News Archive

  • An IT and consulting services company headqartered UK has been included as a member of a $20 million research data preservation project team in USA

    This company (Tessella) is joining the Data Conservancy team to work in a research data preservation project that has been awarded with a 5 year grant ($20 million) by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

    The scope of the project is to build a data research infrastructure for managing the increasing amounts of digital information created for teaching and research, and it is part of the $100 million DataNet program, which aims at establishing a national cyberinfrastructure to support the long term preservation and curation of scientific data.

    Source: http://www.tessella.com/2010/01/press-release-20-million-us-archiving-pr...

  • SHAMAN related news in ERCIM Magazine

    Several articles that relate with SHAMAN project and Theory of Preservation have been published

  • Xeproc document process modelling technology available under Eclipse Public License

    These representations capture the intent behind the workflow and can be preserved for reuse within future, unknown infrastructures contributing to the preservation of knowledge assets.

    In a SOA spirit, XEPROC embeds references to services and documents and provides loose coupling to services and also to data resources, with respect to both their location and format. Xeproc provides a new kind of orchestration designer, integrated in the full set of Eclipse tools.

    Available on Eclipse 3.5 under the Eclipse Public License, Xeproc combines a domain specific language (DSL), an associated graphic designer and extension APIs.

    'Read more' at - www.xrce.xerox.com/Xeproc

    Xeproc in ERCIM Special issue on Digital Preservation -XEPROC

  • The industry approaches Digital Preservation as a way of “Securing communication with the Future”

    In December 2009 the BBC signed a MOU with the BBC, in an innovative approach that foresees to integrate access to nearly a million hours of BBC TV and radio content and over 150 million British Library items for increasing access to research material across both national institutions for the benefit of researchers and the wider public. The MOU also takes in account collaboration in developing viable approaches for rights management, distribution of archive content, digitisation and storage.

    Mark Thompson, Director General of BBC said "Unlocking the wealth of content in the British Library and BBC archives is a great opportunity as well as an immense challenge. It is vital we partner, harnessing the power of digital technology to give the public the access they deserve."
    CEO of the British Library Dame Lynne said “Unparalleled access to joint information services and world-class digital archival content will truly enable the business, academic, scientific, research and creative communities to flourish."

    The BBC also has signed earlier this year MOUs with the British Film Institute and the BBC and The National Archives.

    Source: BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8408818.stm

  • The National Archives of Australia develops an Open Source Digital Preservation Software

    Xena detects the file formats of digital objects and converts digital objects into open formats for preservation.
    Source: http://xena.sourceforge.net/

  • Failures in digital preservation have lead to a current political controversy in USA

    According to Anne Weismann, chief counsel for CREW liberal group these emails have been found due to their lawsuits and pressure generated from Capitol Hill.

    As a consequence of this failure in the properly working electronic record keeping system, it is expected that it will be about 4 years at earliest before the public sees any of the recovered e-mails, as these emails will now go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records. Additionally, new recovery costs and lawsuits will probably come and increase this controversy.

    Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/12/14/2009-12-14_found_22_...

  • SHAMAN PROJECT presented next Wednesday Dec. 16ht at the “Cultural Heritage On Line"
  • Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) agreement signed by the BBC and British Library

    Last Friday (Dec 11th) BBC director general Mark Thompson and Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) agreement in which both organisations joined forces to explore ways to create a new digital archive for content and assets from both organisations.

    According to Brindley this MOU aims at creating “a model of best practice which will allow the Library to develop similar opportunities with other public institutions. Providing unparalleled access to joint information services and world-class digital archival content will truly enable the business, academic, scientific, research and creative communities to flourish."

    The committee will explore various issues around distribution of archive material, such as rights management, digitisation and storage. The BBC also recently signed separate MOUs with the British Film Institute and The National Archives. These agreements are part of BBC`s goal to get as much material as possible in the archive by its 100th anniversary in 2022, although this aim could prove elusive due to the complicated rights negotiations.

    The BBC intends to unlock its archives by the end of 2010, including some material from 1922. BBC Vision director Jana Bennett said that the archive would most likely incorporate a hybrid model of public service and commercial pay models.

  • SHAMAN members particiapted at the 13th European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) 2009

    SHAMAN members participated at the 13th European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL - http://www.ecdl2009.eu/) held in CORFU (Greece)

    The conference addressed the main issues that users and user communities confront within modern digital libraries, such as the creation and enrichment of information artifacts, sharing and distribution of information objects, retrieval and filtering mechanisms, enhancement of user interfaces to increase productivity, and digital preservation.

