Event: Unlocking Audio conference London 26-27 October 2007

As posted on the Digital-Preservation discussion list.

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Unlocking Audio: Sharing Experience of Mass Digitisation

26-27 October 2007

The British Library Centre for Conservation, London

www.bl.uk/unlockingaudio

First circular

Unlocking Audio is an international conference exploring the planning and strategies required for the successful execution of large-scale audio digitisation projects, and the technical and practical issues involved. Aimed at actual practitioners, sharing best practice and looking at emerging standards, the event will be held at the British Library in London on Friday 26th and the morning of Saturday 27th October 2007.

Invited speakers include:

• Kevin Bradley (National Library of Australia)
  
• Jonathan Leong (BBC Archives)
  
• Pekka Gronow (Finnish Radio archives)
  
• David Seubert (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• Mike Casey (University of Indiana)
  
• Jim Lindner (Media Matters)

Provisional programme:

Friday 26^th October

0930-1000 registration

1000-1015 welcome

1015-1045 keynote speech

1045-1115 coffee

1115-1245 paper sessions

1245-1500 lunch followed by tours of the Sound Archive technical department

1500-1600 round table discussion

1600-1700 paper session

1845-1930 drinks reception

1930-2200 dinner

Saturday 27^th October

0830-1000 pastries and posters

1000-1100 paper sessions

1100-1130 coffee

1130-1230 paper sessions

1230-1300 closing keynote

1300-1330 round-up forum

1330-1430 lunch

Participants may be able to join optional excursions to other London sound archives and studios on Saturday afternoon after the close of the conference. Further details will be available soon.

The event will be held at the new purpose-built facility, The Centre for Conservation, located at the main British Library site in London. The Centre contains the technical department of the British Library Sound Archive and includes 10 new soundproof transfer studios, a recording studio, a small workshop and laboratory.

Call for papers

Offers of papers are invited on the planning and execution of large scale digitisation projects, including case studies, the setting of standards, and technical methods. The offers should be submitted before 2nd July along with a title, abstract of no more than 300 words, your name and institutional affiliation, and an indication of whether the paper is an oral or poster presentation, to the contact address below. Authors will be notified by 16th July whether their paper has been accepted for oral presentation. Space will be available for displaying posters and small exhibits during the pastries and posters session on Saturday morning.

Commercial sponsors and exhibitors

If your business is interested in supporting this event, please contact the address below.

Accommodation and travel

Advice on hotels and getting to the conference venue will be issued with the registration form.

Registration

The conference registration fee is £75, which includes the conference abstracts, receptions, lunches, refreshments, and breakfast on Saturday 27^th but excludes the dinner on Friday 26^th. The charge for the dinner is £35. Please do not send payment now.

In order to register your interest, please send your name, the name and address of your organisation and email address before 30th June 2007 to:

Alison Faraday,

“Unlocking Audio”
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
United Kingdom

Fax: + 44 (0)207 412 7777
Email: alison.faraday@bl.uk

Places are strictly limited to 50 delegates. If the event is oversubscribed, we may have to limit the numbers attending from each institution. Applicants will be notified by July 6th if they have been successful in gaining a place. The deadline for payment of registration fees and the optional dinner will be 10th August.

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Technorati tag: digital preservation

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