New Custodians and New Practices Digital Curation for Family History Materials

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New Custodians and New Practices Digital
Curation for Family History Materials

• IFLA-GENLOC Satellite Meeting,11 August 2011
• Ross Harvey (Simmons College, Boston)

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Introduction

• The information diaspora requires new custodians
  of information - including individuals
• Much of this information is in digital form -
  digitized and born digital
• Family history sources are increasingly digital
• Old-style preservation doesnt work with
  digital information
• Custodians (including individuals) need to adjust
  their preservation strategies

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Topics

• New thinking about preservation
• Digital material at risk
• Digital preservation current best practice
• An aside where collections come from
• Guidelines for small organizations and
  individuals
• Where to go next
• Conclusion

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New thinking about preservation

• Preservation is
• concerned with maintaining or restoring access
  to artifacts, documents and records (SAA
  Glossary) measures taken to extend the usable
  life of materials to slow down the natural
  processes of deterioration of an object
  (Wikipedia)
• Paper-based preservation thinking does not work
  with digital information because it
• Focuses attention on the carrier (the physical
  medium)
• Emphasizes secure storage facilities, stable
  environmental conditions
• This doesnt address preservation issues of
  digital objects

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Digital material at risk why?

• Obsolescence of computers and software
• Vulnerability to corruption
• Lack of knowledge about best practice
• Insufficient resources allocated to digital
  preservation
• Insufficient professionals with appropriate
  skills
• Lack of knowledge about what the best
  organizational structures are

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Questions for you

• Do you back up your personal digital files?
• Do you back them up according to a regular
  schedule?
• Have you ever tried reinstating files from the
  backup?
• How many copies of the backup files do you keep?
• Where do you store them?
• Have you ever had a hard disk crash?
• When you upgrade to a new computer, operating
  system or software version, how do you make sure
  you can read your old digital files?

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Questions for you

• Backing up to a regular schedule / Checking that
  backups work / Keeping multiple copies in
  distributed storage
• All of these are good practices for short-term
  storage
• In libraries and archives, we are interested in
• Long-term preservation and in ensuring the
  digital files can be used after time has passed
  DIGITAL CURATION
• This is much harder to do

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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?

• Quantities
• We create and handle lots of digital materials,
  e.g.
• Files created in digitizing projects
• Born-digital materials

Internet-hosted materials Quantities extremely
large BUT our procedures for archiving can
currently handle only small quantities
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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?

• The hardware changes fast

Osborne portable computer 1981
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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?

• The storage media deteriorate fast
• and obsolescence gets in the way

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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?

• The software changes fast
• What is this?
• How would you open it?

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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?

• The file formats change fast
• What is this?
• How would you open it?

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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?
Some of my old files how to open them?
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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?
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Whats so hard about keeping digital materials?

• And theres more
• Technical
• Lack of standards
• Access barriers (e.g. encrypted files without the
  encryption keys)
• Viruses
• Non-technical these are MAJOR
• Funding is not sustained over time
• Legal permissions
• Inadequate knowledge and skills
• Materials poorly identified and described

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The inescapable conclusion

• We cant place digital objects on shelf and leave
  100 years ongoing intervention is required

Preservation by digitization is precisely like
running a glasshouse for plants where you have to
provide water continuously, otherwise you will
lose everythingThis is why a digitization
project is so dangerous if the watering for
all eternity is not paid, nothing is preserved
(Source http//www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/printer_54
49.shtml)
Broken link a digital preservation issue
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Digital preservation current best practice

• Will summarize current best practice in digital
  preservation
• BUT this has been developed for use in large,
  well-resourced archives and libraries.
• It doesn't scale down well to small libraries or
  archives, small collections, private information
• What is this current best practice?

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Current best practice open data, open source,
open everything

• The open data movement
• Open access
• Open source

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Current best practice metadata

• Standards we need more

• Better metadata
• - Data capture
• File formats
• Metadata
• Citation
• Annotation
• Representation
• information
• Data interoperability
• Software integration

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Current best practice better understanding

• Better understanding of
• The challenges
• Best practice in digital archiving
• Needed by information professionals (you!)
• Needed by creators of digital materials
  (including the general public)

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Current best practice better tools

• Better software tools for digital curation
• Useful and usable

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Current best practice life-cycle responses

• Develop responses that take account of the
  life-cycle of information

DCC Curation Lifecycle Model
Open Archival Information System Reference Model
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Current best practice different kinds of
organizations

