Cyber-infrastructure and information policy: the changing face of US digitisation developments
Joyce Ray, Associate Deputy Director for Library Services Institute of Museum and Library Services
Views expressed entirely my own and do not represent the US government or my agency.
Mapping exercise: three agencies are the cultural funding agencies:
National Endowment for the Arts (1960s)
National Endowment for the Humanities (1960s)
Institute of Museum and Library Services (late 1980’s)
Serve 122,000 libraries and 17,000 museums and in the US and all eligible for help from the IMLS. Even though IMLS is the newest agency, we have the most money because of state-based programmes. Preservation Access division funds digitisation.
The National Science Foundation (with Office of Cyberinfrastructure and National Science Digital Library) and the Department of Education and other federal agencies also fund things to do with cyberinfrastructure.
Legislative branch is separate and includes the Library of Congress with the National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Programme.
Then there are private funders including the Mellon Foundation, Sloane Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Google, Open Content Alliance.
Cyberinfrastructure: various definitions from different interest groups.
Challenges/priorities:
- Build the content landscape
- Establish sustainable trusted repositories
- Identify the right economies of scale
- Address copyright barriers
- Eliminate silos
IMLS programmes:
State Grant Program: distributes funds to State Library Administrative Agencies in each state: 2007: 163,746,000
National Grant Programs: competitive grants to libraries, museums, and others: 2007: 70,101,000
Look for interesting content and projects that can help to develop models and new tools and lead to best practice. This infrastructure is growing in significance as many have used state money and some have national money and consortia will typically include colleges, universities, museums, libraries and it’s a good model for them to learn to work together
Examples: California Digital Library, Florida Center for Library Automation, Alabama Commission, University of Denver, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (digital curation curriculum development), University of California at Santa Barbara (wax cylinder recordings), Johns Hopkins (national virtual observatory, working with the University of Edinburgh)
IMLS initiatives: study of the condition of collection in MLAs across the US. Found 4.8bn items held by these institutions. Many of these are in unknown condition or at risk. In response we created a conservation initiative and focused on issue of digital stewardship at Webwise 2007. In 2008 will focus on digital tools.
Found that trusted repositories are needed to:
- preserve digital copies pf resources originally recorded on unstable media
- preserve born-digital resources
- preserve all digital surrogates in case of loss or damage of originals
New IMLS/NISO Framework of Giuidance on Building Good Digital Collections – has four areas: collections, objects, metadata, projects (or initiatives)
Collaboration is the key