Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection
The Raymond Mander & Joe Mitchenson Theatre Collection, one of the largest
collections of theatre and performance related materials in the UK, has a
new website and online catalogue covering the entire research archive at
collection level, as well as pre-1890 London theatre records at item level.
It also has links to a digital media archive of more than 2,000 images from
the archive collection and a searchable gallery of the Painting and Artworks
collection. A charitable trust, the Collection is part of the Jerwood
Library of the Performing Arts, based in Trinity College of Music,
Greenwich, London UK. Web:
http://www.mander-and-mitchenson.co.uk.
Music Australia
The National Library of Australia and Australian digital music provider
Destra Media have formed a partnership to enhance the MusicAustralia online
service. The partnership has expanded MusicAustralia with more than 45,000
tracks of contemporary Australian music and added a new e-commerce function
that allows people to obtain in-copyright recordings through legal
downloads. Web:
http://www.musicaustralia.org.
AlouetteCanada
Alouette is a Canadian open digitisation initiative which aims to bring
about a unified approach to accessing the digital content created,
disseminated, and preserved by its member contributors, including libraries,
archives, museums and galleries. It also aims to play a significant role in
political advocacy and fund raising on behalf of their constituencies. It
will act as a service provider for agencies or individuals who choose to use
the open source software tools provided by AlouetteCanada. It is funded by
the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Web:
http://www.alouettecanada.ca/
Canadian Digital Information Strategy
Library and Archives Canada Digital has released a draft Canadian Digital
Information Strategy for comment. The strategy involves (1) strengthening
digital content through mass digitisation on a national scale, a conducive
digital production environment, improved digital production practices,
diversity in digital content production; (2) ensuring digital preservation
through a selection and capture of digital content for long-term retention,
a distributed digital preservation repository network, preservation-related
research, the development of new workplace skills and increased public
awareness of digital preservation issues; and (3) maximizing digital access
by developing mechanisms for democratic, ubiquitous and equitable access,
provision of seamless access and global visibility, provision of more open
access to public sector information and data, effective communication and
management of copyright and increased user research. “The goals of the
Strategy cannot be undertaken by any single organization” the strategy
document says, “rather, an inclusive, coordinated and distributed approach
involving stakeholders from all sectors of the information environment is
required.” Web:
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/
Digital Futures International Forum
The National Archives of Australia attracted 200 participants to its forum
in September 2007 on collaborative challenges for creating, managing,
preserving and providing access to digital information. Keynote speakers
included Natalie Ceeney, Chief Executive, National Archives of the United
Kingdom and James Hastings, Director of Access Programs at the US National
Archives and Records Administration. The forum concluded that: (1)
partnerships and convergence across sectors and international borders were
vitally important to make best use of technology; and (2) there was a need
to increase investment in skills and infrastructure to maximise application
and return on investment in digital content. “Although there has been
substantial investment in this area in the United States and in Europe and
some investment in Australasia, the uneven and often inadequate levels of
investment are impairing not only access to this digital content, but its
very survival…There is substantial investment in the creation of digital
content, as indicated by levels of investment in ICT systems and research
projects that generate substantial quantities of data. However, matching
proportional investments in preserving and providing appropriate access to
this digital content is often missing. Managers of digital collections need
to be able to tap into ‘upstream’ investment, for example by ensuring that a
proportion of the investment in creating new digital content is set aside
for providing for its preservation and for access to that content which is
of enduring national and international significance.” Web:
http://www.naa.gov.au/dfif.html
Newspapers in Australia
Fairfax Media has published a digital archive of the Sydney Morning Herald
1955-1990 using Olive's ActivePaperArchive to convert its text and microfilm
archives into a single XML-based format. All articles, photos and
advertisements are searchable by keyword and the results are returned in an
exact digital reproduction of the pages. A variety of subscriptions are
available for private individuals, as well as companies, institutions,
government and libraries. Web: http://archives.smh.com.au
The National Library of Australia has entered into a contract with Apex
Publishing to support its major newspaper digitisation program. The Library
will use Apex to build a database comprising one major newspaper from each
state and territory for the period 1803 to 1954. It expects to offer, from
early 2008, full text searching of these newspapers and viewing of content
free of charge. The Library will include initially 19th century portions of
newspapers such as The Sydney Gazette, The Argus, The Courier Mail and other
newspapers from Hobart, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. It will then digitise
the portions of these newspapers from the first half of the 20th century.
The project involves the support of state libraries, which will ensure the
availability of good quality microfilm versions of the relevant newspapers
as source material. Apex will convert digital page images produced from
microfilm into text searchable files through the use of OCR technology and
other processes such as "zoning" of the newspaper articles. Web:
http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp
Newspapers in USA
The Library of Congress has more than 310,000 newspaper pages, from 1900 to
1910, accessible through its Chronicling America Website. The site is a
project of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership between the
Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Over the
next 20 years, NDNP will create a national digital resource of historically
significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 from all states and
US territories. Web:
www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/.
