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The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Salzburg Global Seminar announce release of the report, “Connecting to the World’s Collections: Making the Case for Conservation and Preservation of Our Cultural Heritage” based on a seminar held in Salzburg, Austria, October 28-November 1, 2009. The seminar, part of the IMLS’s multi-year initiative on collections care, Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action, explored global themes related to conservation and preservation, including international needs, issues, perspectives, and accomplishments.

The report includes practical recommendations to ensure optimal collections conservation worldwide and the Salzburg Declaration on the Conservation and Preservation of Cultural, which was passed by 60 participants hailing from 32 countries. The session combined presentations by leading experts in conservation and preservation throughout the world with small working groups tasked to make recommendations for future action in key areas, including emergency preparedness, education and training, public awareness, new preservation approaches, and assessment and planning. To access these resources, click here: http://www.salzburgglobal.org/2009/News.cfm?IDMedia=52858.

“Connecting to the World’s Collections: Making the Case for Conservation and Preservation of Our Cultural Heritage” is available in PDF format at www.imls.gov/pdf/SGS_Report.pdf. A limited number of printed copies can be requested by e-mailing imlsinfo@imls.gov.

LYRASIS announces a collaboration with the South Carolina State Library and DISCUS, South Carolina’s Virtual Library, to provide a customized online collection of current resources for job seekers in the state. The partnership is creating a collection, using the OCLC NetLibrary ® eContent platform, of more than 250 electronic books and reference materials for career and job seekers. South Carolina citizens will be able to access the collection from public libraries, schools, and institutions of higher education. After creating their own personal NetLibrary accounts, residents will be able to access from home or office as well.

The collection content, developed by Timothy Cherubini, LYRASIS director of content innovation, includes current resources on careers, business, test-taking strategies, résumé writing, and other tools for job seekers. LYRASIS Senior Member Products and Services Consultant Kate Vincent serves as project liaison.

“South Carolina has the 3rd highest unemployment rate in the nation. In large measure, South Carolinians are utilizing their local libraries to go back to work or to prepare for new employment challenges,” said David S. Goble, South Carolina State Librarian. “The Career eBook Collection is one of those resources that the citizens of South Carolina need desperately at this time. It’s also just as important to note that the collection is a great tool for the librarian who is assisting those citizens seeking employment.”

This is the fourth statewide collaboration on job seekers’ resources for LYRASIS, which recently developed similar collections, using a variety of e-content providers, for Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana.

Eleven library and higher education-related institutions and organizations today sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski in support of preserving an open Internet.

The groups assert that the Internet faces major threats as a result of deregulation. Internet Service Providers (ISP) have strong incentives to degrade certain Internet services, and new technologies increasingly allow them to control Internet traffic without end user knowledge. Simple, flexible policies are necessary to safeguard the open nature of the Internet and to protect the free flow of information and educational content, according to the letter.

The letter’s signatories urge the adoption of Internet (net) neutrality principles, including non-discrimination and transparency, while allowing for reasonable practices to manage technical issues such as congestion and spam. These principles would give ISPs simple ground rules and guarantee that private network operators and end users remain free to use Internet access as they see fit.

The following organizations signed the letter: the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, American Association of Community Colleges, American Council on Education, Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, EDUCAUSE, Internet2, and the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

To view the letter, please visit http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/ed-library-nn-principles-letter.pdf.

The Steering Committee of Iceland Consortia for electronic subscriptions has selected ProQuest Central to provide electronic resources nationally for the next three years. On behalf of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Steering Committee is responsible for the evaluation and procurement of resources which can then be accessed by all Icelandic citizens from any computer within the country. Electronic content not only serves academic and research institutions but each and every computer in Iceland that connects to the Internet through an Icelandic ISP. The project is funded by the Ministry along with more than 200 libraries, educational institutions and private firms.

For more information about ProQuest Central or any ProQuest product, visit www.proquest.com or www.proquest.co.uk.

