MVP Spotlight- July 2009

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

On Campus
Visual Resources Collection History of Art, UC Berkeley
Image news and tech tips from the Visual Resources Collection
http://havrc.blogspot.com/
The History of Art Visual Resource Center (HAVRC), a partner of the MVP, recently launched a blog in June. “This blog [was] created to keep our primary users informed about image news, as well as to provide an archive of technology tips relevant to teaching with digital images.”

CollectionSpace 0.1 Release
http://www.collectionspace.org/current_release
CollectionSpace 0.1 was released earlier this month. Those interested in this project are encouraged to download and tinker with the 0.1 release, as well as send feedback to the team. “This first release is very limited in its functionality.  The goal of this first release was to demonstrate that all the layers of this complex system will actually work together as an integrated whole.” Users will be able to “create a new object record, view and edit existing records, and save any changes. The 0.1 release interface only allows for text entry; dates, controlled vocabularies, and pattern numbers (e.g. accession numbers) will be functional at a later date.” CollectionSpace 1.0 is expected to be completed at the end of May 2010.

Around the World
Terabytes Missing From The National Archives: Would the Cloud Be Safer?
By Steve Walling of Read Write Web
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/07/06/06readwriteweb-terabytes-missing-from-the-national-archive-63543.html
According to the New York Times, an external hard drive containing 2 Terabytes of data from the National Archives had gone missing in May.  This prompted an investigation that has now “revealed that thousands of electronic storage devices have been lost or stolen. From external hard drives to entire servers, exactly how many devices and how much data has been compromised is unknown.” Steve Walling suggests that data might be better if placed in a cloud rather than a traditional data center. Even though the cloud has its own vulnerabilities as well, content will not be onsite, allowing people to walk off with an external drive or server. “It’s hard to steal the server holding someone’s social security number when you have no real idea where it is.”

Edinburgh Repository Fringe 2009: Beyond the Repository Fringe
Edinburgh, Scotland; Thursday July 30 & Friday 31st, 2009
http://wiki.repositoryfringe.org/index.php/Main_Page
The second Edinburgh Repository Fringe “un”conference will be held at the end of July. Repository developers, managers, researchers, administrators and onlookers are invited to  “see what’s been developed, and still developing in the Repository Landscape” as well as to participate in this year’s Repository Fringe challenge, which is “Design a REPOSITORY FOCUSED/ENHANCEMENT service to a researcher/academic/teacher that they would feel is intuitively useful TO THEM PERSONALLY.” Ben O’Steen and Sally Rumsey from the Oxford University Library Services will give the opening keynote and Clifford Lynch, of Coalition for Networked Information, will give the closing keynote.

World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly
“Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage”
23-27 August 2009, Milan, Italy
http://www.ifla.org/annual-conference/ifla75/
Sponsered by OCLC, The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) will be hosting its 75th conference in August. The theme of this year’s conference is “Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage.” This international conference will focus on a variety of issues from around the world, including open access, repositories, digital librarianship, etc, and its role in different countries and cities.  According to its website, IFLA is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. With approximately 1650 members in 145 countries, it is the global voice of the library and information profession.”

Digital Preservation Management Workshops and Tutorial
Next workshop: October 11-16, 2009
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/dpm/index.html
First developed at Cornell University, the digital training and preservation program will now be hosted by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), at the University of Michigan. The website currently has tutorials, and the next workshop will be in October. “The workshop series is intended for managers who are or will be responsible for digital preservation programs in libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions. The goals of the workshop are to foster critical thinking in a technological realm and provide the means for exercising practical and responsible stewardship of digital assets in an age of technological uncertainty.”

MVP Spotlight- June 2009

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

On Campus
Barclay Ogden Receives Preservation Award
http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/cunews.php/2009/05/11/barclay-ogden-receives-preservation-awar
Sponsored by Preservations Technologies, this year’s Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award was given to Barclay Ogden, head of the Preservation Department at UC Berkeley. This award “recognizes the contribution of a professional preservation specialist who has been active in the field of preservation and/or conservation for library and/or archival materials.” Ogden has spent the past decades focused on library preservation issues– “from library binding to digitization, from disaster preparedness to collection assessment and identifying preservation priorities.”

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.”

Next Generation Melvyl Pilot
http://berkeley.worldcat.org/
Launched in May, this six-month pilot allows users, both on and off campus, to be able to search for resources at all 10 of the UC campus libraries, as well as at other libraries around the world. Users are also able to bookmark and share their searches to their favorite web 2.0 website (e.g Facebook), as well as tag and save searches- creating a list for future reference. This is a joint project between the UC libraries and OCLC. Not all content has been digitized and placed in the pilot yet. “This is a project to create a replacement for the current Melvyl Catalog.”

Around the World
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.

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 Ha.

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.”