The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories

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The Australian Partnership for Sustainable
Repositories (APSR)
CAUL Meeting 2004/1 University of New South
Wales 1 April 2004
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• Roadmap
• Partners
• Extent and Intent
• Activity and Operational Structures
• Digital Sustainability Program (NLA)
• Practices and Testbeds Program (ANU, USyd, UQ)
• National Services Program
• International Linkages Program
• External Involvement

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• Partners
• The Australian National University (Lead
  institution)
• The National Library of Australia
• The University of Queensland
• The University of Sydney
• Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing

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• Extent and Intent
• In responding to the call to develop national
  research infrastructure through the creation of a
  broad repository-based architecture, the APSR
  proposal had at its core
• an overall focus on critical issues of access
  continuity to and sustainability of digital
  collections
• a determination to build on a base of
  demonstrators for digital continuity and
  sustainability embedded in developmental
  repository facilities within partner institutions
• an aspiration to contribute to national strength
  by encouraging development of skills and
  expertise and providing coordination
  throughout the sector via a platform of national
  services and international linkages

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• An open partnership both in its manner of working
  and its ultimate manifestation within a national
  centre
• predicated on a belief that -
• the higher education sector needs catalysts to
  encourage and enable institutions to take action
  based on best practices that will ensure
  continuity of access to key information resources
  over time

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Such resources not simply text-centric in
nature. Real challenge lies in coping with huge
volume of research data and resources in varying
formats and configurations emerging from the
eScience and eHumanities movements cf. Tony Hey
and Anne Trefethen The data deluge an
eScience perspective (2003) Tony Hey Why
engage in e-science? (2004) Within APSR, role of
APAC to carry these eResearch links, beyond their
direct involvement in University of Sydney
testbed project
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Activity Structure
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Operational Structure
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• Digital Sustainability (Core Program)
• Led by NLA, program will support and work with
  demonstrator or testbed projects and also
  feed directly into National Services and
  International Linkages programs (notably in its
  links with the recently established Digital
  Curation Centre in Edinburgh)
• Primary objective to provide mechanisms and
  expertise to ensure digital information
  resources remain
• available findable
• usable trustworthy
• understandable re-usable
• for as long as they are needed
• Seeks to develop national centre of excellence,
  providing such services as best practice
  documentation, software frameworks and
  archives, generic tools, format registries,
  planning strategies, and technology watch
  services

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• Practices and Testbeds Program
• (1)
• Implementation of Repository Technology in a
  Standards Framework
• (ANU)
• Objectives
• Develop an open source repository
  infrastructure that addresses the needs of
  Australian universities for the management of
  digital assets
• Develop mechanisms for building effective
  partnerships with academic community for the
  management of their digital assets
• Participate in federation services with APSR
  partners and other SII projects

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• Key Tasks
• Develop repository system based on needs analysis
  from a broad set of representative collections
• Become major contributor to DSpace open source
  development
• Contribute to international standards and best
  practice for the management of digital
  repositories
• Populate ANU repository
• Develop policy framework for partnerships with
  academic staff
• Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet the
  objectives of the Digital Sustainability program
• Evaluate success of software and policy
  development

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ANU DSpace now live ltdspace.anu.edu.augt First
collections images from ArtServe, ANU Archives
and Noel Butlin Archives Centre Collections from
other ANU communities programmed or being
considered for incorporation include

• ANU EPrints (documents also being contributed to
  Google/DSpace/OCLC scholarly search
  demonstrator)
• ANU E Press (to be launched on 18 May)
  ltepress.anu.edu.augt
• Anthology of Australian Music (audio collection)
• Various art image databases
• Coombs photography demonstrator

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• Practices and Testbeds Program
• (2)
• Sustainability and Interoperability in a Complex
  Distributed Environment
• (University of Sydney)
• Objectives
• Develop a sustainable model for large complex
  object repositories within a distributed
  research environment
• Document a set of supporting protocols and
  standards
• Develop appropriate enabling middleware and
  tools

