DPC/PADI What's new in digital preservation
Issue no. 1 (December 2001-April 2002)
compiled by Michael Day (UKOLN, University of Bath) 3rd May
2002
This is a summary of selected recent activity in the field of digital
preservation compiled from the
digital-preservation
and padiforum-l mailing lists
and the Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Gateway.
1.1 The Digital Preservation Coalition
The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) was officially launched at the
House of Commons on the 27 February 2002. This event was very successful and
gained a large amount of press-coverage for digital preservation issues.
On the 25 March 2002 in London, the coalition organised a DPF Forum on
Web-archiving. Presentations included a general introduction to Web-archiving
issues and the UK Web domain; also descriptions of Web-archiving activity in
the BBC and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. A workshop report and
links to all presenters' PowerPoint slides are available on the DPC
Web-site:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/preservation/webforum.html
A more detailed review of recent DPC activity can be found in:
Neil Beagrie, "An update on the Digital Preservation Coalition,"
D-Lib Magazine, 8 (4), April 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/beagrie/04beagrie.html
1.2 The US National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation
Program (NDIIPP)
This initiative began in late 2000, when Congress called for the Library
of Congress (LC) to take the lead in a national collaborative planning effort
for the long-term preservation of digital content. The April 2002 issue of
D-Lib Magazine contained a progress report by Amy Friedlander (Council
on Library and Information Resources). Friedlander outlines the results of some
stakeholder meetings held last November, including the support for a national
initiative from stakeholder groups that are not part of the traditional
scholarly community, e.g. the entertainment industry. A research programme -
which will be a key part of NDIIPP - also aims to be collaborative in nature
and LC is already working with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other
federal agencies in drawing up a research agenda. An invitational workshop to
discuss the research agenda was held in April 2002 in Washington and
information is being posted on a Web-site mounted at the University of Michigan
(http://www.si.umich.edu/digarch/).
An additional theme in NDIIPP is the importance of building operational
systems. It is acknowledged that mistakes may be made, but that it is important
to learn lessons from these. LC have also worked on devising a conceptual
framework in order to see how the many and varied entities and functions
related to the long-term preservation of digital content might interact. This
is also described briefly in this paper.
Amy Friedlander, "The National Digital Information Infrastructure
Preservation Program: expectations, realities, choices and progress to date,"
D-Lib Magazine, 8 (4), April 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/friedlander/04friedlander.html
1.3 OCLC/RLG Working Groups
In April 2002, the OCLC/RLG Preservation Metadata Working Group
published a proposed metadata element set for what the OAIS model refers to as
'Preservation Description Information' (PDI). Previous documents from the group
had provided a state-of-the-art survey of preservation metadata activities and
a recommendation for OAIS 'Content Information.' Publication of the PDI
recommendation means that the group has almost completed its commissioned task.
A final document bringing together both metadata recommendations is currently
being compiled. All working group documents are available in PDF from:
http://www.oclc.org/research/pmwg/documents.shtm
The other joint OCLC/RLG digital preservation initiative, the Digital
Archive Attributes Working Group, published a draft document entitled
Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository in August 2001, This has been
very well received and is available in PDF from:
http://www.rlg.org/longterm/attribswg.html
2.1 The Cedars project
Work on the Cedars (CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives) project finished
in March 2002. The project had been going for almost four years and a final
workshop was held in Manchester on the 25-26 February in order to disseminate
information about the project, put that work into a wider context and to look
forward to what should happen after the project had ended. A short summary of
this event has been published in the April edition of RLG DigiNews, while a
longer version is available on the Cedars Project Web-site:
Michael Day and Maggie Jones, Cedars Final Workshop, Manchester
Conference Centre, UMIST, Manchester, 25-26 February 2002, Leeds: Cedars
Project, 22 April 2002.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/pubconf/umist/finalWorkshopRep.html
Michael Day, "The Final Cedars Workshop: a report from Manchester, UK,"
RLG DigiNews, 6 (2) April 2002.
