reviews Book Reviews 177 177 Book Reviews Beagrie, Neil. National Digital Preservation Initiatives: An Overview of Developments in Australia, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom and of Related Inter- national Activity. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources and Library of Congress, 2003. 51p. $20 (ISBN 1932326006). For every librarian and archivist, the digi- tal age is upon us. We may not yet have left the era of the book, but we find our- selves entering new territory with many of us feeling that we are unprepared for the journey ahead. Are we crossing the digital divide or standing on the preci- pice about to be swallowed whole by a sea of bits and bytes? From patron expec- tations that everything should be made available online to the stresses of keep- ing abreast with rapidly changing tech- nology and the development of stan- dards, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Sometimes it seems difficult to under- stand how best to navigate in this digital world. One thing is certain: It is impor- tant to stay connected to what other ar- chives and libraries are doing with regard to digital projects. The published report, National Digital Preservation Initiatives, by Neil Beagrie provides an excellent over- view of digital projects and challenges in Australia, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. The National Digital Information Infra- structure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) commissioned a study of inter- national digital preservation initiatives for the purposes of understanding the pres- ervation efforts and challenges faced by information professionals outside North America and for gaining an awareness of major developments in these other coun- tries. The survey was intended to provide a framework for understanding the var- ied national contexts and digital initiatives in hopes of learning from colleagues’ ef- forts, in other national libraries to preserve digital materials, and for explor- ing avenues for collaboration. The report is a high-level sum- mary of Beagrie’s findings and is not intended as a guide for best practice; it is an excellent over- view of the current trends and challenges facing us all. Beagrie identified several underlying trends affecting the institutions charged with preserving information in this digi- tal world; they are summarized below. Even with the technological advances of recent years, digital information has not replaced traditional means of publication and information storage but, rather, has added to it and thus strained the resources of national libraries and archives charged with storing and preserving both tradi- tional and digital information. Digital in- formation is fragile and dependent upon software and hardware that rapidly be- comes outdated. Digital information is distributed differently, with the library holding a license rather than a physical copy. Furthermore, digital distribution goes beyond national boundaries, com- plicating intellectual property rights and confusing the role of the national library in the preservation of information. Finally, the increasing role of sound and moving- image recordings as part of the cultural record was examined. Although the national libraries in these four countries have different operational contexts and missions, in the survey they were able to identify several similar con- cerns that crossed national boundaries and applied to their varied preservation initiatives. They stressed the importance of collaborative efforts but recognized that collaboration required an enormous com- mitment in time and leadership and di- plomacy for it to work well. The impor- tance of staff repeatedly recurred in their comments, indicating that it is important to invest in staff training and to build on 178 College & Research Libraries March 2004 the skills that your staff members possess. They also note that financial support for digital preservation needs to come as a continuing commitment from within the institution rather than depending on tem- porary, outside funding for preservation projects. The digital environment neces- sitates that national libraries be more pro- active in working with publishers of digi- tal materials and with technology provid- ers in finding private-market solutions for digital preservation. These national librar- ies recognize the special problems asso- ciated with the storage of digital audio- visual media, and the report summarizes the various initiatives undertaken to care for sound and moving-image materials. Finally, the survey identified that there was no ultimate solution to this digital dilemma and that practice and policy would evolve over time. The Beagrie report offers librarians and archivists in all settings a practical over- view of the issues related to the preserva- tion of digital media, and it presents ideas and lessons learned from various projects in Australia and Europe. The report gives a context for planning a digital preserva- tion project but is not a practical how-to- guide identifying standards and methods of best practice. It does offer important in- sight into the larger problem, which will help us not to get lost in the details or caught up in the excitement of what tech- nology is capable of providing. A side ben- efit of the report is a wonderful list of in- formation organizations and projects with their associated acronyms. I think that my favorite was LOCKSS or Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe.—Norma Myers, East Ten- nessee State University. A Compelling Interest: Examining the Evi- dence on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities. Eds. Mitchell J. Chang, Daria Witt, James Jones, and Kenji Hakuta. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Pr., 2003. 246p. alk. paper, cloth $49.50 (ISBN 0804740348); paper $19.95 (ISBN 0804740356). LC 2001-151608. The year 2004 marks the fiftieth anniver- sary of the historic Supreme Court deci- sion Brown v. the Board of Education of To- peka, Kansas, which reversed Plessy v. Ferguson and made the common practice of racial segregation illegal. In 2003, the consideration of race in higher education admissions policies continued to be a volatile issue. The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School, once again thrusting the debate surrounding diversity and affirmative action to the forefront of America’s system of higher education. Editors Chang, Witt, Jones, and Hakuta, all knowledgeable professionals in the social sciences, have compiled a panel of race relations and diversity ex- perts from across the country to “explore the knowledge base on race and inter- group relations in colleges and universi- ties.” The result of their effort is A Com- pelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universi- ties. The introduction, written by Chang et al., asks a number of probing questions: Are standardized tests such as the SAT the best way to measure academic worth and potential? Who benefits from racially diverse campuses, and in what ways? Should individual students all be judged by the same criteria regardless of group membership? Is affirmative action inher- ently discriminatory? These questions and more set the stage for an exploration of the racial dynamics at work in colleges and universities. The editors present what the “empirical research has to say about the educational benefits of diversity” and identify what they deem are the “three major parts of the diversity debate: fair- ness, merit, and the benefits of diversity.” Through an extensive review of the so- cial science literature, A Compelling Inter- est presents information on what colleges and universities can and should do to implement and sustain initiatives that “promote the unique benefits that diver- sity provides.” Presented in six chapters, A Compel- ling Interest covers a broad range of top- ics, examining many of the relevant is- << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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