Summary of 3rd edition of FBC e-learning courses

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The 3rd ongoing edition of Polish Digital Libraries Federation’s e-learning courses has ended along with the end of September. We received lots of favourable opinions about courses. The shorter one, “Cooperation with Europeana” did enroll 39 users, 92 people registered for “Digital repositories for small memory institutions”. Similarly to previous edition, every participant could gain a certificate confirming completion of the course and the given note. Passing the tests and filling the questionnaires after each subject were the conditions for which the certificates were given.

source http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7283/8739275009_d17d87c98e.jpg

The “Cooperation with Europeana” course obtained the average note of 4.71. These marks are highly similar to last edition’s ones. Most of participants acknowledged that presented subjects will be useful in their profession and that they are satisfied with the course. Users were pleased to participate in the course and we are happy to surprise people with the quality of it.

We asked participants where did they get to know about the course – it came out that most of them heard about it from a tutor or their boss (9 answers), next, but minor places were: mailing, websites and facebook (each one 3 answers). Questionnaires showed also that majority of participants were librarians, students and few less computer scientists and repository employees.

As it goes to the course “Digital repositories for small memory institutions”, it got the average note of 4.66 so it is the same as it was in the last scholarship cycle. Most of participants got to know about the course from some websites (14 answers), the second most often chosen answer was: “from a friend” (7) or “from a tutor/boss” (10). Only a few answered that it was from Facebook or mailing. The criticism that appeared in comments were mainly about the necessity to improve the navigation between subjects. We gathered also lots of positive opinions about solid and accurate preparation of the course.

Finishing this scholarship cycle entails with closing the possibility of registration for new users. Already registered ones can use and come back to courses. We do not give certificates till the start of a new cycle. Courses will be updated and enriched, we will keep you posted.

Full report describing the evaluation of third edition can be found in PSNC institutional repository.

SCAPE Project training event: Effective, Evidence-based Preservation Planning

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We invite you all to participate in the SCAPE project training event related to digital preservation, especially in the context of preservation planning. The event will be held in Danemark on 13-14th of November 2013. The details can be found at: http://www.scape-project.eu/events/11/effective-evidence-based-preservation-planning

Succeed survey: standards and formats in digitisation

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Succeed project is undertaking a survey on standards and formats used in digitisation of textual documents. Please take a moment to fill it in: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16qvPbAZYUVmYz1MbeCGVcfxy0UXksr3-v5QQ7h3uETE/viewform
The aim of this survey is to gather information about your current practices for master files, delivery formats, metadata as well as OCR and emerging technologies. This information will then help us to define recommendations for texts digitisation in the European and worldwide context. Fill in the survey and provide your e-mail to get informed about results of our analysis: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16qvPbAZYUVmYz1MbeCGVcfxy0UXksr3-v5QQ7h3uETE/viewform
Please respond before September, 30th.
Succeed (http://succeed-project.eu) is a support action funded by the European Union. It promotes the take up and validation of research results in mass digitisation, with a focus on textual content.

PSNC trainings gain professional accreditation PLA

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/denniswong/2406135310/
Source: denniswong

Professional Accreditation of Polish Librarian Association is the evaluation of educational programs directed to librarians and information scientists, made by independent experts pointed by the Polish Librarian Association (PLA, pol. Stowarzyszenia Bibliotekarzy Polskich). Experiences and solutions practiced by acclaimed Anglo-Saxon LIS organizations (eg. ALA, ALIA, CILIP) are the inspiration. On the accreditation’s website there is an information that libraries, universities, continuing education agencies and training companies can apply for it. Grading system and standards worked out by PLA relate to short educational forms generally defined as “training service” such as eg. internship, seminary or training course.

PSNC is known for initiatives which aim to promote knowledge about digital libraries. An example of such activity is a “Digital Libraries” workshop which is organized since 2004. Apart from mentioned workshop, PSNC accomplishes also some trainings for dLibra software users and provides two e-learning courses: “Digital repositories for small memory institutions” and “Cooperation with Europeana”. All of three mentioned services were reported to the accreditation process. On the 4th July 2013 a session of the Professional Accreditation Committee PLA took place under the leadership of Ewa Kobierska-Maciuszko. During the debate, reports from the training services evaluation were examined. With great pleasure we inform that all 3 services received accreditations what is bound with gaining a 3-years valid certificate confirming high quality of those services.

