A few weeks ago I was honored to attend the National Digital Stewardship Alliance meeting. The NDSA was planned by the Library of Congress as part of their NDIIP project.  There were more people there than I expected and it was a humbling experience to hear some of the brightest and most creative brains in Digital Preservation speak.

The high volume of information was overwhelming.  I spent more than six hours at the end of the conference compiling a PowerPoint of the important research highlights.   A small sample of this information is included below.

There were many wonderful presentations giving case studies on how institutions used their own creativity to try and enhance the longevity or migratability (new word?) of their digital files.  The amazing work often was done on a shoestring which though unfortunate, also forced a certain level of imagination and invention.

A few examples are:

Jack Brighton, of campus radio station WILL, gave a wonderful presentation on what a small station is doing to make their civil rights collection more accessible.

Kickstarter.com did a great presentation on how they are helping arts projects get funded and we hope that as they branch into community work that digital preservation might fit into that.

The UK Web Archiving project covered some of the complexities and true effort that it takes to try and tackle capturing the online history of its nation.   http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/

- As of December 2010 – 9 million sites with .uk, probably 1M more

- 10,027 websites archived

- Need skills in Linux, Java, Hadoop, and SOL

5 keys processes to web archiving

- Selection

- Harvesting

- Storage

- Preservation

- Access

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/ngram/

So after taking in all this good information, what is it that I have left the conference with?

People just like us are doing some wonderful problem solving out there.  There is some potential being unlocked, but there is so much to do.

As I see it the Action Items are:

1)    Greater broadcasting of the successful case studies for migration and open solutions.

2)    Training classes in how to boil this down for each type of format/issue.  The NDSA Outreach group held a session called “Digital Preservation in a Box”.  This is the beginning of standardizing the tools that we need.

3)    Overarching education to information and production professionals, as well as, the general public about the dangers of digital fragility and the need for migration (at the least).

I have mentioned to my classes for years that future anthropologists, sociologists and historians will have little to sift through from the late 20^th century.

Some of it is being worked on by archivists now but much is gone.  Let’s keep making progress so that the future of our current history is not lost, like the way of silent films.

More informational tidbits from NDSA:

Other Great Projects

—       ThatCamp.org

—       http://www.scola.org/scola/sampledigitalarchive.aspx

NYPL Labs

—     http://search.creativecommons.org/?q=nypl+map+rectifier&sourceid=Mozilla-search

—     http://menus.nypl.org/

Archiving Facebook

Grad student designed Firefox add-on for individual archiving of Fb.

www.Bit.ly/archivefb

Preserving Virtual Worlds

—      www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/17097

Cool Tools

—  http://www.google.com/landing/historypin/

—  http://blogs.yu.edu/cpa/2011/02/23/open-source-video-platforms-kaltura-vs-entermedia/

Great Quotes

—    JackBrighton”(DAM) is more like an appliance than an Ecosystem.”

—    Michael Nelson “We need to raise the level of user expectations.”

—    Michael Nelson “In all good computer science functions you solve the problem through indirection.”

—    Wheatley and Frieze “The world does not change one person at a time.  It changes as networks of relationships form among people        who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible.”

—    Tim O’Reilly(?) “Teach preservation as a mindset.  Bake this into the tools.”

New Phrases

—    Social Curation

—    Metadata Ecologists

After reading some marketing information from a DAM vendor, and working in the field for nearly 20 years, I just needed to vent about how some present their product.

Some DAM system vendors often tout their automated systems as replacements for what they claim is “costly manual tagging”. Yet, after implementing one of these expensive systems, their customers often turn to information professionals for metadata development help, because their end users are unable to find the assets they need in a timely manner. There is an obvious disconnect between full automation versus high-end manual service.

Using “smoke and mirrors” has unfortunately been an approach for some DAM system vendors. Like stage magicians, they use misdirection to steer potential customers away from the failings of their systems, sometimes by using confusing jargon or misleading customers about the true costs of accurate, efficient metadata development. They argue that automated indexing is superior and less expensive than human catalogers, yet the customers who purchase these systems are disappointed to find that after spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on an automated system, they still need to hire information professionals to make their assets truly useful. At this point, like the professional mechanic trying to repair the shade-tree mechanic’s work, the issue can become more costly than it would have been if the information professionals were consulted in the first place. Cleansing metadata is always more difficult than designing it well in the beginning.

So, despite the “sexy librarian” stereotypes that abound, our profession is often “out-sexed” by the glitz and glamour of technology and the deliberately misleading sales pitches of some DAM vendors. Some corporate officers are enamored of technology and reluctant to expend budget on people. It is only when they realize that the assets that are vital to their core mission cannot be easily found and reused that they turn to information professionals to “fix” the metadata problems. Keep in mind that reuse generates income to help pay for the database system, and in the most successful cases, to more than pay for the existence of the archives & its staff.

Each industry has a specific terminology that distinguishes itself from other industries and from competitors within their own industry. This complexity of language requires mediation by individuals who understand not only the language, but the way in which users apply the language in searching. While computers & software can do a great job of capturing content, they are not as successful at interpreting that content’s meaning to the organization which generated it, or to the public at large. Interaction with the public to increase brand recognition is vital to every company’s mission, especially in light of the increased use of social networking.

Building brand recognition depends on how well one’s marketing efforts are communicated to the public. The textual content of advertising, even with the use of closed captioning and scripts, does not always convey the concepts that a brand manager wants to stress to the public. Often, advertising is so subtle that it does not even contain dialogue. How successful is machine generated indexing to this type of material? A human indexer can capture concepts such as value, convenience, refreshment, fun, excitement, vitality, friendship, family, customer satisfaction, and many others, that may only be contained in the visual component of the material.

The communications department of each company may also have specific requirements for reusing historical imagery. It may be necessary to know that an image of a delivery truck represents the first use of innovative technology, or that a product package image is a limited edition, advertising the anniversary of the company’s participation in a sporting event. This information may only be available from visual clues within the image itself, or from non-documented “corporate memory” which exists only in the knowledge of the people who created the images. It is also essential for a company to know whether or not the talent that appears in an advertisement has been bought out for a limited period of time, in order to avoid unauthorized usage. This requires not only that the talent be identified, but that documentation of the rights contract is available in a form that can easily be accessed. Advertising agencies have not historically kept this documentation readily accessible. Researching this information can be time consuming and difficult to navigate, as the records may only be organized by date, job number or brand, or by the name of the union with which the rights had to be negotiated. Working titles for individual spots may change multiple times, ending with a completely different final title. Accurate identification is essential for successful reuse of corporate assets. A skilled researcher can quickly cut through the layers of obfuscation to get to the heart of talent rights.

Isn’t it about time that we, as a profession, sell our abilities as well as the DAM system vendors sell their systems? After all, we’ve been proven vastly superior, despite the claims to the contrary. Human beings can make the connections between content and context that automated systems are incapable of making. While there have been improvements in face recognition, speech-to-text and other automated indexing methods, nothing beats a professional indexing team for improving accuracy and adding value to machine-generated metadata. For accuracy of retrieval, there is no replacement for a well-tailored controlled vocabulary used in combination with a well-designed indexing policy. This is one of the many places where information professionals excel.

Fortunately, there does seem to be a movement among smarter corporate entities to incorporate librarians, archivists and other information professionals into the teams making the decisions regarding DAM system purchases & implementation. In addition, many employ specialists to create metadata dictionaries, crosswalks to vendor databases, and to manage the quality of metadata entry. These companies have the best track records in developing systems that are the most useful & successful, even winning awards for their efforts. The success of these projects should lead other organizations involved in digital asset management projects to emulate their efforts and consult the experts in metadata development.

The best DAM vendors know that their tool is just part of the solution for asset management and a great team of people needs to set guidelines, determine field requirements and design searchability together. This is what any institution looking for an answer to Asset Management should look for.

If you’ve heard of Second Life but wasn’t really sure what it was, or perhaps you’re feeling hesitant about learning “another” new thing, take heart. I’m here to provide information and guidance to this new social media tool. Check out this 3 minute YouTube video for a quick demo on Second Life and how it’s being used to teach university classes.

In a nutshell, Second Life is a software program that looks like you’ve entered a three dimensional (3D) world on your computer. It’s fantastic for demonstrating processes, displaying artifacts and information, interacting with other people, collaborating, building in accountability to distance education courses, teaching complex concepts, simulations and more. As if it couldn’t get any better, creating an account in Second Life and using their software is free!

Ok, there can be some costs involved. If you decide to use Second Life to create a museum display, hold classes online, run a simulation, etc., you’ll most likely need to rent some server space from the Linden Lab company. But to the public (your customers, clients or students), the use of the system is free. In future posts I’ll go into more depth about how to do a cost analysis and project plan for getting your business or institution set up in Second Life. If you’re already familiar with Second Life and need a little help getting your institution started now, shoot me an email at sjkmartin@gmail.com.

The key concept behind this 3D environment is that it’s entirely user created. You get to decide what you want to do with it. Several years ago I opted to create an interactive museum exhibit called the Black Abolitionist Digital Archive. Second Life visitors walk into a period court house, see portraits of black abolitionist speakers, link to the University of Detroit Mercy’sabolitionist digital research collection, watch informational slide shows and examine 3D artifacts. The most powerful aspect of the exhibit is the ability to reenact the actual speeches and have panel discussions with experts in the field. Communication is done through text chat or via microphone similar to a conference call. All this is done in the comfort of your chair at your home or office. Where else can you get access to that kind of information? If you already have the Second Life software downloaded, click on this slurl and it will open your software and take you right to the Black Abolitionist Digital Archive.

If you haven’t experienced Second Life yet, think seriously about giving it a try. My next posts will deal with interesting places and examples of how institutions and individuals are using the technology. Be prepared for some surprises!

As I was working on a workshop about process planning for digitization, I came across this quote by Peter Drucker, ”Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

No matter how pleasant you are (or you think that you are) the bottom line is that the funding and reputation of your institution rests on success.

