Expanding the Definition of Restoration

The Northeast Document Conservation Center’s Introduction to Preservation defines restoration as “treatment procedures intended to return cultural property to a known or assumed state, often through the addition of non-original material.” (1)  In the context of preservation I’ve generally thought of the term as it would apply to art objects, paintings for instance, or to the rebinding of books.  In both these cases while the finished object may contain new materials the data that the object presents (whether visually or through text)  will hopefully remain unchanged.  

However, when talking about digital objects restoration takes on a whole new meaning, and presents new issues and problems for preservationists.  “Restoring a file” in simple terms means retrieving it from the recycle bin or from a backup, but in the case of damaged or corrupted files often the best one can hope for is to salvage some of the data.  While there are algorithms available for restoring digital images (2), corrupted text files are another matter.  Missing text cannot be filled in without the danger of changing the meaning of the work.  As more and more of our records are either created or preserved digitally, I suspect this second context of restoration will take on increasing significance.

 1. Foley,Lori (Project director). What is preservation? Definitions. In Preservation 101. Andover, Massachusetts: Northeast Document Conservation Center. (2006)  Retrieved from http://unfacilitated.preservation101.org/

2. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inpainting

I'm ba-ack.....

Picking up again after a couple years. I sent myself back to graduate school this year and am being presented with new and varied opportunities to create blog entries. Writing has been my biggest challenge as I've been getting back into student mode and that's all the more reason to make myself practice.

Why did I send myself back to graduate school?  Well, having survived thirty years as a state employee I became eligible for "full" (as in not drastically reduced) retirement this year. That got me thinking about whether I wanted to retire. I don't. I like my job and I can easily imagine staying at it for another five to ten years. However, if I'm going to do that I need to upgrade myself a bit. A lot of things have been changing very quickly in the library world during the past decade and reading journals and partaking of webinars isn't really enough to keep up.

Secondly, the same past decade has seen the creation of viable and useful continuing education for librarians. Several schools have started programs for post-MLS students, and a couple of these are offered online. I chose the University of South Carolina, mostly because of its flexibility. SC doesn't restrict students to a predetermined curriculum, I am pretty much free to take whatever courses suit me. Here is a link http://www.libsci.sc.edu/about/index.htm. I am pursuing the Certificate of Advanced Study in Library and Information Science (that's a mouthful for what is basically a half a Master's Degree).

And as I said, it's all online. I did drive down to Columbia for an orientation and I'm almost sorry that there isn't a residency requirement, it's a beautiful campus and town.

Thing Twenty-Two: Podcasts

I already subscribe to a few podcasts, mostly of NPR shows. I get email alerts and them when I'm working in my office at home. If I ever decide I can afford to upgrade to a smartphone, podcasts are an option that I expect I would make frequent use of for listening to while driving.

I'm not feeling ambitious enough to pursue creating any at the moment. But here are TNCC we have made use of iTunes U (other 23 Things participants may have noticed theFeed@TNCC in the list of education podcast sites). In addition to the news feed, several faculty have created podcasts of lectures and presentations and made them available throuh iTunes U.

Thing 21: Mashups

After looking at these sites it's clear that I've been taking advantage of Mashups for quite a while without knowing it. Since I have never entirely embraced flickr and twitter I wasn't all that excited about the Mashups between them. But I did get more interested when I started looking through the Google Mashups and the ones created for the Apps for Democracy contest.

One Mashup that I found particularly intriguing is #Ask4Stuff a trial service whereby you use Twitter to find results within Worldcat. The reports from people using it were positive, however when I tried it I never received any results. Perhaps I'm just not using it correctly?

Thing 23: The End?

I've enjoyed this process. Learned a lot, got excited about the possibilities of some of the things. Also experienced a bit of frustration at the college's firewalls and other security measures which completely blocked some of the applications, but even that process enabled me to become a lot more familiar with the network staff and I believe we'll be able to come to some accommodation.

The things I found most interesting were:

1. Wikis. As I mentioned in the original entry, I want to use this tool to create a new version of the library's policy and procedures manual. Something similar to the example in week five: Antioch University New England Library Staff Training and Support Wiki . I think we've just about worked out a compromise with IT to actually allow a wiki on the college's servers, so now all that remains is to create the thing.

2. Youtube. I have a much better appreciation for the educational videos that Youtube has to offer. We've just started a subscription to LibGuides here and I'm planning to incorporate some Youtube sources into our new guides.

3. Photos and Image Generators. That was just plain fun.

4. Creative Commons. Having had some frustrating experiences with the current copyright codes in the past, I am gratified to know that there is a grassroots movement of sorts creating another way. Maybe as this grows it will encourage lawmakers to revamp the codes for everyone.

Overall I'd say that I've become much more aware, and more interested in how media, the web, and emerging technologies have become integrated into and are shaping our lives (that's just about what the intro to 23 Things said, isn't it?).

Thanks to Tara and all the other participants!

Thing 20: Tagging and Social Bookmarking

OK, looked around delicious. Explored the site options. Created an account and bookmarked a few sites. I like the portabiity of the bookmarks. Since I'm traveling between two campuses these days, that could really be useful.

Didn't think much of the comments. Everything I saw seemed to just be brief reiterations of the basic site info.

We don't currently have a social bookmark collection, but I mentioned before that we've just started working with Libguides, and I can see delicious working into that nicely. One of the tabs in the Libguides template could be for a delicious list. We'd just have to create a generic TNCC account so that any of the librarians who are editing the Libguides could add links to the delicious list.

I created a collection of bookmarks related to an event we have coming up in October. Author Orson Scott Card will be speaking at CNU, brought in by the Virginia Peninsula Literay Consortium.

Thing 19: Multimedia

I was not aware of the Text-to-speech options in Ebsco, Gale, and Factiva. How cool. I couldn't find the option in Ebsco, but I did in the other two and tried them out.

I was aware of the other audio options listed, and have used all of them except Last.fm

I haven't used Youtube much. I know it has a good deal of useful, educational material, but I get tired of filtering through the dross. We've just started a subscription to Libguides, and I'm hoping that we can use some of the more useful Youtube material in some of our guides.

I found several videos done created by academic libraries. This was a good one, though a bit overlong:


And I liked this series, "The Library Minute" from Arizona State University. Short, coherent, easy to understand:


Lastly, this old one, more general tech than library oriented and a bit dated now, but one of my all time favorites: