Frost Byte, Volume 4, Issue 51

News

The Analog Archives was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to support an assessment of the collections by a preservation consultant. As stated in our application, “The assessment will include recommendations regarding proper housing for the materials, furniture requirements, security, and environmental controls within the archives, and archives policy creation. The consultant will provide the NSIDC archivist with a written report detailing his findings, recommendations that will form the basis of future preservation implementation efforts at NSIDC.”

The following journals have returned from the bindery:

Materialy Gliatsiologicheskikh Issledovanii (Data of Glaciological Studies)

Meteorologiia I Gidrologiia

Permafrost & Periglacial Processes

Polar and Glaciological Abstracts

Polar Geography

Our next bindery shipment will be after the first of the year.

Staff Report

Gloria will be out of the office tomorrow (18^th) and Friday (21^st). If you have any library questions, please see Allaina.

Allaina will be in the office all week; however, you may find her in the analog archives working on some projects. Please stop in room 269 if you need any assistance.

Policy Reminders, etc.

If you use the library after hours, please remember to restart the computer, turn off the lights and close the door when you leave.

New Items in the Library

Journals & Reports

Meteorologiia I GidrologiiaI, # 11-12 (2006); 1-10 (2007)

Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, v. 112, iss. D18, D19, D20

Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans, v. 112, iss. C10

Neige et Avalanches, #119

Earth System Monitor, v. 16, iss. 2

EOS, v. 88, iss. 48, 49

Frost Byte, v. 4, iss. 50

News

With a whopping 16 votes, the blog wins! Thirteen of you voted for the blog; two of you liked the old bulletin board method of publication, and one of you wondered what Frost Byte was. Of course, the last person must have at least found Frost Byte’s blog in order to vote, so I guess we’re accomplishing what we set out to do—widen our reader base! Or something like that, anyway.

Thanks to those of you who respond to Gloria’s reminders and late notices! She does like to know that people don’t immediately delete her emails!

Staff Report

Gloria is here all of this week and through the 20th the next week. She will return on the 26th to provide you with your information needs. She will also be absent on the 31st.

Allaina is here all of this week and next week, and she will be off the 26th.

Journals and Reports

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, v. 45, iss., 2, 9, 10

Physics Today, v. 60, iss. 12

Geophysical Research Letters, v. 34, iss. 19, 20

Berichte zur Polar- und Meeresforschung, #560: Steps of Foundation of Institutionalized Antarctic Research : Proceedings of the 1st SCAR Workshop on the History of Antarctic Research, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Munich (Germany), 2-3 June, 2005.

Berichte zur Polar- und Meeresforschung, #561: Application of stratified kriging to ERS-1 and ERS-2 radar altimeter data to investigate ice elevation changes in the Lambert Glacier / Amery Ice Shelf system, East Antarctica (by Ralf Stosius).

Meri, #59

Frost Byte, Volume 4, Issue 49

News

Don’t forget to vote on the new Frost Byte. You can also send any comments to library@nsidc.org or just stop by the library to chat.

We have added about 40 new images to the Glacier Photograph Collection, and we expect to add more in the next few weeks or so. Let us know if you have any trouble with the search interface or have any comments.

Staff Report

Allaina’s Conference Report

Persistence of Memory: Stewardship of Digital Assets

This two-day conference was held November 28 – 29 in Seattle, WA and was presented by the Northeast Document Conservation Center. The intent of the conference was to cover the “big picture” concepts in digital preservation, presenting several case studies and an overview of the current digital preservation landscape. It was presented in a lecture format with 10 faculty members presenting to an audience of over 200 attendees.

Here are some presentations of note:

The opening speaker, Liz Bishoff (Special Assistant to the Dean and Head of the Office of Sponsored Programs at CU-Boulder) was unable to attend. Her talk, “That All-Important Metadata”, was given by another faculty member. Topics covered included PREMIS, METS, and the differences between what has traditionally been done and what is now being implemented in the digital age.

Tom Clareson of PALINET - "Surveying Digital Preservation Readiness: Assessing Risks and Good Practices for Digital Collections". This talk focused on protecting the digital assets and preparing for disasters.

Robin Dale (UC – Santa Cruz) presented “Trusted Digital Repositories” covering what “trusted” means, what is a repository, many acronyms of this digital age including OAIS, principles and practice, and certification of repositories.

Kirsten Neilsen, California Digital Library, presented a case study, “Ingest in Time: Getting Content into a Repository”. (She also presented for Liz Bishoff.) This was interesting because it explained to librarians and archivists why and how digital repositories might serve their communities. This has been an issue at many of the conferences and workshops I have attended, and this session spoke well to the two groups in a common language.

The final presentation was given by Jim Gemmell, Microsoft Next Media Research Group. “MyLifeBits” was described as “an experiment in lifetime storage” and is a software system being developed by Microsoft that will allow users to capture, store, organize and retrieve “everything” about their lives in a digital format. Some actual practical uses would be for people who are the institutional memory of their organizations. Instead of searching for those materials in their office after spending many, many years creating materials, putting them in several boxes and donating them to an archives collection – instead of all of that paper -- there would only be a hard drive of materials to account for, theoretically already stored and organized. This is still in development; although, there was an interesting demo of what they’ve done to date.

Some questions and thoughts:

v Where does NSIDC fit into all of this digital asset management? where do we stand as an evolving data center – internally and externally?

v NSIDC should be presenting at these meetings as well, not just within the science data communities.

v How should I respond to questions about PREMIS and NSIDC’s role?

v Does NSIDC have a digital disaster plan?

v The time is now for the collaboration between traditional library repositories and digital data repositories.

v Trusted Digital Repository (TDR) vs. Certified Data Centers – what is the difference if there is any?

Another NEDCC Stewardship of Digital Assets workshop will be coming up next year. This two day workshop will be more of a hands on practicum to help plan for the preservation of digital assets. This workshop is being offered at three different locations in the country.

Policy Reminders, etc.

If you use the library after hours, please remember to restart the computer, turn off the lights and close the door when you leave.

New Items in the Library

Journals and Reports

EOS, v. 88, iss. 46, 47

Image #27