[Although I had my computer with me, it was extremely difficult taking notes on the first talk by Peter B. Kaufman, because he spoke like a television montage: tons of references cascading in a montage of things and ideas that get you all excited and make you forget the issue at hand. Nevertheless, what follows is what I could transcribe - it reads more like notes or a bullet list rather than prose.]
These words should not to be taken as an exact transcriptions of what was said. I take responsibility for any errors of transmission.
Friday, June 27
1. Peter B. Kaufman, president and CEO of Intelligent Television.
[See also his article Video, education, and open content: Notes toward a new research and action agenda which includes many of the points mentioned in his talk below.]
Libraries are critical to the health of the country as a liberal democracy.
The fourth estate [i.e. journalism and the commercial press] is bankrupt; [commercial] media has succumbed to trends that imperil freedom and democracy.
But public media is online and truth is available. While everything you do is based on a variety of decisions, ultimately what you do is based on your own freedom and that of our society. In this context, digitization is a moral imperative.
Libraries are producers. See Archibald MacLeish article from 1939, on libraries and culture. [probably: Libraries in the Contemporary Crisis, 1939]
Libraries are becoming involved with their communities. Columbia University is getting involved with its community, witness its interest in the Apollo Theater. [? I couldn't find any connection between Columbia and the Apollo. Maybe Kaufman just meant part of Harlem, which is a faulty point since Columbia is claiming eminent domain because it wants to build in that area; many residents are antagonistic to the idea.]
Libraries are spending more money than television on making their video available.
See The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jenson (Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 2008) for a list of new trends.
Growth of mobile devices: mobile phone are poised to replace the computer as main route to get online.
I encourage you to engage video. Video is where the action is. Growth of video recording occurs across the board. There is growing online demand for moving images. Cisco Systems predicts growth of 30% of downloads in 2008 to 50% by 2010.
Video is the new vernacular. See: On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt.
When you make your videos, engage a tv and film production crew, because they have the know-how of video techniques - they know what works.
Librarians are needed because they have to explain how to render material searchable.
In this context I recommend you re-read Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
2. Jackie Dooley, Head of Special Collections and University Archives, University of California-Irvine.
Is there a moral imperative to digitize? Focus on value of the objects. Here is a list of 10 things to consider in digitization.
The Ten Commandments of Digitization:
1. Embrace the technological continuum of the book
2. Find yourself - why you love your work and what you bring to do it, and how it translates into the digital world
3. Digitize with abandon. Think wholesale vs. retail - not digitizing pages from a book, but the entire book. We need to stop doing the scholars' work
4. Educate yourself about the born digital
5. Make your work economically sustainable. (Forget item level description)
6. Follow the archivists' lead: Are there rare book parallels to "more product, less process?"
7. Make your data promiscuous: expose metadata and digital content
8. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate
9. Revere the knowledge and opinions of the young
10. Pro-actively define our collective future
It's our [special collections libraries] time to join the centrality of the digital experience.
Should we think about shared rare book collections? You need to give priority to preserving some things, and not others.
Digital will not go away; on the contrary it will become central to what we do.
Think of Star Trek metaphor: the computer that told them whatever they want. That's what we want, the full knowledge of human experience.
Among the respondents of Merrilee Proffitt of OCLC (RLG Programs) who encouraged everyone to "digitize wildly and beat out Maury Povich and junk tv."
Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
RBMS Plenary Session 5: If We Build It, Will They Come?
Before the fifth plenary session, there were some words concerning next year's RBMS pre-conference: It'll be a RBMS 50th anniversary conference celebration with a program devoted to nostalgia: "Seas of change: navigating cultural and institutional contexts of special collections." It'll be a critical look at where we have been, where we are, and where we are going, combined with self-examination. RBMS hopes to have new and emerging voices at the pre-conference, including new librarians, those with career changes, and underrepresented librarians.
As in my previous posts, the words following are not to be taken as an exact transcription of the speakers' presentations. There's no guarantee that I captured their words and at times, I was only able to get notes. I take responsibility for any errors.
RBMS Plenary Session 5: If We Build It, Will They Come?
Friday, June 27
Before proceeding with the 2 speakers, the session began with an introductory quote from Albert Manguel's A History of Reading:
1. Medieval Manuscripts and Digital Approaches - Matthew Fisher, Department of English, UCLA.
Let's take a trip down digital memory lane. In the early history of the web, medieval stuff was more elusive. An example of one page left from early digitization efforts in 1993: A brief description, and an isolated image - that's it.
