Digitization 101

As received in email.

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Sharon Yang, in her 2013 article "From integrated library systems to library management services: Time for change?" wrote:

According to OCLC, an estimated 50 percent or more of a library's collections are electronic resources, and 65 percent or more of the materials budget of libraries are spent on e‐content today (Burke, 2012). Based on this rate, by 2020, an estimated 80 percent of the materials budget will be spent on e‐books and e‐journals (OCLC, 2010). In spite of these trends and changes, libraries are still using outdated systems to manage modern collections.

Two things stand out to me from this quote.  First, the increased amount of money which is and will be spent on digital resources. Yes, we know this and it is impacting every library budget.  Second, the phrase "libraries are still using outdated systems to manage modern collections." I'm sure library vendors do not believe this is true, but I wonder if they - and us - are thinking big enough about the problem.

As emphasized in the IMLS event on the National Digital Platform (relevant blog posts), libraries, museums and archives need to create better platforms for the work they are doing.  In my mind, these are platforms which would allow for better discovery and sharing of material.  These are platforms that would adhere to specific standards, so the sharing of data, as well as material, can be done easily.  These platforms would be built to support the processes our cultural institutions have in place, rather than our institutions needing to radically modify their processes in order to use the software.

I like that vision and there are people already working on it, and systems already being built. What we need, though, are people - who are emerging from their undergraduate/graduate programs - who are willing to carry this work forward.  We need people who will support this work over the course of their careers.  That may mean helping to build and maintain, or it might mean being willing to break with the status quo and use these new systems, OR it might mean working with/for our software vendors to bring them on board.  This means breaking with the way things were done before, even "before" means literally yesterday.

Are you on board?

Rolls of hay in Pennsylvania

My last post here was June 20.  Since then I've been on the road for work and vacation, and then catching up from being "out of the office."  Blogging has not be on my mind.  However, I do have a series of blog posts in the works on increasing your library intelligence.  My goal is to begin to release them next week.

I am not the type of librarian, who must visit libraries while on vacation.  However, I do notice libraries and during the last T is for Training podcast, I started the conversation by mentioning the signage at one public library.  That opened an hour-long conversation on library signage, signage audits, and the digital face of a library. If you haven't thought about your signage (or web site) in a while, you might use this podcast episode to prompt a review.  The T is for Training web site contains show notes for the episode.

I am catching up on reading and Internet surfing, which means I'm finding things I should have read months ago.  This blog post wonders if award winning book covers are on books with highly rated content.  I've copied the post's graphic below and you're welcome to go read the original post.  However, this got me thinking about web site design and specifically library web sites.

Most libraries have a web site.  Those sites are created in a number of different ways, using free and fee-based tools.  Some provide basic information about the library, while others are more in-depth.  I suspect that most do not provide all of the information that their users want, such as information about the staff or board of trustees, or details about borrowing privileges.  Indeed many libraries only provide what the staff is interested in sharing, and that could be very little.

Most libraries do not have someone on staff who can create a professional design of the web site.  Sites which we might consider "award winning" are likely owned by large, well-funded libraries, where a tech-savvy person internally or externally is charged with maintaining the site.  As our computing devices have changed (e.g., the move to mobile devices), our site designers have had to create sites that will look good and function on any type of device. This is called responsive design.  My own site is an example of one that uses responsive design so that it functions well on any type of device.

The problem with web sites (and books) is that a great looking site may have very little useful content.  In some cases, a great looking site may actually contain fake content, while a site that is not designed by a professional may have extemely useful content.  Yes, judging a book (or web site) by its design can be problematic.

So what are you to do? 

• Whether your site is for a digitization program, a specific department, or the entire library, make sure that it gives users the information that they desire about you (program, department, library).  If you are waiting until it is designed perfectly, don't.  Place the information online, then schedule time to make it better.
• State your assumptions.  You actually have no idea who will use your web site, so don't assume that they will know specific details about you (e.g., location).  
• Work towards a design that is compliant with American with Disabilities Act rules/guidelines.  If you don't know what that means, ask someone.  Yes, there are free tools, like this one, which you can use to assess accessibility.  I know you might get frustrated with the errors, but try to work on fixing them.
• Work towards functional and informative, then towards beautiful.  People will endure a less than beautiful web site, if it delivers worthwhile information.
• When possible hire someone - even a knowledgeable intern - who can help you with your web site.  Remember that you can contract with someone to provide this service on-demand.

