Article 9: The Librarian's Role in Promoting Digital Scholarship: Development and Metadata Issues by Eileen Llona

Scholarship in both the arts and sciences continues to make increasing use of technology to analyze information and create new knowledge.  The impact of digital technology continues to be felt in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.  Digital scholarship is defined as the products, results and tools that are either born digital or have been converted to digital format.  

Although digital scholarship is on the rise, Llona explains that there are still many constraints and barriers when it comes to managing digital scholarship.  First, when scholars retire or leave an institution, support for their resources might not continue.  In many cases, the library is asked to take ownership of the project.  Second, confusion over copyright issues can block the production or preservation of digital scholarship.  Librarians have the ability to educate scholars about these issues and options for copyrighting their materials.  The constant change of technology standards can also serve as a barrier for some scholars.  Once again, librarians can educate scholars about proper file formats and programs.  Finally, attaching the correct metadata can also be a problem.  The description of these projects can prove problematic, but this is another area in which librarians can apply their training.

Llano writes that librarians need to be aware of these issues because we as a profession are becoming more and more involved in digital scholarship.  Not only to we have the skills necessary to preserve scholarship, but also to give advice on information architecture.  Also, specialists in metadata, content description, and search and access methods are also needed to ensure new forms of scholarship.

Other ways that librarians can be helpful is keeping informed about funding opportunities for digital projects so that scholarship can begin or continue.  It is also important to understand file formats, how they work, and which formats should be used when.  Keeping up to date on the latest metadata standards is also important. Even if a professional is not a metadata specialist, it is still important to at least have an idea about this field in order to communicate about these issues effectively. 

Another issue that Llano briefly mentions is the issues of storage and providing access.

Article 8: Application of MARC21-Concise Format for Bibliographic Data in Bulgarian Libraries: The Case of the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences by Sabina Aneva

Sabina Avena, Chief Systems Librarian at the Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, discusses the application and use of MARC21 in Bulgarian libraries.  She begins by discussing the first efforts toward the standardization of data in Bulgaria, which began in the 1930s.  The article explains the template for the description of microfilms of medieval Slavic manuscripts, with descriptions of specific field selections.  The author then explains the steps that have been taken to promote widespread adoption of this format in libraries across Bulgaria.

It will be interesting to see how things will change since AACR2 has changed to RDA (at least in North America) and to see whether other countries, including Bulgaria, will follow suit.  It will also be interesting to see how long it will take to make the change.

Article 7: Digitizing the Zdenka and Stanley B. Winters Collection of Czech and Slovak Posters, 1920-1991 by Patricia Hswe

In 1991, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received a collection of nearly 500 Central European posters dating from 1920 to 1991.  They belonged to Dr. Winters, a former history professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.  His wife, a native Czech,  was a librarian with an enthusiasm for the visual arts.  Together, they travelled extensively, collecting posters of museums, castle, concerts, and festivals.  The posters have been divided into categories: Artistic, Individual Artists/Personalities, Alphonse Mucha, Tourist, Nature, and Political, Technical, Children, Folk Art, and Cultural and Political.  

Steps to digitize the collection didn't take place until 13 years later.  Personnel at the Slavic and East European Library consulted staff in Preservation and Conservation, University Archives, and the Digital Services and Development Department to assess the needs of the physical collection as well as the construction of a database, converting the finding aid using EAD, and the selection of a metadata scheme.  The scanning of the posters was carried out by the Digital Services librarians.  Due to the nature of the posters, the Visual Resources Association Core Categories, version 3.0, was selected as librarians felt this scheme best represented and described the collection.

One aspect of this project that became very complicated was the issue of copy right.  Librarians and graduate assistants drafted a general permissions letter, which was then translated into Czech.  The letter was then sent to prospective copy right holders in both English and Czech.  However, this was very problematic because the rights holder was rarely located.  Thus, the collection is password protected.

For more information, visit http://www.library.illinois.edu/spx/winters/Overview.htm

Article 6: Implementing an Image Database for Complex Russian Architectural Objects: The William Brumfield Collection

Librarians at the University of Washington are creating a digital library of Russian architectural images from the William Brumfield Collection.  Brumfield is a professor at Tulane University and has devoted his time and travels to the study of Russian architecture.  His collection is estimated at nearly 100,000 images, which have been featured in over 50 exhibits both here and abroad.  Many of these images are on slides.  Because of this, Brumfield is nervous about the collection deteriorating, hence the origins of this project.  This will benefit scholars and researchers greatly, as the amount of resources on this subject are few and far between and because Russia is losing historical buildings at an alarming rate.

