Volume 34, Issue 3

As the new Editor-in-Chief, I feel obligated to offer a brief overview of my background. In addition to having a variety of responsibilities (e.g., reference, instruction, automation) at Middle Tennessee State University Library since 1993, I have been head of our microforms department since 2000. I also have a strong interest in digitization, particularly statewide programs. I am heavily involved with Tennessee's statewide digitization program, “Volunteer Voices,” and co-founder/moderator of the DigiStates discussion list.

ALCTS NEWSPAPER USERS DISCUSSION GROUP MEETING, JUNE 2005, ALA ANNUAL, CHICAGO Discussion group attendees received a number of newspaper project updates ranging from cataloging to digitization. Eric Childress and Diane Vizine-Goetz described the OCLC Terminology Services Project and their use of the Newspaper Genre List. Their goal is to make controlled vocabularies more accessible to people and computer applications, thus providing one-stop access to terminology resources through any web-based metadata editor.

Developing preservation processes for a trusted digital repository will require the integration of new methods, policies, standards, and technologies. Digital repositories should be able to preserve electronic materials for periods at least comparable to existing preservation methods. Modern computing technology in general is barely fifty years old and few of us have seen or used digital objects that are more than ten years old. While traditional preservation practices are comparatively well-developed, lack of experience and lack of consensus raise some questions about how we should proceed with digital-based preservation processes. Can we preserve a digital object for at least one-hundred years? Can we answer questions such as “Is this object the digital original”? or “How old is this digital object”? What does it mean to be a trusted repository of digital materials? A basic premise of this article is that there are many technologies available today that will help us build trust in a digital preservation process and that these technologies can be readily integrated into an operational digital preservation framework.

This paper is a case study of metadata development in the early stages of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a twenty-year digital initiative to expand access to historical newspapers in support of research and education. Some of the issues involved in newspaper metadata are examined, and a new XML-based standard is described suited to the large volume of data, while remaining flexible into the future.