Media Vault Program Update

Media Vault Program Update
October 2010

Greetings MVP Stakeholders,

This month brings the completion of the Media Vault Program, as well as the beginning of new initiatives. It also brings a brief extension, through winter break, for the Extensis Portfolio/NetPublish service.

MEDIA VAULT PROGRAM ENDING
The three-year, grant-funded Media Vault Program comes to a close this fall.  Supported by UC Berkeley’s IT Bank, the MVP has been instrumental in raising issues related to digital asset management and preservation.  Its efforts have addressed fundamental scholarly needs on campus.

The Media Vault Program brought several new services to campus.  Working closely with research and teaching collections, the MVP put in place an innovative digital asset management and archive solution, coupling the notion of long-term preservation with commercially available cataloging and publishing software.  This exploratory offering helped campus collections such as the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the History of Art Visual Resources Collection manage their images, recordings and other electronic holdings, and make these objects available on the Web.  Over the last year, the MVP team took the lessons learned from this work and applied them to the creation of a sustainable content management and collaboration service appropriate for use by the entire campus.  (See ‘Media Hub becoming ‘Research Hub’’, below.)

Equally as important, the MVP created a unique partnership among campus and UC system-wide programs, bringing together the UC Berkeley Library, the campus’s Educational Technology Services and Information Services & Technology organizations, the California Digital Library and others in discussions and workshops about this vital area of academic technology.  Program partners have spawned new initiatives such as the forth-coming Research Hub service, the California Digital Library’s UC Curation Center (see ‘New Services for the UC Community from the CDL/UC3’, below) and significant updates by the campus Library to its GenDB service.  Through these and other initiatives, MVP partners continue to provide help to scholars, even as funding for the Media Vault Program comes to an end.

Increasingly, digital materials form the heart of scholarship.  For the past three years, the Media Vault Program has focused its attention – and the University’s – on the proper management of these resources.  It is a complex and expensive endeavor; developing the means to support scholars will take the concerted efforts of many parties.  The vision of the MVP, and the spirit of collaboration that guided it, must live on!

MEDIA HUB BECOMING ‘RESEARCH HUB’
The Media Hub, the content management and collaboration service piloted this spring by the Media Vault team, has gained a new name on its way to launch.  Rechristened Research Hub, this new service from Information Services & Technology’s Data Services Department is designed to support the needs of campus researchers.  Its URL will be easy to remember: hub.berkeley.edu

The Research Hub team is developing terms of service and pricing models in preparation for a limited release this fall.  Look for an announcement soon.

While the final decisions are being made, the underlying hardware and software have been installed, localized, tested and prepared for campus use.  Authentication has been tied to the campus’s CalNet identity management service, so users won’t need a separate password.  Research Hub is in the queue of services awaiting integration with the CalNet Guest Access program; by the end of the semester, partners and colleagues from outside the campus community should be able to work collaboratively with campus scholars, students and staff.

Meanwhile, the Research Hub has been selected as one of the workspace engines behind the Project Bamboo technology proposal.  Over the next 18 months, the Research Hub will be used to prototype workspace features and to test the online workspace requirements of scholars in the Humanities, Arts and interpretive Social Sciences.

MVP EXTENSIS-BASED SERVICE EXTENDED FOUR MONTHS
The Media Vault Program’s Extensis Portfolio/NetPublish-based service, originally slated to close in October of 2010, has been extended through the end of January 2011, giving MVP pilot participants time to move their collections and catalogs to other platforms.  Thanks to closeout funding from the campus’s IT Bank and the continued generosity of the Library, collection owners will now have until the beginning of spring semester to retrieve their materials.

The Media Vault team will contact participants in the upcoming weeks to help define migration plans.  If you have questions in the meantime, please contact the Media Vault team by email at mvpochelp@lists.berkeley.edu.

NEW SERVICES FOR THE UC COMMUNITY FROM THE CDL/UC3
The California Digital Library (CDL) has announced two new services for the UC community.  Merritt, the next generation repository service from CDL’s UC Curation Center (UC3) will allow UC3 to extend the reach of its services to new constituencies such as museums, archives, research groups, academic departments and data centers.

