D-Lib Magazine (sept.-oct. 09)

Au sommaire du dernier n° de D-Lib Magazine (sept.-oct. 09, vol. 15, n° 9-10):

Articles:

• Establishing Trust in a Chain of Preservation: The TRAC Checklist Applied to a Data Staging Repository (DataStaR)

DataStaR is a data staging repository in development at Cornell University. A data staging repository offers unique opportunities to recruit data into domain and institutional data repositories, but as a transitory curation environment, it demands careful consideration of the role of such a repository in the full life cycle of research data. We describe our experience applying the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification Criteria and Checklist as a framework for specifying system, policy, and documentation requirements to ensure that DataStaR is an effective partner in the entire chain of preservation activities.

• Subject-based Information Retrieval within Digital Libraries Employing LCSHs

In this article, an effort is made to take advantage of the inherent semantic wealth existing within Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSHs) in order to provide more efficient subject-based information retrieval in digital libraries. To formally express such wealth, an ontology schema is presented that is capable of modeling the semantics of LCSHs into adequate ontologies. Finally, in order to show the way towards exploiting such ontologies in favor of the development of more effective subject-based information retrieval in digital libraries, a prototype system is presented. The system contains an ontology modeling the LCSHs that are employed within a digital library of theses and dissertations. Serving as a proof of concept, the prototype describes a system capable of making the expressiveness of the underlying ontology readily available to end users while at the same time retaining simplicity and ease-of-use.

• Analysing Selection for Digitisation: Current Practices and Common Incentives

Over the past few decades, the explosion of digital and digitised documents and the addition of a purely digital facet to the documentary lifecycle have been forcing memory institutions from all sectors to address the same questions that the growth in analogue production necessitated in the early 20th century: Can/should all documents that pass the initial test of appraisal also remain stored indefinitely? What are the requirements for long-term preservation? At what point (if ever) do digital collections become too large to handle? And how can we decide what gets deleted? Individual institutions and collaborative research efforts alike have adopted a wide range of practices in their attempt to tackle these questions. We would expect the current phase of trial-and-error to move slowly towards a set of somewhat more uniformly adopted governing concepts and practices.

• OA Network: An Integrative Open Access Infrastructure for Germany

This article describes concepts, development, and implementation of an overall Open Access infrastructure for Germany. Currently, the joint project Open Access Network is facilitating comprehensive and value-added services built on top of distributed Institutional Repositories. Using the OAI-PMH as the harvesting mechanism, Open Access (OA) Network furnishes an open and extensible architecture to form the technological base for manifold enhanced services. It not only provides a personalized end user platform but also serves as an aggregator node for passing data to other service providers (e.g., DRIVER). Moreover, OA Network provides a testbed for the development of software to implement value-added services. OA Network is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

• Curriculum for Digital Libraries: An Analytical Study of Indian LIS Curricula

The information professionals of today must discharge their duties in a hybrid environment, one that deals with traditional print documents but digital documents as well. To make digital information management a reality, Library and Information Science (LIS) education programmes in India now include digital library courses in their syllabi. An attempt has been made in this article to analyze the digital library course content of LIS Master Degree programmes of selected University Departments/Institutions in India. The results are not encouraging. There is a need to devise innovative LIS programme content on digital libraries in the form of core and advanced elective courses.

Comptes rendus de conférence:

• Report on OAI 6: CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, Geneva 17-19 June 2009

• Purple Cows and Fringy Propositions: The Edinburgh Repository Fringe Festival 200