Cross
Currents No 9 May 2002
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.
Australia
The
Department of Communications Information Technology & the Arts (DCITA) and
the National Office of the Information Economy (NOIE) are updating plans for
the development of Australia’s ICT sector over the next decade.
A Framework for the Future Steering Committee has been formed with
representatives from Australian companies and global corporations, Australian
publicly-funded research bodies like the CSIRO and the Defence Science and
Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the university sector. Details on
membership and terms of reference are available from the DCITA website http://www.dcita.gov.au/.
The report is anticipated in December 2002.
In
the meantime, NOIE has released two reports on the state of the ICT industry,
its needs and prospects. Australia's Information Economy: The Big Picture,
prepared for NOIE by the Allen Consulting Group working with Monash
University, was released in April 2002 at http://www.noie.gov.au/allenreport.
Key issues: broadband, IT skills shortage, privacy and security. The April
2002 Current State of Play report contains charts and data highlighting
Australia's relatively high ranking in Internet uptake at http://www.noie.gov.au/stateofplay
To
assist regional use of ICT, NOIE has produced NetSpots Directory to
help people find their nearest public Internet access facility in Australia (http://www.noie.gov.au/netspots).
NOIE also publishes TIGERS Newsletter to track progress in the Trials of
Innovative Government Electronic Regional Services (TIGERS) project.
To
explore how government and industry can work together to develop better IT
capabilities, NOIE has
established Health Online, a joint venture with the Department of Health and
Ageing, Health Insurance Commission and Department
of Veterans Affairs.
Europe
In
the April issue of NordInfo, Bernard Smith, Head of Cultural Heritage
Applications, EU Directorate General Information Society, analyses EU policies
for the knowledge society. Contents: Europe in the Internet age, the eEurope
contribution; completing telecommunications liberalisation; accelerating
e-commerce; security and confidence building; promoting content; eGovernment;
and digital inclusion. Conclusion: the spread of the Internet can foster
economic growth, provide jobs, connect remote places to urban centres, and
increase the standard of living. For this to happen, Europe needs: the best
possible infrastructure; more competition to drive down prices; a sound legal
framework for converged communication’s services and e-commerce; innovative,
quality content for new interactive services; an effective, efficient and
user-friendly eGovernment; a skilled population; and global access. “Europe
has made major strides in addressing Internet availability and affordability,
nevertheless, much still needs to be done to address motivation. Today one
third of Europeans are committed users of the Internet, another third can have
access but is today not motivated to use it, and the last third of Europeans
are excluded from using it even if they wanted to”. Web: http://www.nordinfo.helsinki.fi/publications/nordnytt/nnytt4_01/smith.htm
Australian
government strategy
The
Cultural Ministers Council held its 15th meeting in May 2002. Decisions were
made on or consideration given to Key
Needs of Australian Heritage Collections, cultural statistics, reconciliation,
arts and education, major performing arts inquiry recommendations, the
small-to-medium performing arts sector, the cultural benefits of public
broadcasting in Australia, and the inquiry into contemporary visual arts and
crafts sector.
On the small to medium size performing arts, CMC agreed to enhance
overall sector sustainability in creative and financial terms through enhanced
co-operation between the Australia Council, DCITA and State/Territory funding
agencies. It approved a joint program for medium-size companies (annual
turnover of $0.5 million to
$1.0 million) to support enhancement of skills in board governance,
financial management, business development, marketing, use of IT and
sponsorship/fundraising.
On
sponsorship, CMC released The Strategic Direction in Corporate
Sponsorships: Practical
Implications for the Arts, a publication developed by the Australia
Business Arts
Foundation. This offers the following advice: [a] sponsorship
arrangements are no longer determined by personal interest; [b] accountability
to shareholders requires a 'hard-nosed business case'; [c] business looks for
'focus and fit', where values and identity match their own; [d] business seeks
Cultural Partners who can demonstrate a valued contribution to community life;
[e] the outcome from sponsorship should be measurable. Sponsored organisations
should take equal responsibility for the ongoing relationship and outcomes.
Further
details: See statistics below, museums next page and http://www.dcita.gov.au/
Conferences
The
second OZeCulture conference takes place in Sydney, 28-30 May 2002. The
program features speakers on digital rights management; online learning;
online exhibitions; website management on a small budget; online transactions;
digital content and industry development; and other topics. Website: http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/conference/
Palm
trees and sunshine will provide the backdrop for the Hawaii International
Conference on Arts and Humanities.
The conference will take place on 12-15 January 2003 at the Sheraton
Waikiki Hotel, Honolulu Hawaii, USA. Deadline for submission of papers: August
21, 2002. Web address: http://www.hichumanities.org.
[Source: ARLISANZ-L]
Cultural
development
The
World Bank Development Gateway’s culture and development section has over
700 resources on arts, crafts & media, cultural management, cultural
policy, cultural tourism, heritage preservation, heritage in danger and the
economics of culture. Web: http://www.developmentgateway.org/culture/
E-commerce
in the arts & crafts
The
World Bank Development Gateway also has a section on e-commerce for arts &
crafts at http://www.developmentgateway.org/e-arts/
Statistics
The
Cultural Ministers Council, at its May 2002 meeting, approved the CMC
Statistics Working Group's proposals for measuring the social impacts of
creative participation in arts and cultural activity, estimating the value of
indigenous cultural product, and measuring the impact of cultural tourism in
regions.
