Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group has announced that the Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern (ZHB Luzern) has adopted the Primo discovery and delivery solution. Both Primo and the library’s Aleph integrated library system (ILS) will be provided through the Ex Libris cloud environment. As the principal library for the universities in Luzern, Switzerland, ZHB Luzern required a discovery and delivery solution that would facilitate searching the multiple resources of these institutions.

Founded in 1951, the ZHB Luzern claims to be the largest library of central Switzerland and provides literature and information for research, teaching, leisure and entertainment. It serves the canton’s university, college and teacher training college, as well as a number of other educational institutions. In addition to modern media, ZHB Luzern houses valuable historical collections which stem from its forerunner libraries, the library of citizens (from 1812) and the cantonal library (from 1832).

The ZHB Luzern is part of the Informationsverbund Deutschschweiz (IDS), a consortium of German-speaking Swiss libraries.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group has announced that the Norwegian national provider of library services, BIBSYS, has selected Primo for its discovery and delivery solution.

BIBSYS is a key supplier of products and services for Norwegian higher education institutions, other research institutions, public administrative institutions, and the National Library of Norway. It offers lecturers, librarians, researchers, students, and others easy access to library resources by providing a variety of search options as well as simple loan and order functions.

Rather than creating a home grown search interface, BIBSYS decided to look into commercial systems. BIBSYS selected the Primo discovery and delivery solution after an evaluation process in which the Ex Libris solution's ability to integrate with existing systems and accommodate local data was clearly demonstrated along with other differentiators.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group has announced that following an agreement with Swets, a developer of innovative content management services for libraries and publishers, mutual customers will be able to search the SwetsWise Online Content e-journal gateway via the Primo Central Index of scholarly electronic materials.

SwetsWise Online Content covers the metadata and abstracts of over 40 million articles and 14,500 full-text scientific periodicals from more than 5,700 publishers. The Primo Central Index, provided as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution.

As a one-stop service, Primo enables users to fulfill their information needs by exploring their library's locally managed collections along with global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central, and to obtain one blended, relevance-ranked result list.

Library information provider OCLC, US, has announced that the University of Nebraska Omaha is now live with OCLC WorldShare Management Services. The University of Nebraska Omaha is 100th institution worldwide to fully implement the new Web-based, cooperative library management and discovery services.

WorldShare Management Services provide a Web-based environment that streamlines cataloguing, acquisitions, license management and circulation workflows, and offers the WorldCat Local discovery service for library users. WorldShare Management Services (WMS) were released for general availability in the US in July 2011. Twenty months later, 100 libraries on three continents - Australia, Europe and North America - are already using the services and some 65 more are in the implementation process to begin using the services in the future.

Working together with WorldShare Management Services, libraries can share data, applications and workflow improvements with peer institutions, end users and partners. Since WorldShare Management Services are built on an open, collaborative platform, libraries can add the features and functions needed to support their unique communities. Libraries without development resources can take advantage of applications developed by others in the library community.

That spirit of cooperation in the WMS community was a key to the decision to move to WorldShare. The move to WorldShare Management Services has already generated cost and time savings for the Criss Library. According to Steve Shorb, Dean of the Criss Library at the University of Nebraska Omaha, the move has helped the library to acquire 300,000 e-book titles for the campus, and in the future they plan to reallocate library staff to create an institutional repository for the university.

Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, and library information provider OCLC, US, have announced the launch of a far-reaching data exchange programme that will enhance the library discovery experience for users of OCLC's WorldCat Local service, ProQuest's Summon service, the full-text of ProQuest Central and ebrary e-books. The programme shares metadata across some of the world's most-widely used library resources, enriching the discoverability and comprehensiveness of all the services.

Once the data exchange is completed, libraries that subscribe to both WorldCat Local and ProQuest Central or that own any ebrary content will be able to discover ProQuest records and access associated content through the WorldCat Local interface. Further, the exchange will enhance the discoverability of catalogue records in the Summon service, creating the potential for libraries to view other institutions' WorldCat holdings information within the Summon experience.

ProQuest Central is the largest, multidisciplinary, full-text database available in the market. This resource provides access to 27 of ProQuest's most highly used databases, with a variety of content types across over 160 subjects, making this the broadest single research resource in the world.

WorldCat claims to be the world's largest database of bibliographic information built continuously by OCLC and libraries around the world since 1971. Each record in the WorldCat database contains a bibliographic description of a single item or work and a list of institutions that hold the item. Institutions share these records, using them to create local catalogues, arrange interlibrary loans and conduct reference work. Since 1971, more than 280 million records have been added to WorldCat, spanning more than 6,000 years of recorded knowledge.

Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris are joining forces to expand access to the Library's rich historical treasures. As part of its Early European Books programme, ProQuest will digitise about 70,000 volumes from BnF's collection of European books printed before 1700. The collection, which is world renowned for its breadth and quality, includes 3,000 works printed before 1501, providing researchers with simple, online insight into early European history and culture.

The BnF's collection is vast and wide-ranging, containing many rare or obscure texts on subjects from literature and history to science and engineering, from law to aesthetics and art criticism, from politics to philosophy and theology. The books themselves come in many forms, with popular chapbooks (which were widely distributed but rarely preserved) at one end of the spectrum and luxury editions aimed at a wealthy, courtly audience at the other.

The BnF is the fifth major library to participate in ProQuest's Early European Books. The company launched the initiative with the Danish Royal Library, Copenhagen and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in Italy. Digitisation operations are currently also underway at the National Library of the Netherlands and at the Wellcome Library in London. In each case, ProQuest has set up a scanning studio on site at the library and uses state-of-the-art technology to create high-definition colour images of every page, including the often-lavish bindings and covers.

Through the Early European Books project, ProQuest is building an increasingly comprehensive survey of printing in Europe to 1700 by digitising and bringing together the holdings of major rare book libraries.

Early European Books collections are available for purchase by libraries worldwide and are delivered via a multilingual interface which allows powerful searching of the detailed indexing, as well as cross-searching of the well-known Early English Books Online database, with its facsimiles of 125,000 books printed in English or in the British Isles between 1473 and 1700. Books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France will be included in a number of Early European Books collections, starting with the newly released Collection IV.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group has launched a self-registration service enabling institutions to easily add the contents of their institutional repository (IR) to the Primo Central Index of scholarly electronic materials and thus expand the breadth of IR content in the index.

Institutional repositories play a key role in the open access movement. They often contain articles that are as yet unpublished or are freely available in the repository as part of an institution's green open access mandate. Once indexed in Primo Central, this content becomes widely discoverable to users in over 1300 institutions, thereby significantly increasing the usage and impact of an institution's research output.

Institutional repositories contain a wealth of otherwise hard-to-find material such as research data, manuscripts, and course notes. It is expected that this new initiative will benefit institutions, researchers, and users of scholarly material - who will enjoy timely and easy access to material they might not have found otherwise - and, as a result, will further the open access movement itself.

Registration of institutional repositories in Primo Central is another strand of the company's open access strategy. Ex Libris endorses both green and gold open access methods and is involved in a number of initiatives to maximize the visibility of open access materials, including exposing the availability of open access articles that are published in subscription journals (hybrid journals).

Library information provider OCLC, US, and Gale, part of Cengage Learning, have agreed to make all Gale databases and archives fully discoverable through WorldCat Local, and to explore broadening discoverability of Gale collections through other applications available through the OCLC WorldShare Platform.

OCLC and Gale have been offering access to some of Gale's most popular databases to mutual subscribers through the WorldCat Local discovery and delivery service. This new agreement will enable OCLC to index metadata and full text for all Gale databases and scholarly archives and make them discoverable through WorldCat Local for mutual subscribers.

In addition, Gale and OCLC will identify metadata that could be made discoverable to any user through OCLC WorldShare Platform applications, making it possible for libraries to better manage these resources - from selection and acquisition, to circulation and access.

Gale will work with OCLC to register all its collections, including the Gale Virtual Reference Library platform and the Gale In Context collections, within the OCLC WorldShare Platform. Gale and OCLC will index for discovery of all full text associated with e-books and periodicals in the collections. Gale will provide OCLC with updated Gale Knowledge Base profiles and library holdings information for all collections, making them fully discoverable and easily accessible to mutual subscribers.

Gale and OCLC will also identify metadata from these collections that can be made discoverable to users around the world through WorldCat.org, the OCLC website that offers access to the global catalogue for discovery of library materials.

The OCLC WorldShare Platform is a global, interconnected Web architecture that supports OCLC services and applications, and provides flexible, open access to library data through APIs and other Web services. Libraries, developers and partners can use this data to build and share applications that streamline and enhance their local library workflows. Adding metadata from Gale databases and archives to the WorldCat knowledge base enhances the ability of library staff to select, acquire and manage their Gale content, using both OCLC applications and other applications in their workflow.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) will host a Library Assessment Forum at the upcoming ALA Midwinter Meeting, featuring LibValue research conducted at the University of Tennessee. The forum will be held on January 25, 2013, from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. in the Sheraton Seattle’s Ravenna Room. No registration is necessary to attend this event.

In a panel presentation, Steven Smith, Regina Mays, and Teresa Walker from the University of Tennessee will discuss their efforts to demonstrate the value of the library with the LibValue project. Steven Smith, professor and dean of libraries, will discuss how the value and return on investment studies are used from the perspective of a dean. Regina Mays, assistant professor and assessment librarian, will discuss her perspective on LibValue from a practitioner/assessment librarian’s point of view. Teresa Walker, associate professor and head of integrated user services, will demonstrate how the LibValue work has been used to assess student success in relation to the use of the learning commons environment.

The Library Assessment Forum will conclude with an overview of the recent Library Assessment Conference held in Charlottesville and a discussion of plans for the 2014 Library Assessment Conference scheduled to take place August 4–6, 2014, in Seattle.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group has announced that the Barr Smith Library of the University of Adelaide has adopted the Primo discovery and delivery solution. A member of Australia's Group of Eight (GO8) research universities, Adelaide joins over 1200 sites that have opted for the Primo discovery solution.

University Librarian Ray Choate emphasised that this was an enterprise-level decision for the University and was based on a number of major considerations. Primo will enable students and researchers to discover the full range of library resources via a single search, with the option to personalise the ranking of results. The solution will play a pivotal role in fulfilling the learning and educational objectives of the University's new strategic plan, which emphasises small group learning and individual research projects, requiring enriched discovery of diverse library resources.

Primo is also a component for implementing the Ex Libris next-generation Alma SaaS library management solution in 2014 as part of the University's participation in the Alma collaborative partner programme.

It is expected that Primo will enhance users' research experience by integrating library services into the discovery interface. Users will be able to fulfill their library needs - whether recalling a book on loan, renewing a borrowed item, or opening an electronic journal article - directly from Primo.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released Research Library Services for Graduate Students (PDF), the second report in the New Roles for New Times series. This series highlights the transformation of the library workforce to address new challenges for research libraries in serving 21st-century students, educators, scholars and researchers.

The new report, written by Lucinda Covert-Vail and Scott Collard, both from New York University (NYU) Libraries, presents findings from interviews and other research into the current state of graduate student programming in primarily ARL libraries. The authors provide several recommendations for serving graduate students more effectively in a demonstrably changing higher education landscape.

The report proposes that the growing number, and heterogeneity, of graduate students and programs presents opportunities for research libraries to provide segmented services targeted for students at different stages of their academic and demographic life-cycle. Through their interviews, Covert-Vail and Collard found an enthusiasm for a broad range of new services, from advanced data manipulation and visualization to softer skills-based instruction in time management and writer's block. They also report that new configurations of library space, housing aggregated services into research or scholarly commons, for example, can both create and leverage collaborations within the larger institution.

Finally, the authors present different strategies for staffing graduate student services, from dedicated positions and committees to more loosely structured teams comprising subject liaisons, technologists, data librarians, and others, who work together to deliver a suite of complex solutions to meet the needs of graduate students in research institutions. This report is freely available for download from ARL's New Roles for New Times website.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) has launched the Read service on its global knowledge platform, OECD iLibrary. With this service, anyone, anywhere can access OECD full-text content, right down to the level of individual chapters and tables. Read content is optimised for browser-enabled mobile devices and can be read online wherever there is an Internet connection. They are also shareable and embeddable.

With tablets likely to displace laptops and desktops as the main reading device for many patrons in the coming years, adding a tablet-friendly version to OECD iLibrary means the needs of librarians are met too. Patrons can expect to discover, share and use subscribed OECD resources more easily, encouraging usage. Sharing OECD knowledge with class and colleagues is simpler than ever, thanks to the social media tools included. Use of Read content is fully aggregated in the COUNTER statistics provided to registered institutions.

The Read service is seen to demonstrate OECD's continuing commitment to making its content accessible for all, whether at a subscribing institution or not. Using Read, anyone can fact-check and access OECD full-text material. OECD iLibrary is stated to be delivering more and more OECD knowledge, with downloads 40 percent higher than last year. Now, with the introduction of Read on OECD iLibrary, OECD knowledge is not only accessible for everyone, but shareable too.

Electronic research databases provider EBSCO Information Services Europe has released a series of five papers reporting the results of a survey on the future of the academic information supply chain.

The papers reportedly cover diverse subjects and reveal some surprising insights into possible future roles for libraries, as well as others in the academic information supply chain. Respondents to the survey share opinions on new and emerging technologies; changing research practices; trends in user behaviour/expectations; and views on a variety of access and business models.

Budgetary pressures are seen to have a significant impact across all areas of the supply chain, but some respondents feel this can be used to drive innovation. Other future forces for change include open access; mobile technology; and the importance of China, India and other emerging economies in shaping publishers' activities.

The papers include "The Future Role of the Academic Library", "Access to Content: Now and in the Future", "The Impact of Open Access" "The Role of Subscription Agents" and "Future Forces for Change".

In conducting this survey, EBSCO and Red Sage Consulting sought opinions from 141 individuals involved in the academic publishing industry. A total of 98 librarians, consortia representatives, publishers, agents/intermediaries and others in the industry shared their views on the future of the academic information supply chain.

EBSCO provides print and online resource management tools and related services. Red Sage Consulting, owned by Sarah Durrant, provides research, business development, coaching, mentoring and training services.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the Ex Libris Primo Central Index will soon be covering the metadata and full text of all journal content on the Taylor & Francis Online platform and in the Taylor & Francis Open programme.

A number of other information providers have recently signed agreements with Ex Libris to enable the Primo Central Index to search their content or to extend the content that is already available for Primo Central searches. These providers include Johns Hopkins University Press (the Press's Project MUSE e-books), SAI Global, Palgrave Macmillan (journals), Plunkett Research, CQ Press, Versita Publishing (Versita open-access journals), and Bridgeman Education.

The Primo Central Index, a cloud-based service adopted by hundreds of libraries around the globe, is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution. As a one-stop service, the Primo solution enables users to fulfill their information needs by exploring both their library's locally managed collections and the global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central and to obtain one blended, relevance-ranked result list.

The University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, in partnership with the U-M Library's MPublishing division, has announced the release of The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia, an original, open access digital collection of archival, primary, and interpretive materials related to the history of the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic in the US.

The collection, located at www.influenzaarchive.org, contains more than 16,000 digitised documents - correspondence, minutes of organisation and group meetings, reports from agencies and charities, newspaper accounts, military records, diaries, photographs, and more. Additionally, it also contains interpretive materials contributed by scholars of history and public health.

The digital encyclopaedia is the culmination of more than five years of the Center's ongoing research in collaboration with the Global Migration and Quarantine Division of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

MPublishing worked with the Center for the History of Medicine to create the underlying architecture of the digital encyclopaedia, as well as its functionality and user interface.

The U-M Library has been leading library digitisation and digital publishing since the 1995 'Making of America' project. Its 2004 partnership with Google to digitise its collection laid the groundwork for HathiTrust, an inter-institutional digital library of over ten million volumes, about 30 percent of which are freely available online.

Funding for this digital project was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, including the 'We the People' designation acknowledging the Center's efforts to enrich the teaching, study and understanding of American history and culture.

