Russ Savage: Digital Repository

Sat, 01 Nov 2003 21:16:50 GMT

When Congress passed the Government Paperwork Elimination Act in 1998, proponents talked about the remaking of an enormous paper-bound bureaucracy into the prototypical 21st century organization, complete with e-signatures and the electronic storage of documents.

If you want an inkling of what this involves, consider that the federal government's computer systems stretch back some four decades, thus representing what may be the biggest IT petri dish in the world.

The deadline for complying with the bill came and went last week with little of the fanfare that accompanied the start of the project. CNET News.com caught up with Ray Wells, IBM's top software executive in Washington, D.C., to gain some perspective on how close Uncle Sam is to realizing the ambition of a hard-copy-less system....

By Charles Cooper , Staff Writer, CNET News.com, October 27, 2003

Sun, 20 Apr 2003 21:06:00 GMT

on the difference between marks and locks. JD Lasica has a nice pointer to a story about progress in the digital watermarking debate. She wonders about this progress because of work (in part by Ed Felten) suggesting “that all such encryption systems can be defeated.” But there is an important distinction that this debate needs. I’m a strong supporter of flawed (in the sense of defeatable) watermarking. Here’s why: [Lessig Blog]

Tue, 01 Apr 2003 02:02:07 GMT

E-records management moves front and center. Documentum, Surety target compliance, content archiving [InfoWorld: Top News]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 11:23:16 GMT

Revealing Ohio's Buried Treasure. Centuries ago, earthen structures of great scientific and cultural significance were built in the Midwest, but farmland and parking lots replaced them in the modern age. A new digital project will create virtual renditions of these earthworks. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 23:46:04 GMT

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Preparing for Computer Disasters. Most colleges have some sort of plan to protect their computer information, although few have faced the kind of disaster that would demonstrate whether those plans actually worked. Experts say staging a mock computer disaster can highlight a preparedness plan's shortcomings, but such tests happen only rarely. [Tomalak's Realm]

Mon, 17 Feb 2003 11:44:13 GMT

SJ Mercury: Disk-drive capacity continues to grow. Dan Gillmor. The kinds of files we store keep getting bulkier, but the disk-drive wizards are moving fast enough to stay ahead. In the next few years, given their continuing innovation, they're likely to do something I didn't imagine possible until recently -- give us so much storage at such a low cost that we genuinely don't know how to use it all. [Tomalak's Realm]

A more varied range of opinion than the title suggests

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 01:42:17 GMT

Health care CIOs: Paperless hospital not ready for prime time. The development of paperless hospital and medical record systems is apparently a time-consuming process inhibited by costs and risks. [Computerworld News]

Thu, 13 Feb 2003 12:11:11 GMT

A Cash Infusion for Digital Archives. Congress has set aside $100 million to carry out a plan for collecting and preserving digital information, including images, CD's, Web pages and electronic journals. By Katie Hafner. [New York Times: Technology]

Sat, 01 Feb 2003 01:42:51 GMT

Digital data chases converged reality [InfoWorld: Top News]

Mon, 27 Jan 2003 12:34:55 GMT

Library of Congress Starts Sound Registry

"Close your eyes and just listen.

There's President Theodore Roosevelt denouncing corporate swindles. Robert Frost reading his poetry. Buffalo Bill Cody urging war with Spain over Cuba.

They are joined by 2.5 million other voices - some famous, some not - and sounds - the huffing and puffing of a steam locomotive is one - preserved at the Library of Congress.

On Monday, Librarian of Congress James Billington was announcing the first 50 sounds to be entered in a National Recording Registry. It seeks to ensure even greater protection for some of the most notable songs, speeches and other utterances.

The library is not the only government repository for sounds. The National Archives and Records Administration has tens of thousands of hours of Capitol Hill speeches, committee hearings and various other gatherings. (from AP)" [Library Stuff]

I can't seem to get to this article at the moment and I don't find anything about this on the LOC site, but I certainly hope they're offering these sound files as MP3s or Ogg Vorbis files you can download!
[The Shifted Librarian]

Mon, 27 Jan 2003 12:32:48 GMT

Petabytes = Librarians!. So Long Megabyte, Hello Petabyte!

