GOAL III : Support electronic publishing, scholarly communication, and creative expression.
1. Operate an electronic publishing program capable of systematic production and distribution of journals, monographs, and multimedia compositions and foster alternatives to conventional publishing.
STATUS :
In its first full year of production, Project Euclid established an international profile for the professional quality of its services and for its potential as a sustainable not-for-profit alternative for publishing in mathematics and statistics. Growth during the year was substantial.
The software supporting Euclid production, Digital Publishing System (DPubS), was designed and developed by staff of the Library Systems Office. In June 2004, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a grant of $670,000 to the Library, in concert with the Pennsylvania State University Library and University Press, to further develop DPubS. This will involve the generalization of the DPubS architecture to provide support for non-serial, as well as serial, literature. A peer-review module will be developed and API’s for DSpace and Fedora will be written, providing a robust and flexible publishing layer for these two major institutional repository systems. DPubS will then be released as an open source tool kit.
In cooperation with the University Press (CUP), the Library will produce an electronic version of the latest edition of Duke’s Physiology of Domestic Animals, part of the CUP’s Comstock Press series and one of its all-time best sellers.
The Library has digitized and provided the Cornell community with access to the full-text of the Cornell University Press’ titles on race and ethnicity on the Library’s Race and Religion web site. (See III.5)
In the Fall 2003, the Library published in print a new history of Cornell University, authored by Carol Kammen.
Mann Library expanded its digital agricultural economics collection to include wire reports from the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. Over 1500 time sensitive wire reports have been added to the system and are available to the public via email. The prices detailed in the wire reports are a good addition to the general production and consumption analysis currently available on the System.
The Library publishes CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA, an innovative international journal of new media art. Further promising collaborations with faculty are under discussion.
Ross Atkinson is a member of the SPARC Advisory Board.
The Library hired a Director of Electronic Publishing.
2. Build a discipline-based repository or repositories (math, physics, engineering, computer science, agriculture, law) that includes Cornell and non-Cornell resources, retrospective and current, commercial and nonprofit.
STATUS:
Digital Publishing System (DPubS) has been employed to distribute access to Computer Science and Theory Center Technical reports. DSpace is now operating as a fully functioning institutional repository. Ross Atkinson, Tom Hickerson, Marcy Rosenkrantz, and Terry Ehling serve on the DSpace Steering Committee chaired by Robert Cooke. Jean Poland led an NSF-sponsored initial planning effort for an International Digital Library of Mathematics. Significant work has been done on the arXiv, including policy decisions and planning for broadening subject areas. Technical enhancements to the submission management interface have been implemented, and new arXiv administrators have been hired.
3.Conduct a campus education program to increase awareness of issues relating to scholarly communication.
STATUS:
The Library’s status report on the Elsevier negotiation in the fall of 2003 provided an excellent opportunity to educate the faculty about the serials pricing crisis, especially faculty in the sciences--although eventually faculty in all disciplines became involved through the Faculty Library Board and the Faculty Senate. Informed, in part, by this education campaign, Cornell’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution encouraging “the library to take an aggressive approach in negotiating new contractual models and pricing structures with Elsevier and other commercial publishers designed to bring serials costs in line with realistic long-term budget projections.”
Selectors discussed the scholarly communication crisis and alternatives to scholarly publishing with faculty departments and programs as part of their budget updates and created a basic Web page ( http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/). The Library participated in the planning for the December 2002 Faculty Forum on Open-Access/Internet-First publishing and organized the Cornell University Library/Cornell University Press-sponsored forum in November 2003 that brought together Cornell faculty who serve as journal editors and managing editors of important scholarly journals. The forum included presentations on alternative publishing options.
4.Support innovative approaches to teaching, research, and creation, making the Library a site for exploration and experimentation.
STATUS:
The Library initiated a new program in 2004, Faculty Grants for Digital Library Collections: Advancing e-Scholarship, to transform unique research and teaching materials into digital collections that are searchable and accessible over the Web. The goal of the grants program is to support collaborative and creative use of resources through the creation of digital content of enduring value to the Cornell community and scholarship at large. In its initial year, thirteen proposals were funded that will increase the amount and scope of scholarly information available online in the areas of humanities and social sciences.
An internal grant allowed a team of librarians and faculty from the Communications Department to undertake an Analysis of Chat Reference. The Team digitally recorded all phone and in-person interactions at two reference desks for a day. The transcripts of the recordings were compared with chat and e-mail questions from the same day. Communications theory is being used to analyze specific aspects of the interactions so that librarians may better understand differences in user behavior and expectations in different modes.
CUL's Office of Distributed Learning is an active partner with CIT and others in supporting the Faculty Innovation in Teaching Grant Program. CUL and CIT were lead partners in conducting Faculty Innovation in Teaching expos. The Division of Rare and Manuscripts Collections established the Goldsen Archive for International New Media Art, curated by Tim Murray (Comparative Literature, English, and Graduate Studies in Film & Video). Claire Germain was co-recipient, with Professors Clermont and Eisenberg, of a 2003 Faculty Innovation in Teaching Grant. Tom Hickerson was also a co-recipient, with Professors Spector (Art) and Murray, of a 2003 Faculty Innovation in Teaching Grant.
Mann Library installed a digital projector, purchased with the gift from the ALS Alumni Association, for students to prepare and practice presentations for classes, conferences, and job interviews in one of the Library’s group study rooms.
5. Selectively support Web authoring and electronic distribution and maintenance of information and image sources having broad educational use or unique value through collaborative endeavors.
STATUS:
Staff throughout CUL are actively involved in such efforts. Illustrative of this effort are: the NSF-sponsored Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library Project (John Saylor, PI, with Professors Moon, Henderson, and Lipson); the IMLS-sponsored project (Tom Hickerson, PI) supporting the work of the Global Performing Arts Consortium, directed by Karen Brazell, Professor of Japanese Literature Emerita; and, a second IMLS-sponsored project (David Block, PI), Images of Southeast Asia: Western Accounts of the Land and Life of the People in the Premodern and Colonial Eras, to digitize early Western travel narratives from the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia selected in collaboration with the faculty of the Southeast Asia Program.
In support of President Jeffrey Lehman’s goal of increasing dialogue and understanding of issues related to race and religion, the Library created a portal to resources of value to students and faculty, and worked with Vice Provost Isaac Kramnick and colleagues teaching Race in the United States and at Cornell (GOVT 210) and Professor Ross Brann and colleagues teaching Judaism, Christianity, and Islam at Cornell (NES251) to achieve the digitization of key works that contribute important perspectives. The website received considerable use and high marks.
Veterinary Library staff, in collaboration with faculty and the Office of Educational Development, created the Veterinary Procedures Collection, a set of digital videos showing veterinary procedures.