Library information provider OCLC, US, has introduced a new OCLC WorldShare Metadata collection management functionality. This is projected to offer more efficient ways for libraries to manage electronic resources and improve user access to valuable collections.

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. This is expected to provide library users with better access to these materials, and library staff with more time for other priorities.

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. 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, customised 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 catalogue 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.

OCLC is conducting free webinars to explain more about the new functionality. Those who are interested can plan to attend one of the webinar sessions which are scheduled on September 18 and September 20 at 3:00 – 4:00 pm Eastern Time.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has reached an agreement with the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) to syndicate the metadata of the research data that ANDS stores and makes accessible to researchers. This agreement is part of the Ex Libris initiative to expand the indexing of research data in Primo Central.

ANDS is transforming Australia's research data environment by managing and connecting data, enabling the discovery of this data, and supporting its reuse. The organisation aims to promote richer, more accountable research; a more efficient use of research data; and improved provision of data to support policy development.

The Australian National Data Service is building the Australian Research Data Commons: a cohesive collection of research resources from all research institutions, to make better use of Australia's research data outputs. Research Data Australia, ANDS' flagship service, provides a comprehensive window into the Australian Research Data Commons. It is an Internet-based discovery service designed to provide rich connections between data, projects, researchers, and institutions and promote visibility of Australian research data collections in search engines.

Library information provider OCLC, US, and Europeana, the provider of Europe's digital library, have worked together on an approach that will enable OCLC member institutions to contribute metadata derived from OCLC's WorldCat database to the Europeana.eu portal in a manner that is consistent with OCLC's WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative.

This agreement aims to dispel concerns that OCLC's policies around metadata in its WorldCat database are an obstacle to complying with the terms of the Europeana Data Exchange Agreement (DEA), which places all metadata contributed to Europeana.eu in the public domain, using the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication license. While OCLC makes no intellectual property claims to individual metadata records in WorldCat, it asserts a copyright claim over the WorldCat database as a whole - which created uncertainty over contributions to Europeana.eu by members of the cooperative. Nevertheless, OCLC wishes to support participation in Europeana by its member libraries given the significance of Europeana.

In response to these concerns, OCLC requested and Europeana agreed to ask subsequent users of the metadata to give attribution to both OCLC and to the contributing institution as the source, and to make them aware of the OCLC cooperative’s community norms around data.

OCLC will continue to publicize its cooperative norms and provide advice and support to members of the cooperative who contribute metadata, while Europeana will actively encourage re-users of the metadata to uphold the aforementioned Usage Guidelines for Metadata.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced the selection of the Primo discovery and delivery solution, bX Recommender, and SFX link resolver by Wyoming Community Colleges. Wyoming joins other states including Virginia, Florida, Hawaii, and Wisconsin where community colleges have adopted Primo statewide.

After a thorough evaluation of the discovery service landscape, Wyoming's seven-college consortium chose Primo for its advanced functionality, in particular its ScholarRank relevance ranking, the scholarly article recommendations from bX, and the solution's flexibility in accommodating complex consortial needs.

Wyoming Community Colleges provide lifelong learning environments through higher education, workforce development, innovative partnerships, and civic and global engagement that lead to economic, social and cultural prosperity. The seven community colleges in Wyoming account for more than two-thirds of all undergraduate credit enrollments in the state.

Library information provider OCLC, US, has announced that Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, has gone live with WorldCat Local, the company's cloud-based discovery and delivery service that allow users to search their library's collection along with the collections of thousands of other libraries worldwide. With the launch of WorldCat Local, Tilburg University has chosen to focus first on the most user-critical service while taking a significant step toward migration of its entire library management workflow to the cloud with the adoption of OCLC WorldShare Management Services.

Students and faculty can now quickly and easily find and get materials they need through WorldCat Local, the discovery tool that offers a single search box to find what they need in Tilburg University Library as well as in the collections of other libraries around the world. With the University's collections already present in WorldCat, the configuration of its electronic collections in the WorldCat knowledge base further facilitates the discovery and delivery of electronic resources. This has provided the foundation for the next stage in its migration.

WorldCat Local can be a stand-alone service, or part of WorldShare Management Services, OCLC's new cloud-based library management services that provide tools to improve library workflows, reduce costs and offer new opportunities for collaboration. In the United States, there are currently 60 libraries already using the new WorldShare Management Services. In Australia, 12 libraries have started piloting the services.

OCLC has recently opened new data centers in London, Toronto and Sydney, in addition to the two that already exist in the United States, to serve libraries around the world interested in using the cloud-based services. Another data center in continental Europe is planned.

OCLC, a US-based non-profit, membership, computer library service and research organisation, has announced that the University library of Skövde has selected WorldCat Local as its new discovery service. University library of Skövde is the first university library in Sweden to use OCLC's integrated solution for discovery of electronic, digital and print materials. The University plans to complete the first implementation phase of WorldCat Local at the start of the academic year in September.

The University was looking for a cost-effective solution with an extensive central index and comprehensive coverage of its holdings to provide students with fast and easy access to the library's electronic materials - more than 15,000 e-journal titles and more than 70,000 e-books.

After the university's records are loaded into WorldCat later in the year, print and digital materials will also be available for discovery in one single search and result set together with electronic publications. In addition to the discovery service, the WorldCat Local solution also provides a knowledge base and link resolver.

The University library of Skövde is planning to translate the interface into Swedish, which will make the Swedish WorldCat Local interface available to other Swedish institutions and users that are part of the OCLC worldwide cooperative.

By loading University library of Skövde records into WorldCat, its students and staff get quick, easy access to these materials via WorldCat Local, and other researchers and students around the world have the opportunity to discover these materials via WorldCat.org.

The American Library Association (ALA) has released 'Ebook Business Models for Public Libraries (PDF),' a report that describes general features and attributes of the current e-book environment and outlines constraints and restrictions of current business models. The report, which was created by the ALA Digital Content & Libraries Working Group (DCWG), is based on conversations with publishers and deliberations on the e-book market. It suggests opportunities for publishers to showcase content through public libraries.

The DCWG recommends three basic attributes that should be found in any business model for e-books. This includes inclusion of all titles, enduring rights and integration.

Nationwide, many libraries are facing constraints from publishers on how e-books can be used, including: perpetuating the print model of one user per e-book license purchased; limiting the number of loans; variable pricing; delayed sale; and restrictions on consortial or interlibrary loans. Alternately, opportunities for publishers might include enhanced discovery, readers' advisory, or even a major new sales channel for library patrons.

The DCWG has developed a number of other resources about e-books, such as its first 'Tip Sheet (PDF),' which is on digital rights management, and an E-Content Supplement to American Libraries magazine.

The DCWG will continue its advocacy on e-book business models for public libraries as it increases its focus on other aspects of e-books such as the school library market and accessibility issues.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the Library Network of Western Switzerland (RERO) has selected the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution. The network includes the universities of Geneva, Fribourg, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel; the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Western Switzerland; and four colleges of education. Primo will complement the network’s current Ex Libris solutions - the SFX OpenURL link resolver and the MetaLib federated search system.

Following a thorough evaluation of commercial discovery products, RERO chose Primo for its international reputation in academic institutions and unmatched flexibility in consortial implementations.

RERO, an acronym for Réseau Romand (French-speaking Network), is the network of libraries in western Switzerland. Founded more than 25 years ago following the decision by several major libraries to collaborate, RERO now includes most academic, public, heritage, and special libraries in the cantons of Geneva, Fribourg, Jura, Neuchâtel, Valais, and Vaud, as well as the Courts of Confederation (2 of the included cantons are bilingual French-German). RERO manages a catalogue of about 240 libraries serving over 280,000 registered readers and 50,000 students in four institutions of higher education (the universities of Geneva, Fribourg, Lausanne, and Neuchatel); the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO); and teacher training colleges (Vaud, Valais, Fribourg, and BEJUNE).

OCLC, a US-based nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organisation, has signed new agreements with global publishers and has added a list of new collections to WorldCat Local. The OCLC discovery and delivery service offers users integrated access to more than 969 million items.

The content providers are expected to add valuable new collections including some searchable full text to WorldCat Local, WorldCat.org and OCLC WorldShare Management Services. They include Adam Matthew Publications, Boom Uitgevers, Expert Reviews, Future Medicine, Future Science, Universitetsforlaget, Intelecom Intelligent Telecommunications, John Wiley & Sons, L'Année philologique on the Internet, Museo Galileo - Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Palgrave MacMillan, and World Scientific Publishing Company.

OCLC continues to negotiate access to critical library content on behalf of the cooperative to ensure access to libraries’ most popular resources. A complete list of databases and collections available through WorldCat Local from these and other publishers is available online at http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/2012/201241.htm

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the University of Hawaii System (UH), which consists of 10 universities and colleges, has adopted the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution, the Primo Central Index of scholarly electronic resources the bX Article Recommender, and the SFX OpenURL link resolver.

With the Ex Libris Voyager integrated library system already in use, the consortium has added Primo to provide its students and faculty with a superior discovery platform. Users will now be able to access library services, such as requests, loans, and account updates, directly from the search interface.

With its diverse member institutions, UH considered Primo’s built-in capabilities for consortia particularly important. The Primo configuration options range from centralised control to total independence for member libraries. With the latter configuration, each library can select its own settings for search options, result boosting, the user interface, the calculation of item availability, and delivery options. UH will, therefore, be able to create a common discovery platform while preserving institutional branding and preferences. Primo also enables each member institution to integrate the discovery layer with its local systems and digital repositories.

Academic publisher SAGE has released the findings of a new report, according to which, providing evidence of value remains an elusive goal for academic libraries across geographic borders. The findings are the results of a six-month research project commissioned by SAGE, which sets out recommendations for academic libraries to enhance their working relationship with academic teaching and research staff.

‘Working together: evolving value for academic libraries’ was undertaken by LISU, a national research and information centre based in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University (UK).

Findings from three geographic areas, the US, UK and Scandinavia, indicated that there is no systematic evidence of the value of academic libraries for teaching and research staff. Despite this, librarians noted that they receive positive feedback about the support the library provides, but there is a perception that academic staff do not really know how to use all that the library can offer.

The findings are based on eight case studies: in the US at Purdue University, Towson University, University of Utah and Wake Forest University; in the UK at the University of Nottingham and University of Sussex; and in Scandinavia at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden and Oslo and Akerhus University College, Norway. Additionally, a survey was undertaken by 630 librarians in the same regions to compare findings.

Outlined in the report are three key issues identified by librarians as being central to working together with faculty. These are: value measurement and perception; working together with researchers and teachers; and raising awareness about library products and services. The report sets out examples of best practice and makes a series of recommendations for libraries and university management to improve the perceived value of academic libraries with teaching and research staff.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the German library consortium Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (Common Library Network, or GBV) will now offer its users online access to its extensive union catalogue via the Primo Central Index of scholarly e-content.

Comprising over 34 million library records, GBV’s union catalogue (GVK) holds valuable content from many academic fields, particularly natural sciences, the humanities and mathematics. The GBV consortium consists of more than 430 academic, public and research libraries in seven German states.

The Primo Central Index, offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution. As a one-stop service, Primo enables users to fulfill their information needs by exploring their library’s locally managed collections along with global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central, and to obtain one blended, relevance-ranked result list.

The American Library Association (ALA) has released a new report examining critical issues underlying equitable access to digital content through the nation's libraries. In the report, titled 'E-content: The Digital Dialogue,' authors explore an unprecedented and splintered landscape in which several major publishers refuse to sell e-books to libraries; proprietary platforms fragment cultural record; and reader privacy is endangered.

The report, published as a supplement to American Libraries magazine, explores various licensing models and the state of librarian-publisher relations. Additionally, the report provides an update on the ALA-wide effort to promote access to digital content, co-chaired by Robert Wolven, associate university librarian at Columbia University, and Sari Feldman, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. The effort includes meeting with publishers, distributors and other important stakeholders; championing public advocacy, and writing position papers that advance practical business models without compromising library values.

'E-content: The Digital Dialogue' identifies a number of ways libraries and publishers can collaborate to lessen the digital content divide.

After detailing his conversations with a reader, writer, publisher and bookseller, Douglas County Public Library Director James LaRue also asks librarians to 'rethink,' and lays out directions to pursue, including an updated legal framework, new content management models and partnership opportunities with other stakeholders in the reading ecosystem.

Lisa Long Hickman, sales and marketing manager of Dzanc Books, argues for open lines of communication to enable fair play, and Deborah Caldwell-Stone deputy director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, urges proactive steps to protect library users' privacy rights.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the Kotar online library and RAMBI, the Index of Articles on Jewish Studies, have made their content searchable in the Primo Central Index.

The Primo Central Index, offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution. As a one-stop service, Primo enables users to fulfill their information needs by exploring their library's locally managed collections along with global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central, and to obtain one blended, relevance-ranked result list.

Kotar is an innovative combination of a digital library of e-books published in Hebrew and a customised work environment, which has been developed by Israel's Center for Educational Technology in collaboration with the country's leading publishers. The full text of Kotar's e-book and journal collections is now indexed in Primo Central.

RAMBI is a selective bibliography of scholarly articles in all fields of Jewish studies, the history and geography of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. Material in RAMBI is compiled from thousands of periodicals and collections in Hebrew, Yiddish, and European languages and is drawn mainly from the collections of the National Library of Israel.

The US’ Salzburg Global Seminar and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) have announced the publication of a report titled ‘Libraries and Museums in an Era of Participatory Culture.’ The report details the events of the October 2011 convening of 58 library, museum and cultural heritage leaders from 31 countries. Together, the participants developed a set of recommendations to help libraries and museums embrace new possibilities for public engagement that are made possible by societal and technological change.

The deliberations identified ‘imperatives for the future’ including accepting the notion of democratic access, placing a major emphasis on public value and impact, and embracing lifelong learning.

Building on the IMLS initiative, “The Future of Museums and Libraries�, as well as on past museum and library sessions convened by the Salzburg Global Seminar, this session brought together library and museum leaders, cultural and educational policymakers, cultural sector researchers, representatives of library and museum education programs, technology experts, sociologists, journalists and library and museum associations.

The report has sought to capture rich perspectives about the changing roles and responsibilities of libraries and museums. The publication describes each of the five plenary sessions and the working group recommendations that resulted from them: culture and communities; learning transformed; building the skills of library and museum professionals; and demonstrating public value. It includes descriptions of innovative case studies from around the globe and a summary of the concluding keynote lecture given by Vishakha Desia, president and chief executive officer of the Asia Society.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has been selected by the National University to provide next-generation library management and discovery services through the Alma unified resource-management system and the Primo unified discovery and delivery system.

As a one-stop service, Primo enables users to fulfill their information needs by exploring their library’s locally managed collections along with global and regional resources, and to obtain a single result list sorted by the Ex Libris advanced ScholarRank relevance-ranking technology.

National University will consolidate its library systems with Alma, replacing a number of legacy systems, including SirsiDynix Unicorn and the Serials Solutions 360 Link and 360 Resource Manager solutions. Delivered as a cloud service, Alma enables libraries to focus their resources on supporting the institution’s teaching and research missions. Alma unifies workflows across print, electronic, and digital resources and helps libraries increase their efficiency through data sharing and collaboration.

National University is the first academic member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) to select Alma. As a new Primo site, National joins other SCELC institutions in the Primo customer community, including the Claremont Colleges, Santa Clara University, and the Master’s College.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that it will include the Harvard Library's catalogue records in the Ex Libris Alma Community Catalog, and Harvard's Digital Access to Scholarship (DASH) article repository in the Primo Central Index of scholarly content. Endorsing the recommendations of the Alma Community Zone advisory group, Ex Libris will make the content from the Harvard Library open and available to the growing international community of Ex Libris customers.

The news from Harvard Library follows the October 2011 announcement by the Conference of European National Libraries (CENL) and Europeana, Europe's digital library, that they are adopting CC0, a Creative Commons tool for waiving copyright protection, thus making the content of their 49-member national libraries available to the public and further supporting the recommendations of the Alma Community Zone advisory group. Ex Libris Alma and Primo provide an ideal platform for collaboration between libraries and the sharing of library content through open metadata principles, as exemplified by Harvard and the European consortia.

