The proliferation of knowledge of IT in general and computer science in particular has reached a mad level over last two decades that most of LIS courses incorporated too much of it in their curricula without matching provision for wards to acquire skills. The academic and theoretical aspects like history of computers, generations of computers, etc. were taught on par with any computer science course and the utility of which in practice was found negligible. Interestingly some concepts and techniques of librarianship have again surfaced with new names in the latest IT and electronic world. For example, push or feed technology is conceptually same as SDI and Meta data is same as bibliographic data or surrogates of information sources. One undesirable feature in the training of LIS professionals in the areas of classification and cataloguing till 70s and in the areas of IT or computer science during last two decades is that there has been lopsided em- phasis on specific schemes, systems, soft wares or languages, and general underlying principles,
concepts and techniques are not given due impor- tance. It is very unfortunate that even principles and techniques are enunciated as corollaries to a given scheme or system.
The electronic environment of 21st century will encompass a wide range of technologies including computer, communication, storage, recognition and other technologies. As such it is easy to say that knowledge and operating skills in all these areas are required by future LIS professionals. As mentioned earlier, as for as breadth and scope of required skills are concerned, LIS professionals must have technical skills, IT skills and manage- rial skills. Before getting into these three broad groups of skills, we may note that skills are not generally acquired by self study or listening to lecturer. What are called ‘practical sessions’ in the traditional schools of library and information science also hardly impart skills. At the best, they arouse curiosity for knowledge. Secondly, when we discuss skill requirements that too in alien areas like management and IT, it is necessary to be clear about the level or depth of the skills expected of LIS professionals.
As far as IT related skills required by new LIS professionals in the electronic world in the near future are concerned, we can identify different levels of skills. Firstly LIS professionals should have skills required for handling IT products, par- ticularly, keyboard, operating system, softwares, physical handling of gadgets, telecommunication products, DBMS, data and file management, DTP, word processing, generation of reports, etc. The next level skills include skills required to apply IT for service management in general and informa- tion processing, search and retrieval in particular.
This involves collection and organization of data in electronic form, indexing techniques, selection and evaluation of sources, searching techniques, updating techniques, etc. Information retrieval skills include online searching as well as searching CD-ROM databases. This level should incorporate skills required for query formulations as well as query interpretation. The advanced level skills
include internet skills and skills required for ac- cessing networked resources as well as marketing of electronic information. A lot more can be said about skills expected for electronic publishing, electronic commerce and electronic marketing.
Hence advanced skills can be considered as a sort of specialization.
Other IT related skills expected of new LIS professionals are skills required for evaluation of search results including modification of query for bettering the results and ranking of hit records and all that comes under post search processing and presentation of data/information. The post search processing is closely related to the personal information system (PIS) discussed earlier in the sense that customers should be trained to enable them to upload the data to the PIS. Hence PIS and post-search processing are also to be treated as enabling technologies and services. This aspect not only expects appropriate skills on LIS profes- sionals but also presupposes ability to impart the same skills to customers. (Pace, 2003)
CONCLUSION
The preservation of the written heritage in what- ever format it s being produced is of crucial sig- nificance to civilized society. Given that it is so important and that there are many strategic factors and costs which need to be established and pre- dicted for the long term, it is an area where there are uncertainties. Digitization of cultural heritage materials is changing the ways in which collec- tions are used and accessed. Many materials are amenable to digitization, including scarce, fragile and ephemeral materials, as well as the whole spectrum of moving image and audio materials.
All can be safely used by wider audience in digital form. Research and interrogative tools for digitized source materials can also make digital surrogates more amenable to certain types of interpretation, such as full-text searching and indexing, as well as comparison of materials for multiple sources.
Many factors will come into play when evaluating the value of digital resources, but these factors may help in assessing when digitizing collections can be cost effective. Valuable digital resources which will bring prestige to the institutions that create and maintain them will be those to support scholarship without any loss of the benefits of working with originals. When evaluating mate- rials for digitization and evaluating whether or not the time is right for an institution to embark on such an initiative, it is important to consider the experimental nature of digital projects. Much work that will be undertaken in the completion of digitization programmes will be at the bleed- ing edge of new technologies. This concept is relative: for institutions that have never worked with electronic resources before, all aspects of technology implementation can be traumatic.
