Three Vacancies at the Open University: Project Manager, Project Officer and Metadata Manager

The Open University is currently offering three posts relevant to Digital preservation:

STELLAR Project Manager (Library Services), 
Temporary Contract until 31 July 2013, Based in Milton Keynes
£37,012 - £44,166 (pro rata) 15 hours a week
closing date : 19/04/2012
 
Following the promotion of the current post-holder the Open University Library Services wishes to appoint a skilled and experienced project manager to manage the JISC-funded STELLAR project until 31 July 2013. This project, part of the JISC ‘Enhancing the Sustainability of Digital Content’ programme strand is investigating the value of older digitised and born-digital learning and course materials. The project will also be investigating the application of semantic technologies to digital course materials, to discover whether this improves the long-term sustainability of this content.  You will need a good track record of successfully delivering funded-projects in a library environment, have excellent project management skills and a good knowledge of library technologies such as digital library systems. The role involves working as part of a small team of project managers in the Digital Services team and will work closely with the team developing the Open University Digital Library.

Details: http://www3.open.ac.uk/employment/job-details.asp?id=6210

Digital Services Project Officer , Library Services
Part time 22 hours per week, Based in Milton Keynes
£30,122 - £35,938 (pro rata)
closing date : 19/04/2012
 
This is an exciting opportunity to join the Digital Services team at the Open University Library Services. The team has a strong record of success in delivering innovative funded-projects and is currently running two JISC-funded projects, (STELLAR on digital content and MACON on mobile technologies), as well as two internal projects building the Open University Digital Library and implementing a reference management tool across the University. This post will be carrying out routine project management tasks across the range of projects being delivered by the team.  You will need to have experience of working as part of a project team, carrying out project administration tasks such as project reporting and budget administration. You will need to be able to work effectively as part of a project team as well as being able to work on your own on individual tasks, and be motivated and organised.

Details:http://www3.open.ac.uk/employment/job-details.asp?id=6209

Metadata Development Officer , Library Services
Temporary 6 month contract, Based in Milton Keynes
£30,122 - £35,938
closing date : 30/04/2012
 
We are seeking a metadata specialist to work closely with our Digital Library Technical Developer and University Archivist to recommend, implement and apply international metadata standards to a wide variety of content types. The post will ensure Digital Library content is easily discoverable, accessible and that digital preservation standards are met. You will have experience working with recognised cataloguing and indexing standards, subject indexing using recognised thesauri and an understanding of the principles of applying metadata and the range of schemas currently available. Familiarity with digital libraries and/or digital preservation projects is preferred. You will need to be able to work effectively as part of a project team as well as being able to work on your own, and be motivated and organised. Ideally you would be practised in communicating with technical and non-technical members of a team and able to liaise with end-users and understand their needs.

Details: http://www3.open.ac.uk/employment/job-details.asp?id=6215

What's New - Issue 44, April 2012

In this issue:

• What's On - Forthcoming events from April 2012 onwards
• What's New - New reports and initiatives since the last issue
• What's What - Re-skilling for research - observations on an RLUK report, Graham Pryor, DCC
• Who's Who - Sixty second interview with Ed Fay, LSE
• One World - Digital Preservation Management Workshops at Ten Years, Nancy McGovern, MIT Libraries
• Your View? - Comments and views from readers

What's New is a joint publication of the DPC and DCC

DPC Executive Director, William Kilbride, was invited to a small workshop in London at the start of March on the broad topic of ‘Curation and The Cloud’  The manuscript of his invited paper 'Curation, The Cloud and Cultural Heritage' has been released for members: http://www.dpconline.org/component/docman/doc_download/747-curationcloudculturalheritagemarch2012 (login required)

What's New - Issue 43, March 2012

In this issue:

• What's On - Forthcoming events from March 2012 onwards
• What's New - New reports and initiatives since the last issue
• What's What - In the Beginning Was the Word, William Kilbride, DPC
• Who's Who - Sixty second interview with Patricia Sleeman and Ed Pinsent, ULCC
• Featured Project - SPRUCE, Bo Middleton, Leeds University Library
• Your View? - Comments and views from readers

What's New is a joint publication of the DPC and DCC

DPC is offering scholarships so that members can attand the Digital Preservation Training programme in May 2012.  This is the seventh time the Coalition has offered such scholarships. 

