JISC has released Splashes and Ripples: Synthesizing the Evidence on the Impacts of Digital Resources.

Here's an excerpt:

This report is an effort to begin to synthesize the evidence available under the JISC digitisation and eContent programmes to better understand the patterns of usage of digitised collections in research and teaching, in the UK and beyond. JISC has invested heavily in eContent and digitisation, funding dozens of projects of varying size since 2004. However, until recently, the value of these efforts has been mostly either taken as given, or asserted via anecdote. By drawing on evidence of the various impacts of twelve digitised resources, we can begin to build a base of evidence that moves beyond anecdotal evidence to a more empirically-based understanding on a variety of impacts that have been measured by qualitative and quantitative methods.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

Yale University has adopted an open access policy for digitized images from its museums, archives, and libraries. Yale has also launched the Discover Yale Digital Commons, which has over 250,000 images.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The goal of the new policy is to make high quality digital images of Yale's vast cultural heritage collections in the public domain openly and freely available.

As works in these collections become digitized, the museums and libraries will make those images that are in the public domain freely accessible. In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching and inspiration.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography |

Images for the Future has released Digitisation Audiovisual Materials Heritage Institutions: Models for Licenses and Compensations (English summary).

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

While digitising for preservation purposes has been permitted since 2004 under strict conditions in accordance with Art. 16n of the Dutch Copyright Act, for the reutilisation of digitized material (e.g. on websites or by means of retransmission by radio or television) permission must be sought and obtained from large numbers of rights holders. For large digitisation projects, such as Beelden voor de Toekomst (Images for the Future), this means a rights clearance operation of dizzying proportions. In addition, digitisation projects face great uncertainty with regard to the level of the copyright license fees due. Given this background the Images for the Future consortium has commissioned the Institute for Information Law (hereinafter IViR) to investigate models for licenses and fees for mass digitisation projects.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

OCLC Research has released Rapid Capture: Faster Throughput in Digitization of Special Collections.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report provides examples of how to simplify and streamline digital capture of non-book collections.

Nine case studies illustrate processes and procedures institutions have adopted to speed up digitization of special collections. The intent in sharing these vignettes is to enable others to consider whether or not any of the approaches could be applied to their own initiatives to increase the scale of their digitization efforts.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced the availability of Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grants. The maximum award is $350,000 (up to three years). The deadline is July 20, 2011.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program supports projects that provide an essential foundation for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. Thousands of libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations across the country maintain important collections of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture, and digital objects. Funding from this program strengthens efforts to extend the life of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible, often through the use of digital technology. Awards are also made to create various reference resources that facilitate use of cultural materials, from works that provide basic information quickly to tools that synthesize and codify knowledge of a subject for in-depth investigation.

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;
• creating encyclopedias;
• preparing linguistic tools, such as historical and etymological dictionaries, corpora, and reference grammars (separate funding is available for endangered language projects in partnership with the National Science Foundation);
• 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 Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 |

The Council on Library and Information Resources has released "Bibliographic Indeterminacy and the Scale of Problems and Opportunities of 'Rights' in Digital Collection Building" as the first paper in its new "Ruminations" series.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

CLIR has launched a new publication series, "Ruminations." The series will feature short research papers and essays that bring new perspective to issues related to planning for and managing organizational and institutional change in the evolving digital environment for scholarship and teaching.

We inaugurate the new series with a report by John P. Wilkin that posits the scope of works in the public domain and probable extent of orphan works in our research library collections, based on an analysis of the HathiTrust book corpus. The question of rights status is critical since it governs how works can be used or reused, especially in the digital environment.

Recent research shows that HathiTrust's collection—which currently holds more than 5 million digitized books—is highly representative of research library collections. On this premise, Wilkin has analyzed HathiTrust's holdings and drawn preliminary conclusions about the proportion of works that are in-copyright, in the public domain, or are orphans—that is, works whose holders cannot be located.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

The Triangle Research Libraries Network has released The Triangle Research Libraries Network's Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Digitization of Modern Manuscript Collections and Archival Record Groups.

Here's an excerpt from the OCLC press release:

This is the first formally published strategy for providing access to unpublished materials online based on an approach created by OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership.

This approach is described in a document titled, "Well-intentioned practice for putting digitized collections of unpublished materials online" and is the output of an "Undue Diligence" invitational seminar held in the spring of 2010. During this event, OCLC Research convened a group of RLG Partner experts from archives, special collections and the law to develop and define streamlined, community-accepted procedures for managing copyright in the digital age that would cut costs and boost confidence in libraries' and archives' ability to increase visibility of and access to unpublished materials online. The group acknowledged that, although there is risk in digitizing materials that may be in copyright, this risk should be balanced with the harm to scholarship and society inherent in not making collections fully accessible. Based on this premise, they identified a practical approach to selecting collections, making decisions, seeking permissions, recording outcomes, establishing policy and working with future donors, which OCLC Research staff outlined in the "Well-intentioned practice" document and posted online.

Since then, a community of practice has formed around these procedures and many professional organizations have publicly endorsed them, including the Rare Book and Manuscript Section (RBMS) of the American Library Association (ALA), and leading academic library professionals and scholarly communications officers.

Based on this ever-growing agreement within the profession, the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) member libraries created a Network's Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Digitization of Modern Manuscript Collections and Archival Record Groups to specify the well-reasoned risk management practices to support their large-scale digitization project called "Content, Context, and Capacity: A Collaborative Digitization Project on the Long Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina." This project will present free and open online access to a total of forty digitized manuscript collections or archival record groups, accompanied by the broad summary descriptions and contents lists found in the finding aids created when the collections were processed. For the first time, these resources will cross the boundaries of the four libraries' reading rooms—bringing together a vast quantity of research material for the era between the 1930s and 1980s. This free and open online availability of full collections will facilitate new scholarly collaborations across institutions, and even nations, and will support the development of educational tools for students and the use of primary sources in classrooms.

Read more about it at "Well-Intentioned Practice for Putting Digitized Collections of Unpublished Materials Online."

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

The Europeana project has released the Europeana Strategic Plan 2011-2015.

Here's an excerpt:

Launched as a proof of concept in 2008, with 2 million objects from 27 EU countries, Europeana spent 2009 and 2010 creating an operational service and ingesting a critical mass of data from some 1500 providers across Europe. Together with content partners and aided by Europe’s leading research universities, we now have a strong and vibrant network of museums, archives and libraries.

We are achieving our objective as an aggregator, and aim to give access to all of Europe’s digitised cultural heritage by 2025. However, to remain successful in the future we need now to move from a centralised role to a more distributed model. Europeana will take its place in a wider European information space, collaborating with other aggregators of content. From the users’ perspective, Europeana’s content will be readily accessible in the places they frequent online—social networks, educational sites and cultural spaces. Our ambition is to provide new forms of access to culture, to inspire creativity and stimulate social and economic growth. To achieve this, Europeana and its stakeholders grapple with major challenges. Primary among these are the intellectual property barriers to digitisation. Europeana will become outmoded if it is not renewed through access to 20th and 21st century material. To ensure such access, more concerted efforts are needed at a European level to deal with orphan works and rights harmonisation. Secondly, it is vital that the digitisation of Europe’s cultural and intellectual record is accelerated. Thirdly, long-term funding needs to be secured for both Europeana and the ecosystem of content providers and aggregators that supplies its lifeblood.

In this strategic plan we outline our approach to these challenges and to creating value for the stakeholders and users. Over the next five years, Europeana will focus on four strategic tracks:

• aggregate content to build the open trusted source of European heritage
• facilitate knowledge transfer, innovation and advocacy in the cultural heritage sector
• distribute their heritage to users wherever they are, whenever they want it
• engage users in new ways of participating in their cultural heritage

| Digital Scholarship |

The European Commission's Comité des Sages has released The New Renaissance.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The report, called "The New Renaissance," key conclusions and recommendations are:

• The Europeana portal should become the central reference point for Europe's online cultural heritage. Member States must ensure that all material digitised with public funding is available on the site, and bring all their public domain masterpieces into Europeana by 2016. Cultural
• Works that are covered by copyright, but are no longer distributed commercially, need to be brought online. It is primarily the role of rights-holders to digitise these works and exploit them. But, if rights holders do not do so, cultural institutions must have a window of opportunity to digitise material and make it available to the public, for which right holders should be remunerated.
• EU rules for orphan works (whose rights holders cannot be identified) need to be adopted as soon as possible. The Report defines eight fundamental conditions for any solution.
• Member States need to considerably increase their funding for digitisation in order to generate jobs and growth in the future. The funds needed to build 100 km of roads would pay for the digitisation of 16% of all available books in EU libraries, or the digitisation of every piece of audio content in EU Member States' cultural institutions.
• Public-private partnerships for digitisation must be encouraged. They must be transparent, non-exclusive and equitable for all partners, and must result in cross-border access to the digitised material for all. Preferential use of the digitised material granted to the private partner should not exceed seven years.
• To guarantee the preservation of collections in their digital format, a second copy of this cultural material should be archived at Europeana. In addition, a system should be developed so that any cultural material that currently needs to be deposited in several countries would only be deposited once.