The idea of a library exhibition is very interesting, but requires lots of time and resources, but presents a disconnect.
Catalogs are by no means are complete; they're not crowd pleasers. Medieval manuscripts are also elusive in catalogs, which often depend on titles, dates, and authors -- exactly those identifying traits that many medieval manuscripts lack. In the British Library catalog not all manuscripts come up when one knows that institution has them (e.g. BL and Piers Ploughman). Also consider the difficulty of locating them in a catalog because earlier English has letters that are not translatable to today's language. (He showed examples.)
Today we have things such as the Digital Scriptorum (a consortium project), an image database of images of medieval manuscripts. In a questionnaire showing user needs, the results showed that people seek specific manuscripts, and are looking for information in the script, although the site is for images. In the digital environment, text = digital text, i.e. that which can be searched. We're accepting the limitation of OCR of early medieval prints (which look like handwriting). The expectations of what can be done limits what scholars can do with them.
But most digital projects involving medieval manuscripts are like tearing leaves from books: the text is struck through and you're left with a catchword (which admittedly can be a fascinating study). But what about scholars whose interest is in alterations of the text? How does one encode such emendations and corrections in the digital environment? It leads to the question: What is the subject: the text, or the corrections?
As a pedagogical resource, these digital images are a godsend. The access they give is also a good thing. Is digital access to selections of a manuscript just a precursor to physical object? If so, why are we engaging in these objects?
The [name of unidentified project] is a catalog of digitized medieval manuscripts, a project of UCLA and Fisher. [See UCLA's Center For Medieval and Rennaissance Studies project page for more projects.]
Who knows what scholar is doing at any time? This is important information to find out, and scholars can't find it out. Just trying to provide access points to medieval manuscripts out there is a problem in itself (official library access points versus the access point needed and desired by the scholarly community). On this [unnamed project] there is no federated search, because Fisher prefers not.
CERL Portal - contains manuscripts and dearly printed material, but has logged in only 2,000 visitors. It requires catalogs to be in an OAI format (to communicate with other websites and portals).
What about research using digital collections? People can do what they want with them, despite what metadata a library provides. There's an issue of imposing limitations on what can be done. Why not have manuscripts in OAI? Why not allow users to provide links, tags, search on their own [user-generated] terms. Why not allow mash-ups, e.g. as the way people use Google maps [i.e. combining Google maps with other applications]. He wants to see mashups of medieval manuscripts. It's a way to foster dialog between patrons and keepers.
2. Strategies for teaching and research - Stephen Davison (Head, UCLA Digital Program):
He spoke about the Digital Library Program at UCLA. Their aims include:
Whatever they may be, digital objects (whether items or fragments) are an important aspect of collection development.
What about the finding aid - should we tie to it, or provide another means of access? Some examples are: OAC (Online Archive of California), and CALISPHERE
(These sites provide different windows for different audiences of a single digital collection.)
Who are the collections for? The saying goes "will they come?" But who are they? (Concerning the Sheet Music Consortium, we've made assumptions of who uses it, but we're not sure; we are trying to design methods to discover who is using it.
There are methods where we can obtain feedback on our digital collections:
Currently we offer conventional access to digital files, usually through library catalogs. But we need to start thinking about web 2.0 features - using users to provide more information, more features, e.g. making guides more wiki-like, ability to tag, annotate, recombine, and do mash-ups. This upload of digital content by users will lead to the creation of new knowledge and understanding.
Popular culture is now a big focus of web 2.0 ideas - e.g. Frontera Collection of Mexican-American music (sound recordings).
(Topics related to American Orientalism - i.e. diverse populations in the US - are also popular.)
What about mass digitization of special collections? Some issues:
Digitization can foster scholarly collaborations. Some examples:
There are some digitization issues here. A good example: Cuneiform tablets are not just text, but are three dimensional objects, making their digitization problematic. It's an issue that's being wrestled in the digital worlds of libraries versus museums.
With the Hypercities project (and others), Stephen foresees the growth of cooperative digitization and metadata harvesting among various institutions.
Elements of the virtual research environment:
Another person's question was left unanswered: whether the scholarly use of digitized information has the same status as the actual study of objects.