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• Key Tasks
• Establish a project methodology for the testbed
  facilities
• Develop protocols within the common XML
  environment of the testbed facilities
• Cooperate with other testbed projects and the
  MAMS project to meet the objectives of the
  Digital Sustainability program
• Scope prototype demonstrator projects (cultural,
  health, historical)
• Develop and implement appropriate middleware and
  tools to enable demonstrators
• Develop and implement testing and evaluation
  methods
• Undertake evaluation of protocols within partner
  and other facilities nationally and
  internationally

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complex distributed environment Testbed project
will work with both local and international
partners SETIS (Scholarly Electronic Text and
Image Service) with links to Michigan, Oxford
and Virginia PARADISEC (Pacific and Regional
Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered
Cultures) with links to AILLA (Archive of the
Indigenous Languages of Latin America) and
DELAMAN (Digital Endangered Languages and Musics
Archive Network) ACL (Archaeological Computing
Laboratory)/SSIU (Spatial Science Innovation
Unit)/Time Map collaboration with links to
Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (UCLA),
Unesco, MacquarieNet
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• Practices and Testbeds Program
• (3)
• eScholarship Australia
• (University of Queensland)
• Objectives
• Develop an integrated entry point to a range of
  repositories of research output
• Encourage better reporting of academic research
  outputs
• Facilitate access to information about
  Australian research

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• Key Tasks
• Identify existing repositories at UQ to be used
  in project
• Investigate and adopt appropriate standards to
  be used, with emphasis on open standards
• Test a range of harvesting protocols, including
  OAI-PMH
• Examine subject mapping techniques to ensure
  metadata conforms to appropriate thesaurus
  descriptors. (Existing institutional subject
  classification schemes will be mapped to the
  Australian Standard Research Classification.
  Where metadata lack appropriate thesaurus
  descriptors, automatic and semi- automatic
  subject mapping techniques will be used.)
• Investigate and implement mechanisms to
  identify, capture, organise and manage
  non-text, non-OAI compliant resources
• Cooperate with other testbed projects to meet
  the objectives of the Digital Sustainability
  program
• Extend demonstrator application to other
  institutions

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• National Services Program
• Objective
• Provide following services to national higher
  education and research sector
• Technical advisory services
• Knowledge transfer and educational services
• Consultation and collaboration services
• Timeframe
• 2005-2006

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• International Linkages Program
• Objectives
• Participate in and contribute to the development
  of international standards applicable to
  digital access and sustainability
• Participate in selected international programs
  in the digital access and sustainability area
• Maintain a technology watching brief across a
  wide range of international programs in the
  digital access and sustainability area
• Timeframe
• 2005-2006
• Some initial steps in 2004 (participation in
  first DSpace User Group meeting, Boston, 10-11
  March, and linkage with JISC/eSCP Digital
  Curation Centre, University of Edinburgh)

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• External Involvement
• Potential for involvement in APSR by others than
  immediate project partners
• National Services Program (starting in 2005)
• Occasional open workshops and forums
• Thought being given to establishing an inner
  mailing/email list for those who register
  interest in receiving news of APSR progress
  and developments

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• Also potential opportunity for others to
  participate as project partners (specified in
  both original proposal and agreement between ANU
  and existing project partners)
• Such participation would require
• Strategic commitment to the development of
  institutional digital repositories
• Significant implementation program involving
  repository technology and a collection program
  focused on research materials having sector-wide
  relevance
• Commitment to sector-wide cooperation in the
  development of institutional repositories
• Commitment to APSR objectives and willingness to
  contribute to APSR processes
• Acceptance that partner responsibilities include
  participation in APSR core activities such as
  standards setting, evaluation and adoption,
  expertise network, skills pool, international
  linkages and benchmarking
• New partners would bring own resources to APSR
• There would be no access to DEST funding unless
  additional monies were granted

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Thank you
Vic Elliott 1 April 2004