Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Press Release from ITHAKA:

ITHAKA is pleased to announce that Dr. Deanna Marcum has accepted the position of Managing Director, Ithaka S+R, effective January 1, 2012. Deanna will lead this growing not-for-profit service, which provides research and strategic consulting services that help transform scholarship and teaching.

Dr. Marcum brings a background of extraordinary accomplishment to her new role. She joins Ithaka S+R from the Library of Congress, where she was the Associate Librarian for Library Services. Previously, she served as the President of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the Dean of the Catholic University School of Library and Information Science. As a testament to her extraordinary leadership and distinguished career, the American Libraries Association (ALA) awarded her the Melvil Dewey Medal, its highest honor, this past June.

“I could not possibly be more excited that Deanna has agreed to join our team,” said Kevin Guthrie, president of ITHAKA, the organization of which Ithaka S+R is a part. “She is a giant in the field, one of the singular leaders in the library community. She has been an ITHAKA trustee since 2005, so she knows our organization well. Not only will she be a fantastic leader for Ithaka S+R, but she will also play an important role leading our overall organization.”

Dr. Marcum has provided invaluable leadership that has helped to encourage change during dynamic and challenging times. In 1997, she led the important process to merge the Council on Library Resources and the Commission on Preservation and Access to form CLIR.  While at CLIR, she formed a joint task force of libraries and publishers to develop effective ways for working together on a range of important issues. In collaboration with EDUCAUSE and Emory University, she developed the Frye Leadership Institute to help mid-career librarians and IT specialists broaden their understanding of higher education issues.

“As I retire from the Library of Congress, I want to remain engaged and devote more time to the issues I am passionate about: preservation, the future of information organizations, and higher education,” said Dr. Marcum. “Ithaka S+R provides the perfect opportunity for me to do this work and hopefully make a difference in these areas. I’ve watched the rapid development of ITHAKA as a board member and am excited about more direct involvement with the talented staff.”

About Ithaka S+R

Ithaka S+R is a research and consulting service that focuses on the transformation of scholarship and teaching in an online environment. Ithaka S+R pursues projects in five programmatic areas: Sustainability of Digital Resources, The Role of the Library, Practices & Attitudes in Scholarly Communications, Teaching & Learning with Technology, and Scholarly Publishing.

Ithaka S+R is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that also includes JSTOR and Portico.

I’ll be attending the Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention in early January, so I can’t make this, but it’s a great workshop program and highly recommended both for the content and the discussion with colleagues and peers working with the same concerns.

Call for Applications
We are very pleased that our colleagues at the University of Miami will host the five-day Digital Preservation Management workshop this January, in Coral Gables, Florida. The Application Form will be available on November 8th, 2011 at 1:00pm ET at http://www.regonline.com/dpmwmiami2012

Digital Preservation Management: Short-Term Solutions for Long-Term Problems
Location: Miami, Florida, USA
Dates: January 8-13, 2012
Tuition: USD $ 950.00 (includes daily lunch and one group dinner)

Who Should Attend?
The intended audience for the workshop series is managers at organizations of all kinds who are or will be responsible for managing digital content over time. The workshop begins on Sunday evening with an opening session, continues Monday -Thursday 9am – 5pm, and concludes on Friday at noon.

Additional information about the workshop structure, content, and instructors is available at:
http://dpworkshop.org/workshops/fiveday.html.

Instructors
Nancy McGovern is the lead instructor for the workshop and will be joined by topical instructors.

Application for Registration
Workshop applications are reviewed before a formal acceptance and registration for the workshop may occur – a two-step process. The application system will be available at 1pm ET on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 and will remain open until the workshop is full (24 participants). We have already had a very high level of interest in the workshop and encourage early application. Apply online at: http://www.regonline.com/dpmwmiami2012

Please Note: Applicants will be notified within five (5) business days if they are accepted to register for the January Miami, FL workshop. Until then, the applicant status will be ‘pending’. Persons accepted to register will be able to do so at the end of November when the registration and tuition payment system will be made available.

About the Workshop
The Digital Preservation Management Workshops, a series presented since 2003, incorporate community standards and exemplars of good practice to provide practical guidance for developing effective digital preservation programs. The workshops were initially developed at Cornell University beginning in 2003 under the direction of Anne Kenney and Nancy McGovern. Since 2006, McGovern has continued curricular development and directing the workshop from ICPSR at the University of Michigan. This has included development of Special Topic advanced workshops and a Train-the-Trainer program. Through 2010, the workshop series was developed with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

If you have questions, please contact us at: digital-preservation @ icpsr.umich.edu
Nancy Y McGovern
Director, Digital Preservation Management workshops
http://www.dpworkshop.org

From the IGDA Game Preservation SIG email list:

The IGDA Perspectives Newsletter is looking for content for its December issue Preservation.

We are looking for pieces generally 500-2,000 words, preferably with a short third person bio and images attached separately. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Highlights of game preservation projects.
• Game history.
• Postmortems of recent games that revisit classic game design.

Please send articles to Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Lameman (elizabeth.lameman@gmail.com) by Friday, November 18.

News on News from DigitalPreservation.gov:

CRL Report Describes Digital Newspaper Production
May 5, 2011 — Preserving News in the Digital Environment: Mapping the Newspaper Industry in Transition (PDF) was produced for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program by a team from the Center for Research Libraries.

This report provides a vivid glimpse inside the workplaces that produce what – not long ago – we would have called newspapers.  As digital news-gathering and production methods proliferate, and as digital avenues for distribution emerge, these workplaces are being transformed in profound ways, with electronic facsimiles and websites (and probably more) overtaking the paper format.

The report is an outgrowth of the Preserving Digital News meeting held at the Library in September 2009, and it features illustrative examples from four American newspapers: The Arizona Republic, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (since 2008, seattlepi.com), Wisconsin State Journal, and The Chicago Tribune. There is additional information pertaining to the work of The New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and the Associated Press.  Altogether, the report makes it clear that the transition to the digital environment is not a neat, throw-the-switch change.

The CRL team of researchers, writers and illustrators included Jessica Alverson, Kalev Leetaru, Victoria McCargar, Kayla Ondracek, Bernard Reilly, James Simon and Eileen Wagner. Their narrative takes us through three major stages in the newspaper workflow: sourcing (gathering news information), editing and production and distribution.  Each newspaper applies somewhat different practices in each stage, ranging from the formatting of the content, the types of metadata employed, and the methods applied to manage the content in the information technology systems that support the workflow.

Here are a few highlights:

• Most editorial systems are built around the traditional concept of a news article or story. Following longstanding newsroom practice, most text is maintained in the editorial system as part of a standard unit of content: it is a news item (for wire service reports) or a story, article or feature. (page 25)
• After the articles and other components of a newspaper print edition are assembled and tagged in the editorial system they are usually exported to a pagination system where the page layouts for the print edition and e-facsimile edition are created. It is in the pagination system that most of the content for these editions of a newspaper is brought together for the first time. (page 28)
• Once a locally produced news story is retired from the active or current pages of a newspaper’s website, it is often posted as the “archived” version or “version of record” in a separate part of the Web. Some newspapers outsource maintenance of these archived stories and features to archiving services like NewsBank, NewspaperArchives.com, and ProQuest. These services add value by formatting and indexing the stories and presenting them in searchable databases, which are normally hosted by the archiving service, but made to appear seamlessly connected to the newspaper site. (page 51)
• A computer-assisted analysis of the Chicago Tribune Web site yielded a granular picture of the rate or “velocity” of updates on news web sites . . . [examining] the number of page URLs against minutes of persistence for a two-day period.  The analysis showed that in general business, entertainment, and sports news tended to be updated most frequently (sometimes several times within the half hour), while features, opinion, travel, and blog content changed less frequently. Hence the difference between print and electronic versions of newspaper content will vary considerably by type of content. (pages 55-56)
• The newer model of the news Web, however, is exemplified by seattlepi.com, the Hearst Seattle Media’s “flagship site,” [which] focuses heavily on information of local interest, such as crime, regional politics and local sports teams.  But seattlepi.com is . . . fundamentally different from its now defunct predecessor, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper.  It features not only original staff reporting and breaking news, but blogs by staff and readers, links to other journalism and news web sites, community databases and photo galleries.  Through partnerships with other Seattle media (i.e., radio and television broadcasters), seattlepi.com also has access to video and audio produced by their local staff. (pages 52-53)

The UF Libraries are collaborating with Flagler College on a two-year project to conserve and digitize the earliest architectural drawings of John Carrère and Thomas Hastings, designers of the Hotel Ponce de Leon and the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Augustine, Florida.

All digitized materials will be openly available in the Carrère & Hastings Digital Collection, which is within the UF Digital Collections.

During the project, keep up with the work in-process by project team members working at UF in Special Collections, Conservation, and the Digital Library Center on the project blog here.

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