As in my previous posts, the words following are not to be taken as an exact transcription of the speakers' presentations. There's no guarantee that I captured their words and at times, I was only able to get notes. I take responsibility for any errors.
RBMS Plenary Session 5: If We Build It, Will They Come?
Friday, June 27
Before proceeding with the 2 speakers, the session began with an introductory quote from Albert Manguel's A History of Reading:
It is the reader who grants or recognizes in an object, place or event a certain possible readability; it is the reader who must attribute meaning to a system of signs, and then decipher it. We all read ourselves and the world around us in order to glimpse what and where we are. We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but read. Reading, almost as much as breathing, is out essential function...reading is at the beginning of the social contract.
1. Medieval Manuscripts and Digital Approaches - Matthew Fisher, Department of English, UCLA.
Let's take a trip down digital memory lane. In the early history of the web, medieval stuff was more elusive. An example of one page left from early digitization efforts in 1993: A brief description, and an isolated image - that's it.
The idea of a library exhibition is very interesting, but requires lots of time and resources, but presents a disconnect.
Catalogs are by no means are complete; they're not crowd pleasers. Medieval manuscripts are also elusive in catalogs, which often depend on titles, dates, and authors -- exactly those identifying traits that many medieval manuscripts lack. In the British Library catalog not all manuscripts come up when one knows that institution has them (e.g. BL and Piers Ploughman). Also consider the difficulty of locating them in a catalog because earlier English has letters that are not translatable to today's language. (He showed examples.)
Today we have things such as the Digital Scriptorum (a consortium project), an image database of images of medieval manuscripts. In a questionnaire showing user needs, the results showed that people seek specific manuscripts, and are looking for information in the script, although the site is for images. In the digital environment, text = digital text, i.e. that which can be searched. We're accepting the limitation of OCR of early medieval prints (which look like handwriting). The expectations of what can be done limits what scholars can do with them.
But most digital projects involving medieval manuscripts are like tearing leaves from books: the text is struck through and you're left with a catchword (which admittedly can be a fascinating study). But what about scholars whose interest is in alterations of the text? How does one encode such emendations and corrections in the digital environment? It leads to the question: What is the subject: the text, or the corrections?
As a pedagogical resource, these digital images are a godsend. The access they give is also a good thing. Is digital access to selections of a manuscript just a precursor to physical object? If so, why are we engaging in these objects?
The [name of unidentified project] is a catalog of digitized medieval manuscripts, a project of UCLA and Fisher. [See UCLA's Center For Medieval and Rennaissance Studies project page for more projects.]
Who knows what scholar is doing at any time? This is important information to find out, and scholars can't find it out. Just trying to provide access points to medieval manuscripts out there is a problem in itself (official library access points versus the access point needed and desired by the scholarly community). On this [unnamed project] there is no federated search, because Fisher prefers not.
CERL Portal - contains manuscripts and dearly printed material, but has logged in only 2,000 visitors. It requires catalogs to be in an OAI format (to communicate with other websites and portals).
What about research using digital collections? People can do what they want with them, despite what metadata a library provides. There's an issue of imposing limitations on what can be done. Why not have manuscripts in OAI? Why not allow users to provide links, tags, search on their own [user-generated] terms. Why not allow mash-ups, e.g. as the way people use Google maps [i.e. combining Google maps with other applications]. He wants to see mashups of medieval manuscripts. It's a way to foster dialog between patrons and keepers.
2. Strategies for teaching and research - Stephen Davison (Head, UCLA Digital Program):
He spoke about the Digital Library Program at UCLA. Their aims include:
- creating digital collections
- looking for synergies with research, teaching, ahd learning
- digital preservation
- development of access and use tools standards
- fostering cooperative projects: campus, statewide, national, international
Whatever they may be, digital objects (whether items or fragments) are an important aspect of collection development.
What about the finding aid - should we tie to it, or provide another means of access? Some examples are: OAC (Online Archive of California), and CALISPHERE
(These sites provide different windows for different audiences of a single digital collection.)
Who are the collections for? The saying goes "will they come?" But who are they? (Concerning the Sheet Music Consortium, we've made assumptions of who uses it, but we're not sure; we are trying to design methods to discover who is using it.
There are methods where we can obtain feedback on our digital collections:
- digitization requests
- offers of metadata
- personal communications
- legal communications
- statistics
Currently we offer conventional access to digital files, usually through library catalogs. But we need to start thinking about web 2.0 features - using users to provide more information, more features, e.g. making guides more wiki-like, ability to tag, annotate, recombine, and do mash-ups. This upload of digital content by users will lead to the creation of new knowledge and understanding.
