Modelling OAIS Compliance for Disaggregated Preservation Services

The reference model for the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) is well established in the research community as a method of modelling the functions of a digital repository and as a basis in which to frame digital curation and preservation issues. In reference to the 5th anniversary review of the OAIS, it is timely to consider how it may be interpreted by an institutional repository. The paper examines methods of sharing essential functions and requirements of an OAIS between two or more institutions, outlining the practical considerations of outsourcing. It also details the approach taken by the SHERPA DP Project to introduce a disaggregated service model for institutional repositories that wish to implement preservation services

Moving data into and out of an institutional repository: Off the map and into the territory

Given the recent proliferation of institutional repositories, a key strategic question is how multiple institutions - repositories, archives, universities and others—can best work together to manage and preserve research data. In 2007, Green and Gutmann proposed how partnerships among social science researchers, institutional repositories and domain repositories should best work. This paper uses the Timescapes Archive—a new collection of qualitative longitudinal data— to examine the challenges of working across institutions in order to move data into and out of institutional repositories. The Timescapes Archive both tests and extends their framework by focusing on the specific case of qualitative longitudinal research and by highlighting researchers' roles across all phases of data preservation and sharing. Topics of metadata, ethical data sharing, and preservation are discussed in detail. What emerged from the work to date is the extremely complex nature of the coordination required among the agents; getting the timing right is both critical and difficult. Coordination among three agents is likely to be challenging under any circumstances and becomes more so when the trajectories of different life cycles, for research projects and for data sharing, are considered. Timescapes exposed some structural tensions that, although they can not be removed or eliminated, can be effectively managed

JISC Programme Synthesis Study: Supporting Digital Preservation & Asset Management in Institutions

In mid-2006, JISC requested that the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), in its capacity as a centre of excellence on digital preservation and digital curation, undertake a small-scale study to synthesise and help disseminate the results of projects funded under the Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions (DPAM) programme. This report is the final outcome of that exercise.

BlogForever: D3.1 Preservation Strategy Report

This report describes preservation planning approaches and strategies recommended by the BlogForever project as a core component of a weblog repository design. More specifically, we start by discussing why we would want to preserve weblogs in the first place and what it is exactly that we are trying to preserve. We further present a review of past and present work and highlight why current practices in web archiving do not address the needs of weblog preservation adequately. We make three distinctive contributions in this volume: a) we propose transferable practical workflows for applying a combination of established metadata and repository standards in developing a weblog repository, b) we provide an automated approach to identifying significant properties of weblog content that uses the notion of communities and how this affects previous strategies, c) we propose a sustainability plan that draws upon community knowledge through innovative repository design

The Preservation of Digital Objects in German Repositories: Die Archivierung digitaler Objekte in deutschenRepositorien: Drei Fallstudien: Three Case Studies

Taking its cue from the increasing amount of digital content deposited into institutional and subject repositories as well as the open question of repositories'' role in long-term preservation, this study presents case studies of three German institutional and subject repositories all of which are in a different stage of establishing a (cooperative) framework for the long-term preservation of their digital collections. Drawing on different sets of criteria for trustworthy repositories, it is investigated which strategies the selected repositories pursue to preserve the digital assets in their collections, and how these strategies are implemented with the help of both human repository staff and the repository software used. The following repositories are considered: pedocs (Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung), JUWEL (Forschungszentrum Jülich), and Qucosa (SLUB Dresden). In that the latter can be regarded as examples for common types of (German) repositories, the results of this study might on the one hand serve as a guideline for repositories that intend, similar to the ones described here, to explore questions of long-term preservation in the near future, or are even taking their first concrete steps in this field. On the other hand, it is hoped that this work can at least give some hints as to the stage and status of long-term preservation in the German repository landscape

Toward distributed infrastructures for digital preservation:The roles of collaboration and trust

This paper first explores some of the reasons why collaboration is becoming increasingly important in supporting scientific data curation, digital preservation initiatives and institutional repository development. It then investigates the concepts of trust and control used in the organisation science literature and attempts to apply them to the work on trustworthy repositories being carried out by various international initiatives

Digital lifecycles and file types: final report

The Rights and Rewards in Blended Institutional Repositories Project is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) under the Digital Repositories Programme. This represents a cooperative venture between the Department of Information Science (DIS), the Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (engCETL) and the University Library. The two year project aims to establish a single Blended repository to meet the teaching and research needs of this institution. It will address the motivational issues facing depositors of teaching materials with a focus on the associated Rights and Rewards. This digital lifecycles study will identify the most appropriate materials for submission to the project’s demonstrator repository. This takes into account factors like: granularity, persistence and multimedia types that can be supported for both teaching and research materials. It also documents the existing lifecycles of these items and the tools and specifications needed within a repository frameworks to support these lifecycles. For example, it will identify appropriate granularity of teaching resources and appropriate methods for content packaging. The results of the study will help to identify which types of files are currently in use, which formats should be supported by the repository system ultimately selected for the demonstrator repository. This information is likely to be of benefit to other projects and institutions in the process of setting up an Institutional Repository (IR)