Overview of content related to 'digitisation'

Editorial Introduction to Issue 70

lisrw — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:20:23 +0000

The editor introduces readers to the content of Ariadne Issue 70.

Welcome to Issue 70 of Ariadne which is full to the brim with feature articles and a wide range of event reports and book reviews.

The LIPARM Project: A New Approach to Parliamentary Metadata

lisrw — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:41:15 +0000

Richard Gartner outlines a collaborative project which aims to link together the digitised UK Parliamentary record by providing a metadata scheme, controlled vocabularies and a Web-based interface.

Parliamentary historians in the United Kingdom are particularly fortunate as their key primary source, the record of Parliamentary proceedings, is almost entirely available in digitised form. Similarly, those needing to consult and study contemporary proceedings as scholars, journalists or citizens have access to the daily output of the UK's Parliaments and Assemblies in electronic form shortly after their proceedings take place.

Unfortunately, the full potential of this resource for all of these users is limited by the fact that it is scattered throughout a heterogeneous information landscape and so cannot be approached as a unitary resource. It is not a simple process, for instance, to distinguish the same person if he or she appears in more than one of these collections or, for that matter, to identify the same legislation if it is referenced inconsistently in different resources. As a result, using it for searching or for more sophisticated analyses becomes problematic when one attempts to move beyond one of its constituent collections.

Finding some mechanism to allow these collections to be linked and so used as a coherent, integrated resource has been on the wish-list of Parliamentary historians and other stakeholders in this area for some time. In the mid-2000s, for instance, the History of Parliament Trust brought together the custodians of several digitised collections to examine ways in which this could be done. In 2011, some of these ideas came to fruition when JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded a one-year project named LIPARM (Linking the Parliamentary Record through Metadata) which aimed to design a mechanism for encoding these linkages within XML architectures and to produce a working prototype for an interface which would enable the potential offered by this new methodology to be realised in practice.

This article explains the rationale of the LIPARM Project and how it uses XML to link together core components of the Parliamentary record within a unified metadata scheme. It introduces the XML schema, Parliamentary Metadata Language (PML), which was created by the project and the set of controlled vocabularies for Parliamentary proceedings which the project also created to support it. It also discusses the experience of the project in converting two XML-encoded collections of Parliamentary proceedings to PML and work on the prototype Web-based union catalogue which will form the initial gateway to PML-encoded metadata.

Background: The Need for Integrated Parliamentary Metadata

The UK's Parliamentary record has been the focus of a number of major digitisation initiatives which have made its historical corpus available in almost its entirety: in addition, the current publishing operations of the four Parliaments and Assemblies in the UK ensure that the contemporary record is available in machine-readable form on a daily basis. Unfortunately, these collections have limited interoperability owing to their disparate approaches to data and metadata which renders the federated searching and browsing of their contents currently impossible. In addition, the disparity of platforms on which they are offered, and the wide diversity of user interfaces they use to present the data (as shown by the small sample in Figure 1), render extensive research a time-consuming and cumbersome process if it is necessary to extend its remit beyond the confines of a single collection.

Figure 1: Four major collections of Parliamentary proceedings, each using a different interface

A more integrated approach to Parliamentary metadata offers major potential for new research: it would, for instance, allow the comprehensive tracking of an individual's career, including all of their contributions to debates and proceedings. It would allow the process of legislation to be traced automatically, voting patterns to be analysed, and the emergence of themes and topics in Parliamentary history to be analysed on a large scale.

One example of the linkages that could usefully be made in an integrated metadata architecture can be seen in the career of Sir James Craig, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1940. Figure 2 illustrates some of the connections that could be made to represent his career:-

Figure 2: Sample of potential linkages for a Parliamentarian

The connections shown here are to the differing ways in which he is named in the written proceedings, to his tenures in both Houses, the constituencies he represented, the offices he held and the contributions he made to debates. Much more complex relationships are, of course, possible and desirable.

The advantages of an integrated approach to metadata which would allow these connections to be made have long been recognised by practitioners in this field, and several attempts have been made to create potential strategies for realising them. But it was only in 2011 that these took more concrete form when a one-day meeting sponsored by JISC brought together representatives from the academic, publishing, library and archival sectors to devise a strategy for integrating Parliamentary metadata. Their report proposed the creation of an XML schema for linking core components of this record and the creation of a series of controlled vocabularies for these components which could form the basis of the semantic linkages to be encoded in the schema [1]. These proposals then formed the basis of a successful bid to JISC for a project to put them into practice: the result was the LIPARM (Linking the Parliamentary Record through Metadata) Project.

