Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Systems and Stewardship (DSS) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DSS Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.
Digitization Activities
Historic Maryland Newspapers Project
On April 18, the Historic Maryland Newspaper Project participated in UMD’s first annual Social Justice Day. Presenting a poster titled “‘Women of Today’ An Overview of Women in Historic Maryland Newspapers,” project manager Rebecca Wack and student assistant Alex Carolan spoke with conference attendants about the HMNP, Chronicling America, and the value of viewing history through the eyes of those who lived it.
Synergies Among African American History and Culture (AADHum)
The AADHum project’s first large shipment is off to the vendor. Scott Pennington, Justin Hosbey, and Will Thomas from MITH coordinated with Stephanie Smith from Driskell to get almost 13,000 pages out the door. These materials will return and be available for MITH DH Incubators in the Fall. Some of the interesting highlights from the shipped materials include documentation of Black Trade Union Conferences from the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the AFL-CIO National Urban Coalition’s materials around riots in the late 1960s.
Other Digitization Activities
In a partnership with MSPAL and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies (LIMS), DCMR has been awarded a Bay Area Video Coalition Preservation Access grant for the digitization of VHS and BETA tapes from the LIMS collection. The tapes have been in storage for years and cover a wide range of materials, everything from movement choirs to lectures. Digitization of the tapes will afford researchers a unique look into the history of the Laban/Bartenieff Institute.
Robin Pike began meeting with collection managers to plan the FY18 vendor-based digitization projects funded through the DIC project proposal process. The DIC funded 17 projects, and Pike will present on them at a future Library Assembly meeting.
Student digitization assistant Marisa Gilman inspected the quality of 1,002 digitization handwritten items from the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) research and education center. The sensitive material documented terrorist activities around the world throughout the 1980s. Eric Cartier uploaded 19 volumes of the CIO News periodical, spanning the late 1930s through the early 1950s, to the Internet Archive. Student digitization assistants Becca Mena and Marisa Gilman inspected the quality of 237 foreign maps from the general maps collection in McKeldin. Student digitization assistant Cecilia Franck inspected the quality of 23 videos and films that will be included in the upcoming Labor in America exhibit in Hornbake Library, and began inspection of the first of four batches of FY17 Diamondback newspapers. All of these projects were funded through the DIC project proposal process.
Digital Programs and Initiatives
Terps Publish
On April 11, UMD Libraries hosted the inaugural Terps Publish event.
The student publisher roundtable, moderated by student leaders of The Left Bench, was attended by students from The Diamondback, Mitzpeh, Powerlines, and The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, as well as individual students interested in founding a publication, and staff from UMD Libraries, the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and University Marketing and Communications.
Many more students and staff attended the publications fair on the Portico, which took place immediately after the student roundtable.
Terps Publish, modeled on similar initiatives at Georgetown University, Ohio University, and Dartmouth, is a collaboration between DPI, University Archives, and Libraries Communications.
GA Update
GA David Durden continued working on the internal Libraries contracts inventory, and volunteered at the University Libraries tent for Maryland Day.
Software Development
ArchivesSpace – We are pleased to announce that ArchivesSpace, an archives information management system, has moved from being a hosted application to a core application with full development support available. As part of this process the ArchivesSpace VM received some maintenance support and improvements. We are also working on implementing new features requested by Special Collections and University Archives.
Hippo – Released version 10.2.4-0 which contains a number of minor fixes as well as a several vendor provided security updates for the CMS. Continued development of the new Libi; completed majority of the feature development for Database Finder for the UMD Student Newspapers public interface, which are both scheduled for release on June 5.
User and System Support
Windows 10
USS thanks everyone that was brave enough to volunteer to be early testers of Windows 10. When deploying a new OS, there will certainly be issues with the various applications staff use for their work. Getting the opportunity to see and resolve these issues has help us greatly for when we begin to deploy to the rest of the staff. Speaking about the deployment of Windows 10, we will begin the deployment to all staff tentatively starting the middle of May. We will send an email to staff as soon as we know when we will begin. Also, we will send out emails with instructions that need to be done by staff, before the migration to Windows 10, to help the migration go as quick and painless as possible. Keep a lookout for more information to come from the Helpdesk.
