Expensing e-books: how much should patron habit influence collection development?

This article by Terrance L. Cottress and Brigitte Bell explores the difficulties in managing print and ebook expenditures in today's libraries.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/BL-09-2014-0023

PCC BIBFRAME web page

Paul Frank, along with the PCC Secretariat, have created a new webpage, BIBFRAME and the PCC, to help librarians learn about the BIBFRAME initiative and understand development of a future bibliographic ecosystem. The creators hope that this page will function as a central source for information, documentation and updates on the PCC's involvement with BIBFRAME.

Of particular interest is a short paper, authored by Paul Frank, entitled BIBFRAME: Why? What? Who? describing the basics of BIBFRAME and why it is being developed.

John Attig blogs from this week's meetings of the Joint Steering Committee

In case you have been waiting with bated breath for a resolution to the issues raised in 6JSC/TechnicalWG/4, "Court and Jurisdiction in RDA" (http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/6JSC-TechnicalWG-4.pdf; see also my previous TechScans post on this topic, dated October 7, 2014)), it appears as though you will have to wait a while longer. As John Attig reports in his blog of this week's meetings of the Joint Steering Committee, "[t]he [Technical Working Group's] paper represents an attempt to disambiguate the uses of the term “Jurisdiction” in RDA in order to distinguish between the place governed and the governing body. The paper proposed to limit the term “Jurisdiction” to the place and to find other terms for referring to various types of corporate bodies. There was no consensus on the recommendations presented, and several JSC constituencies agreed to work together to investigate the problem further." Attig's blog is a great way to get "fly-on-the-wall" observations about the JSC's deliberations as they unfold: http://sites.psu.edu/jscblog/.

Website Archivability

With the recent Symposium: 404/File Not Found: Link Rot, Legal Citation and Projects to Preserve Precedent at Georgetown Law School, it’s important to take into consideration the future archivability of the webpages you and your institution create. We all take for granted the fluidity of the web and frequently forget that content on websites changes, and is lost, constantly. This is not just restricted to news sites, but impacts everything from our institutional sites to government and court sites. Many organizations are working to preserve the content on the internet, from individual websites, to the documents, videos, and images that they includes. And they seek to do this in as authentic a way as possible as well as to give future users the ability to access and interact with the sites in the way it was originally intended.

To assist in the creation of websites that promote archiving, Stanford University Libraries recently published a set of Recommendations for Web Builders to Improve the Archivability of Their Content, with archivability referring to “the ease with which the content, structure, and front-end presentation(s) of a website can be preserved and later re-presented, using contemporary web archiving tools.” This documentation builds on other resources relating to web archiving and seeks to improve collective web preservation efforts. 

Library of Congress BIBFRAME update

On September 4th a presentation entitled Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME): Update & Practical Applications was given to Library of Congress staff. Beacher Wiggins, Kevin Ford and Paul Frank deliver an explanation of the current state of BIBFRAME and its implications for library metadata. The target audience for the presentation is experienced catalogers; BIBFRAME structure and concepts are explicated in an understandable way. Paul Frank attempts to assess the impact of BIBFRAME implementation on the work of a typical cataloger.

The presentation is available for viewing via the Library of Congress' BIBFRAME media portal at http://www.loc.gov/bibframe/media/updateforum-sep04-2014.html.

New report offers recommendations to improve usage, discovery and access of e-content in libraries

A group of professionals from libraries, content providers and OCLC have published Success Strategies for Electronic Content Discovery and Access, a white paper that identifies data quality issues in the content supply chain and offers practical recommendations for improved usage, discovery and access of e-content in libraries.


Success Strategies for Electronic Content Discovery and Access offers solutions for the efficient exchange of high-quality data among libraries, data suppliers and service providers, such as:

• Improve bibliographic metadata and holdings data
• Synchronize bibliographic metadata and holdings data
• Use consistent data formats.

See the article at http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displaytext.pl?RC=19772

"Court" and "Jurisdiction" in RDA

At its meeting in November, the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC) will be considering several recommendations submitted by the JSC Technical Working Group intended to clarify the use of "court" and "jurisdiction" and related terms in RDA. According to the abstract provided by the Working Group in its paper, "[t]he main proposal restricts the meaning of 'jurisdiction' to the context of place and separates it from the context of corporate body. Other proposals make appropriate changes to the terminology of RDA instructions and definitions and scope notes of RDA elements and relationship designators."

