National Archives sign at Kew Gardens Station

National Archives sign at Kew Gardens Station

2011-05-24

European Union's SCAlable Preservation Environments, the SCAPE project

The European Union is funding a project known as SCAPE, for SCAlable Preservation Environments. Here's the blurb from the SCAPE site:

The SCAPE project will develop scalable services for planning and execution of institutional preservation strategies on an open source platform that orchestrates semi-automated workflows for large-scale, heterogeneous collections of complex digital objects. SCAPE will enhance the state of the art of digital preservation in three ways: by developing infrastructure and tools for scalable preservation actions; by providing a framework for automated, quality-assured preservation workflows and by integrating these components with a policy-based preservation planning and watch system. These concrete project results will be validated within three large-scale Testbeds from diverse application areas.

2011-05-12

Yale University offers open access to digital images of objects from its collections

Yale University announced on May 10, 02011 that it is offering open access to "digital images of objects in its many collections freely available online. 'In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images, and no limitations will be imposed on their use,' the university said in its statement. 'The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching, and inspiration.' More than 250,000 images have already been made available in a new online catalog, the university said."

You can access these materials through the university's new search engine with the prosaic name of Cross Collection Discovery, part of its Yale Digital Commons network infrastructure.

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, QuickWire, http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-yale-u-to-offer-digital-images-of-objects-from-its-collections

2011-05-11

iPRES 2011, November 1-4, 02011, Singapore

iPRES 2011 - 8th International Conference on Digital Preservation of Digital Objects

November 1-4, 02011, Singapore


http://ipres2011.posterous.com

iPRES, the main international conference on digital preservation, is calling for proposals for original full and short papers, panels, workshops, posters and demonstrations.

See the Web site for relevant submission dates for your proposals.

Source: DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK, 02011 05 10

2011-05-06

"Archiving the Web for Scholars" article, Inside Higher Ed

"Archiving the Web for Scholars" by Steve Kolowich at Inside Higher Ed (May 6, 02011) is a look mainly at Columbia University Library's efforts to help other organizations preserve their Web presence by utilizing the Internet Archives. The article concludes with a frank and "ironic" admission from Stephen Davis, director of the Libraries Digital Program at Columbia, "We’re trusting the Internet Archive to do this for us,” he says, “and that’s a big limb that we’re out on."