Month: October 2015

2015-10-22

On October 19, 2015, the Senate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus approved a University Policy on Open Access to Research Articles. This policy grants the University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise all rights under copyright to the scholarly articles produced by faculty members.

In the policy, the faculty observed that Open Access, by providing the widest possible dissemination for research, enhances benefits to the state, region, and world while also raising the visibility and profile of the researchers at the University. Under the policy, researchers will retain copyright to their work. Work published before adoption of the policy is exempt from it. Further waiver provisions are available for specific articles upon request.

“We in the Library are eager to help the faculty implement this ambitious policy,” said Aaron McCollough, head of scholarly communications and publishing within the Library’s Office of Research. “Many details remain to be clarified and refined, but we are, as ever, proud to be faculty partners, and I’m confident that the Senate’s decision will help position the University to increase the impact of its research outputs in ways that will be beneficial for it and the world.”

With this important new policy, the University of Illinois joins other premier research institutions, including Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California (whose policy serves as a model for the Illinois policy) in affirming the importance of access to high-quality research without barriers to access and use. The policy is based on recommendations from the University of Illinois University Senates Conference (USC) to the Senates for the Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana-Champaign campuses. Further implementation plans and informational campaigns are forthcoming, as recommended by the USC.
To view the policy, visit www.senate.illinois.edu/sc1512.pdf .

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2015-10-19

The Illinois Digital Newspaper Project has joined the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities in celebrating a major milestone for Chronicling America, a free, searchable database of historic U.S. newspapers; more than 10 million pages have been posted to chroniclingamerica.loc.gov . The University Library has contributed over 300,000 pages, including historic Illinois newspapers such as The Chicago Eagle , The Ottawa Free Trader , and The Broad Ax .

Since 2009, the Illinois Digital Newspaper Project has contributed 24 titles to Chronicling America; a full list of digitized Illinois titles is located at library.illinois.edu/inp . These newspapers, spanning 1865-1922, chronicle Illinois life, including politics, agriculture, entertainment, and more. Hundreds of thousands of pages of Illinois papers are freely available through Chronicling America and the University Library’s Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections ( idnc.library.illinois.edu ).

Launched by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 2007, Chronicling America provides enhanced and permanent access to historically significant newspapers published in the United States between 1836 and 1922. It is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a joint effort between the two agencies and partners in 40 states and territories.

“Chronicling America is one of the great online treasures, a remarkable window into our history and a testament to the power of collaborative efforts among cultural institutions nationwide,” said Mark Sweeney, the Library’s Associate Librarian for Library Services. “The Library of Congress is proud to work alongside NEH and all our partner institutions to make this vision a growing reality. In the coming years, we look forward to adding newspapers from the remaining states and territories, as new partners join the program.”

“We at the National Endowment for the Humanities are proud to support the Chronicling America historic newspaper project,” said NEH Chairman William Adams. “This invaluable resource preserves and makes available to all the first draft of America’s history so that we can see the ideas and events that shaped our republic unfold in the headlines of their times.”

The NDNP awards grants to entities in each state and territory to identify and digitize historic newspaper content. Awardees receive NEH funding to select and digitize 100,000 pages of historic newspapers published in their states between 1836 and 1922. Uniform technical specifications are provided to ensure consistency of all content, and digital files are transferred to the Library of Congress for long-term management and access. The first awards were made in 2005. Since then, NEH has awarded more than $30 million in support of the project.

For more information about the Library of Congress, visit loc.gov .

For additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities, visit neh.gov .

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2015-10-01

L. Brian Stauffer

News release courtesy of the Illinois News Bureau :

A four-year, $1 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will help University of Illinois humanities scholars identify digital publishing options and produce new publications that will best disseminate their research.

The collaborative project involves the University Library, the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities and the department of African American studies. It aims to help scholars understand the digital publishing options available to them and identify those that will best meet their publication goals, whether it’s gaining tenure, providing the broadest possible access to their research or using multimedia formats to present their work.

“This is a time of enormous change in all aspects of scholarship and scholarly publishing. Things are happening very rapidly,” said Allen Renear, GSLIS dean.

“Researchers at GSLIS will be talking with scholars about their publishing needs, looking at the digital options available and assessing their pros and cons,” said Megan Senseney, a GSLIS project coordinator.

One focus will be on projects funded through Humanities Without Walls, a Mellon-funded consortium managed by IPRH that links research centers at 15 universities, including the University of Illinois.

“There are some natural fits between some of the (HWW) projects and this sort of publishing,” said Antoinette Burton, interim director of the IPRH. “For example, one of the projects that has received grant funding will look at the experience of Hmong immigrants in Laos, Paris and the Midwest, and will include a film.”

GSLIS researchers also will work with scholars in the department of African American studies and the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Library Alliance who are involved in projects looking at access to information technology and how to address the “digital divide.”

“The digital divide also applies to higher education,” said Ronald Bailey, head of the department of African American studies. “We want to bring the benefits of these new approaches to a wider audience in higher education and in community-based educational institutions. Part of this is helping people understand how you can do more in terms of making scholarship come alive using these digital formats.”

The Mellon project will provide support for related research by scholars at historically black colleges and universities, as well as research centers, libraries, museums and professional organizations focused on black studies. Bailey said the projects in African American studies can serve as a model for what scholars in other ethnic studies areas can do with the new technology.

In addition to producing a series of publications from HWW and African American studies, the project will develop a digital edition on the topic of scholarly publishing, which will be published using recommended tools.

Researchers will work with the University Library’s Scholarly Commons, which provides research and technology support services to faculty members, and which will serve as the central location for the digital publishing initiative. “The Library is perfectly situated to play a leadership role as an institution in pioneering new technologies,” Renear said.

“In addition to being a hub that supports scholarly communication activities, the Library also provides digital preservation services,” said University Librarian John Wilkin. “We have a tremendous digital preservation repository supporting many types of media. It can support vast amounts of the type of content that makes digital publishing dynamic.”

“The Library will be involved in exploring various digital platforms and how to adapt research to all the various media an author would like to use, as well as how best to make digitally published research available,” said library professor Aaron McCollough.

One of the goals of the project is to develop a model for other universities for assessing the needs of scholars and providing support for various publication options. McCollough said that will include best practices for using the various digital publishing tools, and for moving a project from initial creation to publication to the audience.

Wilkin noted that the Mellon Foundation supports the digital publishing tools Scalar (for including multiple forms of media and various representations of an argument within an author’s work) and Omeka (for displaying exhibits and images), and the U. of I. initiative will help bring together a number of Mellon-funded projects, including those publishing platforms and HWW.

Senseney emphasized that formal print publication through university presses will still be important to scholars, and the digital publishing initiative will consider how to adapt early digital forms of publication to print and how users might move back and forth between print and digital publication of research.

“It’s a grand experiment in interdisciplinary collaboration and its relationship to digital humanities and dissemination. That is really exciting,” Burton said.

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).