Library Technology Guides

Dr. Timnit Gebru is the 2025 Miles Conrad Awardee. NISO announced that Dr. Timnit Gebru, Executive Director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, will be the recipient of the 2025 Miles Conrad Award, NISO's lifetime achievement award for those working in the information community. She will receive her award and deliver the 2025 Miles Conrad Lecture virtually during the NISO Plus Baltimore conference. [Full Announcement].

Gale and ConnectEDD Publishing announce partnership to offer Jimmy Casas' PD Resources on Gale eBooks Platform. Gale, part of Cengage Group and ConnectEDD Publishing, have partnered to bring the professional development resources of best-selling author, leadership coach, and K-12 professional learning expert, Jimmy Casas, to school districts nationwide via the Gale eBooks platform. This collaboration offers a unique collection of acclaimed professional learning resources that provides districts and educators with unlimited and simultaneous access to the digital content they need when they need it for PD growth and student success. This partnership makes Gale the only aggregator of professional learning eBooks to offer ConnectEDD's PD resources, which were previously only available through individual purchases on Amazon. [Full Announcement].

EBSCO Clinical Decisions introduces Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisory Council. EBSCO Clinical Decisions announced the formation of its Generative Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council. Established in June 2024, the Advisory Council was created to provide an independent source of expert oversight and pioneer the responsible, safe, and effective use of generative AI in clinical decision support. This cross-disciplinary council consists of leaders from health care, patient advocacy, legal, technology, and informatics sectors. [Full Announcement].

The American Library Association receives transformational gift to fund scholarships. James W. Lewis of Washington, DC has made the largest individual bequest to the American Library Association in the association's history. The approximately $25 million bequest is truly transformational and will fund scholarships for aspiring librarians, ensuring future generations of highly educated and committed librarians prepared to meet the informational needs of their communities, according to Leslie Burger, ALA Interim Executive Director.  Mr. Lewis' gift will fund library school scholarships for students with demonstrated financial needs. These scholarships will benefit legions of young people who would otherwise be unable to pursue professional librarianship.  [Full Announcement].

Join us December 17 for a public forum on Advancing Digital Accessibility for Scientific and Technical Publications. The DAISY Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium, and the National Information Standards Organization announced that they are partnering to support and advance the accessibility of scientific and technical publications to people with disabilities through a series of virtual public forums. Building on work initiated in 2024 by the US White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, these meetings will seek to advance the goal of ensuring the digital accessibility of content. Recognizing that advancing accessibility is a community effort, the three organizations will work to bring representatives from publishers, research societies, libraries, US Federal Agencies, institutional and government repository hosts, and others around the world together to share knowledge and support best practices. With a long history of leadership in both promoting accessibility and engaging the information and publishing communities, DAISY, W3C, and NISO are well positioned to pursue the vision for a more open, accessible, and inclusive future for science and innovation. [Full Announcement].

Library appoints new Chief for National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The Library of Congress has named Rachael Stoeltje as the new chief of the Library's National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, which includes the Library's Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, beginning in January 2025. Stoeltje will oversee the state-of-the-art facility where the Library of Congress acquires, preserves and provides access to the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of films, television programs, radio broadcasts and sound recordings. [Full Announcement].

NAR Streamlines Access to Real Estate Knowledge with Soutron Archive. Soutron Global, an internationally recognized provider of information management solutions for corporate libraries and digital archives announces that the National Association of REALTORS has streamlined its Library & Archive services by implementing Soutron Archive, enabling improved access to one of the world's largest collections of real estate resources. With 1.5 million members and thousands of affiliated organizations, NAR's vast collection serves not only its members and staff but also the public, academics, and researchers. This strategic move has improved how the library's archive services organize, protect, and deliver its vast collection of real estate resources to members, staff, and the public. [Full Announcement].

OrienTales: Online the New Digital Library of the University of Naples L'Orientale. OrienTales is the new digital library managed by the University Library System of the University of Naples “L'Orientale”. The project aims at the creation, enhancement, promotion, dissemination, and long-term archiving of digital objects and collections, making them available to the public on the platform. The digitized cultural heritage comes from the collections of the University and other institutions that will join the project. [Full Announcement].

Clarivate and the Chinese Academy of Sciences release Annual Collaborative Report to identify 125 research fronts. Clarivate, a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences released 2024 Research Fronts, identifying the most dynamic and rapidly growing specialties in sciences and social sciences. This marks the eleventh annual collaboration between the two organizations, with the report launched at a ceremony held in Beijing. The report identifies 125 Research Fronts, comprising 110 ‘hot' Fronts and 15 ‘emerging' Fronts. A hot Research Front represents an active area of study, while an emerging Research Front indicates a rapidly developing field in scientific research. The ability to identify these specialty areas of research provides a distinct advantage for those who seek to monitor, support and advance research, often in the face of finite resources. This includes governments, policymakers, publishers, research administrators and companies. [Full Announcement].

Enhancing library services at the National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism, Taiwan. National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism, Taiwan's first and only vocational university focused on hospitality and tourism, transformed its library services by transitioning from Aleph to the cloud-based Alma and Primo systems. Despite having a small staff of nine, the library successfully implemented these new platforms to streamline workflows and enhance services for its community of nearly 5,000 faculty and students. [Full Announcement].

JATS-Con to be hosted in Baltimore as a NISO Plus 2025 Pre-conference. Next year's JATS-Con, the user conference for the Journal Article Tag Suite Standard will be held as a pre-conference day associated with the annual NISO Plus Baltimore meeting on February 10, 2025 at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront. This is the first JATS-Con since 2023 and the first to be held in person since 2019. [Full Announcement].

Cindy Hohl to give opening keynote at NISO Plus 2025 in Baltimore. NISO announced that Cindy Hohl will deliver the opening keynote address at the NISO Plus 2025 conference in Baltimore on Tuesday, February 11, at 9:30 am ET. Hohl is director of policy analysis and operational support at the Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library and the 2024–2025 president of the American Library Association. She has also served in a number of other leadership roles in the library community. She is past president of the American Indian Library Association and a board member of the ALA-affiliated Freedom to Read Foundation. She also serves on the Standing Committee of the Indigenous Matters Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). [Full Announcement].

Clarivate reveals Highly Cited Researchers 2024 List. Clarivate, a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, today revealed its 2024 list of Highly Cited Researchers, influential researchers at universities, research institutes and commercial organizations around the world who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field(s) of research. Analysts at the Institute for Scientific Information have recognized 6,636 Highly Cited Researchers in 2024 from more than 1,200 institutions in 59 nations and regions. The rigorous evaluation and selection process draws on data from the Web of Science Core Collection citation index, together with qualitative analysis performed by experts at the ISI at Clarivate. [Full Announcement].

American Library Association launches national search for executive director. The American Library Association has reopened its search for an executive director in partnership with executive search firm Isaacson, Miller. The search will be led by a steering committee comprising ALA member leaders. The selected candidate will succeed Interim Executive Director Leslie Burger, who was appointed in November 2023. ALA's Executive Board chose to relaunch its search for the position. [Full Announcement].

New Report from Clarivate and Healthcare Executive Explores Mainland China's Biopharma Revolution and Increasing Global Influence. Clarivate, a leading global provider of transformative intelligence, in partnership with Healthcare Executive, published by the China Pharmaceutical Enterprises Association, today announced the release of a new report, A Decade of Innovation, A Decade to Come. [Full Announcement].

We are hiring a team member for our Support Department. ByWater Solutions was created with the express goal of changing the way libraries interact with their software and the vendors who support them. We believe that libraries deserve to have access to a personalized, comprehensive support system at a reasonable cost. Our company is made up of a small and close-knit group of librarians, book lovers, technology and data geeks, Tolkien fans, space nerds, knitters, marathon runners, animal lovers, and most importantly, library lovers and open-source fanatics. [Full Announcement].

Université La Sagesse (ULS) chooses Koha open source library management system, hosted and supported by PTFS Europe.. Université La Sagesse Lebanon has chosen Koha as its new library management system, to replace the previous Drupal system. PTFS Europe has implemented the new system and will provide on-going hosting and support services to ULS to ensure its success in supporting these collections into the future. [Full Announcement].

MNLINK Resource Sharing Service, powered by ReShare, now available for Minnesota libraries. Project ReShare announced that the MNLINK resource-sharing service has successfully transitioned to the ReShare platform. This change makes it easy for libraries in Minnesota to discover and share library resources. The new MNLINK, powered by ReShare and VuFind®, and hosted by Index Data, allows users to easily access physical and digital materials across many public and academic libraries in Minnesota. [Full Announcement].

Maria Castresana joins Springer Nature as new Chief People Officer. Maria Castresana has joined Springer Nature as its new Chief People Officer reporting to the Chief Executive. Maria takes over from Gregor Karolus, Chief HR Officer following his retirement at the end of October. As Chief People Officer, she is part of Springer Nature's Executive Committee. [Full Announcement].

NISO publishes update to Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) Standard 1.4. NISO announced publication of an update to the Journal Article Tag Suite Standard (1.4), ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2024. Last revised in 2019, JATS defines a suite of XML structures describing the content of journal articles using a common format that enables the exchange of that content between publishers and archives. It is intended to preserve intellectual content of journals independent of the form in which the content was originally delivered, and to enable an archive to capture structural and semantic components of existing material. JATS has been adopted widely by journals publishers from around the world and is required or supported by many archives as well as web-hosting and conversion vendors. The updated standard introduces important changes to meet evolving needs and practices in scholarly communications. [Full Announcement].