LOCKSS, CLOCKSS & PORTICO: A LOOK INTO DIGITAL PRESERVATION POLICIES

Digital preservation is the process of preserving information in the digital form. By digital form we mean a non- print form. Information is moving from print to web (non-print) and it has become easy for masses especially the scholarly population to access information on the web from anywhere 24*7. Since digital information is more prone to damage and loss than print information, therefore, it is imperative to protect access to this information not only for the benefit of present but for future generation as well. Various initiatives and policies are currently in place to ensure the long term preservation of digital information. LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, and PORTICO are the three major digital preservation initiatives aimed at protecting and preserving the digital content for its long term access and use. The current study provides an overview of how these three initiatives started and how these policies function in collaboration with publishers and libraries for long term digital content preservation

Libraries and Museums in the Flat World: Are They Becoming Virtual Destinations?

In his recent book, “TheWorld is Flat”, Thomas L. Friedman reviews the impact of networks on globalization. The emergence of the Internet, web browsers, computer applications talking to each other through the Internet, and the open source software, among others, made the world flatter and created an opportunity for individuals to collaborate and compete globally. Friedman predicts that “connecting all the knowledge centers on the planet together into a single global network…could usher in an amazing era of prosperity and innovation”. Networking also is changing the ways by which libraries and museums provide access to information sources and services. In the flat world, libraries and museums are no longer a physical “place” only: they are becoming “virtual destinations”. This paper discusses the implications of this transformation for the digitization and preservation of, and access to, cultural heritage resources

Сохранение информации: прошлое, настоящее, будущее

On the multifaceted problem of preserving electronic information. The experience of the past to preserve the printed information on paper is analyzed. At present the whole information environment has become more complex and diverse, a lot of new kinds and types of information and its mediums have been appeared, but the philosophy and realistic purposes of long-term preservation of digital information is still missing. The author highlights that the preservation of electronic information can be achieved only through effective policy and successive actions at global and national levels. The primary task of preserving electronic information resources are defined in the paper.Статья посвящена многоаспектной проблеме сохранения электронной информации. Анализируется опыт прошлого по сохранению печатной информации на бумажных носителях. В настоящее время усложнилась, стала разнообразнее вся информационная среда, возникло много новых видов и типов информации, ее носителей, однако философия, реалистичные цели долгосрочного сохранения цифровой информации по-прежнему отсутствуют. Отмечается, что сохранение электронной информации может быть осуществлено только в результате формирования и реализации эффективной целенаправленной политики, последовательных действий на глобальном и национальном уровнях. Определены первостепенные задачи сохранения электронных информационных ресурсов

Retos y alternativas para la preservación a largo plazo de información digital en bibliotecas

This paper describes the fundamental problems that libraries face in terms of long-term preservation of digital information, demonstrating the need to take action to protect the digital heritage against threats to which it is exposed. A summary of the most important technological solutions is performed, which are points of reference in terms of what is being done in the field of digital preservation systems. In general, it is valued the current state of digital long-term preservation in libraries and major software alternativesEl presente trabajo describe los problemas fundamentales a los que se enfrentan las bibliotecas en cuanto a la preservación a largo plazo de la información digital, dejando en evidencia la necesidad de tomar acciones para proteger el patrimonio digital de las amenazas a las que está expuesto. Se realiza una síntesis de las soluciones tecnológicas más importantes, las cuales constituyen puntos de referencia en cuanto a lo que se está realizando en el campo de los sistemas de preservación digital. Se valora de forma general el estado actual de la preservación digital a largo plazo en bibliotecas y las alternativas de software más importantes

THE MOSCOW DECLARATION ON DIGITAL INFORMATION PRESERVATION

The preservation of digital information – a new problem of our era – concerns the whole world, and every man and woman. It arose at a time when electronic gadgetry is used in every sphere of life; when the volume of born-digital or digitized information is growing exponentially; when the variety of formats of information presentation, and the types and classes of digital objects is increasing apace; technology and software are being rapidly updated; the lifetime and reliability of present-day digital media do not meet the challenges of long-term information preservation; and last but not least, the virtual space of digital information impedes law enforcement and obliterates the borders between national jurisdictions. Despite all efforts, the preservation of digital information lags behind technical development and social changes. For two millennia – ever since the Library of Alexandria was established – humankind has been learning to preserve information on analogue carriers. With that goal in view, all developed countries had established by the mid-20th century a ramified network of comprehensive and specialized libraries, archives, museums, and scientific and technical information centres. They shared basic functions and actively interacted on their own level and between levels nationally and transnationally. They all were parts of a sophisticated infrastructure comprising the press, research institutes, method-setting centres, the educational and personnel retraining system, national and international professional associations, equipment manufacturing industries, standardizing organizations, etc. The methods and criteria of information source selection, and sophisticated and globally standardized methods of information accounting and storing and metadata creation are regularly updated

Durable Digital Objects Rather Than Digital Preservation

Long-term digital preservation is not the best available objective. Instead, what information producers and consumers almost surely want is a universe of durable digital objects—documents and programs that will be as accessible and useful a century from now as they are today. Given the will, we could implement and deploy a practical and pleasing durability infrastructure within two years. Tools for daily work can embed packaging for durability without much burdening their users. Moving responsibility for durability from archival employees to information producers would also avoid burdening repositories with keeping up with Internet scale. An engineering prescription is available. Research libraries’ and archives’ slow advance towards practical preservation of digital content is remarkable to outsiders. Why does their progress seem stalled? Ineffective collaboration across disciplinary boundaries has surely been a major impediment. We speculate about cultural reasons for this situation and warn about possible marginalization of research librarianship as a profession.

