Cross
Currents No 12 Dec 2002
A
digest of cross sectoral information management events, issues and ideas in
organisations, libraries, archives and museums, with special emphasis on
arts and the humanities.
The
National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada will merge to
form the Library and Archives of Canada. The new institution will seek to
develop partnerships with other
communities and knowledge management professionals to create networks and
synergies and to position itself as ‘a leading knowledge and information
management organization-unique in the world’. For updates, see the currently
separate websites at http;//www.nlc-bnc.ca and http://www.archives.ca
Meanwhile,
in Australia, the Federal Government has initiated an efficiency audit of
federally-funded Australian cultural institutions, including the National
Library, National Archives, National Museum, ScreenSound and Australia
Council. [Sydney Morning Herald 11.12.02]
Australian
UNESCO Memory of the World Register
The
Australian Memory of the World Committee is seeking nominations of nationally
significant documentary heritage material for entry on the UNESCO Memory of
the World Register, established to preserve and provide access to the world's
most significant documentary heritage by identifying on International,
Regional and National Registers, documentary material of world significance.
Australian categories of interest for the list of Lost and Missing Australian
Documentary Heritage of National Significance include architectural drawings,
government, literature, music, science & technology and sport. [Source:
Aus-Archivists] Details of the
International program are available at: http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/en/index_mdm.html.
Information about the Australian program is available at: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~aghowell/mow/amow_hmp.htm
Charging
Models for Digital Cultural Heritage
The
Higher Education Digital Service (HEDS) has published a report on the above
topic on behalf of the Mellon Foundation. The study investigated some of the
underlying assumptions being made in the move from previously analogue
photographic services into the realm of digital capture and delivery. It shows
how pricing structures are determined for delivering digital versions of rare
or unique items in libraries, museums, archives and similar public
institutions. It gives evidence of how these digital pricing structures
compare to those used for the delivery of the same or similar resources in
analogue form. It explores the thresholds that determine the point at which an
organization charges for the sale of content and other rights to their digital
holdings and the reasons given for such charges. It concludes by identifying
the clear relationship between the gatekeeper function, the pricing policy and
the assignment of revenue raised in the institutions accounting of whether a
service is profitable or not. Future trends and further steps are also
suggested. [Source DigLib]. Web http://heds.herts.ac.uk/mellon/charging_models.html
.
Humanities
and Technology
The
American Association for History and Computing (AAHC) has called for book
proposals as part of a new series on the humanities and technology, edited by
David J. Staley, Jeffrey G. Barlow, and Dennis A. Trinkle. The goal of the
series is to explore how emerging technologies will transform the
presentation, communication and understanding of history and the humanities.
[Source NINCH]. Further details . http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
or <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Valuing
Cultural Heritage
Edward
Elgar Publishing has just published a new book called Valuing Cultural
Heritage, which is about the application of non-market environmental
valuation techniques to historic buildings, monuments and artefacts. The
editors are Stale Nayrud and Richard Ready.
Web
X: A Decade of the World Wide Web
The
Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary
and Linguistic Computing have called for papers for the ACH/ALLC 2003
conference Web X: A Decade of the World Wide Web to be held May 29-June
2, 2003 at the University of
Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA. Key questions: How exactly are IT developments
changing the ways in which humanities scholars work? What new and distinct
methodologies is IT now bringing to the humanities? How do we expect
methodologies -and the role of the humanities scholar - to change in the near
future as a result of the impact of IT? How are IT-related developments in one
discipline affecting or likely to affect those in others? [Source NINCH]. Web:
http://www.english.uga.edu/webx/
In
America
[American
Memory Project]. The Library of Congress has added a digitally scanned
collection of more than 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music registered for
copyright 1820-1885 to its American Memory Project. It includes popular songs,
operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo
instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for
band and orchestra. [Source: LII] Web: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mussmhtml/
[Music
in Art: Music Iconography as a Source for Music History] The 9th
Conference of the Research Center for Music Iconography, CUNY will be held in
New York, 6-8 November 2003. Proposals for papers on relevant topics are invited at http://web.gc.cuny.edu/rcmi
[Source: IAML]
{RIPM]
The International Index to Nineteenth-Century Music Periodicals has
expanded its chronological scope to 1950. RIPM has already publishing over 150
volumes and an electronic database containing over 410,000 annotated records
dealing with 19th-century music journals. The records covering 1900-1950 will
begin to appear regularly in RIPM Online and RIPM on CD-ROM in 2003. Initially
the focus will be on 20th-century English language journals, although journals
in other languages will also be treated. For a listing of new RIPM
20th-century titles selected for priority indexing click here http://www.nisc.com/RIPM_20th_Century.htm
For sales information contact sales@nisc.com. Web: http://www.nisc.com
In
Australia
[ASRA}
The Australia Sound Recordings Association held its 2002 Conference at
ScreenSound in Canberra during September with presentations on Florence
Austral, MusicAustralia, Dame Nellie Melba and other topics. Further details:
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sound/
[MusicAustralia].
