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Virtual reality (VR) is a rich visualization and analytic platform that furthers the library’s mission of providing access to all forms of information and supporting pedagogy and scholarship across disciplines. Academic libraries are increasingly adopting VR technology for a variety of research and teaching purposes, which include providing enhanced access to digital collections, offering new research tools, and constructing new immersive learning environments for students. This trend suggests that positive technological innovation is flourishing in libraries, but there remains a lack of clear guidance in the library community on how to introduce these technologies in effective ways and make them sustainable within different types of institutions. In June 2018, the University of Oklahoma hosted the second of three forums on the use of 3D and VR for visualization and analysis in academic libraries, as part of the project Developing Library Strategy for 3D and Virtual Reality Collection Development and Reuse(LIB3DVR), funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This qualitative study invited experts from a range of disciplines and sectors to identify common challenges in the visualization and analysis of 3D data, and the management of VR programs, for the purpose of developing a national library strategy. Published (Publication status)

This study identifies challenges and promising directions in the curation of 3D data. 3D visualization shows great promise for a range of scholarly fields through interactive engagement with and analysis of spatially complex artifacts, spaces, and data. While the new affordability of emerging 3D capture technologies presents greater academic possibilities, academic libraries need more effective workflows, policies, standards, and practices to ensure that they can support the creation, discovery, access, preservation, and reproducibility of 3D data sets. This study uses nominal group technique with invited experts across several disciplines and sectors to identify common challenges in the creation and re-use of 3D data for the purpose of developing library strategy for supporting curation of 3D data. This article identifies staffing needs for 3D imaging; alignment with IT resources; the role of archivists in addressing unique challenges posed by these datasets; the importance of data annotation, metadata, and transparency for research integrity and reproducibility; and features for storage, access, and management to facilitate re-use by researchers and educators. Participants identified three main challenges for supporting 3D data that align with the strengths of libraries: 1) development of crosswalks and aggregation tools for discipline-specific metadata models, data dictionaries for 3D research, and aggregation tools for expanding discovery; 2) development of an open source viewer that supports streaming and annotation on archival formats of 3D models and makes archival master files accessible, while also serving derivative files based on user requirements; and 3) widespread of adoption of better documentation and technical metadata for image capture and modeling processes in order to support replicability of research, reproducibility of models, and transparency of scientific process. Published (Publication status)

These are the preliminary and full proposals for an IMLS grant to develop a white paper (to be added here in late 2018) to host three national forums of invited experts to support library adoption of 3D and virtual reality (VR) services. The forums were hosted by Virginia Tech University Libraries, Indiana University Libraries, and the University of Oklahoma Libraries. Each forum covered a different 3D and VR theme: content creation and publishing, visualization and analysis, and repository practice and standards. Lower costs and greater computational power have made 3D and VR technologies financially realistic for a broad variety of institutions. Many academic libraries have developed archives for other forms of research data, but there is an absence of standards and best practices for producing, managing, and preserving 3D and VR content. This gap is an information management problem suited to the strengths of libraries and can benefit librarians and researchers alike across institutions. IMLS: LG-73-17-0141-17

The authors outline a model for digital preservation federation based upon several existing models including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank regional governance model and its similarities to successful large-scale redundant internet networks. In addition other trust models will be examined including Maister, Green, and Galford (2000), Holland and Lockett (1998), and Ring and Van de Ven (1994). These models provide key frameworks for understanding how trust can be enabled among federated but independent institutions.

The MetaArchive of Southern Digital Culture will discuss the first two years of deliverables (2004-2006) for their three year partnership for establishing a collaborative digital preservation network for southern cultural heritage materials. The MetaArchive of Southern Culture is a multi-institutional partner with the Library of Congress in their National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and has established a distributed model for digital preservation. Headed by Emory University, this test-bed implementation network involves six different academic research libraries (Auburn University, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Florida State University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, University of Louisville) as well as a strategic alliance with the Stanford University based LOCKSS Program and the Library of Congress. During the first two years of this project the MetaArchive partnership has implemented a collaborative digital preservation network, has tested the LOCKSS toolset for scale (3 terabytes), for ingest (HTTP and OAI-PMH), and for reliability (total system failure). The group has also developed a collection-level conspectus that inter-operates with LOCKSS ingest plug-ins and collection selection policies of the group. Included in this presentation will be a discussion of the collaborative partnership agreements and the forthcoming work on the next phases of the project which include establishing a non-profit entity that specializes in digital preservation networks for cultural heritage institutions, creating a formalized business model to advance our collaborative paradigm outside of our Library of Congress partnership, to conduct document format tests involving LOCKSS on-access migration and batch migration strategies, and to implement a preservation management framework that incorporates other open-source preservation software tools capable of integrating with our current LOCKSS-based network.

