საბიბლიოთეკო ასოციაციის პრეზიდენტს ღირსების ორდენი გადაეცა

საბიბლიოთეკო ასოციაციის პრეზიდენტს რუსუდან ასათიანს სოფლის ბიბლიოთეკების განვითარებაში შეტანილი განსაკუთრებული წვლილისთვის საქართველოს პრეზიდენტმა გიორგი მარგველაშვილმა ღირსების ორდენი გადასცა. ეროვნული ბიბლიოთეკა ულოცავს მას ამ წარმატებას.

სრული ტექსტი

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Whoa, what a sprint  Last week we had a sprint for newcomers to the VIVO project.  We set a new record for participation in a sprint (21).  I want to thank all the newcomers from all over the world.  We had major efforts in internationalization, search technology, bug fixes, documentation, build process, user experience, and product evolution.  We had new teams with multiple participants join from George Washington University, Texas A&M, and Duke University.  And we had many “old hands” available to answer questions, and provide assistance.  The group worked on more than 50 tickets, closing 20.  And it was just a one week sprint!  We had a great closing session with many good ideas about how to improve development practices, provide assistance for new developers, and organize future sprints.  So many good ideas.  So much good work.  So good to meet and have a chance to work with so many talented good people!

RDA.  It was a busy RDA in Gaborone Botswana:

• VIVO was named in an RDA proposal for modeling attribution
• VIVO was recognized in work being done by the Provenance WG
• VIVO was discussed in the context of persistent identifiers for machines by the PIDINST WG
• I participated in the work of the Data Foundations and Terminology workgroup, and the FAIR sharing workgroup
• I was able to personally update many colleagues on the progress VIVO has made over the past year, including the organizers of the spring 2019 plenary in Philadelphia.  We have lots of VIVO folks in the Philadelphia area.  Perhaps we can plan a meet-up.

VIVO continues to gain mindshare on those working on metadata for research, particularly metadata for representing people and their scholarly works.

Congratulations to Barend Mons!  Dr. Professor Barend Mons of the University of Leiden, creator of the FAIR acronym, director of GoFAIR, past chair of the High Level Expert Group for the European Open Science Cloud and a former keynote at the second VIVO Conference (Washington DC, 2011) was elected president of Codata, the Committee on Data of the International Council for Science to serve a four year term.  It was a pleasure to catch up with Barend at RDA.  Congratulations Barend!

Ontology Interest Group  Interested in ontology?  We have a group for you!  Not sure what ontology is, or why it’s important?  Stop by and find out.  The Ontology Interest Group meets every other Thursday at 10 AM US Eastern time via Zoom.  The ontologists discuss the representation of scholarship as an ontology, study and incorporate the work of others, and create models and an ontology that can be used across systems and applications.  Developers stop by to consider how the ontology might be used in software.  The discussions are always open.  Everyone is welcome to attend.  Some of the issues that have been discussed recently include:

• Representation of identifiers, including ORCiD, DOI, and others
• What identifiers to include in VIVO
• How to manage ontological change
• Licenses for ontology
• Representation of translations, and multiple languages
• Representation of projects and the relationship of projects to grants
• Representation of works in the performing and visual arts
• What constitutes ontology and what constitutes annotation for the purpose of supporting applications
• Fundamental issues regarding the representation of scholarly works

From time to time, the ontologists will spin off a group to work on a particular problem.  And this may result in a proposed design for some extension or revision of the ontology.

If you are interested, please join the ontology channel on Slack, and the interest group meetings.

National Forum on Expert Finder Systems  A new conference is being organized for Feb 28 – March 1 in Orlando, Florida.  The National Forum on Expert Finder Systems is sponsored by Elsevier.  From their web site:

Expert finder systems (EFS) have been serving universities, businesses, and the research community for more than two decades. However, there are still no formal venues for EFS stakeholders to network, learn from each other, and help steer the future of this dynamic field

Many of the organizers have a background in the VIVO community.  Should be interesting.

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

The post VIVO Updates for December 9, 2018 — sprint, RDA, Barend Mons, Ontology, expert finder systems appeared first on Duraspace.org.

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70 years ago today, United Nations Member States signed up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In doing so, they established a set of principles that underpin any sustainable and successful society. In statements released today, IFLA’s Secretary General, Gerald Leitner, and President Glòria Pérez-Salmerón, underlined the work of libraries in ensuring that all can benefit.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a powerfully symbolic document for libraries.

