Digitization 101

In 2014, Delaware became "the first state to follow the latest suggestion from the Uniform Law Commission, a non-profit group that crafts model legislation and lobbies to enact it across all jurisdictions in the United States. Last month the ULC adopted a new legal standard, the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (UFADAA), which laid out what rights heirs should have over digital content belonging to the deceased..."

The National Conference of State Legislatures keeps track of statutes and citations at the state-level which relate to this. According to the NCSL web site:

Several states have enacted laws addressing access to email, social media accounts, microblogging or other website accounts, or certain electronically stored information, upon a person’s incapacity or death. Nevada law provides for the termination of decedents' social media accounts.

The information on the NCSL web site is up-to-date and includes information on legislative actions in 2016. If this is a topic of interest to you, then check out the site.

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.

Today, Henrik de Gyor spoke via Skype to my class that is studying digitization (Creating, Managing & Preserving Digital Assets).  One of the questions asked was about the skills digital asset management professional need and he responded by pointing us toward this blog post on the topic.  Later a student asked which coding language I thought he might learn and my response was XML.

There are other markup languages, like HTML, which means that learning one (like XML) will help a person learn others.  I think anyone who is working with web sites needs to understand markup languages. (A point that was proven later in the class, when one of the students led us in a short Drupal workshop.)

Henrik mentions the LAMP stack in his blog post, which includes Linux, Apache, MySQL, and a scripting language (e.g., PHP, Perl, or Python).  I know from conversations that organizations need people who understand MySQL as well as a scripting language.  I also learned from my student this afternoon that originally you needed to know LAMP in order to install Drupal, so these are indeed worth knowing...as are the other coding languages and technologies that Henrik mentions.

How do you learn these technologies?  Yes, you may be able to find a class to take.  For those that want to learn on their own (and can be motivated to do so), there are sites like Codecademy that can help.  No matter how you learn, be willing to learn through trial and error.  Honestly, you will learn more from your errors than from your successes.

Our conversation with Henrik covered many related topics in an hour, including metadata. Once we had ended the Skype session, I told the class my latest metadata story.

On Monday evening, I was walking to my car when my cell phone rang.  Imagine my surprise when the person on the other end said she was from NBC News!  She had been trying to contact me to ask in person to use a photo of mine on the evening news.  The photo taken at Florida Gulf Coast University, that carries a Creative Commons license, had already been used by the Atlantic Wire, which is how she found out.  But how did the Atlantic Wire find it?  Metadata.  (I'm sure of it!) [If you do not watch NCAA basketball, the you don't know that FGCU has unexpectedly advanced in a tournament and gained national attention.]

I must admit that this was not the first photo that has caught the attention of a company (NMAI, New Orleans, Lucille Ball's grave)  I have a good eye, a decent camera, and a drive to add metadata to my photos in Flickr.  In fact, when I'm looking for a photo to use, I turn to my Flickr account first because I know that I've done a relatively good job organizing and tagging my photos there.

Is metadata important?  Yes...vitally important to our digital libraries and our DAM (digital asset management) systems.  But there is nothing better to demonstrate the power of metadata than being able to say that metadata led to a photo from Flickr being on the evening news!

I was talking to a colleague Monday, who mentioned Hydra. As the site says:

Hydra is not just a repository software solution.  Rather, we see it as having three complementary components:

• there is a vibrant, highly active community supporting the work of the project which shares an  underlying philosophy behind all that it does
• there are design (and other) principles involved in constructing a successful Hydra “head” for use with compatible digital objects, and of course,
• there are the software components, the Ruby gems, that the Hydra community has constructed which are combined together to provide a local installation

Hydra lists 12 partners on its web site, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Penn State and Stanford.  From his report, Hydra is easier than DSpace, etc.  He said that modules from Hydra are easy for another institution to implement.

If you've used Hydra, what do you think of it?  If you haven't used it, is it something you'd consider testing out?  Why? Why not?

Addendum (1/11/2013): I was asked on Twitter if Hydra is being used for institutional repositories and the answer is "yes".  It is also being used for images libraries, media collections and more.  See this page for more info.

Depending on what circles you travel in, you've been hearing about "big data."  This has become the rage; grabbing headlines and creating its own conferences.  The fact that we have been able to create digital information - even through digitization - has laid the foundation for big data. 

What is big data?  Big data is not the spreadsheet on your laptop.  It is data that is too large to handle, store, analyze and preserve without specific tools.  Michael Chui, a Senior Fellow in the McKinsey Global Institute, noted that in the United States, the average company with more than 1000 employees (in most sectors) have more data than the Library of Congress.  Companies that have a good IT and information infrastructure are better poised to capture the value from this data. 

If you are a special librarian working in a corporation, likely someone is talking about big data and making decisions about how to handle it.  Are you a part of that conversation?

The same is true for academic librarians.  Some agencies are mandating that grant recipients make available their research data.  Likely there are specific conversations occurring about this that you should be including in.

