DigitalKoans

BusinessWeek reports that Peter Osnos, founder and Editor-at-Large of Public Affairs, is working with Borders, selected independent bookstores, six nonprofit publishers, and Ingram Industries to experiment with a new book publishing model. The idea is this: publish the book in five formats (audio, chapter, hardcover, digital, and print-on-demand) and let customers decide which one(s) they want. Larger publishers have reservations about the Caravan Project’s experiment. The article states that "going this far this fast unnerves publishers," and it quotes Al Greco (of the Book Industry Study Group): "they are terrified of being Napsterized."

Source: Lowry, Tom. "Getting Out Of A Bind." BusinessWeek, 10 April 2006, 79-80.

Microsoft will be releasing Windows Live Academic Search shortly (I was recently told Wednesday; the blog buzz is saying tomorrow).

As is typical with such software projects, the team is doing some last minute tweaking before release. So, I won’t try to describe the system in any detail at this point, except to say that it integrates access to published articles with e-prints and other open access materials, it provides a reference export capability, there’s a cool optional two-pane view (short bibliographic information on the left; full bibliographic information and abstract on the right), and it supports search "macros" (user-written search programs).

What I will say is this: Microsoft made a real effort to get significant, honest input from the librarian and publisher communities during the development process. I know, because, now that the nondisclosure agreement has been lifted, I can say that I was one of the librarians who provided such input on an unpaid basis. I was very impressed by how carefully the development team listened to what we had to say, how sharp and energetic they were, how they really got the Web 2.0 concept, and how deeply committed they were to creating the best product possible. Having read Microserfs, I had a very different mental picture of Microsoft than the reality I encountered.

Needless to say, there were lively exchanges of views between librarians and publishers when open access issues were touched upon. My impression is that the team listened to both sides and tried to find the happy middle ground.

When it’s released, Windows Live Academic Search won’t be the perfect answer to your open access search engine dreams (what system is?), and Microsoft knows that there are missing pieces. But I think it will give Google Scholar a run for its money. I, for one, heartily welcome it, and I think it’s a good base to build upon, especially if Microsoft continues to solicit and seriously consider candid feedback from the library and publisher communities (and it appears that it will).

The Wall Street Journal reports that customers lack enthusiasm for RFID credit cards due to privacy and fraud concerns. In fact, they are devising novel ways to disable RFID chips, including using hammers and microwave ovens to smash or fry them. FoeBud, a German digital rights group, sells a variety of devices to detect or disable the chips. Sensing a hot market, some companies have joined the bandwagon with new products (e.g., RFIDwasher) that do the job more safely than a microwave oven, which can be a fire hazard when used for RFID frying. For those who don’t want to tamper with their RFID cards, they can buy shielded wallets and passport cases from DIFRWEAR that block signals when closed.

As libraries begin to embrace RFID technology, these concerns from the credit card sector may be worth watching, and it may give them pause.

Source: Warren, Susan. "Why Some People Put These Credit Cards in the Microwave." The Wall Street Journal, 10 April, 2006, A1, A16.

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW) is now available, which provides information about new scholarly literature and resources related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, journal articles, magazine articles, newsletters, technical reports, and white papers. Especially interesting are: "CERN’s Open Access E-print Coverage in 2006: Three Quarters Full and Counting," "Comparison of Content Policies for Institutional Repositories in Australia," "Discovering Books: The OCA/GBS Saga Continues," "A Library’s Contribution to Scholarly Communication and Environmental Literacy: The Case of an Open-Access Environmental Journal," "The State of the Large Publisher Bundle: Findings from an ARL Member Survey," Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe, and "Surveying the E-Journal Preservation Landscape"

Emerald Group Publishing has announced that the volume 34, number 1 (2006) issue of Reference Services Review has been dedicated to the memory of that journal’s former long-time editor Dr. Ilene F. Rockman, whose obituary was previously published in DigitalKoans.

This issue includes "tributes to Rockman, along with the editorial she was composing during the final days of her life."

Emerald will make this issue freely available during the month of April. (See the press release for access details.)

Emerald will also:

• Fund the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section (IS) Instruction Publication of the Year Award for five years, beginning with the 2006 Award, renaming it the Ilene Rockman Publication Award.
• Establish that the Emerald Literati Network Award from Reference Services Review—the journal’s Outstanding Paper Award—hereafter be known as the Dr. Ilene Rockman Award.
• Nominate Rockman for an Emerald Outstanding Service Award in April 2006.

Thanks to Emerald for these welcome tributes to Ilene.

What was new and interesting during the week of 4/3/06?

• "Apple Endorses Win-on-a-Mac. Also, Hell Freezes Over."
• "‘Archiving Should Be Done By Librarians and Archivists, Period.’"
• "Canada’s CIHR Developing an OA policy, Welcomes Comments"
• "Comments Sought on Copyright Exemptions for Libraries"
• "Creative Use of Institutional Repository"
• "Decoding the Drivel"
• "E-Books, Has Your Time Come?"
• "EC Recommends OA Archiving for Publicly-Funded Research"
• "HigherEd BlogCon 2006"
• "How OPACs Suck, Part 2: The Checklist of Shame"
• "iCommons.org"
• "In 2005, Music Went Digital"
• "Internet Archive’s Value, Legality Debated in Copyright Suit"
• "Interview with Lawrence Lessig"
• "Korean Music Industry Puts Negative Value on DRM"
• "Measuring the Audience of a Digital Humanities Project"
• "More on the Digital Universe"
• "Net Neutrality Guarantees Scrapped"
• "Open Source DRM?"
• "Safe Places"
• "Seeking Changes to the DMCA"
• "So, Shall Soft Wear? Well?"
• "Some Links on Network Neutrality"
• "Standards and Discoverability for Library Web Services—DSLR Workshop"
• "Survey Points to Increase Author Understanding of NIH Policy"
• "‘Survival of the Fittest’"
• "UQaM Signs Berlin Declaration, Adopts OA Policy"
• "Web 2.0 Awards"
• "Web 2.0: Scientists Need to Mash It Up"

Want to publish an open access journal, but you don’t want to license a commercial journal management system, develop your own system, or to do it all by tedious HTML hand-coding? Here’s summary information about two existing open source e-journal management systems (and one emerging system) that may do the trick.

HyperJournal

• "HyperJournal is a software application that facilitates the administration of academic journals on the Web. Conceived for researchers in the Humanities and designed according to an intuitive and elegant layout, it permits the installation, personalization, and administration of a dedicated Web site at extremely low cost and without the need for special IT-competence. HyperJournal can be used not only to establish an online version of an existing paper periodical, but also to create an entirely new, solely electronic journal."
• Overview
• Documentation
• Download

Open Journal Systems, Public Knowledge Project

• "Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research. OJS assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions through to online publication and indexing. Through its management systems, its finely grained indexing of research, and the context it provides for research, OJS seeks to improve both the scholarly and public quality of referred research."
• Open Journal Systems (Overview)
• FAQ
• OJS Technical Reference
• Download

DPubS (Digital Publishing System), Cornell University Library (In development)

• "DPubS’ ground-breaking software system will enable publishers to cost-effectively organize, deliver, present and publish scholarly journals, monographs, conference proceedings, and other common and evolving means of academic discourse."
• About DPubS
• FAQ

Postscript: Peter Suber suggests adding several other software packages, including:

1. ePublishing Toolkit
2. SciX Open Publishing Services (SOPS)

Now you can store a 20-second video that can be viewed on a cell phone in a colored bar code the size of a postage stamp. Or, if the cell phone is connected to the Internet, use the bar code to launch a URL. The user snaps a picture of the bar code to utilize it. Content Idea of Asia invested this new bar code technology, which can store 600 KB, and plans to offer it later this year.

Source: Hall, Kenji. "The Bar Code Learns Some Snazzy New Tricks." BusinessWeek, 3 April 2006, 113.

This posting updates and considerably expands my earlier "Scholarly Communication Web Sites at ARL Libraries" posting.

It presents a list of scholarly communication Web sites and Weblogs at the academic member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries. Web sites and Weblogs were identified using separate Google "site:" searches for the exact phrases "scholarly communication" and "open access." Search results were then scanned to identify Web sites or Weblogs that appeared to be intended as the main library’s primary means of communicating to the university community about scholarly communication and/or open access issues. Conferences, presentations, newsletter articles, symposiums, and similar materials were excluded, as were Web sites or Weblogs at branch libraries. Searching was limited to the first few pages of search results.

Additions and corrections are welcome. Use the "Leave a Comment" function for this.

• Auburn University
  
• Brigham Young University
  
• Boston College
  
• Brown University
  
• Cornell University
  
• Emory University
  
• George Washington University
  
• Howard University
  
• Indiana University Bloomington
  
• Iowa State University
  
• Johns Hopkins University
  
• McMaster University
  
• Michigan State University
  
• MIT
  
• North Carolina State University
  
• Queen’s University
  
• Rutgers University
  
• Stanford University
  
• Syracuse University
  
• University at Albany
  
• University at Buffalo
  
• University of Alabama
  
• University of Arizona
  
• University of California
  
• University of California, Berkeley
  
• University of California, Davis
  
• University of California, Irvine
  
• University of California, Los Angeles
  
• University of California, Santa Barbara
  
• University of Connecticut
  
• University of Houston
  
• University of Houston (Weblog)
  
• University of Illinois at Chicago
  
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Weblog)
  
• University of Iowa
  
• University of Kansas
  
• University of Kentucky Libraries
  
• University of Iowa
  
• University of Maryland
  
• University of Miami
  
• University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  
• University of Minnesota (Weblog)
  
• University of Missouri-Columbia
  
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  
• University of Notre Dame
  
• University of Oregon
  
• University of Pennsylvania
  
• University of Pittsburgh
  
• University of Tennessee
  
• University of Tennessee (Weblog)
  
• University of Texas, Austin
  
• University of Virginia
  
• University of Washington
  
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
• Washington State University
  
• Washington University