School Libraries ebook

I found this free ebook, School Libraries: What’s Now, What’s Next, What’s Yet to Come, that was edited by Kristin Fontichiaro and Buffy Hamilton to be a worthwhile read. Chapter 9 has a good section concerning collaboration. The chapter starts on page 117 (of 178) of the PDF ebook and page 90 (of 142) of the HTML version.

All 50 State Librarians Vote to Form Alliance With Internet Archive’s Open Library

The Digital Shift Nov 10, 11
Excerpt: “All 50 state librarians have decided to throw their weight behind the Internet Archive’s Open Library lending program.

The Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) voted unanimously during a meeting held October 24-26 in Santa Fe, NM, to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the Internet Archive (IA) that will essentially make the state librarian in each state a point person for the Open Library’s lending program.”

Hacking the Academy–includes collaboration

This is from the Preface to the new book, Hacking the Academy.

But we hope more generous readers will notice that many of this book’s themes, although perhaps dressed in new technology, actually attempt to revive age-old values and methods in the academy. For instance, our authors agree on the need for open access to scholarship, not only or primarily because the web has enabled us to post that scholarship online, but because it has long been an ethical imperative of teachers to share their knowledge as widely as possible. New modes of engaging students in the classroom with digital media are, at heart, less about the flashiness of technology and more about the need to move past the stagnation of the lecture into deeper, more collaborative—and ultimately, more effective—pedagogy.

Other parts of the book also discuss how greater collaboration can help improve the academy.

Duke collaborates with other universities to expand ebook access

Duke University is collaborating with Cornell, Emory and Johns Hopkins to provide greater access to scanned books published between 1923 and 1963.

They were able to do what Google hasn’t been able to because their library systems own print editions of the books.

“The reason the four of us are collaborating is we had to make the case to our general counsels and our provosts that this is legal,” said Kevin Smith, a Duke librarian and lawyer who handles intellectual property issues. “We collaborated to produce memos, and we made the arguments together.”

The HathiTrust: A Collaborative Enterprise

From “Unlocking HathiTrust: Inside the Librarians’ Digital Library” at the Library Journal.

In a world where commercial forces have staked out wide swaths of digital territory, HathiTrust is a digital library by libraries for libraries, and on a huge scale. We continue and extend libraries’ traditional role —building, curating, and preserving useful collections and providing the best access possible to patrons—in the digital realm. HathiTrust is a collaborative enterprise, supported by funding and in-kind contributions from participating libraries.

Thanks Constance for letting me know about it.

Research Triangle Libraries Get $41K Grant To Explore Consortial Ebook Models

 Library Journal, By David Rapp Mar 24, 2011

Excerpt: “Some answers to the ebook model dilemma may be in the offing, from the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN)—a collaborative organization of the libraries of North Carolina-based Duke University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina Central University—which announced that it has received a $41,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop new models for consortial ebook pricing and acquisition”

Colorado Publishers and Libraries Collaborate on Ebook Lending Model

Library Journal. By Michael Kelley Mar 17, 2011

Excerpt: “A group of independent publishers has teamed up with an academic and a public library in Colorado to offer an ebook circulation model built on the idea that libraries are trustworthy owners and stewards of intellectual content.

The collaboration among the Colorado Independent Publishers Association (CIPA), Douglas County Libraries, and Red Rocks Community College Library will allow the libraries to buy, store, and manage access to ebooks on library servers; integrate the ebooks into their catalogs; and provide click-through purchases of the titles from the library catalog. Negotiations were still under way as to whether the ebook purchase price would be discounted”

Library Consortia Begin To Vote Against HarperCollins Ebook Checkout Policy

Library Journal, By Michael Kelley Mar 7, 2011

Excerpt “Some library consortia have decided to forgo the purchase of HarperCollins ebook titles effective today in the wake of the publisher’s decision to set a license limit of 26 checkouts per title and also amid concerns about what may be next. In addition, an American Library Association task force is convening this week in Washington to begin addressing the question of equitable access to electronic content.”

Collaboration for Greater Access to E-Books

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a good new blog post, “Collaboration Seeks to Provide Easier Access to E-Books.”

The steady growth of e-books has forced libraries to contend with how to curate and distribute materials in a way that makes them easy for increasingly technology-oriented patronage to access.

Some 150 public and academic libraries are trying to respond to that challenge through a new collaboration with the Internet Archive and Open Library. The arrangement will allow library patrons at participating institutions to access e-books owned and stored at libraries other than their home libraries.

Collaborative eBook Platform about to Launch

New Ebook Platforms Target the Scholarly Monograph

Excerpt: “A number of projects are nearing fruition whose goal is to ensure that scholarly books and university presses are not left behind by the ebook market, and academic librarians are watching the efforts with eagerness and interest.

The University Press E-Book Consortium (UPeC), Oxford’s University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO), Books at JSTOR, and Project Muse Editions have all been separately exploring ways to create a new collaborative business model and ebook platform that would better fit the financial and research needs of academic libraries as well as keep struggling scholarly publishers in business…”