Subject: 2 CLIR Reports: "Collections, Content, and the Web"/"The Value of the Archival Perspective in the Digital Environment"
NINCH-ANNOUNCE (david@ninch.org)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:26:51 -0500
Message-Id: <v0421010ab4db15595b92@[192.100.21.23]> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:26:51 -0500 To: ninch-announce@cni.org From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org> Subject: 2 CLIR Reports: "Collections, Content, and the Web"/"The Value of the Archival Perspective in the Digital Environment"
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
February 24, 2000
Two New Reports from Council on Library and Information Resources
(CLIR)
"Collections, Content, and the Web"
"Enduring Paradigm, New Opportunities:
The Value of the Archival Perspective in the Digital Environment"
Both shortly available at:
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/reports.html
Readers will probably have an interest in the latest two reports
published by the Council on Library and Information Resources. The
first is a report on a symposium bringing together the perspectives
of museums and libraries in networking cultural resources. The second
is a paper on how archival experience and perspective can be used by
those who design, manage, disseminate, and preserve digital
information. The reports are on sale and will shortly be available
in html and pdf formats on the CLIR website at
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/reports.html
David Green
===========
>Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 10:40:13 -0500
>From: Terry Kuny <terry.kuny@xist.com>
>Subject: [DOC] 2 Reports from CLIR
>Comments: To: "Web4Lib (postings)" <web4lib@sunsite.berkeley.edu>
>To: DIGLIB@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA
>Status:
>
>The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) recently published
>two new reports, "Collections, Content, and the Web" and "Enduring
>Paradigm, New Opportunities: The Value of the Archival Perspective
>in the Digital Environment".
>
>For information on their contents see the CLIR press releases below.
>Both reports will shortly become available on-line (as full text in
>HTML and in PDF format). You will then find them at the list of CLIR reports:
>
>http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/reports.html
>
>Collections, Content, and the Web
>
>This report explores how the World Wide Web is affecting collections-based
>institutions. It is based on a conference organized by CLIR and the Chicago
>Historical Society in October 1999, with financial support from the Institute
>for Museum and Library Services.
>
>Although libraries and museums share few professional organizations or other
>structures that regularly bring them together for substantive purposes, they
>share a fundamental purpose: to collect physical things to make recorded
>knowledge and aesthetic experience accessible to their patrons. But when art
>and research objects go from real to virtual, how does the relationship
>between an object and its viewer or user change? Who uses museum and
>library Websites, and what do they seek?
>
>These questions drew 30 leaders of museums and libraries to the two-day
>conference, which was designed to focus on issues of collections, audience,
>and technology. Four papers, distributed before and presented during the
>conference, addressed these topics and served as a basis for discussion and
>recommendations. The report includes the papers and summaries of the
>discussions they provoked. It also summarizes a survey of institutional Web
>sites that was conducted to gather preliminary data about museum and library
>Web site design and use.
>
>Libraries and museums come to the Web with very different experiences of
>information technology. Libraries have long used automation for managing the
>description, cataloging, and inventory control of collections. On the other
>hand, museums in the last several decades have made great strides in making
>their collections more accessible to a large public and have developed
>intellectual, aesthetic, and educational portals for onsite visitors to their
>institutions.
>
>The differences that became apparent between the operating assumptions of
>library and museum leaders were in some cases quite predictable.
>Perspectives on intellectual property, for example, diverged because
>of the traditional
>functions that libraries have served in the administration of fair use in the
>print world and the particular interest that museums have had in protecting
>the rights of artists whom they display. Museums dealt forthrightly
>with issues of selection and presentation because they have a
>mandate to interpret.
>Librarian sometimes approached the matter of selection as if it were
>synonymous with censorship, because they traditionally place a high
>value on making information accessible without mediation. But in
>some cases the differences between types of museums (art or
>historical) and types of libraries (academic or public) were even
>more striking. In summarizing the discussions, the report aims to
>represent distinctly these four points of view - public and academic
>libraries, art and historical museums - to highlight the
>often-surprising intersections of values and concerns and the
>equally unexpected divergences of interest or experience.
>
>The report concludes that the fundamental challenge now is to determine what
>steps will ensure that the Web can be greater than the sum of its parts, that
>is, that the museum and library presence on the Web amounts to more than a
>cluster of individual Web sites. No one believes that the Web will replace
>libraries and museums, but many can see a time when the Web blurs and
>eventually erodes, in the user's mind, the current distinctions between
>libraries and museums. We are rapidly moving into an environment in which
>preconceptions formed by traditional institutional associations and
>proprietary control are being challenged and dissolved.
>
>####
>
>Enduring Paradigm, New Opportunities: The Value of the Archival
>Perspective in the Digital Environment, by Anne J.
>Gilliland-Swetland, assistant professor in UCLA's Graduate School of
>Education and Information Studies.
>
>
>The report examines how the archival perspective can be useful in
>addressing problems faced by those who design, manage, disseminate,
>and preserve digital
>information.
>
>For years, archivists have grappled with many of the issues that are gaining
>broad attention in the digital environment. Since the 1960s, the archival
>community has worked closely with creators of records and record-keeping
>systems to develop means to identify and preserve digital records that have no
>paper counterpart. Emerging dialog about how to define and ensure authenticity
>in digital objects can also benefit from the archivist's perspective. Archival
>institutions serve an important legal function in society, and concern for
>retaining the evidential value of records has placed the archival community at
>the forefront of research and development in digital authentication.
>
>There are other aspects of the archival profession that bring valuable
>perspective to the creation, management, and dissemination of digital
>information. The author notes that because archives focus on records,
>archivists are keenly aware of how societal, institutional, and individual
>memory is constructed, and the implications of how that memory is represented
>and transmitted over time. This is especially important as more of the world's
>collections are reformatted and represented on-line, where information is
>subject to not only to corruption or outright loss, but also to loss of
>context. The archival community has been active in exploiting the roles of
>context and hierarchy in information retrieval.
>
>Whereas libraries primarily manage existing information- traditionally in
>published form, but this is changing - archives are also intimately engaged in
>the creation of information and its ultimate disposition.
>
>The author reviews several recent and ongoing projects in which the archival
>community has provided leadership in setting the agenda or integrating the
>archival perspective. The projects have addressed the integrity of
>information, metadata, knowledge management, risk management, and
>knowledge preservation. Many of the projects discussed have in
>common a concern for evidence in information creation, storage
>retrieval, and preservation; cross-community collaboration;
>strategies that use both technological processes and management
>procedures; development of best practices and standards; and
>evaluation.
>
>Digital technology is erasing many of the distinctions between custodians of
>information and custodians of artifacts. Museum curators, librarians,
>archivists, and information technology specialists face many common
>concerns in the digital environment. The author views this broad
>base of professionals as a new "metacommunity" and argues that its
>members face an unprecedented opportunity to contribute their
>distinct perspectives to develop a new paradigm for the creation,
>management, and dissemination of digital information.
>
>
>
>******************************************************************
>Announcing the first issue of Sun's Campus Advisor newsletter.
>Formerly known as the Administrative Advisor, the newsletter has
>been re-named to reflect broader coverage of the entire spectrum
> of Higher Education computing, including HPC, collaborative
>research, bioinformatics,libraries, web-based learning, and more.
>
> Check it out at http://www.sun.com/edu/admin/Winter00.pdf
>******************************************************************
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