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

Introducing The Source

Presidential Libraries Reform Report (Note: PDF)

From the National Archives, USA website

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has recently submitted a report to Congress detailing alternative models to the current Presidential Library system.
The Presidential Historical Records Preservation Act of 2008 [PL 110-404] had tasked NARA with developing plans to reduce the financial burden of the libraries on the Federal Government, improve the preservation of Presidential records, and reduces delays in public access to Presidential records.


Legal delays have blown a hole in the UK's digital heritage

From the Guardian.co.uk website

If it is information on the health of medieval women or the battle of Trafalgar you require, then the British Library is a pretty good place to look. But those wanting to shed light on more recent events or discoveries recorded online could be in trouble.
Digital literature, online scientific research and internet journalism that should have been saved in the nation's main libraries over the past five years may have been lost because ministers have failed to give them the legal power to copy and archive websites.


Toward global measurement of the information society: a U.S.-China comparison of national government surveys

From the First Monday website

To be global, digital and inclusive, we need comparable measures of ICT use around the world. To contribute to this, this research note analyses what questions the Chinese and the U.S. governments ask in their large, long–running surveys on the topic of computer and Internet use. The process and content of these surveys point up agreements, differences, and silences. Based on this, we propose nine basic questions that can be standardised and used in all country surveys of ICT use to create a coherent global dataset.


System and Network Security Acronyms and Abbreviations (Note: PDF)

From the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) website

NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) hopes to bring some order to the sometimes inconsistent and often confusing world of IT (information technology) acronyms and abbreviations by publishing a glossary of commonly used terms. “System and Network Security Acronyms and Abbreviations,” runs the alphabetical gamut from A (address resource record type) to ZSK (zone signing key).
The capitalisation, spelling and definitions of acronyms and abbreviations frequently vary among publications,” the report states. Some abbreviations, such as WWW, have a universally recognized meaning, while others have multiple definitions. For instance, MAC can stand for mandatory access control, Media Access Control, Medium Access Control or message authentication code. Others might contain an internal logic but can be confusing at first glance. For instance, Triple DES (Data Encryption Standard) is often abbreviated as 3DES.


Global Research Report: India. Research and collaboration in the new geography of science (Note: PDF)

From the Thomson Reuters website

This report is part of a series launched by Thomson Reuters to inform policymakers about the changing landscape and dynamics of the global research base.
India is building on its vast resources and potential in becoming a lead economic power. Underpinning the realisation of that economic potential will be a significant expansion in its ability to generate and exploit its knowledge resources through research and the related skills of its workforce. The growth of knowledge and innovation capacity in the BRIC is already impacting on the global research system.


Using a Permanent Usability Team to advance user-centered design in libraries

From the Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship website

Usability, user studies, and evaluating user experiences have been a part of academic libraries for many years. In the last 20 years libraries have created ad hoc usability teams to do user studies. Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries started its ongoing team in 2006, resulting in an increased focus on user experience throughout the libraries. This article explores the team’s history from formation to the work it took on. The merits and challenges usability teams bring to an organisation are also discussed. To date the literature describes usability methods and shares findings from libraries’ usability studies but none discuss the benefits a standing usability team brings to a library organisation or the work it may do.