For many librarians, the big data at your fingertips is your circulation data or data created when your databases are accessed.  The conversation you need to have is with your software suppliers.  Are they creating tools that will help you analyze this big data?

This McKinsey podcast (18 min. MP3) will provide a good overview of big data and help you understand why it is important.  Yes, the entire podcast is geared toward business.  That's okay.  In fact, more library and information science professionals are pursuing working with big data in businesses, so this will give you an idea of why.

Podcast Description:

The amount of data in the world is exploding. Companies and organizations capture trillions of bytes of information about individuals, customers, suppliers, and operations. Meanwhile, millions of networked sensors are being embedded in the physical world in devices such as mobile phones and automobiles, sensing, creating, and communicating additional data. This so called "Big Data" has the potential to be aggregated, analyzed, and used to generate concrete insights and inform decisions. A recent study developed by the McKinsey Global Institute examines the potential value that big data can create for organizations and sectors in the economy, and explores what leaders of organizations and policy makers need to do to capture that value. McKinsey's research on Big Data is discussed by Michael Chui, a Senior Fellow in the McKinsey Global Institute who is based in McKinsey's San Francisco office.

Henrik de Gyor has recorded two of his blog posts that provide information about careers in digital asset management (5:30 minutes and 4 minutes respectively).


You might also be interested in this one (3:34 minutes):

Henrik de Gyor does weekly podcasts on digital asset management. All are interesting (especially the recent ones that provide career advice). This one (12 min.) struck me as being a great overview of the benefits of a DAM in a way that most people would understand.

Last spring, someone told me that they had selected MediaBin as their digital asset management system.  I was going to write a blog post at the time about MediaBin after I learned more about it, but didn't.  From what I did learn, this is a product that would be used in specific situations.  The web site says:

Virage MediaBin centralizes the management of logos, copy, video, images, presentations, and other rich media and digital assets and makes them accessible to geographically dispersed teams. Virage MediaBin is the only commercial digital asset management system designed to work with "original" master assets: it dynamically generates variations or derivatives and delivers them on request. Virage MediaBin uses a patented high-volume media processing engine to render on-demand transformations quickly.

There are likely other products on the market that do similar things.  You should be able to find other products by searching the literature for MediaBin and then seeing who else is mentioned.

Addendum (2/3/2011):  Be sure to read the comment below from Ralph Windsor, who notes that there are other companies that produce similar software and that this software isn't the "only".   He suggests looking at the web site http://www.opensourcedigitalassetmanagement.org/ for information on open source DAM  programs.

Every company tried to position their product as the best solution or the only one that can meet your needs.  Keep in mind that every company has competition.  In fact, for a company to be successful, it needs competition.  Competition proves a need in the marketplace.  At any rate, I do tend to ignore platitudes in company press releases, but forget that others do not. 

From the Henry Stewart Events  DAM newsletter article about emerging themes:

No matter what the industry, or if the consumers of digital and media assets are internal or external to an organization, there are ever increasing expectations that content will be available anytime, anywhere and on any device.

If you don't believe that people want access to content anywhere and at anytime, just watch the people around you on the bus, subway, or train...or on a college campus or in an airport...or at a cafe.  If you are not creating content that can be viewed/used on multiple devices, you may become irrelevant.

Henry Stewart Talks has released a series of seven seminars on digital asset management.  Samples of some of the sessions are available for free. The entire series is available for $119 for three years.  I don't know anything about this series, except what is on the web site.  I do know that Seth Earley, one of the presenters, has done with with libraries and other information organizations.

Henrik de Gyor has a blog and podcast focused on digital asset management (DAM).  He interviews people who are somehow related to digital asset management and recently interviewed me (7 min.).  I talk about me, the iSchool, and - of course - DAMs.

If you're interested in DAMs, you may want to add Henrik's blog and podcasts to your RSS reader.

DAM LA 2010 highlights all the important issues - from the fundamentals of how to get started with a DAM solution to the latest and best practices in the management of digital media. Attendance at DAM LA 2010 ensures that everyone involved in the capture, storage and application of digital media assets is fully briefed on the latest developments and best practices.

Digital asset management (DAM) is a process that is used in many industries.  I'm sure cultural heritage organizations tend to look at what organizations like them are doing, and forget that many other organizations (including for-profit companies) are quite reliant on DAMs.  Recognizing that this is an area where people are innovating (as well as getting more people to pay attention to it), Createasphere has created the DAMMY.

The DAMMY Awards, the first honors specifically recognizing excellence in innovative digital and media asset management technology, methodologies and services, have announced that Jason Bright of Media Beacon has won the DAMMY of the Year Award. 

You'll notice that the DAMMY is being given at a DAM conference.  I wonder how many of you have thought about attending a conference specifically on digital asset management OR considered holding your own roundtable discussion on the topic?

In this 15-minute interview Henrik de Gyor talks about digital asset management implementation with Aric Allen (createasphere). If you are interested in what digital asset management (DAM) can do for you, this podcast offers a very good introduction. 

