Archeological collections management at Minute Man National Historical Park, Massachusetts /

Includes bibliographies.

Livros de artista: gestão da coleção da Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Os Livros de Artista são obras de arte contemporâneas cujo nascimento se situa no século XX. As coleções deste tipo de documentos encontram‐se em museus e em bibliotecas. Nas bibliotecas os riscos do manuseamento estão mais presentes porque os Livros de Artista são tocados para serem lidos. As particularidades deste tipo de coleções, onde os livros têm tamanhos diversos, formas variadas e materiais díspares, levou‐nos à reflexão sobre o impacto do seu manuseamento nas bibliotecas. A reflexão baseou‐se no estudo das práticas em uso na Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. A observação da gestão do risco do manuseamento em Livros de Artista na instituição e a revisão da literatura permitiram a elaboração de um conjunto de regras. As regras devem ser seguidas pelas instituições que têm à sua guarda coleções de Livros de Artista. Acreditamos que a sua adoção, progressiva e continuada, contribui para a minimização dos efeitos do manuseamento e constitui um auxílio na disponibilização e acessibilidade ao longo do tempo dos Livros de Artista. Não anula, de forma total e absoluta, os efeitos do uso de uma coleção de Livros de Artista. Os Livros de Artista para serem lidos são tocados e, por isso, existirá sempre um dano – o desgaste.

La gestión de libros electrónicos de la Biblioteca Virtual de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

La comunicación que se presenta, muestra cómo se lleva a cabo la gestión de los procesos técnicos de los libros electrónicos en la Biblioteca Virtual (en adelante BV) de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (en adelante UOC). La BV está integrada en el Campus Virtual y en las aulas virtuales de la Universidad. La principal particularidad de la docencia en la UOC se encuentra en el hecho de que se realiza, en su totalidad, por medio de un Campus Virtual.La BV de la UOC pone especial énfasis en la adquisición de libros digitales para mejorar el acceso de los usuarios a sus recursos y colecciones en una universidad con un modelo de aprendizaje caracterizada por su virtualidad (el 13 de abril de 2011, el Consejo de Gobierno acordó priorizar la adquisición de documentos en formato electrónico). La irrupción de los libros electrónicos en la BV ha comportado una revisión de los procesos técnicos, de manera que los circuitos de adquisición, catalogación y gestión de la colección digital trabajen de forma coordinada. En primer lugar, se describe el entorno en el que se adquieren y se utilizan los libros electrónicos, los distintos escenarios de adquisición y modelos de compra con los que se puede encontrar la BV de la UOC. Se valora el importante papel que desempeña el proveedor en la compra de libros electrónicos. La BV siempre intenta encontrar un equilibrio entre las necesidades de los usuarios, las posibilidades del mercado y los recursos disponibles. Las compras pueden o no ser consorciadas. Cuando se trata de compra consorciada de libros electrónicos se han de sopesar las ventajas e inconvenientes que esta gestión conlleva, tanto económicas cómo de acceso a los contenidos. Cuando un libro está disponible desde distintas plataformas, hay que estudiar cuál es la que se adecúa mejor a las necesidades de la BV. A la hora de decidir el modelo de compra a utilizar hay que considerar diferentes elementos, como la adquisición individual o en paquetes, la compra directa o subscripción, etc. En segundo lugar, se describen los circuitos internos y tratamientos técnicos que experimentan los libros electrónicos. La gestión de estos procesos la llevan a cabo, en mayor o menor medida, los responsables de los servicios de Adquisición, Catalogación y gestión de la Colección Digital, dependiendo de cómo se haya realizado la adquisición (a perpetuidad o subscripción). Por último, se muestran las distintas opciones de acceso que tiene la BV de la UOC a los libros electrónicos, utilizando para ello un sistema de autenticación de usuarios mediante IP (a través de un porxy WAM). Los puntos de acceso a los libros electrónicos son: el catálogo de la BV, el quick set de libros electrónicos de Metalib, el listado A-Z de SFX, la herramienta de descubrimiento Summon y, además, un nuevo acceso desde el nuevo Web de la BV de la UOC. El acceso a los libros electrónicos de la BV de la UOC es una cuestión que aún no está totalmente resuelta. Desde la nueva Web de la BV se está trabajando para conseguir un punto de acceso único. La principal razón por la que no siempre es posible este único punto de acceso es la existencia o inexistencia de las funcionalidades de metabúsqueda en los libros electrónicos que ofrece cada proveedor. A pesar de la complejidad del nuevo contexto del libro electrónico, la BV de la UOC sigue apostando por los nuevos formatos de lectura, que en el 2013 ha representado el 32,30% del fondo bibliográfico y un 45% sobre el presupuesto dedicado para el 2013. Este proceso se realiza trabajando estrechamente con el profesorado, mediante los contenidos disponibles en la ¿Biblioteca en el aula¿ y potenciando la flexibilidad de los gestores y la construcción de nuevos flujos de trabajo que permitan optimizar y facilitar la transición de la lectura de libros tradicionales a la consulta de monografías en formato electrónico.