By the way, I did run my own web site through the WAVE tool and I can see that I have some changes to make!  I guess I better do that before I look at any of the books below.



Created by Syracuse University's School of Information Studies master of information management program.

David Ferriero and John Palfrey

I tweeted that (above) from a session at the ALISE 2013 conference that was about the Tea Party and Occupy movements.  What does it mean, really?

We've all heard or said things that weren't exactly correct, but whose sentiment was correct.  It could be a misquote or even a made-up quote from someone.  It might be totally contrived like the image to the right.  The question is...if the sentiment is correct, does the "exactness" matter?

While this question was raised in talking about content produced by social movements, I find it interesting from the point of view of our digital archives.  We want our archives to be accurate, but does that mean that we want the content to be verifiable or true?  What if the sentiment was accurate, while the words were not?  Would we place these things in our archives for future access?  If yes, how would we label them?  Personally, I think the descriptions could be tricky, since it could mean understanding who create the information and why.

As I write this, I am also thinking of images that have been Photoshopped liked the one, several years ago, of the British royal family where they altered Prince William's smile.  Was the image accurate?  No. Yet is was an official photograph and has been archived as such, I'm sure.  I wonder if the metadata includes a note saying that William's smile is a fake?

This blog post in the The Signal is a must read because it presents the results of a survey that asked about qualifications a successful job candidate needs.  I'll not repeat it here...so go read it for yourself!

The Digital Public Library of America has received a $1 million award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).  The money will be used to help make library materials from across the nation freely available to anyone online.  In addition, funding "would also free up resources for local libraries to focus on community needs and activities catering to neighborhood kids and adults."  For more information read the article in InnovationNewsDaily.

I have been talking with practitioners recently about their expectations of new library and information science graduates.  One thing is clear - they expect graduates to be able to use, learn, adopt, integrate, and teach technology.  Every library uses or is impacted by technology.  Yes, libraries are implementing digitization programs, installing general use databases, relying on integrated library systems, and circulating ebooks (and other digital media).  And...yes...no matter where you work in a library, you will need to use technology.  Technology isn't compartmentalized.

Historically as a profession, we have attracted people that are interested in books and reading.  Look at your library?  Are the books multiplying before your eyes or is the technology multiplying?  I would argue that technology is dominating libraries and so if you are interested in the profession because of books, I hope you're interested in ebooks, audio books, etc., because those are where important conversations and innovations are happening.

As for reading, yes, it is important, but so is information that comes in forms other than text, including audio, graphics, etc.  Our users don't just want to read and our librarian-technologist need to be comfortable helping them find what they want, no matter the format.

While every librarian-technologist does not need to be a programmer, each should understand how to communicate with programmers as well as library users.  The librarian-technologist needs to be able to talk about specifications, user needs, project requirements, etc.  No...you can't just push this responsibility off on someone else!  You...YOU...need to be an equal partner in the conversation and to do that, you need to be a technologist.

If you're a library science student, consider taking classes that will help you understand and use technology, including a good class on creating databases.  Do you need to learn a programming language?  I think the answer is "yes".  Does it matter which one?  No.  Part of learning a programming language is learning how programmers think and why.  Also, once you learn one programming language, it is easy to learn another.  (And you know, they keep changing!)

If you're entering a library science program and your interest is in books and reading, please be willing to expand your horizons.  That is the only way you will have the impact on the profession (and its users) that you desire.

Let me tell you three situations that have me thinking about this.

First, if you are trying to catalogue or create metadata for an item that is not in your native language, can you complete the task?  Would it be helpful to know another language?  We know that some languages have similarities, so could knowing one additional language actually help you navigate a few more than that?  And would it make you a more effective librarians?

Second, if you are working the reference desk in a city that has a diverse population, should you be able to service people in their own language?  In some industries that diversity in language is sought and valued (e.g., hospitals).  Should libraries also seek to have that type of diversity on their staff?

