The Future of the Past

This is an except from a post I did in the SLA blog. Since this section focuses specifically on digital preservation, I wanted to repeat it here.

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Monday afternoon [June 4] there was a session entitled "The Future of the Past" with Victoria McGargar and Peter Johnson. Sponsored by the News Division, they talked about creating institutional repositories. Some institutions are realizing that long-term preservation is tough.

• McGargar mentioned that one signification digitization project has quietly started to collect pristine paper backup.
• She noted that at the LA Times, they tested 300,000 JPEG files and found that 10% of them were corrupt.
• Non-monetized assets are especially at risk. (Small collections, personal papers, etc.)
• Although we may migrate files successfully, she should examples of where the resultant files had still become unreadable because things just didn't "translate" well.
• Files also can become corrupted without provocation.
• We need a clearer understanding of what "preservation" means.
• She talked through the core requirements for a trusted digital repository, which can be found here.
• I have a note that says that the Copyright Clearance Center may start an orphaned works repository. I'm sure she must have thrown that out as an idea or some that is being discussed, but not something that is occurring now.

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Technorati tags: sla2007, digital preservation

Digitization vendors at the SLA conference, part 3

As I have said before, there were several digitization vendors who exhibited at the SLA Annual Conference this year. This demonstrated that the vendors see special librarians -- those focused on special topics/collections -- as an important market. I've already blogged about some of the vendors, so let me talk about the rest.

• Google -- Okay, Google wasn't there as a digitization vendor, but given their impact on the industry, it is important to note that they were present. They did have handouts about Google Book Search, one of which talked about the impact on libraries and librarians.
• "We see our role as complementary to libraries and librarians. Our aim is to help people search and discover all the world's books." Then they talk about helping people find both digitized and non-digitized books.
• What's in it for Google? "...we hope to provide a better, more comprehensive and useful experience for Google users around the world."
• Backstage Library Works -- I talked to the booth staff about how the work with organizations and found that they will come on-site if necessary and will either bring all the staff with them that they need or high (and train) some of the operators locally. So they are very flexible in how they will work with a customer. We also talked about the fact that they are doing more projects outside of the U.S. (The places I remember hearing were all in Europe.)
  
• S-T Imaging and eImageData both exhibited microform scanners that can be used by patrons (not just by professional staff). There are several difference between how the machine operates with one of the noticeable ones being that the ST200 (by S-T Imaging) does not place microfilm between glass, while the ScanPro 1000 does (eImageData). S-T Imaging reports that by eliminating the glass, it has eliminated the thing that often scratches microfilm. It would be nice to see a side-by-side comparison of the two machines (with software) in order to really see the differences.
• Indus USA has their 5002C which is an overhead book scanner. Their Walk-up Kiosk System has "touch screen technology for easy use by library patrons who intend to scan or copy pages from bound books or periodicals. It allows patrons to save scanned images to a network drive, USB flash drive, print to a printer or send via e-mail, all with the software used with the touch screen monitor." (From their literature) As I saw, these features are being built into several systems geared towards end-users/patrons.
• Digital Library Systems Group / Image Access -- They had two scanners in their booth! One was the Knowledge Image Center (KIC) for use by patrons. (This scanner looked very similar to the one by Indus USA.) The other machine they had was the Bookeye 2 which is meant to support interlibrary loan in a library. They did not have in their booth the Bookeye 3, which is a more high-end scanner for digitization projects. Like the others, it is also an overhead scanner, but had different features that would make it more appropriate for a digitization project.
• nextScan -- I must admit that I stopped by the nextScan booth at the end of the day, when everyone was leaving the exhibit hall. So I picked up their literature, but didn't talk to anyone. nextScan provides equipment for fiche and film scanning. Their products are all production machines and are not meant for end-users. For example, the flexScan can scan rollfilm up to 240 pages per minute or microfiche up to 125 images per minute.
• Long established libraries often have many microforms, so these production machines can be quite useful for those institutions that can copyright clear their microforms for digitization.
• William S. Hein & Co. -- many people know W.S. Hein as a publisher, but they also do digitization. They provide consulting, production, hosting access/control and preservation services. Their production facility includes a Kirtas APT Bookscan 1200.
• Northern Micrographics -- Northern Micrographics will digitize and process materials on your behalf. My notes tell me that nothing significant had occurred with this company since I saw them a year ago.
  

Next year, the SLA Annual Conference will be in Seattle, WA, June 15 - 18. Let's hope that even more digitization-related vendors attend that conference. (Let's also hope that they are indexed in the exhibit hall guide in a way that makes them easy to find!)

Related posts:

• Digitization vendors at the SLA conference, part 1
• Digitization vendors at the SLA conference, part 2

Addendum (06/11/2007): I forgot to mention that PTFS exhibited at the SLA conference. I see and talk to PFTS a couple times a year, so I did not stop by their booth. PTFS does digitization for organizations and also markets content management software (ArchivalWare) which often goes head-to-head against ContentDM when organizations are looking at CMS solutions.

