Digital Library Center Blog | UF

In four nights four men, also near Wauchula, brought in 1,600 pounds of frogs. This seems to be another record.

The above quote is from Bullfrog Farming and Frogging in Florida, 1932.

International Publishers and Librarians Agree to Enhance The Debate on Open Access

Geneva/The Hague 20 May 2009 - For immediate release

A joint statement released today by the International Publishers Association, the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers, and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) calls for a more rational, evidence based debate on open access. It encourages experimentation and piloting of new concepts and ideas, whilst acknowledging that the differences in the different academic disciplines and publishing traditions may lead to differentiated approaches and business models in support of authors.

The joint statement is intended to move the oftentimes heated and polarised debate about open access as a model for scholarly communication towards a more measured and nuanced discourse.

Says IPA President Herman P. Spruijt “The debate about open access is important and publishers welcome it. Publishing is never at a standstill and we should not fear change. Now that more experience has been gained with open access publishing and now that data is available on its success, the open access debate should be able to move away from emotional accusations and oversimplification. Our discussions with IFLA on this topic are always spirited, but have become more insightful and less polarised as we moved towards facts, evidence and differentiated arguments. There is a lesson here to be learned for the public debate on this issue.”

Says IFLA Working Group co-chairman Ingrid Parent: “IFLA is pleased to announce the joint declaration on open access with IPA. This statement shows that both our associations share the important objective of providing the broadest possible access to information. IFLA and IPA believe publishers and librarians have a lot to gain by supporting innovation, experimentation and pilot projects in developing open access to scholarly publications.”

Notes for Editors:
The full text of the statement is available here.

More about IPA:
The International Publishers Association (IPA) is an international industry federation representing all aspects of book and journal publishing. Established in 1896, IPA’s mission is to promote and protect publishing and to raise awareness for publishing as a force for economic, cultural and political development. Around the world IPA actively fights against censorship and promotes copyright, literacy and freedom to publish.

More about IFLA:
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. IFLA promotes the principles of freedom of access to information, ideas and works of imagination and freedom of expression. The delivery of high quality and equitable library and information services helps guarantee that access and improve the social, educational, cultural, democratic and economic well-being of those communities and organizations libraries serve. IFLA has 1600 Members in approximately 150 countries around the world.

In practice, development doesn’t stop. Recognise this and deal with it.

“The coolest thing…” The biggest risk is that premature proscription prevents the coolest thing.

Is this a problem? Only if the system is considered as a whole. Decompose system into independent components that are tractable.

- Neil Jefferies, “Persistent IT Architectures: Building Digital Archives That Last” from the Digital Repositories Workshop: Tools and Infrastructure,23 April 2009.

Several popular browsers have a built in search box next to the address box which can be used to quick-search against specific search engines or sites. We recently allowed UFDC to be added as a search engine choice in your browser. First, however, you will need to follow the steps below:

1. Go to the UFDC main home page.
2. Locate the small browser search box in the upper right hand corner of the browser (to the right of the page URL box). There is a drop down menu which exposes several search tool options.
3. After clicking the drop down, Select “Add UFDC Search”

After doing that, you can always search UFDC directly from your browser’s search box (if the browser supports this).

[This post was written by Mark Sullivan for the help page on the UFDC Browser Search Extension.]

The Documents Department of the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida is a Regional Federal Documents Depository serving Florida and the Caribbean. In the digital era, the idea of access to “networked information” seems fairly standard and it seems tied to the technological delivery system. That’s far from the truth though because the concept of shared, accessible, connected information has been supported by programs like the Federal Document Library Program for so much longer.

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) was established by Congress to ensure that the American public has access to its Government’s information. Since 1813, depository libraries have safeguarded the public’s right to know by collecting, organizing, maintaining, preserving, and assisting users with information from the Federal Government. The FDLP provides Government information at no cost to designated depository libraries throughout the country and territories. These depository libraries, in turn, provide local, no-fee access to Government information in an impartial environment with professional assistance.

As institutions committed to equity of access and dedicated to free and unrestricted public use, the nation’s nearly 1,250 depository libraries serve as one of the vital links between “We the people” and our Government. Anyone can visit Federal depository libraries and use the Federal depository collections which are filled with information on careers, business opportunities, consumer information, health and nutrition, legal and regulatory information, demographics, and numerous other subjects. (From: FDLP)

This is an incredible amount of work–distributing, organizing, and coordinating service from 1,250 libraries for the public to access print and now digital materials. And, FDLP has been been doing it since “electric” was new.

Supporting digital collections–designing landing and help pages, connecting paths, creating records and links, refining interfaces for easy comprehension, answering questions, ensuring backups are in place and correctly implemented–is a ton of work. Doing it in paper, when horses were the transport method, managing the changes in technologies and needs, and continuing to provide service and scaling up over decade upon decade is very near to inconceivably amazing.

FDLP’s scaled structure has “Selective Depositories” and “Regional Depositories”. The Selectives “select” the materials most useful to the citizens of their community and are required to make the publications available to the public. The Regionals receive all of the federal documents distributed through FDLP. UF is the Regional Depository of federal documents for Florida and the Caribbean. Thus UF is connected to partners in the Caribbean through FDLP and through the Digital Library of the Caribbean, another shared preservation and access collaborative and one that traces its roots all the way back to paper and on through “mobile microfilming units” with microfilm cameras on barges and has now added digital as the newest of the new technologies.

