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

Introducing The Source

Testing the Scalability of a DSpace-based Archive (Note: PDF)

From the DSpace website

The implementation of production-level large scale archives is often based on research prototypes that possess essential functions and characteristics, e.g., storage capacity, ingest, metadata recording, ability to migrate to newer formats, etc. However, a key characteristic that is often overlooked is scalability, i.e., the ability of the system to accommodate large numbers of items without compromising performance - while ingesting, indexing or access. Here we describe an investigation of archive scalability in a Java-based system (System for the Preservation of ElectronicResources or SPER) which was built by an R&D team at the U.S. National Library of Medicine to investigate various aspects of digital preservation.


Creating 21st century learning spaces (Podcast)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

Richard Everett is responsible for the IT infrastructure for a GBP100m new build project at Oaklands College (UK). In this podcast interview he talks about some of the challenges involved in such a massive project, the support he has received from JISC services and the difference the new buildings will make to learners at his college.


Access Revolution: The Birth, Growth, and Supremacy of Electronic Journals as an Information Medium (Note: PDF)

From the E-LIS website

The tremendous growth of e-journals in the marketplace has forced libraries to rethink their means of providing access to these coveted resources. Over the past 20 years, methods to connect users to e-journals have taken different shapes, fluctuating among a plethora of theories, ideologies, and technologies. This chapter attempts to synthesise the methods employed by academic libraries during this period to provide seamless e-journal access to users.


The Google Dilemma (Note: PDF)

From the SelectedWorks website

Web search is critical to our ability to use the Internet. Whoever controls search engines has enormous influence on all of us. They can shape what we read, who we listen to, who gets heard. Whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself. Today, no one comes closer to controlling search than Google does.


The Disconnected

From the Library Journal website

Roughly 3.8 million people nationwide between the ages of 18 and 24 are neither in school nor employed. That translates to one in six adults in this age group. Many organisations, forums, national advocacy groups, and the like use the term 'disconnected youth' when approaching this subject. And some would argue that the topic should be reserved for youth services librarians. The vast majority of the “disconnected” self-identify as adults, however. They rarely use the teen room and would most likely approach an adult services reference desk or seek access to the adult computer terminals. They are young, to be sure, but have adult needs, are often parents themselves, and have very real adult problems. Libraries can and should help them.


The United Kingdom Report on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information 2008 (Note: PDF)

From the Office of Public Sector Information website

Information is the infrastructure of our society. It is the lifeblood of any democracy. It goes right to the heart of the relationship between government and the citizen. The web has changed the way we think about information. It has also changed our thinking in terms of how we access information and the ways in which we can re-use information. Information is a vital asset in the digital age, in much the same way as iron and coal were regarded as vital resources to previous generations. Public sector information is a key resource. It has been estimated that 25% of commercial information products and services in Europe are based on public sector information. If we can remove the barriers to re-use, if we can streamline and simplify the processes, the potential prizes for the economies of Europe are enormous.'


Research Publications Online: Too Much of A Good Thing?

From the National Science Foundation website

The Internet gives scientists and researchers instant access to an astonishing number of academic journals. So what is the impact of having such a wealth of information at their fingertips? The answer is surprising–scholars are actually citing fewer papers in their own work, and the papers they do cite tend to be more recent publications. This trend may be limiting the creation of new ideas and theories.
NB: The researcher's findings will appear in the July 18, 2008 issue of Science magazine.

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

Introducing The Source

Screw Cap or Cork? Keeping Tags Fresh (and Related Matters) (Note: PDF)

From the E-LIS website

This article comments to the excitement caused by release of “On the Record,” the final report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. The article notes the challenge of maintaining user-supplied tags in the absence of an agency responsible for their upkeep. It also refers to the chaos emerging from the convergence of enriched catalogs, WorldCat Local, and federated tools, all of which are vying for library search.


Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status

From the D-Lib Magazine website

It has long been assumed that most of the works published from 1923 to 1964 in the US are currently in the public domain. Both non-profit and commercial digital libraries have dreamed of making this material available. Most programs have recognized as well that the restoration of US copyright in foreign works in 1996 has made it impossible for them to offer to the public the full text of most foreign works. What has been overlooked up to now is the difficulty that copyright restoration has created for anyone trying to determine if a work published in the United States is still protected by copyright. This paper discusses the impact that copyright restoration of foreign works has had on US copyright status investigations, and offers some new steps that users must follow in order to investigate the copyright status in the US of any work. It argues that copyright restoration has made it almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a book published in the United States after 1922 and before 1964 is in the public domain. Digital libraries that wish to offer books from this period do so at some risk.


