Digital Library Center Blog | UF

The following is a text-only press release from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). An HTML version of this release with links can be viewed on the agency’s Web site at
http://www.imls.gov/news/2010/030210.shtm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 2, 2010

IMLS Press Contacts
202-653-4632

Jeannine Mjoseth, jmjoseth@imls.gov
Mamie Bittner, mbittner@imls.gov

IMLS and SGS Issue Report on the Preservation of World Cultural Heritage

Washington, DC-The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Salzburg Global Seminar announce release of the report, “Connecting to the World’s Collections: Making the Case for Conservation and Preservation of Our Cultural Heritage” based on a seminar held in Salzburg, Austria, October 28-November 1, 2009. The seminar, part of the IMLS’s multi-year initiative on collections care, Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action, explored global themes related to conservation and preservation, including international needs, issues, perspectives, and accomplishments.

The report includes practical recommendations to ensure optimal
collections conservation worldwide and the Salzburg Declaration on the Conservation and Preservation of Cultural, which was passed by 60 participants hailing from 32 countries. The session combined presentations by leading experts in conservation and preservation throughout the world with small working groups tasked to make recommendations for future action in key areas, including emergency preparedness, education and training, public awareness, new preservation approaches, and assessment and planning. To access these resources, click here: http://www.salzburgglobal.org/2009/News.cfm?IDMedia=52858.

“Connecting to the World’s Collections: Making the Case for Conservation and Preservation of Our Cultural Heritage” is available in PDF format at www.imls.gov/pdf/SGS_Report.pdf. A limited number of printed copies can be requested by e-mailing imlsinfo@imls.gov.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. To learn more about the Institute, please visit www.imls.gov.

About the Salzburg Global Seminar
The Salzburg Global Seminar is an independent, non-governmental
organization with its headquarters at the magnificent Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria. For 62 years, the Seminar has brought together leaders, scholars, practitioners, and students from the fields of politics, economics, law, media, culture and the arts to address issues of global concern. Its faculty, fellows, and staff come from diverse regions, backgrounds, and professional expertise. To learn more about the Seminar, please visit www.salzburgglobal.org

Press Release from FIU: Digital Library of the Caribbean seeks donations to support damaged libraries and archives in Haiti

February 8th, 2010

MIAMI – The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), an international collaboration of educational, research, governmental and non-governmental institutions that provides access to electronic collections about the Caribbean, is seeking donations and technical assistance for the recovery and protection of Haiti’s libraries and their valuable historical, governmental and cultural resources.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean has initiated the Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative, the goal of which is to help the country’s three largest heritage libraries and the National Archives, all of which were damaged in the Jan. 12 earthquake. While the main structures remain standing, one library must be evacuated and most likely demolished and the others suffered significant damage, leaving their collections extremely vulnerable. As a result, significant resources will be needed to protect the already brittle, rare, books and documents, now left in piles and covered with debris.

Bibliothèque haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit (also known as San Martial).
Courtesy of Dominique Franck Simon, director of the Alumni Association for San Martial College.

The damaged institutions have indicated they need gloves, masks, archival boxes and temporary staff to assist in the clean-up. Later, they will need to replace broken shelving, repair or replace damaged electronic equipment and provide more advanced restoration for many of the rarest books and documents.

Laura Probst, dean of FIU Libraries and a dLOC executive committee member, said protecting the historical documents is crucial in the earthquake’s aftermath.

“The collections in these archives represent the collective memory of the Haitian people, their culture, and Haiti’s role in the history of the western hemisphere and the world,” Probst said. “With this initiative we seek to preserve these invaluable resources for Haiti’s future, and for our own.”

FIU has a longstanding partnership with Haiti’s libraries and the National Archives through the Digital Library of the Caribbean and is one of the founding partners and administrators of dLOC, along with the University of Florida and the University of the Virgin Islands.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean’s operations are run out of FIU. Brooke Wooldridge, coordinator of dLOC at FIU, will be traveling to Haiti this week to assist the libraries and archives in documenting their needs and planning for the next phases of their recovery.

The Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative at first will channel resources to four institutions in Port-au-Prince:

• Archives Nationales d’Haïti houses both civil and state records, including births, marriage and death certificates, documentation of social works, civil governance and records of the Office of the President and most government ministries.
• Bibliothèque haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit was founded in 1873 by the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. The library holds resources documenting the history of Haiti, French colonization, slavery and emancipation, and 20^th Century records, as well as newspapers and periodicals.
• Bibliothèque haïtienne des Frères de l’Instruction Chrétienne was founded in 1912 by the Christian Brothers.  It served as depository-library for Haitian imprints and holds titles not even available in the National Library.  It also holds one of the most significant collections of Haitian newspapers.
• Bibliothèque National d’Haïti was established in 1940 and also serves as a public library providing resources, study space and research support.  It has a small but significant collection of rare books, manuscripts and newspapers.

For more information or to contribute to the Protecting Haitian Patrimony Initiative, please visit http://www.dloc.com or call dLOC at 305-348-3008.

Media Contact: Madeline Baró at 305-348-2234.

-FIU-

About the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC):
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is an international collaboration of educational, research, governmental and non-governmental institutions that provides access to electronic collections about the Caribbean. It includes the Archives Nationales d’Haïti, Biblioteca Nacional Aruba, Bibliothèque haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit, Bibliothèque Nationale d’Haïti, Belize National Library Service and Information System, Caribbean Community, Caribbean Studies Association, The College of The Bahamas, the Fundaciòn Global Desarollo y Democracia, the National Library of Jamaica, Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela, the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network, Florida International University, the University of the Virgin Islands, the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida and the University of Florida.

About FIU:
Florida International University was founded in 1965 and is Miami’s only public research university. With a student body of more than 38,000, its 17 colleges and schools offer more than 200 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations and law. More than 100,000 FIU alumni live and work in South Florida. FIU has been classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a “High Research Activity University”. In August 2009, FIU welcomed the inaugural class of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu

News Release:

The Center for Research Libraries, an international consortium of university, college and independent research libraries, has released the findings of its preservation audit, in consultation with its Certification Advisory Panel (CAP), certifying Portico as a trustworthy digital repository. The concise report, available at CRL’s website, specifies criteria from TRAC (Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist) that warrant further vigilance and identifies some additional concerns of CRL member institutions. Portico has agreed to address the issues identified by the panel and to make certain disclosures to CRL periodically, to ensure continued certification. CRL’s report marks the first public disclosure of a digital certification review conducted by an independent entity.

News Release: Flagler receives prestigious ‘Save America’s Treasures’ grant (December 17, 2009)

St. Augustine, Fla. — Flagler College recently received a prestigious grant to help preserve drawings from the architects of the treasured National Historic Landmark Hotel Ponce de Leon.

Flagler College President William T. Abare Jr., Ed.D., announced receipt of the prestigious “Save America’s Treasures” (SAT) grant administered through the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Saving St. Augustine’s Architectural Treasures project, a partnership with the University of Florida Libraries, will conserve and digitally preserve an irreplaceable collection of the earliest architectural drawings of John Carrère (1858-1911) and Thomas Hastings (1860-1929), the designers of Henry Flagler’s famed Hotel Ponce de Leon.

Carrère and Hastings were two of the most significant American architects of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Their firm designed more than 600 buildings, including the New York Public Library (1902-11) and the House and Senate office buildings in Washington, D.C. (1908-09). According to Charles D. Warren, co-author of “Carrère & Hastings Architects,” they were “innovators in both technology and aesthetics.”

Regrettably, as Janet Parks, Curator of Drawings & Archives, Columbia University, said: “Most of the archive of [their] office was destroyed in the 1920’s.” The St. Augustine collection offers significant potential to yield unique information with enduring value.

Comprised of 267 original, fragile drawings on cloth, silk and paper, as well as blueprints and copies, the collection is the largest known archives documenting the firm’s earliest work. Among these fragile drawings are the blueprints for their first commission, the Hotel Ponce de Leon, which launched their careers.

