Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 12.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Magali Duclaux <duclaux@elda.fr> (39)
Subject: ELRA news
[2] From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org> (266)
Subject: "What's New in Digital Preservation?" December 2001-
April 2002
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 06:58:52 +0100
From: Magali Duclaux <duclaux@elda.fr>
Subject: ELRA news
ELRA
European Language Resources Association
ELRA News
*************************************************************
We are happy to announce a new resource available via ELRA:
S0123 Basque Spoken Corpus, by John Aske (Professor Assistant,
Foreign Languages Department, Salem State College)
A description is given below.
*** Basque Spoken Corpus, by John Aske (Professor Assistant,
Foreign Languages Department, Salem State College) ***
This is a collection of forty two narratives in the Basque language
(Euskara) by native speakers. It includes sound files (MP3 format)
and full detailed transcripts. Each of the narratives is a recounting
of a short, silent movie that the speaker has just watched to a friend
or acquaintance who has not seen the movie (no other person was
present in the room, just the recording equipment). Two short silent
movies were used to elicit the narratives: Twenty one of the narratives
correspond to the 7-minute silent movie The Pear Story (Chafe, ed., 1980)
and the other 21 are about a 12 minute collage from Charlie Chaplin's
Modern Times. The recordings were made as a part of a study on Basque
word order in 1993 (Aske 1997). The transcriptions are made following a
modified version of the guidelines given in Edwards and Lampert 1993. The
speakers were from different age groups, different dialects, and had differing
language abilities. Profiles of the speakers are also included. In addition to
the 42 narratives with transcripts, 53 additional sound tracks of
extemporaneous
speech and description of still images are also included.
=====================================
For further information, please contact:
ELRA/ELDA
55-57 rue Brillat-Savarin
F-75013 Paris, France
Tel +33 1 43 13 33 33
Fax +33 1 43 13 33 30
E-mail mapelli@elda.fr
or visit the online catalogue on our Web site:
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html
or http://www.elda.fr
=====================================
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 06:59:20 +0100
From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org>
Subject: "What's New in Digital Preservation?" December 2001-April
2002
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
May 7, 2002
"What's New in Digital Preservation?"
December 2001-April 2002
Below is a very useful compilation of selected recent activity in the field
of digital preservation created by the UK's Digital Preservation Coalition
and the National Library of Australia as part of their joint Memorandum of
Understanding. This is the first issue of a continuing service. The
compilers are interested in feedback to improve the service. Contact:
preservation@jisc.ac.uk
David Green
===========
--------------------------------------------------------
What's New in Digital Preservation?
A joint service of the Digital Preservation Coalition and PADI compiled by
Michael Day (UKOLN, University of Bath)
This is a summary of selected recent activity in the field of digital
preservation compiled from the Digital Preservation and padiforum-l email
lists and the Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Gateway.
1. Organisations
1.1 The Digital Preservation Coalition
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) was officially launched at the
House of Commons on the 27 February 2002. This event was very
successful and gained a large amount of press-coverage for digital
preservation issues.
On the 25 March 2002 in London, the coalition organised a DPF Forum on
Web-archiving. Presentations included a general introduction to
Web-archiving issues and the UK Web domain; also descriptions of
Web-archiving activity in the BBC and the Bibliothque nationale de France.
A workshop report and links to all presenters' PowerPoint slides are
available on the DPC Web-site:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/preservation/webforum.html
A more detailed review of recent DPC activity can be found in:
Neil Beagrie, "An update on the Digital Preservation Coalition," D-Lib
Magazine, 8 (4), April 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/beagrie/04beagrie.html
1.2 The US National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation
Program (NDIIPP)
This initiative began in late 2000, when Congress called for the Library of
Congress (LC) to take the lead in a national collaborative planning effort
for the long-term preservation of digital content. The April 2002 issue of
D-Lib Magazine contained a progress report by Amy Friedlander (Council on
Library and Information Resources). . Friedlander outlines the results of
some stakeholder meetings held lastNovember, including the support for a
national initiative from stakeholder groups that are not part of the
traditional scholarly community, e.g. the entertainment industry. A
research programme - which will be a key part ofNDIIPP - also aims to be
collaborative in nature and LC is already workingwith the National Science
Foundation (NSF) and other federal agencies in drawing up a research
agenda. An invitational workshop to discuss theresearch agenda was held in
April 2002 in Washington and information is beingposted to a website
mounted at the University of Michigan (www.si.umich.edu/digarch/).
An additional theme in NDIIPP is the importance of building operational
systems. It is acknowledged that mistakes may be made, but that it is
important to learn lessons from these. LC have also worked on devising a
conceptual framework in order to see how the many andvaried entities and
functions related to the long-term preservation of digital content might
interact. This is also described briefly in this paper.
