LISNews: Librarian News

Law.com has A Story from the ALA Meeting on Law Librarian Salaries. As you may have guessed, it is not a glowing report on the state of librarian pay. It\'s not just the pay in law offices, but many firms simply don\'t think the libraries are important.

\"\"We need to get away from the attitude that we are lucky to make what we make,\" says Elizabeth Kenney, the law librarian at the Boston office of Philadelphia-based Dechert -- Read More

R Hadden wrote: \"Risk Management of Digital Information: A File Format Investigation.\" by Gregory W. Lawrence et al. It is impossible today to guarantee the longevity and legibility of digital information for even one human generation. The choices are: to physically preserve the format, to emulate the data, or to migrate the digital data. All these choices have risks. In 1998 the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) asked Cornell University to study the risk management for migrating several different common file formats. This report is the result of their studies, and is a practical guide to assess the risks associated with migrating electronic files in various formats. File migration is prone to generating errors, and this report provides practical tools to quantify these risks, get the .pdf file atClir.org

Here is an interesting article from the Tribune Review. The cost of scholarly journals is rising, along with the amount of works being published in them, and libraries can\'t keep up. Some blame the \"Publish or Perish\" syndrome, which may not necessarily produce the best quality of work.\"We\'re trying to take a look at the incentives that drive scholarly publishing,\" said John Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities. The incentives should focus more on the quality of the work, the contribution it makes to the discipline, and less on a simple count of the number of publications.\" -- Read More

Zdnet has this lengthy and interesting article about copyright and its effect on research libraries. In addition, are research libraries \"virtually\" kicking themselves out of businnes. \"As is so often the case when established industries meet the Internet, there is a paradox here: The libraries\' rush into digital technologies may be a sprint toward their demise. At the very least, a monumental transformation seems inevitable. Yet, there is no turning back.\" -- Read More