Scaling Up Video Digitization at the University of Maryland Libraries: A Case Study

In 2015, a team at the University of Maryland Libraries collaborated on a pilot project to digitize 100 VHS tapes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange collection and, in doing so, established organizational workflows for video digitization and access. After completing the pilot phase of the project, staff who worked on the project published a case study in this journal that articulated a question echoed throughout that process: “Is this enough?” Enough descriptive metadata? Enough technical metadata? Enough storage space? This article will reflect on the pilot project, detail how the digitization specifications and workflows established during the pilot project have changed over the intervening years, and how they were scaled-up to digitize and make accessible the remaining videos 1,125 videos in the collection under the auspices of a 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities grant

Read All About It! Outreach for Digital Collections with the National Digital Newspaper Program

Learn about a variety of outreach initiatives featuring digitized newspapers as panelists from state awardees of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) share about their work to highlight digital collections. The National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress developed NDNP for state partners to digitize historic newspapers from across the country and make them freely accessible in the Chronicling America (chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) newspaper database, which now has over 19 million digitized pages. This session brings together partners from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and West Virginia each presenting on a unique outreach project for their digital newspaper collection. Hear about social media campaigns, online exhibits, K-12 history day resources, volunteer research and transcription events, and more that can be modeled to feature your own institution’s digital and analog collections

Effective fisheries management instrumental in improving fish stock status

Marine fish stocks are an important part of the world food system and are particularly important for many of the poorest people of the world. Most existing analyses suggest overfishing is increasing, and there is widespread concern that fish stocks are decreasing throughout most of the world. We assembled trends in abundance and harvest rate of stocks that are scientifically assessed, constituting half of the reported globalmarine fish catch. For these stocks, on average, abundance is increasing and is at proposed target levels. Compared with regions that are intensively managed, regions with less-developed fisheries management have, on average, 3-fold greater harvest rates and half the abundance as assessed stocks. Available evidence suggests that the regions without assessments of abundance have little fisheries management, and stocks are in poor shape. Increased application of area-appropriate fisheries science recommendations and management tools are still needed for sustaining fisheries in places where they are lacking.Fil: Hilborn, Ray. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Amoroso, Ricardo Oscar. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Anderson, Christopher M.. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Baum, Julia K.. University of Victoria; CanadáFil: Branch, Trevor A.. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Costello, Christopher. University of California at Santa Barbara; Estados UnidosFil: de Moor, Carryn L.. University of Cape Town; SudáfricaFil: Faraj, Abdelmalek. Einstitut National de Recherche Halieutique; MarruecosFil: Hively, Daniel. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Jensen, Olaf P.. Rutgers University; Estados UnidosFil: Kurota, Hiroyuki. Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency; JapónFil: Little, L. Richard. Csiro Oceans and Atmosphere; AustraliaFil: Mace, Pamela. Ministry for Primary Industries; Nueva ZelandaFil: McClanahan, Tim. Wildlife Conservation Society; Estados UnidosFil: Melnychuk, Michael C.. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Minto, Cóilín. Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology; IrlandaFil: Osio, Giacomo Chato. Joint Research Centre (JRC); Italia. DG Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, European Commission; BélgicaFil: Pons, Maite. University of Washington; Estados UnidosFil: Parma, Ana María. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Centro para el Estudio de Sistemas Marinos; ArgentinaFil: Segurado, Susana. Sustainable Fisheries Partnership; Estados UnidosFil: Szuwalski, Cody S.. University of California at Santa Barbara; Estados UnidosFil: Wilson, Jono R.. University of California at Santa Barbara; Estados Unidos. The Nature Conservancy; Estados UnidosFil: Ye, Yimin. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; Itali

The Nature of Nurture: Poverty, Father Absence and Gender Equality

Progressive family policy regimes typically aim to promote and protect women’s opportunities to participate in the workforce. These policies offer significant benefits to affluent, two-parent households. A disproportionate number of low-income and impoverished families, however, are headed by single mothers. How responsive are such policies to the objectives of these mothers and the needs of their children? This chapter argues that one-size-fits-all family policy regimes often fail the most vulnerable household and contribute to intergenerational poverty in two ways: by denying at-risk children adequate parenting, and by undermining their mothers’ legitimate interest in nurturing and caring for their own children. The capabilities of these mothers and the well-being of their children are better served by policies which recognise maternal caregiving as a productive and valuable occupation meriting equal respect and social support

