D A V ADigital Audiovisual Archiving

A DReaM Project - Monday Nov 06, 2006

2006-11-07T15:58:00.000-05:00

Imagine a world where your access to digital content is based on your identity rather than the device you're using. Because in fact, your identity is not tied to any particular point or consumption device. Such is Sun's vision behind digital rights management (DRM) where the focus is on network identity as the place where your rights live and are accessible.

This edition of Innovating@Sun with host Hal Stern welcomes Tom Jacobs, director of research at Sun Labs (a.k.a. voodoo computer scientist) to discuss Project DReaM, Sun's acronym for Digital Rights Management Everywhere Accessible.

An audio podcast highlights how companies compete in technologies, based upon the quality of their implementations, services and pricing. The podcast includes:

Hollywood's opinion on the topic and Sun's area of focus – customers in enterprise, healthcare, government, education, finance and securities.

Why interoperable content is so important

How Microsoft tackles the issue with Vista and Sun tackles it with identity management

Reference implementations of code moving into built-in standards

What critics and supporters say about Project DReaM

Digital rights management as an improved approach to security

What the Liberty Alliance community is saying

Government Video and Technology Expo. Washington DC Convention Center Dec 5-7, 2006

2006-11-06T22:08:00.000-05:00

The Government Video and Technology Expo serves the equipment and educational needs of professionals working with video, audio, multimedia, conferencing technologies and broadcast in the federal, state, and local government, as well as in law enforcement, education, religious, and the non-profit sector. The event combines an exhibit hall, educational sessions, and individual conference programs bringing government buyers and vendors together for the ninth year running .

SEAPAVAA conference in Canberra, Australia, Nov 13 - 17

2006-11-06T16:18:00.000-05:00

This year’s conference of the South East Asia-Pacific AV Archives Association will be held in Canberra, Australia, from 13 to 17 November. The theme is THE VISIBLE ARCHIVE: ACCESS, ADVOCACY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. Registration forms, conference program and other information are available at the mirror website: http://www.pia.gov.ph/seapavaa/

SMPTE Conference, Los Angeles October 18-21, 2006

2006-11-06T16:06:00.000-05:00

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers is the leading organization for professionals in motion imaging technology, and for 90 years they’ve been bringing together industry experts on the technological cutting edge to share their knowledge. This year's Conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, brought together the latest in High Definition, Film Technologies, the Digital Intermediate, Video IP Workflow, and a host of other hot topics.

NAB New York Oct 23-25th, 2006

2006-11-06T15:42:00.000-05:00

This year's National Association of Broadcasters convention at the Javits Convention Center in New York featured more than 100 training sessions in cutting-edge production and post-production techniques and an exhibition that showcased the latest audio, video, content creation and asset management technologies.

AMIA 2006 Conference in Alaska

2006-10-31T22:25:00.000-05:00

The Association of Moving Image Archives held a successful 17th Annual Conference in Anchorage, Alaska from October 10 to 14.
The conference included:

Workshops and training on Cataloguing and Metadata; Film Technology; Magnetic Tape Triage; Health, Safety and Disaster Preparedness
Presentations and panel discussions on Cold Storage, Planning digitizing projects, Film scanning, Repurposing television for HD and DVD, Staffing and resources, Training, Ethics, Web access, Cataloguing and Alaskan heritage
Committee meetings covering Preservation; Cataloguing; Copyright; Independent Media; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender; Digital Initiatives; Documentary And Television; Nitrate Film; Regional Audio-Visual Archives; News; Moving Image Related Materials & Documentation; Education; Small Gauge/Amateur Film; Access; International Outreach; and Development of the Moving Image Collections website

Some attendees took time to enjoy the views and natural richness of the Alaskan environment, while visits from a local husky team added to the experience.
Next year's conference will be held in Rochester, NY.

MIC looking for feedback

2006-07-14T12:37:00.000-04:00

This request comes from MIC:

The MIC (Moving Image Collections) initiative, a collaborative between the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and the Library of Congress, is interested in your feedback to better assess how we are doing, where we can improve, and what future strategic directions to take. As many of you are aware, MIC documents moving image collections around the world through a catalog of titles and directory of repositories. It provides a technology base and informational resources to support research, collaboration, and preservation. It is a portal for integrating moving images into 21st Century education and a key access program of the Library of Congress' National Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia.

