CNI: Coalition for Networked Information

Academic Library as Makerspace: 3D Printing and Knowledge Creation

Kathlin Ray
Dean, University Libraries and Teaching & Learning Technologies
University of Nevada, Reno

As part of an ongoing plan to transform an underutilized science and engineering library into a lively incubator for student-faculty collaboration and innovation, staff at the University of Nevada, Reno decided to launch a bold initiative: build a 3D scanning and printing “makerspace” and make it available to the entire campus. The service has been wildly successful with 3D printers running 24 hours a day. Furthermore, positioning the library as a place that facilitates knowledge creation beyond text based tools and resources has been a game changer. Students are highly motivated to learn new skills in order to take advantage of new technologies (Lynda.com gets heavy use); they experiment and iterate quickly to perfect their designs. Even better, students from engineering are now rubbing elbows with people from fields such as biology, computer science, geology, and even art. Like the printing press and the personal computer, 3-D printers have been hailed as a revolutionary device that will ultimately transform the way the world operates.

 Presentation

Academic Preservation Trust

Robin Ruggaber
Director, Online Library Environment
University of Virginia

Michele Kimpton
Chief Executive Officer
DuraSpace

Academic Preservation Trust (APTrust) is a consortium of academic institutions committed to the creation and management of academic and research content for multiple institutions. As a member of APTrust, the University of Virginia in partnership with DuraSpace is implementing a cloud based repository service to aggregate curated content from consortium institutions upon which rich access services may be built. The implementation will further provide long term preservation for selected content through the implementation of a repository within the Digital Preservation Network (DPN).

The aggregate repository is being implemented to collect many forms of content, offer utility to support administrative and simple access, augment individual institution preservation strategies as well as provide a firm foundation for exploring future access services. Consortium members believe they can achieve these goals more fully together than they can alone.

 

http://academicpreservationtrust.org/
Presentation

Auditing Distributed Preservation Networks

Micah Altman
Director of Research, Libraries
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This presentation summarizes the lessons learned from trial audits of a several production distributed digital preservation networks. These audits were conducted using the open source SafeArchive system, which enables automated auditing of a selection of TRAC criteria related to replication and storage. An analysis of the trial audits demonstrates both the complexities of auditing modern replicated storage networks, and reveals common gaps between archival policy and practice. Recommendations for closing these gaps are discussed, as are extensions that have been added to the SafeArchive system to mitigate risks in distributed digital preservation (DDP).

Presentation Slides

http://www.safearchive.org

Building an Archival Identity Management Network: Transforming Archival Practice and Historical Research

Daniel Pitti
Associate Director, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
University of Virginia

Brian Tingle
Technical Lead
California Digital Library

Clifford Lynch
Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information

 

This session will feature two related archival identity management projects: Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) and Building a National Archival Authorities Infrastructure. SNAC (2010-2014), a project to create a test bed of archival authority records and demonstrate their potential for user discovery, comprises a three-part process. First, personal, corporate, and family names (and related historical data) are extracted from finding aids (descriptions of archival records). Next, these names and data are assembled into contextual authority records, which are compared against each other, and against authority and historical data from other sources (e.g. VIAF and DBpedia). The resulting set of authority records serves as the basis of a prototype interface that provides integrated access (through the names and descriptions of people) to related but distributed primary and secondary resources. By virtue of the connections displayed between authority records and related sources, the prototype also provides a visualization of the historical social networks in which the people depicted lived and worked.

Among the primary objectives of the Building a National Archival Authorities Infrastructure (2011-2013) project is to transform the groundwork completed by SNAC into a sustainable national archival authorities cooperative program that is similar to, but distinct from, the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO). The project has convened a series of meetings comprising archivists, librarians, scholars, and allied professionals, with the goal of developing a blueprint for the cooperative. The emerging consensus from these meetings is that the National Archives and Records Administration will host the cooperative, collaborating with the archival and allied communities in its governance, development, and maintenance.

 http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/
http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/search
http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/NAAC_index.html

Collaborative Statewide Networked Information Content: Case Study in the Development and Operation of the Portal to Texas History

Martin Halbert
Dean of Libraries
University of North Texas

Helen Agüera
Senior Program Officer
National Endowment for the Humanities National Endowment for the Humanities

Brenda Gunn
Associate Director for Research and Collections, Briscoe Center for American History
University of Texas at Austin

Mark Phillips
Assistant Dean for Digital Libraries
University of North Texas

 

More than 200 libraries, museums, archives, and scholarly research centers collaborated to create the statewide Portal to Texas History over a 10 year period. This rich resource now contains millions of files comprising more than 220,000 titles, many of which are extensive back-runs of historic state newspapers. The Portal is now used millions of times per year by both academic and public researchers. This panel will discuss the Portal to Texas History as a case study in large-scale collaboration to develop networked information content. Issues that will be discussed by panel participants include the national context of digitization efforts, scholarly guidance in content selection, community engagement, standards-based technology for content aggregation at scale, assessment of usage and impacts, and strategies for long-term sustainability.

 

http://texashistory.unt.edu/

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