The responses from the national libraries and library organizations that are members of the JSC run the gamut from nearly complete acceptance (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) to complete rejection (German National Library) of the Working Group's recommendations, with other organizations falling somewhere in between. ALA and the Library of Congress have given quite nuanced responses, approving some recommendations and suggesting changes to others.

The Working Group's paper and the organizational responses to it are available at: http://www.rda-jsc.org/working2.html#technical-4.

The hidden costs of ebooks for academic libraries

Despite the convenience and attraction of e-books, they actively discourage intense reading and deep learning, according to Peter C. Herman, in a Septemer 29, 2014 post to the Times of San Diego.


http://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2014/09/29/hidden-costs-e-books-university-libraries/

The Cost of Inaction

We all know that budgets are tight and it’s not always easy to integrate preservation work, especially when it comes to multimedia. However, failing to implement a preservation and/or conservation strategy can have its own costs. To help determine what that cost is, as well as to help prioritize collections, AVPreserve has developed the Cost of Inaction Calculator (COI Calculator).

While AVPreserve is a firm that works with institutions to help them better manage, use, distribute, and preserve their media assets and metadata, "they have developed the COI Calculator as a free tool to help users analyze multimedia collections and make more educated decisions about what to digitize, what to perform lower levels of preservation on, and what to leave in its native state. According to their site, the COI Calculator "helps organizations analyze the implications of varying levels of preservation action when dealing with legacy audiovisual collections. COI adds a data point to ROI, or Return on Investment, and helps articulate what stands to be lost or gained in terms of access, intellect and finances based on different scenarios around digitization, physical storage, digital storage, and media longevity." To help explain the goals of the Cost of Inaction Calculator, they have put together a short video that can be viewed here.

Draft LC-PCC Policy Statement on facsimiles and reproductions available for comment

The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) has issued a draft LC-PCC Policy Statement which outlines proposed exceptions to the RDA instructions regarding facsimiles and reproductions. RDA currently instructs catalogers to describe a facsimile or reproduction by "record[ing] the data relating to the facsimile or reproduction in the appropriate element. Record any data relating to the original manifestation as an element of a related work or related manifestation, as applicable." The draft Policy Statement proposes deviating from this instruction by recording certain elements as they apply to the original resource, and using the MARC 533 field to record certain other elements as they pertain to the reproduction, mirroring LC's practice under AACR2 chapter 11. In addition, the draft Policy Statement sets forth guidelines on a provider-neutral approach to cataloging print-on-demand materials and photocopies.

The PCC is soliciting feedback on the proposed Policy Statement until September 26. To read the draft, go to the PCC's homepage (http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/) and look under "What's New."

Cataloger's Desktop interface changes and training resources.

The Library of Congress is rolling out a new interface for the Cataloger's Desktop product on September 10, 2014. This new interface will be simpler and cleaner; focus will be on search and retrieval instead of table of contents browsing.  The text of the announcement is posted at http://www.loc.gov/cds/desktop/New_Cataloger%27s_Desktop_UI-2014-07-01.pdf.

The Cataloger's Desktop Training and Tutorials page provides links to presentation slides and recordings from recent webinars, plus links to "Quick Tips" documentation.

OLCC MARC Format Update 2014, phase 2

OCLC Technical Bulletin 264 describes changes to the MARC 21 formats for bibliographic, authority and holdings data to be implemented in the near future. Things we are most likely to see in our day-to-day cataloging work include:

• Addition of $q Qualifying information to identifier fields such as 020 (ISBN), 024 (Other standard number) and 027 (Standard Technical Report Number). 
• Definition of first indicators for field 588 (Source of Description) to provide display constants. First indicator 0 will generate a display constant meaning source of description; first indicator 1 will generate a display constant meaning latest issue consulted. CONSER participants should wait for notification by the Library of Congress and OCLC before using these new indicators.
• Data recorded in Marc field 265 (Source for Acquisition/Subscription Address) will be converted to field 037 $b (Source of Acquisition/Source of Stock Number/Acquisition). Marc field 265 will be invalidated
• $c (Location of Meeting) has been re-defined as repeatable for for many fields including 110, 111, 610, 611, 710 and 711)

Changes to the MARC format for authority data include:

• Addition of $q (Qualifying information) in fields 020 and 024
• Repeatability of $c (Location of meeting) in fields  110, 111, 410, 411, 510 and 511

Additional MARC fields relating to audience and creator characteristics have also been defined. 

