june13_a.indd C&RL News June 2013 278 N e w s f r o m t h e F i e l dDavid Free IU Libraries digitization project creates rich repository of Hoosier authors An Indiana University Libraries project that will allow anyone to research Hoosier au- thors and their bibliographies online—as well as access hundreds of digitized books —is nearly complete. Conceived years ago and funded in 2006 by a Library Services and Technology Act grant through the Indi- ana State Library, the "Indiana Authors and Their Books" project oversaw digitization of a three-volume reference set published by Wabash College that covers nearly 200 years of Indiana's literary history. The books in- clude authors who were born, raised or ed- ucated in Indiana, or who lived in the state for a major portion of their lives. The site includes more than 7,000 author entries and nearly 21,000 book citations. It links directly to approximately 400 digitized copies of selected titles and allows users to search for remaining titles via external services like Google Books, WorldCat, Hathi Trust Digital Library, and the libraries’ online catalog IUCAT. In addition to works of litera- ture, there are a number of nonfiction works, including histories of local towns, counties, and churches. Indiana Authors and Their Books is available at webapp1.dlib.indiana. edu/inauthors. ACRL sets 2013 Legislative Agenda Each year, the ACRL Government Relations Committee, in consultation with the ACRL Board of Directors and staff, formulates an ACRL Legislative Agenda. Drafted with input from key ACRL committees, ACRL leaders, and the ALA Washington Office, the ACRL Legislative Agenda is prioritized and focuses on issues at the national level affecting the welfare of academic and research libraries. The 2013 ACRL Legislative Agenda focuses on three issues that the U.S. Congress has recently taken, or will most likely take, ac- tion on in the year ahead: first sale doctrine, public access to federally funded research, and federal funding for libraries. New this year, the agenda includes a watch list of policy issues of great concern to academic librarians. Legislation on these issues is not likely to arise and, moreover, ACRL does not believe that any legislation about these issues is necessary. Issues on the watch list are: government information, safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, orphan works/section 108, and fair use. ACRL will continue tracking these issues and advocate for the best interests of academic and research libraries, if necessary. The complete legislative agenda is available at www.ala.org/acrl/issues/washingtonwatch /legagenda. Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health adopts open access policy The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University is joining a growing movement among universities and research institutions to make scholarly research avail- able to the public and free online. The Mail- man School is the first school at the uni- versity and one of the first of U.S. schools of public health to adopt an open access resolution, which calls for faculty and other researchers at the school to post their papers in openly available online repositories such as Columbia’s Academic Commons. The resolution passed unanimously by a vote of the standing Faculty Steering Committee and went into effect May 1, 2013. “We applaud the leadership of the Mail- man School as the first Columbia school and among the first U.S. schools of public health to advance open access to research articles. It will serve as a model as the Libraries con- tinue to work with other Columbia schools, centers, and institutes to expand the commit- ment and participation,” said James G. Neal, June 2013 279 C&RL News Academic librarians discuss cloud computing at international conference Cloud computing is an emerging area in the profession of Library and Information Sci- ence, but India took the lead to host the Sec- ond International Conference on Academic Libraries with the theme “Academic Library Services Through Cloud Computing: Moving Libraries to the Web.” This conference was held on the beautiful campus of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University in New Delhi from February 12 to 15, 2013, and attracted academic librarians from many countries, including Australia, England, France, India, Mauritius, Switzerland, and the United States. Marshall Breeding, an authority on cloud computing and a well-known author/speaker, was the plenary speaker on the opening day and he spoke on the “Cloud Based Tech- nologies Enable Large Scale Collaboration for Academic Libraries.” During his talk he mentioned many new and important develop- ments in the field of library automation and the need to keep-up with the developments for the benefit of all users because cloud computing libraries will be relieved from maintaining hardware and software. Arthur Smith of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) during his plenary talk spoke on the cross linking of data on OCLC World Share Platforms: Features and Tech- nologies.” He is of the view that users and librarians are more interested in finding the information and answers to their questions regardless of the source of the information. Ravindra N. Sharma in his keynote ad- dress, “Academic Libraries and Technology in the Twenty-First Century,” discussed why a majority of developing nations are behind in introducing technology in their academic libraries. He suggested that rich nations of the world and United Nations should make a commitment to work together to remove all barriers in the new global environment of cooperation, development, and resource shar- ing to help academic libraries of developing nations succeed and invest wisely in introduc- ing technology, including cloud computing, for the benefit of information seekers. Nicholas Fleury of Switzerland Inter- national Organization for Standardization informed the delegates that to date 19,500 standards have been developed on differ- ent aspects in the world, but no standards have been developed on cloud computing. Alan Hopkinson of Middlesex University, in London, England, spoke on the topic of “What We Need to Know about Cloud Computing in Academic Libraries.” He mentioned that libraries in developing na- tions are moving to cloud in patches and cautioned libraries by saying “Do not throw yourself into the cloud until the fog clears.” A highlight of the conference was an ex- cellent plenary talk by N. Vijayaditya, retired director general of the National Informatics Center, and a fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India, on “Cloud Computing Indian Initiatives.” He discussed information technology and challenges and said that cloud computing was introduced in 1996 with the introduction of Hotmail, Amazon Web Service in 2006, Gmail, and Microsoft Azure in 2007. Vijayaditya mentioned that according to Forbes survey, “Cloud comput- ing market will reach $241 billion by 2020 and cloud- based services will grow from $12.1 billion to $35.6 billion in 2015.” India is adopting fast to the cloud computing but he warned that the privacy, security, legal jurisdiction, and other concerns of cloud computing must be addressed for academic and other types of libraries. More than 100 librarians, library educa- tors, IT professionals, and other prominent leaders from all over the world presented papers and talks in various sessions in this well-organized conference, which empha- sized the new roles academic librarians must play in the changing environment of technology and adopt new management styles to prepare academic libraries for the next generation of students, faculty, scholars, and other users in the 21st cen- tury.—Ravinda. N. Sharma, Monmouth University, rsharma@monmouth.edu C&RL News June 2013 280 vice president for information services and university librarian. The Columbia University Libraries will be- gin working immediately to support Mailman School researchers as they make their articles available through Academic Commons, the repository platform hosted by the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS), a division of the Columbia University Libraries/ Information Services. HBCU Library Alliance announces ASERL Librarian Exchange participants The Historically Black Colleges and Univer- sities (HBCU) Library Alliance recently an- nounced the participants of the Librarian Exchange Program with the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL). A component of the alliance’s Leadership In- stitute, the Librarian Exchange Program fo- cuses on development of emerging leaders at HBCU libraries. The goals of the exchange program are to develop and foster connec- tions between libraries and strengthen skills of emerging leaders through focused initia- tives to improve library services and pro- grams. Each exchange includes significant time on site at the partner libraries—typically about two weeks—to design and plan implementa- tion of a project that is strategically important to the HBCU library. The first set of exchanges occurred in the summer of 2006, with addi- tional exchanges in 2008 and 2010. By identify- ing, analyzing, designing, and implementing these projects, both ASERL and HBCU librar- ians gain valuable insight into the workings of each other’s library, and build new project management and leadership skills. A list of participants and projects is available at www. hbculibraries.org/docs/0415PressRelease.pdf. 2013 CLIR Mellon Dissertation Fellows named Seventeen graduate students have been se- lected to receive awards this year under the Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources, administered by the Council on Library and Information Resourc- es (CLIR). The fellowships are intended to help graduate students in the humanities and related social science fields pursue research wherever relevant sources are available; gain skill and creativity in using primary source materials in libraries, archives, museums, and related repositories; and provide suggestions to CLIR about how such source materials can be made more accessible and useful. The fel- lowships carry stipends of up to $25,000 each to support dissertation research for periods of up to 12 months. More