As an in-depth explanation of the entire digital curation lifecycle, from creation to appraisal to preservation to organization/access to transformation, the first edition of this text set a benchmark for both thoroughness and clarity. Boasting the expert guidance of international authorities Oliver and Harvey, this revamped and expanded edition widens the scope to address continuing developments in the strategies, technological approaches, and activities that are part of this rapidly changing field. In addition to current practitioners, those pursuing a career as librarian, archivist, or records manager will find this definitive survey invaluable. Filled with up-to-date best practices, it covers such important topics as the scope and incentives of digital curation, detailing Digital Curation Centre’s (DCC) lifecycle model as well as the Data Curation Continuum; key requirements for digital curation, from description and representation to planning and collaboration;the value and utility of metadata;considering the needs of producers and consumers when creating an appraisal and selection policy for digital objects;the paradigm shift by institutions towards cloud computing and its impact on costs, storage, and other key aspects of digital curation;the quality and security of data;new and emerging data curation resources, including innovative digital repository software and digital forensics tools;mechanisms for sharing and reusing data, with expanded sections on open access, open data, and open standards initiatives; and processes to ensure that data are preserved and remain usable over time.Useful as both a teaching text and day-to-day working guide, this book outlines the essential concepts and techniques that are crucial to preserving the longevity of digital resources.

Useful as both a teaching text and day-to-day working guide, this book outlines the essential concepts and techniques that are crucial to preserving the longevity of digital resources.

This new edition of Digital Preservation in Libraries, Archives, and Museums is the most current, complete guide to digital preservation available today. For administrators and practitioners alike, the information in this book is presented readably, focusing on management issues and best practices. Although this book addresses technology, it is not solely focused on technology. After all, technology changes and digital preservation is aimed for the long term. This is not a how-to book giving step-by-step processes for certain materials in a given kind of system. Instead, it addresses a broad group of resources that could be housed in any number of digital preservation systems. Finally, this book is about “things (not technology; not how-to; not theory) I wish I knew before I got started.” Digital preservation is concerned with the life cycle of the digital object in a robust and all-inclusive way. Many Europeans and some North Americans may refer to digital curation to mean the same thing, taking digital preservation to be the very limited steps and processes needed to insure access over the long term. The authors take digital preservation in the broadest sense of the term: looking at all aspects of curating and preserving digital content for long term access. The book is divided into four part: 1.Situating Digital Preservation, 2.Management Aspects, 3.Technology Aspects, and 4.Content-Related Aspects. Digital Preservation will answer questions that you might not have even known you had, leading to more successful digital preservation initiatives.

Whether you’re embarking on the challenge of building a digital collection from scratch, or simply need to understand the conceptual and technical challenges of constructing a digital library, this top-to-bottom resource is the ideal guidebook to keep at your side, especially in this thoroughly updated and reworked edition. Demonstrating how resources are created, distributed, and accessed, and how librarians can keep up with the latest technologies for successfully completing these tasks, its chapters walk you step-by-step through every stage. Demystifying core technologies and workflows, this book comprehensively covers needs assessment and planning for a digital repository;choosing a platform;acquiring, processing, classifying, and describing digital content;storing and managing resources in a digital repository;digital preservation;technologies and standards useful to digital repositories, including XML, the Portland Common Data Model, metadata schema such as Dublin Core, scripting using JSON and REST, linked open data, and automated metadata assignment;sharing data and metadata;understanding information-access issues, including digital rights management; andanalyzing repository use, planning for the future, migrating to new platforms, and accommodating new types of data. This book will thoroughly orient LIS students and others new to the world of digital libraries, and also ensure that current professionals have the knowledge and guidance necessary to construct a digital repository from its inception.

Planning and managing a self-contained digitization project is one thing, but how do you transition to a digital library program? Or better yet, how do you start a program from scratch? In this book Purcell, a well-respected expert in both archives and digital libraries, combines theory and best practices with practical application, showing how to approach digital projects as an ongoing effort. He not only guides librarians and archivists in transitioning from project-level initiatives to a sustainable program but also provides clear step-by-step instructions for building a digital library program from the bottom up, even for organizations with limited staff. Approachable and easy to follow, this book traces the historical growth of digital libraries and the importance of those digital foundations; summarizes current technological challenges that affect the planning of digital libraries, and how librarians and archivists are adapting to the changing information landscape; uses examples to lay out the core priorities of leading successful digital programs; covers the essentials of getting started, from vision and mission building to identifying resources and partnerships; emphasizes the importance of digitizing original unique materials found in library and archives collections, and suggests approaches to the selection process; addresses metadata and key technical standards; discusses management and daily operations, including assessment, enhancement, sustainability, and long-term preservation planning; provides guidance for marketing, promotion, and outreach, plus how to take into account such considerations as access points, intended audiences, and educational and instructional components; and includes exercises designed to help readers define their own digital projects and create a real-world digital program plan. Equally valuable for LIS students just learning about the digital landscape, information professionals taking their first steps to create digital content, and organizations who already have well-established digital credentials, Purcell's book outlines methods applicable and scalable to many different types and sizes of libraries and archives.