This is Flagler College’s second largest award at $49,562 and was one of only five conservation projects funded nationwide. The funds will assist with the preservation of these recently rediscovered records and make them accessible to researchers.

Additional conservation projects include Friendly Association Papers, Haverford, Penn.; Paley Center for Media, New York; “This I Believe” Collection, Medford, Mass.; and William Still Collection, Philadelphia.

Original news release on Flagler College’s website.

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

CHICAGO - Ann Russell is the winner of the second annual LBI George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Preservation Award. The Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) of ALCTS will present the award on Sunday, July 12th, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2009 American Library Association meeting in Chicago, IL.  The Cunha/Swartzburg Award is sponsored by LBI: The Library Binding Institute and includes a $1,250 grant and citation.

Established in 2007, the award honors the memory of George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg, early leaders in cooperative preservation programming and strong advocates for collaboration in the field of preservation. The award acknowledges and supports cooperative preservation projects and/or rewards individuals or groups that foster collaboration for preservation goals.

Ms. Russell, the recently retired Director of the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)  in Andover, MA, is being presented with this honor in recognition of her advocacy of and contributions to cooperative preservation during her  thirty year tenure in the field of library preservation.  Ann’s vision and leadership were the driving force behind NEDCC’s growth and influence in the field of preservation and conservation education and training.   From the creation of the School for Scanning, to work as a founding member of the Regional Alliance for Preservation, Ann has been at the heart of numerous national and international initiatives. NEDCC workshops have been offered all over the US, and in Cuba, South Africa and Russia. In addition to her comprehensive and effective impact on collaborative preservation over the past three decades,  Ann’s collaborative vision and outstanding leadership have strengthened preservation knowledge, practice, and awareness of tens of thousands of staff in libraries, archives, and museums around the world.

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is the national association for information providers who work in collections and technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, preservation, and continuing resources in digital and print formats.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.

The New York Times has an article “Digital Archivists, Now in Demand” and it’s great to see the field recognized and growing! I’m not sure where they got the salary information though, but perhaps the field pays more in some areas than others. Regardless of the financial compensation, working with issues of digital preservation and with the actual materials to-be-digitized is incredibly rewarding and there’s always more to learn.

Last week, UC Santa Barbara announced that they received a massive collection of aerial photography, valued at $14.3 Million, from Pacific Western Aerial Surveys of Santa Barbara. The collection includes more than 500,000 aerial images of 65 major metropolitan areas in the United States at the turn of the 21st Century (1999-2002). This is really amazing, especially so because UCSB Map & Imagery Library is home to the Alexandria Digital Library (ADL), so these materials will be preserved and accessible in the future.

I’ve been so busy the past year (or 14 months to be completely accurate) since joining UF’s Digital Library Center that it’s hard to see what all we’ve accomplished. The time has flown by with loads of wonderful work, and wonderful progress. I decided to review some of our documentation and to note a few of the highlights:

• More stuff! We hit the 1 million page mark in September 2007, and as of today we’re at 2.12 million with so many more to load!
• More types of stuff! Improvements to UFDC that include support for audio and video files, better multi-language support!
• Better ways to see the stuff! Optimized code for a faster UFDC, thumbnails for new all book images for faster quick-viewing, a better interface for usability!
• Better connections to find stuff! Optimizing UFDC for search engines so we’re crawled properly, created RSS feeds for the collections within UFDC, set up external accounts to share content and to connect users to UFDC (this blog, our Flickr account, our YouTube presence, Wikipedia links for items and entries on authors, books, people, and places related to the collections connecting context with actual items).
• More work to tell people about our stuff! Multiple presentations internally and at national and international conferences, interns, class tours, working with faculty, students, staff, and organizations to tell them about UFDC and to show them how it can help their work. We made exhibits, contributed digital materials to exhibits and other events and publications, and worked with the Libraries’ Public Information Officer to write and distribute press releases and other materials.
• More projects to keep going! Working with other groups at the UF Libraries for particular collections, including: Retrospective Dissertation Scanning; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Collection; Romanies Collection; Gainesville Bands; British Parliamentary Debates; Asia Collection; Women in Development; and many more, including further developing existing collections like the Florida Digital Newspaper Library and the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) with partners at the UF Libraries, at UF, and elsewhere. In addition to projects based on partners, we’ve also defined some projects chronologically with grant and time-based projects and this we’ve finished some grants, started new ones, applied for others, are preparing to apply for even others, and migrating some of our older projects from other technology to UFDC.