23rd International CODATA Conference

lisrw — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 12:41:16 +0000

Alex Ball reports on a conference on ‘Open Data and Information for a Changing Planet’ held by the International Council for Science’s Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan on 28–31 October 2012.

CODATA was formed by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in 1966 to co-ordinate and harmonise the use of data in science and technology. One of its very earliest decisions was to hold a conference every two years at which new developments could be reported. The first conference was held in Germany in 1968, and over the following years it would be held in 15 different countries across 4 continents.

International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012

lisrw — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:44:54 +0000

Anna Mastora and Sarantos Kapidakis report on TPDL 2012 held at Paphos, Cyprus, over 23-27 September 2012.

The 16^th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012 [1] was another successful event in the series of ECDL/TPDL conferences which has been the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries for 15 years. Across these years, the conference has brought together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries by addressing issues in the area where theoretical and applied research meet, such as digital library models, architectures, functionality, users, and quality.

Book Review: Information 2.0

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:49:00 +0000

Milena Dobreva reviews the newly published book of Martin de Saulles which looks at the new models of information production, distribution and consumption.

Writing about information and the changes in the models of its production, distribution and consumption is no simple task. Besides the long-standing debate on what information and knowledge really mean, the world of current technologies is changing at a pace which inevitably influences all spheres of human activity. But the first of those spheres to tackle is perhaps that of information – how we create, disseminate, and use it.

Eduserv Symposium 2012: Big Data, Big Deal?

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:48:45 +0000

Marieke Guy attended the annual Eduserv Symposium on 10 May 2012 at the Royal College of Physicians, London to find out what are the implications of big data for Higher Education Institutions.

The annual Eduserv Symposium [1] was billed as a ‘must-attend event for IT professionals in Higher Education’; the choice of topical subject matter being one of the biggest crowd-drawers (the other being the amazing venue: the Royal College of Physicians). The past few years have seen coverage of highly topical areas such as virtualisation and the cloud, the mobile university and access management.

Peculiarities of Digitising Materials from the Collections of the National Academy of Sciences, Armenia

lisrw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:06:59 +0000

Alan Hopkinson and Tigran Zargaryan give an overview of their experience of digitising paper-based materials in the Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences, Armenia including some of the obstacles encountered during image processing and optical character recognition.

Early writing which first appeared as cuneiform protocols and then emerged in manuscript form and as printed materials is currently entering a new stage in its development – in the form of electronic publications.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 68

lisrw — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:17:06 +0000

The editor introduces readers to the content of Ariadne issue 68.

I am pleased to introduce you to the content of Issue 68, and to have the opportunity to remind you that you have a far larger number of channels into the publication’s content.

The Future of the Past of the Web

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:06:52 +0000

Matthew Brack reports on the one-day international workshop 'The Future of the Past of the Web' held at the British Library Conference Centre, London on 7 October, 2011.

We have all heard at least some of the extraordinary statistics that attempt to capture the sheer size and ephemeral nature of the Web. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), more than 70 new domains are registered and more than 500,000 documents are added to the Web every minute [1]. This scale, coupled with its ever-evolving use, present significant challenges to those concerned with preserving both the content and context of the Web.

IMPACT Final Conference 2011

lisrw — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:36:33 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the two-day conference looking at the results of the IMPACT Project in making digitisation and OCR better, faster and cheaper.

The IMPACT Project (Improving Access to Text) [1] was funded by the European Commission back in 2007 to look at significantly advancing access to historical text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods. As the project reaches its conclusion, one of its key objectives is sharing project outputs.

Book Review: The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping

lisrw — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:50:08 +0000

John Azzolini reviews an anthology of perceptive essays on the challenges presented to archival thought and practice by Web 2.0, postmodern perspectives, and cross-disciplinary interchanges.

