CREATe has released Archives and Copyright: Risk and Reform.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper considers the place of the archive sector within the copyright regime, and how copyright impacts upon the preservation, access to, and use of archival holdings. It will begin with a critical assessment of the current parameters of the UK copyright regime as it applies to the work of archivists, including recommendations for reform that have followed in the wake of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property (2006-2010), the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth (2010-2011), the recent Consultation on Copyright (2011-12), as well as the government's response thereto: Modernising Copyright (2012). It considers the various problems the copyright regime presents for archives undertaking mass digitisation projects as well as recent European and UK initiatives in this domain.

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The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 2.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The most important improvement is a completely revamped admin interface, which includes many features to improve workflow and make it easier to build your sites. The search functionality is also dramatically improved, and covers much more of the content in the sites. . . .

Omeka users will notice improvements right away with an upgrade to 2.0 or the launch a new installation. For example, site administrators have much better tools to build custom site navigation without having to hack around in the code (Check for "Navigation" under the Appearance settings.) Also, you'll notice major improvements in file handling. Now you can reorder item files, and the system produces derivatives (thumbnails, etc.) from a much wider array of file types, not just image files.

| Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 2 | Digital Scholarship |

The MediaCommons Press has released a draft for comment of Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement :

Co-authored by a team of ten archivists and curators from the Beinecke, the Bodleian, the British Library, the Harry Ransom Center, Emory's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, and the Rubenstein Library at Duke, the report is the outcome of a series of conversations about how born-digital materials are acquired and transferred to archival repositories.

The main body of the report surveys the primary issues and concerns related to born-digital acquisitions and is intended for a broad audience with varying levels of interest and expertise, including donors, dealers, and archival repositories, as well as scholars, students, and researchers. Appendices provide information about how to prepare for the unexpected and possible staffing costs, as well as ready-to-use checklists that incorporate recommendations from throughout the report.

| Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Digital Scholarship |

The Scholars' Lab has Released BagIt and SolrSearch Plugins for Omeka.

Here's an excerpt from the BagIt announcement:

BagIt is a specification by the Library of Congress for creating containers of files with metadata. . . .

The first part of this release is the BagIt PHP library. This is a generic PHP library for working with BagIt files. . . .

The second part is the BagIt Omeka plugin. This is built upon the BagIt library and provides an easy-to-use user interface for it.

Here's an excerpt from the SolrSearch announcement:

SolrSearch allows you to replace Omeka's default search with Solr. Solr is a standard, popular, open source, fast text search engine server. It handles hit highlighting, date math, numeric aggregation functions (mean, max, etc.), indexing for 33 languages, replication, and many, many more things.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog | Digital Scholarship |

ARL has released Managing Born-Digital Special Collections and Archival Materials, SPEC Kit 329.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This SPEC Kit explores the tools, workflow, and policies special collections and archives staff use to process, manage, and provide access to born-digital materials they collect. It also looks at which staff process and manage born-digital materials and how they acquire the skills they need for these activities, and how libraries have responded to the challenges that managing born-digital materials present.

| Digital Curation Resource Guide | Digital Scholarship |

The Association of Research Libraries has released a pre-publication version of "Copyright Risk Management: Principles and Strategies for Large-Scale Digitization Projects in Special Collections."

Here's an excerpt:

Copyright law often seems unmanageably complex, leading librarians to focus too much on a single aspect of a project and, when that aspect proves inapplicable, to give up the proposed digitization. But the multifaceted nature of the law, especially its variety of limitations and exceptions, should really be seen as an invitation to a holistic evaluation that focuses on risk and considers how each facet can contribute to a risk reduction strategy. If this is done consistently as digitization projects are undertaken, the risk of infringement litigation will usually be seen to be much more manageable, and a great deal of unnecessary self-censorship will be avoided.

See also the pre-publication version of "Digitization of Special Collections and Archives: Legal and Contractual Issues."