Please take a few moments to visit the MIC site (http://mic.loc.gov), then complete the MIC Evaluation Survey by clicking on the link under 'In the Spotlight.'

Decision Tree for Selection of Digital Materials for Long-term Retention

2006-03-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

A Decision Tree for Selection of Digital Materials for Long-term Retention has been added to the Digital Preservation Coalition's website.

This is a valuable tool which will assist in defining a selection policy for the digital materials in your organisation. The structure of the tree is based on a series of questions which will help you evaluate your digital content according to key organisational issues such as Rights and Responsibilities, Technical infrastructure, Costs and Metadata.

It can be found at: http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/handbook/dec-tree.html

Digital Library Symposium proceedings online

2006-03-16T11:32:00.000-05:00

The University of Maryland Libraries' Digital Collections and Research announced its online publication of symposium proceedings from The Library in Bits and Bytes: A Digital Library Symposium, held September 29th, 2005 at the University of Maryland. The online publication contains remarks from session presenters, panelists, and poster presenters on how library practice has embraced and is challenged by digital library initiatives.

Symposium proceedings can be found at:
http://www.lib.umd.edu/dcr/events/symposium/epubs.html

The Digital Future of Moving Image Archives presentation available

2006-03-16T11:04:00.000-05:00

The PowerPoint presentation from the aforementioned talk on The Digital Future of Moving Image Archives is now available at http://www.midwestmediaarchives.org/events.htm.

Vanishing Bits & Bytes: Preserving Information for the Future

2006-02-13T12:42:00.000-05:00

May 8, 2006 Houston, TX
Registration to begin in March

For more information, see: http://resource.library.tmc.edu/Conference.htm

Do you create or maintain valuable information in digital formats?
Learn to plan for the future availability of that data!

Discussion of:
Theories and issues of digital preservation
Practical solutions to be implemented now

Speakers:
Clifford Lynch, Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Victoria Reich, Director and co-founder of the LOCKSS Program
National Library of Medicine Representative
Houston area experts

Sponsored by:
Houston Academy of Medicine / Texas Medical Center; University of Houston
Rice University

Bringing digital preservation to LIFE

2006-02-08T11:55:00.000-05:00

LIFE conference - 20 April 2006
Conference Centre, The British Library
96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB

The JISC funded LIFE project reports its eagerly awaited findings on what it really costs to manage, store and preserve digital collections. In what will be an enlightening and informative one day conference, the project team will explain the challenges faced and the findings that have emerged.

The results of this groundbreaking one year study will provide a real insight into the range of issues that need to be considered for lifecycle management and will even go one step further by providing a framework within which you can work to apply a cost to your own digital collections.

This work should prove invaluable for anyone faced with the challenges of how to store and access digital content over time. By providing real-time figures for two major institutions (UCL and BL) the project findings will be both illuminating and will provide the foundations for future development work in this area.

There is no charge for attending, lunch and refreshments will be provided, however please note we reserve the right to charge a fee of £50 to no-shows. All cancellations must be received within five working days.

Keynote speaker:
Eileen Fenton, Executive Director of Portico; the electronic archiving service supported by JSTOR, Ithaka, The Library of Congress, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

To view the full programme list, please follow this link: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/lifeproject/confprog.shtml
To register for the LIFE conference, please follow this link: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/lifeproject/conference.shtml

The Digital Future of Moving Image Archives

2006-02-06T17:58:00.000-05:00

An evening with Matthew White: The Digital Future of Moving Image Archives

Wednesday, March 1, 2006 7:00 PM
924 E. 57th St. Room #205
Biological Sciences Learning Center
University of Chicago Campus
Admission is free.

An eye-opening evening is in store with media archives expert Matthew White, who will discuss his extensive work using new technologies to successfully transform analog moving image collections into accessible digital archives. White has been involved in visual media for over 20 years, as a producer of programming, as a writer, and most recently as a media executive.

During his tenure as Executive Vice President for Digital Markets for National Geographic Ventures, White became a leading advocate for the digitization of film archives throughout the world. He was recently appointed to an ad-hoc committee for the United Nations to determine how distressed film and video archives in developing countries can be protected and commercialized via digital media. He will present examples of this work and discuss ways to digitize and commercialize moving image archives.

