Encoding models for scholarly literature

We examine the issue of digital formats for document encoding, archiving and publishing, through the specific example of "born-digital" scholarly journal articles. We will begin by looking at the traditional workflow of journal editing and publication, and how these practices have made the transition into the online domain. We will examine the range of different file formats in which electronic articles are currently stored and published. We will argue strongly that, despite the prevalence of binary and proprietary formats such as PDF and MS Word, XML is a far superior encoding choice for journal articles. Next, we look at the range of XML document structures (DTDs, Schemas) which are in common use for encoding journal articles, and consider some of their strengths and weaknesses. We will suggest that, despite the existence of specialized schemas intended specifically for journal articles (such as NLM), and more broadly-used publication-oriented schemas such as DocBook, there are strong arguments in favour of developing a subset or customization of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) schema for the purpose of journal-article encoding; TEI is already in use in a number of journal publication projects, and the scale and precision of the TEI tagset makes it particularly appropriate for encoding scholarly articles. We will outline the document structure of a TEI-encoded journal article, and look in detail at suggested markup patterns for specific features of journal articles

Making Research Data Repositories Visible: The re3data.org Registry

Researchers require infrastructures that ensure a maximum of accessibility, stability and reliability to facilitate working with and sharing of research data. Such infrastructures are being increasingly summarized under the term Research Data Repositories (RDR). The project re3data.org-Registry of Research Data Repositories-has begun to index research data repositories in 2012 and offers researchers, funding organizations, libraries and publishers an overview of the heterogeneous research data repository landscape. In July 2013 re3data.org lists 400 research data repositories and counting. 288 of these are described in detail using the re3data.org vocabulary. Information icons help researchers to easily identify an adequate repository for the storage and reuse of their data. This article describes the heterogeneous RDR landscape and presents a typology of institutional, disciplinary, multidisciplinary and project-specific RDR. Further the article outlines the features of re3data.org, and shows how this registry helps to identify appropriate repositories for storage and search of research data

NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition

What is on the five-year horizon for academic and research libraries? Which trends and technology developments will drive transformation? What are the critical challenges and how can we strategize solutions? These questions regarding technology adoption and educational change steered the discussions of 77 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition, in partnership with the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), ETH Library, and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six developments in technology profiled in this report are poised to impact library strategies, operations, and services with regards to learning, creative inquiry, research, and information management. The three sections of this report constitute a reference and technology planning guide for librarians, library leaders, library staff, policymakers, and technologists

Digital Curation: The Challenge Driving Convergence across Memory Institutions

Collaboration between libraries, archives and museums (LAMS) is undertaken in a continuum which starts with an initial understanding of the differences between the disciplines, and can lead to full convergence with a shared mission and delivery of shared services. Collaboration brings increasing benefits in resource efficiencies and user uptake as participating organizations progress through the continuum. It is in the area of digital content creation and management that the synergies of the disciplines are most often harnessed through cooperative exploration, coordinated projects and collaborative services. This paper examines and extends the Collaboration Continuum first identified by Soehner and elaborated by Zorich, Gunter, and Erway through analyises of the existing research into the nature of LAM collaboration, and identification of the core ethical differences which govern seemingly similar agenda. The paper proposes digital curation as the ?change agent? which will bring about full convergence between the professions, as they move through the digital content and management continuum.preprin

Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities

Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative—not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project—not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make

Strategies for Sustaining Digital Libraries

This collection of essays is a report of early findings from pioneers who have worked to establishdigital libraries, not merely as experimental projects, but as ongoing services and collectionsintended to be sustained over time in ways consistent with the long-held practices of print-basedlibraries. Particularly during this period of extreme technological transition, it is imperative thatprograms across the nation – and indeed the world – actively share their innovations,experiences, and techniques in order to begin cultivating new isomorphic, or commonly held,practices. The collective sentiment of the field is that we must begin to transition from apunctuated, project-based mode of advancing innovative information services to an ongoingprogrammatic mode of sustaining digital libraries for the long haul

Towards Intermediality in Contemporary Cultural Practices and Education

Asunción López-Varela Azcárate and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek discuss how intermediality may influence negotiations of culture and education, and how, in turn, cultural and educational practices can employ new media, with the result of an increase in social impact and significance. Intermediality refers to the blurring of generic and formal boundaries among different forms of new media practices. Intermediality means the employment of theoretical presuppositions in application together with the application of new media technology in action for the betterment of society against essentialisms and towards inclusion and interculturalism. Thus, the notion and potential of intermediality is associated with the incorporation of digital media in a wide variety of loci and spaces of representation and production that deal with the transfer of information and the creation of knowledge in an inclusive society. The trajectories of intermedial spaces between new media and the proliferation of texts, intertexts, hypertexts, and similar acts of remediation, transmediality, multimediality, hypermediality, etc., reveal and offer possibilities about how culture can be negotiated in the context of social and technological change.López-Varela y Tötösy exploran cómo la intermedialidad puede influir en las negociaciones entre cultura y educación y, paralelamente, cómo las prácticas culturales y educativas pueden utilizar los nuevos media para lograr un incremento del impacto y significación sociales. La intermedialidad significa la utilización de presupuestos teóricos de aplicación vinculados con nuevas tecnologías en acción con el propósito de mejorar la sociedad, evitando los esencialismos y a favor de la inclusión y la interculturalidad. Por lo tanto, este concepto queda íntimamente ligado con la incorporación de los medios digitales en una variedad de loci y espacios de representación y producción que gestionan la transferencia de información y la creación de conocimiento en una sociedad incluyente. La trayectoria de los espacios intermediales entre los nuevos media y la proliferación de textos, intertextos, hipertextos y actos similares de transducción, transmedia, multimedia, hipermedia, etc., presentan un amplio abanico de posibilidades sobre cómo puede negociarse la cultura en el contexto del cambio social y tecnológico