Digitization 101: 2009 Year in Review

Keeping with tradition, here's what stands out to me about this last year...

• Google: Founded in 1998, it is hard to believe that a company that is still relatively young could have such a huge impact. 10 years later, it is nearly impossible to avoid Google if you're using the Internet. For those of us interested in copyright and digitization, the Google Book Settlement is something we thought would be completed this fall. Now perhaps it'll become a done deal in early 2010. Of course, it may take years for us to full understand it's impact. (posts on Google)
• The economy: While things maybe getting better, the improvements are slow. The impact on libraries, museums and archives hasn't been pretty. Resources are being cut, including people. Thankfully, agencies that give grants have still been giving grants, and that has been helpful.
• Such a deal: A down economy does mean that many vendors are giving deals. That's good for their customers. However, times like this remind us about the "survival of the fittest". Hopefully, the fittest (strongest) also have the best products and services.
  
• Advocacy: The economic pressure on our cultural heritage institutions has led more of us to become outspoken advocates. In times like this, I'm glad to be a part of the Regents Advisory Council for Libraries and to donate to organizations that work to help libraries. What we need, though, is for every user to become an advocate. We need to make it easy for our users to be our advocates by providing them with postcards, etc., that they can use. (posts specifically for New Yorkers on the Regents Advisory Council for Libraries)
  
• Teaching: I've been teaching full-time for a calendar year and...wow! I teach three classes each semester, which is really keeping me busy. Thankfully, I enjoy the school I'm in, its faculty and staff, and its students. And the schedule does allow me to continue to consult, which keeps me grounded in the real world.

  By the way, it is likely that you know someone that is attending a university program either on campus or virtually. If so, please reach out to that person with words of encouragement and help. Being in school -- especially a graduate program -- can be difficult and stressful. This past year, I've seen how the stress has impacted our students and it can be devastating. Please be supportive - be unconditionally supportive.
  

• Social media: Because of the U.S. Presidential campaign in 2008 and other world events, social media was in the spotlight as 2009 began, and the spotlight is still on it. Social media -- or web 2.0 -- isn't about tools; it's about conversations and connecting with people. If you are not connecting with people online -- and hopefully in places where conversations flow quickly and effortlessly -- then you're missing out personally and professionally. Talk t your colleagues and friends about places online that they are using in order to be part of larger conversations, and then join them. You don't have to be active on a lot of sites or use a wide variety of tools. Start with one or two (e.g., LinkedIn and Facebook) and then experiment with a few more. Use what works for you and drop what doesn't.

  By the way, I do have a second blog on social media that I launched in 2007. Feel free to add it to your RSS reader.
  


• Be in the present: 2009 took me to Arlington VA, Washington D.C, Columbus OH, New York City (many times), Geneva CH, Philadelphia PA, Oklahoma City OK, Albany NY, Florida and...? Being on the road, in the classroom and online reminded me that it is important to be present in the moment. It's not helpful to anyone -- and certainly not fun -- the be physically in one place and mentally in some other place. Life is enjoyed when we're in each moment, and neither living in the past or in the future (or in some alternate mental universe).
  

I'm sure that there are things I should note about the state of digitization, but I'll leave that for another time. This (above) is what's on my mind today at the end of 2009.

You are also on my mind. Thank you for continuing to believe in this blog. Thanks for the comments that you leave, the emails that you send, and the people that you recommend this blog to.

2009 has been a rough year for many people. Let's make 2010 a better year.

Happy New Year!

Related blog posts:

• Digitization 101: 2008 Year in Review (2008)
  
• Thank you (and some statistics) (2007)
• Digitization 101 Year in Review: Words to Take into 2007 (2006)
• Digitization 101 Year in Review: News (2006)
• Digitization 101 Year in Review: Influences (2006)

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Technorati tags: Copyright,Digitization,Regents,RAC, Social Media

Web resource: Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright: Issues Affecting the U.S. Government

Because I'm going to be teachign copyirght during the spring 2010 term, this web site from CENDI is of interest to me, and may be of interest to you. “Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright: Issues Affecting the U.S. Government” was published on Oct. 8, 2008. It includes:

1.0 Glossary of Terms

2.0 Copyright Basics

3.0 U.S. Government Works

4.0 Works Created Under a Federal Contract or Grant

5.0 Use of Copyrighted Works

6.0 Applicable Copyright Legislation and Other Resources on the Internet

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Technorati tag: Copyright

A new outlet for publishing in Digital Preservation Management and Technology announced

Received via email from the publisher Emerald.

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Announcing "Digital Preservation Management and Technology", a new section in The Electronic Library journal. Section Co-editors are Dr Gillian Oliver and Professor G E Gorman Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Digital preservation management and technology are two inter-related issues confronting all memory institutions: libraries, archives, galleries and museums. Such institutions are addressing very similar questions regarding the management of preservation activities and of preserved artifacts, as well as the technologies required to preserve, disseminate and access these artifacts. For many, this has been the unexpected consequence of rushing to reformat existing collections to enable digital accessibility. Resourcing issues (shortage of expertise, limited availability of funding) are forcing collaborative activity to an unprecedented degree between the distinctly different collecting paradigms represented by these institution types. As the functionality of web technologies and social media software increasingly influence the ways in which these institutions operate, the focus on DPMT, on collaboration between technologists and managers, and on inter-institutional collaboration will increase. It is therefore timely to consider devoting a significant section of an existing journal (The Electronic Library) to capture interest and research in this sector.