When the project is completed, nearly 30,000 slides and photographic prints will be digitized, both as high-resolution TIFF images and medium-resolution JPEG images.  The images are cataloged using a metadata set that has been specially created.  Project staff have created the schema by adapting METS and CCO standards.  This presents the images within architectural, geographic, and chronological contexts.  Professor Brumfield has been actively participating in the project, scanning nearly all of the images himself, naming each image, and helping to add metadata.

To browse the collection, go here:

http://frontiers.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfdigcol/mfdcphot.html

Scanner Down!

Anyone reading this blog would notice that I have been doing a lot of article reviews as of late.  This is because the summer is winding down and they will soon be due but also because the scanner has been down for a few days now.  Circulation will also be moving to our floor temporarily while a remodeling project takes place, so I have also been helping move our offices around in order to prepare for that.  Therefore, there hasn't been too much I can do. Luckily, the scanner is now up and running.  At this juncture, I have roughly 230 maps scanned and catalogued.  I'm sure this is probably less than 5% of the whole collection.  I have worked exclusively on 1:50,000 maps, which make up the bulk of this collection by far.  There is only one drawer of 1:25,000 maps and only a handful of drawers in the 1:100,000.  Of course, this makes sense since the 1:100,000 maps are the largest in scale.  I have also been spending this down time learning how to use the index in order to find particular maps.  It is very challenging.  I find myself looking up the coordinates, bringing up a map on Google, and then looking at the index to find which map I actually need.  It seems that I am almost always one off.  Once the maps are done, the map librarian is thinking about creating a GIS-based index that will hopefully take a little bit of the guess work out of it!  Hopefully, this will come to fruition.

Article 5: Internet Resources on Russian History: The Electronic Library at Moscow State University

Moscow State University's Elektronnaia biblioteka of Moscow State University holds on-line texts related to global history, but emphasises different periods of Russian history.  These are divided between Medieval Russian history, history of the Russian Empire, and 20th century Russian history.  This part of the library holds 114 texts while providing links to outside sources.  The collection also includes legislative codes, legal acts, and treaties with foreign countries.  The library also contains memoirs and non-official writings.

The site also helps illustrate topic oriented historical Internet resource (TOHIR).  The author uses its collection on Russian/Soviet labor history as an example of this.  The collection includes historical sources, historiography, bibliography, databases, and references to other on-line sources.  This collection has 11 sections and has been well received both in Russia and abroad.  At the time this article was written (2007), the Electronic Library was one of the most popular and most cited sections of the Faculty of History website.

This article would be helpful to a subject librarian working within a Slavic collection.    This would be the kind of source to which you could direct both students and faculty. A librarian could also post a link to this site on their respective library web-page.  It seems to be an invaluable resource to those studying Russian history.

Article 4: Russia Beyond Russia Digital Library: History, Concept, and Development by Nadia Zilper and Rita Van Duinen

This article focuses on the planning and efforts involved in creating the Russian Beyond Russia digital library. The mission of this collection is to bring together monographs, serials, recordings, newspaper, and images published by Russians outside of Russia.  This initiative gained significant ground when the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill acquired the Andre Savine Collection in 2002.  

In designing the database, Russian language search and retrieval capabilities were a priority as well as using the most current metadata standards for the collection.  At the center of the library is a Core Module which includes the bibliographical and biographical information indexes.  This project was outsourced to East View Information Services and funded by the Mellon Foundation.  During the research phase of this project, the team identified technical requirements, the data content, and data structure.  Savine kept very good records of the collection on notebook paper and index cards, so they used these in establishing the content and structure.  Some objects were represented by both notebook paper and index cards, but some by only one or the other.  

The record display interface contained three sections for each individual record: Description, Related Indexes, and images of the original notebook paper and/or index cards.  The author then outlines the technical processing workflow and the Core Module Data Fields.

The next section outlines their plan for resource discovery on the internet.  The team decided to use MODS, simplifed Dublin Core, and METS.  The data field will map first to related field in Mods, then DC through a crosswalk, with METS acting as a container.  In addition to the internet, resources can be discovered through the library's OPAC and Worldcat.

I found this article very helpful as someone who is somewhat new to building the actual structure behind digital libraries.  I just completed courses in database design and metadata and found that I was able to better understand this article through my background in those courses.  The article also had many diagrams that I found helpful.  The authors organized the article in a step-by-step approach, which helped me understand their process.  I visited the site myself after reading the article and did some browsing.  However, it was difficult for me to do any actually searches since I didn't really have a search in mind and because Russian Diaspora is not something I study.  Overall, I found this article extremely helpful and well written.