"I haven't recently spoken about storage in this space. The David Morgenstern's story, 'What Killed the Megabytes?,' is exactly what I needed to come back to this subject....

After looking at current gigabyte devices, Morgenstern looks at terabytes. To get a terabyte today, you just need a couple of drives. He concludes.

So get used to terabytes while you can. Petabytes will be the next capacity point scheduled to come down to earth.

I agree with him. Consider this prediction from Adam Couture, an analyst at Gartner, reported by CIO Magazine in "What Elephant? Storage is already as big as an elephant and getting bigger" on May 15, 2002: 'The worldwide storage capacity will increase from 283,000 terabytes in 2000 to more than 5 million terabytes by 2005.' " [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
[The Shifted Librarian]

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 13:47:43 GMT

New Portal Software for Virtual Libraries.

"iVia is an open source Internet subject portal or virtual library system. As a hybrid expert and machine built collection creation and management system, it supports a primary, expert-created, first-tier collection that is augmented by a large, second-tier collection of significant Internet resources that are automatically gathered and described. iVia has been developed by and is the platform for INFOMINE, a scholarly virtual library collection of over 26,000 librarian-created and 80,000 plus machine-created records describing and linking to academic Internet resources.

The software enables institutions to work cooperatively or individually to provide well-organized, virtual library collections of metadata descriptions of Internet and other resources, as well as rich full-text harvested from these resources. iVia is powerful, flexible and customizable to the needs of single or multiple institutions. It is designed to help virtual libraries scale. This article describes the results of the last four years of work on iVia as funded by the National Leadership grant program of the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (U.S. Department of Education), and the Library of the University of California, Riverside.

A more detailed description of this software is available in the January 2003 D-Lib Magazine at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january03/mitchell/01mitchell.html.

All are welcome to use this software. Projects interested in working together or collaborating on co-development of systems or virtual library collection content building should contact Steve Mitchell, Project Director, at smitch@ucrac1.ucr.edu."

This is interesting - I'll have to try to look at the description later, though.

[The Shifted Librarian]

Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:52:41 GMT

Get Thousands of Articles from Your Local Library's Web Site.

No Charge: Public Libraries Provide Full-Text Access to Databases!

"A persistent myth says that you can find "everything" on the web. Not even close! Fortunately, many public libraries offer free access to a wealth of online databases that are often much higher quality than what you can (or can't) find on the web....

Other resources can potentially provide an answer -- often a much better answer than the web offers -- that satisfies your information need. One place that you could potentially find this type of material is your local public library.

For most of you, the library is a familiar place. However, what you might be unaware of is that many public libraries in the United States and Canada offer free access to databases that contain full-text magazine and newspaper articles, biographical profiles, full-text books, and much more. These databases also contain large amounts of material that you would never be able to access using a web engine.

What's even more exciting is that these databases are available remotely. That's right, with a library card you can access these resources from any computer connected to the Internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. In other words, you have total access to the content without having to visit the library building.

It's impossible to list every database available from every public library since resources vary amongst libraries. Simply visit your local library's web site, or give them a call and ask what's available and how to gain access. It's a painless process that can be accomplished in a matter of minutes....

Some of these databases also provide full-image reproductions of the material. This means you can access a pdf (Adobe Acrobat) version of the article directly from your desktop. In some cases, these articles are the same ones that you might have to pay for if you went directly to a publication's web site." [SearchEngineWatch.com, via TVC Alert]

And if you're at a SLS library that doesn't provide remote access to your databases, give me a call. We can provide authentication scripts for you or help you work with your vendors to implement their solutions!

[The Shifted Librarian]

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 15:38:56 GMT

Libraries Preserving Our Past.