A Format for Digital Preservation of Images: A Study on JPEG 2000 File Robustness

From the D-Lib Magazine website

Digital preservation requires a strategy for the storage of large quantities of data, which increases dramatically when dealing with high resolution images. Typically, decision-makers must choose whether to keep terabytes of images in their original TIFF format or compress them. This can be a very difficult decision: to lose visual information though compression could be a waste of the money expended in the creation of the digital assets; however, by choosing to compress, the costs of storage will be reduced.


Public Libraries, Archives and Museums: Trends in Collaboration and Cooperation (Note: PDF)

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) website

This report examines the recent trends in collaboration and cooperation between public libraries, archives and museums. In many cases, the shared or similar missions of the institutions reviewed make them ideal partners in collaborative ventures. Different types of collaborative projects are examined, including exhibits, community programs, digital resources and joint-use facilities. Examples come from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom (UK), as well as from Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.


Between a hard rock and a soft space: design, creative practice and innovation (Note: PDF)

From the Council for the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences website

This paper discusses the contribution that the arts, humanities and social sciences can make to innovation systems and innovation policy by embedding design and creative practice in innovation.
Innovation policy is a major economic development strategy - a strategy that is being adopted and implemented by cities, regions and nations to achieve economic results, measured as positive changes in employment, income, exports and productivity. This paper argues that innovation policy should reflect broader perspectives, and the contribution of the arts, humanities and social sciences to innovation.


From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America (Note: PDF)

From the OCLC website

OCLC was awarded a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to explore attitudes and perceptions about library funding and to evaluate the potential of a large-scale marketing and advocacy campaign to increase public library funding in the U.S. The findings of this research are now available. Though this study was based on data from the United States, there are findings in the report that could be applicable to any library seeking to understand the connections between public perceptions and library support.
Among the findings from the report:
* Library funding support is only marginally related to library visitation
* Perceptions of librarians are an important predictor of library funding support
* Voters who see the library as a 'transformational' force as opposed to an 'informational' source are more likely to increase taxes in its support


Guidelines for Library Services for Young Adults (Note: PDF)

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) website

This publication provides a framework for developing services to young adults and libraries, for the international community. The Guidelines contain both philosophical and practical ideas that can improve a library’s response to meeting the educational, informational, cultural, and leisure needs of young adults, in ways that are developmentally appropriate. It is to be used as a document for librarians, decision-makers, policy makers, library students, and stakeholders in the development of services for young people.


Open Access: Opportunities and Challenges – a Handbook (Note: PDF)

From the European Commission website

The handbook on open access published by the German Commission and the European Commission aims to provide information about the opportunities and challenges offered by Open Access, and to present a wide array of issues and positions under debate.

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

Introducing The Source

Digital Lives

From the British Library website

From diaries, letters, jottings and photo albums to blogging, emailing, tweeting and flickr-ing, the digital revolution has affected enormously the ways in which we record our personal lives. These largely born-digital collections will become invaluable in years to come for researchers - from biographers and historians to literary critics and scientists. Currently nobody knows for sure what is happening to this material and whether it can be made available in the future. Digital Lives (British Library) aims to begin to answer these questions.


Copyright protection and the new stakeholders in online distance education: The Play’s the Thing

From the First Monday website

This paper analyses the university as an Internet intermediary in the current climate of online distance education, classifies the stakeholders associated with the university in Web course management, and explores the need for an “Instructional Design Copyright Law”. The situation is likened to a theatrical production, with front-of-house preparations, backstage operations, and tragic characters.


2007 Canadian Internet Use

From the Statistics Canada website

Statistics Canada reveals new 2007 data from the Canadian Internet Use Survey. Interesting findings include:
* Almost three-quarters (73%), or 19.2 million Canadians aged 16 and older, went online for personal reasons during the 12 months prior to the survey
* Among people who used the Internet at home, 68% went online every day during a typical month and 50% for five hours or more during a typical week
* High-speed connections are becoming far more prevalent
* Over 9 in 10 urban home users reported using a high-speed connection, compared with just over 7 in 10 home users in rural areas
* High-speed connections are becoming far more popular
* The vast majority of Internet users aged 16 or older, 94%, reported personal Internet use from home during 2007, while 41% said they used it from work, 20% from schools and 15% from libraries
* More Canadians are participating in blogging, chatting and downloading
* Internet use rates are highest in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.