• Develop organizational structures that respond to
  digital curation demands

McGovern, Nancy (2007) A Digital Decade Where
Have We Been and Where Are We Going in Digital
Preservation? RLG DigiNews v11 no1
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Current best practice new skillsets

• MLS or equivalent, plus other skills such as
• Experience with XSLT, Perl or other scripting
  languages, and/or experience with major
  repository platforms
• Knowledge of XML ... Semantic web technologies
  Experience with one or more metadata manipulation
  and scripting languages XSLT, Java, Perl,
  Python, or PHP

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An aside where collections come from

• Role of the individual in collection building
• Collector
• Compiler
• Creator 
• Collections eventually come to the archive or
  library
• Many collections will include digital objects
• Photographs
• Documents, spreadsheets
• Databases
• These digital objects are created by individuals
• Creating 'good' digital objects is crucial for
  their long life

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• Current best practice has been developed in
  large, well-resourced organizations
• Can we translate them into guidelines that family
  history researchers, librarians, collections
  custodians and archivists in small organizations
  can apply?
• Aim to ensure digital materials are available
  for use in the future

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• General guidelines (National Library of
  Australia, 2009)
• Refresh files (copy them to newer storage media)
• Check that the data hasnt changed by running
  integrity checks
• Add metadata about the processes you apply
• Keeping multiple copies of the file
• Monitor developments in hardware, software, file
  formats and standards that will have high impact
  on digital preservation, and respond to them
• But these simple guidelines are still complex

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• Creating good digital files
• Why? Preservation-friendly files are readable for
  longer they are easier to preserve
• Principles and practices
• Use open software if possible (eg OpenOffice not
  Microsoft Word)
• Use open formats if possible (eg .CSV not .XLS)
• Give files a unique name (eg NZ_Family_History_Ne
  wsletter_no6_11June2009 not Newsletter6)
• Describe your files using metadata
• Record details about the file (eg format, who
  created it, date)

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• Managing digital files
• Why? To avoid obsolescence issues
• Principles and practices
• Refresh files when needed (eg copy them to newer
  storage media)
• Check files after copying to make sure they
  havent changed (eg try opening some of them)
• Always keep one copy of the original file (eg and
  at least one other copy, preferably more)
• Decide which files are most important (eg some
  may be duplicates)

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• Storing digital files
• Why? To make sure there is an accessible,
  unchanged copy available
• Principles and practices
• Keep several copies of the files (eg at least two
  copies, preferably more)
• Store them in different physical locations (eg
  one at home, one at work)
• Store them on different media (eg hard disk,
  CD/DVD, cloud storage)

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• Guidelines for preserving digital photographs
• Identify where you have them stored
• Decide which photos are most important
• Organize the photos selected as important
• Make copies and store them in different locations
  
• More about this at
• http//www.digitalpreservation.gov/you/content/pho
  tos.html

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• Guidelines for designing preservable web sites
• Follow accessibility standards (eg W3Cs Web
  Accessibility Initiative)
• Avoid proprietary formats (eg use HTML, CSS)
• Maintain stable URLs (eg if changing URL, make
  sure theres a redirect)
• Design navigation carefully (eg include a
  sitemap)
• Allow browsing of content, not just searching
  (this helps web harvesting software, eg Internet
  to capture all of the content)
• Source http//blog.photography.si.edu/2011/08/02/
  five-tips-for-designing-preservable-websites/

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Guidelines for small organizations, individuals

• Keep an eye on
• Digital Preservation in a Box http//www.digitalpr
  eservation.gov/register/7Outreach.pdf
• Personal Archiving Preserving Your Digital
  Memories
• http//www.digitalpreservation.gov/you/

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Where to go next

• For lots of good advice European projects
• DCC
• Digital Preservation Europe
• In the U.S.
• NDIIPP (Library of Congress)

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Where to go next

• Cornell Universitys online tutorial Digital
  Preservation http//www.icpsr.umich.edu/dpm/index.
  html
• PARADIGM (Personal Archives Accessible in Digital
  Media)
• http//www.paradigm.ac.uk/

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Conclusion

• The need to preserve digital information is here
  it wont go away
• It is worth putting effort into
• Creating preservation-friendly digital objects
• Managing, storing personal digital objects
  effectively
• Advice is plentiful
• Just do it!
• It isnt hard
• But you have to be organized
• Email ross.harvey_at_simmons.edu

Ross Harvey in his office, ca 1963