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 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

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

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 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

The Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter for August 2008 has just been released. In this month’s issue:

-A report on the International Copyright Workshop and Report (please note a new URL for the report).

-A report on the July NDIIPP meeting in Washington, D.C.

-A report on the Archiving 2008 meeting in Bern.

-And More!

Source: LC / NDIIPP

From the announcement:

Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), announced today that 776 museums, libraries, and archives, representing every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam have been selected to receive the IMLS Connecting to Collections Bookshelf. The contents of the bookshelf were selected by a blue ribbon panel of conservation experts; it includes an essential set of books, online resources, and a user’s guide that can profoundly affect the ability of small libraries and museums to care for their collections.

Source: IMLS

New from LC:
State Digital Resources: Memory Projects, Online Encyclopedias, Historical & Cultural Materials Collections

Source: Library of Congress

From the article:

Fabled Timbuktu, once the site of the world’s southernmost Islamic university, harbors thousands upon thousands of long-forgotten manuscripts. A dozen academic institutions from around the world are now working frantically to save and evaluate the crumbling documents.

Source: Der Spiegel (English)

From the article:

The British Library is embarking on a major research project into its collection of medieval and Renaissance Royal illuminated manuscripts.

The project, which is being funded by a £265,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and is a collaboration with The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, will culminate in the first ever exhibition of the collection – at the British Library in 2011-2012.

In 1757, King George II presented approximately 1,950 manuscripts from the royal library to the newly founded British Museum. Since that time, the manuscripts have remained together as a distinct collection labelled ROYAL.

Source: 24 Hour Museum

+ British Library Automates Billing

+ Toronto Public Library Board Announces Appointment of New Chief Librarian

+ Libraries in D.C. Plan Cuts in Hours: Budget Shortfall Would Also Close Kiosks (via Washington Post)

+ OH: Newark Library Plans to Sell It’s VHS Tape Collection (via Newark Advocate)

DigitalPreservationEurope have released their European Quarterly Preservation Digest that provides an overview of the current activities of European funded projects in the area of digital preservation.

Direct to New Issue
PDF.

Source: DCC

From the iwr article:

Nearly £10 million has been awarded to preserve low use journals for those in UK Higher Education. The new initiative, UK Research Reserve (UKRR) aims to improve access to the journal information for researchers as well as better preserve the body of work.

The partnership between the British Library and higher education libraries, led by Imperial College London will see the low-use research journals being stored at the British Library, with the scheme managed between the two institutions. The multi-million pound resource was awarded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) following an initial 18 month pilot scheme.

Source: Information World Review