Category: Digital Collections

Behind the Scenes with UC’s Digital Archivist: Finding the Needle in the Haystack

By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager

A constant challenge for digital archivists is identifying potentially sensitive material within born-digital archives. This content may be information that fits a known pattern (for example, a 3-2-4 number that likely indicates the presence of a social security number), or sensitive keywords that indicate the presence of a larger body of sensitive information (for example, the keywords “evaluation” and “candidate” in close proximity to each other may indicate the presence of an evaluation form for a possible job applicant).

Digital archivists use a number of tools to screen for potentially sensitive information. When this information is found, depending on the type of information, institutional policy, legal restrictions, and ethical issues, archivists may redact the information, destroy it, or limit access to it (either by user, or according to a certain period of time). Continue reading Behind the Scenes with UC’s Digital Archivist: Finding the Needle in the Haystack

Paper featuring Scholar@UC Gets Best Research Paper Award!

Congratulations to Dr. Nan Niu and his research team!re16_bestresearchpaperaward_niu

Recently Dr. Nan Niu traveled to Beijing, China to attend the RE16 conference- Requirements Engineering16 http://re16.org/downloads/RE16%20program.pdf. He took with him high hopes for the requirements engineering research paper he and his team submitted together with Linda Newman, Head of Repositories and Digital Collections and Amy Koshoffer, Science Informationist. For the beginning of this story and more on the models created using Scholar@UC use cases, see the blog entry “Scholar@UC Goes to Class” (https://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/liblog/2016/01/scholaruc-goes-to-class/).

Dr. Niu has made all the research materials supporting this work available through Scholar@UC https://scholar.uc.edu/works/documents/wm117q084.  Dr. Niu is making brilliant use of Scholar@UC as a teaching tool, a research subject, data preservation tool and an open data/access model.  Again congratulations to Dr. Niu and the whole team!!

Behind the Scenes with UC’s Digital Archivist: Making Sense of It All

By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager

When archivists first make contact with a large group of records, they often perform some form of appraisal. You might think of appraisal as being the calling card of the much-loved PBS television show Antiques Roadshow, in which average people realize that Great Aunt Milly’s painting is a valued masterpiece – or a total dud.

Unlike appraisers, when archivists appraise something they generally aren’t assigning a monetary value, but seeking to articulate the value of the records and the information they contain. The Society of American Archivists defines (http://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/a/appraisal#.V2hA1jXERmM)  appraisal as:

  1. ~ 1. The process of identifying materials offered to an archives that have sufficient value to be accessioned. – 2. The process of determining the length of time records should be retained, based on legal requirements and on their current and potential usefulness. – 3. The process of determining the market value of an item; monetary appraisal.

Continue reading Behind the Scenes with UC’s Digital Archivist: Making Sense of It All

Liebig and Combustion Analysis : Notes from the Oesper Collections, No. 40, September/October 2016

Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) posing with his apparatus for combustion analysis.
Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) posing with his apparatus for combustion analysis.

Issue 40 outlines the history and importance of the chemical technique known as combustion analysis and highlights a reproduction of Liebig’s famous 1831 instrument for this purpose made by the late Dr. Melvyn Usselman of the University of Western Ontario and donated to our museum collections in 2005.

Click here for all other issues of Notes from the Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.

 

 

 

 

Behind the Scenes with UC’s Digital Archivist: Much Ado About Digital

By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager

Within the archives profession, “Digital Archivist” is one of the fastest-growing job titles (http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance/vol31/iss2/5/). The Society of American Archivists offers a Digital Archives Specialist curriculum and certificate (www2.archivists.org/prof-education/das).   And library and archives conferences abound on topics of an electronic and digital nature – like Saving The Web (https://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/news/save-web-2016.html), the Digital Library Federation (https://www.diglib.org/), and the Software Preservation Network Forum (http://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/spn-forum/).

So what does a digital archivist do? Every digital archivist’s responsibilities will look slightly different depending on institutional mission, priorities and resources. As the first link indicates, there isn’t even professional consensus whether a digital archivist is one who works with digitization of analog material (like paper documents and manuscripts, rare books, maps, etc), or someone who works with “born-digital” materials. In many institutions, both of those responsibilities may be within the Digital Archivist’s charge. As UC’s Digital Archivist/Records Manager, my responsibilities center on working with born-digital archives, digital preservation, and overseeing UC’s Records Management program. I also work closely with my colleagues in Digital Collections on digitization projects (http://digital.libraries.uc.edu/).

Continue reading Behind the Scenes with UC’s Digital Archivist: Much Ado About Digital

The Steelyard Balance : Notes from the Oesper Collections, No. 39, July/August 2016

A recently acquired 19th-century Chinese steelyard or so-called “opium balance” with an 11” ivory beam and accompanying “teardrop” storage case
A recently acquired 19th-century Chinese steelyard or so-called “opium balance” with an 11” ivory beam and accompanying “teardrop” storage case

Issue 39 briefly outlines the history and principles underlying traditional single pan or “steelyard” balances and illustrates their evolution using examples from our museum collections.

Click here for all other issues of Notes from The Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check Out the Latest Issue of Source

sourceRead Source, the online newsletter, to learn more about the news, events, people and happenings in UC Libraries.

This latest issue of Source includes an article announcing the new UC academic press, a Q&A about a new position in the Office of Research, and A Note from the Dean: IFLA Coming to Cincinnati. Updates to library websites are showcased in A New Look at Digital Collections and in an article about the Neil A. Armstrong display and website. There are two articles about recent awards –  the Provost Technology Innovation Awards and Recognizing Library Student Workers. Read these articles and more.

Source is available on the web at http://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/source/ and via e-mail. To receive Source via e-mail, contact melissa.norris@uc.edu to be added to the mailing list.

All systems now back online after earlier storage outage

Update – all systems affected by the storage outage (see description below) are now fully back online.  Please contact ucdp@uc.edu or scholar@uc.edu with any questions. Thank you.

(June 7th: 10:42 am)
The isilon storage array maintained by IT@UC had an outage last night. The storage system is back up, but some systems that use it are not. At the time of this blog post, the Digital Resource Commons (https://drc.libraries.uc.edu); the Digital Collections and Repositories website (https://digital.libraries.uc.edu), the Luna image and media repository (https://digital.libraries.uc.edu/luna), and Journals@UC (https://journals.uc.edu) are either down are not fully functional. Some development or test systems are also down. These systems are all in process of coming back online.

Scholar@UC (https://scholar.uc.edu) is up. This blog post will be updated when all systems are back online. You may contact ucdp@uc.edu or Scholar@uc.edu with any questions. Thank you.

New Website for Digital Collections & Repositories

Update, May 16, 2016, 4pm: The website migration has been completed. Let us know what you think about the new site!

Next Monday (May 16), the Digital Collections & Repositories department will launch a new website. The website will be fully responsive and will work on all devices. Graphics will be prominently featured with less text overall. New features include a card-based collections page that can be filtered by library, subject, or format. We’re very excited to launch this new site and hope our users will find it easy to use.

During the transition on Monday, May 16, you may experience difficulties using the website as we copy new files over and remove  old files.

New Digital Collections & Repositories website home page.
New Digital Collections & Repositories website home page.