Librarians, archivists, and records managers do not share identical challenges or controversies in their practical endeavours or theoretical queries. However, a common issue for all the information professions and a dominating topic of discussion in their literature is the fundamental change in the structure and distribution of knowledge caused by mass digitisation. The proliferation of daily digital content, in quantity, reach, and manifestation, is confronting them all with a disquieting role ambiguity. The expanding tools and expectations of Web 2.0 have made this self-questioning a recurrent one, but they have also stimulated invigorating debate on the purpose and direction of these fields. The perception is one of extraordinary change initiated by emerging technologies, unprecedented knowledge production and dissemination, and a new centralised role for the information user. In these galvanising changes leading library and archives practitioners are sensing opportunities for confirming the professions’ relevance, in the estimation of other scholarly disciplines and of society at large, but, perhaps most of all, in their own eyes as well.

eSciDoc Days 2011: The Challenges for Collaborative eResearch Environments

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:20:52 +0000

Ute Rusnak reports on the fourth in a series of two-day conferences called eSciDoc Days, organised by FIZ Karlsruhe and the Max Planck Digital Library in Berlin over 26-27 October 2011.

eSciDoc is a well-known open source platform for creating eResearch environments using generic services and tools based on a shared infrastructure. This concept allows for managing research and publication data together with related metadata, internal and/or external links and access rights. Development of eSciDoc was initiated by a collaborative venture between FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 67: Changes Afoot

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 67.

For readers who might have been wondering, I shall resist Mark Twain's remark about reports of his demise being exaggerated, and reassure you that while Ariadne has been undergoing changes to the way in which it will be delivered to the Web, it has been business as usual in the matter of the content, as you will see from the paragraphs that follow. Issue 67, while currently not looking any different, is in the process of being migrated to a new platform developed to enhance functionality and give a more user-friendly look and feel to the publication.

Retooling Special Collections Digitisation in the Age of Mass Scanning

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Constance Rinaldo, Judith Warnement, Tom Baione, Martin R. Kalfatovic and Susan Fraser describe results from a study to identify and develop a cost-effective and efficient large-scale digitisation workflow for special collections library materials.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) [1] is a consortium of 12 natural history and botanical libraries that co-operate to digitise and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global 'biodiversity commons.' [2] The participating libraries hold more than two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers and students in their home insti

From Link Rot to Web Sanctuary: Creating the Digital Educational Resource Archive (DERA)

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Bernard M Scaife describes how an innovative use of the EPrints repository software is helping to preserve official documents from the Web.

When I started as Technical Services Librarian at the Institute of Education (IOE) in September 2009, one of the first tasks I was given was to do something about all the broken links in the catalogue. Link rot [1] is the bane of the Systems Librarian's life and I was well aware that you had to run fast to stand still.

Book Review: Envisioning Future Academic Library Services

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

John Azzolini reviews a timely collection of essays that highlights the values of institutional leadership and resourcefulness in academic librarianship's engagements with Web 2.0.

Since networked information technology has initiated a breathtaking transformation of knowledge practices, librarians have had a generous supply of thought leaders whose lifetime experience has permitted them to issue credible translations of the 'writing on the wall'. Recently, however, there seems to be many more analysts (and soothsayers) and much more anxious observation and published interpretation of such writing. And the message comes in a red ink, in bold, and with distinct portent, when not downright ominous.

Book Review: Preparing Collections for Digitization

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Michael Day reviews a recently published book on the selection and preparation of archive and library collections for digitisation.

Over the past 20 years a great deal of information and guidance has been published to support cultural heritage organisations interested in undertaking digitisation projects. It is well over a decade now since the seminal Joint National Preservation Office and Research Libraries Group Preservation Conference on Guidelines for digital imaging [1] and standard introductory texts on digitisation like Anne Kenney and Oya Rieger's Moving theory into practice [2] and Stuart Lee's Digital imaging: a practical handbook [3] are of a similar age - although still extremely useful. More up-to-date guidance is also available from services like JISC Digital Media [4] and the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative [5].

Into this mix comes this new book on the preparation of collections for digitisation by Anna Bülow and Jess Ahmon, respectively Head of Preservation and Preservation Officer at The National Archives in Kew, London. The book claims to fill a gap in the existing literature, covering the practical aspects of safeguarding collections during image capture. It is perhaps worth noting upfront that the main focus of the book is on textual resources and documentary records, meaning that it would seem to be most useful for those working in the libraries and archives sectors.

The first chapter provides some essential context, linking digitisation initiatives to the ongoing collection management practices of archives and libraries. It makes the general point that collection management has three main aspects: the development, use and preservation of collections.