In time, Digital Preservation Management and Technology may become a full journal, the focus of which will be research in the broad field of digital preservation management and related technologies in this cross-sectoral domain, which includes academic, corporate, government, scientific and commercial contexts. It will address issues relating to the continuity of digital information, including digital objects, metadata and the context of their creation, management and use. It will encompass all purposes for which information is managed by the different occupational groups: as evidence, for accountability, for knowledge and awareness and for pleasure and entertainment. Coverage is intentionally international. The emphasis will be on research and conceptual papers in these fields.

Articles should be either conceptual papers or research papers in the region of 3000-6000 words.

All submissions will be double-blind peer reviewed. by members of the Editorial Advisory Board.

There will be an international Editorial Advisory Board whose specific task will be to double blind peer review submissions. The 20-30 Board members will be from North America, the UK, Australasia, Asia and elsewhere.

Submissions please, to Digital Preservation Management and Technology at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tel

NYPL Digital Gallery & sharing images

If you haven't seen it, then take a few moments to go to the New York Public Digital Gallery, do a search and then see the options they have for sharing images. They provide the code for linking to an image as well as the code for embedding an image, like:



In fact, if you click on that photo, you'll go to its web page and see the link options on the lower right.

Having content shareable is what we all want. Nice to see NYPL actually doing it. I don't know who is the person behind this (perhaps Josh Greenberg), but whomever it is deserves "two thumbs up".

DIGITIZATION ACTIVITIES: - Project Planning and Management Outline

Received via email. This should be of interest to many people.

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The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) has just released a new planning document, "DIGITIZATION ACTIVITIES - Project Planning and Management Outline".

The aim of this document is to define activities relating to the digitization of original cultural materials, and to outline general steps for planning and management of this process. The activities described in this document address library/archival issues, imaging and conversion work, and IT infrastructure issues in particular, and were identified using project management outlines from several organizations with significant experience working with cultural materials. This document defines "digitization" as a complete process, and covers all project components from content selection = through delivery of digitized objects into a repository environment.

You can access the document from the FADGI homepage - http://digitizationguidelines.gov or, go directly to the document page at:
http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages/documents/Planning.html

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Technorati tag: Planning

Event: 14th European Conference on Digital Libraries

Received via email....

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14^th European Conference on Digital Libraries

September 6-10, 2010

Glasgow, UK

http://www.ecdl2010.org

Call for Contributions

Overview

The European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) is the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues, bringing together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field. ECDL 2010, the 14th conference in this series, will be organised by the University of Glasgow. The proceedings will be published as a volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes on Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Digital Libraries and Mobility
• Digital Library Architectures
• Digital Library Infrastructure
• Digital Preservation and Curation
• Information Mining in Digital Libraries
• Information Retrieval in Digital Libraries
• Interoperability of Digital Library Systems and Services
• Knowledge Organisation Systems
• Metadata Standards and Protocols in Digital Library Systems
• Multilinguality in Digital Libraries
• Multimedia Digital Libraries
• Personal Information Management and Personal Digital Libraries
• Personalisation in Digital Library Systems and Settings
• Policies for Digital Library systems
• Social Networking, Web 2.0 and Collaborative Interfaces in Digital Libraries
• User Interfaces for Digital Libraries
• User Studies for and Evaluation of Digital Library Systems and Applications
• Visualisation in Digital Libraries

Important dates

Research papers

Abstract submission: February 26, 2010
Full paper submission: March 1, 2010
Notification of acceptance: May 3, 2010
Submission of final version: May 24, 2010

Posters and demonstrations

Poster and demo submission: March 31, 2010
Notification of acceptance: May 3, 2010
Submission of final version: May 24, 2010

Doctoral consortium

Paper submission: April 15, 2010
Notification of Acceptance: May 10, 2010
Submission of final abstract: May 24, 2010

Call for Research Papers

Authors are invited to submit research papers describing original, unpublished research that is not (and will not be) simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere. Research papers must be up to 12 pages in length. Paper acceptance can be as long paper, short paper, or poster. The authors of the best research papers will be invited to submit substantially extended versions of their papers for publication in a Special Issue of the International Journal on Digital Libraries (Springer). For further information, please refer to http://www.ecdl2010.org/?page_id=67.

Call for Posters and Demonstrations

Posters provide an excellent opportunity for presenting late-breaking results, significant work in progress, or research that is best communicated in an interactive or graphical format. Demos showcase innovative digital libraries technology and applications, ranging from research prototypes to operational systems, allowing you to share your work directly with your colleagues in a high-visibility setting. Poster and demo submissions must be up to 4 pages in length. For details, please visit http://www.ecdl2010.org/?page_id=75.

Call for Doctoral Consortium Papers

The ECDL 2010 Doctoral Consortium (DC) serves as a forum for PhD students to share ideas about the development and use of Digital Libraries, compare approaches, discuss future research problems and receive feedback from the international Digital Library community. PhD students, whose doctoral research is related to digital libraries and is at a stage of progress where feedback from the international community might be of value, are invited to submit extended abstracts of up to 10 pages describing their work. For detailed information, please see http://www.ecdl2010.org/?page_id=92.

Submissions

All contributions must be written in English. They must follow the formatting guidelines of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and must be submitted via the conference submission system.

Further information

For further information, please visit the conference web site at http://www.ecdl2010.org/ or email info@ecdl2010.org.

Conference organizers

Honorary Chair
Keith van Rijsbergen, University of Glasgow, UK

General Chairs
Joemon Jose, University of Glasgow, UK
Mounia Lalmas, University of Glasgow, UK

Local Chair
Ingo Frommholz, University of Glasgow, UK

Programme Chairs
Andreas Rauber, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Fabrizio Sebastiani, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy

Poster & Demo Chairs
Matt Jones, University of Swansea, UK
Jaap Kamps, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Doctoral Consortium Chairs
Ian Anderson, University of Glasgow, UK
Birger Larsen, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark

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Technorati tag: Digital Libraries

Press release: IIPC Access Working Group Launches Web Archive Registry

Received in email....