Article 3. Iltimos, bizga kitoblar yuboring! U.S. Libraries' Collecting Strategies for Central Asian Publications by Karen Rondestvedt

Karen Rondesvedt's article on collecting Central Asian Publications examines the reasons for the dearth of Central Asian titles in American libraries and comes to the conclusion that it's not a vendor problem, it's a publication problem.  In most cases, it is due to strict governmental regulations on publishing and lack of funds that prevent more materials from being published and exported.

Her essay begins by defining Central Asia as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyszstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan and giving a brief history of collecting in this area.  As of now, between fifteen and twenty libraries collect publications from this area.  In the past, libraries could only acquire materials from a specialized vendor or receive them through exchange plans with international libraries or educational institutions.  Only a few libraries could afford to collect "on the spot," in which the American librarian or an agent went on special buying trips within the host country.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the previous vendors went out of business, with new vendors taking their place.  Exchange partners provided some materials during this time of transition, until they stopped receiving Central Asian books themselves.  Currently, there are a handful of vendors that provide U.S. libraries with titles from the area.  

Rondesvedt then describes a survey she conducted asking area studies librarians which countries presented the most collecting challenges.  Most mentioned Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, but some stated that all were equally problematic.  She then examined the state of publishing within each country and realized that the vendors were not the problem, the simple fact is that materials are just not being published.  I should note here that this article was written in 2006, so I am not sure about changes since then.  In Turkmenistan, President Niyazov emptied or closed most libraries during his time in office.  State bookstores only sold books that supported the president's ideology.  Tajikistan's civil war from 1992 until 1997 severely crippled its economy and its government tightly held the reigns of the publishing industry.  Although Uzbekistan has a much larger population, the same is largely true.  Tight regulations and a struggling economy make publishing difficult, with many private publishing houses struggling to make ends meet.  Kazakhstan and Kyrgyztan show the most promising figures.  Kazakhstan's economy has seen steady growth and enjoys a government that has thus far not discouraged publishing.  The author states that several international book fairs have been held there since 2001.  Kyrgystan managed to overthrow its authoritarian government and at the time this article was written, had nearly 145 publishing organizations.  This explains why it enjoys the highest publishing figures of the five countries.  

I selected this article because I personally don't know much about Central Asia, much less collecting materials from the area.  I will admit that I did not know it was this challenging, but after reading the profiles of each country, it is not surprising.  Unfortunately, it seems that not much can really be done regarding this issue until the situations within each country becomes more stable.  The only thing that librarians can really do at this point is share what works for them.  This article must have been difficult for the author to write because some of these countries offer no statistics on publishing whatsoever.  It seems that she relied heavily on the catalogs of the fifteen to twenty schools that have collections in the area, which is about all that she could have done to conduct the study.  Although I didn't necessarily find her conclusion surprising, I found her country profiles to be incredibly informative.

Article 2. The Methodological Advantages of Digital Editions: The Case of Eighteenth-Century Russian Texts by Marcus C. Levitt

To say that Russia's literary tradition is rich would be an understatement.  Russian authors from Pushkin to Pasternak have left a large body of literary texts.  However, there have been major disagreements about how to edit these literary texts.  The author outlines these disagreements, using the works of Alexander Sumarokov (1717-1777) as an example.  He then describes how digital editions might help overcome these issues while also augmenting the value of these texts.

Levitt explains that since the fall of the Soviet Union, the world of text editing has been in turmoil.  He explains that every aspect of modern text editing has come under questions, even the definition of what a text is.  Other problems include how to order texts in an edition (genre? chronology? other?) and to what degree orthography and punctuation should preserved or modernized.  As a result, there now exists what he calls "hyper-scholarly" editions, along with commercial versions without standards at all, and everything in between.  

The author then uses Sumarokov as an example of these problems.  During the 18th and 19th centuries, there were no institutions that regularized orthographic norms, so grammar and spelling could be different from author to author, even if they were contemporaries.  Needless to say, there were a lot of debates, which Sumarokov took part in.  For example, he was against the use of capital letters anywhere but the beginning of a sentence or verse.  This is in contrast to authors like Karamzin, who practised a style of capitalization closer to German.  But Levitt points out that Sumarokov's essay on the subject was printed in the exact style to which he was so opposed.  This posits the question, is it better to recreate the document the way the author intended or leave it the way it was published?

Levitt suggests that digital applications can act as an extension of a text or enrich a text by adding hyper-textual and hypermedia features.  In the case of Sumarakov, he suggests the creation of a digital edition of his works in all of its multiple variants while also creating a database of 18th century texts in order to study their linguistic forms.

