Preserving Digital Collections

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Preserving Digital Collections

• Andrea Goethals
• Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA)

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Outline

• FCLA?
• The Motivation to Preserve
• Preservation Key
• FCLA Digital Archive
• Digital Preservation Infrastructure

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The FCLA

• Has 46 full-time staff
• Provides centralized automation support for over
  50 libraries at Floridas 10 public universities
• Is attached to UF only administratively
• Runs the largest central ILS in US

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Motivation to Preserve

• Are we living in the Digital Dark Age?
• BBCs 1986 Domesday Book vs. original 1086
  Domesday Book
• Amount of digital information
• 93 of world info produced in 1999 (UC Berkeley
  2000 study How Much Information)
• Rate of technological
• change
• Antique if 15 years old

Source oldcomputers.net
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Preservation Key Fault-tolerance through
Redundancy
Centralized (A)
Decentralized (B)
Distributed (C)
Source Dodge, 2003
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FCLA Digital Archive (FDA) Operational Fall 2003
- ??

• Funding help from IMLS
• Goals
• Establish a working digital preservation archive
  for the use of the libraries of FLs public
  universities
• Identify costs involved with sufficient
  granularity to support reasonable cost-recovery
  pricing
• To disseminate tools, procedures and results for
  the widest national impact

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FDA Preservation Approach

• Still in flux (!)
• Dark archive
• Automated DAITSS (Dark Archive In The Sunshine
  State)
• 2 levels of preservation (bit-level, full)
• Always keep the originals
• Plan for migrations from the very beginning
• Combination of traditional format migration,
  migration on request, and normalization (archival
  data formats, converting to standards,
  canonicalization)

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FDA Business Plan

• Free!
• (Until the end of the grant period, then
  cost-recovery)
• All data contributions through libraries
• Libraries are our customers, we are building in
  customer options

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FDA Ingest Example
CIP
XML
PDF
AVI
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FDA Ingest Example
SIP
XML
XML
CIP
XML
XML
PDF
AVI
XML
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FDA Ingest Example
AIP
SIP
XML
XML
XML
XML
XML
CIP
XML
XML
TIFF
TIFF
TIFF
PDF
AVI
TIFF
XML
TIFF
TIFF
Database Records
XML
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Digital Preservation Infrastructure

• Commonly-accepted terminology
• OAIS Model (Partially helpful to us)
• Good Typology of Preservation Strategies
• Thibodeaus matrix
• Preservation Metadata
• METS (LOC) - Technical metadata still developing
• NISO Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images
  (MIX schema)
• LOC A/V prototyping project
• PREMIS (OCLC, RLG)

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Persistent Archives
Universal Virtual Computer
General
Object Interchange Format
Typed Object Conversion
Virtual Machine
Rosetta Stone Translation
APPLICABILITY
Format Standardization
Emulation
Re-engineer Software
Programmable Chips
Version Migration
Viewer
Maintain original technology
Specific
Preserve Objects
Preserve Technology
OBJECTIVE
Source Thibodeau, 2002.
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Digital Preservation Infrastructure

• File Format Knowledge-base
• Format info (Global Format Registry, PRONOM,
  FCLA)
• Archived specifications
• Recommended submitted formats and why?
• Recommended migrations and normalizations (FCLA,
  Natl Archives of Australia)
• Migration Experiments (Harvard)
• Economic information for preservation
• Fair billing models (effect of formats,
  preservation strategies)

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Digital Preservation Infrastructure

• Digital Archive Software
• Open-source archive software
• Fedora, DAITSS, DSpace
• Software for automatic format recognition,
  technical metadata extraction
• What can read this format? (PRONOM, Global Format
  Registry?)
• File format converters
• Open source software (Ghostscript, etc.)

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• Dodge, Martin. An Atlas of Cyberspaces, 2003.
  http//www.cybergeography.org/atlas/historical.htm
  l
• DSpace http//www.dspace.org
• FCLA Digital Archive / DAITSS http//www.fcla.edu/
  digitalArchive/
• Fedora Project http//www.fedora.info
• Global Registry for Digital Format Representation
  Information http//hul.harvard.edu/formatregistry/
  
• Reference Model for an Open Archival Information
  System (OAIS) http//ssdoo.gsfc.nasa.gov/nost/isoa
  s/
• Library of Congress A/V Prototyping Project
  http//lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mopic/avprot/metsmenu2.htm
  l
• METS http//www.loc.gov/standards/mets/
• MIX http//www.loc.gov/standards/mix/
• National Archives of Australia http//www.naa.gov.
  au/recordkeeping/preservation/digital/summary.html
  
• PREMIS http//www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/
• PRONOM httpwww.pro.gov.uk/about/preservation/digi
  tal/pronom/default.htm
• Thibodeau, Kenneth. Overview of Technological
  Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges
  in Coming Years, The State of Digital
  Preservation An International Perspective,
  Conference Proceedings, July 2002.

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