Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow: poor players on the digital curation stage

Book chapter from Digital Convergence - Libraries of the Future Earnshaw, Rae; Vince, John (Eds.) 2008, XXXII, 416 p. ISBN: 978-1-84628-902-6In this chapter, I will argue that there are non-obvious choices to be made about the “poor players” who manage data. In particular, the role of the librarian in this is not clear. Reg Carr (Carr 2004)attempted to persuade his CURL colleagues at a meeting in Dublin that they should address the emerging importance of data collections head on. His efforts were accepted with enthusiasm by some, resisted by others. There were good reasons for both positions, but I argue that the latter in particular is a temporary phenomenon, strongly linked to budget constraints and to the current transitional phase of librarianship from “mostly physical” to “nearly all digital”. Paul Courant, economist and ex-provost of Michigan, pointed out to a JISC/NDIIPP meeting in May 2006 that, particularly in the context of library budgets and the need to curate data: “There’s plenty of money for anything. There just isn’t plenty of money for EVERYTHING!” Casting one’s mind sufficiently far into the future, it is clear that the trend to digital is irreversible (unless the world as we know it crashes and burns), and hence in a comparatively short time, digital data as well as digital documents will become primary stuff for libraries, and the resources will adapt accordingly. Meanwhile, awkward decisions are needed, on whether to be pioneers, early adopters or late followers! But whether they want it or not, what SHOULD be the role of librarians towards data? To answer this, we need to understand a bit more about data curation

New relationships in Scholarly Publishing

Presented at Networking and the future of Libraries 2: managing the intellectual record, 19-21 April 1995, Bath.In this paper I survey some of the implications of the introduction of several electronic journals as part of the FIGIT Electronic Libraries Programme (abbreviated as eLib). How do these ventures fit into the aims of the Programme? What are the significant issues to be resolved in electronic journals? What will electronic journals mean for the relationships between authors, publishers, libraries and readers

Excuse Me... Some Digital Preservation Fallacies?

A number of common assertions, or perhaps assumptions, about digital preservation have begun to worry me. No one person has said all these things, but increasingly they seem to be in the background of conversations. I will put these forwards as a list of statements, but, in some respects at least, I think they are fallacies: 1. Digital preservation is very expensive [because] 2. File formats become obsolete very rapidly [which means that] 3. Interventions must occur frequently, ensuring that continuing costs remain high. 4. Digital preservation repositories should have very long timescale aspirations, 5. ‘Internet-age’ expectations are such that the preserved object must be easily and instantly accessible in the format de jour, and 6. The preserved object must be faithful to the original in all respects. These statements seem reasonable, and perhaps they are. However, I feel we might benefit from a rather jaundiced look at them. So that is what I thought I would attempt for this article. Beware, the arguments presented here are not settled in my mind; indeed this is to some extent part of an argument with myself

Review: Scholarship in the Digital Age

A review of Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet by Christine Borgman, MIT Press, 2007, hardback, 336 pp, ISBN-13: 978-0262026192

Editorial

Chris Rusbridge, Chief Editor, introduces Volume 4, Issue 3 (2009) of the International Journal of Digital Curation

Towards the hybrid library

Achievements in research programs are seldom what was envisaged at the start. It is still too early to judge the success or failure of the first phases of the UK Electronic Libraries Program (eLib), as several projects are still not completed. Despite this, some lessons learned are becoming apparent. In this article, I reflect on a little of what has been learned, and explore some of the implications. The eLib program has a heavy evaluation component, but the views expressed here are personal, deriving as much from living and working with the projects for the last three years as from any formal evaluations at this stage. From these reflections, I look forward briefly to the latest phase of eLib. My aim is to argue for the concept of the hybrid library as a logical follow on from current developments. Institutions should remain an important focus for digital library activities, and users in those institutions require the sort of integration of digital library services which the hybrid library promises

Editorial

Chris Rusbridge introduces Issue 1 of Volume 2 (2007) of the International Journal of Digital Curation

Create, curate, re-use: the expanding life course of digital research data

Paper presented at EDUCAUSE Australasia 2007 [http://www.caudit.edu.au/educauseaustralasia07/index.htm]Scientific communication used to be based on the article or the monograph. Now datasets and databases are becoming as important in some cases. Aside from their value in communication, data are also the raw stuff of the scientific record, and the basis for verifiability. So scientists need to curate the data they create, and make them available for re-use. What are the implications and effects of these changes, and what should scientists and scholars be doing about them

Editorial

Chris Rusbridge, Director of the Digital Curation Centre and Chief Editor, introduces Issue 1 of Volume 4, 2009, of the International Journal of Digital Curation

Towards the Hybrid Library: Developments in UK Higher Education

Presented at the 66th IFLA Council and General Conference, 13-18 August, 2000, Jerusalem.The real world in which information professionals struggle to provide high quality services is not the simple world of most so-called "digital library" services, but rather is characterised by complexity and diversity in almost all aspects of the information access chain. Dealing with diversity is the real problem for providers interested in offering quality services, and for users seeking to access relevant sources to answer their information problems. This paper outlines the efforts of the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to help UK Higher Education Institutions deal with this growing diversity of information resources. These efforts are based on two strands: the Electronic Libraries Program and the development of the JISC Collections. These strands are now coming together as JISC concentrates on developing a Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER), and encourages organisations to harmonise and facilitate access to this and a plethora of other resources, digital and conventional, through the model of the Hybrid Library