Many institutions are understandably concerned about maintaining the integrity of their data in the cloud at a reasonable cost. Andrew Woods, DuraSpace, recently provided a high level analysis and DuraCloud strategy for “bit integrity checking” in the cloud at NDIIPP.

View all recent DuraCloud presentations here: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPINT/Presentations.

Ithaca, NY The DuraSpace organization unveiled the open source code for the new DuraCloud platform, a hosted service and open technology that makes it easy for organizations and end users to use cloud services, at the Fifth International Open Repositories Conference (OR10) in Madrid, Spain earlier this month. DuraCloud is an open source platform that is built upon commercial cloud infrastructure. The platform itself deploys into a cloud server environment and is integrated with multiple cloud storage providers, including Amazon AWS and Rackspace. DuraSpace is making the open source code available to enable the community to create new software and services that integrate with the core platform.

Developers who are looking into building applications in the cloud are encouraged to experiment with the DuraCloud code and provide feedback about what you see as development synergies and potential additional features. See the DuraCloud wiki for technical documentation and links to download the code:

https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/duracloud/DuraCloud

The DuraCloud open source platform enables cloud storage across multiple commercial and non-commercial providers and offers a cloud-based services framework focused on preservation support and data access for reuse and sharing. Features include replication, image transformation, bit integrity checking, image viewing, media streaming and general compute processing.

For more information about DuraCloud Open Source please attend the free DuraSpace/ORACLE-sponsored “All About Repositories” web seminar on July 28 at 2:00 pm EDT (tomorrow) presented by Michele Kimpton, CBO DuraSpace. Register here:

http://www.oracle.com/dm/11q1field/51943_duracloud_opensrc_webcst.html.

About DuraCloud

DuraCloud is a hosted service focused on providing preservation support and access tools to academic libraries, academic research centers, and other cultural heritage organizations.

The service builds on pure cloud-based storage available from expert storage providers by overlaying the access functionality and preservation support tools that are essential to ensuring long-term access and durability. DuraCloud offers cloud storage across multiple commercial and non commercial providers, and offers compute services that are key to unlocking the value of digital content stored in the cloud. DuraCloud provides services that enable digital preservation, data access, transformation, and data sharing. DuraCloud is appropriate for individuals, single institutions, or for multiple organizations that want to use cross-institutional infrastructure.

DuraCloud has been in a pilot program phase funded by the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), to utilize and give feedback on the DuraCloud platform since the beginning of Fall 2009. The first three pilot partners identified were New York Public Library, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and WGBH Educational Foundation. These three partners were chosen because they were already managing and preserving large amounts of content in a repository and were facing several challenges where cloud infrastructure could provide a possible solution. The DuraSpace not-for-profit organization will release the DuraCloud service in early 2011.

About DuraSpace

DuraSpace is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. DuraSpace software and services are used worldwide as solutions for open access, institutional repositories, digital libraries, digital archives, data curation, virtual research environments, and more.  DuraSpace provides leadership and innovation in the use of open source and cloud-based technologies to serve libraries, universities, research centers, cultural heritage institutions, and other knowledge stewards.  The organization’s open source technology portfolio includes the DSpace open access repository application, the Fedora open repository platform, and the Mulgara semantic database.  DuraSpace is the home of DuraCloud, an emerging cloud-based service that leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content.  The DuraSpace team includes recognized leaders and experts in the management of digital information.  The team works with an active and diverse international community committed to the durability of digital resources.

The DuraSpace technology portfolio inherently addresses the issue of durability of digital content.  Our values are expressed in our organizational byline, “open technologies for durable digital content.

Karlsruhe, Germany Development & Applied ResearchFIZ Karlsruhe and the Max Planck Digital Library cordially invite you to participate in the eSciDoc Days 2010 to be held on Tuesday, November 16, and Wednesday, November 17, 2010, hosted by the Royal Library in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The eSciDoc Days are targeted at both existing eSciDoc users and people interested in eResearch environments, publication infrastructure, research data management and scholarly collaboration.

The two day conference will provide extensive information about eSciDoc, the open source eResearch environment. Keynote speakers will give an overview of the current eResearch developments. Presentations held by eSciDoc team members and eSciDoc users will demonstrate the existing eSciDoc Applications and the underlying eSciDoc Infrastructure as well as its future directions.