• For details of the scholarships including eligibility and timings see: http://www.dpconline.org/training/leadership-programme
• For details of the Digital Preservation Training Programme including course content and registration see: http://www.dptp.org/

DPC is delighted to offer members a preview of our latest Technology Watch Report ‘Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound’, written by Richard Wright, formerly of the BBC. 

‘Moving image and sound content is at great risk’, explained Richard Wright, the report’s author.  ‘Surveys have shown that 74 per cent of professional collections are small: 5,000 hours or less. Such collections have a huge challenge if their holdings are to be preserved. About 85 per cent of sound and moving image content is still analogue, and in 2005 almost 100 per cent was still on shelves rather than being in files on mass storage. Surveys have also shown that in universities there is a major problem of material that is scattered, unidentified, undocumented and not under any form of preservation plan. These collection surveys are from Europe and North America because there is no survey of the situation in the UK, in itself a cause for concern.’

‘This report is for anyone with responsibility for collections of sound or moving image content and an interest in preservation of that content.’ 

‘New content is born digital, analogue audio and video need digitization to survive and film requires digitization for access. Consequently, digital preservation will be relevant over time to all these areas. The report concentrates on digitization, encoding, file formats and wrappers, use of compression, obsolescence and what to do about the particular digital preservation problems of sound and moving images.’

The report discusses issues of moving digital content from carriers (such as CD and DVD, digital videotape, DAT and minidisc) into files. This digital to digital ‘ripping’ of content is an area of digital preservation unique to the audio-visual world, and has unsolved problems of control of errors in the ripping and transfer process. It goes on to consider digital preservation of the content within the files that result from digitization or ripping, and the files that are born digital. While much of this preservation has problems and solutions in common with other content, there is a specific problem of preserving the quality of the digitized signal that is again unique to audio-visual content. Managing quality through cycles of ‘lossy’ encoding, decoding and reformatting is one major digital preservation challenge for audio-visual as are issues of managing embedded metadata.

DPC Technology Watch Reports identify, delineate, monitor and address topics that have major bearing on ensuring our collected digital memory will be available tomorrow.  They provide an advanced introduction in order to support those charged with ensuring a robust digital memory and they are of general interest to a wide and international audience with interests in computing, information management, collections management and technology.  The reports are commissioned after consultation with members; they are written by experts; and they are thoroughly scrutinised by peers before being released.  The reports are informed, current, concise and balanced and they lower the barriers to participation in digital preservation. The reports are a distinctive and lasting contribution to the dissemination of good practice in digital preservation.

‘Preserving Moving Pictures and Sound’ is the second Technology Watch Report to be published by the DPC in association with Charles Beagrie Ltd. Neil Beagrie, Director of Consultancy at Charles Beagrie Ltd, was commissioned to act as principal investigator and managing editor of the series in 2011.  The managing editor has been further supported by an Editorial Board drawn from DPC members and peer reviewers who have commented on the text prior to release.  The Editorial Board comprises William Kilbride (Chair), Neil Beagrie (Series Editor), Janet Delve (University of Portsmouth), Sarah Higgins (Archives and Records Association), Tim Keefe (Trinity College Dublin), Andrew McHugh (University of Glasgow), Dave Thompson (Wellcome Library).

The report is available online at: http://www.dpconline.org/component/docman/doc_download/742-preservingdigitalsoundandvisionpreviewtwrmarch2012 (PDF1079KB, Login required. To register for a login, see http://www.dpconline.org/login/registers)

The SPRUCE Project at the University of Leeds, with the London School of Economics, British Library, Digital Preservation Coalition and the Open Planets Foundation cordially invite you to the first SPRUCE Digital Preservation Mashup, Marriott Hotel, Glasgow, Glasgow G3 8RR 16-18 April 2012.

