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Weekly News Digest
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May 31, 2022 — 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.
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The Urban Libraries Council Unveils Student Success Accelerator Interactive Map
The Urban Libraries Council (ULC) introduced the Student Success Accelerator, “an interactive map that showcases public libraries across the United States that are pioneering a national approach that for the first time brings local elected officials, school and library executives together and their collective resources for student learning in and outside the classroom.” The map comes out of the Leaders Library Card Challenge, “a national effort to have local leaders working together to get a library card into every student’s hand.”“When mayors, county executives, school superintendents and public library executives join forces, we can create opportunities that really benefit our kids,” says Karl Dean, incoming chairperson of ULC. “What can be better than children spending time in their local library, participating in fun educational programs and tutoring with access to smart, supportive library staff and resources in a safe environment.” For more information, read the press release.
SAGE Makes Articles on Gender Equity and Justice Free to Read for a Limited Time
SAGE introduced the Gender Equity and Justice microsite as a collection of free-to-read resources. It explores gender oppression and the societal systems that stifle equality, offering categories such as Reproductive Rights, Gender Parity and Labor, Gender Equity in Policy and Civic Action, Femininities and Gender Identity, and Violence Against Women and Gender Minorities.For more information, read the press release.
OCLC Completes Project to Continue Helping Libraries Leverage Linked Data
OCLC announced the completion of a project “to develop a shared entity management infrastructure that supports linked data initiatives in the library community. As a result of this effort, OCLC has released millions of authoritative WorldCat Entities through a publicly searchable website and will continue to partner with libraries to develop the tools needed to fully incorporate linked data into library workflows and improve resource discovery through connections.”OCLC worked on the project with an advisory group of libraries from around the world, and the more than 150 million WorldCat Entities are freely available to search at entities.oclc.org. The Mellon Foundation helped fund the project via a grant, and with this grant, OCLC also developed OCLC Meridian (a linked data management tool) and APIs that will be released after a development partner phase that will explore how they can be integrated into library workflows. For more information, read the press release.
eLife Shares Recent Accomplishments of Its Early-Career Advisory Group
eLife’s Early-Career Advisory Group (ECAG), founded in 2014, is composed of diverse researchers who help eLife reform research communication and culture with their unique, early-career perspective. They advise eLife on all aspects of policy related to their peer group and generate new ideas for how to support early-career researchers. They published an update on their activities, stating the following:Six new members joined the group in May and they quickly injected fresh ideas and energy into the group. … Following our 2020 editorial on increasing equity, diversity and inclusion in scientific publishing, we worked with the eLife team of staff and editors to support greater diversity on its editorial board. Together with a group of eLife editors[, ECAG members] developed the recent open recruitment project inviting new Reviewing Editors from Latin America. Increasing the involvement of early-career researchers in the peer-review process is an ongoing concern for the ECAG and, in 2021, we worked with the journal’s leadership team to develop and pilot several ideas to address this. For more information, read the article.
The Palace Project Adds OverDrive Titles to Its Platform
LYRASIS and The Palace Project announced that content from OverDrive is coming to The Palace Project app for iOS and Android devices. “This addition will bring the largest provider of library ebooks into The Palace Project platform, allowing libraries to deliver the majority of their ebooks and audiobooks from multiple vendors through a single app,” the press release notes. The Palace Project—a division of LYRASIS in strategic partnership with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and supported by an investment from the Knight Foundation—aims to help libraries expand their digital offerings, delivering content via an easy-to-use interface and ensuring that patron privacy and data are protected. In the coming weeks, libraries using The Palace Project will be able to access their OverDrive titles in the Palace app (the titles will also remain in the Libby app).“OverDrive is a crucial provider of digital content and adding them to The Palace Project is a major win for public libraries,” says Michele Kimpton, global senior director of The Palace Project. “We believe that by bringing OverDrive and Palace together, we’ll be able to get even more content in the hands of library patrons everywhere.” For more information, read the press release.
Evan-Moor Educational Publishers Joins CCC's Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction
CCC (Copyright Clearance Center) announced that Evan-Moor Educational Publishers—a provider of PreK–8 educational resources for teachers and parents—is participating in its Annual Copyright License for Curriculum & Instruction.The license now has nearly 60 publisher participants and is designed to address “diverse licensing needs of EdTech providers, core and supplemental curriculum developers, and custom publishing companies, as well as U.S. State Departments of Education and K-12 school districts. The license provides permission to reuse excerpts of high-quality content including more than one million books, magazines, newspapers, and other works in organized educational activities, including use in curriculum and instructional materials, EdTech ELA [English language arts] applications, and online learning management systems.” For more information, read the press release.
East African Wild Life Society's Digital Magazine Comes to Exact Editions
Exact Editions announced that individuals and institutions that are “interested in conservation & biodiversity can now digitally subscribe to Swara Magazine, the quarterly magazine of the East African Wild Life Society (EAWLS). The fully-searchable modern archive will grow with each issue added, and is available seamlessly across web, iOS and Android devices.” Swara began publishing in 1959 (as Wild Life), and it reports on “the complex issues and solutions in 21st-century wildlife and habitat management alongside award-winning photography.”Exact Editions’ display organizes issues into stacks for easy browsing, and its advanced search function helps locate references to specific species, areas, or other keywords. For more information, read the press release.
Opening the Future Funds Its First Two Titles From Liverpool University Press
Liverpool University Press shared the first OA books to be funded fully by the Opening the Future collective subscription model. The threshold was reached to fund two titles so far, which will be made fully OA via subscribing libraries’ memberships in Opening the Future. They are Empire Found: Racial Identities and Coloniality in Twenty-First Century Portuguese Popular Cultures by Daniel F. Silva, associate professor of Luso-Hispanic studies and director of Black studies at Middlebury College, and Football and Nation Building in Columbia by Peter J. Watson, an early-career teaching fellow at the University of Leeds. Additional titles to be funded will be announced soon.The press release states, “As a leading international publisher in the field of modern languages, the focus of the Liverpool Opening the Future scheme is to make books that focus on Latin American Studies and Hispanic and Lusophone Studies open access.” For more information, read the press release.
De Gruyter Unveils Not-for-Profit Foundation to Help Fund Publishing Initiatives
De Gruyter introduced De Gruyter eBound, a not-for-profit U.S. foundation whose “goal is to support the publishing, sustainability, and accessibility of mission-driven scholarly monographs for not-for-profit and Open Access publishers.” The foundation plans to provide grants for new publications and fund original studies that will “help key actors in the industry to develop new solutions for and insights on the future of the mission-driven scholarly monograph.”For more information, read the news item.
SAGE Signs Its First Read-and-Publish OA Agreement With a U.S. University
SAGE signed a transformative OA agreement with Penn State University “to expand access to scholarly content and increase visibility of Penn State research. This partnership marks SAGE’s first full read-and-publish agreement with a U.S. institution. … The agreement covers access to and article publishing charges (APC) for Penn State faculty reading and publishing in nearly all SAGE journals. Their articles will be made open upon publication and article authors will be able to select their open access licenses while retaining their article copyright.” The agreement is in effect until Dec. 31, 2023.“With this new agreement, Penn State corresponding authors’ work can be published in both hybrid and pure Gold OA journals and can be immediately open and visible without incurring additional cost for authors, libraries, or readers,” says Mihoko Hosoi, associate dean for collections, research, and scholarly communications at Penn State University Libraries. For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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