Abstracts for "The dilemmas of digitization"
Lou Burnard (OUCS) and Martin Wynne (Oxford Text Archive), CLARIN and DARIAH: "standards for computing in the Humanities, and an infrastructure for Europe".
Digitization now embraces both the production of digital surrogates for pre-existing objects of cultural history and the creation of new artefacts which will form the objects of study for future cultural historians. It is critically important therefore that humanistic scholarship master digital technologies. In this paper we will argue that a fundamentally humanistic hermeneutics lies at the heart of the best digitization efforts, and therefore that this is not such a methodological challenge as it may appear to be. Rather, it is a social challenge, which, we propose, is best addressed by the development of social networks and infrastructural initiatives such as DARIAH and CLARIN. Such initiatives facilitate productive and innovative use of these technologies by sharing expertise, promoting standard formats for data resources, and disseminating best practice as regards long term storage and metadata handling. By following the Guidelines they propose, scholars will be freed from a focus on the surface features of the digital technologies in favour of an imaginative realisation of their inherent potential.
David Robey (AHRC), "Digital resources in the humanities : sustainability and evidence of value".
This paper will survey the substantial range of digital research resources that have been funded since 2000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under its Resource Enhancement Scheme, now ended. It will cover a range of issues in digital resource creation: access and visibility, preservation and sustainability, reusability and optimization, and evidence of value. Ways of best addressing these issues will be discussed in relation to the changing context of national support for such activities. Up to this year, essential support has been provided by the Arts and Humanities Data Service, but its funding has now terminated. Eventually it may be replaced by a system of Institutional Repositories with a national infrastructure, or by some other form of national shared services, but in the meantime we will need to develop new independent frameworks to ensure quality and sustainability for resources of this kind.
Mats Dahlström (Swedish School of Library and Information Science), "Digitized library collections – an open source approach"
"If publicly funded libraries (PFL) such as national libraries were to adopt a more open source approach when making digitized cultural heritage (CH) material available, users would be granted not only open access to delivery files at a surface level (in e.g. PDF, JPG, or XHTML) but ”deep access” to archival file material and technical documentation as well (such as TIFF, full XML/TEI, scripts, style sheets and machine instructions). PFL:s would thereby strengthen the force behind the values of equal access, of supporting education and research, and of distributing not only digitized material but competence and methods as well. They might also come one step closer to sharing information-rich material with other digitizing institutions by constructing valid banks of commonly and mutually accessible digitized CH material. As of yet however, this is far from the case. Many PFL:s are rather adopting a policy to restrict public access to light-weight delivery versions while charging users for access to the archival, deep level (or hiding it away altogether). This paper examines some of the arguments for such a restrictive policy and discusses feasible ways of bypassing some of the open source obstacles."
Jacques Roubaud, "On the future of libraries".
After presenting some of his past experiences with numerous different Libraries, the author will make a prophecy about their future in the era of generalized digitalization.
Luca Martinelli (European Commission), "i2010 Digital Libraries: a European Commission initiative for Europe’s cultural heritage and scientific information".
Keywords: digital libraries; cultural heritage, scientific information.
The presentation provides an overview of the Commission initiative "i2010 Digital Libraries", a flagship project of the Commission's overall strategy launched in 2005 to boost the digital economy, the i2010 strategy. The Digital Libraries' initiative aims at making Europe's diverse cultural and scientific heritage (books, journals, films, maps, photographs, music, etc.) easier and more interesting to use online for work, research and study. The Commission outlined its strategy in the Communication "i2010: Digital Libraries" (2005), and later in the Communication on "Scientific Information in the Digital Age" (2007). A first strand of action aims at improving the framework conditions (legal, organisational, financial and technical) for digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation, so that all digital libraries can benefit from an improved "environment".
The instruments used are mainly forms of soft regulation: the use of a Commission Recommendation, incentive measures (co-financing of projects), facilitation of stakeholders' dialogue, coordination with national authorities and cultural institutions.
A second strand of action aims to the launch of a real European digital library, a common multilingual internet access point to the distributed cultural collections of Member States (EUROPEANA).
Specific actions have been devoted to the sector of scientific information, which operates according to particular dynamics.
Christine Madsen (Oxford Internet Institute), "Digitizing rare and unique resources: the “long tail” role of libraries in digital scholarship".
Digitization has, in many respects, made the already common even more common. Abundance of online information—particularly when viewed within the context of poor information literacy skills—may be widening inequalities rather than closing them. It is completely within the power of libraries, though, to remove (or at least reduce) this inequality. By focusing on the digitization of their unique holdings, libraries can direct their resources toward making materials that were previously only available to a few (whether through obscurity, condition, or policy) open to millions.
This paper will explore the application of the ‘long tail theory’ to library digitization projects. By focusing on the digitization of the 80% of library collections that are less used (equivalent to the long tail portion of a standard demand curve), can we develop new economic and access models that will allow libraries to truly revolutionize access to information? And if so, what are the factors and characteristics that will allow for the successful application of the ‘long tail theory’?
