Member News & Announcements, June IO 2022

Industry Leadership

Dalhousie Libraries Welcomes New Dean of Libraries Michael Vandenburg
Dalhousie University, L.S.A. Consortia Member, Blog Post, May 19, 2022

On August 15, Michael Vandenburg will begin his five-year appointment as Dean of Libraries at Dalhousie University. Current Dean of Libraries Donna Bourne-Tyson will be retiring after eleven years of extraordinary leadership.

Since May of 2021, Michael has been the Interim Executive Director of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). OCUL is the consortium of Ontario’s 21 university libraries, committed to maximizing collective expertise and resources through collaborative efforts. While at OCUL, Michael provided leadership for current initiatives and services, and actively engaged with member library directors to review the consortium’s governance and develop new strategic directions.

DEIA Efforts

Ovid’s curated Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Collection targets healthcare disparities, culturally sensitive care, and diverse staffing
Wolters Kluwer, Voting Member, News Announcement, May 10, 2022

Wolters Kluwer, Health announced that its medical research platform, Ovid®, has launched a collection of research articles, books, and media called the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) collection. The collection aims to help users address equitable healthcare delivery, and how to reduce healthcare disparities, improve culturally sensitive care, and drive more diverse staffing.

"Wolters Kluwer's focus on providing the best care everywhere made a collection like this imperative. A lack of health equity and disparity of outcomes among different populations, brought to the forefront by COVID, has become a major focus for many leading health organizations," said Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Medicine Segment, Health Learning, Research & Practice business at Wolters Kluwer.

Open Access, Open Science

Partnership with Max Planck Society marks Springer Nature’s largest open access book deal
Springer Nature, Voting Member, Press Release, May 11, 2022

Springer Nature has signed its largest institutional OA book deal with the Max Planck Society through the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL). The agreement covers all Springer Nature book imprints, across a broad range of disciplines, providing OA funding to affiliated authors from over 80 Max Planck Institutes. 

This agreement marks the fifth OA book partnership1 and the second2 and largest national OA book deal for the publisher to date3 - a pivotal step in driving forward the sustainable transition to OA for book authors. With research showing that OA books are downloaded ten times more often and cited 2.4 times4 more than non-OA books, Max Planck authors publishing as part of this agreement will benefit from even greater reach and impact of their work. 

Wiley and French Consortium COUPERIN Sign Open Access Agreement
Wiley, Voting Member, Press Release, May 11, 2022

Global research and education leader Wiley today announced a new three-year agreement with COUPERIN, a consortium of higher education and research institutions in France.

This agreement is the first of its size signed by COUPERIN. Researchers from 130 member institutions across France will be granted access to all of Wiley’s hybrid and subscription journals and will be able to publish accepted articles open access in all of Wiley's 1,400 hybrid journals. Under the terms of the agreement, individual institutions may additionally offer open access publishing in fully gold journals to their authors.

This agreement will result in more than 2,700 open access articles from authors affiliated with French institutions each year – an agreement that will transition groundbreaking research from across France to immediate open access and enable the world to benefit from its discoveries.

Advancing Open Science in Africa – three organizations collaborate to implement open science principles in seven partner states
Public Library of Science (PLOS), Voting Member, Blog Post, May 3, 2022

The East African Science and Technology Commission (EASTECO), the Public Library of Science (PLOS), and the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) today announced that they will collaborate in the implementation of Open Science and Open Access principles for EAC Partner States, which include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.

“We are eager to collaborate with PLOS and TCC Africa to increase the adoption of Open Science principles for our member states,” said Dr  Sylvance Okoth, Executive Secretary, East African Science and Technology Commission. “This partnership will also enable us to better promote the benefits of Open Access publishing for researchers in East Africa.”

Partnerships and Collaborations

Spanish Research to Benefit from a new Read & Publish Agreement between AIP Publishing and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
AIP Publishing, LLC, Voting Member, News Announcement, May 11, 2022

AIP Publishing, a leading not-for-profit scholarly publisher in the physical sciences, is pleased to announce a partnership with Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), in a three-year Read and Publish agreement.

The agreement, which will be in effect through the end of 2024, enables all researchers at CSIC – an organization made up of more than 100 institutes and centers distributed throughout Spain – to publish open access without incurring article processing charges (APC) in a selection of AIP Publishing’s peer-reviewed journals.

Grants and Awards

National Archives Receives TMF Award to Modernize Mission-Critical IT
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Voting Member, Press Release, May 24, 2022

The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) has awarded $9.1 million to the National Archives and Records Administration to upgrade two mission-critical legacy information systems to cloud-based platforms: the Archives and Records Centers Information System (ARCIS) and the Case Management and Reporting System (CMRS). These upgrades will transform operations and make federal records more quickly, reliably, and securely accessible for veterans and their families, federal agency customers, and the American public.

