EDUCAUSE | Digital Preservation

No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century

ckeller — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:34:41 -0500

In February 2008, CLIR convened 25 leading librarians, publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists to consider this question. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities that libraries are likely to face in the next five to ten years, and how changes in scholarly communication will affect the future library. Essays by eight of the participants—Paul Courant, Andrew Dillon, Rick Luce, Stephen Nichols, Daphnée Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee Zia—were circulated to participants in advance and provided background for the conversation. This report contains these background essays as well as a summary of the meeting.

Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education

ckeller — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:51:48 -0500

Ithaka's 2006 survey of faculty members sought to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects. This study affords the opportunity to develop trend analysis of many measurements collected in the 2003 and 2000 faculty surveys. As in the past, Ithaka developed a robust set of disciplinary and other demographic analyses that have allowed them to learn more about how best to serve the needs of different types of faculty members. Findings include;

Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources
Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

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.

CNI Podcast: Digital Scholarship and the National Endowment for the Humanities - An Interview with Suzanne Lodato

gbayne — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:19:03 -0500

This 17 minute podcast features an interview with Suzanne Lodato, Director of the Division of Preservation and Access for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our conversation was recorded at the CNI 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Before coming to the NEH in 2007, Suzanne Lodato served at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as an associate program officer in the Scholarly Communications Program starting in June 2000. At the Mellon Foundation, she worked on a wide range of grants that spanned library technology, cataloging, electronic publishing, scholarly electronic resources, and research concerning current trends and issues in scholarly communication. Ms. Lodato is a founding member and vice-president of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). She has edited two WMA proceedings volumes, published a number of articles on song and song cycle analysis, and authored entries for The New Grove History of Music and Musicians (second edition), the Reader’s Guide to Music: History, Theory, and Criticism, and the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Europe: 1914-2004. Ms. Lodato received a B.M. from San Jose State University, an M.A. from Hunter College, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

This interview is provided courtesy of CNI and was recorded at their 2008 Spring Task Force Meeting. The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. You can learn more about CNI at their web site, http://www.cni.org

NY Times Article on Digital Preservation Features Berman

rmcdonal — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:27:43 -0500

This recent New York Times article on digital preservation features SDSC’s own Fran Berman.

See - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/technology/techspecial/09store.html?_r=1&sq=

The Need to Formalize Trust Relationships in Digital Repositories

elilly — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:55:25 -0500

The Virtual Burnham Initiative as a Collaborative Project of, by, and for the Community

drupal — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:55:04 -0500

Led by Lake Forest College, Chicago-area academic, cultural, and civic institutions are developing VBI, the Virtual Burnham Initiative, with 3D models re-creating the 1909 Plan of Chicago housed on a project website. VBI is a project about the Chicagoland community that builds community between academic institutions, area organizations, and the greater public through technology.

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.

Gen Next Meets the Greatest Generation: Creating Community Through a Digital Library

drupal — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:50:00 -0500

In creating a digital library collection on World War II, Texas A&M University-Commerce discovered an opportunity to work in partnership with local museums, public libraries, and historical societies. This diverse community greatly expands our ability to preserve historical resources and make them available to scholars worldwide.

Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization: A White Paper

elilly — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:04:27 -0600

The paper describes four large-scale projects—Google Book Search, Microsoft Live Search Books, Open Content Alliance, and the Million Book Project—and their digitization strategies. It then discusses a range of issues affecting the stewardship of the digital collections they create: selection, quality in content creation, technical infrastructure, and organizational infrastructure. The paper also attempts to foresee the likely impacts of large-scale digitization on book collections.