LibraryTechNZ

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-11-20T11:57:00.000+13:00

Introducing The Source

Report of the Task Force on (Harvard) University Libraries (Note: PDF)

From the Office of the Provost, Harvard University website

Harvard’s library system now includes 73 separate libraries with 1,200 full-time employees, 16.3 million volumes, 12.8 million digital files, over 100,000 serial titles, and millions of manuscripts, photographs, musical recordings, films, and artefacts of all kinds, making it by far the largest university library in the world.

Statement on the Report of the Task Force on University Libraries (Note: PDF)

The Core Recommendations of the Task Force are:

Establish and implement a shared administrative infrastructure
Rationalise and enhance information technology systems
Revamp the financial model for the Harvard libraries
Rationalise system for acquiring, accessing, and developing materials for a “single university” collection
Collaborate more ambitiously with peer libraries and other institutions

Making the case for European research libraries (Note: PDF)

From the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER) website

The Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER) Strategic Plan 2009-2012 provides a framework for the LIBER Strategy in the coming years. In 2009-2012 LIBER will give priority to the following areas:

Scholarly communication
Digitisation and resource discovery
Heritage collections and preservation
Organisation and human resources
LIBER Services

Social isolation and new technology: how the internet and mobile phones impact Americans’ social networks (Note: PDF)

From the Pew Internet & American Life Project website

This survey is the first ever that examines the role of the internet and cell phones in the way that people interact with those in their core social network. Key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology.

Papers Fast

2009-11-18T21:38:00.013+13:00

I've just finished writing up a project we finished earlier this year: Papers Fast.

Some background

Papers Past was re-launched in 2007 with a new look and new features -- particularly search -- and quickly become the National Library’s most popular website. In the first year the number of visits per month increased 20-fold, and then it kept growing. But even when it was re-launched, Papers Past was not a fast website. And as time passed, and the number of users grew, and the number of pages increased, we noticed it was becoming slower and slower.

To start with we had an easy solution: when we noticed the site was slowing down, we added another web server to share the load. We started with three web servers. By the time we got to eight this approach had stopped working: adding new web servers did not make Papers Past any faster. Worse, we had built up a backlog of almost half a million pages of searchable text that we could not put online because we were worried the whole system would grind to a halt.

Drastic action was necessary.

So the Papers Fast project was launched. Its goal: to make Papers Past fast.

What’s the problem?

After talking to people who might know, we identified four factors that might be causing problems:

Application. As far as we know, Papers Past is the biggest and most-used Greenstone installation in the world. Maybe Greenstone cannot scale up far enough?
CPU. Papers Past was running on old Sun SPARC servers that were due for a refresh. Maybe new servers would do the trick?
NFS. Most of the Papers Past data is served up using the Network File Service protocol. Is this a good choice for Greenstone?
Network. The Papers Past data is stored on a different part of the network from the web servers, behind a firewall. Is this a problem? Which was it?

To find out, we borrowed a massive computer with 24 terabytes of disk from GEN-i, copied over all our digitised newspaper data, and asked DL Consulting to install a fresh copy of Greenstone, setting up an entirely separate copy of Papers Past.

Then built a fake collection with 2.5 million searchable pages, used Jmeter and our Apache logs to put the test system under twice as much load as we've ever seen before, and watched to see what would happen.

We found the problem was... all of the above.

So what to do?

The first fix was to upgrade Papers Past search to use Apache Solr instead of Apache Lucene. The second was to replace our eight aging webservers with two new Sun Blade Servers with AMD CPUs. Third, we switched to local disk for the metadata and indexes (we'll upgrade to a fibre-attached SAN by the end of the year).

Then we built a new fully-searchable collection (including three new titles) and re-launched on 22 June 2009, two days ahead of schedule!

And no technology project would be complete without a little scope creep. In this case, we had to support the METS/ALTO journal profile so we could add Kai Tiaki: the Journal of the Nurses of New Zealand to the collection, and to extend the image server to support new titles digitised in greyscale. DL Consulting made these changes, and a few more, along the way.

Did it work?

Yes. We've been serving more traffic, and response times have been faster.

For Papers Past, we track traffic from Google separately from everyone else (it's along story, but the core problem is that we serve so much data to Google that our aging web statistics package can't crunch the numbers).

So here's the number of hits we served to everyone other than Google for four weeks before and eight weeks after the launch.

And here's the number of pages we serve up to Google (via Google Webmaster Tools).

You can see that requests from everyone is way up -- especially Google, who have slurped up about 700,000 pages per day lately, peaking at over a million. Before the upgrade, we had a lot of trouble getting Papers Past fully indexed in Google News Archive, but now it is pretty much all there.

Despite this increased traffic, Papers Past response times are much improved. We have been monitoring response times since 2007, and set out very clear performance targets before we kicked off Papers Fast. Here's the performance targets, and the times we observed before and since the changes were made. (All times are in milliseconds.)

Performance measure	Target	Before changes	Since changes
Average response time for generated page request: measured by Google Webmaster Tools	1000	3000-5000	600-800
Average response time for generated page request measured by the Library	1000	> 3500	402
Average response time for search page request measured by the Library	1500	6639	1055
Average the Library time for image server request measured by the Library	6000	11158	3574

Let's take a look at the changes graphically. Here's out internal tracking of response times.

Here's how the response times were tracked by Google.

It's quite a change.

Finally, it has made a big difference for our infrastructure. Here's how the NFS traffic to one of our fileservers changed when we moved the Papers Past metadata and search indexes away. It's also freed up corresponding network capacity.

Summary

On 22 June 2009 Papers Past users not only got half a million more searchable pages, they got a big speed bump. Traffic is up since then, but response times have remained low, and we have a plan to handle more data (the SAN) and more users (extra front-end servers).

Three website upgrades

2009-11-14T02:30:00.017+13:00

Following Courtney's challenge, I'm gonna take a crack at weekly updates on our current major website developments.

As the Digital Service Manager for Find, which is the poster child for a larger internal programme called DDI (Discover, Deliver, Interact), I'm supposed to hold it all together. We'll see if I can hold it together for a weekly update on progress...

Anyway, that's the end of my intro/disclaimer/apology if these posts peter out. Where are we at?

We've been migrating a lot of our metadata records to the new Primo software platform, and we released our first cut in July as the new Find search service. Our main priority has been migrating services off older software which has reached the end of its life.

Last Monday (the 9th) we cut over three of our websites to their (much faster) upgraded versions:

The GLAM organisations who are members of Matapihi have most of their content loaded into the growing giant DigitalNZ, so it made sense to move Matapihi's back end to the DigitalNZ engine. We also conveniently have all the Matapihi content loaded in Find
findNZarticles contributed content is also in Find, so the back end has been migrated to the Primo platform, it continues to have its own website
PublicationsNZ content (a.k.a. the National Bibliography) is also in Find, but it is effectively a subset of our National Library catalogue, so it no longer has its own website, instead there is a PublicationsNZ entry page on Find.

There's still some tidy up work to do, but these seem to be running reasonably well at their new locations.

It took us quite a while to come to terms with Primo's internal 'PNX' record format and how metadata records are converted during import; it loves MARCXML and simple Dublin Core records, but it coughs loudly when you throw more complex XML (especially with namespaces) at it, but we're finally starting to understand how to wrangle it. There's also a hugely complex maze of mapping/lookup tables - slowly we're piecing together the chains of lookup codes and documenting their inter-relationships so it's easier to maintain.

Our eyes are now focussed migrating two remaining services - Timeframes and Discover. We are planning on releasing previews for these before the end of November. You can check the current timetable on our Online Services Changes page.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-11-13T14:53:00.000+13:00

Introducing The Source

Copycats? Digital consumers in the on-line age (Note: PDF)

From the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP) website

Huge economic losses are being sustained due to large-scale unauthorised downloading, generated by widespread confusion about copyright law in the online world. This UK report examines online consumer behaviour in the UK and its potential impact on business and government policy. It is the first piece of research to look at evidence from across the copyright industries and across all age ranges.
The report has two further objectives:

To inform a SABIP workshop at which a selected group of attendees with a direct interest in the issue will consider the implications of consumer behaviour on IP and make recommendations for further areas of SABIP research
To highlight any further SABIP research that is required to ensure that all agencies of Government have the fullest understanding of the issues

Key findings:

