Co-operation for digital preservation and curation: collaboration for collection development in institutional repository networks

Co-operation for digital preservation and curation: collaboration for collection development in institutional repository networks Michael Day , Maureen Pennock and Julie Allinson UKOLN, University of Bath Bath BA2 7AY m.day@ukoln.ac.uk/ http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

Presentation outline
Emerging work from the Digital Curation Centre
Contexts
Collaborative infrastructures for digital preservation
Networks of institutional repositories
Collaboration on preservation infrastructures
Collaboration on collection development policies
Potential areas for collaboration
Conclusions
What do digital curators do?
What do they need to know?

Contexts (1)
Collaborative infrastructures needed 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)
Examples:
Shared services (e.g. file format registries, bit-level preservation)
Networks of "trust" (audit and certification, etc.)
Collaboration on policy level, e.g. on collection development and unified access

Contexts (2)
Institutional repositories:
Used by higher education and research organisations to provide (open) access to peer-reviewed publications and other research materials
Increasingly supported by deposit "mandates" from universities or research funding bodies
Setting up a repository implies an institutional commitment to long-term stewardship

Contexts (3)
Collaborative infrastructures for institutional repositories:
Distributed services linked (for access) by metadata harvesting
OAI-PMH
Data Providers vs. Service Providers (aggregators)
Potential for the development of shared services to support repositories
Alma Swan & Chris Awre, Linking UK Repositories (JISC, 2006): http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

Contexts (4)
Potential shared services (from Swan & Awre):
Advisory services (e.g. on IPR, preservation)
Content creation, digitisation
Repository building or hosting
Metadata enhancement
Resource discovery
Name authorities
Citation analysis and research assessment
Preservation

Digital preservation (1)
Shared services for preservation:
Not all institutions with repositories will be expected to manage long-term preservation challenges:
Lack of local expertise and resources
Existing availability of third party services in related areas, e.g. data archives, national libraries
Preservation is a logical area for collaboration

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

Examples (continued):
SHERPA DP project - UK
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
Led by University of Southampton
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)

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

Collection development (1)
Collection development:
Set of activities, including: selection, acquisition, deselection, disposal, preservation
A traditional focus of library collaboration, e.g. on the development of shared collections
Need for institutional repositories to consider own collection development requirements with wider (national or international) contexts

Managed collaboration on collection development
Potentially reduces unnecessary duplication of effort, but ...
But may also support redundancy:
Replication of content
Application of different preservation strategies
Need to investigate role of repositories with regard to more formally published research materials
Perhaps e-journals should be the main focus of preservation activities in this domain?

Institutional repositories need to define collection development policies with regard to:
Institutional requirements
Interoperability requirements (e.g. OAI-PMH)
Preservation requirements

Collection development issues:
Content types
Peer-reviewed research outputs, scientific datasets, administrative records, ...
Will be different preservation priorities
Object types (file formats)
Policies will have direct influence on risks (and costs) of long-term preservation, e.g.:
Accepting any format
Only accepting a limited number of format types (e.g. PDF/A, XML); need for conversion and validation tools, or considerable post-processing

Potential areas for collaboration (continued):
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
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

Conclusions (1)
What should curators do?
Collaborate with other stakeholders on:
Strategic level collaboration (e.g. through organisations like the UK Digital Preservation Coalition)
Policy development (e.g. through emerging national frameworks)
Research and development
Standards development (e.g., OAIS, ISO Records Management Metadata)
The development of shared services (e.g. GDFR)

Conclusions (2)
What do curators need to know?
Where core services are dependent on other organisations (or services):
Need to understand the risks
Need to deal with these sensibly (e.g., through contracts, service-level agreements, or by moving the most vital functions in-house)
Many remaining open questions:
Be aware that there are still many unknown unknowns
But it is still important to do something (and to collaborate)

Co-operation for digital preservation and curation: collaboration for collection development in institutional repository networks

by Michael Day on Feb 18, 2008

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Co-operation for digital preservation and curation: collaboration for collection development in institutional repository networks — Presentation Transcript