The book of the marine aquarium, or, Practical instructions on the formation, stocking, and management in all seasons, of collections of marine animals and plants /

Publisher's advertisement in back

Digital Conversion and Media Reformatting: Management and Production of Digital Collections

The Digital Conversion and Media Reformatting plan was written in 2012 and revised 2013-2014, as a five-year plan for the newly established department at the University of Maryland Libraries under the Digital Systems and Stewardship Division. The plan focuses on increasing digitization production, both in-house and through vendors, and creates a model for the management of this production.

An ontology for risk management of digital collections

Maintaining accessibility to and understanding of digital information over time is a complex challenge that often requires contributions and interventions from a variety of individuals and organizations. The processes of preservation planning and evaluation are fundamentally implicit and share similar complexity. Both demand comprehensive knowledge and understanding of every aspect of to-be-preserved content and the contexts within which preservation is undertaken. Consequently, means are required for the identification, documentation and association of those properties of data, representation and management mechanisms that in combination lend value, facilitate interaction and influence the preservation process. These properties may be almost limitless in terms of diversity, but are integral to the establishment of classes of risk exposure, and the planning and deployment of appropriate preservation strategies. We explore several research objectives within the course of this thesis. Our main objective is the conception of an ontology for risk management of digital collections. Incorporated within this are our aims to survey the contexts within which preservation has been undertaken successfully, the development of an appropriate methodology for risk management, the evaluation of existing preservation evaluation approaches and metrics, the structuring of best practice knowledge and lastly the demonstration of a range of tools that utilise our findings. We describe a mixed methodology that uses interview and survey, extensive content analysis, practical case study and iterative software and ontology development. We build on a robust foundation, the development of the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment. We summarise the extent of the challenge facing the digital preservation community (and by extension users and creators of digital materials from many disciplines and operational contexts) and present the case for a comprehensive and extensible knowledge base of best practice. These challenges are manifested in the scale of data growth, the increasing complexity and the increasing onus on communities with no formal training to offer assurances of data management and sustainability. These collectively imply a challenge that demands an intuitive and adaptable means of evaluating digital preservation efforts. The need for individuals and organisations to validate the legitimacy of their own efforts is particularly prioritised. We introduce our approach, based on risk management. Risk is an expression of the likelihood of a negative outcome, and an expression of the impact of such an occurrence. We describe how risk management may be considered synonymous with preservation activity, a persistent effort to negate the dangers posed to information availability, usability and sustainability. Risk can be characterised according to associated goals, activities, responsibilities and policies in terms of both their manifestation and mitigation. They have the capacity to be deconstructed into their atomic units and responsibility for their resolution delegated appropriately. We continue to describe how the manifestation of risks typically spans an entire organisational environment, and as the focus of our analysis risk safeguards against omissions that may occur when pursuing functional, departmental or role-based assessment. We discuss the importance of relating risk-factors, through the risks themselves or associated system elements. To do so will yield the preservation best-practice knowledge base that is conspicuously lacking within the international digital preservation community. We present as research outcomes an encapsulation of preservation practice (and explicitly defined best practice) as a series of case studies, in turn distilled into atomic, related information elements. We conduct our analyses in the formal evaluation of memory institutions in the UK, US and continental Europe. Furthermore we showcase a series of applications that use the fruits of this research as their intellectual foundation. Finally we document our results in a range of technical reports and conference and journal articles. We present evidence of preservation approaches and infrastructures from a series of case studies conducted in a range of international preservation environments. We then aggregate this into a linked data structure entitled PORRO, an ontology relating preservation repository, object and risk characteristics, intended to support preservation decision making and evaluation. The methodology leading to this ontology is outlined, and lessons are exposed by revisiting legacy studies and exposing the resource and associated applications to evaluation by the digital preservation community.