The world of the digital consumer is an environment, indeed a series of ‘eco-systems’, subject to rapid change; change that means many predictions about the future of the Internet and digital convergence (and how these are ‘consumed’) made even two, and certainly five and ten years ago seem quaintly dated – a fact that should be held in mind as predictions are made for the future of not just ‘Digital Britain’, but also the ‘Digital World’
Within ten years we have seen the widespread domestic use of high-speed broadband and multichannel (and often High Definition) digital television with the facility to time-shift, copy and view programmes on other devices, and to upload these files to websites such as YouTube; the arrival of wi-fi in the high-street, the library, the office, university and the home; the rapid expansion of open source and Creative Commons publishing; at least four iterations of file-sharing technologies; the birth of mainstream blogging as a broad social phenomenon; the arrival of social media as a significant medium of authorship, sharing, and communication; the shift by the younger digital consumer towards the mobile phone as not just an aural communication tool, but also a medium for text messaging, music and video consumption, and as a gateway to post messages, photographs and other types of content to social media websites
Most recently the large expansion in use of ‘microblogging’, to websites such as the text-based Twitter and the image-based Tumblr, has once again surprised many who suspected these services were a fad. Finally, the recent successful launch of the BBC’s authorised programme-streaming service, iPlayer, and the music streaming service, Spotify, has demonstrated that new forms of business models may be possible in the world of ‘free things’. Unsurprisingly, the literature review we undertook does not grasp the enormity and the speed of these changes. Each impacts centrally on intellectual property
The challenge for IP policy makers is to judge and, where possible, measure the changing social behaviours and attitudes brought about by the myriad rapidly evolving technologies and networks of the digital revolution, and map this against their economic, political and social objectives

'Authentic' learning experiences: What does this mean and where is the literacy learning? (Note: PDF)

From the aWAy with Words Conference website

Teachers are challenged to adopt practices that facilitate the development of “necessary” skills and strategies for learners. For many, however, what is required in policy and curricula is increasingly obscured and even confusing as teachers are bombarded with jargon prescribing seemingly similar (yet apparently different) approaches such as “rich tasks”, “big questions” and “fertile questions” that are to be "relevant”, “authentic” and “engaging” for the learner. Barton and Hamilton (2000) argue that literacy learning should take the learner beyond the transmission of technical skills in the classroom to an understanding of its role within a community’s cultural practices. These literacy practices are mediated by literacy events and it is engagement with these events and their diverse demands that allows learners to make strong connections to their own literacy practices.
Reported in this paper are the interpretations of four experienced primary school teachers as they plan, programme and facilitate authentic literacy experiences in their classrooms. These are examined within the framework of the principles of authentic learning, which is useful in gaining insight into the ways that experienced teachers make sense of the complex jargon associated with their profession for the development of deep and flexible knowledge that can be applied in a range of community settings. Evident in these teachers’ stories are the understandings, beliefs, contexts and competing tensions that underpin the conceptualisation, design and implementation of these experiences. The teachers’ stories reveal the complexity of teaching as they consider:

the individual contexts of their schools
their students’ own communities
the expectations of stakeholders in a child’s education
the availability of resources

Public libraries and the Internet 2008-2009: Issues, implications, and challenges

From the First Monday website

This paper presents an overview of methods, findings, issues, and implications from the 2008 ‘Public Libraries and the Internet’ national survey, including comparisons to data from previous studies. Since 1994, these surveys have chronicled the expansion of the Internet as a primary library service. The 2008 survey includes key data about the many facets of public libraries as community Internet access, training, and service centres, from the number of workstations and connection speeds available to the most common Internet services and training. The findings from the 2008 survey reveal impacts of the global recession on public libraries and their ability to meet the needs and expectations of patrons, communities, and all levels of government.

Engage Your Community - Social Media Workshop

2009-11-11T15:31:00.008+13:00

On Friday 13 November I'm giving a workshop on social media at the Engage Your Community conference.

Workshop Format

As I'm not sure what the level of experience is across the people in the workshop, I've broken it into five sections. Each of these sections can be expanded or contracted, depending on the level of detail we need to go into. I'm hoping for loads of experience-sharing from the people in the workshop.

Introductions
How do we all use the web? How many of us are running personal social media accounts? How many are running accounts on behalf of their organisation? What happens when personal and professional use start to overlap?

This section is designed to get people talking, and to give me a chance to assess how familiar people are with social media tools. That will help me pitch the following sections at the right level.

Observations from Day 1
A few quick points from the presentations given by Colin Jackson, Nathalie Hofsteede and Chris Brown.

A tour of the social web
What's out there that people could be using?

- Listening in (RSS feeds, Google Alerts)
- Joining in (Twitter, Flickr, blogging)
- Community & collaboration (Facebook, wikis, Ning)
[All with examples from the not-for-profit sector]

The golden rules of social media
Things to ask yourself before embarking on any social media adventure (and certainly before picking a social media tool):

- Why do you want to do this?
- What are you offering?
- Who is this for?
- Who will be doing this?

And (numerous) steps for a successful launch.

Planning exercises
Depending on how much time we have, I've prepared an activity for people to break into small groups and plan a social media 'campaign' for a specific scenario.

Hopefully all this gives a bit more context for my slides

Social Media Workshop - Engage Your Community conference 2009

View more presentations from NationalLibraryNZ.

Resources & examples

I've also prepared a rather lengthy handout which I'm now going to reproduce here for ease of use.

Introductions to different kinds of social media

It’s hard to beat the team at Common Craft http://www.commoncraft.com, who make short, straightforward videos about all matter of web (and non-web) things.

These are all available on the Commoncraft YouTube channel

Listening in

Twitter search | http://search.twitter.com

Google Alerts | www.google.com/alerts

Google blog search:

Google your search terms
From options at top left of results page, choose Blogs from the ‘More’ drop-down menu
Scroll to the bottom of the search results

Useful reading
- Social media monitoring (State Services Commission)

Joining in

Blogger | http://www.blogger.com

Wordpress
http://wordpress.com (basic account)
http://wordpress.org (to do your own hosting)

Twitter | http://twitter.com

Flickr | http://www.flickr.com

Examples used:
- Whangarei SPCA blog
- Get in on! Twitter
- Rainbow Youth Flickr

Useful reading
- Twitter case study (National Library)
- Mashable’s Twitter Guidebook
- Twitter for non-profits (Mashable)
- Fundraising potential for Twitter (TechCrunch)
- Darren Rowse’s blogging lessons

Community & collaboration

Ning | http://www.ning.com

Wikis
http://www.wetpaint.com
http://pbworks.com
http://www.mediawiki.org

Facebook | http://www.facebook.com

Examples used
- Mt Cook Mobilised wiki
- Museums 3.0 Ning group
- Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day campaign

Useful reading:
- Case study on Daffodil Day campaign (Ideashop)
- Managing Facebook groups (Mashable)
- Wikis when and why (Nina Simon)

Community management

If you’re going to start spending time with your community online, you’re effectively becoming a community manager. This elderly post from Jeremy Owyang is still relevant if you’re trying to figure out if this is your new line of work.

Like any job, there are some personal qualities you’ll need to bring out in yourself, and some tactics you might find useful.

- A case study from the Brooklyn Museum
- A case study from (the early days of) Flickr
- My notes from Heather Champ and Derek Powazek’s 2009 ‘Designing and sustaining creative communities’ workshop

Planning

One of the most important things you need to ask yourself is – how much time do I (or my team of people) have available? How much time does Web 2 take (Nina Simon)

You’re likely to need some simple policies around how you/your team use social media sites in a professional capacity or on behalf of your organisation. I’m a big fan of the very simple guidelines from the State Services Commission, which were written for government, but which translate over well

The Guardian’s community standards are also helpful if you’re thinking about things like comment moderation

And this page aggregates links to social media policies

One piece of advice: these are your policies. Don’t try to second-guess everything that might go wrong & plan against them, or you’ll become paralysed. Read some of the material above, write some useful & sensible guidelines (aimed at helping the people doing your social media outreach to understand what’s okay and what’s not so okay, both in terms of their own behaviour and that of others) and then update as time goes by and circumstances change.

Generally useful, sometimes even inspiring, reading

Beth Kanter’s blog ‘How nonprofits can use social media’ (the title pretty much explains it)
- http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog

Nina Simon’s Museums 2.0 (Nina is interested in people’s participation in museums & galleries, and frequently writes about social media projects)
blog
- http://museumtwo.blogspot.com

The Community section on A List Apart (but don’t stop there, please, this site is full of delicious reading)
- http://www.alistapart.com/topics/content/community

The Pew Internet & American Life Project regularly issues reports on people’s online activities and behaviour
- http://pewinternet.org/Data-Tools.aspx

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-11-06T11:49:00.001+13:00

Introducing The Source

© the way ahead: A Copyright Strategy for the Digital Age

From the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) website

The aim of copyright is to encourage authors’ creativity and make their works available widely. It is a global system that provides incentives for authors and investors, while allowing access to works for educators, researchers, cultural institutions and users of all sorts, both in business and in the home. Copyright engenders strong emotions. It is about authors’ livelihoods and recognition and about financial rewards for rights holders. But it is also about access to the copyright works, which are essential to our values, our cultures and to the way we spend our work and our leisure time.
This work looks ahead to how copyright can tackle the challenges of the digital age, drawing on previous work including Digital Britain and the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, on international perspectives including the European Commission’s and on discussions and submissions from stakeholders.

