Digital Library Center Blog | UF

At the end of April, arXiv posted an update on their sustainability initiative. This and all arXiv sustainability work should be mandatory reading for all who are working on large, collaborative digital initiatives. Recent updates include the 2011 projected budget and the full support documentation are also available.

The news item below is from the newslib list-serve. I’m posting it because it connects to the work being done at the Price Library of Judaica at the University of Florida to build a Newspaper Digital Collection from the Price Library of Judaica. One of the projects is to build the Price Library of Judaica Anniversary Collection, which represents the first stage of a project to digitize a unique and important collection of over 200 anniversary editions of Jewish newspapers held in the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica. These jubilee issues have never been catalogued by the Library and until now have remained ‘hidden’ from Library users.

News from the newslib list-serve:

The remarkable collection of JTA news reports from 1923 to the present is now available for free at archive.jta.org. Formerly the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, now JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People, the organization is a not-for-profit media company similar to the Associated Press. The tag line is “Writing the first draft of Jewish history”. The archive of original reporting from around the world documents the Jewish experience of the 20th century, much of it not written about in the mainstream media.

There are more than 7,000 contemporaneous articles reported from Europe between 1937-1945 that document the Holocaust on a daily basis, at least that many documenting the experience of Russian Jews throughout entire reign of Communism, coverage of life in then-Palestine before the new state was inaugurated in 1948, and much more.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/05/04/3087568/jta-launches-online-archive-containing-quarter-million-articles

Cool YouTube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB5I5wiL41A&feature=youtu.be

On Alan Liu’s website, he provides an overview of RoSE, a research-oriented social environment:

Created as an outcome of the Transliteracies Project, RoSE is a Web-based knowledge-exploration system that fuses a social-computing model to humanities bibliographical resources to allow users to explore the present and past of the human record as one “social network.” Stocked with initial information data-mined from YAGO and Project Gutenberg (with plans for data-mining the SNAC Project), RoSE provides profile pages about persons and documents, keywords and other data, and visualizations that help users see the relationships between people and documents. Uniquely, it also allows users (humanities students, scholars, and research groups) to add “thickly described” metadata on top of standard bibliographical data. This facilitates a social-network-like sense of active, dynamic interrelation with the objects of research. (cite)

This is a very exciting project because it promises to fuse archival and current researcher networks for tracking and studying relations between authors and documents. A such, it will allow users to explore and study the lives and social networks shared by and through both documents and authors. RoSE currently requires a login, so I’ll be anxiously awaiting its opening for general access and play.

E-SCIENCE LIBRARIAN
The Brown University Library invites applications for the newly-established position of E-Science Librarian. As the Library’s primary liaison for scientific data management, the E-Science Librarian plays a central role in developing library services and guidelines to support scientific research. Together with other Scholarly Resources Librarians, the Center for Digital Scholarship and relevant library and campus partners, the E-Science Librarian will work to increase the Library’s ability to collect and provide access to scientific data, and will act as a resource for students and faculty grappling with issues of data curation, digital methods for scientific research, and emerging digital resources. The E-Science Librarian will contribute to the development of data management plans for funded projects, and will assist in data extraction, reporting, and monitoring compliance with established data management protocols. S/he will contribute to the work of the Brown Digital Repository by helping to develop the requirements and work flows necessary to support research at Brown; by advising teaching faculty on the management of data and providing technical support for use of analytical tools; and in serving as an agent between researchers and the Library’s repository.

The successful candidate will maintain a strong level of competence in scholarly communications issues such as copyright, open access, repositories, data curation, and licensing of online resources. Similarly, the candidate will also maintain competence with tools and methodologies for computationally centered, data-driven research (data mining, visualization, etc.). S/he will also use his/her knowledge of available print and electronic resources to build appropriate collections and to advocate for the fields to which he/she is assigned. To fulfill these responsibilities successfully, the E-Sciences Librarian will be someone with a strong academic background in the sciences and have significant hands-on experience with relevant technologies and applications.

Qualifications:

• Advanced degree in physical or life sciences, data curation, or related disciplines
• 3-5 years of experience working in the field.
• An understanding of the research process as demonstrated by academic or work experience.
• Demonstrated knowledge of issues and technical challenges related to data management/curation, including format migration, preservation, metadata, data retrieval and use issues.
• Familiarity with one or more current scientific data and metadata conventions.
• Experience with one of the commonly used repository platforms (Fedora used locally).
• The ability to acquire new technological skills and resolve problems in a resourceful and timely manner.
• Demonstrated capacity to work effectively and collegially with staff at all levels as well as with faculty and students.
• Evidence of the ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing; strong analytical and organizational skills; ability to manage time and multiple projects in a complex, changing environment with a positive, flexible, creative and innovative attitude.
• Grant writing experience and familiarity with federal funding requirements.

Preferred:

• Experience working with relational databases and XML
• Two to three years relevant data management experience in academic or corporate setting

To apply for this position (JOB#B01291), please visit Brown’s Online Employment website (https://careers.brown.edu), complete an application online, attach documents, and submit for immediate consideration. Documents should include cover letter, resume, and the names and e-mail addresses of three references. Review of applications will continue until the position is filled; applications received by April 18, 2011 will receive first consideration. Brown University is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Employer.

?The first version of the Archives Portal Europe is now online: www.archivesportaleurope.eu

Archives Portal Europe allows users to search across the:

• the holdings of 47 institutions
• 7.794.952 descriptive units
• 725.406 digital archival objects

The site is still in beta, but it already looks great and more great things are sure to come based on the site’s excellent documentation.

The Council on Library and Information Resources’ Digital Library Federation program and centerNet are delighted to announce today their formal alliance. Established in 1995, the Digital Library Federation is a community of library practitioners engaged and committed to building and sustaining digital libraries through collaborative effort and establishing best practices. The DLF community includes project managers, code developers, and digital curators.

The affiliation will focus on areas where digital libraries and digital humanities converge and need further exploration and understanding of each community’s roles and responsibilities. Areas of likely collaboration include the following:

• Data Curation–examining options for the preservation of digital scholarship objects and workflows, and digital products of research and instruction;
• Cyberinfrastructure–exploring interoperability, data mining, shared infrastructure, and linked open data;
• Internationalization–sharing work with international networks to increase awareness and cooperation; improving communities’ awareness of and influence on international initiatives;
• Scaling up and scaling down–working with Google books, HATHI Trust, and the Digital Public Library of America to explore the meaning of aggregating data, and the new types of research questions that can be asked using huge digital libraries; also examining how to leverage smaller scoped work, and understanding the unique preservation challenges this scholarship presents;
• Career paths–highlighting career opportunities in fields of digital humanities and digital libraries to better understand changing professional roles;
• Publication and distribution—exploring how we share research efforts to better inform practice.

News Release: Digital Library Federation Launches New Web Site

March 7, 2011—The Digital Library Federation (DLF), a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), today launched its new Web site at http://www.diglib.org.

The site provides a dedicated space for the DLF community, while also serving as a resource and communication hub around important ideas and trends developing in the broader digital library community.

“The new DLF site will facilitate conversations, raise awareness, and provide a space for collaboration,” said DLF Program Director Rachel Frick. “It is where you learn not only what is being done, but also how to actively contribute to the effort. The site is a dynamic resource, and we welcome input, ideas, and suggestions for content.”

“This is an exciting step in expanding communication between DLF and the broader digital library community,” said CLIR President Chuck Henry. “Engaging this community will be essential as we explore models of collaboration that increase efficiency while also enhancing the infrastructure and services for scholarship and teaching.”

News posting from here.

Berkman Center Announces Digital Public Library Planning Initiative
December 13, 2010 – The Berkman Center for Internet and Society today announced that it will host a research and planning initiative for a “Digital Public Library of America.” With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Berkman will convene a large and diverse group of stakeholders in a planning program to define the scope, architecture, costs and administration for a proposed Digital Public Library of America.

“We’re grateful to Berkman for coordinating this historic effort to create a Digital Public Library of America and to fulfill the vision of an open, distributed network of comprehensive online resources that draws on the nation’s living heritage to educate, inform and empower everyone in this and future generations,” said Doron Weber, Vice President at the Sloan Foundation. “The Berkman Center’s impressive depth of research on the Internet makes it an ideal leader for the planning program. We hope to emerge with a concrete workplan and a governance structure that represents the consensus of the country’s libraries, universities, archives and museums for moving forward together with a shared vision.”

Planning activities will be guided by a Steering Committee of library and foundation leaders, which promises to announce a full slate of activities in early 2011.  The Committee plans to bring together representatives from the educational community, public and research libraries, cultural organizations, state and local government, publishers, authors, and private industry in a series of meetings and workshops to examine strategies for improving public access to comprehensive online resources.

One meeting is already in the works: David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States of America, has offered to host a plenary meeting that will assemble stakeholders in early summer 2011.  Ferriero said, “It is exciting to contemplate a future where the cultural heritage of our country is available at your fingertips.  It is, therefore, important to bring together all interested parties to create a vision of that future.“ Three major federal cultural institutions — Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution — are already discussing a collaborative effort to build and make accessible a digital collection of materials from their collections.

In addition to the plenary meeting, an intensive slate of workshops will be held, running in five parallel tracks — legal, content, technical, financial and governance — to build consensus for next steps in each area.

Steering Committee members include:

Paul Courant, Harold T. Shapiro Professor of Public Policy and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan
Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library
Charles Henry, President of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)
Brewster Kahle, Founder of the Internet Archive
Michael A. Keller, Ida M. Green University Librarian, Director of Academic Information Resources at Stanford University
Carl Malamud, President, Public.Resource.Org
Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress
Maura Marx, Berkman Center Fellow and Executive Director, Knowledge Commons
Jerome McGann, John Stewart Bryan University Professor at the University of Virginia
Donald Waters, Program Officer for Scholarly Communications and Information Technology at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Doron Weber, Vice President, Programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
John Palfrey, Faculty Co-Director at the Berkman Center; Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean of Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, will lead the Steering Committee.

Palfrey commented, “There is great promise in the digital future for libraries, but we need to work in coordinated fashion across many institutions to shape it in a way that is in the public interest. We are excited about creating a big tent in which many leaders can work together to create the design for a Digital Public Library of America.”

About the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Founded in 1997, through a generous gift from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, the Center is home to an ever-growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society. More information can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.

About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants for research and education in science, technology and economic performance. A major goal of Sloan’s program in digital information technology and the dissemination of knowledge is to foster public access to information and knowledge for the benefit of all. More information can be found at http://sloan.org

Contact
Amar Ashar
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu

JISC’s Understanding the Costs of Digitisation (full report and briefing paper) offers an excellent summary of some of the core difficulties facing budgeting for digitization projects.

For those not already mired in digitization project operations, the graphed cost estimates for different projects on pages 44-47 are perhaps the best place to begin. In 3 of the 5 examples, overhead amounted to twice of the actual digitization costs.

To ensure we don’t suffer similar overages, we develop prototypes to estimate costs and associated requirements for projects. In doing so, we still encounter overhead – pushing technology is equal parts exciting and frustrating – but the overhead is manageable.

While the projects themselves have lower overhead through planning, there’s still a good deal of overhead needed to report on and explain project costs because digital projects aren’t comparable, unless designed specifically to be.

Digitisation projects are distinct, and it is not possible to provide a formula (or even approximate figures) to cost a project. [...] Attempting to compare these two projects quantitatively is unhelpful – the numbers could be generated, but without full consideration of the context, they would be meaningless. (page 7)

This document does not contain a formula into which you can input details of your collection and output the cost of the project – there is no standard digitisation project. (page 8 )

It’s nice to see the JISC Report explain what digital folks do on a regular basis – that digital projects are difficult to cost, and that the costs aren’t fungible. It’s also delightfully wonderful that it includes, “Plan the service, not just the project” (briefing paper, page 2). Service should be seen as a core component for any technical work. However in a strictly project-production model, it’s overhead and loss – something to be reduced and prevented. I don’t think anyone disagrees with the importance of service, but it does further complicate the cost model by mixing more discrete (at least on a single project basis) production costs with less quantifiable service costs.

