VRC: Preservation Risk Management for Web Resources

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VRC Preservation Risk Management for Web
Resources Nancy Y. McGovern, Information Day 2004
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VRC Funding

• Part of a 4(5)-year NSF-funded project
• supported by the Digital Libraries Initiative,
  Phase 2 (Grant No. IIS-9905955, the Prism
  Project)
• Also partially funded by a grant from
  The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• Political Communications Web Archiving
  http//www.crl.edu/content/PolitWeb.htm

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Current Team

• Anne R. Kenney, Research Advisor
• Nancy Y. McGovern, Project Manager
• Richard Entlich, Sr. Researcher
• William R. Kehoe, Technology Coordinator
• Ellie Buckley, Digital Research Specialist

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Research

• "Preservation Risk Management for Web Resources
  Virtual Remote Control in Cornell's Project
  Prism"
• by Kenney, McGovern, et al, in DLib Magazine,
  January 2002
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/january02/kenney/01kenney
  .html
• "Virtual Remote Control
• Building a Preservation Risk Management Toolbox
  for Web Resources"
• by McGovern, Kenney, et al, in DLib Magazine,
  April 2004
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/april04/mcgovern/04mcgove
  rn.html

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Purpose

• Risk Management Records Management
• Passive (monitor) ? active (capture)
• Lifecycle support selection to capture
• Human (curator) tool interaction
• Structural and change models of resources
• Promulgate preservation practices
• Understand Web resources and risks

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VRC Stages

• Identification
• Analysis
• Appraisal
• Strategy
• Detection
• Response

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Human Tool Scenario

• 1. Identification
• Human identify Web resources of interest
• Toolbox verify list, expand list
• 2. Analysis
• Toolbox crawl sites, generate characterizations
• Human accept/revise characterizations
• 3. Appraisal
• Human define/review attributes of value
• Toolbox support appraisal, capture results

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Human Tool Scenario

• 4. Strategy
• Human develop/review strategies
• Toolbox plot appraisals, compile strategies
• 5. Detection
• Human define risk parameters
• Toolbox identify/assess risks propose responses
• 6. Response
• Toolbox propose risk response based on rules
  automatic response for some risk categories
• Human monitor automated responses select
  response based on recommended actions

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Risk Display Grid
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Monitoring Layers
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Web Crawling

• traversing Web sites via links
• a capability common to most tools, but with
  different purposes and results
• the VRC toolkit needs more than just Web crawlers

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VRC Toolbox

• Identify tools for each stage (adopt, adapt,
  define, devise)
• Leverage existing apply to longevity
• Analyze steps - automated and manual
• Formalize protocol
• Provide a framework to map existing, plug gaps
  with developments

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VRC Toolkit

• Development steps
• extensive literature review
• development of tool categories
• definition of categories and test protocols
• survey existing tools for evaluation
• select representative for testing
• highlight findings in category summaries

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Tool Categories

• Link checkers
• Site monitors
• Web crawlers
• Site managers
• Change Detectors
• Site Mappers (includes visualization)
• HTML Validators

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Strengths / Weaknesses

• Positive evaluations of model
• Addresses organizational context for method
  link to selection
• Leverage existing tools gap analysis for missing
• Move from method to toolkit demonstrate
  applicability

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Current Activities

• VRC Preservation Risk Management Program
• Map stages to tool requirements
• Apply to potential organizational scenarios
• Enable risk/response scenario development
• Toolkit
• Revise and finish populating tool inventory
• Maintain VRC Control Site

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Future Projects

• Develop approach for building collection
  capturing Web blogs and other Internet
  communications
• State Government Web site case study
• Demonstrators for toolkit scenarios

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Availability

• VRC Test Site public
• http//irisresearch.library.cornell.edu/control/
• Full access to Tool Inventory upon request
• Contact nm84_at_cornell.edu
• http//irisresearch.library.cornell.edu/VRC/