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Adoption of JPEG 2000 by Libraries and Archives: The Future of Digital Imaging

December 3, 2004

Peter Murray
Assistant to the Director for Technology Initiatives
University of Connecticut

As scholars and researchers demand greater electronic access to cultural heritage and geospatial resources, the need for an efficient open standard that presents digital objects electronically has become critical in making the rich resources of libraries and archives available. JPEG 2000 is such a standard in that it can bundle metadata with images in the same physical file, provide greater efficiency in image compression, support region-of-interest encoding, and store multiple resolutions of the same image in one file. On November 4th and 5th, the University of Connecticut hosted a symposium on the adoption of JPEG 2000 in libraries and archives, inviting policy makers and practitioners, digital imaging specialists and software engineers, image/signal processing scientists and adopters of the standards, and vendors as well as users of products. This session is a brief introduction to the JPEG 2000 standard and a report on the outcomes of the symposium.

Report on the Symposium for the Adoption of JPEG 2000 in Archives and Libraries
(PDF file)

http://j2kArcLib.info/

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Metadata
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Almagest Open Source Software: A Teaching Tool for the Scholarly Community

December 3, 2004

Janet Temos
Director, Education Technologies Center
OIT Academic Services
Princeton University

Serge J. Goldstein
Director of Academic Services
Princeton University

Almagest is a relational database for the storage, cataloging and display of images, text, video, sound, and many other file types. The database is the result of more than a decade of development and has been used as a tool for teaching and scholarship at Princeton University for the past nine years. Lecture Builder is an editing tool within Almagest that can be used to organize and display data stored in the database. It is most commonly used as a display tool for images and multimedia objects (film clips or sound files), and as such, creates both online and offline virtual slide presentations that can be viewed in the classroom with a digital projector, or seen from any computer in the campus network. Lecture Builder has various display options that are suited for lectures, quizzes, and self-directed study. Viewers can thus have customized access to information within the database, and explore any of the other items that are related to the data contained in the lecture. Lectures are saved in the database, and can be reused, edited, or updated, by the project’s editor(s) at any time.

We currently are working to offer the Almagest and Lecture Builder software as an open source product to other educational institutions. Additionally, we propose to open part of the database to scholars and researchers, as an open exchange for images, learning objects, and other media where copyright resides with an individual willing to share his or her files with the larger scholarly community.

This session will provide an overview of Almagest, and the opportunity for CNI members to provide input towards its further development.

http://almagest.princeton.edu/

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Repositories, Teaching & Learning
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Archiving the Political Web: Prospects and Challenges

December 3, 2004

Bernard F. Reilly
President
Center for Research Libraries

In the past decade the Web has emerged as a vital medium of political communication, serving political activists, parties, popular fronts, and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a global message board through which to communicate with constituents and the world community.

The Political Communications Web Archiving investigation (PCWA), funded by the Mellon Foundation, analyzed the behaviors of those who use political Web content as primary sources for research, and the effectiveness of the existing Web archiving efforts to meet those users’ needs. The investigation also specified a service model and the curatorial methodologies that are most likely to support sustainable preservation of the fugitive contents of the Political Web. Participating in the PCWA project were NYU, Cornell, UT Austin, Stanford, and the Internet Archive.

Political Communications Web Archiving Investigation Executive Summary (Word document)

http://www.crl.edu/content/PolitWebReport.htm

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Digital Preservation
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ARL Endorses Digitization as an Acceptable Preservation Reformatting Option

December 3, 2004

William A. Gosling
ARL Preservation Committee
University Librarian
University of Michigan

Sherry Byrne
Preservation Librarian
University of Chicago

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has endorsed digitization as an accepted preservation reformatting option for a range of materials. This endorsement is a result of the work of the ARL Preservation Committee. William Gosling, University Librarian at the University of Michigan and Chair of the ARL Preservation Committee will lead an interactive discussion about the Committee’s work. Staff at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan developed a position paper entitled, “Recognizing Digitization as Preservation Reformatting Method” <http://www.arl.org/preserv/digit_final.html>. This paper invites us, as a community, to revisit our practices, compare our viewpoints, assess impacts, and develop a consensus regarding the use of digitization as one of several reformatting options to preserve and provide access to library resources. It is the goal of this session to further this discussion and continue building consensus around this important issue.

Handout (Word document)

http://www.arl.org/preserv/digit_final.html

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Digital Curation, Digital Preservation, Special Collections
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Automatic Exposure – Capturing Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images

December 3, 2004

Günter Waibel
Program Officer
RLG, Inc.

This RLG-led initiative seeks to minimize the cost of technical metadata acquisition and maximize the cultural heritage community’s capability of ensuring long-term access to digital assets. The goal of the initiative is to lower the barrier for institutions to capture the data elements specified in NISO Z39.87: Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images (currently a Draft Standard for Trial Use). NISO Z39.87 defines a standard, comprehensive set of data elements key to an institution’s ability to manage and preserve its digital images.

The project has engaged device manufacturers to determine what technical metadata their products currently capture and to encourage greater capture of Z39.87-defined technical metadata. It also engages cultural heritage professionals to determine how digital repositories and asset management systems can ingest technical metadata that is automatically captured by high-end scanners and digital cameras.

This session will discuss the work of the project, including: identified tools for harvesting technical metadata; upcoming “Automatic Exposure Scorecards” which profile and review the available technologies for capturing technical metadata; progress in influencing technical metadata changes in technology standards followed by device manufacturers; and the development of a Z39.87-Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) panel to allow the extension of the metadata handling capabilities of Adobe Photoshop, a commonly used tool in the cultural heritage digitization process.

