Valerie Harris and Peter Hepburn have published "Trends in Image Use by Historians and the Implications for Librarians and Archivists" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

For years, libraries have offered reproduction services to users, with historians being the core audience. More recently, archives and special collections have developed digitization programs to make primary sources widely available through the Internet. The authors tracked image use from 2000 through 2009 in journals from the discipline of history to discover whether use of images has increased with the growing availability of digital images through libraries, or from social media sites such as Flickr. The study discusses the results, which show no increase in the inclusion of images in the literature, and the implications for librarians and archivists.

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Angel Siegfried Diaz has self-archived "Fair Use & Mass Digitization: The Future of Copy-Dependent Technologies after Authors Guild v. Hathitrust" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt from:

This note discusses the future of digital libraries and other products reliant on mass digitization in the wake of the Hathitrust decision. First, this note presents an overview of U.S. copyright protection and the ways in which its goal of incentivizing authors has consistently been balanced by efforts to protect preservation, access, and fair use. . . .

Second, this note discusses the trial court opinion in Authors Guild v. Hathitrust and the court's fair use finding regarding the full-text search index and copies for the print disabled. . . .

Third, this note discusses the Hathitrust decision's effect on the future of the Google Books case and argues that the fair use ruling paves the road for a similar finding while also giving Google leverage in its ongoing settlement negotiations. . . .

Fourth, after exploring the judicial efforts to protect useful technologies as a matter of public policy, this note explores legislative solutions that would better advance copyright's goals of promoting education, research, preservation, and access.

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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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ARL and Ithaka S+R have released Appraising our Digital Investment: Sustainability of Digitized Special Collections in ARL Libraries .

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The research reveals that understanding the continuing costs for sustaining digital collections is a challenge across libraries. Responsibility is frequently dispersed among departments, and staff time and other costs are rarely allocated expressly to these activities or accounted for project-by-project. Almost universally, libraries are funding this activity out of their base budgets, suggesting that they will continue to need to shift funds from other things in order to support this as a priority.

While libraries are supporting these collections within their operations, the study's findings also reflect concern over sustainability, with librarians citing lack of funding and staff capacity as major challenges to sufficient investment in their digital collections. . . .

The three-part survey, designed with input from the ARL community, was sent to all ARL member libraries in the US and Canada and completed by 89 library directors, a response rate of 70%. In addition to the institutional perspective provided by library directors, library staff responded to other sections to offer insight into activities and costs for all of their institution's digitized collections, and questions about individual projects.

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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 |

Kalina Sotirova, Juliana Peneva, Stanislav Ivanov, Rositza Doneva, and Milena Dobreva have self-archived "Digitization of Cultural Heritage—Standards, Institutions, Initiatives" in the NBU Scholar Electronic Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

The first chapter "Digitization of Cultural Heritage—Standards, Institutions, Initiatives" provides an introduction to the area of digitisation. The main pillars of process of creating, preserving and accessing of cultural heritage in digital space are observed. The importance of metadata in the process of accessing to information is outlined. The metadata schemas and standards used in cultural heritage are discussed. In order to reach digital objects in virtual space they are organized in digital libraries. Contemporary digital libraries are trying to deliver richer and better functionality, which usually is user oriented and depending on current IT trend. Additionally, the chapter is focused on some initiatives on world and European level that during the years enforce the process of digitization and organizing digital objects in the cultural heritage domain. In recent years, the main focus in the creation of digital resources shifts from "system-centred" to "user-centred" since most of the issues around this content are related to making it accessible and usable for the real users. So, the user studies and involving the users on early stages of design and planning the functionality of the product which is being developed stands on leading position.

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

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Preservation and Reformatting Section has released a draft of its Minimum Digitization Capture Recommendations. The comment period ends on 12/31/2012.

Here's an excerpt:

This document was created as a guideline for libraries digitizing content with the objective of producing a product that will not be re-digitized at a later point. Institutions can feel secure that if an item has been digitized at, or above, these specifications, they can depend on it to continue to be viable in the future. These guidelines only speak to the technical specifications of the digitized content itself and not to the larger issue of digitally preserving said content. In some cases, institutions may want to request a digital copy to preserve themselves further safeguarding materials by preserving them in multiple locations.

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The ENUMERATE project has released Survey Report on Digitisation in European Cultural Heritage Institutions 2012.

Here's an excerpt:

The ENUMERATE Survey Report on Digitisation in Cultural Heritage Institutions 2012 represents the first major study into the current state of digitisation in Europe. It is the result of a survey carried out by the ENUMERATE Thematic Network, with the help of national coordinators, in 29 European countries. About 2000 institutions answered the open call to participate between January and March 2012.

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Jennifer M. Urban has self-archived "How Fair Use Can Help Solve the Orphan Works Problem" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

This Article argues that legislation is not necessary to enable some uses of orphan works by nonprofit libraries and archives. Instead, the fair use doctrine in United States copyright law provides a partial solution. The Article addresses three basic questions: first, does fair use provide a viable basis on which libraries might digitize orphans? Second, does fair use provide a viable basis on which to make these orphans available to patrons or the public? Third, more generally, can or should fair use do any additional work in infringement analysis where the copyrighted work in question is an orphan?

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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 |

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 |

Mats Dahlström, Joacim Hansson, and Ulrika Kjellman have published "'As We May Digitize'—Institutions and Documents Reconfigured" in the latest issue of LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of European Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

This article frames digitization as a knowledge organization practice in libraries and museums. The primarily discriminatory practices of museums are compared with the non-discriminatory practices of libraries when managing their respective cultural heritage collections. . . . Two poles along a digitization strategy scale, mass digitization and critical digitization, are distinguished in the article. As memory institutions are redefined in their development of digitized document collections, e.g., by increasingly emphasizing a common trans-national rather than national cultural heritage, mass digitization and critical digitization represent alternative avenues. . . . The article re-contextualizes current digitization discourse: a) historically, by suggesting that digitization brings ancient practices back to life rather than invents entirely new ones from scratch; b) conceptually, by presenting a new label (critical digitization) for a digitization strategy that has hitherto been downplayed in digitization discourse; and c) theoretically, by exploring the relations between the values of different digitization strategies, the reconfiguration of collections as they are digitized, and the redefinition of MLA institutions through those processes.

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