Toward a definition of digital object reuse

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present conceptual definitions for digital object use and reuse. Typically, assessment of digital repository content struggles to go beyond traditional usage metrics such as clicks, views or downloads. This is problematic for galleries, libraries, archives, museums and repositories (GLAMR) practitioners because use assessment does not tell a nuanced story of how users engage with digital content and objects. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews prior research and literature aimed at defining use and reuse of digital content in GLAMR contexts and builds off of this group’s previous research to devise a new model for defining use and reuse called the use-reuse matrix. Findings This paper presents the use-reuse matrix, which visually represents eight categories and numerous examples of use and reuse. Additionally, the paper explores the concept of “permeability” and its bearing on the matrix. It concludes with the next steps for future research and application in the development of the Digital Content Reuse Assessment Framework Toolkit (D-CRAFT). Practical implications The authors developed this model and definitions to inform D-CRAFT, an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant project. This toolkit is being developed to help practitioners assess reuse at their own institutions. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to propose distinct definitions that describe and differentiate between digital object use and reuse in the context of assessing digital collections and data.

Making and Using AI in the Library: Creating a BERT Model at the National Library of Sweden

How can novel AI techniques be made and put to use in the library? Combining methods from data and library science, this article focuses on Natural Language Processing technologies in especially national libraries. It explains how the National Library of Sweden’s collections enabled the development of a new BERT language model for Swedish. It also outlines specific use cases for the model in the context of academic libraries, detailing strategies for how such a model could make digital collections available for new forms of research: from automated classification to enhanced searchability and improved OCR cohesion. Highlighting the potential for cross-fertilizing AI with libraries, the conclusion suggests that while AI may transform the workings of the library, libraries can also have a key role to play in the future development of AI.

University Education in Digital Humanities for Information Professionals

Purpose/Thesis: The article presents the concept of university course in digital humanities for future information professionals. Approach/Methods: The concept of university course in digital humanities draws on the author’s deep knowledge of digital humanities as well as the particular models of research project lifecycle. The concept consists of three elements: the description of educational aims, the graduate’s profile, and the learning outcomes. Results and conclusions: The author proposes that university course in digital humanities should be provided as a part of specialization within a Master program for information professionals. Classes will give students a basic knowledge of a given discipline in the humanities and the theoretical aspects of digital humanities, as well as its structure and history. Students will also learn about information and knowledge organization, digital sources used in humanities, information systems, digital collections, research data management, and scholarly editions. Graduates would be equipped to work at research institutions running digital humanities projects or providing research infrastructure for digital humanists, e.g. academic libraries, museums, archives, digital humanities centers and laboratories. Practical implications: The concept may be used to prepare a detailed program of specialization by faculties offering information science programs. Although the concept has been developed in the context of Polish higher education, it can be modified and adapted successfully in other countries, especially in the EU countries which, like Poland, need to meet the European Qualifications Framework. Originality/Value: Formal university course in digital humanities for information professionals is not very common. The concept of a specialization within a Master program proposed in this article fills this gap so that a new generation of librarians and other information professionals will become more proficient intermediaries between humanists and information.

Digital Preservation

In recent decades, libraries, archives, and museums have created digital collections that comprise millions of objects to provide long-term access to them. One of the core preservation activities deals with the evaluation of appropriate formats used for encoding digital content. The development of science has entered the 4th paradigm, where data has become much more intensive than in the previous period. This situation raises new challenges in managing research data, especially related to data preservation in digital format, which allows research data to be utilized for the long term. The development of science in the 4th paradigm allows researchers to collaborate with and reuse research datasets produced by a research group. To take advantage of each other's data, there is a principle that must be understood together, namely the FAIR principle, an acronym for findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

Finding light in dark archives: using AI to connect context and content in email

Email archives are important historical resources, but access to such data poses a unique archival challenge and many born-digital collections remain dark, while questions of how they should be effectively made available remain. This paper contributes to the growing interest in preserving access to email by addressing the needs of users, in readiness for when such collections become more widely available. We argue that for the content of email to be meaningfully accessed, the context of email must form part of this access. In exploring this idea, we focus on discovery within large, multi-custodian archives of organisational email, where emails’ network features are particularly apparent. We introduce our prototype search tool, which uses AI-based methods to support user-driven exploration of email. Specifically, we integrate two distinct AI models that generate systematically different types of results, one based upon simple, phrase-matching and the other upon more complex, BERT embeddings. Together, these provide a new pathway to contextual discovery that accounts for the diversity of future archival users, their interests and level of experience.

Developing a Minimalist Multilingual Full-text Digital Library Solution for Disconnected Remote Library Partners

The University of Florida (UF) George A. Smathers Libraries have been involved in a wide range of partnered digital collection projects throughout the years with a focus on collaborating with institutions across the Caribbean region. One of the countries that we have a number of digitization projects within is Cuba. One of these partnerships is with the library of the Temple Beth Shalom (Gran Sinagoga Bet Shalom) in Havana, Cuba. As part of this partnership, we have sent personnel over to Cuba to do onsite scanning and digitization of selected materials found within the institution. The digitized content from this project was brought back to UF and loaded into our University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) system. Because internet availability and low bandwidth are issues in Cuba, the Synagogue’s ability to access the full-text digitized content residing on UFDC was an issue. The Synagogue also did not have a local digital library system to load the newly digitized content. To respond to this need we focused on providing a minimalist technology solution that was highly portable to meet their desire to conduct full-text searches within their library on their digitized content. This article will explore the solution that was developed using a USB flash drive loaded with a PortableApps version of Zotero loaded with multilingual OCR’s documents.

Digital Technologies in the Field of Culture: Theorizing the Issue of Digital Data and Cultural Heritage

The purpose of the research is to reveal the peculiarities of the digital collections functioning in the field of cultural heritage. Research methodology is based on the application of a systematic approach to the digitization issue’s study of cultural heritage sites and museum practice. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is the issue’s actualization of the functioning of digital collections of cultural heritage in the cultural context, the statement of the digital canon expansion in the field of cultural heritage. Conclusions. It is emphasized that the discrepancy between the scale of digitized content and the real number of non-digitized and unpublished works of culture and art raises important questions about who decides which works will be published, will enter the scientific and educational circulation, will expand the digital canon and will serve as a source of inspiration for the general public. Thus, the range of problems in the development of digital collections and digital content aggregators in the field of cultural heritage becomes evident. Digital publishing platforms should be seen as primary sources that reflect the cultural, political and social issues of the modern era and reveal ontological and epistemic gaps in the perception of cultural, ethnic and social affiliation. The analysis of conceptual and methodological approaches to the development of modern digital technologies in the field of cultural heritage, which defined the digital turn for all modern cultural processes, allows us to understand the basic patterns and trends associated with recording, analysis and transmission of cultural heritage at the present stage. Critical analysis of digital infrastructures enables the cultural study of the digital turn in the field of cultural heritage in order to identify the possibilities and limitations of digital technologies in the analysis, publication and dissemination of textual and visual materials, demonstrating works of culture and art.

A benchmark of Spanish language datasets for computationally driven research

In the domain of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) institutions, creative and innovative tools and methodologies for content delivery and user engagement have recently gained international attention. New methods have been proposed to publish digital collections as datasets amenable to computational use. Standardised benchmarks can be useful to broaden the scope of machine-actionable collections and to promote cultural and linguistic diversity. In this article, we propose a methodology to select datasets for computationally driven research applied to Spanish text corpora. This work seeks to encourage Spanish and Latin American institutions to publish machine-actionable collections based on best practices and avoiding common mistakes.

Representing a Relationship: The use of metadata to represent the relationship between physical objects and their digital surrogates

<p>Digital collections are increasingly prominent in museums as born-digital material is acquired by institutions, and digital surrogates of physical items are created through digital imaging, digitisation, and reformatting projects. These digital collections are a significant development in museums and a useful tool, particularly for access. When a digital surrogate is created of a physical object, they have an inherent connection to one another. Representing this relationship is important for museums in order to provide context for their collection items. These types of relationships also occur across physical formats, and the consequence of a breakdown in this relationship has been shown in the literature to lead to a loss of context. However, it is unclear how the relationship a physical object has with its digital surrogate is represented in the metadata. Current literature on digital collections only briefly explores existing relationships between digital and physical collections and provides no framework for best practice in a museum context. This thesis examines how metadata is used to represent the relationship between a physical object and its digital surrogate at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The research involved a single-site case study, with interviews and documentary research which were thematically analysed. This thesis shows how the relationship between physical and digital objects are primarily represented at Te Papa through the collection management system’s structure, with some metadata elements representing the relationship incidentally. It also shows that there are differing worldviews and perspectives across the GLAM domains in the language and the drivers of digitisation. This research serves as a snapshot of current practice at one institution and encourages further research to better understand the long-term implications of this and other approaches. For museums, understanding how the relationship between physical objects and digital surrogates is currently being represented through metadata could help support professional practice for both types of collections, ensure the relationship is maintained, and help support existing and future digital interventions in museums.</p>

Representing a Relationship: The use of metadata to represent the relationship between physical objects and their digital surrogates

<p>Digital collections are increasingly prominent in museums as born-digital material is acquired by institutions, and digital surrogates of physical items are created through digital imaging, digitisation, and reformatting projects. These digital collections are a significant development in museums and a useful tool, particularly for access. When a digital surrogate is created of a physical object, they have an inherent connection to one another. Representing this relationship is important for museums in order to provide context for their collection items. These types of relationships also occur across physical formats, and the consequence of a breakdown in this relationship has been shown in the literature to lead to a loss of context. However, it is unclear how the relationship a physical object has with its digital surrogate is represented in the metadata. Current literature on digital collections only briefly explores existing relationships between digital and physical collections and provides no framework for best practice in a museum context. This thesis examines how metadata is used to represent the relationship between a physical object and its digital surrogate at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The research involved a single-site case study, with interviews and documentary research which were thematically analysed. This thesis shows how the relationship between physical and digital objects are primarily represented at Te Papa through the collection management system’s structure, with some metadata elements representing the relationship incidentally. It also shows that there are differing worldviews and perspectives across the GLAM domains in the language and the drivers of digitisation. This research serves as a snapshot of current practice at one institution and encourages further research to better understand the long-term implications of this and other approaches. For museums, understanding how the relationship between physical objects and digital surrogates is currently being represented through metadata could help support professional practice for both types of collections, ensure the relationship is maintained, and help support existing and future digital interventions in museums.</p>