Born Digital report available for public comments

In 2011, an international group of ten archivists and special collections curators gathered for the first of a series of conversations about how born-digital materials are acquired and transferred to archival repositories. The resulting report, Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories, offers recommendations to help ensure the physical and intellectual well being of digital media and files during different stages of the acquisition process.

A draft of Born Digital has been published with MediaCommons Press, an innovative online publisher committed to open public review, and is currently open for your comments: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/borndigital/
We invite you to read the report, share your thoughts via the easy-to-use commenting interface, and take part in a discussion with the larger community of people concerned about the acquisition and preservation of born-digital materials. Your feedback will provide an important level of peer review as the report’s co-authors continue revising and preparing Born Digital for final publication.
If you have any questions about the report, please contact Gabby Redwine at gredwine@austin.utexas.edu

Source: DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK, 02013 01 09

UBC Library digitizes historic BC newspapers

According to this Canadiana.ca update, UBC Library has completed the digitization of 24 historic BC newspapers dating between 1865 and 1924. You can search these through the Canadiana Discovery Portal, a Google-like search engine that currently has its own failings, not the least of which is the ability to isolate a set of records such those valuable newspapers.

As the update states, "There are 8862 issues in total and over 45,000 pages. Here are the names of the newspapers:

Abbotsford Post
Alberni Advocate
Atlin Claim
Bella Coola Courier
Boundary Creek Times
British Columbia Record
Cariboo Sentinel (Barkerville)
Cumberland News
Daily Building Record (Vancouver)
Daily Ledger (Ladysmith)
Grand Forks Sun
Hedley Gazette
Hot Springs News (Ainsworth)
Kootenay Mail (Revelstoke)
Ledge (Greenwood)
Ledge (Nakusp, New Denver, Fernie)
Massett Leader
Miner (Nelson)
Mining Review (Sandon)
Moyie Leader
Nelson Economist
Phoenix Pioneer
Prospector (Fort Steele)
Tribune (Nelson)"

In the Canadiana Discovery Portal Search "Everything" option list, you can change the search option to Titles. There's a catalogue record for the newspaper itself and then individual records for each issue which will take you to UBC's British Columbia Historic Newspapers site. Congratulations UBC on making these invaluable resources freely available.

LinkedIn security breach (June 7, 2012), change your password

In case  you have not heard or been informed, as I was not, LinkedIn.com has had a security breach and 6.4 million member passwords were stolen. The theft was publicized on Thursday, June 7, 2012. As of June 10, 2012, all LinkedIn has done is to post a notice on its site that you should reset your password. In my case, the site remembered I was logged in from a previous visit and did not automatically log me out. I'm not sure whether that's a plus or a minus.

International Archives Day - June 9, 2012

June 9 has been designated as International Archives Day by the International Council on Archives. Given the current (ongoing since May 2012) turmoil in Canada around the elimination of the National Archival Development Program (NADP), a funding source for archives and archival organizations, by the Library and Archives Canada (LAC), as well as the severe cuts at LAC by its current head, Dr. Daniel J. Caron, is it any wonder that no one appears to be celebrating this event in Canada? Most publicly funded archives are also closed on Saturdays and Sundays, which might also explain the lack of hoopla.

OpenMetadata.org opens

OpenMetadata.org has launched. It's a catchy but very misleading name since it deals only with statistical and scientific metadata. The site is the property of "a small group of private companies working with research data and statistics, dedicated to providing services around metadata standards such as SDMX and DDI. Our goal is to provide better visibility and use of existing data resources, whether these are publically available or require permission to access." (About Us).

One of the databases you can consult that makes use of these standards is the Open Survey Catalog, compiled in collaboration with the International Household Survey Network (established 2004). As the name implies these are essentially questionnaires on a wide variety of topics. You may or may not, however, be able to access the actual data because the word catalog means this is a database describing these surveys.