Here's an excerpt:

ARL makes publicly available the ARL Library Investment Index (previously named the ARL Expenditures-Focused Index). Beginning with data for 2005-06, this Index replaces the public availability of the ARL Membership Criteria Index. This new Index is highly correlated with the ARL Membership Criteria Index and less affected by changes in the collections variables. The ARL Library Investment Index calculates principal component scores and the analysis is based on all university member libraries' data (as compared with the ARL Membership Criteria Index, which is based on the 34 founding members of the Association). It is a summary measure of relative size among the university members of the association and has also been calculated retrospectively beginning with data from 2002-03. The Index scores are rounded to two decimal places, which may give the appearance of identical scores (and thus ranks) for some institutions; in fact, when the complete principal component score is calculated, it is extended to higher precision decimal places. Each institution has a unique result and place in the rank order.

| New: Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Charles B. Lowry has announced that he will retire from his position as Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) at the end of December 2012. By announcing his retirement plans now, Lowry provides the ARL Board of Directors with time for a search and a seamless transition of leadership.

Lowry was appointed Executive Director in 2008 for a three-year term, which was extended for an additional two years at the request of the ARL Board. He has led ARL through significant expansion in membership and renewal of its strategic plan. During his tenure, ARL's capacities and offerings have been strengthened and expanded. Guided by Lowry's leadership, the Association:

• gained three new members—University of Calgary, University of Ottawa, and the US National Archives and Records Administration;
• renewed its strategic plan twice;
• led the reshaping of the Library Copyright Alliance;
• navigated the difficult economic downturn that began in 2008;
• expanded ARL's Public Policies capacity, a vital strategic direction; and
• conducted successful searches to replace three highly accomplished senior staff essential to the Association's mission.

| New: Google Books Bibliography, Version 7 | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

H. Austin Booth has been named vice provost for university libraries at the University at Buffalo, Harvey G. Stenger, UB interim provost, announced today. Her appointment is effective immediately.

Booth has served as interim associate vice president for university libraries since June 1, 2010. . . .

As vice provost for university libraries, Booth is responsible for nine libraries that serve UB's 12 schools and colleges, manages an annual budget of $20 million and oversees a staff of 150.

UB's library system is the largest and most comprehensive in the State University of New York and includes more than 4 million print volumes, access to more than 50,000 electronic journals and the largest collection of James Joyce manuscripts, notebooks and letters in the world. . . .

Prior to her appointment as interim associate vice president, Booth served as director of collections and co-director of the Arts and Sciences Libraries.

Booth, who holds the rank of full librarian, joined UB in 1997 and received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Librarianship in 2005.

Her research focuses on digital culture, and on higher education and information technology. She earned a master's degree in library and information science from the University of California-Berkeley and holds a master's degree in English language and literature and a graduate certificate in women's studies from the University of Michigan, where she was named University Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor and held a Mellon Fellowship. She received bachelor's degrees in English and economics from Cornell University.

| New: Google Books Bibliography, Version 7 | Digital Scholarship |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Columbia University Libraries is joining a growing movement among universities and research institutions to make scholarly research free and available to the public online. The Libraries is among the first departments at the university to adopt an open access resolution, which calls for faculty and other researchers to post their journal articles in online repositories such as Columbia's Academic Commons. In January, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory became the first program at Columbia to adopt an open access resolution.

The resolution for the Libraries, which goes into effect on June 1, 2011, will require librarians and other professional staff members to deposit their published scholarly works into Academic Commons or another repository that makes the work publicly available. By posting articles in an open-access repository, authors are able to make their works freely accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection and discoverable via Google Scholar and other search tools, thus promoting a wider dissemination of research and information.

"The Libraries at Columbia have championed open access to research,” James G. Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, said. "It is appropriate that its professional staff should model this policy and place their works in repositories for wide access and use."

The resolution covers only scholarly journal articles and is not retroactive. There is an opt-out feature built into the resolution, with respect to publishing an article in a journal that insists on exclusivity.  The resolution will also cover Health Sciences Library professional staff.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2008–2009, which presents data that describe collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 62 medical libraries at ARL member institutions in the US and Canada.

