Omeka 0.9.0 Released: Software for Digital Collections and Exhibits

Version 0.9.0 of Omeka has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the About page that describes Omeka:

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. It is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content rather than programming.

Omeka will come loaded with the following features:

  • Dublin Core metadata structure and standards-based design that is fully accessible and interoperable
  • Professional-looking exhibit sites that showcase collections without hiring outside designers
  • Theme-switching for changing the look and feel of an exhibit in a few clicks
  • Plug-ins for geolocation, bi-lingual sites, and a host of other possibilities
  • Web 2.0 Technologies, including:
    • Tagging: Allow users to add keywords to items in a collection or exhibit
    • Blogging: Keep in touch with users through timely postings about collections and events
    • Syndicating: Update your users about your content with RSS feeds

Read more about it at "Introducing Omeka" and "New Tool for Online Collections."

JPEG 2000—A Practical Digital Preservation Standard?

The Digital Preservation Coalition has published JPEG 2000—A Practical Digital Preservation Standard?.

Here's an excerpt from the "Executive Summary":

With JPEG 2000, an application can access and decode only as much of the compressed image as needed to perform the task at hand. This means a viewer, for example, can open a gigapixel image almost instantly by retrieving and decompressing a low resolution, display-sized image from the JPEG 2000 codestream.

JPEG 2000 also improves a user’s ability to interact with an image. The zoom, pan, and rotate operations that users increasingly expect in networked image systems are performed dynamically by accessing and decompressing just those parts of the JPEG 2000 codestream containing the compressed image data for the region of interest. The JPEG 2000 data can be either converted to JPEG and delivered for viewing with a standard image browser or delivered to a native JPEG 2000 viewer using the JPIP client-server protocol, developed to support the JPEG 2000 feature set.

Using a single JPEG 2000 master to satisfy user requests for dynamic viewing reduces storage costs and management overhead by eliminating the need to maintain multiple derivatives in a repository.

Beyond image access and distribution, JPEG 2000 is being used increasingly as a repository and archival image format. What is remarkable is that many repositories are storing “visually lossless” JPEG 2000 files: the compression is lossy and irreversible but the artefacts are not noticeable and do not interfere with the performance of applications. Compared to uncompressed TIFF, visually lossless JPEG 2000 compression can reduce the amount of storage by an order of magnitude or more.

TRLN (Triangle Research Libraries Network) Members Join the Open Content Alliance

TRLN (Triangle Research Libraries Network) has announced that its member libraries (Duke University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) have joined the Open Content Alliance.

Here's an excerpt from "TRLN Member Libraries Join Open Content Alliance":

In the first year, UNC Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University will each convert 2,700 public domain books into high-resolution, downloadable, reusable digital files that can be indexed locally and by any web search engine. UNC Chapel Hill and NCSU will start by each hosting one state-of-the-art Scribe machine provided by the Internet Archive to scan the materials at a cost of just 10 cents per page. Each university library will focus on historic collection strengths, such as plant and animal sciences, engineering and physical science at NCSU and social sciences and humanities at UNC-Chapel Hill. Duke University will also contribute select content for digitization during the first year of the collaborative project.

Double Trouble: New Application Strips DRM from Music Files

DRM nemesis DVD Jon (Jon Lech Johansen) has released doubleTwist, a user-friendly application that strips DRM from digital music files.

Read more about it at "doubleTwist Makes DRM-Stripping, Sharing Easy as Pie," "'DVD Jon' Frees Your Media with DoubleTwist," and "Free Your Media With DoubleTwist, a DRM Stripping App Anyone Can Use."

RAD Lab: Cloud Computing Made Easy

The RAD Lab (Reliable Adaptive Distributed Systems Laboratory) is working to "enable one person to invent and run the next revolutionary IT service, operationally expressing a new business idea as a multi-million-user service over the course of a long weekend."

Read more about it at "RAD Lab Technical Vision" and "Trying to Figure Out How to Put a Google in Every Data Center."

Presentations from the CETIS Metadata and Digital Repository Special Interest Group Meeting

CETIS (Centre for Educational Technology & Interoperability Standards) has released presentations from its Metadata and Digital Repository Special Interest Group's February 12, 2008 meeting, which featured talks about selected projects in the JISC Repositories and Preservation Programme. SlideShare presentations and MP3 files are available.

