Category: Digital Archives and Special Collections

DiSCmap: Digitisation in Special Collections: Mapping, Assessment, Prioritisation. Final Report.

JISC has released DiSCmap: Digitisation in Special Collections: Mapping, Assessment, Prioritisation. Final Report..

Here's an excerpt:

In its widest sense the project contributes towards preliminary evidence on user-driven priorities which could help in the process of allocation of funding for digitisation projects. It also can help to define the purpose, value and impact of digitisation not on institutional basis but on UK HE scale. By development of a framework of user-driven prioritisation criteria, DiSCmap contributes towards the longer-term goal of developing a quantifiable and adjustable system of metrics in the digitisation life cycle especially addressing the selection phase.

The amount of collections nominated to the long list [of 945 collections nominated for digitisation] reached beyond the expectations of the project team. This list itself is a valuable outcome which should be enriched further in order to provide a broad and trustworthy basis for the future digitisation decisions. DiSCmap surveyed over 1000 intermediaries and end users; this report presents in a very condensed form only a small proportion of the total evidence on user demand gathered by the project team. Yet in analysing and representing fully the range of end user priorities, DiSCmap has made a considerable advance in identifying the actual digitisation needs of end users. It has done so with the aim of removing the element of guesswork and assumption hitherto inherent in our understanding of user requirements in this area. The combination of intermediary' and end user' studies provides a richness of view points which highlight the many important different aspects related to the user dimension in digitisation.

Omeka 1.1 Released

Version 1.1 of Omeka has been released. Omeka is a "free and open source collections based web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators, and cultural enthusiasts."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 1.1., users will have more control over their installation through the admin interface, such as:

  • Toggling more easily between the public site and the item and collection pages by clicking on a new "View on Public Site" link;
  • Browsing through more than 10 collections;
  • Managing and upgrading plugins;
  • Displaying only item fields containing metadata on the public site with a new setting in the theme panel (without needing to edit on the server).

Read more about it at "Release Notes for 1.1."

Archivists Toolkit Version 2.0 Released

The Archivists Toolkit version 2.0 has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

New features added to AT 2.0 include:

  1. Revised Digital Object module, so that Digital Object records can be created and managed independent of Resource records.
  2. Tab-delimited Digital Object import
  3. Batch export of Digital Objects
  4. Assessment module
  5. New reports for Digital Object and Assessment modules
  6. Revision of all other reports (Names, Subjects, Accessions, Resources)
  7. Improved stylesheets for EAD to PDF and EAD to HTML outputs
  8. Bug fixes as noted in release notes

Read more about it at "New/Updated Features for AT Release 2.0."

Harvard College Library and the National Library of China to Digitize 51,500-Volume Chinese Rare Book Collection

The Harvard College Library and the National Library of China will collaborate to digitize and make freely available the 51,500-volume Chinese rare book collection of Harvard-Yenching Library.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Among the largest cooperative projects of its kind ever undertaken between China and US libraries, the project will digitize Harvard-Yenching Library's entire 51,500-volume Chinese rare book collection. One of the libraries which make up the Harvard College Library system, Harvard-Yenching is the largest university library for East Asian research in the Western world. When completed, the project will have a transformative affect on scholarship involving rare Chinese texts, Harvard-Yenching Librarian James Cheng predicted. . . .

The six-year project will be done in two three-year phases. The first phase, beginning in January 2010, will digitize books from the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, which date from about 960 AD to 1644. The second phase, starting in January 2013, will digitize books from the Qing Dynasty, which date from 1644 until 1795. The collection includes materials which cover an extensive range of subjects, including history, philosophy, drama, belles letters and classics.

All of the rare books will have to be examined carefully to identify those that are fragile, damaged, or are sewn in a way that hides text along the binding margin. To determine which volumes may need conservation treatment, project manager Sharon Li-Shiuan Yang, head of access services at Harvard-Yenching Library, and her team will receive training in basic condition assessment from the Weissman Preservation Center, which treats Harvard's rare library materials. Items needing repair will be sent to the Weissman for treatment by conservators before being digitized.

The digitization work will be performed by HCL Imaging Services group in its state-of-the-art lab in Widener Library, where staff members have been working to design new equipment and workflows in preparation for the huge project, said Imaging Services head Bill Comstock.

The scale of the project will present HCL and the National Library of China with many organizational and technical challenges," Comstock said. "We look forward to partnering with NLC staff, led by Dr. Zhi-geng Wang, the Director of the NLC's Department for Digital Resources and Services, to build innovative new tools and procedures that will make our work on this and other projects more robust and efficient."