Ex Libris applauds this move by Harvard and joins many in the library community in encouraging others to follow suit.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that numerous academic and research libraries in Europe have selected the Primo discovery and delivery solution. In addition, several existing customers have supplemented their Primo offering with the Primo Central Index and the bX Recommender, while other institutions have expanded their successful Primo implementations.

The new Primo sites include the University of Liège (Belgium); Interuniversity Library of Cujas (France); Fraunhofer Society (a research association with 60 affiliated institutes in Germany); University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany); University of Oldenburg (Germany); State Library of Oldenburg (Germany); Jade University of Applied Sciences (Germany); Anglia Ruskin University (UK); Buckinghamshire New University (UK); University of Bath (UK); and University of Northampton (UK).

The Consortium of Icelandic Libraries, a Primo customer since 2009, recently added the Primo Central Index of scholarly electronic resources and the bX Recommender service to its Primo installation. Leipzig University and nine affiliated institutions, which use an open-source discovery system, have also adopted Primo Central and the bX Recommender.

In addition, as a result of their successful experience with Primo over the past three years, ETH-Bibliothek in Zurich and the Austrian Library Network and Services Ltd. (OBVSG) consortium in Austria have expanded their Primo licenses to include all their member institutions.

Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that RMIT Publishing has made additional scholarly content from its diverse collections searchable in the Primo Central Index. Under the agreement, Ex Libris will index a further 78 abstract and indexing (A&I) databases that cover agriculture, the arts, Asian studies, business, education, engineering, health, history, law, media, the sciences, the social sciences, and technology.

Offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, the Primo Central Index is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution. As a one-stop service, Primo enables users to fulfill their information needs by exploring their library’s locally managed collections along with global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central, and to obtain one blended, relevance-ranked result list.

RMIT Publishing is a provider of online research content from Australia, New Zealand, and the Asia-Pacific region, offered through the company’s Informit search platform and online databases. Regarded as the natural home of authoritative regional content for over 20 years, RMIT Publishing was first established in 1989 within the library at RMIT University, with the mission to improve the accessibility, visibility, and preservation of regional content.

Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has signed new agreements with leading publishers worldwide 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 content providers to add important new collections - including some searchable full text - to WorldCat Local, WorldCat.org and OCLC WorldShare Management Services. These content providers include: US-based Alexander Street Press and The Philosophy Documentation Center; UK-based IOP Publishing, Rock’s Backpages, Royal Society of Chemistry's RSC Publishing division and The Taylor & Francis Group; Netherlands-based STM publisher Elsevier; Belgium-based Brepols Publishers; Denmark-based Nordic Council of Ministers (Norden); and South Africa-based Sabinet.

OCLC continues to negotiate access to critical library content on behalf of the cooperative to ensure access to libraries’ most popular resources. A complete list of databases and collections available through WorldCat Local from these and other publishers is available online.

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Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that Cairn.info has joined the rapidly expanding group of information providers whose scholarly content is searchable in the Primo Central Index.

The Cairn.info platform contains top French, Belgian, and Swiss academic journals in the fields of literature, linguistics, philosophy, history, sociology, economics, political science, education, psychology, geography, and others. More than 80 publishers participate in the platform, including Armand Colin, Belin, Les Belles Lettres, Dalloz, La Documentation française, Éditions La Découverte, Les Éditions de l'EHESS, Éditions Gallimard, Les Éditions de Minuit, Éditions du Seuil, ESKA, L'Harmattan, Klincksieck, Presses de Sciences Po, Presses Universitaires de France (PUF), and Vrin. Both the metadata and the full text of these collections will be indexed in Primo Central.

Offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, the Primo Central Index is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution. As a one-stop service, Primo enables users to fulfill their information needs by exploring their library's locally managed collections along with global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central, and to obtain one blended, relevance-ranked result list.

To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.

Global library cooperative OCLC, US, and STM publisher Elsevier have signed an agreement that will make the full text from Elsevier’s SciVerse ScienceDirect journals and e-books available to users of OCLC’s WorldCat Local.

The expanded partnership makes it possible for researchers and students to search the full text of content from SciVerse ScienceDirect through WorldCat Local, OCLC’s discovery and delivery service that offers access to more than 922 million items through a single search box. Authenticated users from subscribing libraries can then access the full text of these journals and e-books. The new full-text searching feature is in addition to indexing and abstracts from Elsevier already available through WorldCat Local.

With this collaboration, Elsevier seeks to strengthen its commitment to the library community, simplifying research for library patrons and enhancing usage of its scientific publications. WorldCat Local is available as a stand-alone discovery and delivery service, and as part of OCLC WorldShare Management Services.

As part of this expanded partnership, Elsevier has also added access to e-book data through WorldCat.org, the Web destination for broad, Webscale discovery of library resources.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has announced the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries. The Code is described as a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. It was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University.

In dozens of interviews with experienced research and academic librarians, the researchers learned how copyright law comes into play as interviewees performed core library functions. Then, in a series of small group discussions held with library policymakers around the country, the research team developed a consensus approach to applying fair use.

The Code deals with such common questions in higher education as: when and how much copyrighted material can be digitised for student use; whether video should be treated the same way as print; how libraries' special collections can be made available online; and whether libraries can archive websites for the use of future students and scholars.

The Code identifies the relevance of fair use in eight recurrent situations for librarians - supporting teaching and learning with access to library materials via digital technologies; using selections from collection materials to publicize a library's activities, or to create physical and virtual exhibitions; digitising to preserve at-risk items; creating digital collections of archival and special collections materials; reproducing material for use by disabled students, faculty, staff, and other appropriate users; maintaining the integrity of works deposited in institutional repositories; creating databases to facilitate non-consumptive research uses (including search); and collecting material posted on the web and making it available. In the Code, librarians affirm that fair use is available in each of these contexts, providing helpful guidance about the scope of best practice in each.

The development of the Code is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has announced a strategic partnership with Sustainable Collection Services, LLC, an organisation founded by the principals of R2 Consulting, that leverages WorldCat Data to help libraries intelligently manage their print monograph collections.

Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) makes use of the WorldCat Search API to provide decision-support for collection assessment, de-selection, and shared print projects. The firm's data-driven services enable carefully-managed drawdown of low-use print monographs while supporting resource sharing and print archiving efforts.

The SCS service leverages WorldCat data as a primary source for de-selection metadata. Access to this data is enabled by the OCLC WorldShare Platform, which exposes OCLC's Web services and data for use and reuse by third party partners.

Partners like SCS can take advantage of the same infrastructure that OCLC uses to build and maintain its own services, providing libraries with an extended range of application options that take advantage of the same core data. The SCS service will complement current OCLC offerings to help libraries analyse their collections, joining WorldCat Collection Analysis and a wide range of reports that are currently available using the OCLC Stats.org tool.

Founded in January 2011 by Rick Lugg and Ruth Fischer of R2 Consulting, along with partners Andy Breeding and Eric Redman, SCS focuses on collection analytics. The company's services enable libraries to analyse circulation and holdings data, and to generate actionable title lists for withdrawal, storage, preservation, and shared print archiving.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has announced that 28 libraries have selected OCLC WorldShare Management Services since July 1, 2011. The OCLC WorldShare Management Services claims to be the first Webscale management services for libraries that streamline cataloging, acquisitions, circulation, license management and workflows, and offer a next-gen discovery tool for library users. This brings the number of libraries worldwide committed to using OCLC WorldShare Management Services to 171.

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 OCLC WorldShare Management Services are able to reduce the time needed for traditional tasks and free staff time for higher-priority services.

In 2010, OCLC announced that it was making OCLC WorldShare Management Services available to early adopters. OCLC WorldShare Management Services were released for general availability July 1, 2011. Currently, 33 libraries are live with WorldShare Management Services.

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Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, and the Bibliographic Agency for Higher Education (ABES) in France have signed a new national licence agreement. The deal will enable all research and educational institutions throughout France and French territories to access Early English Books Online (EEBO).

The agreement will provide researchers with access to digitised pages from more than 125,000 early printed books, transforming research into the early modern period. It also includes 25,000 fully searchable editions of texts produced by the EEBO Text Creation Partnership, enabling end-users to trace the usage of words and phrases across more than two centuries of printed texts.

ProQuest's database of literary and historical classics from the pre-1700 period is reportedly considered the seminal research resource for early modern scholarship. Users in France will access the works through the dedicated EEBO interface, which allows the content to be precision searched by keyword, author, title, or subject. Users can also create Boolean queries and limit searches to specific sources, languages, or collections. Content from the Text Creation Partnership includes searchable, ASCII full-text versions of 25,000 of the documents. Further, the inclusion of MARC records will provide seamless links from the library's OPAC to corresponding images in EEBO.

The agreement is seen as the culmination of a long-standing relationship between ProQuest, the academic and library communities in the social sciences and humanities in France, and the national consortia Couperin, begun in 2002.

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Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the Get It Now service from Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) will be available through Ex Libris discovery and delivery solutions. The service will enable Primo and SFX users in the US to receive PDF copies of articles from journals to which their library doesn't subscribe.

Get It Now was developed with the participation of the California State University (CSU) and the Information Delivery Services (IDS) Project, a resource-sharing management system developed and maintained by the State University of New York at Geneseo. Get It Now covers tens of thousands of articles from over 8,400 journals from leading publishers, including Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Wolters Kluwer, Nature Publishing Group, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Publishers are being added on an ongoing basis.

The integration of Get It Now with Primo and SFX reflects the growing trend among academic libraries toward enabling users to find and access content that the libraries themselves don't own or license. The Get it Now service therefore meets libraries' increasing preference for user-driven, just-in-time collection development.

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Serials Solutions, a business unit of the US-based ProQuest LLC, has announced enhancements to Magazines for Libraries (MFL) Update, the web-based service that delivers timely and informative reviews of serials resources. Magazines for Libraries is an annual print compilation of reviews written by subject specialists and has remained a library standard since 1969.

The periodic MFL Update moves from its email format to a permanent home on the Serials Solutions website, and is available via RSS feed. The company is now providing the service free to librarians everywhere, offering greater access to in-depth evaluations on critical journals and other periodicals and databases.

Magazines for Libraries reviews have been incorporated into Serials Solutions' Ulrichsweb service for several years, providing Ulrichsweb subscribers with access to the entire compilation of more than 7,000 MFL reviews along with bibliographic and availability details for each title. The free MFL Update offers any librarian the opportunity to sign up to receive new reviews and learn how to become a contributor.

The enhancement of Magazines for Libraries Update is part of Serials Solutions' ongoing commitment of providing unbiased, authoritative information to help librarians meet the objectives of their libraries and institutions.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has signed an agreement with Sabinet, its partner in South Africa. The deal is to provide WorldCat Local, OCLC's discovery service, as a single point of access and delivery of electronic, print and digital resources to the National Library of South Africa and 15 academic institutions, offering a simplified discovery and delivery experience to end-users. Sabinet is a major supplier of online information to libraries in sub-Saharan Africa.

With WorldCat Local, links to the full-text of licensed electronic content give users seamless access to all the library's resources from a single search box. For the librarian, evaluation of those resources is greatly simplified by WorldCat Local's aggregated presentation of usage statistics, making comparisons much easier.

As part of a recent agreement between OCLC and Sabinet, libraries will now be able to access Sabinet's African content on WorldCat Local, as well as the OCLC-licensed resources already on the platform.

Where there is need to consult print items, WorldCat Local displays location and availability details.

Users of the system can also use inter-library loan services in instances where there is neither print nor electronic provision of the item required in a local library. In addition to OCLC's WorldCat Resource Sharing service, WorldCat Local will also link to South Africa's national inter-library loan system, managed by Sabinet. Together, these two services represent a significant expansion of library collections.

Based in South Africa, Sabinet has worked in partnership with OCLC since 1995, acting as distributor for them in sub-Saharan Africa since 1997 when they also began cataloguing South African information resources onto the OCLC platform. This agreement was extended in 2000 to catalogue directly onto WorldCat.

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Information services provider Swets, Netherlands, has announced that www.librariesrevolution.com now contains contributions from over 70 of Asia’s most distinguished libraries and institutions. Launched in July of this year, Swets’ Libraries R-evolution project is a collaborative and informative partnership between Swets and the respected library community of Asia Pacific. By sharing and showcasing success stories through the website librariesrevolution.com, the goal is to promote the flexibility and sustainability of Asian libraries across the region.

Some of the notable libraries included are: The Peking University and Tsinghua University in China, The University of Hong Kong, The National University of Singapore and the Waseda University in Japan. Each institution has shared helpful tips, details and best practices on how these libraries can stay abreast of the changes occurring within the industry and make the most of their acquired library collections. The journey of these libraries are sure to inspire other libraries and institutions to partake in this new R-evolution.

The Libraries R-evolution project and website also commemorates Swets’110 year anniversary, outlining the company’s journey from a small scientific and antiquarian bookstore in Amsterdam 1901. Today, it claims to be a leading service and e-solutions provider for customers around the world.

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The OCLC EMEA Regional Council Executive Committee has announced the programme for its third Regional Meeting which will take place on February 28 -29, 2012, in Birmingham, UK. The programme has been extended to two full days to accommodate an agenda that will see speakers from Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US discussing a vision for the future library.

The theme of the meeting - Developing a New Blend of Library - draws its inspiration, in no small part, to its location, Birmingham. The city is soon to be the site of Europe's largest city centre public lending library, when the Library of Birmingham opens its doors in 2013. The opening keynote for the event will be Francine Houben, architect and visionary for the new library, and Brian Gambles, Chief Executive of the Library of Birmingham Development Trust.

Robin Green, Deputy Librarian, University of Warwick, is the current Chair of OCLC EMEA Regional Council. As in previous years, the meeting will be attended by OCLC's Strategic Leadership Team. It is seen to provide a valuable opportunity for them to meet with and listen to the views of members from the region. This year will reportedly be of special significance as it will be the last EMEA Regional Council Meeting that Jay Jordan, President and CEO of OCLC, will present to before his retirement in June 2012. Jordan will be sharing a platform with Eric van Lubeek, Managing Director of OCLC EMEA, and Robin Murray, Vice-President, Global Product Management.

Other highlights of the meeting will be a Plenary session led by Lorcan Dempsey asking "What Business Are We In?", with sessions on collaborative research projects from David White of Oxford University and Alison Cullingford, RLUK's Unique and Distinctive Collections Project Manager.

The closing keynote will be from Pelle Snickars of the National Library of Sweden. In what is said to be a provocative and engaging conclusion to the meeting, "The Future of Media" will ask us to contemplate what visionaries like Steve Jobs would have envisaged for libraries had they diverted their career paths, and chosen to start all over in the library sector.

The meeting is open to all libraries and cultural institutions.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has announced latest enhancements for WorldCat Local. This includes availability on brief results, Local Holdings Record searching, article links and branch information for mobile views and more.

The latest additions to the popular discovery and delivery service now allow users to see if an item is available from their initial results screens for books, serials and articles. This availability information is always accurate and up-to-the-minute, because WorldCat Local uses a real-time call to a library's OPAC. For additional types of eContent such as eSerials, availability information can be found on the detailed record.

The ability to search local bibliographic data through WorldCat Local was added in June 2011. Now, Local Holdings Records (LHRs) are also searchable. LHRs are separate holdings records attached to a related WorldCat bibliographic record that provide local holdings details beyond the OCLC institution symbol, such as a call number or special collection designation.

The ability to display and now search local holdings information ensures that user discovery will support the years of valuable local data entries made by library staff members. When a library adds its local data to a WorldCat Local site, it is available only to users of that site, and will not display to other WorldCat Local library sites.

Additionally, mobile views for WorldCat Local now support access to articles and online links, in addition to monographs. This feature is available to institutions that have loaded information into the WorldCat knowledge base, which is available at no additional charge for OCLC cataloguing members. In addition, information on branch campuses and public library branches are now also available via the mobile views for WorldCat Local libraries.

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Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that Casalini Libri has joined the rapidly expanding group of information providers whose scholarly content is searchable in the Primo Central Index. Casalini Libri will enable Primo Central to index Torrossa.it, a full-text platform that contains Casalini Libri’s Italian full-text collection - Editoria Italiana Online (EIO) - and its collection of Spanish electronic monographs - Edición Española Online (EEO).

EIO and EEO, together comprising 7,200 e-books and 400 journals, have subscribers on three continents and remain the primary sources for scholarly electronic content from Italy and Spain. In March 2011, Casalini Libris was awarded the Aldo Manuzio Prize for EIO in the category of Books and New Technology. This prize was established to promote the dissemination of European books and culture.

Offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, the Primo Central Index is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution. Providing library users with a one-stop service for their information needs, Primo enables users to explore their library’s locally managed collections along with global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central.

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Information services provider EBSCO, US, has announced that EBSCONET ERM Essentials, the company’s e-resource management system (ERM), was recently upgraded to include improved navigation, hover-over previews, and more. These enhancements, a direct result of customer feedback, are designed to make this cutting-edge tool even more effective for the librarians who use it.

Improved navigation within the site provides the ability to maneuver through most lists at the detail level and easily find and browse related items, which helps librarians work more efficiently and with fewer clicks. Quick access to the relevant terms and conditions for a title or package saves time and provides the needed information in the right context. Once a title or database/package is found in the Collection Manager, the librarian can see the terms of use without having to link to the relevant license under which it was acquired.

In addition, access to information in general has been greatly streamlined with the introduction of hover-over previews on virtually every result grid. With frequently used elements shown in the preview, many key questions can be answered right from the result list — reducing the number of clicks and streamlining the operation. Numerous enhancements also have been made to features related to adding cost and license information to resources, including simplifications in how resources can be associated with licenses and the ability to assign costs to multiple fund codes or library locations. Processes have been made more efficient and more intuitive, enabling librarians to save time and provide a more accurate reflection of cost distribution.

ERM Essentials is said to significantly reduce the time librarians spend on data entry and maintenance, allowing them to devote valuable time to other tasks. It shares vital e-resource data and integrates seamlessly with other EBSCO Complete Management and Discovery Solutions, including EBSCONET, EBSCO A-to-Z, LinkSource, EBSCOhost research databases, EBSCO Discovery Service, and more.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has signed an agreement with library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group. The deal will enable Ex Libris to incorporate the WorldCat Search API into several Ex Libris discovery and delivery services, providing OCLC member libraries access to WorldCat through the Ex Libris Primo and MetaLib solutions.

Ex Libris will integrate the WorldCat Search API, which provides machine-to-machine access to WorldCat bibliographic records and holdings data, into its applications to make the collections of OCLC libraries discoverable. Libraries will be able to activate this functionality by registering their key to the WorldCat Search API within their Ex Libris system.

With this cooperative agreement, both organisations seek to adopt an open approach that will improve services for the libraries that they mutually serve, as well as foster collective innovation. The integration of the Search API into Ex Libris unified discovery and delivery services provides for a content-neutral solution that ensures the broadest possible coverage of the resources which are most important to libraries.

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The American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research and Statistics has released a new study, according to which the need for libraries on college and university campuses has increased.

In 'Trends in Academic Libraries, 1998 to 2008,' researcher Denise M. Davis analyses data from the Academic Library Survey administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The study looks at identifying changes in the number of academic libraries, circulation and reserve collections, interlibrary loan transactions and documents received from commercial services, public serve hours, volumes held and added, library staffing, library expenditures, electronic services and information literacy activities.

The report provides an informative look at how the academic libraries continue to provide valuable resources to their community through technology and increased service hours despite a loss of non-librarian staff.

NCES, in collaboration with the academic library community, conducts a biennial survey that captures information about libraries in all degree-granting colleges and universities. "Trends in Academic Libraries, 1998 to 2008" is available as a PDF download at http://www.ala.org/ala/research/librarystats/academic/index.cfm.

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OCLC Research, US, is to host a webinar titled 'Scan and Deliver: Creative User-initiated Digitization in Special Collections and Archives' on September 22, 2011 at 2 pm EDT. The webinar will discuss streamlined methods for scanning and delivering digital copies of special collections materials at the request of users.

Changes in technology and the increased visibility of special collections have resulted in a deluge of requests for digital copies of special collections materials. A steady stream of digitisation requests for one item here, two pages there can reportedly be labour-intensive, and policies for user requests vary widely across institutions. The webinar expects to address these issues.

OCLC Research and the OCLC Research Library Partnership's Working Group on Streamlining Photography and Scanning have been seeking methods for reducing cumbersome digitisation-on-demand workflows and policy obstacles. The Scan and Deliver report concludes that a flexible, tiered approach to delivering digitised copies acknowledges differences in user needs, collections, institutional policies and resources. The webinar will feature creative experiments aimed at scanning and delivering user-requested digital copies of special collections materials.

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Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, has announced that Early European Books, ProQuest's programme to digitise the archives of landmark European libraries, has taken another leap forward with its latest release, expanding the number and range of rare early modern books available through the online service. Debuting now are the first installment of digitised books from the National Library of the Netherlands and further content from the National Central Library of Florence.

The number of digitised books - now more than 6,500 - will grow rapidly throughout the balance of 2011 and into 2012 as more libraries join the programme. Digitisation has already begun at the Wellcome Library in London, and works from this renowned collection of medical and scientific books will be added to the database in the fall.

Although the National Central Library of Florence is well known for its holdings of Italian literary and religious texts and early editions of the Classics, this release also includes many important examples of printing from the German-speaking towns that pioneered printing in the 15th century.

The collection from Florence includes works printed throughout Western Europe, from foundational texts of Classical literature (Aesop, Ovid, Virgil) to medieval writers such as the 9th-century Persian scholar Albumasar (Flores astrologiae, Augsburg, 1488) and the Spanish-born Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, through to the leading Humanist and theological authors of the 15th and 16th centuries. The texts from the Netherlands give an insight into this crucial period in which the Dutch Republic was formed and grew to be a major world power.

Scholars of fine art and book history will find many examples of the printer's craft from both these library collections. All volumes have been digitised in high-resolution colour, including all pages, endpapers, fold-outs and bindings, to give as detailed and vivid a view of the source document as possible.

Inspired by ProQuest's flagship Early English Books Online, the aim of Early European Books is to build a comprehensive library of European printed books from the birth of printing in the 1450s to the year 1700. This long-term project will grow over the years by digitising the entire rare book holdings of Europe's major national and specialist research libraries.

Current content is taken from three major national repositories – the Danish Royal Library, the National Library of the Netherlands and the National Central Library of Florence – and content will soon be added from the renowned collection of medical and scientific texts held by the Wellcome Library in London.

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Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) library has selected the Ex Libris suite of discovery and delivery products, including Primo, with its Central Index; the MetaLib metasearch system; and the SFX OpenURL link resolver.

Following an intensive evaluation process, the university found that Ex Libris technologies, together with the comprehensive scale and scope of the Primo Central Index, best meet the evolving requirements of the library staff and users.

Ex Libris provides automation solutions for academic libraries. Offering a comprehensive product suite for electronic, digital, and print materials, Ex Libris provides efficient, user-friendly products that serve the needs of libraries today and will facilitate their transition into the future.

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Journal subscription services provider Swets, Netherlands, has announced the launch of www.librariesrevolution.com. According to the company, this website is the focal point of Libraries R-evolution, a collaborative and informative project that sees Swets partnering with members of some of the most respected libraries in Asia Pacific. The project aims to promote the flexibility and sustainability of libraries across the region.

The purpose of the website is to provide a repository of information that will empower other libraries and institutions looking to modernise. It will contain helpful tips, details and best practices on how librarians can stay abreast of the changes occurring within the industry and make the most of their acquired library collections.

The most modern libraries have evolved into highly flexible, hybrid combinations of traditional printed material and digitised information. Each participating partner will outline the steps they have taken to transform themselves from the traditional bricks-and-mortar buildings of old into the dynamic, modern libraries they are today and publish that information online. The website will also contain details of how Swets has evolved over its 110 years of operation; constantly adapting to the needs of its customers and keeping in flow with the trends and developments occurring within the industry.

To coincide with Swets' 110 year anniversary, respected libraries and institutions have been invited to take part in the project. The website is currently available in English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, and online reference service Credo Reference have signed an agreement to integrate the WorldCat Search API into the Credo General Reference service, their flagship content application.

With this new agreement, OCLC member libraries that subscribe to the Credo General Reference service will be able to retrieve a list of books from WorldCat related to the topic of their Credo Reference search.

Under this new partnership, authenticated users will be able to access the Credo General Reference service from the library or Credo Reference website and perform a search for encyclopaedic entries. Each entry includes a side panel listing books that are related to the topic generated from a search of WorldCat using the library's key to the WorldCat Search API. Each book includes a link to the library's OPAC or discovery application to get additional information, such as shelf status.

Credo Reference expects to release the functionality later this month. Libraries will be able to activate the functionality by registering their key to the WorldCat Search API within the application. Libraries that do not already have a key to the API can visit the OCLC website for more information on how to obtain a key.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, has signed agreements with leading publishers and other content providers from around the world to add more databases and collections to WorldCat Local, its OCLC discovery service. WorldCat Local offers users integrated access to more than 800 million items in libraries worldwide.

Libraries using WorldCat Local can offer users access to 1,400 databases and collections, and more than 500 million articles.

OCLC recently signed agreements with publishers to make more content available through WorldCat Local. These include Annual Reviews; the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE); Berkeley Electronic Press; Gale; Genealogy Today; the Institution of Engineering and Technology; Karger; M.E. Sharpe; Modern Language Association; National Institute of Justice; and Oxford University Press.

WorldCat Local provides access to books, journals and databases from a variety of publishers and information providers from around the world; the digital collections of groups like HathiTrust, OAIster and Google Books; open access materials; and the collective resources of libraries worldwide through WorldCat. OCLC continues to negotiate access to critical library content on behalf of the cooperative to ensure access to libraries' most popular resources.

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Library automation solutions provider SirsiDynix, US, has announced the release of version 4.1 of its SirsiDynix Portfolio digital asset management solution. The solution builds upon SirsiDynix Enterprise search and discovery, adding digital asset management capabilities, optical character recognition (OCR) technology, open archives Initiative compatibility for web harvesting, and classified security capabilities for restricting visibility of confidential materials by user or group.

The solution is designed for a broad swath of libraries, and it reportedly has the toolset to reflect that. State and public libraries utilise Portfolio digital asset management to make unique local collections available to their community and beyond. Academic and special libraries are said to utilise the Portfolio toolset to centralise digital information and tools for simplified search and content management.

With the Portfolio solution, libraries of varying types and missions are said to be empowered to gain relevance beyond the library community by exposing digital content to web crawlers through OAI-PMH compliance. The solution also provides full-spectrum search results and enables access to previously unsearchable items through in-text (OCR) search and optional harvesting of library-selected websites or external resources. Users can localise record-keeping with customisable metadata fields, and ability to cross-link an unlimited number of records for easy reference.

Additionally, the Portfolio solution helps organise and share multimedia collections including PDFs, video, audio and web pages, and preserve historical collections with support for major standards for the archivist. It also restricts or limits access to protected assets, item-by-item or batch, through the Portfolio platform's accountability control settings. Optional access control and authentication management features can also accommodate different viewing privileges by individual user, group or location.

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Library information provider OCLC Research, US, and Research Libraries UK are working together on a project to gather data on special collections in research libraries in the UK and Ireland. The project is similar to a project conducted by OCLC Research in 2009 that gathered data on special collections in the US and Canada.

The distinction that special collections bring to research institutions has become widely recognised, and an aggregated profile of collections, access policies, users, adoption of new technologies, and other important topics will establish norms across the UK special collections community. The data will effectively support decision-making for strategic priorities and collaborative projects. Individual libraries will be able to place themselves in the context of community norms and consider taking appropriate actions in response.

The survey population will include all Research Libraries UK (RLUK) members, as well as OCLC Research Library Partnership institutions in the UK and Ireland. The project fits comfortably into RLUK's current strategic priorities, which include a strand, Unique and Distinctive Collections, which focuses on maximising the potential of special collections. It also extends the impact of OCLC Research's 2009 work by facilitating comparison of responses in North America and the UK.

The OCLC Research and RLUK project team expects to retain most questions from the 2009 survey to enable comparisons across the two projects. The questions will be adapted or enhanced as appropriate to reflect practices and priorities of the RLUK community. A committee of experts selected by the RLUK board of directors will work with OCLC Research staff to adapt the survey to the RLUK landscape.

A report detailing the results of the survey will be published in the second quarter of 2012.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, has announced two more implementations of its WorldCat Local discovery service at libraries in the UK and Ireland. According to OCLC, libraries across Europe are responding positively to WorldCat Local's ability to connect users to 800 million electronic, digital and physical resources held in library collections locally and globally, via a single search box.

In Ireland, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology's (IADT) WorldCat Local implementation is on track to launch in time for the new academic year this September. Recently, the Irish educational landscape has undergone and continues to experience significant change. One of the many challenges facing those in the sector like IADT is finding more efficient ways of delivering knowledge to its users.

WorldCat Local's ability to search multiple catalogues, systems and e-resources simultaneously is also cited by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) as an important factor in its decision to implement the service. NERC went live with WorldCat Local in May and is reporting positive feedback from users.

NERC's library collections, dispersed across a number of Research Centres throughout the UK, reflect the breadth and depth of research in the environmental sciences over recent decades. Use of the collections had waned in favour of desktop access to the growing volume of scientific research materials available online.

Over the past year, NERC implemented a major project to merge the library systems, services, collections and staff of its Research Centre libraries. Three of these (the British Antarctic Survey, the British Geological Survey and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology), made the decision to retain OCLC's OLIB library management system, becoming the first OLIB user in the UK to adopt WorldCat Local.

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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has announced that OECD iLibrary now provides usage statistics according to COUNTER standards, plus MARC records for all subscribers.

OECD now provides reliable standardised usage reports for all content on OECD iLibrary. The detailed usage statistics are provided for full-text downloads by title and month. This includes all content in PDF, HTML, XLS and Data downloads, ePub will be added shortly.

The iLibrary usage reports cover all content whether freely accessible or behind access controls. There is no duplication in the usage reported as the usage of each publication or dataset is reported separately in one of three reports dependent on the nature of the content.

OECD has also launched MARC Records initially for the books and serials in OECD iLibrary, available for all subscribers to download. MARC records are provided in MARC21 XML format according to U.S. Library of Congress specifications, and those for OECD journals and data products are scheduled for later this year.

OECD iLibrary is the global knowledge base for OECD's data and analysis. It contains all books and papers published since 1998, as well as a vast collection of statistics, with data going back to the 1960s and more than 80 countries covered. It provides integrated search results, showing all available file formats and languages, as well as links to previous editions. OECD iLibrary is projected as a powerful tool for people working at academic institutions, in the private sector and at governmental and non-governmental organisations.

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STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, and library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group have announced their collaboration to make the full text of SciVerse ScienceDirect journal articles and ebooks searchable in the Ex Libris Primo Central Index.

Primo Central is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution, which enables library users to enjoy the full benefit of a one-stop service for their information needs. Primo enables users to explore their library's locally managed collections along with global and regional resources indexed in Primo Central.

Offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, the world-class Primo Central Index covers hundreds of millions of scholarly resources from leading information providers. It now includes full-text journal articles and books chapters from SciVerse ScienceDirect. Part of the SciVerse suite of search and discovery products offered by Elsevier, SciVerse ScienceDirect consists of more than 2,000 peer-reviewed journals and 20,000 books and major reference works, more than 10.5 million articles and chapters with nearly 500,000 added every year.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, has announced that a production version of mobile-optimised WorldCat Local is now available to libraries following beta testing of the service that makes it possible for mobile users to discover items, see location, shelf status, call numbers, and more in their local library, and in libraries worldwide.

New mobile-optimised WorldCat Local sites include many additional features not available in the beta version, most notably support for a wide range of devices. Any smart phone or feature phone capable of running JavaScript or a Java-based Web browser such as Opera Mini or Bolt will be supported worldwide.

