Contact:

Kat Kamp
Marketing Department
Backstage Library Works
Phone: 801.356.1852
news@bslw.com | www.bslw.com

BETHLEHEM, Pa., October 19, 2016 – Backstage Library Works recently completed a pair of scanning projects for the Library of Congress. Over the course of 18 months, they digitized 808,000 archival documents and bound book images on-site at the Library, plus 236,500 transmissive images at Backstage’s preservation facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Digitizing rare and fragile collections on location at libraries provides curators an alternative to the extra handling involved with shipping.

During the course of the on-site project, Backstage had four cameras and four technicians working at the Library. Additional materials were sent to Backstage’s preservation facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for scanning. Library of Congress conservation specialists and Backstage’s digitization team worked together to ensure that the archival documents and bound books were handled with the utmost care. As a result, fragile items were not compromised and the final images provide an accurate representation of the originals.

The Library and Backstage also worked together to determine the best approach for capturing the extensive collection of 35mm black-and-white negatives and color slides. With the Library’s input and feedback, Backstage developed a workflow that was conducive to streamlining production while allowing for custom post-processing of each collection. Testing included scanning samples at several resolutions and applying a range of post-processing settings. The results of the 3600 PPI scans were remarkable and revealed the diversity of the collections.

Cooperation between the Library staff and Backstage contributed to an extraordinarily large volume of work being completed in a safe and timely manner.

Kelly Barrall, project manager for the digitization department at Backstage states:

“We are grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the Library of Congress and appreciate that they were able to provide space for our cameras and crew.

“The library staff was very pleasant to work with and they provided great leadership for our team. This was particularly the case whenever we needed to address specific handling requirements.“Our on-site digitization team, led by Theresa Kidd, provided the best possible care for the Library’s materials. The team’s technical expertise, commitment, and understanding of each collection was evident throughout.”

Backstage worked with the following groups within the Library of Congress:

◾Manuscripts Division
◾American Folklife Center
◾Rare Books and Special Collections
◾World Digital Library
◾Music Division
◾Prints and Photographs Division
◾National Digital Newspaper Program

About Backstage

Backstage’s objective is to provide the most technologically advanced, high quality, yet 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.

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Leiden (NL) / Boston (USA) / Singapore (SG) – 14 October 2016

Brill, the international scholarly publisher, acquires the electronic distribution rights to Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens, second edition (LGB²) from Hiersemann Verlag (Stuttgart, Germany), and further expands its portfolio in Book History and of major reference works in the German language.

The recently completed 9-volume work is edited by Günther Pflug et al., former head of the German National Library. It aims to register and describe all persons, institutes, facts, parameters and practices which play a role in the transmission of knowledge between author and reader. This includes the production, distribution and reception of books. Comprising articles by more than 400 authors, the LGB² is widely considered an indispensable resource for students and researchers in book history, library science, manuscript studies, media studies, and literature and cultural studies.

Brill will make the Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens available online in December 2016 on its reference work platform. The online portfolio further includes other German language works such as Der Neue Pauly Online, Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit Online, Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur Online (Metzler Verlag), and Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart Online (Mohr Siebeck).

Customers of the print edition will be eligible for a discount. More information on the LGB² Online is available on the Brill website: www.brill.com/lgbo. For questions on this media alert please contact Jasmin Lange, Business Development Manager (langej@brill.com or + 31 71 5353 517).

For customer queries please contact our Sales department at sales-nl@brill.com (Europe, Middle East, Africa & Asia-Pacific) or sales-us@brill.com (the Americas).

About Brill
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in 20 main subject areas, including Middle East and Islamic Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, History, Biblical and Religious Studies, Language & Linguistics, Biology, and International Law. With offices in Leiden and Boston and a representative office in Singapore, Brill today publishes over 250 journals and around 1000 new books and reference works each year, available in both print and electronic form. Brill also markets a large number of primary source research collections and databases. The company’s key customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. Brill is a publicly traded company listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV. For more information, visit www.brill.com.

