Digitization 101

This announcement came to me in mid-September.  My apologies in not posting it sooner.  The event mentioned below is being held today (Oct. 20).

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The International Image Interoperability Framework community (http://iiif.io/) is pleased to announce the release of the second major version of its specifications intended to provide a shared layer for dynamic interactions with images and the structure of the collections and objects of which they are part. These APIs are used in production systems to enable cross-institutional integration of content, via mix and match of best of class front end applications and servers.

Thanks to Digitizationblog for pointing this out. The Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections has been made editable by anyone with an account on the site. As the site says:

Engage with your colleagues and help to build a stronger Framework by providing your comments on this website. Community participation in the framework includes providing feedback, annotations, resources, and discussion.

This move allows librarians, archivists, curators, and other information professionals to contribute to this valuable document. For more information contributing, go to How to Contribute on the web site.

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Technorati tags: Digitization, Standards

Gary McGath wrote a blog post on BiggTIFF early in July. For those who know nothing about BigTIFF, the post and the comments will be useful. And the post includes links to additional information.

What is BigIFF? It's a technical standard. Quoting McGath:

BigTIFF changes the TIFF format by using 64-bit offsets and otherwise keeping everything else as much the same as possible. This means it can describe really large images. It also means that software that handles TIFF can be modified to handle BigTIFF with relatively little programming effort.

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Technorati tags: Standards, Digital Image

Recently I had a digitization service bureau mention the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. to me. Among the member companies are organizations that we know are involved in digitization, e.g., Amazon, Google and Microsoft. One of the BISG's committees is the Digital Standards Committee. This committee's purpose is to "develop – with input from all relevant constituencies – industry-wide standards for the online discovery, browsing, search and distribution of books and related content in digital form."

This is another player in the realm of digitization that we need to pay attention to.

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Technorati tag: Standards

The SAA Metadata discussion list carried this announcement on July 3:

A draft standard for International Standard Collection Identifiers (ISCI) is under review by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It will establish a unique identifier for each archival collection and fond. The ISCI will provide a means for duplicate control with metasearch applications, and can be used with the standard collection description metadata element set (NISO Z39.91). You can access the draft at http://www.niso.org/pdfs/ISO_NP_27730ISCIandWD.pdf

The introduction to the draft states:

ISO TC46 has developed standard identifiers for a wide variety of entities. However, a standard identifier for collections and fonds has not been built. In the past there has not been a need for such an identifier, either, but the situation has changed. There is now a large number of collections and fonds and a broad range of organisations hosting them. These collections and fonds can be physical or electronic, partly physical and partly electronic, or virtual; they can be available either on-line in the Internet or off-line.

The need for identifying collections and fonds has emerged with introduction of metasearch engines, which do – or will – include collection descriptions as a means of helping the patrons to locate relevant information. An identifier is generally seen as one of the key metadata elements of collection description; while it is possible to use local identifiers, in an environment where global exchange of this kind of metadata is anticipated, usage of local identifiers is not a good option. Local collection or fond identifiers do not enable either efficient searching or duplicate detection.

The aim of this standard is to enable a system which requires neither a large – and expensive – international centre nor large national/ regional centres, even if tens or hundreds of thousands of collections and fonds are identified.

The working draft is 8 pages with the entire document being 16 pages in length. It already includes comments from some who have reviewed it. Additional comments are due by July 27, 2007 (and I assume due to the project leader named in the document).

Even if you are not interested in the details, you may want to take a look at this in order to see how a standard is proposed. Of course, if the standard is adopted, we may be learning more about it in the future!

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Technorati tags: Metadata, Standards

On July 3, the Digital-Preservation discussion list carried this press release. With DVDs being used more frequently, it is good to see these two groups addressing the problem knowing if a disc is of archival-grade quality. We all know that CDs and DVDs are more fragile than we'd like, so I hope the standard carries something about how long an archival-grade DVD will realistically last and under what conditions. THEN I hope manufacturers do a good job of communicating that information.

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OSTA and Ecma International Announce Issuance of Optical Disc Archival Test Standard Needed to Promote Archival-Grade Media

The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) and Ecma International announced yesterday the completion of their co-development work to issue an industry standard for optical media archive life testing that targets recordable and rewritable DVDs. This standard will enable the industry to offer reliable archival-grade optical discs to help end-users select the media life expectancy best suited to their application requirements. The new standard was approved by the Ecma General Assembly on June 28, 2007, culminating an effort initiated in June 2006 in Sapporo, Japan, when Ecma International's Technical Committee 31 agreed to finalize a draft standard developed by various industry participants working within OSTA.

The document has been assigned the number ECMA-379, and may be accessed at the Ecma website for immediate review. Following this milestone, the standard will be transferred to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC23 under an established "fast track procedure." The earliest anticipated ISO/IEC version is December 2007.

"We announced this collaboration a year ago. The rapid completion of this program can be attributed to the sense of urgency within the optical storage community," said David Bunzel, President of the Optical Storage Technology Association. "End users need reliable media for secure, removable, portable storage of their important documents. Industry wide implementation of this standard will greatly assist them in their purchase decisions."

"Ecma is very pleased to have facilitated this standard development designed to assist the market in clarifying differences in optical media quality," said Istvan Sebestyen, Ecma Secretary General. "The TC31 committee was formed in 1983 having its charter as the development of 'Optical Disk and Disk Cartridge' standards and has since been the preferred venue for this activity. Virtually all of the CD and DVD read only and recordable/rewritable standards have been developed in TC31. Its members are the primary players in optical technology development and therefore it was an ideal place for the development of this media archival life test."

Manufacturers sponsoring and participating in the development of this standard included Fujifilm, Hewlett-Packard, Imation, MAM-A, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Ricoh, Sony, Toshiba, and Verbatim. The committee received strong support from related industry organizations, including Japan's CDs21 Solutions and the Digital Content Association (DCAj). Significant expert technical contributions were made by the editing team that included Drs. Mitsuru Irie (Osaka Sangyo U) and Kunimaro Tanaka (Teikyo Heisei U) under programs sponsored by CDs21 and DCAj, respectively.

"We at CDs21 Solutions feel fortunate that we were able to take part in this effort, where we were able to contribute our resources to the Ecma document with OSTA," said Takao Ihashi, Chairman of the Steering Committee of CDs21 Solutions. "Media life expectancy was also a main project at CDs21, where many active members were those who brought recordable optical discs to market, and were determined to establish a standard for enhancing the value of optical media for all end users, and therefore the timing of our collaboration was perfect."

Fred Byers of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) had this to say: "As a long time proponent of this development and an early contributor to the document, I am very pleased with the outcome. Optical disc applications are increasingly oriented towards long-life storage of computer and A/V data and this standard will help ensure that tested media will meet expectations."

"I3A believes that archiving of digital images is an underestimated issue for the global imaging industry," said I3A's President Lisa Walker. "We are very supportive of this proposal for a joint OSTA-Ecma standard for optical disc archive testing, which fulfills a critical consumer need to identify archive quality media to store their precious memories for the long term."

Victor McCrary, member of the National Digital Strategy Advisory Board (NDSAB) for the Library of Congress and Business Executive for Science & Technology at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory states, "this effort is an excellent example of government, industry, and academia working together to address the need for archival standards for optical media. Preservation of 'born digital' media is of the utmost concern for many of the parties involved in the development of this standard. I commend all involved for taking this important step in taking seriously the emerging global issue of digital preservation as its affects end-users at every level."

Since its formation in Sept. 2005, OSTA's Optical Disc Archival Testing (ODAT) Committee has consisted of a multi-national group of industry experts sharing this common goal. The ODAT Committee includes members of global manufacturers and representatives of optical storage products, university and government.

About the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA)

The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) was incorporated as an international trade association in 1992 to promote the use of recordable optical technologies and products. The organization's membership includes optical product manufacturers and resellers from three continents, representing more than 85 percent of worldwide writable optical product shipments. They work to shape the future of the industry through regular meetings of DVD Compatibility, Commercial Optical Storage Applications (COSA), MPV, ODAT and UDF committees. Interested companies worldwide are invited to join the organization and participate in its programs by contacting an OSTA representative at (408) 253-3695, by fax at (408) 253-9938, or by addressing its Web site at http://www.osta.org.

About Ecma International

Since its inception in 1961, Ecma International (Ecma) has developed standards for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Consumer Electronics (CE). Ecma is a non-profit industry association of technology developers, vendors and users. Experts from industry and other organizations work together at Ecma to develop standards. Ecma submits its work for approval as ISO, IEC, ISO/IEC and ETSI standards and is a main practitioner of "fast tracking" of specifications through the standardisation process in International Standards Organisations (ISOs) such as the ISO and the IEC. Publications can be downloaded free of charge
from http://www.ecma-international.org/.

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Technorati tag: Standards