December 2, 2010 -- National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program staff member Bill LeFurgy recently traveled to Spain to participate in meetings with public librarians and officials of the National Library of Spain (external link).
Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura, Gijón, Spain, the site of the conference.
LeFurgy attended the Fifth National Congress of Public Libraries (external link) in Gijón on November 3, 2010. He presented on Digital Preservation and Legal Rights during a panel discussion on Digital Contents: Legal Aspects of its Management, Publishing and Preservation.
LeFurgy talked about approaches at the Library of Congress in connection with digital preservation, including nurturing community efforts and building a shared collection. He argued that, while copyright currently presents issues for digital preservation, it is up to preserving institutions to advocate for necessary change to improve the situation. LeFurgy was joined on the panel by four professors at Spanish universities who discussed implications of copyright law on digital preservation in that country.
The meeting also featured a lively and provocative presentation by Eppo van Nispen Tot Sevenaer, CEO of United Promotion for Books (external link), a cooperative between Dutch publishers and booksellers to promote books in The Netherlands. He stressed that librarians and libraries need to break with their traditional image of being "no fun and very serious." To illustrate his point, he showed a video of himself asking people on the street "do you want to be a librarian?" The responses ranged from a polite "no thank you" to flat rejection. For libraries to succeed, van Nispen argued, they need to surprise people by adding value in an entertaining way. Librarians themselves need to adopt an attitude of "life is fun" and "forget about the rules."
After the conference, LeFurgy traveled to Madrid to meet with staff at the National Library of Spain. He talked about current NDIIPP initiatives and current efforts of the National Library to archive websites for the Spanish national domain. Staff discussed efforts to design a digital preservation repository, and were especially interested in tools that NDIIPP has helped to develop, including Bagit and Heritrix. There was also discussion about approaches to collaborative projects, as the National Library is very interested in working with their counterparts in other Spanish-speaking countries around the world.