Single-Step EUS-Guided Endoscopic Treatment for Sterile Pancreatic Collections: A Single-Center Experience

Background and Aims: Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) is useful for the treatment of sterile pancreatic fluid collections (PFC), either by means of transmural drainage or by complete aspiration. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of single-step EUS-guided endoscopic approaches for treatment of sterile PFC. Patients and Methods: During a 3-year period, 77 consecutive patients with symptomatic, persistent sterile PFC were evaluated and treated with the linear EUS. We excluded patients with grossly purulent collections, chronic pseudocyst and those whose cytology diagnostic was neoplastic cyst of pancreas. 44 patients received a single 10-Fr plastic straight stent under EUS or fluoroscopic control (group I) and 33 of these underwent a single-step complete aspiration with a 19-gauge needle (group II). Results: The mean size of the sterile PFC was 48 mm in group I and 28 mm in group II (p < 0.001). Overall, endoscopic treatment was successful in 70 (90.9%) patients. The mean volume aspirated was 25 (18-65) ml. The total number of procedures was 50 in group I and 41 punctures in group II. After a mean follow-up of 64 +/- 15.6 weeks there were 6 complications 13.6%): 2 recurrences (referred to surgery), 2 developing abscesses (submitted a new EUS-guided endoscopic drainage with success), 1 perforation that died (2.2%), and 1 case of bleeding (sent to surgery) in group I. In group II there were only 6 (18.1%) recurrences (submitted a new EUS-guided aspiration). None of the patients undergoing single-step aspiration developed infections, perforation or hemorrhage. Conclusion: The recurrence of pancreatic pseudocysts after endoscopic treatment was similar, either by means of plastic stents or by complete single-step aspiration. Copyright (C) 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel

NLG Museum Connecting to Collections, Statewide Planning Grant, Developing a Statewide Disaster Preparedness and Response Plan for Iowa, Final report.

The Iowa Conservation and Preservation Consortium, Iowa Museum Association, the State Historical Society of Iowa and the State Library requested the IMLS CTC grant funds so we could develop a statewide plan to help the stewards of cultural property plan for protection and disaster recovery of collections. We are very pleased with the results of our grant activities. Thanks to the IMLS CTC grant over 200 Iowa collection care takers have received basic training in disaster preparedness and response, 24 care takers have signed up to become cultural collection first responders, a dozen disaster planning/response trainers are available upon request, and over 40 institutions have ReAct Paks. We have created a variety of training tools ranging from basic awareness to in-depth training, established a website of disaster resources, and geo-referenced hundreds of cultural collection sites around Iowa. In addition, the IMLS grant was just the motivator we needed to participate in other national/international efforts which in turn strengthened our IMLS grant project.

Fedora 4 as a Shared Linked Data repository for the Art Institute of Chicago Collections

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Practical Data Curation and Management for Institutional Repositories

Workshop at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Managing groups of files in a rule oriented data management system (iRODS)

The iRODS system, created by the San Diego Supercomputing Centre, is a rule oriented data management system that allows the user to create sets of rules to define how the data is to be managed. Each rule corresponds to a particular action or operation (such as checksumming a file) and the system is flexible enough to allow the user to create new rules for new types of operations. The iRODS system can interface to any storage system (provided an iRODS driver is built for that system) and relies on its’ metadata catalogue to provide a virtual file-system that can handle files of any size and type. However, some storage systems (such as tape systems) do not handle small files efficiently and prefer small files to be packaged up (or “bundled”) into larger units. We have developed a system that can bundle small data files of any type into larger units - mounted collections. The system can create collection families and contains its’ own extensible metadata, including metadata on which family the collection belongs to. The mounted collection system can work standalone and is being incorporated into the iRODS system to enhance the systems flexibility to handle small files. In this paper we describe the motivation for creating a mounted collection system, its’ architecture and how it has been incorporated into the iRODS system. We describe different technologies used to create the mounted collection system and provide some performance numbers.

