Category: Digital Archives and Special Collections

Omeka Everywhere Development Funded by IMLS

The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences has funded the development of Omeka Everywhere.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, in partnership with Ideum and the University of Connecticut's Digital Media Center, is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a National Leadership Grant for Museums from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences to create Omeka Everywhere. Dramatically increasing the possibilities for visitor access to collections, Omeka Everywhere will offer a simple, cost-effective solution for connecting onsite web content and in-gallery multi-sensory experiences, affordable to museums of all sizes and missions, by capitalizing on the strengths of two successful collections-based open-source software projects: Omeka and Open Exhibits.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach, SPEC Kit 341

ARL has released Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach, SPEC Kit 341.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

ARL has released Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach, SPEC Kit 341, which investigates what methods ARL member libraries use to maintain the relevancy of their locally curated digital library collections, and to continue to sustain, grow, capture return on investment, and enhance existing resources through outreach and assessment. The publication also explores current practices for integrating digital resources into the research, teaching, and learning environment.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

Linked Archival Metadata: A Guidebook (Version 0.99)

Eric Lease Morgan and LiAM have released Linked Archival Metadata: A Guidebook (Version 0.99).

Here's an excerpt:

Linked data is a process for embedding the descriptive information of archives into the very fabric of the Web. By transforming archival description into linked data, an archivist will enable other people as well as computers to read and use their archival description, even if the others are not a part of the archival community. The process goes both ways. Linked data also empowers archivists to use and incorporate the information of other linked data providers into their local description. This enables archivists to make their descriptions more thorough, more complete, and more value-added. For example, archival collections could be automatically supplemented with geographic coordinates in order to make maps, images of people or additional biographic descriptions to make collections come alive, or bibliographies for further reading.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

The Benefits and Risks of the PDF/A-3 File Format for Archival Institutions

The NDSA has released The Benefits and Risks of the PDF/A-3 File Format for Archival Institutions.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report takes a measured look at the costs and benefits of the widespread use of the PDF/A-3 format, especially as it effects content arriving in collecting institutions. It provides background on the technical development of the specification, identifies specific scenarios under which the format might be used and suggests policy prescriptions for collecting institutions to consider.

For example, the report suggests that for memory institutions, the acceptance of embedded files in PDF/A documents would depend on very specific protocols between depositors and archival repositories that clarify acceptable embedded formats and define workflows that guarantee that the relationship between the PDF document and any embedded files is fully understood by the archival institution.

Additionally, the report notes that the complexity of the PDF format and the wide variance in PDF rendering implementations and creating applications suggests that PDF/A-3 may be appropriate for use in controlled workflows, but may not be an appropriate choice as a general-purpose bundling format.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Omeka 2.1.4 Released

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has released Omeka 2.1.4.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This maintenance release includes some style additions and corrections in the admin theme, as well as a fix to how records are sorted for newer versions of MySQL. . .

Updated versions of the COinS and Exhibit Builder plugins are also bundled with this release, fixing an error in COinS for PHP 5.2. The updated Exhibit Builder plugin improves many parts of the styling, especially across interaction with many plugins, and expands the data returned by the API.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories

The Council on Library and Information Resources has released Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This report offers recommendations to help ensure the physical and intellectual well-being of born-digital materials transferred from donors to archival repositories. 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 repository staff.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Confluence of Collections at Johns Hopkins’s Sheridan Libraries"

Liz Mengel has published "The Confluence of Collections at Johns Hopkins's Sheridan Libraries" in a special issue of Research Library Issues on mainstreaming special collections.

Here's an excerpt:

Since the creation of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library in 1964, Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has been housed in the main library and has been a part of the daily flow of overall library operations. As with many other special collections departments, this department was securely sheltered behind doors where the staff performed similar activities to other library departments such as collection development, reference, and instruction. Over the past four years, the Sheridan Libraries have been making deliberate efforts to remove the metaphorical silos that separate Special Collections and other library departments. In particular, the libraries have done this by looking at how collection funds are used and by blending positions to work in both Special Collections and the Academic Liaison Department.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital Age

The Smithsonian has released the Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in a Digital Age by G. Wayne Clough.

Here's an excerpt:

The review in this document illustrates how many cultural institutions have already found innovative applications for digital technology, but it is more than just a matter of "using." Digital technology will also change the basics of how these institutions work as we move forward. Collections will be shared across institutions through the linked data cloud; the public will participate in the creative activities of cultural institutions through engagement platforms; and informal education will merge with formal education. Cultural change is never easy, and while an institution might be able to avoid it for a while, this time it will be so big that no one will escape in the long run.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Draft Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness

The Educopia Institute has released Draft Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness.

Here's an excerpt:

These Guidelines are a first-draft version of our work to distil preservation-readiness steps into an incremental process that an institution of almost any size or type should be able to use to begin maturing its digital newspaper content management practices.