I have a student who is doing an internship in a public library.  He has realized that being conversant in Spanish would be a good thing.  In the U.S., a growing segment of our population speaks Spanish, so shouldn't our library staff speak Spanish?  (And if there is another language widely used in the community, shouldn't we have staff members that also speak that language?) 

Third, if you are build a service (e.g., digital collection) that will be used by a diverse group of people, would it be helpful to have text in their own languages that would help them use the site?  Would you want to outsource that work?  Would you want someone on staff to do that work or even know the language well enough to be able to supervise the work?

If you agree that knowing a foreign language would be useful for library and information science graduates, how do we encourage them to learn a language or maintain fluency in a language?  Should we ask existing staff to learn a language that is being used in the community and even tell them which language they need to learn?  (For example, you need to learn Mandarin, not French.)

In September 2010, I wrote a Wayback Wednesday on digital libraries.  Now I want to write another post on the topic, but with a different focus.

We have this concept of a digital library.  If you follow the links below, you will see that there are many definitions of what a digital library is. (more here) Very very simply put, a digital library is some manner of online resources.  There are graduate students who study digital libraries with a goal to become a digital librarian.  What the students learn how to do is to be a librarian whose tool set include the application of normal library ideas to a digital realm. Indeed, because most libraries now contain electronic/digital resources, every librarian is involved in a "digital library". 

I interact daily with students that are interested in digital libraries and who want to take classes in the subject.  Yet, I look at courses such as "reference" and see the amount of digital content in them. Reference is not a course related to the area of digital libraries, yet many digital libraries are used in reference services.  Reference librarian are involved with contract negotiation, discussing the installation of digital resources, etc.  They need to understand a bit about how those digital resources are constructed, in order to teach how to use them.  Does that make a reference librarian a digital librarian?

A cataloguer (or metadata librarian) may not have studied digital libraries, yet the person's work is vital for the creation of digital collections and digital libraries.  Are those workers digital librarians?

I see students learning the latest technologies and delving into database construction, etc., but who do not take digital library specific courses. Yet when they graduate can they call themselves digital librarians?

Or perhaps as hinted in the title of this post, the phrase "digital librarian" has outlived its usefulness.  Maybe it is time to admit that every librarian is a digital librarian.

What do you think?

Previous blog posts:

• What is a digital library? I need YOUR definition. - This contains three definitions.
• David Lankes on “Participatory Librarianship and Digital libraries”
• Paper: Collaboration Services in a Participatory Digital Library: An Emerging Design
• Thomas Frey on electronic outposts (a version of digital libraries)
• John Unsworth's definition of a digital library 

If you haven't read or skimmed this article - published in June 2011 - then you should.  Here is a teaser:

The library clearly has reevaluated its role within the Internet information ecosystem and found a set of new identities. Let's start from here: One, the New York Public Library is a social network with three million active users and two, the New York Public Library is a media outfit.

In this 20 minute video, Jim Del Rosso, the Web and Digital Projects Manager at the Cornell University Catherwood Library (part of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations), talks about their institutional repository, social media, networking and other topics.  I'm sharing this because I found it interesting to hear what they are including in their institutional repository, which includes asking for material in digital form as well as digitizing content.



8/2/2011: Fixed the video URL. Not sure what happened. Sorry.

Last year, Günter Waibel, Program Officer at OCLC Research, wrote a two-part series on collaboration:

• The Future is Collaborative Part I: Give The People What They Want
• The Future is Collaborative Part II: Early Exemplars

Waibel wrote:

...the 17,500 museums in the U.S. effectively divide what they have to offer over an equal number of institutional websites. To make matters worse, cultural content is not only silo’d into segregated sites, but further dispersed across 122,356 libraries and countless archives (I literally couldn’t find a count) across the U.S. All of them believe that they are at the center of their user’s universe – and none of them truly are.

I have written here before abiut the need for collaboration. Waibel's words serve as another reminder of their benefit.

If you haven't yet collaborated, what are you waiting for?