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The International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) has launched a new registry (http://netpreserve.org/about/archiveList.php) of its members’ web archives. Preserving the web is not a task of any single institution. It is a mission common to all IIPC members, and many practices and lessons are transferable.

The launch of the members' web archive registry showcases international collaboration for preserving internet content for future generations. The registry currently includes descriptions of twenty one archives from around the world. As additional archives are made available by IIPC members, the registry will be updated.

The registry provides an overview of all members web archiving efforts and outputs, offering a single point of access to users of archived web content. It also provide detailed description of each web archive, including information about the collecting institution, the harvesting methods (domain, selective, or thematic), the language of the user interface, methods for accessing the archived content, and whether there are any access restrictions that researchers need to be aware of.

The registry was put in place by IIPC’s Access Working Group, which focuses on initiatives, procedures and tools required to provide immediate access and to preserve the future access to Internet material in a Web archive. The registry provides a basis for IIPC to explore integrated access and search in the future.

General information about the IIPC can be found at http://netpreserve.org

For more information, contact Abbie Grotke, IIPC Communications Officer, membership@loc.gov

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Technorati tag: Digital Preservation

Society of American Archivists: EAD Help Pages

The Society of American Archivists EAD Roundtable has created this resource which contains:

• What is EAD?
• Just the Essentials...
• Tools & Helper Files
• EAD Implementors
• Who We Are (EAD Roundtable)
• EAD Bibliography
• Other EAD Resources
• Metadata & Related Standards

If you are interested in Encoded Archival Description (EAD), then this site is worth checking out.

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Technorati tag: Metadata

Digital "librarians"

Since I teach graduate classes in the Digital Libraries Certificate Program at Syracuse University, I often have students ask about job opportunities. Are there really jobs out there? Yes! And during the course of the conversation, I end up talking about specific librarians or organizations. In order to make my life a bit easier for the next conversation ("...and read this..."), I'm writing this blog post. If you have information that you'd like to add to it, please leave a comment. You're wisdom will be greatly appreciated!

So...you're interested in digital libraries and are wondering if people really do the work that you want to do. Yes, there are indeed people working as digital librarians, although that may not be their title. They are working with electronic/digital information, helping to create products and services, talking to (and maybe working for) vendors, educating users, and shaping how we use information online. Here are a few people, etc. that come to my mind when I talk about opportunities. (These are in no particular order.)

• Chadwick Seagraves -- Library Technology Services Leader -- This blog post talks about his recent job change.
  
• Stephen Abram -- Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets
• Michael Habib -- Product Manager
• Stacey Greenwell -- Head of the Information Commons
• Vicky Reich -- Director
• Brewster Kahle -- Digital Librarian
• Nicole Engard -- Director of Open Source Education
• Jason Kucsma -- Emerging Technologies Manager
• David Lee King -- Digital Branch & Services Manager
• Ben Goldman -- Digital Programs Archivist
• ProQuest -- This is one of many companies that are part of the information industry. Many hire librarians as product managers, sales and support staff, and product innovators.
• Broadband access -- There are technologies or initiatives that require digital librarians. Increasing broadband access to libraries is one of them.

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Technorati tag: Digital Libraries

Event: Digital Preservation - The Planets Way. February 2010, British Computer Society, London, UK

I received an announcement about the Planets workshop. Because the formatting had gotten altered (received via discussion list digest mode which often doesn't look pretty), I've pulled information from the Planets web site and pasted it below. For information is available here.

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Digital Preservation - The Planets Way, February 2010

The British Computer Society, London

Registration is now open for the Planets training and outreach event on digital long-term preservation in London. Find out how to plan and execute your digital preservation plan for the future.

Planets (Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services) will host the fourth in its series of three-day training events at The British Computer Society, London on 9-11 February 2010. Digital Preservation – The Planets Way will examine the need to preserve digital content, the action that needs to be taken and the Planets approach to addressing these issues.

Day 1 will consider the case for preserving digital objects, the technical issues involved, the Planets framework, tools and services. On days 2 and 3 delegates will gain hands-on experience of working with Planets and a scenario (sample collection) to develop a preservation plan and preserve digital objects. The event will include plenty of opportunity for discussion, sharing ideas and best practice and to ask questions and case studies from other institutions about preserving digital content.

You can register for either Day 1 only at a cost of 95 EUR, or for all three days at a cost of 199 EUR.

Due to the nature of the event there is an upper capacity of 100 delegates on Day 1 and 40 delegates on Days 2 and 3.

Final closing date for all registrations is 2nd February 2010.

Morning and afternoon coffee breaks and lunch will be provided and are included in the registration fee.

Participants are encouraged to bring a wireless-enabled laptop since there will be practical exercises on Days 2 and 3. Bringing your own laptop also means that you can use the sample collection and exercises after the event.

Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was a good digitization program

I'm not sure how long it took to build Rome (Italy not New York), but the saying goes that it wasn't built in a day. The meaning behind that saying is that whatever is worthwhile takes time to create. Yes, some things can be rushed. Extreme Makeover Home Edition really can build a new how in a week, but I bet turning that house into a home takes a lot longer. And so it is with digitization programs. We may want to get the funding today and begin scanning tomorrow, but it takes longer than that to put the processes in place, test them, modify them, and then let them run.