Makerspace
The MakerSpace was open to the public on Maryland Day. Preston and Yitzy was there to host about 450 people between 10am-1pm. They had 3D printing and Oculus Rift demonstrations, as well as brief explanations about the mission of the Makerspace. They also handed out the very popular mini Testudo statue 3D prints. After closing at 1pm, Preston noticed a young girl and her friend trying to look inside. The local 11th grade high school student was visually impaired. Preston spent 30 minutes with her in a 1-on-1 demonstration of the Makerspace. She was excited to have such an experience and was also thrilled to notice that the Makerspace has accessibility items. She was impressed with the large format keyboards and the touch screen PC!
Google Docs Phishing Scam
On May 3, 2017, the world was infected by a Google Docs phishing attack. The attack took control of user’s Gmail accounts to send out the spam link to user’s address books. Google was able to remove the weakness in Google Apps to stop the phishing attack within one hour of it starting. However, within that one hour, millions of accounts were compromised across the world.
Google believes the only thing accessed was users contact information, no other data was exposed. For those that clicked the approval to authorize “Google Docs” to read, send, and delete emails, there may be a fake Google Docs app in your account. If you haven’t already checked and deleted the fake app, please follow these instructions:
- Go to https://myaccount.google.com/permissions and look to see if there is an application called “Google Docs”. That is not a legitimate application, and you should remove the application.
- To remove the application, click the application name “Google Docs” and then the “REMOVE” button”
- DivIT working to remove the application automatically for all users.
- As this time we do not believe your password has been compromised, but if you are concerned you can change your password at password.umd.edu.
Please note, If you are unsure as to the credibility of a message you receive, contact the sender by phone to verify.
USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium
Support to USMAI
The CLAS team responded to 87 Aleph Rx submissions and 27 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in April.
LNDL EZproxy/Shibboleth Transition
CLAS has been working with Loyola Notre Dame Library (LNDL) to move them to a USMAI-provided instance of EZproxy and also implement Shibboleth authentication for EZproxy and login to the Aleph OPAC. Shibboleth authentication work requires working with both campuses to authenticate EZproxy and PDS (the Ex Libris service that manages OPAC authentication) against their Shibboleth Identity Providers. For EZproxy, members of the CLAS team are reviewing LNDL’s existing EZproxy configuration and copying configurations (including stanzas for all of LNDL’s licensed e-resources) into the new EZproxy instance. The switchover is scheduled for May 25th. LNDL’s patrons will benefit from being able to use their campus logins for e-resource access and OPAC features rather than their library barcode.
USMAI Events
CLAS team members were kept busy with several USMAI events in April. David Wilt attended the Annual Circ Meeting on April 28th and updated attendees on CLAS activities. Linda Seguin attended the Metadata Subgroup Forum on April 17th and presented on Aleph’s bibliographic loaders. Joseph Koivisto attended the Reporting & Analytics Subgroup’s Google Analytics training on April 27th and gave a lightning talk on the use of Google Tag Manager to assist in tracking additional metadata on bitstream downloads in MD-SOAR.
Staffing
Conferences, workshops and professional development
Terry Owen and Robin Pike presented at the Spring 2017 Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) in Newark, NJ on April 21. Many MARAC presentations from previous conferences are available in DRUM.
Pike’s article “Funding a Future for Digital Collections at University of Maryland Libraries” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Digital Media Management. Pike also collaborated with Doug McElrath (SCUA) and Anna Kephart (Coordinator, Southern Maryland Studies Center, College of Southern Maryland) on a chapter submitted to the book Librarianship and Genealogy, pending publication in 2017.
Endangered Data Week
During the week of April 17-21, members of DSS, MITH, and the iSchool held events in conjunction with Endangered Data Week, an international event dedicated to raising discourse on threats to data security and preservation. These events included a interdisciplinary panel on the complex topic of endangered data for researchers, archivists, and conservators; a hands-on workshop dedicated to personal data archiving practices; and a hosted webinar on accessibility of government data and public accountability.
In a hands-on workshop about digital preservation tools and techniques, David Durden and Joshua Westgard, together with Joseph Koivisto and colleagues from MITH and the iSchool, introduced participants to the key concepts and strategies for ensuring the integrity of digital assets, techniques that are equally useful for institutions and individuals who have important digital content to protect from loss.
Event organizers, conveners, and contributors include Kate Dohe, David Durden, Joseph Koivisto, Adam Kriesberg, Purdom Lindblad, Trevor Muñoz, Kelley O’Neal, Josh Westgard, and Amy Wickner.
We are pleased to announce an exciting new event at UMD—Terps Publish! Designed to showcase student publishing at UMD, this event will bring together student editors and writers from publications across the campus for a discussion of publishing issues, followed by a fair showcasing current publications.
