Au menu du dernier D-Lib Magazine (vol. 14, n° 7/8, juillet-août 08):

- Copyright Renewal, Copyright Restoration, and the Difficulty of Determining Copyright Status
It has long been assumed that most of the works published from 1923 to 1964 in the US are currently in the public domain. Both non-profit and commercial digital libraries have dreamed of making this material available. Most programs have recognized as well that the restoration of US copyright in foreign works in 1996 has made it impossible for them to offer to the public the full text of most foreign works. What has been overlooked up to now is the difficulty that copyright restoration has created for anyone trying to determine if a work published in the United States is still protected by copyright. This paper discusses the impact that copyright restoration of foreign works has had on US copyright status investigations, and offers some new steps that users must follow in order to investigate the copyright status in the US of any work. It argues that copyright restoration has made it almost impossible to determine with certainty whether a book published in the United States after 1922 and before 1964 is in the public domain. Digital libraries that wish to offer books from this period do so at some risk.

- Battle of the Buzzwords: Flexibility vs. Interoperability When Implementing PREMIS in METS
The PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata1 specifies the information that a repository needs to maintain for the long-term preservation of digital objects. Many institutions use the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) to implement metadata in digital library applications. Since an important goal is the exchange of objects with their associated metadata between repositories, many implementers of PREMIS are looking at METS as a container to include PREMIS metadata along with other information about and links to the digital objects. To do this, the ambiguities in using PREMIS with METS need to be clarified in a set of guidelines.

- A Format for Digital Preservation of Images: A Study on JPEG 2000 File Robustness
Digital preservation requires a strategy for the storage of large quantities of data, which increases dramatically when dealing with high resolution images. Typically, decision-makers must choose whether to keep terabytes of images in their original TIFF format or compress them. This can be a very difficult decision: to lose visual information though compression could be a waste of the money expended in the creation of the digital assets; however, by choosing to compress, the costs of storage will be reduced. Wavelet compression of JPEG 2000 produces a high quality image: it is an acceptable alternative to TIFF and a good strategy for the storage of large image assets.

- Researcher Profiles and Portfolios: Use Cases of the Facebook Service and the University of Queensland Researchers Service
The University of Queensland (UQ) maintains an online research profiling system, UQ Researchers,1 to showcase the expertise of its academic staff and postgraduate students. The site makes available detailed research profiles and evidence of expertise at various levels. It incorporates school, institute and centre research profiles, CV-type profiles for individual researchers, research project and publication details, and details of available research facilities. External users can search for topical areas and seek opportunities for research collaboration. The service is often used internationally by aspiring research higher degree students who are seeking to identify institutions or individual academics with research strength in their chosen area of study. The UQ Researchers site provides access not only to the expertise and experience of individual researchers but also to that of research groups across the University. Participation in the service is currently optional. There is no mandate for inclusion. [...]