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This document is a companion to the report, "You've Got to Walk before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media." Like the "First Steps" report, the intended audience is those who are just starting to manage born-digital materials, from those wondering where to begin, to those who are actively planning their archival workflow. This paper takes the reader to the point where the digital content has been successfully transferred and preliminary processing of the files has begun. It ends with sample workflows to help readers conceptualize the process, resources that may provide additional avenues of learning and research, and ways to become engaged in the digital archives community. The advisors who helped with the "First Steps" report had offered a lot of ancillary recommendations not ultimately included in that report in order to keep it brief and simple. This experience-based advice forms the basis of this document, which describes the steps in more detail, and suggests software, tools, and resources for learning more about each step. The authors aimed to keep these steps as basic as possible to accommodate the various skill sets and resources that readers (including non-archivists) may have. These steps are a guide to the transfer of born-digital material from media and the documentation of what was done to the digital files. This guide presents these steps as discrete phases of workflow, with a variety of standalone tools for each phase of the most basic workflow, while pointing to more all-inclusive tools to meet larger-scale accessioning needs.

This study reports the results of two related, but separate, surveys. The first is a nationally representative sample of higher education faculty members who are teaching at least one course during the current academic year. A total of 4,564 faculty responded to the survey, representing the full range of higher education institutions (two-year, four-year, all Carnegie classifications, and public, private nonprofit, and for-profit) and the complete range of faculty (full- and part-time, tenured or not, and all disciplines). Three-quarters of the respondents report that they are full-time faculty members. Just over one-quarter teach online, they are evenly split between male and female, and over one-third have been teaching for 20 years or more. A second outreach effort focused on academic administrators--in particular those responsible for academic technology at their institutions. These administrators were asked many of the same questions directed to the faculty, to enable a comparison of how they match (or differ from) the views of the instructors they support. There are a wide variety of titles among those invited to participate--the most common being "Director of Academic Computing" and "Director of Instructional Technology." A total of 591 administrators provided a sufficient number of responses to be included in the study. The respondents include slightly more men than women, with about one-quarter having been in their current position for 20 years or more. The study focuses on what aspects of digital life faculty members are embracing and which they do not use or do not like. The study is primarily concerned with the faculty perspective, and uses results from the administrators to show where the two groups are either in agreement or diverge in their views. Appended are: (1) Chart Data; and (2) Characteristics of the Sample. [This paper, a joint project with "Inside Higher Ed," was written with Doug Lederman and Scott Jaschik. Financial support for this project was provided by CourseSmart, Deltak, Pearson, and Sonic Foundry.]

This report presents tabulations for the 2010 Academic Libraries Survey (ALS) conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences. The 2010 ALS population included postsecondary institutions with all of the following: total library expenditures that exceed $10,000; an organized collection of printed or other materials, or a combination thereof; a staff trained to provide and interpret such materials as required to meet the informational, cultural, recreational, or educational needs of the clientele; an established schedule in which services of the staff are available to the clientele; and the physical facilities necessary to support such a collection, staff, and schedule. Some of the findings include: (1) Academic libraries loaned some 11.2 million documents to other libraries in fiscal year 2010 (table 1). Academic libraries also borrowed approximately 10.2 million documents from other libraries and commercial services. Documents from commercial services accounted for about 176,000 of those documents borrowed; (2) The majority of academic libraries, 2,362, were open between 60-99 hours during a typical week in fall of 2010 (derived from table 2). Another 564 academic libraries were open 100 or more hours per typical week; (3) In fiscal year 2010, academic libraries conducted approximately 34.6 million information services to individuals, including computer searches (table 3); (4) At the end of fiscal year 2010, there were 227 academic libraries that held at least 1 million or more books, serial backfiles, and other paper materials including government documents (table 4); (5) Academic libraries held approximately 158.7 million e-books and about 1.8 million electronic reference sources and aggregation services; (6) Academic libraries reported 88,943 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff working in academic libraries during the fall of 2010 (table 7); (7) Just under half of academic libraries, 1,739, had total expenditures of $500,000 or more in fiscal year 2010 (derived from table 8). Another 581 academic libraries had total expenditures under $100,000 (derived from table 8); (8) During fiscal year 2010, academic libraries spent about $3.4 billion on salaries and wages, representing approximately 50 percent of total library expenditures (table 9); (9) Academic libraries spent approximately $152.4 million for electronic books, serial backfiles, and other materials in fiscal year 2010 (table 10). Expenditures for electronic current serial subscriptions totaled about $1.2 billion. During fiscal year 2010, academic libraries spent approximately $142.7 million for computer hardware and software (table 11); (10) In fall of 2010, about 41 percent of academic libraries reported providing documents digitized by staff (table 12); (11) Over half (54 percent) reported providing technology to assist patrons with disabilities in fall of 2010 (table 12); (12) During fiscal year 2010, some 72 percent of academic libraries reported that they supported virtual reference services (table 13); and (13) During fiscal year 2010, about 32 percent of academic libraries reported that they utilized instant messaging applications (table 13). Appended are: (1) Technical Notes; (2) Glossary; and (3) Survey Questionnaire and Instructions. (Contains 37 tables and 1 footnote.)

