digitizationblog

Google Base allows people to upload content so that it gets indexed faster. According to the FAQ, "Google Base enables you to add attributes that better describe your content so that users can easily find it. The more popular specific attributes become, the more often we'll suggest them when others post the same items."

I've been looking for element sets defining resource-level (not collection-level) administrative metadata and have been coming up empty handed. METS contains generic elements (<techMD>, <rightsMD>, <sourceMD> and <digiprovMD>) that are intended to either point to external administrative metadata or to encapsulate elements from some external schema.

I use Drupal as the content management system (CMS) for a course I am currently teaching. Drupal is a general CMS in that it powers blogs, community websites, and general websites equally well. Some examples of Drupal sites include the JPEG 2000 in Libraries and Archives site and the journal Copyright's community site.

This pandering and predictable article reveals to the world that we don't know how to preserve born-digital material. Duh. At least he acknowledges that "It is conceivable that a few librarians will keep around some antique Wangs and Commodore 64s in order to access digital archives." Thanks.

What is 'digitalization' anyway? Even Google thinks it's a misspelling.

Announcing Canadian Electronic Reserves: A forum for librarians implementing E-reserves in academic libraries across Canada. The inagural posting states

As a result of copyright law, Canada is far behind American libraries in e-reserves implementation. While there is a plethora of e-reserves research, little is Canadian based.

The beta version of Streetprint Engine 3.0 has been out since March but I've only now gotten around to taking a close look. Described on its website as "the world's most user-friendly free software for powering digital collections," Streetprint Engine 3.0 is written in PHP and uses a MySQL backend, and runs on any platform that supports these tools.

This post has nothing to do with digitization (other than I was travelling to get to a relevant workshop), but I want to document my stay at Pearson International Airport during the Air France accident on August 2, and in particular to describe the way that Air Canada treated passengers delayed by the accident.

I'm currently taking Diane Hillmann's "Building Metadata Application Profiles", a 3-day course at the University of New Brunswick Electronic Text Centre's Summer Seminar Series. I'm really enjoying the course, chiefly because it is providing a broad context both for application profiles and for activity within the Dublin Core initiative. That's not to say the content isn't good - it's excellent.

CNN has published an amusing article on the benefits of tagging ideas, images, videos, and people, concluding that "If they're properly tagged, they're far easier to find." What a great idea -- institutions who digitize dusty photos and books could learn a lot from this article. All kidding aside, the EXIF metadata in the files coming out of digital cameras and the track info encoded in MP3 and other digital audio formats illustrate how mainstreamed it has become to embed metadata in digital objects.

I only attended one session today, the one on "User Content". Elisam Magara from the East African School of Library and Information Science in Kampala, Uganda spoke about his gap analysis on how indiginous knowledge (IK) is recorded, organized, and preserved in Uganda.