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.

Major changes in the PREMIS 2.0 data dictionary include expanded rights metadata, more extensive significant properties and preservation level information, and a mechanism for extensibility for a number of metadata units.

Deadline for comments on the XML schema is April 24. More information is available at the PREMIS schemas website.

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.

This story from the New York Times of Dec. 23 explains that preserving the digital byproducts of making movies is considerably more expensive than preserving their analogue counterparts. Of particular interest to Digitizationblog readers is that the article supplies specific dollar figures.

[Posted with permission of Daniel Alemneh, University of North Texas]

I would like to invite you to participate in a research study whose main goal is to identify and understand factors affecting adoption of PREservation Metadata Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) in cultural heritage institutions. The online survey questionnaire contains 18 questions and would take about 15 minutes to complete.

The koLibRI digital preservation tool, developed by German National Library, the Goettingen State and University Library, the Gesellschaft fuer wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Goettingen, and IBM Deutschland GmbH, is now available for download. From the web page:

The Florida Center for Library Automation is pleased to announce that the DAITSS preservation repository application is now available under the GPL license. DAITSS implements the preservation strategies of normalization and forward migration for about 10 currently-supported formats, including JFIF (JPEG), JEG2000, TIFF, WAVE, XML, Quicktime, AVI and PDF, and was designed to conform closely to the OAIS reference model.

Highlights from this issue of RLGDigiNews include "Digital Imaging - How Far Have We Come and What Still Needs to be Done?", "A Digital Decade: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going in Digital Preservation?", and "Copyright Keeps Open Archives and Digital Preservation Separate".

DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) is conducting a survey on international competence centres for digital curation and
preservation activity and expertise. The survey closes March 23rd, 2007.

Springer has just published Henry Gladney's Preserving Digital Information (2007, ISBN 978-3-540-37886-0 ). A synopsis of the book is available.