It sets out, clearly, the right of everyone to ‘seek, receive and impart information and ideas, through any medium’.

Its other articles – concerning education, privacy and participation in cultural life – are no less important. They underline that the missions of libraries are closely aligned with the principles of fair, just, and inclusive societies.

As IFLA Secretary General Gerald Leitner sets out, today, in a message, ‘there are few other institutions who can claim to be delivering on so many rights, for so many people, in so many places’.

Read the rest of Secretary General Gerald Leitner's message

Celebrating and Reflecting

The principles set out in the Declaration are clearly ideals – progress is possible in every society. Libraries, as key community actors, have a duty to act.

IFLA’s President, Glòria Pérez-Salmerón has made the following statement, underlining this role:

​“Happy Human Rights Day!

I believe that libraries have a unique relationship with human rights. We depend on them in order to fulfil our missions. Without protections against discrimination or censorship, without freedom of speech, libraries cannot do their jobs.

But in turn, we can give so much back. We make a reality of the rights to education, to participate in cultural life, to benefit from scientific progress. We defend privacy through our own actions and the training we give our users.

And we bring valuable skills and knowledge to critical decision-making around difficult questions such as the right to be forgotten, or how to handle controversial content.

This work isn’t always easy. But we are a profession based on values, based on a belief that we can improve the lives of our users. We are there to build informed, literate, and participatory societies. We are the motors of change!

And so I believe that we can – that we must – do this.

So I hope that you will join with me, not just in celebrating today, but in thinking about what more we can do tomorrow and every day.

Thank you”

Find out more about IFLA’s plans for Human Rights Day 2018, and read about what libraries and library associations are doing around the world. You can also download and use our poster, and read IFLA’s blogs over the last seven days, which highlighting key articles.

We are proud to announce that our revised Guidelines for Library Services to Children aged 0-18 are now available.

After a lengthy survey process, carried out by Dr. Carolynn Rankin from Leeds-Beckett-University (UK), the revised version of the guidelines was presented during the World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) at Kuala Lumpur in August 2018.

We hope that they will be useful and, dynamic, and will also give guidance to the international library community about children's needs and rights on information, literacy, and reading.

Twenty-eight librarians from 17 universities and research organizations in Hungary and Slovakia will attend the FOSTER and HUNOR (Hungarian Open Repositories consortium) Open Science Trainer Bootcamp at the University of Debrecen in Hungary.

EIFL Open Access (OA) Programme Manager, Iryna Kuchma, EIFL-OA Coordinator, Gwen Franck, and Melanie Imming of Imming Impact will lead the training.

Library and regional and national Research and Education Network (REN) stakeholders from 17 African countries have held the first in a series of meetings to explore how open access (OA) repositories can better engage with RENs to break down institutional silos, add value to repositories, and support the growth of open science in the region.

On December 5th the DuraSpace Hot Topics Series, “The Revolution Will Be Open?” concluded with the fourth and final webinar in this series.  Andrew Smeall of Hindawi, Brian Hole of Ubiquity Press, and Anita Bandrowski of  SciCrunch presented, “How For-Profit Companies Can Be a Part of the Open Environment.”  In this one-hour webinar each presenter discussed their organizations’ roles in the world of open scholarly infrastructure and how their work can benefit the scholarly communication community while both keeping open the infrastructure that they provide and operating in a for-profit mode.

The webinar recording and presentation slides are available at https://duraspace.org/webinar/.

A special thanks to David Lewis and Michael Roy the curators of this series and to all of the webinar series presenters and participants.

The post Recording Available: “How For-Profit Companies Can Be a Part of the Open Environment” appeared first on Duraspace.org.

The recently published guidance for the implementation of Plan S offers welcome new details on how full and immediate Open Access to research publications would be achieved under this new initiative. As LIBER stated in September, when Plan S was first announced, we fully support the ambitions of Plan S. It aligns with LIBER’s 2018-2022 Strategy — specifically our…

The post LIBER Open Access Working Group: Statement on Plan S Guidelines appeared first on LIBER.

Librarians are already engaged with research data management, open access publishing, grant compliance, pre-registration. In this webinar, organised by LIBER’s Research Data Management Working Group, speaker Vicky Steeves says it’s time we as a profession add reproducibility to that repertoire. The webinar was recorded and can now be viewed on YouTube. An audio recording is on Soundcloud and…

The post Webinar Video & Audio: Reproducibility Librarianship in Practice appeared first on LIBER.

Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, and Gwen Franck, EIFL Open Access Programme Coordinator, will take part in the OpenAIRE-Advance General Assembly, which takes place at the University of Debrecen in Hungary. The General Assembly is an internal event for partners.

EIFL is a partner in the OpenAIRE project, leading a task force on open access, open data, research data management and open science training. Read more here.

Message to DPN members from the DPN nodes

Yesterday the Digital Preservation Network (DPN) announced plans to cease operations. The individual nodes that collectively provided preservation services to DPN seek to reassure the DPN membership as well as the larger academic and digital preservation communities that we remain confident about the future of digital preservation.

We continue to support long-term distributed digital preservation. The rich array of collaborative, community-driven digital preservation services in higher education offers reliable benefits to the academic community, despite DPN’s departure. Several of the services represented by DPN nodes provided robust technical infrastructure to DPN depositors from strong organizational bases that serve other constituents as well. That strength is unshaken by this turn of events. In no way does DPN’s end obviate the need for continued redundant, resilient, diverse preservation services working together.

Consistent with the values we affirmed last year, in the document “Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values,” which we all signed, at the core of our digital preservation mission is the belief that “we can accomplish these goals better together rather than separately.” We are united in our dedication to continue exploring future collaborative opportunities. Our resolve and our resilience in pursuit of our common goals remains strong.

In the immediate future we will work together with DPN to assist its depositors during DPN’s shut down process. While we continue to identify next steps, we will be moving ahead from a collaborative position of strength. We are available to work with you to support current and future preservation needs in whatever way we can. You can expect further communication from the node where you deposited content very soon.

Signed (alphabetically),

Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust)
Chronopolis
DuraSpace
HathiTrust
Texas Digital Library (TDL)

The post The Digital Preservation Network (DPN) to Cease Operations appeared first on Duraspace.org.

Last week, IFLA attended the 37th meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). This is the primary international forum for governments to discuss copyright, and in particular limitations and exceptions to copyright for libraries.

It is a place where major change is possible. Among other things, WIPO has the competence to adopt international instruments, and the Marrakesh Treaty is the most recent example with an impact on the work of libraries. For more information, see our “Get into WIPO” guide.

IFLA has engaged at WIPO over a number of years to raise awareness and promote progress on the rules that allow libraries to do their job in a globalised, digital world. In line with a mandate given by WIPO’s General Assembly in 2012, IFLA supports the development of a legal instrument that will help harmonise and update copyright legislation for libraries globally.

IFLA keeps insisting on the need of an international instrument that harmonises and updates legislation on the topic of copyright for libraries around the world and is engaging to make sure that the action plans will lead to consensus on that solution.

Libraries on the Agenda

At the previous meeting of the SCCR, Member States successfully adopted action plans on libraries, as well as archives, museums and educational and research organisations. Last week’s meeting therefore focused on proposed studies on how copyright laws affect the work of our institutions.

After opening statements where Member States underlined their support for the work of libraries, the Committee heard how Professor Kenneth Crews, author of several WIPO studies, plans to develop a ‘typology’ of copyright exceptions. This promises to allow exciting new possibilities to reflect on and compare laws in place, and identify areas of convergence and divergence. It will also be a powerful resource for library advocacy around the world.

In parallel, IFLA engaged closely with delegates to encourage them to use upcoming regional meetings – another element of the agreed action plans – effectively. These meetings will offer an opportunity to hear the experiences of librarians on the ground who have to deal with uneven, and often outdated copyright laws.

With strong similarities in the way copyright laws affect all cultural heritage institutions, libraries are often discussed alongside archives and museums. IFLA therefore also participated in discussions on a study on museums. We look forward to further information from Professor Crews, as well as a report on archives, at the next meeting in April 2019.

You can download IFLA’s general statement on exceptions and limitations.  

A Wider Perspective

While IFLA focuses its efforts on questions around exceptions and limitations to copyright, the Committee itself has a longer agenda.

This includes a draft treaty for broadcasting organisations. While there appears to be some progress on this dossier, it remains controversial. Without proper exceptions and limitations to copyright, it could seriously complicate the work of libraries holding audiovisual collections. See IFLA’s brief on the proposed broadcasting treaty for more, and our statement at SCCR on the topic.

There were also discussions about a possible study on the distribution of revenues from digital music services (among others, the question behind reforms in the European Union which have threatened the rules that allow libraries to manage institutional or open educational resource repositories). This work may, potentially, be extended to literary works in future, which would create valuable new evidence. IFLA also made a statement on the topic during SCCR.

