Dean Rehberger

Reevaluating access and preservation through secondary repositories: needs, promises, and challenges

Digital access and preservation questions for cultural heritage institutions have focused primarily on primary repositories — that is, around collections of discrete digital objects and associated metadata. Much of the promise of the information age, however, lies in the ability to reuse, repurpose, combine and build complex digital objects[1-3]. Repositories need both to preserve and make accessible primary digital objects, and facilitate their use in a myriad of ways. Following the lead of other annotation projects, we argue for the development of secondary repositories where users can compose structured collections of complex digital objects. These complex digital objects point back to the primary digital objects from which they are produced (usually with URIs) and augment these pointers with user-generated annotations and metadata. This paper examines how this layered approach to user generated metadata can enable research communities to move forward into more complex questions surrounding digital archiving and preservation, addressing not only the fundamental challenges of preserving individual digital objects long term, but also the access and usability challenges faced by key stakeholders in primary digital repository collections—scholars, educators, and students. Specifically, this project will examine the role that secondary repositories can play in the preservation and access of digital historical and cultural heritage materials with particular emphasis on streaming media.

Media Matrix: Creating Secondary Repositories

This paper argues for the necessity of digital libraries to increase access to their holdings and have greater impact on e-learning and education by facilitating the creation of secondary repositories. These repositories will provide discipline/community specific metadata and applications and will allow users to find, use, manipulate and analyze digital objects more easily. To this end, MATRIX has developed Media Matrix 1.0 an online, easy to use server-side suite of tools that allows users to locate specific media and streaming media files found in digital repositories and segment, annotate and organize this media online. This application provides users with an environment both to work with and personalize digital media, and also to share and discuss their findings with a community of users. Through creating a secondary repository of usage statistics and user-generated materials/metadata to supplement both traditional cataloging records and discipline-specific online indexes, tools like Media Matrix can help extend the usefulness of digital libraries without increasing costs to the libraries.

Digital libraries, personalisation, and network effects: unpicking the paradoxes

The focus of this panel presentation is on personalisation (including adaptive personalisation) and the constructions of ’digital societies’ around digital libraries and collections. Panelists will represent a variety of perspectives - NEH (USA) JISC (UK) & EU - ranging from developers of highly specialised academic digital libraries, to directors of national digital libraries that aim to achieve system-wide aims.

Media matrix: a digital library research tool

Media Matrix (version 1.0) is an online server side tool that helps users to find, segment, annotate, organize, and publish streaming media found in digital libraries on the Internet. Media Matrix works within a users browser, using the browsers bookmark feature