In 2008–2009, the reporting health sciences libraries held a median of 230,011 volumes, spent a total of $235,821,026, and employed 2,131 FTE staff. Expenditures for materials and staff accounted for the bulk of total expenditures, at approximately 50% and 41% respectively. Respondents reported spending a total of $83,986,222 for electronic materials, or an average of approximately 76% of their total materials budgets; this includes a total of $78,539,253 for electronic serials.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Academic Law Library Statistics 2008–2009, which presents data that describe collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 72 law libraries at ARL member institutions in the US and Canada.

In 2008–2009, the reporting law libraries held a median of 355,922 volumes, spent a total of $213,618,759, and employed 2,057 FTE staff. Expenditures for materials and staff accounted for the bulk of total expenditures, at approximately 47% and 46% respectively. Respondents reported spending a total of $21,860,327 for electronic materials, or an average of approximately 27% of their total materials budgets; this includes a total of $18,940,834 for electronic serials.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Statistics 2008–2009, the latest in a series of annual publications that describe the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of ARL's member libraries. Of the 124 members in 2008–2009, 114 were university libraries (17 in Canada and 107 in the US); the remaining 10 were public, governmental, and nonprofit research libraries (two in Canada, eight in the US).

ARL libraries are a relatively small subset of libraries in North America, but they account for a large portion of academic library resources in terms of assets, budgets, and the number of users they serve. The total library expenditures of all 124 member libraries in 2008–2009 was slightly more than $4 billion; of that total, roughly $3.1 billion was spent by the 114 university libraries and slightly more than $940 million the 10 nonuniversity libraries.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Here's an excerpt:

This consent order presents a unique opportunity to shape best practices in reader privacy for a major online service provider. The marketplaces for e-books and for book search are both in formative stages, and the standards adopted by Google can be highly influential for other market participants. We urge the Commission to confirm that reader privacy deserves the same respect in the online world that it has long demanded in the physical world by insisting on strong protections for reader privacy in the comprehensive privacy program.

Read more about it at "In Comments to FTC, ARL Suggests Privacy Oversight for Google Books."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Google Books Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Save your work in perpetuity with a new tool called Libra. A joint project between ITC and the University Library System, and requested by the Faculty Senate, Libra allows any employee of the University who produces scholarly works to store their papers, and in the near future, theses and datasets, in a secure location. Libra was developed specifically as a repository for peer-reviewed, scholarly articles, although other works such as books may also be deposited, as long as sufficient rights have been retained by the authors.

Read more about it at "LIBRA: University of Virginia's Hydra-based Fedora Repository for Open Access Materials."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Denise is currently the Strategic and Organizational Research Librarian at the University of Kansas, where she previously had oversight of library and information technology activities as Vice Provost for Information Services and Chief Information Officer from 2005 to 2010. Her experience includes lead roles in library research, library administration and planning, information management and policy, and program assessment at the University of Virginia, the University of Kansas, and Syracuse University. She was the acting University Librarian at Syracuse before returning to the University of Kansas to assume the Vice Provost role. She holds a master's degree in library science from the University of Oklahoma and is an alumna of the Association of Research Libraries Leadership and Career Development Program. Her research interests include organizational and change leadership, an area in which she has produced several publications and presentations. Denise has served on numerous library and information technology advisory committees and boards, including the Depository Library Council of the U.S. Public Printer, BioOne, the Simmons College Ph.D. program in Managerial Leadership, the Great Plains Network, Educause, and the Kansas Research and Education Network. Her background makes her extremely well suited to lead our libraries into the future.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Here's an excerpt from the policy:

To promote openness and fairness among libraries licensing scholarly resources, Cornell University Library will not enter into vendor contracts that require nondisclosure of pricing information or other information that does not constitute a trade secret. All new and renewed licenses submitted with nondisclosure clauses will not be signed but henceforth will be referred to the Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Special Collections for further negotiation. . . .

It has become apparent to the library community that the anticompetitive conduct engaged in by some publishing firms is in part a result of the inclusion of nondisclosure agreements in contracts.¹ As Robert Darnton recently noted, by "keeping the terms secret, … one library cannot negotiate for cheaper rates by citing an advantage obtained by another library."² For this reason, the International Coalition of Library Consortia's "Statement of Current Perspective and Preferred Practices for the Selection and Purchase of Electronic Information" states that "Non-disclosure language should not be required for any licensing agreement, particularly language that would preclude library consortia from sharing pricing and other significant terms and conditions with other consortia."³ The more that libraries are able to communicate with one another about vendor offers, the better they are able to weigh the costs and benefits of any individual offer. An open market will result in better licensing terms.

