CNI Spring Task Force Meeting – April 6-7, 2009 April 9, 2009
Posted by David Kennedy in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farI attended the CNI Spring Task Force Meeting in Minneapolis, April 6-7, 2009. Below are some takeaways that I found noteworthy, especially as they relate to repositories.
Keynote Address – David Rosenthal, Chief Scientist, LOCKSS, Stanford University: David challenged some of the prevailing thought on digital preservation regarding format obsolescence. He stated that incompatibility is not inevitable, rather that “creating incompatibility = reinventing the wheel”. He argued that format obsolescence never happens. He backed this up with evidence from the last few decades. The moral of the story: If we go ahead and just collect the bits, we will be fine. A rather freeing thought, given that the perceived complexities often make digital preservation a non-starter.
JPEG2000 is a viable alternative: Ryan Chute, from Los Alamos National Library, demonstrated the Djatoka (pronounced jay-too-kay), which is an open source JPEG2000 image server, built with the Kakadu software library. The Djatoka server now has two client implementations (IIP implementation at the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and Open Layers at UNC). Conceivably, JPEG2000 could be used as both a presentation format and as a preservation format (lossless compression around 2:1 and visually lossless compression around 10:1 from tiffs). Demonstration looked very sharp, will need to pay attention to how it performs in production environments. Discussed with Ryan the plans for integration with Fedora, and there are a few implementation paths to evaluate.
Preservation services in the clouds, Duraspace: Sandy Payette and Michele Kimpton discussed the joint venture between Fedora Commons and Dspace Foundation. Duraspace will be a service (eventually a set of services) as well as open source software. The initial use case will allow for a preservation based service in the cloud. They have identified a few sites that they will be piloting these services with. By Q1 2010, they expect to have extensions available for Fedora and Dspace to plug into these cloud services. I asked about a scenario where we might store preservation copies in the cloud and store derivatives locally, and have Fedora and Akubra broker the data to the right store; they said this is a scenario they are planning for.
Cool Book Digitization Workflow at Northwestern: I attended a presentation by Claire Stewart and Steve DiDomenico from Northwestern on their web-based book digitization workflow, codename “crabcake”. They are digitizing books and ingesting into Fedora. Their Fedora implementation is similar to ours with an atomistic content model and use of METS for structural metadata. Very clean set of workflow tools. The most impressive part of their presentation is their GUI for manipulating the METS structure for a book digital object. This interface is built heavily with Ext JS. Their project is grant funded, and they will be releasing as open source in the summer. From what I can tell, installation of their tools may require some adoption of their local practices, at the very least, their interpretation of METS. Regarding their digitization/QC process, they have a lot of throughput, they push things into Fedora with very little human intervention and fix later, in essence getting things online with very little impediment.
Trident project report: I gave an update on the Trident project. The presentation was well attended, and the project was well received. There was good discussion around the metadata application profile, its possible extension to different metadata schemas, and general use cases for the Editor. There was a general validation that our project continues to head in the right direction.
CNI Spring Task Force Meeting 2009 – Presentation on Trident Project April 8, 2009
Posted by David Kennedy in : Presentations, Trident , 1 comment so farI gave a presentation yesterday to CNI on our Trident Project. The slides are below
My Own Frank Brown April 5, 2009
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One tends to remember making major life-changing decisions on April Fool’s Day. So I can tell you that it was April 1, 1995 when I decided to get a master’s degree in Information or Library Science. Even now, I sometimes wonder, is this whole thing just a cosmic joke? Is some unseen trickster entity laughing at my feeble attempts to manufacture order where none can exist? Probably. But I may never know.
The most dangerous 16 months of my life began on that day. I had just missed the deadline for the next academic year, and would have to wait for the application period to roll around again. Meanwhile, I was living in Chapel Hill/Carrboro and working as a cook in various restaurants. Many opportunities for mischief would materialize. At one point, a housemate had just about convinced me to head for Alaska to work the salmon boats. It was that kind of a year. I was engaged in the most extravagant of all human behaviors, marking time.
Two things saved me from a career of wading through fish guts: the guitar and the library. It wasn’t the first time that I relied on the guitar to get me through a shaky patch, and it would not be the last. Not that I was ever very good at it — having a tin ear kind of limits a person’s musical potential — but looking at a year of waiting to fill out an application, I decided to do something I’d always wanted to do. I would learn to play fingerstyle.
Sam Reed and the Trumpet of Conscience April 2, 2009
Posted by Jill Katte in : Announcements, Trumpet of Conscience , add a comment
In late-March 2009, we proudly published a digital collection entitled: Sam Reed and the Trumpet of Conscience. This collection documents the life and work of activist and organizer, Sam Reed, and the organization and publication, the Trumpet of Conscience, he founded in Durham, N.C., 1987-2000. The Trumpet of Conscience worked for social justice and to improve race relations, and the group’s mission was “To come together, to listen to one another, to strive toward reducing and eliminating the root causes of crime and divisiveness in our midst.”
TOC was open to all and attracted active involvement from numerous Duke University and North Carolina Central University faculty, as well as local Durham residents. According to William Willimon, former Dean of Duke Chapel, Duke and Durham’s Martin Luther King Day celebrations were established, in large part, because of Reed’s efforts. The Sam Reed and the Trumpet of Conscience digital collection includes newsletters, planning documents, photographs, awards, speeches, and interviews created and collected by Sam Reed. The collection also includes articles by and about Dr. John Hope Franklin.
Deena Stryker Photographs of Cuba April 2, 2009
Posted by Jill Katte in : Announcements, Uncategorized , add a comment
We’re very excited to announce the Deena Stryker Photographs digital collection. It includes approximately 1,850 photographs shot in Cuba between 1963 and 1964, processed by Alberto Korda on the island. The collection features photographs of Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro, as well as other major figures in the Cuban Revolution, including Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Celia Sánchez, and René Vallejo. In addition to images of key members of the Castro government at work and relaxing, the collection documents everyday life in Havana and in rural Cuba, focusing on farms, development projects, and schools.
Images of the Protestant Family April 2, 2009
Posted by Jill Katte in : Announcements, Protestant Family , add a comment
In our March build, we collaborated with Duke’s Divinity School Library to republish a collection entitled Images of mainline Images of mainline Protestant children and families in the U.S., which features articles and advertising images of children and families in the U.S. from Protestant-supported or targeted magazines.
The collection includes images depicting family size and health, articles and advertisements on scientific nutrition, and other images directly related to scientific progress and domesticity. Also included are images depicting families in Protestant mission settings. Content for the collection was selected by Dr. Amy Laura Hall and Andrew Keck in the Duke Divinity School.
We acknowledge the generous support of the ATLA/ATS Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative (CDRI), funded by the Luce Foundation, and the Valparaiso Child in Religion and Ethics Program, funded by the Lilly Foundation.
The collection is also part of the American Theological Library Association and the Association of Theological Schools Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative.