"Smithsonian Team Flickr: A Library, Archives, and Museums Collaboration in Web 2.0 Space"

Martin Kalfatovic et al. have self-archived "Smithsonian Team Flickr: A Library, Archives, and Museums Collaboration in Web 2.0 Space" in Smithsonian Research Online.

Here's an excerpt:

The Flickr Commons was created as a forum for institutions to share their rich photographic collections with the emerging Web 2.0 audience of Flickr. The Smithsonian Institution was the fourth member of the Commons. The Smithsonian effort was a direct collaborative effort of the libraries, archives, museums, and information technology staff that generated new pathways for collaboration between these units. As the world's largest museum complex, these Smithsonian units serve as a microcosm for collaboration in the information age. The Flickr Commons project provided insights into how the knowledge, skills, and abilities of libraries, archives, and museums (LAM) can converge in the Web 2.0 environment to provide collection access to new, and in some cases, unknown of audiences. Simultaneously, by putting "LAM" content into an environment that allows for direct interaction by these audiences, the knowledge of the content for holding institutions is enriched. By exposing Smithsonian content within the Flickr environment, the Institution is learning what content is desired by the Web 2.0 world, how to bring crowd-sourcing into professionally curated collections, and how to bring diverse institutional skills together in a collaborative project.

Omeka Image Annotation Plugin 1.0 Beta

The Center for History and New Media, George Mason University has released the Image Annotation Plugin 1.0 beta for Omeka.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Have you ever wanted to annotate your images on Omeka like you can on Flickr?

Now you can with the beta release of Omeka's Image Annotation plugin! Using an adaptation of Chris Woods' jQuery plugin, jquery-image-annotate, Omeka's new Image Annotation plugin allows users to add textual annotations to images. To add an image annotation, users select a region of the image and then attach a textual description.

EmeraldView Front-End to Greenstone Digital Library Software

A beta release of the EmeraldView front-end to the Greenstone digital library software is near completion. The current code is available via a Subversion checkout. A demo is available.

Here's an excerpt from the project home page:

We are aiming to solve several key weaknesses of the stock front-end:

  • Greenstone's cryptic URLs of unusual size are a fail for user comprehensibility, search engine crawlers, bookmarking, etc. . .
  • Though extensive customization of the display is possible, there are some stopping points where modification of the C++ source is required.
  • The customization that is supported is via a system of micro-templates referred to as macros. This system is so heavily nested and cross-referenced that it is very difficult to conceptualize how any given page is generated.

Digital Exhibit Software: Omeka 1.0

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This production-grade release marks the completion of Omeka’s basic requirement set. Maintaining our commitment to serious web publishing for scholarship and cultural heritage, Omeka 1.0 incorporates unqualified Dublin Core metadata for organizing and displaying collections; support for extensible element sets; robust, flexible theme and plugin APIs; and plugins for Zotero compatibility, static page creation, and building sophisticated online exhibitions.

Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use

The Office of Digital Humanities in the National Endowment for the Humanities has released the final version of Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This project is about developing archival tools and best practices for preserving born-digital documents produced by contemporary authors. Traditionally, humanists have found great scholarly value in studying the papers, correspondence, and first drafts of authors, politicians, and other historical figures. In this white paper, the project director make note that contemporary figures compose almost all of their materials on a computer. What challenges will this present to humanists, archivists, and librarians in the future? This very readable paper explores many of these issues with specific case studies involving a number of leading libraries and archives.

Cornell Lifts Use Restrictions on Reproductions of Public Domain Works, Including over 70,000 E-Books

The Cornell University Library has eliminated use restrictions on reproductions of public domain works, including over 70,000 e-books.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In a dramatic change of practice, Cornell University Library has announced it will no longer require its users to seek permission to publish public domain items duplicated from its collections. Instead, users may now use reproductions of public domain works made for them by the Library or available via Web sites, without seeking any further permission.

The Library, as the producer of digital reproductions made from its collections, has in the past licensed the use of those reproductions. Individuals and corporations that failed to secure permission to repurpose these reproductions violated their agreement with the Library. "The threat of legal action, however," noted Anne R. Kenney, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian, "does little to stop bad actors while at the same time limits the good uses that can be made of digital surrogates. We decided it was more important to encourage the use of the public domain materials in our holdings than to impose roadblocks."

The immediate impetus for the new policy is Cornell’s donation of more than 70,000 digitized public domain books to the Internet Archive (details at www.archive.org/details/cornell).

"Imposing legally binding restrictions on these digital files would have been very difficult and in a way contrary to our broad support of open access principles," said Oya Y. Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies. "It seemed better just to acknowledge their public domain status and make them freely usable for any purpose. And since it doesn't make sense to have different rules for material that is reproduced at the request of patrons, we have removed permission obligations from public domain works."

