Trm Introduction

1.Digital Preservation An Introduction DPE/Planets/nestor training eventOctober, 1st- 5th 2007 Vilnius, Lithuania Stefan Strathmann Gttingen State and University Library nestor -Network of Expertise in Long-Term Storage of Digital Resources

10:00 10:45 Lecture

10:45 11:00 Discussion

11:00 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 12:30 Group Work

12:30 13:00 Groups present their results

13:00 13:15 Summary discussion

What is digital preservation?

Why is digital preservation important?

What are the big challenges?

What are the relevant standards, initiatives, programs?

General Introduction

Relevant Aspects

Hardware and Software are becoming obsolete invery short periods of time

Incompatibility of different versions of hard- and software

Fading knowledge of how to use older hard- and software

Aging and decaying storage media

Loss of Information

Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage, October 15th, 2003

Article 1:

The digitalheritageconsists of unique resources of human knowledge and expression.

Many of these resources have lasting value and significance, and therefore constitute a heritage that should beprotected and preservedfor current and future generations.

Article 2 Access to the digital heritage

Article 3 The threat of loss

Article 4 Need for action

Article 5 Digital continuity

Article 6 Developing strategies and policies

Article 7 Selecting what should be kept

Article 8 Protecting the digital heritage

Article 9 Preserving cultural heritage

Article 10 Roles and responsibilities

Article 11 Partnerships and cooperation

New forms of information:

digital production (digitization, born digital, only digital)

digital publication (only digital, object features like retrieval)

digital distribution (portal, value chain)

Rapid change of technology

Digital Preservation consists of processes that ensure that

digital objects remain

accessible,

(re-)usable and

understandable

in the future.

Digital Preservation has to ensure that future software and

hardware tools retain the authenticity, integrity, and

reliability of the digital object.

What is meant by digital long-term preservation or digital

preservation?

Definition by Ute Schwens / Hans Liegmann (DNB/nestor):

In terms of preserving digital resources, long-term does

not mean issuing a guarantee for five or fifty years, rather

the responsible development of strategies which can cope

with the constant changes brought about by the information

market.

Migration

Emulation

Normalisation

Refreshing

Digital Archaeology

Hardware Museum/Technology Preservation

Print to Paper or Microfilm/fiche or barcode

UC Berkeleys School of Information Management and

Systems:

How much Information? 2003

Analysis of the year 2002 to estimate the yearly increase of new (digital and analog) information.

Finding: 30 % increase of digital information per year

See: http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/index.htm

Journals and monographs

retrodigitized material

genuine digital material

Web Documents, Web Server

Preprint-Server, theses, e-Proceedings, etc.

Primary data, research data, raw data

Emails, blogs, etc.

Film, Music, Multimedia etc.

Depends on subject, e.g.

Mathematics (TEX, PS, ...)

Geography (GIS)

Multimedia, e.g.

Animated WWW pages

Interactive objects in e-Learning

Different versions in e.g. PDF, TEX, ...

Presentation Format / Preservation Format

Metadata formats

(Dublin Core, MODS, PREMIS, MIX, ..)

Exchange formats (XML, METS, XML/RDF, SOAP, ...)

Controlled vocabulary systems (Ontologies, Taxonomies, ...)

Architecture, Protocols

Standardisation & Interoperability

Preservation policy

Cooperation: international/national

Cooperation: cross-domain (e.g. museums, archives, research institutes, commercials, ...)

Redundancy of digital repositories explicitly desired

Cooperative management/administration of distributed digital archives/repositories

Coordinated cooperation needed between:

producers of digital objects (e.g. scientists)

providers (e.g. libraries)

distributors (e.g. publishers, hosts of db)

Use of international standards (e.g. DC, OAI, OAIS, METS)

Technical Issues / Obsolescence

Identification & Validation of Formats

Preservation Metadata

Preservation Policy

Legal Aspects

Trusted Repositories

Digital information is stored as a bit stream on physical media => Preservation of the bit stream!

