BitCurator Consortium launches website

The BitCurator Consortium (BCC) has launched its website at http://bitcuratorconsortium.org/. The website contains numerous information resources about the BitCurator Consortium, digital forensics, and more.

The BCC is an independent, community-led membership association that supports the curation of born-digital materials by libraries, archives, and museums. Members of the BitCurator user community founded BCC in 2014 to enhance, promote, and explore this growing area of professional activity.

The BitCurator environment is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that includes open source and public domain digital forensics tools, as well as unique reporting mechanisms and user interfaces, designed to assist libraries, archives, and museums with the curation of born-digital materials. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the BitCurator project has developed, packaged, and documented open-source forensics and data analysis tools to create forensic disk images, analyze files and file systems, extract file system metadata, identify and redact sensitive information, and identify and remove duplicate files.

The BCC operates as an affiliated community of the Educopia Institute, a nonprofit organization that advances cultural, scientific, and scholarly institutions by catalyzing networks and collaborative communities to facilitate collective impact.

Source: edited from ARCAN-L, "Announcement: New BitCurator Consortium Website!", 020150903

"Tackling the wicked problem of managing records in the digital environment" lecture, Victoria, BC, April 21, 02015

As part of the Archives Association of British Columbia's pre-conference, Dr. Julie McLeod,  Professor in Records Management, iSchool, Northumbria University, United Kingdom, will present a lecture titled "Tackling the wicked problem of managing records in the digital environment".

The lecture will be held on April 21, 02015 at St. Ann's Academy Auditorium, 835 Humboldt St., Victoria, BC, from 10 am to 11 am. Pre-registration at a cost of $10 is required by April 20. You can pre-register at http://www.gifttool.com/registrar/ShowEventDetails?ID=1831&EID=19998

Further details and updates are at http://aabc.ca/resources/news/2015/4/7/new-aabc-pre-conference-lecture-in-victoria-announced/

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.

Day of Digital Archives, October 6, 02011

From the announcement on various mailing lists (2011 09 06) posted by Gretchen Gueguen, Digital Archivist, Digital Curation Services, University of Virginia Library:

The Day of Digital Archives is an initiative to raise awareness of digital archives among both users and managers. On this day, archivists, digital humanists, programmers, or anyone else creating, using, or managing digital archives are asked to devote some of their social media output (i.e. tweets, blog posts, youtube videos, etc.) to describing their work with digital archives. By collectively documenting what we do, we will be answering questions like: What are digital archives? Who uses them? How are they created and managed? Why are they important? This year’s Day of Digital Archives will be held on October 6 and entries will be gathered at the Day of Digital Archives blog.

What is meant by “digital archives” well, primarily archives, repositories, content management systems and other initiatives that collect or manage born-digital material. These initiatives don’t have to primarily collect born-digital materials…in fact they are more likely to only have some born-digital content as part of their mandate. Or, maybe they don’t really have a “mandate” at all…maybe someone will contribute their thoughts about managing their own personal digital content or social media presence. The thread ties the participants together is that they collect, manage, preserve, develop, use, think about or otherwise love born-digital content.

Do you create, manage, or use digital archives? Would you like to participate? Well then, drop me a line at gretchen[.]gueguen[@]gmail[.]com with your contact info and I’ll keep you up to date!

DigCCurr, developing an international digital curation/digital preservation curriculum

The DigCCurr site, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is spearheading the development of an international digital curation/digital preservation curriculum. Papers from various conferences and symposia are online. Eligible doctoral (PhD) candidates are urged to apply for fellowship funding provided by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services.

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."

August 02010 issue of Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter

The August 02010 issue of the Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter is available. Included in this issue is news of the Library of Congress' launch of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, "a collaborative effort among government agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organizations and businesses to preserve a distributed national digital collection for the benefit of citizens now and in the future."