Oral history digitisation
Eric Weig, Kopana Terry and Kathryn Lybarger, in Large Scale Digitization
of Oral History: A Case Study (D-Lib Magazine May/June 2007), describe
an oral history analogue-to-digital reformatting pilot project conducted at
the University of Kentucky Libraries. The project included master file
creation and use of a custom interface for searching and retrieving Web
mounted audio segments. Through a cost analysis of the process, the project
unearthed useful information about what can be accomplished with a large
collection and limited funding. Web: http://www.dlib.org/.
Australian support for science and
research
The Australian Productivity Commission’s report Public Support for Science
and Innovation provides a snapshot of Australia's science and innovation
system and looks at the rationales for public support, impacts, impediments,
workforce issues, commercialisation and utilisation, performance evaluation
and benchmarking, funding levels, funding mix and coordination issues,
business programs, public sector research agencies, and funding of higher
education research. Web:
http://www.pc.gov.au/study/science/finalreport/index.html)
Author copyright tools
The Canadian Association of Research Libraries and Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition have released the SPARC Canadian Author
Addendum, a tool for authors in Canada to retain key rights to the journal
articles they publish. The Addendum enables authors to secure a balanced
agreement for retaining select rights, such as the rights to reproduce,
reuse and publicly present the articles they publish for non-commercial
purposes. See
http://www.arl.org/sparc/author
Data curation
Liz Lyon’s JISC Report, Dealing with Data: Roles, Rights,
Responsibilities, Relationships, reviews the variety of data and
arrangements for their curation and use across disciplines. The work of
funders, national data centres, institutional repositories, learned
societies and the Digital Curation Centre are documented with a view to
identifying roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships. Further work
is planned, including the development of a Data Audit Framework to enable UK
universities and colleges to carry out an audit of departmental data
collections, awareness, policies and practice for data curation and
preservation. Web: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
Significance
The Collections Council of Australia is producing a second edition of the
2001 publication, Significance: A Guide to Assessing the Significance of
Cultural Heritage Objects and Collections. The new edition will broaden
the scope by including all four major collecting domains — archives and
libraries in addition to museums and galleries, and will take into account
of new developments and resources since 2001. Web:
http://www.collectionscouncil.com.au/.
Wikipedia as a promotional tool
Ann M Lally and Carolyn E Dunford, in Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital
Collections (D-Lib Magazine vol 13, no 5/6, May/June 2007) document the
University of Washington Libraries' effort to put their digital collections
in Wikipedia. They conclude: “Web 2.0 technologies offer librarians a great
opportunity to enhance the authority of resources that students use on a
daily basis, and to push their knowledge and expertise beyond the
traditional boundaries of the library. We now consider Wikipedia an
essential tool for getting our digital collections out to our users at the
point of their information need. We view this as a very low cost way to
enhance access to our collections, as well as an effective way to
participate in the creation of resources that are used by millions around
the world. We will continue to explore how we can take advantage of the
opportunities that Web 2.0 technologies offer us when marketing our digital
and physical collections.” The article contains useful tips on creating
articles and cross-references within Wikipedia, monitoring for changes and
vandalism, and communicating with other Wikipedia users. Web:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may07/lally/05lally.html
Canadian Library Association moves to open
access
The Canadian Library Association will provide most of its intellectual
property free of charge, in digital form, online and free of most copyright
and licensing restrictions. The revised policy has four parts: (1) CLA will
provide for full and immediate open access for all CLA publications, with
the exception of Feliciter and monographs The embargo period for Feliciter
is one issue, and the embargo policy itself will be reviewed after one year.
Monographs will be considered for open access publishing on a case-by-case
basis. (2) CLA actively encourages its members to self-archive in
institutional and/or disciplinary repositories and will investigate a
partnership with E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information
Studies. (3) CLA will generally provide for the author's retention of
copyright by employing Creative Commons licensing or publisher-author
agreements that promote open access. (4) CLA will continue its long-standing
policy of accessibility to virtually all CLA information except for narrowly
defined confidential matters (eg certain personnel or legal matters). Web:
http://www.cla.ca/
Electronic resources
The National Library of Australia and other library groups have established
Electronic Resources Australia (ERA), a national approach for purchasing
electronic databases, managed by and for all Australian libraries for their
users. Web: http://era.nla.gov.au/.
