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.

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.

This seems like a site worth remembering.  According to the web site:

The IRIScotland Toolkit exists to help institutions who are developing an institutional repository. The toolkit is aimed at both staff within institutions charged with developing repositories and at researchers wanting to find out more about open access and how they can engage with it. The content focuses on policy, cultural and legal issues rather than on the technical aspects of setting up a repository.

FYI.... you can follow the links for more information.

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Quoting Jeanne Kramer-Smyth from SpellBound Blog:

From May 31st through June 2nd of 2006, The National Archives, the Arizona State Library and Archives, and the Society of American Archivists hosted a colloquium to consider the question “What are the practical, technical skills that all library and records professionals must have to work with e-books, electronic records, and other digital materials?”. The website for the New Skills for a Digital Era colloquium already includes links to the eleven case studies considered over the course of the three days of discussion as well as a list of additional suggested readings. As mentioned over on The Ten Thousand Year Blog, the pre-print of the proceedings has been available since August, 2007.As announced in SAA’s online newsletter, the Official Proceedings of the New Skills for a Digital Era Colloquium, edited by Richard Pearce-Moses and Susan E. Davis, is now available for free download. Published under Creative Commons Attribution, this document is 143 pages long and includes all the original case studies.

This report likely has useful information in it for those who are -- or will be -- dealing with electronic records, institutions repositories and digital archives.

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Technorati tag: Institutional Repository

E-Info Global Symposium has placed videos of the presentations given at that conference online, with more to come. The videos are on the E-Info web site and on Google Video. Below is a link the video of my presentation (37 min.). Notes from the presentation are here, along with a link to the PowerPoint.

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Technorati tags: Alabama, Huntsville, Institutional Repository

Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has released Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite, which he describes as "the latest Digital Scholarship publication...designed to give the reader a very quick introduction to key aspects of institutional repositories and to foster further exploration of this topic though liberal use of relevant references to online documents and links to pertinent websites." Besides the overview that this 10-page document provides, it also contains pointers to many other resources. It is a document that will help someone gain some background in order to enter a basic conversation on institutional repositories (IRs).

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Technorati tag: Institutional Repository

My presentation at E-Info Global Symposium was entitled "Trends in eRepositories."

Abstract:

Over the years, our institutions have built large hardcopy repositories for the items they felt were important. Today we are engaged in building digital repositories to house a broad range of materials. In order for these repositories to be good stewards of the information they contain, we must focus on management, infrastructure and community support. We also must be aware of the trends that are occurring, since these repositories are still in their infancy.

The note attached to the first slide provides a list of resources that may be useful to you.

Over the years, our institutions have built large repositories for the items they felt were important. Those archives generally look like this. We hope that they also provide adequate access, but access has often meant digging through boxes for useful nuggets; something that everyone will not do.

We also must wonder if some repositories are like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where materials enter, but then are lost forever.

Now the repositories we are building are digital. These can be right sources of:

• Information
• Data
• Images
• Research
• Published & unpublished materials
• Background information
• Cultural materials
• Items that document our institutions

They contain materials that were born digital as well as digitized. They may contain complex objects. And they may contain pointers to non-digital assets.

In Feb. 2003, Clifford Lynch used these words to describe an eRepository:
Based on his words and the experiences I've witnessed, I focused the remainder of my talk on three areas:

• Management
• Infrastructure
• Community Support

The rest of the presentation should make sense to you, except for one slide:

Yes, this is a fork in the road. As Yogi Berra said:

"When you come to a fork in the road....Take it"

Although many digital repositories are focusing on a broad range of materials, some are only focusing on scholarly publications and building repositories that provide open access to those publications. The open access movement hopes that scholarly publications will be made available either through open access repositories (the Green Road) or by being published in open access journals (the Gold Road). [A benefit would be if a publication was made available both ways.] Unlike the photo, the Green and Gold Roads are not a fork in the road. {That spiel likely worked better in the live version.} [12/12/2007 -- well...I guess the text would make more sense without the typo! Fork in the road, not folk!]

During my presentation, I mentioned that it is important for faculty members to see a real benefit in submitting materials to the repository. After my presentation, Scott Nicholson mentioned that faculty need to produce a body of evidence, when they come up for tenure and promotion, that shows the impact of their work. He said:

Yesterday I spoke at E Info Global Symposium on "Trends in eRepositories." The presentation can be viewed here. I'll post more notes on the Symposium soon, as well as an explanation of the "fork in the road" slide that I used.

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Technorati tag: Institutional Repository

My last post about my schedule was early in October, when I mentioned that I was going to need a lot of coffee due to my upcoming travels. On the flight into Monterey, CA, I actually met Libraryman (Michael Porter) whose photo (left) I've been using with permission. Very cool!

