The European Film Gateway project has released Final Guidelines on Copyright Clearance and IPR Management.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
The report includes:
- an overview of legal frameworks in EU countries for the film sector
- guidelines how to successfully clear rights related to film works
- copyright basics (moral rights vs. exploitation rights, orphan works etc)
- diligent search guidelines for rights holders
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
Marnix van Berchum and Annemiek van der Kuil have released Results of the SOAP Survey: A First Overview of the Dutch Situation.
Here's an excerpt:
Based on the results above, the following conclusions can be made on the "Dutch situation"
- A high number of researchers thinks the publishing of Open Access articles is beneficial to their discipline (90%)
- Main reasons why Open Access publishing is beneficial are the scientific community benefit and benefit for outside the scientific community ("public good")
- Quality, impact and prestige are still very important in making choices on Open Access publishing in journals
- Publication fees for Open Access articles are for a large part covered by the institutions (40%)
- There is no strong feeling on how easy or difficult it is to obtain funding
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
EIFL has released Results of the SOAP Survey: A Preliminary Overview of the Situation in EIFL Partner Countries.
Here's an excerpt:
The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has run a large-scale survey of the attitudes of researchers on, and the experiences with, open access publishing. In the SOAP Symposium on 13 January 2011 in Berlin, the results of the SOAP Survey were made publicly available. "Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing" article is available in arXiv:1101.5260v2 presenting preliminary analysis of the survey responses. To allow a maximal re-use of the information collected by this survey, the data were released under a CC0 waiver, so to allow libraries, publishers, funding agencies and academics to further analyse risks and opportunities, drivers and barriers, in the transition to open access publishing. . . .
We followed the approach of the SURFfoundation and made the first overview of the SOAP survey results, tailored to the situation in 11 EIFL partner countries: Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand and Ukraine.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The European Public Sector Information (PSI) Platform has released Creative Commons and Public Sector Information: Flexible Tools to Support PSI Creators and Re-Users.
Here's an excerpt:
Public sector information (PSI) is meant for wide re-use, but this information will only achieve maximum possible impact if users understand how they may use it. Creative Commons tools, which signify availability for re-use to users and require attribution to the releasing authority, are ideal tools for the sharing of public sector information. There is also increasing interest in open licenses and other tools to share publicly funded information, data, and content, including various kinds of cultural resources, educational materials, and research findings; Creative Commons tools are applicable here and recommended for these purposes too.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The Research Information Network has released Social Media: A Guide for Researchers (see also "Web Materials 1: Links And Resources" and "Web Materials 2: Researcher Case Studies").
Here's an excerpt:
This guide will show how social media can change the ways in which you undertake research, and open up new forms of communication and dissemination. The researchers we interviewed in the development of this guide are using social media to bridge disciplinary boundaries, to engage in knowledge exchange with industry and policy makers, and to provide a channel for the public communication of their research.
The guide is rooted in the practical experience of its authors and of the ten social media users we interviewed as part of the project. We are not trying to present social media as the answer to every problem a researcher might experience; rather, we want to give a "warts and all" picture. Social media have downsides as well as upsides, but on balance we hope that you will agree with us that there is real value for researchers.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing has released Digital Technology Innovation in Scholarly Communication and University Engagement.
