Oxford City Council rejected the university's plans to build a book depository at Osney Mead for the Bodleian's overflowing collections, suggesting it would ruin the historic community's skyline. Nevertheless, university officials remain confident the repository will be built.
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NYPL Announces Sweeping $1 Billion Plan
The New York Public Library (NYPL) today announced a $1 billion transformation plan, sparked in part by a $100 million gift from private equity fund billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, that involves new hub libraries, an expansion of digital resources, and a dramatic change at its physical core.
Under the five-year plan, which follows on the OneNYPL strategy that consolidates the Research Libraries and Branch Libraries under one director, David Ferriero, NYPL aims to double the number of unique users who borrow materials, attend programs, and otherwise use the library in person or online. Already, NYPL said, in fiscal year 2007, the library received more than 16 million visits to its 89 locations, a growth of two million over the previous year. NYPL predicted an eventual threefold increase in visitors, to an estimated 3.5 million people a year.
The gift from Schwarzman, chairman, CEO, and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, and an NYPL trustee since 2001, is the largest single donation in the library's history and the largest "outright, unrestricted gift by an individual to any cultural organization in New York City," NYPL said. The Humanities and Social Sciences Library will be renamed the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.
Under the plan, NYPL will sell the aging Mid-Manhattan Library, one of the central libraries of its branch system, and use proceeds from the real estate deal to fuel a major renovation of the flagship Humanities and Social Sciences Library across the street. NYPL estimated that it would cost $300 million to renovate the Fifth Avenue library, which opened in 1911 and is known for the lions Patience and Fortitude guarding its entrance, into "a vast, state-of-the-art lending library alongside its existing research divisions." The general research collection will be moved from the original stacks-seven levels underneath the Main Reading Room-to high-density shelving under Bryant Park, thus allowing a renovation "to create a multi-level, light-filled new library that overlooks the park."
NYPL, which in 2006 debuted the popular Bronx Library Center, also plans to spend $80 million to build two new hub libraries, in Northern Manhattan and Staten Island; $130 million to renovate branch libraries throughout the system, which serves Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island; and $40 million for the build out of a new Library Services Center in Long Island City. Another $130 million would be spent on technology, online expansion, collections, education, and staff. The library will also seek to add $300 million to its endowment funds for acquisitions, processing, and preservation; educational outreach; staff scholarships; and general operations. The plan includes $20 million for a new Donnell Library, which will be funded through the sale of the current Donnell site.
At a press conference today, attended by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, NYPL president Paul LeClerc pledged that "NYPL.org will be the most used online resource in the world, one of expanding information and cultural power."
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| STM: Harvard Rhetoric Mischaracterizes Publishers' Copyright Policies
The trade group STM (the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers), which represents the interests of scientific journal publishers, this week said rhetoric surrounding Harvard University's recent open access mandate mischaracterizes publishers' copyright positions. In a statement this week, STM officials said that much coverage of the Harvard policy has centered on the "purportedly restrictive practices or policies" concerning how authors' can use their works.
In the Statement on Journal Publishing Agreements and Copyright STM officials noted that publishers "invariably allow the authors of journal articles to use their published papers in their own teaching and for educational purposes generally within their institutions," and that "almost all research journals permit the posting by the author or the author's institution of some version of the paper on the Internet." Indeed, almost every major journal publisher does permit some form of author self-archiving, according to SHERPA RoMEO, which catalogs publishers' archiving and copyright policies.
In addition, STM officials said that recent calls for "authors to modify existing journal publishing agreements with 'copyright addenda' is simply a call for needless bureaucracy." Officials at SPARC, however, disagreed. "I think addenda are actually, unfortunately, a very small piece of needed bureaucracy," Heather Joseph told the LJ Academic Newswire. "There is such a wide variety in what individual publisher polices allow an author to do and not to do with their articles that authors need help navigating the morass. This is especially true when authors need to be absolutely sure they have certain rights-in order to, for example, comply with a funder policy or national law."
Indeed, there is sufficient confusion surrounding copyright policies and what journals will permit that SPARC has partnered with ScienceCommons to create an advocacy effort on author rights, which includes an online tool for authors to craft their own author rights addenda.
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| Kent State LIS School Program Moves to Ohio State Library
For 30 years, the Kent State University (KSU) School of Library and Information Science, located in the northeast sector of Ohio near Akron, has offered a program in the capital city of Columbus, located in the state's center, at Ohio State University. Now KSU will be relocating the program to the State Library of Ohio (SLO), where it had been using some classroom space, thanks to the state library's videoconferencing capacity. It will be the first LIS program within a state library since Melvil Dewey's School of Library Economy at the State Library of New York opened in 1889, according to the SLO.
Around three years ago, KSU began looking for a new Columbus location and found that the State Library has a large amount of open space that could be renovated to accommodate the program, Marsha McDevitt-Stredney, director of marketing and communications for the SLO, told LJ. "Kent State contracted and paid for the renovation and will not pay us rent (as a state agency we cannot charge rent)." Not only does the location offer free parking, it also offers students access to the library's special collection during regular operating hours.
Classes will begin this summer in the 6100 square foot space, which includes "state-of-the-art classroom facilities, conference and meeting areas, offices, and a technology laboratory," according to the SLO. More than 150 students are currently enrolled in the Columbus program. State Librarian Jo Budler said she was looking forward to the partnership: "It's possible that students will have an opportunity to participate in innovative and leading edge projects that we are undertaking here at the State Library, including digitization projects and open source solutions." KSU offers the only American Library Association-accredited master's program in Ohio.
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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