In parallel tracks, we offer a whole day of hands-on tutorials for eSciDoc newcomers as well as experienced developers who are interested in creating their own applications based on the eSciDoc Infrastructure, or who intend to re-purpose their existing eSciDoc Applications.

Program and speakers will be announced soon.

More information about eSciDoc is available at www.escidoc.org

About FIZ Karlsruhe

FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure provides high-quality services for science. Its main activities are focused on STN International, the premium online service in science and patent information, jointly operated with CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society. Through its KnowEsis product line, FIZ Karlsruhe provides e-Science infrastructures to support web-based research. FIZ Karlsruhe also develops databases in mathematics, computer science, and crystallography. FIZ Karlsruhe is a member of the Leibniz Association (WGL) which consists of 86 German research and service institutions.

www.fiz-karlsruhe.de
About the Max Planck Digital Library

The Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) is a scientific service unit within the Max Planck Society (MPS), established in January 2007. The MPDL provides services to help MPS researchers manage their scientific information workflow. Such services comprise the provision of actual content and of technical solutions, but also the support to users by acting as a centre of competence and a community facilitator in the domain of scientific information management. This is achieved through close collaboration with the Max Planck Institutes and their libraries. The core activities of the MPDL lie in building up infrastructures and tools for publications and research data. A substantial task of the MPDL is to provide most effective access to scientific information and fostering the Open Access policy of the Max Planck Society.

www.mpdl.mpg.de

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2010/07/duncan_announces_creation_of_n.html

The US National Learning Registry is an inter-agency government project designed to make federal learning resources, wherever they are stored, easier to find, access and integrate into learning environments around the country and world. This project will enable teachers, students, parents, schools, governments, corporations and non-profits to build and access better, more interconnected and personalized learning solutions needed for a 21st century education.

Project leaders will be looking for collaborators because they see the Learning Registry initiative as global in scope. Dan Rehak, Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Co-Laboratory Hub Technical Advisor says,”Our hope is to help everyone move forward and what we do for the US Gov’t will fit into a broader international landscape.”

Washington, DC The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Information Policy, the Census and National Archives announced it will hold a hearing on the issue of public access to federally funded research on Thursday, July 29. The hearing will provide an opportunity for the Committee to hear the perspectives of a broad range of stakeholders on the potential impact of opening up access to the results of the United States’ more than $60 billion annual investment in scientific research.

The Subcommittee’s interest stems from the growing number of visible expressions of interest in the issue of public access that have surfaced in recent months, in both the Legislative and Executive branches of government. Notably, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy earlier this year hosted a Public Access Policy Forum on mechanisms that would leverage federal investments in scientific research and increase access to information.

Additionally, H.R. 5037, the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which was introduced into the House on April 15 by Rep. Mike Doyle (R-PA) and is supported by a growing bi-partisan host of cosponsors, was referred to the Committee. The bill, and its identical Senate counterpart (introduced by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX)), proposes to require those eleven federal agencies with extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to implement policies that deliver timely, free, online public access to the published results of the research they fund.

According to the notice:

“The hearing will examine the state of public access to federally-funded research in science, technology, and medicine. The hearing will assess and delineate the complex issues surrounding public access policies. The hearing will afford an opportunity for representatives from the areas of publishing, science and research, education and patient care to provide perspective on challenges, potential impact and opportunities regarding increased access.”

This open, public hearing will be held Thursday, July 29, at 2:00 PM in Rayburn House Office Building, room 2154.

“We are pleased that the Committee is creating this opportunity to shine a light on the issue of public access and examine the opportunities and implications it presents in an open, public forum,” said Heather Joseph, spokesperson for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). “This is an issue of deep importance to a wide range of stakeholders – from scientists to students, entrepreneurs to educators, publishers and the public. We welcome this chance for a diverse array of viewpoints on the issue to be heard.”

The growing interest in exploring effective public access policies in the U.S. reflects a larger worldwide trend. Around the globe, national and non-profit funding agencies are recognizing the opportunity to increase the return on their research grants by requiring that findings be made freely accessible on the Internet.

For more information about the issue of public access to publicly funded research, the Federal Research Public Access Act, and other public access policies, visit http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

About the Alliance for Taxpayer Access

The Alliance for Taxpayer Access (ATA) is a coalition of patient, academic, research, and publishing organizations that supports open public access to the results of federally funded research. The Alliance was formed in 2004 to urge that peer-reviewed articles stemming from taxpayer-funded research become fully accessible and available online at no extra cost to the American public. Details on the ATA may be found at http://www.taxpayeraccess.org.

