A lot of big ideas this week.I’m not sure where to start with the UCLA piece, but we’ve read a lot of William Arms’ work this semester and I’m pretty sure that this was the best one.In this article Arms is a powerful advocate for users of digital libraries, who, at some base level, really want to use one and only one digital library.Another way of thinking of this is federation (EBSCO calls it integration).On the technical side, this means interoperability not just in terms of search protocols, like Z39.50, but in terms of interfaces as well.
Elsewhere Roush, that link doesn’t work – get it through ULS, vacillates between cheerleading the Google Book Search and giving some librarians a chance to express their reservations.I think he’s correct that public and private digital librarieswill coexist, with occasional linkages, although it seems like he thinks Google Book Search is public when, in fact, it is not.So much for Arms’ users’ viewpoint.He also fails to account for Digital Rights Management.
We talked about evaluations this week: any examples of DLs that changed because of evaluations? I wasn't sure if Tufts and the others you mentioned around the 2 hour mark of lecture fit this bill. In theory DLs should be easier to adapt/modify based on user critiques than brick and mortar libraries, or does most of this take place in testing/beta prior to the launch?
All libraries are for and serve a specified population, even if they are digital.We were introduced to this in week one, but we’ve been ignoring it since… until now.
You can find the Arms chapter here, as Blackboard has the wrong URL.Panel 8.1 in particular is useful, a nice glossary of terms we’ll be using this week.
Kling and Elliot eloquently and succinctly make their point that one should not use a one size fits all model when designing a digital library.This article was a welcome breath of social science in this course.It’s nice to read something I fully understand.
Saracevic (pdf) asks why DLs aren’t really evaluated (although they will be in this class) and examines some of the evaluations out there.It’s a bit dry, but the points are well-made.
Finally, it’s ironic that all this week is about usability and how things look, but only the final reading (Sheiderman and Plaisant) has pictures. More of those would have been useful, especially in the Arms chapter.
A meta-muddiest point: since Dr. He did not lecture does that mean he won't answer any questions we had about the guest lecture? A course-related muddiest point/rant: I have zero grades for this course. We are 2/3rds of the way through the semester. This is not acceptable. A lecture-related muddy point: digitization overall and digital preservation in particular are very expensive, although the costs are declining. Given that, there have been very few mentions of the digital divide in this course, in that Google can spend its money and large research universities can spend their as well as grant money, but where does that leave small colleges, mid-sized universities, and public libraries?
Rieger’s White Paper really ties the first half of the semester together by looking at large-scale digitization initiatives (LSDIs) that are public, private, and combinations.Of the ones mentioned here, I am least familiar with Microsoft’s.Is that still going on, and what is Live Search Academic?Because I can’t really do justice to this reading in a blog posting after taking a midterm, I’m reposting some of the questions she asks of LSDIs.
“Should we commit to preserve all the digital materials created through the LSDIs, implement a selection process to identify what needs to be preserved, or assign levels of archival efforts that match use level?
Will electronic access spur new demand for materials seldom used in print?
Will LSDIs’ use of high-speed, automated digitizing processes disenfranchise materials needing special handling?
Is there a means for recording gaps in collections and within publications?
How much duplication should there be in selection and digitization efforts?
What legal rights do participating libraries have to preserve in-copyright content digitized through LSDIs?”
The answers to these questions and insights based on her study are illuminating.I’ll move on after one more quote.
“Should we perceive these ventures primarily as access projects, rather than as reformatting initiatives that yield high-quality digital surrogates for the original?”
Like the White Paper, Hedstrom (pdf) and Jones are concerned about current technologies becoming outdated, forcing a mass migration of preserved materials to a new format, and that the digital library lacks a business model.Perhaps Google Book Search can change that in time, but for now I agree.Hedstrom also raises an interesting point when asking about how a database itself might be preserved.
Lavoie (pdf) provides a history and then a blueprint of OAIS, which
“establish criteria for determining which materials are appropriate for inclusion in the archival store.”
“determine the scope of its primary user community.”
ensuring that the information is preserved in a form that is independently understandable to these users”
establish and document clear policies and procedures for carrying out the preservation of the information in its custody”
“committed to making the contents of its archival store available to its intended user community”
Functions include
Ingest, the set of processes responsible for accepting information submitted by Producers and preparing it for inclusion in the archival store”
“Archival Storage. This is the portion of the archival system that manages the long-term storage and maintenance of digital materials entrusted to the OAIS. More specifically, the Archival Storage function is responsible for ensuring that archived content resides in appropriate forms of storage – e.g., online, near-line, off-line – and that the bit streams comprising the preserved information remain complete and renderable over the long-term.”
“Data Management function maintains databases of descriptive metadata identifying and describing the archived information in support of the OAIS’s finding aids; it also manages the administrative data supporting the OAIS’s internal system operations, such as system performance data or access statistics.”
“Preservation Planning. This service is responsible for mapping out the OAIS’s preservation strategy, as well as recommending appropriate revisions to this strategy”
“Access function manages the processes and services by which Consumers – and especially the Designated Community – locate, request, and receive delivery of items residing in the OAIS’s archival store.”
“Administration function is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the OAIS, as well as coordinating the activities of the other five high-level OAIS services.”
Finally, Littman’s article is about the implementation and operation of a digital library and what went wrong along the way.It serves as a model for the rest of us, I suppose.Corrupted files, operator errors… it’s not pretty, although the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) seems to work fine now.
You talked about personal digital libraries in the lecture. Does Flickr fit the bill as one of these? Your holdings on Google docs? What about a lack of searchable metadata, or a lack of metadata overall? How important is metadata to a library, digital or not?
And how does this tie into cloud computing, in which we do everything online – is one's cloud a digital library?
How much of this is conceptual stretching, meaning at this point what is not a digital library? Do these slides jibe with the definitions we read and discussed in the first few weeks of the course?
Online I keeping seeing Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) and Analyzed Layout and Text Object (ALTO) mentioned as an increasingly popular digital library standard. I know that the LOC has used it, too. Is this something that's worth looking into?
