by Katina Strauch

CU Boulder Provost Russell Moore has named the awesome Robert H. McDonald as dean of University Libraries. McDonald assumed the post on Aug. 1, 2018. “I want to welcome Robert to CU Boulder,” said Moore. “He will bring new ideas and sensibilities to the vital work in research, information storage, dissemination and archiving done by our outstanding network of libraries. I look forward to his working with our exceptionally talented University Libraries faculty and staff in creating new ways for our campus community to succeed.” Robert’s research interests include technology management and integration of lean and agile frameworks, data preservation, learning ecosystems, data cyberinfrastructure and big data analytics. McDonald earned his master of library and information science degree at the University of South Carolina and holds a master of music degree from the University of Georgia.

Moving right along, the incredibly charming Duncan Smith, the co-founder and general manager of NoveList, created and led a team that designs the tools library staff use to connecting readers with the books that they need, is retiring! I remember back in 1994 when Duncan was running statewide continuing education services for librarians in North Carolina, and one of the workshop requests that kept coming up was help training people to help readers find their next book to read. In June 1999, EBSCO Publishing completed negotiations for the acquisition of NoveList, CARL Corporation’s electronic readers’ advisory resource for fiction readers. EBSCO Publishing Division general manager Tim Collins said: “This acquisition is a major component of our commitment to provide libraries with the resources they need to serve all of their users. NoveList will be a core component of our program to meet the needs of fiction readers regardless of the type of library they use.”

The dapper David Parker is celebrating a 5-year work anniversary. David is Senior Director, Documentary, Film, Education Video, Licensing, Publishing and Distribution at Alexander Street, a PROQUEST company.  I remember when David was founder of Business Expert Press back in 2008-2013. 

Speaking of BEP, the marvelous Sheri E. Dean Marketing Director, Business Expert Press and Momentum Press, has agreed that BEP will sponsor the international Fast Pitch award in Charleston this November! Are you coming?

Another celebration — The how-does-she-keep-all-her-ducks-in- a-row Cris Ferguson is celebrating a 5-year work anniversary as Director of Technical Services at Murray State University. Cris is also the guest editor of ATG’s Nov 2018 print issue  dealing with the ways in which libraries are financially supporting university curricula.

Heather Ruland Staines, Director, Business Development, Hypothes.is is celebrating her work anniversary. Heather has had a whirlwind career so far exploring the nexus of academic publishing, library technology, and the future of eLearning. Heather is currently, focusing on business development and publisher relations. Speaking of which Heather just announced on LinkdIn that Atypon and Hypothesis are announcing a collaboration to align annotation capabilities in Atypon’s new in-browser Literatum eReader with the emerging ecosystem of interoperable clients and services for annotation based open standards and technologies.

I am bummed that the awesome Rick Anderson has decided to speak at the Arab Emrates instead of Charleston this year! Oh well! But I do want you all to know that his latest monograph, Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University  Press, 2018) was just published.

More Charleston author books just published – The Complete Guide to RFPs  for Libraries by Frances Wilkinson and Sever Bordeianu. (Libraries Unlimited/ABC-Clio, 2018)

Joey van Arnhem has just finished co-editing a LITA guide on Augmented and Virtual Reality in Libraries with Christine Elliot and Marie Rose. Here is the link: .  Joey is one of out staff at the College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library and can be counted on to know all that’s innovative and exciting.

Speaking of book reviews and ATG. This is a very developing area as you have no doubt noticed. Corey Seeman  is taking over Regina Gong’s Monograph Musings column. He is planning a meeting for interested book reviewers and publishers in Charleston during the Conference! Stay tuned!  cseeman@umich.edu

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has announced its latest update. More than 1,000 new words, senses, and subentries have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in the latest update, including worstest, fungivorous, and corporation pop. This quarter sees the inclusion of both obsolete words, such as afound, and new words such as fatberg. See the list at https://public.oed.com/updates/new-words-list-september-2017/

‎The University of North Carolina Press has  been awarded a major grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a three-year pilot to publish up to 150 monographs from university presses in digital-first open access editions. “While the print monograph remains the indispensable format for advancing scholarship in history, the publishing economics for university presses are increasingly distressed,” said John Sherer, Spangler Family Director of UNC Press and primary investigator for the grant. “Cost-recovery models are leading to higher prices and lower overall dissemination of and access to vitally important content. This pilot is attempting to fundamentally rethink the workflow and dissemination model for the monograph in order to dramatically expand access and increase impact while maintaining the exceptionally high editorial quality associated with university presses.” A working group made up of university presses, libraries, and content platforms will oversee the pilot. More information about the pilot can be found here: http://www.longleafservices.org/blog/oa-monographs/

MECA (Manuscript Exchange Common Approach) is collaborating toward the shared goal of systems interoperability. Authors lose time and effort when their manuscript is rejected by a journal and they have to repeat the submission process in subsequent journals. Plus, it is estimated that 15 million hours of researcher time is wasted each year repeating reviews. Both of these challenges could be addressed if journals and publishers could transfer manuscripts between publications using different submission-tracking systems. With the growth of cascading workflows, manuscripts are regularly transferred within a publishing group. But a growing challenge is to transfer the manuscript (and, optionally, peer-review data) across publishers and manuscript systems and even to and from preprint servers. A group of manuscript-management suppliers has taken up this challenge and is working together with NISO to develop a common approach that can be adopted across the industry.

Researchers can now experience open access (OA), subscription and on-demand content faster with Digital Science’s Anywhere Access – the first cloud-based solution to bring one-click access to millions of full-text scholarly articles.  “Accessing an article from an OA or subscribed journal should be as easy as double-clicking a song in Spotify. Too often, researchers are met with cascading layers of link resolution, authentication, proxies, changing publisher website templates, and other redirects before reaching the full-text. Each layer disrupts the researcher’s workflow and focus,” said Robert McGrath, CEO at Anywhere Access.

Ten institutions have signed on to Anywhere Access, including the University of Denver, California State University, Northridge and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “The University of Denver became an early development partner on Anywhere Access because we wanted to make the process of accessing e-resources easier for our patrons,” said Michael Levine-Clark, Dean of Libraries, University of Denver.  To learn more about Anywhere Access, join one of our upcoming webinars: www.anywhereaccess.com/webinar

SAGE Publishing has acquired Talis, a technology company, and its enterprise teaching and learning platform, Talis Aspire.This acquisition marks an important step for SAGE as it moves SAGE’s product portfolio beyond content-led resources into technology solutions that support teaching, learning and research in the higher education institution. This new move is in response to the evolving student, researcher, and library needs.

Helen Szigeti  is leaving SSP. She will be consulting in scholpub and scholcomm, so hopefully attending the Charleston Conference will be in her future. Cheers and good luck, Helen!

We are pleased to welcome Courtney McAllister, the electronic resources librarian from the Citadel’s Daniel Library, who will join the ATG and Charleston Conference teams.  Welcome, Courtney!

We are also happy to have Antje Mays, Director of Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries, in Lexington, back writing for ATG!

Have you noticed that Corey Seeman takes a lot of pictures of squirrels? See Corey’s Squirrel Page!

This is just one of many not to mention Facebook.

Elsevier has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aries Systems, a leader in scientific publication workflow solutions headquartered outside Boston, MA. Aries’ offerings are used by journals, books and other publications for manuscript submission, peer review, production tracking and eCommerce. Aries was founded by Lyndon Holmes in 1986 and has successfully developed several generations of technologies to support publications processes, including Editorial Manager®, an online manuscript submission and peer-review system. Elsevier and Aries have worked closely for nearly 20 years and Elsevier already uses the Editorial Manager platform for a significant number of journals, including its high profile Cell Press portfolio and many society titles.The acquisition is in line with Elsevier’s organic growth driven strategy, supported by acquisitions of innovative open science companies that are helping improve the research information ecosystem, following the acquisitions of Mendeley, SSRN, Plum Analytics and bepress. The transaction is subject to customary conditions and regulatory consents and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018. Scholarly Kitchen via Kent Anderson has a detailed discussion of this. See — https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/08/06/interpreting-elseviers-acquisition-aries-systems/

Thanks to all of you who proposed sessions for the 2018 Charleston Conference! It’s going to be another great one! Have you registered yet?