Beyond OAIS : towards a reliable and consistent digital preservation implementation framework

Current work in digital preservation (DP) is dominated by the "Open Archival Information System" (OAIS) reference framework specified by the international standard ISO 14721:2003. This is a useful aid to understanding the concepts, main functional components and the basic data flows within a DP system, but does not give specific guidance on implementation-level issues. In this paper we suggest that there is a need for a reference architecture which goes beyond OAIS to address such implementationlevel issues - to specify minimum requirements in respect of the policies, processes, and metadata required to measure and validate repository trustworthiness in respect of the authenticity, integrity, renderability, meaning, and retrievability of the digital materials preserved. The suggestion is not that a particular way of implementing OAIS be specified, but, rather that general guidelines on implementation are required if the term 'OAIS-compliant' is to be meaningful in the sense of giving an assurance of attaining and maintaining an operationally adequate or better level of long-term reliability, consistency, and crosscompatibility in implemented DP systems that is measurable, verifiable, manageable, and (as far as possible) futureproofed

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.

Audit and Certification of Digital Repositories: Creating a Mandate for the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)

The article examines the issues surrounding the audit and certification of digital repositories in light of the work that the RLG/NARA Task Force did to draw up guidelines and the need for these guidelines to be validated.

Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis

Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe

A model for digital preservation repository risk relationships

The paper introduces the Preserved Object and Repository Risk Ontology (PORRO), a model that relates preservation functionality with associated risks and opportunities for their mitigation. Building on work undertaken in a range of EU and UK funded research projects (including the Digital Curation Centre , DigitalPreservationEurope and DELOS ), this ontology illustrates relationships between fundamental digital library goals and their parameters; associated rights and responsibilities; practical activities and resources involved in their accomplishment; and risks facing digital libraries and their collections. Its purpose is to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of risk causality and to illustrate opportunities for mitigation and avoidance. The ontology reflects evidence accumulated from a series of institutional audits and evaluations, including a specific subset of digital libraries in the DELOS project which led to the definition of a digital library preservation risk profile. Its applicability is intended to be widespread, and its coverage expected to evolve to reflect developments within the community. Attendees will gain an understanding of the model and learn how they can utilize this online resource to inform their own risk management activities

Bringing self assessment home: repository profiling and key lines of enquiry within DRAMBORA

Digital repositories are a manifestation of complex organizational, financial, legal, technological, procedural, and political interrelationships. Accompanying each of these are innate uncertainties, exacerbated by the relative immaturity of understanding prevalent within the digital preservation domain. Recent efforts have sought to identify core characteristics that must be demonstrable by successful digital repositories, expressed in the form of check-list documents, intended to support the processes of repository accreditation and certification. In isolation though, the available guidelines lack practical applicability; confusion over evidential requirements and difficulties associated with the diversity that exists among repositories (in terms of mandate, available resources, supported content and legal context) are particularly problematic. A gap exists between the available criteria and the ways and extent to which conformity can be demonstrated. The Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) is a methodology for undertaking repository self assessment, developed jointly by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE). DRAMBORA requires repositories to expose their organization, policies and infrastructures to rigorous scrutiny through a series of highly structured exercises, enabling them to build a comprehensive registry of their most pertinent risks, arranged into a structure that facilitates effective management. It draws on experiences accumulated throughout 18 evaluative pilot assessments undertaken in an internationally diverse selection of repositories, digital libraries and data centres (including institutions and services such as the UK National Digital Archive of Datasets, the National Archives of Scotland, Gallica at the National Library of France and the CERN Document Server). Other organizations, such as the British Library, have been using sections of DRAMBORA within their own risk assessment procedures. Despite the attractive benefits of a bottom up approach, there are implicit challenges posed by neglecting a more objective perspective. Following a sustained period of pilot audits undertaken by DPE, DCC and the DELOS Digital Preservation Cluster aimed at evaluating DRAMBORA, it was stated that had respective project members not been present to facilitate each assessment, and contribute their objective, external perspectives, the results may have been less useful. Consequently, DRAMBORA has developed in a number of ways, to enable knowledge transfer from the responses of comparable repositories, and incorporate more opportunities for structured question sets, or key lines of enquiry, that provoke more comprehensive awareness of the applicability of particular threats and opportunities

Economics and Engineering for Preserving Digital Content

Progress towards practical long-term preservation seems to be stalled. Preservationists cannot afford specially developed technology, but must exploit what is created for the marketplace. Economic and technical facts suggest that most preservation ork should be shifted from repository institutions to information producers and consumers. Prior publications describe solutions for all known conceptual challenges of preserving a single digital object, but do not deal with software development or scaling to large collections. Much of the document handling software needed is available. It has, however, not yet been selected, adapted, integrated, or deployed for digital preservation. The daily tools of both information producers and information consumers can be extended to embed preservation packaging without much burdening these users. We describe a practical strategy for detailed design and implementation. Document handling is intrinsically complicated because of human sensitivity to communication nuances. Our engineering section therefore starts by discussing how project managers can master the many pertinent details.

JISC Preservation of Web Resources (PoWR) Handbook

Handbook of Web Preservation produced by the JISC-PoWR project which ran from April to November 2008. The handbook specifically addresses digital preservation issues that are relevant to the UK HE/FE web management community”. The project was undertaken jointly by UKOLN at the University of Bath and ULCC Digital Archives department