Karen Calhoun made the following announcements:

1. Staff:

• Eleanor Brown has been appointed as Senior Assistant Archivist in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library. Eleanor received her Masters in History from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to coming to Cornell, Eleanor had been with the National Archives of Canada for over a decade.

• Kurt Jordan has been appointed as Project Archivist in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Kurt is in the final stages of completing his Ph.D. dissertation for the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Kurt received both his M.A. and M. Phil from Columbia.

• Xin Li has been appointed as Head of Acquisitions Services in Central Technical Services. Xin received her MLIS from Southern Connecticut State University. She most recently worked as the Assistant Head of the Acquisitions Department at the Yale Sterling Memorial Library before coming to Cornell University Library.

• Anna Korhonen, formerly head of the Ordering Unit in CTS Acquisitions Services, has been promoted to Assistant Documents Librarian in CTS. Anna recently received her MLS from Syracuse University.
  2. Announcements:
  • Marty Blume, chief editor for Physical Review will be coming to campus on March 25th, 2002 to give the physics department colloquium. His visit is being co-sponsored by the physics department and CU Library. His topic will be “The Physical Review and Physics Publishing: Past and Future”.

  • The Veterinary Library is hosting a tour following Academic Assembly. Please join them at 10:00 in the Veterinary Education Center.

  • Infra Red Beaming Now Available:
    Stop by the Physical Sciences, Math, or Engineering Library to try out the new IR data ports . Selected computers throughout EMPSL are now equipped with infrared (IR) data ports that can transmit data to your PDA. You can now look up a citation in the database of your choice, and transfer the information to your PDA via IR beaming. There are no cable requirements or special hookups, no special software required on your part if you are handling only text documents. The citation appears as a memo in your memo pad. You can then carry the device to the stacks to locate the items you desire. When you synchronize your PDA with your home base computer, the memo is transferred to your desktop management system, and you can manipulate and incorporate the text into larger documents.

    Instructions for how to beam are posted at the IR enabled computers. Please try this new pilot service and let us know what you think by filling out a short survey either in paper at the three units, or on the EMPSL web page. We look forward to your comments.

    This project was made possible by the Cornell University Library Internal Grants Program.

  • The April Academic Assembly will feature the State of the Library address by Sarah Thomas and a presentation of the library budget by Lee Cartmill.
    

  Program:

  Digital Preservation at CUL: Research and Implementation Initiatives:
  • Anne R. Kenney, AUL, Instruction & Learning, Research and Information Services (IRIS) described the history of digital preservation at CUL. The report “Risk Management of Digital Information: A File Format Investigation” for the Council on Library and Information Resources. The report was released in June of 2000 and is available at: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub93/contents.html
    Anne mentioned:
    
    • Project Prism at: http://www.prism.cornell.edu/PrismWeb/Publications.htm
    • Project Harvest at: http://www.library.cornell.edu/harvest/default.htm
    • And the role of CUL in publishing, RLG’s DigiNews at: http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/

  • Nancy Y. McGovern, Digital Preservation Officer (DPO) discussed the IMLS Grant for 1999-2001: http://www.library.cornell.edu/imls/
    This project took an inventory of existing digital collections and investigated the characteristics of a trusted repository. The project also began to develop models and standards. A current joint effort of IRIS and DLIT will build on the knowledge gained from the IMLS project by investigating policy issues as well as technical issues.

    William R. Kehoe of DLIT explained the origin of the model now used. The team will apply lessons learned from other projects and move forward.

  • OAIS: open archival information system was developed to preserve data sent to earth from space. See: http://ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/nost/isoas/

  • METS: Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard
    See article in current issue of RLG DigiNews: http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews6-1.html

  • Q & A’s:

    Q. How will people find the digital archive? Will google pick it up?
    A. That is a policy issue yet to be decided.

    Q. Will there be a way for the patron to get some context?
    A. The context has to be put in up front.

    Q. How does the cost of digital compare to paper counterpart?
    A. That is a very complex question. It is hard to determine relative costs at this time.

    Q. What is the time frame for the digital archive?
    A. The CUL Master Plan ranked it very high on the priority list. Some digital archives already exist.

    Other questions included:

    1. How will people cite an “object”?
    2. Will each item have a unique identifier?
    3. How will you define an object: book, page, chapter?
    4. How will you include video streaming - whole video vs. selected frames?
    5. Is storage space infinite?
    6. What about de-selection?

  The powerpoint presentation of this talk is available at: http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/dpo/

  Pat Viele, Secretary
  Academic Assembly Steering Committee
  

  ---

  CUL Staff Web Site | Committee Index | Academic Assembly Index

  04/12/02 vwb