Here Today, Gone within a Month: The Fleeting Life of Digital News

In 1989 on the shores of Montana’s beautiful Flathead Lake, the owners of the weekly newspaper the Bigfork Eagle started TownNews.com to help community newspapers with developing technology. TownNews.com has since evolved into an integrated digital publishing and content management system used by more than 1600 newspaper, broadcast, magazine, and web-native publications in North America. TownNews.com is now headquartered on the banks of the mighty Mississippi river in Moline Illinois.Not long ago Marc Wilson, CEO of TownNews.com, noticed that of the 220,000+ e-edition pages posted on behalf of its customers at the beginning of the month, 210,000 were deleted by month’s end.What? The front page story about a local business being sold to an international corporation that I read online September 1 will be gone by September 30? As well as the story about my daughter’s 1st place finish in the district field and track meet?A 2014 national survey by the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) of 70 digital-only and 406 hybrid (digital and print) newspapers conclusively showed that newspaper publishers also do not maintain archives of the content they produce. RJI found a dismal 12% of the “hybrid” newspapers reported even backing up their digital news content and fully 20% of the “digital-only” newspapers reported that they are backing up none of their content. Educopia Institute’s 2012 and 2015 surveys with newspapers and libraries concur, and further demonstrate that the longstanding partner to the newspaper—the library—likewise is neither collecting nor preserving this digital content.This leaves us with a bitter irony, that today, one can find stories published prior to 1922 in the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America and other digitized, out-of-copyright newspaper collections but cannot, and never will be able to, read a story published online less than a month ago. In this paper we look at how much news is published online that is never published in printor on more permanent media. We estimate how much online news is or will soon be forever lost because no one preserves it: not publishers, not libraries, not content management systems, and not the Internet Archive. We delve into some of the reasons why this content is not yet preserved, and we examine the persistent challenges of digital preservation and of digital curation of this content type. We then suggest a pathway forward, via some initial steps that journalists, producers, legislators, libraries, via some initial steps that journalists, producers, legislators, libraries, distributors, and readers may each take to begin to rectify this historical loss going forward

Here Today, Gone within a Month: The Fleeting Life of Digital News

In 1989 on the shores of Montana’s beautiful Flathead Lake, the owners of the weekly newspaper the Bigfork Eagle started TownNews.com to help community newspapers with developing technology. TownNews.com has since evolved into an integrated digital publishing and content management system used by more than 1600 newspaper, broadcast, magazine, and web-native publications in North America. TownNews.com is now headquartered on the banks of the mighty Mississippi river in Moline Illinois. Not long ago Marc Wilson, CEO of TownNews.com, noticed that of the 220,000+ e-edition pages posted on behalf of its customers at the beginning of the month, 210,000 were deleted by month’s end. What? The front page story about a local business being sold to an international corporation that I read online September 1 will be gone by September 30? As well as the story about my daughter’s 1st place finish in the district field and track meet? A 2014 national survey by the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) of 70 digital-only and 406 hybrid (digital and print) newspapers conclusively showed that newspaper publishers also do not maintain archives of the content they produce. RJI found a dismal 12% of the “hybrid” newspapers reported even backing up their digital news content and fully 20% of the “digital-only” newspapers reported that they are backing up none of their content. Educopia Institute’s 2012 and 2015 surveys with newspapers and libraries concur, and further demonstrate that the longstanding partner to the newspaper—the library—likewise is neither collecting nor preserving this digital content. This leaves us with a bitter irony, that today, one can find stories published prior to 1922 in the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America and other digitized, out-of-copyright newspaper collections but cannot, and never will be able to, read a story published online less than a month ago. In this paper we look at how much news is published online that is never published in print or on more permanent media. We estimate how much online news is or will soon be forever lost because no one preserves it: not publishers, not libraries, not content management systems, and not the Internet Archive. We delve into some of the reasons why this content is not yet preserved, and we examine the persistent challenges of digital preservation and of digital curation of this content type. We then suggest a pathway forward, via some initial steps that journalists, producers, legislators, libraries, distributors, and readers may each take to begin to rectify this historical loss going forward

Marketing and promotion of OAR@UoM : the open access Institutional Repository of the University of Malta

In 2014 the University of Malta Library launched its Open Access (OA) Institutional Repository: OAR@UoM. Since OAR@UoM is the first and only online institutional repository on the Maltese Islands, it also plays a major role in promoting OA nationally and in forming partnerships with other stakeholders who lack the infrastructure but are interested to deposit in OA. This pushes the boundaries of traditional IRs and creates a new sets of challenges. The Outreach Department of the library was tasked with promoting OAR@UoM and to develop training workshops to instruct academics on how to upload their research on the IR, whilst also providing some background information on OA and the benefits associated with it. A number of promotional material was created and disseminated on campus to help increase the awareness of OA and OAR@UoM. During its annual OA week in October, the library organizes OA-related activities and talks on campus. In 2015, in collaboration with FOSTER, the library organized a conference to address the misconceptions regarding OA brought forward by a number of academics. The one-day conference was entitled ‘Open Access and its impact on research and scholarship’. Discussions on the impact of OA on the Maltese research/academic community, and training on how to upload on OAR@UoM were the focus points. This paper will look into the effectiveness of the promotion and marketing strategy followed by the Outreach Department in relation to the (OA) repository. It will also look into the increase in submissions done willingly by academics and how their perception of OA has changed. This paper will also investigate the creation of an Open Science Department to assist academics with OA-related queries. Will the creation of a department exclusively responsible for OA have a big impact on the academics? How can the Open Science Department collaborate with the Outreach Department to create a more effective marketing strategy to promote OA publishing and submission of research papers on OAR@UoM? This paper will come up with suggestions for such questions by looking specifically at the case at the University but also compare this with other scenarios of how OA was promoted in different institutions.peer-reviewe

Public sector information and re-use – where is the UK now?

Information produced by government does of course serve a number of purposes. First it should inform government so as to generate sound policy decisions and effective strategies. Second, through a variety of media, it should provide the general public with information to enable individuals to engage with government services and to deliver personal data that they are obliged to provide. Access to a wide variety of public sector information (PSI) is also important to enable individuals to manage their lives, operate their businesses or help make political decisions about which party to support at an election. But in the midst of such uses is the asset itself i.e. PSI and the policy for its creation, storage, management, exploitation and distribution. As a national resource one issue is whether it is a commodity to be shared freely or, in those circumstances where income can be derived from it, a product to be licensed and sold to offset public sector costs? In the UK this has been under debate for many years through analysis of Crown copyright regulation. Current policy, as interpreted by HM Treasury, continues to argue that those wishing to exploit or add value to PSI for commercial purposes should at least contribute something to the cost of its supply. Joint ventures with the private sector have also been entered into for the preparation and distribution of some PSI where the private sector service provider is permitted to recoup subscriptions in return for the investment. Until recently this has been a relatively sterile debate lacking data to fuel the arguments. That has changed as a result of recent investigations which this paper now explores. At issue is whether present policy is vindicated or alternatively whether pressure is growing for further modernisation of conventional approaches? This paper traces the process of development of the policy through to the present

Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence and Fruitful Collaboration

The UK Research Funding Councils (RCUK) have proposed that all RCUK fundees should self-archive on the web, free for all, their own final drafts of all journal articles reporting their RCUK-funded research, in order to maximise their usage and impact. ALPSP (a learned publishers' association) now seeks to delay and block the RCUK proposal, arguing that it will ruin journals. All objective evidence from the past decade and a half of self-archiving, however, shows that self-archiving can and does co-exist peacefully with journals while greatly enhancing both author/article and journal impact, to the benefit of both. Journal publishers should not be trying to delay and block self-archiving policy; they should be collaborating with the research community on ways to share its vast benefits

The University as Publisher: Summary of a Meeting Held at UC Berkeley on November 1, 2007

With the advent of electronic publishing, the scholarly communication landscape at universities has become increasingly diverse. Multiple stakeholders including university presses, libraries, and central IT departments are challenged by the increasing volume and the rapidity of production of these new forms of publication in an environment of economic uncertainties. As a response to these increasing pressures, as well as the recent publication of important reports and papers on the topic, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) convened a meeting of experts titled, The University as Publisher. The event was sponsored as part of the A.W. Mellon Foundation-funded Future of Scholarly Communication project at CSHE.Our goal was to explore among stakeholders -- faculty, publishers, CIOs, librarians, and researchers -- the implications of the academic community, in some structure, taking over many, if not all, aspects of scholarly publishing. Two themes were the focus of the public panels: Institutional Roles in Evaluation, Quality Assessment, and Selection and Structuring and Budgeting Models for Publishing within the University Community. Our discussions included the importance of distinguishing between informal dissemination and formal publishing and the challenges that each presents to the university community. The harsh economic realities of high-quality formal scholarly publication, not least of which are managing peer review and editorial processes, were emphasized. Understanding disciplinary needs was cited as paramount throughout the discussions; the needs and traditions of scholars in the sciences and humanities, as well as among myriad disciplines, will likely demand different dissemination and publishing models and solutions. An additional theme that emerged was acknowledging the diverse forms electronic dissemination takes in the academy and the need to foster a spectrum of alternatives in publication forms, business models, and the peer review process. Budgetary and academic freedom concerns were explored as well. Regarding the expensive infrastructure required for electronic dissemination and publishing, it was agreed that there is enormous duplication among the university press, IT, and the library

Lone Star imPRESSions: A History of Small Press in Texas

Welcome. I believe that small press publishing is a force in Texas, and this exhibit is my way of honoring that. There have been so many different small presses to exist throughout Texas history that I could spend years collecting that information. So I decided to create an exhibit that highlights some of the oldies and some of the new players on the block. The exhibit is not a comprehensive history, but its a window into a history that is diverse and rich. If you are looking to read further on small press, check out my exhibit catalog at guides.lib.utexas.edu/utpc/currentexhibit. I have taken the liberty of providing additional details about each press, adding some others that couldn’t quite fit the exhibit, and providing submission details on each press for those of you looking to publish. I hope you enjoy the exhibit. Welcome to the hard work and perseverance that is Texas small press!UT Librarie

Digital literatures; digital democracies; digital threats?

Technology is reconfiguring the ways in which we consume, produce and disseminate literature, both within literary studies and outside of the academy. However, most importantly, the apparent breakdown of the gatekeeper function that has been triggered by technology in the distribution of both fiction and criticism leads to a form that looks, at least to some perhaps neo-liberal degree, as though it might be more democratic. In this paper, I explore the ways in which these new technologies unearth value structures within our discipline that have been present for a long time, despite the corrective efforts of cultural studies, but are now more overtly surfacing in a swing back toward Leavisite modes. How are we to strike a balance and sensitivity in our practice of reading and teaching towards a liberal model of value and a top-down authoritarian approach? How might technology enable or hinder such a balancing act

DeWitt Wallace Library Annual Report 2015-2016

Summary of library and media services activities for 2015-201