Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation

Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected. Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.

Enabling Inter-Repository Access Management between iRODS and Fedora

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PresentationsDate: 2009-06-04 08:30 AM – 10:00 AMMany digital repositories have been built using different technologies such as Fedora and the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS). This paper analyzes both the Fedora and iRODS technologies to understand how to integrate the two systems to enable cross-repository data sharing. The areas considered include the digital object model, services, management of distributed storage, external data resources, and policy enforcement.National Science Foundatio

Digital Preservation Theory and Application: Transcontinental Persistent Archives Testbed Activity

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and EU SHAMAN projects are working with multiple research institutions on tools and technologies that will supply a comprehensive, systematic, and dynamic means for preserving virtually any type of electronic record, free from dependence on any specific hardware or software. This paper describes the joint development work between the University of Liverpool and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego on the NARA and SHAMAN prototypes. The aim is to provide technologies in support of the required generic data management infrastructure. We describe a Theory of Preservation that quantifies how communication can be accomplished when future technologies are different from those available at present. This includes not only different hardware and software, but also different standards for encoding information. We describe the concept of a “digital ontology” to characterize preservation processes; this is an advance on the current OAIS Reference Model of providing representation information about records. To realize a comprehensive Theory of Preservation, we describe the ongoing integration of distributed shared collection management technologies, digital library browsing, and presentation technologies for the NARA and SHAMAN Persistent Archive Testbeds

Planning strategically, designing architecturally : a framework for digital library services

In an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred. As a trusted information provider, libraries are in an advantageous position to respond, but this requires integrated strategic and enterprise architecture planning, for information technology (IT) has evolved from a support role to a strategic role, providing the core management systems, communication networks, and delivery channels of the modern library. Further, IT components do not function in isolation from one another, but are interdependent elements of distributed and multidimensional systems encompassing people, processes, and technologies, which must consider social, economic, legal, organisational, and ergonomic requirements and relationships, as well as being logically sound from a technical perspective. Strategic planning provides direction, while enterprise architecture strategically aligns and holistically integrates business and information system architectures. While challenging, such integrated planning should be regarded as an opportunity for the library to evolve as an enterprise in the digital age, or at minimum, to simply keep pace with societal change and alternative service providers. Without strategy, a library risks being directed by outside forces with independent motivations and inadequate understanding of its broader societal role. Without enterprise architecture, it risks technological disparity, redundancy, and obsolescence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this conceptual paper provides an integrated framework for strategic and architectural planning of digital library services. The concept of the library as an enterprise is also introduced

Predictive Limitations of Physics-Informed Neural Networks in Vortex Shedding

The recent surge of interest in physics-informed neural network (PINN) methods has led to a wave of studies that attest to their potential for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) and predicting the dynamics of physical systems. However, the predictive limitations of PINNs have not been thoroughly investigated. We look at the flow around a 2D cylinder and find that data-free PINNs are unable to predict vortex shedding. Data-driven PINN exhibits vortex shedding only while the training data (from a traditional CFD solver) is available, but reverts to the steady state solution when the data flow stops. We conducted dynamic mode decomposition and analyze the Koopman modes in the solutions obtained with PINNs versus a traditional fluid solver (PetIBM). The distribution of the Koopman eigenvalues on the complex plane suggests that PINN is numerically dispersive and diffusive. The PINN method reverts to the steady solution possibly as a consequence of spectral bias. This case study reaises concerns about the ability of PINNs to predict flows with instabilities, specifically vortex shedding. Our computational study supports the need for more theoretical work to analyze the numerical properties of PINN methods. The results in this paper are transparent and reproducible, with all data and code available in public repositories and persistent archives; links are provided in the paper repository at \url{https://github.com/barbagroup/jcs_paper_pinn}, and a Reproducibility Statement within the paper

Critique of Architectures for Long-Term Digital Preservation

Evolving technology and fading human memory threaten the long-term intelligibility of many kinds of documents. Furthermore, some records are susceptible to improper alterations that make them untrustworthy. Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs) and Trustworthy Digital Objects (TDOs) seem to be the only broadly applicable digital preservation methodologies proposed. We argue that the TDR approach has shortfalls as a method for long-term digital preservation of sensitive information. Comparison of TDR and TDO methodologies suggests differentiating near-term preservation measures from what is needed for the long term. TDO methodology addresses these needs, providing for making digital documents durably intelligible. It uses EDP standards for a few file formats and XML structures for text documents. For other information formats, intelligibility is assured by using a virtual computer. To protect sensitive information—content whose inappropriate alteration might mislead its readers, the integrity and authenticity of each TDO is made testable by embedded public-key cryptographic message digests and signatures. Key authenticity is protected recursively in a social hierarchy. The proper focus for long-term preservation technology is signed packages that each combine a record collection with its metadata and that also bind context—Trustworthy Digital Objects.