Amy Friedlander, "The National Digital Information Infrastructure
Preservation Program: expectations, realities, choices and progress to
date," D-Lib Magazine, 8 (4), April 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/friedlander/04friedlander.html
1.3 OCLC/RLG Working Groups
In April 2002, the OCLC/RLG Preservation Metadata Working Group published a
proposed metadata element set for what the OAIS model refers to as
'Preservation Description Information' (PDI). Previous documents from the
group had provided a state-of-the-art survey of preservation metadata
activities and a recommendation for OAIS 'Content Information.' Publication
of the PDI recommendation means that the group has almost completed its
commissioned task. A final document bringing together both metadata
recommendations is currently being compiled. All working group documents
are available in PDF from: http://www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/documents.shtm
The other joint OCLC/RLG digital preservation initiative, the Digital
Archive Attributes Working Group, published a draft document entitled
Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository in August 2001, This has been
very well received and is available in PDF from:
http://www.rlg.org/longterm/attribswg.html
2. Projects:
2.1 The Cedars project
Work on the Cedars (CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives) project finished in
March 2002. The project had been going for almost four years and a final
workshop was held in Manchester on the 25-26 February in order to
disseminate information about the project, put that work into a wider
context and to look forward to what should happen after the project had
ended. A short summary of this event has been published in the April
edition of RLG DigiNews, while a longer version is available on the Cedars
Project Web-site: Michael Day and Maggie Jones, Cedars Final Workshop,
Manchester Conference Centre, UMIST, Manchester, 25-26 February 2002,
Leeds: Cedars Project, 22 April 2002.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/pubconf/umist/finalWorkshopRep.html
Michael Day, "The Final Cedars Workshop: a report from Manchester, UK," RLG
DigiNews, 6 (2) April 2002.
http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews6-2.html#conference
In the first quarter of 2002, the Cedars project has also published a
series of guides to various digital preservation issues. Available in print
form (and in PDF) are guides to intellectual property rights, preservation
metadata and digital collection management. Each of these is about 20 pages
long, and are intended to provide non-technical introductions for anyone
interested in aspects of digital preservation, including librarians,
archivists, records managers and the creators of digital content. The
guides describe some specific outcomes of the Cedars project (e.g. the
draft metadata specification) but also attempt to provide a more general
view and give indications of further reading. In the same series, a guide
to digital preservation strategies is now available in HTML and an
introduction to the Cedars digital archive prototype is under preparation.
These guides are available in digital form (PDF or HTML) from the Cedars
project Web-site: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/pubconf/pubconf.html
2.2 ERPANET
ERPANET (Electronic Resource Preservation and Access NETwork) has been
funded by the European Commission to help bring together all types of
organisation interested in digital preservation issues. It will primarily
provide awareness about digital preservation by providing information and
advice services, thematic workshops, training seminars, guidelines, etc.
The project started in November 2001. Project partners are the Humanities
Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University
ofGlasgow, the Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv (Swiss Federal Archives), the
Rijksarchiefdienst (National Archives of the Netherlands) and the Institute
for Archival and Library Science at the University of Urbino. More
information on ERPANET can be found on the project's Web pages at:
http://www.erpanet.org/
2.3 Preservation of electronic scholarly journals
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has funded seven major US libraries to
investigate the development of digital repositories for e-journals. Work on
these projects is continuing, but the Harvard University E-Journal
Archiving project has recently (December 2001) published a report produced
by Inera, Inc. on the feasibility of developing a common archival article
Document Type Definition (DTD). The report recommended the creation of an
XML DTD (or Schema), which would permit "successful conversion of
significant intellectual content from publisher SGML and XML files into a
common format for archival purposes." Also in December, the Harvard project
published a draft proposal for the technical specifications of a Submission
Information Package (SIP) that defined data formats, file naming
conventions, metadata, etc. Both of these documents are available in PDF
from the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Web-site: Inera, Inc., E-Journal
Archive DTD feasibility study: commissioned by the Harvard University
Library, Office for Information Systems, E-Journal Archiving Project, 5
December 2001. http://www.diglib.org/preserve/hadtdfs.pdf
Harvard University Library, Harvard E-Journal Archive: Submission
Information Package (SIP) specification, v. 1.0 draft, 19 December 2001.
http://www.diglib.org/preserve/harvardsip10.pdf
General information on the Mellon-funded programme can be found on the DLF
Web-site: http://www.diglib.org/preserve/presjour.htm
3. Other events
A meeting of the US National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Book
Industry Study Group (BISG) took place during the American Library
Association's Midwinter 2002 Conference on the 20 January. This was
entitled 'Archiving Electronic Publications' and included progress
reportsfrom two of the Mellon funded e-journal projects: Harvard
University's E-Journal Archiving project and Elsevier Science's
collaboration with YaleUniversity Library. A final presentation reported on
collaboration between OCLC and the US Government Printing Office (GPO) on a
Web Document DigitalArchive pilot project. A short summary of the meeting
can be found at: http://www.niso.org/presentations/niso-bisg-rpt.html
4. Other recent publications:
Michael K. Bergman, "The deep Web: surfacing hidden value," Journal of
Electronic Publishing, 7 (1), August 2001.
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/bergman.html
This 'white paper' is concerned with the so-called 'deep Web,' whereby
information is buried deep within dynamically generated sites and which can
not, therefore, be easily reached by standard search engines. The paper is
essentially marketing a product (search technology from a company called
BrightPlanet) and is not about preservation, but it may be able to inform
harvesting-based Web-preservation initiatives on the nature of dynamic or
database-driven Web-sites.