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Technorati tags: sla2007, Digitization

Dublin Core?

DigitalKoans has a post announcing that the Dublin Core standard has been renewed and updated. Interestingly, I heard another attendee at the SLA Annual Conference "report" that Dublin Core is dead. (Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly who said it.) Dead? I wonder what markets have moved away from Dublin Core? I'm seeing and hearing digitization programs talk about and use Dublin Core, so it is not "dead" for digitization programs. Perhaps it is for general Internet uses that something is beginning to replace this standard. If anyone can confirm this (or has heard something different about the status of Dublin Core for specific uses), please leave a comment here. Thanks!

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Technorati tags: sla2007, Metadata

Digitization vendors at the SLA conference, part 2

Von Totanes (The Filipino Librarian) recorded a brief video (30 sec.) of the Kirtas BookScan being demoed at the SLA Annual Conference.



The booth staff did include a person who seemed very watchful of how the machine was doing and who occasionally adjusted the book that was being digitized. Von said in his blog posting, "Note that in the video you can also see recently-scanned pages on the screen next to the machine." The machine is a great attention-grabber and it definitely did that at the conference. As I said earlier, some people were just mesmerized by the machine, even though they were not interested in digitizing books.

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Technorati tags: sla2007, Digitization

What's happening at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) libraries

Mike Flynn, Deputy Director of the Office of Information Analysis & Access for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spoke to a group of more than 50 people at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference during a policy update. In the audience was the new national program manager for the national EPA library system (Deborah Balsamo). There were also several EPA librarians and those who work in EPA libraries on a contract basis. I also had the privilege to have lunch with Mike, Deborah and a few others.

So what did I hear?

• The EPA libraries are alive and well, and it is intended that they remain so.
• The goal is to improve the library network and make the access and retrieval of important information faster and more flexible.
• The EPA libraries need to do more with less (like many other libraries) and take advantage of new technologies.
• That long-term (thinking perhaps 10 years into the future) that there will be a national unified data system that will provide access to all types of information for EPA staff, scientists and the community at large. To me, this was very important to hear. What the EPA is trying to do is to modernize its library network. The changes they have in mind will take time to implement and may be painful. To their credit, the EPA is stepping back and reassessing its efforts in order to ensure that its efforts are in-line with its communities' needs AND are understood by the communities its serves.
• In the past year, the EPA has:
• Placed more focus on electronic delivery of information
• Digitized more documents with now more than 26,000 documents available in digital form
• Closed three libraries to walk-in traffic (but this does not mean that staff at those sites do not have access to information...they do through systems the EPA has put into place)
• Made it clear that they do not intend to close all of the libraries
• Still maintained a full suite of library services
• The EPA recognizes that it will continue to need a core of librarians to help people with their information requests. Many people can satisfy easy requests themselves, so the librarians are needed to help with the more difficult requests.
• They are making no more changes while they finish making their plans to move forward.
• They recognize that they must work hard on the people side of their organization (and they know that will not be easy).
• They are doing a third party review of their digitization plans and will revise the plans as necessary.
• The EPA continues to seek feedback and input from its librarians, the federal government, scientists, academics, etc.
• From the libraries that have closed, all unique EPA documents have been digitized and the hardcopies have been retained. Those materials that are not unique will need to be gone through and decisions made about them.

Mike Flynn understands that a lot of mis-information has circulated about the EPA efforts to re-create its library network so that it can provide information more efficiently and effectively now and in the future (especially for those future employees who will want information in electronic form). He is willing to work hard to correct misperceptions. He is also willing to alter their path, if necessary, to ensure that what they will do will indeed meet all of their future needs.

Digitization vendors at the SLA conference, part 1

I have been impressed with the digitization vendors who are at the conference this year. There are more vendors that offer digitization services AND several of the vendors brought their hardware to show off. I know that scanners and PCs can be tough to ship to a conference, but attendees appreciate being able to see the equipment up close and personal. Someone at the Kirtas booth said that people were just standing and watching their machine operate; mesmerized, I'm sure.

I'll blog in more detail later about all of the vendors, but for now want to talk about the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). I visited their booth and asked if they helped organizations do copyright clearance on materials to be digitized. The answer at the moment is "no." The CCC can help organizations -- that have an agreement with it -- to pay the copyright fee on those items where it manages the rights. For many digitization programs, it is those items where the copyright holder is not easily known that can stall a program (and not those where the rights are managed by the CCC). It sounds like the CCC might develop "products" that will help digitization programs track down copyright holders that are not currently part of the CCC universe. I hope that they really do, since having an organization that can be hired to help with that work could really help to move a program forward.

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Technorati tags: sla2007, Digitization, Copyright

Digitization vendors at SLA Annual Conference

According to the conference information online and a recent conference blog posting, these digitization vendors will be exhibiting at the SLA Annual Conference in Denver:

• Northern Micrographics
• OCLC
  
• PTFS
• William S. Hein & Co. Inc.
  
• nextScan, Inc.
• e-ImageData Corp.
• Kirtas Technologies, Inc.
• Image Access / DLSG
• INDUS International, Inc.
• S-T Imaging, Inc.

Given that it is not always obvious in a description what a company does, there may be more than these at the conference (and I hope there are).

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Technorati tag: sla2007

I'm in serious catch-up mode & WebArchivist.org

Work since the beginning of the year has been like a growing glorious snowball rolling downhill! Notice that I use the word "glorious" so that you know that this is a good snowball. However, I'm now finding that I need to do a bit of "catch-up" before heading off to the SLA Annual Conference in less than two weeks, so my posts here may be slightly less frequent. (For those of you who live where there is no snow, when a snowball rolls downhill, it gets bigger and bigger.)

Last week, I did a digitization workshop that was co-sponsored by the Central NY Library Resources Council and the South Central Regional Library Council. The two councils (consortia) are doing a series of 10 workshops on digitization. I had the pleasure of presenting the first workshop in the series. In February 2008, I'll also have the pleasure of doing the last workshop in the series on marketing. Friday's workshop had nearly 40 attendees including a Benedictine monk! I made two promises at the beginning of the day -- to keep things interesting and to teach them something new (no matter what they already knew). Brother "B" said I delivered on both promises.

At the end of the day, I spent time talking with Steve Schneider, who is involved in WebArchivist.org. Steve came to the workshop in order to hear what libraries are doing in terms of digitization. He, however, is interested archiving web sites and has worked on several projects including the Asian Tsunami, Election 2002 (and 2004), and the September 11 Web Archives. I was impressed to hear how they jumped into action on Sept 12, 2001 and began archiving web sites, realizing that what they were archiving would be of value to others later. WebArchivist is not part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), but certainly has things in common with that program.

In general, libraries are aware that they will need to collect and archive materials that are born digital, although -- in the grand scheme of things -- relatively few are thinking seriously about how to do it. Libraries are not yet focused on archiving web site proactively and the information that they contain (which will be lost if not archived). [See addendum below] Understanding why it could be important and then do it requires a leap of faith. "I'm going to do this because I know that in the future, I'll be glad that I did." Some organizations might be able to take that leap of faith more easily than others (and those organizations may not be libraries).

At any rate, talking to Steve made for a wondering end of the week conversation and I look forward to talking with him again! (Personally, I think he should do some presentations in this region on web archiving....)

Now...time to get back to my to-do list...

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Addendum (4:30 p.m.): Ms. Molly has pointed out that librarians are involved in NDIIPP. And I have to admit that I've been to presentations done by librarians who are involved in NDIIPP. However, as I look out across the library community, they are the "exception." They are attached to organizations (or forward-thinking people) who understand the problem and are willing to act. Many librarians are not "there" yet.

Thanks for pointing out my error!

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Technorati tags: Digitization, SLA2007, web archiving

Book "scanners", conferences, and a rant

I've received two e-mails in the last week from people interested in the Atiz BookdriveDIY and wondering what I know about it. The answer is "very little." I've not seen one live nor have a spoken with anyone who has. However, I know that the Atiz Bookdrive DIY is a machine that people are becoming more interested in, so hopefully more public information (reviews, comments) will soon be available.

Book scanners (actually Atiz, Kirtas, etc. don't scan they digitally photograph) are of more interest to organizations these days, especially since lower cost machines are becoming available. Sadly, when manufacturers exhibit at conferences, they generally do not bring expensive machines with them, yet this is a prime opportunity to demonstrate to a curious audience the technology that they have. I know...it can be costly to bring a machine...and it might get damaged...and... But imagine demoing your product in front of 2,600 people (CIL) or 5,000+ (SLA)? Imagine the buzz. Yes, you would be demoing in front of organizations who can afford your product (or can find the money by partnering with another institution or obtaining a grant). Better yet...these are people who are asked for recommendations from their colleagues (librarians, business associates, etc.).

For those that will be at the SLA conference in June, I checked the list of exhibitors to see who will be there that manufacture/sell digitization equipment or provide digitization services. Here is a list of those that I found on the SLA web site, but there may be more:[1]

• Northern Micrographics
• OCLC
  
• PTFS
• William S. Hein & Co. Inc.
  
• nextScan, Inc.
• e-ImageData Corp.
• Kirtas Technologies, Inc.

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[1] They are not categorized consistently and I couldn't find Kirtas in any category, although they are listed as an exhibitor.

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Technorati tags: Digitization, sla2007