Durable Digital Objects Rather Than Digital Preservation

Long-term digital preservation is not the best available objective. Instead, what information producers and consumers almost surely want is a universe of durable digital objects—documents and programs that are as accessible and useful a century from now as they are today. Given the will, we could implement and deploy a practical and pleasing durability infrastructure within two years. Tools for daily work can embed packaging for durability without much burdening their users. Moving responsibility for durability from archival employees to information producers also avoids burdening repositories with keeping up with Internet scale. An engineering prescription is available. Research libraries’ and archives’ slow advance towards practical preservation of digital content is remarkable to outsiders. Why is their progress stalled? Ineffective collaboration across disciplinary boundaries has surely been a major impediment. We speculate about cultural reasons for this situation and warn about possible marginalization of research librarianship as a profession.

The 'reach' of Digital Language Archives: towards criteria for evaluation

Over the last decade, and with the help of digital media and technologies, archives (with the focus here on archives for endangered and minority languages) have extended their focus from preservation to also becoming facilities for dissemination. Their innovations have largely been on ‘discovery’: firstly by encouraging digitisation and inclusion of analogue and obscure materials, and by partnership with funding institutions to support the creation of new, ‘born digital’ language resources; and secondly through online provision of language resources via web catalogues driven by standardised metadata and in some cases providing enhanced discovery through web portals aggregating the holdings of multiple archives. These advances have increased the visibility, relevance and authority of archives for language-related disciplines and for language-speaker communities. This paper considers a broader set of parameters describing the ‘reach’ of archives, where ‘reach’ includes (a) archives’ understanding of their key audiences in order to provide appropriate services for them, e.g. identifying a range of relevant audiences, their languages of access, their varied technological and information literacies, interface design and usability; (b) discovery, drawing on the understandings of audiences in order to help them browse, navigate, search, identify and select their items of interest; (c) delivery, i.e. making available selected resources according to users’ preferences whether by download, view-in-browser, through apps or other means; (d) access management such that resource delivery follows depositors’ and communities’ preferences, and where users have ways of applying for and negotiating for access; (e) information accessibility, where the actual desired content is accessible to users, whether in terms of contextualisation or appropriate complexity, language, or modality; and finally (f) feedback channels, where users can utilise the archive to provide feedback to depositors or to enhance deposits with user-generated content. Through considering how a number of archives are providing such services, we can see their transition from repositories of memory to facilities for fostering participation and understanding

Less Code, More Product: Leveraging Open Source Technologies To Develop Digital Library Collections

Over the last 10 years, the research library community has made significant investments in developing and utilizing open-source software products to build sustainable digital library infrastructure and services at scale. Community-driven open standards, data formats, protocols and governance are crucial to fulfilling the objective of scalable preservation and access infrastructure. Our collective investments in such development has the further benefit of helping reduce the amount of locally written code while delivering more “product” in the form of online archives, digital collections, exhibitions and services, offering flexible solutions to unique requirements. A good example of the benefits of leveraging open-source infrastructure can be seen in Columbia University’s Seymour B. Durst Old York Library project. In August 2011, Columbia received a substantial gift of New York-related materials from the Old York Foundation together with supporting funds to accession, process and produce a digital library based on the materials. The gift funded digitization of this large and unique collection and provided capacity-building funding that helped us to explore new project management models, establish new collaborative workflows and production processes, and expand development of our digital library infrastructure and feature set. The session will include an overview of Columbia’s strategy for leveraging community-based, open approaches to digital library infrastructure and also describe the specific set of open-source technologies used to implement this and other digital library projects. It will also describe how the Old York Library project helped to accelerate our development efforts, reduce the amount of locally written code, and build more sustainable approaches to meet the needs of unique and distinctive digital collections

The 'reach' of Digital Language Archives: towards criteria for evaluation

Over the last decade, and with the help of digital media and technologies, archives (with the focus here on archives for endangered and minority languages) have extended their focus from preservation to also becoming facilities for dissemination. Their innovations have largely been on ‘discovery’: firstly by encouraging digitisation and inclusion of analogue and obscure materials, and by partnership with funding institutions to support the creation of new, ‘born digital’ language resources; and secondly through online provision of language resources via web catalogues driven by standardised metadata and in some cases providing enhanced discovery through web portals aggregating the holdings of multiple archives. These advances have increased the visibility, relevance and authority of archives for language-related disciplines and for language-speaker communities. This paper considers a broader set of parameters describing the ‘reach’ of archives, where ‘reach’ includes (a) archives’ understanding of their key audiences in order to provide appropriate services for them, e.g. identifying a range of relevant audiences, their languages of access, their varied technological and information literacies, interface design and usability; (b) discovery, drawing on the understandings of audiences in order to help them browse, navigate, search, identify and select their items of interest; (c) delivery, i.e. making available selected resources according to users’ preferences whether by download, view-in-browser, through apps or other means; (d) access management such that resource delivery follows depositors’ and communities’ preferences, and where users have ways of applying for and negotiating for access; (e) information accessibility, where the actual desired content is accessible to users, whether in terms of contextualisation or appropriate complexity, language, or modality; and finally (f) feedback channels, where users can utilise the archive to provide feedback to depositors or to enhance deposits with user-generated content. Through considering how a number of archives are providing such services, we can see their transition from repositories of memory to facilities for fostering participation and understanding