What’s next

IFLA will keep engaging with its members and Member States to ensure that the regional seminars create an adequate forum of discussion that helps us advance on the matter. These efforts will lead up to an international conference in October 2019, where Member States will discuss how best to deliver progress for libraries and others.

Once again, IFLA was lucky to collaborate with many partner organisations that are joining efforts to ensure the best results at WIPO. We also wish to thank the many library associations who followed our call for action and who tweeted using #Copyright4Libraries ahead and during SCCR/37. As a follow up, we will soon release a list of quotes of what Member States said about libraries.  

The sessions can be watched through the WIPO web stream.

~Please open the PDF file to access the links. ~ 

IFLA Secretary General Gerald Leitner has written a letter to key South African ministers and parliamentarians, urging them to take the final steps necessary to approve a copyright reform that will be good for libraries and good for their users. People with print disabilities will benefit particularly from the ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty that the reforms enable. 

It has been forty years since the last major update of South Africa's copryight reform. While the country has seen many changes in the meanwhile, copyright laws have stood still, creating an increasing barrier to libraries in their work to support users in a digital age. 

A bill introduced five years ago has made slow progress, but seen a number of improvements along the way. Libraries have been particular closely engaged, ensuring that the opportunity is taken to do better for the country's learners, researchers and readers.

Following a positive vote in the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry, it remains for the South African Parliament as a whole to approve the bill.

IFLA Secretary General Gerald Leitner has therefore written to key Ministers and Parliamentarians in order to encourage them to take the final step, and not to pay heed to arguments that create confusion and doubt. 

The letter is below, addressed to Dr Rob Davies, Minister for Trade and Industry: 

 

Dear Dr Davies,

I am writing to you as Secretary-General of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Our organisation represents over 2.3 million libraries worldwide, serving over a billion users. We are proud to count South African associations and institutions amongst our membership.

We have followed closely the copyright reforms in South Africa, which promise to deliver long-overdue change in the laws for library activities. From early in the process, provisions on exceptions and limitations have been central to the proposals, and the library community has duly looked to support law makers in creating a law that would best promote education, innovation, research and creativity.

We wanted therefore to welcome the vote by the Portfolio Committee, which makes important progress towards a law that will empower South Africa’s libraries, and in doing so, drive development. If agreed in its current form, it will set a fine example to Africa and the world.

I am aware that the discussions have been intense. It is crucial to remember that libraries are founded on the principle of balance. They spend $30bn globally per year on buying books, supporting rightholders, and then provide access to users in a way that ensures the students and readers of today can become the innovators and creators of tomorrow.

They benefit from rules that adapt to technological change, and offer greater certainty to librarians as they offer help to users. The version of the bill agreed by the Committee would do this.

What it would not do is lead to unreasonable prejudice to the interests of rightholders. Libraries will not be able to take copies of entire in-commerce books and make them available, despite claims to the contrary. Rather, they will continue to buy works, and so support authors and publishers. 

Furthermore, suggestions that the current reforms would be in contravention with the Berne Convention, and would make South Africa unable to accede to the Marrakesh Treaty have been clearly dismissed, and serve only to create confusion and doubt.

What is certain is that South Africa is only a few steps away from passing a law that will demonstrate the country’s regional leadership, and help the country achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Yours sincerely,

Find out more about IFLA's work on limitations and exceptions to copyright for libraries.

The WIPO action plan for 2019 presents great opportunities to bring the debates in Geneva on copyright and libraries to the regions, and to consider international solutions to the challenges faced by libraries, archives, museums and education.

Read our blog on what 2019 has in store for libraries and other sectors, and a round-up of what happened at the last session in 2018 of WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR/37) that met in Geneva on 26-30 November 2018.

DuraSpace and the University of Toronto Libraries in collaboration with Scholars Portal and COPPUL (Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries) are pleased to announce a new joint project “DuraCloud Canada: Linking Data Repositories to Preservation Storage” funded by CANARIE, a vital component of Canada’s digital infrastructure supporting research, education and innovation.

The purpose of the proposed project is to connect preservation storage services through a common deposit layer based on open source software from DuraSpace called DuraCloud to research data preservation in Canada.

DuraCloud is a package of software components — some server based and others web and desktop based — that provides brokering services for cloud-based storage as well as a set of deposit tools and APIs that standardize the way users interact with cloud storage providers.

These software components are made available under open source licenses by DuraSpace and have been used to set up national services such as DuraCloud in the US and DuraCloud Europe. Using the same model and a similar deployment approach, the project will create a service called DuraCloud Canada with the goal of connecting preservation storage services to data repositories and bridging the current gap that exists between both.

The proposed project will make DuraCloud available for research data preservation in Canada by contributing to the DuraCloud open source codebase in order to facilitate the integration of existing data repositories. In doing so, it will fulfill multiple goals relating to the preservation of research data in Canada. It will provide an
interoperability layer between different preservation storage providers, expose a relatively easy-to-use API that data repositories may use to integrate with preservation storage options, and expose the set of pre-existing integrations that are already part of the DuraCloud system.

Work on this project will begin in November of 2018 and continue into 2020. Initial work will make use of DuraCloud within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment by adding storage integrations to existing Canadian data repositories. Once these connectors are in place, development will continue with the goal of allowing the DuraCloud software to be run within the University of Toronto data center rather than in AWS.

About CANARIE

CANARIE strengthens Canadian leadership in science and technology by delivering digital infrastructure that supports world-class research and innovation.

CANARIE and its twelve provincial and territorial partners form Canada’s National Research and Education Network. This ultra-high-speed network connects Canada’s researchers, educators and innovators to each other and to global data, technology, and colleagues.

Beyond the network, CANARIE funds and promotes reusable research software tools and national research data management initiatives to accelerate discovery, provides identity management services to the academic community, and offers advanced networking and cloud resources to boost commercialization in Canada’s technology sector.

Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the majority of its funding provided by the Government of Canada.

For more information, please visit: www.canarie.ca

About DuraSpace

DuraSpace as an independent 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization provides leadership and innovation for open technologies that promote durable, persistent access to digital data. We collaborate with academic, scientific, cultural, technology, and research communities by supporting projects and advancing services to help ensure that current and future generations have access to our collective digital heritage. Our vision is expressed in our organizational byline, “Working together to provide enduring access to the world’s digital heritage.” DuraSpace is the organizational home of the DuraCloud open source software.

About The University of Toronto Libraries

The University of Toronto Libraries system is the largest academic library in Canada and is ranked sixth among peer institutions in North America. The system consists of 42 libraries located on three university campuses: St. George, Mississauga, and Scarborough. This array of college libraries, special collections, and specialized libraries and information centres supports the teaching and research requirements of over 280 graduate programs, more than 60 professional programs, and about 700 undergraduate degree programs. In addition to more than 15 million volumes in 341 languages, the library system currently provides access to millions of electronic resources in various forms and over 31,000 linear metres of archival material. More than 150,000 new print volumes are acquired each year. The Libraries’ data centre houses more than 500 servers with a storage capacity of 1.5 petabytes.

Scholars Portal was formed in 2002 as a service of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) with the University of Toronto as service provider. The Scholars Portal technological infrastructure preserves and provides access to information resources collected and shared by Ontario’s 21 university libraries. Through the Scholars Portal online services, Ontario’s university students, faculty and researchers have access to an extensive and varied collection of e-journals, e-books, social science data sets, geo reference data and geospatial sets. Scholars Portal continues to respond to the research needs of Ontario universities through the creation of innovative information services and by working to ensure access to and preservation of this wealth of information.

The post Announcing DuraCloud Canada: Linking Data Repositories to Preservation Storage appeared first on Duraspace.org.

EIFL has completed a 12-month intensive training programme for public librarians in Zambia, organized in partnership with the Library and Information Association of Zambia.

The training was designed to equip public librarians with skills that will enable them to initiate new public library services that use technology to meet community needs. Trainees were selected from public libraries that have computers and the internet for public use. In all, 30 public librarians from 12 libraries attended the training.

Caroline De Brun (Knowledge and Evidence Specialist, Public Health England) and Isla Kuhn (Medical Librarian, University of Cambridge Medical Library) presented our first webinar. The recording and slides are now available.

This was run in partnership with Evidence Aid as part of Humanitarian Evidence Week 2018, promoting a more evidence-based approach to natural disasters and other humanitarian emergencies. 

Subtitles / closed captions are available - click on Settings then Subtitles/CC and select 'English (United Kingdom)'.

The Section’s latest Annual Report, for 2017-2018, is now available here and its new Action Plan for 2018/19 can be found here.

 

The article was written by Dr Russell Cope, Parliamentary Librarian at the Parliament of New South Wales from 1962 until 1993.

Please click here to read the article.