information on the program, including a list of fellows is avail- able, is available at www.clir.org/fellowships /mellon. UNT Portal to Texas History named TLA Project of the Year The Portal to Texas History, administered by the University of North Texas (UNT) Librar- ies, has received the Wayne Williams Library Project of the Year Award from the Texas Library Association. The award recognizes a project that exemplifies the highest levels of achievement, professional standards, and in- spiration to other libraries. The Portal to Tex- as History was created in 2002 by the UNT Libraries’ Digital Projects Unit to provide on- line access to books, photographs, artifacts, maps, newspapers, letters, and other historic materials from more than 200 archives, his- torical societies, small and large libraries, mu- seums, and private collections from all areas of Texas. With more than 3.3 million pages of materials, the portal incudes many primary source historical materials, such as diaries and personal accounts of events and daily life. The portal is available at http://texashis- tory.unt.edu/. NCSU Libraries project shares stories of past student leaders The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries launched a new Student Leadership Initiative project as part of the dedication of the new James B. Hunt Jr. Library in April 2013. The Web site uses video oral histo- ries, photographs, and other documents to chronicle the experiences and impact of indi- June 2013 281 C&RL News Tech Bits . . . Brought to you by the ACRL ULS Technol- ogy in University Libraries Committee Looking for quick way to create tutorials on the go? The Explain Everything iPad app is a great tool that lets you do just that. Using the white board features and sound recording capabilities, you can annotate documents such as Power Point presenta- tions, images, and text files or open a Web page and quickly create a video showing how to search a database or find a specific resource. You can even embed videos, adding additional functional- ity to your final project. Once your explanation is finished, export your project as an image, PDF, or video. Explain Everything even lets you upload your files to other services such as Evernote, Drop- box, or YouTube. For a little app with a low price ($2.99), Explain Everything can provide big results. — Michelle Armstrong Albertsons Library, Boise State University . . . Explain Everything www.explaineverything.com viduals whose formative time at NCSU shaped their subsequent careers and whose memories provide a valuable and inter- esting window into the period in which they helped shape the university. The initiative currently highlights more than 130 former student leaders and provides engaging video inter- views with more than 30 who share memories of their expe- riences on campus. The proj- ect will add new profiles as research continues and is also available as a multimedia pre- sentation on the large-scale vi- sualization display in the iPearl Immersion Theater in the Hunt Library. The project is available online at http://d.lib.ncsu.edu /student-leaders/. EBSCO launches Civil War Primary Source Documents EBSCO recently introduced Civil War Primary Source Documents, a com- prehensive collection of primary source ma- terials chronicling aspects of the American Civil War. Drawn from the holdings of the New York Historical Society, the collection captures various accounts of the Civil War as it was experienced on land and sea. Civil War Primary Source Documents represents both Northern and Southern perspectives. The ar- chive focuses on the war as it was fought from 1861 to 1865 and includes important contextual documents in the crucial years leading up to the war and after the fall of the Confederacy. The collection is comprised of more than 110,000 pages and includes information from more than 400 individual collections. The invaluable primary resources include original manuscripts of letters, diaries, administra- tive records, photographs, illustrations, and artifacts. Personal accounts appear in vari- ous scrapbook journals and family portraits, and strategic initiatives are evident in maps featuring details of troop movements and lo- cal landmarks. Highlights include letters and first-person accounts from such well-known leaders as Ulysses S. Grant; the papers of David Cronin, a famous soldier and artist; soldiers’ diaries chronicling daily life and experiences as prisoners of war; Union Defence Commit- tee records; and Confederate Army records. Springer signs e-book deal with Virtual Library of Virginia, Washington Research Library Consortium Springer recently announced that it has signed a deal with the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) and the Washington Research Library Consor- tium (WRLC) to provide students and research- ers from across more than 80 campuses access to Springer e-book content. With the completion of this deal, users at the private and public institutions belonging to VIVA and WRLC will have access to tens of thousands of Springer’s eBooks via SpringerLink. For more information, visit springer.com/ebooks.