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

OCLC Research has released Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Part 3: Recommendations and Readings.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In the first report, the 21-member Social Metadata Working Group reviewed 76 sites relevant to libraries, archives, and museums that supported such social media features as tagging, comments, reviews, images, videos, ratings, recommendations, lists, links to related articles, etc. The results from a survey of site managers conducted in October-November 2009 were included in the second report. Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums, Part 3: Recommendations and Readings provides recommendations on social metadata features most relevant to libraries, archives, and museums and an annotated reading list of the literature consulted during this research. Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums: Executive Summary provides a high-level overview of all three reports. The group's final recommendation is that it is riskier to do nothing and become irrelevant to our user communities than to start using social media features.

Also available: Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums: Executive Summary."

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

The National Endowment for the Humanities is accepting grant proposals for its Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program.

Here's an excerpt from the program guidelines:

Applications may be submitted for projects that address one or more of the following activities:

• arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
• cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving images, art, and material culture;
• providing conservation treatment (including deacidification) for collections, leading to enhanced access;
• digitizing collections;
• preserving and improving access to born-digital sources;
• developing databases, virtual collections, or other electronic resources to codify information on a subject or to provide integrated access to selected humanities materials; . . . .
• developing tools for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data, such as atlases and geographic information systems (GIS); and
• designing digital tools to facilitate use of humanities resources.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

CNI has released a video of Barbara Taranto's "Crowd Sourcing Metadata" presentation at the CNI Fall 2011 Membership Meeting.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

The AIMS Project has released AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship.

Here's an excerpt:

The AIMS project evolved around a common need among the project partners — and most libraries and archives — to identify a methodology or continuous framework for stewarding born-digital archival materials. These materials have been slowly accumulating in archival backlogs for years but are rapidly growing as more contemporary collections are accessioned. . . .

Into this climate, the AIMS partners proposed an inter-institutional framework for stewarding born-digital content. The AIMS partners realized that they could not solve all problems associated with born-digital materials but decided to focus their attention on professional practice defined by archival principles and by the current state of collections at the partner institutions.

In developing the AIMS Framework, the project would apply a practitioner-based research approach by developing a model based on real case studies of collections at each institution. Applying our theories would confirm or challenge the initial framework which could then be used as a model around which to build individual workflows and processes within each partner's organization.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 80 | Digital Scholarship |

OCLC Research has released digital recordings and documents from its Scan and Deliver: Creative User-initiated Digitization in Special Collections and Archives Webinar.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Changes in technology and the increased visibility of special collections have resulted in a deluge of requests for digital copies of special collections materials. A steady stream of digitization requests for one item here, two pages there can be labor-intensive, and policies for user requests vary widely across institutions.

To address these issues, OCLC Research and the OCLC Research Library Partnership's Working Group on Streamlining Photography and Scanning sought methods for reducing cumbersome digitization-on-demand workflows and policy obstacles. The result—a flexible, tiered approach to delivering digitized materials that acknowledges differences in user needs, collections, institutions, and resources—is detailed in the report, Scan and Deliver: Managing User-initiated Digitization in Special Collections and Archives.

In this webinar, members of the working group shared their creative experiments aimed at scanning and delivering user-requested digital copies of special collections materials. San Diego State University offers self-serve scanning in their reading room. At the University of Chicago, special collections and interlibrary loan (ILL) colleagues are working together to use existing infrastructure and expertise. The Getty Research Institute developed a tiered approach to capture and post digital files created by fulfilling user requests. The presenters discussed workflows-in-progress, lessons learned, and how they learned to stop worrying and love digital copy requests.

| New: Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

OCLC Research has released Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums, Part 1: Site Reviews.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Traditionally, staff at libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs) create metadata for the content they manage. However, social metadata—content contributed by users—is evolving as a way to both augment and recontextualize the content and metadata created by LAMs. Many cultural heritage institutions are interested in gaining a better understanding of social metadata and also learning how to best utilize their users' expertise to enrich their descriptive metadata and improve their users' experiences.

In order to facilitate this, a 21-member RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group reviewed 76 sites relevant to libraries, archives, and museums that supported such social media features as tagging, comments, reviews, images, videos, ratings, recommendations, lists, links to related articles, etc. In addition, working group members surveyed site managers, analyzed the survey results and discussed the factors that contribute to successful—and not so successful—use of social metadata. They also considered issues related to assessment, content, policies, technology, and vocabularies.

This report includes an environmental scan of 76 social metadata sites and a detailed review of 24 representative sites.

| New: Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |