Over 2017, a group of collaborating organizations, united in the commitment to digital preservation, came together to explore how they can better communicate with the wider community. As an initial effort, the group drafted a Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values that is now being released for community comment until 1st March 2018.
This year, the first ever International Digital Preservation Day was celebrated around the world on November 30th, 2017. Digital Preservation Coalition organised this initiative, aiming both to celebrate achievements, and to highlight how much there is still to do. IFLA raised awareness about the challenges libraries face in preserving digital heritage, and in ensuring that it remains accessible in the future. This includes issues such as policies, storage, and « bit-rot » – the masses of digital content that become unreadable as technology evolves. A recent survey conducted under the UNESCO PERSIST initiative offered some ideas on what other action may be needed.
The new plan grew out of a few important developments. In 2015, the NASIG Board established the Financial Planning Task Force to take a long-term view of NASIG’s finances, set benchmarks and timelines, and to establish financial goals for the next five years. The Board appointed a Strategic Plan Implementation Task Force to draft the final strategic plan for the remaining items.
A recent report from Jisc showcases the upward trend in universities and academics setting up their own presses in an environment increasingly dominated by large commercial publishing houses. Following up on the recommendations arising from this report, authors Janneke Adema and Graham Stone put forward some ideas on how to best support these new initiatives through community and infrastructure-building.
Libraries frequently support their open access (OA) fund using money from their collections budget. Interest in assessment of OA funds is arising. Cost per use is a common method to assess library collections expenditures. This article examines a method and discusses the limitations and implications of using article level metrics to calculate cost per use for OA APCs.
The IFLA Serials and Other Continuing Resources Section sponsored, in collaboration with the IFLA Acquisition and Collection Development Section and the European Solidarity Center, a satellite meeting on Open Access: Action Required, which was held in Gdansk, Poland on 16-17 August, 2017.
The papers presented there, some of which are now in the IFLA Library, are thought-provoking examples not only of what Open Access means today from the librarians’ point of view, but of where it might lead us in the future.
The Library of Congress has launched labs.loc.gov as a new online space designed to empower exploration and discovery in digital collections. Library of Congress Labs will host a changing selection of experiments, projects, events and resources designed to encourage creative use of the Library’s digital collections. Labs will enable users at every level of technical knowledge to engage with the Library’s digital collections. Visitors will have the opportunity to try experimental applications; crowdsourcing programs will allow the public to add their knowledge to the Library’s collections; and tutorials will provide a stepping stone for new computational discovery.
The National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) is sponsoring a survey of organizations in the United States who are actively involved in or planning to archive content from the web. The survey is the fourth in a longitudinal study to track the evolution of web archiving programs and activity in the United States, focusing on similarities and differences in programmatic approaches, types of content being archived, tools and services being used, access modes being provided, and emerging best practices and challenges. The results of the survey will be reported to NDSA members and summary results will be shared publicly in 2018. Results from the three previous surveys (2011, 2013, 2016) are available.
Dialog mit Bibliotheken is a specialist journal about the German National Library, its activities and its range of services. In this issue published just before the Frankfurt Book Fair, innovations in subject cataloguing in operation are presented. The expansion of collection activities with regard to open-access publications is also discussed. In addition, two historians describe aspects of their research into the history of the German National Library between 1933 and 1945 and 1945 and 1990. It also provides an insight into the Library’s internal public relations by casting an eye over the work of the Digital Services department.
The journal is also available online as a free download (in German).
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) is inviting nominations for a new global list of the most ‘at risk’ Digitally Endangered Species. The list will be reviewed by an international panel of DPC members and will be published as its contribution to the first International Digital Preservation Day (IDPD17) on 30 November 2017.