About Hiersemann
Founded in 1892 by Karl W. Hiersemann in Leizpig, and since 1949 based in Stuttgart (Germany), Hiersemann Verlag is an independent academic press specializing in book and library studies, history, art history, classics, literary studies and religious studies. For more information, visit www.hiersemann.de.

View this Media Alert online: http://www.brill.com/news/brill-brings-hiersemanns-lexikon-des-gesamten-...

10/13/2016
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

The SWITCH Library Consortium Goes Live on ByWater Solutions Koha Support

ByWater Solutions, an open source community contributor and America's forefront provider of Koha support, announced today that the Southeastern Wisconsin Information Technology Exchange, Inc (SWITCH) of Milwaukee, Wisconsin is now live on their Koha open source integrated library system.

ByWater Solutions completed the migration of the Libraries' more than 950,000 titles from their Millennium system and is providing ongoing support services to the consortium and its members. SWITCH is made up of 8 Academic Library members who include Alverno College, Cardinal Stritch University, Concordia University, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Mount Mary University, Sacred Heart School of Theology, St. Francis Seminary and Wisconsin Lutheran College. The Consortium's customized online catalog can be found here: https://topcat.switchinc.org/

Jenny Schmidt, Coordinator of Services for the consortium, commented on their move to Koha with ByWater:

"In the course of evaluating a new library system for our consortium, SWITCH was looking for a library system that would translate into cost savings for its members while still not sacrificing key functionality.  Our organization feels it's important for small, academic libraries to have an open source ILS option that is not overly confusing to set up and manage. We appreciated the clear enthusiasm ByWater staff have for open source, for Koha and the future of both.

Jenny goes on to comment on her experience with the team at ByWater:

"ByWater staff have been patient with our group and have worked hard to listen to our local needs starting with our migration. This has been important as our member libraries transitioned to Koha, and because SWITCH plans to continue working with them to shape Koha to be even more robust for small academic consortia like ourselves. We have a shared catalog where patrons are able to place holds on materials from any member library. It was important to our staff to continue to offer article level requests via our catalog. We were very pleased with how Kyle Hall (Lead Developer at ByWater) worked closely with our consortium to develop custom article request functionality for the Koha OPAC and staff client. The end result works better than what we had with our former ILS.  Kyle worked tireless to try and accommodate our libraries."

About the SWITCH Library Consortium:
SWITCH, which stands for the Southeastern Wisconsin Information Technology Exchange, Inc. is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization set up in the late 1980’s by participating private colleges in the Milwaukee area. Its purpose is to help advance the effective implementation of information technology at its member libraries and institutions and to facilitate cooperative ventures between its member institutions. These private colleges serve a diverse student body from traditional age, on-campus students to adult non-traditional students spanning a number of states and countries. Read more about our member institutions.

SWITCH works to support and highlight the library services and collections of its member libraries and institutions. This new mission is to be achieved by:

• Working to better support the facilitation of library services at the SWITCH libraries.
• Working to identify improved techniques and staff training opportunities.
• Working to increase and improve access to each other’s library collections.
• Working to identify ways to showcase the materials owned by the SWITCH libraries.

For more information about SWITCH please visit: http://support.switchinc.org/

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,HTML5, 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 support and implementation 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 for Koha support 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/

11/10/2016

For immediate release

An essential guide to linked data for libraries, archives and museums

Facet Publishing have announced the release of Linked Data for Cultural Heritage

In this new book Ed Jones and Michele Seikel along with a stellar list of contributors help readers understand linked data concepts by examining practice and projects based in libraries, archives, and museums.

Linked open data remains very much a work in progress, and much of the progress has taken place within the domain of the cultural heritage institutions. There is no question that the structure of linked data, and the machine inferencing it supports, shows great promise for discoverability. What will be the ‘killer app’ that breaks linked open data out to the wider world and accelerates its uptake? Perhaps it will be a project described in this volume.

The editors of the book said, “while we are still some distance from the world of linked data that Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila envisaged fifteen years ago when they first proposed a Semantic Web, this book provides a snapshot in time of the current linked data landscape among libraries and other cultural institutions – many very large datasets have now been made available as RDF, and the SPARQL query language enables sophisticated queries across datasets.”

The book examines projects including Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America, OCLC’s use of Schema.org and the development of the BIBFRAME data model and discusses how to migrate from a MARC to a linked data environment, how controlled vocabularies integrate with linked data and the role of authority control, identifiers and vocabularies including Web Ontology Language (OWL).

Ed Jones has been cataloguing serials, on and off, since 1976, and over the years has authored several scholarly papers and made numerous presentations on serials cataloguing, the FRBR and FRAD conceptual models, and RDA. He has been a member of the CONSER Operations Committee, on and off, since 1981, and recently served as an RDA advisor. In 1995, he received his doctorate in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is currently associate director for assessment and technical services at National University in San Diego.

Michele Seikel is a tenured professor and cataloguing librarian on the library faculty at Oklahoma State University. She has published several research papers in peer-reviewed technical services journals. In ALA, she has co-chaired the Cataloging Norms Interest Group and the Cataloging and Metadata Management Section’s Policy and Planning Committee. Currently, she chairs the ALCTS Planning Committee.

- ends

Press and review copies contact:
James Williams, Marketing Manager, Facet Publishing
Tel: +44 (0)20 7255 0597
Email: james.williams@facetpublishing.co.uk

Notes:

Link to the cover image:
http://www.booksonix.co.uk/facetpublishing/9781783301621.jpg?L=0O1474455020

Linked Data for Cultural Heritage | Sep 2016 | 160pp | paperback: 9781783301621

The book is published by Facet Publishing and is available from Bookpoint Ltd | Tel: +44 (0)1235 827702 | Fax: +44 (0)1235 827703 | Email: facet@bookpoint.co.uk | Web: www.facetpublishing.co.uk. | Mailing Address: Mail Order Dept, 39 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4TD. It is available in North America from theAmerican Library Association.

Leiden (NL) / Boston (USA) / Singapore (SG) – 10 October 2016

The international scholarly publisher Brill has 280+ of its book series included in Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Scopus covers abstracts and citations of more than 64 million items from over 5,000 different publishers. This large number of scientific journals, books and conference proceedings delivers a comprehensive overview of the world's research output and helps academics, governments and corporates with their research activities.

Besides one-off books, Brill already had the majority of its journals indexed in Scopus. On top of that, Brill’s book series coverage in Scopus has now been expanded to 280+ titles after review by the Scopus independent Content Selection & Advisory Board.

Ove Kähler, Director Product Management & Global Distribution at Brill: “Books remain an important form of publication in the Humanities. Brill’s authors applaud the commitment of Scopus to continuously enhance its citation database also in the non-science fields.”

Susanne Steiginga, Product Manager Scopus Content: “In our efforts to index the best quality scholarly content in all academic subjects, the inclusion of Brill’s book series is an important step in expanding our coverage in the Humanities.”

For more information about Brill’s inclusion in Scopus, please contact Ove Kähler at kahler@brill.com.

About Brill
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in 20 main subject areas, including Middle East and Islamic Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, History, Biblical and Religious Studies, Language & Linguistics, Biology, and International Law. With offices in Leiden and Boston and a representative office in Singapore, Brill today publishes 265 journals and around 1000 new books and reference works each year, available in both print and electronic form. Brill also markets a large number of primary source research collections and databases. 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 more information, visit www.brill.com.

About Scopus
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize scholarly research. Its comprehensive database contains more than 64 million items indexed from over 22,000 titles coming from 5,000 publishers worldwide, ensuring broad interdisciplinary coverage in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities. Scopus was designed and developed with input from researchers and librarians and features direct links to subscribed full-text articles, other library resources and interoperability with applications such as reference management software. Scopus is part of the Research Intelligence portfolio which includes the SciVal tools, the Pure system, rich data assets and custom Analytical Services. www.scopus.com.

View this Media Alert online: http://www.brill.com/news/majority-brills-book-series-now-included-scopus