LibSite.org
LibSite.org is a recommendation service for library-related websites, The
site features a blog, wiki, RSS feeds and email alerts. Users can rate
sites, post recommendations, and add their own tags. Web: http://libSite.org
Archival Finding Aids
Elizabeth Yakel, Seth Shaw and Polly Reynolds, in Creating the Next
Generation of Archival Finding Aids (D-Lib Magazine Vol 13 no 5/6,
May/June 2007), describe the Polar Bear Expedition Digital at the University
of Michigan, which has developed an archival access system that combines
Electronic Archival Description (EAD) with Web 2.0 features, involving user
input through social software and collaborative filtering. They conclude:
“Our design decisions have attempted to balance the need for continued
archival authority with a desire to incorporate some of the social aspects
of Web 2.0 features. The relative merits of each of these solutions is open
for debate. Social navigation, collaborative filtering, and shared authority
among archival users and archivists will continue to be controversial
topics…For the Next Generation Finding Aids research group, the Polar Bear
Expedition Collections site is just the first in a series of experiments
exploring how to make archival information more accessible in the virtual
environment.” Web: http://www.dlib.org/
Digital records conversion
ARMA International has published The Digital Records Conversion Process:
Program Planning, Requirements, Procedures (Member Price: US$40.00
Non-Member Price: US$60.00). The ANSI/ARMA standard provides requirements
for converting electronic records from one digital recordkeeping system to
another. The work includes tables, a template that draws together
recordkeeping requirements, risks and drivers, controls and stages of the
conversion process, as well as other tools. Details from the ARMA site:
http://www.arma.org/
Functional Requirements for Authority Data
The IFLA Working Group on Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority
Records has published the 2nd draft of Functional Requirements for
Authority Data (previously titled Functional Requirements for Authority
Records). FRAD is one of the key elements of RDA: Resource Description and
Access (see below). Web:
http://www.ifla.org/VII/d4/wg-franar.htm.
Metadata
Mary W Elings and Günter Waibel, in Metadata for All: Descriptive
Standards and Metadata Sharing across Libraries, Archives, and Museums
(First Monday, vol 12 no 3, March 2007) look at the challenge of integrating
digital content from libraries, archives and museums. While there have been
examples of cross-community experimentation, the tendency has been for
libraries, archives and museums to develop parallel descriptive strategies
for cataloguing the materials in their custody. The article defines and
categorises types of standards, provides a brief historical overview of the
rise of descriptive standards in museums, libraries and archives, and
considers the current tensions and ambitions in making descriptive practice
more economic. They conclude: “The successful integration of digital images
of material culture from library, archive and museum collections hinges on
the emergence of a more homogenous practice in describing like-materials in
different institutions. While data structures can be mapped with relative
ease, data content variance still effectively prohibits economic
plug-and-play aggregation of collections. Data content standards such as CCO
emerge as the linchpin in a cross–community strategy to make descriptions
versatile, shareable and readily integrated into union resources.” Web:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/elings/.
The National Archives of Australia has released an exposure draft of its new
Australian Government Recordkeeping Metadata Standard, which describes
information about records the National Archives recommends be captured in
the EDRM and business systems of Australian Government agencies. It differs
from the previous edition in that it is based on a multiple-entity model,
and allows for the description of up to five separate entities: record,
agent, business, mandate and relationship. The final version and
accompanying implementation guidelines will be ready for released in early
2008. Web:
www.naa.gov.au/records-management/publications/AGRMS.aspx
RDA: Resource Description and Access
The National Library of Australia, Library of Congress, British Library and
Library and Archives Canada have agreed on the coordinated implementation of
RDA: Resource Description and Access, the successor to the Anglo-American
Cataloguing Rules, RDA will be available in two parts as a web-based tool,
Part A – description and Part B - access point control. It will provide a
flexible and extensible framework for both the technical and content
description of resources while serving the needs of institutions organising
traditional resources. It also aims to provide a better fit with emerging
database technologies. A key element of RDA is its alignment with the
conceptual models for bibliographic and authority data developed by the
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) —
FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and FRAD
(Functional Requirements for Authority Data). A second key element is that
it establishes a clear line of separation between the recording of data and
the presentation of data. Proposals for handling of general material
designations, specific material designations and uniform titles will be of
particular interest for those preparing to implement changes. The full draft
of RDA will be available in July 2008. The four national libraries plan to
implement RDA by the end of 2009. Web:
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/working2.html
VRA Core 4.0
The Visual Resources Association has published the release version of VRA
Core 4.0, along with an explanation of changes between VRA Core 4.0 beta
version and VRA Core 4.0 release version. VRA Core 4.0 is a data standard
for the cultural heritage community, developed by the Visual Resources
Association's Data Standards Committee. It consists of a metadata element
set (units of information such as title, location, date, etc), as well as an
initial blueprint for how those elements can be hierarchically structured.
The element set provides a categorical organisation for the description of
works of visual culture as well as the images that document them. Web:
http://www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/
Storage
Archives New Zealand has released a revised standard for storage of records
and archives, setting minimum requirements for local and central government
records in New Zealand from January 2010 The standard is structured around
six principles to be taken into account when storing records and archives:
identification and control, facilities, protection against disaster,
security, shelving and packaging, and environmental control. Each principle
is accompanied by a list of minimum requirements, together with explanations
of why these requirements are considered essential, and examples of the
risks they mitigate. Web:
http://www.archives.govt.nz/
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..