Making sure patients understand their diagnosis and the follow-up that is required is an essential area of patient care and providing accurate, trustworthy patient education is paramount for hospitals. An agreement between MEDITECH and medical content provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) promises to make sure patients leave the emergency room with evidence-based discharge instructions representing the best available medical information.

EBSCO is the provider of Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC), a comprehensive collection of evidence-based discharge instructions and patient education. Under the agreement with MEDITECH, PERC discharge instructions will be accessible via the MEDITECH Health Care Information System (HCIS) later in 2010. Discharge instructions will be fully integrated into MEDITECH’s Emergency Department Management, Physician Care Manager, Patient Care System, and Oncology applications allowing clinicians to provide patients with the latest, evidence-based information upon discharge. Patients will gain comprehensive, easy-to-understand information regarding all aspects of their care.

For more information, please contact:

Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Manager
EBSCO Publishing
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

Paul Berthiaume
Public Relations Manager
MEDITECH
(781) 821-3000 ext. 5742
pberthiaume@meditech.com

Longtime Special Libraries Association (SLA) champion Libby Trudell, vice president of marketing for Dialog, has been named a 2010 SLA Fellow. Fellowship in SLA is presented to members in recognition of past, present and future service to the Association and the profession. No more than five fellows are selected in any given year.

The designation of Fellow is presented to active professionals who are not presently serving on the Board of Directors. Fellows are called upon, and expected to advise the Association’s Board of Directors, to prepare necessary documentation, and to alert the membership to issues and trends warranting action. Individuals receiving this honor will be able to use the title Fellow of the Special Libraries Association.

 Ms. Trudell has been an active member of SLA since joining in 1995. In the last 15 years, she has held a number of leadership roles, including serving on the Board of Directors from 2006-2008, and is currently chair of the 2011 SLA Conference Planning Council.

 Ms. Trudell currently directs marketing for Dialog® and other ProQuest® products for the global corporate and professional market. She has had responsibility for numerous functions at Dialog including information professional market development, product management, strategic planning, product marketing, and customer services. Prior to Dialog, Ms. Trudell worked for several library consortia, providing training and marketing for OCLC, RLIN and other library automation products. She started her career at the Massachusetts Bureau of Library Extension, supporting administration of funding for the LSCA program.

Europeana welcomes a report from the European Parliament’s Culture and Education Committee, calling for more content and a sustainable funding solution.

The report, which was unanimously approved by the Committee in a meeting on February 22 and 23, urges governments and cultural institutions to work together to speed up digitisation of their cultural heritage. It suggests that the cost of digitisation should be the subject of a specific budget line in the next Financial Framework.

The report also underlines that the digitisation of public domain content should not create new copyright restrictions.

For more information, please see the press release from the European Parliament.

The Frick Collection is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Stephen J. Bury to the post of Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian at the Frick Art Reference Library. For the past ten years, he has been at the British Library, the national library of the United Kingdom, and one of the world’s greatest research institutions, where he is a Deputy Director and Head of European and American Collections, as well as Maps, Music, and Philatelic Collections. Previously, Dr. Bury was Head of Learning Resources at the Chelsea College of Art & Design, London.

Comments Anne L. Poulet, Director of The Frick Collection, “Dr. Bury brings to this leadership position an exceptional dual perspective. He is both an art historian- who understands first hand the needs of those who teach, research, and curate- as well as an internationally regarded librarian. An active participant on numerous professional commissions as well as dynamic division head of the British Library, he is a great strategic thinker in a rapidly changing field. Stephen Bury has developed a keen understanding in areas of mutual interest to the Frick, among them digitization, collection sharing, storage, and encouraging greater use of new technologies by staff. Furthermore, the nature of the collections he oversees at the British Library, being both European and American, dovetails beautifully with the scope of our holdings and initiatives. With his arrival in May, we know that the Frick Art Reference Library will benefit greatly from Dr. Bury’s insights as well as from the broad connections he has developed through years of highly engaged service and scholarship.”

