techMETRO

Digitech Newsletter :: September 2009

Call for Participation Extended for "Digitization in the Real World" Book

METRO is pleased to announce a call to participate in a forthcoming book, tentatively titled Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects. This book is intended to document experiences with digitization projects that fall outside the spectrum of mass digitization initiatives that have tended to be more thoroughly discussed and documented. Digitization in the Real World will be co-edited by Professor Kwong Bor Ng (Queens College, CUNY) and Jason Kucsma (METRO).

Your experiences will provide useful case studies on what works and what does not for libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organizations managing small- to medium-sized collections. Librarians, archivists, and students stand to benefit from your experiences — learning about the how the key elements of digitization projects play out in diverse institutional contexts. How was your project started? How was it implemented? What organizational and technological obstacles were encountered, and how were they overcome? Were they overcome? What new solutions did your project implement, and were those experiments successful or not? What are some of the lessons learned from your project? Is your project still growing? If not, why?

If you’d like to participate, please submit the following information via email (jkucsma@metro.org) on or before September 7, 2009. (Extended from August 31, 2009)
Name:
Email:
Institution:
Chapter Abstract: 500-1000 words describing the scope of your project and key elements you intend to address in your chapter.

Omeka Workshop Rescheduled for September 11, 2009

If you thought you missed your opportunity to learn how to work with the open source Collection Management System, Omeka, think again! The August workshop was rescheduled for September 11. Omeka is a free and open source collections based, web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators, and cultural enthusiasts. Its “five-minute setup” makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster user interaction and participation.

Jeremy Boggs, Omeka Project Manager, will lead a one-day workshop on September 11. This workshop will introduce Omeka, provide a brief background on developing the software, show examples of different types of websites created with Omeka and teach participants how to use Omeka to build a website for your institution.

Complete details and registration are available at http://bit.ly/28Bzbh.

Digital Collection Spotlight:
Chinese Paper Gods at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library,
Columbia University

Each month we take a moment to share digital collections created by METRO members. Recommend a collection for the spotlight by emailing jkucsma@metro.org.

The images in this collection were assembled by Anne S. Goodrich (1895–2005) in 1931, when as a Christian missionary in Peking she became interested in local folk religious practices. She studied the paper gods in this collection for much of her life. After publishing her research conclusions in 1991, she donated these prints to the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University.

The images are divided initially by usage: Those which were purchased to be burned immediately and serve as emissaries to heaven; and those which were purchased to be displayed for a year while offering protection to the family in a variety of ways, before being burned. The images are further divided by display locations and by the deities they represent.

View the collection here: http://bit.ly/CNlGD

View more digital collections at digitalMETRO, an online directory of digital collections created and maintained by METRO libraries.

Save the Date: METRO Annual Meeting

Join us on October 29, 2009 (2-5pm) at SUNY College of Optometry to commemorate METRO's 45th Anniversary at METRO's Annual Meeting. Our keynote speaker for the afternoon will be John Blyberg, Assistant Director for Innovation and User Experience at Darien Public Library in Connecticut. The event is open to all staff of METRO member libraries. Tours of the Harold Kohn Vision Science Library will take place before the meeting. Registration information will be coming soon, but make sure you save the date now.

Digitization and Emerging Tech Workshops and Events

September:

• 11 - Using Omeka to Build Digital Collections in Libraries and Archives. Details:http://bit.ly/28Bzbh

• 16 - Code4Lib NYC Special Interest Group Meeting (10am, METRO Training Ctr)

• 30 - “Social Networking Literacy for Librarians: Emerging Competencies for Emerging Technologies.” (a co-sponsored presentation by the Library 2.0 SIG and the Science, Technology, and Medical Libraries SIG). Details: http://bit.ly/1aAm7c

Add these and other related events around NY and the world to your Google Calendar by subscribing to the METRO Calendar: http://bit.ly/metrocalendar.

Newsfeed 

The best of August's Tweets from the tweetMETRO feed
(http://twitter.com/tweetMETRO):

• good news for digital preservation: URL shorteners form archiving group (via @libraryfuture) http://bit.ly/117oD4
• CFP: "Digitization in the Real World" book - documenting small/medium digitization projects http://bit.ly/Hik2C
• Future of Library User Experience, webinar keynote from Urban Libraries Council http://bit.ly/eLZe6
• RT @blefurgy: What’s the average lifespan of a Web page? Important digital preservation factoid http://bit.ly/ko8U6
• RT @nytimesbits: A new tool that threads Twitter messages into conversations. http://bit.ly/3jlpj5
• RT @lbraun2000: RWW on archiving tweets - really useful - http://bit.ly/vJqIr
• Stipends available for: A Race Against Time: Preserving Our Audiovisual Media in Atlanta, GA http://bit.ly/3hLk26
• NYC Tech Meetup Group is looking for folks from NYC universities for Sep meetup show-and-tell http://bit.ly/3yemlB
• This week's featured collection on digitalMETRO: The Papers of John Jay at Columbia U. http://bit.ly/w4F1e
• OLE; The unanswered questions http://bit.ly/1aZnqe (via @tadawes)
• Clearing up misconceptions about open source software http://bit.ly/3kE8Y1
• Digital librarians! tribute to the those on the front line for staying on top of tech! http://bit.ly/19RSSZ (via @danklyn)
• RT @dblduchess: 5 ways libraries fail twitter, and more http://www.web2learning.net/archives/3086
• Apprehending the Future: Emerging Technologies, from Science Fiction to Campus Reality (EDUCAUSE Review) http://bit.ly/hnm8s
• OCLC is spotlighting METRO members' digital collections this month http://bit.ly/F7d20

Have other news you think we should be sharing with subscribers to this list? Tweet us at http://twitter.com/tweetmetro.

Digitization in the Real World: Call for Participation

The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) is pleased to announce a call to participate in a forthcoming book, tentatively titled Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects. This book is intended to document experiences with digitization projects that fall outside the spectrum of mass digitization initiatives that have tended to be more thoroughly discussed and documented. Digitization in the Real World will be co-edited by Professor Kwong Bor Ng (Queens College, CUNY) and Jason Kucsma (METRO).

Your experiences will provide useful case studies on what works and what does not for libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organizations managing small- to medium-sized collections. Librarians, archivists, and students stand to benefit from your experiences — learning about the how the key elements of digitization projects play out in diverse institutional contexts. How was your project started? How was it implemented? What organizational and technological obstacles were encountered, and how were they overcome? Were they overcome? What new solutions did your project implement, and were those experiments successful or not? What are some of the lessons learned from your project? Is your project still growing? If not, why?

The scope of these case studies will inherently diverge, and we encourage that diversity. A book that candidly discusses your projects will be of great value to other libraries, archives, museums, cultural institutions, and graduate school students in library science and archives programs.

If you’d like to participate, please submit the following information via email on or before August 31, 2009.
Name:
Email:
Institution:
Chapter Abstract: 500-1000 words describing the scope of your project and key elements you intend to address in your chapter.

Should your proposal be accepted, you will be notified by September 21, 2009 with chapter guidelines and editorial suggestions. The final chapter would be due on December 14, 2009, upon which it will be sent for double-blind peer review. The book is scheduled to be published by METRO, and you will, of course, receive a copy of the book.

CONTACT:
Jason Kucsma
Emerging Technologies Manager, METRO
jkucsma_at_metro.org

Professor KB Ng
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Queens College, CUNY
kbng_at_qc.cuny.edu


ABOUT METRO:
The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) was chartered in 1964 by the New York Board of Regents to “promote and facilitate utilization of existing resources and to develop additional library services in the New York metropolitan area.” Today, with 250 member organizations throughout New York City and Westchester County, METRO is the largest of New York State’s nine reference and research library resource systems, and one of the largest library service organizations in the world. Since 2005, METRO has provided over $300k in digitization grants to fund over 30 small to medium-sized digitization projects as part of its Digital Library Services Plan.

ABOUT THE EDITORS:
Prof. Kwong Bor Ng is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, CUNY. His most recent publication is Using XML, published by Neal Schuman in 2007. His other book (co-edited with S. Rummler), Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design: Emerging Trends in User Experiences, will be published in Sept 2009 by IGI Global.

Jason Kucsma is the Emerging Technologies Manager at the Metropolitan New York Library Council where he manages METRO’s Digitization Grant Program and is the point person for member inquiries related to the resources, training and referral services associated with digitization, digital preservation and emerging technologies issues. Jason received his M.A. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University and an M.L.S. from the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science. He is currently working part-time on a certificate in Digital Information Management (University of Arizona), is part-time lecturer in Rutgers’s Library and Information Science graduate program, and is a recent graduate of ALA’s 2009 Emerging Leaders Program.