Here's an excerpt:
Beginning in the 1990s, a substantial number of innovation projects in scholarly communication began to emerge worldwide. Researchers began to adopt digital technologies for purposes of communication with colleagues and a variety of scholarly journals began making content available online. Digital humanists and scholars across the social science disciplines also began to expand their involvement with emerging technologies in their research and teaching activities. Building on these developments, researchers interested in knowledge mobilization and university engagement also began to augment their efforts with digital technologies. Finally, a certain level of experimentation with the electronic publication of monographs began to appear. The key players in these developments were private sector foundations (for example, the Wellcome Trust and the Andrew Mellon Foundation); innovation-oriented scholars; systems and head librarians; journal editors and publishers; university presses; and SSHRC with its support for scholarly communication and later, knowledge mobilization. Canada has earned worldwide attention for its general level of digital innovation in scholarly and research communication and particularly for innovation in journal publishing, where Open Journal Systems, Érudit and Synergies stand out as significant projects, combined with consortium buying of online content through the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. These and other leading achievements call for purpose-built policy and programs, which have lagged behind innovation. Such policy and programs need to be designed to provide stable funding for innovation-oriented constructivist social scientific and humanist inquiry and university engagement initiatives that have national and international long-term promise. Tied into the post-secondary education system, such investments would enormously increase the visibility and public value of Canadian social science and humanities research, multiplying the social benefit of this work through the development of digital technologies.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium have released the The Horizon Report: 2011 Edition. The report is under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
The report identifies six technologies that are expected "to enter mainstream use in learning-focused organizations." Each of the six is assigned to one of three adoption horizons: one year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. For 2011, electronic books and mobiles are identified in the one-year horizon; augmented reality and game-based learning in the two- to three-year horizon; and gesture-based computing and learning analytics in the four- to five-year horizon.
The advisory board for the project identified these technologies through comprehensive review, analysis, and discussion of research, articles, papers, and interviews. It then drafted a roster of over 100 candidate technologies, which it gradually refined to the six key technologies appearing in the 2011 report. This year, the advisory board consisted of 43 experts from numerous fields and was more internationally diverse than it has ever been. It included representatives from 10 countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The Higher Education Funding Council for England has released the HEFCE Review of JISC.
Here's an excerpt from the recommendations:
• JISC activity should be focused on achieving a large impact:
- Activities need to be clearly linked to the sectors’ priorities
- JISC should offer sector leadership through "routes to best practice," wherever such practice resides
- Research and development activity should focus on horizon-scanning and thought leadership
- Services and projects should be rationalised, with a view to significantly reducing their number
• JISC should be funded through a combination of grants and subscriptions/user charges
• It should become a separate legal entity and the implications of this for the four companies should be reviewed
• Governance arrangements should be clarified, to ensure that the Board takes clear overall strategic control
• The internal structure should be clarified and simplified, to improve efficiency and control
• A plan for the proposed internal structure and operations should estimate the savings to be achieved
• There should be discussions between JISC, the funders, sector representatives and other bodies, to determine an overall funding strategy for ICT in the HE and FE sectors.
Read more about it at "Questions and Answers—HEFCE's Review of JISC."
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
Victoria A. Espinel, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, has released the 2010 U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Annual Report on Intellectual Property Enforcement.
Read more about it at "IP Czar Report Hits on All the Lobbyist Talking Points; Warns of More Draconian Copyright Laws to Come" and "White House Will Propose New Digital Copyright Laws."
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released Generations and Their Gadgets.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
Many devices have become popular across generations, with a majority now owning cell phones, laptops and desktop computers. . . .
- Cell phones are by far the most popular device among American adults. Some 85% of adults own cell phones, and 90% of all adults—including 62% of those age 75 and older—live in a household with at least one working cell phone.
- Desktop computers are most popular with adults ages 35-65, and Millennials are the only generation that is more likely to own a laptop computer or netbook than a desktop: 70% own a laptop, compared with 57% who own a desktop.
- Almost half of all adults own an iPod or other mp3 player, but these are still most popular with Millennials—74% of adults ages 18-34 own an mp3 player, compared with only 56% of the next oldest generation, Gen X (ages 35-46).
- Game consoles are uniformly popular with all adults ages 18-46, 63% of whom own these devices.
- Overall, 5% of adults own an e-book reader, and 4% own an iPad or other tablet computer.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
JISC has released Planet Filestore:Final Report.
Here's an excerpt:
Findings
- By holding the majority of user files on storage which consumes lower amounts of energy, and which is accessed and backed-up less frequently, there were significant percentage energy (and financial) savings. Modelling indicates that moving 80% of files from RAID10 tier 1 storage to nonmirrored RAID5 tier 2 storage results in a 72% energy saving.