Libraries that maintain a full WorldCat Local subscription have the option to customise their mobile presence. In addition, the production version includes more item information than before, with easier navigation to previous and next items within a results set. Users can see location, shelf status, call number, levels of availability and can place a hold, request the item or email citations for any content that does not require authentication.

The move into production creates the possibility of a mobile presence for more than 20,000 libraries. Any library with WorldCat Local or visibility on WorldCat.org can claim their unique URL and use it to support their mobile users.

Mobile-optimized WorldCat Local is available to WorldCat Local users at no additional charge. The enhancement represents an added value of OCLC membership, and is a benefit of members' investment in library cooperation.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, has announced that the Tilburg University Library, in the Netherlands, has selected its Web-scale Management Services (WMS) and WorldCat Local as its new library management solution and integrated discovery-to-delivery service. The Tilburg University Library plans to become operational with WMS, the Web-based cooperative library management services, by June 2012.

The library made its decision after an extensive exploration of the current environment and of new developments, such as cloud computing and content integration—important elements to its staff and users.

By delivering services that are at the network level, Web-scale Management Services from OCLC offer libraries the opportunity to share data and business processes. Due to the service-oriented architecture, libraries can develop their own customised applications for library management activities that they can make available to their colleagues on the OCLC platform. With OCLC Web-scale Management Services, the Tilburg University Library will have a solution with workflow management, electronic resource management and integrated licence management, in addition to traditional tools for online library management such as metadata management, acquisition and interlibrary loan. Cataloguing will be done, as before, in the national cataloguing system GGC.

The WorldCat Local discovery-to-delivery service offers the Tilburg University Library simple implementation, a central knowledge base, access to a growing number of databases and collections, and full integration with WMS.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, has announced that the Library of the University of Alicante, in Spain, has selected WorldCat Local as its new discovery service. The library's administration plans to deliver the enhanced discovery experience with its range of available content from more than 800 million electronic, digital and physical items to its users, through the WorldCat Local central index later this year.

The library was interested in achieving higher usage of its many electronic resources. For the Alicante University Library, OCLC quality and reliability were important factors in choosing WorldCat Local.

The library has about 500,000 records in its catalogue. They will be loaded into WorldCat as part of the implementation of WorldCat Local. About 35,000 staff and students at the University of Alicante will then be able to access different types of materials, including digital objects, electronic materials, databases, journals, music, video, audio, e-books, theses and print, via one unified search field in one single search result.

Another highlight of WorldCat Local to the Alicante University Library is the easy branding of the interface. The university's students and researchers can benefit from social media features, the evaluative content and the mobile interface for smartphones on various platforms.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, has announced that WorldCat Local has added more databases and collections from leading publishers and other information providers to make content more accessible to library users through the Web. WorldCat Local is OCLC's discovery service that offers users integrated access to more than 800 million items in libraries around the world.

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

With these latest additions, libraries using WorldCat Local can now offer users access to 1,400 databases and collections, and more than 500 million articles. OCLC continues to negotiate access to critical library content on behalf of the cooperative to ensure access to libraries' most popular resources.

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Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the United States Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) and the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) have joined the rapidly expanding group of information providers that enable the Primo Central Index of scholarly content to cover their collections.

A publisher of information and analysis products for professionals in business and government, BNA will make available to the Primo Central Index over 90 journal titles aimed at legal practitioners and law students. These resources cover the fields of corporate law and business; employee benefits; employment and labor law; environment, health, and safety; healthcare; human resources; intellectual property; litigation; and tax and accounting.

Extending its scope in the abstract and indexing domain, Primo Central will also index the MLA International Bibliography collection, which provides the only comprehensive bibliography of books and articles published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. The database includes over 2.3 million citations in more than 70 languages.

Offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries around the globe, the Primo Central Index covers hundreds of millions of scholarly resources from leading information providers. Primo Central is an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution, which enables library users to enjoy the full benefit of a one-stop service for their information needs and to explore their library's locally managed collections along with global and regional resources from the Primo Central Index.

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Computer library service and research organisation OCLC, US, has announced that the Spanish consortium BUCLE ("Consorcio de Bibliotecas Universitarias de Castilla y León") has become the first institution in Spain to implement WorldCat Local as its new Search and Discovery platform. The service delivers single-search-box access to more than 800 million items of the library's electronic, digital and physical collections.

BUCLE launched WorldCat Local as a group catalogue solution for the university libraries of Burgos, León, Salamanca and Valladolid. It will be available to the university's over 100,000 registered library users at the end of April 2011. With WorldCat Local, library users will not only be able to access the library's local bibliographic records but also the titles from the BUCLE group catalogue and from OCLC's WorldCat.

Due to the integration of the WorldCat Knowledge Base users have direct access to electronic resources from search results, and a 'View Now' feature on brief records connects users directly to the electronic articles and open-access content that their searches retrieve.

More than 100,000 library users of the BUCLE member libraries will be enabled to search via a single search box - which eliminates the need to consult separate resources and interfaces - both the local library and the BUCLE group catalogue, as well as in all other WorldCat libraries. Search results include multiple formats of materials, including digital objects, electronic materials, databases, journals, music, video, audio, eBooks, theses and print.

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Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that ABC-CLIO has joined the rapidly expanding group of publishers whose content is included in the Primo Central Index of scholarly content.

Offered as a cloud-based service to hundreds of libraries worldwide, the Primo Central Index encompasses hundreds of millions of scholarly resources from leading information providers. The Primo Central Index is offered as an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution, enabling library users to enjoy the full benefit of a one-stop service for their information needs and to explore their library's locally managed collections along with global and regional resources from the Primo Central Index.

ABC-CLIO is a publisher of reference, contemporary thought, and professional development content, created to help students, educators, librarians, and general readers of all ages wrestle with complex challenges. With imprints including ABC-CLIO Greenwood, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth Publishing, Praeger, and its Digital Collections, the company continually invests resources in the development of new content genres, giving customer and reader communities the opportunity to explore deep factual treatments of the topics that matter.

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Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, and the Wellcome Library have announced a partnership to expand access to the library's rich historical treasures. As part of its Early European Books digitisation programme ProQuest will be digitising the Library's entire holdings of European books printed before 1700, comprising more than 15,500 volumes. The collection will be made available for free throughout the UK and the developing world.

The Wellcome Library is the fourth major library to participate in this project. ProQuest launched the project with the Danish Royal Library, Copenhagen and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in Italy, and has already made these rich national collections available to all Danish and Italian citizens, while a third digitisation operation is currently starting up at the National Library of the Netherlands. In all cases, ProQuest sets up a scanning studio on site at the library and uses state-of-the-art technology to create high-definition colour images of every page, including the often lavish bindings and covers.

The collection contains many rare or obscure texts on subjects ranging from alchemy to zoology, and includes many of the most spectacularly illustrated books of the period. In addition to complementing the English works already digitised as part of ProQuest's Early English Books Online database, the new resource will provide access to important continental editions of works by famous English medical authors, such as William Harvey's seminal work on the circulation of the blood, De motu cordis (1628), which was first published in Germany.

Early European Books collections are available for purchase by libraries worldwide and are delivered via a multilingual interface. This allows for powerful searching of the detailed indexing, as well as cross-searching of the well-known Early English Books Online database, which includes facsimiles of 125,000 books printed in English or in the British Isles between 1473 and 1700.

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Accessible Archives, Inc., an electronic publisher of primary source full-text historical databases, has signed an agreement with OCLC Online Computer Library Center. Under the deal, Accessible Archives' content will be now be available through the WorldCat Local and TouchPoint services, which provide an integrated discovery and delivery service for libraries' physical and electronic collections.

WorldCat Local provides access to more than 750 million items, including books, journals and databases from international publishers; the digital collections of groups like HathiTrust, OAIster and Google Books; open access materials; as well as the collective resources of libraries worldwide through WorldCat.

To bring this new feature to its customers, Accessible Archives relied on the licensing and technology experts at Unlimited Priorities Corporation, the publisher's exclusive sales and marketing agent.

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Library automation solutions provider Ex Libris Group, Israel, has announced that the University of Twente in the Netherlands has selected the Primo Direct package. Deployed as a cloud-based solution, Primo Direct and the Primo Central Index of scholarly e-content will provide users with a unified search interface for the library's collections and electronic resources.

Primo will enable users at the University of Twente to search the library's LBS library catalogue together with its e-prints repository and electronic resources in the Primo Central Index.

The Primo Central Index is a mega-aggregate of scholarly content. Managed in the Ex Libris cloud environment, the Primo Central Index encompasses hundreds of millions of scholarly resources from leading information providers. The Primo Central Index is offered as an integral part of the Ex Libris Primo discovery and delivery solution, enabling library users to enjoy the full benefit of a one-stop service for their information needs and to explore their library's locally managed collections along with global and regional resources.

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Library information provider OCLC Research, US, has released a new report titled, 'Cloud-sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-digitized Library Environment'. This report presents findings from a year-long study designed and executed by OCLC Research, the HathiTrust, New York University's Elmer Bobst Library, and the Research Collections Access & Preservation (ReCAP) consortium, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitised books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favour of negotiated access to the digitised corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory.

According to the report, there is sufficient material in the mass-digitised library collection managed by the HathiTrust to duplicate a sizeable (and growing) portion of virtually any academic library in the US. There is adequate duplication between the shared digital repository and large-scale print storage facilities to enable a great number of academic libraries to reconsider their local print management operations, says the report. Further, it states that the combination of a relatively small number of potential shared print providers, including the US Library of Congress, was sufficient to achieve more than 70 percent coverage of the digitised book collection, suggesting that shared service may not require a very large network of providers.

Substantial library space savings and cost avoidance could be achieved if academic institutions outsourced management of redundant low-use inventory to shared service providers, the report noted. Academic library directors can have a positive and profound impact on the future of academic print collections by adopting and implementing a deliberate strategy to build and sustain regional print service centers that can reduce the total cost of library preservation and access, the report says.

The report is available online at http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2011/2011-01.pdf.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is offering a new consulting service, Organizational Performance Assessment for Libraries (OPAL), to help academic libraries effectively integrate strategy, planning, and assessment within the institution.

OPAL is the successor to, and builds upon, the Effective, Sustainable, and Practical Assessment (ESP) initiative, which has supported consultations with 42 libraries since 2005/06. The ESP initiative was developed by ARL Visiting Program Officers Jim Self, Director of Management Information Services, U. of Virginia Library, and Steve Hiller, Director of Planning and Assessment, U. of Washington Libraries, working with Martha Kyrillidou, ARL Senior Director of Statistics and Service Quality Programs.

OPAL will guide the library to establish effective strategies aligned with its university mission and vision, to monitor and document progress toward plans and goals, and to provide stakeholders with a persuasive and easily understandable summary of the library's role in the academy. Additionally, the service will help the library to focus on strategic decision-making and on collecting, analysing, and presenting information that demonstrates the library's impact, outcomes, and value.

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Serials Solutions, a US-based provider of tools and services for libraries and a business unit of ProQuest LLC, has announced the availability of an enhanced interface for its Ulrichsweb global serials intelligence service. Ulrichsweb is an integrated, continuously updated service that enables librarians and patrons to discover, explore, annotate and reuse information about periodicals and the companies that publish and provide them. The new, enhanced interface enables librarians and users to take advantage of the ways Ulrichsweb has grown and evolved to make its depth and breadth of knowledge more accessible.

Ulrichsweb helps librarians find, evaluate and share the bibliographic and provider information they need for effective collection building and management. Patrons use Ulrichsweb to quickly identify serials sources, verify the quality of those resources, and e-mail or save research notes without the need to learn a complex interface.

Serials Solutions continues to develop Ulrichsweb as a comprehensive and content-neutral source, providing unbiased information about electronic, print and microform serials from a wide range of commercial, scholarly, Open Access and other publishers across all subject areas and languages. Enhancements and features incorporated in the new Ulrichsweb interface include expanded international coverage adding details for hundreds of non-English full-text and indexing databases and sources, and tens of thousands of new serials titles; alignment with Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks; more than 100,000 Provider Authority Records from Serials Solutions' expanded Publisher Outreach Program; new search capabilities; and faceted results browsing allowing users to filter by type of serial, peer-reviewed status or other qualifying information to improve serials discoverability.

Additionally, new data export formats and research sharing tools allowing users to save and send search results in a format that is most convenient for them. User-specific personalisation including interface language localisation and personal alerts and lists enable users to customise the Ulrich's search experience to meet their individual needs. New usage reporting options and a simpler administrative console allow librarians to administer Ulrichsweb through the Serials Solutions Client Center alongside their other Serials Solutions services.

A new API with XML and JSON options allow librarians and technical staff to easily integrate Ulrich's data into their library's web pages and discovery services in order to provide researchers and staff with reliable, continuously updated information about electronic and print serials. Expanded linking partnerships and OpenURL awareness help libraries enable interaction between Ulrichsweb and other serials-related resources including their OPACs and discovery services.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has announced expanded agreements with content providers to make more content in a variety of formats accessible to users. Library users can now find more than 700 million items through the WorldCat Local service.

In addition to the 200 million records contributed by OCLC member libraries worldwide, 500 million items from leading publishers, aggregators and mass digitisation efforts are also now accessible through WorldCat Local. OCLC recently added content to WorldCat Local from EBSCO; Gale, part of Cengage Learning; Modern Language Association; ProQuest; and the U.S. Department of Energy. There are now more than 400 million articles, 170 million books, 10 million e-books and 1,100 databases accessible through the WorldCat Local service.

Additional agreements have been signed with ABC-CLIO, American Psychological Association, Association for Computing Machinery, BioMed Central, BioOne, Cambridge University Press, Emerald, IGI Global, Sabinet, Sage, Taylor & Francis and World Bank Publications.

OCLC has added databases accessible through the WorldCat Local central index, which delivers an enhanced user experience because searches will immediately retrieve records indexed within the WorldCat Local service. Other databases are accessible through a quick, remote WorldCat Local single search that is integrated into a single set of results.

WorldCat Local expands a library's collections by combining items from the library, relevant groups or consortia, and libraries around the world through a single search and result set. Built on the foundation of WorldCat, the comprehensive source for discovery of items held by libraries, WorldCat Local allows users to discover unique, locally available resources as well as materials in other libraries around the world.

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A new research study, carried out by Shared Intelligence and Ipsos MORI on behalf of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), seeks to provide an up-to-date picture of what the public wants from library services. It also aims to provide a timely pointer to how councils, faced with difficult financial choices, should shape the service for the future.

The research, undertaken from late July to early November 2010, shows the English public widely value public libraries as a force for good and one that should be provided free. A significant proportion (74 percent) of current users surveyed described libraries as 'essential' or 'very important' in their lives. Fifty-nine percent of non-users also think libraries play an 'important' or 'essential' role in the community. But it also suggests that the notion of library users and non-users is an artificial divide - that instead that people's reliance on libraries tends to vary as their life circumstances change, for example through taking up study, becoming unemployed, having children or retiring.

Books are still the main reason why most people use libraries but the research highlights that motivations for library use among current users are wide ranging: 76 percent use libraries for their love of reading; 44 percent for study; 17 percent to find local information; and, 14 percent view the library as somewhere to take their children.

The study highlights the increasing competition that libraries are now facing from the convenience of bookshops and online stores - one in four 'lapsed' or non-users cite this as their main reason for not using public libraries today. Research also found that around 10 percent of people who are not current library users simply 'don't like reading'. Book choice, good customer service, staff expertise and convenience are seen as key to user satisfaction.

Both users and non-users often expressed concern about books being 'squeezed out' for other services and although they accepted greater automation, they do not think this should be at the expense of maintaining a knowledgeable and helpful staff base.

According to Roy Clare, MLA chief executive, this study helps point to where the library service should be heading at a critical moment as costs need to be cut. It suggests that it is better to plan for the longer term to provide a convenient modern service, with comprehensive book stock, digital access, helpful staff and a range of activities, than to maintain the costs of less-welcoming buildings with steadily reducing opening hours and declining stock.

