Readings: Week 6 Preservation in Digital Libraries

Margaret Hedstrom “Research Challenges in Digital Archiving and Long-term Preservation” http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dlwkshop/paper_hedstrom.pdf

The major Research Challenges:
1. Digital Collections are large, multi-media libraries that are growing exponentially. They is currently no method for preservation in light of an exponentially growing collection that is constantly interred with new and variable media.
2. Digital preservation of these collections bears more similarity to archive programs thamn library oriented issues. There is a need to develop self-sustaining, self-monitoring, and self-repairing collections.
3. Maintaining digital archives over long periods of time are as much economic, social, and institutional as technological. And there are no current models for this type of extended advance.
4. To develop tools that automatically supply and extract metadata from resources, ingest, restructure and manage metadata over time. And become progressively affordable as the digital archive expands.
5. Future inexpensive, flexible, and effectual infrastructures for collections.

Brian F. Lavoie, The Open Archival Information System Reference Model: Introductory Guide. http://www.dpconline.org/docs/lavoie_OAIS.pdf

The OAIS Reference Model was developed through a joint venture between the CCSDS and ISO to create a solution to data handling issues ---- digital preservation problems.

An archival information system is “an organization of people and systems that has accepted the responsibility to preserve information and make it available for a Designated Community.” The open meaning that the model is posed as a public forum to create a solution an any one who wishes to assist or use is welcome.

The duties of the OAIS model are:
1. Negotiate for and accept appropriate information from information producers
2. Obtain sufficient control of the information in order to meet long-term preservation objectives
3. Determine the scope of the archive’s user community
4. Ensure that the preserved information is independently understandable to the user community, in the sense that the information can be understood by users without the assistance of the information producer
5. Follow documented policies and procedures to ensure the information is preserved against all reasonable contingencies, and to enable dissemination of authenticated copies of the preserved information in its original form, or in a form traceable to the original
6. Make the preserved information available to the user community

The development group has create a fully detailed conceptual model, that explores a digital environment, functionality between, management, administration and the user. Even how the data would be packaged in the system. However this model is just that, only a model, it currently has no basis in reality.


Jones, Maggie, and Neil Beagrie. Preservation Management of Digital Materials: A Handbook. 2001. http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/handbook/index.html
introduction and digital preservation sections.

A manual developed through the Digital Preservation Coalition that elaborates on preservation management issues. Although designed to be an international handbook to d-preservation, the handbook does cite that it’s primacy deals with UK issues particularly legislative events. However it does remain current by posting current links with preservation topics and sites.

Justin Littman. Actualized Preservation Threats: Practical Lessons from Chronicling America. D-Lib Magazine July/August 2007. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/littman/07littman.html

Chronicling America:
1. to support the digitization of historically significant newspapers.
2. to facilitate public access via a Web site.
3. to provide for the long-term preservation of these materials by constructing a digital repository.
--- has a digital repository component that houses the digitized newspapers, supporting access and facilitating long-term preservation

Preservation threats encountered: failures of media, software, and hardware. But the worst errors came from operators, ie. Human error, deletion of files.

Question: Statistically, is operator error always the worst preservation threat found in digital archives?