Digital Archiving or Digital Archaeology

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Digital Archiving or Digital Archaeology?

• Dealing with Digital Records
• Maureen Pennock Digital Curation Centre

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Todays talk

• The DCC
• Background Context
• What We Do
• Digital Preservation Archiving
• Preservation Curation Issues challenges
• Specific challenges for repositories receiving
  digital deposits
• Examples
• Proactive solutions

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UK Digital Curation Centre

• JISC Circular 6/03 called for bids in digital
  curation
• JISC and the e-Science Core Programme funding
• for development, services and outreach in digital
  curation
• for a research programme
• Impetus to action
• Growth in e-Science activity and data creation
• Recognition that continuing access to digital
  information

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Partners

• University of Edinburgh (lead site)
• Chris Rusbridge, Prof Peter Buneman
• University of Glasgow - HATII
• Prof Seamus Ross, Director of HATII and Erpanet
• University of Bath - UKOLN
• Dr Liz Lyon, Director of UKOLN
• Councils for the Central Laboratory of the
  Research Councils (CCLRC)
• Dr David Giaretta

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Objectives

• Lead a vibrant international research programme
  to improve quality in data curation and digital
  preservation
• Deliver effective, efficient and high demand
  services
• undertake evaluation of tools, methods, standards
  and policies
• work with the community to establish registries
  of tools and technical information
• Create an active, innovative and collaborative
  Associates Network
• Connect communities
• Universities and Research institutions
• Scientific data and documents
• International cross-sector

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• curation organisations

• eg DPC

• Collaborative

• Associates

• Network of

• Data

• Organisations

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We carry out Research...

• Annotation in Databases
• Data archiving
• Socio-economic and legal issues
• Metadata extraction and curation
• Provenance and databases
• Data transformation, integration and publishing
• Security
• Supporting technologies
• Organisational and cultural challenges to digital
  curation

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We undertake Development...

• DCC Approach to Digital Curation (white paper)
  sets out the path for development activities
• Monitoring international standards
• Development of a Representation Information
  Registry/Repository (DCC RIR)
• Development of recommendations for tools and
  methods for generating Representation Information
• Creating testbeds for digital curation tools
• Creating auditing and certification processes for
  trusted repositories

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We provide Services...

• Information Services
• Community-developed Digital Curation Manual
• Briefing Papers FAQs
• Technology Watch
• Case Studies
• Best Practice Checklists
• Advisory Services
• Events information days, workshops, training,
  conferences
• Helpdesk
• Audit and Certification Services

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But we dont

• Accept digital archival materials for curation,
  storage, or preservation
• Maintain a computer hardware museum
• Offer file migration or conversion
• Repair damaged data resources
• Carry out digital archaeology

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In Summary, we

• Support and promote continuing improvement in the
  quality of data curation and preservation
  activity
• Nurture strong community relationships between
  practitioners, researchers, and curators
• Address digital curation from all aspects of the
  records life-cycle
• Develop and promote curation knowledge, tools and
  techniques
• Identify and research new organisational,
  technical, and supporting curation challenges

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Digital Curation

• Digital curation is all about maintaining and
  adding value to a trusted body of digital
  information for current and future use
  specifically, we mean the active management and
  appraisal of data over the life-cycle of
  scholarly and scientific materials.
• Digital Curation brings a whole host of
  challenges
• The range of stakeholders that affect the
  survival of digital material cuts across the
  whole life-cycle
• Everyone plays an important role

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Preserving Digital Archives I

• The main problems
• Technology obsolescence
• Hardware and software dependencies
• Leading to authenticity and integrity issues
• Fragility of digital media
• Bit deterioration
• Media breakage
• Lack of good practice examples for
• Data creation
• Data documentation

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Preserving Digital Archives II

• Some other problems
• Cultural
• Creators dont (want to) understand the technical
  issues
• Contextual
• Metadata identifying resources is often
  insufficient
• Financial
• Difficult to anticipate costs of different
  activities
• Organisational
• Need for collaboration between parties is often
  overlooked
• Infrastructure and existing procedures often
  inadequate
• Legal
• Largely an unknown quantity!

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Receiving Digital Archives I

• Specific challenges for organisations receiving
  externally originating digital deposits
• Possible lack of control/influence over
• resource creation
• resource collection documentation
• transfer metadata
• technical metadata
• file storage format
• media storage format

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Receiving Digital Archives II

• Further challenges
• Lack of required hardware to read discs
• Lack of required software to read file formats
• Lack of in-house knowledge about digital deposits
• May be a hybrid collection paper digital
• This causes further challenges
• Final archive may only accept limited formats
• You might have to convert the material for
  archiving
• Solving all of these issues may cause you money!

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Digital archaeology for digital archiving

• Digital archaeology
• A form of data recovery
• Exploring what is buried below the surface
• Rescuing neglected and damaged data resources
• May reveal a lot of unwanted material, but
• may also reveals some valuable treasures
• May be necessary for repositories receiving
  digital deposits to ascertain
• What material has been deposited
• Whether the material is valuable
• How to access and store the material for the
  longer-term

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Examples

• NCUACS
• Received Old BBC Discs obsolete storage format
• National Archives/CAMiLEON project
• Domesday Project rescuing data from obsolete
  media and data formats
• NARA
• Hurricane Marilyn resulted in weather damaged
  diskettes and 12 inch WORM discs
• German Unification
• West German Archivists recovering obsolete East
  German data

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What can you do? I

• Find a reliable way to explore deposits and
  ascertain the value of the records
• Some records may be damaged or fragmented
• Rescue records where possible
• Store those that are not
• You never know what we will be capable of in the
  future
• Most data can be rescued given enough time and
  money

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What can you do? II

• Learn from experience
• What you have done in the past
• What others have done in the past
• Collaborate and share knowledge
• Be prepared
• To change processes
• To embark on a learning curve
• To communicate issues to potential depositors
• Develop in-house knowledge
• Cuts costs
• But be prepared to combine it with specialised
  external knowledge when necessary

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What can you do? III

• Identify and use tools developed by others
• DCC tools such as the RIR
• Erpanet tools on Ingest, Costing, Selecting
  Technologies, Developing a Policy tools
• Tools from the NAA
• Tools from the NLA
• Tools from the Digital Preservation Testbed
• Identify and use valuable case studies
• Ross Gow Digital Archaeology Rescuing
  Neglected and Damaged Data Resources
• Jeremy John, British Library Digital Manuscripts
  Project
• Studies presented at this workshop

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Thank you. Questions?

• Maureen Pennock
• m.pennock_at_ukoln.ac.uk
• Join the DCC Associates Network at
  http//www.dcc.ac.uk