~ Subcommittee on Digital Projects ~

The Charge   |   The Inventory   |   The FAQ and other tools   |   Training Activities   |   Vendor Contacts and Issues

AAASS Bibliography and Documentation Committee
Digital Projects Working Group (soon to become the Subcommittee on Digital Projects)
Charge: May 2, 2003

Current Members:

Miranda Remnek (U. of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign), Co-Chair 2005-2007
Andrew Spencer (U. of Wisconsin/Madison), Co-Chair 2005-2007
Michael Brewer (U. of Arizona) 2005-2007
Kevin Hawkins (U. of Michigan) 2005-2007
Erik Zitser (Duke U.) 2007-2009

Purpose

1. To develop a range of mechanisms that will provide more comprehensive documentation of existing digital projects in the Slavic, East European and Eurasian field, and, where possible, more extensive participation in future academic and commercial initiatives;

2. To assess the need for a permanent AAASS Bibliography and Documentation subcommittee devoted to digital activities relevant to Slavic, East European and Eurasian library collections.

Scope

In exploring the need for a permanent oversight committee the working group will need to finalize criteria for specifying the types of digital initiatives in which the group should have an interest. The following oppositions are suggested; these may be modified as work progresses:

i) Types of projects
a) Reformatting v. "new model" (born-digital) scholarship
b) Single-text/single-format corpus v. multifaceted archive (texts,
images, audio)
c) Primary v secondary sources
d) Full-text (historical, literary) v. indexing/bibliographic
e) Text v. numeric/multimedia
f) Freely-accessible v. fee-based
g) Internet-based v Intranet (password)-based
h) CD-ROMS: networked v non-networked
i) Access v preservation
j) Academic versus commercial

ii) Geographic provenance
The group will begin by considering coverage of projects taking place in Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and in Western Europe, as well as in North America.

Activities

The working group will assess the need for, and feasibility of, the following activities, and, where appropriate, propose ways of engaging in them.

1. Creating and sustaining an online inventory of current digital projects in the Slavic, East European and Eurasian field in the humanities and social sciences.

2. Fostering systematic and informed participation in future initiatives by:
* developing a process for the B& D committee to make formal, consensus-based recommendations on digital projects to commercial and other information providers;
* establishing contacts with representatives in library and professional organizations with digital interests, such the Digital
Library Federation, CLIR, Association of Research Libraries, ACRL E-Text Discussion Group, Association for Computing in the Humanities, Text Encoding Initiative, etc;
* furthering contacts with commercial vendors in the Slavic field and elsewhere.

3. Increasing the range of digital information opportunities for Slavic librarians by:
* identifying research & publication topics for examination by committee members and other colleagues
* identifying and documenting websites, listservs, and other resources on digital issues;
* providing updates on new digital developments at annual conferences;
* creating and maintaining a website to consolidate all of the above

4. Increasing the range of digital training opportunities for Slavic librarians by :
* organizing annual panels or roundtables to foster understanding of digital issues;
* sponsoring more extended digital workshops at meetings like the University of Illinois' Slavic Librarians' Workshop
* working with members of the Slavic and East European library community to produce an online training FAQ that covers practical problems and solutions arising from in-house digitization projects and services (including observation of standards, archiving requirements, copyright issues, software issues, delivery issues, methods of on-demand conversion of print material to e-formats, etc.)

5. Complementing national efforts to establish digital repositories by:
* investigating and supporting the creation of Slavic digital archives on the national level (either at general repositories, or at
major Slavic institutions)
* investigating and advocating models of data storage and data sharing at individual institutions.

~ The Inventory ~

For more information, visit the Inventory website.

~ The FAQ ~

This section on Frequently Asked Questions addresses a range of issues pertinent to scholars and librarians who are launching digital projects--or trying to decide whether to begin a digital project. Managerial, legal, and technical questions are examined, as well as aspects of actual digitization techniques. In addition, guidance is offered on writing a "Request for Proposal" (RFP), on post-digitization data management, and on markup and metadata.

For more information, visit the FAQ website.

~ Other tools ~

1. **Information on Open Access (coming soon)**

~ Training Activities ~

• Paper: "Digitizing Slavic Information Resources: Decision-Making Processes, Resource Management, and Hardware/Software Considerations."
  Presenter: Andrew Spencer, U. of Wisconsin, Madison
• Paper: "Adding Value to Digital Texts: Approaches for Scholars."
  Presenter: Miranda Beaven Remnek, U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Paper: "Delivering More for Your Image: Searching, Browsing, and Displaying Content."
  Presenter: Michael E. Neubert, Library of Congress

   Panel Title: "Digitization: Practical Issues for Scholars and Librarians"

• Paper: "What You Don't Know Will Hurt You: A Slavic Scholar's Perspective on the Practicability, Practicality, and Practice of Digitization."
  Presenter: Patricia Hswe, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Paper: "What Slavic Librarians Need to Know about Revealing Hidden Gems: OAI-PMH versus Open WorldCat."
  Presenter: Kevin Hawkins, University of Michigan
• Paper: "What Slavic Librarians and Scholars Need to Know about Preparing Digital Materials for Institutional Repositories."
  Presenter: Eileen Llona, University of Washington

- (June 2006) Slavic Digital Text Workshop, UIUC (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/spx/FisherForum2006/DTW2006.htm)

- (Nov 2006) AAASS panel, Washington. In January 2006 the Subcommittee on Digital Projects submitted a proposal for a panel, with Andy Spencer as chair and Mirand Remnek as discussant:

Panel Title: "Creating, Discovering and Archiving Digital Research Collections: Issues for Scholars"

• Paper: "The Slavist in the Digital World: Creating Shareable and Sustainable Scholarly Resources in Partnership with Librarians"
  Presenter: Kelly E. Miller, University of Virginia
• Paper: "Slavic Resource Discovery: The European Library (TEL) and Other European Digital Initiatives"
  Presenter: Janet Zmroczek, The British Library
• Paper: "What Slavic Scholars Need to Know about Archiving Digital Materials in Institutional Repositories"
  Presenter: Eileen Llona, University of Washington

~ Vendor Contacts and Issues ~

- Journal Ranking Report -

In early 2005 the Subcommittee on Slavic Digital Projects was asked by Eastview Publications to participate in a journal ranking report. The rankings, tabled below, are the result of input from seven academic institutions (University of Arizona, University of California-Berkeley, Columbia University, University of Illinois, University of Kansas, Stanford University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison), which are the institutional affiliations of the subcommittee members.

Table 1 provides raw rankings from each institution, while Table 2 gives the final calculated rankings. The subcommittee arrived at the final rankings by assigning points in inverse proportion to a journal's ranking in each institution's list. Eastview asked the subcommittee to rank 11 titles. Thus, a first ranking garnered 11 points for a journal, a second ranking garnered 10 points, a third—9 points, etc.

The survey's net result shows that the top-ranked (most wanted) journal is Vestnik Evropy, while the lowest-ranked (least wanted) is Slavianovedenie.

Table 1:

Table 2:

*Tiebreaker: ZhMNP had one second-place ranking, while Otech. ist. had no second-place rankings.

Site maintained by Miranda Remnek
Comments and questions may be directed to mremnek@uiuc.edu
Last updated by MBR on Wednesday, 12-Mar-2008 11:42:21 CDT