Institutional restrictions on the use of public domain work, sometimes labeled "copyfraud," have been the subject of much scholarly criticism. The Cornell initiative goes further than many other recent attempts to open access to public domain material by removing restrictions on both commercial and non-commercial use. Users of the public domain works are still expected to determine on their own that works are in the public domain where they live. They also must respect non-copyright rights, such as the rights of privacy, publicity, and trademark. The Library will continue to charge service fees associated with the reproduction of analog material or the provision of versions of files different than what is freely available on the Web. All library Web sites will be updated to reflect this new policy during 2009.

The new Cornell policy can be found at cdl.library.cornell.edu/guidelines.html.

Controlling Access to and Use of Online Cultural Collections: A Survey of U.S. Archives, Libraries and Museums for IMLS

Kristin Eschenfelder has self-archived a draft of Controlling Access to and Use of Online Cultural Collections: A Survey of U.S. Archives, Libraries and Museums for IMLS in dLIST.

Here's an excerpt:

This report describes the results of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded study to investigate the use of technological or policy tools to control patron access to or use of digital collections of cultural materials created by U.S. archives, libraries and museums. The technological and policy tools serve primarily to control copying or other reuses of digital materials. The study had the following goals: 1. Assess what technical and policy tools cultural institutions are employing to control access to and use of online digital collections. 2. Investigate motivations for controlling access to or use of collections (e.g., copyright, privacy, protecting traditional restrictions, income generation etc.). 3. Investigate discouragers to the implementation of access and use control systems (e.g., preference for open collections, lack of resources, institutional mission, etc.). 4. Gauge interest in implementing technical systems to control access to and use of collections. 5. Determine what types of assistance IMLS could provide. 6. Identify institutions with innovative controlled online collections for follow up case studies on policy, technical and managerial details.

Special Collections in ARL Libraries: A Discussion Report from the ARL Working Group on Special Collections

The Association of Research Libraries has released Special Collections in ARL Libraries: A Discussion Report from the ARL Working Group on Special Collections.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Working Group on Special Collections, formed in 2007, has released a discussion report that identifies key issues in the management and exposure of special collections material in the 21st century. . . .

The report includes overviews of and recommendations in three areas:

  1. Collecting Carefully, with Regard to Costs, and Ethical and Legal Concerns
  2. Ensuring Discovery and Access
  3. The Challenge of Born-Digital Collections

It highlights the need for research library leadership to support actions that will increase the visibility and use of special collections and promote both existing and developing best practices in the stewardship of special collections.

World Digital Library to Launch on April 21, 2009

The World Digital Library will launch on April 21, 2009.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

UNESCO and 32 partner institutions will launch the World Digital Library, a web site that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world, at UNESCO Headquarters on 21 April. The site will include manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It will provide unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

The launch will take place at a reception co-hosted by UNESCO Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura, and U.S. Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington. Directors of the partner institutions will also be on hand to present the project to ambassadors, ministers, delegates, and special guests attending the semi-annual meeting of UNESCO’s Executive Board.

Carolina Digital Library and Archives Fall-Winter 08/09 Newsletter

The Carolina Digital Library and Archives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library has sent its Carolina Digital Library and Archives Fall-Winter 08/09 Newsletter out as an e-mail message on the DIGLIB list. It is not possible to directly link to this message; however, you can access the DIGLIB archive, and, after clicking the "I am not a spammer button," find the message "CDLA's Fall-Winter 08/09 Newsletter announcement."

Here's an excerpt:

1. CDLA'S FIRST-YEAR HIGHLIGHTS

Carolina Digital Library and Archives (http://cdla.unc.edu) is the UNC Library's major new department established to improve Web access to the Library's rich collections and to help faculty with new digital projects, services, and tools, with the common goal of advancing scholarship. Among major highlights of our first year are establishment of three new units—the Digital Publishing Group, which includes the award-winning digital publishing program Documenting the American South (DocSouth); the Digital Production Center; and the Research and Development Group–as well as investigation of opportunities in large-scale digitization and implementation of the Scribe program. Most importantly, from our perspective, is that the initial organizational and technological infrastructure was built which now provides increasing digital support to UNC faculty, the Library, and other cultural institutions in North Carolina. We plan to keep friends informed about new digital collections, services, and opportunities through this newsletter, our renovated Web site (coming this spring), and other channels.