While there are many things that can slow a program down, let me just mention those that we forget:

• Other priorities -- You may not have the luxury of having dedicated staff for your program. If you are expecting them to divide their time between digitization and other tasks, you might find that the other tasks -- those things that they are used to -- take priority. Yes, they will say that the digitization program is their top priority, but do they act like it?
• Meetings, vacations, holidays, etc. -- How much can you get done? You think you know the answer, but have you considered those things that will interfere like meetings, vacations and holidays? I know...you have every intention of making great progress between Thanksgiving and New Years, but will you really?
  
• Obtaining approval -- Not only can building consensus take time, but normal decision-making that requires several levels of hierarchy to get involved can take time too. Depending on your organization, purchases above a specific amount may need several signatures (approvals) and it only takes a delay by one person to cause a problem.
• Too many cooks -- The says is that "too many cooks can spoil the soup". While it is important to have people involved and to build consensus, having too many people making decisions can be counterproductive and can slow a program down. What you need instead is a strong head chef along with a sous-chef and line cooks that are all working in harmony with each other.

Yes, equipment will break and you'll run into other problems. While you'll be frustrated, it could be that your program will be stronger and more stable because you didn't rush. I know of one program that took five years from idea until its formal roll-out. Along the way, they got campus-wide buy-in, built teams and processes, and launched a site that is both used and admired.

Yes, make your goals both aggressive and realistic, but remember that it's not all going to happen overnight. It'll take time. That's just the way it works.

A note about canned ham

Those people who leave junk comments (or spam) are getting smarter. I write a post that mentioned Cornell and a spammer, claiming to be someone at Cornell, leaves a enthusiastic, generic comment. Of course, I delete them, but it's likely that you can see that a comment was deleted. You'll have to trust that don't delete legitimate comments. However, I do delete junk comments very quickly as well as comments that cannot be verified.

Not as exciting as Tiger (a.k.a. my life)

My fall semester is coming to a close. I taught three graduate classes this semester: Digital Libraries; Creating, Managing & Preserving Digital Assets; and Business Resources & Strategic Intelligence. You may not realize that I used to do competitive intelligence research, so that last class really is in my area of expertise.

I always enjoy teaching Creating, Managing & Preserving Digital Assets, which I teach online (not in the classroom). The class introduces students to all of the areas that they would need to be concerned with when involved in a digitization program. The class is a real eye-opener for them. The students blogged this semester as they have for several semesters in this class.

Digital Libraries introduces them to the concept and reality of digital libraries. It really complements the class is Creating, Managing and Preserving Digital Assets, and some students take both classes at the same time. This semester, the students build a digital library on digital libraries using SharePoint. (Did we really create digital library? Ah...)

The third class I taught had several differences from the other two: it was a campus (face-to-face) class, it was not a library science class (most students were from our information management program), most of the students were not from the U.S., and it was a hands-on class. I've taught this class twice this calendar year and I've both times have had students research Fortune 1000 companies. The companies and their industries provide a reason for the students to learn a variety of resources and gain experience in reporting on what they have found.

Each class has its ah-ha moments, when students "get it". For the students that are learning about digitization, an early ah-ha is when they realize that digitization is much more than the conversion process. In digital libraries, the students have a huge ah-ha with the definition of a digital library. In business resources, the ah-ha is around the high quality resources that are available through our libraries.

My ah-ha is that every day is exciting. No, not scandalously exciting, but exciting nonetheless.

How are your days?

Blog post: How do I plan for a career in DAM?

Henrik de Gyor blogs about digital asset management (DAM) software, but not specifically about their use in a library, museum or archive setting. Over the past year, he has included some interesting blog posts on why DAM software is needed, software features, and even DAM careers. Some will l find his latest blog post, How do I plan for a career in DAM?, to be of particular interest. I agree that there are a variety of way to become proficient is understanding, using and customizing digital asset management software. I don't think that Twitter, which he mentions, is really helpful for learning about digital asset management software, but do think it can help you make connections to other users as well as some of the vendors. He doesn't specifically mention on-the-job training or hands-on training, which may be a method that many use.

If you surf through de Gyor's blog, I'm sure that you'll find other blog posts that are of interest. You'll also note that he has run several polls. The polls that I viewed had limited votes, so if you find one that interests you, consider submitting an answer. More data or even comments on blog posts can be helpful. (Honestly, a poll can collect bad data if people answer just to see the numbers change. Thoughtful comments can be much more meaningful especially if the response pool is small.)

Assessing user needs

I was asked recently about how people are assessing user needs before beginning a digitization program. As I researched information for my answer, I found these links which I thought I would pass along to you.

• Assessment of End-User Needs in IMLS-Funded Digitization Projects, http://www.imls.gov/pdf/userneedsassessment.pdf
• Evaluation and Assessment Bibliography, http://www.uni.edu/neuhaus/digitalbibeval.html
• Library Assessment (Executive Summary), http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec303web.pdf
• Library Assessment Conference: Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment, http://www.libraryassessment.org/ -- includes links to proceedings of past conferences
• The People in Digital Libraries: Multifaceted Approaches to Assessing Needs and Impact, http://ils.unc.edu/~march/revision.pdf
• Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources (TIDSR), http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/welcome
• Surveys: A Bibliography, http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/Toolkit/surveys_bib.pdf
  

By the way, most of the assessment I've seen, in order to justify a digitization program and help with material selection, has been done by (1) surveying users or (2) looking at usage trends. What have you done?

Reader question about professional film scanners

A reader left this comment, which I thought warranted highlighting. If you have information or an opinion that you would like to share on this, please leave a comment. I'm sure the commenter (Barbara) would be interested to know what institutions are doing.