Videorecording of June BIBFRAME forum now available online

If you were unable to attend the most recent forum of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME) at the ALA annual meeting in June, a videorecording is now available online at http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6323. The main speakers were Sally McCallum, Kevin Ford, Andrea Leigh (all of LC) and Philip Schreur of Stanford University Libraries. I was particularly interested in Kevin Ford's live demonstration of the prototype BIBFRAME editor, which became available a few months ago. Unfortunately, all the viewer sees during the live demo is Kevin typing on his computer; the screen he is typing on is not shown in the recording. For me, not being able to see the interface or what was being typed made the live demo worthless. This is clearly a case of "you had to be there."

Philip Schreur presented an overview of a two-year grant-funded project in which Cornell University Library, Stanford University Libraries, and the Harvard Library Innovation Lab are collaborating. The goal of the project, called Linked Data for Libraries (LD4L for short) is to "create a Scholarly Resource Semantic Information Store (SRSIS) model that works both within individual institutions and through a coordinated, extensible network of Linked Open Data to capture the intellectual value that librarians and other domain experts and scholars add to information resources when they describe, annotate, organize, select, and use those resources, together with the social value evident from patterns of usage."

Andrea Leigh described the background of a BIBFRAME AV modeling study (available at http://www.loc.gov/bibframe/pdf/bibframe-avmodelingstudy-may15-2014.pdf). The report was commissioned by the BIBFRAME team within the Network Development and Standards Office at the Library of Congress and aims to identify the content description needs of the moving image and recorded sound communities and specify how those requirements can be met within a generic bibliographic data model like BIBFRAME. The presentation did a good job of outlining the many complex challenges associated with the description of audio-visual resources, but did not hint at how these challenges might be addressed by BIBFRAME.   

The question-and-answer portion of the session is not particularly useful because the questions cannot be heard and no effort was made to repeat them so that they would be audible for the recording.

RDA news

Two recent developments around RDA may be of interest.

RDA conversion of the LC/NACO Authority file, Phase 3

Gary Strawn posted the following announcement concerning plans for phase 3 of the LC/NACO Authority files via several e-mail lists. Permission for re-posting to other lists without prior approval was given.  The RDA phase 3 documents available via the link in Strawn's e-mail provide further detail as to how some of these tasks might be accomplished. Enrichment of authority records using data mined from the textual 670 fields is an interesting possibility.

Following the successful completion of phases 1 and 2 of the conversion of the LC/NACO Authority File for use under RDA, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging has appointed a task group to consider additional changes to the file. This work is to constitute "Phase 3" of the preparation of the LC/NACO Authority File. This task group's final report is due by March 15, 2015; the report is to propose a schedule for performing the work. After receiving this report, PCC will decide how to proceed.

The most important single task to be achieved during Phase 3 is the re-coding as RDA of those AACR2 authority records that bear no indication that the 1XX cannot be used under RDA. The task group is considering other changes that can be made to records in the authority file at the same time. Some of these changes will be related directly to the adoption of RDA; but this is not necessarily the case. Because millions of records will need to be re-issued to achieve the main goal, other clean-up projects that affect a large number of records can be considered.

The task group has so far investigated the following additional tasks (in some cases the investigation is still very much in progress):

 

* Enhanced generation of the 046 field in authority records for personal names

* Re-formulating older occurrences of the 678 field as 670

* Programmatic switching of terms for relationships, following on changes made to RDA earlier this year

* Programmatic switching of standard terms for music medium of performance, also following changes made to RDA earlier this year; corresponding generation of the 372 field

* Adding ISNIs in the 024 field

* Re-categorize texts used in subfield $c of personal names

* Regularizing the recording of names in the 370 field

Not all of this work will necessarily be held until the primary job of Phase 3 is undertaken. For example, several thousand records with 678 fields have already been adjusted; and changes to music medium of performance will probably be undertaken as soon as the specifications have been approved.

The task group is preparing documents that describe in detail each aspect of its work. Three of these documents (corresponding to the first three bullet points in the above list) are now available for comment. These documents, and the group's charge (including a list of members), can be found at this site:

        http://files.library.northwestern.edu/public/rdaphase3/docs/

The group invites discussion on the PCC and/or RDA lists of these documents. The group also actively encourages suggestions for additional automated manipulations that might be made to the LC/NACO authority file as part of this project.