Handout (Word document)

http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=2681

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Metadata, Repositories
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Bibliographic Data Management Software for Every Student: Embedding a Researcher’s Tool In the CMS

December 3, 2004

Brian Nielsen
Manager, Learning Support Systems
Northwestern University

To highlight the availability of a new Web-based bibliographic database management application, Northwestern University has developed software to enable access to the tool within the campus’ course management system (CMS). Students have the application always available within the CMS without requiring a second login after completing a simple initial procedure. Northwestern’s work is freely available as open source and has been adopted by a number of other universities. This innovation is offering opportunities for instructors to design new active learning projects for students, consistent with recommendations from contemporary learning science research.

PowerPoint Presentation

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/reference/services/RefWorks/index.html

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Teaching & Learning
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Capture to Creation: How High-Resolution Capture and Network-Based Presentation Redefine and Recreate Original Artifacts

December 3, 2004

Harlan Wallach
Media Services Architect
Academic Technologies
Northwestern University

This presentation explores digital archive issues associated with two on-line archive projects completed by Northwestern University. It examines how the subjects were changed into two new digital objects, related to the original, but in fact transformed by the process into new creations for study. The two production processes demonstrated and discussed are: (1) the acquisition of digital imagery from the mural paintings at Dunhuang, China, for the Mellon International Dunhuang Archive, a component of ARTSTOR; and (2) the capture, post-production and presentation of the 1880 Robinson Insurance map, a component of the upcoming electronic edition of the Encyclopedia of Chicago, a joint project of the Chicago Historical Society, the Newberry Library, and Northwestern University.

Northwestern University, in collaboration with the Dunhuang Research Academy and funded by the Mellon Foundation, conducted a four-year effort completely documenting 21 cave grottoes in complete high resolution photographs, and 40 grottoes in QTVR navigable imagery. The resulting online presentation model of the imagery in a resolution-independent, zoomable model goes beyond merely transforming the objects – it redefines the nature of what it means to experience the medieval Buddhist mural paintings.

The Robinson Fire Insurance map is an extensive map of the city of Chicago from 1880. Designed to be a comprehensive record of all of the buildings and structures at that time, it is five volumes in size, comprised of 260 separate 22 x 32 inch pages. The presentation of this data into a page model, single plates, an online bound volume viewer, and then a unified seamless texture combining all 260 plates into one resolution-independent navigable image, again transforms a single source into a new digital object.

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/librarybriefings/archives/589-printer-friendly.html

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Digital Humanities, Digital Libraries
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DARE: The Next Stage

December 3, 2004

Leo Waaijers
Platform Manager, ICT and Research
SURF Foundation

The Digital Academic Repositories (DARE) is a joint initiative by the Dutch universities, which facilitates digital access to the results of their research. Now that all DARE repositories are operational, harvested for instance by DAREnet (www.darenet.nl) and Yahoo, and more than 20 services are ready or under construction, it is time to look ahead. Libraries have been the drivers thus far, but to ensure a stream of content into the repositories and to guarantee that repositories and services are sustainable after 2006, when the DARE Program comes to an end, authors and their institutes must be involved. Several actions are being undertaken, which, basically, aim at satisfying a need for visibility, ease of use, and continued access to the research output of both scientists and their institutes. We will build a national window featuring the complete production of about 150 top scientists, 10 from each university. A link between the repositories and the local research management systems will reduce the administrative burden of writing bibliographic records and loading digital objects, especially as we are building on top of that an automated personal web page generator. Finally, a link to the e-Depot of the National Library will guarantee the perpetual preservation and accessibility of the deposited material.

While working on these issues we received a request from Elsevier requesting permission for indexing and presenting the content of the DARE repositories through their Scirus search engine, which we will also discuss.

http://www.surf.nl/en/themas/index2.php?oid=7

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Digital Preservation, Repositories
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Digital Preservation: From Theory toward Practice

December 3, 2004

Richard Fyffe
Assistant Dean of Libraries for Scholarly Communication
University of Kansas

Beth Forrest Warner
Assistant Vice Provost for Information Services
University of Kansas

Deborah Ludwig
Director, Academic Systems
University of Kansas

Digital content permeates every aspect of the academic enterprise. The challenges presented by the need to provide long-term access to this information are widely acknowledged. One key to understanding them lies in recognizing the mismatch between traditional information management practices – practices largely formed in a print-on-paper environment – and the characteristics of digital information. Given the need for different approaches, without a focused planning program there can be no reasonable expectation that digital information created today will remain usable in a few years. A campus-wide Digital Preservation Task Force at the University of Kansas was charged with exploring the implications of a University commitment to the preservation of digital assets, both academic and administrative. The initial stages of this investigation were presented in a project briefing at the Spring 2004 Task Force meeting. In this presentation we will present the three major components and next steps recommended for our emerging digital preservation program:

• An integrated technical architecture of systems and services, designed around the whole lifecycle of digital information, from creation forward

• A set of functional roles and institutional policies required to insure that these systems and services are implemented and maintained

• An education program for faculty, staff, and administrators in the basic concepts and challenges of digital preservation and a training program in information management practices that will contribute to the ongoing availability of digital files.

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Digital Preservation
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DigitalWell: Digital Asset Managment for Institutions, Television and Radio

December 3, 2004

Jim DeRoest
Director, Streaming Media Technologies
University of Washington

DigitalWell streamlines encoding, management and distribution of high quality audio and video, opening up new opportunities for the learning, research and broadcast communities. The speaker will discuss and demonstrate enhancements to DigitalWell services: institutional repository support, collection management, metadata profiles, access controls, broadcast automation, streaming to handheld devices and high definition video to the desktop. The session will also include an overview of ResearchChannel and its expanding role in the international community.

PowerPoint Presentation

http://www.digitalwell.org/

Filed Under: CNI Fall 2004 Project Briefings, Metadata, Repositories
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