- Cardiff University’s environment, 93% of files were not modified more than 60 days after they were first created. This means that tiered storage would benefit our environment significantly, with an 82% energy saving.
- Hardware manufacturers' energy consumption statements were experimentally found to be a reasonable guide to maximum power consumption. This is useful to know when using modelling tools.
- Idle disks may consume almost as much (approximately 90%) energy as busy disks. This means that unless a storage array has "spin-down" features, it is best to add disk capacity only as and when needed.
Read more about it at "Moving Files, Saving Energy."
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The EIFL-OA advocacy program has released Report on the Implementation of Open Content Licenses in Developing and Transition Countries.
Here's an excerpt:
The survey attempted to gather information from a broad spectrum of research institutions in developing and transition countries in order to get a better understanding of the current state of the implementation of open content licenses. We looked at the web sites of 2,489 open access journals and 357 open access repositories from EIFL network countries. And this report highlights the best practices in using open content licenses by open access journals and open access repositories in developing and transition countries.
Some general findings of the survey:
Using open content licenses by open access journals:
- We identified 556 open access journals that are licensed under open content licenses.
- There are four types of Creative Commons licenses, which are used – the most liberal Creative Commons Attribution license, Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license, Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license and the most restrictive Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative Works license.
- 94% of the access journals we surveyed are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license (524 open access journals in Armenia, Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Lithuania, Macedonia, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, South Africa and Thailand).
- Nine open access journals in China, Russia and South Africa are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license.
- Three open access journals in Ghana, Nigeria and Ukraine are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike license.
- And twenty open access journals in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Estonia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand and Ukraine are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative Works license.
Using open content licenses by open access repositories:
- We identified nine open access repositories that are licensed under open content licenses.
- A repository of open educational materials in South Africa is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license
- A repository of open educational materials in Kenya is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
- One repository in China, two repositories in Poland and two repositories in Thailand are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike license.
- A repository in South Africa is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
- A repository hosted in Argentina is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works license.
- Some repositories in Botswana, Poland and South Africa recommend the depositors to use Creative Commons licenses. As a result a number of publications in these repositories are licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |
The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative has released Privacy Considerations in Cloud-Based Teaching and Learning Environments.
Here's an excerpt:
In this white paper, we outline the privacy issues relevant to using cloud-based instructional tools or cloud-based teaching and learning environments for faculty members and those supporting instruction. Our discussion of how teaching and learning in an increasingly technological environment has transformed the way we interact and interpret FERPA will help inform various choices that institutions can consider to best address the law, including policy and best-practice examples. We highlight practical suggestions for how faculty members can continue to use innovative instructional strategies and engage students while considering privacy issues. Finally, this paper discusses ways to further explore and address privacy locally and includes a comprehensive resource list for further reading.
The Research Information Network has released E-journals: Their Use, Value and Impact—Final Report.
Here's an excerpt:
The objectives for this second phase of the study were:
- to establish a deeper understanding of what lies behind the patterns of use and information-seeking behaviour portrayed in the logs to answer questions such as:
- why do users spend so little time on each visit?
- why do researchers use gateway sites?
- why do few researchers use advanced searching?
- do high levels of use imply high levels of user satisfaction?
- to investigate reasons for the diversity in information-seeking behaviour and usage shown in the logs, especially with regard to research status and seniority, institutional size and research strength, and subject or discipline.
- to determine how online searching and use of e-journals relates to researchers' general behaviour in seeking and using information, and to scholarly and research workflows.
- to investigate further the relationships between levels of expenditure on journals, levels of use, and research outcomes (e.g., does good e-journal provision drive research outcomes, or do libraries benefit from the additional revenue that research success creates?).
