Digital Preservation Policy & Strategy: Where Do I Start?

Athenaeum2l
Christine Madsen & Megan Hurst
@mccarthymadsen
@MHzUX
www.athenaeum21.com
December 7 2016 | NISO & NFAIS Virtual Conference
Digital Preservation
Policy & Strategy:
Where Do I Start?

www.athenaeum21.com © Athenaeum21
Athenaeum21: Who We Are
2
Megan Hurst, MLIS, MFA Co-
Founder, Chief Experience Officer
& Head of US Operations
@MHzUX
Christine Madsen, MLIS, DPhil
Co-Founder, Chief Innovation Officer
& Head of UK Operations
@mccarthymadsen
Expertise
• Web & SaaS Product Development & Management
• Agile Software Development
• Optimization for Multi-Channel Publishing
(web, mobile, audio, video, print)
• Assessment of Digital Services
• User Experience Research & Design
Work Experience
MIDIOR Consulting, Harvard, EBSCO, Athenaeum21
Expertise
• Information Management Systems
• Data Management Strategy
• Data Preservation
• Process Design & Management
• Information Conversion (Physical to Digital)
Work Experience
UCSD, Harvard, Oxford, Bodleian, Athenaeum21

Our
Philosophy
High-quality data and information is
fundamental to human agency,
citizenship, scholarship, research,
enterprise, and government.
Human use and access to data and
information determines its value.
Data and information are
valuable assets, and should be
managed as such.
3

Contents
4
Digital Preservation Policy & Strategy
1. Why
2. What
3. How

LOTS
of
Data
6
1.Increasing quantity
2.Increasing variety
3.Increasing pressure to preserve

How do you make these decisions?
8

Rules vs. Framework
9
NOT about giving
you the rules to
decide what to
keep vs. what to
toss
ABOUT providing a
framework for
understanding
what decisions
to make

10
The answers about what “to keep”
and what “to toss” differ for each
institution
However,
The PRINCIPLES of how to make
these decisions are the same.
First
Principles

11
“we just need a digital repository”
Or
“we should take an emulation
approach rather than a migration
approach”
Common
Traps

Saving time and money
12
• Think about your strategy and policies
• Start with a basic plan
• What do you want to do?
• What is the mission of your organization?
• What are its goals?

13
“a plan of action designed to
achieve a long-term or overall aim”
So, in order to create a strategy,
you need to know what your aim is
Strategy
First

14
a digital preservation strategy is
about supporting your institution in
its goals and mission through the
preservation of digital data and
artefacts.
So, what are the mission and goals of
your organization?
Basic
Premise

15
a clear connection between the goals
of your organization and the digital
preservation activities in which you
are engaging
So, then what is a policy?
Strategy

16
A policy is there to help staff adhere
to and/or contribute to the strategyPolicy

A Policy Should Provide:
17
• The people on the ground with the answers to ‘should I
keep this? Or toss it?’
• A cost-effective way for people to make decisions.
• The CONFIDENCE to make decisions on their own
without having to check with a bunch of people.
• Some clarity for end-users about why you are making
certain decisions

18
• Break the work into bite-sized
pieces
• Stay focused on defining the
problem BEFORE deciding on
a solution
Why the
separation
?

Taxonomy of Topics (From LoC Review - 2013)
19
Access and Use
Accessioning and Ingest
Audit
Bibliography
Collaboration
Content Scope
Glossary/Terminology
Mandates
Metadata or Documentation
Policy/Strategy Review
Preservation Model/ Strategy
Preservation Planning
Rights and Restriction Management
Roles and Responsibilities
Security Management
Selection/Appraisal
Staff Training/Education
Storage, Duplication, and Backup
Sustainability Planning
http://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2013/08/analysis-of-current-digital-preservation-policies-archives-libraries-and-museums/

20
tackles too much at once
conflates three different things
makes the task overwhelming
has the wrong people making the
decisions at the wrong level
The
Problem

Solution:
Break the task into three parts

22
Collaboration
Content Scope
Mandates
Policy/Strategy Review
Sustainability Planning
1
Strategy

23
Access and Use
Metadata or Documentation
Preservation Model/ Strategy
Preservation Planning
Rights and Restriction
Management
Selection/Appraisal
Staff Training/Education
2
Policy

24
Accessioning and Ingest
Audit
Roles and Responsibilities
Security Management
Storage, Duplication, and
Backup
3
Operations

25
Strategy = senior leadership
Policy = managers - the people
who have contact with your user
base
Operations = techies - the
people on the ground
People

26
Strategy = revise every 10 years
Policy = every 3-5 years
Operations = review annually
and revise as needed
Shelf Life

3 Essential Things
27
• Technology -- most people focus here and people
want a shiny solution, even if it is expensive. But the
technology should be the end-point, not the beginning.
• Organizational support -- people have to believe this
is critical to the mission and goals of an organization
and that is why a strategy that makes that connection
explicitly is important.
• Resources -- and those resources need to be both
human and financial

Human & Financial Resources
28
• You need a team of committed people at all three
of these levels → strategy, policy, and operations
• You need a budget
• And advocacy at all levels

3 part approach
to digital preservation
29
Strategy
Policy
Digital
Preservation
Operations
Tech-
nologyPeople

A Good Strategic Approach
Can Make things MORE Preservable
(in addition to reinforcing organisational mission & strategy)

31
“if we start collecting digital
research data to preserve, do we
also need to start preserving the
software that was used to create
and manipulate the dataset?”
Common
Questions

32
“What are the significant
properties of any given object?”
And how do they fit with what we
are trying to achieve?
Are the methods new?
Or are just the research outputs
important?
Better
Question

33
Is yours an organization that
collects the raw materials of
research?
Do you have as part of your
mission to preserve the
process of scholarship
(archives, manuscripts, etc.) or
do you only collect the
outputs?
If the latter, why would you
start now?
Better
Question

Engaging with Researchers
34
• Engage in a conversation about the significant
properties of their digital outputs
• And help them understand how separating the data
from the interface can have a significant impact on
the preservability of their research data.

Content Interface
SCENE I. DUKE ORSINO's palace.
Enter DUKE ORSINO, CURIO, and other Lords; Musicians
attending
DUKE ORSINO
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

37

39
What is important or unique?
Is it really the software?
Can it be designed in such a way
to separate them easily?
Software becomes out of date in
12-24 months
Data should last!
Software
vs Data

40
Wherever possible - separate the
data from the interface
And use your strategy / policy /
operations documents to frame
these conversation on a daily
basis.
Strategy
Policy
Operations

Thank You!
Athenaeum2l
www.athenaeum21.com
Christine Madsen (UK)
madsen@athenaeum21.com
@mccarthymadsen
Megan Hurst (US)
hurst@athenaeum21.com
@MHzUX

Digital Preservation Policy & Strategy: Where Do I Start?

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