My apologies for the long hiatus - it's been more than a month since I wrote anything. I'm now back home in Singapore after a year-long stint in Syracuse. I'm not done with the LIS program yet - there's still one final class which I'm doing in the distance-learning format. There's also my month-long internship with Singapore's National Library Board digital resources and services division, which I'm really looking forward to. In fact, I'm now going through tons of specifications for a new digital preservation system that has been procured. Interestingly, it's the same one that was jointly developed by the National Library of New Zealand and Ex Libris, but built to our requirements. I can't get into the specifics, but I'd say it's going to the preservation platform that will encompass all of the Library's digital assets - think Web archives and digital copies of publishers' legal deposit materials.
Recently, I was also at the launch event of DNet, a network of publishers, organizations, donors and content owners who can deposit and donate their materials with the National Library. A new ingest Web interface has also been created to allow publishers to submit digital copies of their publications. Although the submission of printed materials and offline publications such as educational CD-ROMS is mandatory under the NLB Act, online publications are not covered under the legislation. Through DNet, the NLB hopes to encourage publishers to submit online/digital publications for preservation and access by future generations.
There are potential issues that need to be addressed, however. Digital publications, particularly interactive CD-ROMS, are often produced in proprietary interfaces and formats. This presents problems in long-term preservation. In addition to the publication's bitstream, we'll have to consider its content, structure, context, presentation and behavior that is necessary for accessibility and usability in the long run. There will be trade-offs in some of these areas for sure, and this will also shape the preservation strategies to be adopted.
If you think about what some libraries such as the University of Michigan Library are doing to provide access to digital books, digital preservation becomes even more crucial. This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that U-M library users will soon be able to order print-on-demand copies of books from the university’s collection--and get them in about the time it takes for a barista to whip up a latte using the Espresso Book Machine, a book-printing machine described as "the ATM of books".
These digital surrogates are no longer mere replicas that are only second to the original copies of the digitized books as implied by the term "surrogate". With on-demand printing, they are now treated like original copies. I think this forces us to think deeper about the balance between quality and access in digitization projects. Do we digitize as much and as quickly as we can to increase access to our collections, sometimes at the expense of quality? What if the digital version of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is the only copy of the painting centuries down the road?
Labels: digital libraries, digitization
