Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition of Networked Information (CNI), visited NYU on Nov. 28, 2017. Carol Mandel had invited him “to give a presentation on developments and trends in networked information [which] will be very useful in the Libraries’ Strategic Planning.”
Here are some highlights:
Libraries aim to curate the full lifecycle of research projects, to include artifacts such as data sets and statistical code, rather than just finished products. This can help with replication studies and reuse of data. Institutional repositories like NYU’s Faculty Digital Archive manage preprints and grey literature, but not necessarily data sets, code and documentation. In any case, the latter are more likely to be found on platforms like GitHub, which pose a challenge for long-term preservation and access.
Similarly, while commercial publishers tend to plan for preservation of their own backlists and serial runs, open access publications may be more at risk. The Keepers Registry and repositories such as Portico are pointing the way toward a solution there.
Digital preservation is hard, and growth of streaming media is making it harder. Copyright deposit libraries can help provide a solution, but the US has only one such library (compared to the UK, which has six). Moreover, our own government is sometimes an untrustworthy partner, with threats of government shutdown and removal of scientific information from websites of EPA , NASA, NOAA, and other agencies.
Due to algorithms and filters that personalize what we see, capturing news media is a challenge for libraries and other memory institutions. For more on this, see “Stewardship in the Age of Algorithms,” in First Monday.
How do we preserve emerging media, e.g., the file formats of 3D images and virtual or augmented reality. Libraries have opened “maker spaces” for digital imaging and 3D fabrication, but haven’t thought through how to preserve the key artifacts.
There will be points of convergence among authority files, biographical dictionaries, Wikipedia, SNAC, and the auxiliary databases behind documentary editing projects, e.g., the collected papers of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. These kinds of data can be linked together to support knowledge organization and discovery.
Closing “admonition” from Cliff: beware of the Cloud and maintain an exit strategy.
