Library Stuff

Daily Herald – “Save the newspapers!

It sounds a little self-serving, sure, but even in the Internet age, newspapers may be good for more than lining a litter box and wrapping fish.

What newspapers and other traditional media do, said BYU law professor RonNell Andersen Jones, is combine a passion for open government and public access with the resources to go after the government for the enactment and enforcement of those laws.”

Inside Higher Ed – “Can an information source that is free also be reliable? Or does the price of content always reflect its value? In higher education, this debate usually takes place in the context of academic publishing, where open access journals have emerged to challenge their pricey print predecessors. This mirrors a wider trend in media, where lean, Web-based, free-content outlets have begun supplanting newspapers, magazines, and other publications that depend on subscription revenue.” (via)

From Peter Suber

IU Press Release – “The Kuali Foundation, Inc., is pleased to announce that a group of leading academic research libraries is partnering in the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) (pronounced Oh-LAY) project to develop software created specifically for the complex business management and workflow operations of academic and research libraries.”

More on OLE here

Berkman Center – “In the spirit of Open Access week and otherwise, Harvard’s Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review is today launching a new online publication, Amicus”

Direct to Amicus

UPenn – “The Penn Libraries ScholarlyCommons website has a new look and an expanded mission to help faculty promote their scholarship online. The site is being launched in conjunction with Open Access Week”

Direct to the new site

Gary and Shirl have a rundown.

Direct Dispatch – “Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) recently introduced a bill, H.R. 3762, into the House of Representatives to make published Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports available to the public via the Internet.”

PLOS – “As part of our ongoing article-level metrics program, we’re delighted to announce that all seven PLoS journals will now provide online usage data for published articles. With this addition, the suite of metrics on PLoS articles now includes measures of: online usage; citations from the scholarly literature; social bookmarks; blog coverage; and the Comments, Notes and ‘Star’ ratings that have been made on the article.”

The White House – “As part of the Open Government Initiative, the President tasked Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag with issuing an Open Government Directive to Federal agencies. The OMB Directive will be informed by recommendations being developed by the Chief Technology Officer. Consistent with the President’s goals of promoting government transparency, participation, and collaboration, the public has been invited to offer ideas and suggestions.”