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ALADIN Research Commons: A Consortial Institutional Repository

April 7, 2006

Joan Cheverie
Head, Digital Library Services
Georgetown University

Claire Dygert
Serials & Electronic Resources Librarian
American University

Bruce Hulse
Director of Information Services
Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC)

The Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) has recently launched a shared digital institutional repository (IR) for its member institutions, known collectively as the ALADIN Research Commons. This resource is intended to serve both as a mechanism for publishing the scholarly output of each school’s academic community, and as an open and shared resource that supports research and continued scholarship. The ALADIN Research Commons is built on the open-source DSpace software developed at MIT. The implementation of a multi-institution IR has posed some unique challenges. In this session, members of the WRLC Working Group will discuss both the benefits and the challenges of the consortial model and detail the policy development, operational guidelines, technical specifications, and implementation strategies used to realize an IR in a shared environment.

Web Site:
http://aladinrc.wrlc.org

Handout (MS Word)

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Digital Libraries, Repositories
Tagged With: ,

Archiving and Preserving the Web: Future Directions and Applications

April 7, 2006

Merrilee Proffitt
Program Officer
RLG, Inc.

Dan Avery
Senior Crawl Engineer
Internet Archive

Kristine Hanna
Archive-It Program Director
Internet Archive

This presentation will include a brief discussion of the importance of web archiving, examples of how some institutions are archiving the web, a demonstration of Archive-It, with an overview of the application, a review of the architecture, a discussion of technical challenges already faced, plus a technical roadmap for future developments in the system. RLG will give an overview of its programmatic offerings in web archiving.

Libraries and archives have long collected information that would serve scholars in understanding history, culture, and society.  Because of the efforts of memory institutions, many important documents have been saved which document and help us understand and interpret the past.  So much of today’s information is easily found on the world wide web — web pages have replaced newsletters, blogs are today’s diaries, many government forms and documents are more readily accessible on the web than they are in paper form.  As part of an effort to appropriately document and capture today’s information for tomorrow’s use, institutions must adopt a web archiving strategy.  For many institutions, the prospect of capturing and storing web sites, or entire web domains is a daunting prospect.

Fortunately, Archive-It takes much of the burden out of web archiving.  Archive-It is a web application uniquely designed for the needs of university and government institutions interested in preserving web content. The application allows organizations with limited infrastructure and technical staff to collect, catalog, search and manage archived web content through a web interface. Built on open source components by the Internet Archive and the International Internet Preservation Consortium, Archive-It creates and stores the ARC files that are the standard format for web archiving.

Even though Archive-It helps with the mechanics of web archiving, there are still substantial community issues to grapple with, including: metadata, shared collection development, intellectual property rights, and end user issues.  RLG will be leading a number of working groups that will explore issues and best practice around web archiving for those who are participating in the Archive-It service, or who are pursuing web archiving through other means.

Web Site:
http://www.archive-it.org/

Handout Page 1 (MS Word)

Handout Page 2 (PDF)

PowerPoint Presentation

Archive-It Architecture Introduction (PowerPoint Presentation)

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Digital Preservation
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AstroCat: A Web-based Interactive Astronomical Catalog

April 6, 2006

Stefan Dreizler
Director of the Institute for Astrophysics
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Ralf Stockmann
Head of the Digitization Center
Goettingen State and University Library

AstroCat-based catalogs are intended to hold information on the physical properties of astronomical objects of a specific class. The catalog is interactive in that it allows registered users to add new objects, and the quality is monitored by editors. Changes are instantly visible guaranteeing an up-to-date version. A restoring mechanism ensures citability. It also provides a powerful search functionality. We will present the CVcat as an application and also offer a demonstration of AstroCat.