Anyone interested in how technology and new media are shaping the future of moving image archives will not want to miss this event. Q & A and a reception will follow the presentation.

Location map: http://maps.uchicago.edu/northwest/bsdlearn.html

CONTACT:
Midwest Media Archives Alliance
Carolyn Faber
info@midwestmediaarchives.org
773-562-3540

A Dialogue about the Impacts of Mass Digitization Projects

2006-01-31T10:37:00.000-05:00

Symposium Presented by University of Michigan University Library and National Commission on Libraries and Information Science

March 10 and March 11, 2006
Rackham Auditorium
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan

What are the transformative issues and implications that emerge from mass digitization initiatives? How will initiatives such as the Google partnership with academic libraries impact libraries, universities, government, information policy, publishing, and education? What are the professional, social, and economic issues? How will we identify and respond to the challenges and opportunities to shape future directions?

To help explore these questions, the University of Michigan University Library and the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science welcome your participation.

For more information, contact:
sltsymposium@umich.edu
(734) 764-9358

Notes on Copyright and Mass Digitization

2006-01-31T10:20:00.000-05:00

The American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy recently held a session on copyright and mass digitization. Notes on the session can be found on the Library and Information Technology Assocation's blog: http://litablog.org/?p=200. Thanks to Jill Hurst-Wahl's Digitization 101 blog for this find.

The OITP also published "Digital Rights Management: A Guide for Librarians," written by the computer law and copyright attorney, Mike Godwin.

The 3-D’s of Preservation: Disasters, Displays, Digitization

2006-01-30T12:26:00.000-05:00

The Bibliothèque nationale de France, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the IFLA Preservation and Conservation Section and IFLA Core Activity on Preservation and Conservation (PAC) invite you to attend a special symposium to talk about three of the leading concerns in preservation circles today. Recent disasters around the world have highlighted the need for better planning and preparation to ensure the survival of library collections and cultural materials. Increasing numbers of exhibitions of library and archival materials point to the need for standards and best practices to make certain displayed items are not damaged. Digitization of materials is burgeoning around the world, yet we are not certain of the status of preservation of these important files.

Preservation experts from around the world will gather at the Bibliothèque nationale de France on March 8-10, 2006, to present papers and discuss these issues with members of the IFLA PAC Regional Directors and members of the IFLA Standing Committee on Preservation and Conservation. Registration is free of charge but compulsory.

For more information: http://www.bnf.fr/pages/infopro/journeespro/dri-conservation_gb.htm

Digital Curation and Preservation: research agenda for the next decade

2006-01-13T11:05:00.000-05:00

The final report and recommendations of the Warwick Workshop on "Digital Curation and Preservation: Defining the research agenda for the next decade" can now be downloaded as a PDF file from:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/training/warwick_2005/Warwick_Workshop_report.pdf

This British Library/CCLRC/DCC/JISC sponsored workshop was held in November 2005, and focused on three main strands in parallel breakout sessions and group discussions. Each breakout group considered one of the following topics:

Curation Services and Technologies;
Drivers and Barriers (policy issues);
and Data Life Cycle Management (process issues).

Each session was chaired by a leading expert on the topic and the groups were asked to consider the topic in relation to the following categories: the scope and definition of each topic, the current state of play nationally and internationally; what the vision was likely to be over the next 5 to 10 years; what we needed to do to achieve this vision; what were the dependencies on which achievement of the vision would be based, and what were the priorities.

TAPE Workshop on Management of Audiovisual Collections

2005-12-16T14:19:00.000-05:00

TAPE Workshop on Management of Audiovisual Collections
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam
19-25 April 2006

Librarians, archivists and curators in charge of audiovisual collections need to know about the role of new technology in collection management. Digitisation offers unprecedented opportunities for access to historical materials. But how can it be combined with established preservation methods in an integrated strategy, to ensure optimal access today as well as in the future?

In this 5-day workshop, the characteristics of film, video and sound recordings and the different recording systems and devices will be reviewed. Specific requirements for their handling and preservation will be related to the nature and function of different kinds of audiovisual materials. The workshop will explore the different transfer and conversion methods, technical requirements in relation to quality, and long-term management of digital files. Issues will be approached as management problems, and due attention will be given to aspects like needs assessment, setting priorities, planning, budgeting and outsourcing, and project management.

