Cross
Currents No 17 October 2003
A
digest of cross sectoral information management events, issues and ideas in
organisations, libraries, archives and museums, with special emphasis on
arts and the humanities.
|
ARTS
& HUMANITIES Arts & Humanities Data Service | Arts
education & libraries | Broadband & the humanities | Creative
Industries e-learning | Music libraries in the UK | Rethinking the
humanities in the global age
ASSOCIATIONS
DIGITISATION
Challenges | E-prints | Economics | National initiative | Visual
resources
LIBRARIES
Collaborative reference services | Competition from direct access |
Economics | Future | Statistics
|
MEDIA
& NEWSPAPER ARCHIVES Australian Broadcasting Corporation | BBC |
Moving Image Collections | Newspaper archives MUSEUMS
Museum
Treasures CD Series | National Forum on Performance in Cultural
Institutions
PORTALS
& GATEWAYS
RECORDKEEPING
& ARCHIVES Australian National Audit Office report | Business
records and archives | Describing Archives in Context | National Online
Archival Network | NSW DIRKS manual
STANDARDS
& SYSTEMS Fedora digital resource management | Metadata, Really
Simple Syndication | XML
|
Arts and Humanities Data Service
Arts
and Humanities Data Service (AHDS), established in 1995 with funding by the
Arts and Humanities Research Board and Joint Information Systems Committee in
the UK, has been involved in managing specialised higher education collections
and research into standards and best practice relating to digital resources.
In future, it will pursue a dual focus in subject specialisation and cross-disciplinarity.
Services will be renamed as the following AHDS Centres: AHDS Archaeology, AHDS
History (formerly the History Data Service), AHDS Literature, Languages and
Linguistics, AHDS Performing Arts (formerly the Performing Arts Data Service),
AHDS Visual Arts (formerly the Visual Arts Data Service), and AHDS Executive.
It is also upgrading its website and cross-collections search capability. Web:
http://ahds.ac.uk. [Source: AHDS]
Arts education and libraries
Tara
L. Dirst, in Improving Art History Education:
Library and Faculty Partnerships in Instructional Technology Development
(Information Technology and Libraries Vol 22 no 2, 2003, p. 83-87, http://www.lita.org/ital/index.htm),
writes on a partnership at Northern Illinois University between the Library’s Digital
Projects Department and Art History Department that seeks to improve art
education at the university and create a tool for accessing slides of artwork
via the Web.
Broadband & the humanities
The
[Australian] National Scholarly Communications Forum’s workshop, Strictly
Broadband: Broadband and the Humanities, Social Sciences & Creative Arts
(Museum Victoria, Melbourne, 31 October 2003) deals with opportunities
presented by broadband communication networks for scholars, teachers and
researchers in the humanities, social sciences and creative arts. It includes
presentations by researchers involved in projects that illustrate innovative
use of advanced networks in fields as disparate as tele-microscopy, file and
media archives, the preservation of language and the mysteries of the heavens.
[Source: Aus-archivists]. Web: http://www.humanities.org.au/NSCF/.
Creative industries e-learning
RMIT’s
Faculty of Art, Design and Communication conference CREATE.ED 2003 (2 October
2003) was devoted to advances in online creative interaction, experience
design, new skills for the creative student, online collaborative learning,
photography online, teaching design online, visual representation of learning
materials, design and technology educational practices. Web: http://www.rmit.edu.au/adc/create-ed.
[Source: Arts Hub Australia].
Music Libraries in the UK
The UK Branch
of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and
Documentation Centres has published Access to Music & Collections: a
Plan for Music Libraries and Archives in the United Kingdom and Ireland. (£15.00).
The plan, by Pamela Thompson, Chief Librarian at the Royal College of Music
and Malcolm Lewis of Nottingham City Libraries with funding from the Research
Support Libraries Programme, reaffirms the importance of music to the economy,
culture, society and learning, the need for sustainable management and
delivery of services, and the continuing need to ensure access to music
collections, services, expert advice and guidance. Order form: http://www.iaml-uk-irl.org/
Rethinking the humanities in the global age
Rethinking the Humanities in the
Global Age was the title of the 2003 annual meeting of the Research
Libraries Group. Keynote speaker Thomas Bender,
University Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at New
York University, in Changing World, Changing Scholarship, argued that
the traditional boundaries between disciplines are becoming more and more
tenuous and it is increasingly important to make contextual linkages across a
wide variety of domains. Professor David
Eastwood, Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia, in The
Future of the Humanities: Prospects and Challenges, provided an overview
of humanities funding in the UK. He encouraged more collaborative approaches
to humanities research, and urged a re-evaluation of the concept of the ‘lone
scholar.’ Proceedings: http://www.rlg.org/annmtg/index03.html.
