Godon Brown said:

"….. Public transport timetables and real-time running information is currently owned by the operating companies….."

"…..But we will work to free it up - and from today we will make it a condition of future franchises that this data will be made freely available……"
"….. I can confirm that from 1 April, we will be making a substantial package of information held by ordnance survey freely available to the public, without restrictions on re-use.... “

“….in the autumn the Government will publish online an inventory of all non-personal datasets held by departments and arms-length bodies - a “domesday book” for the 21st century.

The programme will be managed by the National Archives and it will be overseen by a new open data board which will report on the first edition of the new domesday book by April next year. The Government will then produce its detailed proposals including how this work can be extended to the wider public sector.”

Information and knowledge will flows more freely, “….Any business or individual will be free to embed this public data in their own websites, and to use it in creative ways within their own applications…”, he said.

He also announced the creation and funding for the new Institute of Web Science:

“Today I can announce the first funding for the next stage of this research - £30m to support the creation of a new institute, the institute of web science - based here in Britain and working with government and British business to realise the social and economic benefits of advances in the web.”

Source: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22896

ERCIM (the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) Magazine has dedicated its special theme section to Digital Preservation, in the Jan. 2010 issue.

The following articles, produced within the framework of the SHAMAN project, have been published in this magazine issue:

• - Drivers for Digital Preservation
• - SHAMAN: Sustaining Heritage Access through Multivalent Archiving
• - Towards Document Process Preservation: Xerox Launches Document Process Modelling Technology 'Xeproc©'

SHAMAN Project have thought Digital Preservation as communication with the future, since prosperity for future generations is linked to keeping value of today’s digital assets by granting proper access to digital content in the future.

We can see this approach for example in different MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) that the BBC have signed with different partners during 2009.

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; it will increase the 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

A failure in digital preservation have re-steamed a political controversy in USA during this week, after finding 22 million of White House e-mails, that were missing from the President George Bush administration. In USA two federal laws require the White House to preserve its records.

According to Anne Weismann, chief counsel for CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) 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_...

The BBC envisions a hybrid model of public service and commercial pay models for its digiarchive. This MOU agreement signed by the BBC and British Library seek at integrating access to nearly a million hours of BBC TV and radio content and over 150 million British Library items.

On December 11th the 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 Director Jana Bennett said that the archive would most likely incorporate a hybrid model of public service and commercial pay models.

As part of dissemination activities the SHAMAN Project was presented during the Fall meeting in San Francisco 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 conclusion 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. Fall meeting presentations comprised themes such as practical architectures for Digital Preservation, and discussed about needs and challenges in the areas of data curation, data management of eScience content, preservation, repositories, and storage technologies.

More information at http://lib.stanford.edu/files/pasig2009sf/pasig2009sf_shaman_intro.pdf (Part I) and http://lib.stanford.edu/files/pasig2009sf/pasig2009sf_shaman_rtd.pdf (Part II)

The upcoming challenges for Digital Europe were raised in the public consultation "Post-i2010: priorities for a new strategy for a European information society (2010-2015)" in Brussels. It will be opened until 9 October 2009 and available 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.

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).

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

National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the Library of Congress, 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 centres and others who are concerned with ensuring perpetual access to their digital content.

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.