Mining Contextual Information for Ephemeral Digital Video Preservation

For centuries the archival community has understood and practiced the art of adding contextual information while preserving an artifact. The question now is how these practices can be transferred to the digital domain. With the growing expansion of production and consumption of digital objects (documents, audio, video, etc.) it has become essential to identify and study issues related to their representation. A cura­tor in the digital realm may be said to have the same responsibilities as one in a traditional archival domain. However, with the mass production and spread of digital objects, it may be difficult to do all the work manually. In the present article this problem is considered in the area of digital video preservation. We show how this problem can be formulated and propose a framework for capturing contextual infor­mation for ephemeral digital video preservation. This proposal is realized in a system called ContextMiner, which allows us to cater to a digital curator's needs with its four components: digital video curation, collection visualization, browsing interfaces, and video harvesting and monitoring. While the issues and systems described here are geared toward digital videos, they can easily be applied to other kinds of digital objects

ContextMiner: Supporting the Mining of Contextual Information for Ephemeral Digital Video Preservation

Emerging information media present new challenges to the curators. While archiving objects, and building meaningful collection for long-term preservation and access, have been well-understood practice for centuaries, digital objects present new issues. In the previous article (Shah, 2009) I identified a number of these issues related to digital objects, specifically digital videos of an ephemeral nature. I argued that while preserving such objects, adding contextual information is essential. One of the interesting challenges is to identify what to collect and preserve as contextual information. For ephemeral digital videos, I proposed to harvest four kinds of relevances and five kinds of contexts. In order to implement this proposal, I presented ContextMiner, a framework and a system to support digital video curation. In this article, I will take a closer look at ContextMiner, analyzing it for its functionalities and usability. This is done by usability inspection and content analysis. For the former, we simulated two curatorial tasks, asked our users (curators) to use ContextMiner, and provide us feedback on its usability and functionalities. For the latter, we mined a collection prepared by ContextMiner for its potential usage in preservation. Finally, I have summarized the lessons learned from developing and using our system, providing implications for digital library curators interested in collecting and preserving digital objects of an ephemeral nature.  

Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010

This selective bibliography includes over 500 articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation. The Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography includes published articles, books, and technical reports. All included works are in English. The bibliography does not cover conference papers, digital media works (such as MP3 files), editorials, e-mail messages, letters to the editor, presentation slides or transcripts, unpublished e-prints, or weblog postings. Most sources have been published between 2000 and the present; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 2000 are also included

Trust and context in cyberspace

Every day we place trust or reliance on other people and on inanimate objects, but trust may be diminished in the world of information resources and technology. We are often told that information needs higher standards of verification in digital realms than in the paper world. Similarly, when we encounter digital records and archives we may be uncertain how far we can trust them. In the past, trust in records was said to be reinforced by trust in archivists and archival institutions. However, trust in professional experts and institutions is waning; notions of expert objectivity are increasingly challenged. This paper explores an idea proposed by David Weinberger, that ‘transparency is the new objectivity’. Where records are concerned, documentation of provenance and context forms a basis for enhancing their transparency and thus for evaluating their trustworthiness. Many commentators have expressed anxiety that, in digital environments where resources are reused and remixed at will, records may become decontextualized. But in computer science questions are now being asked about how data can be trusted and verified, and knowledge of their provenance is increasingly seen as a foundation for enabling trust. Many computer scientists argue that, while data should be reusable, each piece of data should carry evidence of its history and original contexts to help those who encounter it to judge its trustworthiness. Some researchers have set out to develop systems to capture and preserve information about data provenance. In the longer term, this research may help archivists meet the challenges of gathering and maintaining contextual information in the world of digital record-keeping. Methods of automatically harvesting certain kinds of contextual information are under investigation; automated solutions are likely to expedite what are currently time-consuming manual processes. However, merely being presented with information about provenance is not enough. Insofar as individuals or institutions supply us with that information, we have to decide how far we trust what those people or institutions tell us. There is still a place for expert voices, but experts cannot be seen as infallible providers of objective information