A
November 2003 workshop organised by four Australian professional associations
- Museums Australia, Australian Library and Information Association,
Australian Society of Archivists and the Australian Institute for the
Conservation of Cultural Materials will address the value of collections to
the community, the role of associations and the pressing need to sustain the
collections sector through appropriate and adequately resourced education and
training. [Source: Museum National]
The Australian Computer Society has embarked on
a process to reform its structure. According to a plan distributed to its
16,000 members, the ACS plans to move from its current model, which consists
of a national office and eight state/territory branches, to a unitary model
designed to address the use of eight sets of regulations, strategic plans and
activities and is intended to allow volunteers and staff at branch level to
concentrate on “transferring knowledge and delivering services to members
rather than being consumed by administrative tasks.” [Source: Sydney Morning
Herald 2 Sep 2003] Web: http://ww.acs.org.au
Challenges
Neil
Beagrie, Joint Information Systems Committee program
director for digital preservation concludes, in National Digital
Preservation Initiatives: An Overview of Developments in Australia, France,
the Netherlands,and the United Kingdom and of Related Activities (April
2003), that digital preservation is poorly funded in relation to the scale of
the challenge. Institutions have received little or no additional core funding
to address digital preservation. As a result, they must rely on short-term
external project funding or reallocate internal resources. Generally speaking,
funds are more widely available to provide digital access than for digital
preservation. One critical factor is that awareness of digital preservation
issues is low among members of the governing bodies who could provide funding.
Several factors make preservation a pressing issue. Increasingly, institutions
don't hold physical copies of their digital works, but license access to them.
It is often unclear where the responsibility for preservation lies. Digital
media are fragile. Preservation must be dealt with early in a work's
lifecycle, or valuable materials could be lost forever. Web: http://www.clir.org/
[Source: Shelflife]
Clifford Lynch, in The Coming
Crisis in Preserving Our Digital Cultural Heritage (Journal of Library
Administration, Vol 38 no 3-4, 2003, pages 149-161), concludes that we face a
looming crisis as consumer goods move into digital form. Although there are
formidable technical and economic problems, progress is being made in
preserving scholarly information in digital form because of a shared
commitment to permanent access throughout the entire community of authors,
publishers, libraries, and readers involved with financing, producing,
distributing, managing and using this literature. Libraries are a niche market
rather than the primary market for these goods and have little bargaining
power. The producers of any consumer materials today do not understand or care
about what they must do to ensure preservation of their digital works for the
very long term. Steps to at least limit its impact are discussed. [Source:
Shelflife]
E-prints
The Open Society Institute and
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition have published Model
Business Plan: A Supplemental Guide for Open Access Journal Developers &
Publishers to complement new editions of Guide to Business
Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal and Guide to Business
Planning for Converting a Subscription-based Journal to Open Access, first
published in February 2003. All are available free of charge at
<http://www.soros.org/openaccess>.[SPARC Open Access Forum].
Economics
Shelby
Sanett of AMIGOS Library Services, in RLG DigiNews 15 Aug 2003, says an
economic framework is required to ensure continuing access to information
preserved in electronic form. Research to date has focused on the development
of software and hardware to support long-term preservation strategies. Future
efforts should include ways to evaluate costing strategies for acquisition,
preservation and access activities and formulating associated policies and
strategies. Possible strategies include fee for use, fee from the author, fee
from the publisher and legislative support. Web: http://www.rlg.org/. [Source:
Shelf life]
The Journal of Digital Information, 9 Jun 2003, is
dedicated to the theme of economics. Includes pieces on evaluating the cost of
digital libraries, including start-up costs, costs of providing access to
content, and costs of preserving, managing and maintaining digital resources
for the long term. Web: http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/.
[Source: ShelfLife]
National initiative
The National Digital Information Infrastructure and
Preservation Program, the US$100-million project spearheaded by the Library of
Congress, is currently seeking applications aimed at developing and testing
models for the collection of digital materials. The first set of projects to
be funded will focus on the selection and collection of at-risk and
historically significant digital materials for which no analogue equivalent
exists. In addition, NDIIPP is seeking to develop a network of committed
institutional partners to support the long-term collection and preservation of
digital content. Web: www.digitalpreservation.gov/
Visual resources
Paula
Hardin writes on issues and the costs of managing slide libraries and other
visual resources in Integrating the Digitization of Visual Resources into
Library Operations (Journal of Library Administration, vol 39 no 1, 2003 p
45-55). Web: http://www.haworthpressinc.com
Collaborative reference services
The Internet Reference Services Quarterly, vol 8 no 1-2,
2003, is devoted to issues and trends in virtual reference services. Web: http://www.haworthpressinc.com
[Source: New Technologies in Libraries].
