Costs of digitization

Why is it so hard to find costs for digitization? If you do research, you'll find wildly different costs, from $.04/page to $20/page, and different costs for text vs. images (which I can understand). But you'd think that people who do grant-funded projects would have published this info. Don't granting orgs want this kind of information? "So, Ms. Soandso, how EXACTLY did you spend the money we gave you?" Also, you have to put costs in your grant proposals. Are those figures just pulled out of... [ahem] the air?

This looks ok: The Price of Digitization: New Cost Models for Cultural and Educational Institutions

I like this quote from the end of the summary for the above-linked symposium report:

"I ended by quoting Voltaire, "the best is the enemy of the good," and urging people to go for more material at lower costs and quality levels. I also think we urgently need help demonstrating why we need these projects. Institutions don't quantify the value of new information and fear that it is used by those outside their community; we may need a new definition of community." (http://www.ninch.org/forum/price.lesk.report.html)

Let's remember that: The best is the enemy of the good. Let's make it our mantra. I may have it tattooed on my butt. Or at least put it on my office door. (No one would see the tattoo.)

Semantic Web

So, it turns out that I really do have to learn more about the Semantic Web.

Crap.

More from the De Lange Conference will be on the DLTF blog.

Semantic Web

Yet another new thing to learn about?

This was posted to the DIGLIB list on May 20, as part of a call for papers.

Semantic transportation data models

An underpinning of any effort to share data is getting agreement on the exact meaning of individual data elements and their relationships. This activity occurs within individual transportation agencies - for example, as part of a data warehousing effort; and in the context of larger data standards setting and data exchange efforts. Precise documentation of meaning is essential for data sharing - it allows a potential data user to determine the suitability of a data set, and it provides the basis for translation across different data elements.

With the emergence of the semantic web, progress is being made in many domains on development of semantic data models or ontologies - using the W3C Resource description Framework (RDF) language, the Ontology Web Language (OWL), or ISO 13250-1 Topic Maps. These are precise specifications of information elements that can be used to improve "findability" on the web and to support intelligent web services.

Open Source aDORe DIDLTools 1.0 software

JB sent this to me. Could be useful for UBdigit info.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA, May 17, 2006 ? The LANL Digital Library Research and Prototyping Team & Ghent University Library are pleased to announce the formal release of their DIDLTools software.

The aDORe DIDLTools is a Java toolkit for the construction, validation, serialization and de-serialization of the MPEG-21 DID data model. DID, the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration, provides an abstract model for the representation of digital items, whereas DIDL, the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration Language specifies how to serialize the model in XML. The API provided by the aDORe DIDLTools allows for the construction of customized DIDL XML documents, as well as provides flexible and extensible serialization methods.

This distribution includes a comprehensive tutorial detailing the steps necessary to model and create a DIDL using the DID-API.

The DIDLTools 1.0 software was developed by the LANL Digital Library Research & Prototyping Team, in partnership with Ghent University.

This software may be used without charge in accord with the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) .


Further context for the aDORe DIDLTools software is provided in the papers:
* Bekaert, J., Van de Sompel, H. (2005, August).
"Representing Digital Assets using MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration" http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0508065

* Bekaert, J., Liu, X., Van de Sompel, H. (2005, November).
"Representing Digital Assets for Long-Term Preservation using MPEG-21 DID" http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DL/0509084


More information:
DIDLTools 1.0 software page
http://purl.lanl.gov/aDORe/projects/DIDLTools/

GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.php


Send Feedback and Questions to:
Ryan Chute
Digital Library Research & Prototyping
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library
tel. +1 505 665 6955

Capturing Analog Sound for Digital Preservation

pub137.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Carole Ann sent this. I need to read it.

Label: To Read

The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper

The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper

Have to start keeping track of IR stuff. This is a step in that direction.