DSpace with “Fedora Inside” would be a version of the DSpace application which can store its contents (files and/or metadata) in Fedora. The goal is to retain the out-of-the-box experience that is DSpace, while also enabling the extra features that Fedora provides (e.g. versioning, relationships between objects, flexible architecture).

DuraSpace is looking for volunteers to help make this concept a reality. This work will happen in stages, over several releases of both DSpace and Fedora software. DuraSpace has already volunteering some staff time to help with this initiative.

More information about this “Fedora Inside” concept and how it could be implemented in DSpace is available in the DSpace & Fedora Integration FAQ.

DuraCloud is a hosted service and open technology developed by DuraSpace that makes it easy for organizations and end users to use cloud services. DuraCloud leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content.

This OR10 Birds of a Feather session will provide an overview of the architecture, a demo of the service, and most importantly a discussion of usage patterns and integration approaches for institutional repositories.

Ithaca, NY Fedora 3.4-RC1 is now available for download from the main Fedora Repository page at http://wiki.duraspace.org/x/AgAU.  Release 3.3 of Fedora will continue to be available from this page until the final version of Fedora 3.4 is released, which we are aiming to do in August.

Although a minor release, this version includes a number of exciting new features and bug fixes that make Fedora an ever more compelling repository platform.

You are encouraged to download this new release and give it a spin.  Please let us have your comments and feedback via the mailing lists, and of course please let us know of any problems you discover.

As this is a Release Candidate, testing has not been as rigorous as the testing normally carried out for a final release, although it has been tested on a number of different platforms.  Therefore for production use we would recommend that you use Fedora 3.3.

Some of the important new features in this release are:

DC, RELS-EXT, RELS-INT as Managed Content: The Dublin Core and Relationships datastreams can now be stored as Managed Content, improving performance particularly when these datastreams are large

REST API relationships methods: New methods in the REST API for adding and manipulating relationships in RELS-EXT and RELS-INT

Enhanced Content Models: Including the ability to validate objects against their content models, and support for optional datastreams

Optimistic Locking: The REST API now provides support for optimistic locking to ensure no-one else has made a change to an object since you started editing it

FeSL Authentication: FeSL Authentication can now be used independently of FeSL’s experimental authorization mechanism, and is now the default authentication mechanism (although the old mechanism can be specified during installation). FeSL Authorization is still disabled by default.

Logging reconfiguration without restart: Using the new SLF4J and Logback logging framework, logging configuration changes now become effective without having to restart the server

REST API improvements and bug fixes: further stabilizing the REST API

Deprecation of “LITE” APIs: As of this release, the API-A-LITE and API-M-LITE APIs are deprecated, and will be removed in a future release. You are encouraged to migrate any code using these APIs to use the new REST API.

Full release notes for this release are available from https://wiki.duraspace.org/x/AoFHAQ

Java package naming and Java version

As of release 3.4, Java 5 (JDK 1.5) is no longer supported. Java 6 (JDK 1.6) or later is required both to build and run Java package names have undergone a thorough revision for this release. If you have your own code built against Fedora libraries and you update these to use the libraries from this version you will need to update your code to use the new package names.

Many thanks to all of you who have made this release possible, not only those who have contributed directly to the code for this release, but also those of you who have provided comments and feedback on the mailing lists and raised issues in JIRA.  We rely on the continued involvement of those who use Fedora to continue to make the project a success.

Ithaca, NY  Today, the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization announced its new Registered Service Provider Program to establish partnerships with companies that provide support services to institutions using the DSpace and Fedora digital repository software.

The new program will establish an network of service providers offering a range of services including customer support, technical consulting, software development, and systems integration.   The program will benefit universities, libraries, museums, research institutions, and others that require support in building or maintaining repository-based systems built with DSpace, Fedora, and related open source and commercial technologies.

Registered Service Providers will be easily identified.   They will be featured on the DuraSpace web site (duraspace.org) and relevant project websites, with contact information and a profile of their service offerings.   Providers will also exhibit their affiliation with DuraSpace by displaying the special DuraSpace Service Provider Logo on their marketing materials and websites.