Popular culture is now a big focus of web 2.0 ideas - e.g. Frontera Collection of Mexican-American music (sound recordings).
(Topics related to American Orientalism - i.e. diverse populations in the US - are also popular.)
What about mass digitization of special collections? Some issues:
- a matter of time and money
- there should be careful digitization on a grand scale
- there are parallels to microfilm; but
- digitization is for broad access; it's not yet considered a mode of preservation
- digitization occurs on demand
- provides access to details available in the master image not available to unaided eye
- feature web 2.0 attributes
- makes metadata harvestable
- encourages the "resue and exchange" of information
Digitization can foster scholarly collaborations. Some examples:
There are some digitization issues here. A good example: Cuneiform tablets are not just text, but are three dimensional objects, making their digitization problematic. It's an issue that's being wrestled in the digital worlds of libraries versus museums.
With the Hypercities project (and others), Stephen foresees the growth of cooperative digitization and metadata harvesting among various institutions.
Elements of the virtual research environment:
- web 2.0 tools
- collaboration, or not, as needed (small working groups classes, open to public)
- gathering and sharing of metadata and/or digital objects
- publishing
Another person's question was left unanswered: whether the scholarly use of digitized information has the same status as the actual study of objects.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
RBMS Plenary Session 1: The Big Picture
I had the good fortune to attend the RBMS (Rare Books and Manuscripts) pre-conference in Los Angeles, followed by the ALA (American Library Association) conference in Anaheim, California. I was able to take notes for some sessions, which I'll publish here in a series of blog posts, along with my impressions. Please note: These are my notes, and I take full responsibility for misconstruing of any statements made by the various speakers. I suspect some of these talks will eventually be published, either in RBM or other journals.
RBMS Plenary Session 1 (Wednesday morning, June 25, 2008): The Big Picture
Opening remarks by Christian Dupont, Aeon Program Director at Atlas Systems, Inc.
Special Collections sections of libraries have entered the digital age. New issues are facing rare books and special collections. We are learning to work and adapt together to a new and rapidly changing environment.
Let's consider how things have changed in last 50 years (since RBMS is now 50 years old). Let's celebrate the vitality of the organization. Let's witness its impact and how the section (of ACRL) has grown. We are currently seeking ways to accommodate the growth and interest in special collections. One way to achieve this is through our scholarship program. We know that scholarship recipients may remain members and become active on committees. Today, there are 22 scholarship attendees. These new attendees feed the interests of the organization.
Next year there will be even more scholarships. In honor of the section's 50th meeting, the location will be Charlottesville, VA - the location of first conference.
There is fundraising at RBMS and it is a part of what goes on. There is ABAA; the Booksellers' showcase (which looks more like a book fair). This year there are 24 booksellers in LA, the most we've had in recent years, and perhaps we'll have as many or more in Charlottesville, VA next year. Let these sponsors know they have your support and appreciation.
Remarks by Kris Kieseling, Director of Archives Special Collections at the University of Minnesota.
This year, the RBMS pre-conference took only 4 weeks to sell out, a good sign of the demand/vitality of the field. There are many angles with which to approach digitization in special collections. Alice Prohaska will outline big picture in her talk.
This years there will be no paper forms, but totally online evaluations for the preconference -- expect it in your email after the pre-conference.
Commercial plug: The sponsor of the morning plenary is the Bibliographic Society of America. It is a society which encourages study and research. Their members are librarians, dealers, collectors, students, etc. Please visit their homepage.
Alice Prochaska, University Library at Yale University.
(Her remarks are based in part on her observation of Yale's digitization of special collections.)
I'm concerned about generalities: How can one present the big picture of digitization? So I'll talk as one library director with just one perspective. This is a good time to be talking about special collections in the digital environment.
Special Collections librarians have a problem: there is a morass of unknowns. Some libraries have been digitizing, others have been evangelizing. Alice thought she used to have a clear picture of the world of special collections. So she asked some pertinent questions on her slide show:
What ARE Special collections?
The words we use in addressing access to our collections are: discover, expose, disclose, unlock (etc.) -- as if each word holds the key to explaining what we do.
Preliminary record, collection level record, item level record, catalog, etc.
unit, group, class, piece, box, bundle
("It's easy to misunderstand words" and quotes Obama, and mentions Miss Malaprop.)
There is an ARL Working Group on Special Collections set up in 2007, pursuing the "hidden collections" agenda (of finding ways of bringing these collections to greater attention). Their report is due in October 2008.
Their Priorities:
1. encourage concerted action for collecting and exposing 19th and 20th century materials
2. identify criteria and strategies for collecting digital and other new media that currently lack a recognized and responsible structure for stewardship.
"These issues are closely linked. An enormous amount of valuable material in all formats remains uncollected and risks being permanently lost."
The focus of the ARL group is not meant to demean earlier items. It's just a pragmatic attempt to give the group a manageable task. There are already international efforts to digitize newspapers and books. A strong attempt has been made to encourage these items. Techniques include collections analysis, identification of gaps, make accessible otherwise hidden collections.
Discovery of material can occur in response to new scholarship. For example, the attention to e.g. printed ephemera is a relatively new exploration. Libraries used to eschew collecting this material. Just hobbyists would collect it and insist on its importance. There is still a hierarchy of materials: Materials relating to books and book arts will be more highly regarded, whereas playbills, posters, etc. will not be. But even philatelic collections pose research value. No two people will define ephemera in same way - we all have our own collections that require greater attention. The task of selection and preservation doesn't disappear in digital world, it just changes. Think of the issues with borne-digital items: digitized slides, or email correspondence -- what about legal implications of email? We need a concerted effort to find out about this material.
In speaking of digitization, we're mostly talking about taking analog materials and digitizing them. The activity of digitization frequently linked to the preservation of items.
The environment of digitization:
Preservation issues form part of context; staff skills matter. Large institutions can handle big projects, but small institutions can't, so that means greater collaboration is necessary.
There are areas of growth in the need for Special Collections:
But there are obstacles: RBMS Plenary Session 1 (Wednesday morning, June 25, 2008): The Big Picture
Opening remarks by Christian Dupont, Aeon Program Director at Atlas Systems, Inc.
Special Collections sections of libraries have entered the digital age. New issues are facing rare books and special collections. We are learning to work and adapt together to a new and rapidly changing environment.
Let's consider how things have changed in last 50 years (since RBMS is now 50 years old). Let's celebrate the vitality of the organization. Let's witness its impact and how the section (of ACRL) has grown. We are currently seeking ways to accommodate the growth and interest in special collections. One way to achieve this is through our scholarship program. We know that scholarship recipients may remain members and become active on committees. Today, there are 22 scholarship attendees. These new attendees feed the interests of the organization.
Next year there will be even more scholarships. In honor of the section's 50th meeting, the location will be Charlottesville, VA - the location of first conference.
There is fundraising at RBMS and it is a part of what goes on. There is ABAA; the Booksellers' showcase (which looks more like a book fair). This year there are 24 booksellers in LA, the most we've had in recent years, and perhaps we'll have as many or more in Charlottesville, VA next year. Let these sponsors know they have your support and appreciation.
Remarks by Kris Kieseling, Director of Archives Special Collections at the University of Minnesota.
This year, the RBMS pre-conference took only 4 weeks to sell out, a good sign of the demand/vitality of the field. There are many angles with which to approach digitization in special collections. Alice Prohaska will outline big picture in her talk.
This years there will be no paper forms, but totally online evaluations for the preconference -- expect it in your email after the pre-conference.
Commercial plug: The sponsor of the morning plenary is the Bibliographic Society of America. It is a society which encourages study and research. Their members are librarians, dealers, collectors, students, etc. Please visit their homepage.
Alice Prochaska, University Library at Yale University.
(Her remarks are based in part on her observation of Yale's digitization of special collections.)
I'm concerned about generalities: How can one present the big picture of digitization? So I'll talk as one library director with just one perspective. This is a good time to be talking about special collections in the digital environment.
Special Collections librarians have a problem: there is a morass of unknowns. Some libraries have been digitizing, others have been evangelizing. Alice thought she used to have a clear picture of the world of special collections. So she asked some pertinent questions on her slide show:
- What are special collections?
- What will we mean by special collections in the future?
- In considering the environment in which digitization operates, the current range and scope of digitization in research libraries: where do special collections fit?
- The future: are we going to predict it, or invent it?
What ARE Special collections?
The words we use in addressing access to our collections are: discover, expose, disclose, unlock (etc.) -- as if each word holds the key to explaining what we do.
Preliminary record, collection level record, item level record, catalog, etc.
unit, group, class, piece, box, bundle
("It's easy to misunderstand words" and quotes Obama, and mentions Miss Malaprop.)
There is an ARL Working Group on Special Collections set up in 2007, pursuing the "hidden collections" agenda (of finding ways of bringing these collections to greater attention). Their report is due in October 2008.
Their Priorities:
1. encourage concerted action for collecting and exposing 19th and 20th century materials
2. identify criteria and strategies for collecting digital and other new media that currently lack a recognized and responsible structure for stewardship.
"These issues are closely linked. An enormous amount of valuable material in all formats remains uncollected and risks being permanently lost."
The focus of the ARL group is not meant to demean earlier items. It's just a pragmatic attempt to give the group a manageable task. There are already international efforts to digitize newspapers and books. A strong attempt has been made to encourage these items. Techniques include collections analysis, identification of gaps, make accessible otherwise hidden collections.
Discovery of material can occur in response to new scholarship. For example, the attention to e.g. printed ephemera is a relatively new exploration. Libraries used to eschew collecting this material. Just hobbyists would collect it and insist on its importance. There is still a hierarchy of materials: Materials relating to books and book arts will be more highly regarded, whereas playbills, posters, etc. will not be. But even philatelic collections pose research value. No two people will define ephemera in same way - we all have our own collections that require greater attention. The task of selection and preservation doesn't disappear in digital world, it just changes. Think of the issues with borne-digital items: digitized slides, or email correspondence -- what about legal implications of email? We need a concerted effort to find out about this material.
In speaking of digitization, we're mostly talking about taking analog materials and digitizing them. The activity of digitization frequently linked to the preservation of items.
The environment of digitization:
- collect carefully
- advocate against restrictions on access
- transparency over provenance and source of aquisition
- good practices in records management
- ensure discoverability and access
- address the hidden collections problem
- meet the digital challenge
Preservation issues form part of context; staff skills matter. Large institutions can handle big projects, but small institutions can't, so that means greater collaboration is necessary.
There are areas of growth in the need for Special Collections:
- The growth in teaching with primary sources and undergraduate research;
- local and family historical research. (don't underestimate needs of local communities)
- political pressures to ends access to unique assets
- increased visibility and scrutiny
- nightmare digital challenge:
- intellectual property,
- increased visibility brings greater scrutiny,
- contested interpretations,
- packaging material to make it comprehensible out of context
Current range and scope of digital projects.
Local initiatives exists to support teaching, and collaboratie digitization programs in museums, galleries, and archives. For example:
See: Documents of the American South -- it's a good example of how digitization in a deliberate manner can be unusually beneficial.
There is mass digitization (e.g. the Google project) - whose impact is enormous. Formerly Google had contracts with just 6 libraries; now they use 40 libraries.
(See current issue of the Journal of Library Administration.)
Finally Google and mass digitization is beginning to move into the area of Special Collections. Quality of output is a concern: Google books is not always well presented and the metadata is inconsistent.
Even with copyrighted materials presenting only small snippet of a work is a concern about the presentation of books. To what extent does Google books skew our notion of a book? Their contracts prevent the library community from discussing the Google project among participants. But Google's influence is large.
Other examples of mass digitization: The Open Content Alliance - it's not as rich as Google, but still provides good products, since it has metadata which is better than Google. THe now-defunct Microsoft Live Book Search leaves a legacy of expectations. Yale had valued closer cooperation with Microsoft. Maybe soon we (not just Yale) can move into the regular scanning of Special Collections items in a mechanized fashion, with robotic machines (that won't harm the materials).
Scholars have increased appetites for digitized material and desire greater ability to search across collections. This impacts libraries' directions. Pay more attention to collection development issues. People will be more interested in unique holdings.
Issues for the future:
- translating a traditional mission into a digital environment
- there is no digitization without metadata - (this is part of the "hidden collections" agenda)
- access begets access (more staff should be devoted to digital work)
- more collection analysis
- more sharing among institutions
- need for digital curation
- there are new relationships to users - how to connect to them
- new ways of working with users
- mirroring traditional fucntions in online(?) models
- coping with increasing volume
- identify digitization partners
- librarians should be prepared to wait for new technologies to help achieve more
That was the end of Alice Prochaska's speech, followed by questions, among them:
Q. Special Collections have been strong advocates for preservation of materials. What about preservation of born-digital items?
A. There is an ACRL working group concerning with this issue. Watch for upcoming report.
Q. What should we do with born-digital materials that are constantly changing (such as wikis or blogs)?
A. The recommendations of the working group (mentioned in the first question above) will be generic. They will point to need of development of expertise. Regarding the constantly changing nature of born-digital materials, yes, this is an area that is hugely challenging.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Joshua M. Greenberg Appointed Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship
(From Staff News, vol. 97, issue 18 (May 3, 2007)
Joshua M. Greenberg Appointed Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship
Effective April 16, Joshua M. Greenberg was appointed the Library's Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship by David Ferriero, the Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of The Research Libraries. Dr. Greenberg was formerly a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University (GMU), and the Associate Director, Research Projects, of GMU's Center for History and New Media. In his position as Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship, Dr. Greenberg is responsible for leading The New York Public Library's digital initiative and positioning digital library activities at the core of library operations. Dr. Greenberg reports to Mr. Ferriero.
"Josh is precisely the right person to lead the Library's digital future, building upon our remarkable accomplishments to date," said David Ferriero. "He is both an accomplished scholar, as well as a visionary who has spent his career exploring the interstices of technology and scholarship. He is knowledgeable, creative, and fun to be with. We feel extremely lucky to have him aboard."
In his work at the Center for History and New Media, Dr. Greenberg helped to create diverse tools for research and education, most recently co-directing the development of Zotero, a Firefox browser-based research tool. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University. His first book, which will be published by MIT Press in the fall of 2007, is tentatively titled From Betamax to Blockbuster and charts the evolution of the consumer video rental and sale industry. As part of his Masters-level work at Cornell, Dr. Greenberg developed a system that leveraged embedded closed-captioning to assemble a searchable archive of broadcast television. He earned his BA from Johns
Hopkins University in History of Science, Medicine and Technology.
"I have spent the last decade exploring the application of technology to scholarly practices, and welcome the opportunity to continue this work at an institution with the stature, resources, and talent of The New York Public Library," said Dr. Greenberg. "While I find technology
fascinating in its own right, my goal is to tailor digital tools and capabilities to the actual needs of scholars and library users. I see technology as a means to an end rather than an end in itself."
At the Library, Dr. Greenberg will help shape and implement a digital strategy involving content creation and management and building sustainable capacity. He will work closely with the scholarly community, curatorial staff, Research and Branch Library staff, and the Information Technology Group to create and manage opportunities for new convergences of NYPL content, scholarship, and technology. Further information on Dr. Greenberg can be found by visiting his website at epistemographer.com.
Joshua M. Greenberg Appointed Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship
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"Josh is precisely the right person to lead the Library's digital future, building upon our remarkable accomplishments to date," said David Ferriero. "He is both an accomplished scholar, as well as a visionary who has spent his career exploring the interstices of technology and scholarship. He is knowledgeable, creative, and fun to be with. We feel extremely lucky to have him aboard."
In his work at the Center for History and New Media, Dr. Greenberg helped to create diverse tools for research and education, most recently co-directing the development of Zotero, a Firefox browser-based research tool. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University. His first book, which will be published by MIT Press in the fall of 2007, is tentatively titled From Betamax to Blockbuster and charts the evolution of the consumer video rental and sale industry. As part of his Masters-level work at Cornell, Dr. Greenberg developed a system that leveraged embedded closed-captioning to assemble a searchable archive of broadcast television. He earned his BA from Johns
Hopkins University in History of Science, Medicine and Technology.
"I have spent the last decade exploring the application of technology to scholarly practices, and welcome the opportunity to continue this work at an institution with the stature, resources, and talent of The New York Public Library," said Dr. Greenberg. "While I find technology
fascinating in its own right, my goal is to tailor digital tools and capabilities to the actual needs of scholars and library users. I see technology as a means to an end rather than an end in itself."
At the Library, Dr. Greenberg will help shape and implement a digital strategy involving content creation and management and building sustainable capacity. He will work closely with the scholarly community, curatorial staff, Research and Branch Library staff, and the Information Technology Group to create and manage opportunities for new convergences of NYPL content, scholarship, and technology. Further information on Dr. Greenberg can be found by visiting his website at epistemographer.com.
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