From the article:

The National Archives will start copying and making available online all central government website content from November.

Source: Kable’s Government Computing

Science: Internet Security Program as an Archaeological Tool

A CAPTCHA is a distorted string of numbers or letters that must be read and typed, acting as a security measure on the World Wide Web. You might have solved a CAPTCHA before in order to gain entry into a secure website such as an email provider, ticket seller, social network, or blog. Now, researchers have modified the basic algorithm behind this online security program to help recognize words from faded texts that computerized optical character recognition programs are unable to decipher.

This new program, reCAPTCHA, was developed by Luis von Ahn and colleagues, and is currently in use by over 40,000 websites. It captures the efforts expended by human users all over the world, who collectively type more than 100 million CAPTCHAs each day. In this way, the program capitalizes on a task that only humans can perform, and computers still can not.

The reCAPTCHA program is highlighted in the 15 August issue of Science, the journal of AAAS.

Basically, in an effort to preserve human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world (as well as to make a profit), physical books and other texts are being digitized en masse. But the numbers and letters on a page are often faded or otherwise obscured, especially since many of these texts are old, worn, and out-of-print.

Specialized character-recognition computer programs scan the physical documents and create bitmap images of the text. From these images, the programs can often determine the intended message and re-create the actual text in digital form. However, this technology is far from perfect, and on average, the programs fail to recognize 20% of the text they convert to images. This is where reCAPTCHA comes into play.

Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science

From the post:

EuropeanaLocal is a project funded by the European Commission to “involve and help local and regional libraries, museums, archives and audio-visual archives” to provide access to their content through Europeana, the European Digital Library.

Source: Open Access News

From the story:

Preservation of digital personal papers is to be made easier after a £500,000 grant to the Bodleian Library, Oxford for their futureArch project.

The grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation will allow the library to develop its technical facilities and allow for effective conservation of the digital versions of papers created by politicians, writers, scientists and intellectuals.

As more and more information is recorded in ‘hybrid’ form not previously catered for by traditional archive practice, the Bodleian, like many institutions, is having to grapple with the problem of preserving these records.

Source: 24HourMuseum.org.uk

From the story:

The U.S. Government Printing Office has launched an enhanced version of the Registry of U.S. Government Publication Digitization Projects. All listings from the previous iteration have been incorporated into the new site.

The enhanced Registry provides the ability to:

+ Browse digitization projects by category or alphabetically by title.
+ Search the entire Registry or filter searches by category or fields.
+ Quickly access new and recently updated listings.
+ Utilize RSS feeds to keep informed of new and updated projects.
+ View listings by contributor.
+ Contact fellow digitization participants.
+ Recommend listings to others.
+ Report broken links.
+++ And much more!

Source: Admin Notes

From the article:

Is the best government Web site not a government site at all? A June paper released by Princeton University researchers said government agencies should feed information to third-party sites instead of developing their own sites.

“Today, government bodies consider their own Web sites to be a higher priority than technical infrastructures that open up their data for others to use. We would argue that this understanding is a mistake,” the researchers said. Government should understand providing reusable data, rather than Web sites, is its online main publishing responsibility.

Source: Government Technology

Old-school recordkeeping meets the Digital Age

How does the government manage data that was born digital, meaning it was created in electronic form? Organizations as varied as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the White House, open-government groups, and House members have recently offered recommendations for managing the growing volume of such information. Their approaches underscore the differences of opinion about how much responsibility and power various entities should have over future federal recordkeeping.

Electronic records management has been the topic of proposed legislation and rules, court cases, congressional investigations, hearings, and government audits as agencies weigh options for maintaining the vast amount of official communication that is conducted electronically. Because federal employees use e-mail and other technologies daily for routine notes and important information, it’s not always easy to decide which messages qualify as records that must be preserved. And once a decision is made, the next question is how best to store the messages.

Under the Federal Records Act, NARA approves agencies’ recordkeeping schedules and maintains data once it is submitted for archiving, but each agency decides whether to keep a document. In the case of e-mail messages, individual users typically make the decision.