The Pennsylvania State University Libraries seeks a Digital Collections Curator to play a key role in the further development of our electronic content stewardship and publishing programs. These programs will be developed through a strategic and dynamic partnership between the Penn State Libraries and Information Technology Services (ITS). The Digital Collections Curator will lead the Libraries’ efforts to develop and plan user focused services that enable the effective creation, sharing, discovery, and use of digital content in support of research, teaching and learning. The Digital Collections Curator collaborates extensively with colleagues throughout the Libraries and ITS to achieve his or her objectives. The Curator will report to the Assistant Dean for Scholarly Communications who also oversees Digitization and Preservation, Scholarly Communications Services, and the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing. This is a tenure track appointment.

Responsibilities will include:

• Lead development of an inclusive, user-focused agenda for digital scholarly content stewardship.
• Investigate, recommend, and develop plans for user-focused and repository- based services to effectively manage the sustainable creation, collection and distribution of high-value digital scholarly content.
• Manage a broad set of existing digital collections and repository content, including: reformatted materials (images, books, newspapers, manuscripts, etc), publication related content (journals, conference proceedings, monographs, hybrid formats, post & pre-prints, working papers, etc), as well as the potential and emerging needs for data collections in a wide array of disciplines.
• Research and develop in-depth knowledge of new and emerging technologies, relevant national standards, and best practices, in order to assess and promote their integration into local operations as appropriate.
• Serve on standing working groups and committees related to web functionality and digital content creation and management.
• Communicate effectively with internal stakeholders in the areas of collections & public services, technical services, information technologies, and scholarly communications.
• Promote and report on Penn State’s activities through conference and workshop presentations, written publications
• Represent Penn State in relevant professional contexts and engage with national and consortial peers to identify and/or carry out mutually beneficial partnerships.

Requirements:

• Master’s degree in library and/or information science, or advanced degree in relevant academic field.
• Should have 3 years work related to the creation, management, and provision of electronic data resources in a higher education environment.
• Should demonstrate strong organizational and/or process management abilities.
• Should demonstrate familiarity with developing trends in higher education information management, including, but not limited to: Cyberinfrastructure development, data curation and preservation, electronic publishing, digital scholarship and non-traditional scholarly communications
• Ability to lead and work collaboratively in an evolving and decentralized environment.
• Commitment to user focused design, development, and service provision.
• Communication skills that will support work with both technology experts and novices.
• Facility with common standards and practices in contemporary digital library management. Experience with XSLT, Perl or other scripting languages, and/or experience with major repository platforms is desirable.

Environment:

As an outcome of joint strategic planning, the Penn State Libraries and Information Technology Services (ITS) are collaborating in the development of this Content Stewardship program to meet extant and emerging digital content and asset management needs in areas such as digital library collections, scholarly communications, electronic record archiving, and e-science/e-research. Building on existing services and infrastructure, this program will put in place a cohesive and extensible suite of data access, management, and preservation services that will support the creation and distribution of digital scholarship. Additionally, the Penn State Press and the Libraries jointly operate the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing to explore and incubate publishing services that support the Penn State community.

Penn State, a land-grant institution, is a member of the CIC (Big 10) academic consortium. The Penn State University Libraries currently rank 8th in North America among private and public research universities, based on Association for Research Libraries Investment Index. The Libraries hold membership in ARL, OCLC, CRL and the Digital Library Federation. Collections exceed 6.5 million volumes, including more than 68,000 current serial subscriptions.

The University Libraries are located at University Park and 23 other campuses throughout Pennsylvania, with approximately 6,000 faculty and 42,000 students at University Park, and more than 82,000 students system wide. The University Park campus is set in the State College metropolitan area, a university town located in the heart of central Pennsylvania. State College offers a vibrant community with outstanding recreational facilities, a low crime rate, and excellent public schools. The campus is within a half-day drive to Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City and Pittsburgh. For more information, please visit http://www.libraries.psu.edu and http://www.cbicc.org/

Application Instructions:

Send a letter of application, resume, and the names and contact information of three references to Search Committee, The Pennsylvania State University, Box DCC-PSUA, 511 Paterno Library, University Park, PA 16802, via email to lhrsearches@psulias.psu.edu, or fax to 814-863-5592. Review of applications will begin March 2, 2009 and continue until the position is filled.

Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce.