Introduction to Digital Preservation

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Introduction to Digital Preservation

• Tim Au Yeung
• March 14, 2007

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Introduction

• Quick Bio
• Managed aspects of the digitization program at
  the Library for the past 8 years
• Member, Technical Committee, AlouetteCanada
• Chair, Network Infrastructure Working Group
• Researcher, AlouetteCanada Metadata Toolkit
  Project (CCOP funding)
• Member, Technical Committee, Synergies Project
  (CFI funding)
• Board Member, Museum Computer Network
• Member, Technical Working Group, Lois Hole
  Campus Alberta Digital Library Digitization
  Committee

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Outline

• Definition
• Ways of understanding digital preservation
• Current work
• Future directions
• Activities at the University of Calgary

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• What is digital preservation?

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What is Digital Preservation?

• Digital preservation is defined as the
  managed activities necessary for ensuring both
  the long-term maintenance of a bytestream and
  continued accessibility of its contents.
• (RLG/OCLC, Trusted Digital Repositories
  Attributes and Responsibilities)

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What is Digital Preservation?

• Managed Activities
• Implies
• Human action
• Coordinated effort
• Multiple and successive tasks

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What is Digital Preservation?

• Maintenance of Bytestream
• Mechanical preservation
• Digital data gt physical media
• Physical media gt physical institutions

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What is Digital Preservation?

• Access to Content
• Semantic preservation
• Access implies
• Findable
• Viewable in current context

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3 Views of Digital Preservation

• The Life Cycle approach
• The Systems-Responsibilities approach
• The Challenges approach

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Life Cycle Approach
Acquisition
Creation
Ingest
Metadata
Access
Storage
(Lifecycle Information for E-Literature Project)
Preservation
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Systems-Responsibilities Approach
From the Cornell Digital Preservation Management
Tutorial
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• The Challenges Approach
• The default for digital information is not to
  survive (Howard Besser)

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Challenges

• The Viewing Problem

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Challenges

• The Scrambling Problem

Compression
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Challenges

• The Inter-relation Problem

About
Search
Bios
Services
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Challenges

• The Custodial Problem

Library 1
Library 2
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Challenges

• The Translation Problem

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• Current Work

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Current Work

• Refreshing
• Traditional IT approach to archiving -- copy
  from one media format to another
• Periodic verification of data (checksums)
• Media longevity analysis
• Automated duplication
• LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)

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Current Work

• Migration
• Moving from one format to another format
• Risk assessment (INFORM)
• Format registries
• Harvard Global Digital Format Registry
• PRONOM
• Open standards
• Human readable formats

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Current Work

• Emulation
• Rather than changing the records, moving the
  underlying environment into the new environment
• CAMiLEON and the BBC Domesday project
• The Universal Virtual Computer (National Library
  of the Netherlands and IBM)
• Strengths
• Mitigates the risk of working with individual
  items
• Reduces the amount of work necessary
• Critiques
• Not a living environment

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Current Work

• Preservation Metadata
• Effective management of all but the crudest
  forms of digital preservation is likely to be
  facilitated by the creation, maintenance, and
  evolution of detailed metadata in support of the
  preservation process. (OCLC/RLG, Preservation
  Metadata for Digital Objects)
• Metadata for managing preservation activities
  (PREMIS)
• Packaging for Digital Objects (METS)
• Submission Information Package
• Archival Information Package
• Dissemination Information Package

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Current Work

• Persistent Identification
• Permanent locators for access to digital objects
• Uniform Resource Names (URN)
• Persistent URLs (PURL)
• Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)
• Archival Resource Keys (ARK)
• The Handle System

Repository
Resolver
Requester
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Current Work

• Trusted Digital Repositories
• Attributes
• Compliance with the Reference Model for an Open
  Archival Information System (OAIS)
• Administrative responsibility
• Organizational viability
• Financial sustainability
• Technological and procedural suitability
• System security
• Procedural accountability
• Certification

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Unexplored Areas

• Validation
• Empirical evidence on the risk of loss
• Validation of metadata elements
• Effectiveness of strategies

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Unexplored Areas

• Human Factors
• Situational awareness
• Technology watches and obsolescence risk
• Repository management
• Collaboration, communication and chain of custody
• Error and impact on preservation activities

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Activity at U. Calgary

• Persistent Identification
• Metadata Creation
• AlouetteCanada Metadata Toolkit
• Trusted Repositories
• Synergies / E-Journals
• Institutional Repository

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Questions?