The Internet as a tool for democracy? A survey of non-profit Internet decision-makers and Web users

From the First Monday website

Although research has urged scholars and practitioners to develop the Internet as a democratic tool, little research has examined how users actually use the Internet and how the Internet is conceptualized by those who create its content — particularly in the non–profit sector where questions of democracy, interconnected communication and information gathering are often central to survival. This research surveys 688 people associated with non–profit organizations in the United States to better understand their perceptions and uses of the Internet as a tool for social change.


Home Broadband 2008 (Note: PDF)

From the Pew / Internet website

Adoption stalls for low-income Americans even as many broadband users opt for premium services that give them more speed.
Questionnaire (Note: PDF)


Reading the Future: Planning to meet Canada’s future literacy needs

From the Canadian Council on Learning website

“Reading the Future" is the first report of its kind in Canada. It provides:
* Canada's first projections of adult literacy levels, through to 2031
* an unprecedented look—more detailed than ever before—at the “face” of low literacy
* effective approaches to improve literacy among six identified groups


PDF now ISO standard

From the Government Computer News website

The International Organization for Standardization has approved the PDF as a standard format for electronic documents. ISO has christened Version 1.7 of PDF, the current working version, ISO 32000-1.
Developed by Adobe Systems, PDF is a digital document format designed to preserve the layout and appearance of an electronic document — or the scanned version of a paper document — on different platforms. Adobe submitted the format to ISO for standardization in February 2007. With Adobe relinquishing control of PDF, the ISO Document Management Applications Technical Committee will review any changes made to the format. The openly published standard provides the technical information required for writing software programs that can create and read PDF files, ensuring that organizations will always have some tools available to render PDFs, even if Adobe stops shipping its PDF viewer.

Awesome photo – thanks!! Or, what I've learnt from our Flickr pilot

The National Library's Flickr pilot has recently turned 1 – we've been on Flickr since late June 2007.

We now have nearly 600 images on Flickr. About two-thirds of these are from the Alexander Turnbull Library collections (also available on the Timeframes website), the rest being made up of the 'In 2017 libraries will be… ' set and a set of newspaper banners from our Papers Past website.

Since Flickr introduced statistics in mid December, we now have 6 months of info about visitation to our Flickr images, and we've also been tracking visitor interaction (comments, tags, group invitations etc).

In this post, I want to reflect a little on what we’ve learnt from this Flickr experiment, and share some of the benefits and potential challenges for other collecting organisations looking at running a similar pilot. As Virginia has previously posted about the 'In 2017 libraries will be …' adventure, I won’t cover that here.

Launch off – June 2007

Andy brought the enthusiasm to give Flickr a bash to the Library after attending Museums and the Web. He talked the idea through with a group of interested web and Turnbull staff, and a pilot project was agreed to. The purpose of the pilot was to:

1. Attract users who do not know about our collections, or haven't thought about visiting our subsites.
2. Observe the tagging and commenting behaviours to learn from the experience
3. Evaluate opportunities and issues for any further posting to Flickr.

We decided on the account settings we’d use on Flickr, and the way we would describe and attribute images. The first images we loaded to Flickr were selected from the Collection Highlights and Online Exhibitions sections of www.natlib.govt.nz, and made links between the Flickr pages and the main site. You can see some of our first images in the 'Collect' set.

First reactions

We got some early feedback. Alexandra Turbull (sic) had a couple of questions about why we weren’t using Creative Commons licences and at the time we didn’t have any answers (or a NZ CC licence, for that matter). Now there is a NZ CC licence, but you can’t opt to use it on Flickr. We're also not all that sure how CC and Crown Copyright intersect; this is a topic I'm hoping will be discussed that this year's NDF conference.

Image size was another issue – check out the comment on this 1589 map of the Pacific Ocean.

You’ve gotta make some friends

In August a staff member went through Flickr and added about 50 of libraries and museums as contacts. Like a pebble dropped in a puddle, this activity created a contact-ripple, with our contacts' contacts starting to friend us.

We now get a contact request most days, and about once a month I do a quick search for new collecting institutions on Flickr to friend. I do check profile pages before accepting a contact request, and I’ve rejected a couple, usually because amongst their groups these people have listed things like 'Hot Naked Asian Chicks'.