The
Australian Bureau of Statistics has released a report: Work in Selected
Culture and Leisure Activities, Australia, April 2001 (Cat. No. 6281.0). 17%
of Australians aged 15 or over did some paid or unpaid work in culture and
leisure activities in the year ended April 2001. About one in three of these
culture industry workers were paid for their work, and 62% of these paid
workers undertook the activities as part of their main job. More information
and a summary: http://www.abs.gov.au
The
Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du
Spectacle (SIBMAS) has published a web version of its International
Dictionary of Performing Arts Collections and Institutions
The directory lists over 7000 international institutions with material
relating to the performing arts (theatre, opera, music, ballet, film,
circus, radio, television, cabaret, pantomime) and includes contact details
and summary level information on the collections. Entrants are invited to
contact the editors to correct errors and omissions. Web
http://www.theatrelibrary.org/
]
Of
possible interest to Australian music scholars is 19th-Century California
Sheet Music, a virtual library of some 2,000 pieces of sheet music
published in California between 1852 and 1900, together with related materials
such as a San Francisco publisher's catalogue of 1872, programs, song sheets,
advertisements, and photographs. Full images of every page and some sound
files are available on the website, maintained by Professor Mary Kay Duggan,
School of Information Management and Systems, University of California,
Berkeley Web: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~mkduggan/neh.html
The
American Library Association’s conference in Atlanta on 17 June 2002, will
feature the
work of National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage in the
Library & Information Technology Association’s program "Building
Our Cultural Heritage--Electronically" http://www.lita.org/ac2002/presprog.html.
David Green from NINCH, Virginia Kerr from Northwestern University Library,
Bernard F. Reilly, Jr. from the Center for Research Libraries, and Richard
Rinehart from the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive will discuss why
and how collaboration across the many sectors of the educational and cultural
sectors is the key for the construction of a rich, widely accessible body of
cultural resources. NINCH is a diverse coalition of 100 associations and
institutions collaboratively tackling some of the problems inhibiting the rich
and
integrated deployment of cultural material. This session will explore
collaborative and innovative approaches taken by this group to look at, for
example, new approaches to guidance in good practice, engagement of scholars,
librarians and computer scientists in creating future environments and the
investigation of new economic models and institutional structures necessary
for a digital future. [Source :NINCH-ANNOUNCE]
Articles
& papers
Recent
publications cited on
the What's New in Digital Preservation site of the Digital Preservation
Coalition and the National Library of Australia www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/digital-preservation
include
-
Bergman,
Michael K. The deep Web: surfacing hidden value, Journal of
Electronic Publishing, 7 (1), August 2001 http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/bergman.html
-
Yakel,
Elizabeth,
Digital preservation. Annual Review of Information Science and
Technology, 35, 2001, 337-378. A general overview of digital preservation
issues by an assistant professor in the School of Information at the
University of Michigan.
Papers
presented at the 3rd Annual Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital
World, presented by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 20-22 March 2002,.have been published in
the May 2002 issue of First Monday http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_5/
and include
-
Lynch,
Clifford.
Digital Collections, Digital Libraries and the Digitization of Cultural
Heritage Information
-
Chandler,
Robin L.
Museums in the Online Archive of California (MOAC): Building Digital
Collections Across Libraries and Museums
-
Cole,
Timothy W. Creating
a Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections
Ariadne
issue 31 March/April 2002, has the following articles at http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue31/
:
-
Milne,
Ronald.
The Distributed National Collection' Access, and Cross-sectoral
Collaboration: the Research Support Libraries Programme.
-
Powell,
Andy and Lyon, Liz. The
JISC Information Environment and Web Services - on
possible relationships between the Web Services idea and earlier
ideas about seamless access to information
-
Hartland-Fox,
Becky, Dalton, Pete and Barr, Perry.
eVALUEd
- on a project to develop a transferable model for e-library
evaluation.
European
digital libraries conference
The
European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries
conference will take place at Pontifical Gregorian University Rome, Italy
September 16-18, 2002
The focus of
the conference will be on underlying principles, methods, systems and
tools to build and make available to final users effective digital
libraries. Key issues to be addressed include Integration of methods,
services, systems and interoperability across different data structures,
metadata and components. The conference will be coordinated with a number of
satellite scientific events, sponsored and organized by the DELOS Network of
Excellence on Digital Libraries, an initiative funded by the European Union
FP5 Information Society Technologies programme, which aims to contribute to
the creation of a European digital library research community, encompassing
all the different technology and application fields. Web:
http://www.ecdl2002.org
Trusted
Digital Repositories
The
Research Libraries Group and OCLC in the United States have released Trusted
Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities, a report on
long-term preservation of and access to research materials in digital form.
The report is primarily intended for cultural institutions such as libraries,
archives, museums, and scholarly publishers and is specifically aimed at those
with traditional or legal responsibilities for the preservation of cultural
heritage.
It presents a brief definition of "trusted digital
repositories," provides some examples of the circumstances in which
institutions are undertaking their creation, and speaks to the nature and
achievement of trust. It addresses the seven attributes such repositories must
have and discusses requisite responsibilities at both the higher
organizational/curatorial level and the operational level. Finally, the report
looks at how repositories can be certified and summarizes seven key
recommendations. An appendix provides technical overviews of the Reference
Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS); - a common framework for
describing and comparing architectures and operations of digital archives.
Compliance with this model is a defining attribute of a trusted digital
repository. In January 2002 RLG established an OAIS resources page and
discussion list at its Web site to assist implementers). An operational
responsibilities checklist, a glossary, and selected additional resources
round out the report.
The
report’s working group comprised Neil Beagrie (Joint Information Systems
Committee, UK); Meg Bellinger (OCLC Digital & Preservation Resources);
Robin Dale (RLG); Marianne Doerr (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek); Margaret
Hedstrom (University of Michigan); Anne Kenney (Cornell University); Maggie
Jones (Cedars Project CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives, UK); Catherine
Lupovici (Bibliothèque national de France); Kelly Russell (Cedars Project
CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives, UK); Colin Webb (National Library of
Australia); and Deborah Woodyard (British Library) Web: http://www.rlg.org/.
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..
