114,891 research outputs found

    Like, Link, Share: How Cultural Institutions Are Embracing Digital Technology

    Get PDF
    This report shows how forty cultural innovators are investing in technology and media capacity to connect with new audiences in new ways, create new programs, and strengthen their operations. Established cultural insitutions face challenges as they grapple with rapidly changing technology. Taking full advantage of digital opportunities requires organizations to change their internal systems, work processes, and staff structures, and to tailor the development of digital capabilities to their individual programming, operational, and revenue strategies. However disrutive this process may be, digital strategy is no longer optional but essential. The public expects to engage with culture digitally, to sample and share, to connect and participate

    Striking a Balance Between Physical and Digital Resources

    Get PDF
    In various configurations—be they academic, archival, county, juvenile, monastic, national, personal, public, reference, or research, the library has been a fixture in human affairs for a long time. Digital — meaning, content or communication that is delivered through the internet, is 20 years old (but younger in parts). Basically, both approaches to organizing serve to structure information for access. However, digital is multiplying very fast and libraries all-round contemplate an existential crisis; the more hopeful librarians fret about physical and digital space. Yet, the crux of the matter is not about physical vs. digital: without doubt, the digital space of content or communication transmogrifies all walks of life and cannot be wished away; but, the physical space of libraries is time-tested, extremely valuable, and can surely offer more than currently meets the eye. Except for entirely virtual libraries, the symbiotic relationship between the physical and the digital is innately powerful: for superior outcomes, it must be recognized, nurtured, and leveraged; striking a balance between physical and digital resources can be accomplished. This paper examines the subject of delivering digital from macro, meso, and micro perspectives: it looks into complexity theory, digital strategy, and digitization

    Preparing to Preserve: Three Essential Steps to Building Experience with Long-Term Digital Preservation

    Full text link
    Many organizations face complex questions of how to implement affordable and sustainable digital preservation practices. One strategic priority at the University Libraries at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, United States, is increased focus toward preservation of unique digital assets, whether digitized from physical originals or born digital. A team comprised of experts from multiple functional library departments (including the special collections/archives area and the technology area) was established to help address this priority, and efforts are beginning to translate into operational practice. This work outlines a three-step approach: Partnership, Policy, Pilot taken by one academic research library to strategically build experience utilizing a collaborative team approach. Our experience included the formation of a team, education of all members, and a foundational attitude that decisions would be undertaken as partners rather than competing departments or units. The team’s work included the development of an initial digital preservation policy, helping to distill the organizational priority and values associated with digital preservation. Several pilot projects were initiated and completed, which provided realistic, first-person experience with digital preservation activities, surfaced questions, and set the stage for developing and refining sustainable workflows. This work will highlight key activities in our journey to date, with the hope that experience gained through this effort could be applicable, in whole or part, to other organizations regardless of their size or capacity

    Knowledge Collaboration: Working with Data and Web Specialists

    Get PDF
    When resources are finite, people strive to manage resources jointly (if they do not rudely take possession of them). Organizing helps achieve—and even amplify—common purpose but often succumbs in time to organizational silos, teaming for the sake of teaming, and the obstacle course of organizational learning. The result is that organizations, be they in the form of hierarchies, markets, or networks (or, gradually more, hybrids of these), fail to create the right value for the right people at the right time. In the 21st century, most organizations are in any event lopsided and should be redesigned to serve a harmonious mix of economic, human, and social functions. In libraries as elsewhere, the three Ss of Strategy—Structure—Systems must give way to the three Ps of Purpose—Processes—People. Thence, with entrepreneurship and knowledge behaviors, data and web specialists can synergize in mutually supportive relationships of shared destiny

    Libraries in transition: evolving the information ecology of the Learning Commons: a sabbatical report

    Get PDF
    This sabbatical report studied various models in order to determine best practices for design, implementation and service of Leaning Commons, a library service model which functionally and spatially integrates library services, information technology services, and media services to provide a continuum of services to the user

    Index to Library Trends Volume 38

    Get PDF
    published or submitted for publicatio

    In Search of a New Model: Library Resource Sharing in China - A Comparative Study

    Get PDF
    This paper reviews the framework of library resource sharing (LRS) in China and examines, from a comparative perspective, cases of recent development, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s. Highlights include: (1) historical review of LRS in the U.S. and China, particularly in the areas of print union catalogs and union lists, online bibliographic utilities, and interlibrary loan; (2) literature review of Chinese publications, and LRS issues and challenges in China; (3) Analysis of three LRS models to provide a contextual grasp of a paradigm shift taking place in China; and (4) comparative analysis of LRS objectives, structure, and governance, etc., in the U.S. and China. The study also underscores the imperative for building a national digital library system in China to gain a competitive edge in resource sharing and to support the country’s rapid social and economic growth. At this stage of development, the success of China Academic Library & Information System provides a convincing argument for a national digital library system with its methods of governing, financing, and development
    • …
    corecore