Participants will acquire knowledge of technical issues that will enable them to make informed decisions about the role of digitisation in care and management of audiovisual collections. The speakers will present outlines of issues and practical cases, and a substantial part of the workshops will be spent on discussions and group assignments to develop participants' skills in finding their own solutions. The workshop will be in English.

Registration fee: 600 euros, this includes coffees, teas, lunches and a course pack with reading materials. Participants from institutes who are TAPE partners or ECPA contributors will pay 500 euros.

For online registration: http://www.tape-online.net/courses.html
The registration deadline is 10 February 2006.

For more information on the TAPE project: http://www.tape-online.net

8th Annual SURA/ViDe Digital Video Conference

2005-12-06T11:03:00.000-05:00

ViDe 2006, the 8th Annual SURA/ViDe Digital Video Conference March 27-30, 2006

This conference has become recognized as the essential annual learning event in collaborative audio/video conferencing, streaming video, and storing/serving video-on-demand. Conference content will include examples of digital video projects in the research and education community and information on big video, SIP migration, H.264, video preservation, new conferencing technologies, K-12 applications, technology in the medical community, real time collaboration, firewalls, public broadcasting, voice over IP, open-source interactive media, digital libraries, and search engines. There will also be a general session to hear from the exhibitors.

In addition, two post-conference workshops will be offered on Thursday, March 30:
- Advanced Topics in Audio/Video Conferencing
- Internet2 Commons Site Coordinator Training and/or Big Video

The 2006 conference will be held at Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center in Atlanta, Georgia (http://www.gatechhotel.com). More details will become available at: http://www.vide.net/conferences/spr2006

Digital Preservation in State Government: Best Practices Exchange 2006

2005-12-06T09:53:00.000-05:00

Registration is now open for:
Digital Preservation in State Government: Best Practices Exchange 2006
When: March 27th - 28th, 2006
Where: Wilmington, North Carolina at the Hilton Wilmington Riverside
Registration Fee: $150
Registration Deadline: February 23, 2005

Come join fellow librarians, archivists, records managers, and other information professionals as they share their experiences in managing and preserving digital state government information for public access. Bring examples of your successes, failures, and lessons learned to share with colleagues in facilitated exchange sessions. You will most certainly provide and take away something of value from this experience.

The Best Practices Exchange consists of two facilitated large group sessions (an opening forum and a closing wrap-up), six small group topic-based exchange sessions, and an evening reception.

For more information on the Best Practices Exchange, visit:
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/digidocs/bestpractices/index.html

Library of Congress Launches Effort to Create World Digital Library

2005-11-28T10:12:00.000-05:00

Google Is First Private-Sector Partner with Funding of $3 Million

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin announced today that Google is the first private-sector company to contribute to the Library’s initiative to develop a plan to begin building a World Digital Library (WDL) for use by other libraries around the globe. The effort would be supported by funds from nonexclusive, public and private partnerships, of which Google is the first.

Billington said that the World Digital Library would bring together online “rare and unique cultural materials held in U.S. and Western repositories with those of other great cultures such as those that lie beyond Europe and involve more than 1 billion people: Chinese East Asia, Indian South Asia and the worlds of Islam stretching from Indonesia through Central and West Asia to Africa.”

To lay the groundwork for the WDL, the Library will develop a plan for identifying technology issues related to digitization and organization of WDL collections. These might include presentation, maintenance, standards and metadata schemas that support both access and preservation. The plan will also identify resources, such as equipment, staffing and funding, required to digitize and launch an online presentation of a WDL collection.

Full press release: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-250.html

International team wins the 2005 Digital Preservation Award

2005-11-28T10:09:00.000-05:00

The PREMIS Working Group - a team of 30 experts from five countries - was awarded the prestigious Digital Preservation Award for 2005. This is the tenth anniversary of the Conservation Awards, which this year has a new sponsor - Sir Paul McCartney. This is the second year to include the DPC-sponsored £5,000 Digital Preservation Award, which was awarded to the PREMIS Working Group for "leadership and advancement in digital preservation which will benefit the UK."

The winning team’s work is to do with "preservation meta-data", which is essential to ensure that digital objects remain accessible over time. The work of the PREMIS Working Group goes a long way towards establishing an international open-source standard for handling meta-data, which will help libraries and institutions around the world to archive digital content - the volume of which is doubling every year.