“I think there is a growing consensus that electronic mail and other forms of electronic records that are born digital need to be managed and preserved in electronic form,” said Jason Baron, NARA’s director of litigation.

Source: Federal Computer Week

Battlefield knowledge management

We are all familiar with the frustration of a fruitless Internet search, where querying a seemingly simple topic returns a laundry list of enormous documents that must be downloaded just to find one piece of information.

Now picture the frustration of executing such a search not over a broadband link in your home or office, but instead over a slow speed link as a solider deployed in a hostile forward area, under pressure and time constraints to gather critical information in preparation for battle.

The Army may have found a solution by implementing a Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS) to improve soldiers’ abilities to search the Army’s Warrior Knowledge Base (WKB). The system is based on MarkLogic Server, an XML-based content platform designed to allow for granular database searches, efficient document delivery, and knowledge and information sharing. The system enables soldiers to find the most up-to-date and cutting edge information that may assist them in the field.

Source: Government Computer News

From the article:

The National Archives has finished its Seamless Flow Programme to automate the preservation of electronic government records

The programme has developed tools and processes aiming to create a seamless process, so information created by government can be gathered by the Archives, stored and – when allowed – released online.

David Thomas, chief information officer, said: “The challenges we face with digital records – cataloguing, preserving, accessibility – are similar to those of paper records, but they clearly can’t be addressed in the same way. This new system, the first of its kind, means that we now have the tools to ensure that modern records survive the test of time.

Source: Kable Government Computing

From the article:

How does the government manage data that was born digital, meaning it was created in electronic form? Organizations as varied as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the White House, open-government groups, and House members have recently offered recommendations for managing the growing volume of such information. Their approaches underscore the differences of opinion about how much responsibility and power various entities should have over future federal recordkeeping.

Source: FCW (via LISNews)

From the news release:

Lyon Municipal Library is Google’s 29th library partner for the project and its first in France.

Source: M2

From the announcement:

The Library of Congress, the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas Libraries, the Internet Archive and the U.S. Government Printing Office today announced a collaborative project to preserve public United States Government web sites at the end of the current presidential administration ending January 19, 2009. This harvest is intended to document federal agencies’ online archive during the transition of government and to enhance the existing collections of the five partner institutions.

Source: Library of Congress

See Also: Federal Web Harvest Home Page

From the news release:

The Library of Congress has added new famed authors to the award-wining lineup for the 2008 National Book Festival. Free downloadable podcasts, available on iTunes and the Library’s Web site, as well as other interactive features, bring the magic of the National Book Festival to booklovers nationwide.

From the EUobserver:

The European Commission has urged member states to step up efforts to make Europe’s cultural heritage available to citizens at a mouse click.

Plans for a European digital library containing books, paintings, music, film and photographs are already underway but progress on making works digitally available has been slow with funding problems and lack of technical know-how dragging the ambitious project down.

According to commission figures, European libraries contain over 2.5 billion books but only around 1 percent of archival material has been made available online.

Source: EUobserver

From the news release:

Europe’s cultural diversity in books, music, paintings, photographs, and films open to all citizens at the click of a mouse via one portal – this dream of a European Digital Library could become reality this autumn. However, further efforts by the EU Member States are needed, said the Commission today in a new Communication on making available digital versions of works from cultural institutions all over Europe. Digitisation of cultural works can give Europeans access to material from museums, libraries and archives abroad without having to travel or turn hundreds of pages to find a piece of information. Europe’s libraries alone contain more than 2.5 billion books, but only about 1% of archival material is available in digital form. The Commission therefore called on Member States to do more to make digitised works available online for Europeans to browse them digitally, for study, work or leisure. The Commission itself will provide some € 120 million in 2009-2010 for improving online access to Europe’s cultural heritage.

“The European Digital Library will be a quick and easy way for people to access European books and art – whether in their home country or abroad. It will, for example, enable a Czech student to browse the British library without going to London, or an Irish art lover to get close to the Mona Lisa without queuing at the Louvre,” said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

Source: Rapid

See Also: EU digital library plans under threat (via Hollywood Reporter)