besser--ninch-recent preservation 12/8/01 1 recent digital preservation activities howard besser...

Besser--NINCH-recent Preservation 12/8/01 1

Recent Digital Preservation Activities

Howard Besser

UCLA School of Education & Information

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard


Recent Digital Preservation Activities-

The Problem Preservation Repositories Preservation Metadata Other Digital Preservation Activities Special concerns of Cult Heritage

community


Serious Longevity Problems

What we know from prior widespread digital file formats

Previous formats required little ongoing intervention (remote storage facilities, Iron Mtn); digital formats require intense ongoing management

The Short Life of Digital Info-


The Short Life of Digital Info: Digital Longevity Problems

Disappearing Information The Viewing Problem The Scrambling Problem The Inter-relation Problem The Custodial Problem The Translation Problem


Older Longevity Projectshttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Longevity/

CPA Task Force Getty “Time & Bits” Conference & Follow-ups- Preservation experiments in US and Europe

NEDLIB, CURL, Michigan

Internet Archive Long Now


Preservation Repositories:OAIS Model

High-level reference model describing submission, organization and management, and continuing access

Conceptual framework for different organizations to share discussions with a common language

Producers, consumers, management, actual repository SIP, DIP, AIP AIP consists of data objects plus representation info

(Content, Preservation Description, Packaging, Descriptive)

Originally developed for Space Science community


Preservation Repositories:Projects based on OAIS Model

CEDARS NEDLIB Pandora CDL OCLC/RLG Working Group on

Preservation Metadata, Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository, August 2001-


OCLC/RLGDigital Repository Attributes

_ Administrative responsibility_ Organizational viability_ Financial sustainability_ Technological suitability_ System security_ Procedural accountability


OCLC/RLGSelected Recommendations

_ Policies, Certification processes, Risk management, Persistent ID, Migration/Emulation experiments

_ Stakeholders meet to decide how to describe what is in a dig repository

_ Examine special properties of particular classes of digital objects

_ Technical standards for exchange and interoperability btwn repositories

_ Develop projects and case studies_ Copyright issues


Preservation Metadata

OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, Preservation Metadata for Digital Objects: A Review of the State of the Art, January 31 2001

OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata, A Recommendation for Content Information, October 2001


Other Digital Preservation Activities-

LC Natl Dig Info Infrastructure & Preservation InterPARES Emulation Projects E-Journal Archiving ERPANET Persistent Naming


LC’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and

Preservation Program_ Authorized Dec 2000_ LC, Dept of Commerce, NARA, White House

Office of Sci & Tech Policy_ with help from CLIR, NLM, NAL, OCLC, RLG_ Ongoing collab process_ Commissioned papers on preserving: the Web,

periodicals, digital sound, E-Books, Digital TV, Digital Video


InterPARES International Research on Permanent Authentication

Records in Electronic Systems

_ Ongoing international archival world project examining how to make electronically-generated records last over time

_ Developing the theoretical and methodological knowledge needed, then will formulate model policies, strategies, and standards

_ Next year will be extended to include images and rich media


Emulation Projects

_ CAMiLEON (Michigan/Leeds)_ NEDLIB


E-Journal Archiving

_ Issues– License, don’t own; may not be even able to obtain right to make archival

copy

– Increasingly no paper back-up at all

– Usually we don’t have the important redundancy factor

_ Mellon funded projects (2001)– Yale, Harvard, Penn working w/individual publishers

– Cornell, NYPL--specific disciplines

– MIT exploring characteristics that change (dynamic)\

– Stanford--archiving software tools


Electronic Resource Preservation and Access NETwork (ERPANET)

_ RLG initiative just launched as European consortium

_ Best practices and skills development for digital preservation of cultural heritage and scientific objects

_ 3 year project launched Nov 2001; 1.2 million Euros


NEA 2001 grant to BAVCfor $150,000

_ “To support development and dissemination of a DVD that contains a curriculum for the preservation of electronic art. The DVD will feature a preservation overview; discussions with conservators, artists, curators and technicians; a curriculum to train professionals in the field and project case studies to conserve electronic art.”


Persistent Naming

URNs Handles PURLs Re-directs


What’s special about Cult Heritage Materials?

_ Images & rich media_ Inter-relationships btwn parts_ For Contemporary Art: What is the Work?-


LeWitt: Wall Drawing 340


Installing LeWitt


LeWitt Install Directions


Complexity of Rich Media

_ Works often have artistic nature (including video games)

_ Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)

_ Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material

_ Importance of saving documentation


What can we do specific to Electronic Art?

_ Works themselves may no longer even exist; in many cases, what we can save amounts to forensic evidence

_ Enormous number of elements can, at times, be very important to preserve (pacing, original artifact, elements used to construct the artifact)

_ Too complex to save every one of these aspects for every type of material

_ Importance of saving pieces, representations, and documentation_ Involve the artists to capture their intentions_ Importance of Standards_ Familiarize ourselves with recent conservation developments (Who

Knows?, TechArcheology, Tate, IMAP)


Standards for encodingartists intentions

(group efforts w/i Cult Heritage community)

_ Artists Interviews Project, Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage 1998-1999, Modern Art: Who Cares (http://www.icn.nl/english/6.4.2.html)

_ TechArcheology: A Symposium on Installation Preservation (SFMOMA)

_ More recent SFMOMA/Tate collaborations_ IMAP_ Guggenheim’s Variable Media


Structural Metadata Standards for Encoding Multimedia-

(no time for details)

_ SMIL_ MPEG 4


A few questions the NINCH community should address

_ Special issues raised by non-library institutions_ Special issues raised by images and rich media_ What is the work (or salient points we need to preserve)?_ Bring the arts communities (artist intent, BAVC) together with the

preservation repository communities and the preservation metadata communities

_ Specifically get Cult Heritage communities involved with the selected OCLC/RLG recommendations

_ What organizations will take responsibility to save today’s digital “ephemeral” materials (online ‘zines, arts discussion groups, etc.)?

_ Get cult heritage groups started on working to make sure that structure standards incorporate our works


Recent Digital Preservation Activities

Howard Besser

UCLA School of Education & Information

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Longevity/

http://www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/presmeta_wp.pdf

http://www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/contentinformation.pdf

http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/us-interpares/

http://www.diglib.org/preserve/ejp.htm

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard

http://www.longnow.com/10klibrary/TimeBitsDisc/

http://www.archive.org/

besser--ninch-recent preservation 12/8/01 1 recent digital preservation activities howard besser...

Documents

ninchrecent preservation

preservation experiments

preservation description

preservation metadata

translation problem

digital longevity problems

trusted digital repository

iron mtn digital formats