One of the tasks the Digital Preservation Task Force is charged with is raising awareness about digital preservation initiatives. To that end, the Task Force has created three reference guides: Digital Preservation 101, Talking Points and Questions to Ask Publishers about Digital Preservation, and the Guide to the Keepers Registry. The latter provides insight into how you may begin evaluating the preservation status of the digital scholarship in your collection. The Guides are intended to be a jumping off point for further research and discovery about digital preservation.

Six distinguished leaders in research and scholarship from across Canada and the United States will examine the progress of the initiative Academic Research and University Libraries: Creating a New Model for Collaboration, led by the Vice Provost of the University of Calgary. This investigation, supported by a $1-million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has provided funding for Calgary researchers in social and environmental sciences and the humanities during the past academic year. The reviewers’ comments will focus on the envisioned impact of the research at the University of Calgary on their own institutions.

Many librarians evaluate local Interlibrary Loan (ILL) statistics as part of collection development decisions concerning new subscriptions. In this study, the authors examine whether the number of ILL article requests over one academic year can predict the use of those same journal titles once they are added as library resources. An additional study, examining the sources from which patrons made ILL requests, shows that database search results dominate. These results call into question the need for libraries to subscribe to individual journal titles rather than providing access to a broad array of articles.

Analysis from a survey, carried out by the European Universities Association (EUA), comes as consortia of institutes revolt over price increases and promote open access across the continent.

A new relationship is established between EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) and Infoestratégica Latina, one of the biggest general library service vendors in Latin America. This agreement will ensure that Latin American libraries adopting the FOLIO Library Services Platform (LSP) will be able to rely on hosting and services support.

CAICYT’s institutional project on biblioclastia created a broad definition of the phenomenon of knowledge destruction. Biblioclastia is understood not only as the destruction of books and other media to knowledge, but also as the deprivation of rights of institutions and agents responsible for insuring their preservation and circulation. The proposed definition is explained, and both a methodology and a controlled vocabulary are presented.

The authors, Mela Bosch and Tatiana Carsen, manage the CAICYT- CONICET (Centre for Scientific and Technological Information) in Argentina.

ABES,  French Higher Education Bibliographic Agency, is currently implementing its Shared Library Management System –aka SGBm–.  In the April issue of Arabesques Journal, professionals elaborate on the evolution of library management systems, the changes in bibliographic data models and the digital transition.

Libraries and related organizations coalesce where there are scale advantages: to lobby, to negotiate and license, to reduce costs, or to build shared infrastructure. The sharing of knowledge and innovation that comes from working together is an important reason why these library consortia flourish. Libraries recognize that collective action delivers scale benefits. In this series of 4 blog posts, collaboration for scale is examined in four areas: influence, learning, innovation and capacity.

The National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK) is a transformative new national service that will aggregate bibliographic data at scale and link with other data sources.  The universal benefit for libraries to join in with the NBK is to make UK library data much more discoverable wherever users are trying to find print and digital scholarly resources. It will also greatly enhance their ability to manage and develop their collections.  The live NBK beta interface is openly available at: https://nbkbeta.copac.jisc.ac.uk

After a two year development period (alpha and beta phases), JISC is aiming to launch the ‘live’ service in January 2019.

As library discovery and delivery has largely moved online, the scholarly workflow of academic researchers has become increasingly fragmented. Faculty members are using a variety of software solutions to find, retrieve, organize, annotate, cite, and share information, including library resources. The current status of discovery of library resources within citation management software is outlined, along with expected future developments. Utilizing findings from two Mellon funded studies, it explores the challenges users face in managing their individual scholarly workflows, and recommends optimizations designed to mitigate information loss and increase researcher productivity.