Here at the National Library of Australia we have been very concerned about the recent news that production of Kodak archival scanners Creo iQsmart series is about to be discontinued. We use these scanners, particularly iQsmart2 and iQsmart3, to digitise both reflective and transparent collection material. As far as we know Kodak are the only manufacturers making professional flatbed scanners at this level and so it looks like it will be very difficult to replace the existing equipment once it reaches the end of its useful life.

It seems that in the very near future (as early as next calendar year) most, if not all, professional film scanners will be discontinued worldwide. We are having discussions about how to deal with this situation with managers from other cultural institutions in Australia early next year. Obviously institutions such as ours will still be acquiring negatives and transparencies, including obsolete formats (glass negs and albumen prints etc) for decades to come. Naturally, they will want to continue digitising such materials.

I was wondering if you are aware of any American cultural institutions considering the future of technical means to digitise negative materials.

A great explanation of "Fair Use"

While this 19 min. podcast is meant to be a preview of a workshop on protecting images with copyright, it is really a great explanation of Fair Use. I encourage you to listen to Nancy Wolff, legal counsel to the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) and an expert in the area of image licensing and the law, as she discusses Fair Use with Chris Kenneally.

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Technorati tag: Copyright

Guideline: File Naming Conventions for Digital Collections

The Digital Projects Advisory Group within the University Libraries at the University of Colorado at Boulder implemented this guideline, File Naming Conventions for Digital Collections, in March 2008. It's a well-written four-page document and one that others might like to refer to.

FADGI: DIGITIZATION ACTIVITIES - Project Planning and Management Outline

Received via email....

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The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) has just released a new planning document, "DIGITIZATION ACTIVITIES - Project Planning and Management Outline".

The aim of this document is to define activities relating to the digitization of original cultural materials, and to outline general steps for planning and management of this process. The activities described in this document address library/archival issues, imaging and conversion work, and IT infrastructure issues in particular, and were identified using project management outlines from several organizations with significant experience working with cultural materials. This document defines "digitization" as a complete process, and covers all project components from content selection through delivery of digitized objects into a repository environment.

You can access the document from the FADGI homepage - http://digitizationguidelines.gov
or, go directly to the document page at - http://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/stillimages/documents/Planning.html

Luna Insights

The Digital Image Collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library encourages users to install Luna Insights in order to take advantage of the features it provides. (They are using the Luna Imaging Insight Software Suite.) According to the Folger, Insights allows users to:

• Create a permalink to selected images.
• Save search strategies.
• Export an html page containing thumbnails that link back to zoomable images.

Sounds interesting, but some users may hesitant about installing an additional piece of software.

Zooming with MrSID

I get asked occasionally about plug-ins people are using with the digitization program online and, of course, that's when my mind goes blank. Today I was reminded about MrSID from LizardTech which allows users to zoom in and look at materials in more detail. MrSID is not a free product and it looks like you have to contact LizardTech for pricing.

You can see MrSID in action on this web site.

Blog post: Revised Google Book Search Settlement from a Library Perspective

This summary is long and well written. Thanks to Peter Murray for doing this! Worth reading, skimming and bookmarking.

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Technorati tags: Copyright, Google

Podcast - BTB #133: For Google Book Settlement, Wasoff Reviews Revisions

Quoting the web site:

Last Friday, November 13th, the parties in the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action filed a revised settlement proposal, responding to concerns voiced by authors, publishers and the U.S. Department of Justice.

For the benefit of our customers and rightsholders, Copyright Clearance Center invited renowned intellectual property attorney Lois Wasoff to speak with Chris Kenneally about the most noteworthy changes, and to explain in brief their potential impact on rightsholders and their works.

I have not listend to this yet, but I've listened to another podcast done by Lois Wasoff on the Settlement and it was excellent, so I expect this to also be well-done and relatively easy to understand (given the topic at hand).

Also the site says:

On Thursday, December 10, Wasoff & Kenneally will present a one-hour online seminar providing an in-depth examination of the settlement as proposed, and calling out all important deadlines for rightsholders.

You may register for this event here.

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Technorati tags: Copyright, Google

Call for papers: The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems

Received via email....

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The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems
(MEDES 2010)
with the cooperation of IFIP WG 2.6
http://sigappfr.acm.org/medes
October 26-29, 2010
Bangkok-Thailand

Description and Objectives
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In the world of the Internet, the rapid growth and exponential use of digital medias leads to the emergence of virtual environments namely digital ecosystems composed of multiple and independent entities such as individuals, organizations, services, software and applications sharing one or several missions and focusing on the interactions and inter-relationships among them. The digital ecosystem exhibits self-organizing environments, thanks to the re-combination and evolution of its "digital components", in which resources provided by each entity are properly conserved, managed and used. The underlying resources mainly comprehend data management, innovative services, computational intelligence and self-organizing platforms. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of digital ecosystems and their characteristics, they are highly complex to study and design. This also leads to a poor understanding as to how managing resources will empower digital ecosystems to be innovative and value-creating. The application of Information Technologies has the potential to enable the understanding of how entities request resources and ultimately interact to create benefits and added-values, impacting business practices and knowledge. These technologies can be improved through novel techniques, models and methodologies for fields such as data management, web technologies, networking, security, human-computer interactions, artificial intelligence, e-services and self-organizing systems to support the establishment of digital ecosystems and manage their resources.

The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES) aims to develop and bring together a diverse community from academia, research laboratories and industry interested in exploring the manifold challenges and issues related to resource management of Digital Ecosystems and how current approaches and technologies can be
evolved and adapted to this end. The conference seeks related original research papers, industrial papers and proposals for demonstrations, and tutorials and workshops.

