The November/December 2016 issue of D-Lib Magazine Now Available Online

The November/December 2016 issue of D-Lib Magazine.

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Direct Links to November/December 2016 Issue
Volume 22, Number 11/12

Featured Collection
OPenn

Created by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, makes digitized cultural heritage material freely available and accessible to the public. All images and metadata on OPenn can be freely studied, applied, copied, or modified by anyone, for any purpose.

Editorial

Holiday D-Lib
Editorial by Laurence Lannom

Articles

Assessing Stewardship Maturity of the Global Historical Climatology Network-Monthly (GHCN-M) Dataset: Use Case Study and Lessons Learned
by Ge Peng, Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites-North Carolina, North Carolina State University and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information; Jay Lawrimore, Christina Lief, Richard Baldwin, Nancy Ritchey, Danny Brinegar and Stephen A. Del Greco, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information; Valerie Toner, STG, Inc. and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information

Assessing stewardship maturity — the current state of how datasets are documented, preserved, stewarded, and made accessible publicly — is a critical step towards meeting U.S. federal regulations, organizational requirements, and user needs. The scientific data stewardship maturity matrix (DSMM), developed in partnership with NOAA’s National Centers of Environmental Information (NCEI) and the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites-North Carolina (CICS-NC), provides a consistent framework for assessing stewardship maturity of individual Earth Science datasets and capturing justifications for transparency. The consolidated stewardship maturity information will allow users and decision-makers to make informed use decisions based on their unique data needs. This DSMM was applied to a widely utilized monthly-land-surface-temperature dataset derived from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN-M). This paper describes the stewardship maturity ratings of GHCN-M version 3 and provides actionable recommendations for improving the maturity of the dataset. The results from the use case study show that an application of DSMM like this one is useful to people who produce or care for digital environmental datasets. Assessments can identify the strengths and weaknesses of an individual dataset or organization’s preservation and stewardship practices, including how information about the dataset is integrated into different systems.

Intake of Digital Content: Survey Results From the Field
by Jody L. DeRidder and Alissa Matheny Helms, University of Alabama Libraries

The authors developed and administered a survey to collect information on how cultural heritage institutions are currently managing the incoming flood of digital materials. The focus of the survey was the selection of tools, workflows, policies, and recommendations from identification and selection of content through processing and providing access. Results are compared with similar surveys, and a comprehensive overview of the current state of research in the field is provided, with links to helpful resources. It appears that processes, workflows, and policies are still very much in development across multiple institutions, and the development of best practices for intake and management is still in its infancy. In order to build upon the guidance collected in the survey, the authors are seeking to engage the community in developing an evolving community resource of guidelines to assist professionals in the field in facing the challenges of intake and management of incoming digital content.

Technical Debt as an Indicator of Library Metadata Quality
by Kevin Clair, University of Denver

Metadata production is a significant cost for any digital library program. As such, care should be taken to ensure that when metadata is created, it is done in such a way that its quality will not be low enough to be a liability to current and future library applications. Agile software development uses the concept of “technical debt” to place metrics on the ongoing costs associated with low-quality code, and determine resource allocation for strategies to improve it. This paper applies the technical debt metaphor in the context of metadata management, identifying common themes across the qualitative and quantitative literature related to technical debt, and connecting it to similar themes in the literature on metadata quality assessment. It concludes with areas of future research in the area of technical debt and metadata management, and ways in which the metaphor may be integrated into other current avenues of metadata research.

A Doomsday Scenario: Exporting CONTENTdm Records to XTF
by Andrew Bullen, Illinois State Library

Due to the challenging state budget situation in Illinois, Andrew Bullen of the Illinois State Library was asked to explore how the existing CONTENTdm collections could be migrated to another platform should the State Library be unable to pay its bill for its existing services. Andrew chose XTF, a resource at hand and a logical candidate for undertaking the transfer, and methods that were already available that would allow rapid migration. He describes in detail the process of transferring three collections that represented a reasonable cross section of Illinois Digital Archives content from CONTENTdm to XTF, and offers an evaluation of his test migration approach and lessons learned.

News and Events

In Brief: Short Items of Current Awareness
In the News: Recent Press Releases and Announcements
Clips & Pointers: Documents, Deadlines, Calls for Participation
Meetings, Conferences, Workshops: Calendar of activities associated with digital libraries research and technologies.
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Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Data Files, Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Journal Articles, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Patrons and Users, Preservation, Reports