Elsevier has released University Investment in the Library, Phase II: An International Study of the Library's Value to the Grants Process by Carol Tenopir (with other contributors).

Here's an excerpt:

The results demonstrate the value of the library to the institution in improving grant proposal and report writing and in helping to attract grant income. Library e-collections especially play a vital role in all aspects of grants, from proposal writing to final reports. The study across countries also shows how some specific factors within an institution (such as subject focus) or factors within a country (such as sources for grants funding) can influence the ROI for grants income. This report continues the ongoing discussion of ROI and academic libraries.

The Association of College and Research Libraries has released Futures Thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025.

Here's an excerpt:

This document presents 26 possible scenarios based on an implications assessment of current trends, which may have an impact on all types of academic and research libraries over the next 15 years. The scenarios represent themes relating to academic culture, demographics, distance education, funding, globalization, infrastructure/facilities, libraries, political climate, publishing industry, societal values, students/learning, and technology. They are organized in a “scenario space” visualization tool, reflecting the expert judgment of ACRL members as to their expectations and perceptions about the probability, impact, speed of change, and threat/opportunity potential of each scenario. Finally, the study draws out implications for academic libraries.

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has released Addressing the Research Data Gap: A Review of Novel Services for Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This document presents the results of a review of novel opportunities for libraries in the area of research data services. The activities were identified through a review of the literature and a scan of projects being undertaken at libraries and other institutions worldwide. For the purpose of this report, research data services have been organized into five distinct areas (although it should be noted that there are significant overlaps between them): awareness and advocacy; support and training; access and discovery; archiving and preservation; and virtual research environments. Each section contains a general description of the area accompanied by a number of examples. The examples are not meant to be comprehensive account of existing projects, but rather to highlight the range of possibilities available.

The Library of Congress has tweeted that it will to archive all public tweets made since March 2006.

Here's an excerpt from the blog announcement:

Have you ever sent out a "tweet" on the popular Twitter social media service? Congratulations: Your 140 characters or less will now be housed in the Library of Congress.

That’s right. Every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. That’s a LOT of tweets, by the way: Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions.

We thought it fitting to give the initial heads-up to the Twitter community itself via our own feed @librarycongress. (By the way, out of sheer coincidence, the announcement comes on the same day our own number of feed—followers has surpassed 50,000. I love serendipity!)

We will also be putting out a press release later with even more details and quotes. Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I'm no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data. And I'm certain we'll learn things that none of us now can even possibly conceive.

JISC has released The JISC MOSAIC Project: Making Our Scholarly Activity Information Count; Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The project was tasked to investigate the possibilities for exploiting the user activity and resource use data that might currently or potentially be made available through Higher Education systems to benefit libraries, national services and their users. The project generated seven demonstrators, worked with a variety of real library datasets and organised a series of six practitioner and user workshops. In so doing, it gathered a great deal of intelligence about the potential, both possibilities and pitfalls, for individual universities and national services.

Read more about it at Making Our Shared Activity Information Count (MOSAIC).

The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program has released a podcast (MP3 file) of Babak Hamidzadeh discussing the Library of Congress' digital repository.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Mike Ashenfelder from the Library of Congress talks with Babak Hamidzadeh, Director of Repository Development at the Library of Congress, about the challenges of building an efficient, scalable digital repository. Hamidzadeh describes how the Library's repository works, future plans for the repository and its tools and what will be expected of IT professionals and digital librarians as their roles grow increasingly interdependent.

OCLC Research has released Research Libraries, Risk and Systemic Change.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This report provides an overview of the most significant risks facing research libraries and suggests strategies to mitigate them.

OCLC Research engaged an organization experienced in conducting risk assessments for corporate, governmental and educational clients to identify the most significant risks facing research libraries in the United States. The data collected was assimilated, ranked and analyzed, which revealed a convergence of perceived risks and yielded a shared perspective on a landscape of challenges facing US research libraries.

The descriptive categorization of these risks included in the report provide research libraries with a common vocabulary for identifying, evaluating and responding to shared challenges. They also help build the foundation to support movement toward cooperative mitigation of critical risks. Based on this foundation, OCLC Research intends to formulate a collaborative action agenda in partnership with the research library community.