The project’s pilot website is now available at http://www.musicaustralia.org.
The project aims
to develop a number of music information services and to provide integrated
access to other services of interest. Initial links include the National
Library of Australia's selection of online music indexes and databases, access
to registration facilities for the International Standard Music Number Agency,
Australian Libraries Gateway. register of selected international music
projects, Register of Australian Archives and Manuscripts, PictureAustralia,
Oral History Directory, AusLit, and funding opportunities available from the
Australia Council Music Board. Future service links will include a directory
of Australian musicians and music organisations, links to resources that
provide contextual information links to major non Australian collections and
resources self-archiving services educational and curriculum services.
In
Europe
[European
Musical Digital Content]. The Science Park Office of the University of
Rome, with partners the Municipality of Rome, the MTV musical network, the
Department of Art, Music and Performance at University of Bologna and the AMIC
(Archives of Italian Contemporary Music) is preparing a proposal for an
e-content program which aims to build a network of musical archives and
stimulate the development and the use of European digital content. Expressions
of interest will be sought in December 2002. [Source: IAML]
[MusicNetwork].
The European Commission has funded MUSICNETWORK, a new network in Interactive
Music Multimedia ‘to assist the music industry to enter the marketplace by
drawing on the assets and mutual interest of the different actors in using,
technologies, tools, products, formats and models’. Proposed services
include a large archive, best practice guidelines, tutorials, free workshops,
new standards, discussion forums, promotion of product, market and technical
information. Participation is open to industries, research centres,
publishers, libraries, archives, music distributors, schools of music, and
associations. Web:: http://www.interactivemusicnetwork.org
[AusStage].
The Australian Performing Arts Database project has launched its site at http://www:AusStage.edu.au.
The database currently has over 11,000 records of current Australian events
from January 2001 and past events drawn from the Australian and New Zealand
Theatre Record and the program collections of the National Library of
Australia and the Dennis Wolanski Library collection at the University of NSW.
[Source: Museums Australia Performing Arts Special Interest Group newsletter].
ArtSTOR
The
University of California San Diego has received US$850,000 from the Mellon
Foundation to support several digital media initiatives, including the
creation of a prototype Union Catalogue for Art Images in partnership with
Harvard University and the Cleveland Museum of Art, involving, initially, the
gathering 500,000 metadata records describing art and other images
created at these institutions. The grant will also support the digitisation of
UCSD Libraries' slide collection, which will be added to the ArtSTOR
collection. [Source: NINCH].
Further details
http://www.mellon.org/artstor.
ARTISTE
OAI Repository
ARTISTE
is a European Commission project that has developed integrated content and
metadata-based image retrieval across several major art galleries in Europe.
Collaborating galleries include the Louvre in Paris, the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the National Gallery in
London. Further information: http://www.it-innovation.soton.ac.uk/artiste/.
[Source FOS[
Australian
Contemporary Visual Arts and Craft
The
Myer Report, hailed as the first comprehensive mapping and examination of the
contemporary arts and crafts sector in Australia, is available from the
Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Recommends
include increased funding for practitioners, organisations, publications and
events, changes in industry conditions and a national education campaign.
Website: http://www.dcita.gov.au/
Christine
Soo, Timothy Devinney, David
Midgley and others have written Knowledge Management: Philosophy,
Processes, and Pitfalls in the California Management Review. Vol 44, no 4,
Summer 2002: 129-150. The article, funded by grants from several Australian
research agencies, discusses confusion arising from the promotion by IT
companies of data or document management software as knowledge management
systems. It emphasises essential concept as the process of learning,
understanding and applying information using four subsystems: (1) a database
subsystem; (2) an organizational language subsystem; (3) a networking
subsystem, and 94) a transfer subsystem. It offers 8 KM lessons or caveats.