Digital Curation Projects Made Easy: A Step-By-Step Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums outlines simple steps for accomplishing practical digitization and digital preservation projects for those with little experience, time, and/or resources. Following a general introduction, instructions for completing these commonplace digital curation projects are covered: Photograph collections Newspaper collection Rare books Art Collections Oral Histories Digital curation does not need to be reserved for big budgets or world-famous collections. In fact, a large part of digitization and digital preservation consists of practical projects that are done every day without much fanfare in libraries and archives around the world.

The third edition of Preserving Digital Materials provides a survey of the digital preservation landscape. This book is structured around four questions: 1. Why do we preserve digital materials? 2. What digital materials do we preserve? 3. How do we preserve digital materials? 4. How do we manage digital preservation? This is a concise handbook and reference for a wide range of stakeholders who need to understand how preservation works in the digital world. It notes the increasing importance of the role of new stakeholders and the general public in digital preservation. It can be used as both a textbook for teaching digital preservation and as a guide for the many stakeholders who engage in digital preservation. Its synthesis of current information, research, and perspectives about digital preservation from a wide range of sources across many areas of practice makes it of interest to all who are concerned with digital preservation. It will be of use to preservation administrators and managers, who want a professional reference text, information professionals, who wish to reflect on the issues that digital preservation raises in their professional practice, and students in the field of digital preservation.

Digital collections have already changed the ways users access and interact with an institution's materials. And small or medium-sized libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies face a unique set of challenges in regards to digital collections. They may have been unable to jump on the digitization bandwagon at its beginning due to competing priorities or lack of resources, and may now be struggling to get a digitization program in place to meet the evolving needs and expectations of their own users. The good news is that digital projects can scale down to fit the size of any organization. Providing an entry point for librarians, archivists, and curators who are new to digitization, Monson's well-researched guide shows how even smaller institutions can successfully endeavor to make their content digitally accessible. Clearing aside the jargon and acronyms to hone in on the practicals, this book will help readers get a digitization program off the ground, offering guidance on how to efficiently harness existing workflows, especially in departments seeing a decline in workload; the pros and cons of the two common service models for state and regional digital repositories; how to evaluate and choose among the digital asset management systems, comparing four proprietary and six open source systems; hardware options for image capture; choices in metadata models MODS, VRA Core, Dublin Core Element Set, and EAD; understanding the characteristics of various file formats and using them effectively to create master and derivative files; bitstream copying, data redundancy and other strategies to safeguard digital files against media degradation and technological obsolescence; and Section 108 copyright exemptions for cultural heritage institutions. This easy-to-follow guide to digitization fundamentals will ensure that readers gain a solid grasp of the knowledge and resources available for getting started on their own digital collection projects.

An overview of the field of information organization that examines resource description as both a product and process of the contemporary digital environment. This timely book employs the unifying mechanism of the semantic web and the resource description framework to integrate the various traditions and practices of information and knowledge organization. Uniquely, it covers both the domain-specific traditions and practices and the practices of the ‘metadata movement’ through a single lens – that of resource description in the broadest, semantic web sense. This approach more readily accommodates coverage of the new Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, which aims to move library cataloguing into the centre of the semantic web. The work surrounding RDA looks set to revolutionise the field of information organization, and this book will bring both the standard and its model and concepts into focus. Key topics include: • information resource attributes • metadata for information retrieval • metadata sources and quality • economics and management of metadata • knowledge organization systems • the semantic web • books and e-books, websites and audiovisual resources • business and government documents • learning resources • the field of information/knowledge organization. Readership: LIS students taking information organization courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, information professionals wishing to specialise in the metadata area, and existing metadata specialists who wish to update their knowledge.

This book's authoritative blend of theory and practice makes it a matchless resource for everyone in the archives and records management field.