Ready for school?

I found an interesting article that talked about training library professionals to help them with digitally preserving information. The training was a workshop that began around 1995 and lasted until 2005. The workshop was presented by the Northeast Document Conservation Center(NEDCC)and their main focus was preservation. Within the workshop their goal was to stress the importance of standards, quality, and assuring long-term access to digital collections (Russell, 2007). Many of the professionals that attended these workshops had no previous interaction with digitally preserving materials so the NEDCC had to deal with teaching them how to get started. To address this issue they held discussions on whether they should or should not digitize information.

Throughout the course of the trainings there was one thing that become more and more relevant to the NEDCC instructors. They began to notice trends throughout all their trainings. They noticed that more and more people who were attending the trainings were expecting to be told word for word how to digitally preserve information. This wasn't what the NEDCC wanted to do. So they basically held discussions where the professionals were able to go back to their jobs with a list of questions so that they can begin to ask questions in the planning stages of their digital projects.

This was a very interesting article to read because it helped me to be aware of the issues that professionals deal with when it comes to digitally preserving information. I think that more and more trainings should be available for individuals, not only because someone is new to a job, but also because over the years things can change and people need to be updated on how to do those new things.

SOUND OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you think that library professionals should be given the opportunity to attend workshops like the one that the NEDCC offered? Yes or no, and why.


Reference

Russell, A. (2007). Training professionals to preserve digital heritage: the school for scanning.Library Trends,56(1),288-297.

Digital Preservation

Digital preservation is a very hot topic for many libraries around the world. They all have the same goal of trying to archive information that is of high relevance for researchers every where. But when it comes to the question of what and how they should digitally preserve information from the Web, issues always arise. So the National Libraries began to develop some approaches to help build up their publication archive. Some of those approaches included using a robot to automatically select resources that are likely to be of research value. Which meant that there was less human interaction involved. Another included archiving based on a agreement with selective commercial publishers. So they were able to constantly build their archives with out having to search high and low for relevant materials.

Although most of these Libraries found ways to digitally preserve they were still faced with disadvantages. Some of those disadvantages included the labor issues. They had to hire more staff to get the work done since the preserving process had lots of material. Another disadvantage was that they were basically going in blind with preserving material that they felt would be needed for future users. This was a major issue because its hard to tell what a future researcher would need when researching.

So back to the main question at heart. What should be preserved? I feel the things that are held of high value should be preserved. And what should be digitally preserved for archives should also be based on judgement of what is relevant and has high value. Meaning I wouldn't preserve someones post from a blog, but I would preserve someones article from a scholarly journal.

SOUND OFF!!!!!

What are your feelings about digital preservation?


Phillips, M. E.(2005, Summer). What Should We Preserve? The Question for Heritage Libraries in a Digital World. Library Trends, 54(1), 57-71.

To preserve or not to preserve, that is the question?

When it comes to preserving information, one may be faced with the decision of what should be preserved? This is a question that so many librarians are faced with everyday. Since libraries have many users, their library collections are becoming more and more used and abused. Not that it is a bad thing that patrons use the materials, its just that after years of wear and tear books and other materials become old and battered. So what do we do? Tell the patrons that they cannot use the materials anymore? The answer is no. We have to make the decision to preserve these materials so that they will be available for years to come. But now we need to get back to the question, "What needs to be reserved?"

I read an interesting article that talked about what types of materials needed to be preserved. The article: The Information ARK Selection Issues in the Preservation Process, discussed the various issues that librarians dealt with when it came to trying to decide what to preserve. The author was very passionate about what types of things he felt were the most important and should be preserved for the future users. Some of those things included subscription journals because over time they become ruined and to replace them is a great deal of money and early published materials.

SOUND OFF!!!!

*What do you think should be preserved and why?

References

Billings, H. (1994, April) The Information ARK Selection Issues in the Preservation Process. Wilson Library Bulletin, 68, 34-37.