- to analyse any trends in author referencing behaviour over a long period, and to investigate whether these have changed alongside the development of easier access to scholarly literature.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has released Turning the Page: The Future of eBooks.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
This new study examines trends and developments in the eBooks and eReaders market in the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany, and discusses major challenges and key questions for the publishing industry worldwide. It also identifies market opportunities and developments for eBooks and eReaders, and makes recommendations for publishers, traditional retailers, online retailers, and intermediaries.
The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released Wikipedia, Past and Present.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
The percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information has increased from 25% in February 2007 to 42% in May 2010. This translates to 53% of adult internet users.
Education level continues to be the strongest predictor of Wikipedia use. The collaborative encyclopedia is most popular among internet users with at least a college degree, 69% of whom use the site. Broadband use remains another predictor, as 59% of those with home broadband use the service, compared with 26% of those who connect to the internet through dial-up. Additionally, Wikipedia is generally more popular among those with annual household incomes of at least $50,000, as well as with young adults: 62% of internet users under the age of 30 using the service, compared with only 33% of internet users age 65 and older.
In the scope of general online activities, using Wikipedia is more popular than sending instant messages (done by 47% of internet users) or rating a product, service, or person (32%), but is less popular than using social network sites (61%) or watching videos on sites like YouTube (66%).
The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has released 8% of Online Americans Use Twitter.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
Eight percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. Some of the groups who are notable for their relatively high levels of Twitter use include:
- Young adults—Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults.
- African-Americans and Latinos—Minority internet users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are white internet users.
- Urbanites—Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers.
RIN and the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) have released One Year On: Evaluating the Initial Impact of the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL).
Here's an excerpt:
SHEDL was formally established as a ‘bloc’ purchaser for the nineteen Scottish HEIs by SCURL, the Scottish Confederation of University & Research Libraries, in 2008. Its first three licences, comprising over 1,500 online journals published by the American Chemical Society, Cambridge University Press and Springer, came into effect in January 2009.
This report presents the findings of an evaluation of changes to usage and cost-per-use since SHEDL was established. This report cannot show long-term trends, since it covers only the first year of SHEDL’s existence. Nevertheless, it provides an overview of the initial changes that have followed the introduction of the three SHEDL licences.
The High-Level Group on Scientific Data has released Riding the Wave—How Europe Can Gain from the Rising Tide of Scientific Data.
Here's an excerpt:
A fundamental characteristic of our age is the rising tide of data — global, diverse, valuable and complex. In the realm of science, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. This report, prepared for the European Commission's Directorate-General for Information Society and Media, identifies the benefits and costs of accelerating the development of a fully functional e-infrastructure for scientific data — a system already emerging piecemeal and spontaneously across the globe, but now in need of a far-seeing, global framework. The outcome will be a vital scientific asset: flexible, reliable, efficient, cross-disciplinary and cross-border.
The benefits are broad. With a proper scientific e-infrastructure, researchers in different domains can collaborate on the same data set, finding new insights. They can share a data set easily across the globe, but also protect its integrity and ownership. They can use, re-use and combine data, increasing productivity. They can more easily solve today's Grand Challenges, such as climate change and energy supply. Indeed, they can engage in whole new forms of scientific inquiry, made possible by the unimaginable power of the e-infrastructure to find correlations, draw inferences and trade ideas and information at a scale we are only beginning to see. For society as a whole, this is beneficial. It empowers amateurs to contribute more easily to the scientific process, politicians to govern more effectively with solid evidence, and the European and global economy to expand.
The Scholarly Communication Institute at the University of Virginia has released Scholarly Communication Institute 8: Emerging Genres in Scholarly Communication.
Here's an excerpt:
The following essay attempts to represent and synthesize the rich discussions of SCI 8, the eighth gathering of the Scholarly Communication Institute at the University of Virginia Library, especially the many original insights that emerged into the ways technology transforms the process of creation, dissemination, stewardship, use, and above all, reception of humanities scholarship.. . .
As in other areas of publishing—music, movies, television, fiction, journalism— the Web has effectively unbundled the production and consumption of scholarship. It has also simultaneously undermined publishing business models and library budgets, radically altered reading habits, and called into question the core assumptions upon which scholarship is assessed and validated. How will the fundamental processes of scholarly production—research and analysis, publication and dissemination, stewardship, and use—realign themselves in a digital environment? How will scholars go from digital evidence to digital publication? What would be an appropriate division of labor among the actors in scholarly communication: scholars and learned societies; libraries, museums, archives; publishers; technologists; higher education administration and funders; and the multiple audiences and users who desire online access to humanities content? Where are these new communities constituted, how, and by whom?
We explored these issues in several stages, which included:
- scanning trends both within higher education and beyond that are shaping scholarly discourses;
- examining the processes of scholarly communication as currently constituted, as well as actors involved and the roles they play;
- presenting working examples of new-model scholarship by participants; and
- reflecting on these topics from the perspective of the critical engines sustaining scholarly communication—libraries, publishers, technologists, academic administrators, and funders.
JISC has released E-Journal Archiving for UK HE Libraries: A Draft White Paper for comment.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
Libraries are facing increasing space pressures and funding constraints. There is a growing interest in wherever possible moving more rapidly to e-only provision to help alleviate these pressures as well as to provide new electronic services to users. One of the most cited barriers and concerns both from library and faculty staff to moving to e-only has been sustaining and assuring long-term access to electronic content.
The aim of this white paper is to help universities and libraries implement policies and procedures in relation to e-journal archiving which can help support the move towards e-only provision of scholarly journals across the HE sector. The white paper is also contributing to complementary work JISC and other funders are commissioning on moving towards e-only provision of Journals.
Pamela Samuelson and members of the Copyright Principles Project have released The Copyright Principles Project: Directions for Reform.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
A group of leading experts on copyright law and policy released a report today that explores ideas for meaningful reforms to the U.S. copyright system. Crafted over three years by a group of legal academics, private practitioners, and corporate attorneys, the report examines several ways to improve and update the law in an era of rapid technological change.
The Copyright Principles Project: Directions for Reform (CPP) report attempts to ignite an informed debate about how to best balance the interests of copyright owners and users. The group reached consensus on a number of significant ideas, as well as guiding principles for copyright reform. The project was led by Berkeley Law distinguished professor Pamela Samuelson.
"The report intelligently informs the copyright debate, and the identification and discussion of issues is well done and important," said Marybeth Peters, the head of the U.S. Copyright Office. "The recommendations are thoughtful, and in many cases, I support them. This entire project significantly reinvigorates efforts to bring the copyright law up-to-date, either incrementally or as a major revision." . . .
One of the project's ideas would provide non-commercial uses of copyrighted works better shelter from liability, particularly as users lift parts of existing works to create new ones. The report also suggests a more efficient and technologically-driven approach to copyright registration, so that works can be freely reused if their authors agree.
Copyright law reform has been a challenging issue for stakeholders, many of whom have starkly different ideas about how to balance public and private interests. To its credit, the project team explored controversial subjects openly and with vigorous debate. In cases where the participants could not settle on a specific reform proposal, they were able to draft guiding principles for future reform efforts. . . .
One common problem the report addresses is peer-to-peer file-sharing of commercial movies and music. Although some file-sharing services have been shut down, the illegal practice has not abated. The report suggests the creation of a "safe harbor" to protect online service providers from excessive damage claims if they take reasonable, voluntary, measures to limit file-sharing—or other unlawful distributions of commercial works. Companies that comply would be shielded from liability for user infringements.
The report also suggests development of reasonable and consistent statutory guidelines for damage awards. Current law allows courts to award between $750 and $30,000 in damages per infringed work—and up to $150,000 per work if the infringement is willful. This has led to awards that seem arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with awards in similar cases, and grossly excessive or disproportionate.