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Stuart Dempster sent this message to me a while ago and now having flipped through the three documents, I'm sorry that I didn't get this blog post up earlier.  There may be nothing startling here, except the recognition that we do owe it to our funding agencies to use every option to ensure that our online resources are broadly used.

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The proliferation of computing and network devices has meant that, over the past 10 years, the internet has become the primary driving force in the access, use and engagement with information. Easy access for all to simple social networking and the explosion in interconnectedness has also turned marketing on its head forever.

In an age when media, business, government and almost every aspect of modern society vies for the users’ attention, how can we ensure that the resources that are being created through public funds reach and engage with their constituent audiences?


The reports, guides and case studies below summarise the key principles in maximising your online effectiveness and present a condensed version of the highly successful series of workshops commissioned by the Strategic Content Alliance and undertaken by JISC Netskills in 2010. Pictures, videos and materials from the workshops which supplement this work can also be found at: http://scamore.eforum.org/cgi-bin/default?section=about

• Guide to maximising your online presence (PDF) [15 pages including a checklist for value from the internet]
• A checklist for value from the internet (PDF) [2 pages]
• Reports from the field – Experiences from those ‘at the coalface’ April 2011 (PDF)

As received in email.

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The European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL) has been the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries for 14 years. For the 15th year the conference was renamed into:
International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries

The conference will continue to bring together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries. TPDL 2011 is organised by the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Berlin School of Library and Information Science, the Computer and Media Services and the Department of Computer Science).

SCOPE/OBJECTIVES
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Over the last years, Digital Libraries have taken over a central role in our society. The process of acquiring, creating, processing, retrieving, disseminating, and using knowledge, information, data and metadata has undergone and still continues to undergo significant changes. This includes an ever increasing public access to on-line resources, an evolution in the amount and diversity of resources that are available through this channel, a social shift in the paradigm of how to experience information towards interactive, globally collaborative and personalized approaches, and many more.
In this spirit, TPDL 2011 aims at providing a forum for researchers, developers, content providers and practitioners for presenting and discussing novel results from innovative research and systems development on Digital Libraries.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
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Authors are invited to submit research papers describing original, unpublished research that is not (and will not be) simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere.

TPDL 2011 solicits the submission of full (12 pages max.) and short (8 pages max.) research papers. General areas of interests include, but are not limited to, the following topics, organized in four areas:

Foundations: Technology and Methodologies
- Digital libraries: architectures and infrastructures
- Metadata standards and protocols in digital library systems
- Interoperability in digital libraries, data and information integration
- Distributed and collaborative information spaces
- Systems, algorithms, and models for digital preservation
- Personalization in digital libraries
- Information access: retrieval and browsing
- Information organization
- Information visualization
- Multimedia information management and retrieval
- Multilinguality in digital libraries
- Knowledge organization and ontologies in digital libraries

Digital Humanities
- Digital libraries in cultural heritage
- Computational linguistics: text mining and retrieval
- Organizational aspects of digital preservation
- Information policy and legal aspects (e.g., copyright laws)
- Social networks and networked information
- Human factors in networked information
- Scholarly primitives

Research Data
- Architectures for large-scale data management (e.g., Grids, Clouds)
- Cyberinfrastructures: architectures, operation and evolution
- Collaborative information environments
- Data mining and extraction of structure from networked information
- Scientific data curation
- Metadata for scientific data, data provenance
- Services and workflows for scientific data
- Data and knowledge management in virtual organizations

Applications and User Experience
- Multi-national digital library federations (e.g., Europeana)
- Digital Libraries in eGovernment, elearning, eHealth, eScience, ePublishing
- Semantic Web and Linked Data
- User studies for and evaluation of digital library systems and applications
- Personal information management and personal digital libraries
- Enterprise-scale knowledge and information management
- User behaviour and modelling
- User mobility and context awareness in information access
- User interfaces for digital libraries

PAPER SUBMISSION
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All research papers must be written in English and follow the formatting guidelines of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS).
Research papers must be up to 12 pages of length for long papers, up to 8 pages for short papers, and must be submitted via the conference submission system. All papers will be reviewed by at least 3 members of the programme committee. Paper acceptance can be as long paper, short paper or poster.
The size of the poster should not exceed ISO A0 (portrait) size – maximum height of 1189mm (46.81 inches) and maximum width of 841mm (33.11 inches).
The proceedings will be published as a volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes on Computer Science (LNCS) series.
All papers need to be submitted via the EasyChair conference submission system:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tpdl2011

