The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries and the University of Colorado at Boulder are co-sponsoring a lecture by Paul Conway from the School of Information at the University of Michigan on their IMLS funded research on the quality and usefulness of preserved digital content done through large scale digitization projects. Seating is limited so be sure to RSVP if you are interested. Where: University of Colorado at Boulder, UMC 245 (University Memorial Center) When: Friday, October 7, 2-4pm Cost: Free RSVP to: Geri Virtue ([log in to unmask]) Campus Map: http://www.colorado.edu/campusmap/map.html?bldg=UMC Validating Quality in Large-Scale Book Digitization: Early Research Findings Digital archives accept and preserve digital content for long-term use. Increasingly, stakeholders are creating large-scale digital repositories to ingest surrogates of archival resources or digitized books whose intellectual value as surrogates may exceed that of the original sources themselves. Although digital repository developers have expended significant effort to establish the trustworthiness of repository procedures and infrastructures, relatively little attention has been paid to the quality and usefulness of the preserved content itself. This presentation outlines the design and early findings from a two-year project that is designed to test measures of quality for digital content preserved in HathiTrust, a large scale preservation repository. The presentation concludes with comments on the implications of assessing archival quality within a digital preservation context. The collaborative project is supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Paul Conway is associate professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. His research encompasses the digitization of cultural heritage resources, particularly photographic archives, the use of digitized resources by experts in a variety of humanities contexts, and the measurement of image and text quality in large-scale digitization programs. He has extensive research, teaching and administrative experience in archives and preservation fields and has made major contributions over the past 30 years to the literature on archival users and use, preservation management, and digital imaging technologies. He has held positions at the National Archives and Records Administration (1977-87; 1989-92), the Society of American Archivists (1988-89), Yale University (1992-2001), and Duke University (2001-06). In 2005, Conway received the American Library Association's Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award for his contributions to the preservation field. He is a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists. George Machovec Interim Executive Director Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries 3801 E. Florida, Suite 515 Denver, CO 80210 [log in to unmask] (303) 759-3399 x.101