Storage media types change quickly and are subject to obsolescence

Storage media are unstable and can degrade quickly

Keeping the bit stream accessible

Migration (Medium and Format)

Emulation (Hard- and Software)

Examples:

Document - DOC, HTML

Raster Images - TIFF, PNG, JPEG

Structured graphics - CAD, VSD,

Audio - WAV, MP3, MIDI

Video - MPEG, AVI

Databases - DBF, MDB

Raw data

Collections - tar, zip

We are dealing with lots of different formats!

File format registries may help to handle the heterogeneity.

Identification I have a digital object; what format is it?

Validation I have an object purportedly of formatF ; is it?

Transformation I have an object of formatF , but needG ; how can I produce it?

Characterization I have an object of formatF ; what are its features?

Risk assessment I have an object of formatF ; is it at risk of obsolescence?

Delivery I have an object of formatF ; how can I render it?

(Abrams, Seaman: Towards a global digital format registry. IFLA 2003)

JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment

see: http://hul.harvard.edu/jhove/

The concept of representation format, or type, permeates all technical areas of digital repositories. Policy and processing decisions regarding objectingest, storage, access, and preservationare frequently conditioned on a per-format basis. In order to achieve necessary operational efficiencies, repositories need to be able to automate these procedures to the fullest extent possible

How much technical metadata do I need?

All Preservation strategies (migration, emulation, etc.) depend on the creation, capture and maintenance of suitable metadata:

"Preserving the right metadata is key to preserving digital objects" (ERPANET Briefing Paper, 2003)

"It's all about metadata" (Cedars project manager, ca. 2000)

Specific preservation metadata are necessary to ensure that information can be accessed in the future, e.g. metadata about:

Provenance

Structure

File Format(s)

Technical Environment

Rights

Much of the necessary metadata can be extracted automatically, e.g. via tools like JHOVE

What do you want to preserve?

Why do you want to preserve?

How do you want to render an object in the future?

Furthermore ...

Documentation

Policy for short-term preservation

Policy for long-term preservation

What kind of digital objects is the repository responsible for?

Fixed format texts, images, web resources, complex digital objects, datasets,

What do you want to render in the future?

Keep the original?

What is the original?

Offer extended functionalities?

What are the significant properties of the object?

Appearance (layout, colour, font size, etc)

Behaviour (functionality, interaction, etc)

Structure (chapter, section, etc)

Content (text, video, audio, etc)

Context (cross-references, etc)

How do you want to provide access?

Designated User Community

Options for the user?

we need tools that

help choose & perform a strategy

make the strategy possible (emulators, migration tools)

maintain the link between originals and conversions

enable interoperability and co-operation between different repositories/archives

Tools have to be implemented in the archiving system and archiving workflow.

Preservation has to come to practice!

Copyright and other intellectual property rights (IPR) have a substantial impact on digital preservation

Preservation of digital materials is dependent on a range of strategies, which has implications for IPR in those materials

Consideration may need to be given not only to content but to any associated software

Specific permissions may be very challenging e.g. for webarchiving or digital art

What will be covered by legal deposit?

How much is served from within the country?

Strategy

The national publication archive

How are roles/responsibilities shared?

Web archiving initiatives (e.g. European Web Archive)

Development of electronic deposit systems

International collaboration

Other international repositories

Levels of redundancy

Access restrictions

Digital preservation is often a legal grey area not yet understood or considered by legislators

Lack of legal certainty should not prevent digital preservation actions

Take action to manage risks

Why trusted repositories?

It is very easy to manipulate digital information

The users need to trust the accessed information

Nobody is able to preserve everything distributed preservation management

Criteria of trusted repositories (i.e.TRAC , nestor)

Administrative responsibility

Financial sustainability

Technical security

WhichDigital Preservationissues are relevant in the

context of your Digital Collection? How are they relevant?

Data creation?

Data management (collection management)?

Data storage?

Data documentation and description?

Data preservation?

Data use?

Rights management?

Try to describe a digital preservation Framework for your

institution.