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CALL FOR DEMOS 1st International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries 2011
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Demos provide researchers with an opportunity to present their work in an informal and interactive manner, and obtain direct feedback about their work from a wide audience.
Demos showcase innovative digital libraries technology and applications, ranging from research prototypes to operational systems, allowing you to share your work directly with your colleagues in a high-visibility setting.

We invite the submission of demos on all topics mentioned in the Call for Research Papers.

- Demo submissions consist of a 4-page paper, which must be formatted according to Springer’s LNCS guidelines, and submitted via the conference submission system.
- Accepted demos will be allocated up to 4 pages for the written paper in the TPDL 2011 proceedings. The proceedings will be published as a volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes on Computer Science (LNCS) series.
- Accepted demos will be presented at a plenary poster and demo session during the TPDL 2011 conference.
- For demos, authors will be required to bring laptop computers or other appropriate equipment, as no equipment will be provided.

All abstracts for demos need to be submitted via the EasyChair conference submission system:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tpdl2011

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DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
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Continuing a tradition, the TPDL 2011 Doctoral Consortium (DC) serves as a forum for PhD students to share ideas about the development and use of Digital Libraries, compare approaches, discuss future research problems and receive feedback from the international Digital Library community. The Doctoral Consortium aims to:

- provide PhD students with a friendly and lively atmosphere for presenting their research ideas, exchange experiences with peers, and receive constructive feedback on their work from the international research community;
- help students and doctoral candidates formulate research questions and organise their research;
- help forge new relationships and collaborations within the International Digital Library community, promoting collaborative research; and
- support a new generation of researchers with information and advice on academic, research, industrial, and non-traditional career paths.

The TPDL 2011 DC invites PhD students whose doctoral research is related to digital libraries and at a stage of progress where feedback from the international community might be of value, to submit extended abstracts of up to 10 pages describing their work. It is expected that students who submit extended abstracts, will have finished the first part of their research (one-two years of their studies) and be still in the middle of their research work.

A panel of prominent researchers participating in the TPDL Programme Committee will conduct the workshop. They will review all the submissions and comment on the content of the work as well as on the presentation. Students will have 20 minutes to present their research, focusing on the main theme of their thesis, what they have achieved so far and how they plan to continue their work. Another 20 minutes are reserved for discussion and feedback from the panel of reviewers. The Doctoral Consortium will take place on a single full day. Up to 12 students will have the opportunity to participate.

Submissions should be related to one or more of the conference themes as stated in the Call for Papers. Moreover, they should be presented in a way that demonstrates the link to the chosen conferences theme(s), and they should contain:

- a clear formulation of the research topic and research hypotheses;
- an outline of the significant problems in the field and their current solutions;
- a description of the proposed approach and its expected contributions;
- a discussion of preliminary results; and
- an evaluation (-plan) of the research.

All papers must be written in English and follow Springer's LNCS guidelines. Please send your submission directly by email to the doctoral consortium chair Milena Dobreva (milena.dobreva@strath.ac.uk). Abstracts of the papers will be published in the conference proceedings.


IMPORTANT DATES
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Abstract submission deadline (full and short papers): March 21, 2011
Research paper submission: March 28, 2011 (midnight HAST, GMT -10hrs)
Demo submission: March 28, 2011
Doctoral consortium submission: March 28, 2011
Notification of acceptance (research paper, poster, demo, doctoral consortium): May 23, 2011

Workshop proposal submission: February 14, 2011
Tutorial proposal submission: February 14, 2011
Panel proposal submission: February 14, 2011
Notification of acceptance (workshop, tutorial, panel): March 14, 2011

Submission of final version (research paper, abstract for poster, demo, workshop, tutorial, panel and doctoral consortium): June 6, 2011

All information can also be found on the website: http://www.tpdl2011.org

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Conference Officers
General Chair:
Stefan Gradmann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

Programme Co-Chairs:
Carlo Meghini, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Heiko Schuldt, University of Basel, Switzerland

Programme Committee
tba

As I do at the end of each year, I want to spent time looking back at the last 12 months with a few lists and more.