Significant features include:
• permanent storage
• access via persistent URLs
• tools for long-term management
• an easy-to-use interface for deposit and updates

EZID (ee-zee-eye-dee) enables persistent identification of and access to a scholar’s research, which is critical to the long-term distribution and availability of the work.  Currently, EZID allows users to acquire DataCite Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) or Archival Resource Keys (ARKs).  CDL plans to add other identifier schemes going forward.  EZID is available via a machine-to-machine programming interface (an API) and as a web user interface.

The Research Hub team is already working with the UC3 team to automate the transfer of content from UC Berkeley to the UC3 Merritt platform.  For more information about Merritt or EZID, please contact UC3 (see contact link, below).

So, the program ends, but the effort continues. It has been a pleasure working with each of you – and will continue to be, in new and different forms of endeavor.
Best,
The Media Vault team

Useful Links:
Research Hub (UC Berkeley):
https://hub.berkeley.edu
(coming)
About:
https://hub.berkeley.edu/about
(coming)
Contact: hub@berkeley.edu (coming)
Project Bamboo:
http://projectbamboo.org/

Media Vault Team email address: mvpoc-help@lists.berkeley.edu

California Digital Library / University of California Curation Center (UC3):
http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/

DataCite:
http://www.datacite.org

UC3 contact page:
http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/contact.html

Merritt webinar:
http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2010/05/21/webinar-of-merritt-repository-development/

Spotlight- October 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
“Take Control of Your Publications with eScholarship”
Catherine Mitchell- Director, CDL Publishing Group
Monday, October 19, 2009: 4:30 – 6.00 p.m at Archaeological Research Facility, 2251 College Building, Room 101
In honor of Open Access Week, the Director of the California Digital Library (CDL) will presenting eScholarship, “an initiative of the CDL,” which began in 2002. It currently “houses over 30,000 publications with more than 9 million full-text downloads to date.” Professor Ruth Tringham is the sponsor of this event, which is open to all faculty and students.

Berkeley Prosopography Services and Collection Space Program
Patrick Schmitz
Information Access Seminar
Friday, October 23, 2009, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm at 107 South Hall

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/events/ias20091023

As part of the Information Access Seminar, Patrick Schmitz, will be presenting CollectionSpace Project. The CollectionSpace project is made up of a variety of institutions, including UC Berkeley, “with the common goal of providing a platform for a collections management system.” The Information Access Seminar occurs ever Friday and is always open to the public.

Luscious Complexity: Transcending the Doohickey
Camille Utterback
October 5, 2009: Sutardja Dai Hall, Main Auditorium, 3rd Floor

http://atc.berkeley.edu/bio/Camille_Utterback/

Recently awarded the MacArthur award, Camille Utterback, a new media, artist, will be discuss how interactive art can engage the public without “without incurring frustration in participants”.

Around the World

The Sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects
October 5-6, 2009
Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA

http://www.cdlib.org/iPres/

The California Digital Library (CDL) will be hosting the sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPres). This conference will be held in San Franciso on October 5-6, 2009. This conference will “bring together researchers and practitioners from around the world to explore the latest trends, innovations, and practices in preserving our scientific and cultural digital heritage,” as well as “continue the discussion of creating our digital future.”

Sun PASIG Fall Meeting
October 7-9, 2009: San Francisco, CA

http://sun-pasig.ning.com/


http://sun-pasig.ning.com/events/pasig-san-francisco-oct-79

“Sun Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) will be hosting a 2 day conference in October. The conference will focus on a variety of topics, ranging from storage technology, repositories, to sustainability. Presenters and current attendees come from institutions from all over the world. Co-sponsored by Stanford, Sun PASIG “is focused on sharing open computing solutions and best practices.”

Sheridan Libraries Awarded $20 Million Grant

http://releases.jhu.edu/2009/10/02/sheridan-libraries-awarded-20-million-grant/

The Sheridan Libraries at John Hopkins were awarded 20 millions dollars from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The money is for the Data Conservancy project, which aims to “build a data research infrastructure for the management of the ever-increasing amounts of digital information created for teaching and research.” The Data Conservancy project “involves individuals from several institutions, with Johns Hopkins University serving as the lead…”

Open Images

http://openimages.eu/about;jsessionid=8E1F315E839C9D7C87676F4A4750056C

Open Images is developed by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland. This project is part of the Images for the Future project. The purpose of the Open Images project “is to offer online access to a selection of archive material to stimulate creative reuse.” All images are under a Creative Commons license.

