Private and Public Data

The Guardian ran two articles on sharing data in its Technology section of 20th March 2008.

One was the economic benefits of freeing up data (e.g. map data) The long-term economic benefits outweigh the income gained from licencing the data.

Another was on the public concerns for the sharing of personal data. Recent data loss fiascos have made the public wary about giving their electronic details.

The two issues are actually not in direct competition with each other, but they could easily become confused. Advocates of freeing up data need to be very wary of how their arguments are perceived within the broader public domain

Available online offline

… this is blog is away from computers at the moment. Will be back in early November.

Top Tips for Digitisation Projects (Part 2)

1. Make sure you have IT infrastructure for processing, QA and storage
2. Good documentation provides extra guarantees for users and funders
3. Staff are your most important resource
4. Digitisation can be boring
5. The end-user is nearly always right
6. You can only protect what you can police

All very obvious stuff when you think about it, but getting the details right make the difference between a good digitisation project and a great one.

Why Digitise?

Sometimes you are so involved in the digital library world you forget why you are so concerned with digitising stuff.

Simon Tanner’s 2005 report for UNESCO (Digital Libraries and Culture) reminds the reader of some of the universal reasons for digitising cultural content.

1. It democratises access to the arts
2. It safeguards cultural artefacts under risk of destruction
3. It nurtures notions of ‘home and family’ by dealing with diaspora, displacement and cultural identity

I’ll post the link once Google locates the public version!