New version of the Virtual Transcription Laboratory portal

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A few days ago a new version of Virtual Transcription Laboratory portal has been implemented (http://wlt.synat.pcss.pl). In the current version you can find some new functions and conveniences, also all mistakes reported by users were repaired.

Most important changes that were implemented:

  • transcription’s editor supports multicolumn documents f.ex. newspapers (this option is available in new projects),
  • lines verification mechanism was added, each line is connected to the information about whether it has been looked through or not,
  • the import of TIFF files mechanism was expedited,
  • the possibility to download transcription results in text format,
  • link to preview whole scan in transcription’s editor,
  • numbers of lines were added in a transcription’s editor view,
  • it is also possible to move lines to a certain position in transcription’s view (by giving its number),
  • a mail is sent to the project’s owner after finishing the batch OCR,
  • the information about changes author was added to a history view,
  • author of the project is an optional field in a formula of creating new project

Detailed note about release with all changes and adjustments can be found here.

Apart from changes mentioned above, a suggestions and improvements forum where you can inform us about your propositions of improvements in VTL and vote for other user’s ideas has started (it is available here). You can enter the forum using an orange bookmark “Your suggestion”, which appears in the right upper corner of the VTL site. We strongly encourage to report your ideas and vote for those already visible on forum. Further works on VTL will include functions which mostly appeal to users.

New scholarship cycle of DLF e-learning courses has just begun

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New scholarship cycle of the two e-learning courses: “Digital repositories for small memory institutions” and “Cooperation with Europeana” running in frames of the Digital Libraries Federation has begun with the beginning of June. Courses were upgraded, enriched mostly with information about building digital collections, also an article about the Digitlab system was added. At the end of each subject there is an evaluation questionnaire in which you can express your opinion about the content of given element of the course. Courses were moved to the newest version of Moodle platform which offers also mobile access to the courses.

Present scholarship cycle will last 3 months and each participant has a possibility to gain a certificate testifying their participation. The only condition is getting positive marks at quizzes and fulfilling questionnaires (more information in courses).

LoCLoud project

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LoCloud logo

In March 2013 LoCloud (http://locloud.eu) project has been launched. It is a Best Practice Network co-funded under the CIP ICT-PSP program aimed at enhancing the Europeana content by adding over 4 million items form European cultural institutions. On 19-20th March, at the National Archives of Norway in Oslo, project was officially launched. The meeting gathered 32 partners from 28 different countries to present, plan and discuss the activities of the project over the next three years. Content from small and medium local institutions such as museums, archives and libraries is still underrepresented in the digital European area. Cloud-based technology could offer an affordable and user-friendly solution for making their content available on-line.

Project aims to develop cloud-based technology and services to help small and medium local institutions to aggregate their digital resources and make them accessible on-line, via Europeana.eu, the European Library, Museum and Archive. The project will explore the potential of a cloud-based technology infrastructure for aggregating local content. It will also develop a number of micro-services offering geo-location and metadata enrichment, multilingual vocabularies for local history and archaeology, a historical place name gazetteer and a Wikimedia application to handling relevant ‘crowd-sourced’ content.

LoCloud relies on a large group of technical partners, content providers, aggregating services and partners with specific expertise which make together a very strong consortium.

Public release of (part of) Clepsydra framework

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We’re happy to announce the public release of part of Clepsydra, data aggregation and enrichment framework. It is released under the Apache Licence, Version 2.0.

Clepsydra is a flexible and scalable system for aggregation, processing and provisioning of data from heterogeneous sources. It was designed and developed to be a basis for services focused on aggregation and enrichment of data, e.g. metadata describing on-line collections of cultural heritage objects from Polish memory institutions. The first production deployment of this system is the PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation. Clepsydra is developed as a part of PSNC activities in the SYNAT project.

This first release of Clepsydra contains one component, Clepsydra Storage, which main aim is to serve as a flexible and scalable service allowing storing and accessing large amounts of heterogeneous data.

Installation instruction, documentation and source code for Clepsydra Storage module can be found here.