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 Digital Preservation Coalition has released Digital Forensics and Preservation.

Here's an excerpt:

In recent years, digital forensics has emerged as an essential source of tools and approaches for facilitating digital preservation and curation, specifically for protecting and investigating evidence from the past. Institutional repositories and professionals with responsibilities for personal archives can benefit from forensics in addressing digital authenticity, accountability and accessibility. . . . .Forensic technology makes it possible to: identify privacy issues; establish a chain of custody for provenance; employ write protection for capture and transfer; and detect forgery or manipulation. It can extract and mine relevant metadata and content; enable efficient indexing and searching by curators; and facilitate audit control and granular access privileges. . . . The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of digital forensics, with some pointers to resources and tools that may benefit cultural heritage and, specifically, the curation of personal digital archives.

| Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works (EPUB, PDF, paperback, and XHTML) | Digital Scholarship |

EDUCAUSE has released Developing an Institutional Research Data Management Plan Service.

Here's an excerpt:

Institutions should consider the following as they plan how to best support researchers in preparation of their proposed DMP:

• Identify a model for local administration of research data management plan services.
• Provide resources that can be accessed conveniently by researchers during the proposal development process.
• Designate one or more dedicated staff to be available for a range of consulting needs.

This white paper includes the following sections:

• What Should Be Included in the DMP
• Developing a DMP Service at Your Institution
• Skill Sets Required to support a DMP Consulting Service

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

Digital Scholarship has released version 2 of the Research Data Curation Bibliography. This selective bibliography includes over 200 English-language articles and technical reports that are useful in understanding the curation of digital research data in academic and other research institutions. It has doubled in size since version 1.

Most sources have been published from 2000 through 2012; however, a limited number of earlier key sources are also included.

The bibliography includes links to freely available versions of included works. If such versions are unavailable, italicized links to the publishers' descriptions are provided.

It is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Eun G. Park and Sam Oh have published "Examining Attributes of Open Standard File Formats for Long-Term Preservation and Open Access" in the latest issue of Information Technology and Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This study examines the attributes that have been used to assess file formats in literature and compiles the most frequently used attributes of file formats in order to establish open standard file format selection criteria. A comprehensive review was undertaken to identify the current knowledge regarding file format selection criteria. The findings indicate that the most common criteria can be categorized into five major groups: functionality, metadata, openness, interoperability and independence. These attributes appear to be closely related. Additional attributes include presentation, authenticity, adoption, protection, preservation, reference and others.

| Digital Curation Resource Guide | Digital Scholarship |

Andrew Sallans and Martin Donnelly have published "DMP Online and DMPTool: Different Strategies Towards a Shared Goal" in the latest issue of The International Journal of Digital Curation.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper provides a comparative discussion of the strategies employed in the UK's DMP Online tool and the US's DMPTool, both designed to provide a structured environment for research data management planning (DMP) with explicit links to funder requirements. Following the Sixth International Digital Curation Conference, held in Chicago in December 2010, a number of US institutions partnered with the Digital Curation Centre's DMP Online team to learn from their experiences while developing a US counterpart. DMPTool arrived in beta in August 2011 and released a production version in November 2011. This joint paper will compare and contrast use cases, organizational and national/cultural characteristics that have influenced the development decisions, outcomes achieved so far, and planned future developments.

|Digital Scholarship | Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works |

The Purdue University Libraries have launched the Data Curation Profiles Directory

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Data Curation Profiles (DCP) are in-depth publications which provide detailed descriptions of research data sets and collections. The DCP, and the associated Toolkit which provides instructions and advice on composing them, are the results of research funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Working with Purdue University Libraries Scholarly Publishing Services, the Data Curation Profiles Directory provides a suite of services to support publication, including: assigning a DOI and citation for each published DCP, improved visibility for Profiles through inclusion in indexing and discovery tools, and a commitment to the preservation of DCPs through CLOCKSS and Portico.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works |

The Digital Preservation Coalition has announced the winners of the 2012 DCP Digital Preservation Awards.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Award for Teaching and Communications was presented by Oliver Morley, Chief Executive of the National Archives to a small team from the University of London Computer Centre who run the Digital Preservation Training Programme (DPTP)—an entry-level, introductory course that develops critical thinking about digital preservation. . . .

