Potential name change for Government Printing Office

Legislation has been introduced to rename the Government Printing Office the Government Publishing Office.  The position of public printer would be re-titled Director of the Government Publishing Office.  According to Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks, "The name Government Publishing Office better reflects the services that GPO currently provides and will provide in the future."

GPO's full announcement on the FDLP page is available at: http://www.fdlp.gov/component/content/article/19-general/1583-legislation-introduced-to-change-gpos-name-to-government-publishing-office.  Full text of the legislation is available via FDsys.

Is it inevitable your ILS will be Cloud-based?

            In a recent Twitter post, Lisa Rabey asked a question.

Question: is there a distributed cloud ILS? If not, why not?
— #moriartylives (@pnkrcklibrarian) January 15, 2014

          A few people responded to her question, notably Marshall Breeding and  Keri Cascio, Director of Innovative Technologies and Library Resource Management at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology in Kansas City, Missouri. Cascio pointed out that Ex Libris' Primo and Alma, OCLC WorldShare Management System, VTLS Virtua were all cloud based systems, either through as SaaS (Software as a Service)or as a distributed cloud server environment. SirsiDynix has trumpeted their BlueCloud Suite. Libserra also has a product.

Two years ago, Edward M. Corrado & Heather Lea Moulaison wrote an article in the Digital Shift that tackled many of the questions surrounding putting a library in the cloud. At a recent conference in Charleston, Brad Spry, Shoko Tokoro and Michael Winecoff presented on UNC-Charlotte's Atkins Library's recent move to the OCLC Worldshare System. Softlink has a cloud based product tailored specifically for law firm libraries. 

      



     

BIBFRAME webinars available for viewing

Recordings and slides from two recently presented webinars about BIBFRAME have been made freely available by the School of Library & Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The webinars were presented November 6, 2013 and January 8, 2014 by Kevin Ford of LC's Network Development and MARC Standards Office. The Bibliographic Framework Initiative, commonly referred to as BIBFRAME, is a project to "determine a transition path for the MARC 21 exchange format to more Web-based, Linked Data standards."  In the first webinar, Ford provides a basic background to the BIBFRAME initiative, with an emphasis on objectives, requirements, and expectations for the project. The second webinar begins with a review of some of these concepts, then progresses to a live demonstration of a BIBFRAME editing tool. The webinars do not assume prior knowledge of BIBFRAME or RDF (Resource Description Framework), so they are a good starting point for those looking for an easily absorbed introduction to BIBFRAME. The webinar recordings and presentation slides are available at: http://www.slis.wisc.edu/BFwebin.htm.

NDSA: 3 Years in Review

Last month the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) celebrated the third anniversary of its organizing workshop.  In that time 5 working groups have tackled several pressing issues related to digital stewardship.  Butch Lazorchak from the Library of Congress has put together a review of NDSA’s accomplishments as well as an overview of where it is headed in 2014.

Some of the highlights include identifying NDSA Innovation award winners across several categories (so we all have digital stewardship role models), web archiving and storage surveys, and Digital Preservation in a Box.  NDSA has also produced a series of webinars and posts regularly to The Signal blog, providing two valuable resources for now and the future.

In 2014 we should keep our eyes open for the release of several more NDSA reports as well as expanded outreach activities.

Collection Assessment and Evaluation E-forum

How can we best evaluate our collections to ensure their ongoing utility and value? ALCTS recently sponsored an e-forum on Collection Assessment and Evaluation. Questions examined included participant's experiences with collection assessment, methods and tools used for conducting assessments, and evaluation of non-textual collections.

One interesting result of this e-forum was the creation of a Collection Assessment discussion list hosted by the American Library Association mailing list service.

A summary of the e-forum is available along with an archive of the individual messages.  The summary includes links to tools, presentations and articles related to collection assessment.

The ALCTS website describes e-Forums as "two-day, moderated, electronic discussion forums that provide an opportunity for librarians to discuss matters of interest on an ALCTS discussion list. These discussions are free of charge and available to anyone who wishes to subscribe to the list."

Staffing for Digital Preservation

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) has just released a report on Staffing for Effective Digital Preservation. The Report showcases the results of a 2012 survey of 85 institutions that have mandates to preserve digital content. Some of the key findings are that most institutions do not have a dedicated department for digital preservation and that many institutions also feel that digital preservation is understaffed. Most organizations are retraining existing staff to meet the challenges associated with digital content, but the report does offer potential qualifications for new digital preservation managers. With a substantial increase in digital holdings anticipated over the next year, this is an issue that will need to be addressed in the near future.

Managing Microforms in the Digital Age

As a result of the changes that have transpired over the past thirty years, a revision of the 1977 American Library Association (ALA) publication, Guidelines for Handling Library Orders for Microforms published by the Resources and Technical Services Division (RTSD), Resources Section, and Bookdealer-Library Committee was necessary. The revised publication, retitled Managing Microforms in the Digital Age, provides librarians and information management specialists with some basic information about managing microform collections. The publication does not attempt to be a comprehensive review of the microform industry, nor does it serve as a guide for preservation microfilm production. Managing Microforms addresses trends in bibliographic control, storage environments, current vendors and resources, and microform terminology.  See the report at http://www.ala.org/alcts/resources/collect/serials/microforms.