October 20, 2005
Wisconsin Digital Archive Pilot Project
The Wisconsin Digital Archive Pilot Project is a collaborative effort involving the Wisconsin Reference and Loan Library, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau. Its primary objective is to develop strategies for providing permanent electronic access to web-based Wisconsin electronic government documents.
Documents selected for preservation follow the Guidelines for Selecting Electronic Wisconsin State Documents Policy. The primary focus is to preserve documents that are considered "at-risk," meaning they are born and live only electronically on the Internet and display one or more of the following characteristics:
* It is prepared for a state agency by a private individual or organization that is supported wholly or partly by any funds appropriated by the State of Wisconsin.
* It reports and/or describes the activity of an agency, or of a subset of an agency. (e.g., annual reports, statistical tables or analyses)
* It is legislatively, judicially or administratively mandated.
* It presents the results of a state task force, commission, or of committee work.
Wisconsin state agencies are encouraged to assist in identifying URLs of online publications located on state agency website that are at-risk and should be digitally archived as part of their statutory obligation to participate in the Wisconsin Document Depository Program. This includes new content, content that has been significantly updated or revised, or content scheduled to be removed from a state agency website.
Link: Wisconsin Digital Archive Pilot Project
October 13, 2005
Library of Congress Selects Audio-Visual Digitization System
The Library of Congress has selected a audio-visual digitization and migration tool. The product, called the System for Automated Migration of Media Archives (SAMMA), is set to migrate LOC's large collection of audio-visual material in preperation for its move to the National Audovisual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA.
From the Press Release:
SAMMA combines robotic tape handling systems with proprietary tape cleaning and signal analysis technologies. SAMMA's expert system automatically supervises quality control of each media item's migration. From a thorough examination of the physical tape for damage, to real-time monitoring of video and audio signal parameters during migration, SAMMA ensures that magnetic media is migrated with the highest degree of confidence and the least amount of human intervention. SAMMA uses specially-designed components to gather technical metadata throughout the entire migration process, ensuring that the process is documented in depth while gathering important metrics about the health of an entire collection. The modular, portable system will be installed on-site at the Library and run 24/7. The final product will be a lossless compressed Motion JPEG 2000 digital file copy of each master tape at preservation quality, and the technical metadata describing the condition of the media item and the migration process.
Links:
Media Matters Website (developer of SAMMA)
Library of Congress
October 06, 2005
Open Content Alliance
This news is so big, it is probably old news by now. Several libraries and companies have joined together to create the Open Content Alliance.
The Open Content Alliance (OCA) represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo!
The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors.
The list of participants includes: Adobe, European Archive, HP Labs,
Internet Archive, National Archives (UK), O'Reilly Media, Prelinger Archives, University of California, University of Toronto, and Yahoo!
There are several interesting directions this group is taking.
* Strong participation by non-U.S. institutions (the European Archive, the National Archives in the United Kingdom, and the University of Toronto)
* An Open Content focus that encourages the use of the material in any way. You want to download the book, print it, bind it, sell it? No problem. You want to download 100 books and create your own online collection? No problem. You want to create a personalized website that enables researchers to search, collate, tag, comment, share materials in the OC Archive? NO PROBLEM! So cool...
I can't wait to see what happens next.
Links:
Brewster Kahle's Commentary on the OCA: Yahoo Blog
A New Digital Library Alliance Makes its Debut: Search Engine Watch
Yahoo Works With 2 Academic Libraries and Other Archives on Project to Digitize Collections: Chronicle of Higher Education
September 30, 2005
Digital Extras, 9/30/05
Here are some items that appeared most often in web and blog search feeds for this week.
European Union's Digital Heritage Plans
The Commission adopted on 30/09/2005 the "i2010: Digital Libraries" communication outlining the vision of this initiative and addressing in particular the issues of digitisation, on line accessibility and digital preservation of our cultural heritage.
Representing Digital Assets for Long-Term Preservation using MPEG-21 DID.
This paper will explore the potential of the MPEG-21 DID in a Digital Preservation context, by looking at the core building blocks of the OAIS Information Model and the way in which they map to the MPEG-21 DID abstract model and the MPEG-21 DIDL XML syntax.
The National Archives tackles digital compliance
The National Archives have reached another milestone in digital preservation testing and compliance. In conjunction with the UK Data Archive, The National Archives have released a report comparing their preservation practices to the leading internationally recognised standard for digital archives. This provides a model for other organisations to test the compliance of their own systems.
Using the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model the two organisations were able to compare their preservation practices within a common framework: an opportunity that was particularly timely because, in January 2005, the UKDA was appointed as a legal place of deposit for National Archive documents.
Google Print
You can't go anywhere without seeing some news article praising or blasting Google over their Print project. Here's a list of some of the articles.
* Authors Guild Sues Google: Authors Guild web site
* Google Sued: on Lessig blog
* Google Print and the Authors Guild: on Google blog
* U-M statement on Google library project
* Copyright scholars and publishers on crazy auctorial theories about books and tech: on Boing Boing
* Google Print beta site
September 23, 2005
Requirements for Digital Preservation Systems: A Bottom-Up Approach
This article was posted to arXiv.org a couple weeks ago by researchers at Stanford. Here's the abstract:
The field of digital preservation is being defined by a set of standards developed top-down, starting with an abstract reference model (OAIS) and gradually adding more specific detail. Systems claiming conformance to these standards are entering production use. Work is underway to certify that systems conform to requirements derived from OAIS.
We complement these requirements derived top-down by presenting an alternate, bottom-up view of the field. The fundamental goal of these systems is to ensure that the information they contain remains accessible for the long term. We develop a parallel set of requirements based on observations of how existing systems handle this task, and on an analysis of the threats to achieving the goal. On this basis we suggest disclosures that systems should provide as to how they satisfy their goals.
Several things I like about this paper.
1. It is very readable and easy to understand. When dealing with OAIS, preservation systems, etc., this is not always true.
2. Makes a good argument for open standards, systems, and communication.
3. Authenticity and trust in the digital preservation system will require a full disclosure of strategies, threats and failures. Yes, if a system fails, everyone should know about it.
Unfortunately, the paper often presents Stanford's own LOCKSS digital preservation system in such glowing terms that some readers may consider the paper as self-congratulatory.
A must-read article with great references.
Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0509018
May 13, 2005
Player Piano Music Rolls Converted to MIDI
An enterprising Canadian has been digitizing player piano music rolls and converting them into MIDI files. Terry Smythe has built a custom scanner to read and convert the rolls. His site includes pictures of the scanner and description of the process. You can also download all of the MIDI files he has created.
The MIDI format is a well-documented, stable communication standard for keyboard-based music. Actually, it is a lot more. Read about MIDI in WikiPedia
Link
