Early Industry Adopters: Government Agencies in the Digital Marketplace

When we look at the advantages we gain by migrating our intellectual properties from the physical paper world to the Digital Marketplace, it is hard to find better cost savings, return-on-investment, and increased business operational and end-user efficiencies, than those realized by early adopters: academic institutions, government agencies and law firms.

Our Machinery of Government is comprised of federal, national and state agencies, established for the oversight and administration of specific functions to preserve our history, and our way of life. These government agencies include everything from our national security and justice departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, the US Postal Service, Bureau of ATF&E, National Aeronautics and Space Administration to our Library of Congress, where our national history archives are preserved. The assets created and housed within these agencies could easily be considered among our national treasures.

Its worth mentioning, that LAC Group works with all of the government agencies mentioned above, as a business partner in the Digital Marketplace. The Library of Congress specifically is an important relationship for us, not only as a client, but also as a partner in standards for all digital libraries, as all other industries follow suit.    

Some of the primary standards (using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium) include:

·      MARCXML and MODS – metadata to describe the content of a digital item

·      METS and MIX - metadata formats for media and environment of a digital item

·      PREMIS - metadata format supporting preservation activities for a digital item

·      SRU - protocol for search and retrieval in the digital environment

All of these standards are maintained in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress, and available online now, for 312,000,000 Americans to access, any time, and virtually from anywhere.

Join me next week as I continue my discussion of digitization benefits and standards.

"A good library is a place, a palace where the lofty spirits of all nations and generations meet."
– Samuel Niger