A presentation given by Chris Awre, Jenny Mitcham and Sarah Romkey at RDMF14 (the DCC's Research Data Management Forum) on 9th November 2015 in York. It describes work underway in the "Filling the Digital Preservation Gap" project using Archivematica to preserve research data

1. A collaborative approach to
“filling the digital preservation
gap” for Research Data
Management
Jenny Mitcham, University of York
Chris Awre, University of Hull
Sarah Romkey, Artefactual Systems
9 November 2015

2. Research at Hull and York
• Hull :
– 6 Faculties, 25+ academic departments
– c. 22,000 students
– 62% research classed as 3* or 4* in REF 2014
– In top 50 UK institutions by ‘research power’
• York:
– 30+ academic departments
– c. 16,000 students
– Ranked in the top ten of UK universities for research council
income (THE)

3. Filling the digital preservation gap:
Project aim
“…to investigate
Archivematica and explore
how it might be used to
provide digital preservation
functionality within a wider
infrastructure for Research
Data Management.”

4. What is Archivematica?
● Free and open-source digital preservation system
(AGPLv3) designed to maintain standards-based,
long-term access to digital objects
● Allows users to process digital objects from ingest to
access in using ISO-OAIS functional model
● Implements format normalization upon ingest and
preserves originals to support emulation and
migration strategies

5. What is Archivematica?
● Archivematica is a processing pipeline consisting of
a bundle of open-source tools and python scripts
which deliver a series of preservation micro-services
● Archivematica is designed to output high-quality,
standards-compliant Archival Information Packages
(AIPs)
● Bagit, METS, PREMIS

6. How is Archivematica used?
• For long term preservation of born-digital and
digitized material
• To unpack and preserve contents of disk images
• To create access copies for AtoM, CONTENTdm,
other access systems
• As a “dark archive” for DSpace content
• Research data preservation
– => Jisc Research Data Spring project

7. Archivematica development partners
and more!

8. This is a collaboration
University of Hull:
• Chris Awre – Head of Information Services, Library and
Learning Innovation
• Richard Green – Independent Consultant
• Simon Wilson – University Archivist
University of York:
• Julie Allinson – Manager, Digital York
• Jen Mitcham – Digital Archivist
Artefactual Systems
Jisc - part of Research Data Spring

9. Project structure
• Phase 1 – explore: testing, research,
thinking -produce a report (3 months)
• Phase 2 – develop: make
Archivematica better for RDM, plan
implementation (4 months)
• Phase 3 – implement: set up proof of
concepts at York and Hull (6 months)

10. Why do we need digital preservation?

11. Why do we need digital preservation
for research data?
• We can’t ignore digital preservation – moving targets for
data retention mean we need to take this seriously
• Funder requirements around retention:
– NERC - data should be retained for a minimum of 10 years but
for projects of major importance this may need to be 20 years or
longer
– STFC - expect data to be retained for a minimum of 10 years and
data that cannot be re-measured should be retained indefinitely
– Wellcome Trust – expect data to be kept for a minimum of 10
years but suggest longer periods for certain types of data

12. University of York RDM questionnaire 2013
• Which data management issues have you come
across in your research over the last five years?
– “Inability to read files in old software formats on old
media or because of expired software licences”
– 24% of 181 researchers who answered this question
admitted this had been a problem for them
Why do we need digital preservation
for research data?

13. What does research data look like?
York RDM questionnaire
2013: Please select the main
types of electronic research
data you generate

14. Top research data applications at York

15. What does research data look like?
York RDM questionnaire 2013:
If your project is not yet
complete, can you make an
estimate of the ‘final’ size of
your digital data

16. Why would we recommend
Archivematica for RDM?
• It is flexible and can be configured in different ways for different
institutional needs and workflows
• It allows many of the tasks around digital preservation to be
carried out in an automated fashion
• It can be used alongside other existing systems as part of a wider
workflow for research data
• It is a good digital preservation solution for those with limited
resources
• It is an evolving solution that is continually driven and enhanced
by and for the digital preservation community
• It gives institutions greater confidence that they will be able to
continue to provide access to usable copies of research data over
time

17. What are the downsides?
• It isn’t a magic bullet
• There is no guarantee your data will be
readable in the future
• It can only be as good as current digital
preservation practice
• It can be fiddly to install correctly
• The GUI isn’t that intuitive
• You need staff who understand it

18. Read all about it!
http://digital-archiving.blogspot.co.uk/

19. How could you use Archivematica?
• Host it in-house and link it to an existing
repository/access system (for example DSpace,
CONTENTdm, Fedora/Hydra ...or a CRIS)
• Host it in-house and use as a standalone system
(you would need to have a storage system in place and establish a
way of facilitating access to the data)
• Sign up for a hosted instance of Archivematica
with archivesDIRECT (combines Archivematica with
DuraCloud storage)
• Sign up for a hosted instance of Archivematica
with Arkivum (combines Archivematica with Arkivum storage)

20. RDM Workflows at York
• We get a copy of data from a researcher
• We transfer it to Archivematica
• Archivematica packages it up for storage and
creates the Archival Information Package (AIP)
• Archivematica sends the AIP to archival storage
• Metadata is published in data catalogue
• If someone requests the data Archivematica will
create a Dissemination Information Package (DIP)
• DIP will be uploaded to Digital Library for access

21. How do York plan to use Archivematica?

23. How can we improve Archivematica?
1. Enable better workflows for RDM (producing a
DIP on request)
2. Allowing the DIP (access copy of data) to be
usable by different repository systems
3. Helping reduce bottlenecks for big data
4. Workflows for unidentified files
5. Enabling easier querying of data within
Archivematica by third party applications
6. Better documentation
All are in progress in Phase 2 of the project

24. Where to find out more
http://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/

25. Where to find out more

26. Do talk to us if you are interested in finding
out more about this project
Useful links:
Digital archiving blog: http://digital-archiving.blogspot.co.uk/
Archivematica: https://www.archivematica.org/en/
Report: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1481170