Recon Restatement by Dan Hazen
Janus Challenge #1: RECON
This challenge was initially framed in terms of a collective effort to comprehensively digitize print publications through an aggressive and coordinated redeployment of local materials budgets. Large-scale digitizing initiatives by Google, the Open Content Alliance, the European Union, and other groups have since arisen or further developed. Some previously neglected formats have also moved into the digital mainstream, for instance through newspaper scanning projects or via image empires like ARTstor. These high-volume digitizing efforts coexist with a continuing cornucopia of more focused projects by both individuals and institutions. For-profit firms are busy as well, variously digitizing their legacy collections (typically on microfilm), and creating or capturing new content.
The diversity and scale of this digital surge suggest that we now need a more nuanced response to the “RECON” challenge. This might include the following:
∑ Develop best practices to describe digitizing projects to the broader community. Relevant issues include discerning an appropriate degree of detail in order to balance effective communication with manageable reporting requirements. In the technical realm, one might want to understand the fidelity of the digital surrogate to the original source, capture characteristics, metadata standards, delivery options and attributes, and provisions for long-term hosting and migration. A record of such value-added features as the provision of marked-up text might also prove useful. A means to collect and collate standardized information would help us to identify potentially duplicative efforts, track superficially redundant products that are in fact quite different, and highlight gaps to address.
∑ Develop best practices concerning metadata for digital projects. One element centers on standards-compliant and harvestable metadata. Determining appropriate degrees of granularity is necessary as well: when do we need separate records for each title or piece, and when are collective records sufficient?
∑ Develop best practices to ensure that new digital products are optimally usable. When are simple image files of texts sufficient, and when do we need searchable text? Should numeric data be conveyed as manipulable files that can be loaded into standard statistical programs? Does a database of verse require marked-up poems? What of GIS information and coordinates; how do we approach audio files, or film and video?
∑ Implement a digital projects register or clearinghouse. A means to assemble standard records for completed as well as prospective digital efforts would be very useful. A digital register might also pull together a more idiosyncratic array of publicity blurbs, product reviews, and commentaries such as those in the “Internet Scout Report.” This kind of compilation would help us to understand overlap among distinct projects. It would also highlight different understandings of the purposes of specific efforts: Google’s large-scale programs, for example, can be envisioned as creating a massive textual database, as creating a series of topically coherent digital collections, and as providing electronic surrogates for a myriad of individual books.
∑ Improve our means to search across multiple digital databases. This capability should allow users to discover materials or features that may only be accessible on a limited basis.
∑ Devise specific projects to address gaps in the digital landscape.
Those rallying around these or other RECON themes might engage at different levels of intensity. A discussion forum may be sufficient for some individuals and some topics. An information clearinghouse requires a higher level of organization and commitment. Organizing to serve as a representative body, or a voice at the table during debates and in decision-making groups is still more complex. Finally, pilot or demonstration projects require champions, resources, and a robust foundation.
Next steps may most fruitfully center on e-mail exchanges and listserv postings, plus conference and meeting presentations, in order to pull together individuals and institutions interested in pursuing some or all of these themes. A working session might then be convened with the goal of delineating a practical action plan.
Dan Hazen
Harvard University
October 8,2006