Other ideas include:
Modernize the Copyright Office: Instead of one registry for all copyrighted works, the office could certify third-party registries for different types of works, such as photos, films, and computer programs. The model is akin to the domain name registration system. Other suggestions include adopting a small claims procedure for small-scale disputes.
Reinvigorate copyright registration: Encourage copyright owners to register so that it's simple to find out who owns what. The idea is to make registration easy and worthwhile for copyright owners so that the public can have better information about protected works and their owners.
Refine exclusive rights for authors: Weigh commercial value and risk of harm to copyright markets when determining whether someone's exclusive right has been infringed; this shields non-harmful activity from the threat of highly punitive copyright claims.
Revise the common practice of automatic injunctions: Courts could consider whether a preliminary or permanent injunction is needed to prevent irreparable harm, as well as whether having access to the work is in the public’s best interest.
Limit Orphan Works liability: Enable libraries and others to preserve a part of our cultural heritage by using copyrighted materials whose owners cannot readily be found.
The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project has released PEER Annual Report—Year 2.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
Reporting on the past 12 months of activity in this ground breaking collaboration between publishers, repositories and the research community investigating the effects of Green Open Access, the PEER Annual Report highlights the complexity of the infrastructure required for PEER and the substantial progress achieved towards the project’s objectives.
To simulate the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts accepted for journal publication, 12 participating publishers are providing content and associated metadata from 241 participating journals. Half of the manuscripts are being submitted directly to PEER, while for the other half, authors are invited by publishers to self-deposit into the project.
All submitted content is being received by the PEER Depot, a central repository created specifically for the project by INRIA, which undertakes filtering for EU research content, metadata matching and transformations, and embargo management prior to distribution to participating repositories.
By the end of year 2 (August 2010), almost 25,000 unique publisher provided manuscripts had been processed by the PEER Depot, resulting in 10,000 EU manuscripts after processing (some still under embargo), with embargo expired manuscripts distributed to participating repositories.
The three areas of usage, economic and behavioural research commissioned by PEER are well underway, with the Baseline Behavioural Report already publicly available from the PEER website.
EuropeanaTravel has released Report on Digital Preservation Practice and Plans amongst LIBER Members with Recommendations for Practical Action.
Here's an excerpt:
As part of Work package 1 concerned with planning digitisation, a survey was designed to collect information about digital preservation practice and plans amongst all LIBER member libraries to inform future activity of LIBER’s Working Group on Preservation and Digital Curation. The survey focused on the digital preservation of digitised material.
The major findings are as follows:
- Some LIBER members have already been engaged in digitisation activities. The number of institutions with digitisation activities and the volume of digitised material are expected to grow further in the future.
- There is a mismatch between the perceived high value of digitised material and the frequent lack of a written policy/ procedure addressing the digital preservation of these collections. A number of the institutions without an according written policy stated they were working on developing and establishing one.
- Storage and development of tools are areas where considerable investments are made by the majority of institutions surveyed. Those are also the fields where many of the institutions face difficulties.
- Investments in staff assigned to digital preservation task are still inadequate at several institutions.
- Some digital preservation practices and basic integrity measurements are more widespread than others. More than half of the institutions which responded already have an archive dedicated to digitised collections in place, use preservation metadata standards and format restrictions to support preservation, have processes of bitstream preservation implemented and provide staff training in the area of digital preservation. One can identify a clear tendency that emulation strategy is less commonly used than migration and other migration supporting practices.
- Difficulties in establishing digital archives with a functioning preservation system, the frequent lack of institutional strategies concerning digitisation and digital preservation and funding problems seem to be amongst the most serious problems faced by LIBER members.
Jerome McDonough et al. have self-archived Preserving Virtual Worlds Final Report in IDEALS.
Here's an excerpt from the announcement:
The report includes findings from the entire project team on issues relating to the preservation of video games and interaction fiction, including issues around library & archival collection development/management, bibliographic description, copyright & intellectual property, preservation strategies, metadata & packaging, and next steps for both the professional and research community with regards to these complex and important resources.
