WordPress 2.5 is out

Update for 02008 03 30: Installed WordPress 2.5 which was released on March 29, 02008. Everything seems to be working fine. Original post from 02008 03 18:  Installed and whipped through the overhauled administration interface to the upcoming WordPress 2.5 release. Quite the number of changes. Newer WordPress bloggers may find it less confusing than before, [...]

Digital Preservation Europe spins a PLATTER

From the announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02008 03 28) about the release of PLATTER (Planning Tool for Trusted Electronic Repositories) by Digital Preservation Europe: Digital repositories are entrusted by their stakeholders – depositors, funders and end-users – with the curation of vital and often irreplaceable electronic assets. Repositories typically validate that trust by subjecting themselves to [...]

Open Source in Libraries Web site

According to an announcement on the WEB4LIB list (02008 03 27), the Open Source in Libraries (OSIL) Web site is supposed to launch on March 31, 02008. A mailing list is also available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/opensourceinlibraries. Another, older, similar site, started by Dan Chudnov eons ago in Internet time, is OSS4LIB. Dan’s endorsed the birth of OSIL [...]

8th International Web Archiving Workshop, September 02008, Denmark

The 8th International Web Archiving Workshop will likely be held on September 18 and 19, 02008 in Aarhus, Denmark. The call for papers is out and can be found on the IWAW 2008 Web site.

First NEH Awards for JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grants

From a media release I received from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Tuesday afternoon [March 25, 02008], the National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) newly created Office of Digital Humanities announced the first JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration Grant award recipients on behalf of the NEH and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The announcement [...]

UK National Archives consultation draft on digital continuity standards

From the announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02008 03 26): As part of our Digital Continuity project, The National Archives has developed a set of standards to help government departments and the wider public sector assess commercially available digital preservation solutions. The standards comprise a high-level description of what a digital preservation solution should provide, with cross-references [...]

Social networking and Open Access publishing in the Academy through Pronetos

Pronetos, which appears to stand for Professor’s Network, calls itself “a social network for scholars and an Open Access publisher. It provides an intuitively designed, real-time, web based community platform that facilitates mass collaboration and democratizes content for global distribution among academics with the ability to archive and search that content.” The FAQ indicates that “Only [...]

Koninklijke Bibliotheek report on possible alternative file formats for master images from mass digitization projects

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (National Library of the Netherlands) has published a report on possible alternative file formats for storing master images from mass digitization projects. According to the library, uncompressed TIFFs, its preferred format so far, take up far too much storage capacity to be a viable storage strategy for the long term. The report [...]

International Conference on the Preservation of Digital Objects (iPRES2008), September 02008, British Library

From the announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02008 03 19): The fifth annual International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPres) 2008 will take place at the British Library Conference Centre on 29 and 30 September this year. iPres 2008 is the fifth in a series of international conferences dedicated to promoting understanding and best practice in [...]

Perfect Passwords generator from the Gibson Research Corporation

The Gibson Research Corporation has the Perfect Passwords generator that “generates a unique set of custom, high quality, cryptographic-strength password strings which are safe for you to use” by using “maximum entropy” (as random as you can get) to create a new password every time you visit the page.

New issue of D-Lib Magazine (March-April 02008)

From the DIGLIB mailing list announcement (02008 03 17): The March/April 2008 issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available. This issue contains two commentaries (one of which has two parts), three articles, the ‘In Brief’ column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in ‘Clips and Pointers’. [...]

Scientists Confront Creationism, the book

Edited by Andrew J. Petto and Laurie R. Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007) is the slightly retitled paperback edition of the hardcover edition that seeks to combat the goofy arguments and religious dogma of the anti-evolutionary, creationist/intelligent design crowd.

Wiki portals to Canadian history: Samuel de Champlain and Sir John A. Macdonald

The Civics Channel, Inc. and Northern Blue Publishing have collaborated on two wiki portals around pivotal figures in Canadian history: Samuel de Champlain and Sir John A. Macdonald. The Champlain site recognizes Quebec’s 400th anniversary in 2008 and Champlain’s role in the province’s establishment as a French colony.

Tracking the reel world: survey of European audiovisual collections published by TAPE

From the announcement on the ARCHIVES mailing list (02008 03 11): Tracking the reel world presents the results of a study on audiovisual collections undertaken in the framework of the TAPE project. Based on data collected from hundreds of organizations from all over Europe, most of them archives, libraries, museums (and research) institutes that hold [...]

