Volume 34, Issue 4

The New Jersey Digital Highway (NJDH) is a statewide collaborative being built by public information providers in New Jersey including libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, public broadcasting, and schools. Its broad mission is to develop and sustain an immersive, user-centered information portal to support the New Jersey learner, providing seamless access to cultural heritage materials. To that end, NJDH integrates concepts and technologies of mature digital library initiatives. Equal attention is being given to the competing needs of standardization and customization. It has a user-centered focus that emphasizes the active engagement of the education community and end users. The project stresses iterative training and assessment to inform the entire development and presentation process. But the NJDH initiative extends beyond that of earlier statewide digitization projects in its core mission: to build a robust preservation platform that will ensure perpetual access to the State's digitized collections. NJDH development is one of the first statewide digitization initiatives to have as its core mission the development of a solid digital preservation platform. The integration of core digital preservation extends the capabilities of existing consortial digital library initiatives. NJDH will demonstrate a digital preservation strategy for a statewide digitization initiative that is extensible to other states or institutions. The initial development of NJDH was funded through a National Leadership Grant for Museums and Libraries awarded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in 2003.

With the rapid changes in technology for information creation, capture, display, distribution, storage and preservation, questions abound about the current state of microfilm and its place in the modern information management industry. Clearly there is a place for microfilm in the modern preservation vision. When it comes to information having permanent value, micrographic media remains a stalwart companion of those not willing to risk their data to the perils of digital data storage only. Quoting Jim Harvey of Altek Systems, “Now the word on the street is that without migration, degradation occurs in as little as seven years depending on storage conditions. This is an anathema to archival collections of information … Some are getting ‘that old time religion’ and backing up digital information collections with a permanent micrographic copy.”

For almost 50 years IDC Publishers has been publishing primary sources on analog carriers, thus combining access possibilities with the preservation of often vulnerable sources. The fact that access to online resources is much more convenient compared to analog sources will need no further clarification. As a result IDC is focusing increasingly on online access to existing and new publications. Online resources such as Art Sales Catalogues Online and COMINTERN Online are examples of dedicated services offering access to a specific resource containing millions of pages. In the last quarter of 2005 IDC will launch its new platform for online access to relatively small sets of titles. Through this platform, each library can put together its own collection of titles that is online accessible.