Ronald C. Jantz

Digital Preservation: Architecture and Technology for Trusted Digital Repositories

Developing preservation processes for a trusted digital repository will require the integration of new methods, policies, standards and technologies. Digital repositories should be able to preserve electronic materials for periods at least comparable to existing preservation methods. Modern computing technology in general is barely fifty years old and few of us have seen or used digital objects that are more than ten years old. While traditional preservation practices are comparatively well-developed, lack of experience and lack of consensus raise some questions about how we should proceed with digital-based preservation processes. Can we preserve a digital object for at least one-hundred years? Can we answer questions such as Is this object the digital original? or How old is this digital object? What does it mean to be a trusted repository of digital materials? A basic premise of this article is that there are many technologies available today that will help us build trust in a digital preservation process and that these technologies can be readily integrated into an operational digital preservation framework.

Digital Archiving and Preservation: Technologies and Processes for a Trusted Repository.

SUMMARY This article examines what is implied by the term “trusted” in the phrase “trusted digital repositories.” Digital repositories should be able to preserve electronic materials for periods at least comparable to existing preservation methods. Our collective lack of experience with preserving digital objects and consensus about the reliability of our technological infrastructure raises questions about how we should proceed with digital-based preservation practices, an emerging role for academic libraries and archival institutions. This article reviews issues relating to building a trusted digital repository, highlighting some of the issues raised and possible solutions proposed by the authors in their work of implementing and acculturating a digital repository at Rutgers University Libraries.

Providing access to unique information sources: a reusable platform for publishing bibliographic databases on the Web

The Scholarly Communication Center (SCC) within Rutgers University Libraries has launched several important digital library projects. A major objective of the SCC has been to publish unique information sources on the Web that are not likely to be published elsewhere. Publishing bibliographic databases on the Web can significantly enhance access to an original collection of research literature and further enrich the library collection. We have found that reusable technology platforms offer a special opportunity for research libraries to fill a new role. Through the platform technology and a well defined process, libraries are able quickly and effectively to publish databases on the Web.

The Determinants of Organizational Innovation: An Interpretation and Implications for Research Libraries

The research reported here is focused on a specific type of change in an organization: an innovation. In an empirical analysis of research libraries, it was found that five factors had a significant impact on the innovation performance of the library. These factors relate to the strategy, organizational structure, and leadership of the research library. The study sample consisted of 50 libraries that were members of the Association of Research Libraries. This paper will discuss the theoretical model, explain the effects of these five variables, highlight certain additional correlations that are meaningful, and discuss implications for research libraries.

An approach to managing vocabulary for databases on the Web

ABSTRACT This paper proposes an approach for managing vocabulary for reference databases on the Web. The approach is directed at domain specific databases in which much of the referenced material remains in non-digital form. A combination of interactive and manual processes are outlined along with a proposed implementation approach. For this limited class of databases, it is suggested that the approach can significantly improve vocabulary management with relatively low costs in manual effort.

Geographical information systems at Princeton University: evaluation and exploration of a new library service

Reviews some of the popular Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and related digital data sources. Discusses the results of interviews with Princeton University Library patrons and others involved with GIS within the context of a potential GIS service. Develops a proposal for a GIS service for Princeton University with emphasis on the need for training and creating the digital collections that will be most relevant for the University.

Creating the Innovative Library Culture: Escaping the Iron Cage Through Management Innovation

To survive and thrive in the future, academic libraries must change and adapt to a rapidly evolving external environment. In advocating for a transformation, Stoffle, Allen, Morden, and Maloney (2003) have clearly stated the challenge for library leaders “the choice is to change and thrive or live in the past and fail” (p. 363). The for-profit world has amply demonstrated how the risk of holding on to traditional business models can quickly render a product obsolete. These same disruptive forces are acting on the academic library. Although many have called for a transformation in the library, there is a relatively minimal amount of discussion regarding what the transformation entails. The obvious challenge is how to bring about this change in a world in which most major organizational changes simply do not work (Burke, 2002, pp. 1–7). Culture can be defined as the deeply seated and often unconscious values and beliefs shared by the personnel in an organization (Martins & Terblanche, 2003). In an historic and well-established institution such as the academic library, the culture acts in a way to preserve the status quo, making it very difficult to implement a major new innovation. The “iron cage” metaphor (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) accurately portrays this situation and suggests that library culture perpetuates some of the more restrictive aspects embedded in the norms and traditions of the profession. In these more bureaucratic organizations, “There’s little room for passion, ingenuity, and self-direction” (Hamel, 2000, p. 8), resulting in an inability to respond to a rapidly changing environment that requires flexibility and creativity.

Building value-added services for institutional repositories (IRs): Modeling the Rutgers experience

Institutional repositories (IR) are largely unpopulated due to insufficient faculty experience in self-archiving (Kim, 2010), to inadequate marketing efforts to popularize the advantages of IRs (Jantz & Wilson, 2008), and to lack of faculty awareness regarding the unsustainable costs of traditional means of scholarly communication (Darnton, 2010). This paper explores a number of IR services at Rutgers that, collectively, add significant value to the university’s IR by facilitating scholarly communication and by preserving digital content. These services are based on a flexible architecture, enabling the customization of IR content for specific communities including discipline specific dissertation portals and personalized faculty portals. Related services have been developed, in part, to increase the visibility of faculty publications, including support for internal interoperability among multiple databases (for example, between an IR and a library’s OPAC) and for the export of faculty-deposited works to external databases such as PubMed Central. Future services will include collaborative spaces, science data archiving and curation, and the creation of semantic relationships that connect scholarly materials in multiple repositories. In this paper, we argue that faculty members are frequently unaware of these additional services that can simultaneously enhance the impact of their work while advancing the development of powerful new means of scholarly communication. Harnessing faculty self interest to these technological innovations is the surest mechanism for creating a bridge to the sustainable development of high quality research and a major factor in the success of institutional repositories.

English Advice Manuals Online at Rutgers: A Partnership in a New Course Using Digital Books and Web Technology.

The authors’ experiences in launching a new course at Rutgers University are described. The new honors course resulted from a collaboration between the History Department and Rutgers University Libraries (RUL), in which academic instruction, a unique source of digital books, and Web/Internet technology were brought together to provide a new learning experience for undergraduates. Students used the Early English Books Online (EEBO) collection at RUL and were challenged to learn as much as possible in a single semester about some facet of early English advice manuals. The course objectives, technology platform, and student experiences are discussed.