Read more about it at "Cornell U. Library Takes a Stand with Journal Vendors: Prices Will Be Made Public."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Gibbons joined the University of Rochester in 2000 as the digital initiatives librarian of the River Campus Libraries, and over the years assumed greater and more diversified responsibilities at the University. She was appointed to her present position in 2008.

She is well known in the library world, most significantly for the library user studies at Rochester she has undertaken since 2004. In collaboration with an anthropologist, Gibbons determined how faculty and students do their academic work, find information, and make use of the physical and technological resources offered by the libraries. The results have led to service, collections and physical space changes in the River Campus Libraries designed to better meet user needs. . . .

Gibbons received a B.A. in history from the University of Delaware in 1992, and in 1995, and master's degrees in both history and library science from Indiana University-Bloomington. More recently, she returned to school while working full-time to earn both a M.B.A. in 2002 from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an Ed.D. in higher education administration from the University of Rochester in 2009.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This report is the summary of a project funded by ARL to investigate how research libraries might provide support to print-only publishers in order to ensure long-term digital access to their content. The final report was prepared for ARL by project consultants, October Ivins and Judy Luther.

The project was conducted from 2009 to 2010, and the report to ARL includes identification of the extent and character of journal titles for which support would be necessary, reviews of the capabilities and interest of research library publishing services to support the publishers, and recommendations for actions ARL and member libraries might undertake to address the needs of the editors and publishers of these small print-only titles. Appendices provide talking points for campus outreach, an annotated bibliography, and an overview of the landscape for publishing options.

For more information on the project, please visit http://www.arl.org/sc/models/lib-publishing/pub-support/index.shtml.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Larry Alford, vice-provost for libraries, university librarian and dean of university libraries at Temple University in Philadelphia had been named to succeed Chief Librarian Carol Moore. He will take up his post no later than Aug. 1; the appointment ends June 30, 2018.

Alford has a long and distinguished library career. Prior to joining Temple in 2005, he spent 30 years with his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at North Carolina, he served in a variety of positions, including deputy university librarian and interim university librarian.

At Temple, he was responsible for a library system that includes the five libraries of the Paley library system, the Ginsburg Health Sciences Library, and the Podiatric Medicine Library and also for the Temple University Press which publishes approximately 60 scholarly monographs per year. During his tenure there, he has led a transformation of the Temple library system.

His engagement in numerous library operations, including the development of print and electronic collections, library services, and the renovation and building of libraries, has resulted in a superb vision for research libraries in the 21st Century. Alford has a lengthy and successful record of leadership in co-operative activities among libraries, first in North Carolina and then nationally and globally, culminating in his chairing for the last four years the board of trustees of OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), a global library cooperative that serves 72,000 libraries. . . .

He earned both his bachelor’s degree and his MLS at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the School of Information and Library Science in May 2005.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Since 2006, Walker has guided planning and coordination of all library services for the wide variety of disciplines represented at a large research institution. She has been responsible for Virginia's library administrative services, including finances and budget, human resources, facilities planning and maintenance, and management information services. She leads the library's strategic planning processes and directs the daily operations of a system with 12 locations, 230 faculty and staff and an operating budget of $23 million.

Among the initiatives Walker has led or in which she has played a key role were the planning and construction of a new special collections library, a major renovation of the Charles L. Brown Science & Engineering Library, opening a café in the lobby of the main library (Virginia's was among the first University libraries to do so), and long-range re-imagining of the physical facilities of the main library in preparation for a major renovation of a building that is more than 70 years old.

Walker also collaborated with colleagues in the university's information technology division on an incentive and training program for humanities faculty to help them incorporate technology in their classrooms, and more recently to coordinate a strategic institutional shift from providing computer labs to making it easier for students to use their own laptops throughout the libraries and across campus. She also developed and helped to redirect collection development and management strategies as the balance has shifted increasingly from all print and physical formats to digital.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |