Andrew Bullen has released A Cookbook of Methods for Using CONTENTdm APIs.
Here's an excerpt:
CONTENTdm has a number of useful APIs for directly accessing information contained in its indexes and files. This site is intended as a practical reference guide to using many—though not all—of these APIs.
See also: "Using CONTENTdm's APIs to Customize Your Site and Access Your Data."
Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap
The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University has released "Happy Beta Release Day, Omeka S!!."
Here's an excerpt:
Omeka S is the next-generation, open source web-publishing platform that is fully integrated into the scholarly communications ecosystem and designed to serve the needs of medium to large institutional users who wish to launch, monitor, and upgrade many sites from a single installation.
Though Omeka S is a completely new software package, it shares the same goals and principles of Omeka Classic that users have come to love: a commitment to cost-effective deployment and design, an intuitive user interface, open access to data and resources, and interoperability through standardized data.
Created with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Omeka S is engineered to ease the burdens of administrators who want to make it possible for their end-user communities to easily build their own sites that showcase digital cultural heritage materials.
See also: Omeka S Beta Technical Specs.
Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap
Jess Waggoner has published "Omeka Curator Dashboard" in the Omeka blog.
Here's an excerpt:
The Omeka Curator Dashboard (or "the OCD" as we endearingly refer to it) is a suite of fifteen plugins (though a bonus sixteenth will be coming soon!) designed to facilitate object import and export, manage metadata, and curate collections. Several of our plugins are already available on the official list of Omeka plugins. The others are still undergoing testing, but can be downloaded from the UCSC Library GitHub in the meanwhile. We are actively soliciting feedback on these plugins from the Omeka user community so we can continue to improve their features and interfaces.
Devan Rays Donaldson has self-archived "Development of a Scale for Measuring Perceptions of Trustworthiness for Digitized Archival Documents."
Here's an excerpt:
This dissertation advances scholarship on trustworthiness in three ways. First, it revises an existing conceptual model for trustworthiness perception. Second, it creates an original measurement model for digitized archival document trustworthiness perception-the Digitized Archival Document Trustworthiness Scale (DADTS). Third, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the concept of trustworthiness by providing measurement of the concept in a way that is sensitive to its nuances.
The Measuring Up: Assessing Use of Digital Repositories and the Resulting Impact Project has received an IMLS Grant.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded a $500,000, three-year National Leadership Grant to four partner organizations-the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Montana State University, OCLC Research, and the University of New Mexico-to perform research and recommend best practices that will improve data collection and information sharing for institutional repositories and digitized collections.
Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"
JISC has released Toolkit: Equipment for Image Digitisation Projects.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
This Jisc Digital Media toolkit sets out to look at each of these technologies in detail, outlining both the theory behind the technology, along with more practical insights. It looks at cameras and scanners in depth and provide the stakeholder with the knowledge required to make informed decisions when purchasing, what can be, very expensive items of equipment.
Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"
IFLA has released Guidelines for Planning the Digitization of Rare Book and Manuscript Collections.
Here's an excerpt:
These guidelines attempt to complement this body of knowledge by addressing the specific needs related to planning digitization projects for rare and special collections. They are written from the point-of-view of special collection managers, rare book librarians, curators, and researchers who study the physical object as an artefact bearing intrinsic historical evidence as much as for the intellectual content that it contains.
Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"
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"
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"
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.
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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.
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 |
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 |
