Digital Preservation:

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Digital Preservation Lessons learned through
national action Digital Preservation
Interoperability Framework Workshop April
2010
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Chartered by the US Congress in 2000, the
National Digital Information Infrastructure and
Preservation Program (NDIIPP) began with a
strategy of collaboration and iteration.
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Mission

• To ensure access over time to a rich body of
  digital content through the establishment of a
  national network of partners committed to
  selecting, collecting and preserving at-risk
  digital information

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The Program is engaged in forming a network of
people and an architecture for preservation.
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• The NDIIPP motto is
• Learn by doing
• Some of the lessons we have learned thus far are.

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• We can think of digital preservation as being
  like a race with relay teams proceeding in
  parallel lanes at different speeds towards the
  finish line. Enabling access across time and
  organizational and technical change is the
  equivalent of a finish line.

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Relay as metaphor for digital preservation

• We take on preservation a generation at a time
  preparing to do the best we can in order to hand
  it off to the next generation.
• Throughout the lifecycle of a digital object,
  there are numerous hand-offs across organizations
  and technical environments.
• It is at the handoffs that the community needs to
  pay attention to standards and best practices.

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Consider these aspects to digital
preservationthe content, the organizations
taking responsibility, the technical environment,
and the community.
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Content
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The NDIIPP partner projects have been working
with these categories of digital content. The
work has been driven primarily by content type.
Content

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This is a map of the diverse content domains
represented by NDIIPP work.
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What we learned about content standards

• Format standards are key to understanding how to
  manage digital content through changes in
  software and environments.
• Packaging standards are essential to moving
  content reliably between creator and stewardship
  entities. We learned this during our first
  project, Archive Ingest and Handling Test, and
  through transferring over 100 Tb of content
  across partner organizations.
• Metadata standards are important to content
  creators. We learned this from our partnerships
  with photography associations.

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Organization
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NDIIPP Partner Organization Types 2010
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What we learned about organizations

• Business processes are not interoperable.
  Sometimes it took as much work to get the
  agreement and funding in place as to do the
  project.
• Organizations need a local benefit to engage in
  larger collaborations.
• Organizations have interests beyond their own
  domain. Example Photographers associations are
  interested in collaborating with museum imaging
  standards efforts.

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Environment
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This initial view of architecture reflects the
NDIIPP approach to infrastructure from a shared
tools and services perspective, acknowledging
that local resources would steer adoptions of
storage and software at stewardship institutions.
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Tools and services were developed around the 3
aspects of the architecture.
Access and Views
Understanding, Interpreting, Caring For
Ingest, Acquisition
Export
Storage, Data Assurance
Indiana Digital Preservation Summit
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3rd International Digital Curation Conference
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Tools and Services from the NDIIPP projects
Access and Views
NGDA Tools NutchWAX Wayback LOCKSS Recollection
Conspectus Database DataVerse GIS Archiving
Tool Heritrix Hub Spoke JHOVE LoDN LOCK
SS NGDA Tool Suite PAWN SRB Web
Archives Workbench Web Archiving
Service BagIt Memento UDFR
Understanding, Interpreting, Caring For
Ingest, Acquisition
Export
ACE DataVerse FACIT iRODS JHOVE LOCKSS L-Store
DuraSpace
Storage, Data Assurance
Indiana Digital Preservation Summit
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3rd International Digital Curation Conference
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What we learned about environment

• There is a high interest in sharing tools and
  services for preservation but local repository
  adoptions depend upon organizational resources
  and policies.
• The simplest and most transparent tools are most
  often adopted. The broad acceptance of LOCKSS
  attests to this.
• Hardware vendors need to be engaged to understand
  preservation requirements. NDIIPP sponsors an
  annual storage meeting with vendors.

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Communities
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What we learned about communities

• Shared expertise can reduce time and effort to
  establish local preservation environments. Ex.
  The MetaArchive Cooperative
• Working together builds trust.
• Digital preservation is a task too challenging
  for a single institution. It requires multiple
  domain expertise, about content and technology.
• Communities are essential to sustain digital
  preservation efforts for the long-term.
• Standards need to be considered in the context of
  diverse communities.

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NDIIPP efforts engaged with standards
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• Standards and best practices are needed at the
  intersections of preservation regimes where
  technology and organizations hand-off content.

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For more information

• Consult the NDIIPP website
• www.digitalpreservation.gov
• Or email
• Martha Anderson
• mande_at_loc.gov