I see four trends as I scan the horizon:

1. Digitization is no longer an exceptional activity. While digitization is not a normal activity still for many organizations, it is much more mainstream that is was several years ago.  Look around...can you find a workshop on digitization or on scanning?  Yes, they still exist, but they are definitely not as prevalent as they were before.  Those that haven't jumped on the "digitization train" yet are finding themselves left behind.  (I should note that universities are offering courses on digitization, digital libraries, etc., which go into more depth and which are attracting a high number of students. These courses prepare the students for the growing number of digital library positions that are being advertised.)
   
   In the same vein, one thing to notice is that digitization is no longer in the news as it has been. It is no longer that shiny object that captures the media's attention.  For a while, Google Book Search kept digitization in the news, but even that story is no longer capturing headlines as the sides work toward an agreement.
 
2. Digital preservation is where most of the action is in terms of conversations, conference sessions, research, etc.  This is true because we are a digital society and if we cannot ensure long term access to our digital content, we're doomed.  Losing digital content could mean losing the data and information that we need to run our governments, businesses, academic institutions, etc.  It could also mean losing our history.
   
   If you are not thinking about how to ensure long-term access to your digital content, please begin thinking about it now. You might even make it a New Year's resolution. (Yes, do jump on the digital preservation bandwagon.)
 
3. Institutional repositories are where many are focusing their energy. Whether it is a repository of preprint material, course material, lab notebooks or other content, many organizations are creating institutional repositories.  These repositories include digitized and born digital material that require many of the skills we've been fostering in our digitization programs.
   
   If you haven't heard about a repository in your organization, check to see if one is being built that you don't know about, and then see if you can get involved.  If one hasn't been started in your organization, be sure to position yourself so you will be involved in it.  They will need your skills.
 
4. Collaboration is still very important.  I know that there are some institutions where it is difficult to build external collaborations, but those institutions are rare.  If at all possible, reach out and build collaborations with other cultural heritage organizations, schools, and even businesses.  Also build internal collaborations whenever possible.  Remember that collaborative programs are more successful.

As you know, I am a full-time professor, which means that I not only look at what's happening in cultural heritage institutions with my "gee how can I use this in my practice" hat on, but I also think about what I should be introducing to my students.  This year, one of the technologies that captured  my imagination was QR codes.  I've begun to use them personally, as well as give assignments about them.  If you know nothing about QR codes, check out:

• CIL2010: QR Codes - Relatively short post with introductory information.
• Being Social #13 - Quick Response! - This is from my other blog called eNetworking 101.
• QR codes & libraries by Renata Curty, SU iSchool doctoral student.  As part of her teaching practicum with me this fall, Renata developed and presented this lecture on QR codes, which includes links to QR code generators and readers.

Undoubtedly, you are looking at that two-dimensional thing that looks like modern art and wondering if you really need to know anything about it.  QR codes are being used all around you, even if you are unaware of it.  Manufacturers are using smaller versions of these codes to track inventory.  I've found a QR code on cold medication, for example. Someone spotted a QR code in an airport that would provide access to two free ebooks.  Lots of organizations are using QR codes to deliver content to people on their cell phones quickly and easily.  Imagine, for example, having a QR code in an exhibit that linked the person to online content about each specific item exhibited.  As part of an assignment, my students found ways of using QR codes to link people with library content from a wide variety of locations.

That QR code above contains my basic contact information.  If you have a camera phone and QR code software (e.g.,  i-nigma), you should be able to read it and add me to your contacts.

I have three posts that were the most read Digitization 101 blog posts of 2010. Each received an amazing amount of attention:

• Seth Godin and libraries - This was in response to his blog post where he posited that libraries didn't have winning long-term strategies. Really?  
• Jill's alternate to the 2014 Beloit College Mindset List - This is my take on what has influenced the mindset of this year's university freshmen.
• What I want LIS students to know - A post full of advice for library and information science (LIS) students.