Digitisation of special collections: Mapping, assessment, prioritisation (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users is equally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term?
Key Findings:

The communities of both intermediary and end users are willing to express their view on prioritising digitisation of special collections; the participation in the project was a matter of good will and the good response makes evident that there is definitely interest of the professional communities to express their opinion on the matter of digitisation needs. It should be noted here that the community of intermediaries sees collections on a finer level of granularity; end users often refer to super-collections such as the holdings of an institution
The top user-driven priority criteria that emerged from consultation with both intermediaries and end users are: Improve access; Enhance impact on research and/on studies; Enhance impact on teaching; Allow for collaboration; Improve access outside
The geographic and institutional boundaries of collections nominated for digitisation are wider – this study was aimed at the higher education institutions in the UK, but 14% of the nominated collections were from institutions outside of the higher education sector, and 6% were from overseas
The complementarity of collections is strongly favoured by both users’ communities
The criteria for digitisation nominated by intermediary and end users include general criteria but also a number of criteria where metrics can be applied; thus allowing to establish a ranking mechanism

Integrated Library System Platforms on Open Source / Stephen Abram (Note: PDF)

From Stephen's Lighthouse (Stephen Abram) blog

Stephen Abram discusses what he (and SirsiDynix) see happening when libraries get into talks about moving their Integrated Library Systems to open source platforms systems. What has been found is that they often are not aware of the heavy drawbacks of what open source systems cannot offer at this point in time. To help buyers become aware of the limitations of open source, he has set out to clarify what open source is, how it is different from proprietary software platforms, and why Integrated Library Systems (ILS) are not ready for open source at this point.

Testing the accessibility of Web 2.0

From the University of Southampton, School of Electronics and Computer Science website

Dr Mike Wald and E.A. Draffan are leading a project funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) TechDis which looks at how well people with disabilities can access web services such as blogs and wikis and social networking sites. The team have built an accessibility tool kit, which will enable users to test the accessibility of web 2.0 services. The accessible pen drive offers freely available assistive technologies that can be used to help with this evaluation.
Web2Access, part of the toolkit, provides an online checking system for any interactive web-based services such as Facebook. “We developed it because nowadays users contribute, as well as read, information and so you cannot just click on a button to see if websites are accessible and easy to use”, said E.A. Draffan.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-10-30T10:33:00.008+13:00

Introducing The Source

Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband internet transitions and policy from around the world (Note: PDF)

From the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website

Fostering the development of a ubiquitously networked society, connected over high-capacity networks, is a widely shared goal among both developed and developing countries. High capacity networks are seen as strategic infrastructure, intended to contribute to high and sustainable economic growth and to core aspects of human development. In the pursuit of this goal, various countries have, over the past decade and a half, deployed different strategies, and enjoyed different results. This study reviews the current plans and practices pursued by other countries in the transition to the next generation of connectivity, as well as their past experience. By observing the experiences of a range of market-oriented democracies that pursued a similar goal over a similar time period, we hope to learn from the successes and failures of others about what practices and policies best promote that goal. By reviewing current plans or policy efforts, we hope to learn what others see as challenges in the next generation transition, and to learn about the range of possible solutions to these challenges.

NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

From the Computer Security Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology website

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) role in cloud computing is to promote the effective and secure use of the technology within government and industry by providing technical guidance and promoting standards. This website contains NIST's definition of cloud computing as well as related guidance. This definition will serve as a foundation for our upcoming publication on cloud models, architectures, and deployment strategies. Computer scientists at NIST developed this draft definition in collaboration with industry and government and we expect it to evolve over time as the cloud industry and cloud technology matures.

Copyright and Libraries - Cory Doctorow interview

From Cory Doctorow's website

‘Internet Librarian International’ took place recently in London and one of the keynote speakers was writer, blogger, “copyright activist,” and editor of Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow. Here’s an 11 minutes webcast where Doctorow chats with Jaap van de Geer about several topics including:

Copyright in the age of the Internet
What publishers are scared of
The future of publishers and libraries
E-Books
The ownership of a book (vs, records and movies)
Author recognition of copyright issues
Librarians

Open Access – Harvard's success story (Note: Podcast)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

In October 2008 Harvard University adopted an open access policy for all its research papers to be made available in their university repository, in an opt out basis. Twelve months on, since the policy was adopted, JISC's Rebecca O'Brien speaks with Professor Robert Darnton, Director of Harvard University Library and trustee of New York Public Library and the Oxford University Press (USA), about the cultural change that is taking place at Harvard and the background to why professors at the university decided to share their knowledge in this way.

The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery

From the Microsoft Research website

A new book, ‘The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery’, is available online (full text, free) and is a tribute to the work of the computer scientist, Jim Gray, who was lost at sea in 2007. The entire book is a collection of essays and can be downloaded as a single PDF or individual parts. The part of the book containing essays on the future of scholarly publishing contains an introduction along with six essays written by a who’s who in scholarly publishing and information retrieval.

Introduction by Lee Dirks
Jim Gray’s fourth paradigm and the construction of the scientific record by Clifford Lynch
Text in a data-centric world by Paul Ginsparg
All aboard: toward a machine-friendly scholarly communication system by Herbert Van de Sompel and Carl Lagoze
The future of data policy by Anne Fitzgerald, Brian Fitzgerald and Kylie Pappalardo
I have seen the paradigm shift, and it is us by John Wilbanks
From web 2.0 to the global database by Timo Hannay

DigitalNZ get-together, Sunday 22 November

2009-10-29T16:20:00.002+13:00

The Digital New Zealand team is holding a Wellington get-together on Sunday 22 November, the day before the National Digital Forum conference.

From the DigitalNZ blog:

It will be a mix of info sharing and mini working sessions focused on how we might take DigitalNZ to the next level, with a bit of socialising thrown in afterward for good measure. The idea is that we want to really start ramping things up here at DigitalNZ, but we're only five people. We need your input, your ideas and your critique.

Let the team (Andy, Lewis, Dan, Virginia, Fiona and Jo) know that you're interested in going along by emailing info@digitalnz.org and they'll contact you closer to the day with more details.

If you want to check out what DigitalNZ's been up to lately, have a look at:

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-10-23T11:20:00.005+13:00

Introducing The Source

Harvard, National Library of China embark on digitisation project

From the Harvard College Library website

One of the most extensive collections of rare Chinese books outside of China will be digitised and made freely available to scholars worldwide as part of a six-year cooperative project between Harvard College Library (HCL) and the National Library of China (NLC).
Nancy Cline, the Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College, and Dr. Furui Zhan, Director of the National Library, formally signed an agreement detailing the project on Friday, October 9. “We are pleased to engage in this important collaboration with our colleagues from the National Library of China,” said Nancy Cline. “Dr. Zhan’s commitment to ensuring that these rare materials become an important part of the digital future will have a significant impact on scholarship.”

Does the Brain Like E-Books?

From the Room for Debate blog on the News York Times website

Writing and reading — from newspapers to novels, academic reports to gossip magazines — are migrating ever faster to digital screens, like laptops, Kindles and cellphones. Traditional book publishers are putting out “vooks,” which place videos in electronic text that can be read online or on an iPhone. Others are republishing old books in electronic form. And libraries, responding to demand, are offering more e-books for download.
Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium?
The five experts responding to the questions are:

Alan Liu, English professor
Sandra Aamodt, author, “Welcome to Your Brain”
Maryanne Wolf, professor of child development
David Gelernter, computer scientist
Gloria Mark, professor of informatics

Informing communities: sustaining democracy in the digital age (Note: PDF)

From the Knight Foundation website

The US based Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy focuses not on the media, but on communities, in the places where people live and work. The Commission was given a deceptively simple charge:

Articulate the information needs of a community in a democracy
Describe the state of things in the United States
Propose public policy directions that would help lead us from where we are today to where we ought to be

This report focuses on the information people actually need, and works back from there, suggesting ways that the flow of information and its uses may be enhanced. That is a fundamentally different approach from traditional media policy that sought to promote or regulate existing media. Since the current pace of information technology change is rapid to the point of defying regularisation or regulation, the Commission’s approach is to steer to the true north of what is constant, the need for the free flow of information in a democracy.
Nothing in this report is meant to be prescriptive, rather, is meant to propose and encourage debate.

Scholarly Book Publishing Practice Survey

From the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) website

This summary of some first findings from the first ALPSP survey undertaken to establish scholarly book and eBook publishing practices is provided to highlight the information that will be contained in the ALPSP Research report to be published later this year, but also to draw attention and provide data on:

the size and extent of the forthcoming survey
the types of academic publishing currently being undertaken
the reported effect on sales of the ‘Look Inside’ function provided by Amazon
the number of publishers so far signed up to the Google Book Settlement
the proportion of eBooks published by commercial as against non-profit publishers

During summer 2009, a survey was conducted of 400 publishers, consisting of ALPSP, SSP, AAUP, STM and AAP-PSP members and others known to be active in the scholarly publishing market. The sample included the majority of principal academic and scholarly book publishers. 243 responses were received, representing a 60.75% response rate. 72 responses were discounted from the analysis as their books were published by other publishers, they no longer had a books programme, only completed a few questions with no usable data, or declined, for various reasons to complete the questionnaire. The balance was 171 publishers, or 42.75%. The results of the Scholarly Book Publishing Survey are expected to be published by ALPSP in November 2009.

