Digital Preservation Matters - 10 April 2009

Library of Congress in New Media Initiatives. Weekly News Digest. March 30, 2009.

The Library of congress will start sharing video and audio content on YouTube and iTunes in order to make its resources more-widely accessible. New video and podcasting channels will be devoted to LC content. The GSA (General Services Administration) also announced agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and blip.tv to allow other federal agencies to participate while meeting legal requirements and the needs of government. GSA plans to negotiate agreements with other providers; LC will explore these new media services.

LC has loaded 3,100 historic photos on Flickr in a photo-sharing service and will add new photos each week. Users have helped curators with new information on the photos with public review and tagging. Their photos have received more than 15 million views.

More authors turn to Web and print-on-demand publishing. Elham Khatami. CNN.com. April 6, 2009.

Companies like Author Solutions or Lulu.com allow any author to submit a digital manuscript. These publishers use print on demand, which only produce hard copies of the books when a customer buys one. The author retains the copyright to his or her book and is responsible for all costs, from printing to marketing. Lulu has digitally published more than 820,000 titles, with about 5,000 new titles added each week. Author Solutions has helped about 70,000 authors publish over 100,000 titles, which costs from $399 to $12,999. Print-on-demand publishing is growing, and self-publishing through "vanity presses" is diminishing. On-demand publishing is more flexible, and there is less of a commitment on the author's part. Traditional publishers can benefit from the services of self-publishing companies, and can use this to find new and upcoming authors.

Preserving digital photos: What not to do. Isaiah Beard. Page2Pixel. Apr. 6, 2009.

Concerns about preserving born digital photos. Trying to preserve them with a printed copy leads to loss of image fidelity, loss of technical metadata, besides the inability to adjust or enhance the image. It is best to keep them in digital format. The world of digital curation is addressing the best practices for doing this.

Copyright and Related Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Unpublished Pre-1972 Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives. June M. Besek. CLIR Report. March 2009. [93p. pdf]

This looks at the complex ownership rights related to pre-1972 unpublished recordings and the related laws which govern them; it particular it looks at streaming works rather than downloading them. Experts believe that “the future of audio preservation is in the digital arena” and that involves making multiple copies. There are many issues that must be resolved, such as the definition of “premises” fair use, what does “published’ mean, and the new digital technologies available.