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Weekly News Digest
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August 20, 2020 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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'Publishing Leaders Issuing Warning Over Amazon's Market Power' by Jim Milliot
Jim Milliot writes the following for Publishers Weekly:Three of publishing’s most important organizations have teamed up to write a letter to the chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee investigating the market power of Big Tech to press their case that, over the last several years, Amazon’s growing dominance over book publishing and bookselling has fundamentally altered the competitive framework of the industry. If Amazon’s power is left unchecked, the letter continues, competition within publishing could diminish even more. In a joint letter to Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Maria Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors Guild, and Allison Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, wrote that their members have long relied on a level playing field to publish and sell their works. But today, the letter continued, ‘Amazon no longer competes on a level playing field when it comes to book distribution, but, rather, owns and manipulates the playing field, leveraging practices from across its platform that appear to be well outside of fair and transparent competition.’ For more information, read the article. For Nate Hoffelder’s take at The Digital Reader, click here.
Cengage and OLC Provide Professional Development Resources for Educators
Cengage joined forces with the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) “to offer professional development opportunities for faculty and administrators—via bootcamps, office hours and customized trainings—to support colleges and universities with online and blended learning. Cengage is also continuing its series of free webinars to augment its expansive professional development resources for higher education professionals.” Access webinar recordings here, here, and here.“According to research we did with Bay View Analytics, OLC and others, faculty and administrators say they need help teaching online and help with remote learning platforms. The professional development resources created with OLC, coupled with Cengage solutions and services, give faculty the tools and knowhow to create an engaging online course, while helping institutions provide an affordable, quality learning experience for the fall and beyond,” says Fernando Bleichmar, EVP and general manager of higher education and skills at Cengage. For more information, read the press release.
OCLC and CRL Complete Shared Print Project
OCLC and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) finished their 2-year project to add “support for the registration of serial retention commitments in OCLC’s WorldCat database, [improve] discovery of shared print data, and [enhance] CRL’s Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR).” This expanded functionality—which was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—helps to manage the preservation of the scholarly record for the future.According to the press release, “OCLC and CRL worked together to enhance and simplify registration workflows, allowing shared print programs to quickly set up and then efficiently bulk register thousands of commitments in WorldCat in only a few steps. Serial commitments in WorldCat will be automatically synchronized to PAPR and are also discoverable through an enhanced OCLC Metadata API that provides systematic access to shared print data. This comprehensive shared print data will then be available to inform library decision-making, improving both retention and collection development strategies.” For more information, read the press release.
Clarivate Rolls Out the Arabic Citation Index
Clarivate introduced the Arabic Citation Index (ARCI) in Egypt, which is the “first local language citation index for the Arabic world in Egypt.” Funded by the Egyptian government, ARCI is available across the country’s entire research community and will be open to the 22 nations of the Arab League by the end of this year. Editors of Arabic-language journals can also make journal submissions. ARCI currently offers bibliographic information and citations to scholarly articles from 400-plus Arabic journals (the language interface is in both English and Arabic).“The Arabic Citation Index, hosted on the Web of Science, will provide scientific communities across the Arabic world with the ability to make their journals, and the discoveries within them, more accessible within their region and beyond. It will connect papers in Arabic journals to more than 1.7 billion cited references and the highest quality research from across the globe,” says Mukhtar Ahmed, president of the Science Group at Clarivate. For more information, read the press release.