Hilary Berthon, Susan Thomas and Colin Webb, "Safekeeping: a cooperative
approach to building a digital preservation resource," D-Lib Magazine, 8
(1), January 2002. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january02/berthon/01berthon.html
This paper describes the National Library of Australia's Safekeeping
project, which has funding from the Council on Library and Information
Resources (CLIR). The project is trying to facilitate a distributed network
of 'safekept' resources relating to digital preservation (selectedfrom the
PADI database) by encouraging resource owners to take responsibility for
providing long-term access - or to nominate third parties who could do so
on their behalf. The co-operative model of the Safekeeping project is
interesting because it might encourage the creators and owners of resources
to face up to the responsibilities that they hold with regard to
maintaining long-term access.
Stewart Granger, "Digital preservation and deep infrastructure," D-Lib
Magazine, 8 (2), February 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february02/granger/02granger.html
This is an 'opinion' piece by Stewart Granger of the University of Leeds.
Anne R. Kenney, Nancy Y. McGovern, Peter Botticelli, Richard Entlich,
CarlLagoze and Sandrea Payette, "Preservation risk management for Web
resources: virtual remote control in Cornell's Project Prism," D-Lib
Magazine, 8 (1), January 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january02/kenney/01kenney.html
This paper suggests that Web preservation strategies could use risk
management methodologies. It is based on the work of Cornell University's
Project Prism, funded as part of the second phase of the US Digital
Libraries Initiative.
Julia Martin and David Coleman, "Change the metaphor: the archive as an
ecosystem," Journal of Electronic Publishing, 7 (3), April 2002.
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-03/martin.html
The authors of this paper are researchers at the University of New South
Wales and the University of Sydney. The paper argues that there is unlikely
to be any single solution to the digital preservation problem butthat rapid
technological change will mean that preservation solutions willneed to be
in a state of constant change.
Michael L. Nelson and B. Danette Allen, "Object persistence and
availability in digital libraries," D-Lib Magazine, 8 (1), January 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january02/nelson/01nelson.html This paper -
produced by researchers working at the NASA Langley Research Center -
looked at the persistence and continued availability of 1,000 digital
library objects. These were mostly found in Web-based e-print services like
arXiv, CogPrints and PubMed Central. The authors found that in just over
one year, 3% of the tested objects no longer appeared to be available. With
an assumption that objects placed in e-print services should persist longer
than the average Web page, the authors cautiously conclude that this
finding may have relevance for those concerned with long-term preservation.
However, Nelson and Allen consider that more detailed studies of digital
library object persistence need to be made.
Elizabeth Yakel, "Digital preservation," Annual Review of Information
Science and Technology, 35, 2001, 337-378. A general overview of digital
preservation issues by an assistant professor in the School of Information
at the University of Michigan.
5. Other links:
From the Digitale Duurzaamheid Digital Preservation Testbed
(http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/): Migration context and current
status. Digital Preservation Testbed White Paper, 5 December 2001.
http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/bibliotheek/Migration.pdf
- Approaches towards the long term preservation of archival digital records.
Digital Preservation Testbed Infosheet,v. 1.7, 19 September 2001.
http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/index.cfm?paginakeuze=186&categorie=2
Also (from the digital-preservation@jiscmail.ac.uk and
padiforum-l@nla.gov.au e-mail lists):
Andreas Aschenbrenner, Long-Term Preservation of digital material -
building an archive to preserve digital cultural heritage from the
Internet, Masters Thesis, Technical University Vienna, December 2001.
Available in various formats from:
http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~aola/publications.html
Arthur Smith, Long Term Archiving of Digital Documents in Physics, report
of an IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics) Conference
held in Lyon, 5-6 November 2001.
http://publish.aps.org/IUPAP/ltaddp_report.html
Dollar Consulting, Archival preservation of Smithsonian web resources:
strategies, principles, and best practices. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Archives, 20 July 2001.
http://www.si.edu/archives/archives/dollar%20report.html
VERS (Victorian Electronic Records Strategy) Web-site:
http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/vers/
**************************************************************************
Neil Beagrie JISC Digital Preservation Focus
Programme Director Secretary, Digital Preservation Coalition
JISC London Office, Tel/Fax/Voicemail :+44 (0)709 2048179
King's College London email: preservation@jisc.ac.uk
Strand Bridge House url:
www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/preservation/
138 - 142, The Strand, email list:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/digital-preservation
London WC2R 1HH
**************************************************************************
--============================================================== NINCH-Announce is an announcement listserv, produced by the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH). The subjects of announcements are not the projects of NINCH, unless otherwise noted; neither does NINCH necessarily endorse the subjects of announcements. We attempt to credit all re-distributed news and announcements and appreciate reciprocal credit.
For questions, comments or requests to un-subscribe, contact the editor: <mailto:david@ninch.org> ============================================================== See and search back issues of NINCH-ANNOUNCE at <http://www.cni.org/Hforums/ninch-announce/>. ==============================================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed May 08 2002 - 02:28:41 EDT