Can AI erase the tedium of managing digital collections without also erasing what makes them distinctive? Find out in this recording of last month's webinar with Sara and Ben Brumfield of FromThePage, who explore the good, bad, and ugly of AI in archives.

https://digitalcuration.umaine.edu/teleconferences/dig_brumfield_teleconf_2025.html

Say hi. This is an example of how human labor will be remembered when all books are digitized and we all work with digital copies only. And maybe, hand on heart, this hand was intentionally raised to greet us from the past. #histodons #bookhistory #digitalhumanities #digitalhistory #digitization

My read of the Belgian gov agreement only focusing on #opendata and #digitization:
1. Further investments promised on Linked Open Data
2. A chief data officer at BOSA will need to set a data governance and work on interoperability
3. Railway agencies such as NMBS/SNCB are urged to open up more data
4. The Health Data Space is going to be further developed
5. All gov services to be digitized by 2030
6. Better control over your data

I like it: realistic and ambitious

Out of the many things that I love about my job, one of them is that I get to have deep discussions with experts from not just #academia as we work towards building communities of practice. Today, in our Expert Dialogues session for the Digitization project, I learnt so much about human-centered design and design-thinking, something they never taught me when I was a computer science engineering undergrad.

One of the consortium members shared that they'd built this really beautiful app for a rural community in #India, spent a few crore INR in the process, and then no one ended up using it! I'm glad they are a member of this consortium and were willing to share this so that we don't make the same mistakes! Also learnt that while community members may answer positively to all your survey questions, that doesn't mean they'll actually use whatever digital solution you build - you need to embed yourself within the community and engage in dialogues to get to the crux of the problems they face.

Two of our PhD Fellows are working in the Himalayan region and during the meeting were facing bandwidth issues. Something we definitely need to keep in mind - if we want to design a solution for communities with limited internet connectivity.

@academicchatter

Questions for the hive mind:

We know (or can safely assume) that #AI companies are taking advantage of previously digitized #PublicDomain #OpenAccess texts in order to train their AI tools.

But are any AI companies undertaking new public-domain digitization projects for the purpose of training their AI tools?

If so, do those newly digitized texts ever become #OA? Or are they kept offline for internal use, perhaps to avoid the extra expense of hosting or to avoid helping rival companies?

The health ministry is considering providing support to medical institutions and pharmacies to promote the use of digital My Number personal identification and health insurance cards. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/01/11/japan/science-health/digital-my-number-card-support/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #sciencehealth #mhlw #mynumber #personalinformation #facialrecognition #health #digitization

Was happy to come across someone in the wild sharing this great article by my old boss Tara Robertson. I still think about it when I hear idealistic talk about digitising materials by marginalised people to save them. Things can be more complicated.

"I will look at the digitization of On Our Backs (OOB), a lesbian porn magazine that ran from 1984–2004, as a case study of where digitization and publishing this content online is inappropriate."
https://distantreader.org/stacks/carrels-old/x-griesinger-reading-2023/cache/robertson-not-2022.pdf

You learn a lot about the status and quality of #digitization when the internal newsletter of my university (topic: digital tools) is marked as spam by the mail server of my university. Amazing.

After the devastating fire in the National Museum of Brazi in September 2018 there's been a campaign asking the public to upload their pictures related to the museum to #WikimediaCommons : This call resulted in an impressive peak which didn't last long, however.

(Counted all files in the category https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Museu_Nacional_(Rio_de_Janeiro) or in one of its subcategories, total number of files 8238)

Agiles Management & Innovation im Netzwerk: Zufall statt stur planen - Innovationsmanagement – in vielen Unternehmen bedeutet das: Starre Prozesse, die bis ins kleinste Detail durchgeplant sind.
#Digitization #Future #Innovation #Networking

https://berufebilder.de/agiles-management-innovation-netzwerk/

Recommendations for 35mm slide scanning in the Bay Area? Or a reputable place that does mail-order?

I've got a lot of them so price matters, but I'd also rather pay a little extra for a place that takes more care and keeps the work in-house. Not looking for the quick, discount mail order places.

Hi #digipres colleagues interested in #digitization in #jpeg2000 !

My question: do you use compression ratio or PSNR to define the JP2 compression?

I don't know if it's useful to create a poll for that, but if you think so, I can do it...

At our special collections department a new digital exhibition has been published:

Beyond the Map. Descriptions of the non-European World in Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior.

It provides a thorough analysis of seventeenth-century Dutch publisher Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior, with the help of a group of University of Groningen history students.

https://www.rug.nl/library/heritage/exhibitions/virtual-exhibitions/expo-blaeu/

Headed to the Celtics championship parade today?

Get pumped with some celebratory inspo from their iconic 1984 championship win!

Courtesy of @gbhnews