Re: ALA / ALCTS / PARS REFORMATTING DG

[Henry Grunder <hgrunder@xxxxxxxx>]

Very interesting. I just attended a day's worth of sessions
dealing with many of the same concerns at the recently-concluded
American Institute for Conservation (AIC) meeting in Arlington. Would
it not be a useful exercise for all of the various fragmented,
Balkanized interest groups to work toward a "harmonic
convergence" rather than continue the pattern of redundant
effort? What I call the "Cherry Orchard" effect? If it is not
already clear enough, I note that the title of the session speaks
of "archives" yet "archives" are the turf and domain of yet
another sovereignty, the Society of American Archivists; who
continue to go (if they go at all) their merry independent way,
with a splendid disdain for both librarians and conservators.
According to Walter CYBULSKI:
> 
> American Library Association (ALA) Annual Meeting 1998
> Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS)
> Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS)
> 
> PARS Reformatting Discussion Group
> Sunday, June 28th
> 11:30 a.m.  - 1:00 p.m.
> Washington Hilton & Towers - Military Room
> 1919 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington DC
> 
> Topic:  MAKE STRAIGHT FOR THE ARCHIVES, FULL SCAN AHEAD: Recent developments in digital input quality and the long term preservation of digital records.
> 
> Louis H. Sharpe II of Picture Elements, Inc., Boulder, Colorado, and Thom Shepard of WGBH, Boston, Massachusetts, will be giving presentations and answering questions.  Mr. Sharpe will discuss his work on electronic grayscale de-skewing (correction of "skew" in scanned images) and "ribbon" or "flow-mode" scanning, in which an entire 100 ft. roll of 35mm microfilm can be scanned as an undifferentiated grayscale image.  Mr. Shepard's presentation will center on his work as Project Coordinator for the Universal Preservation Format (UPF) initiative, sponsored by the WGBH Educational Foundation and funded in part by the National Archives' National Historical Publications and Records Commission.  The UPF initiative proposes the use of a "self-described," platform-independent format, designed specifically for digital technologies, that is capable of storing compound content (the media itself and the information about it) for access today and into the indefinite future.
> 
> Moderator: Walter Cybulski, National Library of Medicine
> <Walter_Cybulski@xxxxxxxxxxx> / phone 301-496-2690
>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              !
!
  !
>                                                                                                                                                                     
>