A Guide to Distributed Digital Preservation

This volume is devoted to the broad topic of distributed digital preservation, a still-emerging field of practice for the cultural memory arena. Replication and distribution hold out the promise of indefinite preservation of materials without degradation, but establishing effective organizational and technical processes to enable this form of digital preservation is daunting. Institutions need practical examples of how this task can be accomplished in manageable, low-cost ways."--P. [4] of cove

Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape: 2019 Census

This report documents the design, methods, results, and recommendations of the 2019 Census of Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Providers (SCIP), a Census produced by the “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Infrastructure” project team (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Middlebury College, 2018-19). The SCIP Census was created to document key components comprising the organizational, business, and technical apparatuses of a broad range of Scholarly Communication Resources (SCRs) – the tools, services, and systems that are instrumental to the publishing and distribution of the scholarly record. Using Community Cultivation – A Field Guide (Educopia, 2018) as a framework, we designed a Conceptual Model detailing the impact and outcomes the SCIP Census would address. We then produced and tested a survey instrument with 123 questions that delves into an SCR’s mission, vision, and scoping; technical development and design; administrative and financial scaffolding; community engagement activities; and governance model. The instrument took between 1-3.5 hours for each SCR respondent to complete; variability in time was largely based on the structure, complexity, and availability of an SCR’s organizational, fiscal, and technical information. We conducted the Census through direct invitations, contacting just over 200 identified scholarly communication resource providers by email to participate. The Census remained open for a condensed, month-long collection period (February 18-March 22, 2019). More than 60 SCRs responded to us during this period, and more than 40 tools, services, and platforms ultimately participated in the Census. Our team also researched basic information about 96 additional SCRs, creating a Composite dataset that combined this researched data with a few fields of the respondents’ anonymized data from the Census. This Composite dataset provides a system-level view of the broad range of SCR tools, services, and platforms in use today, including their purposes, founding dates, locations, and other basic information that could be quickly compiled by our team. It complements the deeper information about the technical, fiscal, and organizational mechanisms of SCRs today that the Census dataset provides. The Census and Composite datasets provide a crucial lens through which we can now begin to do three things: 1) increase understanding of the range of forms, functions, structures, and models represented by SCRs across our system today; 2) formally assess some of the factors that influence the sustainability and “fit-for-purpose” of SCRs, and 3) identify concrete tasks and activities that specific SCRs might engage in to improve their stability over time. Our findings include the following, each of which is elaborated upon in the report: • We need a standardized taxonomy for the various functions performed by SCRs. It is currently difficult to differentiate between the broad range of functions offered by SCRs. It is also challenging to understand which steps are common in scholarly communications and publishing workflows, and what SCR choices might work for each of these steps. • SCRs operating within nonprofit and hosted environments report ongoing challenges in raising and sustaining appropriate levels of funding to enable them to build and maintain services over time. These SCRs need additional support if they are to be viable options for institutional use. • Connected to the above, sunsetting in our scholarly communication technical environment is often considered a sign of failure. Instead, we need to welcome it as a sign of a healthy overall environment. We also need to further explore the value of mergers, migrations, and other mechanisms that may provide the necessary administrative, fiscal, and social infrastructure to help support the technical development and maintenance SCRs require. Scaled, leveraged efficiencies (e.g., multiple programs hosted by a single entity with shared leadership and staffing) may help to bring needed expertise while also maintaining a lower overhead. • SCRs need guidance, mentorship, training, and opportunities to refine their visions, technical platforms and design, financial and HR models, community engagement and outreach practices, and governance frameworks, as well as the decision-making processes that undergird each of these elements. This need applies particularly to several key areas of development: o Vision and Strategy. The Census evidenced that many SCRs lack clarity in their expressions of their purposes and goals. This is quickly mendable through specific, targeted investments in business practices that are well understood and documented across a wide variety of fields. o Technical Development and Design. Findings that stood out included the high variability in the number and type of software developers that currently participate in SCRs and the challenges to code contribution that exist in some environments, including Open Source Software projects and programs. o Financial and Staffing. Of all of the areas of concern that have been highlighted in this report, none is more compelling than the financial self-descriptions provided by respondents. Many SCRs report that they have low-to-no financial reserves. Most also do not reconcile their books on a regular schedule, and most lack the basic checks and balances that keep businesses safe from both accidental and purposeful financial misreporting. o Community Engagement and Governance. Deeper evaluation into current community engagement and governance strategies is needed at an individual SCR-level, but the collated and aggregated results from the Census show that most SCRs are engaging in a range of community-building activities and all responding SCRs prioritize in-person events as one part of their approach. We must work harder to ensure that governance bodies regularly evaluate the financial health of the organizations they are empowered to serve, and that external structures help to train both these Boards and staff members to do functions (e.g., accounting for revenues, not just expenditures) that simply are not business-as-usual within most academic environments. This report begins with an introduction describing the motivation and rationale behind this research. It defines what we mean by “scholarly communication infrastructure” and “Scholarly Communication Resource” and describes the overall goals, not just of this initial project effort, but of the broader trajectory that we are undertaking in the “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Infrastructure” project. Our methodology is then described in detail, including our data sources and data framework. It provides an analysis of the data gathered to date and points to a series of data visualizations produced by Data Researchers Nathan Brown and Brianna Morrow (TrueBearing Consulting) that can be adjusted and controlled by users to see different views of the anonymized data and to answer different questions using the data. The remainder of the report documents our findings to date and our recommendations for a larger and ongoing effort to assess the stability of scholarly communication infrastructure components, including recommendations for concrete actions to strengthen and ultimately enhance the sustainability of the infrastructure upon which we increasingly depend. The report closes with suggestions about next steps that a range of prospective partners and affiliates might undertake together in the future. Educopia Institute and TrueBearing Consulting greatly appreciate the opportunity to conduct this research on behalf of Middlebury College and the “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Infrastructure” team, and we look forward to our future involvement in the next phases of work. Results of this survey are discussed in the following blog post: https://educopia.org/red-queens-race