The effectiveness of botanic garden collections in supporting plant conservation: a European case study

Europe has the greatest concentration of botanic gardens in the world, they cultivate extensive collections of plants that include samples of European threatened plant species. This study looks at the effectiveness of these collections in supporting species conservation. A three part study is presented: (1) the results of a survey and assessment of threatened plants in botanic gardens, as defined by the Bern Convention; (2) case studies illustrating current issues in the ex situ management of European threatened plant species; and (3) presentation of policy recommendations on further improving botanic garden contributions to European plant conservation. The survey indicated that of 119 European botanic gardens in 29 European countries, 105 are cultivating 308 of the 573 threatened plant species listed by the Bern Convention. The survey identified 25 botanic gardens in 14 countries undertaking 51 conservation projects focused on 27 Bern listed species. In particular this survey has established that the majority of taxa are held in a small number of collections, dominated by non-wild origin accessions, and are not adequately documented. The majority of specimens in botanic gardens are cultivated out of the range country and not contributing to a specific conservation project. We review the genetic representation and documentation of origin in collections. Existing plant collections contain representatives of populations, now lost in the wild and maintain samples of at least nine European plant taxa identified as 'Extinct in the Wild'. However, inadequate standards of record keeping has compromised the conservation value of many collections. We highlight the dangers of hybridisation and disease in ex situ collections. The results suggest that botanic garden collections are skewed towards horticulturally robust and ornamental species and do not fully reflect priorities as defined by the Bern Convention. Recognising the limitations of traditional botanic garden collections we propose that botanic gardens more effectively utilise their two core competencies, namely scientific horticulture and public display and interpretation. The unique horticultural skills resident in European botanic gardens could be more effectively utilised through the application of horticulture to the management of wild populations.

Brave New World, 2050: The Implications of Shifting to Electronic Collections

This futuristic article discusses the shift in academic and research libraries to electronic collections in the context of information access, costs, publication models, and preservation of content. Certain factors currently complicate the shift to electronic formats and challenge their widespread acceptance. Future scenarios spanning skill ecosystems, technologies and workflows, and societal implications are explored as logical outgrowths of present circumstances.

Data information system to promote the organization data of collections - modeling considerations by the Unified Modelign Language (UML)

Pode-se afirmar que a evolução tecnológica (desenvolvimento de novos instrumentos de medição como, softwares, satélites e computadores, bem como, o barateamento das mídias de armazenamento) permite às Organizações produzirem e adquirirem grande quantidade de dados em curto espaço de tempo. Devido ao volume de dados, Organizações de pesquisa se tornam potencialmente vulneráveis aos impactos da explosão de informações. Uma solução adotada por algumas Organizações é a utilização de ferramentas de sistemas de informação para auxiliar na documentação, recuperação e análise dos dados. No âmbito científico, essas ferramentas são desenvolvidas para armazenar diferentes padrões de metadados (dados sobre dados). Durante o processo de desenvolvimento destas ferramentas, destaca-se a adoção de padrões como a Linguagem Unificada de Modelagem (UML, do Inglês Unified Modeling Language), cujos diagramas auxiliam na modelagem de diferentes aspectos do software. O objetivo deste estudo é apresentar uma ferramenta de sistemas de informação para auxiliar na documentação dos dados das Organizações por meio de metadados e destacar o processo de modelagem de software, por meio da UML. Será abordado o Padrão de Metadados Digitais Geoespaciais, amplamente utilizado na catalogação de dados por Organizações científicas de todo mundo, e os diagramas dinâmicos e estáticos da UML como casos de uso, sequências e classes. O desenvolvimento das ferramentas de sistemas de informação pode ser uma forma de promover a organização e a divulgação de dados científicos. No entanto, o processo de modelagem requer especial atenção para o desenvolvimento de interfaces que estimularão o uso das ferramentas de sistemas de informação.

Microbial culture collections as pillars for promoting fungal diversity, conservation and exploitation

Fungi are a diverse group of organisms with an overall global number of 1.5 M up to 3.3 M species on Earth. Besides their ecological roles as decomposers, fungi are important in several aspects of applied research. Here, we review how culture collections may promote the knowledge on diversity, conservation and biotechnological exploitation of fungi. The impact of fungi diversity on biotechnological studies is discussed. We point out the major roles of microbial repositories, including fungal preservation, prospecting, identification, authentication and supply. A survey on the World Data Center for Microorganisms (WDCM) powered by the World Federation for Culture Collections and on the Genetic Heritage Management Council (CGEN) database revealed that 46 Brazilian culture collections registered in these databases are dedicate to preserving fungi. Most of these culture collections are located in the Southeast of Brazil. This scenario also demonstrates that Brazil has many collections focused on fungal strains, but the lack of up-to-date information in WDCM as well as of a solid national platform for culture collections registration do not allow accurate assessment of fungal preservation. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.