Collection management involves making well informed decisions in order to prioritise actions and optimise the allocation of resources to maintain as much accessible value as possible. (p. 5)

Bülow and Ahmon argue that digital technologies have created new challenges for collection management, e.g. being partly responsible for a shift in attention from the development and preservation role to the development and use role. In practice, however, the link between the roles can be more nuanced. For example, in some cases digitisation may benefit conservation aims by helping to reduce the physical handling of fragile materials. In general, however, the authors feel that while the long-term sustainability challenges of digital content remain unresolved, "digitization of any book or document cannot be seen as a preservation measure for the original itself." (p. 8). The chapter concludes with a brief outline of the four phases of digitisation, each of which is made up of multiple steps. Of these, this book focuses primarily on the first two stages, covering all of the tasks that need to be done prior to imaging (e.g. selection, rights clearance, document preparation) as well as those associated with the digitisation process itself (imaging, quality assurance, transcription, metadata creation). The remaining two stages, chiefly facilitating use and sustainability, are not dealt with in any detail by this book.

Turning Off Tap Into Bath

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Ann Chapman describes the lifecycle of a demonstrator database and the development of a preservation policy for its content and software.

Repository Fringe 2010

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Martin Donnelly (and friends) report on the Repository Fringe "unconference" held at the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland, over 2-3 September 2010.

2010 was the third year of Repository Fringe, and slightly more formally organised than its antecedents, with an increased number of discursive presentations and less in the way of organised chaos! The proceedings began on Wednesday 1 September with a one-day, pre-event SHERPA/RoMEO API Workshop [1] run by the Repositories Support Project team.

Survive or Thrive

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ed Fay reports on a two-day conference organised by UKOLN on behalf of JISC to consider growth and use of digital content on the Web, which was held in Manchester in June 2010.

Survive or Thrive [1] is the punchy title given to an event intended to stimulate serious consideration amongst digital collections practitioners about future directions in our field - opportunities but also potential pitfalls. The event, which focused on content in HE, comes at a time of financial uncertainty when proving value is of increasing importance in the sector and at a point when significant investment has already been made in the UK into content creation, set against a backdrop of increasingly available content on the open Web from a multitude of sources.

Europeana Open Culture 2010

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

David Fuegi and Monika Segbert-Elbert report on the annual Europeana Conference, held at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam in October 2010.

The Europeana Conference is a free annual event which highlights current challenges for libraries, museums, archives and audio-visual archives and which looks for practical solutions for the future. It connects the main actors in cultural and scientific heritage in order to build networks and establish future collaborations. The Europeana Open Culture 2010 Conference [1] was the third annual conference and the biggest so far. It focused on how the cultural institutions can create public value by making digital, cultural and scientific information openly available.

CIG Conference 2010: Changes in Cataloguing in 'Interesting Times'

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Rhiannon McLoughlin reports on a three-day conference on cataloguing in a time of financial stringency, held by the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group at Exeter University, from 13-15 September 2010.

The focus of this conference was initiatives to get through the current economic climate. Cataloguing departments are under threat of cutbacks as never before. Papers on streamlining, collaborative enterprises, shared catalogues and services, recycling and repurposing of content using metadata extraction techniques combined to give a flavour of the new thrift driving management. The continuing progress of the long awaited Resource Description and Access (RDA)[1][2] towards becoming the new international cataloguing standard was another hot topic.

Internet Librarian International Conference 2010

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Claire Tylee, Katrin Flemming and Elly Cope report on the two-day Internet Librarian International Conference focusing on innovation and technology in the information profession, held in London on 14-15 October 2010.

Table of Contents

Thursday 14 October
Track A: Looking Ahead to Value

Thursday 14 October

Track A: Looking Ahead to Value

A102: Future of Academic Libraries

Mal Booth, University of Technology Sydney (Australia)

Michael Jubb, Research Information Network (UK)

Mal Booth from the University of Technology Sydney started the session by giving an insight into current plans and projects underway to inform a new library building due to open in 2015 as part of a major redeveloped city campus.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 64: Supporting the Power of Research Data

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 64.

In these cash-strapped times among all the admonitions to save money here, and resources there, I rather hope to hear much about the necessity of protecting and building the knowledge economy if the UK is to make its way in the globalised world, since we cannot pretend to compete easily in other areas of endeavour. Hence research has to be regarded as one of the aces remaining to us, and thus I hope the importance of gathering, managing and preserving for long-term access research outcomes will be widely appreciated and supported.

Repository Software Comparison: Building Digital Library Infrastructure at LSE

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ed Fay presents a comparison of repository software that was carried out at LSE in support of digital library infrastructure development.

