Baltimore, MD Bromo-Seltzer was invented in this town by Captain Isaac Emerson. To celebrate his tummy-taming elixir he built a clock tower in 1911 that was intended to look like the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. The Baltimore version included a marvelous 51-foot lighted blue rotating bottle on top.

The big blue bottle is long gone but the Bromo-Seltzer Tower remains. Preservationists, archivists, librarians and technology specialists might argue that the blue bottle has gone the way of other parts and pieces of our cultural heritage as increasing amounts of digital information and data threaten to overrun the institutions whose job it is to preserve knowledge into the future. At the SPARC Institutional Repostiories (SPARC IR) Conference and the Sun Microsystems Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) attendees reviewed new solutions and grappled with the thorny issues around creating durable knowledge for future generations in an era of burgeoning information.

SPARC IR, November 18

Living in a land of “Plenty ‘O Information” has caused libraries and institutional repositories from all parts of the world to examine policies, look to economies of scale, and find new ways to disseminate intellectual products in order to provide greater service with public funds. Innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives also provide new ways to consider funding access to scholarship and scholarly resources.

In Nov. 18, 2006 SPARC IR morning sessions David Prosser, Director, SPARC Europe, Syun Tutiya, Chiba University, Japan. The Japanese Policy Environment and Bonnie Klein, Defense Technology Information Center, USA, U.S. Federal Government Repositories & Public Access to Grant Research presented different views of legal and open access policy environments around access to data and information in their three countries.

European information policy is interested in leading the charge towards making materials open and available as a way to stiulate and drive economic development. The Berlin Declaration in Support of Open Access, for example, now has 255 signatories worldwide including Germany, France, Austria, Sweden, China and others. The Wellcome Trust has independently funded biomedical research that is mandated for deposit by UK law, as is publicly-funded research. “Any original research paper” is required to be deposited. Other European research organizations are have also begun putting policies in place to require deposit of papers.

Japan is concerned with getting the technology right prior to instituting overall policy. Tutiya reported, “No policy is our policy.” Assessment and establishing industry/society relationships are two aspects of how ideas around Open Access policies are evolving. Japanese information managers are working towards being able to harvest metadata nationally and are concluding that “environments [for data and information] are more important.”

CENDI is an interagency group of United States federal agencies whose work involves managing repositories, information centers and the government printing office. All 13 CENDI agencies play a role in addressing science- and technology-based national priorities—26 agencies fund about 1,000 grant programs.

Since 2001 online public information facilities such as Science.gov have been paid for out of pocket by participating agencies to provide greater citizen access to basic science research results. Version 5 has just been launched which includes a federated search over many federal repository databases

WorldWideScience.org is an even larger collaborative effort with the British Library. It was launched during the summer of 2007 with 15 partner countries including China. The “fundamental research” represented at World Wide Science can be defined as basic and applied research in science and engineering, the results of which are ordinarily pubished and shared broadly—about 70% of U.S. research falls under this category.

An ongoing discussion is how to structure “interim” scientific reporting. Early results are not always peer-reviewed and can include spotty data types and formats. Only 53% of grantees thought that early posting on a government web site was a good idea because:

–an invention could be prematurely disclosed

–scholarly journals view web site postings as “publication.”

Klein concluded, “[US] Government agencies feel that they do not have the right to mandate Open Access.”

To be continued . . .

From Pat (Viele) the Science Librarian (Pat’s Picks for STEM Educators) The fall meeting of the NYS Section of the American Physical Society was held on on November 14th and 15th. I gave a poster session on Friday evening introducing attendees to ComPADRE (Communities for Physics and Astronomy Digital Resources for Education). ComPADRE is the physics and astronomy section or “Pathway” of the NSDL. At the Special Libraries Association meeting in June 2008, the principle investigator for ComPADRE (Bruce Mason) and I gave a poster session together. We both felt it would be good to spread the word about comPADRE at section meetings for APS and at similar organizations.

My purpose in giving a poster session was two-fold:

1. to spread the word about an excellent digital library
2. to demonstrate what librarians can do to support teaching and research in physics and astronomy

I had many interesting conversations with faculty and students. As I suspected, they were interested not only in teaching college level courses, but also reaching out to school children and the general public.

Clockwise from top left: The NYPL entrance; the main reading room; the map room.

Alex Jones, Laurence M. Lombard Lecturer in the Press and Public Policy Director Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, and John Carroll, Former Editor of the Los Angeles Times discussed the significant public record that news provides in their keynote conversation.

