This was a presentation for the Connecticut Library Association 2016. It introduces how the Connecticut Digital Archive came to be, the challenges of the CTDA and how it is moving forward.

1. Seeing Connecticut Now and Then:
Repository Services That Support Your Best Memories
for the Future
Greg Colati and Jennifer Eustis
Connecticut Library Association Annual Meeting
April 2016

2. The Dilemma of Modern Stewardship, 1816
How do we insure resources that support cultural activities that exist today will
reliably exist and be discoverable in the future?
1816 2016

3. The Dilemma of Modern Media, 1915

4. The Dilemma of Modern Media, 1995

5. Cultural
Armageddon, 2000s

6. Cultural
Armageddon, 2011
Source: University of Southern California
Credit: Todd Lindeman and Brian Vastag/ The Washington
Post

7. The Dilemma of Modern Stewardship, 2016
How do we insure that resources that support cultural activities that exist in digital
form today will reliably exist and be discoverable in the future?
?
2016 2216

8. The Search for A Solution
In October 2011, UConn Libraries created the Second Generation Digital Libraries
Working Group to solve the dilemma of modern stewardship.
Four requirements: Sustainabiilty, Reliability, Interoperabilty, Reusabilty
What we found:
No ONE system or software can do everything
A combination of tools and services creates a preservation ecosystem that is
Reliable and sustainable, and provides interoperability and reusability.
Main components: FedoraCommons and Islandora/Drupal
Along with: Handle.net
By Nov. 2013, version 1.0 was in production

9. Why Fedora/Islandora?
• Open source: Flexible, Customizable, Auditable,
Extensible
• Significant development in academic and
governmental organizations
• Allows for a multi-site implementation
• Ability to accommodate various metadata
standards while normalizing to one
• Provides harvesting capabilities
• Ability to add a large variety of file formats from
the start. Can be set up relatively quickly and
scale to suit a number of different needs such as
historical/cultural materials, research data sets,
manuscripts and transcripts, educational videos,
books, and more

10. What Is Fedora?
Fedora:
• NOT a relational database
• A conceptual framework/set of abstractions about digital information
• A generic repository foundation upon which many kinds of applications can be
created.
• Provides the basis for software systems to manage digital information
• Provides the basis for ensuring long-term durability
• No particular administrative workflow or end-user application is assumed.
• No particular catalog or organizational scheme is assumed.
• Any number of indices and views, designed for specific purposes, both
administrative and public facing, can be applied to any pattern of components
of objects.

11. What Is Islandora?
Islandora:
• A set of Drupal modules that facilitate
interaction with Fedora repository
• Provides a management interface
and one type of presentation
interface
• A head start over build it yourself
approach
Drupal:
• Open source content management
system provides a framework for
presentation of informational web
pages as well as repository content
• Provides a management interface for
user accounts

12. Challenges: Technical and
Operational
• Relatively high barrier to entry compared to
proprietary solutions
• "Out of the box" is not truly functional
• Continuous and continued investment in
development required
• Non-database approach can be difficult to
understand and explain
• Steep learning curve both conceptually and
practically
• Continued growth in storage needs and
infrastructure architecture
• Variety of metadata approaches makes it more
difficult to normalize and visualize data
• How do we organize to support the needs of
both large and small institutions across the
state?
• How do we reconcile what is required of CTDA
as a DPLA Service Hub and what participants
add for descriptive information?

13. • Connect: Participants and users interact with
the repository and each other in various ways
with as little interference from the CTDA as
possible.
• Preserve: Preservation of access in whatever
forms and schemas users require.
• Share: Facilitates sharing of content, but
does not control or determine how, where, or
why.

14. How To Connect, Share and Preserve
Ownership vs. Custodianship
• Participants retain ownership of all content:
metadata, primary content objects, and derivatives
• CTDA is the custodian of the digital assets
• Low barrier to entry: minimal standards for
participation
• Participants are responsible for their own content
and descriptive information about that content

15. Connect and Share
Collaborative Development
• The CTDA relies on collaborations between and
with participants, a constant give and take about
content, needs, tools & initiatives.
• One the one hand, initiatives from one help
another partner and vice versa. Through
collaborative effort a suite of tools can be offered
as well as developed for the future.
• On the other, partners have different needs.
Approaches to digital preservation or information
organization vary based on the needs of each
partner and their user groups.

