Managing Risk with a Virtual Reading Room: Two Born Digital Projects

In March 2010, the University of California, Irvine, launched a site to provide online access to papers of Richard Rorty in the form of a virtual reading room.1 Although we didn’t know it then, we quickly learned that we were one of the first academic repositories in the United States to risk providing remote, online access to born-digital manuscripts. The virtual reading room mitigated the risks involved in providing this kind of access to personal, archival materials with privacy and copyright issues by limiting the number of qualified users and by limiting the discoverability of full-text content on the open web. In January 2013, we launched a site providing access to another group of born-digital materials, the papers of Mark Poster. The two collections had as many differences as they did commonalities, and a comparison of the two projects is useful for understanding the range of decisions and issues that ultimately impact access to born-digital personal manuscript collections

Digital Preservation Should Be More Holistic: A Digital Stewardship Approach

A considerable amount of creative, cultural, and research output is expressed in digital form. It is imperative that the memory sector rapidly improve its capability and capacity for handling digital content in all forms, including complex data. It took gallery, library, archive, and museum (GLAM) sector institutions somewhere between decades and centuries to implement systems for managing physical collections. Those who work with digital content are acutely aware that the same time frames are not afforded when it comes to saving our digital cultural heritage. The “fragility” of content produced from computing environments — thanks to the rapid churn of technological innovation and obsolescence — means that even acquiring, preserving, and providing sustained access to a seemingly “simple” stand-alone file can take considerable effort. The interdependencies and limitations of the computing platforms, software, hardware, and other peripherals (whether mass-manufactured or custom-developed) bring a level of complexity that is typically not experienced with physical collections

Does Every Research Library Need a Digital Humanities Center?

The digital humanities (DH) are attracting considerable attention and funding at the same time that this nascent field strives for an identity. Some research libraries are committing significant resources to creating DH centers. But questions about whether such an investment is warranted persist across the cultural heritage community.In this essay, Jennifer Schaffner and Ricky Erway suggest many ways to respond to the needs of digital humanists, and creating a DH center is appropriate in relatively few circumstances. They also share examples of successful collaborations with DH, but caution that one size does not fit all.  Key highlights:In most settings, it is best to observe what DH academics are already doing and then set out to address gaps. This may include:package existing collections and services as a "virtual DH center"advocate coordinated support for digital scholarship across the parent institutioncreate avenues for scholarly use and enhancement of metadataconsult scholars at the beginning of library digitization projectsget involved in planning for sustainability and preservation of DH research resultscommit to a DH center.A "DH-friendly" environment may be more effective than a DH center.Library culture may need to evolve in order for librarians to be seen as effective DH partners.This essay is intended to prepare research library directors and other decision-makers to respond to questions from deans or provosts who may ask what the library is doing about the digital humanities. It discusses specific concerns of digital humanists and ties these to decisions that might be made by directors, in hopes of bridging the gap between how library directors and DH researchers think about the library's role in digital humanities

New Opportunities for Collaboration in the Age of Digital Special Collections

This essay explores the impact of digitized and born-digital special collections on teaching, learning, and research, and, through institutional case studies, considers the variety of collaborative opportunities made possible by the digitization of special collections

Academic discourses have been shaped by the material forms of dissemination

An interview with Martin Paul Eve about open access

From Accession to Access: A Born-Digital Materials Case Study

Between 2011 and 2013 the Getty Institutional Records and Archives made its first foray into the comprehensive ingest, arrangement, description, and delivery of unique born-digital material when it received oral history interviews generated by some of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. project partners. This case study touches upon the challenges and affordances inherent to this hybrid collection of audiovisual recordings, digital mixed-media files, and analog transcripts. It describes the Archives’ efforts to develop a basic processing workflow that applies the resource-management strategy commonly known as “MPLP” in a digital environment, while striving to safeguard the integrity and authenticity of the files, adhere to professional standards, and uphold fundamental archival principles. The study describes the resulting workflow and highlights a few of the inexpensive technologies that were successfully employed to automate or expedite steps in the processing of content that was transferred via easily-accessible media and consisted of current file formats

Hold it All Together: a Case Study in Quality Control for Born-Digital Archiving

Policies, standards, procedures and software implemented at PAD-Pavia Archivi Digitali (Università di Pavia, Italy) to ensure correct ingest and sustainable long term preservation of digital-native literary papers of Italian writers

Prioritization of Information: An Archives Website Content Analysis and Interviews to Model the Prioritization of Online Content Availability

This study describes a content analysis of the consistency of information available on university archives and special collections websites of the institutions in the University of North Carolina system. Additionally, interviews were conducted with archivists at these universities to understand obstacles they face when posting content online. From the results a prioritized information model for university archives and special collections websites was developed.Master of Science in Information Scienc