A Draft Research Agenda for the Preservation of Physical Format Digital Publications
In an ideal world deposit libraries might preserve everything, but operating in an environment of technical and resource constraints means that priorities must be set. Already there are enough indications of difficulty to recognise that it may not be possible to preserve access to everything, and that some options will be costly and/or ineffective for some materials.
In order to make informed decisions about what we will seek to preserve, we need to know more about what is preservable, at what cost, and how?
The proposed research agenda aims to help us answer those questions by looking at unresolved technical and organisational issues. The point of this research is to support decisions on how best to manage these publications. It is not research for its own sake.
This proposed agenda is framed around three steps:
- Identifying what we already know or believe (sections 2 and 3 below)
- Identifying the issues needing to be resolved before we can formulate strategies for preservation (section 4 below)
- Using the research - identifying the issues to be resolved in formulating a national preservation approach (section 5 below).
On the basis of experience at NLA and other places, we can say that we know or believe:
- We have to organise or identify material in ways that make it easy to find and manage in our collections.
- We need to obtain and record a range of information about the publications we are seeking to preserve, to support preservation planning.
- Magnetic media such as floppy disks have a relatively short useable life span, so we have to slow down the rate of deterioration and/or move what we want to preserve to a more stable carrier. (We know quite a lot about the conditions of storage and handling that will maximise the useful life of magnetic media.)
- We can fairly easily transfer data from floppy disks to more stable carriers such as CD-R without loss of functionality so long as we have retained access to necessary operating software.
- Some publications can be transferred to print on paper, a very stable carrier, without loss of data but with possible loss of functionality. This makes it mainly suitable for flat data such as text and some still images.
- We can also transfer data to other unstable but routinely refreshed magnetic media such as computer hard disks (offering random access), or to digital tape (offering only serial access).
- Obsolescence of technology, both hardware and various layers of software, will make any machine-readable publication inaccessible. It has already made at least 125 physical-format digital publications published between 1983 and 1997 effectively inaccessible at NLA. (Some of these were probably always effectively inaccessible in that the Library may not have had the appropriate equipment or software to provide access.)
- To maintain accessibility we will probably need to maintain archives of hardware and software, or migrate publications to new formats, or use emulation software to provide access. Each of these approaches will probably involve technical and resource difficulties. It is likely that we will need to use combinations of all of these and other approaches as well.
- Many publications use software that may not operate in the same way in a different operating environment. If they are useable at all they will almost certainly lose some of their functionality and look and feel if simply copied to a new operating system.
- Backwards compatibility often has a sunset clause current versions of software will usually operate a few previous generations, but not all previous versions, of the same programs.
- Some physical-format digital publications incorporate intentional security features (such as hardware dongles or software prompts - PINs, passwords), or are hardcoded to be used on a particular drive configuration. These may make it difficult to copy the publications for preservation purposes.
- Most publications require some software to support them viewers, rendering software, etc. Sometimes this is supplied with the publication and sometimes it is not.
- Many CD-ROM publications now include hypertext links to updated network sites requiring different preservation action.
- Many publishers say they will migrate their physical
format publications to networked sites, but we dont know if they will
change them in the process, and we suspect that many publications will not be
transferred retrospectively.
If we choose to preserve a physical-format digital publication, we currently believe the available options are as follows:
- to document and store the item, and look for some rescue technology in the future
- to refresh the item by transferring the data to another copy of the same kind of carrier suitable only as a short term solution
- to transfer the item by copying the data to a more stable carrier such a CD-R or a more highly maintained system such as a backed-up tape archive
- to freeze the item by transferring the data to a very stable, probably human readable, form such as print, microfilm, or something like HD-Rosetta (being developed by the Los Alamos laboratories in USA)
- to migrate the item by copying the data to a currently accessible computer format, (with or without trying to maintain the look and feel)
- to find software that will emulate the original operating software and make it operate in a different, currently accessible operating environment
- to migrate the item to current operating environment, but maintain a preservation master copy of the data in its original format so it can be emulated when losses through migration become unacceptable.
How to achieve these, how to choose the most cost effective and appropriate combination of them, and whether there are other viable options, are the basic tasks of the proposed research agenda.
4. What we need issues to research before we can formulate strategies
- A standardised vocabulary and rules for describing physical format digital materials so they can be easily found and managed in collections
- Agreed arrangements for recording metadata that will help us
preserve publications
Note: NLA intends to pursue within RLG PRESERV program(1) and with the CEDARS Project(2) in UK, and report with proposal - Cost effective ways of predicting and measuring deterioration rates across collections. This would include research on what is known to be happening overseas in this area.
- Cost effective ways of predicting changes in technology likely to make collection material inaccessible and requiring preservation action
- More information on the feasibility of rescuing
currently inaccessible materials.
It is known that some materials have already become inaccessible due to a range of factors, including format deterioration and/or obsolescence; hardware and software obsolescence etc. It is necessary to identify the scope of the problem by first undertaking an analysis of these materials, and assessing their value against current collection development policies. When a sub-set of valuable, but inaccessible publications has been identified, it would be useful to canvas available options for rescue from the international community. The working group could then undertake a cost-benefit analysis. - More information on ways of keeping materials accessible:
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i. By keeping their original access pathways available and operational (technology preservation)
While it is generally acknowledged that it is neither desirable, nor feasible as a long-term proposition to maintain a museum of hardware and software, there is merit in considering options for archiving some software, pending the development of more sustainable preservation pathways which may still be several years away.
ii. By finding or developing software that will emulate their original operating software (emulation)
This is known to be a major research focus within Europe and North America. It makes sense to develop and maintain contact with these programs with a view to seeking cooperation from publishers (via the Libraries/Publishers Working Group, and other appropriate mechanisms) in supplying information which will support emulation.
iii. By transferring them and their supporting software to each new generation of platform (migration)
This is the strategy the NLA intends to focus its own research efforts on in the short to medium term. There is still much work to be done to test reliable, cost-effective migration procedures. A national working group is needed to work on further migration trials. It may be necessary to supply a modest budget to the group for the purposes of these trials. The Libraries/Publishers Working Group would be a useful mechanism for testing the response of publishers in supplying more easily migrated publications.
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- More information on issues in managing preservation
There are still questions we are currently unable to answer, but which will be informed by the outcomes of other proposed tasks. It is proposed that the working group of NLA and state libraries prepare a discussion paper on these issues when more information is available.
5. Outcomes of research - issues to resolve in formulating a national preservation model.
The outcomes of this research activity should help Australian libraries to decide on appropriate preservation responses they can apply. The proposed national working group should report on a recommended national preservation model for physical-format digital publications, taking account of likely costs of preserving different levels of collecting and the overall objectives of the model.
