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

Introducing The Source


Copyfights and literary rights

From the Australian Policy Online website

Presenter: Ramona Koval Presenter: Lynne Spender Presenter: Morris Gleitzman
Listen to this presentation

The biggest recent copyright case is Google's book digitisation project. Authors and publishers wanted a slice of the pie that they thought Google was getting for free. In the US, they were successful in their demands and Google is now paying out millions to these parties and has set up a Book Rights Registry to administer the process.But what are the broader implications for intellectual property and the cultural heritage of ideas?


2009 Digital Future Report - Summary (Note: PDF)
The full report - 191 pages of charts, narrative and great detail - is available for purchase.

From the Center for the Digital Future website

The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School is pleased to present the results of the eighth year of our project, “Surveying the Digital Future.” The eight years of longitudinal research comprise an absolutely unique database that completely captures broadband at home, the wireless Internet, on-line media, user-generated content and social networking. As usual, the report continues to track off-line media use, purchasing both off-line and through e-commerce, social and political activity and a wealth of other data. After eight years, we have an unparalleled view of the non-users who do not go on-line. We carefully examine why they are not users and whether they are likely to ever go on-line.


Home Broadband Adoption 2009 (U.S) (Note: PDF)

From the Pew Internet website

An April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows 63% of adult Americans now have broadband internet connections at home, a 15% increase from a year earlier. April’s level of high-speed adoption represents a significant jump from figures gathered by the Project since the end of 2007 (54%). The growth in home broadband adoption occurred even though survey respondents reported paying more for broadband compared to May 2008. Last year, the average monthly bill for broadband internet service at home was $34.50, a figure that stands at $39.00 in April 2009.


Libraries of the Future
See also What is the library of the future?

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

‘Libraries of the Future’ attempts to explore the issues around the enormous impact of ICT on the academic library and to look forward to ensure that libraries - however they may continue to evolve - remain at the heart of academic life. This public question and answer debate held on 2 April 2009 discussed what information and library provision mean in these changing times. Watch videos of the speakers, see blog posts and comments.


Digital Natives and Virtual Libraries: What Does the Future Hold for Libraries? (Note: PDF)

From the E-prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) website

Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are among the most heavily visited web sites. They are used not only for social networking and entertainment but also for access to information, for learning and for carrying out professional work. Social networks commonly have Web 2.0 features, offer personalised services and allow users to incorporate their own content easily and describe, organise and share it with others, thereby enriching users’ experience. Some users tend to “live” on those social networks and expect information providing organisations to offer similar services. They want libraries to be as accessible, flexible, open to collaboration and sharing as that of social networks and heighten the expectations from such institutions. The future of libraries is closely associated with how successfully they meet the demands of digital users. Otherwise, the “net generation” or the “digital natives” grown up with the Web, Google and Facebook would see libraries as outdated institutions and “take their business elsewhere” to satisfy their information needs. In this paper, the impact of the technological convergence on information providing organisations are reviewed.

NLNZ outages 25 June

good morning readers

The National Library is having server problems today and as a result access to some of our websites and services is unpredictable this morning, including www.natlib.govt.nz

We´re very sorry about the inconvenience and the tech guys are going hell for leather trying to fix thing.

UPDATE (3.25pm)

I typed too soon.

We're still experiencing problems with

-- Manuscripts and Pictorial (aka Sir Donald McLean papers)
-- Te Ao Hou
-- www.natlib.govt.nz

As ever - more updates as they come to hand.

UPDATE (3.10pm)

Most National Library services are now up and running. Access may still be a bit iffy over the next 24 hours.

UPDATE (1.50pm)

The server malfunction will take us a few more hours to fix.

The services affected are:

Te Puna Search
Te Puna Webcat & Cataloguing Client
Te Puna Interloan
Transactions of the Royal Society
Te Ao Hou
Directory of NZ libraries
Kris
www.natlib.govt.nz

We'll be updating again around 3pm

-- Courtney

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

Introducing The Source


In from the Cold: An assessment of the scope of Orphan Works report (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

Organisations across the UK’s public sector are responsible for the management and provision of access to a huge range of content in many formats. These are likely to range from works with high commercial value, such as fine art and commercial films with attributable artists and/or rights holders and collecting societies, to works of low commercial value but high academic, cultural and historic worth, such as documentary photographs, letters and sound recordings, where a recognised rights holder is unlikely. The report shows that millions of so-called ‘orphan works’ - photographs, recordings, texts and other ephemera from the last 100 years - risk becoming invisible because rights holders are not known or easy to trace.



