David Rosenthal has a detailed and useful analysis of the value of open format specifications for preservation: If we plot the quality achieved by a newly created renderer for a format against the cost of creating it we will get an S curve. A certain amount of money is needed to get to a barely [...]
Tag Archives: management
Effects of Open Source on Preservation
05-Jan-09Preserving Data in a Hostile Environment
30-Dec-08Found via the Washington University DLS blog, here’s an article from the NYT on the challenges faced by the National Archives when it comes to the massive data dump the Bush administration is about to unload. The archives invoked its emergency plan to deal with problems in transferring two types of electronic files: a huge [...]
Library Usability Links 12/11/08
12-Dec-08I’m a fan of user personas, but building personas for applications is an interesting idea. SocialStartup.com identifies five fundamental social patterns: Public Timeline Asymetrical Follow News Feed Re-blogging Social Proof Via the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog: The Electronic Library 26, no. 6 (2008): Includes “A Metadata Manager’s Role in Collaborative Projects: The Rutgers University Libraries [...]
Building a Scanning Studio from Scratch
09-Dec-08I’ve been asked by a small-sized museum / special library to make a suggestion on what kind of equipment a start-up digitization studio would need while operating under a budget of approximately $3,200. This studio would need the cabability of digitizing photos, and possibly some text, post-processing the scans, hosting the images on an existing [...]
Library Usability Links 11/16/08
16-Nov-08The University of Minnesota Walter Library hosts World Usability Day talks in conjunction with Campus IT. New to me: Interactions which is available from the ACM Digital Library A description of user personas, this one with a useful persona template [doc] EDSF report on Color Preference in Web Design [pdf] “Results from this research found [...]
I came across a very interesting article today by Michael Boock on the organizaation structure at Oregon State University: Boock, M. (2008, September). Organizing for Digitization at Oregon State University: a Case Study and Comparison with ARL Libraries. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34(5), 445-451. Retrieved October 6, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database. I like [...]
Until Zotero 2.0 comes out, which will be server-based as opposed to client-based, keeping track of research across multiple computers is a challenge. The solution I’ve been using on my windows boxes is a combination of Firefox Portable, Zotero, and MS Synctoy. Firefox Portable will let you install an instance of the browser on a [...]
Is the end near for DRM music?
09-Feb-07Jobs recently put up a position statement on his/Apple’s stance on DRM and the iTunes store. The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four†music companies: [...]
Digital Preservation
26-Sep-06I’m heading out to Cornell next week to attend a Digital Preservation Management workshop. In the preparatory readings, two preservations services caught my eye: HD Rosetta: This service will etch documents onto a nickel plate at such a small resolution that from an 8.5″ x 11″ plate you can retrieve up to 18,000 pages of [...]
Is it library work?
09-Sep-06Terence Huwe has an interesting article in the recent edition of Online. Here’s the citation: Huwe, T. K. (2006). From librarian to digital communicator. Online, 30(5), 21-26. He charts the path through which the U. Berkeley’s Institute and Industrial Relations Library has inserted itself into the information flow starting back when e-mail was such a [...]