There is a reason that business principles exist. There is a reason that companies that fail to follow these principles also fail. Few managers of digitization projects have business backgrounds. The number one failure seems to be a lack of project management skills.

There is not enough in the way of professional literature on this topic. Most is focused on case studies that are presented in ways that are specific to that particular project.

We need to try to develop standards or at the least, guidelines that are portable to most projects. A smart manager follows four important rules:

1. Establish written procedures (aka process manuals)
2. Develop deliverables (aka due dates and accountability)
3. Track production (aka cost accounting)
4. Adjust/improve processes as needed (aka communication and report generation)

In the words of many great politicians, “Let me be perfectly clear, “developing tracking and implementing good project management is not more time consuming than NOT doing it. On the contrary, the risk in not doing it is too great. Why don’t we put the time in to do this deeper structural work? My answer is that most of us do not realize the impact of not doing it.

The number crunching, procedure writing, report generation and pie chart creation is not the most attractive aspect of digitization. Showing the world a digitized version of a little-documented historic event is what pulls us in to this field. Creating tracking forms is NOT why 99% of us enter the profession.

I can’t even count the number of institutions that I have seen go over budget and have to stop in the midst of a digitization project. The lack of ability to manage, project and track costs has stopped some people from even trying. So, I think this is a fair forum to introduce some of these concepts.

Look for a serialized version of “Business Principles for Digitization” to be coming to the blog over the next month.

As always if you have suggestions of what you might like to see, drop me a note!

Oh, I get it. “IT” – of course, the acronym for Information Technology. The name of the computer departments where I used to work. The place where all the “computer guys,” as I fondly referred to them, were busy working their techie magic.

However, when it comes to this particular blog format, a resource for archivists and librarians, “IT” takes on different connotations. What occurs to me is this concept, the quest for high-tech answers to make all our jobs, nay, our lives, easier and cooler, perhaps that is it. Having been teased about how uncool librarians and archivists are (by those not in the profession, natch), it is nice to be able to talk knowledgeably about computer use and social networking applications. It almost proves we are cool.

Certainly technology has made accessibility of library and archival material easier, and that is good. But all this computerization and the need of “computer guys” to create the next big thing is a little overwhelming. What are they trying to prove? Aren’t the existing tools enough? Many of them do similar tasks like helping people reconnect or share ideas. But how helpful are they? Sometimes I think these technology developers just want to come up with catchy names. Delicious, del.icio.us? Really?

Moreover, what is really daunting about the search for “IT” is that it probably will never be found, at least in its entirety. All of this reminds me of my obsession with the news and reading the paper. Many years ago a few people began discussing some current events, and I didn’t know what they were talking about. So I made it a mission to read the newspaper every day, as well as listen to the news on the radio, so I would always know what is going on. But the news is always going on; it will never end. Trying to know all the news is both productive and futile.

So it seems that the quest for “IT,” too, is both ends of that spectrum. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, ad nauseum have been interesting and useful tech tools. However, new technology will continue; some applications may be created that cause current tools to become obsolete. Will any of this ever be enough? Like chasing the wind, perhaps it is unattainable. But the quest certainly makes the work more interesting. And all these incarnations of technology should be documented for future researchers to study. Perhaps this will create a few jobs for archivists who have the foresight to collect and preserve it.

Database searching, the Internet, websites, email, blogs, social networking here there and everywhere.

What is it that we are seeking?

The leap that we had thought that we took into information technology is just a step. No giant leap, no crevasse to reach, no earth shattering change yet. The leap was a baby step to the next baby step to the next.

We read the literature and jump each year, each quarter into a new technology that will help us in our quest to reach users, to organize information, to migrate data. The next technology that will ease our burden, manage our info glut, make us smarter.

The core question and the reason that we started this blog is…HOW are we managing these technologies? The change? These baby steps?

For many institutions it seems to either be a “jump” or a “leap”. By this I define a “jump” as running to a technology without the benefit of a needs assessment or proper research. Questions such as the below come to mind:

How will this benefit my users?

What will be the net (and defined) gain to my institution?

Do I have the in-house expertise to assess this, implement it and maintain it?

How will I promote it?

Sometimes this occurs because management does not realize the planning steps needed for successful implementation. Educating them sometimes helps.

A “leap” is defined as realizing that your institution is behind and trying to leap up to be on par with other institutions.

Sometimes peer pressure affects this decision and the realization that you are the only institution without wireless forces a “leap” into new technologies. Planning questions that come to mind here include:

Do you have the staff training for this?

Are we able to pull along all other associated technologies, services and users to successfully integrate this “leap”?

I speak to students and working professionals every day that embrace technology but worry about whether we are choosing the best technology for the best service or just buckling under to the marketing of consumer products.

Does your institution need to Twitter? Why? To seem hip or to reach Generation C? Is Generation C your user base? Do you have a real Twitter plan for keeping it up to date and understanding how to optimize it?

It is our hope that this will be the venue in which you can do that.