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Library technology solutions provider SirsiDynix, US, has announced the official release of the SirsiDynix Portfolio digital asset management tool. The Portfolio solution builds upon SirsiDynix Enterprise search and discovery, adding digital asset management capabilities, optical character recognition (OCR) technology, Open Archives Initiative compatibility for Web harvesting, and a security-conscious content management system.

The Portfolio solution helps libraries to gain relevance beyond the library community by exposing digital content to Web crawlers through OAI-PMH compliance. It provides full-spectrum search results and enables access to previously unsearchable items through in-text (OCR) search and optional harvesting of library-selected websites or external resources. Further, it helps to localise record-keeping with customisable metadata fields, and ability to cross-link an unlimited number of records for easy reference. Libraries can also organise and share multimedia collections including PDFs, video, audio, Web pages and more, and preserve historical collections with support for major standards for the archivist.

In addition, the Portfolio solution allows libraries to restrict or limit access to protected assets, item-by-item or batch, through its accountability control settings. Optional access control and authentication management features can also accommodate different viewing privileges by individual user, group or location.

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Library cooperative OCLC and electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing, US, have expanded their partnership to enhance the discovery experience for users of WorldCat Local and the EBSCO Discovery Service through an expanded data exchange agreement. The new agreement is projected to create more value for libraries that subscribe to services from OCLC and EBSCO.

WorldCat Local libraries that subscribe to EBSCOhost full-text databases will continue to be able to discover EBSCO records and access associated full-text content through the WorldCat Local interface. The new agreement is expected to improve access to these databases by removing the requirement for users of WorldCat Local to authenticate before searching the metadata for EBSCO databases to which their library subscribes. However, users will continue to be required to authenticate before accessing full text.

OCLC member libraries with a cataloging and WorldCat discovery subscription using EBSCO Discovery Service will now have the option to access WorldCat data through EDS. They can also access holdings information for their library, their resource sharing partners as profiled in WorldCat, and all libraries with holdings in WorldCat. Additionally, libraries will be able to use EBSCO Discovery Service to facilitate interlibrary loan via OCLC.

OCLC will make records from OAIster, a union catalogue of about 25 million records representing open access resources, available to all EBSCO Discovery Service users. OCLC will also make records from ArchiveGrid, an online service that provides access to detailed archival collection descriptions, available to ArchiveGrid subscribers through the EBSCO Discovery Service.

The agreement is expected to continue OCLC’s efforts, on behalf of its member libraries, to make WorldCat data available where it is needed in order to facilitate broad access to library collections and services. EBSCO and OCLC will work together over the next few months on an implementation plan and timeline for enabling access.

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The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has announced the availability of the OECD iLibrary, a new platform providing seamless and comprehensive access to statistical data, books, journals and working papers. The OECD iLibrary replaces SourceOECD and hosts all content equally so users can find - and cite - tables and databases as easily as articles or chapters. The citation tool for datasets and tables is new and unique to the OECD iLibrary.

OECD iLibrary contains all the publications and datasets released by OECD, International Energy Agency (IEA), Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), OECD Development Centre, PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), and International Transport Forum (ITF) since 1998. This includes about 390 complete databases, 2,500 working papers, 5,500 books, 14,000 tables and graphs and 21,000 chapters and articles.

The OECD iLibrary supersedes SourceOECD as the main OECD publishing platform. OECD has been communicating with all its customers over the past couple of months to encourage their use of the new platform as part of the transition. All existing subscribers are now being migrated.

For end-users, the migration process is transparent. Their usernames and passwords, as well as IP address details, have been transferred. SourceOECD's EasyLinks will be automatically re-directed to the appropriate page in OECD iLibrary. Parallel access to SourceOECD will continue to be available to subscribers until the migration is complete.

New and existing subscribers will need to register an OECD iLibrary administrator username and password to be able to use the back-office functions. These currently include the management of administration contact details, authentication details - IP address(es) and/or end-user usernames and passwords, subscriptions and institutional branding.

The OECD iLibrary is still being enhanced and some administrative features such as MARC records and COUNTER usage statistics are currently being finalised prior to deployment shortly. The site will continue to evolve as new technology and innovations become available. OECD welcomes ongoing feedback from librarians and end users to continue to improve the site.

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Library cooperative OCLC has announced that York St John University has become the first academic institution in the UK to implement OCLC's WorldCat Local as its new library end-user discovery interface. The WorldCat Local service delivers single-search access to more than 450 million items from locally held content and the world's library collections. It will be available to the university's 7,500 registered library users in October.

Already in use at more than 600 installations in North America, WorldCat Local is now gaining momentum in Europe. York St John joins a number of UK public libraries also currently implementing the service.

WorldCat Local is a rich discovery environment that provides users with a single search box, eliminating the need to consult separate resources and interfaces. Users have instant access to library materials - digital objects, electronic materials, databases, journals, music, video, audio, eBooks, theses and print. Within the WorldCat Local interface, users only see the most relevant search results, what is available locally, in group or consortial catalogues and worldwide though the entire WorldCat database of 200 million records.

A case study detailing York St Johns experiences with WorldCat Local and reasons for selection will be presented at OCLC's forthcoming series of 'Making Partnerships Matter' road shows in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Dublin and Edinburgh.

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Library cooperative OCLC has announced that it will make more content accessible through the WorldCat Local service with popular databases from H.W. Wilson. The WorldCat Local service delivers resources of local libraries and libraries around the world through a single search box.

Twenty-nine H.W. Wilson databases are accessible via single search and discovery through WorldCat Local for libraries that subscribe to these databases. Twenty-one databases have been added to the WorldCat Local central index; eight more are accessible remotely via a Z39.50 search of WilsonWeb.

WorldCat Local expands a library's collections by combining items from the library, relevant groups or consortia, and libraries around the world through a single search and result set. Built on the foundation of WorldCat, the comprehensive source for discovery of materials held by libraries, the service allows users to discover unique, locally available resources as well as materials in libraries worldwide. WorldCat Local helps increase use of a library's resources and, at the same time, offers users the ability to find more than 475 million items in a wide variety of formats.

Powerful discovery features in WorldCat Local enable library users to more easily find and interact with electronic materials, licensed databases and journals, locally digitised content and physical items. Intuitive connections to delivery services like link resolvers and resource sharing options help users take the final step to access the content they need.

OCLC is expanding the WorldCat Local central index to include more resources from familiar content providers most used by libraries today. The central index will provide access to most available content, and will be complemented by searching remote indexes to incorporate the diverse materials libraries make available to their users.

Independent publisher H.W. Wilson provides researchers with references produced with editorial integrity. More than 60 H.W. Wilson databases - indexes, abstracts, full text resources, plus the acclaimed Retrospective Collection - meet the research needs of customers around the globe.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is seeking nominations and applications for the 2011-12 Leadership and Career Development Program (LCDP). The LCDP is an 18-month fellowship programme to prepare mid-career librarians from under-represented racial and ethnic groups to take on increasingly demanding leadership roles in ARL libraries.

The programme addresses the need for research libraries to develop a more diverse professional workforce that can contribute to library success in serving the research, teaching, and learning of increasingly diverse scholarly and learning communities. This goal is accomplished, in part, by providing LCDP participants with meaningful exposure to the major strategic issues that are shaping the future of research libraries.

Participants will learn about research library issues at the strategic level and be expected to engage in a research project on a topic related to one of the three strategic directions of ARL - influencing public policies, reshaping scholarly communication, transforming research libraries. Each LCDP participant will be expected to complete this research project during the fellowship and to share outcomes with the broader academic library community through publication, invited presentations, or other mechanisms.

Applications are encouraged from librarians and other professional staff from traditionally under-represented groups. Applications are due by October 15, 2010. To apply or to learn more about the programme, visit http://www.arl.org/diversity/lcdp.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) are co-hosting a forum on 'Achieving Strategic Change in Research Libraries', immediately following the ARL Membership Meeting.

This forum, scheduled for October 14-15, 2010, in Washington DC, will explore the strategic questions that leaders must ask in order to ensure that research libraries are meeting the mission of their institution and the research, teaching, and learning needs of faculty and students. The questions that are being asked are complex and can be difficult to answer and the issues being addressed require innovative approaches.

The programme sessions will address a variety of critical questions and new models. Keynote addresses, panel presentations, and concurrent sessions will be held with speakers. The forum is open to all. In particular, directors and other senior leaders of research and academic libraries are encouraged to attend, along with staff members who have responsibilities for managing change in their organisations.

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The Institute of Museum and Library Services has issued a call for comments on its Public Library Survey in a recently published Federal Register notice. The survey provides essential data about public library service in the US including service hours, book circulation, number of librarians, service area population, technology and more.

The survey is made possible through the cooperation of state libraries that provide data each year, and through an agreement with the US Census Bureau. Analysis of survey data has led to policy and funding decisions that seek to improve library service in the US.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute aims to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. It works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organisations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development.

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Library information provider OCLC Research, US, has announced that it will host a free webinar titled 'Managing Collections in the Networked Environment: New Analytic Approaches', on September 9, 2010, at 2 p.m. EDT. Program Officer Constance Malpas and a panel of young library leaders will present a lively discussion about the role of data analysis in library collection management. Staff from three RLG Partner institutions will share insights from research that is reshaping preservation, access and management practices at Columbia University, the University of Michigan and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Featured projects include a longitudinal analysis of circulation trends at Columbia that is informing off-site storage transfers; a study of post-digitisation use of print collections at the University of Michigan; and a project to streamline preservation workflows at UCLA by automating selected aspects of risk assessment. Zack Lane from Columbia University, Helen Look from the University of Michigan, and Jake Nadal of the University of California, Los Angeles, will describe how these projects were designed and executed, and share their experiences in developing new institutional capacity for data-driven analyses.

While Webinar participation is free, advanced registration is required. This webinar will be recorded and made available on the OCLC website and in iTunes.

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The British Library has announced that it will make its collections of bibliographic records available for free to researchers and other libraries, at www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html.

The UK national library has around 14 million catalogue records said to comprise a wealth of bibliographic data. The new initiative is expected to help expose this vast dataset to users worldwide, allowing researchers and other libraries to access and retrieve bibliographic records for publications dating back centuries and relating to every conceivable subject area.

The new free service will operate in parallel to the British Library's priced bulk MARC data supply activity which is used extensively by large commercial customers.

In some instances researchers may use the library's records for purposes very different from those for which they were originally created. The library recently provided the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) with some eight million bibliographic records - allowing the IPO to conduct research into publishing trends dating as far back as 1650, and to plot these patterns against the course of changes in IP legislation.

As the national library of the UK, the British Library seeks to provide world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offer access to a large and comprehensive research collection. The library's collections include 150 million items from every era of written human history beginning with Chinese oracle bones dating from 300 BC, right up to the latest e-journals.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have announced that registration is now open for the sixth webinar in the ARL-ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication (ISC) series, Strengthening Programs through Collaboration. The webinar, ‘Broader Library Involvement in Building Programs—Organizational Strategy,’ is scheduled for September 21, 2010, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT. It is the first of two that will focus on the shifting roles of libraries and their staffs, specifically as those roles relate to sustaining scholarly communications programmes.

Speakers will discuss how libraries are conceiving of their work differently and how they are filling these needs. Case studies will highlight the time and energy taken up by scholarly communications activities at their institutions and how the work is managed. The registration deadline is September 14, 2010.

Scheduled speakers include Karen Williams, Associate University Librarian for Academic Programs, University of Minnesota Libraries; Michael Furlough, Assistant Dean for Scholarly Communications and Co-Director, Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing, Penn State University; and Doug Way, Head of Collections, Grand Valley State University.

The Strengthening Programs through Collaboration webinar series seeks to assist libraries in taking their scholarly communication programmes to the next level. The eight-part ISC webinar series is targeted to those who are in the midst of creating their own institutional scholarly communication programme. This programme will enable those who have responsibilities for working with staff and colleagues an opportunity to share experiences.

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Content technology and consultative services provider EBSCO has announced that library customers can now purchase subscriptions to titles in JSTOR's Current Scholarship Program (CSP). Pricing and title lists can be obtained via EBSCONET, an EBSCO representative or from the JSTOR website.

CSP currently includes 174 titles from 19 publishers and offers access to current journal issues and associated archives through the JSTOR platform. Titles are available individually or as part of collections that mirror JSTOR's existing archive collections. Libraries can access CSP content from publishers such as The University of Chicago Press, University of California Press, The University of Illinois Press, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania and more.

The JSTOR CSP platform combines current issues with archive content, allowing for a more complete content experience. Libraries can purchase collections with current and backfile content for all titles within the collection, individual titles with current content only or single titles with current and backfile content. Current subscriptions to titles or collections in CSP include 'born digital' content for the title, which is content originally published in electronic form, outside of an aggregation.

When ordering CSP content via EBSCO, the order details become part of the EBSCO Integrated Knowledge Base. Available via EBSCONET or special reports, the order details can be used to automatically populate EBSCO's discovery and management solutions, including EBSCO A-to-Z and EBSCONET ERM Essentials. This integration is expected to save valuable hours of staff time and increases accuracy.

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LYRASIS, a regional membership organisation for libraries and information professionals in the US, has announced an agreement with SkyRiver, a bibliographic utility that connects libraries with bibliographic metadata. The agreement enables LYRASIS to market, sell, and provide training for SkyRiver cataloguing services to LYRASIS members throughout the US.

By joining forces with SkyRiver, LYRASIS seeks to provide libraries innovative content, technology and operational solutions. This partnership is seen to be important and timely as libraries continue to face declining budgets while library usage simultaneously increases. The agreement gives libraries unlimited access to MARC records with an affordable annual subscription fee and no additional usage fees.

Since SkyRiver services fit easily into libraries of all sizes and types, the synergy resulting from this partnership will allow LYRASIS members to quickly and easily reap the benefit of SkyRiver's low-cost services.

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The Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) has released a new report, 'Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025.' The report seeks to prompt academic librarians to consider what trends may impact the future of higher education in order to take strategic action now.

Authored by David J. Staley, director of the Harvey Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching in the History Department of Ohio State University, and Kara J. Malenfant, ACRL scholarly communications and government relations specialist, the report presents 26 possible scenarios for the future which may have an impact on all types of academic libraries over the next 15 years.

The scenarios are based on implications assessment of current trends and reflect a variety of potential futures for higher education. The scenarios represent a variety of themes relating to academic culture, demographics, distance education, funding, globalisation, infrastructure/facilities, libraries, political climate, publishing industry, societal values, students/learning and technology.

The report is freely available online at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/value/futures2025.pdf

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The OCLC Board of Trustees has approved a new WorldCat record use policy, developed by a Record Use Policy Council and informed by community input. WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative will be effective August 1, 2010. The new policy outlines the rights and responsibilities associated with stewardship of the WorldCat bibliographic and holdings database by and for the OCLC cooperative. This includes the use and exchange of OCLC member-contributed data comprising WorldCat.

The policy was drafted by the Record Use Policy Council, a group of 12 library leaders charged by the OCLC Board of Trustees to craft a replacement for the Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC Derived Records, which was developed in 1987.

In April 2010, the Record Use Policy Council submitted to the library community and to the OCLC Board a draft policy that began a two-month period of community review and discussion. More than 275 comments were gathered via e-mail, phone, meetings and letters, in an online forum, and by monitoring blogs, listservs, and Twitter. At the end of May, community input was incorporated and a policy statement was submitted to the OCLC Board, which approved the revised document during its June meeting.

The policy is based on the premise that OCLC members value WorldCat as a comprehensive, timely, and accurate reflection of the consolidated holdings of those members. The policy's intent is to encourage the widespread use of WorldCat bibliographic data while also supporting the ongoing and long-term sustainability and utility of WorldCat and of WorldCat-based services such as resource sharing, cataloging, and discovery.

The new policy will become effective August 1, 2010, replacing the Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC Derived Records. Because the data sharing environment is constantly and rapidly evolving, this new policy will be regularly reviewed to ensure its continued timeliness.

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The University of Sheffield, in collaboration with library information provider OCLC Research, US, has been awarded funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council to explore a library catalogue recommender system based on the requirements and preferences of users.