All of this and much more happened during the past year, but the Digital Library Center has been around since 1999 so it all grows from that ongoing work. That’s still the more recent history because the Digital Library Center grew out of the Preservation Department (founded in 1987, I think, based on the  “News from the Preservation Office” newsletters now online in UFDC). By 1993, the Preservation Department was already looking toward a comprehensive method for preservation, around the same time that the Mosaic browser was helping generate interest in the World Wide Web, heralding the promise of the digital revolution to come. There’s so much more to the history and the future of the Digital Library Center, but it’s too much to try to put in one blog post so it’ll have to wait for later.

“Staying Alive: Books through Print on Demand Technology,” an ALA/ALCTS/PARS Program  (Saturday, June 29, 2008, ACC Room 304a-b)

Presenters include:

• Brian from Bridgeport National Bindery
• Lynne Terhune, Wiley & Sons, Print on Demand
• Beth, New York Public Library, head of access, espresso book machine
• University Conservator from the University of Iowa, and that will be posted on the ALA wiki.

Brian from Bridgeport National Bindery
Brian began by speaking with the importance of the printing press in the history of inventions, and the lose-ability of books. With digitization, how print on demand works. Conceptually, take a collection of print files, order them, have them printed. Print file can come from many sources (author, digitization, existing electronic files), to get people interested make the lists from bookstores, catalogs, company websites, others. Printing and binding the books has to be done quickly, hours and not days. POD, customer normally doesn’t know where the book comes from.

Keys to successful POD:  rapid and high quality copies

Strengths of POD:

• Low inventories
• No/low production costs until order is placed
• Highly dynamic; allows rapid changes to content
• Allows nearly all titles to be ‘in print’

Weaknesses

• Production costs per title are more expensive
• Not as effective for instantaneous wide distribution (Harry Potter stock everywhere at once).
• Some limits in size, print quality, and binding options

What Option to Choose: Choose by cost effectiveness

Now librarians don’t need to buy a rare book when finding it. In his experience with Brittle and SlavCopy at the University of Kansas, would make multiple preservation photocopies of books using a list-serve to see who was interested.

Bridgeport doing microfilm digitization, also doing printing and binding of ETDs, and doing retrospective dissertation scanning, POD will get larger as more people want print from digital more easily.

Lynne, Wiley & Sons, Print on Demand
Lynne Terhune, spoke on Wiley’s Global POD/USR Program, and they want all items available through it. POD is not inventoried nor returnable, but USR materials are. Print on demand/Ultra-short Run Library to fill orders, materials all available, no more out of stock, order ships the same day just like it was on the shelf. Some books have increased sales when put online, cash flow has improved, working with authors, no obsolescence, green advantage. Sales are doubling or tripling by year for the items in POD, from 2004-2007 went from 5 to 50 thousand. Industry-costing means that POD is generally a penny and up per page.

Beth, New York Public Library, head of access, espresso book machine
Beth spoke on NYPL’s experiment printing books from OpenLibrary using an Espresso machine for patrons. On Demand is the company that sells the Espresso Machine. When the NYPL team visited On Demand, they knew they’d need faq sheets and they’d need to pre-select titles to keep from overwhelming the public. Ultimately, they offered 13 books, 11 from Open Content Alliance, and two contemporary books were from authors who allowed their books to be printed this way. They also limited by book length, and titles were limited because almost all needed some tweaking, and of course quality going in determines quality coming out. Before the machine is usable, need to make upfront decisions and digital files need editing. The 1.5 machine espresso version is around $150,000, but version 2.0 may be cheaper, however it’s still expensive to digitize and format materials for print.