We now have 365 contacts, but I don’t see this as useful measurement. Instead, I look to comments, tags and favourites as a measure of engagement. Which brings me to …

Statistics and engagement

To begin with, we monitored comments, tags and favourites as a way of seeing how people were interacting with the images. To date, based on a comination of measures, these images of the Wahine (249 views; 3 favourites; 7 comments) and a ventriloquist (195 views; 9 favourites) are the most popular items.





Keeping track of this interaction was easy, as Flickr notifies you when someone performs one of these actions. Keeping track of views was far more difficult. In mid December Andy and I were discussing how we could deal with this (visit each image once a month, record the number of views in a spreadsheet? it seemed very time consuming) when, like magic, Flickr introduced stats for pro account holders.



Although the stats tool is neither deep nor customisable, we do now at least get a daily report of the number of view on our photos, photostream and sets, as well as information about most-viewed images (daily and all time) and referrers.

Our 10 most-viewed images on Flickr are made up of almost entirely of ‘In 2017 Libraries will be …’ entries, with this one in the lead:




However, coming in at No. 7 with 317 views is this novelty cheque, and I have no explanation for that.



In total, we've had 56,926 views on our Flickr items. Offhand, on our busiest single day, we had 440 views. This year, monthly views have been:

January - 5,311
February - 2,142
March - 3,251
April - 3,263
May - 4,645
June - 4,430

In terms of interactions this year, February was our busiest month, with 14 comments, 47 favourites and 12 tags, and June the slowest, with 3 comments, 25 favourites and no tags.

There's this great quote by Winston Churchill on this topic: "Statistics are like a drunk with a lamp-post: used more for support than illumination". It's hard to tell what 'success' means in this context. A comment on every photo? (in which case, we’re not succeeding). A view for every photo? (in which case, we are).

Trends

Instead of paying attention to numbers, I watch trends. This is what I’ve learnt:

1. Favouriting is the most common interaction, followed by commenting then tagging. (This surprised me, as I thought tagging would be more common. I even experimented for a month, adding miminal tags to items I was uploading, to see if this would increase the tagging activity. It didn't.)

2. Most comments are of the 'great photo' variety. A small number give some more information about an image, and the smallest proportion are questions. When you do get a question though, it's generally thoughtful or thought provoking. We've had no problems with spam.

3. New sets of images usually lead to a jump in visitation.

4. Most of our interactions (including contact and group requests) happen overnight, suggesting non-New Zealand users dominate.

5. Promoting new sets in our enewsletter is a good way to attract views.



How we operate now

While I still occasionally add new Collection Highlights and online exhibition images to Flickr, I started curating sets of Timeframes images late last year. Sometimes these support features on the site; for example, a group of photographs recording the return of the Māori Battalion is linked to from this Collection Highlight about the event. Sometimes they're because I chose a theme (like beaches), and occasionally people suggest one to me (like speedway or how not to take photos).

I’ve recently reached out to our Turnbull Library staff to see if they’d like to curate some sets – although I was an image researcher in a previous incarnation and enjoy doing this, I think the more kinds of personal interests you get out there, the more the selection will resonate with Flickr people. It also shares the load around – selecting images is the most time-consuming part of the process. So far, I've had a couple of offers, and one person who wholeheartedly took me up and suggested 5 of the last 8 sets we've added.

For the past two months we’ve been loading a set a week. I try to keep the sets to 14 or fewer items; this is to ensure all new images appear on the first page of our photostream.

A recent development

The project is still a pilot, and we’re still learning what people want to do with our images. A bit of buzz monitoring revealed that one of the things people want to do with the images is use them on their blogs.

In April Mike Riversdale noted that it seemed weird that we left the 'blog this' button on our account options, but then tell people they have to contact us to get permission prior to reproduce images from Flickr.

This spurred us to rethink our permissions statement, and tweak how images are selected for uploading to the site. Since April, we’ve only added images that have no reproduction restrictions, and we use the following permission statement on these:

You are welcome to reproduce this photograph on your blog or another website. Please:

1. Maintain the integrity of the photograph (i.e. don't crop, recolour or overprint it)
2. Reproduce the photograph's caption information & link back to it here on Flickr.

We would like to know how you're using these images - send us an email with a link to your site.

If you would like to use this photograph in a different way (e.g. in a print publication) please contact us.

We then discovered that our original decision not to make all images downloadable (this is a global setting) meant only people with a blog account linked up to their Flickr account could use the images. So I checked with our collection curators that the new permissions statement could be retrospectively added to all the images we had available. Thankfully, the answer was yes, and so we’ve flicked the switch in our account details, and made all the images downloadable.

