BETHLEHEM, Pa., April 5, 2013 — The Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland's Queen Elizabeth II Library has entered into a new phase of a long-term newspaper digitization project with Backstage Library Works. This phase will increase the digital collection's size to more than 100,000 images, adding some 28,000 pages to the 93,000 already digitized since the project began in 2010.

Joan Ritcey, head of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, praised Backstage's work:

"We looked widely to find a microfilm newspaper digitization company which would create high-res images, excellent OCR-ing and software which would separate individual articles from long columns of text on the screen. Technically, Backstage has given us what we needed.

"On a personal cooperation level, the Backstage staff is very easy to work with. Our digitization people interact with them regularly and whether our communication regards the return of original materials or discussions around customization, we always get a response from Backstage the same day."

St. John's, Newfoundland, home of Memorial University, is steeped in a rich history that contributes significantly to the story of the making and life of North America. The Centre for Newfoundland Studies seeks to preserve and tell this history. These preservation efforts include creating a digital collection accessible to students at Memorial University, and to scholars, researchers and hobbyists worldwide.

Backstage is a partner in this ambitious work, providing digital scans of regional newspapers spanning the 20th century. Digitizing from both microfilm and hard copy, a team of digital experts creates archival-quality TIFF images from which JPEG image files and OCR text are derived, then combined into PDF collections. Backstage also creates METS/ALTO metadata, which provides users a rich search experience in CONTENTdm, the digital asset management system used by Memorial University.

Since March 2010, Backstage has digitized over 70 reels of microfilm for the Centre for Newfoundland Studies. The quality of the original microfilming does not always meet modern preservation practices, with inconsistent lighting and image densities causing prevalent contrast issues among the older reels. Backstage professionals know how to handle these unique materials for the best end-result, using technologies and practices honed through 15 years of providing archival digitization services and 25 years working with preservation microfilm.

Kelly Barrall, Backstage digital project coordinator, explained how her team balances the technical demands of the collection:

"A lot of Digital Imaging processes found in the market today rely primarily on software automation. Instead, at Backstage, our approach to the library's project is to find just the right balance of automation and human intervention. This means we apply custom enhancements or hand cropping to some images. We even refer back to the original microfilm when collecting the metadata during the 100% quality assurance inspection of the images, just to verify that the final results represent the original microfilm content."

All project consultation, profiling, materials preparation, scanning, metadata creation and customer support for this project will be provided by the Digitization team in Backstage's Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, office.

Joan Ritcey is Head of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University Libraries, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

About Backstage Library Works

Backstage's objective is to provide the most technologically advanced and efficient means for delivering professional library services. With over 25 years of experience, the company is known for its expertise in handling complex and unique projects. Backstage specializes in solutions for cataloging, authority control, digitization, preservation microfilm, and on-site needs. In providing services to more than a thousand libraries, large and small, public and private, and in locations across the globe, Backstage has cultivated an understanding of libraries, their mission, their operations, and the challenges they face. Backstage offices are located in Provo, Utah, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Contact

Richard Covington | Marketing Manager
Backstage Library Works | Provo, Utah & Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Phone: 801.356.1852 | Fax: 801.356.8220
news@bslw.com | www.bslw.com

4/5/2013
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

Texas Library Consortium Chooses ByWater Solutions’ Koha Support

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and the U.S.’ forefront provider of Koha support, announced today that the Texas Library Consortium is now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

ByWater Solutions completed the migration for the Texas Library Consortium at the beginning of February and will be providing ongoing Koha support and hosting services for their nearly 42 libraries, 1 million items and 120,000 patrons.

Jerry Brock, Owner, e-Libris Technologies discussed the decision of switching to Koha with ByWater Solutions:

“e-Libris Technologies and the Texas Library Consortium chose ByWater Solutions based upon the vendor’s high service rankings, ongoing improvement of the Koha open source software, and their ability to migrate 42 libraries within a single weekend on short notice. The ByWater migration and support teams combined to ensure the transition was successful, and the libraries feel we have taken an important step toward improving service and reliability for their patrons.”

“We ran into a unique situation when we migrated TLC over to the Koha Community and ByWater” Stated Brendan Gallagher, ByWater’s CEO.

He continues: “The consortium was faced with a difficult decision: Either renew with their current vendor, have the plug pulled on their hosted system by their current vendor, or trust that ByWater was up to the challenge of a one-weekend migration of a 42 member library system. We are very grateful that the TLC placed their trust in our abilities and experience and it is a testament to the skill of our migration department that this transition occurred without incident. We are thrilled to provide the Texas Library Consortium with the levels of support they deserve and look forward to a long a productive relationship with this growing library system.”

About Texas Library Consortium:

Texas Library Consortium serves the residents of Texas via their 42 member libraries. Their collection of nearly 1 million items include books, movies and electronic resources.

About Koha:

Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha’s impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies–XHTML, CSS and Javascript–making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://koha-community.org/

About ByWater Solutions:

ByWater Solutions is a full service, high quality support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their ILS than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in first rate Koha implementation and support with library systems of all sizes. Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions to support Koha not only lowers the cost of implementing and maintaining an ILS, but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit: http://bywatersolutions.com/

Seven librarians earned scholarships to attend the ALA Annual Meeting. The scholarships were co-sponsored by ALA and EBSCO to help the librarians continue their professional development. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Lisa

EBSCO Awards Seven Scholarships for Librarians to
Attend 2013 ALA Annual Meeting
~ Annual Scholarships Provide Reimbursement for Librarians
to Attend the American Library Association Annual Conference ~

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. / IPSWICH, Mass — April 4, 2013 — In co-sponsorship with the American Library Association (ALA), EBSCO has awarded seven librarians $1,000 scholarships to attend the ALA Annual Meeting in Chicago, June 27– July 2, 2013. As part of the application process, librarians were asked to write an essay on the topic of how attending the conference will contribute to the librarians’ professional development.

The EBSCO ALA Annual Conference Sponsorship is an annual award consisting of $1,000 for actual reimbursed expenses designed to allow librarians to attend the ALA Annual Conference. The scholarship recipients will be honored by EBSCO and ALA representatives during the conference at a breakfast on Sunday, June 30, 2013.

The scholarship winners, including two first time attendees and two Emerging Leaders, are:
• Jannie R. Cobb, Librarian, National Labor College, Silver Spring, Md.
• Nancy Condon, Member Library Services Librarian, Uncle Remus Regional Library System, Madison, Ga.
• Sara Arnold-Garza, Residency Librarian, Albert S. Cook Library, Towson University, Towson, Md.
• Elizabeth Kahn, School Library Media Specialist, Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology Academy, New Orleans, La.
• Caitlin Moen, Catalog Librarian, LAC Group, Metairie, La.
• Hannah Q. Parris, Access Services Librarian, Johnson & Wales University, Denver Campus Library, Denver, Colo.
• April Wallace, Director, Pinson Public Library, Pinson, Ala.

Sara Arnold-Garza from Towson University says the scholarship will help her make the most out of being named an ALA Emerging Leader, “As a member of the 2013 class of ALA Emerging Leaders, I’ll receive leadership training, meet other new professionals who are enthusiastic and engaged, and connect with the opportunities for professional success afforded by ALA.”

Applications were judged by an ALA-designated jury: jury chairman Julius C. Jefferson Jr., information research specialist, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Stacy L. Creel, assistant professor, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Miss.; Elizabeth Nelson, knowledge analyst, UOP LLC, Woodstock, Ill.; Elizabeth M. Williams, information literacy librarian, Belk Library, Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C.; and Courtney L. Young, head librarian and associate professor, Kelly Library, Penn State Greater Allegheny.

EBSCO is dedicated to supporting the professional development of librarians around the world and has a long tradition of co-sponsoring scholarships to ALA conferences, providing funds for conference registration, travel, and expenses.

About ALA
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit professional organization of more than 65,000 librarians, library trustees, and other friends of libraries dedicated to providing and improving library services and promoting the public interest in a free and open information society: www.ala.org.

About EBSCO
EBSCO is the leading provider of resources for libraries including EBSCONET®, EBSCO’s total e-resource management system, and EBSCOhost®, the world's premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives and e-books. EBSCO provides more than 375 research databases and more than 380,000 e-books plus subscription management services for 355,000 e-journals and e-journal packages. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of journals and magazines than any other discovery service. For more information, visit the EBSCO Web site at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
###
For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Director
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com

Cheryl Malden
Program Officer
American Library Association
312-280-3247
cmalden@ala.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Duluth, GA —April 4, 2013

Homer Public Library has gone live on Evergreen. Equinox Software provided data migration and staff training services. They will also provide ongoing technical support for the library’s Evergreen installation. Almost 45,000 bibliographic items, and more than 9500 patrons were moved to the new system. Their new online catalog can be viewed at catalog.ci.homer.ak.us

Located in Homer, Alaska, the public library dates back to the 1940’s when the local women’s club used an old school building to house the community library. By the 1960’s, the library was operating out of an old fire house and staffed completely by volunteers. The current library building opened in 2006.

