This Week in LIS - 14 December 2007

Upcoming Dates

December 17 (Monday): Dear Linka Project Submission Deadline
December 18 (Tuesday): LIS Christmas Event (2-5pm)
December 19 (Wednesday): Luther Staff Christmas Party (9-10am)

Coalition for Networked Information Task Force Report (Introduction)

Early this week, I had the opportunity to attend the fall task force meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information in Washington DC. CNI is a joint initiative of Educause and ARL (Association of Research Libraries). More than 200 profit and not-for-profit organizations sponsor CNI and partner with it to promote the use of networked information technology to advance research and education. It is a great place to see active collaboration between librarians, information technologists, faculty, and leadership of colleges, universities, companies, and others interested in this field. Two task force meetings are held each year and consist mostly of presentations given by sponsoring organizations that represent the leading edge of use of networked information in higher education. This is a very effective venue to hear the current conversation on where our field is and where it is headed. I find it to be one of the most valuable places to get a picture of the road ahead.

I attended many sessions that offer some direct insight into our road ahead, and I think rather than condense it all into one briefer report, I'll serialize out a bit over a few weeks and talk specifically about topics of direct interest to Luther.

The open plenary was a dual session consisting of the presentation of the Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration for 2007, which recognize leadership in collaborative development of open source software tools with application to scholarship in the arts and humanities, as well as cultural-heritage, not-for-profit activity. Mellon awarded $650,000 to 10 projects, one of which is in active use here at Luther. Receiving awards were:

$100,000 to the American Museum of the Moving Image (Astoria, NY: www.movingimage.us) for the development and release of the OpenCollection museum collection management system (www.opencollection.org).
$100,000 to Duke University (Durham, NC: www.duke.edu) for leadership and development work on the OpenCroquet open source 3-D virtual worlds environment (www.opencroquet.org).
$100,000 to Open Polytechnic of New Zealand (Wellington, NZ: www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz) for leadership and development work on several open source projects including the New Zealand Open Source Virtual Learning Environment (http://eduforge.org/projects/nzvle/). [this project is related to Moodle, which we use for KATIE here at Luther].
$50,000 to the Georgia Public Library Service of the University System of Georgia (Atlanta, GA: www.georgialibraries.org) for the development and release of the Evergreen open-source library automation system (www.open-ils.org).
$50,000 to Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT: www.middlebury.edu) for the development and release of the Segue interactive learning management system.
$50,000 to the Participatory Culture Foundation (Worcester, MA: www.participatoryculture.org) for the development and release of the open source Miro media player (www.getmiro.com).
$50,000 to Talboks- och Punkstkriftsbiblioteket (The Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille: Enskede, Sweden: www.tpb.se) for the development and release of open source tools supporting the Daisy Project for talking books for the visually impaired.
Two awards of $50,000 each to University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, IL: www.illinois.edu): one award for the development and release of the Firefox Accessibility Extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1891); and one award for the development and release of the OpenEAI enterprise application integration project (www.openEAI.org).
$50,000 to University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario: www.utoronto.ca) for the development and release of the ATutor learning management system (www.atutor.ca).

I think it's also great to see organizations such as Mellon recognizing work like this. As Luther is an institution that has taken a stronger bent toward open source than many other schools, awards such as this help foster creative software development that does and will continue to make a real impact on the work we do here.

The balance of the opening session was an overview of current hot topics in networked information given by CNI Executive Director Clifford Lynch. This list gives an excellent overview of the challenges and opportunities that exist for us nationally. Among the topics included are:

