A Free Digital Library
Archives
In a lecture at e.g. 2007 librarian Brewster Kahle introduced his radical idea to create a free, open access digital library with the aim of “bring[ing] all of the works of knowledge to as many people as want to read it.” He uses the Amazon.com website as a model for how he would like to organize, and provide access to the multimedia library he proposes. Kahle notes that digitization is the greatest challenge, arguing that a 10 cent per scanned page cost is miniscule compared to the demand and need for information to be digitized. Brewster continues by explaining how they have begun to seek out, and store audio and video by reaching out to artists, and individuals who are interested in storing and sharing their work for free. He discusses two of his projects “The Internet Archive,” and the “Wayback Machine” which respectively archive the web, and store previous images of websites at various points in time.
Kahle, Brewster
2007
Foley, Christopher
Video
A Vision of the Role and Future of Web Archives
Web archiving
The history of the web and the record of its impact on society may never fully be realized if measures to record and preserve its content are not carefully and consistently maintained. Leetaru identifies the inconsistencies in web archiving by public institutions, such as the Library of Congress, and commercial enterprises, such as the New York Times. He explains current trends for limiting the size of the “crawl” (ingesting web content into the archive) and the web site’s rate of change may not promote discovery of patterns and insights for future scholars and historians. Leetaru proposes web archiving institutions solicit the users and data miners for selecting and presenting the web archive’s content and developing the protocol for ingesting web artefacts.
In addition to increasing the collaboration of a broad web archiving community, Leetaru suggests web archives should also increase the visibility of its holdings and provide sufficient contextual information for the different versions and replacements of web content. Like Wikipedia’s chronology of updates and editions for each page of content, Leetaru believes a web archive should reveal the source code as well as origins of its content. In response to copyright restrictions and rights to privacy, he recommends “snapshots” and limiting algorithms to “surface-level analyses.” By opening access to the intellectual content of the web artefacts and simultaneously adhering to both property and technical standards, preservation of the web archive and the potential for future research can be assured.
Leetaru, Kalev
University of Illinois
2012
Polk, Victoria
Document
http://netpreserve.org/sites/default/files/resources/VisionRoles.pdf
Acquiring Copyright Permission to Digitize and Provide Open Access to Books
Copyright
Scholarly communications librarian Denise Troll Covey elaborates the difficulties and challenges of digitizing and providing access to books. Reporting on three separate studies sponsored wholly or in part by the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, Covey cites the labor and time intensive work behind securing publisher and author permissions for not merely digitizing, but also providing access to previously printed works. Despite the open access initiatives by scholars and international consortium, such as the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002,she reports fewer than half of the targeted collections become available to the public. While continuing to encourage and promote efforts to secure copyright permissions for digitizing and publishing books, Covey acknowledges current U.S. copyright laws must be changed and advocates lobbying legislative officials to develop both laws and technologies that do not impinge upon the public's right to know. Notwithstanding recent measures to curtail "copyright misuse" (overly restrictive practices by copyright holders), Covey notes that legal protection for creative expression and doctrines such as Fair Use and library copying privileges have weakened in response to aggressive publisher and author tactics to secure and restrict access to digitized books.
One solution for scholarly institutions countering restricted access has been to create institutional repositories. Although these measures facilitate research and scholarly exchange, they do not meet the larger public's rights to information and creative expression. As each of the Carnegie Mellon studies reveal, the status of copyright permission for digitizing individual books is often unknown or unattainable, erring on the conservative side and therefore, rendering such books unavailable. Covey provides sources for locating copyright status and suggests diplomatic means for requesting and securing rights to digitize and make available previously printed books.
Covey, Denise Troll
Council on Library and Information Resources
2005
Polk, Victoria
©2014 Council on Library and Information Resources. All rights reserved.
E-Book
ISBN 1-932326-22-7
ISBN 978-1-932326-22-2
Addressing Major Digital Archiving Challenges
data mining
The proceedings of a conference regarding the issues faced by the European Commission’s FP7 PSP-funded project, E-ARK. At the time of its publishing, the project had recently shifted its focus to open access, which had a profound effect on the methods of collection and analysis. The conference was centered on demonstrating the issues the project was facing at this point in its life and proposed solutions for the future.
Delve, Janet; Anderson, David; Wilson, Andrew
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Preservation. School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
2015
Ramos, Madison
CC BY 4.0 International ; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Accession Number: edsbas.2F616B39
AONS II: Continuing the Trend Towards Preservation Software "Nirvana"
Archives
The Automatic Obsolescence Notification System, version 2 (AONS II) is a system designed by the National Library of Australia and the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories to monitor archived digital files in order to help archivists keep track of when files may become obsolete, so they may update file formats before information is lost. Pearson explains the need for this type of system, noting that “we are still far more advanced in creating digital information resources than we are in taking concrete action to preserve them.” AONS II helps archivists to deal with the practical issue of keeping digital files in updated and usable formats. Pearson discusses the PANIC (Preservation Webservices Architecture for Newmedia, Interactive Collections, and Scientific Data) model and the AONS I program that together led to the creation of AONS II. Next, he details the goals of the program and describes how the system works to track file formats and notify users of files that are in danger of becoming obsolete. Additionally, Pearson notes that AONS II is an open source program freely available for download through the SourceForge website.