Though their missions may sometimes diverge, Jones pointed out that the great libraries of the world are in the same business as great newspapers in trying to make distinctions between fact, fiction, and authentic knowledge. Jones and Carroll were in agreement that serious public affairs news reporting as a service in support of a citizen’s ability to make informed decisions about participating in democratic processes is now threatened in the United States.

Jones explained that The New York Times was the first news organization to publish a searchable news index in 1913. This early effort to treat a news record as a scholarly resource was printed on longer-lasting paper to aid in its preservation. This gigantic book cataloged every article by date and location on each physical page by year. The New York Times sold two copies in every town—one to the editor of the paper and one to the library for reference.

Carroll explained that today people expect better and immediate access to news and other content. News delivered in paper editions has not traditionally provided minute-by-minute information. News is now primarily born digital—produced in electronic form online and over the air waves. Both libraries and news organization’s preservation strategies have been developed to preserve paper or facsimile versions of paper on microfilm.

Other speakers pointed out that the future of microfilm as a preservation technology is not assured as digital imaging revenues continue to out pace film technology profits.

Newspapers’ business models have been shattered. Web news engages young readers, ruins paper circulation revenues, and has wrecked havoc with the print advertising model. Community newspapers were once an accepted monopoly because there was no other way to advertise goods and services in order to reach potential local customers. After an economic boom in the 1980s when most newspapers added investigative reporters, they are now in economic decline.

Large media corporations often acquire struggling newspapers, and replace them with online and broadcast media organizations which do not place an emphasis on having reporters in the field. Newspaper reporters are part of a traditional newsroom culture whose activities have been understood to contribute to the greater good. By actively looking for facts and verifying details newspaper reporters have created a record of public affairs that often does not exist anywhere else.

Jones and Carroll regard newspaper readers as both customers and citizens. “We perform a function in support of their citizenship,” said Carroll. They concluded by suggesting that new economic models to ensure that news in the public interest survives are needed.

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Several speakers presented library challenges and strategies around understanding news content and structure in order to preserve it digitally and on microfilm. Andrew Madden, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Google, presented the company’s recently announced historic newspaper archive microfilm scanning initiative that seeks to organize the world’s older information and make it as universally accessible and useful as Google’s other web-based information (Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives, The New York Times, Sept. 8, 2008).

Content within Google indices has increased particularly with respect to burgeoning types and formats. Google Earth, Books, and You Tube are some examples. Because less than 1/2 of 1% of all Google users use advanced search or look beyond the first page of search results, there are questions about how to manage and provide access to specialized and complex content going forward.

People often look for older content within the Google News space. “Archival” can mean 30 days or older, although users could be searching for 200-year-old documents. Two years ago Google News stories were maintained in the news space for 30 days, and then were rolled into the crowded Google index.

For the last five years Google has begun to focus on off line content with scanning initiatives like the Google Book project and discovered that before 1995 most news was not born digital, and had been preserved on microfilm if it has been preserved at all.

Madden pointed out that Google would like to work with libraries in the same way that they work with publishers as they look towards preserving news archives. Google underwrites the cost of the program, and will share advertising revenues in exchange for access to content.

Rights management is a critical piece of the project of going forward as it has been for Google Books. Experimentation with providing partial news archive content is encouraged. Along with providing digital news archives back to originating sites in an I-frame, Google will provides a use analysis “dashboard” to partners. Google News Archive bundles a microfilm reader service within the browser.

Madden believes that making news archive content live back on library and publisher web sites will enhance context for understanding the historical record of news.

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Valerie Komor, Director of the Corporate Archives of the Associated Press, suggested that there was a disconnect between what news “is”—information that people read and react to right now—and the concept of news as a part of the historic scholarly record. “News is not written or reviewed to last beyond today even though we understand its cultural and historic value. We must ensure that format is not destiny,” She said.

Which is why born digital news, its meaning, and how its natural structures are tracked and managed, were also on the minds of attendees. While many preservationists roll their eyeballs and throw up their hands when venues for news aggregation such as Twitter and Facebook are mentioned, others, like Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Student Affairs and New Media Professor, Columbia University, caution that the onslaught of new communications methods and strategies cannot be overlooked in shaping policies for preserving the news record. News is emerging in new types of online “pockets” every day.

Sreenivasan explained, for example, that news of a recent California earthquake was first reported on Twitter by a person who was experiencing the effects first-hand.

“Facebook is competing with the Internet for your time and attention,” He said, “That’s their strategy.” With more than 100 million Facebook users worldwide, it seems to be working. He believes that journalists should take advantage of social spaces like Facebook where “BAW” (Bored at Work) users can easily stumble on news.

He suggests that libraries and news organizations might look into ways to host citizen journalism news content in the future as a way to generate revenue.