He believes that one advantage of a digital edition is that it can seamlessly combine both critical and  documentary aspects of the text together.  Levitt also supports the addition of hypermedia in order to expand on the value of the text.  In the case of Sumarakov, his collection of poems could be accompanied images of the monuments he describes in the poems or his songs published with the musical scores written using his lyrics, and his operas and ballets linked to visual materials such as set and costume design sketches, but also linked to audiovisual recordings.  The challenge, he concedes, is not only what to present, but how to present it.

I must admit that I found this article a little challenging, mostly because I don't work with older texts or manuscripts.  However, I had never actually thought about the differences in orthography and the affect they have on various editions in great detail.  Thus, I found the section about orthographic differences and how they are represented (or not represented) in older editions.

As far as his ideas for digitization, I think that Levitt is on to something.  First, I think his idea of adding media to accompany the editions can be achieved.  The challenge would be displaying the options in the architecture of the web-site.  Would it simply consist of a work and a menu with links to it's variations?  Would this be the same if additional media was also added?  The idea of adding hypermedia is great because it helps place the text within a cultural context.  

From a linguistic point of view, making an 18th century textual database available would be a huge asset to those studying issues in Slavic linguistics because a user would have the ability to view and compare these different editions.

I liked this article because it opened my eyes to a topic that I hadn't really thought about before in great detail.  However, I wish he would have spent more of the article actually talking about the possible benefits of digitization of 18th century texts.  Instead, he spent more time explaining the orthographic difficulties that these texts can sometimes cause.

Article Reviews

Many of my next posts will include article reviews.  My internship requires me to read and comment on nine articles related to library science.  Because of my second Masters degree in Russian and East European Studies, my articles will also have a Slavic slant to them.  Many of them are written by librarians from the geographic area and cover such topics as publishing, acquisitions, digitizations, and metadata.  Most of the articles I have selected focus on digitization in some form or another.  These articles are pertinent to anyone looking to become a Slavic specialist, but are also useful for anyone working in an academic library or digital libraries.  Since I'm not entirely sure which direction my career will take me, I figured that this list will give me a wide scope from which to glean information.

Article 1: The Diversification of Russian Scholarly Publishing, 1995-2005 byJohn Bushnell

Anyone involved in Slavic Studies will confirm that Russian scholarly publishing is on the rise, but Bushnell sought to measure the increase in his study.  There are no statistical series that count scholarly books, so Bushnell used a random sample from the Russian Press Service database for the years 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005 in order to track publishing trends over a decade.  In his study, he defines scholarly publishing as monographs, collections of scholarly articles, and scholarly source publications while excluding translations, reprints, textbooks, memoirs and statistics.  He then assigned the publishers into five different categories:

• Those related to the Academy of Sciences
• Universities
• Other state institutions
• Religious institutions
• Private, commercial presses

The data suggests that scholarly publication nearly doubled in Russia.  Although it lags behind the growth of publishing overall, this is still quite an achievement.  Publishing among The Academy and universities remains strong, but the rise is largely due to the increased use of commercial presses.  However, The Academy and the universities still lead in the publication of collections of scholarly articles, since no commercial press would be interested in publishing them due to the low demand.   

According to this study, private publishers are most attracted to works of history and literary studies, with history accounting for between 40 and 50 percent in each of the years studies.  Literary studies account for between 10 and 20 percent.  This follows trends in studies, both in Russian and abroad, as history is being reassessed and authors banned during the Soviet Union are being re-evaluated.  Philosophy and religion round out the numbers.  

I chose this article for several reasons.  First, I held a Graduate Assistantship last year for Wook-Jin Cheun, the Librarian for Slavic and East European Studies at IU.  Although my duties did not include the actual acquistion of library materials, it did start me thinking about the challenges of collecting foreign academic materials.  Second, although my interests have shifted towards digital libraries and less towards Slavic librarianship, I still think it is important to keep up with the current state of library and publishing trends within the area.

This article is relevant because if publishing trends in Russia are changing, that means that librarians within Slavic studies have had to change their approach to collecting.  One can no longer purchase straight from the academy any more, but must now seek out books from these commercial publishers.  Luckily, from my experience with working with Wook-Jin, it seems there are a few vendors who have made this process a bit easier in the last few years.  Lastly, this news is encouraging.  It means that publishing in Russia is on the rise on the whole, and that is very welcome news for American academic institutions as it will mean a greater variety to select from.

Creating the Icon...

One of the cool things that I get to do as part of my internship is create the icon that will represent the collection!  Here it is!  I took the hammer and cycle pin from a hat I bought in Russia and put it next to the University of Bonn Stamp.  I think it will look really cool on the Digital Library Program site when the collection is ready to be put on the web!

Getting Started: Initial Metadata Issues

Before diving into this project, I spent some time discussing certain data and metadata related issues with my colleagues.  The program that we use for our digital library collections automatically provides us with a set schema, whether all of the fields are desired or not.  However, there is nothing against adding extra fields.  In this case, it became clear that the field 'Title' was not sufficient.  Each map will have its own sheet number, which will serve as the unique title.  The problem is that each map is part of a series, and this collection consists of three series separated by scale: 1:25,000s, 1:50,000s, and 1:100,000s.  However, the collection itself is only one portion of the Cyrillic Map Collection, which is the overall title of the collection.  Thus, it became apparent that Series Title needed to be added.

The problem of whether or not to use Cyrillic or transliteration also caused some discussion.  Each map consists of a sheet number followed by a title (Example: O-35-14-Г Таллин).  It all came down to whether or not PhotoCat would support searching in Cyrillic, but because no foreign language collections had yet been digitized, this was unknown territory.  After setting up some Cyrillic examples, I found that it actually worked.  Therefore, the title can remain in Cyrillic exactly the way it appears on each sheet.  This is important because the prospective users of this collection will most likely be familiar or fluent with the Russian language.  Therefore, it is really important to keep as much of the Cyrillic as possible.

In addition to the Cyrillic, I decided to also add the transliteration where appropriate.  This mostly effects the Geographic Subjects field.  For any one map, there may be up to five or six entries.  Every entry has the USSR listed, then the modern country name (some maps may include borders, so there can be more than one country name).  Next is the title name (each title is the name of a city).  Each name is given in Cyrillic, and either transliterated or written in Latin text (as in the case of city names in Poland).  Some maps also include the district or region name as well, so this is also added.  The Geographic Subject field has by far become the most complex field to complete, but the more descriptions of the place that can be added, the easier it will be for patrons to find the maps they are looking for with more accuracy.  That's what it's all about!

The Complications of Copyright Law

Before starting this digitization project, Lou Malcomb, the Director of Government Information and Geo-Science Libraries, had me look through some information about Russian copyright law.  My colleague had been in touch with others in the library field about this same subject and the responses proved to be mixed.  A librarian working in Russia said that this would be no problem to digitize, while others disagreed.  One response included a lengthy explanation of Russia copyright law, only to conclude that the information given was not conclusive.  This prompted me to do some searching of my own, which yielded an article released earlier this March.  Christopher Boffey's "Avtorskoye Pravo [Author's Law]: the Reform of Russian Copyright Law Toward an International Standard" appeared in the Maryland Journal of International Law (there will be more about this article in my next post).  Currently, any official documents, such as "laws, court judgments, and other governmental texts" is excluded from copyright laws.  Because these maps are documents from the Red Army, a government domain, then according to the law, they are not under any sort of copyright law.

What I find interesting about this situation is how complicated the world of copyright can be.  Understanding United States copyright laws can be difficult enough, but then trying to understand another country's set of laws adds yet another layer of complexity.  It seems to me that there should be a simpler way to keep track of what falls under copyright and what does not for each country.  What I find more troubling is that even the information specialists don't seem to have a diffinitive answer either.  My colleague forwarded the responses to her question that she had posted on a list-serve.  The responses were either completing inconclusive or contradictory.  However, I must also keep in mind that things are constantly changing in former Communist countries, and that it is more than likely that even information specialists working in Russia are just as unsure about their laws as we sometimes are of our own.

Greetings!

As a Library Science student at Indiana University, Bloomington, one of my requirements is to take an internship for credit (S605).  The purpose of this blog is two-fold: first, to document anything interesting about my internship through journal entries; second, to provide reflections on articles I have read that pertain to my areas of interest and the internship.  These articles will talk about issues in Russian and East European librarianship, understanding maps, metadata issues, and digital libraries.

My internship consists of 180 hours of work at the Governement Information, Maps, and Microform Services in Wells Library at Indiana University, Bloomington.  Because of my dual Masters program in Russian and East European Studies and Library Science, I am working with the Soviet Red Army Map Collection.  This partial collection came to Indiana University from the Library of Congress.  Because these are duplicates from their collection, it is by no means complete. They are fine example of topographic maps, which means that they depict the terrain, enable the user to determine coordinates, elevations above sea level, and relative elevations of particular points or areas.

As an intern, my job will be to scan the maps (using a very expensive, state-of-the-art scanner!), examine and try to solve metadata issues, and add relevant data to each map.  Eventually, the collection will be available on-line on the university's library web-page.

I'm very excited to have the opportunity to work with such a cool collection!