Between now and the end of the year, I'll be giving three workshops/presentations on social networking tools for Suffolk Cooperative Library System (Nov. 29), SUNY Cortland (Dec. 4) and the Rochester Regional Library Council (Dec. 11). (See calendar in the left column for details and links). I'll also be giving a presentation at E-Info Global Symposium (Dec. 7) in Huntsville, AL on "Trends in eRepositories." This is a one-day conference with speakers come from across the U.S. and Canada.

My talk at E-Info will be on institutional repositories in a broader sense than we might think about them. eRepositories are a potential rich source of information, data, images, research, background info, unpublished materials, and cultural materials. Since they are digital, they must be more proactive in being good stewards of the information they contain. They are the archives that will house the information we'll want in the future, and we need to ensure that we build them well.

Events are already on my schedule for 2008, with several others likely to fall into place soon. (See calendar on the left side of this blog.) Among them is an event on January 16 where I'll talk about "Privacy & Security in Our Online, Networked World." I talk about privacy both in my digitization and social networking workshops, and security is always a concern when talking about social networking. At this event, I'll be able to talk about these issues with members of the financial community.

For more information on any of the events on my calendar, please contact the sponsoring organization or me. If you would me to speak at your event, give me a shout.

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Technorati tags: Digitization, Second Life, Social Networking Tools,Institutional Repository

Fedora has had a rash of announcements in the last week. They announced:

• The Fedora Commons
• A new web site
• Additional staff
• A new version of the software
• The receipt of a four-year, $4.9 million grant

The "Fedora Commons is a non-profit organization providing sustainable technologies to create, manage, publish, share and preserve digital content as a basis for intellectual, organizational, scientific and cultural heritage by bringing two communities together."

All of this means that Fedora will be supported and will continue to grow, and that's a good thing.

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Technorati tags: digital preservation, institutional repository

Abstract:

This short booklet is intended to introduce the commonest non-obvious customization-related tasks for newcomers to DSpace administration. It has been written against the stable version 1.4.2 of DSpace and Manakin 1.1. We have tried to include instructions for different operating systems as required; most customizations, however, work identically cross-platform. This booklet was created as a handout for the tutorial "Making DSpace Your Own", at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The introduction states:

This short booklet is intended to introduce the commonest non-obvious customization related tasks for newcomers to DSpace administration. It has been written against the stable version 1.4.2 of DSpace and the Manakin user interface, version 1.1. We have tried to include instructions for different operating systems as required; most customizations, however, work identically cross-platform.

It's free and distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For those using DSpace, this could be a tremendous help.

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Technorati tag: institutional repository

The Association of Research Libraries periodically has a SPEC Kit created to address best practices in a specific area for libraries. In 2006, Charles W. Bailey, Jr. chaired a group that created a SPEC Kit on "Institutional Repositories." The table of contents and executive summary (9 pages) are available for free, along with information from other SPEC Kits (here).

Institutional repositories "collect and provide access to diverse, locally produced digital materials." For the purpose of the SPEC Kit, "an IR was simply defined as a permanent, institution-wide repository of diverse, locally produced digital works that is available for public use and supports metadata harvesting." The last two point -- public use and metadata harvesting -- mean that the content is open for many to see and use.

In my mind, an institutional repository is a type of knowledge management system, even through the definitions for both are somewhat different. Many people scratch their heads when confronted with these different "content" management systems. How are they different? How are they the same? Will we, at some point, just have systems for managing content without worrying about if it is a IR, KM, CMS or...? I hope so! For now, though, the differences do matter. However, no matter what system your working with, the executive summary for "Institutional Repositories" undoubtedly contains information that would be useful to you. It is well-written and concise.

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Technorati tag: institutional repository

We now see programs that allow users to add comments to their digitized materials, like the Maine Memory Network (example). Allowing users to add comments is a great way of including their knowledge in the collection. Undoubtedly there will be a few people -- with long memories -- that would enjoy adding what they remember. (Genealogists, especially could have a heyday.)

Although it may sound frightening, providing a way for users to comment on all types of materials could be useful in ensuring that information -- unknown to the group that mounted the collection -- is not forgotten. One of the best places for this might be in allowing users to add comments to materials that document history, whether it be the history of a family, community, a product, or a company. What tidbits -- lost from the records -- could be added?!

As I think about this, I think of companies that are likely digitized their old records in order to create a knowledge management system. It is likely that they are digitizing the official documents kept as part of their document retention program. But those documents may not contain the "rest of the story" and the unsanitized version of what occurred during the product's life-cycle, for example. There could be comments added that would ensure that the company understood truly how it succeeded and reminded the company of what it shouldn't do again.

Would you want to approve comments that are submitted? Yes and you would want the right to not display any that were deemed inappropriate. Notice I didn't say delete, since an inappropriate comment could still have information that you may want to retain. We know that some people could submitted damaging and incorrect comments, so you need to be able to deal with that. Any program that is allowing people to add comments should have public statement about how they will deal with inappropriate or erroneous comments.

Finally, comments are useless if no one acts on them. If you accept comments, have someone review them and see what can be used from them. Who knows what you will find!

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Technorati tag: institutional repository, web 2.0

We will readily weed a book collection because it is seen as a normal function. However, can we weed an institutional repository? If someone created this information which related to our institution, and it contains information that "might" be useful, can we throw it out? What if the information is electronic and is seemingly taking up "no" space?

Actually, this topic came up recently when talking to Peter Verheyen. We both acknowledged that one might weed a digital collection, deciding what to keep long-term and what to throw away. If you think of your digital assets like the books you acquire, it is only natural to think that some may only be useful for the short-term. You might even create digital assets that you intend to use and keep for a limited period of time.

Even those who blazing the trail of digital preservation acknowledge that not all things may be preserved equally. But when we think of an institutional digital repository, can we envision weeding it?

In fact, the materials should be reviewed before entering the repository and those with low value should be culled, as well as duplicates. As materials enter the repository, there should be a clear expectation for the length of time they will be kept, with the recognition that not all items will be kept the same length of time. (For example, some academic course materials might only be kept for four years, while course catalogues might be kept indefinitely.) When the deletion dates arise, you might decide to review what will be deleted (perhaps only by category) to ensure that the material is not needed.

By the way, this type of weeding is no different than what occurs with document retention schedules that are created (and used) in many organizations. [Many refer to document retention schedules as document deletion schedules, since the schedule tell you what to retain as well as what to throw away.]

Weeding is a necessary evil. It serves a purpose. It ensure that we keep what is valuable and let go of those things that are no longer of value. Could weeding delete something that we'll want later? Maybe. But in order to keep our repositories useful, it is a risk we'll have to take.

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Technorati tags: institutional repository, knowledge management, km, information management

When you think about the information your organization needs to have access to -- and those materials that your users want to access - what do you think of? Likely your answer will depend on where you sit in the organization. You might, for example, think of the materials that are in the archives. If you work in the "communications" department, you might think of current and historic press releases, annual reports, and other documents that talk about the institution. If you're in human resources (personnel), you might want access to current and old employee manuals, employee files, union contracts and other documents that are important to how the institution relates to those that work for it. And if your a user (consumer), you might want information from the institution that tells you about its products and services, its history and its financial standing.

In many institutions, the documents above may be in different files (paper or electronic) and perhaps even stored in different buildings (or locations). The danger is that as those materials will be maintained in separate systems rather than combined -- in some manner -- into an institutional repository.

One definition of an institutional repository is "an online locus for collecting and preserving -- in digital form -- the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution." While an institutional repository is focused on collecting and preserving, many organizations -- especially for-profit organizations -- have been looking into knowledge management. According to Colquhoun-John Ferguson & Scott Goldie, "Knowledge management is...[an] area which has introduced a methodology for the planned capture and re-use of organisational knowledge."

Re-use. It is a simple word, but what are your expectations of reuse? Mine are that I can take something that I created before, modify it and save it as a new version. Yours might be that you can continue to modify the same document, save it with the same name, and have the IR/KM do version control for you. Someone else might want to continue to refer to the same document, until it is replaced with a new version, and then wants that old version to be archived (but not deleted) so that it is part of the institution's history.

As I look at institutional repositories online (e.g., Georgia State University), I know that my view of them is broader than how they are currently being defined, at least in academia. But should we limit what an institutional repository is? Can it be -- function as -- a knowledge management system? Maybe like many other things, the definition is in the eye of the beholder. In my eyes, the institutional repository should be a place for the entire institution. What do you think?

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Technorati tags: institutional repository, knowledge management, KM, information management

Quoting the web site:

This is an abridged version of a final report describing the activities surrounding Phase I of a one-year pilot project called the University of Notre Dame Institutional Digital Repository. After outlining the goals and methods of the project, the report enumerates ways the project could be continued. The seventy-some people who participated in the project are now looking to administrators across the University to become familiar with the contents of the report and set its future course.

What problems is Notre Dame trying to solve?

The three-fold purpose of the Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) is closely aligned with the goals of the University. The IDR's three goals are:

1. to make it easier for students to learn
2. to make it easier for instructors to teach
3. to supplement the scholarly communications process

With these goals in mind the IDR is defined as a set of digital objects combined with sets of services applied against those objects - think "digital library".

The need to create institutional repositories was a series of hallway conversations at the iPRES conference. Given those conversation and the goal set out by Notre Dame, I suspect that this report-- both abridged and full versions available online -- will be well read.