16. Preserve and Share
Low Barrier
• The CTDA demands from the
participants no more than
preservation requires;
• The CTDA provides to
participants a means to do more,
should they wish.

17. Data Responsibility
• CTDA is not the guardians of digital
content.
• Non-judgmental regarding content
and metadata. Everyone and
everything is welcome:
• Two requirements: that you have the right to
deposit, and that the content is not
malicious/destructive to the system.
• Content owners determine their
quality standards
• No prescribed one way to organize,
add, or manage content.
• Participants make their own
decisions about organization of
content and how to add and
manage it.

18. The True Cost of
Ownership is Responsibility
• Instead of imposing the program’s ideas
everyone, CTDA welcomes different
approaches while educating participants
about technologies and services.
• Owners become stewards, considering the
options of digital preservation and
information organization.
• Because there are so many options,
stewards can often become lost, anxious, or
paralyzed.

19. The True Cost of
Custodianship is Education
• The technical infrastructure imposes
some structure.
• This does not affect how people
organize or describe their content.
• CTDA provides training and
suggestions on the different options
available to organize and describe
content.
• Strategies must meet participants’ and
their users’ needs.

20. Participants Can
• Participants can choose an a la carte
option for long-term preservation of digital
assets.
• Participants may:
• Deposit Content
• Access Content
• Add and manage content
• CTDA provides at no cost:
• Repository & Preservation services up
to 500GB
• Community Management services
• End User support
• System management support
• CTDA provides at cost:
• Additional preservation storage
• Channel (or independent site)
services
• Data curation services

21. Data Responsibility: Metadata & Indexing
• CTDA participants are encouraged to ask this
question:
If someone finds your digital asset on the web
through Google or DPLA, will that user be able to
determine if this is a digital asset they want to learn
more about, see, or use?
• Thinking about metadata and indexing means
thinking beyond a descriptive record. It's about
"relationships" between objects. Records are
dynamic and affect searching, browsing, and
discovery.
• Metadata and indexing require constant care and
re-evaluation

22. Management Tools
• Browser-based, no software to
load or update
• Load content singly or in groups
• Only you can manage your
content
• Separate ingest server provides
higher throughput without impact
on presentation channels

23. Access
• Presentation Channels
• Viewers for supported file types
• Web search engine indexing
• OAI-PMH harvesting
• Indexing in the Digital Public
Library of America, iConn
• Inclusion in Connecticut
History Illustrated (for content
you specify)
• Open APIs, embed codes; for
indexing, content extraction,
viewer re-use
• Custom channels scoped to
organizational content
*Note: Some services are fee-based

24. CTDA Collections
• All the content, all the time, no
matter what the subject
• Primary harvest site for external
aggregators
• Persistent resolver for handles
for general participants
http://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org

25. • Basic system training
• How-to documentation from the
CTDA website
• Metadata consultation
• Data migration and conversion
for ingest
• Custom forms and tools
Metadata and
Management

26. Indexing
• Harvesting by DPLA
• Harvesting by iConn
• Open OAI supplier for indexing
• Search engine optimization for
discovery by Google, Bing, etc.

27. Data Responsibility: Metadata & Indexing
• CTDA participants are encouraged to ask this
question:
If someone finds your digital asset on the web
through Google or DPLA, will that user be able to
determine if this is a digital asset they want to learn
more about, see, or use?
• Thinking about metadata and indexing means
thinking beyond a descriptive record. It's about
"relationships" between objects. Records are
dynamic and affect searching, browsing, and
discovery.
• Metadata and indexing require constant care and
re-evaluation

28. Repository Content
• 320,000+ assets being managed
• 20+ institutions in production
• 38,000+ OAI records for harvest
Groton Public Library

29. Find Out More
ctdigitalarchive.org
• General information
• Service Catalog
• How-to documents
• News and information about
CTDA activities
• Links to production channels
• More!