The projects covered were Becta Vocabulary Management Services, DC-Education application profile, EnTag (Enhanced Tagging for Discovery), FeedForward, OAI-ORE, and SWORD.

The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Institutional Repositories

JISC’s DataShare project has released The Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Institutional Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the "Introduction":

One of the key issues present in IRs is dealing with the description of items held in the repository. Data are not different from other digital materials and need to be described not just for discovery but also for preservation and reuse. The social science data archiving community has been working for many years on a metadata standard to describe datasets, and a new version is about to be published, the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) 3.0.

This document reports back from the DDI 3 workshop "Using DDI 3.0 to Support Preservation, Management, Access and Dissemination Systems for Social Science Data" held at the Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany in November 2007. It intends to present the DDI standard to repository managers, data librarians and data managers and provide background information to help them to examine how the DDI fits with developments in their institutional repositories for research-generated data. The report discusses the appropriateness of using the different DDI versions to address the requirements of research data in IRs. It brings together some of the key questions of the DataShare project with regards to access management, linking to other materials and versioning of datasets.

ARL Publishes NIH Public Access Policy Guide

The Association of Research Libraries has published "The NIH Public Access Policy: Guide for Research Universities."

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The new NIH Public Access Policy, which becomes effective April 7, 2008, calls for mandatory deposit in PubMed Central of peer-reviewed electronic manuscripts stemming from NIH funding. The change from a voluntary to mandatory policy creates new expectations, not just of funded investigators, but also of the grantee institutions that support those investigators.

The ARL guide, "The NIH Public Access Policy: Guide for Research Universities," includes the following sections:

  • Policy Overview
  • Institutional Responses
  • Retaining Rights
  • How to Deposit
  • Resources

The guide focuses on the implications of the NIH policy for institutions as grantees, although some information for individual investigators is included and links to further details are provided. The guide is helpful to a range of campus constituencies that may be involved in implementing the new policy, including research administrators, legal counsel, and librarians.

In addition to compliance concerns, the guide also considers the benefits of the new policy and institutions' opportunities to build on the policy requirements by seeking additional rights for using funded research to address local needs.

Reflecting the dynamic nature of campus implementation activities, the guide will be updated as more campuses release plans, resources, and tools that can serve as models for their peers.

Three-Strikes Copyright Policy: France, the UK, and Now Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian government is evaluating the UK's "three-strikes and you're out" copyright policy, which leaped the English Channel from France. The UK version of the policy involves a warning on the first illegal download offense, a suspension of ISP privileges on the second, and a revocation of ISP access on the third.

Read more about it at "War on Music Piracy."

Presentations from the Open Access Collections Workshop

Presentations from the Open Access Collections workshop are now available.

Here are selected presentations:

Muradora Version 1.2.1 Released: Federated Identity and Authorization for Fedora

The DRAMA (Digital Repository Authorization Middleware Architecture) team has released version 1.2.1 of Muradora.

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

Muradora is an easy to use repository application that supports federated identity (via Shibboleth authentication) and flexible authorization (using XACML). Muradora leverages the modularity, flexibility and scalability of the well-known Fedora repository.

Muradora's unique vision is one where Fedora forms the core back-end repository, while different front-end applications (such as portlets or standalone web interfaces) can all talk to the same instance of Fedora, and yet maintain a consistent approach to access control.

Read more about it at "Muradora 1.2.1 Release."

Kete 1.0, Web 2.0 Digital Library Software, Released

Version 1.0 (stable release branch) of the Kete digital library software has been released.

Here's an excerpt about Kete from Katipo Communications' "Kete is Open Source Digital Library and Archiving Software":

Kete is an Open Source application written in Ruby on Rails, released under the GPL. Initial development has been a partnership between the Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd. funded as part of the Community Partnership Fund in 2006.

Kete stores, organises, indexes and retrieves all sorts of digital files including Office documents, PDF's, images, videos, audio such as spoken word and music, website links, and html pages/text.

Kete encourages you to make links between different items that enable users to browse your collection. It also faciltates discussion about items and topics, so you can build understanding and foster collaboration.

Read more about it at "Kete 1.0 Release Branch and Upgraded Kete.net.nz."