Australia in the digital economy
Report 1 - Trust and Confidence Report
Report 2 - Online Participation

From the Australian Communications and Media Authority website

These reports cover Australians' attitudes and behaviours to online security and privacy; issues of digital confidence and skills; take-up and use of the internet; and factors which influence people’s decisions to participate or not participate online.



Archives, libraries and museums as communicators of memory in European Union projects

From the Information Research: an international electronic journal website

This paper explores the approach to communication of memory in archives, libraries and museums in European Union research projects in 2000-2005. The main objectives were: to identify predominant aspects of heritage communication; to determine whether and how heritage communication was related to memory; to establish patterns of participation in projects by determining types of institutions and their country of origin. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were carried out to identify the most visible aspects of heritage communication, interrelationship of memory and heritage and impact of certain institutions and countries on the development of project ideas. The analysis revealed that the definitive features of archives, libraries and museums were collections and information management processes. Meeting social needs of present communities and developing meaningful stories of the past were almost not considered. The domination of libraries and museums in information and cultural projects respectively was identified, while archives were the least visible.


The Metadata is the Interface: Better Description for Better Discovery of Archives and Special Collections, Synthesized from User Studies (Note: PDF)

From the OCLC website

Structured metadata can be useful internally for collection management and public services, but is not always what users need most to discover primary sources, especially minimally-described collections and “hidden collections.” Studies show that users often do not want to search for collections by provenance, for example, as important as this principle is for archival collections. One of several core competencies that special collections metadata librarians must have is “a keen understanding of users’ needs and preferences.” This is especially important now that discovery happens in multiple environments. Librarians and archivists need to manage archival collections by provenance, but also must describe what is in the collections for their users.


Booking the future

From the openDemocracy website

Is the book dead? Can the six huge publishing conglomerates, a.k.a., the Six Sisters, rescue books? Will publishers find a new profit model? Can bookstores survive the internet? Can writers make a living? What about e-books? Is Kindle the beginning and end of the revolution? Will Google Books be literature's savior or executioner?


Reading Dickens Four Ways

From the Chronicle of Higher Education website

How 'Little Dorrit' fares in multiple text formats.

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

Introducing The Source


Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world

From the Research Information Network website

Bibliographic records play a central role in enabling users to find, locate and gain access to books and journals. The records are created and enhanced at different stages in a supply chain from publishers, through a range of intermediaries, to libraries and then to end-users. This report looks at how bibliographic records for content held by UK academic and research libraries are created and distributed, for printed and electronic books, and for scholarly journals and journal articles; and at how they are utilised by all involved in the supply chain, from the publisher to the final end user.


KnowPrivacy Report

From the KnowPrivacy website

The goal of this project was to examine both the data handling practices of popular websites and the concerns of consumers in an effort to identify practices which may be deceptive or potentially harmful to users‘ privacy and, based on our findings, offer potential solutions that policymakers should consider when discussing any new Internet privacy regulations or that website operators could implement to potentially avert or soften regulation.


Net Neutrality and what it means for libraries (Note: PDF)

From the E-prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) website

Net Neutrality, the idea that the Internet should be provided to all without discrimination based on content or applications, has been an important policy issue in the last few years. The focus of the presentation is on key concepts, historical perspectives, legislative issues, and the impact of Net Neutrality on libraries and their users.


Spinning a Semantic Web for Metadata: Developments in the IEMSR

From the Ariadne website

The authors reflect on the experience of developing components for the Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry, which exists to support the development and use of metadata standards.


This revolution will be digitised: online tools for radical collaboration (Note: PDF)

From the Disease Models and Mechanisms (DMM) website

What if everyone in the world were in your lab - a ‘hive mind’ of sorts, but composed of countless creative intellects rather than mindless worker ants, and one in which resources, reagents and effort could be shared, along with ideas, in a manner not dictated by institutional and geographical constraints?