Sustainable PReservation Using Community Engagement (SPRUCE) project has been funded by JISC to inspire, guide, support and enable HE, FE and cultural institutions to address digital preservation gaps; and to use the knowledge gathered from that activity to articulate a compelling business case for digital preservation.  We aim to foster a vibrant and self-supporting community of digital preservation practitioners via a mixture of online interaction and face to face events. To get the ball rolling we are organising a series of free events around the UK (based on the successful AQuA Project) that will provide support and technical expertise to address the real digital preservation challenges that institutions face. The best work from event attendees will be awarded funding to develop the activity and embed it within business as usual processes. £60k is available for these awards.

Over 3 days a diverse community will come together to discuss, test, code (don't worry non-techies we won't force you to code), plan, and share challenges related to the new types of content entrusted to libraries, archives, and museums to preserve and manage.  The focus is around community, communication, and learning from one another for we definitely can't go it alone in the new landscape of digital content.  The result will be practical digital preservation tools which meet your specific needs and which are likely to be useful more widely.

Registration is now open and is free.  Accommodation and subsistence will be paid for - lunch, dinner, bed and beakfast.  You simply have to organise travel and you have to commit to staying all three days.

To register or find out more, visit: http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/40-SpruceGlasgow?xref=41

Email tomorrow … and next year … and forever: Preserving Email report published

Preserving Email, a new report from the DPC, gives practical advice on how to ensure email remains accessible

Email is a defining feature of our age and a critical element in all manner of transactions. Industry and commerce depend upon email; families and friendships are sustained by it; government and economies rely upon it; communities are created and strengthened by it.  Voluminous, pervasive and proliferating, email fills our days like no other technology.  Complex, intangible and essential, email manifests important personal and professional exchanges.  The jewels are sometimes hidden in massive volumes of ephemera, and even greater volumes of trash.  But it is hard to remember how we functioned before the widespread adoption of email in public and private life.

Institutions, organizations and individuals have a considerable investment in - and legal requirements to safeguard - large collections of email.  IT managers and archivists have long recognised that email requires careful management if it is to be available in the long term but practical advice about how to do this is surprisingly sparse.  So a new ‘Technology Watch Report’ from the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will be of wide interest.

‘The first email was probably sent by researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965’, explained Chris Prom of the University of Illinois, the report’s author. ‘It has long since gone missing, deemed too trivial to be worth preserving.’

‘Since then email has become a valuable documentary form because people typically use it to write things that were not intended for wide revelation at the time. So it can contain material which researchers – and high court judges – find incredibly useful.’

‘Users normally shoulder the ultimate responsibility for managing and preserving their own email.  This exposes important records to needless risks and is counterproductive in many cases. But it doesn’t have to be like this.  Individuals and organizations can lay the foundation for long term access so long as they understand the technical standards that underlie email systems. Based on this understanding, they can implement sensible preservation strategies.’ 

‘The Preserving Email report provides a comprehensive advanced introduction to the topic for anyone who has to manage a large email archive in the long term: and in the long term that will be most of us.’

Gareth Knight of King’s College London welcomed the report.  ‘Preserving Email provides an excellent overview of the topic, drawing together observations made in a number of research projects to provide a succinct overview of the legal, technical, and cultural issues that must be addressed to ensure that these digital assets can be curated and preserved in the long-term. Its conclusion, providing a set of pragmatic, easy-to-understand recommendations that individuals and institutions may apply to better manage their email archive, highlights the complexity of email preservation.  It also sends a clear message that it is something that everyone can perform.’

The British Library is among the agencies currently working on new strategies to preserve email.  Maureen Pennock of the British Library welcomed in particular the two short case studies which are included in the report. ‘The report includes case studies from the Bodleian Library and the Medical Research Council which are really useful in making sense of the practical problems which we face, and how to resolve them in practice not just theory.  They show what can be achieved and underline just how useful the core email standards are.’

Neil Beagrie of Charles Beagrie Ltd, managing editor and principal investigator of the Technology Watch Series highlighted the plans for more reports in the series in the near future.  ‘Preserving Email is the first of five planned publications from leading experts in the new DPC Technology Watch Series.  The format of the new reports has had a major redesign, and ISSN and DOI identifiers have been added.  We hope these features will enhance the use, citation and impact of the reports. Further reports on Preservation of Moving Picture and Sound, Intellectual Property Rights for Digital Preservation, Digital Forensics and Preservation, and Preservation Trust and Continuing Access for e-Journals will be released later in 2012. The DPC and Charles Beagrie hope the new series will be a significant contribution to encouraging digital preservation and best practice worldwide.’