Redirecting moved URLs - surely it's not forever?

2009-10-22T13:12:00.002+13:00

Our Find service has been up for four months now and we're about to start moving some of our other services into it. This means some of our old platforms (and their URLs) will be retired.

We want to make sure anyone can continue to use the old URLs for accessing the services, but we don't want to have to maintain URL redirects forever (we're an archival institution, when we say forever, we really mean it). We have thousands of pages covering each of our online collection items, so one-to-one URL redirects involve datasets and programming scripts, all of which need maintaining. We also want to do everything possible to make it easy for website managers to update any links they have made to our services.

So we're planning on using a three-phase approach.

Phase one - Full automatic redirection service

All page requests return an HTTP 301 (moved permanently) message pointing to the URL for the equivalent page in the new site - most browsers will automatically refresh to the new location indicated. However, as a fallback it will also deliver a web page indicating that the page has moved, what the new URL is (as a clickable link), and the page will automatically redirect after 10 seconds (using a 'meta' tag refresh).

Some information pages are being removed during the migration. If requests for these pages just redirected automatically to the new homepage, it could be confusing. Instead requests for those pages will return an HTTP 404 (page not found) page explaining that the site has changed and provide a link to the new homepage.

Phase two - Notification-only service

All page requests return an HTTP 404 (page not found) page. This page explains that the site has changed and the expiry date for the old URL; it also includes the URL for the equivalent page in the new site. There is no automated redirection (but the new URL can be clicked on).

This alerts website managers that they need to take action, but gives them the exact information they need and the deadline.

Phase three - Switch off the domain

Hopefully all bookmarks will have been updated to the new locations. At this point the domain name will be retired. Any attempts to access it will return 'DNS Host name resolution failed'.

An alternative is to keep the domain alive but not provide specialised redirects - any request for any page on the domain is automatically redirected (HTTP 301) to only the new homepage.

Timing

We are planning on running the redirects for 12 months - 6 months in phase 1, 6 months in phase 2, then the domain name will be retired.

Does this seem reasonable?

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-10-16T13:37:00.000+13:00

Introducing The Source

Adult digital media literacy needs (Note: PDF)

From the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) website

This qualitative research report focuses on non-use and limited use of internet and mobile phones by adult Australians. It provides an understanding of explaining factors such as lack of skills, motivation or economic circumstances, and how the digital media literacy of these groups might be increased.

Mythconceptions: A reality check on e-Books from the publisher’s POV

From the Smashwords website

This report, without denying that the time has definitely come for book publishers to take e-Books seriously, will debunk some of the more prevalent myths about e-Books under current market conditions and technological realities.

Digital quality of life: understanding the personal and social benefits of the information technology revolution (Note: PDF)

From the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) website

In the new global economy, information technology (IT) is the major driver of both economic growth and improved quality of life. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in its 2007 report "Digital Prosperity: Understanding the Economic Benefits of the Information Technology Revolution" documented how IT, since the mid-1990s, has been the principal driver of increased economic growth not only in the United States but also in many other nations. However, IT is also at the core of dramatic improvements in the quality of life for individuals around the world. In our new report, we show how IT is the key enabler of many, if not most, of today’s key innovations and improvements in our lives and society - from better education and health care, to a cleaner and more energy-efficient environment, to safer and more secure communities and nations.

The Internet: empowering or censoring citizens? (Note: MP 3)

From the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) website

In the context of authoritarian states, the internet has always been viewed as an unambiguous force for good. It has, indeed, had a wide-reaching impact on many such regimes, allowing their citizens to mobilise around particular political and social issues and gain access to previously banned materials. However, many authoritarian governments are now also beginning to exploit cyberspace for their own purposes; some of them appear to be succeeding in subverting the internet's democratising potential. We may have overestimated the internet's ability to bring change and underestimated the role that political, social and cultural forces play in determining how new technologies are being adopted.
Could the internet actually inhibit rather than empower civil society? Join Evgeny Morozov, 2009-2010 Yahoo fellow at Georgetown University, as he outlines the dramatically different ways in which the internet's potential can be utilised by citizens and regimes.

Australian mobile phone lifestyle index (Note: PDF)

From the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association website

The findings of this report provide valuable insights into the background, usage behaviour and preferences of Australian mobile phone users. This information is intended to better inform mobile application developers, content and service aggregators, content and service owners, mobile telecommunication companies, handset manufacturers, analysts and other industry partners about the current Australian mobile content and services market and key longitudinal trends.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-10-09T10:47:00.012+13:00

Introducing The Source

Presidential Libraries Reform Report (Note: PDF)

From the National Archives, USA website

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has recently submitted a report to Congress detailing alternative models to the current Presidential Library system.
The Presidential Historical Records Preservation Act of 2008 [PL 110-404] had tasked NARA with developing plans to reduce the financial burden of the libraries on the Federal Government, improve the preservation of Presidential records, and reduces delays in public access to Presidential records.

Legal delays have blown a hole in the UK's digital heritage

From the Guardian.co.uk website

If it is information on the health of medieval women or the battle of Trafalgar you require, then the British Library is a pretty good place to look. But those wanting to shed light on more recent events or discoveries recorded online could be in trouble.
Digital literature, online scientific research and internet journalism that should have been saved in the nation's main libraries over the past five years may have been lost because ministers have failed to give them the legal power to copy and archive websites.

Toward global measurement of the information society: a U.S.-China comparison of national government surveys

From the First Monday website

To be global, digital and inclusive, we need comparable measures of ICT use around the world. To contribute to this, this research note analyses what questions the Chinese and the U.S. governments ask in their large, long–running surveys on the topic of computer and Internet use. The process and content of these surveys point up agreements, differences, and silences. Based on this, we propose nine basic questions that can be standardised and used in all country surveys of ICT use to create a coherent global dataset.

System and Network Security Acronyms and Abbreviations (Note: PDF)

From the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) website

NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) hopes to bring some order to the sometimes inconsistent and often confusing world of IT (information technology) acronyms and abbreviations by publishing a glossary of commonly used terms. “System and Network Security Acronyms and Abbreviations,” runs the alphabetical gamut from A (address resource record type) to ZSK (zone signing key).
The capitalisation, spelling and definitions of acronyms and abbreviations frequently vary among publications,” the report states. Some abbreviations, such as WWW, have a universally recognized meaning, while others have multiple definitions. For instance, MAC can stand for mandatory access control, Media Access Control, Medium Access Control or message authentication code. Others might contain an internal logic but can be confusing at first glance. For instance, Triple DES (Data Encryption Standard) is often abbreviated as 3DES.

Global Research Report: India. Research and collaboration in the new geography of science (Note: PDF)

From the Thomson Reuters website

This report is part of a series launched by Thomson Reuters to inform policymakers about the changing landscape and dynamics of the global research base.
India is building on its vast resources and potential in becoming a lead economic power. Underpinning the realisation of that economic potential will be a significant expansion in its ability to generate and exploit its knowledge resources through research and the related skills of its workforce. The growth of knowledge and innovation capacity in the BRIC is already impacting on the global research system.

Using a Permanent Usability Team to advance user-centered design in libraries

From the Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship website

Usability, user studies, and evaluating user experiences have been a part of academic libraries for many years. In the last 20 years libraries have created ad hoc usability teams to do user studies. Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries started its ongoing team in 2006, resulting in an increased focus on user experience throughout the libraries. This article explores the team’s history from formation to the work it took on. The merits and challenges usability teams bring to an organisation are also discussed. To date the literature describes usability methods and shares findings from libraries’ usability studies but none discuss the benefits a standing usability team brings to a library organisation or the work it may do.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-10-02T11:55:00.000+13:00

Introducing The Source

What to withdraw: Print collections management in the wake of digitization (Note: PDF)

From the Ithaka S+R website

As journals are increasingly accessed in digitised form, many libraries have grown interested in de-accessioning little-used print originals; but desires to re-purpose space often come into conflict with concerns about preservation. This paper analyses which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future.
This report is intended to allow libraries to redeploy the resources devoted to print collections management to special collections, digital collections, or new services.

Defining “Non-commercial”: A study of how the online population understands “Non-commercial Use” (Note: PDF)

From the Creative Commons website

In 2008-09, Creative Commons commissioned a study from a professional market research firm to explore understandings of the terms “commercial use” and “non-commercial use” among Internet users when used in the context of content found online. The study was comprised of two components – an empirical study of understandings of Internet users in the United States, and an informal study for comparison purposes of a broader, worldwide group of Internet users consisting of those generally more familiar with CC but not taking part in the empirical survey (dubbed “Creative Commons Friends and Family” or “CCFF”). The primary objectives of the study were two-fold:
1) to survey variations in the general online population’s understanding of the terms “commercial use” and “non-commercial use,” when used in the context of the wide variety of copyrighted works and content made available on the Internet
2) to provide information and analysis that would be useful to Creative Commons and to others in understanding the points of connection and potential disconnection between creators and users of works licensed under Creative Commons non-commercial, or “NC,” licenses or other public copyright licenses prohibiting commercial use.

JPEG 2000 as a Preservation and Access Format for the Wellcome Trust Digital Library

From the Wellcome Library website

JPEG2000 is a relatively new image file format, created by the JPEG Committee in 2000. JPEG2000, despite its name, is not a JPEG format, but utilises a clever compression technology that maximises quality while minimizing file sizes.
Seeking to determine exactly which JPEG2000 format to use to meet the aims of long-term storage and accessible delivery services, the Wellcome Library commissioned a report by Simon Tanner, Director of King's Consultancy Service (KDCS). The report was written in conjunction with Robert Buckley of Xerox Corporation, an expert in the technical specifications of the JPEG2000 format.

National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (Note: PDF)

From the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) website

The NAPLAN literacy and numeracy tests are conducted in May each year for all students across Australia in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. All students in the same year level are assessed on the same test items in the assessment domains of Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy.
Each year, over one million students nationally sit the NAPLAN tests, providing students, parents, teachers, schools and school systems with important information about the literacy and numeracy achievements of students.

Libraries of the Future

From the Inside Higher Ed website

The university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralized, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas. That's what Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning and programs at the University of California System, told a room full of university librarians at Baruch College of City University of New York, where the higher education technology group Ithaka held a meeting to discuss "sustainable scholarship."

Going Mobile: How publishers are preparing for the burgeoning digital market (Note: PDF)

From the Audit Bureau of Circulations website

The proliferation of mobile devices in our culture is hardly a surprise to anyone walking down city streets, drinking coffee at a corner café or observing the driver sitting next to you in traffic. The Audit Bureau of Circulations and its digital subsidiary, ABC Interactive, recently conducted an online survey of our print publisher members to learn more about current mobile initiatives and plans, and the impact of mobile on their business models. The survey results provide an early stage snapshot of the activities taking place in and around the mobile market as both publishers and buyers focus their attention on this burgeoning space.

Communicating knowledge: How and why UK researchers publish and disseminate their findings (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

This report, published by the Research Information Network (RIN) and JISC, shows how researchers are concerned by what they perceive as mixed messages about the channels they should use to communicate their research findings. The report highlights the need for more consistent and effective guidance from funders and higher educational institutions. If they wish to encourage researchers to disseminate their work through a variety of channels as well as in high-status journals, they must give stronger and more positive messages about how those channels will be valued when it comes to assessing researchers' performance they must give stronger and more positive messages about how those channels will be valued when it comes to assessing researchers' performance.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-09-25T12:55:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Hidden costs in cheaper books

From the Australian Policy Online (APO) website

Not so long ago, the Productivity Commission released its final report* on a very vexed question, which was: should the provisions of the Copyright Act, which currently prevent overseas editions of Australian-published works from being imported into Australia, be repealed? These provisions, known as parallel import restrictions, give a degree of assistance to Australian publishers, authors and printers, which they would not have without them.
Factors other than market efficiency need to be considered when we contemplate change, writes Jenny Stewart in the Canberra Times.

*see also Restrictions on the Parallel Importation of Books - Supplement to Research Report (Note: PDF)

Collecting cultural material: principles for best practice (Note: PDF)

From the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (Australia) website

These guidelines assist Australia's collecting institutions to acquire their collections in a manner that meets the highest standards of legal, ethical and professional practice. The booklet has been developed by the Heads of Collecting Institutions (HOCI), which is a forum of the Chief Executives of the National Collecting Institutions within Australia.
Australia's collecting institutions vary but they share common objectives of collecting, researching, preserving, and exhibiting cultural material from Australia and around the world.
They also share a concern that their collections are acquired in a manner that meets the highest standards of legal, ethical and professional practice. These guidelines are intended to assist cultural institutions within established legal and ethical frameworks.

Analysing selection for digitisation: Current practices and common incentives

From the D-Lib Magazine website

Over the past few decades, the explosion of digital and digitised documents, and the addition of a purely digital facet to the documentary life-cycle, have been forcing memory institutions from all sectors to address the same questions that the growth in analogue production necessitated in the early 20th century: Can/should all documents that pass the initial test of appraisal also remain stored indefinitely? What are the requirements for long-term preservation? At what point (if ever) do digital collections become too large to handle? And how can we decide what gets deleted?
Individual institutions and collaborative research efforts alike have adopted a wide range of practices in their attempt to tackle these questions. We would expect the current phase of trial-and-error to move slowly towards a set of somewhat more uniformly adopted governing concepts and practices.

National Library of Wales unveils new reading room

From the National Library of Wales website

The National Library of Wales has unveiled its newly refurbished reading room, which first opened in 1916. The face-lift cost the library in Aberystwyth more than £750,000, and now includes a place for people to meet and discuss their work.

Understanding Users of Social Networks

From the Harvard Business School website

Many business leaders are mystified about how to reach potential customers on social networks such as Facebook. Professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski provides a fresh look into the interpersonal dynamics of these sites and offers guidance for approaching these tantalising markets.
Key concepts include:
* Online social networks are most useful when they address failures in the real world
* Pictures are the killer app of social networks
* Women and men use these sites differently
* Businesses shouldn't consider SNs as just another channel

Finding new ways to browse

2009-09-24T08:48:00.001+12:00

A group of rather loosely connected thoughts about browsing and sharing digital images, serendipity and metadata ....

Earlier this month George Oates, the original force behind The Commons on Flickr, gave a presentation in Bristol on her past work on The Commons and her current role at the Open Library.

George noted that her presentation had three themes:

It's all about increasing access
Learn to love (and exploit) networks
Institutional knowledge as substrate

I found one of George's observation about Flickr really interesting. Talking about the metadata that a particular photo entered Flickr with (date taken, type of camera) and the metadata that has been added to it (tags, placement in groups and sets that give it context through association) George noted that

"It's almost as if all this metadata provides some sort of surface tension that prevents the photo from sinking into the depths of obscurity amongst these billions of photos."

I thought again of that comment when reading Nate Solas's post on the Walker's New Media Initiatives blog, about the Art Finder collection browse/search functionality on the ArtsConnectEd site.

Writing about The Big Idea for the interface, Nate said:

What if we could start with everything and narrow it down from there? Offer the user the entire collection and let them whittle away at it until they found what they wanted?

It's all browse. Keyword is just another filter.

I found it interesting how long I spent fiddling round with the filters on the site before I went looking for a box to type search terms into.

This experience - where browse = happy serendipity - leads me to the new Galleries feature on Flickr (and and a rather overdue update about our Commons work on Flickr). The new tool lets you gather together up to 18 photos by other people (none of your own) into a named and annotated set, which is then shared with all site visitors. It's a way of curating what you think is good or interesting work on Flickr, and then presenting that to other people. It's a serendipitous experience for Flickr browsers - and has been exploited for yesterday's dust storm in Sydney - and adds yet another aspect of surface tension to all the metadata options Flickr already makes available.

It seems that the page where you can see which of your photos is included in which galleries is private (like stats) but we've had a nice little start with 13 photos in 11 galleries, including Netweb's Gallipoli gallery, Brenda Anderson's Glaciers on a human scale gallery, and zyrcster's Night photography across The Commons gallery. As the Indicommons crew have pointed out, this make the cross-Commons curating group members were already doing much easier.

I've just noticed that in the FAQ Galleries are described as 'favourites on steroids'. I've been thinking about favourites a bit over the last couple of weeks, since this Election Night photo was used in a post on the Flickr blog.

The coverage added significantly to the image's 'surface tension' (see the jump in visits below) and the photo has been favourited 268 times since.

Watching this happen confused me a little - I don't (personally) really see what people get out of favouriting (I'm not alone in this!). But galleries make more sense to me - favouriting for the intent of sharing. It's also another fantastic example of how Flickr encourages community within the enormous site - people are leaping onto this new feature, even though they can't promote their own work through it. And of course, all this activity adds more and more contextual information - surface tension - to the individual images.

My own first gallery - of photographs of photographers across The Commons - is here.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-09-18T14:33:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Intercultural dialogue through the arts and culture? (Note: PDF)

From the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA) website

As part of the preparations for the 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture 2009 in Johannesburg, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA) opened up a discussion with its network members on the claim that intercultural dialogue has become a new priority for arts and cultural policy makers around the world.

To address this question, IFACCA, with support from Summit co-host, the National Arts Council of South Africa, commissioned the ERICarts Institute to design and analyse the results of a survey to map views and collect cases of good practice on the (potential) role of intercultural dialogue in the arts and arts policies. A questionnaire was sent to the member organisations of IFACCA and to experts in its larger international network of researchers, arts practitioners and NGOs. Between April and July 2009, 108 respondents from 51 countries on all continents were collected online.

Europeana - Next Steps (Note: PDF)

From the European Commission website

This document looks ahead to the next phase of development of Europeana, which opened in November 2008 as part of the Commission's digital libraries initiative, aiming to make Europe's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to all on the internet. This document also looks at its future orientation and sets out the main challenges for the coming years in relation to (1) enriching Europeana’s content with both public domain and in copyright material of the highest quality and relevance to users, and (2) a sustainable financing and governance model. The objective is to ensure that Europeana and the underlying policies for digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation give European culture a lasting visibility on the internet and turn our common and diverse heritage into an integral part of Europe's information infrastructure for the future.

Towards green ICT strategies... (Note: PDF)

From the OECD website

Governments focus on greening ICTs rather than creating smart ICT applications. This OECD report analyses government programmes and business initiatives on ICT and the environment to address environmental challenges, particularly global warming and energy use.

Libraries Connect Communities 3: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2008-2009 (Note: PDF)

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

This new study finds that more than 71% of all libraries (and 79% of rural libraries) report they are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their communities. 66% of public libraries rank job-seeking services, including resume writing and Internet job searches, among the most crucial online services they offer – up from 44% two years ago. In a separate survey, 80% of New York libraries indicated they helped someone search for a job in late 2008.

Additional key findings on the state of Internet availability in public libraries include:
* More than 90% of public libraries provide technology training such as online job-seeking and career-related classes, general Internet and computer use instruction
* 76% of public libraries offer free wireless access
* 81% of public libraries report there are not enough public Internet computers to meet patron demand some or all of the time; increasingly, libraries are having trouble replacing outdated computer workstations due to cost

Data sharing: Empty archives

From the Nature website

Most researchers agree that open access to data is the scientific ideal, so what is stopping it happening? Bryn Nelson investigates why many researchers choose not to share.

Open access to journal content as a case study in unlocking IP (Note: PDF)

From the University of Edinburgh School of Law website

This paper assesses the extent to which the theoretical openness of access to refereed papers in open access journals is being exploited in practice. The internet has brought with it both means to disseminate and access content, and an enhanced expectation that content will generally be readily accessible. This has threatened entrenched for-profit activities, which have long prospered on closed, proprietary approaches to publishing, facilitated by anti-consumer provisions in copyright laws. The ePrints and Open Access (OA) movements have been complemented by the emergence of electronic repositories in which authors can deposit copies of their works. The accessibility of refereed papers published in journals represents a litmus test of the extent to which openness is being achieved in the face of the power of corporations whose business model is dependent on the exploitation of intellectual property (IP). A specification of the requirements for “Unlocking IP” in refereed papers is presented and applied, leading to the conclusion that a great deal of progress appears to have been made. The copyright arrangements applied by most publishers enable authors to self-deposit PrePrints of their papers on their own web-sites and in open repositories; and in many cases authors can also self-deposit the PostPrint, i.e. the author's copy of the final version.

A snapshot of the GLAMs sector

2009-09-18T09:57:00.005+12:00

Yesterday I filled in for Nat Torkington and Colin Jackson on the 'New Technology' slot with Kathryn Ryan on National Radio.

The segment ended up being almost entirely ad libbed, but here are some notes I prepared, mostly as a reminder to self, some of which got covered and some of which didn't ...

***

The GLAMS sector is gearing up towards the annual National Digital Forum in November, so it's a good time to look at the work they're doing. I've picked topics to do loosely with access, innovation and using social media to reach out to communities and audiences.

NZETC releases e-publications
http://www.nzetc.org/

The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre at Victoria University is a free online archive of digitised New Zealand and Pacific books, manuscripts and journals. They have stuff like Jean Batten's autobiography, Katherine Mansfield's 'The Garden Party', and a big set of 19th century New Zealand novels.

In the last month they've released most of the texts in the archive as ePub eBooks, which means you can now download them to your Sony Reader or iPhone or iPod Touch. I think the interesting thing about this is that while the NZETC site is an amazing research tool, it doesn't feel to me like something you want to settle in front of and read a whole novel. It's really well done, and the search functionality is great, both on the site as well as for grabbing search engines' attention, but that's a little bit like reading a book using the index as your way in. Turning the digitised texts into e-publications restores some of that original bookiness.

Archives New Zealand on Ziln
http://www.ziln.co.nz/channel_detail.php?program_id=6&channel_id=60

Ziln describes itself as "New Zealand's internet television network". People who have video content can work with Ziln to create their own channels. Archives New Zealand have done this; you can watch things like the 1955 open rollerskating champion doing her thing, and a clip of 4 tuatara being sent to zoos in London, New York, Chicago and San Diego. It's a smart example of an organisation saying "why should we try to make people come to our website to see our stuff - if we have video, why not put it in a place where people are going to watch videos?".

Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa
http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/

Based in Christchurch. I think this is one of the most important projects going on in terms of access. The APNK works to put computer equipment, like PCs and scanner and webcams, and broadband internet access and wifi into public libraries throughout the country. They've started with small and rural libraries, and I think they're up to somewhere between 130 and 160 libraries now. They don't just provide the equipment and the access, they also train staff in the libraries and provide ongoing support, so there's someone to call if the wireless goes down or the software is behaving funny.

These new facilities in libraries that couldn't previously support them are bringing new audiences into the buildings - like teenagers and migrant workers. People are going into libraries to skype home, and one of the funniest things people are seeing are all these new Facebook and Bebo accounts getting set up, full of photos of kids standing in front of bookshelves, because they're using the APNK equipment to take the photos and get onto their accounts.

GLAMS on Twitter

GLAMS organisations in New Zealand have taken to Twitter with a vengeance. They're talking to people about their shows, events and collections, and all sorts of random stuff. At the National Library we use Twitter to share strange, moving or funny items from our collections: yesterday I tweeted out a 1912 ad from a nursing journal we recently added to the Papers Past website, advertising cough lollies with ingredients including cocaine, formaldehyde and potash.

One of the nice things about the Twitter accounts is that they're often being run by people who don't normally get to talk to the public (web managers, collection managers, writers) but who are filled with enthusiasm and passion.

National Library http://twitter.com/NLNZ
Te Papa http://twitter.com/TePapaColOnline
City Gallery Wellington http://twitter.com/CityGalleryWgtn
Christchurch Art Gallery http://twitter.com/ChchArtGallery
Te Ara http://twitter.com/te_ara
NZ on Screen http://twitter.com/nzonscreen

Blogging

Blogs are another of the Web 2.0 technologies that the GLAMs have leapt on, and especially the libraries.

Christchurch City Libraries' blog is outstanding - they've even sent people to live-blog the Auckland Readers and Writers festival http://cclblog.wordpress.com/

It's not just the big libraries though. For example, Rodney Libraries blog everyday and it's just two people with piles of enthusiasm driving it. http://www.rodneylibraries.blogspot.com/

Te Papa also has a really active blog, that covers all kinds of topics, from ferns to framing to the giant squid. It's interesting to see how these blogs create a sense of community, even with a huge audience like that of Te Papa. For instance, when the artist Julian Dashper died earlier this year, and one of the Te Papa curators wrote a post about him, people from all over the world left their comments and thoughts on the blog. http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/

Tell the GLAMs what you want
http://makeit.digitalnz.org/voting

Collecting organisations all over the country are busily digitising their collections so that they can make them easier for people to access. Digital New Zealand has the Make it Digital website where people can suggest and vote for and comment on things that they'd like to see available online. There's all sorts of requests up there - from aerial photography to the Māori Land Courts Minute Books, and it's really interesting to see the discussion around why people want stuff.

One of the unexpected benefits is that people in organisations are watching the site, and when they see people asking for stuff that's already online, they're jumping in to help them find it. The discussion around the Stones directories is fascinating - a company is digitising the directories and using the Make It Digital site to do a bit of customer research.

Openness

There's been a lot of talk in New Zealand lately about open data and open government, centred around Open New Zealand and spinning off into events and products like the open data barcamp and the Open Data Catalogue. GLAMs organisations are all about people getting access to New Zealand's culture and heritage, on site or online. Copyright is a huge headache for these institutions as they try to get their collections online, and even when copyright has expired, there are moral rights, and cultural considerations, and concerns about donors.

More and more organisations in this area are releasing items or information under Creative Commons licences, including NZETC and NZ on Screen. The National Library is The Commons on Flickr, where collecting institutions all over the world are taking a collective deep breath and releasing photographs from their collections under a "No known copyright restrictions" licence, that lets people do whatever they want with them.

And a big move in the last year is organisations in the GLAMS and beyond making their metadata available through an API built by Digital New Zealand. This API means that other developers, not inside institutions, can access this data and make their own mash-ups from it, like Paul Hagon from Australia who's made a mash-ups with Google Maps so you can search for photographs of a place by clicking around a map instead of typing in key words.

