Reshaping Preserv 2 from a Life(cycle) perspective

Steve Hitchcock and Dave Tarrant

Preserv 2 ProjectSchool of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS),

Southampton University

JISC Digital Curation and Preservation Projects ForumPlacing Ourselves in the Bigger Picture

30 June 2008, Birkbeck College, London

Some tricky questions

Q1 What is digital preservation?

A ?But, from summary of LIFE2 conference:

“We have been presented with reports from a number of Case Studies … seems to suggest that we are still learning what digital preservation means in practice”

Q2 Who wants digital preservation?

A ?

Q3 When is preservation not preservation?

A e.g. when it’s storage or interoperability

Digital preservation as an intangible asset

• Laurie Hunter

“digital preservation is a selective preservation of an intangible asset that has a reasonable probability of producing benefits at some future time. In that sense, digital preservation decisions are investment decisions … Hence, appropriability, the nature of the market for preserved data, its pricing and timescale or life-cycle, are all important issues which need to be addressed.”

http://www.dcc.ac.uk/docs/Wksppaper.pdf

Understand the needs of the market, but what if the market doesn’t understand the product in the first place?

Definitions of digital preservation

Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions that ensure access to digital content over time.

Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure access to reformatted and born digital content regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. The goal of digital preservation is the accurate rendering of authenticated content over time.

Digital preservation combines policies, strategies and actions to ensure the accurate rendering of authenticated

content over time, regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. Digital preservation applies to both born digital and reformatted content.

Digital preservation policies document an organization’s commitment to preserve digital content for future use;

specify file formats to be preserved and the level of preservation to be provided; and ensure compliance with

standards and best practices for responsible stewardship of digital information.

Digital preservation strategies and actions address content creation, integrity and maintenance….

Prepared by the Preservation and Reformatting Section, Working Group on Defining Digital Preservation ALA Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., June 24, 2007http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/newslinks/digipres/index.cfm

Preserv schematic: original (2005)

Preserv schematic: original (simpler)

Preserv: preservation services for digital institutional repositories

RepositoryPreservation

service providerContent

Preservation costs

• Neil Beagrie, et al. Keeping Research Data Safe: A Cost Model and Guidance for UK Universities

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/keepingresearchdatasafe.aspx

• LIFE2, applying a whole-business approach, including overheads; moving towards a ROI-based method (LIFE3?)

• “there is one question everyone needs to ask - how much can you afford to pay?” David Rosenthal, DCC-associates list, 26 June

One-size cost model does not fit all

Schematic: end Preserv 1 (2007)

EPrints storage architectureEPrints 3.2 architecture (proposed)

Honeycomb

Interoperability in action

PreservPreservRepository Preservation and

InteroperabilityRepository Preservation and

Interoperability

.org.uk.org.uk

OAI-OREEPrints & Fedora

Which is which?

Interoperability in action: the video

Dave Tarrant, Ben O’Steen and Tim Brody, Preserv 2 From Blip TV http://blip.tv/file/866653

Repository Software

Storage Controller

Physical Storage

EPrintsFedora

EPrintsFedoraDSpace

Local DiskRemote ServerCloud ServiceHoneycombEPrintsFedora

Services

TNA API - PRONOM• File Format Identification• Significant Properties• Migration Tools• (Performance Metrics)

Scheduler (Oxford)• Services & Invocation API

Interoperability• OAI-ORE Specification & Mapping

Application Program Interface (API) + XMLRelation Exclusivity (1 to 1, 1 to Many)

Content Policy

Preserv project structure (May 2008)

Repository Software

Storage Controller

Physical Storage

EPrintsFedora

EPrintsFedoraDSpace

Local DiskRemote ServerCloud ServiceHoneycombEPrintsFedora

Services

TNA API - PRONOM• File Format Identification• Significant Properties• Migration Tools (Performance Metrics)

Scheduler (Oxford)• Services & Invocation API

Preserv project structure (May 2008)

Interoperability• OAI-ORE Specification & Mapping

Application Program Interface (API) + XMLRelation Exclusivity (1 to 1, 1 to Many)

Content Policy

Repository preservation service providers

Start of Preserv (2005)• Preservation services, e.g. National libraries

• Institutional services• Repository software

Manue.fig

Repository preservation service providersToday• Preservation services, e.g.

– KB-NARCIS (Dutch portal, includes

DARE IRs)– German National Library (theses)– BL (UK PubMed Central)– Sherpa-DP

• Institutional services, e.g. Oxford• Repository software• Repository services• Library services, e.g. OCLC• Cloud storage services, e.g. Amazon, Google

Preserv 2 today

• Preserv has evolved• More focussed on enabling the infrastructure for a

full and diverse range of preservation services required by the market

• A project, not a service provider• Project partners, singly or jointly, might emerge as

different types of preservation service provider• Let many preservation service providers flourish