News

University of Maryland Libraries have taken advantage of the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) since April of this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. ETAS has made it possible for Maryland students, faculty, and researchers to obtain lawful access to specific digital materials in HathiTrust that correspond to over 923,000 titles held in print at UMD. Online access to ETAS titles will continue as the Libraries progress through at least phase two of reopening. As HathiTrust must abide by copyright limitations, ETAS titles may be viewed, but cannot be downloaded.…

Michael Dougherty, chair of the Department of Psychology, first came to appreciate the importance of open science for the role it can play in replication and reproducibility of research. “Making work openly available is one way we can engage in a more transparent science, a more honest science,” says Dougherty. “If work can easily be double-checked by others, open access to science serves as an internal check on the system. It helps ensure we’re putting out only our best quality work.” While this remains an important function of open science, Dougherty will tell you now that he sees open…

University of Maryland Libraries is now among ten Big Ten Academic Alliance libraries to join the Collaborative Archive & Data Research Environment (CADRE). CADRE provides researchers access to secure, high-quality data documenting academic research, publication trends, and patents in all knowledge domains. Maryland-affiliated researchers will now have access to CADRE’s highest level of data and text mining services for major datasets, such as Web of Science, Microsoft Academic Graph, and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office data. "Improving our data services and curation for the University…

PACT members continued their discussions about MIT’s licensing principles and they reviewed Harvard’s policies. The debate centered around the merits of stating that UMD supports the MIT and Harvard principles versus writing a UMD-specific set of policies and principles. Issues included the need to:

• address UMD stakeholders/sponsors
• provide a brief statement of local views and to acknowledge other institutions’ principles
• acknowledge practical local steps for renegotiations with publishers

MD-SOAR (mdsoar.org) is a shared digital repository platform for eleven colleges and universities in Maryland. It is currently funded by the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) Library Consortium (usmai.org) and other participating partner institutions. MD-SOAR is jointly governed by all participating libraries, who have agreed to share policies and practices that are necessary and appropriate for the shared platform. Within this broad framework, each library provides customized repository services and collections that meet local institutional needs. Records in…

The Annual Undergraduate Research Day (URD), hosted by the Maryland Center for Undergraduate Research, was hosted online this year through the Libraries DRUM (Digital Repository at the University of Maryland) platform. URD is Maryland’s largest, most visible, and most diversified showcase for undergraduate research accomplishments. Explore undergraduates’ remarkable research accomplishments at go.umd.edu/urd2020.

PACT members continued the discussion about UMD's licensing practices and status of "big deals" and transformative agreements, namely ….: ●      Perpetual access and its effect on pricing and licensing - access to a small subset of journals, negotiated with publishers, sometimes separate contracts and terms ●      Walk-in access as one effort to serve land-grant and access needs? The group began discussing a core set of guiding principles for scholarship at UMD. They agreed that UMD should aim to protect authors’ copyrights through increasing awareness,…

Libraries has added its first four courses to the UMD Open Learning, a non-credit course catalog for the University of Maryland community and beyond hosted by the Office of Extended Studies. Registration for Introduction to R Language Programming, Introduction to Python, Introduction to Adobe Audition, and Introduction to Adobe Premiere is now open.

UMD Libraries' licensing practices Collections Strategies and Services associate dean, Dan Mack, provided an overview of the current UMD position, ‘big-deals”, and factors to be considered when negotiating contracts.  UMD is a land-grant institution required to provide public access to materials. The Libraries must also be ADA compliant and accommodate disability access. We aim to leverage consortial partnerships and maximize our ability to share content; and content must work with our integrated library system (ILS) and discovery tools. Maryland laws and UMD policies are also a…

Guest: Jeff Mackie-Mason, University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer at UC Berkeley, co-chair of the UC negotiation team.  Negotiations on transformative agreements began in 2018 and are a major priority for the University of California. They spent two years drawing up a strategic plan and building a coalition of support from the libraries, faculty, and upper administration. The university president and all chancellors are also in support, and the University Senate is an active participant. There was a focus on cultivating large support from faculty: UC faculty senate…