Digital Collections/Exhibitions Software: Omeka 1.0 Alpha Released

Omeka 1.0 alpha has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This version of Omeka includes:

  • New helper functions and updates current helper function;
  • Enhancements and fixes bugs throughout the admin panel;
  • An autocompleter to the tags field for items;
  • Filtering for the users list in the admin;
  • An upgrade notification to admin dashboard if you're version of Omeka is older than the latest stable release.
  • A "Remember Me" checkbox to the login.
  • A global view page and helpers for file metadata, which will allow you to edit file metadata and display it in public themes.

Max Planck Institute Releases Best Practices for Access to Images: Recommendations for Scholarly Use and Publishing

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science has released Best Practices for Access to Images: Recommendations for Scholarly Use and Publishing.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The recommendations were prompted by the barriers encountered by those who wish to use and publish images of cultural heritage objects. High licence fees and complicated access regulations make it increasingly difficult for scholars in the humanities to work with digital images. It is true that the digitization of image collections has acted as a catalyst for scholarly research. However, archives, collections and libraries differ greatly with respect to the question of how, where and on what basis images may be used for scholarly purposes. Moreover, their policies in this regard are becoming increasingly restrictive, especially when it comes to new forms of e-publishing.

The MPIWG drew up its recommendations for facilitating the scholarly use of digital images following consultations with international experts which took place in January 2008. The recommendations call on curators and scholars to develop a mutually binding network of trust. The aim of the initiative is to encourage stakeholders jointly to address the current and future challenges raised by the digital age. The document urges curators to refrain from restricting the public domain arbitrarily and calls on them to accommodate the needs of scholars for reasonably-priced or freely-accessible high-resolution digital images—both for print publications and new Web-based forms of scholarly publishing. It exhorts scholars to recognise museums, libraries and collections as owners and custodians of physical objects of cultural heritage and to acknowledge their efforts in making digital images available. Moreover, it urges them to take their role as guarantors of authenticity and accurate attribution extremely seriously.

Archival Management Software: A Report for the Council on Library and Information Resources

The Council on Library and Information Resources has published Archival Management Software: A Report for the Council on Library and Information Resources by Lisa Spiro, Director of the Digital Media Center at Rice University.

Here's an excerpt from the report's Web page:

With generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources has launched a multiyear program that addresses the challenge of cataloging hidden collections—those materials held in special collections, archives, and other restricted or relatively inaccessible settings. The program has two major dimensions: first, to identify hidden collections of potential value to scholars; and second, to address the thorny issue of cataloging such materials efficiently, effectively, and in such a way that the catalog records are available to scholars through the Web. In this paper, Lisa Spiro describes and analyzes some of the major technologies that are available to librarians, curators, and archivists and the implications of deploying these systems for existing workflows.

Folger Shakespeare Library Provides Free Access to 20,000+ Images

The Folger Shakespeare Library is now providing free access to over 20,000 images.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The digital image collection includes books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and 218 of the Folger’s pre-1640 quarto editions of the works of William Shakespeare. Users can now examine these collection items in detail while accessing the Folger’s rare materials from desktops anywhere in the world. . . .

The Folger’s digital image collection provides resources for users to view multiple images side by side, save their search results, create permanent links to images, and perform other tasks through a free software program, Luna Insight.

The Folger is also collaborating with the University of Oxford to digitize 75 quarto editions of Shakespeare’s plays and create the Shakespeare Quartos Archive, which will provide free online access to interactive, high-resolution images of the plays. The Shakespeare Quartos Archive is funded by a new Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant awarded jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joint Information Systems Committee. In addition, Picturing Shakespeare will make 100,000 images from the Folger collection—including prints, unique drawings, and photography relating to Shakespeare—available to teachers, scholars, and the general public in 2010 through an initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Both projects join a fast-growing body of podcasts, videos, and other online content produced by the library.

Library of Congress to Scan 25,000th Book in Digitizing American Imprints Program

The Library of Congress will scan the 25,000th brittle book in its Digitizing American Imprints Program, which is supported by a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Library, which has contracted with the Internet Archive for digitization services, is combining its efforts with other libraries as part of the open content movement. The movement, which includes over 100 libraries, universities and cultural institutions, aims to digitize and make freely available public-domain books in a wide variety of subject areas.

Books scanned in this pilot project come primarily from the Library’s local history and genealogy sections of the General Collections. For many of these titles, only a few copies exist anywhere in the world, and a reader would need to travel to Washington to view the Library’s copy. . . .

