| A Special Note: We at ARL are struggling with the
anguish of the tragic events of Tuesday. Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers
go out to all whose lives are touched forever.
Table of Contents 1. ARL Fall Membership Meeting Materials Available
1. ARL Fall Membership Meeting Materials Available The 139th Membership Meeting of ARL will convene October 17-18 at the
Jurys Hotel in Washington, D.C. The meeting will adopt last fall's program
design that center on a series of ARL committee-sponsored and member-led
discussions. Topics identified include: e-metrics project findings,
learning outcome and accreditation, the shaping of a special collections
agenda for ARL, time-demands on ARL directors for fundraising, digital
library projects and preservation interests, and the role of accreditation
in achieving quality library education. To arrange for hotel accommodations,
please call the Jurys Hotel at
ARL committee meetings will be held on Wednesday, October 17 followed by a reception that evening. Just prior to the reception there will be an informal Welcome to ARL orientation for directors new to ARL and other first-time Membership Meeting attendees; all member leaders, no matter how many meetings you have attended, are encouraged to attend this one hour briefing to meet new colleagues. The Membership Meeting program discussions, the Federal Relations lunch program, and the Business Meeting will be held on Thursday, October 18. The Membership Meeting will adjourn at 4:30 pm Thursday; however, members are encouraged to stay and attend the ARL Forum that commences the next day. (See item 2.) 2. ARL Forum on Collections & Access Registration Materials Available Following a lively discussion on the ARL directors e-list, the ARL Executive
Committee agreed to move forward with plans to convene a Forum to explore
new approaches to collection management and machine-assisted access strategies
that could increase the visibility of research library collections. On
October 19-20, 2001, in Washington, DC, immediately following the ARL Membership
Meeting, ARL will convene "Collections & Access for the 21st Century
Scholar: A Forum to Explore the Roles of the
Library Directors are encouraged to attend accompanied by one or two
other leaders from their library who are most involved in supporting the
transformation of the institution. For example, a library director might
be accompanied by an AUL for collections, technical services, and/or public
services. Institutional team participation of two or more persons is encouraged
and will be given preference in registration; individual
The registration fee is $275 per person; information about the forum and the registration form is on the ARL website http://www.arl.org/forum/index.html. The Forum will convene in the Jurys Hotel on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. on Friday, October 19 at 9 a.m. and adjourn Saturday, October 20 at 12 noon. There will be a reception sponsored by OCLC early on Friday evening and the rest of the evening is open. ARL has received generous financial contributions from EBSCO Subscription Services and Fretwell-Downing, Inc. to ARL in order to defray costs of the Forum. Immediately after the Forum adjourns at 12 noon on Saturday, October 20, the Center for Research Libraries is hosting a lunch meeting for all ARL Forum participants who would like to stay and participate. On CRL's behalf, Ross Atkinson, Deputy University Librarian at Cornell University and Chair of the Center's Collection Assessment Task Force, will convene the open discussion. This session will include a brief overview of the current state of the CRL collections, and will aim to identify ways in which CRL collection services can best support and extend the national collection effort. Hotel accommodations - To arrange for hotel accommodations for the ARL Forum, please call the Jurys Hotel at (202) 483-6000 and ask for the Association of Research Libraries special negotiated rate of $146.00, single/double. The Jurys Hotel should receive your reservation no later than September 21, 2001, to guarantee rates as part of the ARL group. 3. Public Library of Science Announces Plans for New Journals On the eve of their September 1st deadline, the leaders of the Public
Library of Science sent a letter to signers of the PLoS Open Letter, encouraging
their colleagues to support those publishers that have made some positive
efforts towards the goals of the PLoS and to support the development of
a new publishing mechanism "operated by scientists, for the benefit of
science and the public." The PLoS leaders acknowledged that while
the PLoS initiative had been viewed positively by scientists and the public
around the globe, it had not been supported enthusiastically by the publishing
community. The PLoS leaders note in
According to the PLoS website, the leadership group has established a non-profit organization called the Public Library of Science and plans to launch online journals with original research papers, reviews, essays and commentary. Articles published by the PLoS will be assigned to the public domain. Articles will undergo rigorous peer review by an editorial board of intellectual leaders in biology, medicine and allied fields. The costs of publication will be recovered primarily through charges to authors, which the leaders expect to be about $300 per published article. Costs will be subsidized for those who cannot afford the charges. The PLoS has begun to raise funds to cover the start-up costs and hopes to begin publishing early next year. A copy of the letter to signatories, a list of policies regarding open access of existing journals, plans for PLoS journals, and the PloS license can be found on the re-designed website at http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/. 4. ARL Supports National Geographic Society's Supreme Court Appeal ARL, ALA, the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), and the Medical Library Association (MLA) have jointly filed an amicus brief in support of the National Geographic Society's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The National Geographic Society is seeking to overturn the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in the case of Greenberg v. National Geographic Society. The appeals court, in overturning a lower court decision, ruled that National Geographic's CD-ROM version of the past 100 years of the Society's magazine was not permissible under the Copyright Act. The library associations filed an amicus brief before the Court due
to concerns that the Eleventh Circuit decision could hinder the use of
digital technologies. The Eleventh Circuit appeals court held that National
Geographic was not permitted to reproduce and distribute,
ALA, ARL, AALL, and MLA view the CD-ROM of the National Geographic magazine as no different than if a microfilm version of the magazine had been made. Copyright protection extends to works in any tangible medium of expression. The original collective works that are reproduced in digital facsimiles constitute a permissible revision and are not themselves changed by the transformation from paper to the CD-ROM version. In this case, the photographs at issue appear in the CD-ROM version in the exact positions (along with text and advertising) in which they appeared in the original print version of the magazine. Libraries also support the right of scholars and researchers to combine pre-existing works with the necessary software to provide a searching capability. Under the Eleventh Circuit's decision, no CD-ROM or digital technology that requires the addition of such software could arguably ever qualify as a permissible revision. The amicus brief is available on the ARL website at http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/ngs.pdf. 5. ARL E-Metrics Phase II Draft Report Circulating for Feedback Phase II draft report of the E-Metrics study is circulating among project participants and copies of the final report will be mailed to all ARL libraries shortly. The report proposes 16 statistics and measures covering the following areas: collection inputs, service outputs, expenditures, and digital library statistics. Project participants will have a full-day meeting on Tuesday, October 16, to discuss the pilot project findings and recommend next steps. The research team at the Information Use Management and Policy Institute also is working on moving forward Phase III activities that include preparation of the next version of the "white paper" regarding library's contributions to institutional outcomes. It is also expected that training modules will be developed to assist ARL member institutions train staff as to the importance and process for collecting and analyzing networked statistics and performance measures. For more information about ARL E-Metrics see the project homepage at: http://www.arl.org/stats/newmeas/emetrics/index.html, or contact Martha Kyrillidou. 6. LibQUAL+ Prepares for OhioLINK and AAHSL Participation in Spring 2002 During the first week of September, members of the LibQUAL+ project
team interviewed faculty and students at Northwestern University Medical
School about their views on library service in order to reground the survey
instrument for use in the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries
(AAHSL) community this spring. On 24 September in Columbus,
7. Knight Roundtable Essay on Target for Late Fall Publication The first draft of the essay resulting from the Knight Higher Education Roundtable on Sustaining Communities of Scholarly Communication was sent to participants last week. The essay details the discussion by and the recommendations of the almost 30 representatives of the humanities and social sciences scholarly communications community that met in Philadelphia in March. Participants will have the opportunity to review and comment on the draft before a final essay is published later this fall. Initial recommendations include: broadening the conception of audience for scholarly work in the humanities and social sciences; exploring the potential of technology to expand both the audience and the kinds of materials that can be made available; preserving the centrality of peer review; establishing active and continuing partnerships in scholarly publishing; educating scholars about copyright issues; and considering new models for meeting the costs of scholarly communication and publication. The Roundtable was co-sponsored by ARL, NHA, and the Knight Higher Education Collaborative with funding from the NEH. For more information, contact Mary Case. 8. Creating an International Agenda for Scholarly Communication Representatives from CURL (UK), CARL, and ARL met in Washington on August 15 to begin discussions on an international agenda for scholarly communication. (CAUL in Australia and CONZUL in New Zealand were also invited but could not participate in the August meeting.) CURL proposed the formation of an International Scholarly Communications Forum that would facilitate discussion among the groups on how academic libraries around the world can work together to respond to scholarly communications challenges. CURL was represented by Paul Ayris, Director of Library Services at the University College London, and Martin Lewis, Deputy Librarian at the University of Sheffield. CARL was represented by Tim Mark, CARL Executive Director, and Bill Maes, CARL President from Dalhousie University. Marianne Gaunt, Chair of the ARL Scholarly Communication Committee, and Mary Case, Director OSC, represented ARL. Rick Johnson and Alison Buckholtz attended for SPARC. The represented groups agreed in principle on the value of the new alliance and will be working through their respective Boards over the next month to seek ratification. LIBER has been invited to join as will appropriate organizations in Asia. A follow-up meeting has been scheduled in Washington on October 16 to officially launch the Forum. Please contact Mary Case, for further information. 