This guide is designed for use by information technology administrators, data specialists, and program staff responsible for the "content" in data reports, as well as education leaders (e.g., administrators who prioritize tasks for technical and data staff), and other stakeholders who have an interest in seeing that schools, school districts, and state education agencies operate in an effective and equitable manner for all constituents, regardless of disability status. It is intended to raise awareness in nontechnical audiences and suggest best practices for complying with Section 508 goals at an operational level in schools, school districts, and state education agencies. This document reflects the judgment of experienced education data managers and information technology specialists. While there is no mandate to follow these principles, the authors hope that the contents will prove a useful reference to others in their work. This paper contains three chapters. Chapter 1 raises awareness about how people with disabilities access electronic information, introduces the federal Section 508 accessibility law, and challenges education leaders to make their electronic resources accessible to all constituents regardless of disability status (i.e., to comply with the law). Chapter 2 describes the technical capabilities required by Section 508 and international guidelines for achieving accessibility. Chapter 3 recommends practical strategies for planning to improve accessibility and comply with Section 508 standards in an education organization. Appended are: (1) Forum/NCES Resources & Selected State Laws and Policies Governing Accessible Technologies; (2) Section 508 Leadership Indicators from the U.S. General Services Administration; (3) Commonly Asked Questions About Section 508; and (4) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. (Contains 1 table, 7 figures and 13 footnotes.)

Faculty are big users of and believers in social media. Virtually all higher education teaching faculty are aware of the major social media sites; more than three-quarters visited a social media site within the past month for their personal use; and nearly one-half posted content. Even more impressive is their rate of adoption of social media in their professional lives: over 90% of all faculty are using social media in courses they're teaching or for their professional careers outside the classroom. There are big differences, though, among the patterns of use from one social media site to another. For personal use, Facebook is both the most visited site and, by a large margin, the one with the highest rate of postings. YouTube is the second most visited, but posting rates are low. YouTube and Facebook are also the most frequently cited when faculty report on their uses of social media in support of their professional careers. Nearly two-thirds of all faculty have used social media during a class session, and 30% have posted content for students to view or read outside class. Over 40% of faculty have required students to read or view social media as part of a course assignment, and 20% have assigned students to comment on or post to social media sites. Online video is by far the most common type of social media used in class, posted outside class, or assigned to students to view, with 80% of faculty reporting some form of class use of online video. Use of social media is not without its problems; most faculty are concerned with the time it requires. The two most pressing concerns about faculty use of social media are privacy and integrity: 80% report that "lack of integrity of student submissions" is an "important" or "very important" barrier, and over 70% say privacy concerns are an "important" or "very important" barrier. In spite of those concerns, however, faculty believe that social media sites offer value in teaching. An overwhelming majority report that they believe that video, podcasts, and wikis are valuable tools for teaching, and a majority report that social media sites can be valuable tools for collaborative learning. Figures are appended. (Contains 22 figures.) [This paper was a collaborative effort with Pearson Learning Solutions and Converseon.

Writing is an important issue in the UK today. While children's and young people's writing standards steadily improved until 2006, levels have not increased in recent years. Writing is much more than just an educational issue--it is an essential skill that allows people to participate fully in today's society and to contribute to the economy. Since relatively little is known about young people's views about writing in the UK, the key objectives of this survey were: to explore how much young people enjoy writing, what type of writing they engage in, how good at writing they think they are and what they think about writing. This research provides everyone with an up-to-date insight into young people's attitudes towards writing. Most young people write regularly and young people write technology-based materials, such as text and instant messages, most frequently. While owning a mobile phone does not appear to alter young people's writing behaviour, having a profile on a social networking site or having a blog is connected to enjoyment of writing and confidence in writing. Young people today use computers regularly and believe that computers are beneficial to their writing. Appended are: (1) Writing attitudes questionnaire; (2) Technology and young people's background characteristics; (3) Reasons for writing ability by demographic background; and (4) Writing frequency of 18 types of format for whole sample. (Contains 13 tables and 8 figures.) [This paper was created in collaboration with Booktrust.]

Communicating with prospective students has undergone a profound transformation in the past ten years. Campus marketing--like marketing for any organization--had to adapt first to the Internet and e-mail and now to new social media formats like social networking and blogging. A recent survey of 1,000 college-bound seniors, however, shows that prospective students not only value quality content, they are willing to read a great deal of the most valuable content on college Web sites. In addition, the majority of students said that if a college's Web site content did not meet their expectations, they would be disappointed or even consider dropping that college from their search. This report will explore what these college-bound students revealed about their online expectations, preferences, and behaviors. These students detailed what they felt about the content, organization, and look of college Web sites, and how much those elements factor into their enrollment decisions. (Contains 3 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by James Tower.]

The Commission on Preservation and Access has published a number of reports on the preservation and access implications of scanning text and microfilm. This report focuses on what sets the digitization of visual collections apart from other scanning projects. Projects to digitize visual collections present their own unique set of questions and concerns, as well as issues that overlap with digital capture of text. The report provides basic suggestions about planning digitization projects, practical guidelines for working with images, and some final thoughts about the future systems and infrastructure needed to provide collections of images over the long-term. To use digitization as a tool to provide worthwhile, enduring access to treasured cultural and historical resources, one must become informed, establish guidelines, and proceed in rational, measured steps to assure that such reformatting of visual matter is accomplished as well and as cost-effectively as possible. The paper includes the following sections: (1) Introduction (Digital Images as a Reproduction Medium and Of Letters, Lines and Images: Reproductions in Print Publications); (2) The Original Object and Its Reproduction; (3) A Framework for Assessing Image Quality; (4) Color Matching for Image Collections (Color Management, Transformation and Image Output and Controlling Images in Distribution Environments); (5) Documentation and the Integration of Image and Text (Production and Management Documentation); (6) Building Image Collections; and (7) Image Access and User Environments (Rights To Image Collections, Electronic Publications and Use of Visual Materials, and How Will Collections of Digital Images Be Created?). (Contains 45 references.) (SWC)