All scanning operations are housed in the Library’s John Adams Building on Capitol Hill. Internet Archive staff work two shifts each day on 10 "Scribe" scanning stations. The operation can digitize up to 1,000 volumes each week. Shortly after scanning is complete, the books are available online at www.archive.org. Books can be read online or downloaded for more intensive study. The Library of Congress is actively working with the Internet Archive on the development of a full-featured, open-source page turner. A beta version, called the Flip Book, is currently available on the Internet Archive site.

Open Source Archival Software: ICA-AtoM 1.0.4 Beta Released

ICA-AtoM 1.0.4 beta has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the What is ICA-AtoM? page:

ICA-AtoM stands for International Council on Archives—Access to Memory. It is a web-based, open-source application for standards-based archival description in a multi-lingual, multi-repository environment.

ICA-AtoM comprises:

  • HTML pages served to a web browser from a web server. Apache is used in development but ICA-AtoM is also compatible with IIS.
  • A database on a database server. MySQL is used in development but ICA-AtoM uses a database abstraction layer and is therefore also compatible with Postgres, SQLite, SQLServer, Oracle, etc.
  • PHP5 software code that manages requests and responses between the web clients, the application logic and the application content stored in the database.
  • The Symfony web framework that organizes the component parts using object-orientation and best practice web design patterns.
  • The Qubit Open Information Management toolkit, developed by the ICA-AtoM project and customized to make the ICA-AtoM application.

Manuscript Collections on the Web, SPEC Kit 307

The Association of Research Libraries has published Manuscript Collections on the Web, SPEC Kit 307.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This SPEC survey investigated how many manuscript collections are held in ARL member libraries; what percentage of these collections are represented on the Web; what types of information about the collections are available in finding aids and on the Web; what formats are used for finding aids on the Web; how many library staff are working on manuscript collections; the challenges and benefits of migrating collection information to the Web; and whether and how usage of manuscript collection information is tracked.

Of the 123 ARL member libraries, 72 completed the survey by the March 2008 deadline for a response rate of 59%. All of the survey respondents indicated that they are managing to post at least some information about their manuscript collections on the Web. Most of the comments indicated that the respondents want to post more information online, but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons, primarily staff and time constraints. Almost all respondents are creating MARC records for their collections; fewer are creating EAD finding aids. A select few represent all of their manuscript collections on the Web in some way, either as MARC records, brief blurbs in HTML, or EAD finding aids.

The survey results also show that librarians and archivists squeeze arrangement and description duties in between a multitude of other responsibilities. They are not the only staff in these institutions who perform these tasks, but they do spend larger percentages of their time than anyone else on actually adding information to the Web.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents in the form of manuscript collection Web sites, finding aid Web sites, Web sites of collaborative online resources, arrangement and description guidelines, and Web processing procedures.

The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec307web.pdf.

Digital New Zealand's Coming Home Memory Maker: Users Remix Media to Create Digital Videos

Digital New Zealand has released its Coming Home Memory Maker, which allows users to remix historic digital media.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Memory Maker is an interactive online video remix tool, that lets people mix historical film footage, digitised photographs and objects, and music/audio clips into a 60 second video that can then be saved, shared, and embedded on other sites.

Archivists' Toolkit Version 1.5 Released

The Archivists' Toolkit version 1.5 has been released.

See "New Features for AT Release 1.5" for details.

Here's an excerpt from the home page that describes the software:

The Archivists' Toolkit™, or the AT, is the first open source archival data management system to provide broad, integrated support for the management of archives. It is intended for a wide range of archival repositories. The main goals of the AT are to support archival processing and production of access instruments, promote data standardization, promote efficiency, and lower training costs.

Currently, the application supports accessioning and describing archival materials; establishing names and subjects associated with archival materials, including the names of donors; managing locations for the materials; and exporting EAD finding aids, MARCXML records, and METS, MODS and Dublin Core records. Future functionality will be built to support repository user/resource use information, appraisal for archival materials, expressing and managing rights information, and interoperability with user authentication systems.

Digital Collections/Exhibitions Software: Omeka 0.10b Released

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 0.10b.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Omeka 0.10b incorporates many of the changes you asked for: an unqualified Dublin Core metadata schema and fully extensible element sets to accommodate interoperability with digital repository software and collections management systems; elegant reworkings of our theme API and plugin API to make add-on development more intuitive and more powerful; a new, even more user friendly look for the administrative interface; and a new and improved Exhibit Builder. While the changes are extensive and represent a next-to-last step forward toward a 1.0 release in early 2009, existing users of Omeka should have little trouble switching to 0.10b. New users should have even less trouble getting started. Meanwhile, visitors to Omeka.org will find a new look, a more intuitive information architecture, easily browsable themes and plugins directories, improved documentation and user support, and new ways to get involved in the Omeka community.

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