| Digital Scholarship |

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission has funded 53 grant proposals, including seven digitization projects.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

DIGITIZATION
Grants for digitizing entire archival collections of historical importance.

Georgia State University
Atlanta, GA                                            $90,102
The PATCO Records Digitization Project.
A 20-month project to digitize eight series—approximately 179,000 scans—of  the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) records from the union's national office.

Getty Research Institute
Los Angeles, CA                                  $100,790
Living the American Dream: Housing and Urban Development in Los Angeles, 1936-1997. 
A two year project to digitize and make available online approximately 60,500 images from the Leonard Nadel Papers and the Julius Shulman Photography Archive. 

Library of Virginia
Richmond, VA                                     $150,000
Augusta County, VA, Chancery Records, 1745-1912.
A two year project to digitize the Augusta County Chancery Court records, consisting of 460 cubic feet totally approximately 900,000 images representing 10,437 cases. .

Marist College
Poughkeepsie, NY                                $103,979
Lowell Thomas Papers Digitization Project.
A project to digitize 36,164 images, including 8,000 glass plate negatives, 6,500 lantern slides, 13,000 photographic prints, 300 stereopticon cards, 1,800 film negatives, and more items in the Graphic Materials Series in Lowell Thomas Papers, a collection drawn from the works of the 20th century American writer and broadcaster.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Rutgers, NJ                                            $57,390
Housing Law and Policy Digital Archive.
A project to digitize two collections of materials, totaling 94,000 pages, in the areas of public housing law and urban history.

University of Illinois, Chicago
Chicago, IL                                            $47,099
Chicago: Photographic Images of Change.
A two year project to digitize approximately 30,275 photographs of historic Chicago sites, streets, neighborhoods and buildings contained within the James S. Parker collection (1900-2003) and the Chicago Photographic collection (ca. 1890-1970). 

University of North Texas
Denton, TX                                           $30,509
The Civil War and Reconstruction.
Aone year project to digitize and make available online a group of eight 19th century collections totaling 22,412 pages.  The records span from 1823-1919, but the bulk of the records date from the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

| Digital Scholarship |

Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive has announced that the University of Toronto has digitized 250,000 books.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

When I talked with Carole Moore, the fantastic librarian from University of Toronto, about 6 years ago, she had a vision of scanning 250,000 books from their libraries. Well, a few days ago she succeeded. (http://www.archive.org/details/university_of_toronto)

It has been a winding road to here, with financial help from Yahoo and Microsoft, from the Canadian government and from the University of Toronto—but she got there in grand style. . . .

250,000 books for free to the world from one of the great libraries in the world.

IBM and the European Union are collaborating on a mass digitization project called on IMPACT (IMProving Access to Text).

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

IBM and the EU have expanded their research collaboration, which now includes more than two-dozen national libraries, research institutes, universities, and companies across Europe to provide new technology that will enable highly-accurate digitization of rare and culturally significant historical texts on a massive scale. Unlike past digitization projects where the result has been static, online libraries of texts, this unique widescale effort, called IMPACT (IMProving Access to Text), will offer new tools and best practices to institutions across Europe that will enable them to efficiently and accurately continue to produce quality digital replicas of historically significant texts and make them widely available, editable and searchable online.

Funded by the EU, IMPACT's research combines the power of new innovative Web-enabled adaptive optical character recognition (OCR) software with "crowd computing" technology—a fast growing concept designed around individuals, or 'crowds,' enhancing a process or product by sharing their knowledge and expertise to dramatically improve its quality and efficiency. Combined, these technologies will allow institutions for the first time to adapt digitization to the idiosyncrasies of old fonts, anomalies and even vocabularies–while reducing error rates by 35% and substitution rates by 75%.