digitizationblog News on digitization in libraries and allied institutions

The Digital Preservation Coalition has released a report titled Preserving the Data Explosion: Using PDF. The report is written from a records-management perspective, focusing on "PDF/Archive as an archival file format to preserve an organization's knowledge" combined with comprehensive records management programs and policies.

The Association of Research Libraries has published a report titled Research Library Publishing Services: New Options for University Publishing (PDF). Among the report's findings are the results of a late 2007 survey that "verified that research libraries are rapidly developing publishing services.

Harvard University and Indiana University have just published a 168-page guide Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio Preservation, which was developed with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the U.S. The guide, plus some additional appendices, is available from the Publications section of the Sound Directions website.

The public alpha versions of the OAI Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE) User Guide and Specification documents are now available.

The objective of this survey, conducted in July and August 2007 among 18 RLG partner institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom, was to gain a baseline understanding of current descriptive metadata practices and dependencies. The report summarizes the descriptive practices used across a variety of applications, the data structure and data content standards followed, the audiences for the metadata created, and some organization patterns.

RLG Programs' interpretation of the results and the issues we identified to pursue in future projects is available at

[Posted with permission of James Moses]

Primary Research Group has published The International Survey of Institutional Digital Repositories (ISBN # 1-57440- 090-8) and would like to share some of its research results.

Just a few of the study’s many findings are that:

• The average institutional digital repository spent $78,802 (US) in start up costs.

OCLC Programs and Research has published this report inspired by the "Digitization Matters" forum held in August 2007 by Research Libraries Group and the Society of American Archivists. The report presents strategies for bringing the scale of digitization of unique special collections in libraries and archives in line with that of the mass digitization of published material by programs such as Google Books and the Open Content Alliance.

DDQ Volume 6, Number 3 is now available. Items include a link to the announcement that the NDIIPP funding has been withdrawn, and that the works of Robert Heinlein are being digitized by the UC Santa Cruz Library.

Available here. A snippet -- LJ: "You've been critical of Google's library partnerships. What is Google doing right and/or wrong?" BK: "Two problems: one is perpetual restrictions on the public domain. Another is that these negotiations are all going on in secret."

NISO has received funding from the Institute for Library and Museum Services to update its Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. According to the lastest issue of NISO Newsline, the new version will "improve coverage of non-text formats, international initiatives, digital preservation, Web 2.0 concepts, and several other areas of interest".