Washington Post Op-Ed Supports Digital Preservation Program
A May 16 op-ed in The Washington Post called "Saving Our Digital Heritage" compared the possible loss of America's digital heritage with the loss of the ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt. The piece was written by Jim Barksdale, a member of the National Digital Strategy Advisory Board and former chief executive of Netscape Communications Corp., and Francine Berman, director of the San Diego Computer Center, which is a partner of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. Read the op-ed (external link) (registration required).
Working to Establish Preservation Standards for Geospatial Information
Members of the North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP) are working with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), a nonprofit international standards organization, to help develop digital preservation standards for the geospatial industry.
NCGDAP has been working with the OGC for the past year to bring together federal agencies, academia and the private sector to discuss the importance of geospatial preservation.
Collaboration is a key element of the NCGDAP strategy, bringing together representatives from the National Archives and Records Administration and the OGC Interoperability Institute to coordinate the formation of an Ad Hoc Data Preservation Working Group to explore the issues.
A draft charter for a proposed formal Working Group was written by NCGDAP co-principal investigator Steve Morris of North Carolina State University in advance of the December 2006 OGC Technical Committee meetings in San Diego.
The proposal was accepted by the OGC Technical Committee and is in the process of being finalized. Once fully established, the Working Group will provide a venue and mechanism for seeking technical and institutional solutions to the challenge of preserving digital geospatial data.
Project to Make Mapping Tools More Accessible.
The North Carolina Geospatial Data Archiving Project (NCGDAP) is actively involved in efforts to improve the NC OneMap services by investigating how historic and at-risk data might be integrated into Web-based mapping services.
NCOneMap is a comprehensive geographic data resource that draws on data from individual state, local, regional and federal agencies to create a single map interface that draws data simultaneously from across agencies.
NC OneMap users can view geographic data seamlessly across North Carolina, search for and download data for use on their own systems and determine the origin of the data through an online data inventory.
The North Carolina Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCCGIA), one of the NCDAP co-investigators, is responsible for NC OneMap, and is leading the investigation into ways to include historical municipal boundary data in the system as a first step toward providing historical mapping services.
Washington Times Features NDIIPP
On April 26, on page 1 of the Metropolitan section, The Washington Times ran a major article on the importance of digital preservation and focused solely on the Library’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. The story, called “Saving the Digital Record,” is available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20070425-105139-2450r_page2.htm (external link)
Section 108 Group Prepares for Fall Report
The Section 108 Study Group, a committee of copyright experts, met on April 24 and 25 to finalize discussions and preparations for a report due in the fall. The group has been studying issues and developing recommendations for revising the copyright law for digital content while seeking an appropriate balance among the interests of content creators and other copyright holders and libraries and archives charged with preserving the content.