Rewriting the Book: On the Move With the Library of Birmingham

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Brian Gambles presents the Library of Birmingham vision and strategy for addressing the challenge of mobile digital services.

The Library of Birmingham (LoB) will open in 2013 as a world-class centre for culture, learning and knowledge, rewriting the book for public libraries in the 21st century. 'Rewriting the Book', which is integral to the new LoB brand, recognises and embraces the present and future challenge to libraries – it accepts that established means of accessing knowledge are changing rapidly and dynamically, with a significant digital dimension, and that increasingly radical responses to this challenge are demanded from leaders in the library sector.

The LoB will seek to transform perceptions of Birmingham, redefining 'the library', with an outward focus, deeply embedded in partnership working, digitally connected to the world, and servicing both local and international audiences as a platform and cultural hub for knowledge and communal exchange. Fundamental to this change will be the delivery of digital services both inside and outside the new library with greater support for mobile communications with customers. Mobile is commonplace today, and opens up many opportunities to enhance customer experience both inside and external to the new library.

This article describes the continuing journey of the LoB project in assessing the challenge of mobile, its relevance and how innovation could improve the visitor experience in the future.

Mobility: An Integral Part of Living

Mobile services are an integral part of our daily lives and embedded in our culture. This is never more apparent when we do not have them close to hand – a recent survey found that 40% of mobile phone users would rather lose their wallet than their mobile device. The choice may not be available for much longer: the mobile is very likely to become your wallet in the future!

Trove: Innovation in Access to Information in Australia

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Rose Holley describes a major development in the Australian national digital information infrastructure.

In late 2009 the National Library of Australia released version 1 of Trove [1] to the public. Trove is a free search engine. It searches across a large aggregation of Australian content. The treasure is over 90 million items from over 1000 libraries, museums, archives and other organisations which can be found at the click of a button. Finding information just got easier for many Australians. Exploring a wealth of resources and digital content like never before, including full-text books, journals and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, Web sites, diaries, letters, archives, people and organisations has been an exciting adventure for users and the service has been heavily used. Finding and retrieving instantly information in context; interacting with content and social engagement are core features of the service. This article describes Trove features, usage, content building, and its applications for contributors and users in the national context.

Opportunities for Libraries

I see tremendous opportunities for libraries this year because of advances in technology. The changes in technology mean that anyone can create, describe or recommend content, which means that many people and organisations are becoming librarians or libraries in their own way. Librarians should not be threatened or dismayed by this but rather encouraged, since it means that society is retaining its ongoing interest in the creation, organisation and dissemination of content, and we have an integral role to play in these developments. Libraries and librarians are relevant more than ever in this environment because we have vast amounts of data and information to share, a huge amount of information expertise, and an understanding of how technology can assist us in making information more accessible.

We need to have new ideas and re-examine our old ideas to see how technology can help us. What things have we always wanted to do that we couldn't before, like providing a single point of access to all Australian information? Is this still pie in the sky or can we now achieve it? Libraries need to think big. As Charles Leadbeater would say 'Libraries need to think they are leading a mass movement, not just serving a clientele.' [2] Librarians are often thought of as gatekeepers with the emphasis being on closed access, but technology enables gatekeepers to open doors as well as close them and this is the opportunity I see. However many institutions will need to change their strategic thinking from control/shut to free/open before they can make this transition, and take a large dose of courage as well. The American author Harriet Rubin says, 'Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.' [3] The National Library of Australia already took this step forward in 2008 with the advent of the Australian Newspapers beta service, which opened up the raw text of digitised Australian newspapers to the public for improvement, without moderation on a mass scale [4]. With a long history of collaboration across the Australian cultural heritage sector [5] with regard to digitisation, storage, and service delivery, the National Library of Australia is well placed to take the lead with innovation in access to information.

Some people may say, 'But isn't Google doing that, so why do we still need libraries?' There is no question in my mind that libraries are fundamentally different from Google and other similar services. Libraries are different to Google for these reasons: they commit to provide long-term preservation, curation and access to their content; they have no commercial motives in the provision of information (deemed by various library acts); they aim for universal access to everyone in society; and they are 'free for all'. To summarise: libraries are always and forever. Who can say that of a search engine, or of any commercial organisation, regardless of size?

Intute Reflections at the End of an Era

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Angela Joyce, Linda Kerr, Tim Machin, Paul Meehan and Caroline Williams look back at the history and achievements of Intute, and reflect on lessons learned as the service enters its final year.