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In conclusion Bernard Reilly, President, Center for Research Libraries made several observations: paper and microfilm are rear-guard news preservation strategies that will go away in 5-7 years; collective support for local preservation efforts is key; transparency helps in sharing information about efforts especially around collection development.; systematic opportunism works–taking a comprehensive approach to collecting materials, and; common requirements for “default” news repositories such as LC, CDL, Google, News Bank, ICPSR and Portico will promote interoperability and utility in managing digital news objects. The Center for Research Libraries and the Global Resources Network will release a report based on presentations and discussions from this meeting.

Let content be free;
Create value with context.
Service you can sell!

When nouns become verbs:
To google, or go ogle?
The hit list beckons.

Who learns what, and how?
Social graph meets concept map.
Make my dream come true!

Change is in the air.
But the learner still comes first;
Begin with the end.

Views are author’s own.
Not official policy
Of the NSF.

Since 2000 National Science Digital Library (NSDL) projects and partners have demonstrated multiple ways to provide high quality resources and tools that support innovations in teaching and learning. This year’s NSDL Annual Meeting promises to highlight even more of these ongoing cyberlearning initiatives that in total have increased the educational value of national investment in digital library initiatives. Global institutional library and archive communities are interested in what NSDL has learned over the last eight years–how to effectively re-purpose both technology and information for K16 educational audiences.

Fedora Commons is one such knowledge community. More than half of the Fedora Commons global community of users and developers are from large international, public or academic libraries and archives. As a member of the Fedora Commons community NSDL is one of many organizations that rely on Fedora Commons open source repository software to create an underlying architecture for systems like NCore, the suite of technologies and standards that are a framework for NSDL’s digital library infrastructure.

The authors of The Academic Library in a 2.0 World (1), a research bulletin published by EducauseConnect, have suggested that libraries will increasingly be called on to prove their value to learning, teaching, and research by demonstrating tangible outcomes and evolving their structures, processes, services, and staff roles to accommodate the changes occurring in publishing and communication.

NSDL-writ-large has developed expertise in re-purposing and delivering institutional knowledge for teaching and learning since 2000. Partnering with NSDL projects is one answer to how libraries and archives in many parts of the world might begin to address an outreach mission that is new to some of them.

As one UK institutional archivist and librarian once said to me, “The idea that we should be in the business of marketing, creating new products, and providing open access to what’s inside of formerly well-guarded fortresses of knowledge is new for some of us.”

Take Oxford, for example.

Recently Sarah Thomas, The 26th Bodleian Librarian (that would be 26th over the last 9 centuries), and Director of Oxford University Library Services at Oxford University, addressed former colleagues at Cornell University about the differences between what she described as Oxford’s very old institutional library system (900 years, 10,000 medieval manuscripts, and four Magna Cartas) and Cornell’s “young” library system (about 150 years, one Magna Carta and a handful of medieval manuscripts). I was struck by the vast cultural differences she described between these two venerable library systems located across an ocean from one another, but with the same closely held ideals for institutional support of scholarship and learning.

The University of Oxford is rich in daily academic ritual among well-known buildings designed by early architects like Sir Christopher Wren. Time is even reckoned differently. Three-month long “terms”—Michaelmas Term, Hilary Term, and Trinity Term create a scholarly pace of life where many students and faculty ride bikes from place to place, and is in tune with the idea of quiet study over long periods. Academic ritual at American universities is more likely to involve loud music, multi-tasking, media and access to online social networks that change at the speed of a keystroke.

The 30,000 external and 60,000 internal Oxford registered “readers”, who we might understand as “users”, like printed materials, a lot. Many of Oxford’s library systems deliver physical books to people who are in library buildings because almost no one is allowed to take a book out of one of Oxford’s many libraries, and yet because Oxford is a UK legal depository (a copy of every publication, electronic and other non-print material are required by law to be deposited in a national library to ensure that this information is available for future generations). Thomas feels an obligation to people throughout the UK to make Oxford’s valuable knowledge resources more accessible. A small percentage of Oxford’s collections are digitized and internet access is not always available on campus. She is committed to making the needs of users, and readers, a part of the Oxford Libraries’ tradition in the future.

She concluded with the question, “How do we go forward and benefit from this remarkable past?”

Part of the answer lies in Fedora-based projects at Oxford like Forced Migration Online (FMO), a project coordinated by a team based at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford Department of International Development (QEH), University of Oxford. FMO aims to give comprehensive information in an impartial environment and to promote increased awareness of human displacement issues to an international community of users.