The Award for Research and Innovation was presented by Martyn Harrow, Chief Executive of JISC to the PLANETS project. PLANETS brought together memory institutions, small businesses, major technology providers, and research institutions from across Europe to build practical services and tools to help ensure long-term access to digital cultural and scientific assets. . . .

The DPC's most prestigious prize—the Decennial Prize—is awarded specially to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of the DPC and it recognizes the most outstanding work over the decade that the DPC has existed. An intense international competition followed and finalists from New York, Washington and London were selected after a painstaking assessment by an expert panel. But when Dame Lynne Brindley announced the winner this evening, it was the Archaeology Data Service at the University of York that came out on top. The Archaeology Data Service is an innovative group based in the Archaeology Department of the University of York.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works |

The National Archives has announced its grant awards for historical records projects, including those for digitization and electronic records management and preservation.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Digitizing historical records grants, totaling $420,000, went to four projects: the University of Florida will digitize and make available more than 36,000 pages of diaries and manuscripts from the end of the Colonial period to the beginnings of the modern state; Princeton University will digitize more than 400,000 pages of six Cold War-related manuscript collections; Harvard University will digitize 189,074 pages, covering four generations of the Blackwell Family from 1784 to 1981, that cover abolition, temperance, women's suffrage, and education; and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation in Springfield, Illinois, will digitize the records of Richard Yates, Sr., governor of Illinois 1861-1865.

Three Electronic Records grants, totaling $235,000, went to: the Council of State Archivists for a two-year project to strengthen the capacity of states and territories to manage and preserve electronic records; an electronic records start-up project at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; and a planning grant for the Missouri Office of the Secretary of State to establish an electronic records archives.

| Reviews of Digital Scholarship Publications | Digital Scholarship |

Martin J. Gengenbach A has self-archived his Master's theses "'The Way We Do It Here': Mapping Digital Forensics Workflows in Collecting Institutions."

Here's an excerpt:

The study presented in this paper used semi-structured interviews with archivists and curators to investigate the implementation of digital forensics practices for managing born-digital content in collecting institutions. . . . High-level workflow models based on the information gathered through those interviews provide additional documentation and context for archives and special collections seeking to develop their own processes

| Digital Curation Resource Guide | Digital Scholarship |

The EUDAT project has released the EUDAT Sustainability Plan.

Here's an excerpt:

We survey the current provision of infrastructure and long-term data archival services in Europe and review recent efforts to assess the costs involved in preserving research data (Chapters 1 to 4). To focus and constrain sustainability planning, we introduce a number of candidate guiding principles for EUDAT (Chapter 5) and suggest an overall logical model of its future shape, and a number of possible mechanisms for realising this model (Chapter 6). We discuss possible mechanisms to define levels of service and provide funding for a future EUDAT CDI, and introduce our intent to measure actual costs of delivering EUDAT services through an activity-based cost modelling exercise (Chapters 7 and 8).

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works |

Natsuko Nicholls has self-archived Status and Outlook for University of Michigan Research Profile Data Strategy in Deep Blue.

Here's an excerpt:

My investigation into various faculty expertise efforts and activities across institutions shows that many universities have not yet developed or adopted a centralized, comprehensive university-wide system for expertise data collection and activity reporting. There is still substantial variation in procedures across departments and colleges within institutions and considerable duplication of effort across campus units. However, it is indeed the recent trend that many institutions—including the University of Michigan—have actively engaged in campus-wide discussions about research profile data curation needs, concluding that a more centralized system would provide incentives for timely data-entry, guarantee currency of the expertise data, and increase overall efficiency and data quality. This study also sheds light on the role of the academic library as an important stakeholder in expertise data collection and management. My findings suggest that various attributes of an academic library make it an ideal driver for research profile data management. The academic library is a strong resource for information technology expertise as well as information management and dissemination at any institution. Further, it tends to be a neutral and trusted entity, especially with employees who regularly engage with researchers and have a good understanding of the academic landscape and the needs of the research community. In addition to providing an overview of the research landscape where profiling needs are quickly rising and where benefits from a well-managed profile data system are widely understood, this study also illuminates the conventional use of expertise databases and research networking/discovery tools as well as Current Research Information Systems (CRIS).

| Research Data Curation Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |