Key reports and publications in Canadian archival history

The Association of Canadian Archivists created a page pulling together Key Reports and Publications in Canadian Archival History. The documents span the development of Canadian archives from the 19th century to the present.

Leading in the Digital World: Opportunities for Canada’s Memory Institutions report

The Council of Canadian Academics has released its report Leading in the Digital World: Opportunities for Canada's Memory Institutions. The report was assembled by an Expert Panel on Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution haired by Dr. Doug Owram.

Royal Society of Canada expert panel on future of archives and libraries releases its report

The Royal Society of Canada’s Expert Panel on The Future Now: Canada’s Libraries, Archives, and Public Memory is now available at: https://rsc-src.ca/en/expert-panels/rsc-reports/future-now-canadas-libraries-archives-and-public-memory

A free copy of the full report is downloadable at the  bottom of the page.

Source: ARCAN-L mailing list, 020141113

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

November/December 02010 issue of D-Lib Magazine is here

From the announcement on various mailing lists on 02010 11 16:

The November/December issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available.

This issue contains four articles, an opinion piece and a conference report. Also in this issue you can find the 'In Brief' column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in 'Clips and Pointers'. This month, D-Lib features WebExhibits courtesy of Michael Douma, WebExhibits Editor.

The articles include:

Taming the Metadata Beast: ILOX

Article by David Massart and Elena Shulman, European Schoolnet (EUN), Belgium; Nick Nicholas, Australian National Data Service (ANDS), Australia; Nigel Ward, eResearch Lab, the University of Queensland, Australia; Frédéric Bergeron, TELUQ, Canada

PDF/A: A Viable Addition to the Preservation Toolkit

Article by Daniel W. Noonan, The Ohio State University Archives; Amy McCrory and Elizabeth L. Black, Ohio State University Libraries

Trends in Large-Scale Subject Repositories

Article by Jessica Adamick and Rebecca Reznik-Zellen, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Federated Content Rights Management for Research and Academic Publications Using the Handle System

Article by Guo Xiaofeng and Li Ying, Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, and Sam X. Sun, Corporation for National Research Initiatives

November 02010 issue of the Library of Congress Digital Preservation newsletter

The November 02010 issue of the Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter is available.

Digital Records Preservation; Where to Start Guide (October 02010)

The ISO Working Group responsible for Records Management Digital Records Preservation, formally known as ISO TC 46/SC 11/WG 7, has published its Digital Records Preservation; Where to Start Guide (October 02010). The 18-page document is available for download as a PDF file. Sadly, there is no mention of the work of InterPARES which has been covering much of the same territory for the past several years and has also produced a similar 22-page guide called Preserver Guidelines: Preserving Digital Records: Guidelines for Organizations. This InterPARES 2 2008 publication also appears as Appendix 21 of the InterPARES 2 book titled International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (InterPARES) 2: Experiential, Interactive and Dynamic Records.

DCC / DPC What's New, Issue 31, November 02010

The Digital Curation Centre and the Digital Preservation Coalition have published Issue 31 of What's New for November 02010.

DCC / DPC What's New, Issue 30, October 02010

The Digital Curation Centre and the Digital Preservation Coalition have published Issue 30 of What's New for October 02010.

New issue of open access journal LIBER Quarterly (Vol. 20, No. 1, 02010)

A new issue of the open access journal LIBER Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 1 (02010) is available. LIBER is the acronym for the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche or Association of European Research Libraries. This issue includes an article titled "User Collaboration for Improving Access to Historical Texts" by Clemens Neudecker and Asaf Tzadok in which they discuss the work of the 02008-02012 IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) project, one of whose goals is "to develop tools that help improve OCR results for historical printed texts, specifically those works published before the industrial production of books from the middle of the 19th century. ... The IMPACT project will specifically develop a tool that supports collaborative correction and validation of OCR results and a tool to allow user involvement in building historical dictionaries which can be used to validate word recognition." 

DCC / DPC What's New, Issue 29, September 02010

As announced on the DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK mailing list (02010 09 03), the Digital Preservation Coalition and Digital Curation Centre have published Issue 29 of What's New for September 02010. This issue "includes an interview with Catharine Ward of Cambridge University Library and an overview of recent digital preservation activities in Canada from Pam Bjornson of the Canadian Institute for Science and Technical Information."

Digital Content Quarterly Issue 3 (Summer 02010) from the UK JISC Strategic Content Alliance

The UK's JISC Strategic Content Alliance published its Summer 02010 Issue 3 of the Digital Content Quarterly in both interactive and non-interactive PDF versions. This is a superb publication which I highly recommend. Details and download links are found on the Strategic Content Alliance Blog.

DCC / DPC What's New: Issue 28

The Digital Curation Centre and the Digital Preservation Coalition released What's New, Issue 28 (August 02010), on August 3, 02010. According to the announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK, "As well as the regular round up of news and events this issue includes an interview with digital curator Sharon McMeekin of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and an overview of recent digital preservation activities in Ireland from Tim Keefe of Trinity College Library in Dublin. William Kilbride's editorial discusses the difficulty of knowing whether a preservation plan will work."

July/August 02010 issue of D-Lib Magazine available

Quoting from the announcement on various mailing lists (02010 07 15):

The July/August issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available.

This issue contains four articles, an opinion piece, and a conference report. Also in this issue you can find the 'In Brief' column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in 'Clips and Pointers'. This month, D-Lib features The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery of Scripps College collection of Japanese woodblock prints.