This first draft is being issued for public review and comment here from July 22, 2013-September 20, 2013.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Crafting Linked Open Data for Cultural Heritage: Mapping and Curation Tools for the Linked Jazz Project"

M. Cristina Pattuelli, Matt Miller, Leanora Lange, Sean Fitzell, and Carolyn Li-Madeo have published "Crafting Linked Open Data for Cultural Heritage: Mapping and Curation Tools for the Linked Jazz Project" in the latest issue of Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper describes tools and methods developed as part of Linked Jazz, a project that uses Linked Open Data (LOD) to reveal personal and professional relationships among jazz musicians based on interviews from jazz archives. The overarching aim of Linked Jazz is to explore the possibilities offered by LOD to enhance the visibility of cultural heritage materials and enrich the semantics that describe them. While the full Linked Jazz dataset is still under development, this paper presents two applications that have laid the foundation for the creation of this dataset: the Mapping and Curator Tool, and the Transcript Analyzer. These applications have served primarily for data preparation, analysis, and curation and are representative of the types of tools and methods needed to craft linked data from digital content available on the web. This paper discusses these two domain-agnostic tools developed to create LOD from digital textual documents and offers insight into the process behind the creation of LOD in general.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Batch Metadata Assignment to Archival Photograph Collections Using Facial Recognition Software"

Kyle Banerjee and Maija Anderson have published "Batch Metadata Assignment to Archival Photograph Collections Using Facial Recognition Software" in the latest issue of Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Useful metadata is essential to giving individual meaning and value within the context of a greater image collection as well as making them more discoverable. However, often little information is available about the photos themselves, so adding consistent metadata to large collections of digital and digitized photographs is a time consuming process requiring highly experienced staff.

By using facial recognition software, staff can identify individuals more quickly and reliably. Knowledge of individuals in photos helps staff determine when and where photos are taken and also improves understanding of the subject matter.

This article demonstrates simple techniques for using facial recognition software and command line tools to assign, modify, and read metadata for large archival photograph collections.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Foundations of Data Curation: The Pedagogy and Practice of "Purposeful Work" with Research Data"

Carole L. Palmer, Nicholas M. Weber, Trevor Muñoz, and Allen H. Renear have punlished "Foundations of Data Curation: The Pedagogy and Practice of "Purposeful Work" with Research Data" in the latest issue of Archive Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Increased interest in large-scale, publicly accessible data collections has made data curation critical to the management, preservation, and improvement of research data in the social and natural sciences, as well as the humanities. This paper explicates an approach to data curation education that integrates traditional notions of curation with principles and expertise from library, archival, and computer science. We begin by tracing the emergence of data curation as both a concept and a field of practice related to, but distinct from, both digital curation and data stewardship. This historical account, while far from definitive, considers perspectives from both the sciences and the humanities. Alongside traditional LIS and archival science practices, unique aspects of curation have informed our concept of "purposeful work" with data and, in turn, our pedagogical approach to data curation for the sciences and the humanities.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Walk This Way: Detailed Steps for Transferring Born-Digital Content from Media You Can Read In-house

OCLC Research has released Walk This Way: Detailed Steps for Transferring Born-Digital Content from Media You Can Read In-house.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The third report, Walk This Way: Detailed Steps for Transferring Born-Digital Content from Media You Can Read In-house, collects the assembled wisdom of experienced practitioners to help those with less experience make appropriate choices in gaining control of born-digital content. It contains discrete steps with objectives, links to available tools and software, references and resources for further research and paths to engagement with the digital archives community.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The .txtual Condition: Digital Humanities, Born-Digital Archives, and the Future Literary"

Matthew Kirschenbaum has published "The .txtual Condition: Digital Humanities, Born-Digital Archives, and the Future Literary" in a preview issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

Here then are some specifics I have considered as to how digital humanities might usefully collaborate with those archivists even now working on born-digital collections:

  • Digital archivists need digital humanities researchers and subject experts to use born-digital collections. Nothing is more important. If humanities researchers don't demand access to born-digital materials then it will be harder to get those materials processed in a timely fashion, and we know that with the born-digital every day counts.
  • Digital humanists need the long-term perspective on data that archivists have. Today's digital humanities projects are, after all, the repository objects of tomorrow's born-digital archives. Funders are increasingly (and rightfully) insistent about the need to have a robust data management and sustainability plan built into project proposals from the outset. Therefore, there is much opportunity for collaboration and team-building around not only archiving and preservation, but the complete data curation cycle. This extends to the need to jointly plan around storage and institutional infrastructure.
  • Digital archivists and digital humanists need common and interoperable digital tools. Open source community-driven development at the intersection of the needs of digital archivists, humanities scholars, and even collections' donors should become an urgent priority.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Archives and Copyright: Risk and Reform

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.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

Omeka 2.0 Released

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 |

Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories

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 |

Scholars’ Lab Releases BagIt and SolrSearch Plugins for Omeka

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 |

Managing Born-Digital Special Collections and Archival Materials, SPEC Kit 329

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 |

"Copyright Risk Management: Principles and Strategies for Large-Scale Digitization Projects in Special Collections"

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 |

Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Part 3: Recommendations and Readings

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 |

NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grants

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 |

AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship

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 |

Scan and Deliver Webinar Recordings and Documents Released

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 |