Weekly Readings - 21 April 2006

MIC (Moving Image Collections). Jane D. Johnson. RLG DigiNews. Apr 15, 2006.
http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20916#article1

Moving Image Collections was created as a partnership between the Library of Congress and the Association of Moving Image Archivists and began as a preservation initiative, a collaborative effort to promote discovery, preservation, and educational use of moving image materials. It provides a union catalog, archive directory, and informational resources and support for collaborative preservation, access, digitization, exhibition, and metadata initiatives. It raises awareness about preservation issues and risks to our film, television, and video heritage by telling readers how to care for home collections, the role of archives, and the preservation process. It is not just a tool for archivists, but provides access for the public and educators which is the key to a sustainable preservation strategy. The directory can take users to the organization’s records in the Union Catalog, to the organization’s own catalog, or to its website. Central to the database is the metadata elements that provide descriptions of the items. There are mappings to MARC, Dublin Core, MPEG-7 and others, plus the ability to map other schema into the collection.


Six Lessons Learned: An (Early) ARTstor Retrospective. Max Marmor. RLG DigiNews. Apr 15, 2006.
http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20916#article0
ARTstor is a digital library of images for educational and scholarly use. Here are some of the lessons learned:
- the importance of building a campus-wide resource instead of discipline-specific collections;
- the importance of digital images in teaching and research;
- the ramifications of such a resource for “buy vs. build” decision
- the trade-offs of building “user-driven” collections
Users want to do things with digital images, to change them and assemble in different ways. They need tools in order to integrate the materials into teaching and research.


Library of Congress, British Library to Support Common Archiving Standard for Electronic Journals. Guy Lamolinara. April 19, 2006.
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06-097.html

The Library of Congress and the British Library have agreed to support the migration of electronic content to the NLM DTD standard. The libraries hope that their support of this standard will help ensure long-term access to electronic journals. The standards for digital materials are still evolving. By supporting this, they hope it will lead to an internationally recognized standard.