Some Updates

New MVP Website: We have officially migrated to the new website (http://mvp.berkeley.edu), currently hosted at wordpress.com. The launch of a new website will be part of a larger communications strategy we hope to roll out with your input over the next weeks.

IT Bank Funding Status: On March 5, we submitted a proposal for continued funding for the Media Vault Program from the Campus Technology Council. Thank you, all, for your input and letters of support.On March 23, David Greenbaum, Patrick McGrath, and Michael Ashley provided a status update to the Campus Technology Council.

HART Forum: We will be presenting MVP and hosting an information table at the Humanities Arts and Research Technologies (HART) Spring Forum, which will take place from 9AM to 1PM on April 24 in 110 South Hall. We hope to engage new arts and humanities scholars in exploring how they could benefit from the Media Vault Program.

Gen1 Platform & Service Development: The MV Team has made considerable progress towards stabilizing the “first generation” Media Vault platform, developing new scripts for file transmission (checksum, automated content migration), implementing Development/QA servers for testing, performing backup and recovery tests, and formalizing intake procedures, ongoing operations and service descriptions for MV-DAM, MV-Archive, MV-Publish and MV-Consult (to be published shortly on the Media Vault Website). We expect that our work stabilizing the platform and clarifying service offerings will improve the quality of service for current and future partners. We look forward to feedback from current partners.

Library Collaboration: We are actively exploring how to integrate the Media Vault digital asset management platform with the Library Systems GenDB repository and the CDL Digital Preservation Repository.  This is a critical project for the Media Vault Program, as it opens new pathways for a comprehensive digital asset management workflow, from ingest to access and preservation, across key campus and system partners. We are using a test collection (a subset of the Digital Nineveh Archives) to explore opportunities and challenges around such integration. We will engage MVP partners and Steering Group in identifying issues to explore, analyzing outcomes, and proposing next steps.  We expect to complete this project by early summer 2009.

Advisory Nominations
We are in the process of identifying advisors for the Media Vault Program. We would like to assemble an advisory board representing diverse perspectives on digital scholarship and conservation. Please let us know if you can recommend someone whose expertise would benefit the Media Vault Program.

Requirements for Gen2 Platform and Services
Over the next few months, we will undergo a lithe but formal planning process in preparation for the next phase of platform and service development. This process will include interviewing key stakeholders, describing existing and planned campus services, and surveying the evolving landscape (literature review, competition analysis), and, finally, developing technical requirements and a roadmap for service and platform development. We welcome suggestions on how to structure this process. We will schedule a workshop for MV partners to review process and preliminary data later this summer.

HART Spring Forum

The Humanities and Arts Research Technologies (HART) Steering Committee would like to invite you and your colleagues to the HART Spring Forum.  This half-day event will be held on Friday, April 24, from 9 AM – 1 PM, in 110 South Hall. The Forum has the following goals:

• Demonstrate successful technologies for research or teaching.
• Highlight interdisciplinary projects on campus.
• Offer individual consultation with technology experts.
• Help faculty and technologists team up.
• Provide information about tech programs for the arts, humanities and social sciences.

The preliminary agenda is listed below; it is also attached as pdf file . As you look through the agenda, you will note that there is opportunity for anyone to host an information table about a project on which s/he are currently working.  Feel free to use this opportunity to share your work, get input from your colleagues, and/or seek collaboration.  Further, throughout the forum, an ad hoc discussion board will be set up for researchers seeking discussion on a given topic, seeking collaboration on a project, seeking technology support for a given project, or seeking a project toward which to apply their technology. Feedback requested To help us make the the proper food and facility arrangements, please contact us at hart_spring_forum@lists.berkeley.edu

• If you plan on attending some or all of the forum; or
• If you wish to host an information table.

Humanities & Arts Reseach and Technologies (HART) Program The HART Program is a campus initiative designed to advance research and teaching in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences through technology and campus collaboration.
HART Steering Committee Janet Broughton, Dean of Arts and Humanities Susan Schweik, Associate Dean, Arts and Humanities Anthony Cascardi, Director of Townsend Center Charles Faulhaber, Director of Bancroft Library Stuart Russell, Chair of Computer Science AnnaLee Saxenian, Dean of the School of Information David Greenbaum, Director of IST-Data Services. ———————————- Preliminary Agenda

9:00 Breakfast and Browsing the Tables and Displays

• Continental breakfast
• Information tables and poster displays will be set up to foster discussion and answer questions in two major categories:
  • General technologies that can be used in research and/or teaching;
  • Faculty projects seeking support, feedback, and/or potential collaboration.