It will be necessary to ascertain the willingness and preparedness of institutions to embrace a certain degree of risk and experimentation and to understand whether or not such experimentation is acceptable or indeed necessary.
Developing understanding of the information that will be needed to preserve digital content has been an impressive co-operative effort on an international scale. It is an ongoing task and technology is not standing still while we figure it out. However great gains have come and will continue to come from sharing expertise through- out the digital archiving community. Cooperative efforts including metadata, standards, metadata extraction and conversion tools and format reg- istries offer the hope of a longer life for digital content worldwide.
REFERENCES
Caplan, P. (2008). The Preservation Of Digital Materials; Expert Guides To Library Systems And Services. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.
Council on Library and Information Resource.
(2005). CLIR Publication No. 129.
Deegan, M., & Tanner, S. (Eds.), Digital Preser- vation. London: Facet Publishing.
Glister, P. (1997). Digital Literacy. Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley And Sons Inc.
Gorman, M. (2003). Enduring Library. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.
Hughes, L. M. (2004). Digitizing Collections.
Strategic Issues for The Information Manager.
London: Facet Publishing.
Lankes, D. R. (Eds.). (2000). Digital Reference Services in the New Millennium; Planning Man- agement and Evaluation. New York: Neal Schu- man Publishers Inc.
Mcclure, C. R. (2002). Statistics, Measures And Quality Standards For Assessing Digital Reference Library Services: Guidelines And Procedures.
Syracuse, NY and Tallahassee, FL: Syracuse University and Florida State University.
Pace, A. K. (2003). The Ultimate Digital Library;
Where the New Information Players Meet. Chi- cago, IL: American Library Association.
Chapter 8
Digital Preservation Challenges, Infrastructures and Evaluations
David Giaretta
Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK
ABSTRACT
To preserve digitally encoded information over a long term following the OAIS Reference Model requires WKDWWKHLQIRUPDWLRQUHPDLQVDFFHVVLEOHXQGHUVWDQGDEOHDQGXVDEOHE\DVSHFL¿HGDesignated Community.
7KHVHDUHVLJQL¿FDQWFKDOOHQJHVIRUUHSRVLWRULHV,WZLOOEHDUJXHGWKDWLQIUDVWUXFWXUHZKLFKLVQHHGHGWR support this preservation must be seen in the context of the broader science data infrastructure which international and national funders seek to put in place. Moreover aspects of the preservation components of this infrastructure must themselves be preservable, resulting in a recursive system which must also be KLJKO\DGDSWDEOHORRVHO\FRXSOHGDQGDV\QFKURQRXV(YHQPRUHGLI¿FXOWLVWREHDEOHWRMXGJHZKHWKHU any proposal is actually likely to be effective. From the earliest discussions of concerns about the preserv- ability of digital objects there have been calls for some way of judging the quality of digital repositories.
In this chapter several interrelated efforts which contribute to solutions for these issues will be outlined.
Evidence about the challenges which must be overcome and the consistency of demands across nations, disciplines and organisations will be presented, based on extensive surveys which have been carried out by the PARSE.Insight project (http://www.parse-insight.eu). The key points about the revision of the OAIS Reference Model which is underway will be provided; OAIS provides many of the key concepts which underpin the efforts to judge solutions. In the past few years the Trustworthy Repositories Audit DQG&HUWL¿FDWLRQ&ULWHULDDQG&KHFNOLVW75$&GRFXPHQWKDVEHHQSURGXFHGDVZHOODVDQXPEHURI related checklists. These efforts provide the background of the international effort (the RAC Working
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-767-1.ch008
INTRODUCTION
Much work has been undertaken in the area of digital preservation. It has been said National Science Foundation Cyberinfrastructure Council, 2007) that “the Open Archival Information Sys- tem OAIS,(2002), now adopted as the ‘de facto’
standard for building digital archives”. The work presented here is firmly based on OAIS.