Retooling Libraries for the Data Challenge

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Dorothea Salo examines how library systems and procedures need to change to accommodate research data.

Eager to prove their relevance among scholars leaving print behind, libraries have participated vocally in the last half-decade's conversation about digital research data. On the surface, libraries would seem to have much human and technological infrastructure ready-constructed to repurpose for data: digital library platforms and institutional repositories may appear fit for purpose. However, unless libraries understand the salient characteristics of research data, and how they do and do not fit with library processes and infrastructure, they run the risk of embarrassing missteps as they come to grips with the data challenge.

Whether managing research data is 'the new special collections,'[1] a new form of regular academic-library collection development, or a brand-new library specialty, the possibilities have excited a great deal of talk, planning, and educational opportunity in a profession seeking to expand its boundaries.

Faced with shrinking budgets and staffs, library administrators may well be tempted to repurpose existing technology infrastructure and staff to address the data curation challenge. Existing digital libraries and institutional repositories seem on the surface to be a natural fit for housing digital research data. Unfortunately, significant mismatches exist between research data and library digital warehouses, as well as the processes and procedures librarians typically use to fill those warehouses. Repurposing warehouses and staff for research data is therefore neither straightforward nor simple; in some cases, it may even prove impossible.

Characteristics of Research Data

What do we know about research data? What are its salient characteristics with respect to stewardship?

Size and Scope

Perhaps the commonest mental image of research data is terabytes of information pouring out of the merest twitch of the Large Hadron Collider Project. So-called 'Big Data' both captures the imagination of and creates sheer terror in the practical librarian or technologist. 'Small data,' however, may prove to be the bigger problem: data emerging from individual researchers and labs, especially those with little or no access to grants, or a hyperlocal research focus. Though each small-data producer produces only a trickle of data compared to the like of the Large Hadron Collider Project, the tens of thousands of small-data producers in aggregate may well produce as much data (or more, measured in bytes) as their Big Data counterparts [2]. Securely and reliably storing and auditing this amount of data is a serious challenge. The burgeoning 'small data' store means that institutions without local Big Data projects are by no means exempt from large-scale storage considerations.

Small data also represents a serious challenge in terms of human resources. Best practices instituted in a Big Data project reach all affected scientists quickly and completely; conversely, a small amount of expert intervention in such a project pays immense dividends. Because of the great numbers of individual scientists and labs producing small data, however, immensely more consultations and consultants are necessary to bring practices and the resulting data to an acceptable standard.

Variability

Digital research data comes in every imaginable shape and form. Even narrowing the universe of research data to 'image' yields everything from scans of historical glass negative photographs to digital microscope images of unicellular organisms taken hundreds at a time at varying depths of field so that the organism can be examined in three dimensions. The tools that researchers use naturally shape the resulting data. When the tool is proprietary, unfortunately, so may be the file format that it produced. When that tool does not include long-term data viability as a development goal, the data it produces are often neither interoperable nor preservable.

A major consequence of the diversity of forms and formats of digital research data is a concomitant diversity in desired interactions. The biologist with a 3-D stack of microscope images interacts very differently with those images than does a manuscript scholar trying to extract the underlying half-erased text from a palimpsest. These varying affordances must be respected by dissemination platforms if research data are to enjoy continued use.

One important set of interactions involves actual changes to data. Many sorts of research data are considerably less usable in their raw state than after they have had filters or algorithms or other processing performed on them. Others welcome correction, or are refined by comparison with other datasets. Two corollaries emerge: first, that planning and acting for data stewardship must take place throughout the research process, rather than being an add-on at the end; and second, that digital preservation systems designed to steward only final, unchanging materials can only fail faced with real-world datasets and data-use practices.

Blue Ribbon Task Force Symposium on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on a symposium which provided an opportunity for stakeholders to respond to the recent Blue Ribbon Task Force report on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access.

On Thursday 6 May 2010 an historic event took place. The event allowed people to express their opinions on potential future action in a highly significant area. No, not the British general election, and I'm sure the concurrence of dates was unintentional! This event was the Blue Ribbon Task Force Symposium on sustainable digital preservation and access, held at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre in London [1].

Book Review: The Art of Community - Building the New Age of Participation

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ed Bremner reviews a work on building and supporting online communities.

The Preamble

I have been building online 'communities of practice' for about 10 years now. Some have thrived and others not. It started about 10 years ago with the formation of a small association with a shared interest in classic marine heritage. The community operated entirely online, mainly through a forum and we found that, with very little conscious effort, the community quickly grew and thrived. It was quickly taken up as an example of good practice and evidence for what could be achieved within a small community with similar interests and aspirations.