Registered Service Providers share the DuraSpace commitment to ensuring that current and future generations have access to our collective digital heritage. Service Providers are active participants in open source software communities and are committed to providing expertise and technical consulting to enable customers to achieve their goals with open technologies.

The program will launch with five initial Registered Service Providers: Atmire (i.e., @mire), CILEA, DiscoveryGarden, Enovation, Media Shelf and Wijiti.  DuraSpace invites other companies providing services supporting digital repositories and cloud-based solutions to join.

DiscoveryGarden CEO Mark Leggott says, “DiscoveryGarden is excited to be among the first companies working with the DuraSpace community as a member of the Registered Service Provider Program. The DuraSpace family of open source software provides an unparalleled foundation for building a healthy repository ecosystem that can help steward digital assets in any landscape. This new program is an excellent example of how we can both benefit from and contribute to building a vibrant and sustainable DuraSpace community.”

DiscoveryGarden provides consulting and software-as-service based around the Islandora open source solution stack.  Islandora integrates two best-practice open source software solutions (Drupal and Fedora repositories) to create unique systems for digital asset management and enterprise content management.

Lieven Droogmans, CEO of Atmire (@mire) says, “@mire is proud to be one of the first Registered Service Providers in the DuraSpace program. Through this financial and technical commitment, our company seeks to further extend its relationship with the community and to contribute to the continuity and success of DSpace around the world. DSpace is the key component in most of @mire’s projects and lies at the core of @mire’s activities. Each member of our technical staff is fully devoted to DSpace customization and development.”

Atmire (@mire) is a company that has a wide offering for institutions running DSpace repositories including installation, customization, add-on modules, training and support services.

For more information about Registered Service Providers, or to join the DuraSpace Registered Service Providers Program, contact Michele Kimpton at mkimpton@DuraSpace.org.

ABOUT DURASPACE

DuraSpace is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. DuraSpace software and services are used worldwide as solutions for open access, institutional repositories, digital libraries, digital archives, data curation, virtual research environments, and more.  DuraSpace provides leadership and innovation in the use of open source and cloud-based technologies to serve libraries, universities, research centers, cultural heritage institutions, and other knowledge stewards.  The organization’s open source technology portfolio includes the DSpace open access repository application, the Fedora open repository platform, and the Mulgara semantic database.  DuraSpace is the home of DuraCloud, an emerging cloud-based service that leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content.  The DuraSpace team includes recognized leaders and experts in the management of digital information.  The team works with an active and diverse international community committed to the durability of digital resources.

The DuraSpace technology portfolio inherently addresses the issue of durability of digital content.  Our values are expressed in our organizational byline, “open technologies for durable digital content.”

Lincoln, Nebraska centerNet, an international network of digital humanities centers with over 200 members worldwide, today announced the launch of a beta web site. This is a work in progress, and comments and suggestions are appreciated.

http://digitalhumanities.org/centernet_new

We hope to add some new features in time, including a “members section” with more information about each of the centers. BTW, descriptions that now appear were contributed by centers and organizations themselves, and in some cases may need to be amended.  If your description is one of these, please send us revised text.

The DuraCloud open source platform enables cloud storage across multiple commercial and non-commercial providers and is also a cloud storage/compute application focused on preservation support and data access for reuse and sharing. Features include replication, image transformation, bit integrity checking, image viewing, media streaming and general computer services. Learn more about DuraCloud here: http://duracloud.org.

Excerpt from a historic map entitled: THE ENVIRONS, AND HARBOUR OF LISBON, which is part of the BNP Portuguese Culture Collection.

The Portuguese Culture Collection contains historic selections from the National Library of Portugal that are in the public domain and some recent content for which a copyright license was granted. Resources include maps, books and images stored and accessed through a Fedora repository.

C&T 2011 welcomes participation from researchers, designers, educators, industry, and students from the many disciplines and perspectives bearing on the interaction between community and technology, including architecture, arts, business, design, economics, education, engineering, ergonomics, information technology, geography, health, humanities, law, media and communication studies, and social sciences. The conference program will include competitively selected, peer-reviewed papers, as well as pre-conference workshops, a doctoral consortium, and invited keynote and panel speakers
.
We look forward to welcoming you to an exciting conference in Brisbane, Australia’s new world city.
–Marcus Foth, Conference Chair

IMPORTANT DATES

10 December 2010: Full papers and workshop proposals due
24 January 2011: Review reports due
18 February 2011: Notification of acceptances sent to authors
4 March 2011: Camera ready papers due
30 April 2011: Workshop papers, Doctoral Consortium and Student
Volunteer applications due
29 June 2011: Pre-conference workshops and Doctoral Consortium
30 June – 2 July 2011: C&T 2011 conference at QUT, Brisbane, Australia

CONFERENCE TOPICS

C&T 2011 welcomes contributions in all areas of community and technology research, design and development. In addition, we particularly invite authors to address any of the following topics:

Augmented Reality
Civic Intelligence
Context and Location Awareness
Community-centered Design and Evaluation Methodologies
Community Engagement
E-research with Communities
E-government and E-governance
Participation
Smart Community Services
Sustainability
Universal Usability and Accessibility
Urban Informatics
Tangible Interfaces for Community Interaction
Technologies of Scale Making
Visualisation Techniques
Working across Cultures

PAPER SUBMISSIONS

All submissions must be written in English. Papers must be no longer than 10 pages, including all additional material such as references, appendices, and figures. Please format papers using the ACM SIGCHI two column layout available at http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform. Full papers must include a title, sufficient space for the author name(s) to appear on the paper, contact information and affiliations, abstract, keywords, body, and references.

Papers submitted by the due date will undergo a double blind peer review process by an international panel and evaluated on the basis of their significance, innovation, academic rigour, and clarity of writing. Accepted papers will be included in the published conference proceedings if at least one author of any accepted submission has registered and attends the conference. Papers are submitted via an online submission system that will be opened in September 2010.

Please send any questions to Jesper Kjeldskov, Technical Program Chair: jesper AT cs.aau.dk

WORKSHOP PROPOSALS

Workshops are half day or full day sessions prior to the main conference program on 29 June 2011. Workshop proposals (max of 2 pages, using the ACM SIGCHI two column layout available at http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform) should be aimed at a community with a common interest. If you are working in an emerging area of Communities and Technologies, consider organising a workshop as an opportunity to advance the field and build momentum. C&T workshops might address basic or applied research and practice, new methodologies, emerging application areas, design innovations, management and organizational issues, or education. Each workshop should generate ideas that give the C&T community a new, organized way of thinking about the topic, or ideas that suggest promising directions for future research. Some workshops result in edited books or special issues of journals; you may consider including this goal in your workshop proposal.

Please send proposals to Jaz Choi, Workshop Chair: h.choi AT qut.edu.au

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM

The Doctoral Consortium is scheduled prior to the main conference program on 29 June 2011. The Doctoral Consortium offers research students a special forum where they can present, discuss and progress their research plans with peers and established senior researchers. Research students wishing to attend the consortium should submit 4 pages, using the ACM SIGCHI two column layout available at http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform, addressing 4 headings: Aims and Background; Significance and Innovation; Methodology; Questions and Issues (that is, identify those areas you seek feedback on). Places at the consortium will be offered based on a review of the submitted proposals.

Please send applications to Christine Satchell, Doctoral Consortium Chair: christine.satchell AT qut.edu.au

VOLUNTEERS

C&T actively encourages students to volunteer at the conference. Being a student volunteer is a great way to support the research community, meet other students in the field, and attend an international ACM conference. You will help the conference organisers with the running of the conference and support the setting-up of presentations and workshops. You will see the latest in C&T research and development, and have fun while learning about running the conference. In return, you will get free registration.

To apply, email us your contact details (email, phone, university), an abstract of your research project, a CV, and the reasons why you would like to be a student volunteer. Applications close on 30 April 2011.
Please send applications to Ronald Schroeter, Volunteers Chair: r.schroeter AT qut.edu.au

Have you heard about SWORD (http://www.swordapp.org/) but are unsure of why or how you should use it?

Members of the SWORD team will be running a free hands-on workshop at OR2010 that will provide an introduction to SWORD, some examples of how it can be used, and if you have a laptop you can try out some SWORD clients and have a go at making your own using an online SWORD client creation toolkit.

By the end of the workshop you’ll understand what SWORD is, how and where you should use it, and the new potential deposit avenues that it could open up for your repository.

Full details are at:

- http://or2010.fecyt.es/Publico/WorkShop/index.aspx#b3

It will run from 2:15 until 4:30 on Friday 9th July. It is aimed at both technical and non-technical members of staff.

Please send an email to swordapp@gmail.com to book a place on the workshop.

Enjoying two successful years, the Repository Fringe Festival is back for the third time… and this year we have moved the event to the end of the Edinburgh Festival, and to the National eScience Centre. Registration is now open here:

http://www.repositoryfringe.org/

Always innovative, and always looking forward, this year we are looking at the OPEN: Open Data; Open Access; Open Learning; Open Knowledge; Open Content; etc…

The programme for the event is, as ever, created by the participants, however there will be a focus on group discussion rather than long talks.

Pecha Kucha will make an appearance again, as will the round-table discussions… and we will be hosting a Great Debate on the Thursday Evening (with wine & nibbles.)

We are looking for submissions from managers, librarians, coders, educators & blue-sky thinkers; we are looking for Pecha Kucha talks & round-table discussion ideas…. and one of them we’ll take on for the Great Debate. Contact information for queries may be found here: http://eris.lib.ed.ac.uk/repofringe/?page_id=44.

We are also delighted to be able to offer space on Wednesday September 1 for anyone who wishes to host a meeting or workshop at that time.

Repostitory Fringe 2010 tag: #rfringe10

San Francisco, CA Oracle is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of the Open Repositories conference July 6-9 in Madrid. If you are attending the conference, make sure to register for Oracle’s PASIG event taking place July 5th. For more information on the conference, visit the OR website.

The Oracle Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) has an information-packed day planned focused on open computing solutions and best practices in the digital preservation, repository, and archiving space. The meeting will address topics of mutual co-operation in the areas of Repositories, Digital Libraries, Data Curation, Management of eScience content, and Long-Term Preservation.

Experts from Stanford University, Oxford University, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family Search, the DuraSpace organization, Oracle, and other global institutions and organizations will discuss their projects and new technologies, including open storage, sustainable preservation architectures, and new reference architectures.

Agenda items will include:

• Global trends review and the Oracle PASIG focus
• Projects, goals, use cases, and issue areas presented by leading institutions, businesses, and organizations
• Oracle technology overview and reference architecture
• Breakout sessions discussing partner solutions, Oracle content management and archiving solutions

About PASIG

Oracle’s PASIG community provides support for organizations and companies challenged with preserving and archiving important research, web content, digital media assets, and cultural heritage materials. The organization was founded in 2007 with the cooperation of the U. of Alberta, the British Library, the French national Library, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and other leading global libraries and universities. This PASIG is directed at fostering global collaboration across different themes, disciplines, and industries. Ideas and input from this conference will be incorporated into both the Fall semi-annual global PASIG event and Oracle solution directions.

For additional agenda information please contact Art Pasquinelli. For other meeting questions, please contact Arianne Hardt.

Boston, MA BioMed Central (BMC), an international publisher of journals in science, technology, and medicine and a pioneer in open-access publishing, named Harvard University one of the world’s three open-access institutions of the year. BioMed Central announced the honor at its fourth annual research awards ceremony in London on June 9.

The annual award recognizes institutions that have done the most to show leadership in taking steps to expand access to the published results of scholarly research. This year, to reflect the global spread of open-access initiatives, BMC chose to honor Harvard together with the University of Zurich and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The award to Harvard recognizes the breadth and significance of Harvard’s open-access policies: “The open-access mandate introduced by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has been extremely influential, encouraging and emboldening other US institutions including MIT, Kansas and Duke University to take similar action. In addition, a furthehulr four schools at Harvard have since gone on to introduce their own mandates. (Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government).”

In addition, BioMed Central lauds the University as “it emphasizes the need to find sustainable alternatives to subscriptions in order cover the costs associated with peer-reviewed publication, while avoiding the need to restrict access.”

Stuart M. Shieber, author of the FAS open-access policy and director of the Office for Scholarly Communication, describes the award as both gratifying and significant. “In global terms, Harvard has a leadership role in open access,” notes Shieber, who is also Harvard’s James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “Like our colleagues at Zurich and at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we have accomplished a great deal, but must continue to work on many fronts: support for open-access journals, difficult issues in monograph and book publishing in the humanities, access to scientific data, tools for supporting open access, new kinds of scholarly output such as databases and software.”