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."

iPRES2010 conference, September 02010, Vienna, Austria, Europe

From the call for participation announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02010 06 28) about the 7th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (IPRES 2010), September 19 to 24, 02010, Vienna, Austria, Europe:

The Austrian National Library, the Vienna University of Technology and Austrian Computer Society are pleased to invite you to the International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPRES2010) in Vienna in September 2010. iPRES2010 will be the seventh in the series of annual international conferences that bring together researchers and practitioners from around the world to explore the latest trends, innovations, and practices in preserving our digital heritage.

Digital Preservation and Curation is evolving from a niche activity to an established practice and research field that involves various disciplines and communities. iPRES2010 will re-emphasise that preserving our scientific and cultural digital heritage requires integration of activities and research across institutional and disciplinary boundaries to adequately address the challenges in digital preservation. iPRES2010 will further strengthen the link between digital preservation research and practitioners in memory institutions and scientific data centres.

The early registration deadline is July 31 02010.

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.

Digital Curation Institute Conference, June 02010, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

From the announcement on ARCAN-L (02010-04-06):

Digital Curation Institute Conference

June 16th – 17th, 2010
iSchool, University of Toronto – Canada

The Digital Curation Institute at the University of Toronto's iSchool provides a rich, interdisciplinary environment for investigating principles and theory building related to the creation, management, use, interpretation and preservation of digital resources; conducting research on digital curation issues; and developing technologies and tools to support best practice in this area. The DCI promotes innovative multi-faceted research projects that involve collaboration among faculty, students, practitioners, and researchers both national, and internationality. It encourages research that utilize multi-methods approaches from the fields of critical information studies; library and information science; archives and record management; information systems, media, and design; cultural heritage; museum studies, knowledge management and information management.

The key objectives of this conference are to promote greater understanding of the issues of digital curation, advance research on digital curation, to refine a digital curation model and defining the Digital Curation Institute’s research agenda.

Topics include: approaches for digital curation research; modeling for digital curation; risk, trust and certification; curating creative objects, digital libraries and digital repositories; digital curation and government records; experimentation.

Speakers include: Ross Harvey (Simmons GSLIS), Hans Hofman (Nationaal Archief Netherlands), John MacDonald (information management consultant and educator), Andreas Rauber (Vienna University of Technology), Seamus Ross (iSchool, University of Toronto), Raivo Ruusalepp, (Estonia Business Archives). Tom Hickerson, (University of Calgary) Anne Van Camp (Smithsonian Institute)

Registration: Registration fees include catered lunches, coffee break and a reception.
Register online at: http://dci.ischool.utoronto.ca [(not active as of April 6, 02010)]
Pre-registration before June 10,

$150 General public
$100 University of Toronto faculty and staff
$50 Students
Onsite registration

$200 onsite

Contact:
Prof Wendy Duff
DCI Director iSchool, University of Toronto
wendy.duff@utoronto.ca Phone: 416-978-3152

Oxford University Bodleian Library's futureArch project (02008-02011)

Oxford University's Bodleian Library is creating an electronic records and archives management system for born-digital materials called BEAM (Bodleian Electronic Archives and Manuscripts). In addition to information on the BEAM Web site, a related project, futureArch (Future Archives), offers a blog of its activities, which deal with curating a traditional and digital archives.

BEAM was preceded by the PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media) project, a joint effort of Oxford and Mancester universities, which ran between 2005-2007 and produced "Best-practice guidelines in the form of a workbook on issues relating to the archiving of personal papers in digital form...."

According to the first post on the futureArch blog (July 2, 02008), the futureArch project

"will see us move the curation of born-digital archives and manuscripts from a series of small projects to a sustainable activity integrated with other aspects of the Library's operations. When futureArch concludes, in just over three years time, we aim to have embedded the curation of born-digital archives and manuscripts into the way we do things."

The Tectonics of Digital Curation Symposium, May 25–26, 02010, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

From an announcement posted to various mailing lists,

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

THE TECTONICS OF DIGITAL CURATION:

A Symposium on the Shifting Preservation and Access Landscape

MAY 25–26, 2010

The Ray and Maria Stata Center

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Cambridge, MA

PRESENTED BY the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)

HOSTED BY the MIT Libraries

THE TECTONICS OF DIGITAL CURATION explores the sustainability of cultural collections created for and maintained on the Web. At this two-day symposium, a diverse faculty of national experts will examine the forces at play in our increasingly networked society.

TOPICS WILL INCLUDE: divergence and complexity in information networking; digital preservation repositories; electronic copyright and intellectual property; collaborative and commercial preservation models; digital archiving strategies; open access to scholarly communication; the networked self; preservation of CAD models; and preservation of community-built digital creations (video games).

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Librarians, archivists, museum professionals, IT professionals, CIOs, administrators, scientists, architects, and scholars – any decision-maker responsible for creating, managing, or preserving digital resources that are accessed via networked systems

COST: $325; students: $275

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: Friday, May 14, 2010

FOR COMPLETE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER: Visit www.nedcc.org

Digital Antiquity: Transforming Archaeological Data into Knowledge

From the front page of an international initiative to create a digital archaeological record standard (tDAR) and digital repository:

Digital Antiquity is a collaborative organization devoted to enhancing preservation and access to digital records of archaeological investigations in order:

• to permit scholars to more effectively create and communicate knowledge of the long-term human past;



• to enhance the management of archaeological resources; and



• to provide for the long-term preservation of irreplaceable records of archaeological investigations.

Digital Antiquity will establish a financially and socially sustainable, national/international, on-line digital repository that is able to provide preservation, discovery, and access for data and documents produced by archaeological projects. The repository, known as tDAR (for "the Digital Archaeological Record") is set up to encompass digital documents and data derived from ongoing research (more than 50,000 field projects are conducted in the US each year) as well as legacy data collected through more than a century of archaeological research in the Americas. With the active participation of the discipline, this initiative has the potential to transform the practice of archaeology and to revolutionize our knowledge of the past by enabling synthetic and comparative research on a scale that has heretofore been impossible.

With generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funding, Digital Antiquity staffing will include a full-time Executive Director, two software engineers, a data curator, and clerical staff. In mid-November, Francis P. McManamon began working as the Executive Director. A search for the software lead engineer is underway. The remaining staff will be hired subsequently. Management of Digital Antiquity is overseen by a 12 member Board of Directors and informed by a distinguished external Science Board of professionals in archaeology and computer and information science. Digital Antiquity currently is housed at Arizona State University, as a collaborative effort with the University of Arkansas, the Pennsylvania State University, the SRI Foundation, Washington State University, and the University of York.

Islandora.ca, another Canadian, open source digital records lifecycle system

Close on the heels of Archivematica, a digital preservation system built from open source products and created by British Columbia's Artefactual Systems, comes Islandora.ca from the Robertson Library at the University of Prince Edward Island. According to the About page, "Islandora combines the Drupal and Fedora software applications to create a robust digital asset management system that can be used for any requirement where collaboration and digital data stewardship, for the short and long term, are critical." You can see some examples of how the Islandora project is being deployed through IslandArchives, a set of digital collections, and IslandScholar, a "Repository-In-A-Box" solution for institutional repositories. Islandora also maintains a list of Virtual Research Environment (VRE) sites.

DCC Digital Curation Manual: call for authors and topics

The UK's Digital Curation Centre is looking for topics and authors for its collaborative Digital Curation Manual. According to the announcement on various digital preservation mailing lists (02009 05 05), "A list of current instalments and proposed new topics and abstracts are available on our website (http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resource/curation-manual/chapters/)." If you are interested in writing for this manual, contact Joy Davidson, DCC Acting Associate Director, at british.editor@erpanet.org by June 1st 2009. Her announcement included a Microsoft Word proposal template, but I wasn't able to include it and I couldn't find it on the Digital Curation Manual site. And did I mention they're paying for your contribution?