τεχνοσοφια

I know precious little about rights management.  And what I do know I have gleaned from the occasional Slashdot post or Wired article.  Former colleague Grace Agnew, Associate University Librarian for Digital Library Systems at Rutgers University, has put the wraps on a book about digital rights management targeted at librarians, Digital Rights Management: A Librarian’s Guide to Technology and Practice (also available in paperback):

This book provides an overview of the current landscape in digital rights management (DRM), including: an overview of terminology and issues facing libraries, plus an overview of the technology (including standards and off-the-shelf products). It discusses the role and implications of DRM for existing library services, such as integrated library management systems, electronic reserves, commercial database licenses, digital asset management systems and digital library repositories. It also discusses the impact that DRM ‘trusted system’ technologies, already in use in complementary areas, such as course management systems and web-based digital media distribution, may have on libraries. It also discusses strategies for implementing DRM in libraries and archives for safeguarding intellectual property in the web environment.

If you’re a librarian or information professional looking for an introduction to DRM, an underpinning for rights management strategy, or a refresher on rights management technologies, you might consider checking it out.

For full disclosure, I was one of several reviewers of this book.

I don’t ordinarily post pictures around here but I am making an exception.  Elizabeth and I recently spent a week in Anchorage, AK, where my in-laws were gathered for a family reunion.  Eliz took a bunch of pictures and has uploaded a few to Flickr.

Boy, but it is gorgeous up there.  A fellow sure could get used to all those mountain vistas and free-range zucchinis (?!).

Dear Future Me,

You’ve forgotten how to decode (or unescape) HTML or XML in Python again, haven’t you?  My, my, that old age does catch up with you.

Well, it turns out that xml.sax.saxutils.unescape() works like a charm.  I’m certain that edge cases lurk here and there, so caveat, um, coder.

I’ve been using my time at RepoCamp today to get the OAI-ORE plugin for WordPress validating again.  I’m having some trouble using the validator so I say that with some diffidence.  But the latest code which is now checked in to the WordPress plugins svn repo ought to be close, if not fully conformant, to the 0.9 version of the ORE spec.

I’m not sure the plugin is really useful; it’s just an Atom feed of all posts and pages in a WP instance.  I can think of some ways to make this more useful, by allowing blog authors to create their own aggregations, pulling in content outside of the particular instance.  I am certain that others can come up with even better uses.  I’m open to suggestions.

Thanks to Jay Datema for prodding me a bit, if indirectly.

About a month ago, I read on my colleague’s blog that the Emory University Digital Library published a new book on sustaining digital libraries.  I’ve finally started reading it and figured I would post a note here.

The articles of this monograph provide resources for digital library stakeholders who seek to better understand how to effectively evolve such efforts from short-term projects to long-term sustainable programs. The monograph includes contributions from leaders in major digital libraries that have made such transitions or which are systematically considering the question of programmatic sustainability, including representatives from the National Digital Infrastructure and Information Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).

I might also note that the book is available for free as a PDF.

So far I’ve read the introduction by the editors and the abstract from Leslie’s paper, and the book looks like a high-quality read from cover to cover, with articles based on actual digital library experience.  It’s a pragmatic approach for how to sustain digital library initiatives, looking beyond technical concerns towards the more challenging social and economic ones.  To some extent, we are getting pretty good at preserving bits and relationships between collections of bits — it is yet to be seen how good we will be at preserving the preservation systems themselves.