The Museum Form: Artists\u27 Reflections on a Life in Dance

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College

Confronting Coastal Flood Risks in Portland, ME

Sea level rise, increasing and intensifying storms, and subsequent flooding resulting from climate change pose significant and imminent danger to coastal communities. An examination of Portland, Maine, a coastal city in New England, provides an opportunity to address challenges related to flooding concerns resulting from climate change and to consider strategies that could be helpful for other similarly situated communities

Cedar Walton: an Analytical Study of His Improvisational Style Through Selected Transcriptions

This study examines five transcriptions of performances by Cedar Walton, one of the iconic hard bop jazz pianists in the 20th and 21st centuries. The transcriptions analyzed are improvised solos recorded between 1964 and 2001 and include the following songs: “Pensativa,” “Rhythm-a-Ning,” “Bremond’s Blues,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” and “I’m Not So Sure.” They have been examined for common elements and threads in Walton’s playing, specifically addressing rhythm, harmony, and melody. These devices are also discussed in the context of bebop and hard bop, and observations have been made about the differences in his improvisation depending on the genre of jazz he is playing. Musical examples and definitions of jazz terminology are included throughout the study to help demonstrate Walton’s various approaches, which largely include devices used to create tension and release, and to build a sense of forward motion. The detailed analysis of these transcriptions provides a bank of useful information about Walton’s signature style and unique sound

Selling the news: Distributing Wrexham's newspapers, 1850-1914

This is the author's PDF version of a book chapter published by Oak Knoll Press & The British Library© 2009. Maps appear at the end of this version, in the published version the maps appear interweaved with the text.This book chapter discusses how Wrexham's newspapers developed a reliable distribution service through north and mid Wales and parts of Cheshire and Shropshire. The role of agents and how their location reflected a newspaper's circulation area is particuarly discussed.Based on conference paper delivered at the Twenty-fourth Print Networks Conference on the History of the British Book Trade at the University Chester, July 2007

Contested spaces: an analysis of the ANC government's approach to the promotion of media development and diversity in South Africa, with a particular focus on the policy process that led to the formation of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MIDDA).

Faculty of Humanities School of Literature and Language Studies 8703354e [email protected] dissertation tracks the media development and diversity policy positions of the South African government with a particular focus on the establishment of the Media Development and Diversity Agency. It tracks the reasons for the reduction in the Agency’s funding and the curtailing of its mandate. The dissertation argues that a powerful coalition of forces including the commercial media sector and the Department of Finance (now National Treasury) impacted on the policy process to drive government thinking in a more market-driven direction. It explores the implications of this market thinking for the deepening of media development and diversity in the country. Further, the research looks at an alternative critical political economy of the media vision – firstly, in terms of how this vision was scuppered in the policy process, but also how it might be resurrected. The critical political economy of the media school argues that development and diversity issues are not unproblematically served by the market and commercially driven media systems. Critical political economists of the media call for a number of state intervention including anti-monopoly legislation, subsidies for struggling more marginalised media sectors and so forth. Also, they call for the development of a core non-commodified, citizenship-orientated and inclusive public service media sector