Topics
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In this call, we solicit original research and technical papers not published elsewhere. The papers can be theoretical, practical and application oriented on the following themes (but not limited to):

- Digital Ecosystem Infrastructure
- Web Technologies
- Social Networks
- Data & Knowledge Management Systems
- Multimedia Information Retrieval
- Ontology Management
- Services systems and Engineering
- E-Services , E-Learning, E-Humanities and E-Government
- Emergent Intelligence
- Game Theory
- Networks and Protocols
- Security & Privacy
- Standardization and Extensible Languages
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Business Intelligence
- B2B, B2C, B2A, E-Commerce, E-Business, E-Marketing and E-Procurement
- Digital Library
- Open Source

Paper Submission
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Submissions must be in an electronic form as PDF format and should be uploaded using the conference website. Submissions should be at most 8 ACM single-space printed pages. Papers that fail to comply with length limit will be rejected. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least 3 peer reviewers. Selection criteria will include: relevance, significance, impact, originality, technical soundness, and quality of presentation. Preference will be given to submissions that take strong or challenging positions on important emergent topics related to Digital Ecosystems. At least one author should attend the conference to present the paper. The conference Proceedings will be published by ACM and indexed by the ACM Digital Library.

Important Dates
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- Submission Date: June 20th, 2010
- Notification of Acceptance: September 5th, 2010
- Camera Ready: September 20th, 2010
- Conference Dates: October 26-29, 2010


Program Chair
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Richard Chbeir (Bourgogne University, France)

Local Organizing Committee Chair
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Asanee Kawtrakul (NECTEC, Thailand)

International Program Committee
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(see the web site for the full list)

Authority and trust

My digital library students have had a conversation this semester about whether blogs are scholarly. When I discussed this topic with one of our PhD students, he rephrased the question and used the words "authority" and "trust". Is a blog (or blogger) recognized as being an authority? Can a blog be trusted? To him, the answer is provided by the community. For example, it is the community of people that are interested in digitization who decide if this blog/blogger can be seen as being an authority and it is the community that decides whether it can be trusted.

Authority -- Who is an authority on hip-hop music? Those people who are part of the hip-hop music community are the authority. They are the ones that will look at a new hip-hop music video, web site or artist and decide if it related to the community. They will decide if that new artist really is a hip-hop music artist or a fraud. Since I'm not a member of that community, I am not an authority.

We often look at blogs, web sites, etc. and pass judgment about them as outsiders, not as members of their specific communities. While there may be aspects of a blog, for example, that we can judge, as an outsider we cannot judge the blogs authority. We need to turn to members of the community in order to discern that. We can look at inbound links (via a search engine) or at the authority as judged by Technorati, or talk to other members of the community. If members of the community see that site as being important, then it is.

Authority does not mean that others don't disagree with the information or that it doesn't carry can authoritative voice in other circles. It means that within that community the site/blog/? is considered an authority.

Trust -- The community also judges whether the blog/site can be trusted. Notice that trust is different than authority. Yes, these qualities can and do function independently of each other. What we want are blogs and web site that are seen by their communities as being authoritative and trustworthy. We want to know that we can rely on the information.

While you may not be a blogger, you need to be aware that whatever you do online is being judged by your community - those people who have the same subject area expertise, same point of view, etc. Are your efforts being seen as authoritative? Can people trust your efforts? If not, what do you need to change?

Event: 8th European Conference on Digital Archiving

Received via email...

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8^th European Conference on Digital Archiving 2010

28-30 l 04 l 2010 Geneva

www.eca2010.ch

Online registration and early-bird discount

Online registration for the conference has now opened. The early-bird discount rate is valid until 31 January 2010!

Programme

150 renowned experts and practitioners from Switzerland and abroad will discuss the latest achievements, projects and prospects in the field of digital archiving in over 100 sessions. In addition to classic lectures the programme will also include workshops and poster sessions to provide an opportunity for experts to go into specific themes in greater depth.

Highlights

The participation of a further prominent speaker has been secured: Charles Leadbeater, author of ‘We-Think: Mass innovation, not mass production’ (www.wethinkthebook.net) and strategic advisor to various firms and governments. In addition, an attractive selection of side events awaits: welcome cocktail, gala dinner, exhibition and excursions, insight into the archiving practices of a selection of Geneva’s leading institutions.

Full details of the conference can be found at www.eca2010.ch

ECA 2010

Federal Department of Home Affairs FDHA
Swiss Federal Archives SFA

Archivstrasse 24, CH-3003 Bern

eca2010@bar.admin.ch

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Technorati tag: Digital Preservation

Book: Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums

Peter Hirtle, Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon have written a new book entitled Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums.

Abstract:

Digital communications technologies have led to fundamental changes in the ways that cultural institutions fulfil their public missions of access, preservation, research, and education. Institutions are developing publicly-accessible websites in which users can visit online exhibitions, search collection databases, access images of collection items, and in some cases create their own digital content. Digitization, however, also raises the possibility of copyright infringement. “Copyright and Digitization” aims to assist understanding and compliance with copyright law across libraries, archives, and museums. It discusses the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, the major exemptions used by cultural heritage institutions, and stresses the importance of “risk assessment” when conducting any digitization project. It also includes two cases studies, examining digitizing oral histories and student work.

In an experiment in open-access publishing, the book is available as a free download through eCommons, Cornell University’s institutional repository, and from SSRN.com. The book is also for sale through Amazon.com ($39.95).

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Technorati tag: Copyright

Report: Digital Preservation in Action: Toward a Campus-Wide Program

Published in September 2005, this is 14-page report -- Digital Preservation in Action: Toward a Campus-Wide Program -- is something you may want to read at a later date. Quoting the introduction:

This bulletin explores a proposed model for establishing a digital preservation program in colleges and universities -- requirements for educating the institutional community, developing roles and policies, and establishing an integrated technical architecture to support the complete life cycle of digital information. The model was develped at the University of Kansas as part of High-Velocity Change, High-Volume Collaboration (HVC²), an initiative that involved five work groups to explore collaborative learning spaces, digital preservation, and quality services for scholars, decision makers, and students.