The Research Information Network has released Challenges for Academic Libraries in Difficult Economic Times: A Guide for Senior Institutional Managers and Policy Makers.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Based upon data gathered in the UK and internationally, and focus groups with senior librarians during late 2009, the guide looks at the financial position of libraries, their strategies for dealing with challenging economic circumstances, and the value of libraries.

After a decade of growth in budgets and services, academic librarians now expect a sustained period of cuts over the next three to five years. The scale of these cuts means librarians are having to reconsider the kinds and levels of service they can provide in support of their universities missions.

This guide shows how librarians are responding to the issues of balancing expenditure between information resources and staffing and how they plan to sustain levels of service, as well as developing new services to meet new needs. It demonstrates that library directors need the support of senior managers across the higher education sector, as well as from publishers and other information providers, to help address the challenges, as well as the opportunities, faced.

Read more about it at the briefing document.

Denmark's Electronic Research Library has released The Future of Research and the Research Library.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report sets up a number of challenges and scenarios for the future of the research library. The libraries must take some strategic future choices. Should the library maintain its traditional role or should it become a knowledge center for research and learning?

For a long time Denmark's Electronic Research Library, DEFF, has wished to make a study of the future library service of researchers and scientists. By engaging The Lime Guild this job was done throughout 2009. The Lime Guild has done several analyses, which have had the purpose to predict future scenarios for the research libraries in relation to the development within the research system and to the future demands of the researchers.

An essential part of conducting this study was to do interviews with interested parties and the main stakeholders in DEFF. This group of people includes both vice-chancellors and deans at universities, library directors of development and also representatives from DEFF's steering committee and liaison group. Also key international experts have contributed generously to the study.

David H. Carlson, Dean of Library Affairs at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, has been elected Chair of the SPARC Steering Committee. Carlson has been a committee member since 2008.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Carlson brings to the Chair position a rich and deep perspective informed by working with a variety of libraries and institutions in his career, including a teaching college, large research-intensive university, and a library consortium. He has served extensively with the board of directors at the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), and currently serves on the boards of directors for the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) and BioOne.

Carlson has been an active participant in industry-level scholarly communication activities, especially those related to library-vendor relations. He led the library community in successfully securing a reversal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) decision to stop supplying new Science content to JSTOR. He has spearheaded Open Access activities at SIUC, and was responsible for launching the campus's open-access repository. Carlson has also been active supporter of national public access policies and has been a vocal advocate of the NIH Public Access Policy as well as the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA).

"David Carlson is a committed advocate who sees things through to their conclusion," said Heather Joseph, SPARC's Executive Director. "His experience with institutions of all types, and his commitment to deepening the impact of research through expanding access will help SPARC make important new strides in the coming years. The committee and I look forward to having David's leadership to help us address the challenges and opportunities before us."

"The matters facing SPARC are vital to not just libraries but the academy," said Carlson. "Indeed, as technology provides greater access to tools and platforms that permit creative contributions, the issues are becoming increasingly important to society as a whole. It is a critical time to show the detrimental effects of restrictive laws and regulations, and to advance requirements for public access to research sponsored by government agencies." He added, "I look forward to working as Chair of SPARC to pursue key avenues toward change at this crucial juncture."

SPARC's voting membership, which includes representatives from over 150 academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada, also elected the following individuals to serve on the SPARC Steering Committee for three-year terms beginning January 1:

• Maggie Farrell, University of Wyoming (non-ARL director)
• Rick Luce, Emory University (ARL director)
• Lorraine Harricombe, University of Kansas (ARL director)

Steering Committee members whose terms concluded in December include outgoing Chair (2005 through 2009) Ray English (Oberlin College), Larry Alford (Temple University), Sherrie Bergman (Bowdoin College), Diane Graves (Trinity University), and Randy Olsen (Brigham Young University).

The full SPARC Steering Committee represents ARL and non-ARL libraries in the U.S. and Canada as well as SPARC Europe, SPARC Japan, CARL, and AASHL. The full list is available at http://www.arl.org/sparc/about.