It truly felt as though these two weeks zipped by in a
blink of an eye. I have to
admit to feeling very sad, emotional but also proud and pleased. I was
definitely sad that the course was coming to an end, that I wouldn’t gather
with this group again, but also proud of all that I had learned and
accomplished within a two week time frame. After discussing our trip to Cambridge, we discussed
the various publishers that we visited over the past two weeks. We
agreed that while they all had their strong points, some seemed to be
more well rounded than others. For example, Sage and Berg do not have
partnerships. Also, ProQuest was the only publisher to consider libraries and
librarians.
Joyce
Ray, a former student of the course and lecturer at Johns Hopkins
University, spoke about Digital Curation and Publishing. She went over a
nuts to bolts portrayal of what is entailed in the curation process.
She stressed the importance of organization from the very beginning of
the process, including an item's provenance, which can be difficult
since orphan works are prevalent and no idea where they actually originated. Many steps have been taken in recent years to ensure that
work is being digitized properly and the same way across the board. While selection was mentioned, it was not the main focus. The importance of data management was also covered.
Other than Jonathan Bowen on day 2 of the Conference, she was the only one to directly mention
visualization. It is useful in helping
people understand information by painting a picture. In terms of
usability, interface and the basics, it’s wonderful for linked data and helping
to create relationships. Pratt has several classes on visualization.
Big data is hard to manage and surprisingly, to me anyway,
small data is even more difficult. There
are usually four levels of data and it’s important to track back and keep up
with the provenance, since special metadata is needed. The other issue is storage. At Purdue University, where Anthony's son Charles Watkinson is the director of the Purdue University Press, each researcher is given storage space and if they
receive a grant, they are allotted even more space. The University of Bath maintains researchers
storage space for 10 years. After that, they will need to make arrangements to
keep the information secure. Lots can be
lost if that does not happen.
Joyce also talked about the Open Archive Information Services
(OAIS). It’s a reference model dating
back to 2003 where content, context and access are viewed at 3 individual
bubbles that all overlap. In conjunction with the Trustred Repos Archives
Checklist (TRAC), which has been adopted as the standard, all changes are documented
and there is a great deal of clarity. At
the beginning of a data life cycle, the appraisal and selection process begins.
With storage being expensive, one must realize they cannot save everything.
The other point that
was raised that had been on my mind was about storage. When Google started the
Hathi trust with the University of Michigan (UofM), they often said that UofM
shouldn’t worry about storage because it was all digital. That was not the case. Not only where the
tiff files so large that they considered saving them in the inferior jpeg
format, but the way in which they were stored was also unacceptable. Google has a history of using underground
storage that has been labeled “cheap” that requires lots of water to keep it
cool. So it’s unstable and wasteful and
dangerous to the environment. A consortium was created allowing several
universities to split the storage, thereby saving the quality. As much as information specialists speak of the simplicity of the digitization process, little about it is simple. Following false or poorly thought out information can lead to a project's demise.
After Joyce's presentation, we were given the afternoon off to explore cultural sites of London. I spent the afternoon walking around Canary Wharf, Poplar and Hackney, reminiscing over my time in London 10 years ago. Quite a lot has changed in those areas. Old hangouts are missing due to the Olympics but not everything can remain the same.
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| Canary Wharf |
We then met up at Spaghetti House for a lovely dinner to celebrate the end of our course. It was the perfect end to share our stores of librarianship, great food and wine.
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