Full press release: h ttp://www.dpconline.org/graphics/advocacy/press/award2005.html

University of Georgia's Peabody Archive selects SAMMA for videotape migration project

2005-11-07T14:42:00.000-05:00

Media Matters' automated system to preserve and digitize priceless collection

The University of Georgia’s Peabody Archives has signed with Media Matters to use their System for the Automated Migration of Media Archives, or SAMMA, to migrate over 2,000 recordings submitted by local television stations around the United States for consideration in the annual Peabody Awards competition between 1973 and 1990. The project, funded by the National Park Service’s “Save America’s Treasures” program, will employ SAMMA to make multiple high and low resolution digital files and a tape copy of the recordings simultaneously.

"Many television stations can't or don't keep copies of the recordings submitted for the Peabody Awards. SAMMA will allow us to preserve as many of these recordings as we can," says Abolins. SAMMA is currently completing a project at the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University and will soon begin work at the Library of Congress in preparation for its move to the National Audio-Video Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA in 2007.

View the entire press release here.

What's New in Digital Preservation - Issue 11

2005-11-07T14:37:00.000-05:00

Issue no. 11 (June - September 2005) of the DPC/PADI "What's New in Digital Preservation" bulletin is now available from the Digital Preservation Coalition Web site and the National Library of Australia's PADI Web site:

National Library of Australia:
http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/qdigest/sep2005.html

Digital Preservation Coalition:
http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/whatsnew/

Library of Congress Selects Automated Videotape Preservation and Digitization System for Audio-Video Project

2005-10-20T12:05:00.000-04:00

SAMMA to Migrate Library's Audio-Visual Collection

The Library of Congress has contracted to purchase the System for the Automated Migration of Media Archives, or SAMMA, to migrate its massive collection of audio-visual material in preparation for its move to the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA. Over the next several years, the Library will use SAMMA to migrate and digitize many of the hundreds of thousands of recordings in its collection.

The Library realized that it would take many decades and be prohibitively expensive to migrate and digitize the audio-visual collections manually. To have the material available at the Culpeper facility when it opens in 2007, a more practical, cost-effective, and efficient method had to be found. In examining the alternatives, the Library concluded that Media Matters' innovative migration automation system would provide the high quality necessary to preserve the recordings, while meeting the required cost and time restraints.

SAMMA combines robotic tape handling systems with proprietary tape cleaning and signal analysis technologies. SAMMA's expert system automatically supervises quality control of each media item's migration. From a thorough examination of the physical tape for damage, to real-time monitoring of video and audio signal parameters during migration, SAMMA ensures that magnetic media is migrated with the highest degree of confidence and the least amount of human intervention. SAMMA uses specially-designed components to gather technical metadata throughout the entire migration process, ensuring that the process is documented in depth while gathering important metrics about the health of an entire collection. The modular, portable system will be installed on-site at the Library and run 24/7. The final product will be a lossless compressed Motion JPEG 2000 digital file copy of each master tape at preservation quality, and the technical metadata describing the condition of the media item and the migration process.

Upon completion, the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center of the Library of Congress will be the first centralized facility in America especially planned and designed for the acquisition, cataloging, storage and preservation of the nation's heritage collections of moving images and
recorded sounds. It is expected to be the largest facility of its kind in the world. The NAVCC, funded by the Packard Humanities Institute and the U.S. Congress, will open fully in 2007.

Contact Steve Kwartek at steve.kwartek@media-matters.net.
Phone: 212-268-5528 X113

METS Awareness Training Seminar

2005-09-06T10:08:00.000-04:00

METS Awareness Training Seminar
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, October 25, 2005

The first seminar in the Joint Information Systems Committee-supported METS Awareness Training series will take place on 25th October at the NLW, following the FEDORA conference (http://www.llgc.org.uk/fedora_conference.htm) at the same venue on the previous day. Attendees at the FEDORA conference are welcome to attend the METS day without additional registration.

Further details about the seminar are available at http://www.odl.ox.ac.uk/projects/projects_mets.htm. For further details on METS, see the METS home page at http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets.

