The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Addressing the uncertain future of preserving the past: Towards a robust strategy for digital archiving and preservation (Note: PDF)

From the Koninklijke Bibliotheek website

The purpose of this document is to analyse the Koninklijke Bibliotheek’s e-Depot strategy in the context of wider developments in the archiving and publishing environment, develop scenarios for future framework conditions and highlight a range of strategic options to sustain the Koninklijke Bibliotheek’s successful record in digital preservation. The report will be of interest to staff at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, as well as decision makers at other national and university libraries faced with the challenges of digital archiving and preservation. It will also be relevant to other stakeholders in the distribution of scholarly knowledge, including traditional and open-access publishers, operators of dissemination portals, researchers, learned societies, journal editors, funders, developers of preservation technologies and governments.


Why Appraisal is not ‘Utterly’ Useless and why it’s not the Way to Go either: a (PPP) Provocative Position Paper. (Note: PDF)

From the DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) website

DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) has released the first in a series of thought provoking and controversial position papers on a range of issues surrounding digital preservation. The intention of these papers is to promote vigorous debate within the digital preservation community and encourage people to think about digital preservation in new and innovative ways by exploring and challenging the received wisdom.


The Pew Global Attitudes Project: 2007 Report (Note: PDF)

From the PewResearchCenter website

What does the world think about globalisation and its many manifestations, economic or otherwise? Asking such a question is akin to opening up hundreds of cans of worms simultaneously, but the Pew Global Attitudes Project isn't afraid of taking on this topic. The latest Pew Global Attitudes survey of more than 45,000 people around the globe asked participants what they thought about economic globalisation and its effect on their own country and others around the world. The survey also asked participants to offer their views on immigration, social issues, and various aspects of technology.


Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search?

From Stanford University InfoLab

Social bookmarking is a recent phenomenon which has the potential to give us a great deal of data about pages on the web. One major question is whether that data can be used to augment systems like web search. To answer this question, over the past year we have gathered what we believe to be the largest dataset from a social bookmarking site yet analyzed by academic researchers.
We conclude that social bookmarking can provide search data not currently provided by other sources, though it may currently lack the size and distribution of tags necessary to make a significant impact.