Overcoming Challenges in Scaling Up Digitization Projects During the Pandemic

The University of Maryland Libraries received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2019 to digitize the Dance Exchange collection, a video collection of performances and rehearsals and their corresponding paper programs. The Dance Exchange was founded by Liz Lerman, a well-known choreographer whose ethos of “dance for all” underscores the type of work and community programs created by the company and the performers, including all ages and differently-abled participants. This paper will discuss a brief history of the project and content, why this collection was prioritized by the curator, and the importance to the wider dance community. We will focus this report on the Libraries’ best practice technical standards implemented and expanded for this project and why implementing the metadata was important as we were moving to new digital preservation technologies. The standards include video technical specifications, metadata XML specifications, and embedded metadata specifications. We will also elaborate on how we scaled up workflows built to handle previous projects of a few hundred items to a project of over 1,100 items, and the challenges of reviewing, modifying, and moving the large amount of metadata and data. A major impediment for this project was that the university and our vendor closed due to the pandemic at a key point when we were receiving files back for review. We will examine how we changed digitization and review workflows due to the need to move the project work remotely. A final challenge we are currently experiencing is a massive repository and digital preservation archive migration. We will share how we are working with repository managers and digital preservationists during the university closure to complete the work necessary for getting the content online. We will conclude by discussing how we will implement the changes we made to future av digitization projects.The University of Maryland Libraries received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 2019 to digitize the Dance Exchange collection, a video collection of performances and rehearsals and their corresponding paper programs. This paper will discuss a brief history of the project and content, best practice technical standards implemented by the Libraries and expanded for this project, scaling up workflows built to handle a project of a few hundred items to a project of over 1,100 items, changing digitization workflows due to pandemic closures and the need to move the project work remotely, and a repository and digital preservation archive migration that occurred during the course of the project. The report will share how we overcame challenges and will implement the changes we made to future av digitization projects.The National Endowment for the Humanitie

BHL’s Feedback Tools and User Surveys: Investigating User Needs for Data in Digital Libraries

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a digital library dedicated to improving research efficiency through open access to biodiversity literature as part of a global biodiversity community. BHL currently makes over 52 million pages of biodiversity literature freely available and drew over 1 million visitors in 2016. Additionally, over 4 million API calls were made to extract data from the site last year. To meet the needs of these users and continuously improve research efficiency, BHL has relied on feedback submitted through issue reporting tools on the website and through direct engagement with users. With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, BHL is also currently hosting five residents through a National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) project, entitled Foundations to Actions, to methodically gather input on best practices in digital libraries; recommendations for crowdsourcing transcriptions for improved data access; strategies for enhancing image access; analysis of collection strengths and gaps; and overall user needs. This session will highlight initial results from a user survey designed to identify and prioritize recommended improvements and new features for accessing the data in BHL

BHL’s Feedback Tools and User Surveys: Investigating User Needs for Data in Digital Libraries

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a digital library dedicated to improving research efficiency through open access to biodiversity literature as part of a global biodiversity community. BHL currently makes over 52 million pages of biodiversity literature freely available and drew over 1 million visitors in 2016. Additionally, over 4 million API calls were made to extract data from the site last year. To meet the needs of these users and continuously improve research efficiency, BHL has relied on feedback submitted through issue reporting tools on the website and through direct engagement with users. With support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, BHL is also currently hosting five residents through a National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) project, entitled Foundations to Actions, to methodically gather input on best practices in digital libraries; recommendations for crowdsourcing transcriptions for improved data access; strategies for enhancing image access; analysis of collection strengths and gaps; and overall user needs. This session will highlight initial results from a user survey designed to identify and prioritize recommended improvements and new features for accessing the data in BHL

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project Advisory Board Meeting 2019

This presentation was prepared for the meeting of the Historic Maryland Newspapers Project (HMNP) Advisory Board and related stakeholders held on April 18, 2019. The HMNP is the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) project in the state of Maryland, and is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. This project is in its seventh year and fourth grant phase. The purpose of this meeting was to update the Advisory Board on the project progress and to brainstorm outreach and programming ideas

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project Advisory Board Meeting Fall 2020

This presentation was prepared for the meeting of the Historic Maryland Newspapers Project (HMNP) Advisory Board and related stakeholders held on October 28, 2020. The HMNP is the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) project in the state of Maryland, and is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The purpose of this meeting was to update the Advisory Board on the project progress and to determine title selection for Phase 5 of the grant (2020-2022)