9. ARL Supports OFT Investigation into STM Market ARL recently submitted a letter to CURL in support of their request that the UK Office of Fair Trading conduct a study of the market for STM journals as suggested by the Competition Commission in its recent report on the Reed Elsevier/Harcourt merger. Although the Competition Commission ultimately approved the deal, they identified several aspects of the STM market that are "unusual and may benefit from further examination." ARL's letter noted some of these troubling aspects such as the exclusive transfer of copyright expected by publishers, the high prices and high levels of price inflation in STM journals, the difficulty of opting for substitutes when dealing with core titles, and the difficulty for new entrants to compete given the time it takes to build brand recognition. Should the OFT decide to proceed with an investigation we will continue to work with colleagues in the UK to support their efforts. 10. RGL-OCLC Release Report on Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository The second RLG-OCLC report intended to advance long-term retention of digital research materials is now available for review and comment. The report, "Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository: Meeting the Needs of Research Resources," can be found at http://www.rlg.org/longterm/attributes01.pdf, or http://www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation, or http://www.oclc.org/presres. This 52-page PDF document is intended to prompt consideration and discussion worldwide, as a step toward achieving an international consensus on the standards, criteria, and mechanisms for certifying digital information repositories. The report contains guidance and recommendations to organizations interested in long-term maintenance of and continuing access to digital materials. It highlights some key strategic issues as it focuses on practical assistance to administrators and implementers of digital archiving services. Comments are encouraged and should be sent to Robin Dale, RLG, by October 12, 2001. 11. ARL Statistics and Measurement Program Update (a) ARL will mail the survey for the ARL Statistics, ARL Law Library Statistics, ARL Medical Library Statistics, and ARL Preservation Statistics in September. A number of enhancements on the data entry interface just completed allow libraries now to see percent changes (increases and decreases) since last year as soon as they submit the data to ARL. (b) ARL Annual Salary Survey 2001-2002. Received 45 out of 122. Please send the data as soon as possible. Survey documents and instructions are also mounted on the web at: http://www.arl.org/stats/coordinator.html. (c) The ARL Statistics 1999-2000 is currently at the printer. Status: complete; final tables are available at: ftp://www.arl.org/stat/statspub-xls. Complete pdf version available at: http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/00pub/00arlstat.pdf. (d) ARL Supplementary Statistics 1999-2000 (received 116). Expected to be completed in September. (e) In production are the following survey datafiles/publications from data collected in prior years: + ARL Academic Law and Medical Library Statistics 1999-2000
In August, there was an IFLA presentation http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla67/papers/034-135e.pdf, and IFLA journal article http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/ifla01.html, that feature the ARL Statistics and Measurement Program. If you need data and files that are not yet publicly available, contact Martha Kyrillidou. 12. International Conference on Performance Measurement Held in Pittsburgh The Fourth Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, co-sponsored by ARL convened on August 12 through 16. 120 delegates, representing 22 countries attended this year's conference in search of "Meaningful Measures for Emerging Realities.". This year the conference had the good fortune to be an official IFLA Satellite Pre-Conference, sponsored by the IFLA Section on Statistics and this connection between the Northumbria Conference and IFLA's Statistics Section holds promise for some fruitful collaboration in the future. With forty stimulating parallel sessions, a plenary session, and six keynote and invited speakers, delegates had difficult choices to make. Topics ran the gamut from theoretical issues in performance measurement to reports on projects in progress, including many of the current efforts underway across the world to find new measures to better reflect the value of libraries to their constituencies. A number of the ARL new measures projects were featured in the program with a number of presentations covering the ARL E-Metrics project and LibQUAL+. For further information about this year's conference, visit the conference web site at: http://www.arl.org/stats/north/index.html; The videos of the plenary, keynote, and invited speakers' talks will be on the ARL web site in the near future. 13. SPARC's Publishing Partner "Orgnic Letters" a Credible Competitor Organic Letters, the peer-reviewed American Chemical Society (ACS) journal launched just two years ago, has exceeded Tetrahedron Letters, the main commercial competitor, in impact factor in the subject category of Organic Chemistry. Organic Letters http://pubs.acs.org/journals/orlef7, has rocketed to number seven in impact factor, according to the 2000 ISI Journal Citation Reports. Tetrahedron Letters comes in at number 13. Organic Letters, which was SPARC's first publishing partnership, received mainstream recognition when The Economist recently called it "a credible competitor" to Tetrahedron Letters. In fact, 2000 ISI Journal Citation Reports Data indicates that, in addition to surpassing Tetrahedron Letters in impact factor, when Organic Letters is evaluated with respect to journals publishing more than 100 articles in 2000, it rises to number two in impact factor. It is bested only by The Journal of Organic Chemistry, the ACS journal to which Organic Letters traces its heritage. According to the 2000 ISI Journal Citation Reports data, out of 48 journals in organic chemistry, Organic Letters' impact factor is 3.367. Tetrahedron Letters' impact factor is 2.558. Organic Letters published its second volume (26 issues) in 2000. In comparison, Tetrahedron Letters published its 41st volume (52 issues) in 2000. Organic Letters has also created price moderation in the field, according to statistics compiled by SPARC. If Tetrahedron Letters had continued on the price increase trajectory it was on in 1995-98 (+15% per year), it would cost $12,000 today. But that steep trajectory immediately flattened with the launch of Organic Letters, which costs less than one-third the price of Tetrahedron Letters. 14. Coalition for Networked Information Update CNI will be a co-sponsor of the next Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, JCDL, which will be held on July 14-18, 2002 in Portland, Oregon. A call for papers and registration information is available at: http://www.jcdl2002.org/. CNI is also a co-sponsor of ECURE 2001: Preservation and Access for Electronic College and University Records, on October 12-13 in Mesa, Arizona. The conference will address topics that include metadata standards, campus policymaking, legal and regulatory issues, electronic publishing of dissertations and theses, and e-mail management. Registration is currently open. Clifford Lynch will provide a keynote. Program information and registration is available at http://www.asu.edu/it/events/ecure/. CNI is partnering with the EDUCAUSE NLII and the TLT Group's Flashlight Project on a Transformative Assessment Program. The first component of the program will be an in-person Focus Session on September 14 in Denver (registration is now closed). Following the session, an online workshop on transformative assessment for teaching and learning involving technology will be offered to institutional teams. For more information, see http://www.educause.edu/nlii/meetings/nlii014/tap.asp, or contact Joan Lippincott at joan@cni.org. A very successful conference on Managing Digital Video Content was held
at Georgia Tech in August. Developed by CNI, Internet2, SURA, and
ViDe, the conference featured a wide range of speakers. Materials
related to the presentations are available at http://www.vide.net/conferences/MDVC_public.ppt.
Streaming video of some of the presentations, including a keynote by Clifford
Lynch, should soon be available. CNI Executive Director Clifford Lynch's
talk, "Personalization and Recommender Systems in the Larger Context: New
Directions and Research Questions," delivered at the Second DELOS
15. IFLA 2001 Conference in Boston Scores a Big Success The 67th Meeting of IFLA held in Boston on August 18-24 was the largest gathering of international librarians ever held. Over 5,330 total attendance was recorded. The conference was also a success in expressing the theme: "Libraries and Librarians Making a Difference in the Knowledge Age." This theme captured the proactive nature of the profession and our ability to positively influence future access to needed information. The content of the conference program was rich and valuable for understanding our role in the emerging knowledge age. The conference celebrated libraries as place. There were 42 tours of local libraries with over 1,000 visiting guests. The three librarybased receptions (Boston Public Library, Harvard University Libraries, and MIT University Libraries) were simply fabulous. The city of Boston closed the street in from of BPL and hosted the food, drink, and related operating costs for the opening reception. Many of the visitors took advantage of Bernie Margolis invitation to tour the BPL as well as to enjoy the delightful desserts. The receptions at Harvard and MIT were also spectacular. Many of the international visitors marveled at the ability of the Americans to host two large receptions simultaneously and then, in the middle of the evening, switch everyone to the companion campus for the second party. Our special thanks go to Sid Verba and Ann Wolpert for the extensive support and gracious hospitality given to our international colleagues. One of the dramatic changes in IFLA in recent years is the growth in the presence and influence of American librarians in IFLA. ARL's Duane Webster was co-chair of the Boston National Organizing Committee and Jim Neal (Columbia) was chair of the fund development committee. At the IFLA meeting in Boston a number of new appointments to IFLA committees were announced and this information is available at the IFLA website http://ifla.org/III/index.htm. Future IFLA meetings are scheduled for: Glasgow, Scotland in 2002; Berlin Germany in 2003; Buenos Aires in 2004; Oslo, Norway in 2005; and Seoul, Korea in 2006. 16. ARL Publications Issued in August and September + ARL Bimonthly Report 217 (August 2001). This issue features articles about the metadata harvesting protocol developed via the Open Archives Initiative, SPARC Europe, libraries and the Tasini case, and the 2001-2002 Leadership and Career Development Program participants. See http://www.arl.org/newsltr/217/index.html. + Electronic Ecology: A Case Study of Electronic Journals in Context. Karla L. Hahn. 79 pp. ISBN 0-918006-48-1. See http://www.arl.org/scomm/ee/index.html. + Johns Hopkins: Nancy Roderer was named Interim Director of the Sheridan Libraries and Interim Dean of University Libraries, beginning September 1. She will also continue in her current role as Director of Welch Medical Library. + New York State: Liz Lane has announced her retirement effective the end of October 2001. + American Library Association: William R. Gordon, Executive Director of ALA since March 1998, will resign August 31, 2002, to begin his retirement. September 12, 2001pm
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