Allan Hancock College (AHC) in Santa Maria, CA, on December 15 announced a new partnership with BibliU, a London-based eTextbook platform provider originally spun off from the University of Oxford Innovation Fund. Through the new initiative, the AHC library will enable students to access digital course reserves from any device. 

Mary Patrick, Dean of Academic Affairs and dean of the AHC Library, explained in an announcement that while the library was always looking for ways to support students, the COVID-19 pandemic and shift to remote learning had accelerated the need to offer a new course reserves solution. Prior to the pandemic, the library’s physical textbook reserves had been its most-used resource.

“Before the pandemic, our library was already in search of innovative ways to support Allan Hancock students, many of whom are balancing work or family in addition to their studies,” she said. “As we transitioned to online learning due to the pandemic, our library also needed to make the move to remote services—and while students’ health and safety was our primary concern, creating access to course materials quickly became an urgent priority. This is about streamlining access to digital course reserves at no cost to students, in order to ensure that learning continues even in the midst of the pandemic.”

Dave Sherwood, CEO and cofounder of BibliU, added that “this is about not just ensuring affordable, equitable access to course materials—but also helping students stay on track to graduation even amidst the uncertainty and turmoil caused by COVID-19.”

THE LIBRARY CORPORATION SELECTS ORACLE CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE

The Library Corporation (TLC) has selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as its commercial public cloud platform, transitioning away from managed colocation hosting services for its library management systems CARL•X, Library•Solution, and Library•Solution for Schools. The company is also moving all internal development environments to the cloud as well.

TLC•Cloud Services features NVMe solid state storage and a flat network design that limits the number of switches, routers, and “network hops” between computing and storage, resulting in a low-latency, responsive network. TLC will manage the firewall, day-to-day maintenance, and secure daily backups.  

“TLC selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure after a comprehensive commercial cloud provider evaluation,” TLC Chief Operating Officer John Burns said in an announcement. “The performance, data security, and operational scalability of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for our library management and data services products are a great fit for TLC as we move to a completely web-based commercial cloud environment for both our commercial products and internal development teams.” 

TLC Chief Technology Officer Justin Duewel-Zahniser added that Oracle's “organizational capacity for scalability, security, and performance” would enable TLC to focus its resources on "improving and supporting our library management and data services.”

PROQUEST LAUNCHES TDM STUDIO FOR DATA VISUALIZATION

ProQuest on December 10 announced the launch of TDM Studio, a new text and data mining visualization interface designed to enable researchers and students to analyze large datasets, even if they don’t have coding experience.

“TDM is becoming a necessary skill across disciplines to help us better understand and evaluate data in new ways,” Mindy Pozenel, director of product management for ProQuest TDM Studio, said in an announcement. “Most existing TDM tools require some knowledge of coding and an understanding of data structures, but today, a new visualization interface in TDM Studio makes this type of analysis accessible to everyone. Researchers with coding experience will continue to benefit from TDM Studio’s development environment.”

The University of Sydney in Australia has been piloting TDM Studio in several courses and workshops. Senior History Lecturer Marco Duranti praised the new interface, stating in an announcement that “the tool transformed how my students and I approached our exploration of human rights controversies in a historical perspective. It illuminated not only the transformational impact of data science on our field, but also the value of combining computational analyses with traditional humanities approaches.”