Book Review: Digital Information - Order Or Anarchy?

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Muhammad Rafiq offers us a review of a work which examines the future of digital information and emerging patterns of scholarly communication.

Digital Information offers an overview of the digital landscape based on the heterogeneous perspectives of multiple stakeholders contributed by the experts from Higher Education, publishers' community, information professionals, and legal experts.

This overview presents seven well written chapters by an international team of experts who have contributed well to the debate of digital information in the context of order or anarchy.

The book seems to answer the million-dollar question of today's information world:

Editorial Introduction to Issue 63: Consider the Users in the Field

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 63.

For those who can either remember or are battling still to make the technology work, be it coding, integration or test, it is easy and understandable enough if the technology assumes an overwhelming profile on the horizon of one's project and daily work. It is very understandable when they privately grumble that colleagues unburdened with the minutiae of such work display a breath-taking insouciance to the consequences of asking for a change in spec because there has been an unexpected development in the requirements of the users.

Balancing Stakeholder Needs: Archive 2.0 As Community-centred Design

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Jim Ridolfo, William Hart-Davidson and Michael McLeod present a case example on building a digital archive with cultural and scholarly stakeholder groups - to provide a model for balancing stakeholder needs.

Archive 2.0 is relatively new concept for us, one that we have only worked with since 2007 and the beginning of our Samaritan Digital Archive Project at Michigan State University (MSU). Our project started with the intention of building a digital archive; the Archive 2.0 nature of the project surfaced when we realised that in order to build a useful archive, we would need to engage multiple stakeholder communities. In our project this meant working with the cultural stakeholders, the Samaritans, as well as academic stakeholders, including Samaritan and Biblical scholars. Initially we thought that applying Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking, image tagging, etc, to a digital archive would be our most important contribution to the project. As the project unfolded and we identified stakeholder needs more precisely however, we realised that our role was as much about balancing stakeholders' representational needs as much as it was about the application of Web 2.0 technologies.

The project began in December of 2007 when Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center [1] Research Assistant Jim Ridolfo was browsing the digital MSU Special Collections catalogue, and discovered the library index for the MSU Chamberlain-Warren collection of Samaritan texts. While investigating the history of the collection, Ridolfo learnt that in 2003 a Samaritan elder had travelled to MSU and had spoken to the Board of Trustees. The elder, Binyamim Tsedaka, had 'encouraged the university to utilise the collection to promote Samaritan studies.' [2] On learning of Tsedaka's speech, Ridolfo e-mailed Tsedaka and enquired about the community's possible interest in collaborating on a digitisation project. Tsedaka responded with his full blessing and an offer of collaboration [3].

Who Are the Samaritans?

The Samaritans have existed as a community for thousands of years. They are an ancient biblical people living primarily in Holon, Israel and Mt. Gerizim, West Bank. Their Torah is similar in content to that of Jewish people, but with several major theological differences. For example, the Samaritan Torah maintains that Mt. Gerizim rather than Jerusalem is holy. The Samaritan Pentateuch also contains thousands of textual differences from the Masoretic Hebrew text; consequently, their theological interpretations and practices differ from common Jewish interpretations and traditions. In addition, the script of the Samaritan Torah is written in Samaritan Hebrew, which includes a unique script, pronunciation scheme, and grammar. Starting at a very early age, all Samaritan children learn to read, write, and chant in Samaritan Hebrew.

The Samaritan community includes 712 members, with approximately half the population living in Holon, Israel, and the other half living in the Mt. Gerizim village of Kiryat Luza. The community in Holon speaks Modern Hebrew as a first language, while the community in Kiryat Luza speaks Palestinian Arabic as a first language. The Samaritans living in Kiryat Luza maintain a delicate relationship with the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Being few in number and vulnerable to larger political trends, they seek a peaceful relationship with both authorities. For example, the residents of Kiryat Luza possess both Palestinian Authority and Israeli passports, vote in both elections, and work, travel, and study on both sides of the Green Line. Since the Samaritans of Holon and Kiryat Luza commemorate all festivals, holidays, and life cycle celebrations together on Mt. Gerizim, they are very keen to maintain contact between both communities [4][5].