Anne
R Kenney and others, in Google Meets eBay: What Academic Librians Can Learn
from Alternative Information Providers (D-Lib June 2003), report on a
study comparing the cost and effectiveness of Google Answers with reference
librarians at Cornell University. The study found that, although the
reference librarians scored higher overall than Google's freelance
researchers, their scores were not significantly better. Both groups were
rated good overall. Google's prices were significantly lower than the cost of
a traditional reference librarian's time. They recommended regular monitoring
of developments in the broader information landscape, implementation of a peer
review process in library reference services, and the introduction of
mechanisms for users to publicly rate responses to reference enquiries. Web:
http://www.dlib.org/
Competition from direct access
Brian L. Mikesell, in Fee or Free? New Commercial
Services Are Changing the Equation (Journal of Library Administration, vol
37 no 3-4, 2002, p.465-475), looks at the impact of competition from online
full-text research services such as Questia and Ebrary, which are offering
library-like services directly to faculty and undergraduates for a fee.
[Source: New Technologies in Libraries].
Economics
Library Trends, vol 51 no 3, 2003 is devoted to theme of
library economics. Articles include Library Economic Metrics: Examples of
the Comparison of Electronic and Print Journal Collections and Collection
Services by Donald W. King and others (p. 376-400), which deals with a
framework of library economic metrics including service input and output,
performance, usage, effectiveness, outcomes, impact, and cost and benefit
comparisons, Cost, Statistics, Measures, and Standards for Digital
Reference Services: A Preliminary View by R. David Lankes, Melissa Gross
and Charles R. McClure (401-413), which reports on work from two studies
related to the assessment of digital library reference services and the
development of standards for such services. [Source: New Technologies in
Libraries]
Future
Clifford
Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, writes
on the future libraries in Ubiquity, Vol 4, Issue 23, July 30 - August 5,
2003): “My personal view is that we're going to start seeing a two-layered
model. We're going to see digital collections that are presented and managed
in a passive way. They will function similar to a repository where stewardship
is the major theme. Then you're going to find access systems layered on top of
these, which may be more volatile. They may have shorter lives than the
underlying collections. You may see the same collections presented through
multiple access systems. These access systems will be not just retrieval
tools, but analysis environments in some cases. We'll see a great diversity in
these access systems -- what I call 'digital libraries' as opposed to digital
collections. Some will be affiliated with traditional libraries; others will
come from very different places, and will go very far out towards the 'active'
end of the services spectrum that we were discussing, towards analysis
environments and collaboratories. I think we'll also increasingly harness
social and community capabilities in digital libraries, for example. Libraries
(as organisations) have avoided this due to concerns and traditions around
patron privacy, but commercial organisations like Amazon.com have been very
aggressive and creative in deploying recommender system technology and other
social filtering and personalization technologies. These will find their way
into the next generation of digital libraries on the Net." Web: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/c_lynch_1.html.
[Source: ShelfLife].
Michael
A Keller, Victoria A. Reich and
Andrew C. Herkovic in What Is A Library Anymore, Anyway? (First Monday,
5 May 2003) assert that forecasts of library obsolescence are often the result
of projection. They all too often
miss the deeper functions libraries perform. Local custodianship of
collections is a key value point for libraries. The extent to which libraries
forget their roles as custodians of collections may determine how bright their
future turns out to be. [Source Current Cites]. Web: (http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_5/keller/).
According
to the report Better Public Libraries, published in the UK by Resource
and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE),
libraries enjoy widespread popularity with the British public, with over 96%
of survey respondents citing them as a valuable resource to local communities.
But, while libraries have been quick to adapt to changing technology, outmoded
design and in some cases poor location have led to a decline in patronage of
some public libraries. Looking toward the future, the report cites several key
trends in library services: (1) libraries increasingly will function as
communications centers for residents, business travellers and tourists, with
patrons regularly using library PCs for e-mail exchange; (2) virtual library
services will be available 24/7 as libraries become more flexible in their
hours; (3) library patrons will extend the length of their visits for study
purposes, creating a need for ‘comfort zones’ and auxiliary services such
as cafes and lounges; (4) children's services will become increasingly
important, as libraries promote themselves as safe havens, both in physical
location and in cyberspace. [Source: Resource]. Web: http://www.resource.gov.uk/documents/id874rep.pdf
Statistics
The
Association of Research Libraries has released its ARL Supplementary
Statistics 2001-02, indicating that the portion of the library materials
budget spent on electronic resources has grown fivefold in the last 10 years -
from an estimated 3.6% in 199293 to 19.6% in 2001-02. 110 ARL university
libraries reported spending more than US$171 million on electronic resources
in 2001-02. The vast majority of that amount was spent on electronic serials
and subscription services. 48 ARL libraries reported another US$20.3 million
was spent on their behalf through centrally funded consortia. In addition to
library materials funds, libraries in 2001-02 spent US$12,578,752 for document
delivery and interlibrary loan activities and US$25,006,573 for bibliographic
utilities, networks, and consortia from their operating funds excluding staff
costs. Web: http://www.arl.org/stats/sup/.
Next section
This
issue of Cross Currents compiled by Paul Bentley
The
Wolanski Foundation would be grateful for feedback
on the scope, format and content of this bulletin..