Media Vault Program Holds Community Workshop

The Media Vault Program brought together users of its first generation services Friday afternoon, September 11, to share updates, gather feedback on functional requirements for a “generation 2” service and plan for a larger community workshop.  Following closely on the heels of last week’s workshop of access, preservation and digital curation service providers, Friday’s meeting furthered MVP’s push to provide campus with tools to keep research data safe and easy to share.

Media Vault users heard about a number of preservation, access and digital curation services currently available to campus or soon to come on line.  Bernie Hurley of the Library Systems Office spoke about the Library’s WebGenDL digital asset management service. “The Library has been using this system to manage its digital assets for about five years,” Hurley said.  In addition to helping researchers catalogue their data and manage the related metadata, the Library can also help Media Vault users and program staff:

• Create persistent identifiers for their materials
• Integrate with the California Digital Library’s Digital Preservation Repository
• Surface collections for discovery
• Make contact with other researchers, and
• Starting in November, access legal counsel regarding intellectual property issues.

Hurley repeated the Library’s generous offer to make 16TB of storage available to the Media Vault Program.

John Kunze of the California Digital Library’s Digital Preservation department followed Hurley.  Kunze articulated CDL’s vision to be “recognized as the hub of digital preservation and curation activities for University of California.”   He described the types of materials that the CDL handles, including its web site archive and tools for web site harvesting.  Then, he discussed the CDL’s new digital curation initiative.  “Preservation in not a place,” Kunze said.  “It comes to the user.”  Rather than relying on “monolithic, single-culture systems” to maintain digital objects, the CDL is developing a set of independent but interoperable “micro-services” to handle all aspects of curation, which can be applied throughout the object’s lifecycle.  The first of these, to be available starting in January 2010, will pertain to identity and storage.

Noah Wittman presented on the Media Vault Service’s “Gen2” platform selection process and roadmap.  Building upon its experience with Extensis Portfolio and NetPublish, and keeping a keen eye on the entire ecosystem of access, preservation and curation services available to the campus community, the Media Vault Service is working to develop a recommendation for its future platform within the next six weeks.  The new platform should take advantage of existing services and address the gaps where existing services don’t fill user needs.

Following the round of presentations from service providers, the workshop participants turned their attention to assessing a list of functional requirements for a new platform.  (See the Functional Requirements page of the Media Vault wiki.)  This exercise provided an opportunity for community members to share experiences in a group setting, and for program staff to benefit from the collective expertise of Media Vault users.

The remainder of the workshop focused on planning for the larger community workshop scheduled for the end of October.   Conversations revolved around how to attract campus members to that event, especially given the increased stress and workload caused by the budget crisis.  More generally, how can the Media Vault Program motivate campus scholars to try its services?  Finally, what would it look like if MVP could ramp up its service from 2% of campus to 15%?

MVP Spotlight- September 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
5 Major Research Universities Endorse Open-Access Journals
By Ben Terris

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Five-Major-Research/8042/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

UC Berkeley, along with Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and MIT, ‘signed a compact agreeing to the “timely establishment” of mechanisms for providing financial support for free open-access journals.’ This is in response to the high costs of purchasing journals, as well as the growing Open Access movement.

CollectionSpace .02 Release

http://wiki.collectionspace.org/display/collectionspace/August+2009+Status+Update

The CollectionSpace team is expected to release .02 at the end of the month. The new release will have a slightly different design, as well as “four new user screens….:login, create new landing page, find and edit landing page, and intake. ” The CollectionSpace team is made up of a variety of institutions, including UC Berkeley, “with the common goal of providing a platform for a collections management system.”

New Batch Download Feature in ARTstor

http://havrc.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-batch-download-feature-in-artstor.html

History of Art Visual Resource Center (HAVRC) recently created a 4 minute tutorial demonstrating Artstor’s latest feature: Batch Download. Users are also able to batch download items straight into PowerPoint. Currently, ArtStor is limiting the number of files downloaded. Users are only able to download a 1000 images per semester.

Around the world
The Sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects
October 5-6, 2009
Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA

http://www.cdlib.org/iPres/

The California Digital Library (CDL) will be hosting the sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPres). This conference will be held in San Franciso on October 5-6, 2009. This conference will “bring together researchers and practitioners from around the world to explore the latest trends, innovations, and practices in preserving our scientific and cultural digital heritage,” as well as “continue the discussion of creating our digital future.”