What I want LIS students to know was mentioned in a number of locations on the Internet and sparked a few similar posts by others.  In addition, I received tweets, emails and other communications from LIS students who valued the advice.  From the sounds of it, my post reached some students when they needed the advice the most.

This blog post may not have received a high number of hits yet, but it is one that I think is worth highlighting:

When a student's work intersects with copyright, integrity and ethics (Opinion/Rant)

In September, I began a series called Wayback Wednesday, which I hoped would facilitate me resurrecting worthwhile posts from the Digitization 101 archives.  As my fall semester as a professor got busier, my time for blogging grew shorter, and Wayback Wednesday didn't become a weekly feature.  I do, however, intend to produce more of them in 2011 and on a more regular - but not weekly basis.

Here's a list of the Wayback Wednesdays to date:

• Wayback Wednesday: 5 interesting blog posts worth remembering from the Digitization 101 archives
• Wayback Wednesday: Blog posts on digital libraries worth remembering from the Digitization 101 archives
• Wayback Wednesday: Remembering blog posts on digitization resources in the Digitization 101 archives
• Wayback Wednesday: Copyright blog posts from the Digitization 101 archives
• Wayback Wednesday: Metadata blog posts from the Digitization 101 archives

A Moment About Me - My days have been very full this year and one of my goals has been to find a better balance, and to not be over-committed.  However, I enjoy making a difference if at all possible and being involved, which does lead to me having a very full plate of activities...and I enjoy them all!

Two things from my very full plate that I want to highlight are:

• SLA elections results, my past & your future - By the way, my term as a member of the Special Libraries Association Board of Directors begins in just a few days!
• Jill interviewed on Another DAM Podcast - Henrik de Gyor interviewed me this fall for his DAM (Digital Asset Management) Podcast.  The wonderful side benefit was meeting - via Skype - someone whom I knew virtually.

A Moment About Digitization 101 - In May, I updated all of my web sites to have a consistent look and feel.  An unintended consequence is that the archive of Digitization 101 is difficult to access.  The labels on the right side of the blog will show you recent posts on that topic, but may not go back far enough.  I didn't think this would be a problem, but I've received a few emails from people who want to be able to search the archives and so I'll have a search feature implemented in 2011.

By the way, you can use your favorite Internet search engine to search this site (e.g, site:hurstassociates.blogspot.com plus whatever terms are relevant to you).

That's it until 2011!  Wherever you are, I hope that 2010 is ending on a positive note. I know that some of you have been adversely affected by budget cuts, unusual weather, and personal/family hardships.  Ending 2010 on a positive note may just been that you have survived the year.  If that is true, do take a moment to look ahead to 2011 as a new year and a fresh start.  Remember that you have friends and colleagues that are their to listen, to help, and to send positive energy your way.

Related blog posts:

• Digitization 101: 2009 Year in Review
• Digitization 101: 2008 Year in Review
  
• Thank you (and some statistics) (2007)
• Digitization 101 Year in Review: Words to Take into 2007 (2006)
• Digitization 101 Year in Review: News (2006)
• Digitization 101 Year in Review: Influences (2006)

In the past, I have tended to use an Amazon.com wish list as well as blog posts to track books of interest relating to digitization and copyright.  Earlier this year, I converted those into an Amazon Listmania list and then added other related books from Amazon.  A few people have stumbled across the list and perhaps have found it useful.  If you're curious about what's on it, check it out.

For me, this is truly a list to use to jog my memory.  Yeah...I saw a copyright book that would be useful...what was it again?  If you'd like to create a list to jog your memory, you can do it in Amazon (or another online bookseller), LibraryThing or on other web sites.  (And having it online really is more useful than in a document on your computer.)  The trick is to find a place that you'll remember and that will have or allow you to enter information that you know will be useful.  Not only is that list then available for you, but you can also share it with others.  And perhaps, if funding is available, it could be the list you use to updated your institution's collection.

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FTC Disclaimer: Digitization 101 is an Amazon affiliate and may receive a small commission if you purchase a product or service from an Digitization 101 Amazon link. (Trust me, I'm not getting rich off of Amazon.)