Here is a list of information tables to date:

General Information Tables

• 1. Media Vault Program (http://mediavault.wordpress.com/)
  2. Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/)
  3. Wikis
  4. Blogs
  5. Library Services

Projects (1-6 are HART-funded projects)

1. 1. Berkeley Prosopography Services (http://inews.berkeley.edu/articles/Spring2009/BPS)
   2. Townsend Humanities Labs
   3. CNMAT Collaborative Technology for Multidisciplinary Research and Training (http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/)
   4. Full-Spectrum Photography and Image Processing
   5. Portable Durable Tele-Immersion Technology for Teaching, Artistic Global Networking, and Experiments in Creativity and Collaboration
   6. Developing spatial analysis tools for the collaborative study of linguistic phenomena
   7. TBD
   8. TBD
   9. TBD
   10. TBD

10:00 Presentations

• 10:00 Introduction
• 10:20 Presentations
  • Successful uses of blogs
  • Successful uses of wikis
  • Media Vault Program
  • Library Services
  • Zotero
  • Berkeley Prosopography Services
  • Townsend Labs

12:00 Ad hoc discussions at information tables and poster displays We will provide a discussion board to enable ad-hoc discussions. There will be at least three categories:

• I am looking for help, input, technology for my specific project;
• I am looking to apply my technology to a project; and
• I want to talk about a specific idea.

MVP Spotlight- April 2009

Each month, we highlight news relating to digital scholarship, access and preservation at Berkeley and around the world. To contribute, email Lizzy.

On Campus

Meet, Greet and Eat with Sun: What the MySQL is this anyway?
http://www.citris-uc.org/events/meet_greet_and_eat_sun_what_mysql_anyway
April 15, 2009: 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Location: 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
Duleepa Wijayawardhana, an ‘open-source evangelist’ of Sun Microsystems,  will be introducing and  discussing the importance  mySQL, an open-source database.

California Digital Library Announces Self-Guided Tutorial for the eXtensible Text Framework (XTF)
By Lisa Schiff, eScholarship Publishing Program Technical Lead
http://cdlinfo.cdlib.org/blog/2009/03/17/california-digital-library-announces-self-guided-tutorial-for-the-extensible-text-framework-xtf/
Last month, the California Digital Library (CDL) released an extensive self-guided tutorial for its eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) application.  XTF is an open source, software, which allows customization based on individual need and digital collections.  “The tutorial provides guidance for implementing and customizing XTF, from core functionality to overall look and feel.” The tutorial focuses on adding new content, metadata, customized logo and colors, increase significance of titles in ranking hits, displayed fields, searching and browsing, footnotes, and heirarchies of content.
Download the tutorial here.

Around the World

All About Repositories Webinar Series: Increasing use and content through creative service-repository bundling; the case at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 – 9:00 a.m. PT; 12:00 p.m. ET
http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/09-0319.shtml
Please register at: http://www.education-webevents.com no later than April 14, 2009.
Presented by the DSpace Foundation, Fedora Commons, Sun Microsystems and SPARC, Joan Giesecke and Paul Royster of University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) will discuss the institutional repository at UNL. This repository began 3 years ago and has become the “country’s third largest institutional repository,” containing over 21,000 resources. This repository is also one of the busiest: records show over 100,000 downloads each month. “This webinar will: discuss UNL practices for content recruitment and document preparation, policies and implementation, staffing requirements, and software customization and design; and consider the central role of the library’s IR in an overall campus strategy for scholarly communication and publication.”

Museums and the Web 2009: the international conference for culture and heritage on-line
April 15-18, 2009
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/
Held in Indianapolis, Indiana, this two-day conference will brings together web designers, programmers, educators, directors, from different all over the world and in different fields to discuss “the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of culture, science and heritage” on the web. This conference is produced by Archives and Museum Informatics.

UNESCO, Library of Congress and partners launch World Digital Library
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=44958&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
On April 21st UNESCO, the Library of Congress, and 31 other partner institutions will launch the World Digital Library, an online archive that will “feature manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs” from all over the world. This digital library is free of charge and will be translated in 7 languages.