The articles include:

nature.com OpenSearch: A Case Study in OpenSearch and SRU Integration by Tony Hammond, Nature Publishing Group

Document Management in the Open University of Catalunya (UOC) Classrooms by Albert Cervera, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

The Benefits of Integrating an Information Literacy Skills Game into Academic Coursework: A Preliminary Evaluation by Karen Markey, Fritz Swanson, Chris Leeder, Brian J. Jennings, Beth St. Jean, Victor Rosenberg, Soo Young Rieh, Robert L. Frost, Loyd Mbabu, and Andrew Calvetti, University of Michigan; Gregory R. Peters, Jr., Cyber Data Solutions LLC, and Geoffrey V. Carter and Averill Packard, Saginaw Valley State University

Semantically Enhancing Collections of Library and Non-Library Content by James E. Powell, Linn Marks Collins and Mark L. B. Martinez, Los Alamos National Laboratory

DCC / DPC What's New: Issue 27

The Digital Curation Centre and the Digital Preservation Coalition released What's New, Issue 27 (July 02010), on July 5, 02010.

May/June 02010 issue of D-Lib Magazine is out

From the announcement on DIGLIB and other mailing lists (02010 05 18):

The May/June issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available.

This issue is a special issue on the theme of Digital Libraries in China. ...

The articles include:

Overview of Digital Library Developments in China by Xihui Zhen, Content Digital Innovations

Building the New-generation China Academic Digital Library Information System (CADLIS): A Review and Prospectus by Wang Wenqing and Chen Ling, The National Administrative Center for CALIS, Peking University

China National Science and Technology Digital Library (NSTL) by Qiao Xiaodong, Liang Bing and Yao Changqing, Institute of Science and Technology Information of China (ISTIC)

The National Digital Library Project by Wei Dawei and Sun Yigang, National Library of China

Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography version 1 now available

Version one of the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography is now available from Digital Scholarship.

http://digital-scholarship.org/dcpb/dcpb.htm

This bibliography presents over 360 selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation.

Most sources have been published between 2000 and the present; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2000 are also included. Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints for published articles in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories. Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.

The bibliography is the work of Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

Source: DIG_REF@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU and other mailing lists (02010 05 16)

Keeping Research Data Safe 2 (KRDS2) final report released by JISC

As announced on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK and elsewhere (02010 05 17):

JISC is pleased to announce that the final report for Keeping Research Data Safe 2 (KRDS2) is now available from the JISC website. This KRDS2 study report presents the results of a survey of available cost information, validation and further development of the KRDS activity cost model, and a new taxonomy to help assess benefits alongside costs. The KRDS2 study was conducted by Charles Beagrie Ltd. and associates.

KRDS2 has delivered the following:

• A survey of cost information for digital preservation, collating and making available 13 survey responses for different cost datasets;

• The KRDS activity model has been reviewed and its presentation and usability enhanced;

• Cost information for four organisations (the Archaeology Data Service; National Digital Archive of Datasets; UK Data Archive; and University of Oxford) has been analysed in depth and presented in case studies;

• A benefits framework has been produced and illustrated with two benefit case studies from the National Crystallography Service at Southampton University and the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex.

One of the key findings on the long-term costs of digital preservation for research data was that the cost of archiving activities (archival storage and preservation planning and actions) is consistently a very small proportion of the overall costs and significantly lower than the costs of acquisition/ingest or access activities for all the case studies in KRDS2. As an example the respective activity staff costs for the Archaeology Data Service are Access (c.31%), Outreach/Acquisition/Ingest (c.55%), Archiving (c.15%).This confirms and supports a preliminary finding in KRDS1.

Full URL:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2010/keepingresearchdatasafe2.aspx#downloads

A range of supplementary materials in support of this report have also been made available on the KRDS project website. This includes the ULCC Excel Cost Spreadsheet for the NDAD service together with a Guide to Interpreting and Using the NDAD Cost Spreadsheet. The NDAD Cost Spreadsheet has previously been used as an exercise in digital preservation training events and may be particularly useful in training covering digital preservation costs. The accompanying Guide provides guidance to those wishing to understand and experiment with the spreadsheet.

UK Digital Preservation Coalition Digital Preservation Case Notes

As announced on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (2010 04 30):

The DPC, with help from the Scott Polar Research Institute, Portico and ULCC, and with funding from JISC, is pleased to announce the launch of the first in a series of Digital Preservation Case Notes. The Case Notes offer straightforward examples of organisations and individuals tackling the digital preservation challenges that come from mass digitization. The first describes the Scott Polar Research Institute's 'Freeze Frame' project. It makes the point that short lived projects need to do some long term thinking to ensure that the benefits of digitization are robust and it describes how a short term project negotiated its way round this long term problem.

Three more case notes are planned for the immediate future, and DPC members can preview the whole set [David says this is a members preview link and requires login].

http://www.dpconline.org/advice/case-notes/index.html

What's New, Issue 24 (02010)

DPC and DCC are delighted to announce the publication of 'What's New 24' http://www.dpconline.org/newsroom/whats-new-issue-24.html

This latest edition marks a new initiative between the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) which pools our efforts and produces a more frequent and more interactive news bulletin for those interested in all matters of digital curation and preservation. It is a successor of the DCC's monthly Curation News Round-up and the DPC's quarterly bulletin 'What's new in Digital Preservation?'

Each month, this publication will feature a snapshot of what's on and what's new, a topical discussion paper, a practitioner profile and an update from one of our partners overseas. In addition, readers are invited to share comments and debate current issues (simply add your comments at the bottom of the page on the DPC website).

The third issue of the joint publication includes an interview with Anusha Ranganathan, Oxford University Library Services, an overview of recent developments from Inge Angevaare, Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation, a listing of forthcoming events and an editorial section from the DPC Executive Director William Kilbride.

Source: DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK, 02010 04 01