To find out more about the Fedora Commons community of libraries and archives in some surprising places and cultures worldwide come to “Fedora Commons Educational Repository Projects” at NSDL’s Annual Meeting, October 1, from 3:30-4:00 p.m. in the Capital Room, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington. D.C.

(1) Wawrzaszek, Susan, and David G. Wedaman. “The Academic Library in a 2.0 World” (Research Bulletin, Issue 19). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

The schedule includes presentations and overviews from NSDL Pathways and partners who are implementing NSDL resources and tools for K12 and undergraduate classrooms nationwide. Stay tuned to this blog for up-to-date meeting notes and preview information.

By Pat Viele, Physics & Astronomy Librarian for the Edna McConnell Clark Physical Sciences Library at Cornell University

Edmonton, Alberta, site of the AAPT Summer Meeting (http://www.aapt.org/Events/SM2008/index.cfm) held from July 19-23, 2008, was very colorful with huge fields of bright yellow canola plants (used to make a type of edible cooking oil) in full bloom. The plants only flower for about one week, so our timing was good.

First on my agenda was to give my “Mining the Hidden Web” tutorial. I always enjoy these sessions and learn from those who participate. I then spent time with David Jones, who has just taken on the position of liaison to the physics department at the U. of Alberta. The science and technology library at the U. of Alberta is currently undergoing renovation taking advantage of one of its two seasons: winter and construction.

Michio Kaku, faculty at the City College of New York and author of “Physics of the Impossible” spoke on that topic. He will host a TV (Sci Q Sundays) series this month. For details, see: http://science.discovery.com/tv/sci-q/about/about.html. Michio is a very engaging and entertaining speaker whose talents can be experienced on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW8rgKLPHMg

As chair of the Committee on Professional Concerns, I facilitated the committee meeting, attended sessions that the committee sponsored, and attended Programs I and Programs II meetings to help plan the next national meetings.

The session “Graduate Education in Physics: Which Way Forward?” was a follow-up session to the conference itself which was held in late January at the American Center for Physics. I have great interest in the recommendation of the Task Force on Graduate Education in Physics that physics graduate students be offered instruction in information fluency.

The session “Rethinking the Upper-Level [physics] Curriculum” was arranged by Cornell University alum Dr. Ernie Behringer. Attending sessions like this helps me learn more about what faculty and students need at various levels in my work with Cornell faculty and grad students.

“Scientific Communication and Writing” was an excellent session. I was especially impressed with the program developed by husband and wife team of Dr. Dan Budny, U. of Pittsburg, and Dr. Teresa Larkin, American University. In collaboration with librarians, the English department, and the writing center, they have developed an excellent writing program for engineering and physics students. At the end of the year, the students work in groups to prepare papers for their own conference. Details are here: http://www.engr.pitt.edu/%7Eeng11/.

As always, the physics demonstration show was both entertaining and informative. After the conference I traveled to the Canadian Rockies’ Jasper National Park–the trip was spectacular.

The idea for RepoCamp came out of UK “BarCamp” and “Unconference” events sponsored by the JISC Common Repository Interfaces Group (CRIG). Unstructured, rapid prototyping events are designed to speed up on-the-fly innovation. Instead of spending time in meetings discussing possibilities RepoCamp participants quickly explain ideas and write code together in a friendly environment.

A typical day at RepoCamp goes something like this: Sharing five minute “elevator pitches” loosely based on what’s currently inspiring or bothering participants about managing, developing or running a repositories; self-organizating around flip charts with notes from pitches so that people can gather to contribute insights around particular ideas; ad hoc prototyping with selected “gurus” who coordinate progress and help grab services off the web; sharing conclusions with a new round of elevator pitches based on outcomes that can include step-by-step paper-prototypes, working interfaces or brand new ideas. The real RepoCamp wrap-up is traditionally conducted at a local bar where the best ideas seem to emerge. “Let’s make a lot of mistakes and make them fast,” is an often-repeated RepoCamp direction says Flanders. More challenging issues such as scalability, robustness, and interoperability are post-RepoCamp fodder.

CRIG takes an inclusive view of knowledge management in interfacing repositories with other services. Rachel Bruce, founder of CRIG along with Rachel Heery, observes, “These issues are global and not something to be dealt with solely within national boundaries.” The opportunity to reach out to developers in the U.S. to create solutions with a series of RepoCamp events grew out of collaborations that were already taking place with DSpace, EPrints, Fedora developers.

Sandy Payette, Executive Director of Fedora Commons, home of Fedora open source repository software, sees RepoCamp and other emerging programming events as being particularly useful for developers who enjoy social networking around things that matter to them—most often problem solving that leads to rapid prototyping. “It’s a way to gauge interest on-the -spot,” She said.