NLM Supplemental Press Release

2005-09-02T11:38:00.000-04:00

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has put out a Supplemental Press Release on their “Getting to Disk-based Lossless Digital Video Preservation” symposium entitled "Some Additional Talking Points for a Video/Archival Technical Audience." It can be found at:
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/VideoArchivists2005/PRESS%20RELEASE%20-%20ADDITIONAL%20POINTS%20v4.pdf

Checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories

2005-09-02T10:44:00.000-04:00

Checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories Completed and Released

RLG has just released a draft report for the certification of digital repositories. The draft, titled "An Audit Checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories," is available at http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20769. It is the product of a task force working on a joint project between RLG and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The goal of the RLG-NARA Digital Repository Certification project has been to identify the criteria repositories must meet for reliably storing, migrating, and providing access to digital collections. The "Audit Checklist" identifies procedures for certifying digital repositories. Leveraging the RLG-NARA checklist, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Audit and Certification of Digital Archives project will test audit the Koninklijke Bibliotheek National Library of the Netherlands), which maintains the digital archive for Elsevier Science Direct Journals, the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), and Portico, an archive for electronic journals incubated within Ithaka Harbors, Inc. Stanford's LOCKSS system will also participate in this effort.

For more about the RLG-NARA task force, see http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=5441

JPEG2000 Blog

2005-08-29T17:20:00.000-04:00

A blog on JPEG2000 in Archives and Libraries run by Peter Murray of OHIOLink is available at http://j2karclib.info/. There is also a listserv - subscription information is at http://j2karclib.info/page/j2karclib-l_mailing_list.

Upcoming METS Opening Day

2005-08-25T12:46:00.000-04:00

METS Opening Day October 15, 2005 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

This event will provide an overview of the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) schema, and discuss the basics of implementing digital library systems which use METS. Participants will be given an opportunity to see how to build METS documents from scratch, and learn about how other institutions are implementing METS. There will also be opportunities to discuss the technical details of implementing METS, including the use of creation tools, endorsed extension schema, and making METS documents available to users.

The event is free of charge, but attendees of the METS Opening Day must register. Registration is limited to 100 people. Registration and travel information will be available shortly. A preliminary program is available at:
http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/program_canada.html

RLG DigiNews August 2005

2005-08-22T10:35:00.000-04:00

The August 2005 issue of RLG DigiNews is now available. Volume 9, Number 4 includes:

Feature Article 1
Developing Digital Preservation Programs: the Cornell Survey of
Institutional Readiness, 2003-2005
by Anne R. Kenney and Ellie Buckley

Feature Article 2
Watch This Space: Ten Promising Digital Preservation Initiatives
by the RLG DigiNews Staff

Highlighted Website
UK Web Archiving Consortium

FAQ
Predicting the Life Expectancy of Modern Tape and Optical Media
by Vivek Navale

http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20744

Real-Time Audio-Video Lossless Encoding Card

2005-08-22T10:31:00.000-04:00

Media Matters Gives First Public Demonstration of Real-Time Audio-Video Lossless Compressed Encoding Card at National Library of Medicine

Justin Dávila, System Architect and Technology Consultant for Media Matters LLC, gave the company's first public demonstration of its new Motion JPEG2000 lossless encoding card at the “Getting to Disk-based Lossless Digital Video Preservation” symposium held at the National Library of Medicine. The real-time audio-video encoding hardware provides mathematically lossless compression using wavelet-based algorithms, preserving video content in a Motion JPEG2000 digital file that is about one-third the size of uncompressed video with no loss of information, plus synchronized lossless audio in standard BWF format.

For the full press release:
http://www.media-matters.net/images/pressreleases/NLM%20MM%20MJPEG2k%20demo.pdf

LITA National Forum featuring MIC

2005-08-22T10:18:00.000-04:00

2005 LITA National Forum to feature Moving Image Collections preconference

The 2005 Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) National Forum will be held September 29 - October 2, 2005, at the San Jose (CA) Marriott hotel. "Moving Image Collections" (MIC) will be presented as a preconference to the Forum, beginning the afternoon of September 29 and concluding the morning of September 30. Please see below for a description of the program. Registration for the preconference is $175 for LITA members, $210 for non members.

The preconference will explore best practices for describing and preserving moving images and digital video using metadata, as well as MIC's extensible metadata strategy for making digital resources accessible and useful to different audiences.