France's Three-Strikes Copyright Proposal Crosses the English Channel

A draft of a forthcoming Green Paper from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport ("The World’s Creative Hub") promises that the UK will "move to legislate to require internet service providers to take action on illegal file-sharing." It appears that the UK version of France's controversial "three-strikes and you're out" digital copyright proposal will involve a warning on the first illegal download offense, a suspension of ISP privileges on the second, and a revocation of ISP access on the third.

Read more about it at "Britain Considers Anti-Piracy Steps," "Internet Users Could Be Banned over Illegal Downloads," "ISPs Demand Record Biz Pays Up If Cut-Off P2P Users Sue," "Report: Three-Strikes Copyright Enforcement May Come to UK," and "UK ISPs Don't Want to Play Umpire to 'Three Strikes' Rule."

Net Neutrality Is Back: The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) have introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5353) in the House.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The goal of this bipartisan legislation is to assure consumers, content providers, and high tech innovators that the historic, open architecture nature of the Internet will be preserved and fostered. H.R. 5353 is designed to assess and promote Internet freedom for consumers and content providers. Internet freedom generally embodies the notion that consumers and content providers should be free to send, receive, access and use the lawful applications, content, and services of their choice on broadband networks, possess the effective right to attach and use non-harmful devices to use in conjunction with their broadband services, and that content providers not be subjected to unreasonably discriminatory practices by broadband network providers.

Read more about it at "Lawmakers Introduce New Net Neutrality Bill," "New Net Neutrality Bill Frowns on ISP 'Favoritism'," "New Net Neutrality Bill Surfaces in House (Updated)," and "Net Neutrality Returns To Top Of Washington's Agenda."

EU Commissioner Wants 95-Year Copyright Term for Musicians

Charlie McCreevy, the European Union's Internal Market and Services Commissioner has said that he would like to extend musicians copyright protection to a 95-year term. Unlike composers and lyricists, who get a lifetime plus 70-year term, performers currently have a 50-year term. McCreevy plans to introduce legislation to support his 95-year term plan.

Read more about it at "Bands Set for Longer Music Rights," "EU Commissioner: Let’s Extend Music Copyrights to 95 years. Ars: 50 Years Is Plenty," "EU Looks to Extend Copyright and Blank Media Levies," and "EU Suggests Singers and Musicians Should Earn Copyright Fees for 95 years."

Commons-Research Mailing List Launched

Giorgos Cheliotis has launched the Commons-Research mailing list.

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

Discussion among researchers studying the commons, for example the use and impact of peer production methods and communities and open licensing. We welcome researchers studying the commons in a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, economics, law, media studies, sociology. . .

JISC E-Journal Archive Registry Study

JISC has released "Scoping Study for a Registry of Electronic Journals That Indicates Where They Are Archived."

Here's an excerpt from the "Executive Summary":

The research and especially the interviews have confirmed the assumption behind the project that there is a need for more information, and more easily accessible information, about where e-journals are archived. However, what has also emerged strongly is that this issue cannot be considered in isolation, either from the overall context of relationships within the scholarly communication system, nor from other initiatives being undertaken to improve information flows e.g. in relation to the transfer of journal titles between publishers. . . .

Librarians felt that they were most likely to consult a registry in situations where they were considering taking out or renewing a subscription; considering cancellation of a print subscription in favour of an e-only subscription; contemplating relocating or discarding print holdings. The vast majority of potential users of such a registry would be library staff in university and national libraries, though organisations licensing e-journals on behalf of the library community would also be likely to use the registry to check compliance with licence conditions.

One of the key benefits of a registry is perceived to be the exposure of gaps in archive provision. This was identified by all types of stakeholder: librarians would want to be alerted to risks to any of their holdings; publishers who are making provision would like to see their efforts recognised and pressure placed on publishers who are not making satisfactory arrangements; archive organisations would also benefit as that effect fed through to more demand for their services.

The drawbacks to a registry as a solution to the acknowledged information gap were mainly seen as ones of practicality (keeping the information accurate and up to date), trust (especially whether a national solution is appropriate, and conversely whether an international solution is feasible) and sustainability of the funding model. Other solutions were suggested, mainly involving either WorldCat or ERM vendors such as Serials Solutions. The latter were also suggested as a complementary part of a solution involving, but not limited to, a registry.

VALA 2008 Presentations

Presentations from the VALA 2008 conference are now available.

Here's a selection of presentations:

Michelle McLean has blogged a number of VALA 2008 sessions in Connecting Librarian postings.