Welcome

Photos of Larryblakeley
http://www.royblakeley.name/larry_blakeley/larryblakeley_photos_jpeg.htm

(Contact Info: larry at larryblakeley dot com)

Important Note: You will need to click this icon to download the free needed to view most of the images on this Web site - just a couple of clicks and you're "good to go."

I manage this Web site and the following Web sites: Leslie (Blakeley) Adkins - my oldest daughter

Lori Ann Blakeley (June 20, 1985 - May 4, 2005) - my middle daughter

Evan Blakeley- my youngest child

is a diverse nonprofit coalition of arts, humanities and social science organizations created to assure leadership from the cultural community in the evolution of the digital environment. The Initiative began in 1993 as a collaborative project of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the Getty Information Institute, an operating program of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Through its working groups, NINCH has responded to calls from the field for particular tools to assist practitioners in their current work.

The database is a response to the call for peer-reviewed information on humanities computing projects that would focus as much on research, methodology and software as on "product." That is, the database is not primarily a listing of all available resources for the humanist (as is, for example, the Humbul Humanities Hub of the UK's Resource Discovery Network) but rather as a tool for working scholars and funders to track the work done in a given area and to find reusable resources.

The University of Michigan, Rice University Library and the University of Virginia have contributed personnel and resources; their professional library cataloguers ensure consistency and reliability of information. The database prototype, available in 2002, was seeded with data from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Getty Grant Program.

Below are four options for further information and material:

ACCESS TO THE PROTOTYPE. This link takes you directly to the Search Interface of the Database Prototype where you may search or browse currently available records.

BACKGROUND ON THE PROJECT. An introduction, rationale and history of the project, together with a listing of the people involved in the project

GUIDELINES & HELP DOCUMENTATION. Materials to assist project directors complete records currently being prepared for entry into the database

NINCH WORKING GROUP PAPERS. Reports on Meetings and Workflow Outlines

The International Database is to contain peer-reviewed information on research and resource-building projects that make significant use of humanities computing methods. Projects that collect, encode, analyze or present source materials and those developing computing tools would be considered. Project websites would as a rule be used in documentation of projects, but the International Database aims to go far beyond the kind and depth of information usually available on the Web. It would not deal with electronic publishing as such, since there are already resources dedicated to tracking and cataloguing these.

Due diligence will be done to ensure that this project is not duplicating other work and due publicity will be given to ensure that others in the field know of the development of the project. One current, related project is a "Directory of ARL Digital Library Projects," conducted for the Association of Research Libraries by a team at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Guide to Good Practice in the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials (a living document)

By the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII), University of Glasgow, and the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH).

The Guide was first imagined and seriously discussed in 1998.

Back then it was clear that high-level guidance was needed (engaging multiple perspectives across different institution types and formats) to make sense of the plethora of materials coming out on information and technical standards, metadata, imaging, project management, digital asset management, sustainability, preservation strategies, and more. NINCH had been created in 1996 to be an advocate and leader across the cultural heritage community in making our material universally accessible via the new digital medium and this project seemed tailor-made for our new coalition.

The NINCH Guide is a practical online guide for those in all sectors of the community who are digitizing and networking cultural resources. A NINCH Working Group representing all sectors of the community created a set of six core principles defining good practice. The group then outlined the scope of a Guide that would be based on a survey of current practice and organized as a decision tree for the user.

A team led by Seamus Ross from the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute of The University of Glasgow was hired to conduct interviews with a wide range of digitization sites and to write the Guide.

Thirteen sections follow the broad life-cycle of digital projects: from Resource Assessment, Selection of Materials and Digital Rights Management, through the technical questions of digitizing all formats, to the issues of Sustainability, User Assessment, Digital Asset Management and Preservation. In addition to the Guide itself, a Bibliography, an edited set of interview reports and the interview instrument will be available.

The Guide will be made available initially in a flat text file and incrementally deploying an innovative presentation interface enabling the user to navigate the text through a layered decision-tree format. This project has been made possible through a grant from the Getty Grant Program.

Future developments and discoveries will add to and refine it.

The Guide was first imagined and seriously discussed in 1998.

Back then it was clear that high-level guidance was needed (engaging multiple perspectives across different institution types and formats) to make sense of the plethora of materials coming out on information and technical standards, metadata, imaging, project management, digital asset management, sustainability, preservation strategies, and more. NINCH had been created in 1996 to be an advocate and leader across the cultural heritage community in making our material universally accessible via the new digital medium and this project seemed tailor-made for our new coalition.

Our task and goal, as a leadership and advocacy organization, is to build a framework within which these different elements can effectively collaborate to build a networked cultural heritage.

The Group thus proposed that Good Practice will:

1.    Optimize interoperability of materials.

Digitization projects should enable the optimal interoperability between source materials from different repositories or digitization projects.

2.    Enable broadest use.

Projects should enable multiple and diverse uses of material by multiple and diverse audiences.

3.    Address the need for the preservation of original materials.

Projects should incorporate procedures to address the preservation of original materials.

4.    Indicate strategy for life-cycle management of digital resources.

Projects should plan for the life-cycle management of digital resources, including the initial assessment of resources, selection of materials and digital rights management; the technical questions of digitizing all formats; and the long-term issues of sustainability, user assessment, digital asset management and preservation.

5.    Investigate and declare intellectual property rights and ownership.

Ownership and rights issues need to be investigated before digitization commences and findings should be reported to users.

6.    Articulate intent and declare methodology.

All relevant methods, perspectives and assumptions used by project staff should be clarified and made explicit.