Image
Not me, but another New Zealand radio legend, Aunt Daisy.
Maud Ruby Basham, 1959. Reference Number: 1/2-046733-F. Alexander Turnbull Library. Image from the Manuscripts and Pictorial website

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-09-11T11:15:00.001+12:00

Introducing The Source

Cultural funding by government, 2007-08

From the Australian Bureau of Statistics website

This publication contains estimates of Australian public funding for arts and cultural activities, facilities and services across the three levels of government for 2007-08. Detailed expenditure by local governments for heritage and arts cultural activities, facilities and services is provided for the first time. For local governments, expenditure for the 2006-07 year has also been included.
Total government funding for cultural activities was $6.3 billion in 2007-08 ($6,311.4m). The Australian Government contributed $2,358.9m (37.4%) to total cultural funding while the state and territory governments contributed $2,952.2m (46.8%) and local governments provided $1,000.3m (15.8%). Libraries received $1,036.4m or 16.4% of total funding, including $653.4m from local government.

The relationship between public libraries and Google: Too much information

From the First Monday website

This article explores the implications of a shift from public to private provision of information through focusing on the relationship between Google and public libraries. This relationship has sparked controversy, with concerns expressed about the integrity of search results, the Google Book project and Google the company. In this paper, these concerns are treated as symptoms of a deeper divide, the fundamentally different conceptions of information that underpin the stated aim of Google and libraries to provide access to information. The paper concludes with some principles necessary for the survival of public libraries and their contribution to a robust democracy in a rapidly expanding Googleverse.

Social Networks and Teen Lives

From the Commonsense Media website

Social networking is now a major force in a teen’s daily social life. Commonsense Media’s recent poll reveals that social networking is moving communication from face to face to cyberspace - and that parents have a lot to learn when it comes to their children’s behaviours online.

Digital Literacy and Citizenship in the 21st century (Note: PDF)

From the Commonsense Media website

The dynamic new world requires new comprehension and communication skills, as well as new codes of conduct, to ensure that today’s powerful media and technologies are used responsibly and ethically. Much of the interaction in this digital world happens at a distance, which can diminish the rules of cause and effect, action and consequence. Additionally, much of digital life takes place under the cloak of anonymity, making it easier to participate in unethical and even illegal behaviours.

Urbanisation and our relationship with the city - presented by Antony Funnell in AUDIO and via TRANSCRIPT

From the Web 2.0 Summit website

The 21st century will see ever increasing levels of urbanisation. In this programme we look at the way we engage with the city. What do we need to take into account to ensure greater harmony between our future needs as individuals and the needs of the metropolis?

From PDF to MP3: Motivations for creating derivatives

From the First Monday website

With increasing frequency, authors are licensing their works in such a way so as to permit others to create derivative works. In some cases, these derivatives extend the impact of a work by providing a translation into another language or modifying the file format to make it more accessible. Seventeen creators of derivatives were surveyed on their motivations for doing so. They indicated that they were willing to create derivatives that extend the original content of a book because they want to help others access the work. Nearly all the people surveyed indicated they were glad they had created derivative works, often feeling like they were part of a community effort to share the work with others. These creators of derivatives believe that as awareness of open licenses increases, others will be encouraged to create derivative works.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-09-04T11:56:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

A future for our digital memory: Permanent access to information in the Netherlands - 20 page English-language summary of the report (Note: PDF)

Full report (in Dutch)

From the Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation website

In order to underpin its strategy, the NCDD decided build a detailed picture of the current situation in the public sector in the Netherlands. Can institutions or domains be identified which have successfully risen to the challenge of digital preservation and permanent access? What categories of data are in danger of being lost? How can the risks be managed? The so-called National Digital Preservation Survey was funded by the Ministry of Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and was held in the first six months of 2009.
A team of three researchers conducted some seventy interviews with stakeholders in three distinct sectors: government & archives, the research community, and cultural heritage institutions.

Quantifying the Economic Impact of the Internet

From the Harvard Business School website

Businesses around the advertising-supported Internet have incredible multiplier effects throughout the economy and society. Professor John Quelch starts to put some numbers on the impact. Key concepts include:

Each Internet job supports approximately 1.54 additional jobs elsewhere in the economy, or roughly 2 percent of employed Americans

The advertising-supported Internet creates annual value of $444 billion

About 190 million people in the United States spend, on average, 68 hours a month on the Internet. A conservative valuation of this time is an estimated $680 billion

Changing Roles: The August 2009 issue of Library Connect (Note: PDF)

From the Elsevier website

Articles include:

Thrive rather than survive: Incorporate assessment into your library planning

Today’s changing environment brings benefits and challenges to researchers

From stronghold to threshold: The library’s role in supporting the University of Aberdeen’s quest to join the ranks of the world’s top 100 universities

Academic research executives and managers (REMs) face increasingly complex and changing challenges

What is the value of content to the research workflow?

Partnering further with faculty and university administrators: Academic librarians offer a vision of their future

Librarians in Argentina sharpen their skills in unleashing the power of digital resources

Museums, Libraries, and 21st Century Skills (Note: PDF)

From the Institute of Museum and Library Services website

The report outlines a vision for the role of libraries and museums in the national dialogue around learning and 21st century skills and includes case studies of innovative audience engagement and 21st century skills practices from across the country.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-08-28T11:55:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents (Note: Webcast)

From the Library of Congress website

David S.H. Rosenthal, chief scientist with the LOCKSS Programme at Stanford University, explores sustainable approaches to format obsolescence in digital preservation. He discusses large scale interactions between the evolution of information technology over time and the social, technical, and economic factors that enable digital preservation; changing fundamental understandings of threats and challenges in digital preservation and emerging recognition that economic and social sustainability are the overarching long-term barriers.

Self-Service to the People

From the Library Journal website

The California State Library GoLibrary Project uses automated materials-vending to aid under-served populations in new ways.

An Introduction to QR Codes

From the UKOLN website

Quick Response (QR) codes are two-dimensional barcodes (matrix codes) that allow their contents to be decoded at high speed. They were created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994 and have been primarily used for tracking purposes. Only recently have they filtered into mainstream use with the creation of applications that allow them to be read by mobile phone cameras.

Video appears in paper magazines

From the BBC website

The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September. The video-in-print ads will appear in select copies of the US show business title Entertainment Weekly. The slim-line screens - around the size of a mobile phone display - also have rechargeable batteries. The chip technology used to store the video - described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards - is activated when the page is turned. Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video. The first clips will preview programmes from US TV network CBS and show adverts by the drinks company Pepsi.

Let's get physical ....

2009-08-25T10:14:00.006+12:00

I've always disliked the word 'virtual' in relation to the web - virtual tours, virtual lives. The word either creates a false similarity, or a false distinction.

One of the things that's interested me over the last year or so is the blurring distinction between 'online' and 'physical'. You see it in Flickr meet-ups; Derek Powazek and Heather Champ talked about it in their Webstock workshop earlier this year; Brooklyn Museum's 1st Fans membership is designed for people who fit into the Venn diagram of attending Target First Saturdays at the Museum and following the Museum online. I have a dream inside my head where in a few years volunteers can come into the redeveloped National Library in Wellington and hang out in the volunteer lounge, cleaning up our metadata and OCRd newspapers and drinking our (hopefully improved by them) staff coffee.*

Recently, the Library's Twitter account has made the jump into the physical world - namely print publication. One of the good people at Unlimited saw our @nlnz stream and got in touch to see if some of the digitised items we were posting could be featured in the magazine. Chelsea and I did a sweep of Manuscripts and Pictorial, looking for images Unlimited might find interesting - pictures relating to advertising, the economy, finance, business.

The first tweet-related image appeared in the latest issue: Mr E.D. Vallence burning excess sterling banknotes after the introduction of decimalisation rendered them redundant. We provide the image, and this time it's Unlimited that scribes the caption.

There will be an image per issue over the coming year - 6 images in all. Chelsea and I are pretty stoked about this new way of spreading our enjoyment in the collections; it's a nice change to have 'the media' come to you, instead of hunting journalists down and trying to interest them in your wares. It feels like a really good fit, and we're pleased that it came out of someone seeing and enjoying what we were doing online. If by any chance you're interested in doing something similar, get in touch!

You can see the photo reproduced in Unlimited on Manuscripts + Pictorial, and read more about how we run our Twitter account in this blog post.

*It should be noted that this is just one of my nutbar ideas, and not part of existing plans for the Library redevelopment.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-08-21T12:01:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Australia's Cultural Institutions and the efficiency dividend: not a pretty picture

From the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) website

The Commonwealth government has a significant responsibility in collecting, maintaining and exhibiting Australian and international art and cultural artefacts to both educate and inform the public and preserve our political, social and cultural history. There are a number of cultural agencies within the Commonwealth Government. These include the National Archives of Australia (NAA), the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), the National Library of Australia (NLA) and the Australian War Memorial (AWM). This paper briefly reviews the effect of Commonwealth funding practices on the operation of these agencies and concludes that the policies and practices of the last two decades have significantly damaged Australia’s cultural agencies – something which the Rudd government must remedy in order to secure Australia’s heritage and renew our focus on the arts.

It’s been Geometric! Documenting the Growth and Acceptance of eBooks in America’s Urban Public Libraries

From the IFLA website

This paper and presentation features the results of a recent survey of downloadable eContent (AKA eBooks) representation among libraries in the Urban Library Council and Public Library Association. It reveals information on current and best practices among collection development librarians, selection/acquisition methodologies, and identifies trends in American public library eBook downloads, and user acceptance/non acceptance of eContent among Urban Library Council and Public Library Association member libraries.

The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age

From the MIT Press website

In this report, Cathy Davidson (Duke) and David Theo Goldberg (University of California) focus on the potential for shared and interactive learning made possible by the Internet. They argue that the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity for world-wide community and the limitless exchange of ideas. The Internet brings about a way of learning that is not new or revolutionary but is now the norm for today's graduating high school and college classes. It is for this reason that Davidson and Goldberg call on us to examine potential new models of digital learning and rethink our virtually enabled and enhanced learning institutions.

Why Academic Libraries Matter

From the Library Journal website

For those drowning in information, the library is land, a place where you can clamber up, catch your breath, gather your wits - and drink deeply.

Library E-Learning Spaces

From the IFLA website

This paper analyses the state of learning spaces as they impact library education. Specifically, it reviews the literature about current trends in designing learning environments that facilitate e-learning. The report also lists cited examples of good practice in contemporary university library e-learning spaces.

Designing Library Services Based on User Needs: New Opportunities to Re-Position the Library

From the IFLA website

Providing proactive library services requires careful examinations of current capabilities, user needs, and the direction for the future. In an environment where users already feel satisfied and content with current services, libraries must start developing an innovative and sometimes a radical approach to reach out to users with new services. To do so, libraries should have a mechanism to monitor user needs which change continuously and ability to network with other campus units to meet their needs and expectations. The presenter has collaborated with several colleagues at the career service office to offer programs on obtaining jobs and understanding the job markets in various industries. Especially noteworthy in this approach was that the presenter’s role was not limited to simply offering information resources to students. Rather, the author was regarded as a partner of the career service office and offered workshops and seminars that discussed how to tailor individuals’ resumes and cover letters based on the information that they acquired. The presenter was concentrating on “how to apply information” to individual situations, rather than simply “how to find information.”

Library 2.0: Balancing The Risks And Benefits To Maximise The Dividends

From the University of Bath Repository website

This paper provides a number of examples of how Web 2.0 technologies and approaches (Library 2.0) are being used within the library sector. The paper acknowledges that there are a variety of risks associated with such approaches. The paper describes the different types of risks and outlines a risk assessment and risk management approach, which is being developed to minimise the dangers whilst allowing the benefits of Library 2.0 to be realised.

The World Digital Library and the Social Sciences

From the IFLA website

The World Digital Library, launched in April 2009, has the potential to benefit social scientists by: (1) providing researchers access to content that otherwise would not be available; (2) offering new tools to search, browse, and view content on line; and (3) facilitating the sharing of content in ways that promote interdisciplinary work and collaboration among researchers and their students. Social scientists can contribute to the WDL by (1) assisting with the selection of content; (2) contributing to the description and interpretation of content; and (3) suggesting new ways to catalog and classify materials on the WDL.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-08-14T11:45:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Should copyright of academic works be abolished?

From the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University website

The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly of limited applicability to the academic domain. For in a world without copyright of academic writing, academics would still benefit from publishing in the major way that they do now, namely, from gaining scholarly esteem.
Yet publishers would presumably have to impose fees on authors, because publishers would not be able to profit from reader charges. If these publication fees were borne by academics, their incentives to publish would be reduced. But if the publication fees were usually paid by universities or grantors, the motive of academics to publish would be unlikely to decrease (and could actually increase) – suggesting that ending academic copyright would be socially desirable in view of the broad benefits of a copyright-free world. If so, the demise of academic copyright should be achieved by a change in law, for the 'open access' movement that effectively seeks this objective without modification of the law faces fundamental difficulties.

The digital native - myth and reality

From the Scribd website

This paper offers a critical perspective on popular and political understandings of young people and digital technologies - characterised by notions of 'digital natives', the 'net generation' and other commonsense portrayals of expert young technology users. The paper considers the accuracy of such descriptions in reflecting young people's actual uses of digital technology and digital information, arguing that a misplaced technological and biological determinism underpins many current portrayals of children, young people and digital technology. Having presented a more realistic basis for approaching generational differences in technology use, the paper explores the functions and roles that information professionals (especially librarians, teachers and other information specialists) can be expected to play in supporting young people in the digital age.

An implosion of knowledge

From the Meanjin website

This articles argues that the privileging of access to data above its application means that the debate over whether libraries are in the book business or the information business is diverting us from the thought that they should be in the knowledge business, ‘business’ having become apposite once neo-liberals set the agenda. Knowledge is being redefined by the access that computer clusters offer to ever more bits. In the digital domain, ‘new’ is more often about devices than depth of comprehension.

Is There Such a Thing as Free Software? the Pros and Cons of Open-Source Software

From the Educause Quarterly website

* When open-source software is effectively evaluated, deployed and managed, it can serve as a viable alternative to proprietary software
* Open-source software doesn’t always save resources or money, but it has definite advantages in certain situations
* Open-source software is licensed, so any use comes with certain rights and obligations; non-compliance entails serious legal and financial risks
* To ensure your institution’s contributions to open-source software projects are in the institution’s best interests, engage key stakeholders and subject matter experts to establish appropriate guidelines

Digital Continuity Action Plan

From the Archives New Zealand Continuum website

The Digital Continuity Action Plan is a world first initiative, which will prevent important public records being lost and ensure today’s information is available tomorrow. Today most public information is created digitally, but the continuity of that digital information over time has become a real concern. To address this concern the plan has been developed as an all of public sector programme to assist and support agencies overcome issues with storing, accessing, using and reusing the digital information they produce.
Archives New Zealand will lead the implementation of the plan, along with our lead partner agencies, to provide support, advice and leadership on digital continuity issues. Archives New Zealand is mandated under the Public Records Act 2005 to support the public sector to better manage its record keeping and in turn ensure the accountability of government. The Plan is designed to support this responsibility and provide a platform for public sector agencies to act in a coordinated way to manage their digital information efficiently. The aim of the plan is to ensure that public sector resources are used more efficiently through collaboration by sharing ideas, expertise, and systems and by minimising duplication.

NDF conference: subsidy for small organisations

2009-08-12T16:38:00.002+12:00

The annual National Digital Forum conference is taking place in Wellington on November 23-24 at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

As it happens, I'm on the organising committee, so you can trust me when I say it's gonna be a goodie. We have some exciting international speakers lined up (including experience designer Nina Simon, and Daniel Incandela of Art Babble fame) but just as - if not more - importantly, we've got lots of interesting and passionate people from New Zealand GLAMS (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) coming along to talk about the work they're doing and the big issues we face as a sector.

This year the NDF is offering up to 10 grants to subsidise registration fees to help people who are employed by or associated with small community organisations and who would otherwise not be able to afford to attend the conference. The subsidised registration fee is $200 for the two-day conference.

This grant is only open to New Zealand residents or citizens. You need to complete the application form, and find someone to act as a referee for your application (to confirm your organisation requires financial assistance). Your referee can be someone you work with, but shouldn't be a family member.

NDF subsidy grant application form (PDF)

Applications close on 28 August, so please help spread the word if you know people who may be interested, or get a wriggle on if you're thinking of applying yourself.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-08-07T11:55:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Usage of communication portfolios in distributed work environments

From the First Monday website

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of communication portfolios in distributed work environments (DWEs). A communication portfolio refers to a mix of information communication technologies (ICTs), consisting of either single ICT or multiple ICTs that organisational communicators use for communication in the workplace. Our results demonstrate that a variety of communication portfolios with different sizes, contents and structuring mechanisms were used by organisation members in DWEs.

Why do people go online? The Ruder Finn Intent Index

From the Ruder Finn website

The Ruder Finn Intent Index "classifies people’s reasons for going online” into 7 broad categories: Learn, Have Fun, Socialise, Express Yourself, Advocate, Do Business, and Shop. Within the categories ‘pass time’ was the most responded to result with 100% of people saying that they go online for this reason.

M Is For Service: Current Mobile Trends in Libraries (Note: PPT- 164 slides)

From the Iowa State University website

More people than ever are using mobile devices for a wide variety of purposes including communication, internet access, text messaging, and entertainment. It is important that libraries provide services on these devices as use increases. Gerry McKiernan from Iowa State University presented this Keynote address at the virtual 'Handheld Librarian 2009' conference on 30 July.

Other presentations also available.