Turning on the Lights for the User: NISO Discovery to Delivery Forum

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Laura Akerman and Kim Durante report on Discovery to Delivery, Creating a First-Class User Experience, a NISO Forum on today's information seekers and current standards developments held in March 2010 at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center.

Volcanic Eruptions Fail to Thwart Digital Preservation - the Planets Way

editor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Matthew Barr, Amir Bernstein, Clive Billenness and Manfred Thaller report on the final Planets training event Digital Preservation - The Planets Way held in Rome over 19 - 21 April 2010.

In far more dramatic circumstances than expected, the Planets Project [1] held its 3-day training event Digital Preservation – The Planets Way in Rome over 19 - 21 April 2010. This article reports its proceedings.

An Attack on Professionalism and Scholarship? Democratising Archives and the Production of Knowledge

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Andrew Flinn describes some recent developments in democratising the archive and asks whether these developments really deserve to be viewed as a threat to professional and academic standards.

This article was originally delivered as a paper for the 'Archives 2.0: Shifting Dialogues Between Users and Archivists' conference organised by the University of Manchester's ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) in March 2009. The paper came at an opportune time. I was absorbed in a research project examining independent and community archival initiatives in the UK and exploring the possibilities of user- (or community-)generated and contributed content for archives and historical research [1]. Furthermore I had just received referees' comments on a proposed research project examining the potential impact of the latter developments on professional archival practice. Whilst two of the reports were very positive, one was more than a little hostile. The reviewer was scathing about the focus of the proposed research on the democratisation of knowledge production, dismissing the notion as part of a short-term political agenda that was detrimental to the idea of scholarship and one with which the archive profession should not concern itself. In particular, scorn was reserved for the idea that, in future archive catalogues, many 'voices' might be enabled 'to supplement or even supplant the single, authoritative, professional voice', an idea which was described as being, in extremis, 'a frontal attack on professionalism, standards and scholarship'.

At the time of receiving this review and considering my response, I was also beginning to write my paper for the conference and had already decided that my theme would be democratising the archive. However I realised that these comments neatly encapsulated a powerful and genuine strand of thinking within the archive profession and academia more generally, which one might loosely term 'traditional'. Although there are now many user-generated content archive and heritage projects in existence, and terms such as participatory archives, Archives 2.0 and even History 2.0 are an increasingly common part of professional discourse [2], some, perhaps many, archivists and scholars remain deeply sceptical about the need for a democratisation of the archive and of scholarship.

In the end the research project was supported by the AHRC despite the critical review and has now commenced [3]. However, in this brief article I will try to respond to this strand of thinking by, first identifying what is meant by the democratisation of the archive and why advocates of such a thing believe it to be important. I will then briefly introduce two different but linked developments (independent or community archives and user- or community-generated content), which in harness with new technologies might play a role in such a democratisation, and in so doing challenge aspects of traditional archival thinking and practice. Finally I will offer a few thoughts on the shifts in our understanding of the archive and the resistance to those shifts. Ultimately, I will suggest that rather than viewing this debate as one between the expert (or the academic or the professional) and the crowd, it is in the concept of communities that the key might be found. A successful democratised and participatory archive is one which recognises that all those who come into contact with the archive (directly or indirectly), the 'community of the record', can and do affect our understanding and knowledge of that archive.

A Research Revolution: The Impact of Digital Technologies

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Dicky Maidment-Otlet and Judy Redfearn describe a new JISC activity to highlight how digital technologies are changing research.

At the end of November 2009, JISC launched a year-long suite of activities under the heading Research 3.0: driving the knowledge economy. A series of events, publications and Web activity are stimulating discussion about how advanced digital technologies are creating a revolution in research and the way researchers work.

The Digital Preservation Roadshow 2009-10: The Incomplete Diaries of Optimistic Travellers

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

William Kilbride and Malcolm Todd report on the Digital Preservation Roadshow - an eleven month tour of the UK and Ireland designed to provide archivists and record managers with practical advice and support in managing digital resources.

Subject Repositories: European Collaboration in the International Context

editor — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Dave Puplett reports on the conference Subject Repositories: European Collaboration in the International Context held at the British Library in January 2010. The conference launched Economists Online (EO), an innovative economics subject repository.

Institutional repositories are now common in Higher Education, but successful examples of subject repositories, which cater to an entire discipline, are much rarer. The Subject Repositories conference taught some key lessons about the role of transnational collaboration in setting up a subject repository. The conference drew on the expertise of renowned specialists in the field and the two and a half-year-long development process of Economists Online [1].