Americans use the records in NARA’s custody to better exercise their rights and more easily access government benefits to which they are due. Modernizing ARCIS and CMRS will directly benefit our citizens by accelerating the delivery of records to citizen requesters and improving the customer experience for the public and our federal agency partners. These upgrades will improve system security and service for the more than 1.5 million annual requests from veterans and their families for records needed to access benefits, plus the nearly eight million annual requests from other federal agencies for records that they need to provide citizen services and fulfill their missions.

Emory’s Rose Library receives NEH grant for Black Print Culture project
Emory University Library, L.S.A. Member, Blog Post, May 3, 2022

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a planning grant of $46,630 to the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University for The Wayfinder Project: Revealing Black Print Culture to a Linked World, 1830-.

The Wayfinder project is an initiative to reimagine James Danky and Maureen Hady’s 1998 “African American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography.” The project will add new serials to the bibliography and republish the current volume using a linked data framework to make it more searchable, discoverable, and usable. The newspapers and periodicals at the core of this project contain the richest, most detailed record of 19th and 20th century African American life and thought. They are an unparalleled resource for understanding the African American past.

Libraries, Collections & Archives

UMASS Libraries Launch New Website
University of Massachusetts, Amherst Libraries, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, May 23, 2022

The UMass Amherst Libraries go live June 1 with a redesigned website.

A beta version of the site has been operational alongside the existing site since mid-March, which has allowed the new site to be reviewed for accessibility, accuracy and ease of use, as well as ensuring alignment with campus style.

With approximately one million patrons visiting the Libraries’ website to access services and resources each year, this new site represents an investment in access for our students, faculty, staff, and community members.

Atlanta University Center to Become 127th Member of ARL
Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Voting Member, News Announcement, May 6, 2022

At its Spring 2022 Association Meeting held in Toronto, Canada, April 25–April 28, the membership of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) voted to invite the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center (AUC), Inc., to join ARL as the 127th member, effective July 1, 2022. Loretta Parham, AUC CEO and library director, accepted the invitation.

“This membership is a hallmark moment for the Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library, one in which we can deepen our commitment to excellence in our provision of information, research, and preservation services for the four HBCU institutions that we support. We are eager to engage, contribute, and learn from the work of ARL, and we are grateful for the invitation to be a member of such a reputable body of research libraries and archives,” said Parham.

Preserving Endangered Languages
University of Texas, Austin, L.S.A. Member, Featured Article, April 29, 2022

Language is so central to humanity that it frequently takes on the involuntary characteristics of breathing or eating—words seemingly form in our minds and fall effortlessly from our mouths or onto a page in a way that can go without notice or concern. It’s only when we lose our ability to communicate that we realize how important a shared language is to our collective experience, and a better understanding of ourselves.

Such is the inspiration at the heart of the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), a digital repository of multimedia resources in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America, founded in 2000 at The University of Texas at Austin and located today at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.

Digitizing Rare Collections with the Shirley
Washington University in St. Louis Libraries, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, April 27, 2022

It’s Preservation Week! The Preservation and Digitization unit wanted to take this opportunity to announce an expansion of in-house digitization capabilities for oversize and color/detail critical materials. This addition was made possible through a generous $100,000 gift from James and Joan Schiele. The gift was made in honor of Shirley K. Baker, former Vice Chancellor of Scholarly Resources and Dean of University Libraries in celebration of her long and impactful career in the Department of Special Collections. The new equipment thus has acquired the nickname “The Shirley” in her honor.

The new system consists of a 40” x 60” Titan copy stand from Digital Transitions and Phase One 150-megapixel large-format camera system. This system is designed specifically for digitizing cultural heritage material, allowing us to exceed the industry’s most stringent quality control standards while enhancing already efficient workflows and practices.

UBC Library opens new Conservation Space in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
University of British Columbia, L.S.A. Consortia Member, News Announcement, April 27, 2022

A specialized Conservation Space designed to facilitate the conservation, preservation, and treatment of the library’s physical materials has recently been opened at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The creation of this space will enable UBC’s Preservation Unit to work with greater efficiency and tackle more demanding and challenging responsibilities. The Conservation Space, which opened in early September 2021, is supervised by conservator Anne Lama, conservation technician Hannah McKendry, and student employees.

“The Conservation Space is an open window to communicate to the community the variety of expertise available at UBC Library and how we are working hard to facilitate access to the library’s collections,” says Lama.

Financials, Mergers, and Acquisitions

UGA Press Acquires NewSouth Books
University of Georgia, L.S.A. Member, News Announcement, May 12, 2022

The University of Georgia Press, a respected publisher of global scholarship, creative and literary works, and general interest books on the American South, announced today its acquisition of NewSouth Books.

Based in Montgomery, Alabama, NewSouth Books is an independent trade publisher widely recognized for its focus on Southern culture and history, particularly civil and human rights. NewSouth was launched in 2000 by Suzanne La Rosa and Randall Williams; La Rosa is the company’s publisher, Williams its editor-in-chief