Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness (open access)

Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness

The Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Preservation Readiness address a specific set of preservation challenges faced by libraries, archives, historical societies, and other organizations that curate substantial collections of digital newspaper content. The Guidelines are intended to inform curators and collection managers at libraries, archives, historical societies, and other such memory organizations about various practical readiness activities that they can take. They provide links to technical resources that curators can either implement themselves or work with their technical staff to implement. The Guidelines (Version 1.0) only deal with digital newspapers at this point, not broadcast or other forms of digital news.
Date: March 4, 2014
Creator: Skinner, Katherine & Schultz, Matt
System: The UNT Digital Library
Guidance Documents for Lifecycle  Management of ETDs (open access)

Guidance Documents for Lifecycle Management of ETDs

In 2011, a research team led by the University of North Texas, the Educopia Institute/MetaArchive Cooperative, and the worldwide Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), began studying the production, dissemination, and preservation of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). The original intent was to develop and disseminate documentation for academic libraries that would help curators better understand and address the preservation challenges presented by these new digital collections. As researchers from the libraries of University of North Texas, Virginia Tech, Rice University, Boston College, Indiana State University, Penn State, and the University of Arizona began to grapple with ETD lifecycle management issues, they quickly realized that librarians were but one of many academic stakeholder groups that work collaboratively to produce and maintain ETD collections. Studying the library role in isolation was neither feasible nor helpful. The scope of our work increased to encompass the roles and responsibilities of core stakeholders in the ETD lifecycle: students, faculty, administrators, technologists, commercial vendors, and librarians. The resulting Guidance Documents address areas of interest to ETD program planners, managers, and curators. They will help this extended set of stakeholders understand, document, and address the administrative, legal, and technical challenges presented by ETDs—from submission …
Date: March 19, 2014
Creator: Alemneh, Daniel Gelaw; Donovan, Bill; Halbert, Martin; Han, Yan; Henry, Geneva; Hswe, Patricia et al.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Web as History (open access)

The Web as History

The World Wide Web has now been in use for more than 20 years. From early browsers to today’s principal source of information, entertainment and much else, the Web is an integral part of our daily lives, to the extent that some people believe ‘if it’s not online, it doesn’t exist.’ While this statement is not entirely true, it is becoming increasingly accurate, and reflects the Web’s role as an indispensable treasure trove. It is curious, therefore, that historians and social scientists have thus far made little use of the Web to investigate historical patterns of culture and society, despite making good use of letters, novels, newspapers, radio and television programs, and other pre-digital artifacts. This volume argues that now is the time to question what we have learnt from the Web so far. The 12 chapters explore this topic from a number of interdisciplinary angles – through histories of national web spaces and case studies of different government and media domains – as well as an introduction that provides an overview of this exciting new area of research.
Date: March 2017
Creator: Brügger, Niels & Schroeder, Ralph
System: The UNT Digital Library
War in the Pacific: A Chronology January 1, 1941 through September 30, 1945 (open access)

War in the Pacific: A Chronology January 1, 1941 through September 30, 1945

Text outlining major events in the Pacific Theater throughout World War II, organized by date. It also includes text for the Instrument of Surrender, appendices containing military and war data, a bibliography, and list of related Web sites.
Date: March 2014
Creator: Hyland, George O., III
System: The UNT Digital Library
SPARC Landscape Analysis: The Changing Academic Publishing Industry – Implications for Academic Institutions (open access)

SPARC Landscape Analysis: The Changing Academic Publishing Industry – Implications for Academic Institutions

This report was commissioned in response to the growing trend of commercial acquisition of critical infrastructure in our institutions. It is intended to provide a comprehensive look at the current players in this arena, their strategies and potential actions, and the implications of these on the operations of our libraries and home institutions. It also outlines suggestions for an initial set of strategic responses for the community to evaluate in order to ensure it controls both this infrastructure and the data generated by/resident on it. This document is designed to provide higher education leaders with an analysis of the leading commercial players’ strategies in this domain, the implications of those strategies, and a preliminary set of possible broad-stroke strategies that higher education institutions might consider taking to secure outcomes consistent with their own values and goals.
Date: March 28, 2019
Creator: Aspesi, Claudio; Allen, Nicole; Crow, Raym; Daugherty, Shawn; Joseph, Heather; McArthur, Joseph et al.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture (open access)

The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture

Digital technology has made culture more accessible than ever before. Texts, audio, pictures and video can easily be produced, disseminated, used and remixed using devices that are increasingly user-friendly and affordable. However, along with this technological democratization comes a paradoxical flipside: the norms regulating culture's use — copyright and related rights — have become increasingly restrictive. This book brings together essays by academics, librarians, entrepreneurs, activists and policy makers, who were all part of the EU-funded Communia project. Together the authors argue that the Public Domain — that is, the informational works owned by all of us, be that literature, music, the output of scientific research, educational material or public sector information — is fundamental to a healthy society. The essays range from more theoretical papers on the history of copyright and the Public Domain, to practical examples and case studies of recent projects that have engaged with the principles of Open Access and Creative Commons licensing.
Date: March 2012
Creator: De Rosnay, Mélanie Dulong & De Martin, Juan Carlos
System: The UNT Digital Library
Library of Congress: Strong Leadership Needed to Address Serious Information Technology Management Weaknesses (open access)

Library of Congress: Strong Leadership Needed to Address Serious Information Technology Management Weaknesses

The Library of Congress has established policies and procedures for managing its information technology (IT) resources, but significant weaknesses across several areas have hindered their effectiveness: -Strategic planning: The Library does not have an IT strategic plan that is aligned with the overall agency strategic plan and establishes goals, measures, and strategies. This leaves the Library without a clear direction for its use of IT. -Investment management: Although the Library obligated at least $119 million on IT for fiscal year 2014, it is not effectively managing its investments. To its credit, the Library has established structures for managing IT investments—including a review board and a process for selecting investments. However, the board does not review all key investments, and its roles and responsibilities are not always clearly defined. Additionally, the Library does not have a complete process for tracking its IT spending or an accurate inventory of its assets. For example, while the inventory identifies over 18,000 computers currently in use, officials stated that the Library has fewer than 6,500. Until the Library addresses these weaknesses, its ability to make informed decisions will be impaired. -Information security and privacy: The Library assigned roles and responsibilities and developed policies and procedures …
Date: March 2015
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library