February 2008 Archives

Just released today, a new report by Robert Buckley and published by the Digital Preservation Coalition is titled, JPEG 2000 - a Practical Digital Preservation Standard? and addresses archival and preservation issues with the JPEG2000 format.

Aren't sure what JPEG2000 is all about? The report also does a good job of concisely explaining the attributes and advantages of the format:

A single architecture for lossless and visually lossless image compression
• A single JPEG 2000 master image can supply multiple derivative images
• Progressive display, multi-resolution imaging and scalable image quality
• The ability to handle large and high-dynamic range images
• Generous metadata support

With JPEG 2000, an application can access and decode only as much of the compressed image as needed to perform the task at hand.

JPEG 2000 also improves a user’s ability to interact with an image. The zoom, pan, and rotate operations that users increasingly expect in networked image systems are performed dynamically by accessing and decompressing just those parts of the JPEG2000 codestream containing the compressed image data for the region of interest.

Using a single JPEG 2000 master to satisfy user requests for dynamic viewing reduces storage costs and management overhead by eliminating the need to maintain multiple derivatives in a repository.

To see JPEG2000 files in action, try examining one of the maps in the Southern Nevada History in Maps collection. After selecting an image of interest, click on Zoom and Pan in the record and compare what is viewable by zooming in from the default size to 100% to see the amazing detail available.

Check out this interesting article, Strains and Joys Color Mergers Between Libraries and Tech Units about the possibilities of merging librarians and IT departments to help provide user-centric services.

David W. Dodd, the CIO who arrived at Xavier University in 2005, said students and faculty members wanted three basic things: "Provide the services I'm looking for, in the manner I want, and get out of my way." They weren't getting any of them.

It doesn't look easy or comfortable, as you can see reflected in this quote from a failed merger:

Tensions arose when technology workers, ponytailed young men, began sharing the same office space with librarians, most of whom were older women, said Ms. Wagner. According to her account, the men brought in a huge microwave, were slobs, had messy cords dangling from equipment, and said they worked much harder than the librarians who left work at 4:30 and took breaks throughout the day.

While this may be a humorous quote, you can imagine some librarians being rocketed right out of their comfort zone as they experience being "blended" with IT staff. And it can be hard to imagine some IT departments ever refining their customer service skills to the standards most librarians pride themselves on. If this is the way things are headed we all need to start thinking about our current library culture and how we can integrate the best of both worlds to benefit our users.