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!

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."

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.

A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation published by the MetaArchive Cooperative

Members of the MetaArchive Cooperative (Atlanta, GA, USA) wrote and published A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation as "the first of a series of volumes from the Educopia Institute describing successful collaborative strategies and articulating specific new models that may help cultural memory organizations work together for their mutual benefit." The guide is available as a freely available PDF or for purchase as a print publication.

Source: ARCHIVES mailing list, 02010 02 24

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.

Fedora 3.3 available as of 02009 12 21

From the announcement on DIGLIB (02009 12 22),

Today [02009 12 21], the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization and the Fedora digital repository project announced the release of Fedora 3.3 (http://fedora-commons.org/confluence/x/jQ3S). This release marks a new milestone in the process of developing the Fedora open source software. For the first time, the Fedora community came together under the leadership of a Community Release Manager who facilitated the software development process and the integration of community contributions. The effort was led by Kai Strnad, Software Engineer with FIZ Karlsruhe (http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/) and member of the eSciDoc project team (https://www.escidoc.org/).

Archives of Ontario (Canada) RFI for Trusted Digital Repository - Repository of Archival Digital Records

The Archives of Ontario (Canada) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) for Trusted Digital Repository - Repository of Archival Digital Records.

The purposes of this RFI are to:

- Gather information about the availability of Long Term Digital Preservation solutions (such as a Trusted Digital Repository) that might meet our requirements;
- Identify potential suppliers;
- Gain knowledge about suppliers’ capabilities in the design, development, implementation and maintenance of a Trusted Digital Repository;
- Assist in the determination of future purchasing options or requirements.

This RFI is not a solicitation for tenders or proposals. No contract or other form of commitment will be entered into with any vendor based on responses to the RFI. This RFI shall not constitute an authorization by the Government of Ontario to vendors to undertake any work that would result in any obligation, cost or liability to the Government of Ontario.

For full details of this Request for Information please find the link to MERX.

http://www.merx.com/English/SUPPLIER_Menu.asp?WCE=Show&TAB=1&PORTAL=MERX&State=7&searchtype=pubhome&id=186236&src=osr&FED_ONLY=0&ACTION=&rowcount=&lastpage=&hcode=jFg5GoWIgyT9U0p%2b2Y%2fWPg%3d%3d

Source: DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02009 11 18)

November/December 02008 issue of D-Lib Magazine is here

The November/December 02008 issue of D-Lib Magazine is here. The focus of this issue is digital scholarly communication.