Sun PASIG Fall Meeting
San Francisco, CA
October 7-9, 2009

http://sun-pasig.ning.com/


http://sun-pasig.ning.com/events/pasig-san-francisco-oct-79

“Sun Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) will be hosting a 2 day conference in October. The conference will focus on a variety of topics, ranging from storage technology, repositories, to sustainability. Presenters and current attendees come from institutions from all over the world. Co-sponsored by Stanford, Sun PASIG “is focused on sharing open computing solutions and best practices.”

Data Sharing

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/datasharing/index.html

This week’s Nature features a special section devoted to data sharing. Topics include researchers hesitation to share, pre and post data sharing, as well as the importance of preserving and sharing data.

Library of Congress and DuraCloud Launch Pilot Program Using Cloud Technologies

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/duraspace/2009/07/15/library-of-congress-and-duracloud-launch-pilot-program-using-cloud-technologies-to-test-perpetual-access-to-digital-content-service-is-part-of-national-digital-information-infrastructure-and-preserva/

The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and DuraSpace are collaborating on a one-year pilot program. The pilot program will “test the use of cloud technologies to enable perpetual access to…digital content.” T Recently developed by DuraSpace, DuraCloud is the new cloud-based service that will be tested. Other partners include the New York Public Library and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Sun in Education Web Seminar Series
“All About Repositories” series

http://www.education-webevents.com/

Part of Sun’s “Technology that Bridges the Digital Divide” seminars, the “All About Repositories” series will begin in September. Along with Sun, DuraSpace and SPARC International will “provide overviews of best practices, technology updates, and key trend analyses for academic resources directors, IT managers, digital librarians, repository managers and developers, and curators.”

UNESCO Digital Library Majaliss opens up classical Arabic literature to public

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=29118&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

UNESCO recently launched the Digital Library Majaliss project, which aims to ‘provide free access to hundreds of thousands of pages of classical Arabic literature and to demonstrate, at the same time, the innovative use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for reading, teaching and learning.’ The project is accessible online and on CD-Roms.

MVP Spotlight- August 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
Opencast Matterhorn Project Awarded Funding from Mellon and Hewlett Foundations

http://www.opencastproject.org/content/opencast_matterhorn_project_awarded_funding_mellon_and_hewlett_foundations


http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/07/28_matterhorn.shtml

The Opencast Matterhorn project recently received 1.3 million dollars from the Andrew W. Mellon and William and Flora Hewlett foundations. Scheduled to be launched next summer, this project will focus on developing software that “will support the scheduling, capture, encoding and delivery of educational content to video-and-audio sharing sites such as YouTube and iTunes, so that learners can access lectures when and where they need it” Software will also include various tools (bookmarking, annotations, etc.) that will help users become even more engaged with the content.  The Opencast Project is made up of 12 institutions from all over the world, including UC Berkeley.

The Google Books Settlement and the Future of Information Access
Conference Schedule
Friday, August 28, 2009, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/events/20090828googlebooksconference

The School of Information invites the campus community and public to attend a one-day conference that will be focusing on the recent “Google Books Settlement.” The conference intends to “address major issues arising from the proposed settlement,” such as: “the right of the public to have access to works embraced by such a settlement, the questions of privacy inevitably arising from creating and controlling access to such a collection, the potential for and restrictions on research into the content and use of such a collection, the quality of the content and the metadata surrounding it.”

The Sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects
October 5-6, 2009
Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA

http://www.cdlib.org/iPres/

The California Digital Library (CDL) will be hosting the sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPres). This conference will be held in San Franciso on October 5-6, 2009. This conference will “bring together researchers and practitioners from around the world to explore the latest trends, innovations, and practices in preserving our scientific and cultural digital heritage,” as well as “continue the discussion of creating our digital future.”

Around the World
Sun in Education Web Seminar Series
“All About Repositories” series

http://www.education-webevents.com/

Part of Sun’s “Technology that Bridges the Digital Divide” seminars, the “All About Repositories” series will begin in September. Along with Sun, DuraSpace and SPARC International will “provide overviews of best practices, technology updates, and key trend analyses for academic resources directors, IT managers, digital librarians, repository managers and developers, and curators.”