For more information:
http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/litaevents/litanationalforum2005sanjoseca/Default5678.htm

Digital Curation Manual

2005-08-08T16:48:00.000-04:00

The first installment of the Digital Curation Centre's Digital Curation Manual is now available for download at http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resource/curation-manual/chapters/open-source/.
Entitled "Open Source for Digital Curation" and written by DCC Advisory Services Manager Andrew McHugh this aims to:
* Describe a range of explicit digital curation application areas for
open source;
* Offer some examples of existing uses of open source software;
* Highlight a selection of open source applications of interest to
digital creators, curators and re-users;
* Deliver quantitative insights into the value of open source
software;
* Offer guidelines for institutions planning to introduce these
technologies.

Two more installments, on Metadata and Curation of Dynamic Data, will be published within the next two months. Approximately 45 installments have already been commissioned and these will be released throughout the duration of the DCC project.

Any suggestions may be sent to the Digital Curation Manual Editorial Board (curation-manual@dcc.ac.uk).

Fedora Conference

2005-08-08T10:04:00.000-04:00

Digital Asset Management with Fedora, 24th October 2005

The National Library of Wales is pleased to open registration for the Digital Asset Management with Fedora conference to be held in Aberystwyth, Wales.

The aim of this meeting is to bring together those using, or thinking about using, Fedora from across Europe in order to share knowledge and experience whilst providing an environment for making connections between institutions.

This conference will be held in conjunction with METS Awareness Day on 25th October 2005. Participants are welcome to attend both events.

The deadline for registration is Friday, Sept. 17, 2005 For more information, including abstracts and booking forms, please visit the conference website at http://www.llgc.org.uk/fedora_conference.htm.

TAPE workshop on management of audiovisual collections

2005-07-29T16:47:00.000-04:00

TAPE workshop on management of audiovisual collections
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
28 September - 4 October 2005

In this 5-day workshop, the characteristics of film, video and sound recordings and the different recording systems and devices will be reviewed. Specific requirements for their handling and preservation will be related to the nature and function of different kinds of audiovisual materials. The workshop will explore the different transfer and conversion methods, technical requirements in relation to quality, and long-term management of digital files. Issues will be approached as management problems, and due attention will be given to aspects like needs assessment, setting priorities, planning, budgeting and outsourcing, and project management. The workshop will be in English.

For online registration: www.tape-online.net/courses.html
For more information on the TAPE project: www.tape-online.net

For more information on the workshop contact the ECPA:

European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA)
P.O. Box 19121, NL-1000 GC Amsterdam,=20
visiting address: c/o KNAW, Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29,
NL-1011 JV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
tel. ++31 - 20 - 551 08 39 fax ++31 - 20 - 620 49 41
URL: http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/

What's New in Digital Preservation

2005-07-29T16:24:00.000-04:00

Issue no. 10 (January - May 2005) of the DPC/PADI "What's New in Digital Preservation" bulletin is now available from the Digital Preservation Coalition Web site and the National Library of Australia's PADI Web site:

Digital Preservation Coalition:
http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/whatsnew/

National Library of Australia:
http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/qdigest/may2005.html

Long-Lived Digital Data Collections

2005-04-18T16:47:00.000-04:00

Solicitation of Public Comments on a Draft US National Science Board Report

The National Science Board (NSB, the Board) invites public comments on the draft report, Long-Lived Digital Data Collections: Enabling Research and Education in the 21st Century (NSB-05-40).

The draft report may be viewed and downloaded from the NSB Web site:
http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/meetings/2005/LLDDC_draftreport.pdf

The draft report provides the findings and recommendations of the Board on Long-Lived Digital Data Collections. The report arises from the recognition by the Board of the growing importance of digital data collections in research and education and their potential for broadening participation at all levels. It is intended by the Board as a first step in undertaking a broader discussion of the issues.

The Board plans to discuss public comments and revisions to this document in May 2005.Comments should be addressed to NSBExecOfficer@nsf.gov by May 1, 2005.

Should optical discs last forever?

2005-04-18T16:33:00.000-04:00

An article in CNET poses the question:

Would you like your digital-storage media to last 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, 35 years or 40 years? If you're an organization or government agency, the U.S. government and an
optical-disc industry group would like you to answer that question in a quick survey.

Find the article here: http://tinyurl.com/63ax4
Find the survey here: http://www.dvda.org/html/nist_survey.php
Survey responses will be accepted until May 31, 2005.