For those of you that are attending this, the following digitization-related vendors are exhibiting at the SLA Annual Conference.  The exhibit hall (INFO-EXPO) is open Sunday, June 13 - Tuesday, June 15. 

• Access Innovation - taxonomy, conversion services
• BackStage Library Works - conversion services
• The Crowley Company - hardware
• Cuadra Associates - DAM software
• Data Harmony - taxonomy
• e-ImageData - hardware
• Ex Libris  - DAM software
• InMagic - DAM software
• Northern Micrographics - conversion services
• OCLC - DAM software, services
• PTFS - DAM software, conversion services
• S-T Imaging - hardware
• VTLS - DAM software

If I missed anyone, please let me know.

By the way, as a candidate for the SLA board of directors, I'll be in booth 1329 (SLA Marketplace) on Sunday from 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. with the other director candidates.  Please stop by and say "hello"!

Received a demo this morning of new digital asset management software called "SimpleDL".  They are just engaging their first customers and starting to exhibit at library conferences.  The software seems easy to use and with good functionality.  Seeing a demo is not like "kicking the tires" (doing a real test), but it can given an indication if you really want to know more.  What I saw makes me think I'd be will to see/hear more.

I asked a lot of questions about what the software does, who they're working with, who they are, etc.  I did not ask about ongoing software support.  Since they are a startup, that is a question some organizations might see as a mitigating factor. 

Roy Tennant believes that you should always know how to get your content out of the software, and I was impressed that Steven and Jacob demoed that early on in the session.

Add this to the "I should have mentioned this earlier" category. I heard about this in Switzerland and finally found the paper I had written it on.

As the web site says:

CDS Invenio (formerly CDSware), the integrated digital library system, is a suite of applications which provides the framework and tools for building and managing an autonomous digital library server. The software is readily available to anyone, as it is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL). The technology offered by the software covers all aspects of digital library management. It complies with the Open Archives Initiative metadata harvesting protocol (OAI-PMH) and uses MARC 21 as its underlying bibliographic standard. Its flexibility and performance make it a comprehensive solution for the management of document repositories of moderate to large size.

CDS Invenio was developed at CERN, which is both maintaining and using the product. According to the web site, CERN manages over 500 collections with the software. More than a dozen scientific institutions worldwide are using the software. At the sites listed that are using Invenio, you can see that it is being used to house bibliographic records, full-text documents and digitized materials.

Invenio's features page uses phrases such as "Google-like" and "Amazon-like" which would intrigue anyone!

Although the Invenio homepage has not been updafed since 2005, the software has been updated in the last two years and some of the pages have been updated in the last six months.

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Technorati tag: Digital Asset Management

The Digital Image Collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library encourages users to install Luna Insights in order to take advantage of the features it provides. (They are using the Luna Imaging Insight Software Suite.) According to the Folger, Insights allows users to:

• Create a permalink to selected images.
• Save search strategies.
• Export an html page containing thumbnails that link back to zoomable images.

Sounds interesting, but some users may hesitant about installing an additional piece of software.

From an email message.

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Join the Museum Computer Network for the 37th annual conference in Portland, Oregon, November 11th 14th.


PRELIMINARY PROGRAM AVAILABLE ONLINE NOW

Join MCN for four days of programming with innovative sessions panels, papers, case studies, and workshops that illustrate how institutions are effectively functioning and planning to function during the tough times ahead.

Visit www.mcn.edu/conferences to view the preliminary program and for registration, hotel & travel information.

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About the Museum Computer Network

Mission: The Museum Computer Network (MCN) supports the greater museum community by providing continuing opportunities to explore, implement, and disseminate new technologies and best practices in the field.

Founded in 1967, MCN is a nonprofit organization with members representing a wide range of information professionals from hundreds of museums and cultural heritage institutions in the United States and around the world. MCN helps museum information professionals and people
interested in technology in the cultural heritage community seek out and share ideas and information through a wide range of activities, including an annual conference, special interest groups, website, and other outstanding resources such as the new MCN Project Registry at
MuseTechCentral (http://musetechcentral.org/)

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Technorati tags: Web 2.0, Digital Asset Management, Digital Repository

For those of you who are managing image archives such as those that might be created by a university's public affairs department, or design and printing services, here are two blog posts that may be of interest to you.

Rachel Reuben blogs about moving from Extensis Portfolio Server to Google's Picasa. Extensis did not provide the return on investment that they had been looking for. She received advice from Whitney Anderson, who was able to outline the pros and cons of Picasa. While Reuben has not yet fully tested Picasa with their content, she is already pleased with the results she is seeing.

At the end of her post, Reuben asks what image management software other groups are using. While I doubt that she is willing to switch to another platform, having that information would be helpful to others who are looking for alternatives.

Thanks to Josh Shear for pointing me toward Reuben's blog post.

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Technorati tag: Digital Asset Management