Collaboration on appraisal and collection development for the long-term preservation of digital content

Collaboration on appraisal and collection development for the long-term preservation of digital content Michael Day DCC Research Team UKOLN, University of Bath Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom [email_address]

Presentation outline
Different approaches to selection and appraisal
Collection development
The importance of collaboration for:
Digital preservation
Institutional repositories
General principles for selection and appraisal

Approaches to selection (1)
Fully comprehensive
“Storage is cheap. Why select?” (topic of ASIST student chapter panel discussion, UNC, 2007)
May seem to provide a way of avoiding the cultural bias evident in most selection regimes
But, ad hoc decisions on retention may still be made, but maybe on pragmatic grounds (e.g., available technology, security, privacy) with little in the way of accountability
It also does not resolve the practical question of who should be responsible for preservation

Approaches to selection (2)
Different professional approaches to selection
Archivists focus on “appraisal”
Based on well-established theoretical principles
An important part of archival practice
Other cultural heritage organisations focus on the development and management of collections
Based on a different set of assumptions

Example: Web archives (1)
Highlights differences between the archival and collection development approaches
Archivists and records managers approach Web operations as a potential source or generator of records
Identify best practice for managing Web records, e.g. TNA
Mitigating organisational risk
Enhancing accountability

Example: Web archives (2)
International Internet Preservation Consortium
Internet Archive and national libraries
View Web as a source of “published” content that can be harvested to enhance existing collections
Whether highly selective (e.g. UK Web Archiving Consortium, National Library of Australia’s PANDORA archive) or broader in scope (domain capture), national library led-initiatives tend to focus on traditional collection development criteria

Collection development (1)
Typically focuses both on institutional objectives (e.g. “supporting the research and teaching needs of the university”) and subject needs
Traditionally includes a range of activities:
Selection, acquisition, deselection (weeding), disposal, preservation
Part of collection management (also includes policies, budget allocation, collection evaluation
Most collections will change over time, e.g. responding to changes to institutional objectives and the resources available (money and space)

Specific selection factors might include:
The overall purpose of the collection (e.g. supporting education and research)
Existing subject strengths
The information needs of users
Quality, accuracy, authoritativeness, currency, …
Value for money
Statutory requirements (e.g. for national libraries)

Collection development policies
These help guide ongoing collecting activities and form the basis for evaluation
In the library sector, these can be “highly charged political documents and … the province of the most senior library management” (Derek Law)
Helps to define organisational goals
“ Deaccessioning” can lead to controversy (e.g. Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold )

Digital resources raise new kinds of selection issues:
Defining content, e.g. understanding the “significant properties” of resources (vitally important for making preservation decisions)
The need for various types of metadata
Access
The longer-term implications of licenses
User support and training needs

The principle that it is important to select resources early in their lifecycle
Obsolescence leads to loss
Implicit knowledge gets lost
Metadata and documentation is hard to (re)create retrospectively

Collaboration on preservation (1)
Collaborative infrastructures have long been identified as necessary for digital preservation and curation, e.g.:
Preservation is "an ongoing, long-term commitment, often shared, and cooperatively met, by many stakeholders" (Lavoie & Dempsey, 2004)

Collaboration on preservation (2)
Examples:
Shared services (e.g. registries of representation information, third-party services for bit-level preservation)
Networks of "trust" (audit and certification)
Collaboration on policy level, e.g. on collection development and access

Institutional repositories (1)
Institutional repositories require collaborative infrastructures:
Distributed services linked (for access) by metadata harvesting
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)
Data Providers (repositories) and Service Providers (aggregators)
Potential for the development of shared services to support repositories (Swan & Awre, Linking UK Repositories (JISC, 2006)

Institutional repositories (2)
Potential shared services identified by Swan & Awre (2006):
Resource discovery
Building or hosting repositories
Advisory services (e.g. on IPR, preservation)
Content creation, digitisation
Metadata capture and enhancement
Name authorities
Citation analysis and research assessment
Preservation services

IRs and preservation (1)
Shared services for preservation:
Assumption that not all institutions with repositories will be able to manage long-term preservation challenges, e.g.:
Lack of local expertise and resources
Existing availability of third party services, e.g. provided by subject-based data centres, national libraries
Preservation is a logical area for collaboration

Examples:
DARE (Digital Academic Repositories) initiative (Netherlands)
National Library of the Netherlands (KB) has responsibility for content deposited in participating repositories
Repository Bridge project (UK)
Demonstration of harvesting e-theses (using OAI-PMH and METS) by the National Library of Wales

Examples (continued):
SHERPA DP project (UK) - JISC funded
Developed disaggregated framework for outsourcing preservation, based on the OAIS model
Explored the packaging and transfer of content (using METS)

Examples (continued):
Preserv project (UK) - JISC funded
Simple model of modular services, e.g. for:
Bit-level preservation
Object characterisation and validation (e.g. using registries like PRONOM-DROID)
Preservation Planning (risk assessments, technology watch, etc.)
Preservation strategies (e.g. migration)

IRs and preservation (5) Preserv service provider model (Hichcock, et al ., 2007)

IRs and collection development (1)
Collection development issues for :
Content types
Peer-reviewed research outputs, scientific datasets, administrative records, ...
Will have different preservation priorities
Object types (file formats)
Policies will have direct influence on risks (and costs) of long-term preservation, e.g.:
Accepting anything vs. defining the specific standards to be used

Ongoing review (and weeding) of collections
Withdrawal of content (contentious issue)
Superseded or duplicate material
Defining preservation service levels
Different policies needed for different types of material

Potential areas for collaboration:
Ingest workflows
Checking conformance with submission rules
Automated tools for format characterisation and validation, maybe conversion (normalisation)
Metadata enhancement, e.g. consistent forms of name

Shared collection development (1)
Collection development has been a traditional focus of library co-operation, e.g.:
Farmington Plan (1940s)
University of London Depository Library
The concept of "virtual collections"
IFLA Universal Availability of Publications (UAP) core programme
Also applies to digital collections
OhioLINK
California Digital Library

Collaborative collection development and digital preservation
Potentially reducing unnecessary duplication of effort
Enabling co-ordinated decisions to be made about the redundancy and geographical distribution of content
Also supporting the application of different preservation strategies to the same class of content

Identifying collections at risk and supporting their rescue
In order to do these things, it may be useful to have some common understanding of what collection development and appraisal should mean in the digital era
The main appraisal activities identified by the InterPARES Appraisal Task Force may be useful here

InterPARES appraisal framework (1)
1. Compiling information
Identifying the form and contexts of records
Identifying the particular components that need preservation
Based on solid research (not just collecting it together in a haphazard fashion)
This information could become part of the record’s metadata

2. Assessing value
Judgement based on creator’s needs and societal needs
May be context dependent (institution specific)
Assessing continuing value
Authenticity
Determining value

3. Determining the feasibility of preservation
Determining value is not enough in itself
Need also to consider whether the records are able to be preserved as authentic records
Takes into account the organisational ability to undertake preservation
Gathers technical information
4. Making the appraisal decision
Based on value and feasibility
All decisions made must be documented

A generic framework: as developed has a focus on records, but the general principles, broadly interpreted, could be applied to other forms of content, e.g. scientific datasets, Web content
Does not presuppose a particular preservation approach
Encourages a focus on organisational objectives, object contexts, object value, the technical feasibility of preservation, and the determination of “significant properties”
Helps to document the selection process

Conclusions
The use of a consistent set of principles might help to encourage:
More consistency in documenting selection and appraisal decisions across domains, with benefits for collaboration
May provide insight into assessing value and preservation feasibility in specific contexts (like Web archives)

Collaboration on appraisal and collection development for the long-term preservation of digital content

by Michael Day on Feb 19, 2008

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Collaboration on appraisal and collection development for the long-term preservation of digital content — Presentation Transcript