Raising Islands, Hawaiian-style science and environmental issues

Jan TenBruggencate, a science reporter and author who lives in Hawaii, has a blog I came across called Raising Islands in which he talks about science and environmental issues in Hawai’i.

ResearchTrail.com, another entrant in the collaborative search world

Although ResearchTrail.com, the service of a company called ResearchTrail Ltd. founded by Judith Koren, launched its site on March 9, 02008, the promises remain unfulfilled for now. The “Free search tips” are not there and registration is required simply to get an invitation to “preview the ResearchTrail information portal.” There’s also no evidence of the [...]

250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives

The Online Education Database has a great annotated list of more than 250 “killer digital libraries and archives” that it published on October 17, 02007. The list is arranged first by individual states of the United States and then by topic, concluding with a list of directories including the British Columbia Digital Library by yours [...]

Got a Gravatar yet?

I’m thinking of getting me a Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) at Gravatar.com. Now, who should I be? Dougall Campbell of Geek Ramblings created a great and easy WordPress plugin called Easy Gravatars that will “display gravatars for the people who comment on your posts. You do not need to modify any of your template files — [...]

Google rebrands JotSpot Wiki as Google Sites within Google Apps

According to a March 6, 02008 Information Today Newsbreak piece by Erik Arnold published on, Last week, Google announced that it was launching Google Sites to supplement its growing Google Apps product suite (www.google.com/enterprise/apps). Google Sites (www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/sites.html) is the integration of JotSpot, a web-based wiki provider that Google purchased more than a year and a half [...]

UK Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations (DANGO)

From the About page of the UK Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations (DANGO): DANGO, the Database of Archives of UK NGOs since 1945, is an online, free-to-access database, enabling researchers to identify NGOs that interest them, and then access both existing and new information about the content, location and accessibility of archival holdings relating [...]

Results of IMLS study of Internet impact on museums and libraries

The Institute of Museum and Library Services in the United States unveiled its research report, InterConnections: A National Study of Users and Potential Users of Online Information, on March 6, 02008 at the 9th annual WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World in Miami, Florida. According to the IMLS media release, IMLS [...]

Indiana University goes open access with Open Journal Systems from the Canadian Public Knowledge Project

The Indiana University Libraries and and the Indiana University Digital Library Program are conducting a pilot project with open access publishing with the Open Journal Systems software from Canada’s Public Knowledge Project. Indiana University calls their service IUScholarWorks Journals. It’s kind of cool and probably just a coincidence that I published an article on PKP in the January [...]

How-to resources for digitizing analog sound

Here are a couple of how-to resources from 02007 and 02008 for digitizing analog sound: Audio Tape Digitisation Workflow: Digitisation workflow for analogue open reel tapes by Juha Henriksson (Finnish Jazz & Pop Archive) and Nadja Wallaszkovits (Phonogrammarchiv, Austrian Academy of Sciences), TAPE (Training for Audiovisual Preservation in Europe), 02008 Sound Directions: Best Practices for Audio [...]

Project PLANETS Upcoming Events calendar

This page of Upcoming Events at the European Project PLANETS (Preservation and Long-term Access through Networked Services) will help you plan your digital preservation meeting attendances.

Birds of America by John James Audubon takes digital flight at the University of Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh Library System has digitized its collection of John James Audubon’s Birds of America and his Ornithological Biography. Audubon’s Birds of America at the University of Pittsburgh is part of the William M. Darlington Digital Library Collection. The Flash player is required to view the Audubon plates. The site also recommends Internet Explorer version [...]

Review of The Preservation of Digital Materials by Priscilla Caplan, ALA TechSource, v. 44, no. 2 (Feb/Mar 02008)

I was pleasantly surprised to have received a copy of the latest monograph from the American Library Association’s TechSource Library Technology Reports series (ISSN 0024-2586). This just happened to be on the topic of my blog, and the cover letter suggested that any comments about this issue should include a link back to the TechSource [...]

Drupal going commercial under a company called Acquia

The open source content management system Drupal, popular among the library community, is going commercial under a company called Acquia that was started by Dries Buytaert, founder of the Drupal project. Quoting the source of the story, “The new effort aims to bring a commercially supported version of Drupal to business users and could shake up the [...]