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

Introducing The Source

© the way ahead: A Copyright Strategy for the Digital Age

From the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) website

The aim of copyright is to encourage authors’ creativity and make their works available widely. It is a global system that provides incentives for authors and investors, while allowing access to works for educators, researchers, cultural institutions and users of all sorts, both in business and in the home. Copyright engenders strong emotions. It is about authors’ livelihoods and recognition and about financial rewards for rights holders. But it is also about access to the copyright works, which are essential to our values, our cultures and to the way we spend our work and our leisure time.
This work looks ahead to how copyright can tackle the challenges of the digital age, drawing on previous work including Digital Britain and the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, on international perspectives including the European Commission’s and on discussions and submissions from stakeholders.


Digitisation of special collections: Mapping, assessment, prioritisation (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

Traditionally, digitisation has been led by supply rather than demand. While end users are seen as a priority they are not directly consulted about which collections they would like to have made available digitally or why. This can be seen in a wide range of policy documents throughout the cultural heritage sector, where users are positioned as central but where their preferences are assumed rather than solicited. Post-digitisation consultation with end users is equally rare. How are we to know that digitisation is serving the needs of the Higher Education community and is sustainable in the long-term?
Key Findings:

• The communities of both intermediary and end users are willing to express their view on prioritising digitisation of special collections; the participation in the project was a matter of good will and the good response makes evident that there is definitely interest of the professional communities to express their opinion on the matter of digitisation needs. It should be noted here that the community of intermediaries sees collections on a finer level of granularity; end users often refer to super-collections such as the holdings of an institution
• The top user-driven priority criteria that emerged from consultation with both intermediaries and end users are: Improve access; Enhance impact on research and/on studies; Enhance impact on teaching; Allow for collaboration; Improve access outside
• The geographic and institutional boundaries of collections nominated for digitisation are wider – this study was aimed at the higher education institutions in the UK, but 14% of the nominated collections were from institutions outside of the higher education sector, and 6% were from overseas
• The complementarity of collections is strongly favoured by both users’ communities
• The criteria for digitisation nominated by intermediary and end users include general criteria but also a number of criteria where metrics can be applied; thus allowing to establish a ranking mechanism
  

Integrated Library System Platforms on Open Source / Stephen Abram (Note: PDF)

From Stephen's Lighthouse (Stephen Abram) blog

Stephen Abram discusses what he (and SirsiDynix) see happening when libraries get into talks about moving their Integrated Library Systems to open source platforms systems. What has been found is that they often are not aware of the heavy drawbacks of what open source systems cannot offer at this point in time. To help buyers become aware of the limitations of open source, he has set out to clarify what open source is, how it is different from proprietary software platforms, and why Integrated Library Systems (ILS) are not ready for open source at this point.


Testing the accessibility of Web 2.0

From the University of Southampton, School of Electronics and Computer Science website

Dr Mike Wald and E.A. Draffan are leading a project funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) TechDis which looks at how well people with disabilities can access web services such as blogs and wikis and social networking sites. The team have built an accessibility tool kit, which will enable users to test the accessibility of web 2.0 services. The accessible pen drive offers freely available assistive technologies that can be used to help with this evaluation.
Web2Access, part of the toolkit, provides an online checking system for any interactive web-based services such as Facebook. “We developed it because nowadays users contribute, as well as read, information and so you cannot just click on a button to see if websites are accessible and easy to use”, said E.A. Draffan.