When Not All Papers are Paper: A Case Study in Digital Archivy

Hypertext poet Deena Larsen is worried about the potential loss of her digital poetry, but she has a plan to save it. In a 2004 article, “The Uncertain Fate of Scholarly Artifacts in a Digital Age,” Larsen revealed her plans for preserving her hypertext work Marble Springs. “Ms. Larsen started collecting old Macintosh computers so people will always be able to read Marble Springsin its original format. She has 100 computers in her two-bedroom apartment.” Although Larsen’s two-bedroom mausoleum of circa 1990s technology is one strategy for saving born-digital hypertext works, it is probably not the best. An armada of aging hardware will not protect digital objects from hard drive crashes, hardware failure, inoperable software, operating system malfunctions, unreadability, or natural disasters. Preservation of electronic records requires a commitment to active preservation practices including migration, refreshing, and integrity and authenticity checks of stored digital records. Maintaining the status quo, regardless of the magnitude of hardware and software stockpiles, is not a viable preservation strategy. The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) notes the inadequacy of just holding onto digital materials and advocates more active digital preservation strategies in their latest publication, Born- Again Bits: “The stakes are even higher when we consider that keeping works of electronic literature alive in their original form does not serve all present needs, let alone those of the future.

Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use

Digital Humanities Initiative Level 1 Start Up funding is requested to support a series of site visits and planning meetings among personnel working with the born-digital components of three significant collections of literary material: the Salman Rushdie papers at Emory University's Woodruff Library, the Michael Joyce Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Deena Larsen Collection at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland. The meetings and site visits will facilitate the preparation of a larger collaborative grant proposal among the three institutions aimed at developing archival tools and best practices for preserving and curating the born-digital documents and records of contemporary authorship. Initial findings will be made available through a jointly authored and publicly distributed online white paper, as well as conference presentations at relevant venues

Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use

Digital Humanities Level 1 Start-Up funding ($11,708) was received in support of a series of site visits and planning meetings for personnel working with the born-digital components of three significant collections of literary material: the Salman Rushdie papers at Emory University’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library (MARBL), the Michael Joyce Papers (and other collections) at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and the Deena Larsen Collection at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland. The meetings and site visits were undertaken with the two-fold objective of exchanging knowledge amongst the still relatively small community of practitioners engaged in such efforts, and facilitating the preparation of a larger collaborative project proposal aimed at preserving and accessing the born-digital documents and records of contemporary authorship. The grant period was September 2008-March 2009. The only specified deliverable was this white paper; however, as the Outcomes and Next Steps sections (below) suggest, a small initial investment by NEH has yielded significant benefit in the form of infrastructure, knowledge sharing, and future collaboration

Assessing Impacts of OER Services and Affordable Learning Initiatives at SUNY OER Services since 2017

SUNY OER Services (SOS) supports creation, adaption, and adoption of open educational resources (OER) and teaching with open pedagogy in the State University of New York System. Analyzing data from enrollment in OER courses since 2017, we uncovered significant contributions to student outcomes from instructors selecting OER for their courses. Drawing from data across SUNY campuses, we present evidence of how use of OER positively impacts student outcomes. Specifically, we explore instances of course and campus programmatic assessment activities. At an aggregated level, the presentation delves into broader implications, showcasing reduced time to degree attainment and heightened graduation or transfer rates through the implementation of OER Degree Pathways on SUNY campuses. Case studies provide insights into the strategic use of statistical analyses illustrating the practical applications of affordable learning materials within the educational context

Designing social media policy for government: Eight essential elements

Government agencies are increasingly looking to leverage social media to improve the quality of government services and enable greater citizen engagement. Publicly available social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, are providing governments with attractive options for meeting these new objectives. These sites are widely available to government employees and citizens with Internet access; they have established communities and networks; and they provide a wide range of audio, video, and interactive capabilities without substantial costs. While there are many high profile examples of government agencies engaging social media tools, for the vast majority of governments across the US, these tools are still fairly new and relatively unexplored. The process of adopting new tools and managing the related changes in work processes and policies is not easy for any type of organization. But governments at all levels are starting to put more and more effort into figuring out social media tools that involves exploring new ways of working and shifting communication patterns. It also involves the creation of new policies and guidelines to encourage proper use and to mitigate the risks of social media tools. Developing a social media policy can be an important first step for those government agencies considering using social media and can ultimately serve as a key enabler for responsibly and effectively leveraging social media tools. Yet, many governments are struggling with what such a policy should encompass and convey. Not surprisingly, given the emergent nature of social media, relatively few U.S. governments actually have a formalized set of policies to guide their own efforts, as well as for others to draw on or learn from. As a consequence, governments are faced with reinterpreting and applying old policies that govern the use of the Internet or creating completely new policies. To help fill the gap in what is known about social media policy in government, the Center for Technology in Government undertook an effort to identify as many government social media policies as possible, to review those policies for patterns in content and approach, to talk with those experienced in developing these policies and those seeking guidance in this area, and to produce a new resource to guide government social media policy development efforts. The study begins to answer the question, what are the core elements of a government social media policy? Our analysis identified eight essential elements for a social media policy:1) employee access, 2) account management, 3) acceptable use,4) employee conduct, 5) content, 6) security, 7) legal issues, and 8) citizen conduct. The analysis focused on 26 publicly available government social media documents, and results from interviews with 32 government professionals who were already using or were considering using social media tools1. Overall, our search identified two types of documents being used by governments to communicate with employees about the use of social media: 1) guidelines and 2) policies. Of the 26 documents we reviewed, 10 were official social media policies, 12 were social media guidelines, and 4 were a mixture of both. In general, guidelines provide advice on how to best use social media tools to achieve a desired result, such as eliciting citizen engagement or providing suggestions for creating interesting content. Policies, on the other hand, represent official positions that govern the use of social media by employees in government agencies, such as detailing what constitutes acceptable use or outlining official processes for gaining access to social media sites. The documents we reviewed varied with respect to the degree of detail devoted to any one element, with some covering a range of elements in brief, and others covering fewer elements in greater detail.2 For instance, the United States (US) General Services Administration (GSA) Handbook for Social Media combines both policy and guidelines into one document, with the goal of creating a one-stop-shop for informing employees about all aspects of social media use. Some, such as the New Media and the Air Force handbook, comprehensively detail the agency’s overall policy, strategy, and preferred way to engage with the public. Meanwhile the State of Utah Social Media Guidelines focused on specific elements such as the “rules of engagement” with social media for employees. This report provides a brief overview of social media use in government with particular focus on the types of use by government professionals; it then presents detailed descriptions of the eight essential elements identified through the analysis; and closes with brief guidance on strategies for getting started

Digital Materiality: Preserving Access to Computers as Complete Environments: Paper - iPRES 2009 - San Francisco

This paper addresses a particular domain within the sphere of activity that is coming to be known as personal digital papers or personal digital archives. We are concerned with contemporary writers of belles-lettres (fiction, poetry, and drama), and the implications of the shift toward word processing and other forms of electronic text production for the future of the cultural record, in particular literary scholarship. The urgency of this topic is evidenced by the recent deaths of several high-profile authors, including David Foster Wallace and John Updike, both of whom are known to have left behind electronic records containing unpublished and incomplete work alongside of their more traditional manuscript materials. We argue that literary and other creatively-oriented originators offer unique challenges for the preservation enterprise, since the complete digital context for individual records is often of paramount importance—what Richard Ovenden, in a helpful phrase (in conversation) has termed “the digital materiality of digital culture.” We will therefore discuss preservation and access scenarios that account for the computer as a complete artifact and digital environment, drawing on examples from the born-digital materials in literary collections at Emory University, the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Maryland