Galen Charlton, Equinox Manager, of Implementation says, "I lived in Anchorage for a few years and know how welcoming and helpful the Alaska library community is. It has been a real treat to help welcome another Alaskan library to the Evergreen community."

Ann Dixon, Homer Public Library Director, says "Overall, we are very pleased at how smoothly the migration transpired. Thanks especially to Galen for his tireless and quick responses!"

About Equinox Software, Inc.

Founded by the original Evergreen designers and developers, Equinox Software is a leader in open source solutions for libraries. Their goal is to engage and support a rapidly growing open source community while assisting libraries in moving away from expensive proprietary vendors and products.
For more information on Equinox Software, please visit http://www.esilibrary.com.

About Evergreen

Evergreen is a robust, open-source integrated library system best known for its unique ability to meet the needs of very large, high-transaction, multi-site consortia. However, it has also proven equally successful scaled down for even the smallest libraries. Evergreen now supports almost 1,200 libraries of every type-public, academic, special, and school media centers across 4 countries, 31 U.S. states, and 8 Canadian provinces. King County Public Library System, SCLENDS, and the NC Cardinal consortiums are all currently running Evergreen. For more information about Evergreen, including a list of all known Evergreen installations, see http://evergreen-ils.org.

Press contact: Corinne Hall, corinne@esilibrary.com, 770-709-5571

Leiden (NL) / Boston (MA) – 4 April 2013

Brill, the international scholarly publisher, is pleased to announce that JISC Collections has purchased the Brill Journal Archive Online Part 2 on behalf of the education and research community in the UK.

Part 2 of the Brill Journal Archives is available to access on Brill’s new e-journals and e-books platform booksandjournals.brillonline.com. The content will also be made available on the JISC Journal Archives platform as part of the JISC eCollections service. Eligible libraries wishing to sign up for access to the Brill Journal Archive Online Part 2 are invited to contact JISC Collections.

The purchase of the Brill Journal Archive Online Part 2 follows an earlier acquisition of Part 1 by JISC Collections in 2008. More than 100 institutions in the UK have access to Part 1 and are now eligible for access to Part 2 as well.

The Brill Journal Archives consist of two parts, the first part covering the 19th and 20th century, and the second part covering the first decade of the 21st century. Part II covers all 1,254 volumes of 175 journals that were published in the 10-year period 2000-2009.

“Together with the Brill Journal Archive Part 1, the new agreement with JISC Collections gives the UK academic community seamless access to more than 100,000 articles in the humanities, international law & human rights and biology,” says Sam Bruinsma, Vice President Business Development at Brill. “We are delighted that Brill’s journals have been selected by JISC Collections.”

Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections, said that “the Brill Journal Archive Part 2 received high marks and was ranked as a high priority by the UK community in our recent call for archives and collections. The central purchase of the archive brings value to our members and we are pleased to be providing users with access to an even larger archive of content to support their teaching, learning and research.”

For more information or customer queries, please contact our sales team at sales-nl@brill.com for customers outside the Americas, or at sales-us@brill.com for customers inside the Americas.

All UK higher and further education institutions and research councils are eligible for access to the Brill Journal Archive Online Part 2. Please contact JISC Collections at help@jisc-collections.ac.uk to set up access.

About Brill (brill.com)
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, BRILL is a leading international academic publisher in the fields of Ancient Near East and Egypt, Middle East and Islamic Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, contemporary History and History of War studies, Biblical and Religious Studies, Slavic Studies, Language & Linguistics, Biology, Human Rights and Public International Law. With offices in Leiden and Boston, BRILL today publishes more than 185 journals and around 600 new books and reference works each year. All publications are available in both print and electronic form. BRILL also markets a large number of research collections and databases with primary source material. The company’s key customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. BRILL is a publicly traded company and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV. For further information please visit www.brill.com.

About JISC Collections
JISC Collections is a division of JISC Collections and Janet Ltd. It supports the procurement of digital content for education and research in the UK. Through its negotiation and licensing work JISC Collections provides annual savings to its members in excess of £50million per annum. For further information please visit www.jisc-collections.ac.uk