'A New Copyright Office Warehouse …' by Paul Capel
Paul Capel, supervisory records management section head at the Library of Congress (LC), contributed a guest post for the LC’s Copyright blog. He writes:The United States Copyright Office holds the most comprehensive collection of copyright records in the world. The Office has over 200,000 boxes of deposit copies spread among three storage facilities in Landover, Maryland; a contracted space in Pennsylvania; and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) facility in Massachusetts. Even with these three warehouses, that’s not enough space. Each day, the Office receives new deposits, and despite the increase in electronic deposits, our physical deposits continue to grow year after year. … This October, the Office will be opening a new 40,000 square foot warehouse that has been in discussion for over twenty-five years. We will be moving our deposits out of facilities that are more than forty years old to centrally locate them in a new state-of-the-art facility. This is a huge undertaking, and we are aiming to move 88,000 boxes from Landover in under 45 days. The new space is environmentally controlled and meets preservation requirements for the storage of federal records. Even more importantly, the new facility will allow the Office to maintain control over all our records in a single location, which will improve our retrieval times and will enable us to serve our stakeholders better. This new facility is a great start, but we have an even bigger vision for our deposits. To truly inventory and track our deposits, the Office is investigating a warehouse management system that will help staff inventory, track, locate, and manage all the items in our warehouse. This type of system will help the Office enhance the availability and accessibility of materials, decreasing manual processing, and allowing for real-time tracking of deposits at any given time. It will also let us know who has them and when their period of retention ends. … This is a huge step forward in the Office’s modernization efforts, and could not have been accomplished without the support of teams across the Office and the Library. For more information, read the blog post.
PLOS and LibLynx Work Together on OA Analytics
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) teamed up with LibLynx “to develop ground-breaking analytics that better communicate the usage and impact of Open Access (OA) content.” The press release continues:A critical component in the development of sustainable funding models for OA is the ability to communicate impact in ways that are meaningful to a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders, including institutional partners, funders, and authors. While traditional paywall publishers can take advantage of industry standard COUNTER reports to communicate usage to subscribing libraries, no similar standard exists for OA content. … These new approaches will provide stakeholders with reports customized to meet their changing needs and underpin the development of new business models. Reports will be trialed and piloted with the PLOS community over the next 6 to 12 months, contributing to the development of future standards in this area. “Together LibLynx and PLOS have a unique opportunity to develop new metrics for evaluating open access content—an emerging need for libraries and consortia as they work to evaluate the benefits of transformative and native-open access publishing agreements,” says Tim Lloyd, LibLynx’s CEO. “Our depth and breadth of experience in this arena, along with the organizational data available from PSI Metrics, will help provide PLOS and their partners access to real-time, on-demand reporting on the impact of their content.” For more information, read the press release.
SirsiDynix Introduces the Community Engagement Platform
SirsiDynix unveiled its new Community Engagement Platform (CEP), “a comprehensive marketing tool for libraries of all shapes and sizes. It consolidates multiple products and services into one cohesive solution, delivers unified and consistent branding, and creates more effective marketing campaigns with data directly from the Integrated Library System (ILS).” Libraries can use it to share programming information (via an online calendar), send emails (customized via Smart Lists), and access reporting (that tracks engagement, usage, and demographics).“Having a consistent experience helps build trust and credibility with your patrons, encouraging them to visit the library more frequently,” says Eric Keith, SirsiDynix’s CMO. “Libraries often use multiple tools to engage patrons, making it challenging to maintain a unified look and feel. We all interact with well-known brands every day, and this shapes our experience and perception of companies and organizations. Patrons of the library have the same expectations. That’s why we created CEP. It helps libraries meet those same brand expectations that library users have—and we’ve made it as simple as filling out a form.” For more information, read the press release.
COVID-19 NEWS: OverDrive Shares '4 Ways to Keep Promoting Your Digital Library'
Annie Suhy, outreach specialist at OverDrive, writes the following in “4 Ways to Keep Promoting Your Library During the COVID-19 Pandemic”:For your patrons who may be unaware of how to access your digital collection or just need a reminder that it’s available, we compiled some easy ways to get the word out, even though they may not have been in your original plan. … Whether patrons are picking up their reserved titles through your drive-up window or venturing inside to browse, place a bookmark inside borrowed materials along with the due date slip. Patrons will be happy to have a nice placeholder (bonus: they won’t be tempted to bend those corners!) and it will serve as a reminder that digital titles are available, even if they’re not always able to make it in to the library. … Space is a premium inside the library. … West Plains Public Library (MO) solved for this by using window clings on their doors and windows to advertise their digital collection. … On the other hand, a large sign outside your library could be the attention-grabber you need while patrons wait for their items in the drive-up line. For more information, read the blog post.
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Brandi Scardilli
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