Deposit, save, share, find that content and data: new UC3 services launch
The University of California Curation Center (UC3) is excited to be launching three new services September 15 and 17, 2010. They include Merritt (named for CDL’s close neighbor, Lake Merritt), a tool for the UC community to manage, archive and share their content safely, persistently and for the long term, EZID (ee-zee-eye-dee), and JHOVE2. EZID provides researchers a way to persistently identify and access a scholar’s research such as datasets, critical to the long-term distribution and availability of the work, and JHOVE2 is improved software for managing digital collections. UC campus colleagues have also contributed to the enhancements of these tools.
Please contact UC3 for more information and refer researchers with long term access and preservation needs at <http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/contact.html>.
(These services are a part of UC3’s strategy for curation micro-services. Learn more at:
<http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/curation/index.html>.)
For more details about Merritt and EZID, see below:
Merritt http://merritt.cdlib.org/ (and for additional information, http://cdlib.org/services/uc3/merritt/ ) is a new cost-effective service that provides the UC community with an easy to use tool to manage, archive, and share their content. Merritt provides significant features for valuable digital objects:
* permanent storage
* access via persistent URLs
* tools for long-term management
* easy-to-use interface for deposit and updates
Merritt is a next generation service from CDL’s UC Curation Center (UC3) (working with the UC libraries) that provides a trustworthy and dependable environment for the long-term management of a range of digital materials including images, videos, datasets, texts, and more. Merritt enables collection managers to take control of their materials and deposit, archive, share, and disseminate information via an easy to use interface or API. While UC3 will continue to manage content arising from historical partnerships with the UC libraries, the new features of Merritt will allow UC3 to extend the reach of its services to new UC constituencies such as museums, archives, research groups, academic departments, and data centers.
EZID (ee-zee-eye-dee) http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/ezid/index.html is a service providing researchers and others a way to manage identifiers persistently for datasets, files, and resources of all types. The service is available via a machine to machine programming interface (an API) and as a web user interface.
What’s so important about identifier management? Persistent identification of and access to a scholar’s research is critical to the long-term distribution and availability of her or his work. EZID lets you update not only a description of the work, but also its “forwarding address,” so no matter where the work moves, the citable, clickable link to the resource will continue to provide access.
Currently, EZID allows you to acquire DataCite <www.datacite.org <http://www.datacite.org> > Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) or Archival Resource Keys (ARKs), and we plan to add other identifier schemes going forward. In the future, we will also support object deposit options.
All disciplines can benefit from using EZID. It transcends domain boundaries and is applicable to the sciences, humanities and the social sciences. It will work with a range of data types including numerical, images, text sequences, text, digital audio, digital video, modeling data and more.
JHOVE2 http://jhove2.org JHOVE is software widely used in libraries, archives, and museums for managing digital collections. In 2008, CDL, Stanford University Libraries and Portico were awarded a grant from the Library of Congress, through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), to develop the next generation of this software, called JHOVE2. JHOVE2 improves the design of the existing architecture of JHOVE, adds key enhancements, and includes new modules that support preservation-related processes.
JHOVE2 is a powerful tool for determining important properties about a digital file:
1) What is its file format?
2) Is it valid?
3) What are its technical properties?
4) Does it conform to local policy rules?
This information is critical to the long-term preservation of digital collections.
The software is open source, available at <http://jhove2.org>. There have been several beta releases in past 2 years. The next beta release will be Friday, September 17. This release is meant primarily for developers interested in reviewing the current state of the code. A production release of the JHOVE2 application will follow in October. More information can be found on the JHOVE2 website: <http://jhove2.org>.
Please also see the flyer for EZID and Merritt’s User Documentation.