Richard Ovenden, Deputy Director of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University and Chair of the DPC welcomed the report.  ‘This is the tenth anniversary of the Coalition, which was launched in the House of Commons in February 2002.  One of the ways we are marking this year is by releasing a new set of reports to update and extend the advice we offer.  The Technology Watch Reports are a popular and lasting help to anyone interesting in ensuring that their digital memory available in the long term, and we work hard to ensure they are accessible as well as authoritative.  This new report of Preserving Email will be particularly relevant to a wide readership so it’s a great way to kick off our tenth anniversary year.’

The report is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr11-01 

The Digital Preservation Coalition’s Leadership Programme has awarded five scholarships so that members can send staff to the Digital Futures Academy in London in March.   The long list of applicants was examined by a small review committee, and candidates were selected against three criteria – the role that the course would have in their career development, the benefits that accrue to a DPC member from attendance, and the extent to which digital preservation was part of their organisational role.

The selected candidates are:

• Matthew Herring, University of York
• Huw Jones, Cambridge University
• Louise Lawson, Tate
• Catherine Ryan, National Library of Ireland
• Ian Savage, English Heritage

‘We’ve previously given grants to other training courses before, but this is the first time we’ve sponsored members to attend Digital Futures’, explained William Kilbride, Executive Director of the DPC.  ‘One of our main functions is to ensure that the workforce has the skills needed to manage digital collections for the long term – a goal which is best achieved by supporting a diverse mix of expert training.  We’re delighted to be working with Simon Tanner and his colleagues in the Digital Futures Academy and we are confident that the course will have a significant benefit to the recipients and their employers.’

Led by experts of international renown, the Digital Futures Academy focuses on the creation, delivery and preservation of digital resources from cultural and memory institutions. The five day course is aimed at managers and other practitioners from the library, museum, heritage and cultural sectors looking to understand the strategic and management issues of developing digital resources from digitization to delivery. The Digital Futures Academy is operated and organised by the King’s College London.

Simon Tanner, course organiser welcomed the five DPC candidates.  ‘I’m delighted the DPC Leadership Programme has supported the Digital Futures Academy in this way and I was very impressed by the quality of applications received.  The Academy enables participants to develop their own professional networks outside their own organisations, the sorts of relationships which strengthens the Coalition as well as its members.’

For more on the DPC Leadership Programme see: http://bit.ly/c4hDmm
For more about the DPC and to Join see: http://bit.ly/y7JWB1
For more about the Digital Futures Academy see: http://bit.ly/4BN9NL

DPC is delighted to extend an invitation from JISc so that members can attend the 'Curation in the Cloud' workshop in London 7-8th March.  This event will assess the potential and practicalities of using cloud-based solutions for the long-term preservation of digital materials, focusing particularly on data that originates from research or that supports research processes. 

In recent years the hype around cloud computing as a route to delivering a dazzling array of services has (to quote Gartner) been 'deafening'. But much of the focus has been on using cloud infrastructure to create, process and analyse data, often in relation to business information and in the context of either the virtualisation and green ICT agendas, or for the purpose of providing flexible computational capacity for actively undertaking research work. There has been less opportunity to consider the potential of this technology to address the data curation and long-term preservation needs of researchers and research organisations. Especially in light of emerging UK government-led directives on ensuring long-term open access to publicly funded research, it is more important than ever that organisations have a clear sense of all the choices that are available to them when investing in this critical area.

Because this event is being organised by JISC, members from higher education institutions are invited to register directly at:

https://www.eventsforce.net/jisc/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=51486&ef_sel_menu=475&eventID=186&eventID=186

The DPC has a block booking of 5 places at this event for those members outside of HE, which will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis, so members outside of the higher education sector are asked to contact williamATdpconlineDOTorg before reserving a place.

For more information see: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2012/03/curationinthecloud.aspx