digitizationblog News on digitization in libraries and allied institutions

Creative Commons will lose their US federal tax exempt status if they don't meet their fundraising goal by the end of December. Donations can be made through the CC site (via PayPal). RedHat and Six Apart have generously offered to match donations up to $5000.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library has released the aDORe Archive Solution, a "write-once/read-many" framework for archiving files, assigning persistent identifers, and disseminating metadata about the file via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. adoreArchive is made available under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

The Visual Resources Association Data Standards Committee is asking for feedback and beta testing of version 4.0 of the VRA Core metadata schema. A discussion forum for comments has been established, with a deadline of January 31, 2006.

Among other articles, this issue contains an interesting piece on the The University of Oregon's frank reassessment of its digital collection building activites. A nice reality check for all of us.

The Internet Archive has released version 0.20 of Wayback, a new implementation of the application used to create the Wayback Machine. The primary goal of this new implementation is to replace the existing application that popluates the Wayback Machine and to allow it to be used by others, presumably for archiving their own websites. Wayback is released under the Lesser GNU Public License and requires Apache Tomcat.

The Digital Library Federation is inviting public review and comment on the its MODS Implementation Guidelines for Cultural Heritage Materials. Developed by the DLF Aquifer Initiative, the guidelines are meant specifically for metadata records that are to be shared by the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting or other means, and that describe digital cultural heritage and humanities-based resources.

antiword is a utility for converting Microsoft Word 2, 6, 7, 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003 to text, Postscript, and XML/DocBook. antiword is available under the GNU Public License and runs on pretty much every commonly available operating system. Note that the freshmeat page for antiword seems to be a bit more up to date than its main home page.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries has opened a search for a Digitization Librarian. Details and job description, along with procedures for application, are available here.

Digiwik is "designed to be a repository of digitization information for use by individuals, museums, libraries, researchers, and any other entities with digitization needs." Excellent!