The National Archives of Australia developed and maintain Vroom – Virtual Reading Room (http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/). Vrroom is like many systems in that it provides access to archival collection records and digitized materials. To those, Vrroom has added educational and contextual materials for a number of the items. Also, items are presented together in groups with more educational context for the group of items; thus, people can learn more about specific things/people/etc as well as the larger context for those items in relation to other items all in context together.

From this description, Vrroom may seem like many educational websites. It is, but it is also an excellent example of policy needs can dictate technology (and the opposite should never be true; technology should not dictate policy) to provide needed supports that enable access. As a website, Vrroom enables access in expected ways. As a cultural heritage website, Vrroom enables access by supporting cultural heritage protections specifically by blurring thumbnail images of people and providing a warning before showing the full image and text. The warning states: “Warning. Indigenous Australians are advised that this document includes images or names of people now deceased.” (example). Technologically, this is simple. While simple, it’s also very important because enabling access means more than simply putting materials online.

Enabling access means ensuring materials can be found (outreach, promotion, search engine optimization, etc) and that the materials are usable (usability studies, help documents, etc), as well as ensuring that the materials can be made sense of and used (contextual supports, educational guides, exhibits, cultural heritage supports, etc).  Vrroom is an excellent resource for archival research and teaching, as well as being an excellent example of how cultural heritage institutions support access and what supporting access really means.

Europeana has released their second whitepaper, Whitepaper No. 2: The Problem of the Yellow Milkmaid. The whitepaper begins with an excellent example, that of the yellow Milkmaid:

‘The Milkmaid’, one of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous pieces, depicts a scene of a woman quietly pouring milk into a bowl. During a survey the Rijksmuseum discovered that there were over 10,000 copies of the image on the internet—mostly poor, yellowish reproductions. As a result of all of these low-quality copies on the web, according to the Rijksmuseum, “people simply didn’t believe the postcards in our museum shop were showing the original painting. This was the trigger for us to put high-resolution images of the original work with open metadata on the web ourselves. Opening up our data is our best defence against the ‘yellow Milkmaid’.”

From the example comes the subtitle for the paper: “A Business Model Perspective on Open Metadata.” The problem, however, is far greater than a “business model perspective on open metadata” seems to suggest. If not truly present online (meaning accessible, connected, and information rich), cultural heritage institutions risk being erased in the deluge of information from other sources that make important concerns like authenticity and expertise seem less important in the face of sheer quantity.

The problem of the yellow milkmaid is an argument from a business perspective in terms of the core value propositions for cultural heritage institutions and their very reasons for existing. The problem of the yellow milkmaid is an excellent and memorable example of the need for cultural heritage institutions to engage with technologies in ways that support their core value propositions and their roles in society. The whitepaper as a whole is excellent and worth the read for its arguments on open data as well as for application to larger concerns.

Press Release:

For immediate release: August 4, 2010

For more information, contact:
Karla Strieb
Association of Research Libraries
202-296-2296
karla@arl.org

ARL Promotes Member Use of Large-Scale Digitization Principles

Washington DC— The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Board of Directors unanimously voted on July 26, 2010, to endorse a set of nine principles to guide vendor/publisher relations in large-scale digitization projects of special collections materials, recommended by its Transforming Special Collections in the Digital Age Working Group. The Board’s vote strongly encourages ARL member libraries to refrain from signing future agreements with publishers or vendors, either individually or through consortia, that do not adhere to the principles.

The ARL Board recognizes that research libraries are increasingly finding that large-scale digitization of special collections materials involves partnerships with commercial vendors and publishers, and that those partnerships should be governed by principles that protect special collections materials and promote the broadest possible access to digital versions of them.

Special collections often include valuable and unique materials, but also incur special responsibilities for their stewards. Digital access to special collections materials has become important in revealing hidden materials and promoting humanities research, and ARL member libraries often require appropriate collaborations and partnerships to implement large-scale digitization activities.

The nine principles address issues including implications of the distinctive character of special collections, the need for libraries to retain their own copies of the products of digitization projects, the importance of promoting broad access to digitized collections, and concerns regarding the collection of data about users of digitized collections.

“I am thrilled that the ARL Board has endorsed these principles, which encourage research libraries and archives to provide digital access to special collections while safeguarding institutional interests and promoting broad public access,” said Anne R. Kenney, Chair of the Working Group. “At Cornell, we plan to draw on the framework to improve many terms in our negotiations with vendors, including to shorten embargo periods on all our digitized collections to five years or less.”

To view these principles, please visit: http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/principles_large_scale_digitization.pdf

The report won’t be out until after the meeting this May, but Computer Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections should be exciting and timely reading for everyone involved in supporting cultural heritage collections.

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