The DSpace Foundation and Fedora Commons recently announced plans to collaborate based on meetings held this spring where members of DSpace and Fedora Commons communities discussed multiple dimensions of cooperation and collaboration between the two organizations. Ideas included leveraging the power and reach of open source knowledge communities by using the same services and standards in the future. The organizations will also explore opportunities to provide new capabilities for accessing and preserving digital content, developing common web services, and enabling interoperability across repositories.

JISC CRIG saw this and other community efforts towards achieving greater integration and interoperation as an opportunity to host the U.S. Repostiory Roadshow that wrapped up at the Library of Congress on July 25. The JISC CRIG team would like to extend thanks to Ed Summers for arranging the LOC venue.

JISC will sponsor an academic developer-focused event in 2009 that will utilize RepoCamp ideas (Flanders suggests, for example, that the conference dinner might be something like a a massive video game party) to continue to work towards that elusive but worthy goal of “interoperability” by building relationships among developers and programmers across academia. Look for an official announcement of JISC’s “Developer Happiness Days” early in 2009.

This rich atmospheric still image is from “Nature Tzu-jan” by Ari Rubenstein, Curv Studios.

As the field of computer graphics has advanced over the last quarter of a century the simulation of reality has come into its own as an art form. SIGGRAPH 2008 artists and programmers presented computer graphics imagery that embodied inherent aspects of the medium such as exposed wire frame underpinnings and subtle textures, just as the qualities of paint, ink, stone and clay have always been used to express thoughts, feelings and ideas.

The graphic icon that was used on posters and signage throughout SIGGRAPH is a 3D holographic, machine-like image entitled “Animation Mother” by Meats Meier. The being appears human-like and yet is composed of distinctly recognizable computer animation elements.

The SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival featured a sensory cornucopia of screenings representing a wide range of media examples from all over the world. The event was hosted by Pixar Animation Studios, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Lucasfilm in the state-of-the-art NOKIA Theater.

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Ed Catmull, President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, opened the conference with a look back over his pioneering career in managing work groups who were responsible for creating groundbreaking full-length animated films such as “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo.”

RenderMan® is a Pixar high quality rendering product used for making feature films that was collaboratively developed by engaging a community of digital effects and computer graphics companies. Catmull said, “It has been a standard for 20 years.” He continued, “We set a complexity goal that we thought was impossible and have far exceeded our goals.” The success of the Renderman® development process demonstrated the benefits of open sharing and decision-making.

There is a lot of pressure to ‘get it right the first time’ when making feature films because mistakes are so expensive. Production managers are sometimes seen as a roadblock to artists and programmers who are actively involved in creative processes. Catmull emphasized that communication in a creative environment should happen between anybody at anytime. Catmull believes that balancing this complex work culture was made easier because early animation teams believed that they were making history.

On the heels of Catmull’s talk the Walt Disney Company announced that they will open a research and development lab at Carnegie Mellon University to engage top technology for its theme parks, television networks and animation studios. The Disney Research Pittsburgh Lab is scheduled to open this fall.

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This is a computer rendering of an ancient Roman market area from the Rome 1.0 model that visitors were invited to ‘walk through’ at the Rome Reborn exhibit booth.

Of particular interest to those interested in new ways to interact with complex data was the Rome Reborn multimedia exhibit at SIGGRAPH. The exhibit was the result of an international collaboration led by The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia that includes industry partner IBM, and the German Archeological Institute, the Universite de Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux III, the Universite de Caen, the Politecnico di Milan and UCLA. These rich data sets (Rome 1.0 and Rome 2.0) depict Rome as it might have appeared in A.D. 320. The models includes hills, valleys and water features of the city where over one million people lived and worked in 7,000 located and identified buildings. Significant architectural, political and social structures and monuments are represented in great detail.

The exhibit was divided into several sections where each of the partners demonstrated devices and technology that allowed viewers to participate in the life of ancient Rome in new ways. Comparative hand-held walking tour devices, large scale viewing screens, three dimensional depictions, and interactive displays are all ways that this “data” can be experienced. Creators of Rome Reborn believe that this model is an accurate representation of what a visit to the city would have been like during the time of Constantine the Great.

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Computer and Robotics Professor Takeo Kanade, who is also the Director of the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center at Carnegie Mellon gave the final keynote of the conference and looked to a balanced future where robots and machines would provide humans with just enough assistance to improve their lives, but not take over. Most SIGGRAPH attendees that I spoke with were overwhelmed by the volume and variety of information that was packed into a few action-packed days, but as they say, that’s entertainment. And as Kanade concluded, this field is fun.