Additional documents will be posted to this site as they are prepared, and discussion of them invited as well. The group has created a Twitter account that will be used to broadcast notifications of new and revised documents: rdaphase3. Interested parties are encouraged to follow that Twitter account, to be up-to-date on the group's activities.

In its work, the task group has uncovered, and expects to continue to uncover, a number of categories of problems that cannot be handled by a program, but could be cleared up by a group of dedicated volunteers. For example, the program that made a preliminary examination of the 370 field identified a large number of fields with subfield $2 reading "naf" or "lcsh" for which no corresponding authority record could be found. Each of these must be reviewed, and an appropriate action taken; but there is far more work to do than the task group can achieve on its own.  All NACO participants--at either the individual or institution level--will be encouraged to assist in the work.  Other likely projects include: authority records for personal names for which the conversion program could not generate an 046 field for one reason or another, but which appear to contain date-shaped information; records whose 100 has only a birth date but whose 670 fields contain a death date. There will no doubt be many more such projects. The task group will announce each clean-up project as it prepares the unnecessarily underlying problem reports and suitable instructions.

RDA toolkit technical committee formed

James Hennelly, Managing editor of ALA Digital References recently announced the formation of an RDA Toolkit Technical Committee via several e-mail lists.  The purpose of the committee is to address "open technical issues related to the application of RDA, RDA Toolkit and the RDA registry.  The full text of the announcement and a membership list for the committee are available via the RDA Toolkit blog.

 

NASIG assumes management of Serialist

NASIG has has announced that they have assumed management of the longstanding listserv SERIALIST.

The full text of the announcement is available at via the NASIG blog.

Library of Congress Recommended Format Specifications

In June the Library of Congress released Recommended Formats Specifications to assist in its acquisitions process. These recommendations were developed with the idea of long-term preservation in mind and take on the analog as well as the digital. They cover six categories of creative works: Textual Works & Musical Compositions, Still Image Works, Audio Works, Moving Image Works, Software & Electronic Gaming & Learning, and Datasets/Databases.

While the primary purpose of these recommendations is to provide internal guidance at the Library of Congress, it will also serve as a best-practices guide to the library and related communities to help ensure long-term preservation of creative works. And do bear in mind that while these are recommended formats, it doesn't necessarily mean that other formats should be excluded. It merely identifies those that have the best potential for long-term access.

Check out the Press Release here.

10 Things to Buy with TS-SIS Preservation $150.00 Contest Money

Here are 10 things you can buy with TS-SIS Preservation 3^rd Annual Worst Book $150.00 Contest Money:

1.    Water alarm

2.    Moisture resistant boxes

3.    Interleaving papers and tissues

4.    Cutters and trimmers

5.    Mount making tools

6.    Aprons

7.    Gloves

8.    Transport cart

9.    Display products

10.  Disaster kits and components

Preservation Committee members are on standby. We are eager to see your picture. Send your picture to mw960@law.georgetown.edu before/by July 1. Deadline extended to July 7!

Complete details about the contest can be found here.

Thank you,
Maxine Wright 

OBS/TS Joint Research Grant Survey

The following is posted on behalf of the OBS/TS-SIS Joint Research Grant Committee:

Please complete this survey about the OBS/TS-SIS Joint Research Grant. It will take only 5 minutes of your time and your input will help in planning for the future of the Grant. Deadline is Friday, June 27, 2014.

The link to the survey is:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3KNYQW9

Thank you!

OBS/TS-SIS Joint Research Grant Committee

Kerry Skinner (Chair)

Frederick Chan

Merri Hartse

Ellen McGrath

Victoria Sukhol

 

Digital Preservation Reading List

Interested in developing a digital preservation plan, but not quite sure where to start? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. The Northeast Document Conservation Center has recently developed a Digital Preservation Reading List. This annotated bibliography was developed “to acquaint you with the challenges associated with developing a digital preservation plan and repository, and successful strategies for overcoming those challenges.”

The bibliography begins with a broad overview of digital preservation needs. It then delves into specifics such as strategies, frameworks, file formats, metadata, curation, and more. It also takes into consideration some of the ambiguity in terminology and includes items on specific types of digital archives and repositories (such as Institutional Repositories, Subject-Based Repositories, and Research Repositories).

Data Management: How Far Have We Come?

Data management is rapidly becoming a hot topic in libraries, especially with the announcement of the Big Data Research and Development Initiative in 2012. What many of us don’t realize is that the foundation for this initiative was laid in 2003 with the publication of a report by the National Institute of Health on the sharing of research data. In the years since there has been an explosion of data and federal agencies have been developing data management plans as well as sharing requirements to expand access to it. Even with these advances we still struggle to preserve and make accessible the results of federally-funded research.

The Library of Congress’ blog The Signal has recently published a two-part series that delves into the history of the federal government’s data management practices and looks into the resulting tools and services that have been developed to meet federal requirements. While we're moving in the right direction, this is really only the tip of the iceberg.

ALA State of America's Libraries Report

On April 14, the American Libraries Association released its report on the State of Amercia's Libraries. This report expresses a high level of frustration with the state of e-books and e-book delivery. Nancy K. Herther has done an excellent write-up on several of the issues involved here.

There's also been some excellent news items about altmetrics and some great new resources when it comes to images -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art released almost 400,000 images online for non-commercial use. Also, if you've not seen it, the online journal Hybrid Pedagogy has been providing a platform for great new articles on how modern resources can be integrated and used in the classroom. Check it out!

CONSER Cataloging Manual updates for RDA

The Library of Congress PCC CONSER Documentation and update page now has many revised draft modules for the CONSER Cataloging Manual. These updates reflect changes to the manual necessitated by adoption of RDA. Each module has been extensively overhauled and begins with an outline, references and definitions for terms used. Each area of description lists the preferred source of information, with references to the RDA Toolkit and examples of how the RDA guidelines should be applied expressed in MARC. If there are differences between LC/PCC and CONSER practice, these differences are explicitly discussed.

Module 35: Integrating Resources includes extensive cataloging surrogates and example records in MARC with commentary discussing the cataloging choices. Sample records both before and after conversion to RDA are provided. This module concludes with cheat sheets for both print and online integrating resource RDA MARC records.

Some knotty areas, such as micro-forms, still require revision, but the project is well on its way to completion. The many concrete examples provided are wonderful aids to understanding application of RDA "suggestions" for description.

The completed modules are slowly being pushed out to the Cataloger's Desktop, but currently appear only in the "updates" area of the CONSER Cataloging Manual.

THIS is what linked data looks like?

On April 28, OCLC issued a press release (http://www.oclc.org/en-US/news/releases/2014/201414dublin.html) announcing the availability of 197 million bibliographic work descriptions, formatted as linked data. Collectively referred to as "WorldCat Works," the 197 million sets of linked data represent a leap forward in the migration of library data from traditional library catalogs to the linked data world of the World Wide Web.

Richard Wallis, OCLC's "Technology Evangelist," posted an article (http://dataliberate.com/2014/04/worldcat-works-197-million-nuggets-of-linked-data/) the same day with further information about the project and its significance to libraries. Roy Tennant devoted a post on the Hanging Together blog (http://hangingtogether.org/?p=3811) to this development, calling it "the most important thing you haven't heard of." Both Wallis and Tennant point their readers toward an example, Gandhi's "Story of my experiments with truth" (http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1151002411.html). Looking at the example, one sees a set of, well, links. The links are separated into a number of categories, many of which will be familiar to catalogers (e.g., contributor, creator, genre). The links can be viewed as several different kinds of RDF serializations, in addition to HTML: Turtle, RDF/XML, N-Triples, and JSON-LD.

While recognizing the significance of what OCLC has done, I confess to some confusion. The "work" chosen as an example is actually what RDA calls an "expression." Gandhi's "work" in the example is a translation of his autobiography, which was originally written in Gujarati, yet this is nowhere apparent in the sample "work" description. The original Gujarati work has its own work description (http://experiment.worldcat.org/entity/work/data/1809067428.html); as far as I can tell, it includes no link to the English translation. Is it unrealistic to expect linked data to provide links between works and their translations? Tennant's blog post explicitly refers to this capability: "By aggregating various translations of works around a single identifier, we can then present the record that a particular user wishes to see given their language capabilities." Unless I am misunderstanding what linked data is supposed to do (entirely possible!), what I am seeing so far in OCLC's work descriptions does NOT live up to this promise.

E-Books and Ethical Dilemmas for the Academic Reference Librarian

When dealing with e-books, several ethical dilemmas exist as a result of competing professional values. Dilemmas identified and discussed here include challenges related to serving nonaffiliated users, providing high-quality service while respecting intellectual property rights, and balancing the needs of current users with the needs of future generations. Readers would like to have access to all e-books all of the time, with as few restrictions as possible. Librarians would like all of their users (affiliated or nonaffiliated, current or future) to be able to easily use e-books. Librarians also want to recognize the valuable contributions of authors, publishers, and content distributors while safeguarding patron privacy.