http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews6-2.html#conference
In the first quarter of 2002, the Cedars project has also published a
series of guides to various digital preservation issues. Available in print
form (and in PDF) are guides to intellectual property rights, preservation
metadata and digital collection management. Each of these is about 20 pages
long, and are intended to provide non-technical introductions for anyone
interested in aspects of digital preservation, including librarians,
archivists, records managers and the creators of digital content. The guides
describe some specific outcomes of the Cedars project (e.g. the draft metadata
specification) but also attempt to provide a more general view and give
indications of further reading. In the same series, a guide to digital
preservation strategies is now available in HTML and an introduction to the
Cedars digital archive prototype is under preparation. These guides are
available in digital form (PDF or HTML) from the Cedars project Web-site:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/pubconf/pubconf.html
2.2 ERPANET
ERPANET (Electronic Resource Preservation and Access NETwork) has been
funded by the European Commission to help bring together all types of
organisation interested in digital preservation issues. It will primarily
provide awareness about digital preservation by providing information and
advice services, thematic workshops, training seminars, guidelines, etc. The
project started in November 2001. Project partners are the Humanities Advanced
Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow, the
Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv (Swiss Federal Archives), the Rijksarchiefdienst
(National Archives of the Netherlands) and the Institute for Archival and
Library Science at the University of Urbino. More information on ERPANET can be
found on the project's Web pages at:
http://www.erpanet.org/
2.3 Preservation of electronic scholarly journals
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has funded seven major US libraries to
investigate the development of digital repositories for e-journals. Work on
these projects is continuing, but the Harvard University E-Journal Archiving
project has recently (December 2001) published a report produced by Inera, Inc.
on the feasibility of developing a common archival article Document Type
Definition (DTD). The report recommended the creation of an XML DTD (or Schema)
which would permit "successful conversion of significant intellectual content
from publisher SGML and XML files into a common format for archival purposes."
Also in December, the Harvard project published a draft proposal for the
technical specifications of a Submission Information Package (SIP) that defined
data formats, file naming conventions, metadata, etc. Both of these documents
are available in PDF from the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Web-site:
Inera, Inc., E-Journal Archive DTD feasibility study: commissioned by
the Harvard University Library, Office for Information Systems, E-Journal
Archiving Project, 5 December 2001.
http://www.diglib.org/preserve/hadtdfs.pdf
Harvard University Library, Harvard E-Journal Archive: Submission
Information Package (SIP) specification, v. 1.0 draft, 19 December 2001.
http://www.diglib.org/preserve/harvardsip10.pdf
General information on the Mellon-funded programme can be found on the
DLF Web-site:
http://www.diglib.org/preserve/presjour.htm
A meeting of the US National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
Book Industry Study Group (BISG) took place during the American Library
Association's Midwinter 2002 Conference on the 20 January. This was entitled
'Archiving Electronic Publications' and included progress reports from two of
the Mellon funded e-journal projects: Harvard University's E-Journal Archiving
project and Elsevier Science's collaboration with Yale University Library. A
final presentation reported on collaboration between OCLC and the US Government
Printing Office (GPO) on a Web Document Digital Archive pilot project. A short
summary of the meeting can be found at:
http://www.niso.org/presentations/niso-bisg-rpt.html
Michael K. Bergman, "The deep Web: surfacing hidden value," Journal
of Electronic Publishing, 7 (1), August 2001.
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-01/bergman.html
This 'white paper' is concerned with the so-called 'deep
Web,' whereby information is buried deep within dynamically generated sites and
which can not, therefore, be easily reached by standard search engines. The
paper is essentially marketing a product (search technology from a company
called BrightPlanet) and is not about preservation, but it may be able to
inform harvesting-based Web-preservation initiatives on the nature of dynamic
or database-driven Web-sites.
