Building on seven years of research in the creation, storage, management, and delivery of digital objects with funding from the National Science Foundation, MATRIX, a Humanities Computing Research Center at Michigan State University, has constructed an open source digital repository, Project Builder, which provides the full functionality of a rich content management system. Designed for long-term preservation and access, Project Builder is a flexible web-based content management system that allows for the development of complex, multimedia learning objects. Digital objects in the repository can be easily repurposed and reused for other projects. Utilizing a modular programming, Project Builder, is designed to facilitate both digital preservation and on-line publication by individuals and communities. Project Builder is interoperable with DSpace and Fedora repositories. The program can ingest materials from any standardized repository and can output METS XML that can be harvested by these repositories. Nonetheless, neither programming skills, nor library science expertise is required to utilize Project Builder. Indeed, it was created with the goal of helping smaller cultural institutions and individual faculty members create rich, multimedia digital archives and websites that can be easily maintained, augmented, and repurposed. Michigan State University is in the final stage of releasing Project Builder as an open source program for educational use. As Project Builder is a robust digital archive application that allows developers to focus as much on presentation of complex learning environments as it does the storage, management and preservation of digital objects, it meets a significant need of the educational community.

http://www.matrix.msu.edu

Handout (MS Word)

Since the launch of the Virtual Museum of Canada in 2001, the Canadian Heritage Information Network has developed a database of more than 8000 messages and comments about its professional website and its website aimed at the general public. Messages are analyzed, coded, collected, and stored using the QDA Data Miner database according to specific descriptors such as date, location, language and also categorized based on the content of the message (type of product, message tone, and site feature mentioned in the e-mail). Systematic quantitative analysis provides information about the users and their interests, about their attitudes toward the site, and how the VMC site in general is being used (school work or projects, research, teaching, publishing, personal purposes). Long-term qualitative analysis allows the interpretation of user behavior and changes over time as the VMC itself changes, and as a tool to measure its impact on visitors.

http://www.chin.gc.ca
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca

This session reports on the outcomes of the October 2006 licensing and policy summit. Thirty open source project leaders, university attorneys, technology transfer officers, foundation leaders, and others convened to work on a framework for software sharing policies, copyright contributor agreements, licenses, and educational materials.

http://summit2006.osnext.org

The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) sponsors repository development projects in Australia in a range of areas, and in 2007 a priority area is “Repository Integration and Interoperability.” This session will demonstrate the work done in partnership with the National Library of Australia to define and implement a METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) profile for the automated repository-to-repository exchange of digital items/collections (e.g. digital image collections) between DSpace and Fedora. The technical details of what is required to make the two-way interoperability of DSpace and Fedora a reality will be discussed as part of the demonstration.

http://www.apsr.edu.au

Videos are becoming ubiquitous in higher education — in classrooms, in distance learning, and in presentations of university events for audiences worldwide. But how effectively is this media being used? As user participation flourishes in YouTube, Wikipedia, and iTunes, it is time for a breakthrough in video-based education. What kinds of hybrids will emerge when educational video breeds with participatory media? Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning has been working on classroom tools designed to promote analytic use and purposeful manipulation of video. This panel will demonstrate these tools, including the NSF-funded VITAL: Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning, a multimedia essay environment that integrates video libraries with clipping and tagging workspaces.

http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/web/index.html

Handout (PDF)

Presentation Slides PDF Version (Kaufman)

Presentation Slides Powerpoint Version (Kaufman)

Powerpoint Presentation (Phillipson)

Last year, in a report to the National Archives, a panel of the National Research Council stressed the importance for digital preservation systems to be explicit about their “threat model,” the threats against which they do and do not protect content. The LOCKSS team published a draft generic threat model in response. After more than 8 years of the LOCKSS program, the status of both the LOCKSS and CLOCKSS systems against each of the classes of threats in the generic threat model will be discussed. The range of content being preserved and the prospects for more in the next year will also be described. How defenses against the threats in the model can be audited and benchmarked will be discussed. The LOCKSS team’s plans for improving both LOCKSS and CLOCKSS’ defenses will be described.

http://www.lockss.org
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/rosethal/11rosenthal.html

http://www.lockss.org/locksswiki/files/c/c9/CNI2006-dshr.pdf

Handout (PDF)

Users increasingly expect access to United States government information to be electronic. The Government Printing Office (GPO) has recently awarded a contract for prime integrator services on its Future Digital System project (FDsys). FDsys will transform the collection, preservation, and dissemination of electronic information from all three branches of government, in line with GPO’s historic mission to provide perpetual, free, and ready public access to the published information of the federal government. GPO last briefed CNI on its Concept of Operations for FDsys in 2004. Since then, extensive analysis and planning has set a baseline of over 3000 detailed requirements which will drive the implementation of the system over the coming 2+ years. The briefing will include an overview of the plannng and highlights of expected features of FDsys.

http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm

Powerpoint Presentation

How and why do faculty make choices about where they publish? What factors color their attitudes about publishing in new electronic venues such as open access journals and blogs? According to an explorative study conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, faculty are wary of electronic publishing venues primarily because they are associated with a lack of quality control through peer review. Instead, faculty tend to rely on tried and tested journals and publishers for their information needs. “Conventional peer review is so central to scholars’ perception of quality that its retention is essentially a sine qua nonfor any method of archival publication, new or old, to be effective and valued. Peer review is the hallmark of quality that results from external and independent valuation. It also functions as an effective means of winnowing the papers that a researcher needs to examine in the course of his/her research.” The study, conducted by C. Judson King, Diane Harley, and a team of researchers, was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It was motivated in part by the oft-cited “lack of willingness of faculty to change” as the key barrier to moving to more cost-effective publishing models in an environment of escalating costs and constrained resources. The study is based on approximately 50 in-depth interviews with faculty, administrators, librarians, editors, and publishers, and formed the basis for five disciplinary case studies — English Language Literature, Anthropology, Chemical Engineering, Law and Economics, and Biostatistics.

Among the study’s findings is a tendency for many members of the research community to equate electronic-only publication with lack of peer review, despite the fact that there are many examples to the contrary. Moreover, because of the very nature of peer review, this factor holds back even those who are fully aware of the advantages of fully peer-reviewed e-journals, because they know that the individuals reviewing their work for advancement may well not have that awareness.

http://cshe.berkeley.edu/research/scholarlycommunication/index.htm