Pearson, David
iPRES
2007
Polk, Victoria
Document
http://www.ipres-conference.org/ipres07/presentations/David_Pearson_AONS_II_continuing_the_trend_towards_preservation_software_Nirvana.pdf
Archives for All: Professional Responsibility and Social Justice
Archives
Jimerson argues that in the information age, knowledge is power, and power is determined by those who determine what information will be preserved for the future, i.e., archivists. Therefore, archivists should use their power to benefit all members of society. He contends that archivists should adopt a social conscience and “promote accountability, open government, diversity, and social justice.” In addition, this social conscience can be implemented through objectivity (he explains the difference between objectivity and neutrality) in which archivists can address social issues without abandoning their professional standards and values. He says their role does not prohibit political advocacy, and Jimerson argues that archivists have both a moral and a professional responsibility to balance the power of the status quo with that of the marginalized. Therefore, they should help restore social wrongs and support the causes for justice and community consciousness among these marginalized groups. They should be public advocates and agents of change because they have a collective responsibility to ensure the preservation of information (or evidence) for “accountability, individual rights, and social justice.” Jimerson believes archivists has two main goals: (1) reflect diverse societies and give a voice to those marginalized, and (2) increase professional membership among marginalized groups. And, these commitments must be international in order to be effective.
Jimerson, Randall
Society of the American Archivist
2007
Polk, Victoria
© 2015
Journal Article
http://archivists.metapress.com/content/m0r3p382j155/
Bibliographic Indeterminacy and the Scale of Problems and Opportunities of “Rights” in Digital Collection Building
Copyright
John P. Wilkin, executive director of <a href="http://www.hathitrust.org/">HathiTrust</a> and associate research librarian for the University of Michigan, provides an in-depth report on the current percentages of published works that are at various stages of public domain and in-copyright. He explains that ascertaining the extent of the institution’s collections, the number of orphan works (holder of copyright unavailable), and the number of works in-copyright, enables librarians and archivists to develop strategies for storage and circulation of items particularly suited for academic institutions. A comprehensive bibliography with complete metadata enables scholarship found lacking in many large-scale bibliographic resources, including WorldCat and Google Books. Although Wilkin acknowledges these sources facilitate discovery through their search and retrieval interfaces, the quality of information provided is limited primarily to publication data. He suggests a significant amount of gray literature and orphan works are unavailable due to copyright restrictions and minimal cataloging. Thus, even within academic institutions, the patrons are unaware of potentially valuable resources. Using HathiTrust’s resources to survey the scope and categories of works ranging from public domain to in-copyright status, Wilkin concludes that the largest percentage of academic library collections are comprised of orphan works. In addition to the patron’s lack of access to these rich materials, these institutions incur great cost and unnecessary duplication of printed material for storage and maintenance.
Wilkin, John P.
Council on Library and Information Resources
2011
Polk, Victoria
CLIR
Report
http://www.clir.org/pubs/ruminations/01wilkin
Case of the Puzzling Personal Digital Archive
Archives
“Case of the Puzzling Personal Digital Archive” by writers Wendy Hagenmaier, Oscar Gittemeier and Michelle Kirk is a presentation hosted by NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. The program is working in collaboration with NYU Libraries and Coalition for Networked Information. This is run under their communications and sciences department. The presentation is an introduction to people who are trying to preserve personal information and sort it into an organized way that is easy to look and search through. The presentation itself is an interesting and colorful powerpoint for viewers in order to keep them engaged. This is especially important for people who are not familiar with programs. The presentators will introduce the concept of preserving personal information and how to do it without encountering more problems in a funny, comedic way.This adds an aspect of relatability for the readers in order to keep them following along in what is usually an extensive and complicated process. This presentation is valuable because it allows viewers an easy introduction into how to preserve personal information, the dangers of not doing so, and the correct way to do so. Preserving information can be a quite tricky and tedious task, with even the smallest errors resulting in incorrectly preserved and processed information.
Wendy Hagenmaier, Oscar Gittemeier and Michelle Kirk
2015-05-06
Clara Pulido, Jacquelyn Curtin, Truc Duong
CaseofthePuzzlingPersonalDigitalArchivePDA2015Hagenmaier
Digital Archives: Democratizing the Doing of History
Pedagogy
This article discusses the fact that prior to the digital revolution, only scholars could study primary sources. K-12 students and teachers were relegated to the little they could get to locally because they did not have the money needed to experience primary historical sources themselves. These limitations kept many students and teachers from getting excited about research. Digital archives, however, allow anyone access to primary sources in a nonlinear environment. Because of this, archivists should strive to create digital archives from a large variety of voices. In this way, the history classroom should be radically changed to foster historical inquiry and personal connections to historical content. The article discusses a study of pre-service teachers who engaged with digital archives. They found them useful for their future classrooms, especially since they often represented the marginalized groups not represented in the textbook.
Bolick, Cheryl Mason
International Journal of Social Education
2006
Polk, Victoria
Journal Article
http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ782136.pdf.
E-Journal Archiving Metes and Bounds: A Survey of the Landscape
Archives
This report discusses 12 different e-journal archiving efforts. It finds that individual libraries cannot fully preserve what should be archived on their own. Most libraries cannot get the licenses needed to archive what they want to. And while some e-journal archiving efforts have been made, most academic e-journals are not being archived at all. The report argues that libraries must make efforts to protect e-journals in order to meet the needs of researchers. It recommends that libraries work with publishers to create e-journal archiving programs and earn the rights necessary to archive e-journals. Libraries should collaborate about their efforts. They should create a database of existing e-journal archives, in order to better see the gaps in preservation. This information should be widely available online. The report calls for support of and lobbying from libraries and e-journal archives, particularly within the library and scholarly community.
Kenney, Anne R.
Entlich, Richard
Hirtle, Peter B.
McGovern, Nancy Y.
Buckley, Ellie L.
Council on Library and Information Services
2006-09
Polk, Victoria
CLIR
Report
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub138