New Opportunities Fund Preservation Workshop March 15th 2002

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New Opportunities FundPreservation Workshop
March 15th 2002

• Maggie Jones
• Cedars Project Manager

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Strategic Overview

• Increasing quantity of digital information being
  produced
• Increasing investment in digital technology for
  scholarship and research
• Increasing dependence on digital technology

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Strategic Overview, continued

• Challenges of maintaining digital materials
• Strategic Developments in digital preservation
  since 1995
• Focus on UK - though increasing collaboration at
  global level
• Implications for creators of digital content

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Increase in Quantity of Digital Material

• In 2000 the www consisted of about 21 terabytes
  of static HTML pages, and is growing at a rate of
  100 per year. Many web pages are generated on
  the fly from data in databases, so the total size
  of the deep web is considerably larger.
• Source How Much Information? October 2000
• lthttp//www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/how-much-in
  fo/index.htmlgt

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Increasing Investment in Digital Technology

• Individual institutional level
• 50m for NOF-Digitise Programme for creation of
  high quality content
• Government agenda

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Increasing Dependence on Digital Technology

• Considerable advantages of digital access
• enhanced functionality
• convenience of access
• Cultural shift in programmes such as eLib, moves
  to OAI archives etc.
• Changing expectations of library clientele

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Categories of Digital Documents

• Conversion of non-digital to digital
  (digitisation, e.g. BLs Treasures)
• digital documents created during day-to-day
  business of an institution ( digital records)
• resources created digitally (born digital)
• However they come into being, they need to be
  managed from the earliest possible stage

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Digitisation v Digital Preservation

• Digitisation the process of creating digital
  files by scanning or otherwise converting
  non-digital materials
• usually done for the purpose of enhanced access
• may be used as a preservation tool to protect the
  non-digital originals

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Digital Preservation

• Actions necessary to maintain access to digital
  materials beyond the limits of media failure or
  technological change
• Digital documents needing to be preserved might
  include results of digitisation projects or
  digital records created by an institution or
  born digital documents

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Digital Preservation Challenges

• Technical
• fragility of the media
• technological obsolescence
• need to be able to overcome dependence on
  hardware and software environment it was created
  in
• speed of technological change

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Digital Preservation Challenges, continued

• Roles and responsibilities are not yet
  well-established
• Trend towards licensing access rather than
  owning a document
• Need to actively manage document from creation
  (lifecycle management)
• ephemeral nature of many documents, particularly
  project-based

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Digital Preservation as a Strategic Priority

• 1995
• Report of RLG/CPA Task Force on Digital Archiving
• Warwick 1 Workshop on Long-Term Preservation of
  Electronic Materials
• Establishment of Arts and Humanities Data Service
  (AHDS)
• UK Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib)

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Putting Digital Preservation on the Agenda

• Warwick 1 led to
• commissioning of seven studies into digital
  preservation
• AHDS activities
• commitment to good practice in creation and
  management of digital resources
• eLib Phase 3 included digital preservation as
  strategic priority

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The Cedars Project

• Having caused some of the increasing move of
  scholarly resources into the digital domain, we
  felt it was irresponsible to continue to ignore
  or to sideline preservation issues
• Chris Rusbridge. Towards the Digital Library.
  D-Lib Magazine July/August 1998.
• The Cedars (CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives)
  Project, 1998-2002
• http//www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/

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Further Developments

• Warwick 2 held in March 1999
• Concluded that
• Need to have better co-ordination (post of JISC
  Digital Preservation Focus established June 2000)
• Need more scope for collaboration (Digital
  Preservation Coalition established)

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Digital Preservation Coalition

• Aim is to develop a UK digital preservation
  agenda within an international context
• sharing learning and practice advocacy and
  co-ordination
• 19 members (as of March 2002)
• Officially launched on 27th February 2002
• good press coverage
• http//www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/preservation

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Other Developments

• Attributes of Trusted Digital Repositories
• http//www.rlg.ac.uk/longterm/attributes01.pdf
• EU meeting on Digital Preservation, March 2002
• UNESCO resolution on digital preservation
• The Research Grid
• initial funding of 120m for e-science

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Other Developments, continued

• National deposit libraries are building
  infrastructure to manage digital collections
• BL building Digital Library Store
• KB building Deposit System for Electronic
  publications (DSEP)
• Further research on technical preservation
  strategies being undertaken by the CAMiLEON
  project

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Lifecycle Management

• responsibility for archiving rests initially
  with the creator or owner of the information
• RLG/CPA TaskForce on Digital Archiving. 1995
• http//www.rlg.ac.uk/ArchTF/

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Lifecycle Management, continued

• Involvement of creators of digital content in
  digital preservation is key difference in
  collection management between digital and
  non-digital
• Need to manage from creation because
• the speed and inevitability of change
• cost-effectiveness - avoids the need for costly
  retrospective rescues

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NOF-Digitise

• Requires all grant holders to adhere to technical
  standards
• http//www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk/content/digitise.
  asp
• Recognition of importance of good practice from
  creation

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Summary

• Digital Technology has brought many opportunities
  and some challenges
• Much work has been done in addressing those
  challenges since the Report of the RLG/CPA
  Taskforce in 1995
• Much still to be done but the point of no return
  has now been reached