New Open-Access Monograph Series Is Announced

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/New-Open-Access-Monograph/7613/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

It was recently announced that Open Humanities Publishing (OHP) will be “joining the University of Michigan Library’s Scholary Publishing Office (SPO) to create five new open-access monograph series with a focus on critical and cultural theory.” All content will be given a Creative Commons license and will be accessible digitally and as a book. Readers are also encouraged to remix, tag, annotate, etc all content. Established in spring 2008, Open Humanities Press (OHP) is an open-access scholarly publishing collective made up of individuals from all over the world.

The Digital Imaging and Archiving Department at Virginia Tech Creates New Digital Repository to Support Research

http://www.vtls.com/pressrelease/The-Digital-Imaging-and-Archiving-Department-at-Virginia-Tech-Creates-New-Digital-Repository-to-Support-Research-58

Since March 2009, Virginia Tech has been working to creating a “a university-wide digital research repository that enables a broad range of content owners to digitally archive and collectively publish important collections of research materials by providing a secure mechanism for the delivery and display of those items to other researchers, or learners who seek out authentic sources of significant information.” Virginia Tech will be using the product Vital, which was “built on Fedora.” This repository is for students, faculty, and the general public to contribute to, learn from,  and explore.

Free Tools to Back Up Your Online Accounts

http://lifehacker.com/5335553/free-tools-to-back-up-your-online-accounts

Lifehacker recently featured different services to help you back up content stored in the cloud (e.g Gmail, Flickr, and etc. accounts) onto your computer. Although users may think that storing content in the cloud seems safer since big companies are likely to have a good backup workflow compared to a regular individual, there is still a possibility of losing all your data. “Depending on an external service to host, update, and maintain the software you love and the data you need is both the cloud’s advantage and disadvantage: you’re putting your stuff on computers you don’t control at a single point of access (or failure). Companies get shut down or bought, accounts get locked up, servers (and you) go offline.”

MVP Accomplishments, as of July 2009

Engagement with Partners

•      We are in the middle of a process to re-engage with current partners in order to ensure that our current services were meeting their needs.  Made a few small changes to the services to enhance the utility for current partners.

•     Engaged new partners including the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive and the Office of Public Affairs.  Both customers are interested more (but not exclusively) in the Digital Asset Management capabilities of the Media Vault than they are in the long-term preservation capabilities.  This has necessitated some rethinking of the standard workflow.  The MVP team believes this may be a growth area and is actively engaging with these partners to develop a plan that works well.

Generaton 2 Platform Planning

•     After more than a year of running our current platform during the MVP POC project, it has become clear that we need to implement a platform that improves on our current Extensis Portfolio/Netpublish platform in the following ways:
- Is more scalable, requiring very little or no human intervention to provision new users of the service, and allowing the service to grow to hundreds or thousands of distinct customers, including individuals.
- Is designed for use at an enterprise scale, including capabilities such as integration with CalNet authentication/authorization, delegated administration and group management, etc.
-    Is based on open and fully documented standards for metadata storage and preservation
-    Is based on FLOSS software, that does not require an end user to purchase client software in order to take full advantage of the service.
-    More easily integrates with other services, such as ARTStor, bSpace, the Library, cloud-based services (e.g. Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, etc.), institutional and discipline-specific repositories, etc.

•    Developed a representation of the “Digital Scholarship Lifecycle,” defining the different phases of work that go into a piece of scholarship, and to discuss how the Media Vault can better support each of these phases.
•    Developed a literature review of current thinking about digital asset management and digital repository systems (see http://mvp-drm.berkeley.edu/wiki/Related_Literature_and_Other_Resources)

•    Developed use scenarios for the broad spectrum of potential users of the Media Vault service (see http://mvp-drm.berkeley.edu/wiki/Use_Case_Scenarios)
•    Initial exploration and investigation of platform and service possibilities, including the possibilities ranging from:
-    mashing together services from local and cloud providers to provide many or most of the necessary capabilities of an MVP system, to:
-    systems such as Nuxeo, Alfresco, Thalia, ePrints, dSpace, etc. which would be run and managed in-house.
We believe the final solution will likely be a blend or middle ground on this spectrum.

Staffing Changes
•    Hired Noah Wittman as Program Manager.
•    Added Ian Crew to the team on a permanent basis.  (He has been a part of the team on a temporary basis since October 2008.)  Ian is responsible for managing the running of the platform and services for the Media Vault.
•    Added Rick Jaffe to the team on a permanent basis.  Rick is currently participating in community and customer outreach, and in planning for the next-generation Media Vault platform



Internal Process Improvements
•    Created MVP Wiki for planning and project coordination.  See http://mvp.berkeley.edu/wiki
•    Did extensive work on project planning and deadline/milestone creation and description.
•    Implemented Footprints for issue tracking.



Technical Accomplishments
•    Implemented full monitoring of MVP services, which actively alert the team to issues with any of the services, and warn of potential issues before they affect service delivery.  This has resulted in significantly decreased downtime for the Media Vault service.
•    Implemented auditing of UC Backup backups, verifying that backups are complete and correct on an ongoing basis
•    Performed a successful recovery test of nearly 2TB of data from UC Backup.  All data was recovered successfully and fully intact (matching MD5 checksums on each file).
•    Implemented complete backups of all Portfolio metadata databases.
•    UC Backup reduced their prices recently, reducing our total storage and backup costs from $0.75/GB/month to $0.65/GB/month ($0.15/GB/month storage, $0.25/GB/month onsite backup, $0.25/GB/month offsite backup).  As we are currently using approximately 4TB of storage, this will save $400/month.

Communications Improvements
•    Implemented a significantly improved website, with updated marketing materials.
•    Performed outreach, to engage potential customers and to gather further requirements for the MVP Gen 2 platform
•    MVP Workshops–we are planning for two workshops for early Fall 2009:
-    Service Provider Workshop
•    October 2009
•    We will work with the service providers whose services inter-relate and coordinate with MVP activities (e.g the Library and ETS) to ensure that everyone’s plans and activities in this area are well coordinated and avoid overlap and duplication of effort.
-    MVP Community Workshop
•    October 2009
•    We will focus on knowledge exchange and developing of the next generation Media Vault platform and services.

MVP Spotlight- May 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

I-School’s Master’s 2009 Final Project Showcase
Thursday, May 14, 2009, 4:00pm – 8:00pm at South Hall

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/events/20090514finalprojects

The I-School’s class of 2009 will presenting their final project. “Final projects are the culmination of the students’ two years of work in the School of Information’s Master’s program.” The final projects will touch on one of three themes: Organizational Issues; Social Networking and Collaboration; and Communication and Memory.

Around the World

DSpace Foundation and Fedora Commons Join Together to Create DuraSpace Organization

http://www.dspace.org/index.php?/News/DSpace-Foundation-and-Fedora-Commons-Join-Together-to-Create-DuraSpace-Organization.html

Earlier this month, DSpace Foundation and Fedora Commons announced their new partnership. Together, DSpace and Fedora Commons will be forming “DuraSpace,” which will
continue to focus on Dspace’s and Fedora’s repository platforms as well as “offer new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users.”

Zentity

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/zentity/

Zenity, a Research Output Repository Platform, developed by Microsoft Research is available now. This platform “provides a built-in ScholarlyWorks data model with pre-defined entities” as well as allows users to customize the platform to meet their own individual needs. Zenity supports RSS, OAI-PMH, OAI-ORE, AtomPub and Sword.

New MA programme in Digital Asset Management

http://www.stoa.org/?p=882

A new Master program in Digital Asset Management is being launched at King’s College London. This is a collaboration between the Center for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) and the Center for e-Research, which are both at King’s College. This program is an addition to MA Digital Humanities, MA Digital Culture and Technology, PhD (Digital Humanities), which are currently being offered there.

Workshop On Integrating Digital Library Content with Computational Tools and Services
June 19, 2009 in Austin, Texas, USA
See
http://www.music-ir.org/sgdl-workshop/sgdl-cfp.pdf
for a more complete CFP.
This conference will focus on the creation, development, and future deployment of the “second generation digital libraries” (SGDL).  10 years ago, the development of first generation digital libraries lead to “the browsing, searching and then retrieving of digital materials.” However, with the improvement of technology and services, “exciting new opportunities are arising to create SGDL by extending the standard DL use paradigm to include the analysis of the retrieved materials in a tightly integrated manner.

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP)

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-02-09.htm


http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_tracking_project

According to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, the Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) was launched at the end of April. This is a social tagging project meant to keep track of new [Open Access] projects. “The idea is to tag new OA developments and recruit others to do the same.  On the many-eyeballs principle, we’ll notice many more new developments together than any of us could notice on our own.  A group feed will broadcast the results of what we notice to everyone who wants to follow along.”

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.