Hilde van Wijngaarden (Koninklijke Bibliotheek)

The National Library of the Netherlands, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), has been preserving e-journals since the early nineties. Their (our) e-Depot system has been in production since 2003, was built by IBM based on the OAIS model. It was integrated with other library modules. It’s technical heart is the IBM DIAS system.
It contains 20 international publishers, 10.000 journal titles, academic repositories, all amounting to 15 Tb.
Hardware was replaced a few years ago, and now the software system will be replaced. There are several new requirements. One is the scale, the digital collections will grow to be enormous, to hundreds of terabytes, or even petabytes. The collections are also growing more divers, for example enhanced PDF’s with interactive applications, video and audio. Digital preservation is a core functionality of library processes, not something special, on the outside anymore. The original e-Depot was separate from the main library infrastructure. The new e-depot will be the infrastructure, and used for all collection storage.
Specific for the KB, the IBM DIAS contract will end in september 2012, also in the new strategic plan, released in the beginning of this year, the priority was set on the digital library.
With regards to preservation levels, it is impossible (financially) to store everything at the highest quality possible. But, not everything needs the same level of preservation, nit everything is worth as much. So, preservation levels will have to be implemented. These might take into account the storage regime, ingest validation and preservation actions. Using risk assessment, the preservation level for a collection is determined, in the collection management plan based on the availability of the original, the quality of the digital object and the type of object (images are easier than websites). This will make the system flexible and able to differentiate between different collection.
We are working together with other European National Libraries, currently with UK, Germany, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Workshops have been organized, with an aim of sharing knowledge, but also to act as one force on the market for digital storage systems. The standardization of interfaces and the modular approach for system architecture were discussed. Outcomes are a two-layered OAIS model and a description of digital library services of four of those national libraries, including the KB, available next week. It was discussed if the library systems are really that different than those used in the ‘real world’ for example in the world of insurance.
During development, the work has been decided into four parts, each with their win project lead. The aim is to have the system in production in 2012.
Some remarks from the questions from the audience: Customer services will be developed in the newly established digital library program. Digital preservation is at the core of development, because most people working on the set up of this new system have worked at the digital preservation department. The decisions about collection selection and preservation levels are made by the collection and preservation departments.

Richard Walis, Technology Evangelist, Talis

Walis starts his talk with a basic introduction of Talis, and their involvement in the semantic web in the UK. They have worked with many government agencies to use and present their data. They host truly open and free data sets for free.
He then moves on to an introduction of the web, starting with (a young) Tim Brenners-Lee. It is a web of linked documents, but these links are not qualified. A machine cannot find out why certain links exists. For example, there is no such thing as a negative link, so if you link to something you do not like, it still raises their search position.
When the semantic web was presented, the press picked up on the ‘artificial intelligence’ part of the story. Googling the semantic web gives you many papers of what we can do when the web has been qualified. We still have to do that. The W3C is working on standardizing this. What the semantic web will be, is a collection of qualified links. For example, Tim Brenners-Lee is the author of Weaving the Web, which is published by Harper Paperbacks. This is linked data. The semantic web and linked data are two separate but very similar concepts. There is a TED talk of Tim Brenners-Lee talking about Linked Data.
In the library world we have been working with machine readable metadata for a long time. Butbwe use library standards such as MARC, Z39.50 etc, but these are NOT web standards.
There is a diagram of the linked data cloud by the W3C. Linked data has been used by various organizations, some quite surprising. Governments (US with data.gov, UK with data.gov.uk), who have been starting to use linked data. Media (BBC, New York Times). The BBC started out with music and program data, using RDF and SPARQL to test the water, to see if it would be used and by whom. This data can be used to make profiles of the channels. It has also been used to combine it with other sources of linked data by http://www.johngoodwin.me.uk/boundaries/meshup.html, where he linked ordinance data, DBpedia, his RDF family tree and the BBC datasets. He used the music artist data, their origin location and BBC program data to show when local artists were on a BBC show. Another example is the BBC wildlife finder http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/species/lion.html. On this website each animal is described using linked data from DBpedia, the BBC etc. This show the principle of linked data which is, write what you can write best, and use other sources for all other data. The BBC publishes all their data as linked data; just add RDF as an extension and the RDF is shown.
What have libraries been doing? An example is shown from the Library of Congress, who use ‘follow your nose’ navigation. Another is the LIBRIS catalogue from the Swedish National Library. These catalogues don’t show that they use RDF, and preforms well. Some functions are not new (more by this author, more like this) but it works more naturally.
These projects are a bit on the sidelines, but libraries have wonderful core data. We have MARC data, which we can use to make linked datasets. An example giving analyzing data of two Harry Potter books, linking them in the end tom concepts, an author, movies etc.
National libraries are starting to publish subject headings, but not very much. For example where is the linked data version of WorldCat? The Internet archive has started the open library, http://www.openlibrary.org, which aims to have a page for every work that exists. Be aware, XML has often been associated with RDF, but RDF doesn’t have to be in XML.
Linked data is still young but it’s growing fast. When comparing it to the growth of the web, we are in 1994, and the cloud will grow extremely fast in the future.
How can libraries get involved? Engage and learn with your community. W3C has a Library Linked Data Incubator Group. We are behind the curve at the moment. http://tinyurl.com/ldlibraries. It is a different way of thinking, not record based but relationship based. Talis has free triple stores to play with. http://www.talis.com/platform, http://www.slideshare.com/rjw/semantic-web-libraries-ifla-2010.

Marijke Dewaerheijdt and Els van Eijck van Heslinga

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands, is a relatively small national library. Some issues for the future are financial cutbacks and am expected shortage of experienced and well trained staff. In the Netherlands there is also no university LIS degree.
In 10 years, seventy percent of staff will have left, due to retirement and other interests. In the Netherlands the workforce will decrease by half a million in the next twenty to forty years. Shortages in our sector seem to be inevitable.
Therefore should be a focus on retaining and developing talented staff. The KB started two trainee programs, one for young professionals, for young people not working at the KB for more than two or three years. A second program was started for young professionals working for around five years to train for management positions.
The young trainee program runs for two years. The trainees work full time at the library, and spend half a day on the trainee program. Subjects include project management, personal skills, getting to know the information sector, strategy and policy, organization studies and projects in organization and lastly innovation and knowledge management. A separate agency was attracted to work on personal development in four sessions: Personal effectiveness, communication, project leadership and personal leadership. Trainees were also assigned a coach, a KB manager (not their own) to discuss any working issues.
The management trainee program is less focussed on the field and the KB, under assumption that they know most already.
The young trainee pro am has just started it’s second run with a broader perspective, including the UKB (university libraries and the KB).
Advantages of the program are that it broadens the perspective for these trainees, not only in their own library but in the entire field, both nationally and internationally.

Open Access, challenges for national libraries.
Bas Savenije, National Library of the Netherlands

National Libraries are the custodians of the nation’s intellectual heritage, according to the IFLA. They increasingly get a role in the nation’s information infrastructure. We are slowly moving towards national digital libraries; everybody wants to have access to everything, as fast and cheap as possible. Open access is a movement to provide broad access to information, to no cost to the reader.
When the open access movement started, is was mainly focussed on scholarly publications. To understand the open access movement, we have to get back to why scholarly journals were started. They were established to facilitate communication and discussion about scientific papers, discoveries. They also claimed a discovery for their own. Journals were something between books and letters. Journals reviewed their submissions, and the quality of the contributions and editorial boards led to a hierarchy of journals. We still use this today as the basis of the scientific world, and is used for funding decisions. The system is very conservative. And the quality is not determined by the paper, but by the name and fame of the journal. Managers love to quantify results in this way, without looking at quality. Another disadvantage is that the system is very slow.
There are two traditional elements: a quality assessment, which is still an essential element of research evaluation, and distribution. Distribution was traditionally done by journals through subscriptions. Nowadays scientist share their results online, for faster distribution and greater spread.
This is the base of the open access. The open access movement was started with the Berlin Decleration, not yet signed by IFLA. Some parts are, the author grants all users free, irrevocable, worldwide right of access, and a right to copy. The publications are deposited in repositories.
Research has show that open access publications are read and cited more. The availability is an important point. At the moment, even in the Netherlands, scientific publications can be hard to access by ‘non-scientific’ users. And between countries it is en more difficult.
There are two paths, the golden road of open access journals, and the green road of self-archiving in repositories. There are many open access journals. They can be found at the directory of open access journals, http://www.doaj.org. There are small initiates and larger publishers, non-commercial and commercial. A open access journal is no cheaper than a regular journal, because you do not deal with subscriptions. There are new business models, such as article processing costs paid by the author, institutional membership or sponsorship, grant, advertisement. There are also hybrid journals, they have traditional and an additional fee for open access.
Many open access journals are fragile when it comes to sustainability. National libraries can help by archiving the journals, embedding them in the (inter)national information infrastructure (metadata -> harvesting), extending to open access monographs and promoting new models for impact assessment (MESUR).
There are several types of repositories (the green road): personal archives (personal websites), subject archives, institutional archives. An institutional archive is not only to show what each institution publishes, but also an easy way to provide broader open access services, such as per subject search. Many publishers do not allow authors to put the final paper anywhere else than their journal. Sometimes they do allow the final author version (only missing final publisher edits) to be uploaded. National libraries can help with long-term preservation of these repositories. This can be as a dark archive, but also open, with integrated access. These repositories must also be embedded in the (inter)national information infrastructure. For example, when you do a search in WorldCat, and see a paper that is not available, you should be automatically be led to the final author version in a repository. National libraries can be part of the licensing negotiations to make demands for open access. National libraries can promote new copyright arrangements (SPARC, SURF). And finally, national libraries can promote mandates for submission by institutions and research finders (receivers of grants must publish their paper open access).
Of course there is more: culture heritage. In the Berlin Decleration, it encourages holders of cultural heritage to support open access, for free.
The conclusion is that there is a big role for National Libraries in open access. It is sometimes said that National Libraries should not join in the open access discussion, but they should. Open access is not against publishers, but it promotes new business models, and leads to more usage. There are discussions with publishers how to move towards this new situation without de-valueing the system.
In the afternoon, during the IFLA General Assembly, a resolution will be submitted that IFLA should publish a white paper on open access, and sign the Berlin Decleration.

Sture Allén, member of the Nobel Prize committee and laureate.

Allén starts his talk with a short history of the Nobel family and the Swedish Academy. The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 and the king is it’s patron. The reason the academy has eighteen members is because the king liked the word for eighteen (aderton) and not for twenty. The academy meets every week. Kings and scions of foreign monarchs may attend (not scions of the Swedish monarch). There are various items on the agenda, projects, publications, prizes (over fifty). The chairperson and deputy chairperson change every six months. The permanent secretary has a post for life, but retires at seventy at the latest.
The Swedish academy is autonomous in all respects. They have no connection to governments, they have their own financing, and are unique as an academy in that respect.
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) a famous chemist, but he loved literature and philosophy. He was critical towards society. In his will of 1895 he donated an amount corresponding to 225 million US dollars in today’s money.
Every Nobel prize amounts to 10 million Swedish crowns. The criteria in the will for the prizes are 1) to those who shall have conferred the greatest benefit of mankind, 2) during the preceding year, 3) no consideration to nationality, 4) the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work, 5) In an ideal direction.There are five Nobel prizes physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, literature and peace. There is a sixth, for economics but this is not a Nobel Prize. There cannot be more than the five prizes, out of respect to the will of Nobel.
The Nobel Prize for literature is for the work with the most literature value, so this can also be a non-fiction work, such as philosophy. Translation are important, the committee can only read a few languages. Sometimes, when there is the thought that there is no good translation, a new one will be ordered for the committee. Four groups can nominate, members of the Academy, professors in literary subjects at universities, earlier literary laureates, presidents of author’s organizations for their respective countries.
Every year there are about 200 candidates. These are nominated by February 1st. By April this list has been bright down to fifteen. This is easier as it seems because most names are known. In May there are five final candidates left. In September and October are the concluding discussions, the vote and the final announcement. The candidate must obtain more than half of the votes, a minimum of twelve votes must be cast. The ceremony is on December 10th in Stockholm. The prize can be shared, but this seldom happens.
There are four parties involved, the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Committee of the Academy, the Nobel Foundation and the King.
Two times the prize has been declined, 1964 by Jean Paul Satre, and in 1958 by Pasternak but they are still laureates, because the decision cannot be challenged.
Allén has written an introduction to the Nobel Prize for literature, available in many languages.
Allén, Sture, & Espmark, Kjell, The Nobel Prize in Literature. An Introduction. (First Ed. 2001. Swedish Academy. Distr. Norstedts, Stockholm.) Several edition. Available in English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and soon Chinese.
Allén ends his talk with a funny anecdote about a laureate who gets a parking ticket.

This session is about the collecting and preservation of the archives and information from short term tribunals.

Ayodeji Fadugba, Sustaining the legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Fadugba is not a librarian, but got in touch with Claire Germain, librarian for the Cornell University School of Law, to find out how they handled their collection of the archives of the Neurenberg. The Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established to accuse and put on trial those responsible for the war crimes during the war in Rwanda. This court is by nature temporary to facilitate the healing and forgiveness. Some cases are transferred to national courts, if they are willing and able. This might not happen if the country is willing and able, but has harsh laws (death penalty) or no law against genocide. The court is still ruling, and appeals are thought to run until 2013.
The court has some legal obligations, which are hard to complete due to the temporary nature of the tribunal. Some of these obligations enforcement of sentences, which can run from 25 years to life, also the witness protection programs. There are still some fugitives that still have not be caught. In some cases witnesses come back and say their testimony was false, contempt procedures will be started. The last obligation is the management of the archives.
The tribunal also has an obligation to end impunity. The trial only tried the most responsible, but not all. In the future, if the archives are not cared for and accessible to all, the genocide might be denied. This is already starting to happen.
There is an issue of ownership. Is the collection owned by the UN, or are they just the custodians? Is the collection owned by the people of Rwanda? And who should be given access? And when, the archive must not be permanently closed. There is also a question of which rules apply, those of the UN or of this court.
There are a lot of problems that can arise when thinking about who should have access to the archive and who will manage this.
An important issue close to my expertise is digital preservation. Authenticity is an extremely important point, and they are dealing with a mostly born-digital archive. Will they print everything, or use emulation or migration to keep the archives accessible in the future? Funding is an extremely important problem, because who will keep funding after the court is disbanded? Right now the UN will fund, but in the future they may need to apply for outside funding. When applying for funding for digital projects, it is very important to include funding for preservation, because digital preservation is often overlooked.