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Over the last several decades, U.S. supercomputing centers such as the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), and the Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC), along with national partnerships such as the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) and TeraGrid have developed a rich tradition of support for advanced computing applications and infrastructure. In addition, these centers have developed some of the worlds longest continually operating archives of digital information. These characteristics enable such nationally-funded centers to become natural partners for the library and archive communities as they develop digital preservation infrastructure. Concepts which will be critically important to the development of long-term preservation networks, including cyberinfrastructure and data grids, have grown out of the National Science Foundation and its programs for supercomputer centers. The centers have also served as hosts for long-running development and testing of software tools for data management in distributed environments, including the SRB and iRODS data grid software. These centers are also natural sites for the deployment of necessary physical and virtualized cyberinfrastructure for digital preservation. Several important current and past initiatives, from InterPARES (Duranti) to Chronopolis have involved staff and resources at supercomputing centers working directly with archives and libraries. Along with these opportunities, there are significant challenges to the integration of the current infrastructure involved in the support of advanced computational science, on the one hand, and services that support the community needs for digital preservation on the other. This paper provides an overview of software development and deployments in the context of supercomputing centers and national partnerships, describing foundational cyberinfrastructure efforts, which provide physical and logical support for more advanced digital collection and preservation projects in both the sciences and the humanities. The paper then surveys some important recent work at sites in the NSF’s national cyberinfrastructure project, the TeraGrid, related to the digital preservation arena. It also examines two projects that the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program Program (NDIIPP) has funded at SDSC to study large-scale, long-term digital archives. These projects provide valuable examples of collaborative digital preservation practice within the context of a shared U.S. cyberinfrastructure. Finally, we consider the possibilities for further development of digital preservation infrastructure and partnerships within the Teragrid and across international boundaries. The character of digital preservation development outside of the United States is briefly considered and compared, and future directions for international efforts are evaluated.

The authors extend their process for creating and establishing trust relationships to include steps for restoring trust relationships after catastrophic events. Part of this model will include best practices for business continuity relationships and will integrate trust models from Holland and Lockett (1998) and Ring and Van de Ven (1994) and how they can be applied to a process for trust restoration after periods of disaster or critical data loss. These models provide key frameworks for understanding how trust can be utilized for collaborative start points as well as for collaborative recovery points from physical natural disaster or critical data loss. Additionally, the authors will present findings from an audience poll conducted on May 15, 2009 during the presentation of this topic at the 4th International Conference on Open Repositories with additional conclusions and commentary.

Assessing universities and faculty is a continuous struggle. Academic administrators must labor year after year to gather meaningful statistics for assessment exercises such as periodic institutional accreditations, program reviews, and annual funding requests. It is hard to overstate the difficulty and complexity of compiling such data. The professional literature of higher education administration contains frequent calls over the past several decades, for better ways to measure performance in colleges and universities. One way to accomplish this is through the work of research libraries and their use of institutional repositories. Developing a standardized way to assess a university's ouput through the use of digital repository metrics is one such method to assess and compare separate institutions. This paper looks at several models that could be of use in this process.

The authors outline a model for digital preservation federation based upon several existing models including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank regional governance model and its similarities to successful large-scale redundant internet networks. In addition other trust models will be examined including Maister, Green, and Galford (2000), Holland and Lockett (1998), and Ring and Van de Ven (1994). These models provide key frameworks for understanding how trust can be enabled among federated but independent institutions. Georgia Institute of Technology Indiana University

This article summarizes findings from a study of author/depositor distribution patterns within scholarly digital repositories. At the moment, evaluative frameworks are in short supply for institutional and disciplinary repositories (Kim & Kim, 2006). After a review of issues of scholars participating in digital repositories, author/depositor distribution is analyzed as one possible technique that might be used to judge the success of a repository. This statistical technique was used to evaluate participation patterns among more than 30,000 author/depositors whose works were found in various categories of digital repositories. Findings from this analysis, including comparisons of participation patterns across three categories of scholarly repositories, are presented along with an explanation of the questions and challenges that arose during the study. The article concludes with an evaluation of the analytical technique and its potential as one metric for judging a repository's success.

Describes bundling MediaWiki open source wiki software into the electronic resource access strategy to enable custom content that supports online training and course-based information literacy objectives. This article will demonstrate how Florida State University has customized MediaWiki to suit the needs of faculty, students, and librarians.