The entire concept of information distributed, organized, accessible, and supported even with so many of the technological advantages today isn’t easy. While it’s easy enough to put stuff online where it is technically possible for someone to get to it, to really make it connected, organized, accessible, and preserved/guaranteed in the manner necessary for it to be truly usable isn’t easy. Doing it well even without the technological supports is inspiring.

I haven’t had quite as much exciting news to share lately because the Digital Library Center has been focusing any free time–aside from keeping up with current projects–on trying to load some old files for the most recent segment of a multi-phased grant. The older files are from 1998-2004 and were included in the earlier grant phases, and were microfilmed instead of being digitized. The microfilm was later digitized, but the color pages still had to be scanned and so now we’re re-combining the grayscale and color pages, processing the images, adding bibliographic metadata, and loading and archiving the files. The process is slow going and often unexpected problems or just confusing oddities come up that require more time than these already time-consuming files require. While this sort of work isn’t as fast, easy, or fun as the rest of what we do, it’s still worth the extra effort to restore color to rare, colorful books and to enable access online and instead of on a microfilm reader.

It’s always wonderful to know that researchers are using the UF Digital Collections (UFDC) in their research, and it’s particularly nice to see how the UFDC can become part of and can facilitate research. Most recently, an image from UFDC appeared in Stowe: in Her Own Time, edited by Susan Belasco, which was recently published by the University of Iowa Press. The image from UFDC is from the September 1869 issue of Fun Magazine and it provides an illustration for page 183 of Stowe: in Her Own Time, in the section “Rose Terry Cooke, [Stowe and the Lady Byron Controversy, 1869-1870].

UFDC regularly receives inquiries requesting permissions to use images in research and popular publications. If you’re one of the authors or researchers already using UFDC, please let us know!

Applications are invited for participation in a new series of advanced text encoding seminars, sponsored by the Brown University Women Writers Project with generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

These seminars assume a basic familiarity with TEI, and provide an opportunity to explore specific encoding topics in more detail, in a collaborative workshop setting. Each seminar will focus on one of two topics:

1. Manuscript encoding: focusing on the detailed challenges of encoding manuscript materials, including editorial, transcriptional, and interpretive issues and the methods of representing these in TEI markup.

2. Contextual information: focusing on TEI methods for formalizing and representing information about context: named entities such as people and places, thematic analysis and keywords, text classification, glossaries and annotations.

These seminars are intended to provide a more in-depth look at specific encoding problems and topics for people who are already involved in a text encoding project or are in the process of planning one. Each event will include a mix of presentations, discussion, case studies using participants’ projects, hands-on practice, and individual consultation. The seminars will be strongly project-based:
participants will present their projects to the group, discuss specific challenges and encoding strategies, develop encoding specifications and documentation, and create encoded sample documents and templates. We encourage project teams and collaborative groups to apply, although individuals are also welcome. A basic knowledge of the TEI Guidelines and some prior experience with text encoding (e.g. an introductory workshop, job experience, etc.) will be assumed.

Travel funding is available of up to $500 per participant.

Application deadlines are below. For information on how to apply, and for more detailed information on each workshop, please visit http://www.wwp.brown.edu/encoding/seminars.

The workshop schedule is as follows:

University of California, Santa Barbara
Hosted by the English Broadside Ballad Archive and the Transliteracies Project September 14-16, 2009 This workshop will focus on the encoding of contextual information.
Application deadline: June 15, 2009
Applicants will be notified by June 30.

University of Maryland, College Park
Hosted by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities January 20-22, 2010 This workshop will focus on the encoding of manuscript materials.
Application deadline: August 1, 2009
Applicants will be notified by September 1.

Brown University
Hosted by the Center for Digital Scholarship April 8-10, 2010 This workshop will focus on the encoding of contextual information.
Application deadline: November 1, 2009
Applicants will be notified by December 1.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Hosted by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities July 2010 (precise date and deadlines TBA) This workshop will focus on the encoding of manuscript materials.

University at Buffalo
Hosted by the Digital Humanities Initiative at Buffalo October 2010 (precise date and deadlines TBA) This workshop will focus on the encoding of manuscript materials.

University of Maryland
January 2011 (precise date and deadlines TBA) This workshop will focus on the encoding of contextual information.

Victoria University of Wellington has announced the establishment of a targeted PhD scholarship in the broad area of digital preservation:

Future Memory at Risk: Digital Preservation and Cultural Heritage

The creation of a national digital memory poses fundamental challenges for cultural heritage institutions. Our libraries, archives and museums are searching for new ways to demonstrate their relevance in the digital world, but they are uncertain of the boundaries of their responsibilities which were established in a pre-digital age. Our
future access to a trustworthy and meaningful national memory requires these institutions to identify, preserve and make accessible significant digital artefacts of society and also to capture the relationships of these artefacts to the contexts within which they were created and curated. People, institutions, places, events, cultural artefacts and resources are all important constituents.

This project’s purpose is to investigate the varying responsibilities, as well as the potential contextual frameworks that govern this community’s diverse constituents. Outcomes will include relevant strategies for a collaborative digital preservation programme to provide the foundation for our digital national memory.

The deadline for applications is 15 May, 2009. Further information is available at http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/admisenrol/payments/scholarships/stratresschol.aspx

Queries about the research topic should be addressed to:
Dr Gillian Oliver
School of information Management
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600 Wellington
New Zealand
Email: Gillian.Oliver@vuw.ac.nz