For more information, contact us at mediarelations@frick.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dean Smith as Director, Project MUSE. Smith will lead the Press’ flagship electronic scholarly journals publishing program beginning March 10, 2010. Project MUSE’s innovative and collaborative approach to online publishing offers a fair and sustainable model for both libraries and publishers, and Smith will oversee an expansion to include more archival journal content on the MUSE platform and enhanced services to subscribers, content providers, and end users.

Smith comes to JHUP with extensive publishing leadership experience and expertise in digital publishing initiatives, product management, technical direction, global sales and marketing, and strategic development. As Director of Content for the American Society for Training and Development, Smith created a digital publishing strategy for the society’s periodical, book, and research publications. During a decade-plus tenure with the American Chemical Society, Smith oversaw dynamic growth in worldwide electronic access to the society’s publications, designing innovative pricing models, emphasizing library customer relations, and implementing effective internal management systems. He previously spearheaded electronic publishing efforts for a variety of medical publication products at Chapman & Hall, and led traditional journal publishing programs at C&H and Springer-Verlag. An accomplished writer and published poet, he holds a BA from the University of Virginia, and an MFA in Cre ative Writing from Columbia University.

For more information, please contact Melanie Schaffner, mbs@press.jhu.edu.

Ingram Marketing Group Inc., the marketing and advertising agency of Ingram, today announced the launch of PubLinkSM, a specialized software/CRM tool that gives publishers a robust and flexible platform to manage, track and deliver product catalogs and galleys in both print and electronic formats.

The powerful functionality of Ingram’s PubLink allows publishers to store and manage customer and publicity contacts, distribute galleys and catalogs in an electronic format, and order and deliver to customers printed galleys using the print on demand single copy technology and workflow from Ingram’s Lightning Source.

For more information, visit www.ingramcontent.com or www.ingrammarketing.com, or contact: Keel Hunt (615) 321-3110.

Author Solutions (ASI), the world leader in indie book publishing, announced today a distribution deal with Scribd - the world’s largest social publishing company.

Under terms of the agreement, all new ASI titles published through the AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, and Xlibris imprints will be made available for purchase. As well, a portion of ASI’s backlist of more than 120,000 titles will be sold through the site.

Authors will receive 50 percent of the net sales of their titles through Scribd. A default price of $9.99 will be set for every title, but each author will have the opportunity to set his or her own price. Distribution to Scribd will be included as a free service for all new ASI titles.

For more information on Author Solutions visit http://www.authorsolutions.com.

The SLA Nominating Committee has identified ten candidates for election to the 2011 SLA Board of Directors. The committee is responsible for soliciting names of potential candidates from the membership and putting together a slate of candidates that has exceptional talent, is professionally diverse, and provides regionally balanced representation.

Members will have several opportunities to hear from and get to know candidates at the SLA 2010 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO in New Orleans. The election will be held electronically in mid-September 2010.

The candidates running for election to the 2011 SLA Board of Directors are:

For President-Elect:

• Brent Mai, Concordia University, Portland, Ore.
• David Stern, Maximize Information, Providence, R.I.

For Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect:

• James E. Manasco,University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky.
• Ulla de Stricker, de Stricker Associates, Toronto

 For Division Cabinet Chair-Elect:

• Scott Brown, Social Information Group, Longmont, Colo.
• Richard Huffine, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Va.

For Director (two positions):

• Nerida Hart, HartKnowledge Consulting, Murrumbateman, NSW, Australia
• Jill Hurst-Wahl, Syracuse University/Hurst Associates Ltd., Syracuse, N.Y.
• P.K. Jain, Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi Enclave, Delhi, India
• Sara Tompson, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

For more information about SLA’s governance practices and leadership, please visit the Board of Directors section of our Web site at http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/governance/bodsection/index.cfm.