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

Introducing The Source


ISO 28500:2009, Information and documentation -- WARC file format

From the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) website

For many years, heritage organisations have tried to find the most appropriate ways to collect and keep track of World Wide Web material using web-scale tools such as web crawlers. At the same time, these organisations were concerned with the requirement to archive very large numbers of born-digital and digitised files. A need was for a container format that permits one file simply and safely to carry a very large number of constituent data objects (of unrestricted type, including many binary types) for the purpose of storage, management, and exchange. Another requirement was that the container need only minimal knowledge of the nature of the objects.
The WARC format is expected to be a standard way to structure, manage and store billions of resources collected from the web and elsewhere. It is an extension of the ARC format, which has been used since 1996 to store files harvested on the web.


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 programmes, 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. The report concludes with a guide to collaborations, including examples of best practices in the field, a guide to a successful collaboration, a discussion of the benefit and risks of collaboration, and a list of resources consulted.


2009 WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World

From the WebWise Conference website

Each year, the WebWise Conference brings together some 300 museum and library professionals to address the development of technological and digital resources and their impact on museums, libraries, and other cultural organisations. The theme of the 2009 WebWise was ‘Digital Debates’ - issues faced by museums, libraries, archives and other cultural institutions in terms of emerging technologies.
Presentations include:
* Rights and Responsibilities
* Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
* Identity and Collaboration
* Chasing the Edge and Maintaining the Core


Local objects Telling Global Stories

From the Collections Australia Network (CAN) website

How do collections and objects “speak” to audiences? How can museums present their collections online in ways that can be resourced and sustained at a local level? Collections Australia Network national project manager, Ingrid Mason presented this paper at the 2009 Museums Australia conference to discuss how galleries, libraries, archives and libraries (GLAMs) can bring their collections to life online and engage new audiences.


M-Libraries: Information use on the move (Note: PDF)

From the University of Cambridge Arcadia Programme website

When people talk about mobile libraries, they tend to mean a bus or truck that has been kitted out as a roving branch library. However, with a growing number of people accessing the internet from their pocket PCs and mobile phones, libraries are investigating ways to deliver their services to mobile phones and other small-screen devices so their customers can access them any time anywhere. This can be as simple as sending text message alerts about reservations becoming available or overdue books, or as complex as the Athabasca University Library’s Digital Reading room, which allows readers to access full eBooks and journal articles through their library’s subscriptions on any mobile device.


Explore Australian collections and worldwide online sources

From the National Library of Australia website

The National Library of Australia has just released the first prototype of its new ‘Single Business Discovery Service’ for comment by key stakeholders. The service provides integrated access to over 42 million metadata and text resources from a range of the National Library's collaborative services and from elsewhere. For this initial version there are a range of data sources including: the Australian National Bibliographic Database, Australian Newspapers, Picture Australia, the ARROW Discovery Service and Pandora. The new service will also provide the discovery interface for the People Australia initiative. Additionally we have included some external sources of data such as OAIster, Open Library, the Hathi Trust, the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress tables of contents, publishers' descriptions and sample book chapters.
In leveraging off the collaborative approach the National Library takes with its discovery services, and in integrating results from across collections and formats, this new service will have distinct benefits for users. For example a researcher searching for images relating to "George Woodroffe Goyder" will also be presented with results for people, books, manuscripts, maps and full text newspapers articles. This new approach presents major benefits to the researcher who, in the past, would have had to visit each discovery service in turn and conduct separate searches for the material they sought.


Running code as part of an open standards policy

From the First Monday website

Governments around the world are considering implementing or even mandating open standards policies. They believe these policies will provide economic, socio–political, and technical benefits. In this article, we analyse the failure of the Massachusetts’s open standards policy as applied to document formats. We argue it failed due to the lack of running code. Running code refers to multiple independent, interoperable implementations of an open standard. With running code, users have choice in their adoption of a software product and consequently economic and technological benefits. We urge governments to incorporate a “running code” requirement when adopting an open standards policy.


Wikidentities: Young people collaborating on virtual identities in social network sites

From the First Monday website

Wikis and social networking sites (SNS) are arguably two of the most popular tools used by young people as part of their everyday social interactions. We propose that the concept of the wiki may be useful for understanding the kinds of virtual identities that are constructed, visually presented, and narrated in online contexts, such as MySpace. The term wikidentities is used in this paper to encapsulate the kinds of identity work, which may occur through SNS. We argue that wiki-like behaviour has consequences for reconceptualising identity as something that is mediated by (rather than at odds with) technology. Our research opens up ways for considering new forms of agency for young people appropriate to a high–tech era that encourages collaboration, negotiation, and risk.