Last week Paul Capewell emailed us heads up about his use of this photo of the Beatles on his blog – that’s exactly the kind of thing we’re hoping to encourage.

The third party API setting is still not activated. This is because of concerns about images being pulled into applications without any context such as titles or attribution etc. It's not so much about copyright, but about usage rights that were negotiated when materials were donated to the library. The flipside is of course that the images are not open to new and engaging user contexts, thus you won't see our Flickr images in an app like Flickr Fastr. We're hopeful though that this will also be revisted in the future.

It takes time (but not that much time)

Changing the permissions statement probably took about 3 days all up (and a sore wrist from all the cut'n'pasting).

On average, I probably spend about 2 hours a week selecting, clearing & loading images, responding to comments and requests, monitoring what people are saying about (and how they're using) our Flickr images, and recording the stats.

What I've learnt

1. It feels really good when people talk to you on Flickr. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

2. Sort out the permissions stuff BEFORE you start loading images. Find the most unencumbered images in your database, then make them available in the most open way possible.

3. The trickiest challenge we've had during the Flickr pilot was a request to add this image to a Whaling group. It was a request that generated quite a lot of debate among staff of the National Digital Library, some of whom felt joining the group would reflect badly on the Library. However, the decision was made to add the photo, following the Turnbull's attitude that it is not their place to make 'moral' judgements on how people wish to use collection images.

4. Flickr is a good way of dipping a toe in the social media water - a lot less time and energy has to be invested than in, say, oh, I dunno, blogging? Compared to this blogging pilot, there's also been less work with creating policies, administration, and in replying to comments / commentary.

And looking forward?

I think we'll keep loading one set of images per week to Flickr - it feels like a comfortable amount. And we're still investigating Flickr Commons with interest.

My priority over the next couple of months is getting more staff involved in selecting images to add to Flickr. Looking a bit further forward, I'm thinking about how we might use Flickr to record and share the redevelopment of our Wellington building. Any suggestions?


Image credits from top

Wahine sinking in Wellington Harbour, 10 April 1968
Unidentified Evening Post staff photographer
Reference number: EP-Accidents-Sea-rescue-Wahine-folder-2-of-4-01
Photographic print
Dominion Post Collection, Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library

Man with his ventriloquist dummy ca 1870.
Photographer: William James Harding
Reference number: 1/4-006818-G
Wet collodion glass negative
Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library

Draft novelty Christmas and New Year gift cheque / printed by James Rodger & Co. Christchurch. 1910s.
Reference number: Eph-A-CARDS-New-Year-1910s-01-1
Ephemera Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library

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

Introducing The Source

2008 Global Student E-book Survey

From the ebrary® website

ebrary®, a leading provider of e-content services and technology, recently announced that the results of its first "2008 Global Student E-book Survey" completed by nearly 6,500 students throughout the world, representing approximately 400 individual institutions, are now publicly available. Anyone interested may register for a digital copy.
Designed by more than 150 college and university librarians throughout the world, the wide-scale survey explores students’ usage and perceptions of e-books.


Omeka 0.9.2

From the Omeka website

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. Omeka is free and open source.


The right to information: reviewing Queensland’s Freedom of Information Act (Note: PDF)

From the Queensland Freedom of Information website

Chaired by barrister, author and former journalist, David Solomon, the panel makes 141 recommendations that are "not merely an upgrade of the legislation, but a new model... a radically different but more effective legislative architecture for FOI". The Queensland review could be a model for changes in other states and the Commonwealth.


Convenience Trumps Quality: How Digital Natives Use Information

From the FUMSI website

It has been seven years since Marc Prensky launched the concept of digital natives (the post-www generations) and digital immigrants (everyone else!) on the world. His definitions and terms have come in for scrutiny and debate since then, but they are an undeniably powerful metaphor for the change which all too evidently surrounds us. The most important point in his argument is that we are not witnessing a simple ratcheting up of incremental change but have reached a point of discontinuity marked by fundamental change. Digital natives are, quite simply, different people.


Scholarly Publishing Re-invented: Real Costs and Real Freedoms

From the Journal of Electronic Publishing website

Ever-increasing journal subscription prices continue to stress the academic community in both economic and intellectual terms. Deploying newly available tools and approaches to article production in a collaborative manner offer dramatic reductions in cost, up to two orders of magnitude. This level of cost saving practically mandates a re-thinking of the entire business model for scholarly publishing. Open access—providing content globally at no cost—should be both economically viable and sustainable.