This is a companion piece to "Digital Preservation: A Campus-Wide Perspective".

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Technorati tag: Digital Preservation

Report: Digital Preservation: A Campus-Wide Perspective

Quoting the abstract:

This bulletin outlines campus-wide issues relating to digital preservation, an emerging aspect of the stewardship responsibility for higher education. Digital presentation requires more than simply extending traditional preservation practices to digital information or assuming that media backups are sufficient. Providing ongoing access to vital current content and stewardship of intellectual and cultural heritage challenges us to define a new information environment that promotes the preservation of fragile digital information. A companion ECAR research bulletin (#19, 2005) details the University of Kansas proposed actions in creating an integrated digital preservation program.

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Technorati tag: Digital Preservation

Press Review+: Google Book Search Revised Settlement (2.0) Released; What About Libraries?

Resource Shelf has collected information on the revised Google Books Settlement agreement, which was released yesterday. It's long and draws upon analysis and information provided by several sources. I would expect more people to release that analysis in the coming days.

Call for participation: Libraries in the Digital Age 2010

Received via email...

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ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Zadar, Croatia, 24 - 28 May 2010

University of Zadar, Zadar, Croatia (http://www.unizd.hr/)

Full information at: http://www.ffos.hr/lida/

Email: lida@ffos.hr

The annual international conference Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) addresses the changing and challenging environment for libraries and information systems and services in the digital world. Each year a different and 'hot' theme is addressed, divided in two parts; the first part covering research and development and the second part addressing advances in applications and practice. LIDA brings together researchers, educators, practitioners, and developers from all over the world in a forum for personal exchanges, discussions, and learning, made easier by being held in memorable locations.

Themes LIDA 2010

Part I: DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP: support by digital libraries. Contributions (types described below) are invited covering the following topics:

• Research, practices, and values related to digital scholarship, including conceptual frameworks that emerged
• Contemporary nature of the scholarly information and communicationenvironment in general and as involving digital libraries in particular
  
• Developments in digital humanities
• Navigating shifting patterns of scholarly communication
• The impact digital libraries have on digital scholarship and on education in various fields, and vice versa; the impact of digital scholarship on digital libraries
• Studies on how faculty, researchers, and students make use of digital scholarly resources for their research or in education
• Practices that emerged in libraries related to support of digital scholarship, such as resource/collection building, digitization, preservation, access, services and others;
• International aspects of digital libraries with related trends in globalization and cooperative opportunities for support of digital scholarship;
• Research and discussions on general questions: How are we to understand new forms of scholarship and scholarly works in their own right? How are we to respond in digital libraries? What are the opportunities and challenges?

Part II: DIGITAL NATIVES: challenges & innovations in reaching out to digital born generations. Contributions (types described below) are invited covering the following topics:

• Research and discussions on general questions: who are these digital natives? How they are different from older generations - or digital immigrants - and what is the world they're creating going to look like?
• The impact of digital natives on libraries
• Digital libraries and social networks on the Web
• The cultural and technological challenges faced by digital libraries in serving digital natives
• Examples of library services specifically aimed at digital natives
• Efforts by libraries to help people that are more digital immigrants to become more digitally natives
• Role of libraries in e-learning and education in general
• Is the future of libraries closely associated with how successfully they meet the demands of digital users?

Types of contributions

Invited are the following types of contributions:

1. Papers: research studies and reports on practices and advances that will be presented at the conference and included in published Proceedings.

2. Posters: short graphic presentations on research, studies, advances, examples, practices, or preliminary work that will be presented in a special poster session. Proposals for posters should be submitted as a short, one or two- page paper.

3. Demonstrations: live examples of working projects, services, interfaces, commercial products, or developments-in-progress that will be presented during the conference in specialized facilities or presented in special demonstration sessions.

4. Workshops: two to four-hour sessions that will be tutorial and educational in nature. Workshops will be presented before and after the main part of the conference and will require separate fees, to be shared with workshop organizers.

5. PhD Forum: short presentations by PhD students, particularly as related to their dissertation; help and responses by a panel of educators.

Instructions for submissions are at LIDA site http://www.ffos.hr/lida/

Deadlines:

For papers (an extended abstract) and workshops (a short proposal): 15 January 2010. Acceptance by 10 February 2010.

For demonstrations (a proposal) and posters (an extended abstract): 1 February 2010. Acceptance by 15 February 2010.

Final submission for all accepted papers and posters: 15 March 2010.

Conference contact information

Conference co-directors:

TATJANA APARAC-JELUSIC, Department of Library and Information Science University of Zadar; Zadar, Croatia; taparac@unizd.hr

TEFKO SARACEVIC, School of Communication and Information; Rutgers University; New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA tefkos@rutgers.edu

Program chairs:

For Theme I: VITTORE CASAROSA, Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell'Informazione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy, casarosa@isti.cnr.it

For Theme II: GARY MARCHIONINI, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, march@ils.unc.edu

Venue

Zadar is one of the enchanting cities on the Adriatic coast, rich in history. It still preserves a very old network of narrow and charming city streets, as well as a Roman forum dating back to the first century CE. In addition, Zadar region encompasses many natural beauties, most prominent among them is the Kornati National Park, the most unusual and indented set of close to a 100 small islands in the Mediterranean For Zadar see http://www.zadar.hr/English/Default.aspx. For Croatia see http://www.croatia.hr/

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Technorati tag: Digital Libraries

Call for papers: IADIS International Conference E-Society 2010

Received via email...

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CALL FOR PAPERS - Deadline for submissions (1st call extension): 4 December 2009 --

IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE E-SOCIETY 2010

March 18-21, 2010 – Porto, Portugal

(http://www.esociety-conf.org/)

* Keynote Speaker (confirmed):

Christina Preston, MirandaNet Founder, UK

* Conference Background and Goals

The IADIS e-Society 2010 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within the Information Society. This conference covers both the technical as well as the non-technical aspects of the Information Society. Broad areas of interest are eSociety and Digital Divide, eBusiness / eCommerce, eLearning, New Media and E-Society, Digital Services in eESociety, eGovernment /eGovernance, eHealth, Information Systems, and Information Management. These broad areas are divided into more detailed areas (see below). However innovative contributes that don't fit into these areas will also be considered since they might be of benefit to conference attendees.

* Format of the Conference

The conference will comprise of invited talks and oral presentations. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the form of a book and CD-ROM with ISBN, and will be available also in the IADIS Digital Library (online accessible). The best paper authors will be invited to publish extended versions of their papers in the IADIS Journal on WWW/Internet (ISSN: 1645-7641) and other selected Journals.

* Types of submissions

Full and Short Papers, Reflection Papers, Posters/Demonstrations, Tutorials, Panels and Doctoral Consortium. All submissions are subject to a blind refereeing process.

* Topics related to the Information Society are of interest. These include, but are not limited to the following areas and topics:

«« eSociety and Digital Divide »»

Connectivity may imply social coherence and integration. The opposite may result as well, when systematic measures are taken to exclude certain individuals or certain groups. Papers are welcomed on the next keywords:

• Social Integration

• Social Bookmarking

• Social Software

• E-Democracy

• Social Integration

«« eBusiness / eCommerce »»

May include issues relating to:

• Business Ontologies and Models

• Digital Goods and Services

• eBusiness Models

• eCommerce Application Fields

• eCommerce Economics

• eCommerce Services

• Electronic Service Delivery

• eMarketing

• Languages for Describing Goods and Services

• Online Auctions and Technologies

• Virtual Organisations and Teleworking

«« eLearning »»

May include issues relating to:

• Collaborative Learning

• Curriculum Content Design & Development

• Delivery Systems and Environments

• Educational Systems Design

. E-Citizenship and Inclusion

• eLearning Organisational Issues

• Evaluation and Assessment

. Political and Social Aspects

• Virtual Learning Environments and Issues

• Web-based Learning Communities

«« New Media and E-Society »»

May include issues relating to:

• Digitization, heterogeneity and convergence

• Interactivity and virtuality

• Citizenship, regulation and heterarchy

• Innovation, identity and the global village syndrome

• Internet Cultures and new interpretations of “Space”

• Polity and the Digitally Suppressed

«« Digital Services in E-Society »»

May include issues relating to:

• Service Broadcasting

• Political Reporting

• Development of Digital Services

• Freedom of Expression

• E-Journalism

• Open Access

«« eGovernment /eGovernance »»

May include issues relating to:

• Accessibility

• Democracy and the Citizen

• Digital Economies

• Digital Regions

• eAdministration

• eGovernment Management

• eProcurement

• Global Trends

• National and International Economies

• Social Inclusion

«« eHealth »»

May include issues relating to:

• Data Security Issues

• eHealth Policy and Practice

• eHealthcare Strategies and Provision

• Legal Issues

• Medical Research Ethics

• Patient Privacy and Confidentiality

«« Information Systems »»

May include issues relating to:

• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

• Intelligent Agents

• Intelligent Systems

• IS Security Issues

• Mobile Applications

• Multimedia Applications

• Payment Systems

• Protocols and Standards

• Software Requirements and IS Architectures

• Storage Issues

• Strategies and Tendencies

• System Architectures

• Telework Technologies

• Ubiquitous Computing

• Virtual Reality

• Wireless Communications

«« Information Management »»

May include issues relating to:

• Computer-Mediated Communication

• Content Development

• Cyber law and Intellectual Property

• Data Mining

• ePublishing and Digital Libraries

• Human Computer Interaction

• Information Search and Retrieval

• Knowledge Management

• Policy Issues

• Privacy Issues

• Social and Organizational Aspects

• Virtual Communities

• XML and Other Extensible Languages

* Important Dates:

- Submission deadline (1st call extension): 4 December 2009

- Notification to Authors (1st call extension): 6 January 2010

- Final Camera-Ready Submission and Early Registration (1st call extension): Until 27 January 2010

- Late Registration (1st call extension): After 27 January 2010

- Conference: Porto, Portugal, 18 to 21 March 2010

* Conference Location

The conference will be held in Porto, Portugal.

* Secretariat

IADIS Secretariat - IADIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE E-SOCIETY 2010

Rua Sao Sebastiao da Pedreira, 100, 3

1050-209 Lisbon, Portugal

E-mail: secretariat@esociety-conf.org/

Web site: http://www.esociety-conf.org/

* Program Committee

Program Chair

Piet Kommers, University of Twente, The Netherlands

Conference Chair

Pedro Isaías, Universidade Aberta (Portuguese Open University), Portugal

Committee Members:*

* for committee list please refer to http://www.esociety-conf.org/committees.asp

* Co-located events

Please also check the co-located events:

Information Systems 2010 (http://www.is-conf.org/) - 18-20 March 2010

Mobile Learning 2010 (http://www.mlearning-conf.org/) - 19-21 March 2010

* Registered participants in the e-Society conference may attend Information Systems and Mobile Learning conferences’ sessions free of charge.

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Technorati tag: Digitization