Network Infrastructure
- Net Neutrality – this is the issue of prioritizing certain types of traffic on the Internet over other types. Currently Internet backbones carry all traffic at equal priority. Elimination of network neutrality threatens to restrict free flow of information and preference wealthy corporations and content providers.
- Environmental Concerns - this issue is front and center here at Luther. Datacenter owners and providers are actively engaged in thinking about how to sustain tremendous growth while remaining environmentally responsible. There is a growing trend to locate datacenters away from metropolitan centers and close to sources of natural energy (primarily water). Microsoft recently announced a major datacenter in Siberia. It is easy to run networks to remote locations, while it is a lot harder to deliver energy to more centrally located places.
National Cyberinfrastructure - the problem of maintaining massive amounts of digital content, objects, and data is before us with ongoing issues of management, reuse, and curation of electronic material.
Digitization / Hidden Collections - While the Google Book project gets the headlines, increasingly we need to be looking at digitizing local collections that are hidden in the online world. Luther has actively pursued this through digitization of Chips, and will be continuing to selecting digitize materials from our hidden collections.
Use of Digitized Collections - Because of the extensive digitization efforts underway, we are on the cusp of being able to do data mining and analysis of historical and current published material on a scale never before seen. The problem remains that only Google and other major corporations actually have full access to the full digitized content due to copyright restrictions and other logistical realities. This is a challenge to be overcome, and can bring some significant gains if access to data is made available.
Appliance Ebook Readers - They keep popping back up, though even the Kindle doesn't seem to quite get it right.
Institutional Repositories - This one has been around a while as institutions try to corral digital data, but also to just figure out how to use a digital repository.
Electronic Theses & Dissertations - This is increasingly the standard method for collecting and managing scholarly work from graduate schools.
Records Management / Institutional Archives - There is growing awareness of a disconnect between traditional archival practices and modern electronic records management at colleges and universities. Often archives are not directly involved in maintaining electronic records generated by major campus information systems.
Name Authority - Questions of name authority, linked to issues of identity management and biography management are taking a more prominent place in conversations about evolving traditional library authority practices.

These were broad overviews, next week, I'll include some more specific project reports.

Google Apps Feedback / Your Creativity Needed

We are currently soliciting and receiving feedback from all our Google Apps beta users. Reaction is strongly positive across the board. It is our hope to package our evaluation work, feedback and other documentation into an official project proposal soon. As part of that proposal, we're seeking a name for this new suite of services. We'd rather not call it Google Apps, but would like something else that brands and localizes this product. Ideally a naming scheme that both encompasses the whole suite, but also each part (mail, calendar, docs, chat, start, etc.) would be good. So, if you have thoughts or ideas, please send them along.

Dear Linka

A reminder of our Dear Linka project to better interact with our users via humorous Q&As. The project document is available in the LIS General project in Basecamp. Submissions should be emailed to me by Monday, December 17th. Thanks for your help in making this a fun and engaging project.

Staff Holiday Event - Tuesday, December 18th

This Tuesday from 2-5, we'll come together to celebrate the close of the fall semester and the coming holidays. Some specifics regarding the afternoon:

You are welcome to bring a treat to share. Drinks will be provided.
We will have a group activity to challenge our brains a bit.
We'll also have a voluntary gift exchange. If you would like to participate, please bring a gift in the $10-15 range. It should be something you yourself would like to receive. Bonus gifts will be available to winners of our group activity.

Notes from LIS Council

LIS Council did not meet this week.

Reminders

LIS staff are encouraged to trial Google Apps for Education. Contact Adam for information on how to participate.
Puffer Plan lunches - schedule available in Basecamp or on lis.luther.edu
Have news to share? Post to the blog at lis.luther.edu/blog
Tuesday items to share? Please send along to Cindy H.
Traveled lately? Please post a brief report to the blog at lis.luther.edu

Recruitment Updates

Systems Administrator - Campus Interviews are complete.
Academic Technology Librarian - Semifinalist review is underway.
Help Desk Technician - Campus Interviews are complete.

8:45s for Next Week

We'll hold virtual meetings everyday next week.

Cool Resource of the Week: What Should I Read Next? / Suggester Suite at LibraryThing

With the holidays quickly approaching, perhaps we'll have a little time to wind down and maybe even read a book (at least that's how I feel :) Need some recommendations, and don't have your favorite librarian nearby to make recommendations? whatshouldireadnext.com is a British-based site that seeks to give you some suggestions based on other user's recommendations. Books entered into the same favorites list become linked together and the more data that is added allows the system to make stronger correlations between titles. As a non-commercial site, recommendations are not linked to purchases (like through Amazon) and all links between items are from actual readers. They also have a beta for film and music.

LibraryThing also has a suggester feature that will analyze your own library and make suggestions based upon titles you hold in common with others. Or you can ask for suggestions with any title as a seed (or you can use the UnSuggester to get opposite titles from what you have or like.

On the web: http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/ and http://www.librarything.com/suggest