[Source: Current Cites]
Thomas
A Stewart’s latest article How to Think With Your Gut in Business
November 2002 (pp98-104) refers to a growing body of research that
appears to show that intuition is inseparable from effective decision making
and asserts ‘in complex or chaotic situations...intuition usually beats
rational analysis’. [Source Current Cites.
Ingrid
Mason from the Powerhouse Museum Research Library in Sydney presented a paper Knowledge
management, valuation of intangibles, and the strategic development of
cultural institutions: what does knowledge management mean to the cultural
sector? How can we 'manage' knowledge? at the Museums
Documentation Association Conference in the UK, 4-6 September 2002. Intangible
assets are slippery in nature; they are hard to pinpoint and even harder to
incorporate into the more traditionally tangible nature of strategic plans and
performance measures. Nonetheless, cultural institutions are compelled to find
ways to identify and illuminate their value, cultivate and exploit them.
[Source; AMO]. Web address for paper: http://www.phm.gov.au/library/papers/ingrid/
In
New Zealand, a steering group has completed Collaborating at Speed:
Innovation Infrastructure for a Knowledge Economy, a report on the
establishment of an Internet Advanced Research Network in New Zealand. The
report recommends: a network that is open to private sector stakeholders as
well as the research and education communities; connectivity to all major
centres within 12 months, with expansion to regional centres to follow;
funding from government as well as private sector groups and a program to
stimulate application development in areas like Creative, Biotechnology,
Tele-health, AgriTech, ICT, Education and e-Learning. A consortium is proposed
as an immediate step to develop an appropriate governance and management
structure for the establishment of the network. [Source: The Update]. Web:
http://www.ngi.org.nz .
DLIST:
Digital Library of Information Science and Technology
The
School of Information Resources and Library Science and the Arizona Health
Sciences Library at the University of Arizona have launched DLIST, a Digital
Library of Information Science and Technology repository of electronic
resources on the domains of Library and Information Science (LIS) and
Information Technology (IT) incorporating published papers, data sets,
instructional and help materials, pathfinders, reports and bibliographies It
runs on the Open Archives Initiative (OAI)-compliant Eprints v.2 software
developed at the University of Southampton. The University invites authors in
relevant areas to register and deposit their papers. Web:http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu
Digital
Library Technology Trends
Sun
Microsystems has published a 38-page white paper Digital Library Technology
Trends, examining new IT architectures, content management issues, and
leading edge academic projects worldwide. A copy is available at http://www.sun.com/.
[Source: Diglib]
JISC
CC-Interop
Current
KISC projects include CC-interop, involving the M25 Systems Team, CDLR, MIMAS
and RIDING, building on expertise acquired in relation to physical and virtual
union catalogues. The project aims to test the feasibility of inter-linking
between physical and virtual union catalogues and further tests many of the
findings highlighted in the UKNUC Feasibility Study Report. CC-interop will
also investigate collection level description schemas in relation to both
clumps and COPAC as well as their use in the selection of targets in clumps.
This will entail the development of guidelines for dealing with variations in
cataloguing indexing practices in order to facilitate interoperability between
the clumps and COPAC. {Source FOS]. Web: http://ccinterop.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/
Reference
Chat
A
group of experts in a Library Journal roundtable discuss live digital
reference services (chat reference, virtual reference, online reference, and
synchronous reference) and conclude that (1) librarians should think of live,
digital reference as just one in a suite of tools they offer the public; and
(2) libraries must offer this service and must do it well -- or someone else,
such as a profit-focused corporation, most assuredly will. (Library Journal
Review News 1 Oct 2002) Web: http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/
Cybermuseums
NINCH
has published Stanley N. Katz’s address What Do We Want from the
Cybermuseum? dealing with the development of digital technology in
museums, particularly as regards the need to rethink institutional
infrastructure, coordinating and integrating digital production, new staffing
models, the potential of broadband for furthering museum education and
outreach, the role of technology in connecting museums with the communities of
the future, the relationship between digital presence and the number of
visitors to the physical museum; and the role of NINCH vis-a-vis its museum
members. [Source NINCH]. Web. http://www.ninch.org/forum/museums.html
Museums
and the Web Conference
Archives
& Museum Informatics’ next Museums and the Web conference, chaired by
Jennifer Trant and David Bearman, will be held on March 19-22, 2003: in
Charlotte, North Carolina USA. [Source NINCH]. Further details and papers from
all previous conferences: http://www.archimuse.com/mw2003/
Reading
behaviour and electronic journals
Carol
Tenopir and Donald W. King in Reading Behaviour and Electronic Journals
(Learned Publishing October 2002) present the findings of several surveys
about the journal reading habits of scholars. According to Current Cites:
‘One interesting finding is that the natural and social science faculty at
the University of Tennessee at Knoxville had a limited awareness of e-print
services. For example, 8 of 99 subjects (8%) knew of arXiv.org, probably the
highest profile e-print service in existence. By contrast, 29% of subjects at
the Oak Ridge National Laboratory knew of the service. While e-print services
may loom large in the minds of reformers, it appears that there is a
significant amount of work to do in educating scholars about the existence and
potentials of such services. Another interesting finding is that, of UT
subjects, only 8% read articles from e-journals
that the library subscribed to, 4% from free e-journals, 3% from e-journals
that subjects subscribed to, and 2% from
authors' Web pages. On the other hand, 41% read articles from personal
print subscriptions and 24% from library print subscriptions’. [Source:
Current Cites]
Library
use varies according to how information will be used.
Behaviours
and patterns of information users strongly relate to how they plan to apply
the information, according to preliminary conclusions of a Digital Library
Federation-commissioned study. According to Current Cites: ‘The survey of
more than 3,000 students and faculty at about 400 colleges and universities in
the United States found that 64% said their own library's Web site met their
current information needs for research. But for coursework, students said they
used more information from their schools' physical and virtual libraries than
from other sources, with 67% using the Web site. For instructional
purposes, teachers reported using only slightly more information from their
institution's physical and virtual libraries than from other sources -- a
faculty member might use one method when seeking information for a class and
another method when searching for research material. And 84% of respondents
said that overall the Internet has changed the way they use their
institution's library. For research, they used considerably more information
from the library -- physical and virtual -- than from other sources. This is
particularly true for researchers in the biological and social sciences, the
arts and humanities, and engineering, but less so for those working in law,
math and the physical sciences. (Educause Review Sep/Oct 2002). Web http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm02511.pdf
New
Open Source ILL System
The
University of Winnipeg Library has announced the OpenILL Project (http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/projects/openill),
which will create an open source ISO ILL/IPIG compliant InterLibrary Loan
system. OpenILL will be deployable locally, or via a remotely hosted option
and will provide a highly configurable environment. The system will
interoperate closely with another open source library product, GODOT (http://godot.lib.sfu.ca/),
which provides a robust resource discovery, linking and requesting system.
GODOT is an open source alternative to linking products like SFX and has been
developed by COPPUL, the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (http://library.usask.ca/coppul/).
The 1st release is planned for December 2002. [Source: FOS]
XOBIS:
the XML Organic Bibliographic Information Schema
The
Medlane Project at Lane Medical Library, Stanford University, has completed an
alpha version of XOBIS, which attempts to restructure broadly interpreted
bibliographic information and authority records in an exploration of the
feasibility of replacing MARC. The schema and two preliminary sample records
are available at http://xobis.stanford.edu
According
to the Press release, unlike the initial XMLMARC DTD, released with version
1.0 of the XMLMARC software, and unlike the new MARC XML schema from the
Library of Congress, XOBIS is not a literal translation of MARC into XML.
Instead, XOBIS conceives of library data in a way that attempts to
simplify its structure without loosing critical content.
Because this is an alpha version, some of MARC's more exotic fields
have not been fully considered. XOBIS builds on crisp reusable data elements
that are explicitly related to each other. This differs from MARC XML which
treats many relationships as record descriptions.
For instance, in MARC XML, the publisher of a work is a part of the
record's description while, in XOBIS, it is represented by a Work to
Organization relationship (that may or may not be controlled by an authorized
Organization record). Future plans include writing an XMLMARC map that will
convert MARC records into the XOBIS format.
[Source: fos-forum]
This
issue of Cross Currents compiled by Paul Bentley
The
Wolanski Foundation would be grateful for feedback
on the scope, format and content of this bulletin..