"The New York Public Library's Image Gate is currently in Beta. However 80,000 images so far out of 600,000 isn't too shabby. Of remarkable interest are the collections (also some here) they have put up so far for your browsing pleasure. Anna Atkins cyanotypes are beautiful, and the Art of the Cigarette Card is joyously quirky. Be sure to check back in 2004 when its all done."[MetaFilter]

Photographs from the Chicago Daily News: 1902-1933
"The Library of Congress in collaboration with the Chicago Historical Society has added to their American Memory Web site over 55,000 images of urban life taken between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Chicago Daily News. Search by keyword or browse by subject." [What's GNU]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Sun, 12 Jan 2003 04:32:47 GMT

News.Com: A life in bits and bytes. Q&A with Gordon Bell. Jim and I wrote an article on the 50-year outlook for computing, and that's when we realized that the amount of storage was so vast that we in principle could capture everything--everything you read, every picture you've ever taken, everything you've said. [Tomalak's Realm]

Sun, 12 Jan 2003 04:31:06 GMT

In Virtual Museums, an Archive of the World. The American Museum of Natural History is creating a searchable online catalog of the museum's 30 million items. By James Gorman. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 13:53:11 GMT

NSF Works Toward A Digital Science Library [USAtoday via Slashdot via [ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]]

What's a digital library? Creators compare them to traditional libraries full of books and periodicals, but digital libraries are found on the World Wide Web. They allow users to access multimedia resources that have been organized for their needs.

The National Science Digital Library, funded by the NSF, is aimed at addressing widely acknowledged problems with science and mathematics education in the United States. The library, which will cover engineering and technology in addition to mathematics and the sciences, is a growing group of collections and services created to support science education at all levels, from pre-kindergarten through postdoctoral research.

Developers note that while tons of information is already available on the Internet, it can be difficult for teachers to find what they need and then gauge its quality.

Tue, 31 Dec 2002 18:35:08 GMT

It's just freaking cool. The most compelling effect in Minority Report, for me, was the visualization of active paper. Last night we watched it again, and later some friends dropped by. To put this in context, I live in smalltown New Hampshire, not Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley. There is lots of dialup Internet happening here, and DSL is growing, but Wi-Fi households are rare. When a topic came up in conversation, and I flipped open the TiBook to check it out, I had an epiphany. The future really is here, albeit not evenly distributed. I didn't mention, and I'm sure it didn't occur to my friends, that I was connecting wirelessly to the Internet. It seemed completely natural that "the Internet" would be "in" this little box, whether or not wires were running to it. The technology is disappearing into the woodwork, as it should. It is becoming a small-i internet. ... [Jon's Radio]

Sat, 21 Dec 2002 17:45:24 GMT

Is it software?, Jon Udell's Radio Blog, InfoWorld, Dec. 21, 2002

Is it software? asks Dave. That's such a great question! From the moment I first saw an HTML form on a Web page, it was clear that boundaries were about to blur. Web pages are both documents and programs. Websites are both publications and applications. URLs are both phrases and function calls. Text is code, code is data, data is text....

Sat, 21 Dec 2002 11:28:05 GMT

IBM plans open-source storage strategy. Big Blue is releasing an open-source version of the software needed to let servers tap into its forthcoming "Storage Tank" technology. [source: CNET News.com]

" The technology works by using a different way of keeping track of descriptive information--"metadata" such as physical locations, file sizes or access permissions--that accompanies the actual content within the files. Where most storage systems include this metadata in the storage system itself, Storage Tank spreads the information across a group of metadata servers,..."

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 13:26:42 GMT

New Premise in Science: Get the Word Out Quickly, Online. A group of prominent scientists are challenging the leading scientific journals with the creation of two peer-reviewed online journals this week. By Amy Harmon. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Tue, 17 Dec 2002 13:03:29 GMT

No Longer for Scholars' Eyes Only. With the help of Hewlett-Packard, the Catholic Church makes historic documents accessible on the Web that only academics and church officials shared before. By Chloe Veltman. [Wired News]

One goes "Wow! Digital!" and one goes "Uhoh! Digital!"

Sun, 15 Dec 2002 13:12:37 GMT

The power of ISBN. Geoff at the Blog Driver's Waltz asks: ... [Jon's Radio]

Digital records 'obscure the past'. Digital technology has major shortcomings as a replacment for more traditional methods of archiving. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 23:32:28 GMT

W3C signs off on approach to secure XML documents. The move could open the door for end-user adoption of an XML-based approach to secure XML in document form. [Computerworld News]

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 19:59:34 GMT

Stage curtains painted by Salvador Dali and others