Digital Preservation: "How will I read this conference content in 25 years time"- A strategic role for HEAnet in digital preservation

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Digital Preservation "How will I read this
conference content in 25 years time"- A strategic
role for HEAnet in digital preservation

• Marie Reddan
• Lighting the Future Strategies for Education and
  Research Networking. HEAnets National
  Networking Conference

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Overview

• Data Stewardship - Digital Preservation and
  Curation
• Issues in digital preservation
• Current activity in Ireland in creating digital
  content
• Challenges arising from digitisation projects
• Lifecycle management of data - advantages of a
  co-ordinated approach
• Advocacy and progress to date
• Advancing a national strategy for digital
  preservation

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Data Stewardship

• Preservation

• Curation

• Preservation entails standards-based, active
  management practices that guide data throughout
  the research life cycle, as well as ensure the
  long-term usability of these digital resources

• Curation involves ways of organising,
  displaying, and repurposing preserved data
• To stand the test of time long-term stewardship
  of digital data sets in science and Engineering
  ARL / National Science Foundation 2006
• www.arl.org/pp/access/nsfworkshop.shtml

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Issues in digital preservation

• Preservation of the object in itself not enough
• Speed of technological change
• BBC Domesday project
• http//www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html
• Volume of digital content
• National heritage / national importance
• Importance of national strategies and
  infrastructure
• Digital preservation will not happen by chance

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Current activity in Ireland in creating digital
content

• Huge investment in research and resultant
  digitised output
• Academic Research
• Government funded Research Projects
• Libraries and Archives
• Research Institutions
• Not just print multimedia

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Challenges arising from digitisation projects

• Nature and Lifecycle of projects
• Awareness of research work in progress
• Technical support issues
• Funding problems
• Importance of Standards
• Issues of selectivity for long-term preservation

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Lifecycle management of data - advantages of a
co-ordinated approach

• Generally accepted and applied standards
• Ability to aggregate and organise content created
• Ability to build on content created innovation
  and creativity
• Centralised or distinct sources of expertise
• Promotion, education and training
• Technical support
• Active management of data
• Preservation for long term usability
• Curation of data / re-purposing of preserved data
• Security of content

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Advocacy and progress to date
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Irish Manuscripts Commission

• Develop a comprehensive, inter-departmental
  framework to implement a national strategy for a
  digital infrastructure linked to a trusted
  digital repository

• Irish Manuscripts Commission
• Digitisation Policy
• 2007
• http//www.irishmanuscripts.ie/downloads/IMC20DT
  F20report20210607.pdf

• Devise a national strategy that is flexible
  enough to respond to the dynamic nature of
  digitisation projects and the technology
  underpinning them it must also aim to ensure
  that digitised resources/ objects are openly
  accessible, and developed using internationally
  recognised protocols for data capture and
  long-term digital preservation

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Royal Irish Academy

• Digital Humanities Observatory DHO

• ADVANCING HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH
  
• IN
• IRELAND
• a report by the Royal Irish Academy
• 2007
• http//www.ria.ie/policy/pdfs/website.pdf

• The DHO was established to manage and
  co-ordinate the increasingly complex e-resources
  created in the arts and humanities. It will
  enable research and researchers in Ireland to
  keep abreast of international developments in the
  creation, use, and preservation of digital
  resources.

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Funding Bodies

• Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)
• Irish Research Council for Science Engineering
  and Technology (IRCSET)

• Suitable repositories should make provision
  for long-term preservation of and free public
  access to, published research findings

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Advancing a national strategy for digital
preservation
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Role for HEAnet?

• Key role
• Implementing and supporting a national Digital
  Preservation strategy at the technical level
• How?
• In collaboration with key stakeholders
• Why HEAnet?
• Data storage is a key strategy of HEAnet
• Is the Irish national academic and research
  network - working with all Irish HE and Research
  Institutions
• Is a major player in international networking
• Technical expertise
• Is responsible for the shared infrastructure
  which is built, maintained and updated
• Storage is part of that infrastructure which can
  be maintained and preserved
• Building on what we already have

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Finally .

• Like the Librarian in the Book

• it is not for us ordinary monks to know where
  the information is actually kept it is enough
  that we can be given access to it when we need it
  

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Digital Preservation "How will I read this
conference content in 25 years time - Part 2
DHO Preservation Strategies

• Don Gourley, IT Manager, Digital Humanities
  Observatory
• Lighting the Future Strategies for Education and
  Research Networking. HEAnets National
  Networking Conference

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Digital Humanities Observatory

• Part of the Humanities Serving Irish Society
  (HSIS) consortium to develop an all-island
  inter-institutional research infrastructure for
  the humanities
• Defining, promoting and implementing best
  practices for
• Digitisation
• Archival
• Curation
• Discovery
• Presentation
• 3 years funding under cycle four of the Programme
  of Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI)

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Addressing preservation in 3 years

• Work with partners
• Exploit national infrastructure and services
• Create interoperable and shared services
• Promote and deploy best practices
• Implement specific preservation strategies
• Create preservable digital content

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HSIS partners digital content creation and use

• An Foras Feasa
• National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI
  Maynooth)
• Dublin City University (DCU)
• Dundalk Institute of Technology (DKIT)
• St. Patrick's College
• The Global Ireland Institute
• University College Dublin (UCD)
• Institute of Technology, Tallaght (ITT)
• Queens University Belfast
• Texts, Contexts, Cultures
• National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI
  Galway)
• Trinity College Dublin
• University College Cork
• Unaffiliated HSIS Partners
• National College of Art and Design (NCAD)
• Royal Irish Academy
• University of Ulster

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e-INIS partners technical support and
infrastructure

• ICHEC, Grid-Ireland, HEAnet
• Systems development support
• Web hosting
• National federated data store
• Data management and preservation services

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DHO infrastructure for digital preservation

• View digital preservation as a series of holding
  positions, or perhaps as a relay. Make your
  dispositions on the basis of the timescale you
  can foresee and for which you have funding.
  Preserve your objects to the best of your
  ability, and hand them on to your successor in
  good order at the end of your lap of the relay.
  In good order here means that the digital objects
  are intact, and that you have sufficient metadata
  and documentation to be able to demonstrate
  authenticity, provenance, and to give future
  users a good chance to access or use those
  digital objects.
• Chris Rusbridge, 2006

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Best practices for digital preservation

• Take care of the bits (backup, refresh, etc.)
• Keep content discoverable, accessible, usable
  re-usable
• Implement strategies to ensure content is in
  good order
• Standards
• Migration
• Encapsulation

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DHO preservation strategies standards
Application profiles Object structures Metad
ata schemas Data formats Encoding formats
community-specific
DC Education
METS
RDF
TEI
Dublin Core
TIFF
XML
JPEG
WAV
PCM
ISO-8859-1
generic
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DHO preservation strategies migration
Application profiles Object structures Metad
ata schemas Data formats Encoding formats
DC Education
METS
RDF
TEI
Dublin Core
TIFF
JPEG2000
XML
JPEG
WAV
PCM
ISO-8859-1
Unicode
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DHO preservation strategies encapsulation

• Structured digital objects
• Persistent digital object identifier
• Representation documentation
• Provenance information
• Context
• Fixity
• Content datastreams

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How will I read this conference in 25 years
time?
ASXWMV
PDF
PHP HTML
PPT
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Questions?

• I have a few . . .
• Selection?
• Funding?
• Access rights?
• Authenticity?
• ?