Following the unanimous FAS vote for open access in 2008, Provost Steven E. Hyman charged the University Library to create the Office for Scholarly Communication as an integral part of Harvard’s central library services.

“In recognizing Harvard as one of three globally significant open-access institutes,” states Helen Shenton, Deputy Director of the Harvard University Library, “BioMed Central celebrates the leadership and support of Harvard’s faculty, while affirming the value of the University’s investments in scholarly communication. The award also underscores the growing role of the Harvard Libraries in gathering, curating, and delivering up-to-date research online through our growing open-access repository.”

• As Lives are Documented Digitally: Strategies for Cultural Memory Organizations, by CNI director Clifford Lynch
• DuraCloud: Preservation Infrastructure in the Cloud, by Andrew Woods, DuraSpace

More videos from CNI’s April membership meeting will be announced soon. Subscribe to either channel feed to receive automatic updates when new material is available.

At the same time knowledge organizations are concerned with adding value to scholarly, scientific and cultural content in the form of contextual information about collections and resources, calling attention to technical developments, and by sharing news about events and achievements. Paying for news gathering and dissemination activities in lean budget years is, however, challenging.  Should repository managers and library directors use their time to broadcast about what they are doing or should they actually do it? Where does organizational news and information fit in to the general distributed news landscape?

On 6/6/10 Slashdot ran an item from the “some-patients-are-beyond-treatment dept.” entitled “Google’s Plan To Save the News Through Reinvention.” Though Google does not create news stories, it indexes and ranks them for publication through Google News. A recent article in The Atlantic, “How to Save the News” by James Fallows, reviews the Google strategy and refers to the “troubled ecology of news.” Not surprisingly Google feels that the ailing patient might be saved by using more Google online services.

The economic plight of news organizations in the U.S. even inspired the FTC to gather and propose industry-created suggestions. These “solutions” are offered in support of keeping streams of impartially researched, vetted and edited news alive in support of public policy and democratic processes.

Please join an OR10 Birds of a Feather (BoF) on Tuesday, July 6 at 11:30 a.m. (http://or10.crowdvine.com/pages/bof) for a session entitled “Getting the Word Out: Strategic Content Partnerships Across Communities” organized by Carol Minton Morris, Director of Marketing and Communications, DuraSpace.

We will discuss how can we more effectively propagate organizational news and information. Can we make content automate, multiply and work harder as we push it out through smaller pipes, more frequently and with fewer resources by establishing “strategic content partnerships?”

• Groups and organizations whose news and information align in some ways could become “strategic content partners” in order to collaboratively research, write, share and distribute timely and relevant items of interest to our communities through our collective lists, news feeds and channels. Is this a useful concept? What would it take to form “strategic content partnerships”?

• Participants will “pitch” informal story ideas for discussion and feedback. We will then mix and match ideas, and talk about how we might use story ideas generated by the group to test the concept of “strategic content partnerships.”

Contact Carol Minton Morris (cmmorris@DuraSpace.org) with questions. See you in Madrid!

The series kicks off with a 45 minute presentation entitled “Repositories and Cloud Services for Data Cyberinfrastructure” by Sandy Payette, CEO DuraSpace, on June 23 at 11 am PT; 2:00 pm EDT, (register here) that will take a historical look at the emergence of infrastructure–electric grids, railways, and the Internet.

The development of these different types of infrastructures reveals that a key developmental stage has been reached when formerly incompatible or stand-alone systems are interconnected via adapters and gateways. We see this in the digital repository domain, where the notion of a digital repository began as a predominantly institutional phenomenon, or in certain cases a disciplinary phenomenon, but is now evolving to a point where repositories are becoming integrated components of larger systems and distributed infrastructure. At the same time, we see the emergence of cloud technologies that offer large-scale storage and compute capabilities, but with open questions on how well the cloud will meet the requirements of digital preservation and data archiving.

In this session, Payette will discuss how the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization is working to evolve open source repositories and cloud services to serve as core components within emerging data cyber infrastructure. In collaboration with the Fedora and DSpace communities, DuraSpace is positioning repositories and cloud services to become part of a distributed data curation and archiving fabric that encompasses both institutional systems and the Web. She will also provide highlights from the DuraSpace partnership with the Data Conservancy, an NSF-funded Datanet project.

Date: Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Time: 11:00 PST/2:00 EDT
Register here