Hilary Berthon, Susan Thomas and Colin Webb, "Safekeeping: a cooperative
approach to building a digital preservation resource," D-Lib Magazine, 8
(1), January 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january02/berthon/01berthon.html
This paper describes the National Library of Australia's
Safekeeping project, which has funding from the Council on Library and
Information Resources (CLIR). The project is trying to facilitate a distributed
network of 'safekept' resources relating to digital preservation (selected from
the PADI database) by encouraging resource owners to take responsibility for
providing long-term access - or to nominate third parties who could do so on
their behalf. The co-operative model of the Safekeeping project is interesting
because it might encourage the creators and owners of resources to face up to
the responsibilities that they hold with regard to maintaining long-term
access.
Stewart Granger, "Digital preservation and deep infrastructure,"
D-Lib Magazine, 8 (2), February 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february02/granger/02granger.html
This is an 'opinion' piece by Stewart Granger of the
University of Leeds.
Anne R. Kenney, Nancy Y. McGovern, Peter Botticelli, Richard Entlich,
Carl Lagoze and Sandrea Payette, "Preservation risk management for Web
resources: virtual remote control in Cornell's Project Prism," D-Lib
Magazine, 8 (1), January 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january02/kenney/01kenney.html
This paper suggests that Web preservation strategies
could use risk management methodologies. It is based on the work of Cornell
University's Project Prism, funded as part of the second phase of the US
Digital Libraries Initiative.
Julia Martin and David Coleman, "Change the metaphor: the archive as an
ecosystem," Journal of Electronic Publishing, 7 (3), April 2002.
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/07-03/martin.html
The authors of this paper are researchers at the
University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. The paper argues
that there is unlikely to be any single solution to the digital preservation
problem but that rapid technological change will mean that preservation
solutions will need to be in a state of constant change.
Michael L. Nelson and B. Danette Allen, "Object persistence and
availability in digital libraries," D-Lib Magazine, 8 (1), January 2002.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january02/nelson/01nelson.html
This paper - produced by researchers working at the NASA
Langley Research Center - looked at the persistence and continued availability
of 1,000 digital library objects. These were mostly found in Web-based e-print
services like arXiv, CogPrints and PubMed Central. The authors found that in
just over one year, 3% of the tested objects no longer appeared to be
available. With an assumption that objects placed in e-print services should
persist longer than the average Web page, the authors cautiously conclude that
this finding may have relevance for those concerned with long-term
preservation. However, Nelson and Allen consider that more detailed studies of
digital library object persistence need to be made.
Elizabeth Yakel, "Digital preservation," Annual Review of Information
Science and Technology, 35, 2001, 337-378.
A general overview of digital preservation issues by an
assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of
Michigan.
From the Digitale Duurzaamheid Digital Preservation Testbed (http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/):
Migration context and current status. Digital Preservation
Testbed White Paper, 5 December 2001.
http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/bibliotheek/Migration.pdf
Approaches towards the long term preservation of archival digital
records. Digital Preservation Testbed Infosheet,v. 1.7, 19 September 2001.
http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/index.cfm?paginakeuze=186&categorie=2
Also (from the digital-preservation@jiscmail.ac.uk and
padiforum-l@nla.gov.au e-mail lists):
Andreas Aschenbrenner, Long-Term Preservation of digital material -
building an archive to preserve digital cultural heritage from the
Internet, Masters Thesis, Technical University Vienna, December 2001.
Available in various formats from:
http://www.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/~aola/publications.html
Arthur Smith, Long Term Archiving of Digital Documents in
Physics, report of an IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied
Physics) Conference held in Lyon, 5-6 November 2001.
http://publish.aps.org/IUPAP/ltaddp_report.html
Dollar Consulting, Archival preservation of Smithsonian web
resources: strategies, principles, and best practices. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Archives, 20 July 2001.
http://www.si.edu/archives/archives/dollar%20report.html
VERS (Victorian Electronic Records Strategy) Web-site:
http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/vers/
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Compiled by:
Michael Day,
Research Officer, UKOLN, University of Bath. Last updated:
07-May-2002. |

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