The joint Doctoral Award will pay for a Ph.D. student to work for three years with Dr. Paul Clough and Ms. Barbara Sen, lecturers in The Information School at the University of Sheffield, and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway at OCLC, investigating the applicability of the recommender concept to the domain of the library catalogue. Recommender systems suggest items to users that are likely to be of interest to them but have not yet been considered.

The goal of the project is to follow a 'user-centered' approach to the development of a library catalogue recommender system, establishing user needs and preferences before mining the bibliographic data within the WorldCat database to retrieve similar journals, books, digital media and video records that may be of interest. WorldCat allows researchers to experiment with various, large-scale sources of evidence on which to base recommendations, thereby not restricting the recommender system to the holdings and circulation activities of a single institution.

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E-Resource Access and Management Services (ERAMS) provider Serials Solutions, US, a business unit of ProQuest, has announced that it is developing Serials Solutions Access Control Service, a hosted authentication and proxy service that will improve access for users and free up library staff time. Access Control Service is expected to simplify the process of accessing library resources from remote locations, combine data management with access control, and eliminate the current requirement for IT resources to implement and manage this service.

Available later in 2010, Serials Solutions Access Control Service will authenticate users, verify their entitlement to electronic resources, and then, connect them to the library's subscribed content providers. Further, libraries will be able to consolidate management of their e-resource subscription data and its access control through the Serials Solutions Client Center, which will include a user authentication component and a Software as a Service (SaaS) proxy.

Serials Solutions Access Control Service is part of the company's overall mission to provide simple solutions to everyday issues that surround e-resources.

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Library information provider OCLC Research, US, has announced that its scientists, in partnership with JISC, have released a study titled ‘The Digital Information Seeker: Report of Findings From Selected OCLC, RIN and JISC User Behaviour Projects’. The report seeks to analyse and synthesise 12 separate studies to make it easier for information professionals to better understand information-seeking behaviours of library users. It also aims to help the professionals review the issues associated with the development of information services and systems that will best meet these users' needs.

The study, authored by Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Dr. Timothy J. Dickey, OCLC Research, was funded by JISC, and was presented during the JISC Annual Conference in London in April.

The 12 selected studies were commissioned and/or supported by non-profit organisations and government agencies, and were reviewed by the authors, who analysed the findings, compared their analyses and identified the overlapping and contradictory findings.

A synthesis of findings from these user studies points toward a number of implications for libraries that are shared by multiple studies, including library systems must do better at providing seamless access to resources; librarians must increasingly consider a greater variety of digital formats and content; library systems and content must be prepared for changing user behaviours; library systems need to look and function more like search engines, i.e., Google and Yahoo, and web services, i.e., Amazon.com, since these are familiar to users who are comfortable and confident in using them; high-quality metadata is becoming more important for discovery of appropriate resources; and the library must advertise its brand, its value and its resources better within the community.

There are many more published user behaviour studies than the 12 included in this synopsis and analysis, according to the study. This study was an attempt to review major, funded studies that were published within the past five years and that specifically addressed electronic content, users' perceptions of their information-seeking behaviours, and library catalogues. In addition, an emphasis was placed on studies of UK users. This analysis provided an opportunity to identify the common findings as well as the contradictory findings.

The full text of ‘The Digital Information Seeker: Report of Findings From Selected OCLC, RIN and JISC User Behaviour Projects’ can be found on the JISC website at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/reports/2010/digitalinformationseekerreport.pdf.

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The University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine has been awarded a two-year $314,688 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create an original, open access digital collection of archival, primary, and interpretive materials related to the history of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the US. The University of Michigan Library, through its Scholarly Publishing Office, is contributing digital conversion, hosting, and archiving services to the project.

The project will include about 50,000 pages of original materials that document the experiences of 50 diverse communities in the US in fall 1918 and winter 1919 when influenza took the lives of an estimated 675,000 Americans. The collection’s primary resources comprise letters and correspondence, minutes of organisations and groups, reports from agencies and charities, newspaper accounts, military records, diaries, photographs and more.

According to Dr. Howard Markel, the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, ‘The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia’ will be the first to document exhaustively the impact of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic on one nation. This will permit scholars to explore how the 1918 influenza epidemic influenced many communities and sub-communities in the early twentieth-century United States. Also, it will help understand how individuals and society responded to a health crisis of extraordinary magnitude.

Online implementation of the digital collection will take place through collaboration with the Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO) of the UM Library. The SPO partners with faculty at UM and beyond to provide sustainable digital publishing services that place preservation and access at the center of its efforts. The Library is also a lead partner in the Google Book Search project and in HathiTrust, an inter-institutional repository of millions of digitised books.

‘The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia’ will be launched in 2012 at www.influenzaarchive.org. The project team is led by Stern and Markel and includes J. Alexander Navarro, Mary Beth Reilly and Julie Judkins, all based at the Center for the History of Medicine. The digital encyclopaedia is the culmination of more than five years of the Center’s ongoing research in collaboration with the Global Migration and Quarantine Division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), US, has announced that it is adding records to WorldCat that represent digitised books from the Google Books Library Project and the HathiTrust Digital Library to provide greater access to and increased visibility of these digitised collections.

OCLC is working with libraries, Google and the HathiTrust to derive new MARC records that represent these digital collections based on the rich collection of print records contributed to WorldCat by the OCLC membership over the last 40 years. Searchers will begin seeing these records in WorldCat immediately. OCLC will continue to add records for these collections to WorldCat on an ongoing basis. WorldCat searchers will be able to locate digitised books from these collections and link to the associated book landing page. Also, in some cases, searchers will be able to access the full text of eBooks available through these initiatives.

HathiTrust was conceived as a collaboration of the 13 universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitised collections. OCLC and the HathiTrust are working together to implement a public interface for the HathiTrust catalogue through a WorldCat Local interface, to be introduced later this year.

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Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), US, has announced that the University of Alberta, Red Deer College, Lakeland College and Concordia University College of Alberta are the first among NEOS member libraries to implement WorldCat Local. WorldCat Local is the service that delivers resources of local libraries and libraries around the world through a single search box.

All members of NEOS, a cooperative library consortium that comprises 18 government, hospital, college and university libraries throughout central and northern Alberta, have been given the option to implement OCLC’s WorldCat Local service. The University of Alberta, Red Deer College, Lakeland College, and Concordia University College of Alberta will complete their implementations by March 31, 2010, with more NEOS member libraries to follow in the coming months.

WorldCat Local is a rich discovery environment that presents local library search results most relevant to the library user, followed by materials available through consortia, as well as allowing the user to search the entire WorldCat database of more than 170 million records. WorldCat Local provides single-search access to discover all types of library materials - physical, electronic and digital. WorldCat Local will interoperate with NEOS members’ existing interlibrary loan management systems and help to streamline circulation among NEOS member libraries, while maintaining each member library’s localised branding.

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Cologne-based libraries and the Library Centre of Rhineland-Palatinate (LBZ), in cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center (hbz), have reportedly become the first German libraries to adopt open access for bibliographic data. The institutions have published their catalogue data for free public use. The University and Public Library of Cologne (USB), the Library of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the University Library of the University of Applied Science of Cologne and the LBZ are participating in the move. The release of bibliographic data is projected to form a basis for linking that data with data from other domains in the Semantic Web.

The objective of the latest initiative is to provide free access to knowledge to everybody via the Internet. Until now, it was not possible to download library catalogues as a whole. The library of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has already published its data under a public domain licence in January. According to observers, cooperation and data exchange between libraries have been firmly established in the library world for more than 100 years. Freely supplying bibliographic data should not only further enhance cooperation among libraries but enable subsequent use by non-library institutions, they feel.

The North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center has begun evaluating the possibilities to transform data from library catalogues in such a way that it can become a part of the emerging Semantic Web. The liberalisation of bibliographic data is seen to provide the legal background to perform this transformation in a cooperative, open and transparent way. Currently there are discussions with other member libraries of the hbz library network to publish their data.

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Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), US, and e-research and educational publisher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, US, have signed an agreement to index the latter's flagship full-text periodical databases in WorldCat Local. WorldCat Local is the service that combines the cooperative power of OCLC member libraries worldwide with the ability to use WorldCat.org as a solution for local discovery and delivery services. With this new initiative, both parties seek to provide single-search access to users that subscribe to both services.

The agreement calls for OCLC to centrally index the metadata of Gale's Academic OneFile and General OneFile databases to provide WorldCat Local users a direct link to the abstracts and articles in these authoritative resources. The two databases contain about 100 million records each that connect to millions of full-text articles in both HTML and PDF from peer-reviewed journals, newspapers and magazines, as well as thousands of podcasts and transcripts.

Gale joins a growing list of OCLC eContent partners that have agreed to have their databases indexed in WorldCat Local. These institutions are collaborating on a global scale to ensure that library users can find and access the content in their local libraries, in regional libraries and through the OCLC network of WorldCat libraries worldwide. Currently, more than 100 databases, 420 million article records, and numerous digital library collections, including Google Book Search and HathiTrust, are combined with the 170 million items catalogued in WorldCat to provide libraries using WorldCat Local a rich and growing index that represents the combined print, electronic and digital collections of the OCLC membership.

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2CUL, a partnership between the libraries at Cornell University and Columbia University, has announced a study to discover if the library can help ameliorate high attrition and low completion rates for doctoral students in the humanities.

The goal of the project is to listen to graduate students’ concerns and determine whether the library can develop strategies that will help directly with their research and contribute to their success. Grants from the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation will support the user needs assessment to determine what academic libraries can do to help humanities doctoral students complete their degrees.

Cornell’s Graduate School and Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are providing additional support. Support from Cornell's Graduate School comes from a grant from the Council of Graduate Schools for its CGS Ph.D. Completion Project.

The pilot project will involve focus groups with Cornell and Columbia’s humanities students in all stages of their PhD work, as well as recent graduates. Interviewers will then develop a questionnaire based on information from the focus groups and administer it to 20-25 students in 3-4 departments at each institution.

After the analysis period, the institutions will recommend a course of action to address the findings. Possible steps forward would include partnerships with the graduate schools, writing centres and other campus entities at both institutions. Assessment will be completed by March 2011.

Humanities students have longer mean times to complete their PhDs than students in any other discipline and, according to a recent National Science Foundation study, those times are increasing. In 2003, the average humanities student took nine years to graduate, up from 7.5 years in 1978. Another study shows that humanities students’ 49-percent completion rate within a 10-year period is considerably lower than the rates of their peers in mathematics and physical sciences (55 percent), social sciences (56 percent), life sciences (63 percent) and engineering (64 percent).

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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), has received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The funding will be used to study the value of academic libraries to students, faculty, policymakers and funders.

The three-year grant, entitled ‘Value, Outcomes, and Return on Investment of Academic Libraries (Lib-Value),’ will work to enrich, expand, test, and implement methodologies measuring the return on investment (ROI) in academic libraries.

Academic libraries actively participate in the many changes in scholarship, such as the move to e-science, collaborative and participatory scholarship, and focus on new materials such as data, multimedia, and born-digital assets. To remain relevant and central to the academic mission in the future, academic librarians need to be able to demonstrate the value that the academic library provides to the campus community using proven methods of measurement.

The results of the study will provide evidence and a set of tested methodologies and tools to help academic librarians demonstrate how the library provides value to its constituents and ROI to its funders; and to measure which products and services are of most value to enhancing the university’s mission. The project is expected to expand upon earlier studies to consider multiple measures of value that the academic library brings to teaching/learning, research, and social/professional/public engagement functions of the academic institution.

To ensure that the process will be rigorous, realistic and highly visible in the academic library and university community, an experienced team of academic librarians and researchers are projected to bring their leadership to the project. The project is also engaging an advisory committee of noted information science researchers.

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Information services provider EBSCO, US, is set to launch EBSCONET ERM Essentials, which seeks to offer key features that librarians need to simplify management of their e-resources. The launch is slated to coincide with ALA Midwinter 2010.

In 2009, 25 library customers partnered with EBSCO to beta-test ERM Essentials in two phases with an initial round during the spring and a second phase beginning in mid-October. Feedback from beta testers has reportedly been positive. According to the company, users can discover a new way to manage their e-resources, eliminating the challenge of maintaining multiple e-mail chains, paper files, spreadsheets and other decentralised information spread across multiple departments and staff.

ERM Essentials is pre-populated for orders of e-journals and e-packages purchased through EBSCO with daily updates to ensure accuracy. It offers integration with other EBSCO tools that are already in the market. The product claims to provide librarians with a user-friendly system, intuitive design and a central location to manage all their e-resources. The often cumbersome job that most librarians face when trying to manage large groups of e-resources, such as e-journal collections, purportedly becomes easier with ERM Essentials. The product is positioned as the first full-featured electronic resource management tool that automatically populates and maintains more than 100 data fields for e-journals and e-packages purchased through EBSCO.

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The American Library Association has announced that its Atyourlibrary.org, which launched earlier this year, continues to post lively new content that encourages the public to use their local library.

The mission of the site is to be a catalyst that drives people to their local libraries. The Web site works to get the word out that libraries are filled with rich resources, which are easy to access, as well as promote the goals of the Campaign for America’s Libraries. Where available, recommended resources are linked to the World Cat database, which provides a list of the nearest libraries with the recommended item.

Atyourlibrary.org is part of the Campaign for America’s Libraries (www.ala.org/@yourlibrary), ALA’s public awareness campaign that promotes the value of libraries and librarians. Thousands of libraries of all types – across the country and around the globe - use the Campaign’s @ your library brand. The Campaign is made possible by ALA’s Library Champions, corporations and foundations that advocate the importance of the library in American society.

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The US’ Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has announced the release of a new research brief, ‘Service Trends in US Public Libraries, 1997-2007’. The brief seeks to identify important changes public libraries have made to address patron needs in an increasingly Internet-centric environment, and explores service differences in urban and rural communities.

A comparison of more than 11 years of Public Library Survey data suggests that service changes in US public libraries are having an impact on visitation and circulation, as record numbers of people now use public libraries nationwide. The survey found that the availability of Internet terminals in public libraries rose sharply between 2000 and 2007, increasing by 90 percent on a per capita basis. This dramatic increase is one example of the way US public libraries are expanding their range of services to meet patron demand, according to the study.

Between 1997 and 2007, per capita visits to public libraries increased nationwide by 19 percent. During the same period, per capita circulation increased by 12 percent. This growth in demand for library services occurred even as people increasingly turned to the Internet to meet other information needs. The study identified very different trajectories between urban and rural communities for select service trends, highlighting the importance of local context for identifying patron needs and improving services.

Future research from the Office of Policy, Planning, Research and Communication will examine library services in a variety of different contexts from small towns and remote rural areas to central cities and suburbs. It is expected that such place-based analysis would provide important insight into the impact libraries have on their communities, while building a stronger, evidence-based platform for planning library services to meet local needs.

The research brief is available online at http://www.imls.gov/pdf/Brief2010_01.pdf.

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The CIBER research group at University College London has announced the availability of the final report for its global library survey that concerns the challenges, trends and best practices during tough economic times. Co-sponsored by Charleston Conference, Baker & Taylor’s YBP Library Services and ebrary, the survey was completed by 835 institutions around the world. A complimentary copy of the final report can be obtained by registering at http://www.ebrary.com/corp/inforequest/survey2009.jsp.

According to the survey, the current financial year is a tough one for academic libraries, with 34.7 percent of institutions receiving a total library budget that is at least 5 percent smaller than the previous year (excluding inflation). The outlook in two years time is mixed, with 31.4 percent expecting their total library budget to be smaller than in the current financial year, 40.1 percent about the same, and 28.4 percent expecting an increase. Overall, resource budgets are more vulnerable than personnel, services or infrastructure, with monographs and print journals being the most vulnerable to cutbacks.

When trimming their resources budget, libraries were least likely to cut e-books, followed by electronic-only serials and database subscriptions. About 52.5 percent of libraries view the acceleration of print to digital as the most effective option for balancing their budgets, with subscription as the most popular method. Just under half of all libraries see the demonstration of value through usage and outcomes data as the smartest way to manage the cost of resources.

Dr. Allen McKiel, Dean of Library and Media Services at Western Oregon University, will lead an interactive presentation of the final results at ALA Midwinter. The event is slated for January 16, 2010, from 10:30 am to 12 pm at the Boston Park Plaza in Boston. All are invited to discuss what the findings mean for libraries as well as possible responses and solutions. Librarians, faculty members, publishers and others are encouraged to write papers on the survey.

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The Miami-Dade Public Library System has announced that it has chosen AquaBrowser Library, a discovery tool offering visual, faceted searching that connects to any data source. AquaBrowser is projected to help the library’s members easily and fully explore its vast collection. Existing users of the search tool include over 700 libraries.

AquaBrowser seeks to offer users a familiar web-like experience, with the precision needed for discovery, without any disruption to the library’s backroom and staff activities. Its technology is seen to provide users with an intuitive and attractive interface on top of an existing catalogue. The library internally keeps working the way it always has, but customers get the kind of search and Web 2.0 experience they have come to expect on the Internet, according to the company.

The tool is designed to utilise common search behaviours to deliver immediate results and relevant content from a variety of sources. Its “search, discover, refine� methodology is seen to provide visualisation and faceting features that help users quickly and easily uncover relevant results and inspire them to explore more of a library’s resources.

SerialsSolutions is the exclusive provider of AquaBrowser Library to academic and special libraries in North America. AquaBrowser North America provides the service to public libraries. The tool was developed by Medialab Solutions, a US-based provider of library software. Medialab had announced in July 2009 that, in a single year, more than 400 libraries had chosen AquaBrowser Library. In August, the eiNetwork,a collaboration of the Allegheny County Library Association and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, had announced the adoption of AquaBrowser to provide its 44 member libraries with an independent discovery layer.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is initiating a new series of invited reports addressing emerging roles for research libraries. The New Roles for New Times series will begin publication with five reports in 2010. The reports will identify and outline emerging roles for research library staff and present research on early experiences among ARL member libraries in developing the roles and delivering services.

Reports being developed for the New Roles for New Times Reports series are: Transforming liaison librarian work by Karen Williams, University of Minnesota; Repository services by Sarah Shreeves, University of Illinois; Digital curation and preservation by Tyler Walters, Georgia Tech; Library roles in promoting graduate students’ development of research skills and understanding of scholarly communication by Lucinda Covert-Vail and Scott Collard, NYU; and New roles in providing print collections: remote storage and collection consolidation by Emily Stambaugh, California Digital Library.

These reports will highlight existing work, report authors’ findings, and offer analysis of trends, best practices, and key issues. Each of these will describe the emerging role, articulating the audience affected by the new role and the benefits various constituencies experience as a result of the new role. Reports will be freely available as PDF files on ARL’s New Roles for New Times website at http://www.arl.org/rtl/nrnt/.

Complementing the report set, ARL will work with the New Roles authors to organise corresponding webcasts on each topic. Webcasts will be scheduled to follow a report’s release.

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The UK’s Wellcome Trust has called for greater transparency among publishers to counter the argument that access fees are being paid twice - once through subscriptions and again through publication fees. The call comes as the Trust announces a further £2 million to fund open access (OA) publication fees for its researchers over the next 12 months. The funds are part of the ongoing commitment to ensuring that the results of all Trust-funded research are made freely available online.

Since 2005, the Wellcome Trust has made it a condition of funding that researchers are required to make any Trust-funded publications available within six months through life sciences online archive, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). The Trust will meet publication costs where the publisher agrees to make articles freely available through UKPMC at the time of publication and to license these works in a way that facilitates re-use, subject to proper attribution.

In recent months, however, concern has been expressed by the research community that publishers are using OA fees as an additional revenue stream without making a concerted effort to adapt their business models. In other words, access fees are being paid twice, through subscriptions and through publication fees.

UKPMC is currently being developed with the aim that it becomes the information resource of choice for the UK biomedical and health research communities. The development programme is managed by the British Library in consultation with UKPMC funding organisations and the academic community.

Key developments include providing the functionality - through text and data mining technologies - to integrate research articles with a range of other online sources. These include gene, protein and chemical compound databases. There is also an effort to integrate a range of bibliographic databases - including Medline, Patents and Agricola - into a single, seamless discovery tool. The new UKPMC site will go live early in 2010.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, and the South West Regional Library Service (SWRLS) have announced a collaboration. The initiative will initially see seven public library authorities in the South West of England using WorldCat Local as their shared end user discovery service in 2010.

Library authorities in Bournemouth, Bath & NE Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Plymouth are working with OCLC to implement a discovery interface. The interface will enable users to search and place reservations on materials held across the South West region. The service is a replacement for Wisdom, formerly supplied by DS Ltd, now part of the Axiell Group. By adopting this approach, the libraries expect to also raise their profile on the web by becoming visible in WorldCat.org, a web destination for the discovery of library resources.

The libraries, through their participation in UnityUK, are already regularly updating their bibliographic and holdings information, which OCLC then uploads to WorldCat. This facilitated records transfer is seen to have opened up the potential for them to utilise services built on the WorldCat platform, including WorldCat Local. The seven SWRLS libraries will have their own individualised web discovery interface reflecting their libraries’ branding and holdings switched on. Each interface will also present real-time holdings information from the other participating libraries to quicken the time it takes for users to locate items of interest.

The decision by libraries in the South West to adopt WorldCat Local as a shared service comes at a time when public libraries across the country are joining up service provision. In September, the Society of Chief Librarians announced an initiative to allow members of a library to borrow books from any of 4,000 libraries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. And, as has been widely reported, the UK government is planning a national request service backed up by home delivery in an attempt to reinvigorate the public’s perception of libraries.

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The Association of Learning and Professional Society Publishing (ALPSP) has announced that, according to its recent survey of librarians, the average number of journals being made available by libraries more than doubled between 2000 and 2009. However, librarians are predicting that they will provide access to around the same number of journals in 2010 as they did in 2009, with more journals purchased as part of 'big deals' and fewer as single subscriptions. This will be of concern to smaller publishers who are unable to offer their content as part of a 'big deal' and those that are launching new subscription journals.

ALPSP undertook the survey in mid-2009 to inform a panel discussion at the ALPSP International Conference 2009. It conducted the survey against the backdrop of the global economic downturn that began in the second half of 2008, and the impact that this had on public finances and on the volatility of the world's major currencies.

The survey was designed by Richard Gedye, Research Director, Oxford University Press and Chair of the conference panel session, and Ian Russell, Chief Executive, ALPSP, with input and advice from the four librarians involved in the conference panel session: Rick Anderson (University of Utah), Colin Storey (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Jill Taylor-Roe (Newcastle University), and Nol Verhagen (Amsterdam University).

A significant proportion of librarians responding to the survey state that they would prefer to purchase content from non-profit publishers. However, the profit status of the publisher is not an important factor in any of the purchasing decisions surveyed. There is a strong demand from library customers to move more journals to electronic only. Three of the four most important barriers are within the control of publishers who may wish to consider what more can be done regarding electronic only offerings, licensing terms and post cancellation access to facilitate this move.

Librarians generally understand and value the role that academic publishers play in the dissemination and communication of scholarship. However, there is room for a better understanding of the inflationary pressures on journal prices and better communication regarding this from the scholarly publishing industry generally.

Librarians look for the most advantageous cost / benefit ratio when making their purchasing decisions. Usage statistics, both overall use and cost per use, are very important tools used in determining whether to renew or cancel journal content. Publishers should therefore continue to make every effort to maximise the usage of their version of the article, says the survey. Faculty continue to play a very important role in all purchasing decisions relating to single subscriptions, and end user marketing will therefore remain a priority for journal publishers who primarily sell their content as single subscriptions.

Librarians responding to the survey are knowledgeable of open access publishing business models. However, more work needs to be done to minimise the burden of administrating open access publishing and to ensure that expenditure is predictable, the survey findings indicate.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has announced improved search and new online features for its flagship publication Research Library Issues: A Bimonthly Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC (RLI). A freely available online-only publication, RLI includes articles on the major issues that research libraries face in meeting the academic and research needs of the diverse communities they serve.

Recent issues of RLI are now available on a test basis through Tizra Publisher, a Web-based publishing platform. The system’s features include full-text search; page-at-a-time linking; and compatibility with mobile devices. The software also allows readers to zoom in if text is too small, and download full articles for printing or offline viewing via links available on every page. The new Test Site for Research Library Issues is freely available at http://publications.arl.org.

This service is introduced by ARL as a test to gauge user response and determine if such a platform could be used to distribute other ARL publications. Comments on the new platform should be directed to pubs@arl.org.

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The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) and Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) have commissioned a report on academic library and IT services. The report shows how academic library and IT services are budgeting for today’s economic conditions, but are in need of help to scenario plan for the long term impact of the recession.

The report, ‘The impact of the economic recession on university library and IT services’ contains the findings of 40 interviews carried out in 36 universities across the UK. It shows that library and IT services are adept at managing their budgets year on year. However, it acknowledges that there is a need to develop creative solutions to be able to offer the 24 hour access to resources that students, academics and researchers currently expect.

It also warns that the impact of any cuts is likely to have wide implications on institutions’ delivery of their overall strategic aims, such as enhancing the student experience. The report is available online at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/libsitimpacts.aspx.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released a report on liaison librarian roles as a special issue of Research Library Issues (RLI). Guest edited by ARL’s Karla Hahn, this special issue of RLI focuses on the evolution of new roles and institutional strategies for liaison work.

Five articles identify emerging roles and consider the challenges of developing corresponding liaison capabilities. Authors from Minnesota, Berkeley, MIT, British Columbia, and NYU each reflect on their experiences and offer insights to fellow travellers mapping out their own routes to a new vision of liaison work.

Research Library Issues is a Bimonthly Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC (RLI). The freely available, online-only publication is released six times per year by the Association of Research Libraries. RLI focuses on the major issues that affect the ability of research libraries to meet the academic and research needs of the diverse communities they serve.

ARL, a nonprofit organisation of 123 research libraries in North America, aims to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. It seeks to advance the goals of its member research libraries; provide leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities; foster the exchange of ideas and expertise; and shape a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organisations.

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Global library cooperative OCLC, US, has announced that its board of trustees has convened a Record Use Policy Council. The council will draw upon the fundamental values of the OCLC cooperative and engage with libraries worldwide to develop the next generation of the WorldCat Record Use Policy. The intent is to recommend a new policy that is aligned with the present and future information landscape. The new policy will replace the Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC Derived Records that was developed in 1987.

The formation of this council was one of the recommendations contained in the final report of the OCLC Review Board on the Principles of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship. This report was formed in January 2009 to represent the membership and inform OCLC on best practices for sharing library data.

The Policy Council is also charged with carrying out the other recommendations contained in the final report, including development of a policy to enable expanding the role and value of WorldCat in the broad information ecosystem. The members of the OCLC Record Use Policy Council have agreed to undertake a significant body of work to canvass the current and future information needs of the library community and provide a broad and inclusive set of perspectives and experiences.

Over the next seven months, the council will review key values and principles underlying the current guidelines developed in 1987; develop success criteria for a revised policy or guidelines; conduct and disseminate the results of an environmental scan of data-sharing policies; evaluate findings from the environmental scan and draft a new policy and recommendations for implementation; and develop a formal, transparent and well-managed process for vetting the new draft policy with the OCLC Regional Councils and the OCLC Global Council as the representatives of the OCLC membership.

The Record Use Policy Council will begin its work soon. The group will define an approach and timeline to carry out this charge. The council will submit a new draft policy and recommendations for implementation to the Chair of the OCLC board of trustees and OCLC President and CEO, for review and approval by the trustees in midyear 2010.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has announced that ‘From Groundwork to Action’, the 2010 National Diversity in Libraries Conference (NDLC), will take place from July 14-16, 2010, in Princeton, New Jersey. The biennial NDLC seeks to serve as a regional meeting for library staff members to discuss diversity issues, especially issues common to the host region’s culture.

The 2010 NDLC Planning Committee has called for proposals for presentation at the conference. Conference presentations are sought in all areas of diversity including – but not limited to - workplace, user services and technology.

The deadline for submitting proposals is October 2, 2009. Those interested in participating in the event can consult the NDLC wiki for further information regarding presentation formats, selection criteria and submission guidelines.

ARL, a nonprofit organisation of 123 research libraries in North America, aims to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. It seeks to advance the goals of its member research libraries; provide leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities; foster the exchange of ideas and expertise; and shape a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organisations.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Public Engagement, SPEC Kit 312, which explores the ways in which traditional ‘outreach’ programmes in academic libraries are evolving to address the emergent concept of ‘public engagement’ at the institutional level. It also looks at the degree to which the library is integrated into campus-level efforts to promote public engagement.

By the March deadline, responses had been submitted by 56 of 123 ARL member libraries for a response rate of 46 percent. Of the 56 responding libraries, 88 percent reported providing such programmes as part of their service profile. Respondents identified a wide variety of programmes that they characterise as ‘public engagement.’ The top four areas of library activity reported were programmes in the areas of K-12 education (80%), cultural engagement (75%), government information/e-government (68%), and lifelong learning (66%).

SPEC Kit 312 includes documentation from respondents in the form of mission statements, descriptions of library engagement programmes, examples of awards programme, scholarship of engagement information and job descriptions. The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec-312-web.pdf.

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The eiNetwork, a collaboration of the Allegheny County Library Association and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, has opted for the AquaBrowser library software, which provides libraries with visual and faceted search solutions.

AquaBrowser will provide eiNetwork’s 44 member libraries — which have holdings of nearly 4 million items — with an independent discovery layer. The Medialab Solutions product seeks to offer users a contemporary web experience without any disruption to the library’s backroom and staff activities. It also seeks to provide technology that empowers users with an intuitive and attractive interface on top of an existing catalogue. The library internally keeps working the way it always has, but customers get the kind of search and Web 2.0 experience they’ve come to expect on the Internet.

Existing users of AquaBrowser include 600 libraries. Other large consortia offering AquaBrowser to their users include Ramapo Catskill Library System (NY), Metropolitan Library Network System (MN), Upper Hudson Library System (NY), Southeastern Libraries Cooperating System (MN), Library Integrated Network Consortium (IL), MARINet (CA) and Prairie Area Library System (IL).

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Information service company EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), Netherlands, has developed an open source software development kit (SDK) for developing clients and servers for the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI). The SDK will assist content providers in implementing SUSHI – a key requirement for being compliant with Release 3 of the COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) Code of Practice for Journals and Databases.

The SDK includes .Net classes that will facilitate working with COUNTER 3.0 data and SUSHI 1.6 services. Whether the intended solution is a SUSHI client or server, these classes will provide the groundwork to allow developers to focus on the logic rather than implementing the standard. The SDK, which contains documentation, source code, a sample client, and a sample server can be found at http://code.google.com/p/ebscosushisdk/.

SUSHI will be an integral part of EBSCO’s Usage Consolidation module, a new service that is being added to ERM Essentials, the company’s e-resource management system.

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The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released a new guide on outreach to scholarly society leaders to assist libraries in developing positive, supportive relationships with leaders, editors, and members of academic scholarly societies affiliated with their institutions. It will support development of faculty outreach programmes at ARL member libraries by offering strategy and tactics for increasing the engagement with leaders at their institution.

The guide seeks to increase library staff’s conscious connections with leaders of scholarly societies residing on their campus in order to build positive relationships between librarians and faculty members; create opportunities for education and dialog with key opinion leaders and decision-makers within disciplinary communities; identify opportunities for libraries to partner/collaborate with scholarly societies; enhance library leadership’s decision-making capability by building a better understanding of their faculty members’ and researchers’ ongoing needs for services from scholarly societies; successful campus outreach should encourage and support society leaders to engage in positive change that advances the scholarly communication system, promotes new research modes, and offers a path forward in a time of paradigm shift.

The full text of ‘Campus Outreach to Scholarly Society Leaders, Editors, and Members: Promoting positive change and a continuing role for scholarly societies’ is freely available at http://www.arl.org/sc/faculty/coi/coitalkpoints2009.shtml.

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