Digital Preservation Management Training

2005-04-12T14:11:00.000-04:00

Digital Preservation Management: Short-Term Solutions to Long-Term Problems
May 15-20, 2004
Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY

Cornell University Library is offering a digital preservation training program May 15-20, 2005 with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The workshop targets managers at organizations that are facing the digital preservation challenge and highlights the need for the integration of organizational and technological issues to devise an appropriate approach. This limited-enrollment workshop has a registration fee of $750 per participant.

Online registration is now open on the workshop website: http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/dpworkshop/

Call for Papers: ECDL 2005

2005-03-14T13:51:00.000-05:00

The 9th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries invites original contributions focusing on research and development supporting information access and exploration both from a technology perspective as well as in different application-domains such as science, e-government, cultural heritage, etc.

Topics of contributions include (but are not limited to):

- Concepts of Digital Libraries and Digital Documents
- System Architectures, Integration and Interoperability
- Information Organization, Search and Usage
- User Studies and System Evaluation
- Digital Preservation
- Digital Library Applications

http://www.ecdl2005.org/

Digital Futures: from digitization to delivery

2005-03-14T12:58:00.000-05:00

Digital Futures: from digitization to delivery
26th - 30th September 2005, London, UK.

King's College London and OCLC-PICA are pleased to announce the Digital Futures 5-day training event.

Led by experts of international renown, Digital Futures focuses on the creation, delivery and preservation of digital resources from cultural and memory institutions. Lasting five days, Digital Futures is aimed at managers and other practitioners from the library, museum, heritage and cultural sectors looking to understand the strategic and management issues of developing digital resources from digitisation to delivery.

Digital Futures will cover the following core areas:

Planning and management
Fund raising and sustainability
Copyright
Key technical concepts
Creating and delivering textual resources
Visual and image based resource creation and delivery
Metadata - introduction and implementation
Implementing digital resources
Digital preservation

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kdcs/digifutures.htm

Digital Video Preservation Reformatting Project Report

2005-03-11T14:35:00.000-05:00

The Dance Heritage Coalition has published a report on their Digital Video Preservation Reformatting Project. The report examines the suitability of a variety of popular digital compression schemes as a potential preservation format by applying them to various types of dance footage. Topics include lossy versus lossless compression, file wrappers, and an analysis of various codecs applied to dance footage.

The report can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/5ydxc

Sustainable Preservation of Digital Assets in a University

2005-03-11T13:37:00.000-05:00

The report and papers from eSPIDA's workshop held in February are now available. The event's aim was as to launch eSPIDA and create a level of awareness about sustainable digital preservation. The speakers opened up new lines of enquiry for digital preservation. The economic considerations offered by Professor Jane Hunter in particular resonated strongly; this is a new way of thinking for many in the field. The event contained lively discussions about digital assets, roles and responsibilities within an Institution towards them, drivers for preserving them and a whole manner of associated topics and these are brought out in the report.

http://www.gla.ac.uk/espida/events.shtml

New Digital Preservation Coalition Report

2005-03-10T18:04:00.000-05:00

The British Library were invited to prepare a report on mass archival storage, based on their own practical experience in developing their Digital Object Management system. Jim Linden, Sean Martin, Richard Masters and Roderic Parker authored the document and are all part of the BL's Digital Object Management (DOM) Programme at Boston Spa.

The report includes an overview of general issues related to building a large secure data storage system and includes discussion of what needs to be taken into account before the Total Cost of Ownership can be calculated.

While based on the BL's experience, as the report indicates: Our long-term needs are far from unique.

This document will be enormously valuable to all those who are engaged in, or planning for, secure long-term storage of large volumes of digital materials.

The report can be found here: http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/reports

Welcome to DAVA, the Digital Audiovisual Archiving Blog!

2005-03-10T17:40:00.000-05:00

Hello, and welcome to DAVA, the Digital Audiovisual Archiving blog. It's intended to be a locus of information for topics related to the transformation and preservation of audiovisual material. Sample topics include encoding, storage, metadata, provenance, rights, automation, and restoration. While this blog will focus mainly on audiovisual media items, many of the topics will have application to digital library objects in general.

This blog is administered by Media Matters, a digital archiving consultancy based in New York.