Katherine Skinner - Collaborative Distributed Digital Preservation: The MetaArchive Cooperative

Katherine Skinner Executive Director, Educopia Institute Program Manager, MetaArchive Cooperative University of North Texas December 11, 2009

What is distributed digital preservation?
Why do we need to collaborate?
What are some basic principles of collaborative networking?
What do they look like in practice?
MetaArchive Cooperative
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Digital preservation:
Managed activities necessary for ensuring both the long-term maintenance of a byte stream and continued accessibility of its contents.
Aims to ensure that future users will be able to discover, retrieve, render, manipulate, interpret and use digital information in face of constantly changing technology
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“ Disaster recovery strategies and backup systems are not sufficient to ensure survival and access to authentic digital resources over time. A backup is short-term data recovery solution following loss or corruption and is fundamentally different to an electronic preservation archive.”
JISC. Digital Preservation: Continued Access to authentic digital assets. (November, 2006)
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Internal policies
Internal strategies/procedures
Implementation
Monitoring
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Policy should
Explain how digital preservation can serve major needs of the institution
State some of the principles/rules that form the basis of implementation
Provide guidance and authorization on preservation of digital materials (selection, rights info, formatting, etc)
Ensure the authenticity, reliability and long term accessibility of the digital materials
Be date stamped and marked for next review
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Document preservation practices
The “what”—what content is preserved and where is it preserved
The “how”—what service(s), how process for ingest/harvest, how retrieve if necessary, how monitor
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Maximizing survivability through adapting long-known preservation conventions
Multiple copies
Distribution
Security
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How do you do preservation?
Rule 1: you don’t do it alone!
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Collections
Books, journals, newspapers, unique items, etc.
Services
Building, disseminating, and preserving collections
Once solitary; now defies such boundaries
Competition vs. collaboration issue
Viability at stake
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Adjust to a more collaborative mindset to accomplish two preservation goals:
To preserve the digital collections we create
Maintain integrity so that we can continue to access both “born digital” and digitized materials
To preserve our own institutional missions
Outsourcing a core mission is a dangerous proposition
Danger of becoming a broker rather than a do-er
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Collaborative Network: An association of autonomous entities collaborating to achieve common or compatible goals.
Source: Wikipedia.org
Skinner 12/11/09 FLEXIBILITY FRAGILITY

Enables communities to work together on a common solution to a common problem
Demands attention to organizational structure in order to work
Requires three key elements:
A common cause
Solid institutional buy-in
Attention to the organizational arrangement that governs the partnerships
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Founded on the premise that cultural memory organizations should maintain their historical role as cultural stewards
Preservation of digital assets as corollary to preserving physical ones
Need in house expertise and knowledge
Value of curators and librarians and archivists
Chose technical and organizational infrastructure that capitalizes on cultural memory organization’s proven methodologies
Distributed preservation
Partnership to keep costing affordable
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A distributed digital preservation cooperative for digital archives, based on LOCKSS
Founded in 2003; supported by combination of sponsored funding (NDIIPP, NHPRC), consulting fees, and membership fees
Provides digital preservation infrastructure and training and models to enable other groups to establish similar networks
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MetaArchive is a cooperative, not a vendor:
A cooperative (or co-op) is an organization that consists of a group of individuals who have joined together to perform a function more efficiently than each individual could do alone. The purpose of a cooperative is not to make profits, but to improve each member's situation and the situation of the surrounding society.
collaborative association of cultural memory organizations with a nonprofit administration
All hardware and software assets are owned by members
Membership fees go to a central pool of support for members’ co-op activities
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Skinner 12/11/09 14 US Members + Lib. of Congress 2 Overseas Members

Auburn University
Boston College
Clemson University
Emory University
Florida State Univ.
Folger Shakespeare Lib.
Georgia Tech
Pontifícia Universidade Católica (Rio)
Rice University
Univ. of Hull
Univ. of Louisville
Univ. of North Texas
Univ. of South Carolina
Virginia Tech
Library of Congress
NDLTD
SDSC
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Works with any repository system
Collections must be available via http for initial harvest (it can be a highly secure pathway)
Tiered membership: $5K or $1K per year
Server cost: $4,600/3 years (currently)
Space is at cost : $0.67/GB/year for six replications
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Collections
Technical Infrastructure
Organizational Infrastructure
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Format-agnostic solution
Subject- and genre-based archives
Southern Digital Culture
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
TransAtlantic Slave Trade
Early Modern Literature
Newspapers (coming soon)
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MetaArchive provides a cost-effective cooperative structure:
secure distributed digital preservation of archives
based on re-use of LOCKSS for archives
Network participation as a MetaArchive-LOCKSS cache is simple and inexpensive
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Preservation solution needed a long-term, sustainable infrastructure
Question arose: Who’s in charge of a Cooperative of peer institutions?
Sought guidance
legal team, librarians, archivists, and IP specialists
Created core structure in 2006:
charter, membership agreement, papers of incorporation, business plans, etc.
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Separated the administrative apparatus and member institutions
provides a clear line of leadership and responsibility
helps to keep any one member’s goals from unduly influencing the cooperative’s direction
gives leverage for external partnerships
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reducing our short- and long-term costs
Investing in a commonly-owned solution, not purchasing a service
Sharing technological development and organizational tasks
decentralizing our activities
Safety in this “brave new world” of digital preservation may well reside in shared knowledge and shared commitment
decreasing dependence on third-party solutions
There is room for various types of solutions
Increased capacity for acting as a community of cultural stewards
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Outsourcing core services = risky proposition
Core missions:
Building collections
Disseminating collections
Preserving collections
Cannot focus on the collections at the expense of the services … need both in order to carry our missions and memory forward
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Dr. Katherine Skinner
404 783 2534
[email_address]
Skinner 12/11/09

Katherine Skinner - Collaborative Distributed Digital Preservation: The MetaArchive Cooperative

by Katherine Skinner

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