Today’s news:  An award for Statistical Abstract; slides from IFLA semantic web meeting; Gale receives award from Michigan Lib. Assn.; an OCLC – Europeana agreement; PLOS’ Global Participation Initiative; Springer’s API Challenge 2.0 winners; and People in the News.

 Lifetime Achievement Award Presented to Statistical Abstract

Last week, the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to the Census Bureau for the Statistical Abstract, the national data book that contained collections of statistics on social and economic conditions in the United States. The award acknowledged the publication’s role as one of the premier reference sources for the past 133 years.

RUSA Committee Chair Jack O’Gorman presented the award to Census Bureau Deputy Director Thomas Mesenbourg at the office of the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, D.C. The honor was initially announced at RUSA’s Midwinter Book and Media Awards Reception, an annual party at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting celebrating the top reading and reference titles as selected by the expert librarians of RUSA.

Slides from IFLA Semantic Web SIG Open Meeting Now Available

InfoDOCKET reports that Slides from the SWSIG 2nd meeting at 78th IFLA WLIC are now available from the IFLA website featuring numerous presentations.

Gale Receives Inaugural ‘Heart of a Champion’ Award from the Michigan Library Association

“Gale, part of Cengage Learning… announced it is the 2012 recipient of the inaugural Michigan Library Association (MLA) Heart of a Champion Award. The award was presented to Gale to honor the vast advocacy efforts the company undertakes on behalf of all libraries, in Michigan and around the country…”

Europeana and OCLC agree on approach for member libraries to contribute metadata to the Europeana.eu portal

OCLC and Europeana, the provider of Europe’s digital library, have worked together on an approach that will enable OCLC member institutions to contribute metadata derived from OCLC’s WorldCat database to the Europeana.eu portal in a manner that is consistent with OCLC’s WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative.

This agreement aims to dispel concerns that OCLC’s policies around metadata in its WorldCat database are an obstacle to complying with the terms of the Europeana Data Exchange Agreement (DEA)…”

 Announcing the PLOS Global Participation Initiative

PLOS has announced “a program to increase the global participation of authors in open-access publishing. On September 4th, 2012, we launched the PLOS Global Participation Initiative, which aims to encourage submissions from researchers around the world who may previously have been prevented or limited in their ability to publish in open-access journals…”

 Winners announced for Springer’s API Challenge 2.0

“Springer recently concluded its API Challenge 2.0, and announced the winners of the competition. The challenge asks programmers to create new and original non-commercial applications that use Springer’s metadata and content APIs. The goal is to offer users new and novel ways of finding, visualizing and/or manipulating relevant data drawn from Springer’s… content database…”

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

New Head of Business Development and Sales for EMEA for IOP Publishing

“Brett Rubinstein has today been announced as the new Head of Business Development and Sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for IOP Publishing.    Mr Rubinstein will take up his new role at the Bristol office of IOP Publishing in mid-September. He has over ten years’ experience in science, technical and medical publishing and currently holds the position of Vice President, Library Sales in the Americas for Springer. Mr Rubinstein joined Springer in 2005 and has a proven track record in sales growth, product and business model development, as well as experience in working with society journal partners…”