Web Site:
http://www.astrocat.org

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Digital Libraries, Information Access & Retrieval
Tagged With: ,

Building a Digital Library of the Middle East: Report from a Workshop Held in Alexandria, Egypt, January 15-17, 2006

April 6, 2006

Stephen Griffin
Program Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering
National Science Foundation

Joan K. Lippincott
Associate Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information

Joyce Ray
Associate Deputy Director for Library Services
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Donald J. Waters
Program Officer for Scholarly Communication
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

With funding from NSF and the US/Egypt Joint Science and Technology Fund, IMLS and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) partnered to organize a US-Egyptian workshop at the BA in January 2006. The purpose of the workshop was to lay the foundation for development of a core infrastructure, identify scope and requirements for initial content for a Digital Library of the Middle East, and to discuss requirements for establishment of dedicated linkages to global science and technology networks.

Specific workshop objectives were to:

• Agree on a long-term vision
• Assess the current information infrastructure in the Middle East and examine the potential for establishing advanced research networks
• Identify a model for content aggregation, management, and preservation
• Identify content scope and services, and
• Document requirements as a roadmap for future actions

Presenters will discuss the workshop and forthcoming report as well as anticipated next steps to advance the long-term vision.

Web Site:
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~egyptdlw/

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Cyberinfrastructure, Digital Libraries
Tagged With: ,

Building an Interdisciplinary Research Program in an Academic Library

April 6, 2006

James L. Mullins
Dean of Libraries
Purdue University

D. Scott Brandt,
Associate Dean for Research
Purdue University

Data and information problems facing researchers today are voluminous and include a wide range of activities which can and should include library science expertise—from developing methodologies for collecting, to identifying and enhancing metadata, to building databases and mining them, to disseminating results through repositories, and in educating a variety of users on the availability and accessibility of research results. These problems call for participation and collaboration beyond traditional bibliographic searching as part of initial investigation or literature review—librarians need to contribute as co-investigators. They can develop interdisciplinary information protocols for data mining and extracting information from complex or multidiscipline data sources. They can translate vocabularies and build taxonomies for data across disciplines. They can apply curation and archive techniques to data and resources. And they can provide a network for promoting and sharing information, as well as education and outreach for a variety of types of end users. It is important to note that participation and collaboration is not simply an extension of the traditional role of “service” in meeting information needs of patrons—it is more proactive and involved.

The Purdue University Libraries has undertaken an interdisciplinary research program, to participate in various projects and initiatives as appropriate, to help support the strategic research mission of Purdue University. It engages in and applies library science-based research which promotes or supports university research. It focuses on key areas that support Purdue’s strengths (science, engineering, agriculture), but also pursues cross- and multi-disciplinary research, especially (science education, scholarly communication, agricultural economics, etc.). It pursues and participates in sponsored funding research, such as NSF, NIH, and other agency/foundation grants. And it develops a broader program that provides structure, guidance and mentoring to help new Libraries faculty hit the ground running, as well as foster research from all tenured faculty in the Libraries.

Web Site:
http://www.lib.purdue.edu/interdisciplinaryresearchprogram

Handout (MS Word)

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Publishing, Teaching & Learning
Tagged With: ,

Circle of Service: The Commons at the University of Tennessee

April 5, 2006

Barbara I. Dewey
Dean of Libraries
University of Tennessee

Julie K. Little
Associate CIO and Executive Director, Innovative Technologies Center
University of Tennessee

The Commons is a collaborative partnership between the University of Tennessee Office of Information Technology and the University Libraries to connect students and faculty with tools and information to be successful learners and teachers in the 21st century. A true partnership and next generation facility, the Commons emphasizes the “Circle of Service” philosophy and serves as a model for the campus and beyond.

Our presentation will discuss the following:
• Establishing the vision, guiding principles, and philosophy
• Cultivating support from various campus constituencies
• Building a new circle of service model to encompass the entire 2nd floor of a large research library facility, Hodges Library
• Proving the concept through boot-strapping resources with implementation of phase I completed in less than six months
• Using results as a model for campus-wide information services including articulating indicators of success

Handout (PDF)

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Learning Spaces (includes Information/Learning Commons)
Tagged With: ,

Collaborations in Shibboleth and Federation Futures

April 5, 2006

Ken Klingenstein
Director, Middleware and Security
Internet2 and University of Colorado, Boulder

With Shibboleth now widely deployed in production and testbed environments, there is increasing focus on enhancements and the trust federations to support it and collaborations are playing an important role. This session will present next steps for Shibboleth including future tools, such as SHARPE and Autograph, for privacy management and plans for integration with commercial products. Collaborations with content and service providers both nationally and internationally are enhancing the value and shaping the future of federations. Progress is also being made on the peering of the InCommon Federation with the Federal e-Authentication Federation and on use in the Grid communities.

Web Site:
http://shibboleth.net/

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Information Access & Retrieval
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Designing Digital Preservation Repository Services at Stanford: Practical Theory for Practical Services

April 4, 2006

Keith Johnson
Product Manager, Stanford Digital Repository
Stanford University

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) are building a set of services to facilitate long-term stewardship of information encoded in digital form. These services and the infrastructure supporting them are collectively called the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR), and are envisioned to support not only the institutional scholarly needs of Stanford, but also the world’s broader academic and research communities. The broadly defined scope of the SDR requires it to accommodate large volumes of widely heterogeneous content; in the emerging digital preservation field this creates significant challenges. One of the most considerable is identifying commonalities in the preservation service needs of the heterogeneous objects to build broadly valuable and viable services. To this end, SDR staff have been surveying existing digital preservation theory, participating in funded digital preservation research, investigating the nature and scope of extant digital information at Stanford, and investigating traditional preservation and archival practices. This briefing will present theory synthesized by SDR staff to model our digital preservation economics and the implications of this theory on the emerging services and longer-term design of the SDR.

Handout (MS Word)

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Digital Libraries, Digital Preservation, Repositories
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Embracing the (De)contextualization of Digital Artifacts

April 4, 2006
Barbara Taranto
Director, Digital Library Program
The New York Public Library

In the course of building NYPL Digital Gallery (450,000 publicly available digital images) the Library engaged the expertise of several well known historians, curators, scholars, artists and researchers. Most important to this group was the idea of the tertiary products that would result from the initial publication and the concern that building context in derived formats was essential for the non-trivial use of the content. Collectively we imagined many possibilities including, digital exhibitions, digital monographs, print matter, educational guides, etc. In fact, web afficianados such as “Pantufla” (on Flickr) and “Boing Boing” have put a lie to those musings by harvesting thousands of images from the Gallery, modifying the core metadata and sometimes the images; and then communicating with other bloggers regarding his/her modifications. The conversation that began among bloggers last March, when the public site was launched, continues, as bloggers pass original digital materials and the deconstructed ones into a common forum for discussion on authentic vs. artistic content and the effect it is having on visual and social culture on the web.

Web Site:
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org

Handout (PDF)

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Digital Humanities, Digital Libraries, Intellectual Property, Social Media
Tagged With: ,

Gnosh: Social Metasearching in the Liberal Arts

April 4, 2006

Bryan Alexander
Director of Research
National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE)

Michael Richwalsky
Web Administrator
NITLE, Allegheny College

Gnosh is a social metasearch and aggregation tool, created and developed by academic technologists at Vassar and Allegheny Colleges. It supports searches across a variety of search engines and social services, then enables query histories, visualizations, and storage. Additionally, Gnosh works as social software by supporting search subscription and publication, leading to query-based conversations and emergent social networks. Gnosh emerged to address pedagogical, research, and support needs surfaced by a liberal arts colleges’ social software users group.

Web Site:
http://webtools.allegheny.edu/gnosh/index.php

PowerPoint Presentation

Filed Under: CNI Spring 2006 Project Briefings, Net Generation (includes Millennials), Social Media, User Services
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