View the article at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02763877.2014.879035 (from Informed Librarian Online)

EBSCO Information Services Creates Open Policy for Data Sharing

EBSCO Information Services has released its new policy on metadata sharing and technology collaboration. EBSCO will make all metadata (and full text when contractually allowed) available for more than 120 full-text databases and 500,000+ e-books, as well as over 50 historical digital archives to third party discovery services. The policy outlines EBSCO’s commitment to exchanging metadata and integrating technologies with partner vendors to enable an enhanced discovery experience for mutual customers. EBSCO’s new policy covers critical areas of mutual collaboration with other discovery vendors. In addition to the sharing of metadata (and full text where allowed), the policy includes EBSCO providing assistance with linking technology that has been requested by customers.

See announcement at http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displaytext.pl?RC=19120

Digital Terminology

As we move into an increasingly digital world we sometimes forget that terms that have a clear meaning to us may be clear as mud to some of our colleagues.  Many of us are using terms such as “institutional repository,” “digital collections” and “digital archive” somewhat interchangeably. But when we look at things in a larger perspective, the reality is that these terms can mean very different things to different people and/or in different contexts. These semantic challenges are starting to garner attention within the profession.  They are especially relevant as our locally created digital holdings multiply and we attempt to preserve and make them accessible to users. 

Recently the term “archive” and “digital archive” have been discussed at some length to help those in the field, and those working on the fringe of the field, understand the different meanings of the term in different contexts. Trevor Owens recently broke down many different meanings of “archive” – including the physical, digital, and IT related kinds.  Check out his post here.  In the first of a two-part post, Kate Theimer has also delved into some of the specific library & archive-related meanings of the term.  Her post is available here.

This is a topic that will continue to be debated, but for now it’s a good idea to have a discussion at your institution to make sure everyone is one the same page.

NASIG issues draft core competencies for print serials librarians

NASIG has issued draft Core competencies for print serials librarians as an intended appendix to the Core competencies for Electronic Resources Librarians.  These competencies describe the skills required to manage serials in physical formats and acknowledge the continuing importance of print materials in library collections.

Core competencies for Serials Librarians are described in in the areas of print material life cycles, technology, research and assessment, communication, supervisions and management, professional development and personal qualities. As described, a Serials Librarian should have a thorough knowledge of serials acquisitions, the ability to organize continuing resources using the principles of bibliographic description, including CONSER and RDA, knowledge of best practices in physical processing and preservation.  Additionally, the Serials Librarian should be able to apply assessment tools to inform a library's serials purchasing and retention decisions. 

The NASIG Core Competencies Task Force plans to host discussion sessions during the 29th Annual NASIG conference in Fort Worth, Texas to gather feedback on this draft. The text of NASIG's announcement and request for comment, and a link to provide comment are available at: http://nasig.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/core-competencies-for-electronic-resources-librarians/.

Online Bibliographic Services and Technical Services Special Interest Sections' Joint Research Grant accepting applications.

Posted at the request of the AALL OBS-SIS and TS-SIS Joint Research Grant Committee.

The AALL OBS-SIS and TS-SIS Joint Research Grant Committee is now accepting applications for the 2014 Grant! 

The purpose of the Online Bibliographic Services and Technical Services Special Interest Sections' Joint Research Grant is to provide support to American Association of Law Libraries members conducting research specific to technical services law librarianship that will enhance law librarianship service to our clients.

Qualifications: AALL membership is required. Preference will be given to applicants who are members of the OBS-SIS and/or TS- SIS at the time of application. Evidence that the research and publication will directly or indirectly benefit technical services law librarianship must be shown.
Grant Awards: JRGC awards grants in a single year ranging in amount of no more than $1,000 at the discretion of JRGC, --and-- pending approval of each grant amount each year as authorized by OBS and TS Executive Boards. 

Deadlines: Applications are due to the JRGC Chair no later than May 15, 2014. Grant recipients will be announced at the annual AALL meeting. Award amounts will be mailed to successful grant recipients as soon as final approval is received by the JRGC Chair.

For more information on the grant and the application process, please visit: http://www.aallnet.org/sections/obs/committees/joint-research-grant-committee

If you have any further questions, please email the JRGC Chair, Kerry Skinner at Kerry.Skinner@asu.edu.