  • SHAMAN PROJECT presented at SUN-PASIG Fall Meetings

    As part of dissemination activities the SHAMAN Project was presented during the Fall meeting in San Francisco (Part I: http://lib.stanford.edu/files/pasig2009sf/pasig2009sf_shaman_intro.pdf and Part II: http://lib.stanford.edu/files/pasig2009sf/pasig2009sf_shaman_rtd.pdf ) by Ruben Riestra (Inmark), Project coordinator, and Prof. Dr.-Ing Matthias Hemmje (Fern Universitat of Hagen).

    Fall meeting reached about 170 attendees and gathered academicians, technologists, librarians, and storage architects from around the world to discuss best practices and solve challenges in 21st Century archiving. The conclusión of this meeting was that “with the close collaboration of leading educational and library institutions, the world's valuable research, audio-visual content, and cultural heritage materials can be preserved and more widely and safely shared. But much remains to be done to address issues in this evolving field.”

    SUN-PASIG is the SUN Preservation and Archival Interest Group, led by Sun Microsystems, gather Sun market, product experts and PASIG members in a jointly manner, in order to set out baseline technology trends for the group. Presentatios show practical architectures for Digital Preservation, and discuss about needs and challenges in the areas of data curation, data management of eScience content, preservation, repositories, and storage technologies, that.

  • SHAMAN at iPRES 2009 – The Sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects

    Under the theme "Moving into the mainstream, enabling our digital future," this premier conference brought together researchers and practitioners from around the world working to preserve the world's cultural and scholarly digital heritage, to present the latest trends, innovations, and practices in preserving our scientific and cultural digital heritage (Conference Program: http://www.cdlib.org/iPres/confsched.html ).

    The following were the main topics of the conference:

    - Re-positioning preservation awareness and services further upstream in the digital lifecycle

    - Re-emphasizing that digital preservation problems and solutions encompass legal, economic, and social as well as technological dimensions

    - Re-asserting the need for comprehensive integration of preservation analysis and activities into the organizational planning and operations of institutions that produce, manage, or exploit digital resources

    Bringing preservation issues to the attention of the broader public in order to change minds, policies, and expectations

    Stressing the importance of seeing digital preservation as an outcome resulting in usability
    Reinhard Altenhöner, as Head of the IT Department of Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), the national library of Germany, presented “E-infrastructure and Digital Preservation: Challenges and Outlook “ (http://www.cdlib.org/iPres/presentations/Altenhoener.pdf). He exponed the reasons and strategic aspects which maybe can illuminate the prohibiting factors for the unassertive progress of Digital Preservation, based on the the German situation and their practical experiences. Currently, the DNB is a SHAMAN partner and also participates in several nacional and european projects. Its focal points of technical development are Long-Term Preservation and the makeup of automated indexing and linking processes.

    Wolfgang Wilkes, representing Fern Universitat of Hagen and InConTec, partners of the Shaman project, presented “Towards Support for Long-Term Digital Preservation in Product Life Cycle Management “ (http://www.cdlib.org/iPres/presentations/Wilkes.pdf). In which he exposed a real-life engineering archive use case scenarios linking the Product Lifecycle Management systems and the Digital Preservation Systems.

    The presentation highlighted the importance of legal and economic motivations for the design and engineering domain to address and integrate digital long-term preservation into the product life cycle management (PLM). Different phases of a product’s life generate diverse and very complex, structured data, often in proprietary data format which is necessary during long-lasting products (i.e airplains) for contractual and economic requirements as well as for legal compliance.

    SHAMAN, CASPAR, KEEP and PLANETS project represented DigiCult projects. The EU-funded research on cultural heritage, digital libraries and digital preservation that deals with leading-edge information and communication technologies for expanding access to and use of Europe's rich cultural and scientific resources.

  • Public hearing and consultation on Post-i2010: priorities for a new strategy for a European information society (2010-2015)

    The upcoming challenges for Digital Europe were raised in a public consultation "Post-i2010: priorities for a new strategy for a European information society (2010-2015)", open until 9 October 2009 and available now in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Polish.

    The consultation will contribute to the preparations of a new European ICT strategy which the Commission aims to present in 2010 as part of the next wave of the Lisbon Agenda.
    A public hearing on this topic is organised in Brussels on 23 September.

  • The US Library of Congress in Top 10 Federal IT Initiatives

    Government Computer News announced in September (2009) that the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program is among the best of Federal information technology initiatives of 2009.

    "The annual GCN Awards honor agencies for their outstanding achievements in the application of information technology to advance their work and the services they provide. The 2009 agency winners are now part of a tradition of innovation, excellence, and service.

  • SHAMAN presented papers at IFLA Congress

    Under the motto “Libraries create futures: Building on cultural heritage”, the World Library and Information Congress 2009, 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly, took take place in Milan, Italy.

    SHAMAN partners presented a Paper in the session Statistics for the cultural heritage (Preservation and Conservation Section).

  • Digital economy can lift Europe out of crisis, says Commission report

    The European Commission's Digital Competitiveness report published today shows that Europe's digital sector has made strong progress since 2005: 56% of Europeans now regularly use the internet, 80% of them via a high-speed connection (compared to only one third in 2004), making Europe the world leader in broadband internet.

    Europe is the world's first truly mobile continent with more mobile subscribers than citizens (a take up rate of 119%). Europe can advance even further as a generation of "digitally savvy" young Europeans becomes a strong market driver for growth and innovation.

    Building on the potential of the digital economy is essential for Europe's sustainable recovery. from the economic crisis. Today the Commission has asked the public what future strategy the EU should adopt to make the digital economy run at full speed.

  • On July 2009 SHAMAN was invited to talk at the 9th Industrial Conference on Data Mining ICDM’2009.

    Held in Leipzig, Germany, this conference aimed at educating people from industry and medicine on benefits of Data Mining.

  • SHAMAN Assessment Framework at ACM MEDES 2009

    SHAMAN Assessment Framework at ACM MEDES 2009

    A collaborative paper on "Assessing Digital Preservation Frameworks: the approach of the SHAMAN project" will be presented by Perla Innocenti at the International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES) 2009 in Lyon, France.

  • 23 July 2009 - Preservation in the Cloud

    23 July 2009 - Preservation in the Cloud
    The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program has launched a pilot program to test cloud technologies for preserving digital content. The pilot will focus on using a new service, DuraCloud, developed and hosted by the DuraSpace Foundation.
    Cloud technologies use remote computers to provide local services through the Internet. Duracloud will let an institution provide data storage and access without having to maintain its own dedicated technical infrastructure.
    Among the NDIIPP partners participating in the pilot program are the New York Public Library and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The test will cover both storage and access services, including content replication and monitoring services that span multiple cloud-storage providers.
    DuraCloud is aimed at helping institutions and individuals take advantage of cloud technologies in providing access to their digital materials. DuraCloud is focused on providing trusted solutions for organizations such as universities, libraries, cultural heritage organizations, research centers and others who are concerned with ensuring perpetual access to their digital content.

  • OvGU::Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg organised the special session at the 16th International Conference on Digital Signal Processing (DSP 2009)

    Jana Dittmann and Claus Vielhauer from UNIMD organised the special session at the "Securing Media for the Next Centuries: from Digital Watermarking, Fingerprinting and Hashing to Secure Archival Architectures" at the 16th International Conference on Digital Signal Processing (DSP 2009), held 5-7 July 2009 on the Aegean island of Santorini, Greece.
    During this session the following partners presented:
    - Dennis Nicholson and Milena Dobreva from University of Strathclyde (U.K.)presented "Beyond OAIS: Towards a Reliable and Consistent Digital Preservation Implementation Framework" (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/12915/1/strathprints012915.pdf)
    - Martin Mois, Claus-Peter Klas, Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias L. Hemmje from Fern Universität Hagen (Germany) presented "Digital Preservation as Communication with the Future" (http://www.lgmmia.fernuni-hagen.de/bib/docs/Mois_etal_09.html.en)

  • First SHAMAN Public Deliverable fresh baked

    30 June 2009
    SHAMAN Requirements Analysis Report and Specification of the SHAMAN Assessment Framework and Protocol is the very first Public Deliverable that will be available in brief at EU/Cordis webpage. Document comprises an identification of SHAMAN Usage Scenarios and related use cases to determine the Conceptual Requirements of the Infrastructure and conducts a needs analysis study in three representative domains.
    This analysis on preservation policy in real-life and the usage scenarios for the representative domains will result in the design of the functional and non-functional parameters to be implemented by the SHAMAN environment as well as in the design of an Assessment Framework detailing the SHAMAN Assessment Protocol (SAP) for validating the project’s progress towards objectives and impact of its results.
    The needs and expectations of end users and service providers are surveyed to inform the development of the proposed system. The analysis focuses on organisational contexts as well as on the different document and object types and their meta-data, with an emphasis on how the results can be executed on sample content and its evaluation in terms of real library, archival and preservation services in the public as well as in the industrial and scientific context.

  • Ex Libris Group Announces the General Release of its Digital Preservation System

    Ex Libris™ Group announced the release of Ex Libris Rosetta for digital libraries, which will provide national and academic libraries and archives around the world with a solution to support their task of collecting and preserving cumulative knowledge in digital format for the enjoyment and use of generations to come. Just as the Rosetta Stone held the key to enabling early 19th century scholars to understand Egyptian hieroglyphic script, which died out in the fourth century AD, Ex Libris Rosetta provides today’s libraries with the infrastructure and technology needed to preserve and facilitate access to and understanding of the digital collections under their guardianship--in perpetuity.

    Ex Libris Rosetta supports the acquisition, validation, ingest, storage, management, preservation and dissemination of different types of digital objects while enforcing the relevant policies that can vary from one institution to another.

  • SHAMAN was launched