EDUCAUSE | Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; and Digital Preservation

At Libraries, Taking the (Really) Long View

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:46:16 -0500

Storing digital data is becoming more essential to the work of librarians, who are trying to think in terms of the next 100 years — a virtual eternity in computer time.

Full Report of the Section 108 Study Group

ckeller — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:19:08 -0500

The Section 108 Study Group is a select committee of copyright experts charged with updating for the digital world the Copyright Act's balance between the rights of creators and copyright owners and the needs of libraries and archives. The Study Group was convened as an independent group by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation program of the Library of Congress and by the U.S. Copyright Office. The recommendations, conclusions, and other outcomes of the Study Group's Report are its own and do not reflect the opinions of the Library of Congress or the U.S. Copyright Office.

Institutional Repositories and E-Journal Archiving: What Are We Learning?

elilly — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:21:43 -0600

The growing need for institutions to capture and maintain access to their administrative and academic information is driving the exploration of organizational models for digital preservation. Among the approaches being developed are institutional repositories and e-journal archives.

On the Threshold of Cyberscholarship

elilly — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:45:55 -0600

The widespread availability of digital content creates opportunities for new forms of research and scholarship that are qualitatively different from those represented in traditional scholarly literature. To capitalize on these opportunities, digital content must routinely be collected, managed, and preserved in ways that are significantly more rigorous than conventional methods. A new form of infrastructure is required to ensure that digital content, including research products and primary sources, is readily available, accessible, and usable.

A Review of the Open Educational Resources Movement: Achievement, Challenges and New Opportunities

ckeller — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:39:08 -0600

This report examines The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s past investments in Open Educational Resources, the emerging impact and explores future opportunities. Central to the report is the idea of “The Brewing Perfect Storm” and the creation of an Open Participatory Learning Infrastructure.

Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation

ckeller — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:15:14 -0600

Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation establishes best practices in many areas where they did not previously exist. This work also explores the testing and use of existing and emerging standards. It includes chapters on personnel and equipment for preservation transfer, digital files, metadata, storage, preservation packages and interchange, and audio preservation systems and workflows. Each chapter is divided into two major parts: a preservation overview that summarizes key concepts for collection managers and curators, followed by a section that presents recommended technical practices for audio engineers, digital librarians, and other technical staff. This latter section includes a detailed look at the inner workings of the audio preservation systems at both Harvard and Indiana.

Inheritance and loss? A brief survey of Google Books

ckeller — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:25:22 -0500

The Google Books Project has drawn a great deal of attention, offering the prospect of the library of the future and rendering many other library and digitizing projects apparently superfluous. To grasp the value of Google’s endeavor, we need among other things, to assess its quality. On such a vast and undocumented project, the task is challenging. In this essay, I attempt an initial assessment in two steps. First, I argue that most quality assurance on the Web is provided either through innovation or through “inheritance.” In the later case, Web sites rely heavily on institutional authority and quality assurance techniques that antedate the Web, assuming that they will carry across unproblematically into the digital world. I suggest that quality assurance in the Google’s Book Search and Google Books Library Project primarily comes through inheritance, drawing on the reputation of the libraries, and before them publishers involved. Then I chose one book to sample the Google’s Project, Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. This book proved a difficult challenge for Project Gutenberg, but more surprisingly, it evidently challenged Google’s approach, suggesting that quality is not automatically inherited. In conclusion, I suggest that a strain of romanticism may limit Google’s ability to deal with that very awkward object, the book.

Dealing with data: Roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships

ckeller — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:47:28 -0500

This JISC report reviews the variety of data, and arrangements for its curation and use, across disciplines.The work of funders, national data centres, institutional repositories, learned societies and the Digital Curation Centre are all documented, with a view to identifying (as the report's subtitle says) the "roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships", that are emerging as important.

Managing Digitization Activities: Executive Summary

drupal — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:21:10 -0500

The executive summary of this ARL Spec Kit discusses various components of library digitizing projects. These areas include; staffing, budgets, and material selection.

In Google's Broad Wake: Taking Responsibility for Shaping the Global Digital Library

drupal — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:41:16 -0500

The author discusses how the Google Library Project has brought digital libraries into the spot light, including a new focus on negotiations concerning digital library resources.