International Journal of Digital Curation
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From Princess to Punk: Digitisation in the Fashion Studio
Get PDFThe Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection project was a unique collaborative venture between staff and students at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) and their Chancellor, the British fashion and textile designer Zandra Rhodes. Working within the designer’s private studio space, this initiative has developed the first digital record of her personal collection of garments and drawings, supported and enriched with behind-the-scenes video interviews and tutorials, for worldwide educational use. This paper examines the benefits and strategies for undertaking the project in situ within the designer’s private studio environment. It outlines the need for a bespoke, flexible approach to digitisation in the visual arts that respects the individuality and creativity of the artist, whilst drawing on established documentation standards and expertise from the library, archive and museum sector
Resources to Support Faculty Writing Data Management Plans: Lessons Learned from an Engineering Pilot
Get PDFRecent years have seen a growing emphasis on the need for improved management of research data. Academic libraries have begun to articulate the conceptual foundations, roles, and responsibilities involved in data management planning and implementation. This paper provides an overview of the Engineering data support pilot at the University of Michigan Library as part of developing new data services and infrastructure. Through this pilot project, a team of librarians had an opportunity to identify areas where the library can play a role in assisting researchers with data management, and has put forth proposals for immediate steps that the library can take in this regard. The paper summarizes key findings from a faculty survey and discusses lessons learned from an analysis of data management plans from accepted NSF proposals. A key feature of this Engineering pilot project was to ensure that these study results will provide a foundation for librarians to educate and assist researchers with managing their data throughout the research lifecycle
Creating an Online Television Archive, 1987–2013
Get PDFThe growth of television, and in particular television news, has created a challenge in preserving and providing access to the resulting material. At the same time, technology has opened many opportunities to capture this information and make it more widely available. In some ways, it is a race of technology against the speed of content creation. In this paper, we describe a very successful archival project that records, indexes, archives and makes available the totality of the programming of the U.S. based C-SPAN television network, a nonprofit network that telecasts the entirety of the U.S. congressional proceedings, hearings, presidential speeches and other public policy events. As such, it is an archive of unedited primary source events. The use of evolving technology over 25 years has made this archive possible and it exists free on the Internet for world-wide access
Examining Disclosure Risk and Data Utility: An Administrative Data Case Study
Get PDFThe plethora of new data sources, combined with a growing interest in increased access to previously unpublished data, poses a set of ethical challenges regarding individual privacy. This paper sets out one aspect of those challenges: the need to anonymise data in such a form that protects the privacy of individuals while providing sufficient data utility for data users. This issue is discussed using a case study of Scottish Government’s administrative data, in which disclosure risk is examined and data utility is assessed using a potential ‘real-world’ analysis
Review: Research Data Management: Practical Strategies for Information Professionals
Get PDFA review of Research data management: Practical strategies for information professionals, edited by Joyce Ray, Purdue University Press, 30 Jan 2014, paperback, 436 pp., ISBN-10: 1-55753-664-3, ISBN-13: 978-1-55753-664-8
DMPonline Version 4.0: User-Led Innovation
Get PDFDMPonline is a web-based tool to help researchers and research support staff produce data management and sharing plans. Between October and December 2012, we examined DMPonline in unprecedented detail. The results of this evaluation led to some major changes. We have shortened the DCC Checklist for a Data Management Plan and revised how this is used in the tool. We have also amended the data model for DMPonline, improved workflows and redesigned the user interface. This paper reports on the evaluation, outlining the methods used, the results gathered and how they have been acted upon. We conducted usability testing on v.3 of DMPonline and the v.4 beta prior to release. The results from these two rounds of usability testing are compared to validate the changes made. We also put forward future plans for a more iterative development approach and greater community input
The Use of PDF/A in Digital Archives: A Case Study from Archaeology
Get PDFIn recent years the Portable Document Format (PDF) has become a ubiquitous format in the exchange of documents; in 2005 the PDF/A profile was defined in order to meet long term accessibility needs, and has accordingly come to be regarded as a long-term archiving strategy for PDF files. In the field of archaeology, a growing number of PDF files – containing the detailed results of fieldwork and research – are beginning to be deposited with digital archives such as the Archaeology Data Service (ADS). In the ADS’ experience, the use of PDF/A has had benefits as well as drawbacks: the majority of PDF reports are now in a standard format better suited to longer-term access, however migrating to PDF/A and managing and ensuring reuse of these files is intensive, and fraught with potential pitfalls. Of these, perhaps the most serious has been an unreliability in PDF/A conformance by the wide range of tools and software now available. There are also practical and more theoretical implications for reuse which, as our discipline of archaeology alongside so many others rapidly becomes digitized, presents us with a large corpus of ‘data’ that is human readable, but may not be amenable to machine-based technologies such as NLP. It may be argued that these factors effectively undermine some of the perceived cost benefit of moving from paper to digital, as well as the longer-term sustainability of PDF/A within digital archives
Appraisal and Selection for Digital Curation
Get PDFBased on existing appraisal/selection policies in libraries, archives, museum, social science and science data centers, this paper presents a generic appraisal/selection framework for digital curation. In presenting this framework, the author discusses how archival appraisal theories, methods, and criteria adapt to the general digital curation context
Video Game Preservation in the UK: A Survey of Records Management Practices
No full textVideo games are a cultural phenomenon; a medium like no other that has become one of the largest entertainment sectors in the world. While the UK boasts an enviable games development heritage, it risks losing a major part of its cultural output through an inability to preserve the games that are created by the country’s independent games developers. The issues go deeper than bit rot and other problems that affect all digital media; loss of context, copyright and legal issues, and the throwaway culture of the ‘next’ game all hinder the ability of fans and academics to preserve video games and make them accessible in the future. This study looked at the current attitudes towards preservation in the UK’s independent (‘indie’) video games industry by examining current record-keeping practices and analysing the views of games developers. The results show that there is an interest in preserving games, and possibly a desire to do so, but issues of piracy and cost prevent the industry from undertaking preservation work internally, and from allowing others to assume such responsibility. The recommendation made by this paper is not simply for preservation professionals and enthusiasts to collaborate with the industry, but to do so by advocating the commercial benefits that preservation may offer to the industry
Data Management in Metagenomics: A Risk Management Approach
Get PDFIn eScience, where vast data collections are processed in scientific workflows, new risks and challenges are emerging. Those challenges are changing the eScience paradigm, mainly regarding digital preservation and scientific workflows. To address specific concerns with data management in these scenarios, the concept of the Data Management Plan was established, serving as a tool for enabling digital preservation in eScience research projects. We claim risk management can be jointly used with a Data Management Plan, so new risks and challenges can be easily tackled. Therefore, we propose an analysis process for eScience projects using a Data Management Plan and ISO 31000 in order to create a Risk Management Plan that can complement the Data Management Plan. The motivation, requirements and validation of this proposal are explored in the MetaGen-FRAME project, focused in Metagenomics