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Takeaways from the Digitization Special Interest Group Meeting on Digital Preservation

The Digitization Special Interest Group, convened by Cynthia Tobar and Mike Handis (both at the Mina Rees Library, CUNY Graduate Center), met today to discuss digital preservation issues for libraries and archives. The meeting featured a panel presentation with John Mignault (New York Botanical Garden), Andrea Buchner (Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History), and Jennifer Vinopal (New York University).  It was a great discussion spanning workflows, technology solutions, and policy. Here are some of the resources the panelists recommended and handed out to participants:

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM JENNIFER VINOPAL 

Title: Digital Curation for Preservation
Authors: Tyler Walters & Katherine Skinner, for ARL
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/nrnt_digital_curation17mar11.pdf

Abstract: Digital curation refers to the actions people take to maintain and add value to digital information over its lifecycle, including the processes used when creating digital content. Digital preservation focuses on the “series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary.” In this report, we highlight the intersection of these actions, specifically focusing on how digital curation must facilitate the preservation of our shared digital memory 

Title: Digital Preservation of Moving Image Material?
Author: Howard Besser
Abstract:  An overview of the changes in production and distribution technology of moving image and its impact on the AV archiving process. Special attention is given to two paradigm shifts: from managing complete productions to asset management and from preservation of the physical object as an artifact to the preservation of individual content items. Although published in 2001, this article is still relevant today. 
http://www.prestocentre.eu/library/resources/digital-preservation-moving-image-material
Note: old, but still considered relevant by the author 

Title: SDS Final Report
Title Gloss: Supporting Digital Scholarship, a Mellon-funded project to explore library adoption of "born digital" content created during faculty-driven research
Summary: the report contains six sections and four appendices. The next section examines the problem that the project set for itself. Section 3 discusses the significant properties method. Section 4 looks at levels of collection. Section 5 discusses our work in collecting born-digital projects. Section 6 contains the results of an extensive investigation of policy issues.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sds/SDS_AR_2003.pdf
Note: old, but still considered relevant by the authors 

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM JOHN MIGNAULT

 The Digital Curation Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/digital-curation?hl=en&pli=1. Pretty active list and a good way to stay on top of what's going on in the field. Skews slightly geekwise.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library at http://biodiversitylibrary.org - BHL (of which my library is a founding member) is both an access and preservation project and is interesting from the standpoint of 12 variously sized libraries coordinating a preservation project for all their pre 1923 biodiversity literature.

Archivematica at http://archivematica.org - Archivematica is a new open source archiving and preservation system which already handles an impressive number of file formats. Interestingly it is distributed as a "virtual appliance" - a virtual machine that has the software already and installed and configured.

RECOMMENDATIONS FROM ANDREA BUCHNER

RLG/OCLC Working Group on Digital Archive Attributes (2002). Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/past/rlg/trustedrep/repositories.pdf 

Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (2002). The OAIS Reference Model. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf  

NISO Framework Advisory Group (2007). A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. Retrieved March 22, 2011http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/framework3.pdf

The Center for Research Libraries (2007). Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/pages/trac_0.pdf

Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access (2010). Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf

Library of Congress (2011). Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Digital Collections. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/

Digital Preservation Policies

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR( (2007). ICPSR Digital Preservation Policy Framework. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/curation/preservation/policies/dpp-framework.jsp

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR( (2007). Digital Preservation Policy Framework: Outline. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/ICPSR/curation/preservation/policies/dp-policy-outline.pdf

Library and Archives of Canada. Digital Preservation Policy (2006). Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/collection/003-200-e.html

National Library of Australia (2009). Digital Preservation Policy. Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.nla.gov.au/policy/digpres.html

Digital Imaging Standards

Puglia, Steven, Jeffrey Reed, and Erin Rhodes (2004). Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Materials for Electronic Access: Creation of Production Master Files – Raster Images. (2004). Retrieved March 22, 2011 http://www.archives.gov/preservation/technical/guidelines.pdf

Recommended Workshop

Nancy McGovern. Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems. Digital Preservation Workshop Sponsored by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)

 

Mashups, Management, and Copyright this March at METRO

Join METRO for one or more of three workshops this March for librarians, archivists, information professionals, and students interested in digital collection creation and management.

March 4, 2010
Library Mashups:
Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data

Instructor: Nicole Engard, Director of Open Source Education, ByWater Solutions
Time: 10:00am-1:00pm
Fee: $75 METRO; $50 myMETRO members; $100 non-members
Register and Information: http://bit.ly/axRg3W
Description: Nicole C. Engard, editor of "Library Mashups: Exploring new ways to deliver library data", will explain what mashups are, how they can be used and share examples from libraries around the world. In the first half of this workshop, attendees will learn about some of the tools they can use to mash up library data with content from the web to reach more patrons. Examples include using maps to enhance library data, using Flickr for digital collections and creating library websites with data from several information sources. After learning the basics and seeing examples from other libraries around the world, attendees will have a chance to create a website with WordPress.com pulling data from several sources on the web.

March 9, 2010
Planning and Managing Digital Projects

Instructor: Laurie Gemmill, Digital Program Services Manager, Lyrasis
Time: 10:00am-4:00pm
Fee: $150 METRO members; $100 myMETRO members; $200 non-members
Register and Information: http://bit.ly/ceqD0l
Description: This workshop covers all aspects of digital project planning, including: process development, project planning (including setting standards), identifying resources and budgets. The workshops will also address plan implementation, including developing workflow, quality control, collaboration, and evaluation.

March 17, 2010
Copyright for Digital Project Planning

Instructor: Linda Tadic, Professor, New York University
Time: 10:00am-4:00pm
Fee: $75 METRO members; $60 myMETRO members; $100non-members
Register and Information: http://bit.ly/9vfWW8
Description: Increased user demand for online content and wider acceptance of digitization as a preservation action requires librarians and archivists to become familiar with how copyright law intersects with their digital project planning. This workshop approaches copyright from the collections and project management perspective. An overview of Section 108 and how to analyze underlying or third-party rights in textual, visual, audio, and moving image content will be discussed. Metadata that can be captured as part of the legal due diligence process will be described in context so the purpose of the metadata is clear. We will perform exercises with common digital project scenarios.

For any questions, please email [email protected] or call Migdalia Cortes at 212.228.2320 x26.

Workshop Recap: Digital Preservation Tools, Systems, and Services

The following guest post comes from Timothy Ryan Mendenhall, a student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College, CUNY. He attended the third workshop in our Digital Preservation Workshop Series and agreed to share his recap here. 

On Thursday, January 28, Tyler Walters led a packed workshop at the METRO headquarters entitled Digital Preservation: Tools, Systems, and Services. After coffee and cookies, the morning got off to a brisk start with a quick overview of the theoretical and practical fundamentals of digital preservation, which are necessary to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of any digital preservation tool or initiative. But theory is of little use without practice, so Walters launched into a discussion of the types of implementations and strategies which have emerged to respond to the challenges posed by digital resources. As in the analog sphere, one of the major difficulties with digital resources is that there is no "one size fits all" preservation strategy or tool. Therefore, each institution must determine the proper fit for its own institutional profile. Accordingly, in the first exercise, workshop participants were asked to design a repository model for a made up institution with a diverse set of resources. This task proved much more challenging than it may sound, and my group found it difficult to get beyond some of the basic questions pertaining to copyright, policy, and budget concerns. Nonetheless, we did manage to sketch out some basic ideas, and the ensuing group discussion was fruitful.

After lunch, the imperative to enact sound preservation policy and initiatives for digital objects was thrown into stark relief when a bug in a single Power Point slide confounded the computer's operating system mid-presentation, threatening to shut down the visuals. After some fruitless wrangling with the system, Walters was about to abandon the digital presentation and lecture from printed handouts of the slides, when a workable solution presented itself—migration of the Power Point file to PDF. If such a failure to render a digital file can occur from a disconnect between two contemporary, presumably compatible computers and operating systems, imagine the difficulties in store decades down the line if information professionals don't act now!
   
The afternoon presentations, which focused on software systems for preservation repositories, such as FEDORA and Rosetta, on resource-sharing initiatives and digital asset management consortia such as MetaArchive and DuraCloud, and finally on micro-tools like JHOVE which hone in on specific tasks associated with the OAIS repository model, were of the greatest benefit to me as a participant. With such a wide variety of initiatives being tested right now, it can be overwhelming to get a handle on each individual project's goals, specializations, strengths and weaknesses. Out of a mass of confusing acronyms, the workshop helped participants understand the unique nature and scale of these initiatives, services, and tools. As with physical preservation strategies, certain tools fit certain repositories better than others, and before contracting with a vendor or committing to a digital asset management software, it is necessary to find right fit for your institution's collection. Thus a small specialized repository might be better suited to partner with MetaArchive than with a larger program like the Internet Archive, to give an example. The ensuing exercise, in which our small groups evaluated different softwares and initiatives to determine which was the best fit for our made up repository from Exercise 1, really did help us compare and contrast the different services available.
     
The program ended with a quick presentation by ExLibris representatives on their Rosetta software, developed in cooperation with the National Library of New Zealand. As we left the METRO Training Center, we might not have become experts on digital preservation, but at least we now all had a much better grasp on the available resources to get a program started, which might be the most daunting hurdle to overcome in digital preservation. 

Workshop Recap: Risk Assessment for Digital Collections

The following guest post comes from Elisabeth Stern, a graduate student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College, CUNY. She attended the second workshop in our Digital Preservation Workshop Series and agreed to share her recap here. 

The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) hosted the second of a three-part informational Digital Preservation Workshop Series on December 16, 2009. Like the first part of this series, this professional development program was led by Liz Bishoff of BCR and Tom Clareson of Lyrasis.  Both are seasoned professionals in the field of library science and have extensive experience with digital library initiatives at the regional, national, and global level. Bishoff is director of Digital & Preservation Services at BCR while Clareson serves as Senior Consultant at Lyrasis.   

This workshop, “Risk Assessment for Digital Collections,” focused on the methods that could be used by institutions to help guarantee the safety of their digital archives and collections.  Bishoff and Clareson stressed the importance of digital preservation risk assessment, and they carefully worked through a template outlining goals and guidelines for assessing risks to digital resources.

This Risk Assessment template covered 9 areas that institutions might examine in order to mitigate risk to their collections:

• The template advised developing a mission statement for the institution that includes long-term dependability of access to digital items.  This might include a description of what’s being collected, legal mandates, documentation, etc.
• The importance of having a proper inventory for a digital collection was explained thoroughly; including the consequences involved in having multiple file formats.
• The template advised institutions to question its organizational fitness.  Bishoff and Clareson stressed the importance of an institution’s non-financial resources; i.e. its staff and training of staff.
• Finances, however, are always important so the template illustrated the fact that one must figure the amount of financial resources needed from an institution in order the achieve projects pertaining to their digital repository.
• Legal issues were certainly emphasized.  Bishoff and Clareson explained that there could be severe consequence to a person and his institution if maintaining the contractual and legal rights to control a digital collection is inefficient or incorrect in some way.

After discussing the first five critical first-step areas for assessing risks to digital collections, Bishoff and Clareson defined good methods of preservation and responsibility that might be taken if one’s agency already has digital preservation policy in place:

• Strong emphasis was put on preservation and quality control.  Bishoff and Clareson explained that an institution must develop goals based on mission statements pertaining to the maintenance of the collection.  Areas to consider when creating these objectives could include file formats, decisions regarding the repository’s infrastructure, rules about emulation or migration, etc.
• For a digital collection, in terms of preservation and item accessibility, pertinent and accessible metadata may be the most important aspect.  The template strongly advises that institutions compose a statement regarding the role, use and creation of the metadata associated with the items in their institution’s collection.
• Once a collection has been established, its preservation is impossible without the proper, trained staff working in appropriate positions.  The roles and responsibilities associated with the upkeep of a digital collection must be well-defined and outlined. 
• Finally, Bishoff and Clareson outlined the need for evaluating and updating a collection.  They explained that monitoring will often show need for updates and revisions in plans, policies, technology, file formats, etc. 

During the question and answer period, people were very eager to share stores about the digital collections where they work and the methods being used at their institutions in attempt to improve organizational procedures, risk management, and disaster planning, for example.  It was extremely remarkable to witness people from all areas of the field talking about such similar issues and the problems associated with them.

When Ms. Bishoff spoke about assessing and managing the risks in one’s digital repository, she discussed conducting an audit of digital collections using DRAMBORA (Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment). DRAMBORA allows an auditor to inspect and review an institution’s digital collection and mitigate its risk. It appears to be an extremely useful tool for institutions interested in executing a self-audit.

During a live display of how DRAMBORA might be implemented, Clareson and Bishoff provided a deep explanation of digital risk assessment and disaster mitigation.  While work in the field is ongoing and mission-critical, it must be noted that Bishoff and Clareson warned that digital risk assessment is still an emerging field whose methods are unfinished and imperfect.  They explained that this is a rapidly changing field with new ideas being put forth daily, and advised staying current with the newest technologies and practices through more workshops, local and national discussion groups/ listservs, and trade journals.

A report from the third workshop in this series, “Digital Preservation Tools, Systems, and Services,” will be forthcoming on this blog.

PREMIS for Dummies?

Those of you who have spent any amount of time trying to digest the 224-page PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata may be pleased to know that there's help. Priscilla Caplan (Florida Center for Library Automation, for the Library of Congress) has written a more accessible "Understanding Premis" document to ease folks into the actual implementation of PREMIS. From the introduction:

This guide is a relatively brief overview of the PREMIS preservation metadata standard. It will not give you enough information to implement PREMIS, but it will give you some idea of what PREMIS is all about. For many readers, this will be enough. For those who do need to master the PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, this guide may serve as a gentle introduction that makes the larger document feel more familiar.

Read Understanding PREMIS
Full PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata